Guild Wars 2

I reflect Spoj’s concerns on this.

My primary focus is the PVE interrupt mesmer. While it isn’t the best PVE build, it is still pretty good. Vulnerability on daze, vulnerability on interrupt, quickness in interrupt, weakness on interrupt, etc. Once the chronomancer releases, I’ll be able to get slow on interrupt, too. Now, this was all balanced around the fact that, against mobs with defiance I have to actually time my interrupts well to get an effect.

But after HoT, everything is going to have a break bar. Against sub-champion mobs this is a massive nerf to the interrupt build. Even against champions, I now have less fine control over interrupts, since the bar will constantly be ticking down and regenerating. This will make the PVE interrupt build dead once HoT launches.

As rare as this is, I agree with spoj here. One thing I’d like to comment on:

Charblaze.6958:

I fear soft CC will become like Vulnerability: everyone has some so there is no place for a dedicated build or a profession with good Vulnerability application like Necromancer and Engineer.

This is something I’m really not sure is true. Vulnerability isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as people give it credit for, and soft CC even less so. Let alone on a practical build with practical tactics. I would be hesitant to assume that we’ll automatically end up with capped chill, cripple, immobilize, blind, and slow in an AoE by just existing.

On the PVE side there are a couple of builds I use. All use berzerker set with eagle runes.

Max phantasm DPS: Domination 2/2/1, Dueling 1/3/1, Illusions 1/2/2. Signet of the Ether, Mantra of Pain, Time Warp, x2 other utility slots depending on what is needed. Sometimes I’ll run an interrupt variant that uses domination 2/3/3 with mantra of distraction. The overall goal of the build is to lay down phantasms as frequently as possible. The setup gives greatsword and sword off-hand a 12 second phantasm recharge, meaning that no matter the circumstances a phantasms is moments away.

The weapon choice varies. Sword off-hand is almost a must, since it has the highest damaging phantasm. Sword main-hand is a must, too. From there, it is a tossup: Focus provides pulls + missile blockage, pistol provides reliable single target DPS, and greatsword provides AoE burst.

Support Interrupt: Domination 2/3/3, Dueling 1/3/1, Inspiration Any/1/2 or 3. Mantra of Healing, Mantra of Pain, Mantra of Distraction, one spare utility, time warp. Weapon is sword/sword + sword/focus. This build has a lot of minor support going for it, like AoE cleanse on the Healing Mantra, Reflects on Focus, Boon Spreading on phantasm summon, and group distortion for emergencies. This gives the build a surprisingly large toolbox, and as such it is my default build when grouping up with other players.

The adept tier is a tossup. By default I usually have Persisting Images to buy phantasms an extra hit, but both restorative mantras and medic’s feedback have their places. Also, if I’m solo or the group has good boon capabilities already, I’ll take Temporal Enchanter to buff timewarp.

These builds have a lot of overlap.. As for those spare utilities, I run many things:

Feedback for additional reflects
Portal for obvious portal shenanigans
Mantra of Concentration for Stun Breaking
Mantra of Resolve or Null Field for condi cleansing
Signet of Illusions for greater illusion health (usually taken if none others are needed)
Signet of Inspiration for overworld running
Mimic if I really need a lot more feedback or null field
Blink in rare cases where warping is needed.

Good question. Know this: the daredevil gets a leap finisher on dodge. So, if you run DD in sPVP after HoT, you’ll get your PW from stealth.

You know, I’m horrible with elementalist but excellent at thief. Really. It is strange how night-and-day it is. It isn’t that thief is a stronger class than the ele. Really, the ele is the best class in the game. It isn’t that thief is more durable. They’re in the same HP tier, and the armor difference doesn’t mean much.

Its a vision problem. My elementalist has such big, flashy and explosive effects. I also made my ele a a norn, so the physical body of my toon gets in the way. I can’t see the miniscule tells that enemies have behind all of these effects. So my elementalist (and to a lesser extent, guardian) gets close and personal with the floor way too much. I end up having to spam rotations,, and my usage of defensive skills and dodges is largely reliant on the force.

The thief has minimal effects. A slight black woosh behind the weapon, and that’s it. While on my thief, I can clearly see everything that everyone is doing. I don’t blindly spam and hope for the best on the thief. I simply engage.

