Guild Wars 2

Ignore your starting area. find the central hub where everything converges, then you can easily access all areas of the map without much problems.

Don’t attempt map objectives without wallows and updraft. You should also have at least a week of roaming experience on the map, too. Otherwise, you’ll find it extremely frustrating to find things if you haven’t already memorized most of the travel routes, amount and type of enemies in each zone, etc.

Shiro’s skill actually works even if you activate it then invoke another legend. The heal still works. Technically you can activate Shiro’s heal then switch to Jalis and activate that heal as well, effectively giving you two heals.

The best thing about it is that it needs to only be activated and then you can switch to a different legend and move on. It’s actually quite good once you start using it with other legends.

So, I’ve been toying around with ventari, as well as the druid.

Both specs are “Healing” specs to be the primary healer. Both classes require a large sum of their class, specialization, utilities, and gear to be shifted toward healing — However, the results seen are not the same.

The druid outperforms ventari in every single category, except projectile blocking.
The healing is stronger (far stronger, and heals in 2-3 areas at once, with the pet healing as well as the active wisps), team support is arguably even (given spirit used, buffs provided), the condi cleanse is as good, if not better. In addition druids bring multiple water fields.

The problems with Ventari, as I see them, consist of the following:

1) The tablet is clunky, moves too slow.
This is detrimental to a group that has to move often, as the heals are unreliable. Try moving the tablet through a running target that isnt running in an exact line — even then, it can be difficult to pass the tablet through them

2) You have to stop to heal.
What I mean by this is the heals have cast times, and wont happen if youre doing anything else. If youre Using UA, or Staff 4, the utility skill wont go off. I believe the utilities on the tablet should be seperate from your characters attack skills/animations/cast times. This would help alleviate the above. You could then Cast 3 (Burst heal in 2 seconds) then move the tablet with Q, providing a burst heal along the way while its traveling/a large one at the end if youre fast enough/its not traveling far. This currently works sometimes, but not always

3) The trait line has garbage additives due to our low heals and the problems above
Hardened foundation needs to be reversed. It needs to grant healing power for toughness.
Natural abundance needs to be a burst heal, not something dropped on the ground.
Tranquil Benediction needs to provide protection, or Resilience — Or increase the number of orbs dropped.

4) The utilities:

1- As mentioned above, this is clunky to move the tablet, moves slow, and doesnt let you cast while doing other things. The tablet moving should have a 240 range on its heal. 360 range when stationary.

2- Protective Solace – This one is good. No complaints.

3- Natural Harmony – The area is too small, the cast time is way too long for how much healing it does. It also sometimes bugs out if you move the tablet, draining your energy, but not healing the burst.

4) Purifying Essence — If i let it channel for 5 seconds, and hope allies havent cleared their condis, it might heal for 1400 max. Less than moving the tablet, or casting Natural harmony. We already condi cleanse on staff 4, potentially from rolling, and from swapping legends — and other classes have access to aoe condi cleanses as well. This needs to remove ALL conditions, or drastically improve the healing coefficient

5) Elite — In my mind, there is no reason to ever cast this. Fragments dont last long enough, and even if they did, hasn’t Anet learned from the medpack? NO ONE PICKS UP TINY THINGS ON THE GROUND. Not only is it hard to see, but that means you have to stop DPSing to hopefully get there in time. If they are going to keep with this “Pick up this tiny thing” at least make it worth it. They need to last longer, provide a buff (regen, swiftness) or condi cleanse with the heal. You also then have to re-cast the tablet, then re-move the tablet where it needs to be.

I understand druids maybe should be the best healer, but there shouldnt be such a large disparity in the two primary healers. If the ventari is meant to be more sustain, give us more tools to sustain people with Healing over time, instead of the large bursts seen in the toolkit (2, 3, 5). If it is meant to be more “support/utility” — Fine, drop the “Healing effectiveness” increases throughout their entire trait line, especially the 2 that are required to be taken in salvation.

There is nothing for us on fractals anymore. They are meant for the new people. Dont even bother.
Lets hope raids have enough content for us

It used to be around 460G for a full light set. I can check my spreadsheet when I get home as I have been casually tracking the costs. I could also tell you what the prices would have been had they not messed with the recipes.

