Guild Wars 2

need a buff

For me, just because I don’t use a new elite on my main doesn’t mean that my main should change.

At this moment, I have no intent on changing my main.

Dawdler.8521:

Duelist specifically seek to fight 1v1 and fully expect everyone to respect that and that none on 3 sides interfere.

In theory…

In real life it happend a million times to me that I (as a roamer) left duellers alone just to be 3v1 ganked 1 minute later 100 meters away from the duelling spot because they switched from duel- to gank-mode and started to chase me.

If it’s red it’s dead! Thanks to all the (honorable and respectful … my ass!) duellers in downstate I can freekill for another 10 minutes of participation!

SnowPumpkin.1809:

A lot of TC people left and went to Mag last time it was open….then after that BG opened and a lot of players from Mag went to BG. TC and Mag have both dropped Tiers a lot. I almost feel like this is happening intentionally so people pay to bandwagon. Hopefully that’s not true and things will get sorted out soon, something with the mechanics must be off.

Anyone who transfers to get the easy lewt deserves to be fleeced.

TC and many other servers suffered from glicko manipulation by Arena Net to an attempt to improve WvW, it locked TC into Tier 1 where they couldn’t sustain. This caused a mass wave of guilds to leave TC including CERN to take up homes else where.

I dont have any advice as to where to go. GO where you have friends and go to a server that supports your timezone.

I assume the logic behind it having to unlock the raid track was to get players to try raids, but I completely get your frustration at it, as once I’d completed all the HoT masteries I was also annoyed at having my exp bar locked and not being able to progress it until I’d unlocked the raid masteries.

However I don’t think it’s something that will change anytime soon (if at all), so for now I’d just bite the bullet and try to get VG or the escort one done, you only need to do enough to unlock the track, so don’t need to clear a whole raid. Once the track is unlocked you can level the masteries in HoT maps and don’t ever need to go back to raids.

After a couple of weeks joining VG raid training & newbie friendly groups on LFG (and failing all the time), I ended up asking for advice on the raids forum here, and got quite a few messages from kind raiders who were willing to help me unlock the track, I joined one who with his guild buddies helped me down VG on the first try. (I even survived the fight). So I’d drop a message over in the raid forum and see if you can get some help there.

I hear that the escort one is actually easier to do than VG, and can be pugged, but I don’t really know raid stuff, so best to confirm it with those who know about raids. Since unlocking the track I have wanted to get into raids, but just haven’t had the time.

I did some testing in WvW and the feeling is very good, it looks effective as offensive build, and you can even balance it to be less glassy. But the higher condition pressure in WvW is simply unmanageable with it, lacking the condition cleansing.

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

It’s unbeatable in duels and effective in team fights. It can sustain outnumbered for quite some time. What more do you want?

prety much this… i barely ever see a Warrior go down in a 1v1

most of the time we need to gang up on one and even then they can tank the kitten hell out of us while running around and even kill someone if we don’t have a support with us….

the only time Warriors seem to have issues are with Bomber Mesmers/Thiefs
seriously it feels like warrior are farting heals while fighting one….and still can hit pretty kitten hard…

All ANet needs to do is just delete Blackgate, problem solved. xD

Hey everyone how’s it going. I got another video with a weaver build up and this one isn’t as strong as the others but boy is it fun! I cannot wait to play this build again at PoF release because I had an absolute blast.

The builds only condi clear is earth 4 on focus which I’m hoping is solved at PoF release when maybe Unravel Hexes can be our other option for condi clear. I tried water instead of arcane and it just didn’t feel right. I really do feel like the best way to play this build is arcane/air/weaver. Until then we just take all the damage modifiers and basically play it like a suicide build!

If you have any questions let me know in the comments! Enjoy and I hope you look forward to play this build as much as I do.

Good, Modest Improvements would be nice

Mediocre – Needs Improvement

Hello,

I played a combined total of about 16 hours of Staff Weaver during the preview, specifically in PvP.

