Guild Wars 2

With GS it’s easy now to stack lots of burning in teamfights even if have completly 0 points in Condiion Damage, when you picked up Indomitable Courage and Permeating Wrath.
You just jump into the battle with Whirling Wrath + Judge’s Intervention and that’s enough to stack burning up to 10. I use to play with Celestial Amulet so it’s even more condi dmg.

Also Glacial Heart is placed next to two very strong trait so the choice is hard here.

I think that hammer will find its use after HoT expansion. It will help with holding enemies in your traps:

1. Test of Faith + Banish
2. Ring of Warding + Procession of Blades / Light’s Judgement

I would like to see Guardian “banishing” enemy right into the Dragon’s Maw.

Don’t forget that Shiro’s abilities cost tons of energy. It’s impossible to maintain so high DPS for a long time. Shiro Legend doesn’t have any condi cleanses and stability. With Dragonhunter spec it will be harder for him to stay close, because of random knockbacks.

And about those two unblockable attack after block… it will most probably proc on Aegis not on Shelter. You can’t really predict when Guardian’s Aegis will pop up.

There are a few issues with Spirit Weapon:
1. Its attacks are really slow.
2. When you run forward and you order your Spirit Weapon to do sth, it often stays behind and you have to wait till it comes to you.
3. It often dies in teamfight/in AoE.
4. After summoning all of your weapons you will stay with nothing for next 30s.
5. Spirit Weapons can be good in PvE, but not in PvP and WvW if you are going to take all three of them as utilities.

The best Spirit Weapon is definitely: Shield, because it doesn’t attack on its own so it won’t die in AoE easily. You can feel that it protects you from projectiles. Plus its active ability always works and it is mostly useful in combat.

What to change:
I don’t think that Spirit Weapons in current form are useful. Spirit Weapon shouldn’t appear in the physical form as summons but more like commands.
1. You can no longer summon a Spirit Weapon in a physical form.
2. You can command Spirit Weapon to appear for a short period of time (untargetable), do what it does (heal in the area, knockback, AoE damage, AoE Aegis + dome) and then disappear. I mean something like Revenant’s hammer skill #5 where weapon appears only as a animation.
3. Cooldown would be much shorter: sword-15s, hammer-20s, bow-30s, shield-30s.

Trait:
1. Spirit Weapons cooldowns are reduced by: 20%.
2. Spirit Weapons give boons to allies around their target: sword-retaliation, hammer-might, shield-protection, bow-regeneration. //but since it’s in Zeal line it must be sth more offensive not boons, gotta think about it

Before condition damage changed battles between Guardian and Necromancer were 5 minutes long if no one interfered – fair 1versus 1 combats. Necro applied some condies… Guard cleansed them. But now fate of the battle depends on the ability to maintain your conditions until enemy will waste all of his condi removals. It’s nice to see that with torch you can maintain 4-7 stacks of burning for so long (2k dmg per tick). Sadly shield still isn’t so useful.

It’s science time!

Assic.2746:

In general +150 toughness doesn’t make a difference.
I’ve just tested it on PvP.
Average damage taken with Strength in Numbers: 1293
Average damage taken without Strength in Numbers: 1303,5
Difference: 10,5dmg (per hit); less than 1%

I think it’s better to take Communal Defenses. You will not decreseace, but completly negate incoming damage for your whole team.

So if the amount of lets say AoE damage is equal to 1293. Communal Defenses will block a total of 4 * 1293 = 5172 or 5 * 1293 = 6465 (if you have aegis) damage for your whole team.
With Strength in Numbers you can only decrease it by 5 * 10,5 = 52,5 damage.
But what is important, Communal Defenses has 15s of ICD and Strength in Numbers works all the time (while in combat), so it’s 52,5 * 15s = 787 damage in 15s if each of your team members gets 1 hit each second.
It’s 75 hits in 15s distributed across all of your team. It would be equal to amount of damage blocked by Communal Defenses if your team would have recived
75hits * 6,6 = 495 hits in 15s (each member has to be hit ~7 times each second).

I recommend Communal Defenses and if you take Pure of Heart with it you only gain further benefits.

Traits that not synergize affect Aegis which comes directly from Guard, who has those traits equipped.

Most of traits which synergize with Turai’s passive proc on block. The only exception is Unscated Contender.

Guardian has the most synergy with this Mist Champion. For instance Warrior has only 2 traits working well with Desert Carapace:

• Gain might on block.
• Gain Retaliation on block (5 cd).

