Guild Wars 2

Care to post your stats and what you ended up using?

You certainly don’t have to take RHS, I’m just comfortable enough to know that I won’t die too much unless I play badly. I don’t really like sanctuary though; it’s just not reliable enough. I would take purging flames to remove conditions.

I think you should take either consecration cooldown or ground target. Taking them both means that you don’t have absolute resolution and your condition removal is very poor.

How about something like 10/0/20/20/20? or 0/0/30/20/20 if you really feel that squishy? Strength in Numbers, Purity, and Altruistic Healing should all help you live longer.

What are we talking about here? PvE has no problem with offensive builds and build diversity lacks because pve is not balanced, and defensive builds are just better for large group wvw which is a failing of wvw because of the way rallying and aoe and siege works. I guess that leaves that messthat is pvp, so I’d imagine it’s more of a failing of the game mode more than anything else.

Should just give it time, necros were pretty terrible before June and are still subpar in pve but a few tweaks made it into the QQ-generators that they are now. I rolled a guardian to pass the time, and voila, necros were useful again. So if you’re sour, just reroll. They seem to only care about numbers if enough people stop playing a certain class, at least that’s evidence of something.

Otherwise, tough it out and think of what the class and in more coherent terms than “omg we’re not warriors”. You just have to realize change needs to be done one step at a time, and you can’t just suddenly revamp a class. The necro was basically resurrected by moving a few traits to earlier in the tree and a new one in particular. Now, you could argue that all these steps taken are wrong, in which they are, but if you want to provide constructive feedback, you have to stop the chest beating.

Guardians need more mobility; the devs are just plain wrong in their false dichotomy and also they need more stability. What kind of “defensive support” lacks so much in that? Yes, you can point at SYG but that’s practically mandatory against other players and what else ? Hallowed Ground (lol cooldown) and a Indomitable Courage that requires heavy investment in virtues and conflicts with Absolute Resolution. Yea…. honestly I don’t find these are impressive. Shouldn’t we be the ones that can become practically immune to CC? Just saying.

And fix the zeal tree! And those subpar minors in valor.

Oh man, that’s perfect.

Again? Well fine. My goal here is to not create traits that are “must have” but you could still take them if you were bored.

Spite-- This tree tends to focus on damage, damage, and more damage. It is because Axe Training and Close to Death put everything to shame, and everything else feels like filler.

Spiteful Tailsman: It actually works
Yea, I don’t think that’s being unreasonable at all to have a trait does what the tooltip says.

Spiteful Removal: Also transfers 1 condition to a foe
Might give a reason to take it in big fights, and goes along with necromancer themes.

Reaper’s Might: Also grants 1 stack of might upon entering Death Shroud
It’s already a good trait, but it’s not one I’d rush to use atm— more filler than anything else.

Training of the Master: + damage and Activating a Minion skill has additional effects:
Flesh Golem Charge Cripples
Bone Fiend immobilize chills
Shadow Fiend Blind causes vulnerability
Flesh Wurm Teleport causes you to gain swiftness

Taking this trait to go minions is a pretty big sacrifice if you use axe since you’d lose either close to death or axe training. Actually traiting minions is just a big sacrifice is in general, so this makes it close to the Guardian’s inspired Virtues but much more expensive. It really needs to be that good.

Siphoned Power: Activates when below 50%
What’s the point of getting it when you’re almost dead?

Curses-- Pretty much a perfectly designed tree, and my favorite one. It could just use one thing…
Withering Precision— Reduce Duration to 4 seconds, 5 second internal cooldown

The long ICD makes it not worth 30 points.

Death Magic-- It focuses on minions and staff, and promptly gets ignored except for staff traits

Reanimator- is merged with Protection of the Horde at 15 pts
2 traits nobody really would miss. For the sake of color, just confine it to 5 points.

Dark Armor— Also -50% CC Duration when channeling

New Master Trait— Poisonous Strength— 7% of toughness goes to condition damage.
Death magic to be a staff user’s tree, so boosting the condition damage by a little should help.

Death Shiver— Also chills
Look at that name!

