Guild Wars 2

emikochan.8504:

Only reason you see those lfgs is that the non-specific lfgs fill instantly and disappear, while the people waiting for a specific combination of classes will have to wait longer.

This is especially amusing with people that want to speed run, since it often takes longer to make the party than the time saved.

As someone who forms non-specific LFGs, this is a lie. The “80s zerk meta no necro” groups fill much faster than “casual” or “all welcome” groups. This is partly due to a lot of the dungeon running community being like minded. This is partly due to lazy players who just want to be carried. This is partly due to the acclaimed prestige of running in a highly exclusive party. This is partly due to players having alts that they can switch to, since after 3 years no one just plays one class.

When players see casual run they think “underleveled newbs that I”ll have to babysit". Even if they don’t want to run zerk meta gear, they’ll still join those parties to not have to deal with other casuals. It is sad how often it is that a zerk party will disband in the middle of the run because someone rightly notices that half the players aren’t in zerk gear. It is also sad how often it is I"ll see a casual group will disband upon seeing a ranger/necro/non-80 in the team. They’ll join up, then an underleveled ranger joins, and then they leave. What follows is then a slew of people joining, then leaving
immediately. I’ll go through over a dozen players before actually getting a casual party.

I don’t know its formal name, so I’ll call it the Groucho Marx dilemma. Based on the famous line “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member”, there is a systematic problem where casual players don’t want to run in a casual party. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the only people who end up joining a casual run are underleveld newbs who don’t know better.

Personally I find supporting on the mesmer to be quite easy. I run inspiration/domination/dueling in PVE, and it gives me access to quite a lot. Most notably boon stripping and stealth, which is Eles and Guards lack.

Should I run the mantra build, it gives me spammable AoE condi Cleanse, spammable significant heals with ambient non-regen healing, regen healing, a lot of automatic reflects, group invulnerability on command, and further group support with automatic boon duplication. I can swap the boon duplication for speed/resistance and stronger glamours. The signet variant lets me grant AoE distortion on heal, so I no longer have to shatter my phantasms to save someone, along with stronger phantasms and more frequent boon duplication. This is in the inspiration line alone.

The sword gives me vulnerability and spammable boon stripping. The focus will give me group swiftness, a large AoE pull, and projectile destruction/reflect. Feedback reflects, null field cures condis and strips boons, veil and mass invisibility give stealth. Illusion of Life provides a sometimes permanent rez on a relatively fast cast and recharge time. The support mantras provide concentrated bursts of stability and stunbreaks. Phantasmal Defender provides a unique kind of defensive buff. Portal provides a unique method of navigation that has niche uses, and Time Warp is a very powerful buff + debuff. We have plenty of interrupts for boon stripping, plenty of tools to personally avoid damage, and in certain boss fights our DPS is actually quite high.

The thing is, I don’t have to go out of my way to support as a mesmer. All but stealth come naturally. Memsers might not be the most super-efficient awesomeness of the extreme regarding utilities, but its still good to have one around.

Zenith.7301:

NO.

This guts PvE necromancer. Chill of death and blighter’s are worthless in PvE power based reaper, making us choose reaper’s onslaught or decimate defenses is a straight up nerf to pve reaper.

What the hell? We already have a crap shoot in the adept tier with no PvE traits, and you wanna force more useless, weak traits on PvE necromancers?

How about we buff the weak stuff instead?

Hell, you can switch Soul Eater/Deathly Chill with Relentless Pursuit and PvE necromancers would actually have PvE relevant options.

The ideal scenario for a PvE Reaper would be Soul Eater/Chill of Death (yeah, Chill of Death is bad for PvE but it’s less bad than augury of death or relentless pursuit or chilling nova)Decimate Defenses (Chilling Force is worthless thanks to Phalanx Strength warriors easily capping might alone for the group)Reaper’s Onslaught (our only good PvE grandmaster).

Right now we’re stuck with bad adepts for PvE, two bad minors as well with no offensive/group utility boosts for PvE, and your suggestion would completely screw over PvE reaper.

What are you talking about? Blighter’s Boon is great for a PVE reaper. It caps off health while in DS, ensuring maximum effectiveness for the Scholar Rune’s 6th bonus, and also recharges Reaper’s Shroud much more quickly. Should you not want to go defensive, you get Soul Eater with extra damage and faster recharge on all other GS skills. If you wan to full on Shroud Knight focused, then PVE reapers already cap out their crit chance with deathly perception, so Decimate Defenses + Reaper’s Onslaught is useless.

Our adept traits for PVE are just fine. Chilling Nova adds more damage and synergizes with chilling force + bitter chill. Augury of Death is pretty good in PVE, because there you can reliably hit 5 targets with shouts. Relentless pursuit is very useful in PVP, and forcing players to have to choose between pursuit and blighters boon/onslaught/chilling force/decimate defenses is going to quite literally hamstring PVP Reapers.

Throwing us into a premade party makes decimate defenses nigh useless. You’ll already have 50% crit chance, so given an additional 20% from team fury, 8% from banners, and another 10-12% from Target the weak, and 3% from Plate of Truffle Steak. That is 93% crit rate. Go with a sigil of accuracy and you’ll cap yourself out. So, with Decimate Defenses useless, and if you assume Chilling Force is useless, this leaves you with one obvious trait line: Chilling Nova, Soul Eater, Reaper’s Onslaught. Oh look, you’ve lost nothing.

Embolism.8106:

Do people really Shatter with 1 illusion or less that often? I get doing it for utility like Diversion, Distrortion, Boon Stripping or a panic blind/heal/cleanse but generally I don’t Shatter unless I have 2, if not 3 Illusions anyway.

Continuum Shift changes the field a bit. Illusionary Reversion under a shift meant that shatter spam was twice as effective. 2 diversions + 2 wracks + 2 frustrations in that order is quite strong, especially if you get them all back a second later.

Misguided.5139:

Comparing might sources between the Spite and Reaper lines, the might provided by chilling force is really short (5s). Any chance we could get a bit of a bump to at least 10 seconds?

Actually, Chilling Force could be really frightening if it were higher. Siphoned Power gives more might, but chilling force gives life force. Chilling Force can last the entire fight, whereas Siphoned Power only works for half the fight. Siphoned power also has an internal cooldown, whereas chilling force has an external cooldown.

Chilling force is also more reliable in an AoE, thanks to all of the goodies that we’ve just been given. With the ability to very reliably hit 3-5 targets per second (wells, warhorn, GS AA, shouts), Chilling Force is going to sustain 15-25 stacks of might by itself. Siphoned Power caps out at 20.

At the moment, chilling force is balanced around the idea that optimum conditions aren’t always going to be met.

Shiny. Some of these changes are so good that I’m afraid we’ll be reeled back too far, like what happened to the original dhuumfire.

About Soul Eater: The problem with Soul Eater isn’t Soul Eater. Siphon is fine, CD recharge is fine. The problem with Soul Eater is that it is next to two titanic traits. Chilling force is excellent and reliable damage boosts and lifeforce generation. Decimate Defenses is an extremely powerful offensive boost that left unchecked will obliterate an enemy.