Keep in mind that ascended armor only provides roughly 2% DPS increase without infusions if you go berserker. What you get out of it compared to the cost isn’t worth it. Content also will not be so tightly tuned where the 2% difference will be required.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s recommended. You can still beat them in exotics but you have less room for error. Fortunately armor provides such a small boost relative to the rest which means you shouldn’t stress out over ascended armor.

And since there always seems to be that one person who makes the inevitable mistake about percentages, I’ll correct them now. A 2% DPS loss for each of the 10 players on an individual level does not equate to a 20% DPS loss for the group.

This. Everyone gets 2% income increase does not means a country of 1 million population gets a 2000000% incoming increase. Each player getting 2% more dps means the team is getting 2% more dps.

I vote for toning down mushroom’s aoe damage.

Also, the kittening frogs.

Those kittening frogs. You basically can’t melee them at all unless you have 100% aegis uptime or unless you one shot them.

Coulter.2315:

Needs no nerf.. They die easily and are very vulnerable to interupts, controling the way they face and dodges. Play smarter.

Got it. the “lern 2 play” theme is strong.

gricks.1897:

Masteries are only a necessity for the first 1 or 2. The rest are nice and fun. Are some necessary for collections? Yes, but that can take time. There is nothing saying “You must have this mastery or you cant do the thing!”

Actually, there is ONE, the Stealth detection for the boss in Verdant Brink. Thats the only thing coming to mind. They always said the Masteries would simply be useful lateral progression that you will gain. You are welcome to grind them up all you want, but you do not have to. I have 2 in each tier in the Jungle, and 3 in Nuhoch just from doing the events, and that’s been perfectly enough.

On the other point int he exp necessary in general, yes it is rediculous amounts of exp.

The point I’m making is not that about its necessity but more about how just plain not fun they are to grind out the xp, and how some of them have such niche uses, while I am giving positive suggestions on how to improve those masteries to be more useful, and also a positive suggestion on how to reorganize the mastery lines in a way that reduces grind and encourages doing the events (opening up the vendors at tier 1 of a mastery line is better than tier 2 or 3 if you want to encourage event completion because if I’m earning currencies that I can’t even spend, I’m less compelled to continue doing the content)

I don’t like the concept of gating something fun behind something not fun in a video game, where a video game is meant to be played for fun, it should all be fun. But the way it’s gated is not fun.

Okay I think some might be confused because everyone keeps saying +5 infusion, when it is actually the +5 versatile simple infusion. You can’t directly trade in a crafted +5 infusion for a +7. It is only the versatile ones.

harold.3526:

They can blink 1200 without a target?

nope

Let’s actually be real for a minute. It doesn’t matter what classes you bring as long add each build is solid and relatively optimized. There is absolutely no need for"engi over thief" unless your speed clearing. Get the needed roles filled and have everyone know what they need to do, you’ll be fine.

Why shouldn’t there be damage checks when one of the three pillars of the game is damage? (Damage, support, control)

Raids is next week, however, it’s been proven time and again that ArenaNet can make amazing PvE and well as painfully bad PvE design.

So I’m making a quick list of things I don’t (and I’m sure many others) don’t want to see.

1. DPS Checking.
During the beta weekend event, the Vale Guardian was nothing more than a DPS check. Granted, it already has some pretty strong and deadly mechanics that required team play. There was one issue that should never show up in PvE, that was the bosses “Rage Timer”
You see, if you don’t deal enough damage, the boss will deal x5 the amount of damage and can easily wipe your entire team instantly. Unless he had 4% of his health bar left, it was GG.

The Rage Timer only encourages players to go full zerker and full condi, any sort of defense can mean defeat, which ironically goes completely against ArenaNets raid mantra of exploring builds.

The lesson: Do NOT have a DPS check! Seriously, if you want to reward teams that are fast and effective you give actual rewards! Speaking of…

2. Only 1 chest per boss/event/room.
What’s wrong with 1 chest? Nothing, but it hinders design. If you want players to take the challenge to the next level, give them next level challenges. Reward those groups that are effective and are at their absolute best.

Beat this boss in just 5 minutes?! Well, that bolds a 3 chest rewards. Tripling the chance at those rare items.

This is where you can apply those stat checks or add even extra challenge. You could run through this trap filled room with your team, or you could do it naked with your team.

