Guild Wars 2

Khisanth.2948:

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.

You missed this in the patch notes.

Blood Magic traits that siphon health now heal through shroud. Additionally, siphon damage and healing from traits is now called out in the combat log.

but yes … the siphons do look very underwhelming when looking at the actual numbers in the combat log. it looks much more impressive as a cloud of green numbers.

I didn’t. I’m referring to group heals. Blast finishers in water fields, Ventari’s Tablet, etc.

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 it isn’t a number issue, then the numbers are at least a factor. The staff auto is lower than it should be, hook strike is incredibly low for unknown reasons (especially when compared to the sword, which has a similar effect), dust strike is incredibly slow for its relatively low damage, and vaults long activation time means it isn’t as powerful relatively to other skills. Impairing Daggers is also quite low, too. Impact Strike also only does as much damage as auto attacking, so unless you are finishing someone off with it. you are better off not using Impact Strike.

The traits themselves are also lacking some numbers. Evasive Empowerment is a garbage effect, and staff mastery tries its hardest to remove its situational damage buff. I imagine if all of these things get buffed a bit, then the DD will be in a better place.

That is what I’ve been trying to convince people of for awhile. The traps have potential. They’re not properly tuned at the moment, but their high direct damage means that trap stacking with Dragonhunters is far more dangerous than it is with thieves and rangers.

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.

I’m going to try at least every spec for awhile. There will be situations where the elite spec is better than base.

Except for the necromancer. Once HoT launches, Reaper is never leaving my bar. The traits are just too good. Too universal. The greatsword, too fun. Damage + Defense + Utility. The shouts are meh, but good enough for use.

The tempest is a maybe. As a primarily PVE-er, I’ll be using firestorm in lava font a lot. But for deeps sake, it means I’ll have to sacrifice the arcane line, which has a bunch of defenses and utility that I definitely use. The arcane skills are a strong competitor against the shouts. But what I lack in might stacking, fire storm will make up for. So on that side, it is a “we’ll see”.

The chronomancer is probably a yes. The run speed boost alone is worth it. The ability to spam slow is also good, and compliments the interrupt build nicely. On the flip side, the ability to shatter phantasms at least once is a much needed utility in PVE. The wells + alacrity is an interesting addition, and I wonder how that will change things.

The dragonhunter is only in select circumstances. All of the current traits for the guardian are based around how virtues currently work, and the DH virtues being non-instant cast is a problem. The traps are alright if you can pre-cast them, but guardian utilities are so potent that it is hard to drop it for sheer damage. I’m not sure the longbow is a better ranged weapon than the scepter right now, so unless some things change for the better, I won’t be using much DH.

The Daredevil is another “maybe”. Unlike tempest or DH it isn’t that daredevil does anything wrong. The dodges are great, the physical utilities are strong and fun, the staff skills are currently meh but workable. The issue is that for PVE, Deadly Arts/Critical Strikes/Trickery is already a really strong spec. It is hard to pick what to sacrifice: The utility/group support of trickery? Can’t loose that. The pure aggression and critical power/healing of Critical Strikes? Don’t want to lose that. The damage modifiers and pure power + weakness of Deadly Arts? Maybe, but losing that 20% extra increased damage will be painful. But still, vault’s ability to tear through adds is epic…

The Herald is definitely a yes. I’ve never known the revenant without the herald, so there isn’t much to say on that. The berserker is a no, because I don’t play warrior.

Mostly I’m just wondering that is wrong with the OP. Throughout the entire beta weekend I acquired no gruff from playing the new specs or playing with the new specs. Entire maps full of players, and not one complaint. The majority of players like playing with the new specs and classes, as it makes the game more interesting while also giving them a perspective for suggestions on how to change the classes.

The world can’t cave to every unreasonable suggestion. The fact is that having beta content merged with regular content makes for a much richer testing environment, and any issues with that fact is a personally issue that will have to be resolved yourself.

I’m used to playing hammer guard in PVE, so I’m well acquainted with slow attack speeds.

The greatsword has all of the things that I wanted in a necro weapon. High damage blind + cripple, solid sustained damage, a finisher of some kind that synergizes with its own innate field, a pull + interrupt, and the chill synergizes with a lot of things. It has damage, defense, and utility all in one package.

The game mode would help a bit. But as of right now, nobody knows.

Definitely not optimized. I noticed quite a few bad moves here.

#1: Chilling bolts don’t actually do damage. Without Bitter Chill there’s no reason to use Soul Spiral in the ice field left by executioner’s strike.

#2: Executioner’s Scythe is only a DPS boost if used on enemies below 25% HP. Otherwise it is more effective to just auto attack with sword/dagger/shroud or gravedigger spam. Maybe if bitter chill were a factor you would use at at other health levels, but otherwise no.

#3: Soul Spiral itself isn’t that good, either. It’s direct damage is substantially lower than other attacks, and the 48 ticks of poison doesn’t help much (let alone in a build without might). Use Soul Spiral in a dark field. Each of the leeching bolts (tested in PVP at 2375 power) does 242 damage, and assuming there are about 12 bolts total that comes to an additional 3k on top of its usual damage. The 2k heal is a bonus.

#4: I’m having minor difficulty pinning down exactly what the build was. It definitely isn’t running chilling victory, and for a decimate defenses it is running very few ways to inflict vulnerability. Death Spiral and Rending Shroud only. No Unyielding Blast, no Bitter Chill, no off-hand focus, etc. I don’t know the minor or grandmaster, either.

#5: I’m pretty sure that Vampiric Presence is a higher personal DPS boost than Banshees wail. Even when using the warhorn. I’ve only done a few golem tests, but I’m consistently getting an indestructible kill in an additional second or two faster with Presence. This was without minions.

Those are the things I’m sure about. There are other things, such as whether Grasping Darkness is a DPS increase, or whether the best solo build is Spite/Blood Magic/Reaper.

Woodenpotatoes made a video about this. It is slightly dated, but still works.

The comb is basically ele + ele + thief + guard. Thief uses venomshare for basilisk venom and devourer venom, and sometimes skelk venom. Thief also provides shadow refuge. Basically it goes like this:

1. Everybody buffs up and stealths to a zerg who’s sitting on a point.
   #2: Everyone grabs an ice bow.
   #3: The guardian warps inside and proceeds to “tank” the zerg, refusing to grant the zerg the capture point.
   #4: Everyone simultaneously drops ice bow #4 onto the group.
   #5: Bags rain from the sky.

However, as for what you are doing… I’ve never seen it done before myself. I can never find a group coordinated enough. But I can theorycraft.

#1: Signet of Malice is necessary. The healing it provides along with dagger storm is awesome.

#2: it is a little known fact that, because most venoms are instant activation, they can be used in the middle of dagger storm without interrupting. If you guys are using condi or hybrid builds, venomshare can boost your damage by quite a bit. Stagger the venoms 1 after the other, and you’ll effectively have 25 uses of those venoms in about 8 seconds. A total of 150 applications of spider venom amounts to 900 ticks of poison spread throughout the zerg, at base.

#3: Yes, an ele would be good to group with. This isn’t necessarily for burning, but for might. An ele can drop a fire field and then blast it repeatedly, giving the whole group long duration might and fury. In full zerk that amounts to a 28% increase in direct damage, and 220% increase in the damage done by bleed (110 to 350 or so). It is important that you’ll want to have the ele out of team, because the loss of an additional dagger storm means a 25% reduced damage from the burst, making all the buffs you receive to be very minor overall. Even if you can’t get group fury on everyone from the ele, thieves can still blast a ton of might with their shortbows.

#4: I can’t really give advice on which field to use without experimentation. Immediately I would say dark field, since those leeching bolts both do damage and generate health. But a smoke field would ensure more survival, and last longer than a dark field. So… depends on what you need I guess.