Both Chilling Force and Decimate Defenses synergize really well with the reaper specialization, as well as every other trait line. Both are universal bonuses that apply to multiple weapons, as well as Shroud itself. Both have powerful, build defining effects. When compared to that, Soul Eater just doesn’t cut it.

My solution to this problem is to move things around. There is another titan of a trait that can compete with those two, and there aren’t any builds that are terribly hamstringed by being exclusive with Chilling Force and Decimate Defenses: Reaper’s Onslaught. So, my suggestion is to move Decimate Defenses and Chilling Force to the grandmaster tier, and move down chill of death and blighter’s boon. Soul Eater can compete with those two.

There’s only one minor build that gets penalized by this: Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper Dhuumfire builds. Now, instead of having the 15% attack rate with Onslaught + 50% crit rate with Decimate, that variant will have to choose to go with either. In exchange, it gets either Blighter’s Boon for more defense, or Chill of Death for more offense, so it isn’t a total loss.

I’m not sure if mesmers have the “most”. That would go to the engineer. But, mesmers do have a lot of utility.

I just wish the hammer didn’t randomly knockback enemies. That’s what really kills its useage.

I don’t know. I didn’t test that. I was comparing Sword/Axe with Greatsword. Throwing in additional longbow swaps would’ve added another variable.

So I devised a rather simple test. In the heart of the mists I decided to see how long it would take to kill the indestructible golem 5 times.

Amulet: Berserker
Runes: Ranger
Pet: Jungle Stalker/Jaguar.
Sigils: Force/Battle
Utilities: Healing Spring, Quickening Zephyr, Frost Spirit, Signet of the Wild, Strength of the pack

Sword + Axe/Axe
Build: Marksmanship 3 2, 1. Skirmishing 1, 1, 1. Beast Mastery 2, 3, 2.
Rotation: Auto attack until weapon swap. Then use Path of Scars.

Time 1: 1:09
Time 2: 1:11
Time 3: 1:10
Time without pet swapping: 1:14

Greatsword/Greatsword
Build: Marksmanship 3, 2, 2. Skirmishing 1, 1, 1. Beast Mastery 2, 2, 2.
Rotation: Spam skills when available. Weapon swap is timed to coincide with Maul for fastest maul times.

Time 1: 1:15
Time 2: 1:16
Time 3: 1:13

Average GS time: 1:14:7
Average Sword Time 1:11:0

I’m coming up with a 5% damage difference between the two. This is… quite a bit smaller than what my napkin math showed.

You’re probably wondering why it is I ran a test without pet swapping. It was a bit of trivia I was wondering about: the buffs on a pet reset when you swap them, so the copious might buffing from sword vanishes when swapped. I tested to see if it was better to not swap (jaguar), and turns out no, it is not.

Now for the next test that everyone is wondering about: the non-weapon swap variants. Often times, the off-hand will be reserved for longbow for ranging down a target. So, non-weapon swap variants. These will assume a slightly unique rotation, in that the fight will be opened with longbow rapidfire, and then a melee weapon will be swapped to. Also note, there is a slight build change here: instead of a Sigil of Battle on the off-hand, a sigil of strength is used instead.

Greatsword
Time 1: 1:16
Time 2: 1:16
Time 3: 1:20

Sword/Axe
Time 1: 1:07
Time 2: 1: 05
Time 3: 1:07

I think that the superior numbers here are from the superiority of the sigil of strength. Anyway, comparing these numbers, the sword is 16.6% better than the Greatsword.

So, you’re all probably wondering why it is that the GS/GS is nearly the same as Sword + Axe/Axe, but when taken by themselves the Sword + Axe does so much more damage than the Greatsword. That all comes down to two traits: Furious Grip, and Quick Draw. On the Greatsword, the weapon swap of maul → one AA chain → maul contributes a surprising amount of DPS bonus, both through the high damage of the combo and also through vulnerability. On the GS/GS run vulnerability was frequently capped, but on the single weapon run it was only occasionally capped. With Furious Grip the return of opening strike was always put onto maul, giving a 25% bonus where it was needed most.

Path of Scars, while a good skill, isn’t as much of a linchpin in sword DPS. So, when taken by itself, the sword does substantially more damage than the greatsword.

Elitism isn’t about efficiency as much as it is about patience and tolerance. The necessities bar for most things in the game is really low, so low that much of the “group content” can be soloed. At that point, extra bodies are a convenience, so it is really about how convenient you see other classes as. Necros and Rangers, sadly, aren’t convenient enough.

Part of it has to deal with newbie issues. Due to the nature of the game, a necro or ranger is more likely to be a newbie player that has to be taught. Some people subconsciously adopt this and become bigoted, seeing the entire class as bad.

Good news is, this isn’t as bad as it used to be. It is quite rare to see a “heavy’s only” party, and only slightly less rare to see a “no xxx class”. Right now the big thing is “80s”, which has actually become nearly obsolete with the recent rebalancing of level scaling.

Guys, my numbers aren’t the end all beat all. They just assume certain effects under an indefinitely long fight.

#1: Yes, I basically did assume double greatsword for furious grip. You can still make use of furious grip with something like the longbow, but drastically changes how the battle plays out. That assumption is just a product of me using another person’s tests on onslaught vs. remorseless.

#2: This involves a very basic strategy for sword. Many pure sword DPS builds will have double axes as the offhand, taking advantage of the weapon swap traits to use Path of Scars on a 9 second cooldown. Doing this, we’ll get a sword DPS of 414, or a 13.7% increase.

#3: Pets exist, and contribute meaningfully to a player’s DPS. I didn’t calculate pet numbers because I don’t know where to begin.

#4: Opening Strike exists for the sword, too. Under indefinite assumptions opening strike is minimal benefit. But real fights don’t play out like that. Melee rangers burst down very quickly with quickness.

Personally, I consider any increase above 10% to be significant, because 10% is the maximum amount of variability in damage from RNG alone. Sword has that, so against single targets it is a noticable damage loss.

I’m probably going to have to come up with a new kind of test. My inability to factor in pet damage is hamstringing things.

Fractal Daily. Then I’m going to spend most of my time gathering while I watch stuff on TV/youtube. Then I’ll power personal story on my new toons. Probably end the day with Triple Trouble.

Good child syndrome.

I’ve had a guard since launch. Played it off and on. Never really got into it, because I like a challenge. The guard always felt strong. Useful. Needed. It wasn’t hard to play a guard. PVP or PVE, same thing. Powerful field manipulation, powerful support skills, plenty of active defenses, slightly low damage but it was fine. Everyone is glad to have a guardian around. It was a good class.

Other classes, they get buffed and nerfed a lot. They go from OP to UP, but guardians are in a good place. They’re the good class, so they don’t need as much attention. They aren’t lacking as many things as other classes. I mean sure, condi guard was a long ways off for awhile, but otherwise they were solid. You don’t want to suddenly dump everything onto the good class. They’re already fine, and you don’t want to mess up what is already fine.

So, everyone else gets attention. Mesmers especially, because memsers were not a good class. Mesmers were a bad class, always being picked on by the thief. But now, the tables have turned. Mesmers now pick on thieves. Power is shifting drastically, but the Guardian is a good class, so it doesn’t need attention.