The lesson: Eventually players will find the dominant strategy, something that can never fail, fast and is easy to do. It doesn’t matter how hard you make something, if it is designed to be beaten, it will be beaten then it will start to be beaten effectively. This is where you should apply those challenges.

3. Lack of audio and visual.
You know that the Hero Point in Auric Basin with Balthazar? His one attack he casually raises his arm and then make everything explode? REALLY?! Does that mean I can have a meteor shower that is very quiet? NO?!

I have no idea why ArenaNet just loves powerful, deadly and quiet explosions of death. If there is a super charged mega attack, I better kitten well hear and see it!

The lesson: Finish the combat. If everyone blows up and dies, I better feel like it was because we fail to react, NOT failing to see it in the chaotic attack animations from the players.

4. Stupid boss mechanics that makes no sense.
Remember the Vale Guardian? It wasn’t bad but brings up so many bad designs. First off, you needed 5 players to stand on a circle that randomly spawns around to prevent a whip.
Okay, so, what the kitten? Why does the Vale Guardian have that? Who is casting it? Why does it require 5 people? Why does the key to his defeat just randomly appears?

Just like Mai Trin, she is technically unbeatable, but she has a friend that holds to key to her defeat.

This is what you call, stupid mechanics. Why not have players beat Horis, take his cannon and shoot Mai Trin, reducing her shield?

Why not have an artifact that you drag around to protect you in the Vale Guardian fight? Players that pick it up or drop it, till provide the AoE safe shield that requires 5 players to stand in. But it’s not so simple, while it does provide a shield, picking it up will slowly kill the holder. Not only that, the artifact will lose it’s protective charges the longer it is not held. Meaning that you HAVE to keep it held as much as possible meaning that you cannot just leave it laying around.

The lesson: If it seems dumb in design, it probably is dumb design. Put some extra thought into it.

5. Bugs.
Be sure doors WILL open.
Be sure events WILL trigger.
Be sure bosses WILL follow the rules.
Be sure items WILL spawn.

That is all from me.

Who wants to add #6?

Overloads are stunbreaks.

So is Eye of the Storm.

And you can still run cantrips. Personally, I’d say at least one cantrip is still required if you are doing PvP. I still run Mist Form in WvW.

It’s more essential than ever. An elementalist who chooses mist form and is not running fire immediately dies to conditions. There is literally nothing you can do than run away, no matter how cheesy and lowskilled your condi opponent is. An elementalist with cleansing fire has only one stunbreaker and an elementalist with only earth armor as a stunbreaker is a dead elementalist. You are pigeonholed into running fire spec which reduces build diversity and even then there is no reason why a mesmer teleport should have
a) less cd
b) increased range
c) the ability to break stun
compared to lightning flash. Either lightning flash or cleansing fire need to get their stunbreaker back as it was before elementalist was overnerfed.

Even if you devs disagree with elementalist getting one more stunbreaker; consider it as an apology for tempest being total crap.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Casual-PvE-Air-Earth-Tempest

Just something I haven’t seen mentioned – the icd for Shared Empowerment (give 1 might to allies when you apply a boon) is 1sec. Your herald boons sync with the server and refresh every 3s so you are effectively getting 1/3rd of the potential from the trait. If you stagger your utilities a little you’ll get better might sharing. If you run sigil of strength you can get, on average, a sustained 4 extra might shared to allies (tested in the mists). While this is a loss in personal dps from an air sigil and you will easily cap at 25 might, it’s definitely worth noting you can get some insane might sharing for such a small price.

Here’s the breakdown if anyone is interested:

baseline (just facet of darkness and nature): 4-5 might
w/ Facet of Strength: 10-11

w/ Sigil of Strength: 9-10
w/ Sigil & Facet: 15-16

w/ Sigil & Runes of Strength: 11-12
w/ Sigil & Runes & Facet: 18-19

*all tests had 86.85% crit chance and had facet of darkness and nature maintained. Number range is the amount of maintained might applied to a nearby ally. This was against the indestructible golem in the mists. Note that more enemies will allow more sigil procs so the sigil might actually average 1 or 2 might higher in multiple enemy scenarios.