I don’t know if it isn’t a number problem. At least some of it is. I ran the numbers in the other BWE feedback thread, and have come up with some necessary changes.

Question: Does anyone know the health of Shambling Horror?

I ask this because, as a defensive skill, it might actually be pretty good. This all depends on how much health they have, though.

You can earn plenty of gold in drytop. What you have to do is make clay pots, which require 25 bricks of clay. After you buy the recipe and buy the clay (both with geodes), you can craft a pot and sell it on the market for quite a hefty sum.

To really rake in the dough, you need a good map. Tier 5 and tier 6 give loads of geodes and also make everything really cheap. The events you farm also give a lot of karma.

I haven’t specifically looked at how much money the buried locked chests will give. I’m sure there are more ways to earn gold, but without standing in drytop myself I won’t be able to tell you anymore.

Also the ambrite skins are wicked sick nasty, yo.

Honestly, I’m still debating how much “analysis” I should do on the dragon hunter. With so many necessary upcoming changes not implemented, it makes the whole thing almost futile.

Almost. I’m still going to do the traps. In PVP with no amulets, runes, or sigils equipped. So basically it is base damage.

Purification: 50 damage. 2192 self heal + 0.25 scaling, 6413 trap heal with 1 scaling. 1 × 6 bleed. 1 second activation time, 30 second recharge. BUG: Skill does not list its target maximum for damage, which is 5.

Fragments of Faith: 665 damage 1 × 6 cripple. 1 second activation time, 45 second recharge. Uses Fragments of Faith, which spits out 5 fragments for 10 seconds that each give 1 × 8 aegis when picked up. 90 pickup radius. BUG: On utility bar, skill does not display fragments of faith when scrolled over.

Test of Faith: 798 damage per crossing of the ring. 1 × 6 cripple. 8 second duration. Unblockable. 1 second activation time, 30 second cooldown.

Procession of Blades: 1200 damage (10 hits). 1 second activation time. 25 second recharge. BUG: Does not list the duration upon activation, which is 4 seconds. BUG: While the skills animation is only 3 seconds, it continues doing its damage over an extra second.

Light’s Judgement: 50 damage per pulse. 1 × 1 revealed per pulse. 10 × 2 vulnerability per pulse. 8 second duration. 1 second interval. 9 pulses total. 450 damage total. 1 second activation time, 45 second cooldown.

Dragon’s Maw: 638 damage. 1 × 4 slow. 6 second barrier. 180 range pull. 1 second activation time, 60 second cooldown.

Overall these traps have the same problem as last weekend: Minor effects, long activation times, long recharge. For reference, I’m going to bring up the traps from other classes.

For example, on a generic broken down condi ranger build, vipers nest hit s for 9,241 condition damage. Every 16 seconds. With a half second activation time. Flame Trap hits for 7.9k every 12 seconds. Needle trap hits for 6.8k every 24 seconds.

The ability for guardian traps to inflict bleed is being removed next patch, so each of their traps becomes a daze. Tested in PVP (full zerk, scholar runes, sigil of force), the highest damaging trap Procession of Blades only hits 5k direct damage.

This wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that it is the highest damaging trap.

There are two ways to build traps. Ranger traps are all about damage. Thief traps are about utility. Dragonhunter traps are all about neither. They have much lower damage, but also have much less utility. On much longer recharges. With much longer activation times.

So my suggestions are fairly simple:

#1: Reduce the recharge of Fragments of Faith and Light’s Judgement by 10 seconds. Increase their damage by 33%% respectively.
#2: Reduce the Recharge of Test of Faith to 25 seconds, and increase its damage by 50%.
#3: Reduce the Recharge of Dragon’s Maw to 45 seconds, increase its damage by 33%.
#4: Reduce the Total damage time of Procession of Blades to 3 seconds, and reduce the delay of the blades emerging from the ground.
#5: For all traps, reduce their activation time to 0.5 seconds.

It is hard to come up with a metric for these skills. Smite Condition is the closest I can come up with, but there’s a lot of incomparables. When traited, Smite Conditions, is a 2k heal + AoE 4 seconds of fury + condition cleanse every 2 seconds. Instant activation, base 505 damage, 16 second recharge. It is slightly lower in damage than most traps, but because it does so much more it is better off.

It is still an option to make the traps into more utilities than damage, like thief traps.

I had no idea drake could wreck face like this.

“Sic-em!”: 40% increase
Opening Strike: 25% Increase
Signet of the Wild: 25% Increase
Attack of Opportunity: 50% increase

1.4 × 1.5 × 1.25 x 1.25 = 3.28

More than triple damage in a single hit.

Most of my changes have already been implemented, and it feels great. There’s still a few things I’d like to see.

#1: Mild Soul Eater Buff.
#2: Make Augury of Death a 20% + 3% recharge per foe hit, or an additional effect so it is more reliable.
#3: Mild Damage buffs on shouts.
#4: Reduce Soul Spiral’s animation time, which also happens to increase its DPS.
#5: Make Infusing Terror Persist outside of Shroud.

Anet was hesitant to put in these changes, fearing everything would be “too much”. But, those above issues don’t go away just because other things are buffed. A useless trait/skill doesn’t stop being useless just because something else was buffed.

Anchoku.8142:

To me, life force generation running greatsword felt terribly slow. Part of the problem feels like LF is generated on the third AA rather than the first. Letting GS AA for several seconds just for a couple bits of LF felt wrong.

What are your thoughts?

In general, my experience with life force generation on any weapon that isn’t the dagger is lackluster.

You can break it down as LF per second. The GS has two skills worthy of note: Death Spiral is 1% LF per second, and the auto attack is 1.33% LF per second (should all hits connect). Add these together, and you get about 2.33% LF per second. That is per target hit, so theoretically it can be up to 7% LF per second.

Compare it to the dagger, which has an auto that grants 4% per second. That is already pretty high, but add in the focus which is a further 0.833%, or 1.07% when traited. On alternate is the warhorn, which adds 0.33% per second, but scales up to 5 targets for 1.67% per second. So basically at base, the dagger will restore 5.07% per second.

The axe gets 12% life force on an 8 second recharge, but with a 2.5 second channel this comes to 10.5 seconds per burst, which is 1.14%. Add on focus/warhorn as necessary.

The Scepter has 3% per condition on a 10 second recharge. Assuming 4 conditions, this is 1.2% per second. The scepter frequently runs with dagger off-hand, which doesn’t provide additional LF, so that is something to keep in mind.

The Staff auto has 4% on a 1.4 second attack speed, so this is a 2.8% per second, per target hit. This makes staff arguably the best LF generator… were it not for the fact that staff auto is quite horrible, in that it is unreliable and does poor damage. Of note here is Soul Marks, which is 3% per mark. Working out the recharges, this gives staff skills 2-5 a total of 1.06% per second.

So really, I’d put GS at #3 in life force generation, behind the dagger and an improperly used staff. Not counting the staff, it is the second best LF generating weapon. That is by a wide margin, though: dagger generates more than twice as much LF per second against a single target.

Alright, I decided to do some number crunching, again. This is obtained in PVP while wearing no amulet, runes, or sigils, so this is basically the base damage of each skill. This time I’ll lead with the reference materials:

Lightning Whip: 448 damage, 300 range. 0.95 seconds attack speed.
Dragon’s Claw: 137 × 3 damage. 400 range. 1 second attack speed.
Vapor Blade: 117 × 2 damage, 1 × 6 vulnerability (x2). 1 second attack speed.
Impale: 178 damage. 1 × 8 bleed. 300 range. 1.04 seconds attack speed.
Fireball: 332 damage. 1200 range. 1.4 second attack speed.
Lava Font: 1,252 damage. 5 targets. 4 second duration. 1200 range. 180 radius. fire field.