In working with the skill set, I wanted to provide some specific feedback of what is “working well” and what could perhaps need some modest tweaks, and in the case of most of the Water/X combinations, need some very significant value adjustments or additional functionality to be useful for damage or support builds.

If needed, these could be PVP/PVE split, but I feel like the suggested numbers are very “fair” and are compromises between existing skills, such as comparing healing numbers to Geyser or Water Globe for similar skills. I hope some of the more “conceptual” changes are liked for the additional utility and functionality.

Each additional utility/suggestion is designed to provide better combo potential and “flow” of the play style. Other suggestions are to add Fields or Finishers where appropriately needed, which often also synergize with build options.

For example “What would benefit Fire/Air and Air/Fire kits if we werent to add something to Plasma Blast?”

Answer: adding a short area “Pull” to Plasma Blast after it explodes, allowing it to collapse enemies inward to either Lava Font / Static Filed combo them, or to Lightning Surge + Meteor Shower them. Also, its totally in need of a Blast finisher to combo with Lava Font and Static Field.

Now, on to specific skills and combinations that were extremely fun and rewarding:

The Really Good! No changes needed.

Zet.9130:

I’ve come to terms with the fact that Anet will work actively to prevent wealthy players. I do believe that there are wealthy players; players that are wise in the ways of flipping high priced items at the TP, players that guessed that certain common items would rise in price and accumulated large quantities prior to the spike. But as a whole Anet does not favor that situation and at times if an event becomes obviously apparent they can and have intervened.

Prior to the release of the game Anet hired a gentleman whose name I do not remember. But I do remember he was adamant that the economy could be controlled and that he would do it.

I don’t think Anet does it to mean or because it hates the players. It does it to provide a stable economy. An economy that has the correct gold to gem ratio. I do believe if Anet wanted t6 leather prices to drop they would turn the dial and loot bags could be filled. It will change … and then change again.

People are playing the game and having fun. If I want to play the game like a Tycoon type game I need to accept the environment that I’m playing in, I wonder if Silver is going to spike this time around?

Do you mean John Smith who has posted many times on forums?
There are many (relative) incredibly wealthy players so not something they are actively preventing, they are very good at inflation control however.

Anything can come back as a gift/TP item/BL chest item/etc. It’s been that way for years.

I’m so thrilled, I just cant wait to get my 5000 Karma container!

The entire purpose of the gift was to get players to do WvW and was probably why they moved it to a reward track rather than bought with badges.

Reward track progress can be gained by doing many of the WvW dailies which require no enemy player interaction. Killing a dolyak, taking camps, and so forth are really no different than PvE dailies since you’re fighting NPC’s.

Since the stab changes, WvW is pretty much solely about numbers. Back when stab kept players up in the AoE CC, a good 25 man guild would tear through a pug zerg twice its size and then some.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Yes it really is about numbers, this Is why BG wins every week. It’s also evident when one server faces a 2v1, which is a situation that is unwinnable, due to the combined servers superior numbers.

Numbers over all timezones = coverage – the basis for your win, superior coverage = guaranteed win

Numbers advantage in your timezone = your blob outnumbers opponents during your timezone, opponents do not have the numbers to face yours. PvDoor, no risk play. Blob server wins skirmishes covering your timezone.

KDR = not necessarily a measure of skill, but rather tracks with the out of balance population of your timezone/server versus your opponents. Easy kills when 2x the opponents squads. And can also be attributed to skill. Mostly, it’s numbers. KDR in outnumbered matchups reflects the willingness of players to throw their bodies at, or get caught by the unbeatable blob force. Good players don’t. New players, think they can or think they should.

Morale – Being the large blob, and largely unopposed group feeds the morale of your map blob and keeps the blob intact. Taking T3 structures your opponents worked for hours to upgrade, in just a few minutes with smaller groups attempting to defend your 3 guild-organized groups, feels good, but isn’t a reflection of ‘good’. Opposite is true for your opponents. Morale drops when a significant structure is lost and the server was unable to muster a reasonable defense. This feeds sense of hopelessness for those players. Facing this day after day results in less player support, less play and transfers off that server.