This has been a problem for awhile. Even with effect LoD turned down I still can’t see anything. I have pretty bad vision, too. It is spotty, never better than 20/30 even with glasses, and without glasses I am one step from legally blind. I come from a game that used to have just as many flashy effects, but had a slider where you could all but completely remove the flashing lights from other player’s attacks.

I am definitely looking forward to traps now that they have 11/2 second cast time.. That one second cast time really limited those traps. Now it might be viable to drop them in an enemy’s face.

I find the effort put into tempest to be a bit disheartening. Out of all of my suggestions lists, tempest had the biggest number of issues. And yet, it receives the lowest number of changes.

There were some good things here. Stability is good. Rebound change is good. I’d have to look at how the new overloads function, since their previous effects were a product of their cast time, but a normalized activation time is good.

But… its not enough. In my previous analysis, I had to throw out some pretty big numbers for changes. I think maybe one of these concerns were touched on. Unless there’s some big additional changes announced later, my suggestion for the tempest after next weekend will be identical to my suggestions after the last weekend.

The fanboy in me is glad that Fists of Fury is getting an outright damage buff. Before it had DPS on par with haste, but now it’ll be even higher.

The evade component on vault sounds pretty sweet. But, I am worried that it might be overpowered. Vault is essentially an AoE Backstab that has no usage limitations. It is somewhat balanced by the fact that once you start the bound, an enemy pretty much knows where you’re going to land and can counterattack. But, if it has an evade component, then there is no counterattacking. I don’t PVP that often, but that is a concern I still have.

Most of these changes are good, if not ambiguous and undecided. For Evasive Empowerment I would give the buff a 3 second duration, but otherwise these sound pretty good.

The Augury of Death change is weird. Instead of giving it a static recharge + bonus, we’re getting a lifesteal component. So now, against a single target, it still doesn’t recharge worth a darn, but now it also does a paltry hit + heal. I guess in a target rich environment this would go from a paltry heal to a minor one. Maybe that is what they were going for.

The good news is, a lot of the shouts were buffed with reduced CDs anyway, so Augury of Death being good isn’t a necessity for shouts being good. The other changes are pretty nice, though.

There was a topic about this before. I’ll just link to my post there.

I usually hit 30+. Highest I’ve personally noticed is 35.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Life_force

Your life force is 69% of your health. 79.35% when traited.

A link would’ve been nice. On venom thieves, that I am not so sure about.. Someone else did the numbers on venomshare thieves, and assuming doublecast the venomshare build has higher overall burst and equivalent sustained damage as the zerker build. This is assuming a standard sized target without linecasting (10 icebow hits).

I can answer the condi mesmer question for you. The staff projectiles bounce, and as such they are unreliable in a group environment. When solo, the projectiles hit the enemies twice. But, add in team members, and it is possible for winds of chaos to bounce to another team member instead of to another enemy. This leads to the condi spec being unreliable in terms of damage output, being randomly cut in half in certain circumstances. Likewise, the buildup for winds of chaos to do damage is really slow, making it so even in the puggest of pugs you’ll find enemies dead before it can build. The third and final issue is that the offensive power of the build doesn’t scale up against multiple targets. Sword + Focus hits multiple enemies easily, as do the mantras. But those darned bouncing orbs have a finite amount of power, and multiple targets means dividing that damage among enemies instead of multiplying it.

EDIT: A bit more. Here is a graph from metabattle that compared the numbers of the condi thief to others. At the 15 second mark it surpasses everything that isn’t Elementalist. The frostbow graph isn’t as kind, only surpassing Guardian at the 18 second mark.

With these numbers, I do have to admit that thief is no longer the single target king. Tis a shame, since I liked holding that title. Though it does make me wonder where we stand PVE balance wise if the class, skills, and tactics that are best for single target damage are identical to multiple target damage.

Ensign.2189:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Also, reading comprehension is a must. I said single target damage. Ele and Engi are great against groups, whereas the thief is only middling at groups. But against any one enemy, and those backstabs + heartseekers really tear through their health.

Both engy and ele have substantially higher single target DPS than a D/D thief. Berserker engineer and staff elementalist both deal roughly 20% more DPS than the best possible thief rotation, while a Sinister engineer, in a sufficiently long fight, will deal roughly 40% more DPS.

D/D thief is roughly on par with guardian when it comes to damage, ahead of warriors, necromancers, and power rangers but behind mesmers and condition rangers.