/end musing

For those unaware, “Good Child Syndrome” is the tendency for a child in a multiple-children household to be emotionally neglected and starved for attention because their birth order and good behavior has left their parents to focus all their attention on the other, more problematic children. Usually it is a middle child that suffers this, as the eldest is always venturing into new problems and the youngest needs the most emotional support.

To be fair, Guardian’s aren’t wholly neglected. Feel My Wrath is a very powerful skill which makes all other forms of quickness pale in comparison. The trait synergy for hammer has increased substantially. The Radiance line now gives me constant fury that I didn’t have before. Condi guards are actually a thing now. The additional points mean we can go into full virtues for a useful toolbox, honor for endurance and some group buffs/heals, and valor if you want a more defensive line.

Its not all bad. There are some traits that I would work around/change, though.

Harper.4173:

You can’t simultaneously make the same content accessible to the average or new player and still challenging and difficult for the veteran – you can do one or the other – never both.

I am assuming you are conceding all other points. But this, right here, is where you are wrong. The phrase “easy to learn, hard to master” exists for a reason.

The problem was diagnosed years ago. The GC meta is sustained by the lackluster enemy and encounter design. GW2’s combat system was made PVP first, and it shows. There are a multitude of objectives that can be accomplished each in many ways, and because of this multiple varieties of gear and builds are enforced. The enemies are designed like this were a standard MMO, with poor AI and one or two skills. The objectives the same: 99% of problems are solved ultimately by killing enemies.

Not all balance is the same. The high performance of GC gear is supported primarily by the high concentration of burst that all enemies have. Higher ambient damage means more value in passive defenses, and more effective healing capacitance.

There are many more ways in which the game can be made more difficult that punishes melee GC gear more than anything else, however these are harder to program. AI that closes for burst or kites players, skills that give temporary but powerful defensive abilities, enemies that ambush with relatively high burst, etc and so on. Basically take all the things that make running full GC gear risky in PVP, and put them in PVE.

The whole discussion is moot. Anet already plan to do this. They’ve already done some of it with mordrem and aetherblades, and they’re going to continue doing it.

Ever heard the expression: “A late game is good eventually. An unfinished game is bad forever”? It kind of applies here.

An expansion pack is a chance to re-sell a game. if the expansion pack goes horribly, then the name of the game will be soured for years. HoT shouldn’t be rushed, because rushing it will just mean a worse experience in exchange for a theoretical (and unlikely) cash grab.

This is one of those thoughts that I have frequently. The reason why racism is bad in the real world is because it is incorrect. There’s very little difference between individuals of different physical features.

But in fantasy game settings, we aren’t dealing with the same species but with minor alterations. We’re dealing with entirely different species, which have entirely different biology. Different organs, different hormonal balance, different development pacing and stages, different lifespans and aging, different diets, and a wholly alien ecology. I can kind of understand the animosity when the other “race” is something like an intangible alien who consumes zero point energy for sustenance. The correct term would be specie-ism.

I understand the allegory that is being made, but I can’t help but think it is a bit incongruent when the other “race” is more biologically similar to a fern than a human.

I want the evade on Death Blossom to be longer. Though the skill isn’t ideal for a pure power build, on my hybrid and condi builds it is awesome. 3 × 10 bleeds in an AoE is great, and the whirl finisher is decent, too.

Petrol.9086:

You need to add Swoop and maybe even Hilt Bash(Since it increases your pet’s next attack by 50%) to the GS calculation if you want to compare them fairly.

Also i find it odd that Path of Scars has higher dps than Maul when the latter hits about as hard but recharges three times as fast with two hand training.
Another wildcard there is how often Path of Scars bugs out and doesen’t return

I knew I forgot something. Swoop is a DPS loss, though. Hit bash is good, but a single pet attack being 50% stronger in a 25 second period… kind of hard to factor in. I’d need to know the attack rate of pets. Crude experimentation is getting an attack rate of about 20 times in 25 seconds, so hit bash will raise one of them by 1.5. This is about a 2.5% damage increase overall on the pet, so I guess you could throw that on.

I also forgot the recharge reduction on Maul with two-handed training, and the damage boost from opening strike. Previously I just listed the vulnerability stacking. So, including the recharge reduction only, you’ll get

Sword:367
GS: 300

At base. Factoring in the rest of the damage mods. 5% for two handed training. 7.5% for remorseless vulnerability. 7.5% for remoreseless increased damage.

Sword: 404
GS: 364

Total difference: 11%

The thing with Path of Scars/Maul is that I am listing DPS per activation time. You’re thinking of DPS per recharge. It isn’t shown directly in the math, but Maul is raises GS DPS much more than Path of Scars raises sword DPS.

While some of these are indeed a problem – some aren’t.

You’re nitpicking. My point stands.

More attacks but don’t forget your dodges and active skills also come off cool down so technically staying alive longer also gives you more changes to actively mitigate damage

No, it doesn’t. You might get one more shot, and thats it. What keeps people alive is disengage, where they switch to a ranged weapon and run away from a fight.

The difference is fighting the mob for 1-2-5 minutes then wiping can be a much more rewarding experience in terms of learning the game and the boss’ mechanics than wipin in the first 10 seconds of the fight and having to run back, wipe again after 10-20 seconds and repeat.

The boss fight lasts 30 seconds. And no, it isn’t more rewarding. It is discouraging, doing trivial damage slowly only to be overpowered anyway.

In a 5 man full zerker team provided all players are newbies if one or more players go down they will most likely all go down.
It happens with experienced players. So I can only imagine how newbies do it.

Experienced players stack. Newbie players run around all over the place. The boss can’t focus damage, so when he’s chasing one player another is healing the downed.

At one point you mentioned this “delaying the inevitable” and while this could hold true I explained above how this delay can be fruitful and beneficial to the newbies while the instant wipe is far more detrimental.

And I’ve been explaining to you that it isn’t true. It isn’t instant wipe. It isn’t far more detrimental.

Having a chance to adapt and learn a fight is much more present in the drawn out engagement compared to the almost instant wipe.

Its not. Learning a fight in zerker gear is easy: you only need to successfully read and predict once or twice, and you’re good. Rinse and repeat for future encounters.

Ultimately I’m trying to point out that while GC gear is optimal for experienced veterans that like to farm dungeons it’s rarely seen used by players who are new and inexperienced.

It is rarely used by new players because they have a large set of incorrect preconceived notions about how the PVE game works. Both from PVP in this game and PVE in other games.

I also don’t see the reason GC shouldn’t be really good in one area of the game considering that other gear sets have their respective areas where they’re better than GC gear.

Two probelms.

#1: Balance. When Anet makes PVE content, they either have to balance it for the layman and make it too easy for vets in max DPS gear, or they balance it for max DPS gear and make it too hard for the layman.

#2: Preference in play is still a really big thing. Anet themselves have said that they didn’t intend or want the zerker meta that currently exists. Making other gear more useful means more people feel fulfilled in their playstyle. And no, they aren’t trying to obsolete the full GC party. They’re trying to raise the skill cap in specific ways so that you have to actually be skilled to pull it off. Currently, GC gear wins by sheer statistical fortitude alone.

