Guild Wars 2

Lahmia.2193:

Back to the original topic.

Controversial idea incoming:
Revert Chilling Darkness nerf, so it no longer has an ICD.
Change functionality of Well of Darkness by removing the blind (gasp!), adding a (3.0) damage modifier and adding projectile block.
Reason why?
If they did buff Chilling Darkness by removing the icd, this would just make Well of Darkness into another pure condi spam skill. Removing the blind and adding damage/projectile block would cement it as a useful power skill, that could replace Well of Corruption and add a power alternative to corrosive poison cloud.

So both power and condi necro could be buffed without infringing too much on the other.

I really doubt it would hurt anybody if well of darkness did the same damage as well of corruption. I also dont think that removing the ICD of chilling darkness would be that OP. The only really critical skill is well of darkness, and even then its a pulsing field you can easily dodge out of in pvp scenarios, and it would maybe help with the dps on PVE condi builds. I cant tell if the added damage of the well would be a net dps increase over the 180 power from signet of spite though.

Dawdler.8521:

Lahmia.2193:

And that’s what I mean by useful. Apologies if I seem pedantic but powerful, to me, suggests large amounts of damage like meteor shower, hundred blades or gravedigger.

Nah thats just high damage. Powerful != dps in WvW. 100b? Weakest attack the warrior has. Meteor storm? Only used for zerging and even then its area denial more than damage as people just dodge out of it. Gravedigger? Lol who even use greatsword in WvW…

Powerful in WvW can be something as simple as Dark Pact locking your opponent a whooping 3s which is often a death sentence. Or in the case of the staff, probably the most powerfull anti-condi attack in the game dumping your conditions on the enemy.

Thats just not true. Meteor Storm is one of the most devastating skills in WvW, even if its hits are random. Warrior 100b can be extremely usefull to disrupt the backline in combination with a CC and also it is a great tool for downstate pressure combined with all the stances a warrior has. And also greatsword is a pretty strong weapon for zerging and meta for some condi builds

Best solution for the topic would be to be able to re-activate the marks a second time to cause a manual detonation, so you can decide if you wanna use the damage to cleave the downed target as quickly as possible or use it as a means of zonecontroll to potentially damage the downed target and the person attempting to rezz.

While i think the first pack of buffs with the bleed synergy are pretty cool especially trough that GW1 vibe the weapon is still in an awkward spot.

The selfheal of skill #2 is the real purpose of the skill in my eyes but we dont have the stability nor the defense to make much use of it.

Skill #3 has a too long CD and a slightly too long cast time for what it does. I would love a sequence skill so that if you hit an enemy with it, you can reactivate the skill again within 5 or so seconds to shadowstep to the initial target.

Yeah numberwise it’s very potent. But the thing is the scepter conditions baseline are rather weak compared to other condi weapons. I feel like scepter pretty much sucks without this trait in all game modes, with this trait it gets slightly above average, and this isnt good. A weapon should feel good by itself and awesome with a grandmaster trait. Grandmaster Traits where supposed to greatly impact the way you play, a bare number increase on a weapon doenst seem to justify this.

I think the utility skills might be “Desecrations” like guardian consecration only the exact opposite and tuned for condi’s and group support. What i would love to get are interesting skills that are usefull for condi soloplay as well as group play, as well as being meaningful even in pvp. Desecrations would have a 5-7 sec base duration (increased by traits maybe?), would cause negative and unique effects while foes stand inside and also an effect if a target inside the desecration gets hit:

Heal:

• Lair of the Beast: Heal for yourself. Reduces healing for all enemies inside by 20%. Allies that hit targets siphon life (icd per attacker)

Utility:

• Tainted Ground: Incoming Condition Duration increased by 20%. Allies that hit targets in the area cause Torment.

• Unholy Sanctuary: Boons expire twice as fast, allies hitting foes in the area corrupt a boon (icd per attacker)

• Blighted Field: Enemies can’t evade or block, hitting enemies causes a blight fiend pet to spawn for a limited time (icd per foe, minions all under necro controll) the attacks of the fiends cause poison, looking like small scorpions that attack ranged

• Corroding Conflagration: Weakness and Vulnerability is 50% more effective, enemies are burned on hit.

Elite:

• Devouring Sands: Conditions expire twice asfast, but deal 125% increased damage, attacks cause heave bleeding, fear(icd) and immob (icd)

Torch of course would have a decent stun or root to synergize with the utilities, maybe a skill #4 like agonizing flames: enemy suffers burning and torment each second for 4 seconds, the target gets CCed in sequence: first tick cripple, then chill, then immob, then stun. And a skill #5 that causes a fiery sandstorm with heavy conditions, or some fiery ritual circle on the ground.