I do want to know what the source of these numbers is. Especially if it ranks memsers as higher DPS, since the high phantasm death rate makes that only true in the most select of circumstances. Also, if we assume enough time for conditions, then pre-cast venomshare thief is higher damage than berserker thief.

That is something I wonder about. From my experience, thief is fine. It is just that in PVP mesmers are better currently.

Petoox.6570:

Thief doesn’t have highest dps, I don’t know what is ranking but Sinister engi has best and staff ele has second best.

Also, where does thief have condition cleanse? I can only remember Shadow’s Embrace in Shadow Arts but nobody uses that thing in pve, maybe for Snowblind campfire soloing but nowhere else really.

Infiltrators Strike + Infiltrators Return removes one condition each use. Spam as needed.

Outside of Sword, Hide in Shadows takes care of most damaging conditions. Withdraw and Roll for Initiative takes care of most disabling conditions. Signet of Agility is a single group cleanse, but sometimes all you need to remove is one condition. Shadowstep + Shadow Return is a stunbreaker that removes 3 of any condition.

Also, reading comprehension is a must. I said single target damage. Ele and Engi are great against groups, whereas the thief is only middling at groups. But against any one enemy, and those backstabs + heartseekers really tear through their health.

Thaddeus.4891:

The specialisation wasn’t kind to the thief tho. Where everybody was buffed a lot by the patch (Guardian when from 8-9k to 12-14k in dps), the thief didn’t move a lot in the DPS department. He lost a lot of damage modifier and wasn’t buff by the additional stats from gear (he already had 300 power, precision and ferocity from trait).

This is something that I’m actually wondering about. While the standard thief build didn’t allocate more stats, the thief didn’t walk away empty handed. With the loss of 5% from dagger training and 5% on dual skills came 1% per initiative with leading strikes. We’ve still got exposed weakness and executioner.

Of particular note is the new critical strikes line. Without it, my full zerker + scholar thief has 50% self fury uptime and 216% crit damage (effectively a 1.74 modifier off of a scaled 64% crit chance). But with critical strikes, I have full fury uptime with several other crit changes totaling to around 87% crit chance and 245% crit damage. This comes to a 2.26 modifier effectively being a 30% increase in damage overall. Also include Ferocious Strikes, which is 10% on crit above 50% health (which I’ve calculated as a 4.35% damage mod).

In total? 35.4% increase in damage from taking critical strikes. So really, I’d like to see where the numbers that say thieves are the same come from.

Thieves are pretty good in PVE.

*Best class for blind spam, giving them high defensive utility for the whole group.
*Access to projectile destruction and reflection.
*Best blast finisher in the game.
*Very high single target damage. Best in the game last I checked.
*A lot of access to disables and defiance stripping/bar breaking skills.
*Group swiftness, fury, and vigor. The group vigor is quite rare.
*Spammable evades. This makes them great at meleeing otherwise difficult bosses.
*High self healing.
*Boon Removal, either a bit or a lot depending on the build.
*Good access to weakness.
*Best access to stealth. This means a lot, regarding skipping to aggro management.
*Though currently not used too much due to how rarely enemies heal themselves, they have good access to poison.
*Their spammable shadowsteps means they can bypass a lot of area effects.
*Spammable condition cleanse.
*On condi specs, decent at might and vulnerability.
*Low cooldowns means power builds can run 3 signets + one utility, and the team doesn’t suffer from it.
*Capable of spamming every combo finisher in the game.

All in all, no one is going to look at you and go “ew, a thief. reroll to a real class plz!”. As for their flaws…

*Weak ranged game. Don’t have far range or that much damage at it.
*Mediocre Combo Fields. Smoke fields are a mixed bag, because while blasting stealth in them is an effective tactic, it can mess things up when one overrides a fire field.
*Melee builds are bad at self-buffing, having little to no access to might or vulnerability.
*Requires being beside or behind enemies to do the best damage. With stealth this isn’t always a problem, but it isn’t uncommon for damage to be kitten by a twisty enemy.

Other than the range game, I wouldn’t call those much of a deficiency.

GWEN is good for uncoordinated zergs. I’d argue that engi is also just as good in an uncoordinated zerg.

With coordination, I’d imagine nearly all classes are viable. Thief is good for havoc teams, solo roaming, and also for venomshare (either control or condi). Thieves can also make for good zergbuster groups.

