Guild Wars 2

The thief’s natural immunity to chill effects always makes it a tough fight for the reaper. Daredevil isn’t particularly more dangerous than base thief in this regard.

There’s another problem.

Metabuilds are built assuming other players in your team also have meta builds. If you are alone or don’t have other players with meta builds on your team, then the metabuilds can be quite lacking.

For example, take the Guardian. Meta build can be found here. You can see there are several decisions that are good in an organized group, but not necessarily good elsewhere.

#1: The build assumes large amounts of outside fury, so it takes right-hand strength + retribution. A more newb friendly build would take Radiant Fire and Inner Fire for maximum self fury stacking, and also more flexibility outside of running a one-handed weapons.

#2: It takes Zealous Wrath for a 5% increase in damage (plus minor heal) because the build assume vulnerability will be handled by outside forces. A more ubiquitous build would take Blinding Jeopardy, and then take advantage of the blinds on sword/focus/GS/VoJ to have bursts of higher damage than Zealous Blade.

#3: Unscathed Contender is a very difficult-to-use trait, especially since aegies is prioritized over focus blocks. A newb friendly build would take much greater advantage using either of the other traits.

#4: With the changes from #2, Amplified Wrath would be better to take than Perfect Inscription. PI gives the signet a 36 point boost, which is overall quite insignificant, but maximum DPS builds try to squeeze as much as they can.

#5: All notes regarding honor and the hammer are relegated to a completely different build. The honor line is pretty good for new players, since it gives vigor on crit, might on crit, Pure of Body, and Force of Will. The hammer is also an easy spec to run, giving entire teams permanent protection. This isn’t taken, though, since meta builds assume perfect play and outside might, so there’s no use for these otherwise useful traits.

EDIT: #6: The sigils chosen are force and night, assuming that all other utilities will be handled. But without excess might stacking, sigil of strength’s additional might boosts could outperform both of them.

Combine all this together, and you end up with a build that performs better assuming perfect play and group support. Take those two factors away, and it is arguably sub-par to Zeal/Radiance/Honor.

Depends on what you mean by “well”. There’s three things to look at:

#1: How long
#2: What intensity
#3: How consistent

I’d argue that half of the classes fulfill those 3 criteria: Engineer, Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer. The other ones… not as much.

Thief: On their condi builds they get Skale Venom and Deadly Trapper for bursts of vuln, but on power builds they don’t get much vulnerability at all. There’s a paltry amount from sundering strikes, and the weapon skills are too short duration to be meaningful.

Elementalist: Ele’s get a massive burst with Glyph of Storms in air attunement. Otherwise they have miniscule amounts from Weak Spot, and some from water attacks, but water attacks are rarely used.

Mesmer: Gets minor amounts of sustain from the domination line, but often requires interrupts/dazes/shatters to inflict small amounts. Fairly consistent, especially with the sword auto attack.

Guardian: Can get consistent amounts from Symbolic Exposure and Blinding Jeopardy, but won’t be getting high intensity anytime soon.

I’m a solo and low-level pug runner myself, so I’ll be looking forward to several things.

#1: Massive increase in vulnerability stacking. Focus 4 with GS 3 already puts an enemy at 24 stacks of vulnerability. Bitter chill synchronizes well, and Well of Suffering puts out even more vulnerability. Also add on unyielding blast, and things will be great.

#2: Decimate Defenses. That’s going to be great.

#3: Greater might stacking.

#4: Effective offense in shroud. Currently, life blast has about the same DPS as the axe auto attack. With reaper’s shroud, the DPS will be just under dagger. This means that I can be much more durable without sacrificing as much offense.

#5: And should the situation require it, greater lifeforce generation/healing. I’ll be maining decimate defenses, but chilling force + blighter’s boon equals quite a bit of life force and healing. So, in those rare circumstances where I have to preform my civic duty and facetank a boss, I’ll be much more effective at that.

Someone is sitting under a bridge and telling riddles.

It is actually quite amazing how much more important tactics are compaired to gear. At base, Zerker only does 45% more damage than soldiers (roughly, depends on class/build). So if an enemy would survive for 5 seconds against a full zerker team, it would then only live 7.25 seconds on a full soldier team.

What keeps players alive and what kills enemies fast is tactics. How well you stack boons, what weapons and rotations you use, if you have the right utilities and traits for the encounter, etc.

All this definitely looks fun. I’m still mad that they gutted acrobatics just to make this specialization, but the specialization is still good.

I’ll try tempest for a bit, but as it stands now I’m definitely not going to use it. I’m a mostly PVE Ele.

I like the lava font + fire tempest combo. It does more damage than just auto attacking. Shock and Aftershock is also a really good skill. That wide area magnetic aura will definitely save lives. The advantages end there.

Normally when I run ele I use Fire/Air/Arcane. Sometimes I’ll swap to Water or Earth for niche uses, but the Arcane line is the strongest third line in PVE. Damage, defense, utility, and group support all in one. The tempest traits, however, are pretty bad. Not quite thief acrobatics bad, but they are arguably the worst traits the ele has to offer. Highly focused, little to no class synergy, no damage buffs, and the utilities provided exist mostly to compensate for PVP weaknesses inherent to the tempest design philosophy.

The warhorn is meh. Sand Squall and Dust Storm are good. Squall would exist mostly to extend quickness, and Dust Storm is a blind field. I guess with Shock and Aftershock, swirling winds wouldn’t be as needed, but I’ll still be missing out on the blast finishers and personal protection that focus provides.