With that out of the way, lets look at overloads.

Fire Overload: 426 per pulse. 1 × 3 burning per pulse. 10 seconds of might per pulse. x 8 whirl finisher. 11 pulses. 180 range. 4.5 second activation time, 20 second cooldown. Total off 11 × 10 might, 11 × 3 burning, 4686 damage total.

BUG: No target listing on fire overload.

Water Overload: 392 per pulse. 0.2 scaling per pulse. 3220 final heal. 0.75 scaling on final heal. 8 seconds of regen at end. 1 condi cleansed per pulse. 360 range. 20 second cooldown. 4 pulses + final heal. 2.75 second activation time.
Total of 4788 healing.

BUG: No target listing on water overload.

Air Overload: 302 damage. 1 × 10 vulnerability. 3 targets. 3 second field duration. Attack interval 0.25 seconds. 360 range. Lightning Field. 14 pulses total. 4.75 second activation time. 20 second recharge.
Total of 14 × 10 vulnerability, 4228 damage.

Earth Overload: 266 damage, 1 × 3 cripple per pulse, 1 × 4 immobilize at the end. 1 × 1 second of protection per pulse. 5 targets. 1 second interval. 240 range. Blast Finisher. 4 pulses + final hit. 20 second recharge, 5 second activation time. Provides a break bar.

BUG: Does not list the break bar in the tooltip, or what happens when the bar is broken.

Note: with Harmonious Conduit and Elemental Enchantment, the recharge of each overload goes down to 14 seconds.

A lot of people have usage complaints regarding the overloads. I’m not going to be looking at that, since as a PVE-er I probably wont’ have much issue using the overloads. What I’ll be looking at are the statistics.

Currently, Fire and Air overload are fine. Air overload has a tooltip DPS of 890, not factoring in vulnerability. This is higher than the tooltip dps of 718 that fireball + lava font will give. So, if there are 6 seconds of available time between fights, Air Overload is worth using. Fire Overload is even more monstrous, doing more damage and buffing while also burning. The activation time of Fire Overload makes it blend almost seamlessly into the duration of Lava Font, making it basically additional damage over just auto attacking in that timespace.

The kittenes to balance are Water and Earth. Water is a tough one. Whether you are using staff or D/D, you’ll be sitting in water attunement for 3 seconds after going through the standard rotation. Unlike Air, it isn’t wise to sit in water to pre-charge the attunement, as healing is an on-demand skill. This puts water in this strange spot where you would need to have additional healing, but it isn’t so necessary as to cause your teammates to die. I can still see use for it, though, so for now I won’t touch it.

Earth Overload is, quite frankly, nigh useless. It doesn’t do enough damage to warrant use on that side. The ele is at the bottom of the AA war, so 8/9 times enemies will be chasing you down. This makes the PBAoE cripple and immobilize nearly useless, only keeping chasing enemies at slightly longer than arms length. It gives AoE protection, but less than elemental attunement or sand squall. The blast finisher at the end is the most difficult to use blast finisher in the game, having a delay of 10 seconds, so it might as well not even exist.

It is so broken, I’m not even sure how to fix it. Immediately I’d say triple its damage, and add a blast finisher at the start of the overload. Back-end the damage for counter-play.

Now, Warhorn Skills.

Heat Sink: 3 × 10 might, boon duplication. 600 range, 600 radius. 0.75 seconds activation time, 30 second recharge.

Wildfire: 211 Damage, 1 × 2 burning, 8 pulses, 180 width, 600 length, fire field. 0.75 seconds activation time. 30 second recharge.

Tidal Surge: 323 damage, 1203 healing, 8 seconds of regen. 240 knockback. 35 second cooldown. BUG: No range indicator.

Water Globe: 470 Healing, 4 pulses, 1 second per pulse, 180 radius, 750 range. Unblockable(?). 0.5 second activation time, 35 second cooldown.

Cyclone: 288 damage. 10 seconds of swiftness. 180 pull. 9 Impacts. 3 targets. 240 width. 750 length. Unblockable. 1 second cast time. 25 second cooldown.

Lightning Orb: 115 damage, 1 × 10 vulnerability per hit. Interval 0.25 seconds. 1200 range, 300 radius. 25 second recharge. Does 9 hits against a stationary small target.

Sand Squall: 2 seconds of protection, 2 seconds of duration increase on all boons. 600 radius. Blast finisher. 30 second recharge. Actually self applies about 8 seconds of protection.

Dust Storm: 96 damage, 1 × 10 vulnerability, 1 × 2 blind. 5 second duration, 2 second interval. 180 radius, 750 range. 0.75 second activation time. 30 second cooldown. Hits a stationary target about 6 times. Makes a series of storms along its path.

Notable Warhorn Traits: 20 second cooldown reduction + group stunbreak on use (10 second recharge.

I can appreciate what the devs are trying to do here. But it doesn’t work that well. The devs are making a glass buffer. I’ve seen this concept done before, and it rarely works. On the relative side, the ele is incredibly squishy, even when built for durability. Because of this, the ele needs utilities in order to survive. The off-hand dagger provides these utilities via movement and control. The off-hand focus provides it via control and invulnerability/blocks.

The warhorn does not have movement. It does not have invulnerability. It has paltry control. What we are left with is a buffer that can’t support itself. A lot of these skills by themselves would be great. But without the ability to defend themselves, the warhorn using tempest is left as fodder.

The Fire and Earth Warhorn skills are fine. So I’ll concentrate on the water/air skills.

Water Globe and Lightning Orb are interesting ideas, but “interesting” doesn’t make it good. These skills are essentially moving wells. They suffer the same weakness as wells, but magnified. When one is confronted with a well, they simply walk out of said well. But with Lightning Orb being mobile, “walking out” is now accomplished much more easily. Water Globe in particular is really bad, because it is a support skill, and to make use of that support skill your allies have to drop what they are doing and run along with it.

This problem exists in both PVP and PVE. Now, there are a couple of ways to solve this. #1 is to make it so instead of a traveling projectile, they behave like dust storm and wildfire, and just linger along the travel path for its entire length. #2 is to make it so these skills are not multi hit skills, instead just cause their effect once to whatever target they hit.

Cycle and Tidal Surge are the control skills, however they lack any defensive utility. Cyclone exists solely to pull enemies in line with the other warhorn skills. Tidal Surge is basically a heal with a long delay knockback. Both have a cast time, then a long delay for using. Immediately, the first solution I see is to make their control effects instant along their path instead of on a long delay. I would also make tidal surge cleanse conditions, as currently tempests don’t have that much condition cleansing. Likewise, it would be very beneficial for one of those skills to have a block/invulnerabilty attatched to them.

So I guess in short, the warhorn changes would be the following:

#1: Tidal Surge’s control effect is instant after cast.
#2: Water Globe is converted into a 180 × 750 area, and pulses a heal + condition cleanse in its entire area 4 times.
#3: Cyclone reflects projectiles for the length of its animation.
#4: Lightning Orb now hits all targets once, but discharges a large bolt that does 920 damage (at 100o power) and 8 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds.

And now for Shouts.

Rebound: already being changed so I won’t cover that.

Wash Away The Pain: 3560 heal, 0.3 scaling. 1.5 second activation time. 25 second cooldown.

Feel the Burn: 266 damage, 1 × 4 burning 600 radius, 5 targets, 20 second cooldown. AoE Fire Aura for 5 seconds

Flash-Freeze: 186 damage, 1 × 3 chill, AoE frost aura for 5 seconds. 5 targets, 600 range, 25 second cooldown, 0.25 second activation time.