The thief does have a lot of poison and bleeds. Minor access to torment and confusion, too. In PVE I get 7k ticks of poison with spider venom + venomshare on a single target. That’s what 30 stacks of poison will do to someone. If you run with a team in WvW you’ll have a similar effect.

Though I’m not sure this is about condi builds necessarily. The thing with burning is that it is strong enough to be useful outside of condi builds. Thieves get a lot of the second best condition, which is poison. The main advantage of poison is the -33% effect it has on heals. Assuming the enemy does heal, this can be seen as 1.5k-2k damage.

That said, I would like better access to some of our other conditions. We are getting some with Daredevil’s condi dodge, but still, I would like to see minor buffs to dagger training and increased bleed duration to the pistol’s auto attack and stealth skill.

#1: More involvement in class balance.
#2: Swimsuits.
#3: More stupid fun PVP and WvW maps and modes.
#4: Procedurely and randomly generated dungeon..

Super special premier of swimsuits and/or customizable underwear.

Ignoring the mass of hate in this thread…

There’s nothing wrong with not taking Soul Reaping alongside of reaper. SR is really good if you want to buff shroud knight focused builds. If you aren’t focusing on shroud, then another line is just fine.

I experiment with curses myself. The reaper comes with a series of low CD blinds, so chilling darkness isn’t too bad when taken with other chill synergizing traits. Plague sending is a good all around trait, though. The only good master trait is Path of Corruption, but it is decent. 2 boons every 6 seconds has its uses. I suppose if you really want, you can take master of corruption for a lower cooldown on Consume Conditions, but outside of a condi build I"m not sure it is worth it.

The real stars of the curses line are Furious Demise, Target the Weak, and Weakening Shroud. Demise is self fury, which is always useful. Target the weak is additional condi damage and precision, and given that you’ll regularly be inflicting up to 5 different conditions, this is basically a 10% increase to crit chance. Weakening Shroud is the support trait, giving both single target weakness regularly and AoE weakness on command. Weakness is an often underrated condition in PVE, acting as a scaled 25% reduction of incoming damage for the entire group. So it is like a weaker but non-mutually exclusive version of protection.

Blood magic is decent as well. Mostly for the wells. There isn’t much different between a bloodmagic necro and a bloodmagic reaper, though. Vampiric Presence, Vampiric Rituals, Ritual of Life, etc. and so on. Provides group protection, a strange mix of group healing and increased damage, and it makes the ever-potent wells even better.

Now the thing with Death Magic is that it is quite weak when compared to the other line. For example, the 480 toughness that is given in Death Magic isn’t that good, since Curses will give (assuming glass cannon gear) exactly that much relative toughness from the weakness it inflicts. The condi cleansing in DM isn’t that good, either, considering the multitude of transfers that come from other lines as well as weapon/utility skills. The power gain from deadly strength isn’t that good either, being outpaced by furious demise + target the weak, or the vampiric traits, or dhuumfire/deathly perception. Thus, a lot of people avoid Death Magic unless they are making a minion build. A lot of people avoid minion builds, too.

If you want to be thematic about it, sure you can take Death Magic. But unless you’re running minions, currently there isn’t anything in Death Magic that another line can’t do better.

You know, I do wonder why it is anyone would have more than 10 characters. You’ll have a male and female of each race, and you’ll also have at least one of every class. If you want a different playstyle, just buy a different gear set.

I guess I can understand having a key farmer, or extra slots to farm silver doubloons…

They’ll return… as antagonists.

It is the nature of the beast. When you give a class high damage and invisibility, it makes people mad. This isn’t a problem unique to GW2, either. Back in City of Heroes, people hated Stalkers in PVP, and they had the same bag of tricks.

It is a PVP thing mostly. In PVE you don’t get much thief hatred.

6 currently. Going to have a revenant for 7th.

A whole lotta stuff to acrobatics.

Are you guys sure that Resounding Timbre is better than Companion’s might?

Just remember: Luck is for other people.

Tim.6450:

@Arachnid Those numbers are fine and well but the problem is our heals aren’t that great either compared to other classes and that 1 health does not equal 1 life force.

That is not a problem that is unique to YSIM. That is a global necro problem, and as such the thread is mis-titled and misdirected if that is the real issue.

I didn’t go into this, but here’s how I calculated the scaled health via life force.

