Guild Wars 2

Fluffball.8307:

Justine.6351:

I think I am going to make a run this season on condi longbow and see where I can get. I think I will be starting in amber or emerald as I havnt played since S2. Maybe the reduced CD on the wilderness skills will carry me to legend tier lols.

When druid first came out I tried condi staff and the damage even on a stationary test golem was so bad I couldn’t kill it. However I’m with you, I’m sort of determined to play this season with a condi build. I don’t want to do power LB again, and healing is so blasé.

If I wind up close to legendary which is unlikely since I PvP like once a month these days, I’ll switch to something more traditional . This season is likely the only chance I’ll have to ever make it that far. I don’t have time for grinding anymore with a bebe so maybe I’m actually skilled enough to pop this out.

Congratulations on the baby! You’ll still have time for legend, fluffy! (Maybe)

Some other classes might be able to focus more on damage with nerf to Rev. Coming from a Druid main, I always put extra defense on when I see a rev or two on other team. It’s that or be a rally bot.

When there is no rev I can safely drop signet of stone and replace it with something more damage oriented. I can also swap out offhand dagger. So, yeah, you might see some of the bunkers changing to deal more damage…

I am very excited as well. I can’t wait to see rating, good or bad, and it will be awesome to get ascended armor and weapons. I spend soo much time in HotM it will be nice to have some HotM stuff!

The changes to DH and Rev will shake things up as well. I can understand the concerns of Rev and DH players, but these changes will make things interesting for sure.

Eleazar.9478:

also natural stride and sig of the hunt are redundant

Yeah, I can never make these kind of builds work, without a few stun breaks and Condi clears.

My initial thought is survival is dependent on running constantly. That’s it. The signet is probably there for when natural stride gets dropped in combat. Like a berserk build, unload everything and kill them before they kill you. But berserk build has much more utility, knockback, invisibility, and evasion on sword. Seems risky this build…

GussJr.1643:

@Archon, this is what I run

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAnfVjUqQ5KWzCGsAVLWMEsmOwJoEAvVHrpVmAwor0lCT6mzUA-TZRAABRfKA64BA0z+D6XGAgjAAA

Thanks Guss! I’ll try it out!

I guess I am not sure what you mean by very strong. Once you get to a certain level of mechanical skill, you should be able to defeat most foes who are not at the same level with any well thought out build.

But what happens against other players who are on the same mechanical skill level as you and using HoT specs? Are you beating them too? I really don’t think the core specs holds up to the elite specs in PvP.

Thus, my axiom that PvP requires Druid, which in turn requires healing power, which in turn requires Menders, or maybe Sage for Condi, which rules out precision based Condi from Druid.

I could be wrong. I would love to try some new builds. I am going to give Gussjr’s a try.

GussJr.1643:

Archon.6480:

I really don’t think they do much. I’ve been trying to make Druid work without healing, but it’s not going well. You need over 1000 healing for Druid to be viable. I don’t see it working anyway.

Druid only works with Menders amulet. All else fail. They removed all build diversity last patch.

Edit: Sage might work with Druid runes. Trying that now.

I had more fun with my Druid when I got out of the mindset that druid was only for healing. I have so much fun on my bleed Druid now, but will be sticking with the amulet and rune I currently use.

I have no intentions of going back to a pure heal build.

I didn’t say Druid is only for healing. I said it only works with healing power. It’s weak without it. Good players will have advantage on other classes or same class. At least, I cannot find a competitive build that has little to no healing power.

If you have one, I would like to try it, in all seriousness.

Stronghold needs 10 player teams and different objectives so guild teams can compete.

The real problem with traps, comes with skilled players using the AoE hard CC at the worst possible time. Think about it. Insta-cast AoE hard CC that can be cast while you are doing other things, like stomping, resting, or setting up a pull or knockback. It’s a bit overturned.