Shock and Aftershock: 398 damage 1 × 6 cripple, 1 × 2 immobilize. AoE Magnetic Aura for 5 seconds. Blast Radius 240, 600 range. 0.25 second activation time. 50 second cooldown.

Eye of the Storm: 1 × 5 AoE super Speed. 600 radius. AoE stun Break. 45 second cooldown. BUG: Number of targets isn’t listed.

Notable Traits: Tempestuous Aria: 2 × 10 might per shout, 1 × 3 weakness per shout.

The shouts are a very mixed bag. It is hard to have a frame of reference. In general, I’d say the problem with shouts is the same problem with warhorn: Glass Buffer. Good news, however, is that shouts aren’t exclusive with other utilities, so it isn’t as bad as the warhorn.

On the PVE side the shouts are in competition with arcane skills. With Elemental Surge, the arcane skills become just as powerful and versatile as the shouts do. For comparison:

Arcane Wave: 372 damage,+150 ferocity for 15 seconds, 24 second cooldown, instant activation. Blast Finisher. Causes either 1 × 5 burning, 1 × 3 chill, 1 × 5 blind, or 1 × 1 immobilize.

Traited, Feel the Burn does less damage, has less versatility, and is less controlled. The only things that it has that arcane wave can’t do better is weakness. So, my suggestion is a 33% increase in the direct damage of Feel the Burn.

Shock and Aftershock is good, mostly because it is an AoE Magnetic Field, which makes it a life saver. Flash Freeze is alright I guess. I’m comparing it to Suffer from the reaper. Suffer has condition transfers, the same damage, same chill duration, longer recharge but shorter activation time. Flash freeze has AoE frost Aura, might stacking, and weakness.

Eye of the Storm is good relative to Ele’s other stun breakers, but not that great globally. Eye of the Storm should provide a Shocking Aura to make it more useful, and to complete the theme.

Finally, the traits. Probably the biggest turnoff with the tempest are the traits. They are highly focused, often times accomplishing things that should be baseline quite frankly. They are uninspired, and exist mostly to deal with flaws that are innate to the classes other abilities. As such, they contribute very little.

On the Minor Side, Speedy Conduit isn’t that good of a trait. Eles generally aren’t lacking for speed, having many ways to apply swiftness and many movement skills. Speedy Conduit basically exists for those who want to have speed, but don’t want to apply it properly like everyone else. Hardy Conduit is better, but it still leaves you vulnerable for 40% of the Overload’s animation. My suggestion here is to increase the duration of Hardy Conduit’s Protection to 5 seconds base. Likewise, merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit.

In the adept line you have Gale Song, Latent Stamina, and Unstable Conduit. Gale Song is good. Latent Stamina is meh: it is trying to replace the role that cantrips provided by giving water swap a vigor buff, but compared to the defense and long duration vigor, it just doesn’t compare. Unstable Conduit is pretty bad. Most Auras are clutch maneuvers, and giving an Aura at the end of the overload is 5 seconds too late.

Increase the vigor duration of Latent Stamina to 5 seconds, and make it so Unstable Conduit casts the Aura at the start of Overload, and not the end.

On the Master line we have Tempestuous Aria, Earthen Proxy, and Harmonious Circuit. Tempestuous Aria is fine, but it is lacking that oh-so needed cooldown reduction. Earthen Proxy is not as good as it sounds. By changing the damage reduction from -33% to -40%, you are increasing the effective health of an ele by just 9%, and given how low an ele’s health is, that isn’t much. Harmonious Conduits is fairly generic, but it isn’t that good. I would merge Harmonious Conduits with Unstable Conduits.

In the Grandmaster Tier we have Imbued Melodies, Lucid Singularity, and Elemental Bastion. I already merged lucid singularity with another trait. Imbued Melodies is one of those traits where, I appreciate what it is doing, but I don’t actually know how effective it might be in practice, so leave it there. Elemental Bastion probably should’ve been part of Powerful Aura, but as it stands it is far inferior to just blasting a water field. It is a pretty paltry heal, so at base I would double the amount of healing that Bastion provides.

So, in summation:

#1: Merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit as the adept master trait. This leaves an open spot in the Grandmaster line.
#2: Add a 20% cooldown trait to Tempestuous Aria.
#3: Increase the protection duration of Hardy Conduit by 2 seconds to 5 seconds base.
#4: Merge Harmonious Conduits and Unstable Conduit. Make Unstable Conduit Grant the aura at the beginning of its use.
#5: Double the base healing and scaling healing of Elemental Bastion.
#6: Increase the Vigor duration of Latent Stamina to 5 seconds.
#7: Change Earthen Proxy to be a 52% increase in protection strength, making Protection now cut direct damage in half.

You may notice that this leaves two open trait spots. One at the master tier, and one at the grandmaster tier. This is where my analysis fails me: I don’t have the creativity to come up with new traits that will help out the Tempest. Currently the Tempest is the class with the most changes proposed, so with all of the above I’d be frightened of adding anything too strong.

Interesting enough, Reaper’s Onslaught boosted Reaper’s Shroud does less sustained damage than the dagger auto, and the same damage as the greatsword auto. Because of this, there are viable power builds that won’t be needing Reaper’s Onslaught.

You have to build specifically to stack vulnerability in order for the valk set to be near equivalent damage to zerker. Otherwise there isn’t much difference.

I’d definitely go with spite (bitter chill, rending shroud, other trait), soul reaping (unyielding blast, deathly perception, other trait), reaper (decimate defenses) if you plan to run valk. That setup should give enough vulnerability to sustain decimate defenses high enough outside of shroud.

So, having made a revenant toon this time around, I decided to do a bit of comparing. This is in PVP with no amulets, runes, or sigils equipped.

CttB: 532 damage 9.5 seconds of chill (trait improves it, can’t remove). 2 × 10 seconds of stability per enemy hit. 2 second stun. 5 targets, 600 range, 1.25 second activation time, 120 second recharge.

Jade Winds: 399 damage, 3 second stun, 600 range, 1 second activation time. Minimum 10 second recharge. Can be charged up to be used twice in a row while in combat.

Now, normally I would come in and talk about how CttB serves a different purpose. How it synergizes with all the chill traits, how it grants stability, how it has higher DPS, etc. and so on. But… that recharge. The ability to fire off Jade Winds consecutively is so strong, that any benefit that CttB had as a group stun is moot.

I’m extremely new to the revenant. I have no perspective on how well the rev sustains energy in PVP, so for “balance” I’m not exactly sure how it would do. But at first glance, I’m sitting here wondering why Jade Winds doesn’t have any kind of internal cooldown.

Don’t have a set build atm. But I will talk about. For PVE I’m torn between Critical Strikes and Trickery for the third line.

Trickery Bonuses: 15% damage at maximum initiative, more initiative, swiftness and vigor + boonsteal, daze on command.

Critical Strikes: much higher relative damage boost, higher crit chances, perma fury.

So, the eternal question being utility or raw power. Currently I’m going with Critical Strikes, and am just using Signet of Shadows for speed boosts.

If this is going to be the central thread for feedback, then I’m going to repost my thread here.

So I’ve got some numbers banged out. This is all done in PVP with no amulet, rune set, or sigils. So essentially at base stats. These are almost the tooltip values from ye olde days. So, tell me what you think, and if you have the animation times for the staff skills, it would be great.