Life Force has two things to consider. First, without traits, the LF bar has 69% of your maximum health, so at minimum you have 13,256 additonal “health”. Second, damage is reduced by 50% while in shroud, so technically this is 26,513 additional health against direct attacks. This value of 26.5k is what I used when converting life force to practical health. 4% LF thus means, at minimum, 1061 health.

This is a messy conversion, though. The elephant in the room is degen, which is 4% per second untraited. The gorilla in the room is condition damage, which doesn’t get scaled down. The little birdy in the room is that the last hit which brings the necro out of shroud doesn’t receive the 50% damage reduction.

In general, I just go with the straight 26.5k health conversion, because it is important in two aspects. First is the PVE tactic of Shroud Flashing, where you click shroud on and off real quick to take a big hit from an enemy (while also using certain skills). When shroud flashed, this is very little degen, so the life force bar acts as a second health bar to absorb bursts. Second, in PVP there are a lot direct damage burst specs which will try to kill you. These bursts are frequently executed in the span of 2 to 3 seconds, meaning that again there is very little degen for the massive amount of damage being received.

Against sustained damage, you can consider shroud as an effective health bar, but sustained damage does 1061 additional damage per second while using it.

The whole necro healing issue is central to the nature of shroud. Not only does the necro technically have the highest base health in the game because of shroud, but also there are a lot of skills (most analyzed extensively in other threads) that generate life force. This generation can be seen as a form of healing, and when considered as a form of healing the necromancer actually has high health regeneration. Heck, dagger auto can be seen as healing for 1k health per second at minimum health.

This leaves the devs in a tough spot. To balance out the high base health and theoretical healing (alongside of vampirism), they are gutting the necro’s actual healing and active defenses. Are they gutted too much? Good question. Just be aware that giving the necro the same real healing as other classes on top of its theoretical healing could easily make necros OP.

Times like this I wish I documented the healing numbers from the skill. I have to hope that the numbers on the wiki are correct.

YSIM: 3954 heal, 20 second cooldown. 4% LF per enemy hit (so at least 4%). Can currently be traited to reduce recharge by 7% per enemy hit, so with traits it is an 18.6 second cooldown at the least. 0.75 second activation time. At the most, it is a 13 second cooldown and 20% life force per activation. 259 base damage.

Consume Conditions: 5240, 724 per condition consumed. Self inflicts 5 stacks of vulnerability for 4 seconds. 30 second cooldown. 1.25 second activation time. Can be traited to have as low as 20 seconds, but also will cause blind for 4 seconds.

Well of Blood: 5240 + 280 × 6. Total of 6,920. 40 second recharge. 1 second activation time. Heals up to 5 allies in its radius. Can be traited to a 32 second recharge with protection and 109 additional healing per pulse per enemy caught in the well. At minimum this is 654 more health, at maximum this is 3270 more health. Also causes AoE protection when traited.

Signet of Vampirism: 325 health when hit, 1 second ICD. 3960 initial active heal, with 390 × 5 additional heals possible given enough attacks, totaling to 5910. 35 second cooldown, 1.25 second activation time. A group can heal off of the siphons, and also do additional damage. Alone the skill does 1005 damage, but in a group it does 5025 damage. Can be traited for a 28 second cooldown, along with 3 × 15 might and 2 boon conversions on activation.

Summon Blood Fiend: This one is tricky, since the cooldown is dependent on how long the creature lives before blowing it up. Just by staying alive it does 926 health every 3 seconds. By sacrificing, it gives 3960 health. The total time for a summon + sacrifice is 2.25 seconds, on a 16 second cooldown.

With all of the numbers out of the way, I’m going to break it down into heals per second.

YSIM Minimum: 191 per second. +51 scaled health via life force.
YSIM Maximum: 191 per second. + 256 scaled health via life force.
YSIM Traited minimum: 204 per second. +55 scaled health via life force.
YSIM Traited maximum: 288 per second. + 386 scaled health via life force.

CC: 168 per second. +23 per condition.
CC Traited: 247 per second. +34 per condition.

WoB: 169 per second. 41 per second to allies in the well.
WoB Traited minimum: 230 per second. 51 per second to allies in the well.
WoB Traited maximum: 309 per second. 51 per second to allies in the well.

SoV: 163 per active heal. 325 w/passive. Active give 54 per second to attacking allies.
SoV traited: 202 per active heal. Passive the same. Active gives 67 per second to attacking allies.

