Guild Wars 2

I didn’t realize how bad the root on the scepter ambush was until the stress test. It needs to go, full stop. It makes no sense with how ambush skills actually work.

I would definitely like to see something else done with shatters, yeah. The absence of any new effects here is pretty conspicuous.

I think there’s a lot wrong with Mirage, with lots of potential ways to go about fixing it with varying degrees of redesign. But one thing that stands out to me about the current iteration of the spec is how absurd the gameplay loop surrounding mirage mirrors is. They essentially enable or fortify our dodging, but because of their placement, skill/trait triggers, and instant activation it’s not really possible to use them reactively. As it stands, if I want to use a mirror to trigger a blur, I need to pre-empt the attack I intend to dodge enough to use an unrelated skill, wait for the mirror to spawn, approach the mirror, and make contact with it just as I would want the dodge to proc. In practice, this will only ever happen in extremely controlled environments, like farm status raid bosses (and even then it’s unnecessarily disruptive). In other circumstances, this might be an accidental benefit at best, with the mirage happening to bump into a mirror spawned from some effect and avoiding damage they might have otherwise taken.

For me, it would make so much more sense if mirrors didn’t activate immediately on contact, but instead behaved like a resource, either giving us an extra endurance bar (daredevil is probably the most apt design comparison for mirage, and it’s not a favorable one) or an f5 cloak skill.

What we have now is clumsy, unfocused, and yet it’s the core focus of most of our new utilities and a lot of the traits.

and yes ambush skills need to be better/have a longer activation window, but I think that’s already down to less of a design flaw and more of a numbers adjustment.

draxynnic.3719:

Just make it part of one of the Chronomancer minor traits: “Alacrity has double effect on you.” They’ve already demonstrated that they can make traits that increase the effect of a boon on you (regardless of the boon’s origin) with Hardy Conduit.

I’m not pleased with the nerfs or anything, but this seems like the most elegant “solution” here. Chronomancer cooldowns and rotations stay where they are, while alacrity becomes more manageable, from their balancing perspective, with regards to every non Rev or Thief skill that exists or will exist in the game.

It’s been mentioned that the paper is intended to be tradeable, but we don’t know when this change/fix will actually be implemented.

I’d love to be enjoying it.

Unfortunately I decided to make The Chosen, which is blocked by an accountbound level 300 Scribing item before you can even start working on the collection

PopeUrban.2578:

radioAspen.6829:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

You can’t buy/trade the paper, which is the problem.

Its account bound? That is indeed a problem, and kind of inconsistant from a content flow perspective.

While the wvw, dungeon tokens, etc. all assume you have to go do a thing, that thing is a case of immediate progress. You see “I need badges” or “I need tokens” and you can go get them. If you literally have to level scribe yourself to get paper that’s pushing it, as now you have to opt in to a guild system, claim a hall, and do a lot of expensive upgrades.

I don’t have a problem with that for scribe as a profession, as it’s supposed to be a guild-centric discipline, but requiring it for a non guild related and highly work intensive personal prestige item seems a little out of whack.

I mean, it isn’t a crafting backpack, which is a bonus to leveling the craft rather than the entire point from a design perspective, and scribes aren’t really about crafting personal equipment.

Yes, it’s accountbound. If it wasn’t then this would be totally fair and balanced, but as things stand it’s really awkward.

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

You can’t buy/trade the paper, which is the problem.

Axel Slice.4760:

but then there is a good chance that the cost of leveling scribe and crafting the paper would be more than just buying The Chosen on the Trading Post, so this isn’t exactly ideal :/

As of right now this is absolutely the case. I can’t link it atm because I’m on mobile, but someone made a post recently that breaks down the cost of obtaining and sufficiently upgrading a guild hall, and getting Scribing to the appropriate level.

These have to be done before you can even START working on the collection itself, and they already far exceed the cost of just buying the whole precursor on the TP. It’s all a bit silly. I don’t think any other item in the game that isn’t directly related to guilds actually requires guild participation, either, which makes me think (hope?) the whole thing is just an oversight/miscommunication rather than an intentional design choice.