Staff Skills
Staff Strike: 205
Staff Bash: 215
Punishing Strikes: 428 (4 × 8 vulnerability), x1 whirl finisher.
NOTE: All auto attack skills have 130 range.
Weakening Charge: 822. 3 Initiative cost. 2 seconds of weakness per hit, 6 seconds total. x1 whirl finisher.
Debilitating Arc: 391. 4 initiative cost. 0.5 seconds of evade. 6 seconds of cripple.
Dust Strike: 225 per hit. Up to 3 hits. 4 Initiative Cost. Up to 3 targets. 5 seconds of blind per hit.
Vault: 879. 6 Initiative Cost. 5 Targets.
Hook Strike: 73. 2 second knockdown.

I don’t have the animation times for staff skills yet. Someone else will probably have to get those. However, at the moment I am assuming that the staff AA takes about 2.5 seconds, given that the staff sustains 16 seconds of vulnerability, but only half way through its final auto attack.

Physical Skills:
Fists of Fury: 730 Damage, 20 second Recharge. 130 Range.
Palm Strike: 332. 130 Range.
Pulmonary Impact: 872 (note: cannot crit)
Distracting Daggers: 146 per dagger. 1/4 second daze per dagger. 900 range. 25 second cooldown.
Imparing Daggers: 597. 3 × 8 poison, 1 × 4 slow, 1x 2 immobilize. 25 second recharge. 900 range.
Bandit’s Defense: 1 second block. Stun breaker. 10 second recharge.
Reflexive Strike: 199. 2 second knockdown.

BUG Bandits defense will not display reflexive strike when scrolled over. Reflexive Strike has no tooltip for range.

Impact Strike: 199. 2 second daze. 300 range. 40 second recharge.
Uppercut: 598. 0 launch distance. 130 range.
Finishing Blow: 532. 130 range.

Channeled Vigor: 5520 healing when endurance is not full. 1.125 scaling when endurance is not full. Otherwise, 7320 healing, 1.5 scaling.

Traits:
Bound: 465 damage. 5 targets. 180 range. Leap Finisher. 300 Evade Distance.
Driven Fortitude: 456 Healing, 0.08 scaling.

Impaling Lotus: this skill behaves a bit oddly, so I’ll list out its behaviors.
#1: It sends up to 3 daggers outward to any enemies within 600 range of the entire evade.
#2: Each of these daggers carry the conditions.
#3: 1 × 8 bleed, 1 × 6 torment, 1 × 2 immobilize per dagger.
#4: x2 whirl finisher.

Some other numbers, for reference.
Sword AA: 284, 284, 482
Dagger AA: 198, 302 + 10% endurance, 302 + 1 × 8 poison.
Heartseeker: 255, 533, 710
Backstab: 426, 853
Pistol Whip: 1,116.

Overall I am actually a bit disappointed. The most annoying parts are the aftercasts on the dodge skills and the general clunkyness of the staff. So, currently my comments are thus far.

#1: The staff auto could use a boost. The full auto has 848 damage, compared to 1050 from the sword (same attack speed), and the scaled attack speed of 955 from the dagger. This is relatively a 23.8% reduction and a 12.6% reduction in damage. While the staff can maintain about 14 stacks of vulnerability, the other autos do so much more. Dagger poisons (which is good even for non-condi builds) and regains endurnace. The sword inflicts weakness and cripple. Thus, the “low damage” of the staff isn’t really worth it.

My suggestion: increase auto attack damage by 10%

#2: Why does hook strike do jack for damage? We already have an extremely similar skill on sword, which does 266 tooltip damage and can either blind or daze for 1.5 seconds. The 2 second knockdown really doesn’t justify the 72 base damage.

My suggestion: Increase the damage of Hook Strike by 250%.

#3: I’m not exactly sure what is being accomplished with weakening charge. This skill would be much more beneficial if it tracked targets instead leaping a fixed distance ahead. You know, kind of like how Death Blossom, Flanking Strike, and Heartseeker do. The root on use is painful as well.

My suggestion: make Weakening Charge chase and track your target like the above skills. Reduce the aftercast and make it so you aren’t rooted after the movement portion of the skill is completed. Increase range to 600.

#4: No comments on debilitating arc at this time.

#5: I’m unsure of how to change Dust Strike. Immediately, I think the skill takes way too long to use, and thus can’t be used tactically. Compare Black Powder which takes half the time and lingers, or Shadow Shot which takes 1/4th of the time. Shadow Shot does twice the damage, too. So technically it is 8 times DPS.

Suggestion: Reduce the pre-cast animation time of Dust Strike by at least 50%.

#6: Reduce the jump time on Vault to 0.75 seconds. While it is a high damage skill on impact, it isn’t that high of a DPS skill, since it takes a full second to execute its attack. This means it is actually worse than backstab and heartseeker as far as damage goes.

#7: Fists of Fury + Palm Strike takes way too long. I did a couple of generic stopwatch tests and the entire cast time of the skill is 1.5 seconds + 0.75 seconds. Again it isn’t accurate to the tooltip. I would also suggest changing how this skill works: Instead of having a 2 second stun on palm strike, give it a 2 second daze upon activating fists of fury. This will give it more utility as an interrupt and make it more reliable, instead of just hoping that fists lands all hits so you could use a stun..

Note: I’m having difficulty actually “balacing” the physical skills. The damage that weapons do are constrained by initiative, whereas physical skills are constrained by cooldowns. Immediately I see that, crit scaled, fists of fury only has 5% higher DPS than Bound, and lower DPS than pre-mybuffs Vault. However, when compared to auto attacking, it does have about 54% higher damage than sword. Currently, I’m going to use a haste to FoF comparison. Haste on a 60 second cooldown does 50% more damage for 6 seconds. Currently, FoF will do about 54% more damage over the span of 7.75 seconds. This means, assuming all hits connect, that FoF is actually a better investment than haste, ancillary effects notwithstanding.

#8: Bandits Defense. Skill seems fine. Would be nice to fix the tooltip errors.

#9: Distracting Daggers. Skill seems fine for the most part. Make them projectile finishers, though.

#10: Imparing Daggers. This skill is a bit… odd. Again, see above on “difficulty balancing physical skills”. From a condition damage perspective this skill is weaker than everything. Of particular note is needle trap, which immobilizes longer, does more damage, and can be pre-cast to reduce cooldowns. Also, needle trap works in an AoE and has various trap synergies. Aside from that, caltrops is more damage with a long duration cripple in an AoE, and the venoms are individually more powerful but can be shared with the team. That slow, though, does throw a wrench into balancing, and since I am not fully acquainted with how well slow works in PVP, I’m left a bit puzzled with how to balance. Also the direct damage of the skill is solid.

My suggestion: Increase the poison duration to 10 seconds, and make each dagger a projectile finisher.

#11: Impact Strike. I’ve done some generic tests, and so far this skill does about 1,329 tooltip DPS over the span of 3 seconds, coming to about 443 DPS. That… isn’t much at all. It is barely better than auto attacking. However, again I have to figure out how to balance a whole new mechanic. When traited it restores 30 endurance and effectively stops the enemy attacking for its duration, so at the moment I’m going to leave impact strike where it is.

#12: Channeled Vigor ATM is fine. Or really, I’m not sure if and where it is deficient or how to fix it, if at all.

Going into traits now. Anything that I don’t comment on is “fine”.

#13: Evasive Empowerment is crap. It needs to give a buff that increases all damage done, and not just the very next attack. A duration of 3 seconds sounds about right, beginning immediately after dodge.

#14: Increase the heal scaling coefficient of Driven Fortitude to 0.32. Currently, wearing full clerics gear contributes basically nothing to this skill.

#15: I think Staff Mastery is trying to be too complicated. Just make it a flat 10% increase to staff damage.

#16: Increase the Evade Distance of dash to 400. Currently, the extra range doesn’t do much.