Blood Fiend: 309 health per second.
Taste of Death: 236 health per second assuming active blood fiend. 217 without.

This is only a numbers analysis, so keep in mind that Blood Find and SoV require no cleave and a massive beatdown to get their maximum passive numbers. I’ll be looking at the active numbers mostly.

If the life force is valuable, YSIM without traits is alright. It is 242 scaled health per activation (assuming at least one target, because why in the world would you use YSIM out of combat?). That is as good as CC + 3 conditions, not factoring vulnerability. It is outright better than Well of Blood and Signet of Vampirism untraited. All in all, if you need the life force, YSIM is pretty solid.

The traits make things more complicated, because then you start to factor in utility and sacrifice. You must give up Close to Death for Signets of Suffering, Path of Corruption for Master of Corruptions, etc. The problem is that Augury of death is a bad trait. It only works when you’re surrounded. If those conditions are met, then YSIM with Augury of Death is a monstrous heal. 674 scaled health per second is nothing to sneeze at.

But the other traits don’t scale down, and that is where YSIM falls behind. Consume Conditions becomes the highest practical heal, if you don’t mind the blind and vulnerability. Signet of Vampirism becomes pure aggression, stacking might and converting boons and doing up to 5k piercing damage to an enemy. Well of Blood synergizes well with other wells, acts as group support, and in select scenarios that life siphon adds up to a massive heal (note: this scenario is more select that Augury).

Blood Fiend is just kind of… there. Theoretically good, but impractical to use., and easily interruptable.

Tl:dr, YSIM is fine as a heal. It is Augury that is terrible.

I think it is a horrible idea. There is a lot of play revolving around the downed state, and the game was designed around the downed state.

I’m gonna make it cut. I’m also going to spam Fists of Fury all over the place, since I like the idea of beating people to death with my bare hands, mystical kungkittenstyle.

Fade.5904:

Please make ‘Dash’ a shadowstep instead of the clunky run animation! or leave it as the old dodge animation but add 2 secs super speed or some such.

You can sign me up for this one.

eisberg.2379:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Anet really needs to be taught the Streisand Effect.

Apparently you need to learn the “innocent until proven guilty” principle. Got any proof that Anet had anything to do with the take down of the blog?

There is no defense in the court of public opinion.

Anet really needs to be taught the Streisand Effect.

It is an issue I see a lot on the forums regarding specializations: Being in a specialization means, at minimum, you’re taking the traits. You don’t have to take the weapon or utilities.

That said, I’m not sure reaper is ever leaving my bar. Even if I don’t use the GS, the traits are too good for me to pass up.

You can make a necro that’s pure white, but his cloak and clothes are black. Name him Ginosaji. Kudos if you get the reference.

I’m not going to abandon hope on improvements yet. This time I made a rather lengthy post detailing many problems and how to solve them, and the devs usually listen to me for some strange reason.

Well… I have one interesting tale.

I reflect for triple trouble regularly. As a reflector, I’ve kind of taken it upon myself to announce in squad chat who the reflectors are, and also to direct whenever eggs get out or when we die. However, I also use this squad chat to make jokes on occasion. They’re usually silly jokes, like how you have to rub the char’s belly or he won’t reflect for you, or a bunch of extreme weeabo references.

So one day, I crossed a line. I didn’t know this was a line, but I crossed it. The message in squad chat was the following: “Hello everyone, (name) and I will be your reflectors today. I apologize if any eggs get out, since I’m refusing to call until (name) admits that Rainbow Dash is the best pony”. Something to that effect. Apparently this joke was funny to some, since there were a couple of hilarious messages in chat to the line of “appleponi is the best poni” and “(name) says that rainbow dash sucks”. Little did I now that this struck a nerve with some people, because then what followed was an extremely lengthy and heated agument/trollfest over MLP:FiM.

Now I am memser reflect, and I was on cobalt wurm that day. Its an easy wurm: 35 seconds between eggs unless the damage phase interrupts, eggs proceed husks. You can practically AFK it. So, I spent the entire duration of that wurm arguing with people in map chat, defending MLP:FiM. Or rather, talking down anyone who was arguing against it. This was not a short ordeal: this was easily 25 minutes straight of fighting. Or… something like fighting. Either it was a purposeful trolly argument, or some people really hate MLP:FiM and thus deserved the rage they got. While my wurm was a successful decap, another wurm unfortunately failed.