Yep, largely about the numbers.

And, why I continue to ask for clarity for what the go forward plan is to create some semblance of population balance and a mechanism which does not revolve around “Luck of the Link” manual pairings and is responsive to material shifts in populations.

See post discussion here

I did all of them over the course of a few days. They’re not that much of a time sink that you’re making them out to be.

EDIT: Since a couple people are having issues following the thread, the above that I’m referring to are the collections as that is what the OP is complaining about.

Just do a small amount of your collection each day in addition to your normal play and you will get there before you know it.

Tiresias.6473:

I don’t know how carefully you curated the clips, but it seems to me that in all of them you were allowed to do exactly what is optimal: run into melee range, drop Sand Shades, and use Sand Shroud to rapidly spam out conditions. It seems nobody was using condition clearing or Resistance, and nobody tried to send your conditions back at you.

I mean, there is no way you should have been able to take on as many people as you did in that first clip. With such little access to Stability you should have been controlled to death, and quickly at that.

But there is a lot of Condi running around right now: Scourge, Mirage, Firebrand, Weaver, etc. I took a Knight-geared Power Reaper using minions with the Death Magic trait that has minions take your conditions from you and then apply it to what they attack, and let me tell you: that’s SUPER EFFECTIVE right now. I’ve killed SO MANY people with their own conditions.

Yeah, it’s a trollish build, but it works great in skirmishes, roaming, and 1v1s.

Still, if almost anyone runs right into a Scourge that’s standing near a Sand Shade and running Sand Shroud, they are going to melt. That seems just fine to me.

He was able to do it because it’s WvW where at least 80% of players are about 1 step up from an NPC in terms of brain capacity.

Half the time you die roaming it’s because you were outnumbered not outskilled.

Hello everyone! Hopefully everyone has been having fun playing around with scourge during the beta weekend. I had time to roam a bit and threw together a quick video to just show it in action. Gear is the same as what I run for reaper since beta weekend makes it harder to change gear.

Video

Build Scourge: Bot-Bot-Mid

My thoughts overall Scourge is extremely strong. With Duumfire pulsing on desert shroud and the F2 ability gaining path of corruption corrupt, you can create a lot of down cleave very quickly. The torch abilities seem to be well balanced and a reasonable option instead of dagger (I like it more than dagger tbh).

The lack of shroud for me personally didn’t change my playstyle a lot. My general policy is the best defense is counter-pressure and boy does scourge do this in bunches. Not only that, but you can put shades on downs and cleave them while you kite which is a huge benefit over reaper imo. The ability to use all the shade skills while stunned is very useful since you can create space via the fear or sustain through desert shroud barrier.

I could imagine duumfire getting a nerf prior to PoF release since the pulse per desert shroud pulse is a bit too strong. A single pulse at the beginning of each of the shade abilities is already very good for the trait. My sustain felt better than reaper for the build I use and I never felt in need of lifeforce in general which maybe isn’t a great thing since I haven’t practiced lf management with scourge yet.

The biggest counter to scourge is range of course, but if you play los well you should operate better than a reaper would in a similar situation.

The biggest things I would like to see fixed as the shade charge being consumed if you jump before placing the shade without placing the actual shade (clearly just a bug) and of course the portal being fixed.

Final Word: When PoF comes out I predict I will be switching to scourge for my build. Hopefully power reaper gets the deathly chill change to power damage and gets the speed of shadows old version put into the adept traits instead of the relentless pursuit.

Just incase my own thread isnt gonna be read by anet im posting this here.
sorry for double posting!

I’ve tested out weaver for the past 2 days straight since the demo launched and i’ve found quite abit of issues with the Weaver.