#17: I’d really like to rework how Bound works. Currently it does several undesirable things:
A) Roots you in one place as you hang in the air.
B) Has an aftercast that prevents movement for a moment.
C) It only creates an attack where you land, meaning that if you dodge away from an enemy, you’ll end up not getting the damage from the Bound.

I’d like to change that. So, my suggestion is as follows:

A)Make it so bound explodes out damage at the start of the ddoge, and not the end.
B)Smooth out the animation so you don’t hang in air for awhile.
C)Remove the aftercast on the skill.

So I’ve got some numbers banged out. This is all done in PVP with no amulet, rune set, or sigils. So essentially at base stats. These are almost the tooltip values from ye olde days. So, tell me what you think, and if you have the animation times for the staff skills, it would be great.

Staff Skills
Staff Strike: 205
Staff Bash: 215
Punishing Strikes: 428 (4 × 8 vulnerability), x1 whirl finisher.
NOTE: All auto attack skills have 130 range.
Weakening Charge: 822. 3 Initiative cost. 2 seconds of weakness per hit, 6 seconds total. x1 whirl finisher.
Debilitating Arc: 391. 4 initiative cost. 0.5 seconds of evade. 6 seconds of cripple.
Dust Strike: 225 per hit. Up to 3 hits. 4 Initiative Cost. Up to 3 targets. 5 seconds of blind per hit.
Vault: 879. 6 Initiative Cost. 5 Targets.
Hook Strike: 73. 2 second knockdown.

I don’t have the animation times for staff skills yet. Someone else will probably have to get those. However, at the moment I am assuming that the staff AA takes about 2.5 seconds, given that the staff sustains 16 seconds of vulnerability, but only half way through its final auto attack.

Physical Skills:
Fists of Fury: 730 Damage, 20 second Recharge. 130 Range.
Palm Strike: 332. 130 Range.
Pulmonary Impact: 872 (note: cannot crit)
Distracting Daggers: 146 per dagger. 1/4 second daze per dagger. 900 range. 25 second cooldown.
Imparing Daggers: 597. 3 × 8 poison, 1 × 4 slow, 1x 2 immobilize. 25 second recharge. 900 range.
Bandit’s Defense: 1 second block. Stun breaker. 10 second recharge.
Reflexive Strike: 199. 2 second knockdown.

BUG Bandits defense will not display reflexive strike when scrolled over. Reflexive Strike has no tooltip for range.

Impact Strike: 199. 2 second daze. 300 range. 40 second recharge.
Uppercut: 598. 0 launch distance. 130 range.
Finishing Blow: 532. 130 range.

Channeled Vigor: 5520 healing when endurance is not full. 1.125 scaling when endurance is not full. Otherwise, 7320 healing, 1.5 scaling.

Traits:
Bound: 465 damage. 5 targets. 180 range. Leap Finisher. 300 Evade Distance.
Driven Fortitude: 456 Healing, 0.08 scaling.

Impaling Lotus: this skill behaves a bit oddly, so I’ll list out its behaviors.
#1: It sends up to 3 daggers outward to any enemies within 600 range of the entire evade.
#2: Each of these daggers carry the conditions.
#3: 1 × 8 bleed, 1 × 6 torment, 1 × 2 immobilize per dagger.
#4: x2 whirl finisher.

Some other numbers, for reference.
Sword AA: 284, 284, 482
Dagger AA: 198, 302 + 10% endurance, 302 + 1 × 8 poison.
Heartseeker: 255, 533, 710
Backstab: 426, 853
Pistol Whip: 1,116.

Overall I am actually a bit disappointed. The most annoying parts are the aftercasts on the dodge skills and the general clunkyness of the staff. So, currently my comments are thus far.

#1: The staff auto could use a boost. The full auto has 848 damage, compared to 1050 from the sword (same attack speed), and the scaled attack speed of 955 from the dagger. This is relatively a 23.8% reduction and a 12.6% reduction in damage. While the staff can maintain about 14 stacks of vulnerability, the other autos do so much more. Dagger poisons (which is good even for non-condi builds) and regains endurnace. The sword inflicts weakness and cripple. Thus, the “low damage” of the staff isn’t really worth it.

My suggestion: increase auto attack damage by 10%

#2: Why does hook strike do jack for damage? We already have an extremely similar skill on sword, which does 266 tooltip damage and can either blind or daze for 1.5 seconds. The 2 second knockdown really doesn’t justify the 72 base damage.

My suggestion: Increase the damage of Hook Strike by 250%.

#3: I’m not exactly sure what is being accomplished with weakening charge. This skill would be much more beneficial if it tracked targets instead leaping a fixed distance ahead. You know, kind of like how Death Blossom, Flanking Strike, and Heartseeker do. The root on use is painful as well.

My suggestion: make Weakening Charge chase and track your target like the above skills. Reduce the aftercast and make it so you aren’t rooted after the movement portion of the skill is completed. Increase range to 600.

#4: No comments on debilitating arc at this time.

#5: I’m unsure of how to change Dust Strike. Immediately, I think the skill takes way too long to use, and thus can’t be used tactically. Compare Black Powder which takes half the time and lingers, or Shadow Shot which takes 1/4th of the time. Shadow Shot does twice the damage, too. So technically it is 8 times DPS.

Suggestion: Reduce the pre-cast animation time of Dust Strike by at least 50%.

#6: Reduce the jump time on Vault to 0.75 seconds. While it is a high damage skill on impact, it isn’t that high of a DPS skill, since it takes a full second to execute its attack. This means it is actually worse than backstab and heartseeker as far as damage goes.

#7: Fists of Fury + Palm Strike takes way too long. I did a couple of generic stopwatch tests and the entire cast time of the skill is 1.5 seconds + 0.75 seconds. Again it isn’t accurate to the tooltip. I would also suggest changing how this skill works: Instead of having a 2 second stun on palm strike, give it a 2 second daze upon activating fists of fury. This will give it more utility as an interrupt and make it more reliable, instead of just hoping that fists lands all hits so you could use a stun..

Note: I’m having difficulty actually “balacing” the physical skills. The damage that weapons do are constrained by initiative, whereas physical skills are constrained by cooldowns. Immediately I see that, crit scaled, fists of fury only has 5% higher DPS than Bound, and lower DPS than pre-mybuffs Vault. However, when compared to auto attacking, it does have about 54% higher damage than sword. Currently, I’m going to use a haste to FoF comparison. Haste on a 60 second cooldown does 50% more damage for 6 seconds. Currently, FoF will do about 54% more damage over the span of 7.75 seconds. This means, assuming all hits connect, that FoF is actually a better investment than haste, ancillary effects notwithstanding.

#8: Bandits Defense. Skill seems fine. Would be nice to fix the tooltip errors.

#9: Distracting Daggers. Skill seems fine for the most part. Make them projectile finishers, though.

#10: Imparing Daggers. This skill is a bit… odd. Again, see above on “difficulty balancing physical skills”. From a condition damage perspective this skill is weaker than everything. Of particular note is needle trap, which immobilizes longer, does more damage, and can be pre-cast to reduce cooldowns. Also, needle trap works in an AoE and has various trap synergies. Aside from that, caltrops is more damage with a long duration cripple in an AoE, and the venoms are individually more powerful but can be shared with the team. That slow, though, does throw a wrench into balancing, and since I am not fully acquainted with how well slow works in PVP, I’m left a bit puzzled with how to balance. Also the direct damage of the skill is solid.

My suggestion: Increase the poison duration to 10 seconds, and make each dagger a projectile finisher.

#11: Impact Strike. I’ve done some generic tests, and so far this skill does about 1,329 tooltip DPS over the span of 3 seconds, coming to about 443 DPS. That… isn’t much at all. It is barely better than auto attacking. However, again I have to figure out how to balance a whole new mechanic. When traited it restores 30 endurance and effectively stops the enemy attacking for its duration, so at the moment I’m going to leave impact strike where it is.