Currently, it isn’t looking good for the PVE tempest.

The exclusive dye system is inherently unfair. This new birthday boost just made it fair. People who either benefited or were robbed by the old system feel robbed now.

This is the nature of the world. If you fix an injustice, this is done at the expense of those who benefit from that injustice.

Siva Mira.3546:

I think you are thinking way too kitten this issue. How often do you see people spaming Chilled that make you feel like “OMG my Chilled will never tick!”

Ice bow 3 and 5 both cause chill. 3 in particular basically wipes all previous chill stacks away.

I encountered this problem years ago when I pointed out that skipping is insulting to the devs and bad for the game. What I received in response was the most dismissive, arrogant, deceitful, condescending, selfish dribble I had ever seen in an internet community. The only reason elitists have adopted that false “make your own group” argument is because they got tired of being yelled down by other players. Were it not for that, they would still rampage into every thread in the forum to personally insult people who don’t play to their liking. When the forums were more active, it was saddening to see which thread with legitimate complaints will be shouted down as “not a problem” next.

I can understand wanting to push the limits. On occasion, I will take my super-pretendy-fun time and see if I can crack the system. As a personal problem solving challenge. But that rarely extends past the instance. In a gigantic fantasy world with sword and sorcery, I’d hate to find the most efficient way to do something and then do just that. Forever. I’d get bored very quickly. I’d also get existentially exhausted, putting so much time and energy into something so ultimately meaningless.

The good news is, this is all pretty moot at this point. Anet isn’t focusing on dungeons anymore. If they do, the ones they design will probably have measures against the current dungeon meta (gates, long leash distances, locking people into specific arenas, infinitely spawning mobs, AI improvements, meaningful escorts, etc). The community hasn’t reached a point where players will demand necromancers leave the map, and they probably never will.

I haven’t found any class to be insufficient in the overworld. Granted, Staff Ele is ahead of everyone else, but the other classes aren’t too bad.

For general overworld roaming I usually run the mantra-interrupt build. Mantra of pain is really good at bursting down miscellaneous mobs, and mantra of distraction + power lock is good at defense, too. Since the mantra nerf the build is slightly ineffective against solo champions. Build is Domination 2/3/3, dueling 1/3/1, and Inspiration 3/1/2. Full GC gear of course.

Against champions and world bosses, I use a signet + phantasm build. Domination 2/2/2, Dueling 1/3/2, and Illusions 1/2/2. If you can get x3 duelists up at a safe range, you’d be amazed how much damage they can dish out on a single target. If the boss is extremely narrow-minded and lacks AoEs, 3x swordsman is even better.

My concern right now are that thieves are completely focused around two defensive tactics, blinds, and stealth.

Blinds are alright, but they’ve been nerfed on occasion, and aren’t going to be as strong in the future. With increasing access to resistance and a break bar (which I believe stops blinds), the ability to defend ourselves with blinding attacks is going to diminish.

Stealth is the OP’s main concern, and it is still a good one. While stealth gives us the ability to run away, it doesn’t ensure victory in a fight. Also, more and more classes are getting anti-stealth mechanics. Stealth can help a tricky thief sometimes avoid damage, but it isn’t a surefire thing.

What we need is a serious buff to the acro line. If we had evades longside of blinds and stealth we would be good, but currently acro is so subpar single traits are frequently more powerful than acros’ cumulative effects.

I’m of the opinion that generally no, it is not. At base, a full power thief will have a 7% increase in damage from the signets passive. The signet has a minimum recharge of 36 seconds. Having a 7% boost for that full duration is better than a 15% boost for only 5 attacks.

There is one exception. If you are running an ambush build and plan to burst down targets ASAP, then this signet is useful. Venomed Steal + Cloak and Dagger into backstab + heartseeker x 3 is enough to down other classes on occasion. The might from Signets of Power helps here, too. Even then, this is hit or miss, since so may players have been burst down by this tactic they carry skills to avoid it.

The amount is random, because the droops are ultimately random. If someone gets a good or rare drop, the values increase significantly.

Just to confirm, this is from a PVE perspective, right? Because in PVP I imagine the high updtime for evades would contribute meaningfully to the overall performance of the weapon.

I haven’t done PVP in awhile, but looking at that build…

#1: Relentless Pursuit is really good. If you’re going to be chasing people in reaper’s shroud with dhuumfire, you want their debuffs to be as minimal as possible. Chill is no good if you’re chilled, too.

#2: Stunbreaks are necessary, especially since Doom is no longer available as a counter-stun. My gut tells me to just go with Spectral Armor for protection + life force generation, but without testing I’m not sure it is better than Spectral Walk. Spectral walk has swiftness + reverse teleport, and currently this build has no speed boosts. I know it is relying on chill, but swiftness is still good.

Another consideration is “You are all Weaklings!”. It causes AoE weakness, so it will reduce damage, and it can also stack some might (5 + 3 per target hit). The main reason to take YAAW over Spectral Armor is the cooldown: 30 seconds vs. 50 seconds. Though with weakning shroud you’ll already be inflicting weakness, so protection can work in conjunction with it. Guess you’ll have to test it out to see what is better. But seriously, stun break, or be a pinball. As for which skill to replace, either “Suffer!” or spectral grasp. Immediately I’d replace suffer (and likewise go with plague sending as major adept), since spectral grasp is an interrupt + life force + longer duration chill, but depending on how often you are outnumbered/condi’d up suffer might be better. Preference applies here.