I’m currently using them since, at least in the open world, I cast wells frequently and time warp somewhat infrequently. But I could see myself changing them if I start to feel like it’s not worth it.

Reverse.1056:

i was expecting at least a moderator or smth to help us out here… or this has to be changed NOONE can start crafting Precursor shield coz of that Only ppl in Big Guilds who own a guild hall.. so what about the solo guys or with no guild guys? Is this rly neccesary?

It’s actually worse than that, as the price of leveling the Scribing profession far exceeds the entire cost of The Chosen.

I feel like this really does need to be looked at. As best as I can tell, the precursor journeys do involve a lot of expense and gating, but this is far, far beyond any of them.

I can’t imagine that the devs actually intended to require membership in a guild with an advanced guild hall and a high level in a fairly niche guild-specific profession to obtain something that’s not even related to guilds.

This is such a lovely change. Right choice, anet.

This has been very frustrating for me since I unlocked it. I can’t really find any info on scribe that wasn’t part of the livestream or blogs, can anyone with more insight into the profession provide a reason for why a material like this would even need to be accountbound?

Yeah this strikes me as something that’s more the result of an oversight than an intentional design decision. I don’t think there’s anything else in the game that’s not directly related to guilds but requires guild participation? Much less a specific upgrade level.

ZennithRising.8653:

So scribe will be needed to craft the legendaries?

The paper is needed to make the first item in The Chosen’s hunt, which is a book. I don’t think you need it for the others.

I’m curious about this as I’m trying to start my collection. It says it’s accountbound so you can’t trade it. Is there any other way to obtain it without Scribe and/or is it possible to learn scribing without having access to a guild hall?

Because it seems a bit weird that a guild hall would be a requirement to complete this.

Can we stop calling people who went out and did entire world completion on their alts just to prepare for this “casual/lazy/want everything handed to them/whatever.”

I think the disparity here is what’s really awkward and shocking. It’s like, what’s the point of doing normal hero challenges now when one challenge in the jungle gives you more points than entire non-Orr maps in central Tyria

They were mechanically similar to how Druid’s Avatar form or Warrior burst skills work?

Which is to say, you gain a resource that builds in combat and is independent of your specific attunement. When it’s full, you press f5 to activate the overload for whatever your current attunement is.

I’m not very impressed with Tempest and I don’t know that I would be playing one anyway, but. I feel like this would address the problems of having to camp attunements when the ele playstyle doesn’t necessarily support it, as well as stuff like being able to use Overload Water when you actually need it, rather than 5 seconds from when you need it. Plus, having to build up some kind of force to trigger an overload feels more thematic to me than just having everything on a timer.

Furthermore, this could allow for overloading to be on a global cooldown, instead of setting an attunement on cooldown after you use one.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

radioAspen.6829:

I had doubts about staff and chaos, but I’ve been playing this in fractals and I absolutely love it.

Do you no longer have doubts? I mean, do you feel that the staff and chaos are really contributing?

The main thing is that staff provides a relatively “safe” way to quickly generate two illusions that aren’t in melee range. And I’m finding that I’m not worrying at all about phantasm uptime/damage so I don’t really miss traits that support them. I mean, I guess you could probably replace chaos and not really lose all that much? But I don’t feel like the line you replace it with would really do much for you either, unless you also change up the basic rotation/playstyle a bit.

But this is just my impression after one night of testing.

I had doubts about staff and chaos, but I’ve been playing this in fractals and I absolutely love it.

But I’m anxious about quickness and alacrity uptime nerfs, even though I think the numbers feel pretty good right now considering how you have to give up so much of your usual mesmer stuff and the rotation has such little room for error.

Demented Yak.6105:

I also like the new functionality of the overall legend. I also, however, agree with most other people in that Embrace the Darkness needs to be buffed and Unyielding Anguish needs some smaller changes.