Harper.4173:

Snip

That’s why I’m telling you your idea is a purely theoretical one – in reality a 5man newbie zerker party will wipe AC like there’s no tomorrow because they have no experience with the game.

Snip

You are drastically underestimating the damage done by enemy attacks, and how little damage is actually mitigated by passive defenses. Kholers spin, for example, will still OHKO players who are in knight or carrion armor. The same goes for Colossus Rumblus rocks fall everyone dies attack. Same goes for the trolls leap. Same goes for the Howling King’s Scream. Same goes for the Scavanger’s Pounce and consecutive stun. Maybe if you are in PVT armor and you don’t get focused/crit you’ll survive, but a surprisingly large amount of time having twice the effective health means nothing. Getting twice the effective health is actually pretty hard, since you need full soldiers in order to achieve it.

These proportions are tight, and active defenses are very finite. So, the correct statement would be “Should the attack deal enough damage to kill a GC toon but not a non-GC toon, then you get one additional chance to dodge”. Sure, you technically get another chance to dodge, but this neglects the fact that the longer lived enemy gets to launch far more attacks. Even if you dodge precisely in tanky gear, you’ll end up taking more damage because of the enemy’s longer lifespan. If you imprecisely dodge, you’ll get the same amount of progress either way.

You’re also assuming that there is an entire group wipe every time something goes wrong. Even in a full newb group that is rarely the case. The couple of players who survive can rez the downed ones, thus giving them a much larger margin of error than what you are depicting. They still have heal skills, they still have protection, they still have stun breaks, etc. and so on. Even at launch, players were using their utility bar to increase their survival, and were quite effective at it. They’re also good at running away and attacking at range. Back when the game was first launched, the strategy of the time was one person kite while someone heals the others. Keeping at range is a surprisingly good defensive tactic.

You’re also forgetting that higher DPS is a cumulative bonus, whereas higher durability is a personal bonus. The faster an enemy dies, the faster it stops dealing damage to everyone. Every player with higher damage contributes more and more to the groups survival. The sum total of this contribution is quite staggering, and it makes the tools available to the players more potent.

EDIT: I mused over these points years ago. There’s really two factors that changes how well GC gear does over durable gear:

#1: Healing Capacitance. This is the capability to receive heals. The more durable you are, the more overall healing you can receive. If you are in a situation where you’ve managed to avoid the threshold of lethal damage, this is only meaningful if you are receiving enough health to compensate for that damage. Otherwise, the loss in power just delays the inevitable.

#2: Clinched thresholds. Enemy damage isn’t constant. It is segmented into bursts. Because of the massive heal after every fight, you only need just enough effective HP to survive. This burst delay is the period of time in which more durable gear can make up for the damage they’ve lost. By survivng the lethal hit, a more durable gearset can be more effective if they are capable of downing the enemy between bursts. This benefit lies in the fact that going full tank or full GC isn’t the most efficient combination of EHP x DPS.

These are both rare circumstances in PVE. You brought up one sort-of brought up one in rezzing other players, but this isn’t true healing capacitance, since it requires another player belly up and sacrifice their own safety to bring someone back. Given the statistical similarity between the two gear sets, unless one of those content-specific thresholds are met, GC gear will outpreform tank gear by sheer statistical fortitude alone.

I can do some napkin math.

Sword/Axe: Auto attack takes 1.8 seconds. Does 202, 202, 235 damage. AA DPS is 355.
Hornets Sting: takes about 1 second. Does 235 damage for 235 DPS
Monarch’s Leap: Don’t have the timing on this. Assuming at least a quarter second aftercast, this does 336 DPS
Serpent’s Strike: Does 235 damage over the course of 1 second. Assuming at least a quarter second aftercast, this does 188 DPS
Path of Scars: 235 × 2 damage. Assuming quarter second after cast, this is 627 DPS
Whirling Defense: 1008 damage over 5 seconds. 202 DPS.
Notes 1: AA sustains 2.8 stacks of might per target hit on the pet. Against 3 targets this is about 8.3 stacks of might.
Note 2: AA’s second move only hits 1 target.

Greatsword: Takes 2.56 seconds for the full rotation. Tooltips are 203, 203, 240. Tooltip DPS is 252 for the auto attack.
Maul: 434 tooltip damage. Assuming a quarter second aftercast, it has 434 DPS + 5% extra afterward for 8 seconds.
Swoop: 327 over 2 seconds. 164 DPS
Counterattack: insufficient data to calculate DPS. No known animation time.
Hit Bash: 185 damage over, assuming a quarter second aftercast, 0.75 seconds. DPS is 247.
Note 1: Maul hits 5 targets.

To get these DPS numbers, I take the highest recharge skill (path of scars, maul), and then see how may auto attacks go into that recharge time, then divide that by recharge + attack time of the highest recharge skill.

(Single Target)
Sword: 367 DPS
Greatsword: 289 DPS

(3 Targets)
Sword: 896
Greatsword: 868

(5 targets)
Sword: 896
Greatsword: 992

Now, for modifiers. Note, I’m only listing modifiers that would be different between each build. Otherwise they cancel out (I.e. steady focus).

Sword: Predators Onslaught (10%),

Greatsword: Two hand Training (5%), Remorseless (7.5%).

Single Target:
Sword: 404
Greatsword: 326

I’ll have to test opening strike against simultaneous enemies. If it doesn’t distribute the vulnerability to everyone, then… things get complicated.

Anyway, from napkin math it looks like sword does 24% more damage than Greatsword against a single target. Against multiple targets, this evens out, though. There are several wild cards, though:

#1: Pet DPS, Sword. This is the tricky one, since both weapons affect it. If you take Companion’s Might, assuming 70% crit rate, Sword will stack 9.2 stacks of might on a single target, and 22 stacks of might against multiple targets. Using a cat (say, Jaguar) with beast mastery, this is an 18% / 43% direct damage increase, and a 75% / 180% increase in condition damage.

#2: Pet DPS, Greatsword. Vulnerability has an effect, too. Companion’s might will stack 4 stacks of might on a single target, and 13 stacks against multiple targets. The GS will maintain, on average, 13.2 stacks of vulnerability on a single target (multiple targets needs to be tested). So, using the Jaguar again, the total damage boost will be a 22% direct damage boost on a single target, and 50% condi damage.

#3: Specific weapon rotations. It isn’t said, but the current set up implies greatsword/greatsword for furious grip.

#4: Party DPS, and how vulnerability affects it. Particularly, how much the party applies, too.

#5: Evades. All evades that aren’t attached to the GS auto attack count as a DPS loss. Should the GS auto happen to be timed to avoid attacks, this will be a DPS boost for the GS.

#6: Burst. This is all assuming a stable fight. However, as well all know, melee rangers like to combine Signet of the Wild, Zephy’rs Speed, and Quickening Zephyr together to do a furious burst. Done within opening strike, and things get crazy.

The question becomes this: does all that compensate for the 24% in which the GS lags behind the sword with? I’m not so sure.

Mostly I miss the traits.