#3: I am really hesitant to go with a build that frail in PVP. At weakest, I’d go with a sinsiter/carrion hybrid. With carrion armor you’ll have a 34.7% crit chance, which is enough for sigil of tormenting and weakening shroud, and barbed precision’s bleed is meh in the first place. You need that extra durability to make sure the conditions have time to tick.

That is all for now. I’m really out of practice, and aren’t confident on any other changes. But other things to consider testing are:

Sigil of Ice over Hydromancy. Yes, hydrmancy works on command and in an AoE, but sigil of ice works at a distance, and doesn’t require a weapon swap.
Traits other than Chilling Darkness, as I am still not sure it is worth it in this build. Terrifying descent can make for some interesting combos, and Plague Sending as an extra condi transfer is always good, especially if you replace “Suffer!” with the stun break.

Times like this I wish the reaper didn’t require so much work. I’m probably going to check the guardian’s tooltip damage, attack rates, and animation times for these skills on the next beta. Then, I’ll be able to give you more of an answer.

I always pictured the tempest as a storm that builds up and unleashes. Currently overloads aren’t that good (though I will use fire in PVE), but if they get substantial damage buffs then an elementalist overload will be an “OH SHISHKABOB” moment for enemy players.

Wanze.8410:

Whatever items they will promote during the anniversary sale was probybly proposed and approved weeks ago.

Whatever you post here, will not influence what we will be getting in the next 3 weeks.

I’ve got some bad news for you: “probably” is not a certainty. There’s no proof that Anet will not change their minds upon seeing a highly requested item.

I wouldn’t mind raiment of the lich. I missed that one.

As far as traps go, my immediate concern is that they take twice as long to place as every other trap in the game. If traps had a half-second placement time, then they will become much more usable in combat.

#1: These traps do apply a lot of conditions. Burning, Bleeding, Blind, Cripple, Vulnerability, Revealed, and Slow.

#2: Ranger traps are on short cooldowns. Sometimes. Thief traps are not. Then again, the cooldowns for the traps can be adjusted, and being wells will not make things any better (see necromancer wells). Being wells just gets rid of doublecast.

#3: Dragonhunter Traps already provide crowd control. Fragments of Faith causes cripple, and is instant damage. Procession of blades is also nigh instant. Test of Faith causes cripple and a soft punish-if-you-walk-out effect, and Dragon’s Maw is an outright pull and barrier for 6 seconds. There’s only one trap that isn’t an instant damage attack, and that is Light’s Judgement. All other traps don’t need to hold you at all, in spite of being capable of doing so.

#4: These do provide utility. One is a blind + heal, another is a spammable aegis + cripple, another is a reveal, and dragon’s maw is basically a 6 second immobilize that comes with 4 seconds of slow. If you use the trapper runes they also all provide stealth and superspeed. Arguably the only bad trap is Test of Faith, since its strange effect means it can be counterplayed really easily.

And now for non-specific points.

#5: Guardians aren’t sacrificing utility to take traps. At all. Firstly, you don’t need to take the healing trap to have massive trap DPS, since the healing trap doesn’t do that much damage. This means that you can still have blocks and automatic condi cleanse. Second, virtues exist for a reason. If you take the virtue line, you get condition cleanse, stun break, and stability. Dragonhunters themselves come with a leap and a mobile personal shield that can absorb countless ranged attack, and also can take traits that give stability and protection.

#6: The “Source of Damage” is not easily avoided. You can’t see them until they’re already hitting you, traps are unblockable. Purification, Fragments of Faith, and Dragon’s Maw are instant. Procession of Blades is extremely fast. The only ones you can “avoid” are test of faith, for its obvious barrier nature, and Light’s Judgement, which takes awhile to fully activate. Thankfully the other traps provide control, and if not those traps there’s hunters ward, ring of warding, wrath of justice, chains of light, zaealots embrace, and binding blade + pull to yank them in again.

#7: Traited the traps have a 36 recharge (purification 24, dragon’s maw 48), and when pre cast their recharge ticks down. With smart placement, the traps can activate their effects twice within their own recharge. So no, you aren’t “useless for 40 seconds” because of traps.

#8: Traps are not exclusive with weapon skills. You can use both procession of blades and whirling wrath at the same time.

#9: Stability and teleports does not mean traps are useless. It just means that an opponent now no longer has stability and teleports when dealing with the rest of your skills. Also, half the trap effects can’t be avoided. Likewise, this is a problem that also exists with wells.

#10: You’re being too rigid. My idea of a trap focused WvW ambush class is a highly focused one, much like the trap focused builds of rangers. It doesn’t have to be exclusively traps. For example, if Light of Judgement is too slow for your tastes, you can swap it out with another skill to fill whatever hole enemies seem to punch through.

I might have to disagree with the “Low survivability” part. I’m assuming you are referring to PVP, which when I used to do it, I did it a lot with the Necromancer.

The Necromancer has a problem in that its defenses don’t scale up to multiple targets. This is bad when you are outnumbered, but in a 1 vs. 1 scenario I always found the necro to be quite tanky. I usually won fights because of my sheer bulk alone. Including Death Shroud and using Soul Reaping (power necro), I have 49.7k effective health with a full bar. Sure, 60% of that degens when in use, but for sheer bulk and absorbing burst it is very effective.