I think I might use the new Mallyx in my Power tank build instead of Jalis. I now don’t need the corruption trait line and it should be easier to get out of sticky situations involving conditions. We’ll see.

This. I hated the old Mallyx, now I may actually use it. But Unyielding Anguish and Embrace the Darkness definitely need to be looked at, in their current forms.

No you are not.

>>;

Tritone.1395:

The real question is why does it feel that way?

I think the answer is that every legend (other than glint) is the barebone version of that role. Jalis is a tank. Ventari is a healer. There isn’t really an in-between with these legends.
Now Glint on the otherhand has multiple uses. Use it to boost your damage with permanent fury. Use it to tank with perma protection or regen. You could even argue it can go condi with might and Elemental Burst.

Basically I think that Glint feels essential because she works well with every legend while all the others only seem to work well her.

This. Glint feels like the model for how the legends should be designed. The skills are basically doubled compared to other legends, which means they’re more flexible, and that addresses some of the biggest complaints about revenants in general. The way that you can doubletap facets to get the active skill without paying more than a tick of the upkeep cost (except the elite, because I think you pay the cost until the animation finishes?) means that energy doesn’t feel like as much of an issue, even when you’re keeping multiple upkeep skills active almost all the time. For the first time I’m actually using my whole skillbar, and it feels like weapon skills and utilities work together fluidly rather than against each other.

And all in all it just feels better. Herald is what made Revenant “click” for me, but I can’t imagine playing the class without it…

Agreeing that smokescales and snipers need some tuning, I think everything else is in a pretty good place.

Except adolescent fire wyverns. They’re not at all difficult, they’re just silly. Their big aoe attack is like a 10 second evade with no possible counter. They always use it right off the bat, and as far as I can tell you can’t even interrupt it because the evade starts as soon as the attack initiates, there’s no cast time. And it’s so slow that they’re never going to kill you with it, you just move out of range and watch until they finish flying in circles so you can move in and two-shot them. It’s ridiculous.

Mostly a pve perspective, but.

I think something that people are overlooking in this thread is that the m-word doesn’t dictate a single, static build that is optimal for every single situation, rather it dictates the build that is optimal for that specific situation, and as such it’s dynamic. Even if there are three obvious “meta” utility choices for this piece of content, only two of them may be “meta” for another with a new skill taking up the third slot, etc. If you look at actual build or dungeon guides, they give you all kinds of situational heal, utility, and even trait changes to make for specific reasons.

Furthermore, we can make informed decisions based on other factors. If I’m pugging with my PS warr, I may take more sustain or Fury generation than I otherwise would with an experienced party where I know other people are going to support me.

Revenant currently lacks this kind of finesse. You’re essentially choosing your entire kit on the basis of the one skill you may need. This gives Revenant fewer ways to approach any content, and adding options puts them on par with other classes, not above them.

I really want to like this, but I think that upkeep skills are easily the worst aspect of the current energy system. Designing an entire spec/legend around them seems…questionable…

In practice, unless the ticks are lower than what we’ve seen so far, it seems like you’ll just be an auto-attacking boon dispenser.

Spear having two auto-attacks is pretty interesting, though.

Yes, this happened to me as well. The weird(er) thing is that I had been playing on my non-beta characters for most of yesterday afternoon, then I left for about an hour and came back to get ready for reset Teq and I got these.

Millssta.9064:

I agree with Kidel. Tempest write up from anet. Direct copy.

Remaining attuned to an element for a period of time will now allow you the option to overload that attunement for a short while. Once you’ve attained a singularity with the attunement, you can reactivate it to perform a special channeled ability. These abilities are so chaotic and draining that they exhaust your current attunement, locking you out of it for a period of time should you move to another element. Before you ask, yes, the Fresh Air trait will refresh your exhausted air attunement and allow you to overload it much sooner

“locking you out of it for a period of time should you move to another element.”