If you’re in a pve scenario where your party has little might or you are the sole might provider, definitely consider sigil of strength and maybe strength runes! Or if your war doesn’t want to run PS!

obal.3218:

Rotation Notes

Pure DPS Rotation

• Glint + Shiro – Activate all facets except elite -> Elemental Blast -> Assassin Stance -> Enchanted Daggers -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> Dragon Stance -> Activate all facets except elite -> Sword Auto until Quickness runs out -> Unrelenting Assault -> Frigid Blitz -> Sword Auto -> Elemental Blast -> Assassin Stance -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> repeat Glint and Shiro off cooldown

I’ve spent a couple days puzzling over this, and trying to work out the rotation. I’m a bit slow, so let’s pretend that I don’t fully understand all the mechanics, or how they necessarily work. Actually, we don’t even have to pretend.

At the moment, I’m using the Glint/Shiro combo, with hammer and sword/axe. I’ve been trying really hard to follow the above rotation in order to understand what’s going on, and why. One thing that isn’t specified and I had issues with trying to work around is, you don’t specifically mention the F2 facet.. am I correct in assuming that when you say “activate all facets”, that includes the F2 one? And if so, do I ever blast it, or just leave it alone? I’ve been having troubles with it when swapping to Shiro and attempting to use Impossible Odds.. because Impossible Odds is unavailable with the F2 still active. So I’ve just been ignoring F2 altogether and don’t even activate it in the rotation. Again, let me know what I’m doing wrong, there.

So what I’ve been able to gather, and you allude to it in your rotation notes but not clearly enough for me, is the only reason we are in Shiro is to use the heal, Impossible Odds, and autoattack.. and that’s it. Right? What isn’t clear is what is the trigger that makes me swap back to Dragon Stance.. is it when Impossible Odds runs out?

Then, when you say “activate all facets except elite”, again, does that include the F2 facet? If so, I’m not sure I understand what you mean in your notes by letting it run out for some sort of cooldown avoidance. What exact mechanic are we striving for there?

Can you provide a bit more description about what exactly is going on during this rotation?

Thank you.

Velimere.7685:

obal, how is the staff’s DPS compared to that of the sword?

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Anybody know how much damage you lose by swapping to staff for certain tasks like the cc break bars? I’m kind of annoyed with how damage traits focus on the sword either through a direct buff or to dual wield; not that I hate sword and it’s a great primary but it is annoying that it doesn’t affect the Hammer or staff if you have those on swap.

Anyway, I suppose the damage isn’t all that important if you swap to it to smash that bar, but I still wonder…

Here is using just staff. I use it at the start of a fight but don’t swap back to it after that. This doesn’t account for the surge of the mists nerf and it assumes you have no dps downtime since it takes time for most bosses to run back after using it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Following up on today’s blog post about raid rewards, we wanted to share some details on specific items:

In order to preserve the challenge of raids, we’re disabling the use of a number of items inside raid instances. Many of these restrictions will be familiar, as they’re also disabled in WvW and dungeons. However, we are also disallowing the use of many runes and sigils that provide bonus damage versus particular types of enemies, as well as the potions that give similar effects. Using food and utility buffs inside a raid is perfectly okay, but most other items that give bonus damage or access to new skills beyond your profession have been disabled.

You forgot to add that thief class is disabled for raids.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just give the enemies an enemy type for which there is no slaying sigil?

Been waiting for this

Thanks for not running the shards, it opens up a market for us filthy Fractal Sellers as the population that runs fractals dwindles.

It used to be if you did 50/40/30/20 each day, you had about a 31.6% chance of getting either an ascended armor box or a weapon box, and ascended rings were so common that you’d likely get 2~4 per day. Not getting at least one ring was unheard of (less than 0.5% chance).

Now if you do all the dailies, your chance of getting either an ascended armor or weapon box is under 4% and you have a 34.5% chance of not even getting a single ring. Not even a single ring.

THAT is what’s broken, not gold rewards, not irrelevant stuff like completion chests or skins. Ascended drops have been nerfed so hard into the ground that rings only drop twice as often now as ascended chests used to.

Fix that.

50 s more for 100 lvl compared to lvl 1 ? What exactly does it fix? Noone want gold rewards in fractals, we want ascended drops. As a fractal player myself i rather prefer the ‘i won’t have to spend kittenload of gold for asc eq so i can run frac on alts’ type of profit.

https://twitter.com/Shazbawt/status/658092329962573824

There you go buddy.

You guys gotta chill out. Berserker was in a bad state, and guess what? It got buffed today. Guess what else? I think its likely that tempest will see some improvements as well.