In PVE, I’ve used my berserker necro as a pseudo-tank on occasion. Mostly against Legendary Svánigandr, Foreman Spur, and the Clockheart. While Svánigandr will rip me to shreds on every other class I play, on the necro I can sit there and take it for extended periods of time, ensuring that other classes don’t get chewed up.

Coarr.3286:

the missing dps comes from our pet :P

Partly this. A trend I’ve noticed among all ranger skills is that they are all technically sub-par. The ranger is purposefully built at 75% capacity, assuming that the pet will make up for the difference.

I haven’t done any personal calculations to see how much damage the pet does, but from personal experience (I.E. accidentally leaving the pet on passive), the damage definitely isn’t negligible.

Also, it is quite hard to get an accurate pet DPS, since how much damage the pet does depends on weapon and build. Greatsword builds are good at stacking vulnerability, sword builds are good at stacking might, etc..

All in all, even if the greatsword does 16.6% less DPS than the sword, I still find it to be more useful. The evades keep me alive, the vulnerability is good, and I like the cleave it has. Also it doesn’t animation lock me..

I’m not ready to dismiss traps at all. In fact, I think traps might be more powerful than wells. Why? Well, let me explain.

Traps in WvW and partly in sPVP are used as ambush spots. You’re walking around, then suddenly the world is coming to an end due to the sudden explosion of conditions and control effects that hit you. Rangers have been doing this for awhile, but now thieves are also adopting this playstyle. But, there was a good defense against this in condition cleansing.

Dragonhunter traps aren’t condi traps like ranger and thief traps. They are direct damage traps. Sure, the burns from virtues will still hit, and the trait adds bleeds, but that is on top of their relatively high direct damage. This makes an entire utility of traps become a very large burst of damage that can’t be cleansed away.

While the traps alone might be a bit sub-par (although their damage has just been booted), it won’t be uncommon to be hit by Dragon’s Maw, Procession of Blades, Light of Judgement, Fragments of Faith, and an additional burst skill from the Guard all at the same time. We’re talking about 22 × 6 bleeds, 20 vulnerability, 4 justice procs, revealed and slow status, a trapping barrier, and then an additional combo from the guard itself (for the sake of argument, lets say symbol of energy + hunter’s ward). I don’t have the exact numbers of the damage on each trap, but I imagine that this is quite a lot.

Second, traps can be pre-cast. Its a trick that I use in Silverwastes on my ranger, but it also works in sPVP and WvW. Traps linger in place for a long time, and if placed with enough forethought they can be used twice in a row.

So no, I’m not convinced traps are bad yet. If anything, the activation time for guard traps might be too long, but traps themselves not so much.

The chill is based off of condition damage. In the previous beta weekend, the formula was this:

97 + 0.08 condition damage. Multiplied by 1.5 against enemies below 50% health.

In the next beta weekend, the formula is this

194 + 0.16 condition damage. Multiplied by 1.5 against enemies below 50% health.

It stacks in duration, so at any point you’ll only have one stack of Deathly Chill ticking away at any one time. This only affects chill applied by the reaper, so other sources will bump off the damaging chills. This includes other reapers, so this is one of those effects where having multiple reapers will not make multiple Deathly Chills. Which is unfortunate, since given the reaper’s good self buffs Deathly Chill is the highest damage grandmaster.

So, this comes down to consideration. If you are playing with a reaper, do not apply additional chills unless they are not using Deathly Chill. Otherwise you’ll be sapping away 392 DPS average from them (power build).

Captain Unusual.9163:

Numbers from beta are not indicative of the final product and are subject to change.

God kitten , why do people have so much trouble realizing this?

Because it is wrong. Ideas have inertia: they don’t change unless an outside force causes change. Unless you show and tell the developers that something is overpowered or underpowered, it will stay exactly where it is. So, it is best when giving feedback to assume something is going to stay exactly where it is.

DPS isn’t a particular class in this game. It is a type of build. You go either full berserker or sinister gear, and then you pick traits to increase direct damage or condition damage. Every class can do this. So really, it comes down to style.

Elementalist.
PRO: Highest DPS in an AoE. Excellent self buffer and group buffer. Good field manipulation. Second most diverse class in the game. Can do maximum damage at range.
CON: Low defenses, both active and statistical. You have a few skill evades, and a few defensive buffs, but you’ll still be surprised how quickly you go down.

Engineer
PRO: Highest condition DPS. Excellent self and group buffer. Most diverse class in the game. Good at debuffing and vulnerability.
CONS: Very difficult to play, requiring 2 or 3 skill presses to accomplish what other classes can do in one. Will have to change utilities and traits frequently to meet demands, and won’t always be doing DPS.

Warrior:
PRO: Best self and group buffer in the game. High direct or condition damage. Second highest statistical bulk in the game. Good self healing.
CONS: Can’t buff as well doing condition damage. Lacks utility. Must be in melee range to be effective.

Thief
PRO: Highest single target damage in the game. High condi damage in groups. Spammable blast finisher. Good debuffs. Spammable attacks overall. Decent utility. Highly evasive. Best at stripping defiance.
CONS: Frail. Is only decent at self + group buffs on the condi build. Doesn’t have as good AoE damage or ranged damage.