At least slow does not interrupt everyone in a big AoE circle. Of course baddies are going to spam their traps, or pre cast them and hope your pet does not set them off. Good players use both traps offensively to interrupt (when you CANT avoid it).

BlackBeard.2873:

Sins.4782:

I’d like to see some new 3-stat amulets. Something for front-line fighters, maybe call it Fighter’s Amulet, with power main stat and toughness and vitality as secondaries. This would allow builds that could stand on point and soak a lot of damage, but not deal overmuch in return and require outside help for healing due to a lack of healing power. I’d also like to see a new amulet for that healing support, we’ll call it Healer’s Amulet, with healing power main stat and toughness and power secondary stats.

No way! Those are suspiciously similar to soldier’s and cleric’s amulet, which everyone qq’d about before HoT as they were so imbalanced! They were the real problem, everything would have been fine without HoT if they had just removed those amulets and given every class the ability to be invuln, block,dodge about half the time to make up for it!

Archon.6480:

They banned all amulets that had both a major and minor defensive stat because HoT introduced great active defense on most classes …

“Great” in that they ruined the fun of pvp for a large number of players and completely murdered build diversity! Its great! Maybe the rest of the community will stop pvp altogether with the next expansion, which will allow everyone to just be invuln and dish out instant damage 100% of the time!!!

I should have said “superior.” The word “great” has suffered from semantic diffusion…

Thea Cherry.6327:

Wait what!? Asc Gear for PVP!? Who needs that?

I do! Thanks.

Kastiel.1947:

Spartacus.3192:

RIP Power Rev…..Mallyx change good tho.

remove of Daze from traps is a big nerf. No more interrupts. I suppose slow fits in with the DH having poor mobility so helps to stay on target.

I guess Condi builds on the rise again. Burn Guard and Condi Rev.

Like there weren’t enough condi druids , necros, mesmers, engis, thieves , warriors ..

Condi Druid can’t use that junk. No healing = No Druid. Druid is useless without healing, credits to the last diversity patch.

I really don’t think they do much. I’ve been trying to make Druid work without healing, but it’s not going well. You need over 1000 healing for Druid to be viable. I don’t see it working anyway.

Druid only works with Menders amulet. All else fail. They removed all build diversity last patch.

Edit: Sage might work with Druid runes. Trying that now.

Necromancer

Added hot key to facilitate targeting. Anyone can press alt-n to target the nearest Necromancer.

Ranger

Removed Menders amulet to increase Druid build diversity. We also increased healing scaling while reducing base numbers. Healing will be more effective with over 1,400 healing power and significantly less below this.

Warrior

We felt that Warrior needs more passive defense so increased endure pain duration by 200%.

:)

sephiroth.4217:

Condition toughness healing?

Acro condi evasion thief plays ftw.

:) I would love that combination, but fear Condi Druid would be OP with that.

Huskyboy.1053:

Crinn.7864:

Huskyboy.1053:

DH enjoys high performance against a number of professions but condi necro is their weakness. CPC is best used when they’re on LB since it destroys projectiles.

While CPC and WoC are definitely punishing to camping DH. I wouldn’t call necros a weakness. Necros are simply too vulnerable to DH F1 pulling us into oblivion.

Also as you get into higher tiers the DH stop camping and start getting aggressive.

Fully agree with all of that. I’d suggest using Foot in the Grave if you see a DH on the other team and are planning to 1v1 or 2v2 them (probably should plan for that, not a lot of situations where Death Perception will be terribly useful versus a trapper DH). Shroud activation is instantaneous, so with FitG you can save it until you’re pulled and activate it just as the pull begins. Condi necro is one of the few builds where you can afford to stay at 1200 range, as versus the DH you actually can out-damage them from that range. Many builds require closing in to match their damage potential, like Thief, condi mes, rev, etc. but condi necro does fine from range. That range gives you time to activate shroud before you hit Test of Faith.