Death Nova— The explosion also blinds

Flesh of the Master— Also allows for one extra bone warrior
For even more meat

Blood Magic-- What are we gonna do with you? You’re so lame, so…

Merge Vampiric Precision into Bloodthirst
Merge Vampiric Wells with Ritual Mastery

So we don’t have to pick which crappy trait to take, thanks. If Siphoning is to remain subpar, then give it along with actually useful things.

New Grandmaster Trait— Master of Vampirism— Heals and siphons work in Death Shroud, and healing power scales 10% more with all siphon abilities. If you put 30 points in this tree, you should deserve to overcome this restriction that plagues all necromancers.

Soul Reaping-- Another well designed tree that has a ton of synergy. Not much is needed at all.

Speed of Shadows— Not capped by movement speed cap.
It’s kinda useless that it is…. let us run away.

Foot in the Grave— Breaks stun
Now that would just be amazing, if only…

SrebX.6498:

All the balance issues aside, the simple answer is: Because Necromancers are a ranged class
So it does mean they don’t need as much Health, armor and regeneration as a Melee class. They event get to do more damage than you for the exact same reason, because they don’t have as much DPS up-time as ranged classes….

Just to emphasize, I’m giving the simple answer… I’m not denying how useless Health siphoning is for us, and how our regeneration abilities are crap to pretty much everyone else….

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment. I think blood magic really needs a rework.

You’re right that it’s wrong to compare, but how can you ignore the fact that a PASSIVE healing ability heals around the same as an active ability’s BURST, which is obviously available after some long cooldowns

Well, I haven’t played warriors beyond sometimes on a friend’s PC. (And yes I like to mock on how ezpz it is, but this isn’t about me). But my point was mainly on that comparison that siphons cannot be compared to a utility skill.

If you got spiked down to very low health all of a sudden and have to burn that heal, isn’t that heal in that very moment the worst one one could take compared to options? Recovering 10k health over the course of 20 seconds, isn’t the same as using a heal spell for 10k with a 25 second cooldown, unless the sustained damage is consistent.

My point is that while using other classes to serve as a frame of reference on what works or what is broken is fine, but too much of implying class favoritism doesn’t really help anyone listen to us. It’s just that every class forum is full of “well this class has…” that it’s just really hard to take it seriously and most likely just gets ignored like 90% of other rants in this forum. It’s better to explain why this fails within the context of Necromancers. Talking too much about another class’s overpowered skills will just lead to anet nerfing them, and most likely doing nothing about us. It’s not the first or last time that’s happened. This has happened to necromancers when everyone else was QQ’ing about them, and little was done to fix whatever was wrong with their class. One could look over at what Anet thinks will improve Guardians but anyone that’s played one for more than a few hours would see that’s just insanely detatched. Is that the same over here? Sadly, yes but that’s another rant.

Anyhow, truth is that points spent for siphoning are bad simply because you would have been better off anything else. That’s really just all needed to be said.

And one really has to establish context— this is obviously more of an issue fighting players than it is in pve.

In any case, I’m not really disagreeing with anything, but it’s just better if people would find a way to just keep “ANET Y U NO BALANCE” out of order. Of course, we are a ranged class and shouldn’t have as much survivability. This of course somewhat ignores the fact that our ranged options aren’t too good and with gap closers, stuns, and whatnot and stuff that this “advantage” becomes more and more minimal… this is something I don’t think the developers understand since they don’t seem to play the same game as us.

I like how staff is such a terrible option and it’s getting worse, yet the other alternatives on a swap weapon end up being worse anyways.

Vex.7486:

#1Reanimator and #2POTH kill this line for me. 1# is useless and #2 is only good for MM. We do have a lot of channeled skills so wouldn’t it make more sense to replace reanimator with Dark armor? And POTH replaced with Reapers protection. Then buff / Change the 2 minor traits and move them to be selectable.

You don’t see blood magic with any well based minor traits, so why should my 2/4 traits in death magic be useless in any other build besides MM?

That’s a brillant idea actually. One would never take Dark Armor for a trait only, but as a minor it’d be nice.

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment. I think blood magic really needs a rework.