While the greatsword and the shouts are subpar, the Reaper actually had a couple of good things going for it. Reaper Shroud was solid, but the main thing were those traits. They were oh so delicious. Decimate Defenses, Reaper’s Onslaught, Blighter’s Boon, Chilling Force, Relentless Pursuit, Cold Shoulder, heck even Augury of Death in the right circumstances. They combo so well with each other, and so well with other specializations. There’s just so much to play with.

All of the “leet” groups don’t use corner pulling anymore. The corner pull was fast mostly because Fiery Greatsword was OP in corners for a bit. Now, the groups just run up and fight the enemies where they stand, usually relying on mesmer focus pull or guardian greatsword pull to stack enemies.

I think the tempest is fine. I’m actually looking forward to using it when it is fully released.

Yes, some traits/skills need to be buffed. But I’m not going to throw my hands up and declare that Anet start over again.

Of course I actually believe it. That’s why I said it. Work this out logically:

GIVEN: The survival time X DPS of gear sets are the same.
IF skill dodges are necessary to complete an objective
THEN performance will falter equally when skill dodges are absent.

In my experience, players who transition to zerker gear see a performance boost. They wonder why it is they weren’t wearing zerker gear before. This is largely because of how newbs play: They sit a maximum range plinking away with ranged weapons. When your combat style depends entirely upon kiting and keeping an enemy at a distance, all the toughness and vitality doesn’t do you much good. So, when they swap to zerker and see all those big crits (really it is a 50% or so damage increase over soldier/knight), they do better.

You’re probably confusing meta tactics with GC gear. The transition to using primarily melee weapons and burst skills carries with it both a significantly larger DPS increase than gear switching, and a significantly higher risk involved. It can be quite brutal for a new player to swap to melee combat, and it is here that I see many players falter.

And this was the case – even in GW2’s dungeons at launch. It was hard – going full berserker was considered very difficult and very few players could and would do it.
In time as players got better, more knowledgeable and learned more about the game this changed.
3 years later – can people still expect dungeons to provide the same level of challenge for veterans that they provide for new players?

That’s because it was harder. As time has gone on, the lower level content has been nerfed repeatedly.

This suggestion seems like it would be more overpowered than the recharge bug we had earlier. Because at least then you had to spend 10 seconds or so recasting all of your mantras.

Harper.4173:

DPS and skill is highly rewarded – I will again ask you what do you think will happen if you take 5 unskilled or new players – slap berserker gear and damage traits on them and send them to do even simple runs of AC.
Or if you want to take it more seriously – send them to Arah or FOTM 20+.
Tell me – what do you think will happen?

They do just fine.

There’s a little bit of trivia that people don’t know about our gear system: Its actually fairly balanced. When taking the overall damage output x effective HP, comparing the two identical builds with different gear sets results in nearly identical performance. The ability to kill things faster produces a similar DPS drop as being more durable, and the increased survival time means an increased damage output length that is roughly equivalent to just doing damage faster. It is like this for all but nomad’s gear.

It is balanced like this for PVP’s sake. It works fine there. But, in PVE you don’t have zerker enemies or soldiers enemies. You just have enemies. Against any standard enemy, face tanking and auto attacking will produce nearly similar results, regardless of your gear type. So, if you put a bunch of n00bs in either zerker or knights gear, the result will be the same either way.

The imbalance comes from three things:

#1: Reward rates. While on a fight by fight basis the gear is equal, if you take the total event time for completion they are not equal. Higher DPS gives you rewards faster.

#2: Group Contribution. A player with increased durability only “contributes” to the overall performance of the group if they are capable of absorbing attacks. Sometimes this is possible, but the aggro system in this game is finicky, and many enemies have wide AoE arcs of damage. However, pure damage is always a group contribution. Dead deals no DPS, so increased kill times against an enemy means increased party durability.

#3: Active defenses. Active defense give finite windows of damage mitigation for their recharge. This gives a window where the damage mitigation between glass cannon tanky gear is identical. The faster you can kill an enemy, the greater proportion of time this mitigation window takes up of the fight. This leads to the rather contradictory phenomena where being more durable actually makes you take more damage.

Under normal circumstances, the performance of GC gear would be balanced by the higher downed and defeated rate. But the game just isn’t hard enough. The good news is, this is a problem that Anet is already working on.

panzer.6034:

Still waiting for swimsuits

I came here just to say this. And now I’m off. Woosh!

If I remember correctly, it wasn’t just thieves, either. All blind fields except well of darkness received this treatment.

Arnath.2319:

Now we receive the worst elite specialization (thus far) Dragon Hunter, with the worst skills in the game (Traps) with a Longbow that is weaker then Scepter and Virtues that are weaker then the current Virtues.

Reaper says hi. But seriously though, I feel your pain. Right now the only good use for the shield is as a buffer for reflecting wurm eggs. Shielding of Judgement is too slow and accomplishes basically the same thing as an ele swapping to earth attunement. Shield of Absorption… I imagine this has uses in PVP, but in PVE it is a horrible reflect that forces a self stun and knockback.

I spent most of the weekend with the reaper, so I only have a few ideas:

#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.

I have a minor idea on what to do with the elite.

Instead of making the next skill used within 6 seconds or so have a 20% reduced recharge, make all skills used in 6 seconds have a 20% reduced recharge.

Might be OP, might not. But at least it might be worth using.

SkiTz.4590:

LOL. Dungeon community is perfectly fine. That is not the reason anets dung team was abandoned. NO ONE is forcing you to speed run or join PUGS that clearly say they are speed running.

You are free to start a LFG that says casual/relaxed run.

IT WILL FILL UP IMMEDIATELY.

There’s TONs of players that aren’t looking for speed runs

Why are you hating on people for wanting to start a group thats goal is to finish the dungeon asap?

Both LFGs are perfectly accepted (speed running minmaxers and casual runs). Just avoid the group that you don’t want to be a part of. No one will give you crap.

Open world community can be toxic as well.
Plenty of trash talking in teq maps that aren’t being 100% perfect.
I remember how toxic the map chat was during twisted marionette platform fight failures.

My memory is quite a bit longer than everyone elses, apparently. I remember the debacles that the dungeon community would perpetrate. First it was confined, but upon Anet nerfting the CoF P1 farm, it became widespread and severe. The dungeon runners would pop up in random threads, harassing people for not using their builds and play style. Accusing them of being wastes of space, selfish leechers, “carebears”, etc. Then it took a turn for the worse, where instead of actually explaining themselves, they adopted troll logic and the most condescending attitude of elitism I had ever seen. They saw it fit to insult other people into submission instead of explaining themselves. Then, when the community lashed out against them, they played the victim, claiming “oh, it’s just the way we do things. you’re discriminating against my playstyle!!!”. I’ve lost count of how many of them changed account names.

The most recent attitude is a product of this: after learning that harassing random people doesn’t work, they “keep to themselves”, in the sense that they claim that everyone can do whatever they want and pretend that their sense of elitism doesn’t trickle down through the community. Everything is fine, except for the dozens of bingo threads they have to shout down on a daily basis, because otherwise… things wouldn’t be fine, now would they? But hey, it isn’t like one of their most popular threads consists of them making fun of the uninformed masses. After Anet stopped focusing on dungeons, the influence of these players has dropped, and now they are only mildly cancerous instead of the rampaging malignant social tumor they once were.