#12: Channeled Vigor ATM is fine. Or really, I’m not sure if and where it is deficient or how to fix it, if at all.

Going into traits now. Anything that I don’t comment on is “fine”.

#13: Evasive Empowerment is crap. It needs to give a buff that increases all damage done, and not just the very next attack. A duration of 3 seconds sounds about right, beginning immediately after dodge.

#14: Increase the heal scaling coefficient of Driven Fortitude to 0.32. Currently, wearing full clerics gear contributes basically nothing to this skill.

#15: I think Staff Mastery is trying to be too complicated. Just make it a flat 10% increase to staff damage.

#16: Increase the Evade Distance of dash to 400. Currently, the extra range doesn’t do much.

#17: I’d really like to rework how Bound works. Currently it does several undesirable things:
A) Roots you in one place as you hang in the air.
B) Has an aftercast that prevents movement for a moment.
C) It only creates an attack where you land, meaning that if you dodge away from an enemy, you’ll end up not getting the damage from the Bound.

I’d like to change that. So, my suggestion is as follows:

A)Make it so bound explodes out damage at the start of the ddoge, and not the end.
B)Smooth out the animation so you don’t hang in air for awhile.
C)Remove the aftercast on the skill.

He has a lot of good points, but I do have to disagree with him on some things.

#1: Prebuffing isn’t necessarily to improve group DPS. He is correct in that, when a lot of groups don’t factor buff and positioning time in their kill, that their numbers are inaccurate. Real life doesn’t stop ticking away.

However, prebuffing does make the fight easier. So in a hard fight, it is still worth it to buff early, even if it takes slightly longer overall.

#2: Telling people to use melee weapons, even when inexperienced, isn’t bad advice. The necro when played horribly is the second most durable class in the game. Using the dagger for higher sustained damage is a good option for new players. In fact, I recommend most new players use melee weapons and learn fights instead of hanging back with ranged weapons.

Otherwise I like most of the video.

In PVE, I swap between two builds.

#1: Full berskerker gear. Deadly Arts 2/3/3, Critical Strikes 1/2/1, Trickery 3/1/2. Weapon set is whatever I feel like. Usually D/D + Shortbow, but D/P, S/P, and S/D all work well. Scholar Runes. Utilities is are Signet of Malice, Assassin’s Signet, Signet of Agility, Dagger Storm, then a filler utility. Usually it is Smokescreen, but Shadowstep and Shadow Refuge all make an appearance.

Alternates include using haste on flank + trick recharges with haste. Nearly any of the Critical Strikes adept major skills are good, and sundering strikes can also be useful.

The theme of the build is pure damage. It is rare to encounter a PVE mob that won’t go down after mug + Cloak and Dagger into Backstab + Heartseeker. The direct damage is really high. Sword works well for defensive variants, either using the evades on the sword skill or blinds on pistol off-hand.

#2: Venomshare build. Full sinister gear. Traits are Deadly Arts 3/1/1, Trickery 3/1/3, Shadow Arts 3/3/3. Weapons are D/D and D/P. Rune of the afflicted. This has two particular sets of utilities, depending on whether you’re in a group or not. Note: NPCs count as a “group”.

Skelk Venom, Spider Venom, Skale Venom, Filler Skill. Filler is either smoke screen for defense, or Needle Trap for damage. This is good for groups.

By yourself: Skelk Venom, Caltrops, Needle Trap, filler. Filler is either spider venom or smokescreen.

The reason being that the venoms need a team to scale up, but Caltrops and Needle Trap don’t need a team. There’s also another variant: Trapper’s Respite is best if you can pre-cast the needle trap. But, in sustained combat, Dagger Training will do more damage.

Even though the thief doesn’t have any burns, it actually does a whole lot of condi damage in burst. The best way to play this build is to pre-cast the venoms for your group. They linger for 30 seconds, so if used at the right time you can get two waves of venoms in the span of 3 seconds or so. You can also pre-cast traps in the right place, and will be able to use 4 needle traps consecutively. All planning aside, the build basically spams death blossom and then dagger autos until death blossom is off cooldown again.

Silverkey.2078:

Enrage mechanics make sense because:

• it ensures a full turtle party won’t work
• it adds to the difficulty (see world boss)

I guess the devs assume that a full turtle party is more likely than a full zerker, and this is probably true in the beginning. I sincerely hope full zerker will never work, but many people seem to disagree with me in the PvE forum…

Mark me down as a disagreer. Enrage mechanics as a DPS check are one of the most frustrating ways to go about it, because until most of the time has passed you aren’t sure that it’ll work or not. Likewise, it doesn’t make the bosses any harder, it just means that you have to re-instance after every failure.

I’ve seen other games do it better. Two ways in particular.

#1: Piercing damage. This was done in a game where one class can literally be 20 times more durable than another, but since this wasn’t via HP scale many of the bosses had special piercing effects that could do damage beyond passive defenses.

#2: Regen/heal mechanics. A boss with high permanent regen serves as a DPS check, except that in these fights you’ll know in about 10 seconds whether you lack the deeps or not.

Perfect class diversity in raids will be a pipe dream. The game will have 9 different classes when raids are released. This isn’t just a question of “will necros have a place”. It is a question of “will revenants, engineers, rangers, mesmers, and thieves have a place”. For that to be true, there would be only a single redundant class in the raid.

I’m playing around with this in theory, and currently there are two ways things can go.

#1: All 10 players in one area. This has a optimum comp of 5 eles, 2 warriors, 2 mesmers, and an extra (probably a thief). The 5 eles have extremely high DPS and will also stack a whole lot of might/fury, and most importantly will give the entire party ice bows. The two warriors are there for banner buffs for each party, as well as might stacking and group rez. The two mesmers are there for utility: boon stripping, cleansing, reflects, portals, slowness, time warp, mass invisibility, etc. The thief provides high single target damage alongside of group vigor and blind spam, or should the situation require a mass amount of control or bar breaking.

#2: Two teams split toward different objectives. This will basically be the same comp: 2 Eles, warrior, mesmer, thief. Each team a duplicate of each other.

As for the other not mentioned classes:

Engineer: This will be useful where high condi damage is needed. In general, if the team isn’t a perfectionist, an Engineer can fulfill any role to some degree. Of particular note, the engineer is arguably the second best blind spammer in the game.

Ranger: This is another high-condi damage class. The ranger will be useful in circumstances where enemies need to be engaged at very far range, or the pet is necessary to tank hits off of a fast attacking boss. The ranger will only be “useful” if all other necessary roles are filled, as it provides little more than HP and damage by itself.

Guardian: The guard is basically a mesmer alternate. It doesn’t have as much utility, but it does have more power. Guards will be useful if permanent protection is needed, as well as group pulls, or if the mesmer just happens to be too redundant. Special note here, guards are not good at boon stripping, which may be a necessary role in certain circumstances. However, thieves can take care of that, should the need arise.

Necromancer: The necro only brings two things to the group: epidemic, and a spongy body to absorb hits. It does do other things, like protection, AoE boon stripping, group cleanses, etc. but these are usually already handled by the guardian, mesmer, and engineer. If there are a lot of adds that spawn, the necromancer’s ability to take hits will come in handy.

Revenant: I have no expertise in this class. My entire game experience has been spent without this class, and until I get my hands on one I’m not sure what they’ll truly be able to do.

The DPS numbers might even out a bit if the fight lasts longer than 30 seconds. One of the reasons why I don’t like averaging 30 seconds is because skills have cooldowns longer than thirty seconds.