Can’t say I knew either, lol.

And yes, I can’t really imagine trying to fire that slow ray of judgement in the middle of a fight. You could keep focus until you reach a large group. Also, shield gives like 60 toughness which really doesn’t matter, but more toughness is always welcome.

Although I didn’t realize Shield of Wrath was blast finisher. (wait really?) Why did shield get a crappy light field? >.>

RHS is mostly so that scepter damage isn’t utter crap— you usually don’t want zerker in wvw zerging since you’d die quite quickly in a big fight and that means your crit rate isn’t that high. You’ll have about 55-60% crit rate with RHS and neighboring fury will take you up 20% more which isn’t bad at all. This would be a good idea to somehow fit Empowering Might in your build though certainly not mandatory. (0/30/0/30/10 Pure of Voice, or something)

As for on crit sigils, you should note that all sigils that have an effect share the same cooldown so they aren’t that hot at times. I use an energy sigil on swap for staff, though that might be overkill since we have vigorous precision.

Hammer is like the easy mode weapon. Because of the consistent protection you can pretty much trait anything and get away with it, as long as your traits are in multiples of 5, but preferably on the damage side.

It’s of course also incredibly useful for keeping yourself alive in wvw with the power of AH. So honestly, I don’t care if the damage isn’t top tier— it hits hard enough and I can just 111111211111 without looking most of the time. Also, in wvw you may use the last 2 skills; they’re pretty nice actually.

I do that a bit but it’s mostly 600 range due to the poor tracking and ability to hit of scepter skills so adjust your expectations— this will usually only be best in bigger fights. I’m not sure why you’d want Writ of Exaltation when your only symbol is going to be the speed one. Though you’re free to toss a hammer into this…

So a very simple one is 0/30/0/20/20, which takes right handed strength and absolute resolution because you absolutely need condition removal somewhere and it doesn’t seem like you want many shouts. Personally, I like doing Stand your ground+ Hallowed Ground for mass stability which has kept me alive more than anything else ever has. Though I’ve always been stuck to soldier runes, so I must have a shout somewhere at least. :p It helps us so much in dealing with condition removal and the large bonus to vitality when we have such tiny health pools is invaluable. And if you feel too squishy, might want to do 0/30/10/10/20 and get strength in numbers + signet of judgement. Or just take 15 radiance but I don’t think that’s necessary if you’re not frontlining; something like 0/15/30 (AH obviously)/5/20 would be pretty solid.

You’re mostly centered around pressing f1 a lot, since that offers you blind, vulnerability, and might. Renewed Focus + Inspired Virtues mashing should be something frequently abused too.

In larger fights, I’d think shield is better. Shield is typically inferior in most situations but in big fights 3 blocks won’t mean very much and protection/knockback helps a lot.

Much like purging flames, me thinks it was better to not take any “buffs” if this is their idea of one.

The change is great for groups that contain multiple guardians, but…

It’s kind of a joke that 8 sec regardless of anything else is considered “too much” mobility. Even with 20% boon duration and -20% cooldowns on it, it’s not quite perma swiftness and staff is hardly the best weapon when you’re by yourself.

I understand that the intended way to play wvw is to find your local dorito and be a boonbot spamming 1 all day, but alas….

Yak’s bend seems to have a obsession with bending our yaks leading like no supply recieved for over an hour— don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before which is pretty intresting. I think PETA would like a word with you. :p

Hmm, I don’t get how to do 2 mighty blows in a purging flames. Purging flames lasts 6 seconds when traited and Mighty Blow has a 4 second cooldown when traited.

I like the blood/death 25 actually though, but I’m a power necro and I don’t pvp so those nerfs don’t affect me at all.

I hate even having to run the Black Lion trader, so I can’t really share the same sentiment. I go exploring in my own time when I’m not being sent on a chore— that’s “fun”.

There’s also 5 more cities other than Lion’s Arch, so….

Yea, I agree that it’s not practical to fit a build between wvw and pve because the goals are so diffrent and the retraits so cheap. At the very minimum you want to at least swap armor in between the two modes. Trinkets can stay zerker since it’d be a pain to grind out 2 sets of trinkets.