Ranger.
PRO: Very high condi damage. Direct damage is good at stacking vulnerability. Highly evasive. Has a few unqiue buffs for groups. Strong burst damage.
CON: Difficult to play. Damage is tied to pet, which can be killed. Mediocre at most things.

Mesmer.
PRO:Highly evasive. Good group utility. Can theoretically sustain massive DPS. Good at debuffing and healing. Highly evasive.
CON: Sustained DPS is tied to phantasms, which die frequently. Low personal DPS. Bad at self or group buffing. Bugged traits mean lower condi damage.

Guardian.
PRO: Strong utility, decent healing and defensive buffs. Good field manipulation. Lots of blocks. A few good offensive buffs, too.
CONS: Middling damage, and frail past active defenses.

Necromancer.
PRO: highest statistical bulk. Can multiply conditions. Decent Vulnerability. Good at self buffing.
CONS: Has good AoE damage only in bursts. No good ranged options. Bad at group buffs. Low active defenses.

As for which one has the highest damage… that is where it gets complicated. Overall, Elementalist and Engineer have the highest direct and condition damage respectively. But the warrior has the best offensive buffs, and in a group that means a whole lot. The thief has high base damage, so with buffs they do the best single target damage in the game, which is good against all those champion and legendary mobs.

The mesmer has theoretically really high damage, arguably better than the “top” classes, but only in situations where their phantasms stay alive. The ranger is 3rd place in damage with conditions, but only if their pet stays alive. Guardians have second lowest damage, but that is technically, because they can beat out other classes in specific situations (ranger/mesmer when their buffs fail, thieves against 3 or more targets or at range, etc). The only class you could say is “low DPS” is the Necromancer, and that is in group settings where self-buffs aren’t as valuable.

I’m actually not.

I guess it depends on the events. I don’t run around in champ trains or doing world bosses, except tequatl and triple trouble. Whenever there’s an event up, I’ll often find myself being the one to do it solo, which can mean quite a bit when you end up fighting a champion.

In legacy content, yeah some of the events can be quite boring. I find drytop and silverwastes events to be much more challenging.

Sometimes I use swiftness. On my female human/norn I don’t always, because I think their jogging animation is hotter at base speed.

Lhos.1643:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Lhos.1643:

Ignoring the fact that precursor crafting will be a thing soon enough, they can be purchased with gold, which can be obtained in various ways. Ergo, progress can be measured and made.

You’ve complete missed the point. Working to get the gold to buy a precursor isn’t the same as one falling from the sky. People complain that they haven’t gotten “lucky”, not that they haven’t worked long and hard enough to get gold.

Hold one one sec….

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

#2: If you can’t measure your progress, it means you can’t make any progress. You are no closer to getting a precursor today then you were at launch. No amount of playtime or money spent entitles you to miracles.

#3: Luck is for other people. It may seem like it is for everyone, but that is because whenever someone is lucky they shout it to the skies. For every person who is lucky, there are tens of thousands who aren’t.

#4: Hard work is for you. It is much more profitable to sell and merch goods for trading than it is to buy and burn them hoping common sense is wrong. Take advantage of the fact that you can make money off of other people playing the lottery.

So… what was the point of these? What you meant by #2 is pretty clear, then you outline in #3 and 4 that it’s more worthwhile to make gold, but now you’re telling me your whole point was the RNG is mean and stupid. Could have just said so. :P

Nope. No “but now”. The whole point always is that it is stupid to be entitled to miracles. it is stupid to assume that, because you’ve played so long or because other people have received one or because you’ve dumped a lot of money into the mystic forge or because you’re a super special snowflake, you somehow deserve a super rare drop. I am utterly baffled how you could’ve arrived at a different conclusion in the first place.

I have two builds that I alternate between.

#1: Zerker build. Weapon set: Shortbow + D/D or D/P or S/P. Either weapon set works, just swap to what you’re most comfortable with.
Utilities are Signet of Malice, Signet of Agility, Assassin’s Signet, then one spare slot for smokescreen/shadow refuge/shadowstep. In general, I use D/D to backstab and heartseeker down enemies as quick as possible. But for the breach I’ll use S/P with Shadow Refuge. The greater AoE attack and blinds are good, so is the dodge and the ability to stealth the carrier.
Gear: Full berserker everything. Scholar runes (ruby orbs work well, too), Sigil of Force, Sigil of Strength.

The build is Deadly Arts (Mug, Revealed Training, Executioner), Critical Strikes (Either Side Strike or Signets of Power, Practiced Tolerance, No Quarter), and Trickery (Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand). On rare occasion I will swap out No Quarter for Invigorating Precision, but for Silverwastes I haven’t had to. This build is meant to give the most damage possible, letting you easily get up to 245% crit damage with 80% chance or higher.

#2: Venomshare condi build. Weapon set: D/D + P/nothing or shortbow. Here the shortbow is used mostly to lay down a poison field, so Death Blossom causes poison.
Utilities are Skelk Venom, Spider Venom, Skale Venom, then a free slot for Needle Trap. Caltrops, Smokescreen, and Shadowrefuge (NOTE).
Gear: Full Sinister. Afflicted runes. Sigil of Malice +… filler sigils. Currently I have x2 earth.