Even if this could probably have been worded better, the PoI stream made it clear how the locking is supposed to work.

warbignime.4610:

The thing is they have very little health so it’s really easy to burst them down and their projectile is really slow.

I’m not sure about their normal attacks, but their trail seems instant to me? And like I said in my post, I don’t have an issue when I’m fighting them by myself, it’s the way they blend in with other mobs in events and stuff, so being able to burst them down doesn’t really help.

They seem a bit OP to me too, but if someone can tell me something I’m missing that would be great.

Dealing with them on my own is easy enough, but the biggest issue imo is that unlike other dangerous mobs (teragriffs, etc) neither they nor their attacks seem to have very much visual presence, so I don’t notice them in big events until I’m lying on the floor in three intersecting not!Fiery Rush trails. If I could tell them apart from other humanoid mordrem mobs or if their attacks had bigger tells it would feel manageable, but as it is now they seem kind of cheap.

Otherwise I’m loving the rest of the enemies in Verdant Brink.

This is something that’s been bothering me about the design of the elite specs since the beginning. They’re completely self-contained, nothing that an elite spec introduces now will ever have any relevance to anything new that anet adds to the same class later down the road.

Want to bring along longbow on swap for your guard for that one boss but don’t want to have to adjust your traits to fit dragonhunter in? Oh well. Like the new warhorn offhand but think that you would prefer a different mainhand to pair with it? Well it’s too bad, then, because when you get that new mainhand with the next elite spec, you won’t be able to equip a warhorn at the same time.

We don’t need to take weapon traits to use core weapons as it is, they just make them (ostensibly) perform better. I’d like to see them expand that to elite spec weapons (and utilities?) as well. This would make things harder to balance, comparatively, but the way it works now just seems so limited for the long run.

I was also under the impression that the entire point of Energy was to have skills with no cooldowns.

As it is now this system works less like Thief/Initiative and more like Warrior/Adrenaline, except where Adrenaline feeds all of your skills instead of just 1.

Knighthonor.4061:

its meant as a Tanking tool.

It displaces the enemy to allow them to not hit allies.

And yet there are other ways to pull off this same effect that are more reliable and less of a problem for yourself/your allies than Unyielding Anguish.

The functionality of Revenant underwater combat is one of the things I’ve been most curious about. I’m pretty sure some spear placeholder skills were datamined, so that probably answers that question.

But as for legends/utilities. Since we have no choice as to which utilities to take, every utility on every legend needs to be usable underwater or at least have some kind of alternative it automatically swaps to (like tornado → whirlpool).

The only other option would be at least two underwater-specific legends, but with how training and hero points work now, I doubt that this would be the case.

cocowoushi.7150:

Another suggestion: Tablet needs to summon as soon as you enter Ventari. None of this Switch > wait > press 6 > wait > now I can use my skills. If you are switching to Ventari you ONLY want your tablet and you want it NOW. There is no reason to hide it behind a second skill. The heal on activation is so small that it won’t even be missed.

I would say that it takes too long to really “get going” after all of your legend swaps, but Ventari is especially bad.

lordhelmos.7623:

Running animation with staff 1 needs help though. It seems to reset jerk and looks odd.

Perhaps I should have said “visual effects on skills” since that’s really what I meant.

The animations have clearly had a lot of work put into them, and I love the theme of the class and the lore behind it.

I actually like using a lot of the skills, those on hammer especially, they just feel a bit underpowered.

Staff is currently my favorite weapon set, skills 3 and 5 are useful and I like that it has a built in condi cleanse, even if it doesn’t affect the user (I think?).

Tablet is a neat mechanic (though aspects of it still need to be worked on) and unique stuff like this is what I really wanted to see from this class/future elite specs.

I…really, really want to like the class? Is that considered a positive? >>;

In theory? to make this the heavy-tier counterpart to elementalist and engineer as a class that uses its mechanics to (more than) make up for lack of weapon variety, in this case using two sets of 6-9 skills to fill in the gaps left by having only one weapon set.