But if you insist, you can do what I do out of laziness, and take 25 radiance and 30 honor or 25 radiance, 10 honor, 20 virtues and then put the last 15 points as needed (Fiery Wrath, Strength in Numbers or something else). You want either Absolute Resolution or Pure of Voice to clear conditions, or you can just take 10 points in virtues for purging flames cooldown. I feel radiant power and condi clears are nice to have in any given situation.

It’s fine. Most people are “that person” at some point; it could be a lack of motivation, skill, or just a bad day. You can’t just expect to pick up something and expect to pwn it regardless of prior experience with other games. That kind of attitude ruined Starcraft 2 for me as I was poised to never get any better. Truth, is most of the people that pick up at any game are terrible at it, including myself. However, if you realize it, then you can improve, instead of living in the delusion that you are l33t like most people that play any game end up being.

“I used to be good…” < Don’t be that guy!

Being rewarded for playing the way you want is too vague. It leaves out the most important condition of sane gameplay, which is that reward should correlate with difficulty, and you should be able to play the way you want and be rewarded accordingly with equivalent content of the same difficulty— which doesn’t happen in this game anyways— but I’m just saying.

Still, I agree with OP on the fundamental idea that methods of acquiral need to be a lot wider, especially for stuff that actually matters.

Hmm, God forbid the game reward you for actually playing it. Really, the WvW achievements previously were a terrible joke. And yes, you are not more important than anyone else, sorry. When you stack and get bandwagoners, that’s what you were asking for. My server is having similar issues like this, but that’s just how it goes.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yeah, back in my day we just called it “Flavor of the Month”.

If you’re referring to picking the “optimal strategy picked by common consensus as of late” then I’d agree, and that’s also how I view a lot of the situation.

But you know FOTM makes you a lot less cooler and trendy, and more of a follower, so it’s only natural to claim one is metagaming which sounds cooler to the uninitiated. :p

In reality though, it’s not easy to tell what is what in the present.

Irsei.6802:

Yaki.9563:

Full cleric (magi back) is only 1064 healing power. Extra 300 from traits (lol), extra 150ish from food gives you a whoping total of about 1500 healing power. That means your shouts heal for 2850 or so. Not 3400. Exaggerate much?

So you’ve got some warrior burning 3 utility slots with short range on the heal, traited fully into worthless defensive trait lines, wearing worthless gear, and otherwise almost entirely worthless just so they can heal some butt-huggers for less than 9000 every 25 seconds.

That doesn’t sound like Guardian at all.

The truly hilarious part? Before the patch they could do the same thing except, oh noes, they only healed for 8000 instead of 9000 every 25s. Did anyone seriously run such a troll build? Nope. Will they now? Maybe if they’re dumb.

You all can ignore this guy…. another warrior trying to defend his op class… man these trolls are coming out of the wood work after this last mega love patch for warriors…

I don’t know. He seems to be making a valid point about burning 3 utility slots and going down a subpar tree. Maybe you could counter his points, because well, he’s not the one sounding like a troll here.

It was bad. The only good thing was that meditations are always instant now.

Purging Flames sounded good in theory, but that cast time really sucks. Until it gets shorter or instant I can only imagine it using it in pve for the aoe burn.

Is it really worth the 10 points in any context over something else?

Metagame= I know that you know that I know that I know what you know.

The way I’ve seen it used over the years is basically the game revolving around expectations of players optimally and said measures to counter other players. If you’re in the loop of what is widely considered the best strategies, then your strategy will revolve around taking advantage of these assumptions. It’s generally strategy that goes beyond the developer’s intentions.

For example, in poker, it’s a fairly standard strategy to raise with weaker hands when you are in position. Playing in position is generally more profitable then not playing in position, plus you get the advantage of the blinds folding and you getting their chips without a fight at times. A metagame example would be 3-betting. If you are facing a good player, then you would expect him to raise more hands in position (usually the button) and you could take advantage of this by rereraising him, and thus putting pressure on them, possibly pushing them out of the pot and stealing their chips. And if they know you are doing that, then there’s 4-bets, etc.