Khenzo.2465:

Assic.2746:

Unyielding Anguish << This skill highly requires some cooldown implemented!!! On PvP people are being thrown around like toys by just one Revenant, who spams it!!!

I think this skill shouldn’t displace enemies at all. It’s so totally obnoxious.

It’s hard to interrupt it, channeling of this skill is really quick.

Unyielding Anguish << This skill highly requires some cooldown implemented! On PvP people are being thrown around like toys by just one Revenant, who spams it. I know that the cost of this skill is high, but it is really strong.

And it should have some graphic effect, because right now it looks like a lag. I don’t know something like a portal below the player.

Duka.5864:

Door Breakers
Door Breakers prioritize doors! JUST LOL

Last time they were going for trebs instead…

I’ve got a question.
Have you ever considered spending supplies on defensive upgrades?

• Your door guards have better shields now, which grant them +50% hp and +500toughness.
• Your door guards are invulnerable for a first 5s of combat (while in combat; 90s cd).
• Your guards can throw a chain and pull enemies to themselves (60s cd).
• Build baricade on the road, which will slow down enemy NPCs (like in silverwastes).
• Place mines in front of the doors that will deal X dmg to the enemy who will step in them (enough to one shot a door breaker).
• Shiny armor! Enemy door breakers in range of 600 will follow you until the effect won’t end (duration: 20s). Be careful though if they manage to catch you, you will instantly die and lose your supply.

Every upgrade could be bought once.

Leo G.4501:

Think there’s still hope for Dragonhunter?

Definitely not. In one of pictures/arts we can se Braham with a bow, so he probably is going to become a “Dragonhunter” himself. That would include tons of dialogues in the HoT story etc. They won’t change it.

Actually name “Dragonhunter” reminds me about dragon hunters from Gothic II.

I did those measures basing on 2600 armour pool (2750 with Strength in Numbers), so it would be a small difference in WvW, but when people go to WvW they usually have sth about 2500 armour+. The amount of dmg decreased by Strength in Numbers can be higher or lower depending on player’s toughness, I doubt it will be higher than damage blocked by Communal Defenses.

In general +150 toughness doesn’t make a difference.
I’ve just tested it on PvP.
Average damage taken with Strength in Numbers: 1293
Average damaga taken without Strength in Numbers: 1303,5
Difference: 10,5dmg (per hit); less than 1%

I think it’s better to take Communal Defenses. You will not decreseace, but completly negate incoming damage for your whole team.

So if the amount of lets say AoE damage is equal to 1293. Communal Defenses will block a total of 4 * 1293 = 5172 or 5 * 1293 = 6465 (if you have have aegis) damage for your whole team.
With Strength in Numbers you can only decrease it by 5 * 10,5 = 52,5 damage.
But what is important, Communal Defenses has 15s of ICD and Strength in Numbers works all the time (while in combat), so it’s 52,5 * 15s = 787 damage in 15s if each of your team members gets 1 hit each second.
It’s 75 hits in 15s distributed across all of your team. It would be equal to amount of damage blocked by Communal Defenses if your team would have recived
75hits * 6,6 = 495 hits in 15s (each member has to be hit ~7 times each second).

I recommend Communal Defenses and if you take Pure of Heart with it you only gain further benefits.

It’s more like old Glacial Heart (without CD reduction). It can be useful, but you won’t see much of a difference in battle. But if you have another Guard in your party with the same trait setup you will probably notice heals.

Communal Defenses has 15 ICD and Pure of Heart doesn’t have any ICD.
You can heal allies with it with:

• Shield of Avenger,
• “Retreat!”,
• Virtue of Courage,

You can even apply aegis 2 times witch each of those skills.
“Retreat!” >> Aegis on you breaks >> Communal Defenses
Then you have to wait 15s to do this again (ICD of Communal Defenses) or you can just ignore it and pop other skills with aegis. But if you wait this will be much more effective.

I did try it and it’s not as good as it sounds, not on WvW, but it can be nice addition to a Shout Guard. Especially when both Pure of Heart and Pure of Voice are in the Honour trait line.

“Save Yourselves!” doesn’t appear on the Slot Skills list.
Click Me Senpai!!

Retaliation from Power
Base counter for Retaliation: 198 + 0,075 * Power
Average Power*: above 2000
Retaliation damage: 348 +/-

Retaliation from Condition Damage
Radiant Retaliation counter: 198 + 0,15 * Condition Damage
Average Condition Damage in condi builds*: 1300
Retaliation damage: 393 +/-

*Stats from PvP environment.