I sold my loots and left the map as usual, but not before dropping this little gem in the flames: “It sounds like you all need a lesson in friendship. Luckily I know where you can get a few”. The next day, I was being referred to as the brony, and my squadchat joke was: “I’ll try to stay away from any hot-button topics, like politics or children’s television shows”.

/blogforums.

You never have to apologize if you’re never in the wrong.

It is really hard to be never wrong, though. You gotta work for it.

Cynz.9437:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

On the PVE side I still see plenty of thieves. The rarest class by far is the engineer., which is weird because I’d argue strongly that it is the second best class in the game.

But in PVP I can understand the absence. With their new buffs, mesmers out-thief the thief. For awhile the reverse was true, though, so I guess it is their time to shine.

Classes shouldn’t be balanced around “it is their time to shine”.

Not balanced. Just is.

The thief will have several roles. It all depends on which one they pick.

#1: Rezzer/aggro management. Thieves are one of the best rezzers in the game, particularly because they can just drop a shadow refuge and nearly bring back a fully defeated player. If a player is getting harassed too much by a champ, stealth is an instant de-aggro.

#2: Thieves have the highest single target damage in the game when buffed. Given no other utility is needed, a thief will be in a default spot.

#3: Evasion tanking. The thief is very good at evades. Whether it be from their utilities and traits, or their weapon skills, a thief is capable of evading attacks for extremely long periods of time. It is high risk gameplay, but you’d be amazed what a good evade tank can accomplish.

#4:Thieves aren’t without control. Smoke screen blocks projectiles and blinds, dagger storm is also a long duration reflect. Any venomshare build can give the team mass immobilize (which the thief can already do quite well), mass chill, or even mass stun. I can’t imagine a champion who’s breakbar won’t be shattered by 5 basilisk venoms. On smaller enemies, scorpion wire can pull for crucial re-positioning, and the blind fields will still render them incapable.

#5: Boon stealing. It isn’t done as much anymore, but the ability to steal boons does have its niche uses. Bountiful Theft, in particular is a really strong skill that also acts as a group party buff, so if it yanks something like, say, quickness off of a boss, then your whole team gets to shred. The group vigor is just a plus.

#6: Thieves natively inflict a lot of poison, even on power builds. Poison has an anti-healing mechanic that, while seldom used, is quite valuable. Considering that warriors, guardians, mesmers, and elementalists don’t have any poison, this gives thieves another niche they fill.

#7: Spammable blast finisher. Its always around, so just saying.

#8: Thieves have high single target uptime for weakness. Lotus poison is 4 every 10 seconds, and Weakening Strikes is 5 every 10 seconds. If both are taken, this can amount to 9 seconds of weakness every 10 seconds. I’m not sure how break bars will work with weakness, but if they just cut it in half like defiance does, it is still a relatively high uptime of 45% on a champion. Sword auto attack adds more, Weakening Charge from staff adds more, leap finishers in poison fields add more, too.

All in all, the thief has many roles it can fulfill, and many of these roles aren’t done as well on other classes. Granted, a thief can’t do everything listed above all at once, but they are flexible enough to adapt to what is needed.

On the PVE side I still see plenty of thieves. The rarest class by far is the engineer., which is weird because I’d argue strongly that it is the second best class in the game.

But in PVP I can understand the absence. With their new buffs, mesmers out-thief the thief. For awhile the reverse was true, though, so I guess it is their time to shine.

Even though the guardian was one of the first classes I ever made, it was the last one that I ever leveled up and started to play. There was always something that irked me a bit about the guardian, and I never could quite put my finger on it. I think I’ve figured out what is bothering me. Most of the guardians utilities are redundant.

I’m mostly a PVE player, so it is from this perspective. A lot of the tools that the guardian has are the same tools, but with slightly different things attached to them.

I’m going to use Sanctuary as an example. Sanctuary is an interesting consecration that I almost never use. If I want to stop projectiles, I already have wall of reflection to do it better. If I want to stop someone from moving, I already have ring of warding/line of warding to do it. If I want to heal, merciful intervention does that better. The end result being that I’m never going to run sanctuary.