I’ve played PVP for months, WvW for months, overworld PVE for months, and dungeons for months. Dungeons are the worst. Dungeons manufacture a singular, refined, and focused hatred, whereas any failed event in PVE is just generalized frustration shouting toward the sky. A failed match in WvW can be attributed to the other team, and the same as in PVP as well. Maybe when the day comes where I am approached by random players and ritualistically harassed to leave the overworld map for playing a Necro, then the communities would be equal.

The whole “just make your own LFG and no one will bother you” thing is a big lie. I’ve made countless “anyone welcome”, or “casual run” LFGs. Do you know what happens? Other people will hijack your party and kick you. One player will join and decide to try and solo the whole dungeon before anyone else joins, robbing other players of chests. I’ll watch the LFG, and watch the standard “80s speed exp zerk” parties appear and fill several times over before one person joins my party. They’ll join, see someone who isn’t 80, then immediately leave without saying a word, forcing me to have to put the LFG up again. I’ll still get people who will demand someone (usually the ranger or necro) alt to a “real class”, and then quit the team when they refuse to change.

It is obvious why the dungeon team was disbanded. Dungeons have the worst community in the entire game. It is the only source of class discrimination and gear discrimination PVE side. This is contrary to Anets goal of having everyone do anything and everything, no judgement.

In the open world, any player’s flaws are hidden amongst the zerg.

coso.9173:

I wonder why everyone says that all modern MMOs are WoW clones? Excepting a few, I don’t see it. How is GW2 a WoW clone? Because it has armor and levels and dungeons and crafting? I think too generic to categorize it as a wow clone

#1: Gear Tiers that require high wealth/grind to ascend (note)
#2: Leveling and statistical based combat
#3: Over-the-head camera placement
#4: Menial tasks handed out as quests
#5: Generic Fantasy Setting with machines and magic
#6: Cooldown restrained skill based combat
#7: General interface layout
#8: Multiple species as “races” to play
#9: Similar dungeon and raid like content (note)
#10: Randomized loot drops and tables
#11: Crafting and Gathering
#12: Similar build customization schemes.
#13: Compartmentalized and segmented PVP
#14: Themepark style design
#15: Guilds and their associated perks
#16: Class based skill restrictions
#17: Large economy that drives much of the in-game content

There’s probably more. My knowledge of WoW is limited to the occasional video/article on the subject. But, let me put it this way: If I were to take a screenshot of both of these games and show them to someone who is completely unaffiliated with videogames, would they be able to pick apart what is different between the two? Or would they just say “these look the same”?

Notes: GW2 is attempting to be a rebel in a certain fashion, using, for a lack of a better word, socialist design philosophies with how they make their game. They make all but the most extreme gear tier readily available, with the highest tier not being significantly stronger. Everyone gets rewards and can participate in whatever event they walk in to. Everything is heavily level scaled as to not give an advantage to higher level or better geared players. Everything grants experience. Every class can fulfill every role. So on and so forth. While many of these are QoL upgrades from the former systems, these aren’t new systems. They’re the same system, but with a different spin on how things work.

GW2 isn’t an outright WoW clone. As far as the genre goes, it is comparatively far from it. But, the similarities of WoW are so engrained into the genre that even when attempting to make a different game, it end sup looking and feeling like WoW on the surface.

MrRuin.9740:

Asgaeroth.6427:

People aren’t leaving MMOs, look at the top lists on Steam. People are spreading out to the various MMOs. TERA’s Steam launch came around the same time GW2 HoT preorders started. TERA is GW2’s main competition right now, and I’m sure more than a few people used the Steam launch of TERA to talk themselves out of buying HoT and switching games. MMO playership is growing, but there is ever more and more MMOs to play so each individual game has more competition.

There is much more to point to the contrary. Big-name MMO’s shutting down, MMO’s doing server merges, MMO’s dropping fees and prices in a desperate attempt to gain and keep players, big-name MMO’s like WoW having their populations drop substantially.
When people leave one MMO and go to another and yet more others only to find them generically the same, they eventually leave the genre entirely to play or do something else more engaging, since no developer in the MMO genre has the imagination to reinvent it or do anything substantial with it.

This is a relevant video. The problem isn’t imagination, it is money. Due to the time and financial investment required for MMOs playerside, the MMO market is highly competitive and exclusive. Anything that doesn’t stick to the WoW formula is considered too big a financial risk for investors. This fear is so pervasive that GW2, which is different mostly on a superficial and QoL level, was considered a high risk and likely to fail.

spoj.9672:

Because you can compare skills directly without worrying about stat differences between builds/classes. Its standard theory crafting practise to use the coefficients. You can also get a rough estimation of dps by using coefficients per second. And then simply multiply that by weapon strength, power, damage mods and crit mod and divide by armour for actual dps. Its basically the the base number. So noone needs to calculate the coefficient from tool tips just to calculate damage at a different power. It skips a step.

Maybe im just being anal. But i find it a lot easier to see the damage difference when its in coefficient or coefficient per second (cps) form. I believe it also makes more sense to the devs because thats the number they actually have in their system which they change to tweak damage. (Would love to be corrected if im wrong on this)

If this were a cross-class examination, you might be right. But it isn’t. This is all internally necro. You still have to worry about particular builds when dealing with coefficients. Particularly, I’d have to factor in weapon attack strength when balancing, so the coefficients wouldn’t be an accurate representation of the real proportion between dagger DPS and greatsword DPS.

The tooltip numbers are fine, so long as you have the sense to use identical builds when comparing them. Going off of coefficients is going to reduce everything to a form that isn’t readily understood by the population, and make everything more complicated when I have to factor in intrinsic properties of the weapons that I took out to get the coefficients in the first place.

Power scales linearly. If you want to find out the damage at a different power, then the formula is easy: listed tooltip damage x new power / old power.

Anchoku.8142:

GS has a lot of AoE so of course it should be weaker against single targets. The problem I have is that range is too close to dagger. It should be a bit longer, perhaps 240 minimum.

Its called opportunity cost. The greatsword takes forever to preform its attacks. Because of this, the GS will lose a lot of damage whenever any of these situations arise:

#1: You’re forced to dodge or get out of the way of an enemy attack.
#2: You are interrupted before finishing the long windup
#3: The enemy is killed before you can launch the attack.
#4: The enemy gets knocked away before the attack can finish.
#5: The enemy downs you before you can down it.
#6: The GS is not fighting multiple tightly packed targets.

The problem is exacerbated greatly by the following fact: Reaper Shroud’s auto attack has, unboosted, higher DPS than the greatsword. It his the same amount of targets, but does so faster. So really greatsword has no excuse.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

This is something I hear a lot. I cannot disagree more on this matter.

The reaper is a really solidly built line, and it actually has several things that are good for condi builds. Chilling nova with bitter chill adds vulnerability, chilling force gives much needed life force and might to condi builds, blighter’s boon also generates life force, and a correct working reaper’s onslaught combos with dhuumfire for 15% more burns. For a condi build, the combo of Terrify -> Executioner’s Scythe ->Soul Spiral with bitter chill is a deadly combination, inflicting 44 ticks of poison while capping out vulnerability.