So the usual difference is lesser than 50 dmg. That’s not much. At least the base 198 could be increased, while using Radiant Retaliation.

To sum it up… right now Confusion from Mesmer’s scepter skills deals more damage even if enemy won’t use any abilities, than Retaliation. Balance gone wrong :P

#EDIT Further calculations
Damage based on base proffesion HP (%):

• 18472HP – Warrior, Necromancer
  Retaliation damage (Power): 1 hit – 1,88% of HP
  Retaliation damage (Condition Damage): 1 hit – 2,13% of HP
  Difference: +0,25% of HP

• 15182HP – Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer
  Retaliation damage (Power): 1 hit – 2,29% of HP
  Retaliation damage (Condition Damage): 1 hit – 2,59% of HP
  Difference: +0,30% of HP

• 10905HP – Guardian, Elementalist
  Retaliation damage (Power): 1 hit – 3,19% of HP
  Retaliation damage (Condition Damage): 1 hit – 3,60% of HP
  Difference: +0,41% of HP

• For every health pool scaling from condition damage improves the health loss per 1 hit by ~12% (example: 1,88/2,13*100%). In theory it’s equal, but in practice when we look at health pools there will be a difference in %.

WOW! It looks like Retaliation is more effective vs enemies with lower health pool.
I guess it’s nothing new :P.

It’s because right now Smite deals dmg at random places in its radius (min: 0 hits, max: 16 hits). If it was a symbol it would pulse and deal dmg per each pulse. That wouldn’t be random anymore, because each pulse would have 100% chance to hit every enemy. So I think that right now it’s good enough.

Sword and scepter are more offensive weapons, usually used to chase enemies. You can’t expect them to stay in your symbol. You can say that there is immobilize on scepter’s #3, but it’s mostly used to close the gap between you and enemy.

Sword’s animations and mechanics just don’t allow any of them to be a symbol.
The only one skill they could be a symbol is scepter #2. But even then people would just say, that sword is the only weapon without a symbol.

I guess this will never change. Just like shield’s skills mechanic. Players complain about it since GW2 launched and nothing have changed. At least now cooldowns are lower.

Tomes could return in the future Guard elite specialization.

Yep, I did it for test and I also can’t “approve” this build as a good one. It’s all a spike burning. It’s almost imposible to maintain it and the best option for Dungeons/Fractals are power builds with a little dose of burning (maybe torch; depends on variation).

But it is fun to see those numbers in PvE after all.

I have a screen somewhere one moment.

20 stacks of burning

- Without Superior Sigil of Smoldering.
- Without Superior Rune of Balthazar. I have Superior Runes of Melandru in this armour and they are too expensive to replace them for this test only.
- Beigarth’s Gear (Knight).
- I have less than 500 Condition Damage there (signet + 10% of Power was converted into Condition Damage).

I know that this dmg is nothing to “things” Ele can do with fire, but I wanted to show that it is possible to stack burning up to 20 ALONE.

Thaddeus.4891:

Like Jerus said. Zeal is the symbol line. The real question is :

Anet Why did you put a sceptre trait in the Symbol line?

Scepter trait has been always in Zeal trait line – “10% more dmg with scepter” now it’s “gain might when Justice passive triggers”.

It’s more like bunch of illusions is chasing you. You have two options:
1. Leave the illusions and get that dmg, condies and sometimes CC.
2. Kill the illusions… get dmg, condies, and CC. They will be back in “2 dodges” or 10-12s.

Do you want it or not, you will kill them accidently with your auto attack or one AoE skill…

I don’t know how to nerf it… But what I think is if illusion is killed by player (not shattered) the cooldown of skill should be increased or at least skill which generated this illusion should be unavaible for a few seconds. That would be, how to say it? JUSTICE!

When thieves gain stealth they usually apply PbAoE Blindness and our Shield #5 misses.

Wiki – Cloaked in Shadows

Nah, shield is still the most useless of guardian’s weapons. Especially when “Stalwart Defender” and “Strenght in numbers” are in the same trait lane.
It’s better to get focus and have protection +150 toughness from “Strenght in numbers” than shield and have only +180 toughness.
30 more toughness < 4s of protection

I know that everyone wants taunt for skill #4 . I have a slightly other idea: the dome
(skill#5) should last 1s longer and weaken every foe inside it. If enemy has stability and cannot be pushed by dome, he would be weakened (blind is also a possibility here).