Likewise, bluffing in poker requires your opponent to be aware of the game enough to know that they can beat.

Both tactics are terrible to use against people you don’t know, or bad players because they don’t follow the assumptions of “standard” play. To put in short, standard solid (aka straight up) plays will beat bad players, but against better players you will need this metagame. Bad players will think “meta” counters everything. It does not.

Starcraft is another good example of metagaming developing over so many years so that you wouldn’t be able to intuitively map out strategies just by theorycrafting. In fact most pro strategies involve taking a fast expansion (seems like its sequel is heading this direction too) because good players are able to hold off most early aggression and this causes early aggression to become less popular due to fact that your opponent will hold it off. But making too many assumptions can be fatal and throwing curveballs that exploit player expectations often yields quick victories and tons of crying from angry opponents.

Good games have complex and involved metagames that take a long time to master, forcing people to adapt. Bad games have ones that are shallow and monotonous. However, due to discrepancies in skill as well as the sheer amount of collective experience and knowledge that needs to be figured out, many players will tend to have tunnel vision and make a lot of premature assumptions. Truth is, most players will just not figure it out because they have a preset view of what is true and what is not, thus never improving.

Pretty standard stuff

Valor- Strength in numbers,retributive armor or purity/ AH
Honor- Superior Aria, Two handed mastery, Pure of Voice

And soldier runes are really good as conditions are everywhere.

Careful with the Save Yourselves! If you’re not carefull, you’ll send yourself away though I’ve never actually killed myself with it before. Consider Reflect Wall, Retreat! or Signet of Judgement.

Chris.3290:

I’m not great at keeping count but will this be our 20th consecutive win against SBI, or only 19th?

Hmm… we’ve been tricked!

Chris.3290:

TL;DR Playing for second is for losers.

Stuff just posts itself, really.

Well, I’m not gonna cry imba or anything, but let’s get a bit ambitious here just for kicks.

Zealot’s speed— should proc at 75% health

Spirit Weapon GM trait needs to either make weapons invincible or greatly increase health, the condi trait needs a huge boost to be of any use, most likely inflict chill or something as well.

Courageous Return seems useless. Move Might of the Protector down to where that is and give us a toughness to power trait for 25 valor.

AH should heal nearby allies (though less than for what you heal yourself). I thought we were a healer class?

Elusive Power is crap because it conflicts with Vigorous Precision, one of the main reasons to take Honor. Rename Elusive Power to Defiant Power and allow the extra damage to happen if endurance is low or if the Guardian has 3 or more conditions on them.

Vengeful: Also gain fury when an ally dies (long cooldown)

Unscathed Contender: Also grants 5 sec regeneration (30 second cooldown)

Power of the Virtuous: Also deals extra damage for every condition you have

Shield 4 needs to grant aegis along with protection (It’s a shield right?) Cooldowns need to be a bit less.

Shielded Mind— Also creates a hallowed ground when activated (long cooldown)

Elite Focus – Also 50% boon duration for 3 seconds when activating an elite skill

Yea… dream on. But whatever.

Well, that disappoints me greatly.

I’ll be crying in a corner now.

Burl.9567:

It’s not really surprising a SoR matchup thread gets to 12 pages so quickly. It is surprising when it gets there with 10 of the 12 pages being Mag and SBI arguing back and forth.

That’s because forum warrioring is more about coverage and zerging, just like wvw. Only the naive would care about Posts Per Tick.

coglin.1867:

Wow, guardians get buffs and you guys cry. This is down right pathetic. Some of you need to get off your duffs and play a profession that takes skill to accomplish what guardians can face role. You guardians and warriors have no idea how good you have it. Reading this thread is like dealing with my kids. 1 has a birthday and gets a gift and the other 4 act like jerks because they didn’t get anything

This is pretty true. I mained a necro before they got all those buffs and they were pretty awful in pve. When I rolled a guardian I was like “lol wut is dis?” I find it hilarious that people say there’s necro bias when they were bottom tier for about 9 months or so. Come some more time and the necro’s in a good spot, so give it some time. Balance isn’t something you can create with the snap of a finger.