To get performance sustained for indefinite periods, you’d need to use the longest cooldown DPS skill as the timeframe. That, or make a weighted average of each skills DPS over their recharge and their total proportion of time.

As a reflector for Triple Trouble, it can be hard sometimes when another player stands inside of you. Because then you have to look through two people to see the wurm’s animations.

Personally I like the hybrid nature of D/D. Poison on auto, bleeds + whirl finisher spam, and a trait that gives a proc chance for more poison per hit.

My suggestion would be to make dagger training 50% better (either 50% chance to proc or increase the poison duration to 3 seconds), and increase the evade time on Death Blossom to 1/2 second.

Open world is usually considered “too easy” to use a specific build for. It is partly correct, as though some builds are still more effective than others.

Personally for overworld stuff I still use a dungeon build. Staff, full berserker gear, Fire 1/1/1 Air 3/1/1 Arcane 2/3/2. The ability to do massive damage at a distance cannot be understated, especially when doing something like Tequatl or Triple Trouble.

This is true for most overworld content at the moment. Just focus more on personal buffing instead of relying on group buffs, and you’re good to go.

At the moment, swimsuits. Although they haven’t put swimsuits into the game yet, in spite of high demand. I assume this probably has to do with the ratings system or international appeal.

I suppose I belong to that rare group that doesn’t have a main or a favorite of any kind. I play 6 classes, and I swap through them as needed or depending on what mood I’m in.

Female sylvari. This puts me at a 4/3 gender ratio, female centered, though. But… I just don’t want to play a char or a male asura.

Just know that there is not enough engineers in the world.

I started skimming the posts after it devolved into a petty argument, but I’m not sure someone explained this.

There’s a particular reason why it is the celestial amulet is so strong on the elementalistt, but not so much on other classes. The elementalist is one of two classes that can really take advantage of all of the bonuses it gives. A class has to have both good condition damage and direct damage in its build, while also using copious amounts of healing outside of the heal skill. There’s only two classes that do this: Engineer, and Elementalist.

As to whether this is the amulets fault or not… it isn’t. Logic it out: if the amulet stays the same, but on different classes it doesn’t cause a problem, then it isn’t the amulet. The celestial amulet working well with the elementalist isn’t much different from marauder or berserker working well on the thief.

I’m afraid my expertise ends there. I haven’t PVPed in awhile, and so my experience on why the D/D ele in particular is overpowered is very limited.

I have the same problems as the OP. It is why I say that the whole “just make your own LFG” argument is a lie. It just plain doesn’t work.

I wrote a somewhat lengthy thread about this awhile ago. Nearly everything I said there still applies here.

Wait… can chronos stack nearly a minute of stealth? With that much, they could portal and recapture keeps easily.

I like the female norn’s looks. They have some good outfits in medium armor.

That said, I always thought that humans and char were more theme-appropriate for thieves.

Sigmoid.7082:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

This depends on how pve changes. Going to assume not all the new content and mobs will be so easy that you can zerk gear everything and some other stats may be needed.

That I am not so sure about.

Tactics aren’t static. The “meta” doesn’t have to stay as stack and melee. If there is a more dangerous enemy being engaged, then using ranged attacks to disengage while others melee makes for an effective defensive tactic.

That said, even in GC gear the power necro is incredibly durable, and the reaper will be moreso, given the generation of life force per hit. Even if there is a cheesy EHP check via area wide pulsing damage, the necro will pass with flying colors. With shroud and its base health, the necro essentially has 45.7k effective health against direct damage, and 32.4k against condition damage.

This makes me a bit worried about the ele/thief/guard, though. Even in full soldier gear they don’t get those numbers.

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

The problem isn’t that the necro doesn’t provide anything. The problem is that what the necro provides isn’t used in PVE.

Take lifesteal, for example. This has a couple of unique properties, particularly that it ignores all kinds of defenses. This has some niche uses, jade maw for example. The necro provides the best lifesteal in the game, both through their own traits as well as the massive amount of access to dark fields. Soon, through whirl finishers as well (gravedigger x 3, soul spiral x 11). Currently this is nigh useless, unless you are fighting an enemy with long invulnerability periods. Raids may give us exactly that.

We’ve got a couple other fields, too. Poison fields for weakness and more poison. An Ethereal field, but that is more area denial than a usable field. Soon we’ll be getting Ice, which while chilling bolts are only good for Bitter Chill, the frost aura does provide a unique form of damage reduction. We’ve also got a light field for retaliation and cleansing, but I do argue strongly that it would be better as a water field.

Second is how we handle conditions/boons. Necromancers are unique in that they convert boons and conditions instead of just cleansing them. If there’s ever a circumstance where there is a pulsing burning effect, I’ve found that well of power is excellent, since it converts burning to Aegis. WE also transfer conditions, too. Turning enemy DPS into our DPS. But, enemies rarely have a set of conditions such that transferring and converting is really useful.

Third is epidemic. This skill has theoretically massive damage and utility. But, in order to take advantage of it, you’d need a set of conditions that again aren’t met in standard PVE. You need a very high health boss who spawns a bunch of adds. In that circumstances, epidemic would wreck so much face, debuffing and damaging masses.

Fourth is bulk. There are a handful of bosses where, in my personal experience, the best tactic to fight them is to have a necro facetank. With high life force generation and health, even in GC gear a power necro is surprisingly sturdy.

Fifth is movement impairing skills. Necros are good at AoE cripple, and soon AoE chill. But, there’s never a group of enemies that you need to run from or chase.

This community isn’t too bad. I’ve seen ones that are much, MUCH worse. For example, I haven’t acquired a single stalker or hatescriber, and there aren’t players with 30 different account names that are used to troll people. The forums actually look down (for the most part) against hacking and exploits. Barring some exception, you’ll get more serious answers to any question than non-serious ones. People don’t use the forums as a medium to break international law. The moderating staff are only categorically liberal instead of capital L zealots, or conservative fascist, or worse yet the trolls or criminals themselves. The moderators aren’t too lazy, either, since whenever I report someone actions are swift.

I’ve been to places where none of that is true.

Greatest to least. Burn rangers are surprisingly good.

As of this moment, reaper’s shroud is fine. I am a bit concerned that it needs to be tied to reaper’s onslaught to be really competitive, but otherwise it isn’t that bad at all. With onslaught the shroud AA is as strong as the swords AA, which is weaker than the dagger. So if you were expecting shroud to be uber burst mode, it won’t be.

There are a couple of things to consider, though, which is why at its current DPS it is fine.

#1: Reaper Shroud is not exclusive with any weapon. You can take both, so there isn’t actually a “loss” here.

#2: Reaper’s Shroud gives a layer of protection via life force, so it is effectively a defensive bubble with minute damage loss. This alone makes it worth using.

#3: Reaper’s Shroud gets a whole ton of buffs from different traits. During the previous Beta, I experimented with a shroud build that had Rending Shroud, Reaper’s Might, Unyielding Blast, Vital Persistence, Dhuumfire, and Decimate Defenses in full zerker. The thing was insane. It self-stacked 25 might, doled out 25 AoE Vulnerability, burned with every auto, could stay in shroud form for well over a minute, and this was back when onslaught was bugged.

The only disadvantage to Reaper Shroud is that necros don’t have good ranged power options, and Life Blast previously held this position.

Black Box.9312:

Traps need a stun on activation (or at least an immobilize), not a daze. People will continue to just walk right out of them and render them useless otherwise.

It is better than you think. Most traps are instant or nigh-instant activation, so they’re essentially just a delayed daze skills. For the ones that aren’t, there are several abilities the guardian gets to hold enemies in place. The daze means they can’t immediately warp out.

From what I hear, the condi damage rankings would be the following:

Engi, Ranger, Ele, Guard.