To begin, weaver is supposed and quoted by the devs to be a “dmg dealing bruiser” yet it just feels like mediocre dmg with zero survivability at such a close range due to us not being able to pressure our enemies.

I’ve been practicing Weaver against a Deadeye, Holosmith, Mirage, Spellbreaker, Scourge and Firebrand.

So far the Weaver was able to deal a little bit of pressure against Holosmiths but in clear numbers, with the exact same amulet the holosmith did 4x more dmg in a single skill than any of the weaver skills this clearly is not a fair thing due to the fact that Weaver has pretty slow Cast times compared to the cast times of the other specs and we are the most squishy even when traited into more surviveable specs like water, earth or arcane. To add fuel to the fire weaver as a hybrid doesnt deliver enough conditions to keep up the pressured dmg for a decent high risk high reward playstyle, if we wanted to go condi based, we should honestly just play Tempest as it offers more conditions and more surviveability with auramancer traits.
To conclude the dmg is just lack luster.

Now lets move on to the survivability of weaver.

Weaver has 2 nice evades in the sword skills, and a nice evade in the utility slots aka being Twist of Faith, Riptide and Earthen vortex. In my opinion Weaver does not have any issues with the ICD atunement swapping, since we have enough evades/ when we get a dmg buff to dmg enough pressured dmg to wait out the 4 seconds to go into offhand earth for our obby flesh / magnetic wave, or other means of avoiding dmg.
The heal skill in my opinion actually does its job and provides allot of healing, though the initial heal might be a little low compared to like the warrior heal, maybe a 500+ health would do the trick already.
To conclude Weaver survivability WOULD be good if we had more dmg.

Now lets move on to the mechanics of Weaver.

I really enjoy how the Weaver offers survivability with the evades and heals though one thing im uncertain about it the Gale strike, which takes 3/4 seconds to cast and has a range of 170, it is just too slow of a hit for a stun which can be stunbroken.
Other than that the leaps feel abit short, though in my opinion it shouldnt matter TOO much, a s mall buff would be appericiated but not something of my concern.
The combat in my opinion is smooth for an ele, since i played d/d ele for most of my time on gw2 i can really relate to sword, its pretty much a better dagger main hand with no dmg.
The Flame Uprising skill is slow and does little dmg for the slow cast time, so that deffinitly should be buffed.
Overall the mechanics of weaver in my honest opinion feels good and right for the spec.

My final thoughts.
If Weaver got more Pressured power dmg, around a 25%-50% increase in flatt dmg, and maybe a slight buff in speed then the class would suffice as a nice bruiser, the elementalist class always was squishy, and i dont want that to be changed alhowever the current state weaver is in does not enough pressured dmg or gap closes to counter fact that the ele is so squishy, we were never ment to be able to face tank high bursts, and its a rewarding playstyle if you could dodge and avoid it, though at the moment Weaver has no Dmg to deal to pressure your enemy, so they can facetank our dmg whilst putting up 8-10k crits on us 2shotting a marauder build.

Staff elementalist feedback here:

Bit more constructive feedback to weaver:
From a Staff ele’s view:

I had the feeling weavers are made mostly for melee fighting and melee weaponry, the utilities and elites are all heavily melee focused, the traitline felt dull and uninventive with little synergy to the rest of the ele traitlines.
It felt far more like a “off-tank” than a “mage class”, and was very disappointed as Tempest is purely melee focused so expected we wouldn’t get another purely melee focused setup.

Unreval: make it a Toggle at F5.
as you still have the GCD on all attunements being able to switch fully is in no way breaking the gameplay, however it does lessen the annoyance of using it and makes it more of a “fair balance” to get the skills you need.
As it is still preventing double field blast (earth->water->fire=fury+mights, etc. combo’s) it is still a pretty big sacrifice to gain the new skills.

dual cast skills:
All dual cast skills should be effected by CDR from their respective traitlines (or at least one of them, even with both on you don’t get CDR on dual skills).
Traits which adds attunements effects should add both effects, and double if fully attuned (you are giving up a full traitline for an awful one, I think this would lesson the hurt of that).