In practice? none of those reasons and I quite honestly cannot see the thought process here.

If Shiro does all of the things that people are saying he will have to do to fix this class, then Shiro is going to have to be the single most OP spec in this entire game…

I also had this happen a lot and there was nothing I noticed that should have been causing it. Energy levels were fine, I wasn’t interrupting the casting. One thing I noticed that MAY have been common to all of the incidents was that it seemed to turn off during the activation of another skill (not another skill that reduced my energy to 0, though) but I’m not 100% sure that was always the case.

Moonlit.6421:

What’s the difference between the way this is set up and a thief’s initiative is set up? Honestly asking here bc I didn’t personally see any problem with it

While I’m not sure that removing the cost from weapon skills is necessarily the answer, it’s “different” because this affects both utility and weapon skills while initiative only affects weapon skills. The energy cost of some utility skills is quite high (particularly in relation to what the skills actually do) and it’s easy to burn through your reserves, especially on Jalis, making both your weapon and your current utility set practically useless.

Xillllix.3485:

Sylent.3165:

I simply won’t play revenant because the no weapon swap. There are way to many instances in this game where you need to switch back and forth. I don’t want to use just a hammer at all times only because you need ranged for a lot of fights.

Rev hammer is ranged.

Again, they’re referring to the lack of weapon swap and how this means you’re locked into the range of whatever single weapon set you choose, not saying that there are no ranged weapons on the class.

yakuza snowdragon.4639:

entropythreee.8152:

I just cant fathom not having a ranged weapon option if I decide to go melee. Makes some situations really kittenty/dangerous.

Hammer is ranged and has a good range at that, have a 1 hit ate range and see what you think

I’m pretty sure they’re referring to the lack of weapon swap (if you take a melee weapon then you don’t have a ranged option), not saying there’s no ranged weapon at all.

Renkencen.6127:

I really hoping they do get one by the time of release. I don’t want them to become the ele and engi of the heavy classes.

Being the ele/engi of heavy classes would be great. The problem is they’re not even that.

The wording of the Revenant beta weekend announcement suggests that it’s not available to people with Portals, just those who have pre-purchased the xpac. Would it be possible to get some dev clarification on whether or not this is the case?

ButterOfDeath.2873:

You need a staff as it increases the damage you do in shroud if you enter it while having the staff equipped.
This is due the fact shroud only uses your offhand for damage calculations(or was it mainhand?).

For pve, dagger/focus and dagger/warhorn are both good choices.
For pvp, dagger/focus is not the preferred choice.

This, but as far as I know it’s actually because DS damage is based on the weapon stats themselves. 2h weapons have higher base stats than 1h weapons, and staff is the only necromancer 2h weapon. Previously a trait would actually boost axe damage to be comparable, so axe was useful for DS builds, but with specializations the functionality of it was changed, so.

When Reaper happens, greatsword will also be an alternative.

Personally I think if instead of hurting us more it actually gave us some Resistance it would go a long way to alleviating this problem and making it seem like it’s actually improving the skill group. You know, like what these traits do on classes that aren’t Necromancer.

But I still think Consume Conditions should be typeless.

Zantmar.5406:

we r suppose to transfer the vulnerability

^troll comment
(Anet thinks its fair for necros to use more than 1 skill to accomplish the same thing other class can do)

It would be one thing if necro tools for doing so were actually reliable…

Yes, another Consume Conditions topic because this is completely ridiculous.

On quickly skimming the wiki I’m only seeing 5 existing weapon or utility skills that immediately apply 10 or more stacks of vuln.

(On My Mark, Crushing Blow, Analyze, Whirling Defense, and Rapid Fire, if it matters. Feel free to correct me if I’m overlooking something, I’m not an expert I just got curious.)

Most skills only apply 1-3 stacks and durations are more or less on par with the 4 seconds from our new CC. So yeah, this amount of vuln, at least instantly, is pretty rare overall and in our miserable case it’s self-directed.

In what possible universe is this game balance?