However when facing 2 or 3 DH it’s a 90% chance that either all of them or all but one are trash. In such a case I hedge my bets and pick a build that punishes them most.

Un-reflectable long range attacks to widdle them down. At close range, you need to really outplay them to have a chance. They are probably best close range class at the moment (tied with Mesmer). They are high damage bunkers with massive AoE damage. You must kill them at range.

It’s nearly impossible to spike them at close range, you will get ageis’ed, blocked, blinded, dazed, or just have your attack magically miss.

They banned all amulets that had both a major and minor defensive stat because HoT introduced great active defense on most classes (Mesmer, guard, Druid, scrapper, Revenant, Ele, and warrior). Even thief can (theoretically) bunker through well placed endless evasion.

Stronghold should be 10v10. Not conquest, not WvW. Something between. It’s own game mode.

I like it. I mostly solo queue, but during ranked season I frequently duo queued with friends from all over the place. That was really fun, but not ROFL stomp over powered.

InsaneQR.7412:

For dungeons and low fractal zerker is better.
For high fractal is condi better.
Raids idk.
Openworld you can use pretty much both, zerker kills faster in openworld but both is viable.

No, I don’t think so. Condi kills much faster, but you have very little utility to work with. Zerker has better range and utility options. Condi is close range and VERY high damage. You would use as much Vipers as you can and use sinister for everything else. Also you need to eat food for +20% duration.

You should build both sets so you can use all Ranger weapons. With zerker, you can use Sword, GS, offhand axe, and Warhorn. With Condi, you can use SB, mainland axe, torch, and dagger. Just leave one 20 slot invisible bag for the alternat armour, trinkets, and weapons.

OriOri.8724:

Lordrosicky.5813:

3 month patches is totally fine and close to the industry standard.

The problem isnt balance, its power creep anyway. The more patches you get mean the more power creep you get as they never nerf anything because all the clueless people will cry about it as they dont realise it power creep will make them quit anyway

They never nerf anything? Mesmer would like to say hi.

Druid says… Where did my healing go?

Seriously, add this so Druid can use conditions… Please! You trashed all our condition builds!

1050 Condition
1050 Healing
560 Precision
560 Vitality

Honestly…. How did you miss this? Sage does not have enough Healing to work anymore, since the scaling on healing was, uh, changed to give us more build diversity….

OP: No, it does not look terrible. You’re nuts. They took our advice.

1. They will show us skill rating (So many want this).
2. They added sweet ascended PvP gear rewards (I asked for this).
3. They changed league to be skill based instead of grind based (Nice)
4. They temporarily made it so we can’t get farmed by premades (Will be fun to try)
5. A new armor set, exclusive to PvP… And it’s ascended (awesome, not junk)
6. They are adding metrics to match score so we can better kitten our performance.
7. We can now spend shards of glory (glorious!)
8. Rewards are tied to effort, so the more you play, the more you get. This is nice so beginners have incentive to continue.

Dual sword Druid! I’m telling ya, it’s a thing.

There will be bodies everywhere, left in your path of destruction.

Fluffball.8307:

Not to speak for Archon, but there isn’t a ton of variation in the high-end builds. He’s probably running something similar to this:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Power_Glyph_Buffer

Yep, that’s it. I use sigils of water instead of sigils of night, which looses a nice chunk of DPS, but I like having AF always ready to go. I also use Clarion Bond over Enlargement.

For raiding and open world feats of strength the Condi Ranger build is… out of this world. You can solo most HP bosses with it, though a few will utterly destroy you for lack of control. This one just makes me smile inside.

Is he asking if it is too strong or too weak? Or just in balanced in general? Regardless, he should just communicate what he thinks instead of asking in a way to imply some sort of unmentioned truth.

Example: “Hey Devs, I played ranger and it seemed too weak because x, y, and z.”

OR: “Hey Devs, I played ranger and it seemed too strong because a, b, and c.”