The build is Deadly Arts (Trapper’s Respite, Deadly Respite, Potent Poison), Shadow Arts (Shadow’s Embrace, Leeching Venoms, Venomous Aura), and Trickery (Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Bewildering Ambush). Other variants include Dagger Training and Uncatchable instead of Trapper’s Respite and Thrill of the crime. The goal of the build is to imbue yourself with venoms, and then use death blossom to apply as much condis in an area as possible, following up mostly with dagger auto attacks. Only using pistol when disengage is needed.

NOTE: How this build performs varies wildly. If you have people around you, the venoms are really powerful. If you don’t, then the venoms aren’t that good at all. So, unless you have a team or plenty of people at your keep, use Needle Trap and Caltrops. Those don’t scale down, and can still inflict a lot of condi damage. I frequently use Needle Trap + 2 Venoms, and doing this disengage is important because of the lack of blinds.

Lhos.1643:

Ignoring the fact that precursor crafting will be a thing soon enough, they can be purchased with gold, which can be obtained in various ways. Ergo, progress can be measured and made.

You’ve complete missed the point. Working to get the gold to buy a precursor isn’t the same as one falling from the sky. People complain that they haven’t gotten “lucky”, not that they haven’t worked long and hard enough to get gold.

The OP does have some good points, but is wrong overall.

It is not their job, nor should it be, to make sure that every class is equally represented at all phases in beta.

It is their job, actually. All of these specializations are being worked on simultaneously by different parties specifically to give equal representation. If it wasn’t, then the classes would be worked on one at a time.

As much as I’d like to assume that there is no form of class discrimination by the devs, it is highly unlikely. First, discrimination isn’t a conscious decision, so no matter how much they say they aren’t showing favoritism, they have favorites. Second, each class is not only different, but each class community is different as well. Spend an adequate amount of time in the necro and engineer forum, and you’ll swear they were from different planets. Third, because each dev is going to have preconceived notions about the class, this will change how open to feedback they are. “Skill” is a concept that can be used to dismiss a surprising amount of legitimate criticism.

EDIT: Forgot this.

The biggest complaint currently isn’t the performance of the tempest per se. The tempest overall was alright. The problem is that all of the feedback that was given was ignored largely.

I made a personal analysis of the threats in another thread. If you want the long version, go there. But the short version is this:

Overall: the trait line consists of a bunch of subpar overload support traits for the mediocre overloads, spots of obscure and strange buffs for mediocre shouts. So, for my suggestions:

#1: Merge Lucid Singularity and Speedy Conduit as the adept master trait. This leaves an open spot in the master tier.
#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: Unstable Conduit needs to use 2 auras. First when the channel is started. Second when the channel ends. That way, the ele has 10 seconds of continuous Aura.
#5: Double the base healing and scaling healing of Elemental Bastion.

That’s all for now. Still not sure what to do with Earthen Proxy or Latent Stamina.

iSmack.1768:

Do i need to sacrifice a goat? How many?
[

Do not beseech the devil for what RNGesus has control over.

I wrote this in another topic on basically the same issue. It bears repeating here:

For as long as MMOs have had the RNG system, I’ve had to contend with the fact that I never, ever, in all my life, have gotten something that was significantly “rare” enough to warrant special mention. I’ve been playing these games for12 years now. And in these 12 years I’ve learned why it is that the lottery is called a stupid people tax..

#1: You aren’t going to get a precursor. Period. All the money you throw at trying to get one is figuratively going down the toilet.

#2: If you can’t measure your progress, it means you can’t make any progress. You are no closer to getting a precursor today then you were at launch. No amount of playtime or money spent entitles you to miracles.

#3: Luck is for other people. It may seem like it is for everyone, but that is because whenever someone is lucky they shout it to the skies. For every person who is lucky, there are tens of thousands who aren’t.

#4: Hard work is for you. It is much more profitable to sell and merch goods for trading than it is to buy and burn them hoping common sense is wrong. Take advantage of the fact that you can make money off of other people playing the lottery.

#5: Don’t even try to get one. It is a waste of time, money, effort, and hope. The sooner you accept failure, the sooner you can get over it and do something productive.

This is something that I want. If the emotes aren’t given for free, then I’d love to see a set of emote packs that contain all of the zany and crazy emotes that our characters can do.

The one I want most is a righteous headbanging emote. Sue, we can pop and lock as we dance, but as rocker I want to thrash and really express myself with my toon.

Zenith.7301:

But lets assume that we’re going to sacrifice all of the goodies in Curses for what is in Reaping.

And by “goodies” you mean weakening shroud, which you can’t flash effectively with reaper shroud thanks to the 1 sec icd

I think this sums up the problem with talking to you in the most succinct manner.. You don’t realize when you’ve made an obvious logic error. You’re also moving the goalposts, changing the topics and dodging questions. Communication with you is nigh impossible. Right now, the greatest argument against you is yourself.

Drennon.7190:

They used the same “well received” bs on the ele forum. “The concepts behind overloading an element were pretty well received”

I blame myself for this. I spent all my time hammering out base damage and activation times on other specializations. I never really got to dragonhunter or tempest.

Maybe I’m just cynical in this regard, but to me “living world” is a zinger that was developed to make the regular updates and changes that are made to every other MMO sound special here.

I find this a bit strange. From my short stint as a tempest, the problems seemed to stem from the lackluster traits. I’m surprised to see not a single trait change.

I’m not sure damage was the problem.

spoj.9672:

But its still less than forceful greatsword and unnecessarily restricted and weak on single targets. This is a big hit to PvE because boss fights are a big part of the gamemode. Which makes chilling force pointless to take.