I like it. It’s perfect for shout guard since it’s first more offensive shout, but I have one issue with it… the icon doesn’t fit to other shout icons

Kitten… I deleted my post accidently :P

Honorable Staff doesn’t increase boon’s duration.

With staff:
http://imgur.com/8JZcKzl
Without staff:
http://imgur.com/K5lq7Rh
It also shows 0.0% Boon duration in Attribute’s panel:
http://imgur.com/KZdxCi1

Edit:
While investigating I noticed now when we mouse over “Condition duration”, we can see which conditions we have upgraded, but I can’t see anything under “Boon duration” although I have my Retaliation boosted by 25% (Virtue of Retribution). I’m not sure if it is a bug or not, but still it’s worth mentioning.

Shiki.7148:

That would only be true if that first trait was the only thing generating globes…which it isn’t. The elite explodes the tablet for globes, and staff auto generates globes. Minor #1 is “more globes” and minor #2 “all globes generate more health”. A proper comparison would be eg. for Necro : “Crits have a chance to procc bleed” and “Bleeds last longer”.

I am not talking about globes generated by Ventari’s skills and staff.

Besides the names are even different:
- orbiting globes (Invocation trait line),
- healing orbs, energy fragments (Salvation trait line),

Even I am confused now… if it works as you said it would make sense obviously, but in fact those would be 3 different names for the same thing.

EDIT:
OK! I watched last few episodes of PoI and I think and know how it works now.
1. So those “orbiting globes” are not the same as orbs generated in Ventari’s legend form. Picking them up with some traits from Salvation trait line won’t give us regen and swiftness, but they can provide a powerful healing as well especially when connected to benevolence bonuses.
2. Two minor traits mentioned by me make sense since globes somehow fly around and heal allies if they touch them and second one allows to destroy orbs for a stronger self heal. So first allows to heal allies and second to heal yourself. But still +50% effectiveness is only for leveling up so you can feel stronger."

I just visited Dulfy website to check the new Ventari traits line and while making a build I realized that some Revenant’s traits make no sense at all.

I am talking about these two:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swirling_Mists
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revitalizing_Breath

Two minor traits from Invocation line, that are in fact one trait separated into two.
This sentence is true, since the first trait tells we can summon some globes and second, that those globes can heal us and they become stronger. But what is the point of this when we can choose between minor traits. Isn’t it better to make one minor: “When you use skill which costs energy you generate a globe, which can heal you upon the legend swap.” and make the second minor focusing on something else. Because right now it sounds like: “You gain swiftness on legend swap.”, “Swiftness gives 33% movement speed”.

It would be ok if the second minor – Revitalizing Breath was an adept, master or grandmaster trait.

Ranger has a lot of animal themes in his animations: snake, bees and a bear. So while dodging some animal should also appear like leaping panther or deer/stag.

By the way, it would be nice to see some animal themed utility skills like summoning a herd of stags running along and knocking down enemies on their way.

Faux.1937:

Assic.2746:

My thief is so thin. I wonder how he will carry a greatsword on his back.

Um… its fantasy, he will have a way XD

If you were a ranger you be able to XD

There is one way! But it’s painful and expensive. It’s called… total makeover kit <thunder>.

Me too. I like the idea of rifle and “sniper” specialization. Right now thief has lots of mobility and use he stealth to get close to the enemy, strike and hide. It would be nice to see thief using stealth to reposition himself to get away from target hide and attack from distance while being lock to one position (aiming just like some warrior’s rifle skills).

My thief is so thin. I wonder how he will carry a greatsword on his back.

In my opinion Ventari’s legend skill #6 has A WAY too low energy cost… what is 10 energy!? He can regenerate it in 2-3 seconds what makes this legend OP like really OP. Why? Because Revenant don’t need to participate in combat to heal his team all the time. He can just spam #6, which costs nothing.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/gw2-ventari-tablet-utility-skills1.jpg

So this “staff build” should encourage ppl to go out and fight with team. Maybe you won’t deal much dmg, but you will apply many condies like Weakness and Weakness and tons of Blind. But with current cost of skill #6 none will do this.

For me it should cost like 25-30%. It’s not high. Player should make strategic decisions if moving the tablet is important enough to do this or rather not to or maybe it would be better to destroy it with skill #0 (elite).