I am not a Dev, but I’ll answer it is more or less balanced with a few glaring weaknesses against certain team compositions.

The first weakness is that the HoT elite mechanic and class mechanic are very restricting on Ranger class. There is only one amulet that has enough healing power for elite mechanic and it has no toughness. Leaving Druid builds very predictable and open to direct damage.

The second weakness is that the class mechanic (pet) is only useful with nature magic, so as a druid we are also locked into nature magic.

The third weakness is lack of access to stability, making Ranger one of the easiest classes to gank (looking at you Mesmer).

Why is it mostly balanced? Well, if you kite like your life depended on it (it does) and outplay your opponent several times in a fight, you have a good chance of winning.

I would much rather be paired with an inexperienced player in a bunkerish support class than one in a glass class. The latter will lead to sudden death.

MADPIEMAN.8023:

Buffing sword auto attack would be ideal but would require Anet skill splitting and no one wants old power rev 2.0 damage. But for all classes I hope Anet really start to do some serious changes. It’s been 4 years and lots of stuff on all classes is underpowered or useless.

Yeah, going back to axe, I think it suffers same problem of being to slow and sluggish. The pre-cast on skills 2 and 3 are painful.

Reduce the after cast on sword auto attack by .10 seconds and add trait which gives +10% critical damage to sword.

Ranger attacks should be fast and precise as opposed to high damage lumbering blows from meat head warriors and guardians.

Swagger.1459:

With all due respect, I’m not going to micromanage crappy pets that struggle to keep up and hit moving targets, have super long f2 animations with attacks that also miss moving targets, die constantly and screw over so much of our personal damage and builds… when I’m getting blasted in the pixels by effortless 10k+ hits in wvw and spvp…

If pets were simply made to move and attack faster, kept pressure on moving targets and hit reliably, were more resilient… then I think most players would be happy.

Yep, that would work for me.

I like your suggestion and agree with fluffy, that return is critical and it would be bad to loose that. I would love to be able to keybind it and have what you suggested.

I tried to get around using Smokescale and Bristleback after the last nerf, but determined it is not possible. The only way they could nerf these pets to be as useless as the others would be to remove their ability to hit. I use them because I can rely on them when needed.

All things being equal, the pet MUST hit a target to win an even matchup. Our damage is low compared to other classes. If our class mechanic misses all the time we should—and do—lose. That’s the only reason these two pets are so popular. They work when needed.

Fluffball.8307:

Archon.6480:

Condition Ranger/Druid have far superior damage. You would use full viper’s for this.

With the caveat that they only do this in highest end PvE. Obviously for something like lab you’d go LB ranger, or some equivalent. And viper is a little silly in WvW.

Yeah, vipers in WvW is painful to imagine! Total utility…. Zero. I should mention I ran fractals 97 twice today as full zerk, it’s fine.

For the others, I think healing Druid works better and is maybe more fun for yourself and allies. Zealots, Minstrel, Magi, or some mixture thereof (I like Zealots/Mistrel combination). Zealots trinkets and weapons can be swapped into full zerk for more healing, or Minstrel/Magi for more damage. They are really nice to have.

Oh man, well after getting stuck in pergatory Foefire for thousands of matches over the last 5 seasons, I think most of us are enjoying the new maps in unranked.

I kind of dread the return of the next season because of the limited amount of maps.

I just want cool pvp weapon and armour skins. Yeah, yeah, I know it will gosh cause pve players to infest our games our something stupid.

Whatever, I just want moar stuff!

Ider.1276:

So, is berserk druid still viable after recent nerfs?

Yeah, it’s fine. Not great, and not as fun as before, but it’s fine. It’s always fun to shoot things with arrows, even if the damage and utility are kinda meh.

Condition Ranger/Druid have far superior damage. You would use full viper’s for this.

I can’t say if it is overpowered or not, but I have to run from the good ones or die trying. It’s annoying because they are also more mobile than Druid so… yeah, not sure.