The good news is, we’re getting more chill, and better ways to apply it. I wouldn’t think of it as restricted against single targets as much as more beneficial against multiple targets. Necros can already self stack quite a bit of might, so Chilling Force might be one of those “scaling up” things that we wanted. This also has the benefit of working without the need to crit, making it more reliable and usable on all builds.

The ICD is there to prevent this + blighters boon from going out of control. The reaper has several multi-hitting skills (death spiral, soul spiral, death’s charge to name a few), and against a chilled foe with no cooldown it means 2% life force per hit. Death Spiral suddenly does 24% life force per strike alongside of 6 might. Against an AI build this can go up x 3, making Death Spiral regen 72% life force per use. Soul Spiral would heal for 8k health and cap might. I don’t even know what death’s charge could do.

That said, Forceful Greatsword, particularly when combined with its buddy trait Phalanx Strength is arguably OP in PVE. There are a lot of traits on other classes that stack might, both personally and for the whole team, but against this cthulhul scale monstrosity it all gets rendered useless. I don’t play warrior, but I have noticed that any time I team up with one my might is capped 4 seconds into the fight.

For the sake of comparison, I have a guardian. Empowering might has an ICD of 1 second and a duration of 5 seconds. It isn’t weapon specific, but this basically caps out at 5 stacks of group might. When running a condi thief, the AoE venoms give 6 might at most. On my ranger, 4 stacks of might, up to 7 if I use a drake + fire field. Memser is complicated because it can dupe boons, but it doesn’t stack might on itself that well at all. The ele and engi are good at it, because they can spam blast finishers into fire fields, but this eats up their entire utility bar. The warrior run up to some mobs and cap might with a single 100 blades.

One of these isn’t like the other. I haven’t played warrior, so I’d hate to go and demand an outright nerf based on my experiences alone, but kitten .

Zenith.7301:

stuff

Oh please. Your posts devolved into a slew of incoherent and generalized rants aimed at the sky. It was so shoddily put together I legitimately had no idea what you were even trying to convey anymore. Your standards are almost incomprehensible, your view narrow minded. Instead of putting out the particular instances and details you are talking about beforehand, you just belittle me for not knowing what you didn’t say.

So, now onto the points.

#1: Foot in the Grave isn’t bad.

#2: Your entire premade build structure idea is flawed. I’m not sure anyone should bother taking reaper into a premade, because the utilities it offers are redundant and already covered by other classes. Since “trash” is irrelevant, greater cleave isn’t needed. You wouldn’t need shroud knight to stack might because you’ll already be capped. Shroud knight won’t stack vulnerability because you’re not taking Soul Reaping. So what is left? Decimate defense is nigh redundant, chilling force is redundant, blighters boon is useless, augury of death is useless, relentless pursuit is useless, chilling nova is too weak, the minors are all “bad traits”… that leaves Soul Eater, Reaper’s Onslaught, and Chill of Death. Soul Eater is meh at best, and Chill of Death is exclusive with Reaper’s Onslaught.

So, funny bit of trivia: the dagger auto attack outdamages reaper shroud’s auto attack, even with onslaught. The greatsword AA is only 0.66% (that is less than 1%) weaker than shroud auto with onslaught. Throw in signet of spite, and the gap widens. There’s only one reason that someone would use Shroud’s AA over the other weapons, and that is the might and vulnerability stacking from Spite and Soul Reaping respectively. Without soul reaping and with pre-capped might, there is no advantage to using Shroud AA. The only skill in reaper’s shroud that is higher than its AA is Executioner’s Scythe, which you’ll just pop in to and use every 30 seconds or so, which means onslaught contributes almost nothing to the skill. Regular Death Shroud already has a burst skill: Tainted Shackles. Its fast cast time means it has relatively high DPS, higher than Executioner’s Scythe at 25%+ health, before factoring in torment. This is also sacrificing the damage bonus from Weakening Shroud.

But lets assume that we’re going to sacrifice all of the goodies in Curses for what is in Reaping. Yes, Decimate Defenses will cover for Target the Weak. You have to pick chilling force or reaper’s onslaught for damage. At maximum might, Deathly Chill will inflict 314 damage +50%, and 471 damage below it, for an average of 392 DPS. This can be tacked directly onto the greatsword auto, meaning 73% uptime until gravedigger spam. This isn’t including chilling nova, chill of death, or executioner’s scythe, which push the numbers up a bit, or any additional sources such as Icebow or whirl finishers. You can stop right here, since that extra 392 DPS is being tacked onto the sword, which given Signet of Spite is already more damaging than Onslaught Shroud.

I guess the short of this is, I don’t trust your judgement on what is “good” or “bad” at all.

#3: You’re not hypocritical. You’re inconsistent. I’m not sure if you’re talking about either under my changes or your changes or the current setup, and you change this up from point to point. Now, to talk about Dhuumfire, this is largely a PVP oriented issue, where Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper will be frequently used. With this trait setup, a shroud focused build will be able to pick decimate defenses, reaper’s onslaught, and dhuumfire at the same time. This build isn’t overpowered, so the rantings about dhuumfire come from thin air. It is an unfortunate effect that my change will necessitate a swap, but this isn’t just a loss. You get to use Deathly Chill and blighters boon alongside of Onslaught instead of exclusive with it. You also can use Decimate Defenses with Soul Eater at the same time. The only issues that really prop up are when you are using a power focused Spite/SR/R shroud-focused build. If you aren’t using that particular playstyle, then there are already obvious choices to go for that either lose very little, or gain.