So as in topic. Endless Plush Griffon Tonic jump animation is broken. After jump animation character is instantly teleported/moved to the ground. What I mean is – there is no falling animation.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

currently honing my pvp skills and also grinding for ascended armor (need 2 pieces and have 60g so i’m almost done)

also my internet has been kinda bad so i’ve been playing a lot of singleplayer games. a lot of payday 2, specifically.

I’ve also been trying out other mmos just to get a feel for the market (gw2 is the only mmo i’ve seriously played) mostly Tera, vanilla WoW, SWToR, and Archeage.

I’m also starting to work on getting my drivers license so that’s taking a bit of my time as well.

Just and off-topic question. How much gold does now cost one ascended armor part?

I :

• sleep,
• eat,
• check reddit and fb to see if HoT is already out,
• watch GoT,
• do daily PvP,

“[…] and on and on it spins…”. Just waiting for HoT to break the wheel.

EDIT: And I’m making cash in Hearthstone while waiting for new expansion or adventure at least.

velmeister.4187:

I found that map extremely boring in 5v5 format. This map begs to be 8v8.

This topic is not about it. But I cannot agree, 10 players is more than enough.

Secretwep.2054:

This does need seriously fixed, by making door breakers only target the doors and the archers focus on guards, then people, then gates. Attacking the treb should not be part of their AI.

Yep. Now they probably have to attack enemies type: building/structure not players and when treb attacks them (it’s player, who uses treb but they recognize that treb attacks them not player, which is a little true), they immediately change their focus because this specific type of enemy – building/structure (a little hilarious) attacked them. They target structures only instead of doors only. At least I think so.

There are quite a few bugs also… my match ended 310 : 310 and it ended 8s before time limit, basically 0:08. Someone can say 8s whatever. NO! We killed enemy player and we should win 315 : 310 but match ended at that time. Matches just end faster than they should.

EDIT: For me heroes should spawn only three times: one side, other side and both sides because after that the winning team always gets two heroes and the losing team can’t leave “defense line” and if you can’t leave this line you lose because of the difference in points (more heroes more points).

Also the number of treb repairs should be limited.

And to be strict and push players to defend their NPCs there should be a limit of NPC summons per minute or two. Like you can summon max 5 NPC per minute. It would be more startegy based then. Now most players brainlessly summon NPC because they have supply and if they are more “zerky” they win. Not because of skill or anything. Beacuse of swarm of zerglings.

They should work just like Heroes do – aim for doors just like hero aims for lord.

So long story short, when Door Breakers are hit by treb they automaticaly change their objective and they start aiming for treb… they just try to destroy it instead of destroying doors. I believe that it should not be happening, beacuse they are called “Door Breakers”. It can be really frustarating, when you lead a group of 5 Door Breakers and 5 Door Breakers can crush the doors almost immediately, but when hit by treb they turn left, go upstairs and die there trying to destory treb.

It’s definitely a cool change since the tomes are mostly useless in pve and also in pvp.

But we already have a passive healing effect from virtue of resolve. What if Signet of Courage would grant us protection for 2-3s every 10s or even better something new like 2s of resitstance every 10s.

I have some other idea about the Passive: Everytime you remove conditions you get 2-3s of resistance (effect does not stack). This passive also works well with new/reworked traits for guardian especially the one, that smites condition when using healing skill. Why? Because when we have poison on ourselves and we remove it by using healing skill it can be applied again.

healing skill > smite condtition > 2s of resistance > 100% of healing skill potential

I hope that they will add Nika/Vizu and it will be heavy physical dmg legend mb with some stealth mechanics.

I think that it will work like gathering resources for example. The vine is in the same place for every player but each one have his own vines, which only he can burn.

saventis.1485:

yeaaaaa they are pretty much just heart events with a different name

It’s quite smart. If we had completed a heart event, we couldn’t repeat it unless we created another character. In expansion we can repeat it how many times we want.

Plus “hearts” are a hudge part of GW2, they just cannot disappear, so i think we will learn about lore from NPC near outposts and then we can also have some fun ty to the adventure system.

:D

Basing on the today’s “PoI” don’t you think guys that adventures can be anything… for example races.

Maybe those characters who run away from rolling towards them monster are taking part in an adventure or race (similar to grawl fractal xP).

http://youtu.be/IOUk2y0K2m8?t=1m14s

phokus.8934:

I just find it odd that the Guardian in the HoT picture is shown with a shield in his main hand. Give artist’s an inch…

This image of guardian is just flipped horizontally. It means nothing.

I think that guardian won’t get pistols nor rifle in this expansion.

Guardian resembles a mage so I think they won’t give us “mechanical” weapons.