Staff dual cast Skill: (max targets of staff need to be increased x2 imho on all skills.)
Pressure Blast: only does slightly more damage than fireball, adds minor effects from dual cast and 15sec cd.
I Really feel like it need to be a Blast finisher as well as decreasing cast-time or increasing dmg or increasing aoe area+target hit.
Skill animation look kind of dull and PLEASE change the underhand, soft throwing of it. It looks really silly for a “big spell”.

Pyroclistic Blast: duration need to be increased on the after effect, it is very low now and doesn’t combo well with any of the finishers. Also add a KD/Daze effect on initial hit
Skill animation; please change the underhand throwing and the “curved” projectile angel, it looks like we are throwing a giant waterball with our muscles, not that we are magically creating a big spell and using magic to blast it at something.

Lahar: like the idea, staff ele need more lasting CC. think it would be better as a vortex spell which pulled enemies into the middle with each pulse. And/or don’t think it last long enough though and since it’s a field you can easily get out of it. Increase its duration and give it the field attribute.

Monsoon; this should be a KB skill on every hit, that knocksback the enemies as it goes through them, like a moving earth wall (gab-creator of which the ele currently has only 1). It’s width should also be increased 2-3 times.
Skill animation: pretty nice should be a big bigger.

Plasma Blast: of the the cooler looking ele skill; find it’s effect to be too low for how easy it is to evade, aoe area is quite small as well. Either increase the aoe or increase the Dmg or decrease the CD.
Skill animation; like the colour setup, beautifull explosion on it, only real improvement should be to the character models cast animation (arm moves to early and to slow, move slightly later and faster, like with flame burst.

Pile Driver: Cast-time is long, you are rooted while using it, piercing effect is rarely strong, long cd, daze hardly makes up for the downsites:
Give it 1500 range (as the only staff skill which can reach that far), increase it’s cast time to 3 seconds, increase it’s damage significantly. This would give ele at least ONE very long ranged skill.

Weaver Traits: (generally: stop giving specific weapon trait stats if you are limiting recharge to single elements. You are double handicapping the elementalist, either it should all be weapons or all be attunements)

Master fortitude: change it to a higher bonus which occur when dual-cast is used.

Weaver’s Prowess: only give benefits to condition dmg builds, add in bonusses for power builds on this one.

Elementalist Rage: only gives bonus for power build, make it also help condi builds (and stop double dipping in the traits, the options are limited enough as it is).

Superior elements: increase the weakness timer or change to conditions to increase the damage, or add more than 1 condition to trigger it, to something else (as ele staff got Zero skills that adds weakness, which you will ever cast, this is an awful synergy).

Bolstered elements: guess it is a fine defensive trait.
Elemental Pursuit: kind of a cool skill to have added.
Unravel hexes: also a cool skill to have added although I feel these two traits could have a more combined effect, using 2 traits on this does seem to lock down the traitline a lot. And it gives 3 traits that breaks CC automatically (bol, ele, unravel). So bit much to put here since there isn’t much interesting synergy in the rest.

Invigorating strike: is ok I guess, but again kind of boring and pushing towards only 1 playstyle.

When it comes to traits I would have Loved to see more traits actually make synergy with other traitlines in the ele’s package.
I feel like all the new traits in weaver traitlines are kind of boring, and some of them just seems very “meeh” and “bad” compared to all other traitlines.

Elites/utility skills:
Here I feel we seriously need something that isn’t targeted on ourself. Could we please get some ranged skills in utility and elites?
Or is this just the new ele where every new utility and elite skill is just self-target on us with low aoe range? :/
Feel sad we can’t even get a single elite skill that isn’t melee ranged when we are playing the Main Mage class in the game :/

edit: not sure if the range of staff skills shouldn’t be increased in general or at least have a trait that does this now that you can get sniped so easily.