Previously, condi necros didn’t have as much by way of life force generation or vulnerability stacking. While Dhuumfire + Reaper’s Onslaught will be a competing option (increasing burn stacks by 15%), should a condi build not want to take dhuumfire, it needs a trait that can compete. Blighter’s Boon makes for a good defensive option, but an offensive option is necessary. Enter Deathly Chill.

My scaling choice is mostly arbitrary. If I wanted to be technical, I could compare the relative uptime of chill on a condi build vs. the attack rate and burn stacking of the Dhuumfire + Onslaught combo. But, that requires a set of lengthy real-world testing that I just don’t have the resources to get. So I just set it as equivalent to a burn at base.

I dunno, man. Seems like an awful lot of swimming upstream when you could just go power and probably do better. Or stick with the standard condi application methods… or just play a condi Engineer and apply way more condition pressure for way less work. I just don’t see the point in putting in so much effort to make this condi build function.

There’s a problem with that logic. If your options are “just play an engineer”, then condi necro will never be good. No, the correct thing to do is improve condi necro, because it’ll make more people happy.

I think we came to a lot of the same conclusions. Though personally I swing the balance hammer quite a bit harder. Mainly I’m trying to balance things internally, because as it stands I won’t be using either the utilities or the weapon the specialization provides. The higher opportunity costs of the GS balance out the target cap, and the highly situational scaling on the shouts means that I’ll be better off with something like wells, which do similar things but don’t scale down.

This is mostly a PVE perspective, BTW.

I do agree that Shivers of Dread is an odd case, because Fear is an odd case. The only builds that have any tangible amount of fear are terror specific builds, so really this trait is a QoL upgrade more than anything else. There is one combo I think this would work with, but even if Deathly Chill getting a significant buff I’m not sure the curses/soul reaping/reaper build will be worth it.

I think dagger needs a buff. 3 things:

#1: The LF gain from the auto should scale up depending on how many targets you hit. Currently it doesn’t.

#2: Life Siphon takes too long, does too little damage, and heals too little.

#3: Dark Pact’s animation time is too long.

Fairly simple fixes. #1, make it scale. #2, 40% damage boost and 40% healing boost, 2.5 second channel time. #3 reduce animation time by 0.25 seconds.

My biggest concern with DH is the longbow’s auto attack. The reason why I looked forward to LB was because of how bad scepter is as a ranged weapon. Enemies literally shimmy in place to nullify the weapon. If LB has the same problem, then there’s not much point to going DH.

The reason why the engineer forum is so positive is because the engineer is the second best class in the game. While not as potent as the elementalist, it is far more diverse. This leads to a situation that is completely unique as far as professions go: Whatever the problem is or whatever the situation demands, the engineer has the tools for the job.

The other class forums are so embittered because they’re impotent. Most classes (even the elementalist) are lacking some kind of crucial tool, and when a situation arises where that tool is necessary they get pounded. Necromancer has little to no group utility and poorly scaling personal survival, rangers are stuck with pets and have minimal group buffs and support, thieves are wholly reliant on stealth and delayed skill evades to survive, mesmers DPS is unreliable and generally low sustained with mostly niche support utilities, Guardians have low DPS with bad ranged options and no escapes, Ele’s have no boon hate and are really frail. I don’t know what warriors have. This is a most generalized version, but you get the jist: there’s a bunch of things that these classes don’t do, and it comes back to bite them in the butt. It is understandable why they’re sore.

But the engineer doesn’t have that problem. Given time to think and a little problem solving, there is no issue an Engineer can’t overcome. Engi’s a chill because of this.

Question: has anyone checked if Reaper’s Shroud has the same damage reduction as Death Shroud?

Blaine Tog.8304:

— Chill of Death: I actually think the low condition damage scaling is kinda a good thing here. Greatsword is clearly a power weapon and the Reaper in general is more for power builds than for condition damage. As such, it makes sense not to bait Conditionmancers with damaging Chills. Just give it appropriate base numbers as an extra source of damage for power/tanky Reapers and leave the scaling low.

This is something I hear a lot. I cannot disagree more on this matter.

The reaper is a really solidly built line, and it actually has several things that are good for condi builds. Chilling nova with bitter chill adds vulnerability, chilling force gives much needed life force and might to condi builds, blighter’s boon also generates life force, and a correct working reaper’s onslaught combos with dhuumfire for 15% more burns. For a condi build, the combo of Terrify -> Executioner’s Scythe ->Soul Spiral with bitter chill is a deadly combination, inflicting 44 ticks of poison while capping out vulnerability.

Previously, condi necros didn’t have as much by way of life force generation or vulnerability stacking. While Dhuumfire + Reaper’s Onslaught will be a competing option (increasing burn stacks by 15%), should a condi build not want to take dhuumfire, it needs a trait that can compete. Blighter’s Boon makes for a good defensive option, but an offensive option is necessary. Enter Deathly Chill.

My scaling choice is mostly arbitrary. If I wanted to be technical, I could compare the relative uptime of chill on a condi build vs. the attack rate and burn stacking of the Dhuumfire + Onslaught combo. But, that requires a set of lengthy real-world testing that I just don’t have the resources to get. So I just set it as equivalent to a burn at base.

spoj.9672:

Tooltip damage varies depending on your power. So using damage numbers like the ones on the wiki doesnt make much sense. Its best to use the coefficients. As they are always constant.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aI9lEpPZLiNVf7ibEeVzV1h_-aWWt-JEGW0suFgaewM/edit#gid=0

These are current coefficients. Id suggest tweaking your feedback to reflect coefficients. Or at least list the power you have with these tooltips.

The feedback is exactly the same. I’m comparing, under identical conditions, the tooltip damage between dagger and all other skills. Thus, the ratios between coefficients and tooltip damage are the same.

Actually, scratch that. It’s better. Coefficients don’t take into consideration weapon attack strength.

Explanation for Reaper Shroud Changes: Reaper’s Shroud is mostly fine. My main concern currently is that Soul Spiral will be OP correct timings + onslaught (596 tooltip DPS). It will become a massive DPS boost, higher than new Gravedigger spam, and with more whirl to boot. But, I’d rather reign it in later than have it be undepowered for eternity. likewise, with the long animation of Executioner’s Strike I felt it needed a buff, too.

Explanation for Trait line Changes: The traitlines are already pretty solid. Nova was overnerfed (450% nerf), but they had a point, so I only increased the frequency by 50%. The numbers for Chill of Death were appalling, even in a full condition build. Chill is a condition that can’t be reliably stacked for long durations, and also doesn’t stack in intensity, and the effect of the trait was even less than that of a burn. So, as a baseline, I made it equivalent to burn, and 50% stronger below 50% health. Heck, it might need to be even stronger than that, given how infrequently a condi build inflicts chill in the first place.