Chris.3290:

kuora.5402:

Chris.3290:

SBI, way to pull us out of our fight with SoR with a ham-fisted attempt on our garri, and you just ended up giving it to SoR anyway.
Only the lag from the SoR guys on the gate prevented you from getting wiped within seconds.

I’m trying hard to respect you guys; I don’t know if it’s your transfers, or you read FA’s WvW manual, or what.

TL;DR Playing for second is for losers.

Oh ho, we’ve got some hard-assed SoS here. But I guess playing for second is better than being 3rd.

No, no it’s not. FA used to play like this every week, now they are getting stomped by Maguuma. YB played this way, and they fell to Tier 5.

On SoS, we know we’ll never get better pounding on SBI. Bring on RISE, CHOO, and HL. Bring on guys that have skill as well as numbers.

I can’t wait for Maguuma to pass SBI. While they have good players , too many of them aren’t ready for this level of play.

You seem oddly infatuated with SBI. You’ve even decided to label us as quitters in another matchup thread— talking crap about us in another thread makes me think even your pvf lacks confidence. Trying to take advantage of our lack of forum coverage too? I’m sorry that we’re no longer just doors you can pound, and we know how excellent you guys are at that but I’m afraid you’re going to have competition that’s awake now. We might be bad and maybe we are worse than you, but the high horse is a bit too high for you.

It’s just fortunate that SoR is in this matchup so you can just attribute everything to SoR holding you back otherwise you guys would totally smash us. And of course talk crap about other servers that aren’t even involved, including one that’s shown a lot more class.

Your respect isn’t needed or wanted. Thanks anyways.

And hats off to SoR, you’ve been very respectful on and off the battlefield since you guys don’t need any chest beating to prove anything. It’s been pretty pleasant compared to the past few weeks.

gg anet.

And oh hi SoS

It’s definitely a problem, since they don’t drop much and most stat combinations are useless anyways unless you wvw, in which case a few more are useful. They should salvage into ascended materials for sure.

Dyno.9467:

CMstorm.8679:

well now all you gotta do is dodge, dip, duck, dive and DODGE!

Welcome to GW2…….Patches O’Houlihan

Is this really necessary?

P.S. We need a wrench dodging dungeon and the elitist speedclear crew of Globo Gym.

Dual.8953:

ArchonWing.9480:

Dual.8953:

I feel the need to restate my concern about a damage meter, in relation to the arguement: “elitists already exist”. My concern is the ratio of elitist to casuals. Lets say the game community is 90% casual, 10% elitist. Many casuals don’t know what is truely optimal in the game, and since it’s difficult to prove what is optimal definitively, they consign them themselves to the fact that it doesn’t matter in the long run. However, it is in our basic human nature to persue what we believe is the “best”, which is why min/maxers and elitists exist. With a damage meter, we could have a better view of the best dps setup in the game, but this knowledge could promote a desire for casual layman to persue this “best”. This mentality converts what currently would be a casual player, into an elitist, demanding only the best.

I don’t get it. Trying to improve or seek something better doesn’t mean someone’s not casual.

This relies on a faulty assumption that casuals would like to remain ignorant, and elitists are going to use these statistics to min-max everything. But this just represents a false dichotomy. A lot of people wouldn’t say no to something that allows them to get what they want. At the same time, a lot of so-called “elitists” meaning the type that actively excludes and kicks people often don’t care about reasoning and numbers but rather just conforms to the fotm mentality that something is objectively the best without figuring out why… in reality they already made up their minds already.

My point is these so-called min-maxers are also the ones that frequently edit wiki pages so that people such as myself that are too lazy to figure it out on my own can know too. This is just really the same thing. What you view as toxic elitists is not the same as the people that actively explore the mechanics of the game, and it’s honestly quite insulting to them.

My problem isn’t the min/maxer who do legwork or want to improve themselves.
My problem is the players who disallow other players from joining parties.
I want players to be allowed to run what they like without being forced to conform to one specific build.
My concern is with a damage meter, players will find the highest dps build, and it will invalidate any build other then it in the eyes of the masses. All who don’t play that build will not be allowed into most parties; which I might add would halt experimentation.
I want players to be free to play as they choose, not be forced to run fotm. I realize this already happens to some degree, and I don’t want this attitude to permeate the entire player base.