Basically, I agree with what others have already stated regarding Weaver – besides reducing the global cooldown for attunement swapping. From what I‘ve seen, Weaver is about combining two elements to get new effects, not about attunement dancing to the max. I think this was brought up by Wooden Potatoes (and maybe others streamers), but I can’t remember someone at Anet saying so. So I guess the global cooldown ist the Ele’s drawback that most oft he new elite specs have gotten: Necro loses his second healthbar aka shroud, Warrior will only have two bars of addrenaline and access to level 1 bursts, guard loses instant support via virtues and instead gains more but channeled support by tomes, …. Therefore, I think the global cooldown for attunement swapping should stay. But in turn, what we gain for losing instant access to the 4th and 5th skills should make up for that – which it currently doesn’t. So these are my suggestions:

Sword
Sword feels clunky and weak when compared to the other weapons. Some skills could use some more range. Maybe give 1-2 of the autoattacks a small gap closer (like Ranger once had on sword) on the second part of the chain, or increases the range of the closers already there. Also, maybe a second evade would be nice. Sword is a melee weapon, after all. I also think the damage should be increased.

Dual Attacks
These are basically what we get for the increased global cooldown on attunement swap and the resulting drawbacks. Some Dual Attacks make up for up that (Lava Skin, …), but some still need buffs to really shine (pretty much like Overloads did Pre-HoT). Besides increasing damage and/or range, you could also add some finishers, evades, blocks or combo fields.

Barriers
Right now, these feel almost useless due to decaying way to fast and having a relatively low base value (at least for Ele, but I guess it‘s the same for Necro). I understand that Anet wants to prevent players to LoS during a fight, stack up some barriers, re-enter the fight, and repeat as long as needed. So I suggest changing the way barriers decay to being instant instead of slowly, but delaying the decay. For example, if a skill gives you a barrier which lasts 3 seconds and starts decaying after 1 second, you would have 0 barrier after 4 seconds. Instead, I would like to see the barrier last for the full 4 seconds, and then run out instantly. The result would be the same, but none oft he barrier points would be wasted by a slow decay. If the barriers base value is also increased- especially on Dual Attacks – , the Weavers survivability would get a nice and needed boost.

Effects related to attunements
Some of the traits that activate on swapping to a attunement (Healing Ripple, …) will not activate when fully attuning to single element. I think they should to make up for the increased global cooldown on swapping and losing instant access to 4th/5th weapon skills. Additionally, any trait that is active while you’re attuned to a specific element (Empowering Flame, …) will only work for your main hand attunement. I suggest that they also work for the off hand one, giving players more reason to double attune and enhancing the aspect of combining two elements. I understand that changing active skills like Glyphs or Elementals to work with double attunements would be too much, though.

Condi cleanse/Resistance
Some form of condi cleanse would be helpful with surviving in melee range. Right now, Weaver has more or less to rely on Water traits/skills to cleanse condis. Changing Unraveling Hexes to remove every kind of condition would probably be too much (making Frash Air builds pretty much immune to condis), but something like „remove a Condition/gain Resistance when using a Dual Attack / when using a Stance / when gaining a Barrier / when a barrier expires“ might work.

I love a Sinister/Viper’s combo on Tempest or Vanilla builds. I camp Fire in those build, though.

The Weaver spec offers the Weaver’s Prowess trait for a 20% bump in condi duration and a 10% bump in condi damage upon switching attunements. If you’re going to switch, then it’s good to have something like Earth to switch to.

Tier 1 is the exotic armor you get from the reward track. Tier 2 is the first ascended version and has no rank requirements to purchase. It takes 1310 tickets to get the full set and can be turned into legendary armor.

You DONT need the T3 armor (with rank requirements) to turn it into legendary.

when I look at the hours of time spent in this game and had fun there (why else should one stay with the game?) this is little money compared to a person thats walking in a restaurant or sports park to have fun.