This is the strongest I have seen them, ever.

Bad ones die easy, over and over again, but good ones seem over-tuned. Too many clones, not enough dodge and condition removal to mitigate.

Crinn.7864:

Archon.6480:

Sigmoid.7082:

The reason people dont like conditions is because they have to build around it as a defence.

It is much easier to apply than direct damage,

This is false. Condi applying abilities can be blocked and evaded just as power ones are.

Yes, but power ones are easier to avoid. So what I said is true. Condi usually comes in big AoE circles, Instant effects, etc.

Ranger as a class does well in PvE. Top notch damage build (condi viper) and great healing/support with Magi/Zealot.

It’s a walking contradiction in PvP.

In WvW…. I’ll just say: “Stability went where?”

It’s really kind of comical.

1. To be competitive, you must run elite spec, which is Druid.
2. For Druid to heal nicely you must invest heavily in Healing (at the expense all else)
3. There is only one amulet that has enough healing now…
4. Druid skills are tied heavily to healing, so you can’t run anything non healing…
5. They nerfed overall healing and condition removal by around 50% from what it was.
6. They also nerfed damage output by adding 25% increase on WHaO (less boons)

Ha ha. I wonder. Do they know the wrecked it?

There is no reason to go into WvW as a Druid.

Our Elite HoT class mechanic just got nerfed by 50% and we were forced into healing stats only gear if we want to have decent heals.

Would you want a low damage “healer” that can only heal 50% of the time and has pathetic stability? When it is not being CC’d it is on cooldown. You can’t count on it so it is rather useless. It went from being rather decent to complete crap for support.

Sigmoid.7082:

The reason people dont like conditions is because they have to build around it as a defence.

I like condition damage and also think it should be able to down an opponent in seconds. I just don’t like the way it is applied en masse with a higher frequency than it can be removed. Even when building to remove it.

It is much easier to apply than direct damage, so removal skills are a big part of balancing it. They increased the output but didn’t increase the removal/mitigation enough to compensate.

I would like a reward track to upgrade Glorious Armor to an Ascended PvP precursor version, then to a legendary PvP version.

There should be exclusive PvP Legendary Armor. GW1 PvP armor was the best in the game.

EH, WVW IS OPEN WORLD PVP.

BESIDES, IT WOULD RUIN THE ATMOSPHERE WHEN A BUNCH OF PVP WANNABES START A DUEL IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR OPEN WORLD EVENT.

NO THANKS.

Condi is fine. Condi removal is not fine.

We need more/better options to remove condi and hard CC. HoT added condi-barf (classes can load you with 5-8 conditions instantly) but did not give enough mass condi removal to compensate.

Saiyan.1704:

TDM
3 rounds
Time limit of 5m
Lowest average health team loses the round after time expires

Exactly this, and remove respawn, but keep downstate.

Piieuw.5834:

Laaaaaaaaaame. You’re telling me I spend time grinding these maps, skipping on things to do with friends, or skipping on going out on some days, just for nothing. You dissapoint me, Anet.

The best part of GW2 is that you don’t have to grind like a mindless Zombie to play PvP.

Ha ha, how about the regular stomp animation but you slam down a big bag of salt that explodes.

Dariya.9380:

The time-limited achievements are quite easily obtainable in a few days, even without excessive grinding. This is just pandering to the PvE community again because they missed their chance. If you want to make them permanent, they won’t really feel like an actual achievement anymore nor exclusive to the PvP, and you should make it harder to obtain and add some motivation.

PvP players can’t have anything fun to do because… What? PvE?

I really don’t care if PvE players are interested in PvP achievements or not. I like stuff to do in PvP.

Eh, won’t your MMR tank if you keep loosing? Just loose a few more matches and you’ll be in noob novice league…

Thanks PvP team and Gaile. I actually found the Coliseum achievements quite fun to obtain. More rewards for PvP are welcome.