I don’t believe in designing game features based around the concern some people that might be terrible.

If someone is willing to be rude to someone that did them no wrong, then with or without a dps meter, I would want nothing to do with them. In fact, I would honestly think that helps weed out such folk. Any kind of information or discovery leads to this, not just a dps meter.

Frankly, I place more priority into honing my own style of play over other people kicking me over it. I’ll always have friends to play with anyways.And if that leaves me with less people to play, then they weren’t worth playing with.

Dual.8953:

I feel the need to restate my concern about a damage meter, in relation to the arguement: “elitists already exist”. My concern is the ratio of elitist to casuals. Lets say the game community is 90% casual, 10% elitist. Many casuals don’t know what is truely optimal in the game, and since it’s difficult to prove what is optimal definitively, they consign them themselves to the fact that it doesn’t matter in the long run. However, it is in our basic human nature to persue what we believe is the “best”, which is why min/maxers and elitists exist. With a damage meter, we could have a better view of the best dps setup in the game, but this knowledge could promote a desire for casual layman to persue this “best”. This mentality converts what currently would be a casual player, into an elitist, demanding only the best.

I don’t get it. Trying to improve or seek something better doesn’t mean someone’s not casual.

This relies on a faulty assumption that casuals would like to remain ignorant, and elitists are going to use these statistics to min-max everything. But this just represents a false dichotomy. A lot of people wouldn’t say no to something that allows them to get what they want. At the same time, a lot of so-called “elitists” meaning the type that actively excludes and kicks people often don’t care about reasoning and numbers but rather just conforms to the fotm mentality that something is objectively the best without figuring out why… in reality they already made up their minds already.

My point is these so-called min-maxers are also the ones that frequently edit wiki pages so that people such as myself that are too lazy to figure it out on my own can know too. This is just really the same thing. What you view as toxic elitists is not the same as the people that actively explore the mechanics of the game, and it’s honestly quite insulting to them.

NPCs aren’t just weak. They’re made of paper.

This is especially notable in Orr when the enemies got stronger, and the NPCs are just as useless. The worst is of course the morale ones where if they die, you fail.

Bad zerkers will definitely fall fast. But a good zerker will often output enough damage to make up for this or not even die at all. They can dodge and greatly reduce the incoming damage done to them.

On the other hand, someone in Soldier gear, regardless of skill will do much less damage even if they get higher uptime and are able to “facetank”.

The thing is support is dependent on your traits and skill selection, not gear besides boon duration and healing power. And unfortunately, healing power scales poorly compared with other stats.

That being said, it’s reasonable to say that a subpar player in nonzerker gear is better off than in berserkers and that you can’t expect ideal situations from random people or your casual friends. It really depends on what they’re doing with their higher survivability. My personal opinion is that people should gear for the highest dps possible that doesn’t land them on the floor. And honestly, if they can’t do it in zerker, well they shouldn’t. But I doubt this threshold is at PTV gear either. From what I’ve read of the class forums that I play, a lot of people aren’t aware of the potential their profession has. In fact one of the best advice I recieved was that Altruistic Healing for Guardians wasn’t mandatory. That advice wasn’t good because it was stressing “omg moar dps”, but because it opened a lot more flexibility in builds and suddenly there are more options then if you lock yourself into thinking certain things are required.

This is of course assuming you’re partying with randoms. If not, then realize that grinding for virtual currency is also a time waster anyways, and it doesn’t matter. But in the end this tool would help quite a few people. Regardless of what you’re doing, there’s often a “sweet spot” that can be more closely measured. As for the people that would abuse it currently; honestly, they already are doing this. People have been chasing the “best” play ever since the beginning of video games, after all.