#4: Sigil of Night doesn’t always work. It is only good if you’re running specific dungeons, in which case general builds might as well go out the door. Besides, I suggested Sigil of Accuracy as a general example. There’s more than that. I balanced on the current stats of my necro, but it goes further than that. Calculating out a full zerker ascended with precise infusions, this sits at 56% crit chance. I also noticed that a sharpening stone is only a 2.7% damage increase at max might, so if I switch that out with a maintenance oil, that comes to a 61% crit rate, resting. So, add fury, 81%. Add banner, 89%. Add Target the Weak + 5 conditions, 99%.

#5

and you call them myopic, because god forbid a person who only plays PvE cares only for PvE balance, much like spvp and WvW folk do

That is the definition of myopic. Its actually worse than that. You’re talking about premade meta dungeon runs exclusively. What about overworld? What about casual runs? What about solo dungeon runs? But I digress: the reason why the devs and players are so focused around PVP balance is because it is actually a competition, with winners and losers. However, the devs and players are wrong in this. They should also be concerned about PVE as well. Them being wrong doesn’t give PVE players an excuse to be wrong themselves. That’s hypocrisy.

#6: Thus, my main complaint with your suggestion regarding moving around Soul Eater is that you aren’t trying to create a balanced trait line. You’re shoving personally inconvenient traits into obscure places to let them die, and not even thinking about what it might do to other game modes.

#7: I’ll admit I misread what you meant about the shout. When you said “it becomes terrible”, you were referring to Augury of Death in regards to the bonus it gives to the healing shout. I thought you meant the heal as a whole becomes terrible even with Augury of Death.

Cameron.6215:

I 100% agree with you, but I believe we won’t appreciate what Acrobatics is until we get to play it with the new specialization traits and overall change of role. And who knows perhaps it will be a very broad trait-line to compliment every other trait-line. This is purely speculation but I’m strongly for belief in this view.

There’s a phrase for this. Its called the argument from ignorance. Your case is that, while acrobatics looks terrible, we can’t say it is terrible because we don’t know what the specialization will bring.

I don’t buy it. For all we know, the specialization will make things worse for Acro. Right now, acro is the worst trait line in the game. The defenses it offers pale in comparison to those in SA and Trickery, and it doesn’t offer meaningful utility on its own. I made a thread about this earlier.

Behellagh.1468:

It’s one of those great lies, like making loads of gold off the TP by just flipping anything. It’s super easy!

It is pretty easy. You buy something/craft something then put it up for sale. A week later you get a massive windfall. Unless the markets horribly shift against you. So easy but unreliable.

I have one. Human male

Personally I don’t see much point in having multiples of the same class. I already have 2+ gear sets on my mesmer, and 400 gems for an extra bag slot for more build reliant stuff is cheaper than 800 gems for a second character.

The big concern with difficulty at the moment is diversity. There are a lot of mechanics in this game that aren’t taken advantage of in PVE simply because the game is too easy.

Take cripple, for example. In PVP, cripple is good for covering conditions, chasing people down, or running away from people. In PVE, cripple isn’t good, because there’s nothing to chase, run from, or an enemy with condi cleanses that would make covering conditions meaningful.

So, to make cripple useful, you’d need enemies who do those things. By default, enemies who run away/ cleanse condis/ need you to run away from them are going to be harder than the generic tank and spank baddies we have now.

The only stronger gear in the game is ascended, and unless you are doing high level fractals it generally won’t fall from the sky. You can craft it, but to do that you have to buy the crafting materials, so it is basically the same as buying it from the TP. You can spend laurels to get ascended rings, amulets, and trinkets, though.

Otherwise, what you buy on the TP is as strong as it gets. Whether it is crafted, dropped from enemies, or bought from a vendor, level 80 exotic gear all have the same stats.

Misguided.5139:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Chilling Force is going to sustain 15-25 stacks of might by itself.

And so will the minor adept trait from Spite while in Shroud, without the need for chill, and give you plenty of time to exit shroud and do other things. The stacks from Chilling Force will evaporate in an instant. A little breathing room would be nice.

The thing with chilling force is that it can stack might 3x to 5x faster than siphoned power. Even at half duration, this makes it more potent.

Look, the point is that chilling force is fine. Though it stacks might like siphoned power, it has its own set of benefits that make it worthwhile.

Zenith.7301:

stuff

So you basically only care about your own particular style of PVE in particular circumstances, and are too myopic to see anyone who would have different concerns, PVP be kitten ed. You’ve utterly lost the point of this whole conversation in your rantings and ravings.

*You claim that the heals from blighters boon are useless, then whine about how you don’t think the shout heals are sufficient.
*You forget the whole reason why you’d take deathly perception is for 100% crit rate in shroud with reaper’s onslaught, I.E. the changes that sparked this whole conversation to begin with.
*You’re suggesting a change to decimate defenses specifically to deal with the fact that decimate defenses is nearly useless in a premade, and your whole starting point was that you need decimate defenses and onslaught together.
*You whine about dhuumfire, but then say you’re taking spite/blood magic/reaper..

Come back when you can make a coherent thought and are considerate of others.