Soul Eater is the oddball, because even with my buffs it’ll never be used. Decimate Defenses and Chilling Force are too powerful and too universal in all game modes. The paltry lifesteal and recharge for the greatsword just cannot compete. Soul Eater, were it not to have such stiff competition, would be a fine trait on its own. I contemplated moving traits around, and currently I think the best option is to swap Soul Eater with Reaper’s Onslaught, since that doesn’t break too many combos. Shroud focused build lose Chilling Force, but gain Blighter’s Boon, so it is a fair trade. Shroud builds can also take death’s perception instead of decimate defenses, letting them get their precision back. Reaper’s Onslaught is another titan of a trait, and so it can compete with the other two masteries.

Explanation of Shout Changes: When necromancers asked for utilities that scaled vs. how many targets we fought, apparently Anet heard “sucks unless scaled vs. multiple targets”. The changes I’ve made to the shouts are basically the same change I made to Augury of Death: Strong base effect, minor scaling. Overall the secondary effects are slightly less powerful against 5 targets, but that is a fair trade given the newfound reliability of the shouts.

The shouts also needed a damage boost. To compare, Ele shouts were doing 2x to 3x the damage, but with no activation time and other additional effects. The only shouts I couldn’t really give the Augury treatment to were “Suffer!” and “Rise!”, because of how their effects work, so I just gave them blanket buffs. Chilled to the Bone’s effect is strong enough that it didn’t need buffs, but the long activation time meant that the skill could never be used effectively. I also gave it a damage bonus, because the damage it currently had wasn’t justified by the long recharge of the skill.

Greatsword Suggestions:
#1: Increase the damage of each hit of the greatsword by 25%. Increase the chill duration from 1.5 seconds base to 2 seconds base on the final hit.
#2: Increase the damage of Gravedigger by 25%. Increase the recharge reduction to 100%
#3: Increase the damage of Death Spiral by 25%
#4: Decrease the animation time of Nightfall from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. Change the radius to 300" for each hit instead of the final hit.
#5: Make grasping targets go in the direction that your character is facing, and not in the direction that the camera is facing.

Reaper Shroud Suggestions (NOTE: These changes are all assuming that Reaper’s Onslaught is fixed in the future. Reaper’s Onslaught increases the DPS by 15%).
#1: Death’s Charge should stop at your targets location, like every other leap in the game.
#2: Reduce the animation time of soul Spiral to 2 seconds.
#3: Increase the damage of Executioner’s Scythe by 15% at each tier.

Trait Suggestions:
#1: Augury of Death should have a 20% recharge reduction with 3% additional recharge per foe hit.
#2: Chilling Nova: Reduce the cooldown to 10 seconds.
#3: Increase the recharge reduction of Soul Eater from 3% to 5% per foe hit.
#4: Massively increase the scaling of Chill of Death. Currently at level 80 the condition damage is 97 + 0.08 condition damage, which is multiplied by 1.5 above the threshold. Increase the base damage to 131.5, the scaling to 0.155 condition damage. Retain the same 1.5 multiplier below 50%.
#5: Swap the position of Soul Eater and Reaper’s Onslaught.

Shout Changes:
#1: Double the Damage of every shout except “Suffer!” and “Chilled to the bone!”
#2: Change “Your Soul is Mine!”, so that it gains 8% life force + 2% per foe struck
#3: Have “You are all Weakling!” grant 8 stacks of might + 2 for each target hit.
#4: Have “Nothing can save you!” grant 8 seconds of unblockable + 2 for each target hit.
#5: Increase the damage of “Suffer!” by 33%
#6: Increase the Damage of “Chilled to the Bone!” by 33%, and reduce the cast time to 1.3 second.
#7: Reduce the recharge of “Rise!” to 30 seconds.

Explanation for Greatsword Changes: While these numbers may be powerful, the fact is the weapon is still really slow. Completing a full auto attack chain is hard, even in PVE, and the long animations means you’ll often be self interrupting before you can complete an attack. These make the greatsword weaker than they appear to be numerically, and because of this I have given the greatsword higher DPS than the dagger’s auto attack. Pretty much every skill change can be summed up as “increase damage”.

Explanation for Dagger Changes: The dagger still needs an update. I don’t know why the auto doesn’t scale life force generation with targets, and that is something that needs to change. While the greatsword becomes an offensive but unreliable weapon, the dagger becomes a defensive but reliable weapon. And such, I increased the reliability and also increased the effectiveness of the long-underpowered Life Siphon.

Continued in Part 3

Using references from the reddit thread, I’ve come up with the final set of tooltip damage and DPS times for each of the attacks. Getting the numbers themselves was easy: it was my previous numbers X 916/1000. The tooltip values on the wiki were never updated to reflect change in power. Thankfully this is an easy fix.

Greatsword Auto Attack: 314, 351, 407 with 1.5 seconds of chill. All hit 3 targets. Total animation time is 3 seconds.
Gravedigger: 739, 5 second recharge, 80% recharge reduction with effect. 5 targets, x3 whirl finisher. Animation time: 1.7 seconds.
Death Spiral: 335. 12 second recharge, 12 × 10 stacks of vulnerability, 2% life force per hit, 3 targets. Life force scales. Animation time: 1.4 seconds.
Nightfall: 258 per pulse, 25 second recharge. Cripple and blind per pulse, 2 seconds between pulses, Dark Field, 5 targets. Total animation time: 1.5 seconds.
Grasping Darkness: 369. 30 second recharge, 3 × 4 poison, 4% life force per hit. 5 targets. Total animation time: 1.03

Reaper’s Shroud Auto: 225, 225, 451. 1% life force on the final hit. 3 targets. Total animation time: 2.4 seconds.
Death’s Charge: 376, 5 targets, 6 second cooldown, 3 second blind on land. Total animation time: 1.4 seconds
Infusing Terror: 1 second of fear, 20 second cooldown. Gives 8 × 3 stacks of stability over the course of 8 seconds. No animation time.
Soul Spiral: 1038, 11 × 4 poison, 40 second recharge. Countless whirl finishers. Total animation time: 3 seconds
Executioner’s Scythe: 563 above 50%, 752 between 25% and 50%, 940 below 25%. Creates an ice field which chills for 1 second per pulse and persists for 5 seconds. Stuns for 1.5 seconds. 30 second recharge. Total animation time: 1.9 seconds.

Now, for comparison, here is the tooltip DPS of each skill when compared to the dagger auto attack.

Dagger Auto DPS: 447

Greatsword Auto DPS: 357
Gravedigger DPS: 435
Gravedigger spam DPS: 390
Death Spiral DPS: 239
Nightfall DPS: 688 (note: per activation animation time. Actual field duration is 6 seconds)
Grasping Darkness DPS: 358

Reaper Shroud Auto DPS: 375
Death’s Charge DPS: 269
Infusing Terror: Does no damage
Soul Spiral DPS: 346
Executioner’s Scythe DPS: 296, 396, 495

Dagger Suggestions:
#1: Make the life force generation of the auto attack scale with how many targets get hit. Resist the stupid urge to reduce the amount of LF gained per hit.
#2: Increase the damage and healing of life siphon by 40%, decrease the channel time from 3.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
#3: Decrease the animation time of dark pact from 1 second to 0.75 seconds.

Continued in part 2