Repeat with… most skills, really. I essentially have the same toolbox, whether I’m running shouts, meditations, or consecrations. Group Condition Cleanse? In Shouts, Consecrations, and Spirit Weapons. Additional Burning Damage? In everything but shouts. Group Stability? That’s in Shouts and Consecrations. Projectile destruction? Spirit weapons and Consecrations. Stun Breaks? So many I can barely count them. Movement skills? Shouts and meditations.

There are some “unique” things here and there. Meditations have shadowsteps are are largely selfish. Consecrations create fields. Spirit weapons are AI based and can tank a few hits, etc. Overall, it seems like the guardian is shoehorned into doing the same three things. Cleanses, Stun Breaks, and Blocks. You just have to decide whether you’ll be AoE, ground targeted, self-targeting, or an AI build.

Heck, even the traps are a bit bland right now. We have damage, damage and vulnerability, damage and immobility, damage if you move, and damage + aegis.

Honor is only good if you honor it. Personally, if I were to come across two people fighting, I’m not going to bother trying to figure out of they are dueling or not. I’m probably going to attack the enemy player first, and ask questions later. Or else they might attack me.

Personally I’m all for stupid fun maps. Not everything has to be no items, fox only, final destination. Even if UW combat isn’t the main focus of balance, I would still like to see it around.

If the enemy only hits you once in awhile, then active defenses will cover it, and you won’t need toughness or healing. That’s why the zerker meta works currently. The inability to see is only a minor detraction.

To do that, you would need an incredible amount of fast healing. So much that you’ll be healing for nearly as much as the enemy hits you for. This doesn’t make durability practical, since there isn’t any situation in the game where you can’t pile enough healing on to make it all better.

Khristophoros.7194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Khristophoros.7194:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

My concern is exactly how much unavoidable damage they’ll be throwing at us. The thing with standard tank/heal/dps games is that the scales between different archetypes are huge.

In GW2, the scales between them are small. The difference between someone running around in full GC as compared to, say, knights gear isn’t that big. It is only about 60% higher effective health, which may seem like a lot until you realize it just means you’ll be taking 37.5% less damage. That is less than the innate difference between some classes.

As much as I am for gear diversity, I can’t forget this fact. Gear diversity is about preference in play more than anything else, because as the game stands it currently can’t handle a traditional trinity setup.

That IS a lot. It’s not just more EHP, it’s also more Effective Healing.

Put that toughness on a necro with blood magic, wells healing you for just shy of 200 per tick per enemy and yeah it’s a big deal.

It really isn’t when comparing thresholds of damage. On paper it seems good in the long term, but in reality that extra amount of EHP frequently won’t mean a thing. While fighting champions in silverwastes and drytop, I will very frequently be hit with an attack that goes for 16k or so in a single strike. That number is 10k in knights gear. The overall takeaway of this? You still die in two hits, and your toughness has gained you nothing.

As much as I’d like to make the necro the tank (BTW, vampiric rituals only heals for 110 per tick), Death Shroud blocking healing makes supporting them inconsistent. You’d be better off with a class that can chain invulnerability skills.

If the hits are that big you’re supposed to dodge them or use shroud to absorb them when you’re out of endurance. Shroud has 50% damage reduction so you can take 4 of those hits, or 6 of those hits if you have protection on too.

The point I was making is a character can provide their own sustain. A necro doesn’t need external healing. Between blood magic and shroud you have enough.

Vamp rituals is 110, then you get about 40 each from both other siphon traits for the damaging wells, so that is about 190 per enemy per tick. And the non-damaging wells only heal for 110 per tick per enemy. Of course that’s only the wells. The necro gets more siphons in addition to that.

The point I’m making is that the game isn’t designed to handle a trinity system. Stats are scaled toward personal performance, balancing outgoing damage and total health around a relatively tiny pivot. This is done for PVP’s sake, so a player doesn’t go totally out of control as the extreme end of either spectrum. This isn’t about any particular class, either. You’re arbitrarily bringing up necromancer as an example, but what about the other classes? There are situations in this game where I’ve been hit for nearly twice my total effective HP on my thief. By a champions auto attack Solo. Switching to full knights gear means absolutely nothing in that circumstance.

And those examples are only situations where it is useless. Also think about situations where it is nigh useless. Even if we assume tankier gear buys you an attack or two, how long does that really last? How big of a contribution does it make to your team to survive one extra attack? There’s no aggro management system in the game, so having high EHP might result in the big bad bosses running right past you.