In the end, I feel it’s not reasonable to expect anything from randoms who have a wide variety of skill levels. Certainly, I don’t want any griefing or AFK’ers or people who don’t communicate, but if we’re going for efficiency, then you will need to find people you know and trust. Doing otherwise is like running to the corner of the street and expecting the next person you see will be able to stack and dps. For anyone that prizes efficiency and then goes out to find a bunch of subpar randoms while proceeding to rage at and abuse them, I think that’s honestly a very bizzare gap in logic and they themselves might be subpar in some aspects too.

Apparently PvF is also just zerging too. Let’s open recruiting to cover our gaps in forum coverage.

Yes to a personal meter. The combat log is utterly useless.

I really hate to inform you all, but unfortunately there are objective metrics to performance. Whether or not you accept these metrics to be indicative of character ability is another story, but people are theorycrafting “optimal” builds regardless and personally I want to see if the build I’m trying out is more effective than the one I was doing last. Stats are always subjective to interpretation, but to form an analysis of any value, you need actual numbers.

Having the game hide this kind information just because people may get their feelings hurt is silly. Do people not realize many things are situational; and if whatever you’re using is “bad”, then it’s bad? So what if it suggests your build is trash? It probably is. So what? I’m a pretty terrible player, so I don’t hang out with elitists. Cool story really; I do play the way I want, but I don’t want to make any excuses either.

And it does help if we can prove that a build a friend is running is suboptimal to run something else. Better than failing 20-30 times I say.

Also, the next time you bring your non-fotm build/class in and you can prove it can just do just as well as their “favored” builds. Well, wouldn’t that be swell?

As for people being jerks, people always be jerks, and you shouldn’t play with them. The whole thing comes down to the zerker debate. There’s jerks on both ends. I compare rude speedrunners that forum warrior to people who drive fast, constantly tailgate while swapping lanes and think they own the highway, honking at people who get in their way. And then there’s the zerker haters who want to “drive the way they want” but think that going 40 mph in the fast lane and blocking it is perfectly acceptable. (aka the person that feels entitled to join speedruns without gearing for one)

Slower traffic keep to the right. That’s all I’ll say.

It’s not just zerker that relies on crits; that messes with any build that is built on them… and not to mention all the other innocent stat types that have precision on them.

Mehhhh; goodbye honor. >.> I haven’t been using PoV lately anyways; been doing Absolute Resolution/Soldier runes in WvW— guess purging flames it is.

bokkieskitten.8023:

Necro nerfs, the two words that really get me. Wasn’t it bad enough, that when we had finally gotten things to be good enough. Not great, but good enough. Only to be smashed to bits because of PAX? It’s saddening.

We were promised that all these game modes would be split in terms of balance, because anyone with any sense would realize it is impossible to balance all 3 in the same way.

Yes, there were most likely a lot of FOTM’ers who decided to roll a necro for some easy wins, but one cannot have such tunnel vision.

So what happened? Previously we had trouble putting out the damage, and now we can to take out people. But then most necros have been pigeonholed into a semi-glass cannon build, and then we insert that infamous concept of the necro ping pong ball.

On the other hand Typin most likely does not have the luxury of hiding behind a zerg and taking credit for server achievements… although if guards and warriors melt away, they could just be bad but that can happen anywhere.

I’d imagine you’d say specialist if your majority of gameplay is small group play, right? If you have an organized group, having clearly defined roles helps then trying to do a little of everything. An all rounder is better in larger, less organized group when you just can’t rely on everyone to provide something.

Of course, there are many shades to this. A guardian is going to provide a lot of support regardless of build, just because of the inherent way to class is made.

Anet’s killing PvF too in an effort to force everyone to karma train? How sadistic.

As someone who’s first character was a necro I am quite passionate about the issue, since before June I really thought this class was really weak. After it, we’ve gone stronger in some ways and weaker in others. You might agree the necro class has become a bit more one-dimensional towards damage, such as the oddity of condi builds needing spite more than power builds. That leaves your average necro with only 20 points to spare in the utility/defense trees.

SBI is especially strong during the weekend compared to the weekdays. This won’t be over yet.

Tricare.2946:

Watch a necro roaming video. They are awesome in anything they do if played right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okygEMfhps8

Ah, it must be this propaganda that brainwashed me into thinking that necros are stupidly hard to beat in 1v1. :p