We can still dream :P

I dont think a Sigil that removes all soft CC on swap is a good idea, most classes got a reduce in soft cc duration in the traits, and soft cc should stay a good way to counter certain classes like warrir to a degree. Removing all chills, imobs and cripples with a simple weaponswap is too strong, given how relatively rare chills and immobs can be applied. Removing immobs only would be a better idea because it can cause some really unfun moments when youre in a long duration immob without a way of condi clear. This would devalue Soft cc even more then gapclosers, resistance and the traitlines would.

I also would like a “greater Sigil of Agility” with 3 sec superspeed and 3 sec quickness on a 18 sec cooldown, this could create some better bursts.

Also a “Sigil of Vanishing” that provides a short duration stealth on weaponswap? Would help some classes that dont have acces to stealth to escape or to reposition themselfs in teamfights.

My personal favourite would be Profession Specific Sigils to further customize each profession, but i guess thats off the table.

Okami.7049:

Brujeria.7536:

They could add a traitchange, or even a second trait effect to an existing trait that would increase damage by 20% if the target has no boons. This would be a straight buff to all PVE scenarios, you can limit it PVE only.

So you just want Spiteful Talisman buff, then?

Like a highly powered up PVE only version of it, yeah.

Why is necro dps still 30 – 40% lower without providing meaningful or unique support to group members and why is so much power of the necro locked behind boon corrupts?

A mix of baseline buffs and trait changes / buffs for pve only would do the trick.

They could add a traitchange, or even a second trait effect to an existing trait that would increase damage by 20% if the target has no boons. This would be a straight buff to all PVE scenarios, you can limit it PVE only.

Fleshgolem could get an additional effect: 150 ferocity to allies or 10% condi duration for all allies.

A trait that increases your damage against targets standing inside your wells / darkfields by 10% and an additional 10% for yourself and allies.

A trait that lets necromancers get 1,5% damage increase per stack of vuln instead of 1%, for an easy 12,5 % overall damage in all scenarios. They could turn all these into PVE only without breaking anything.

Apart from that simple number buffs, i feel that the animations and attack speed of all weapons are okay now, its just the base values of the damage / conditions applies that keeps necros back.

Yeah, no reason to not give AP. AP never really where competetive in the first place, a big part of the AP are locked behing past living story achievements, so the rentire AP leaderboard is just an uneven hoax. If they are the best players in a season give them AP, thats just fair.

Well of the Profane:

- Deals damage like Well of Suffering
- Enemies inside can not be healed or rezzed.
- Allies cant drop below 1 health (Would also work on DS health)

Signet of Grenth:

Passive: Inflicting a condition steals life, if you inflict chill the leech is trippled (40 per condition per stack)
Active: 900 range shadowstep to target area, leaving a trail of ice between the 2 positions that inflicts chill and torment onto foes. 30 second CD.

Why dont you tie the pips directly to the MMR? When MMR decreases so do the pips – in any league. So a single game does not equal a pip.

Hello there,

the pvp server 206.127.159.161:0 has massive serverlags the entire day. No other IP has caused any troubles, but in this one frequent ping spikes and server lags make matches unplayable.

The down state idea is basicly nice, even with the current rezz speed and invuln duration, its the inconsistency in the overall balance and downstate skills that make it trivial. Certain skills and effects counter some or all of the mechanics linked to downstate play. There should not be a single “safestomp” ability, no stealth stomp. Blind shouldnt affect downed players, downed skills that prevent stomping should be similar strong in power, difference in effect is good, big differencies in power or reliability should not exist. Then remove free stability all over the place, and free aoe CC over the place and you have a very tactical component that boils down to more then spam all skills onto the first downed person.

Remove the treb. Its not fun to play this map at all, its already heavily biased towards gapclosers and mobility. Treb is just an unfun mechanic, even if it would have different skills or take condi damage.

Well i think an elite well should do something “special”, just adding some blatant conditions to have a condi well isnt the way to go.

Well of the Lich:
Pulsing high Damage and Healing.
Deals 17% damage to downed enemies per tick, rezzes allies for 17% per tick.

or

Well of the Abyss:
Small damage per tick.
Enemies lose all boons and cant apply boons while inside.
Enemies cant clear conditions or stunbreak while inside the well.
Allies gain resistance for each second inside of the well.

So let’s see. RS is your meelebruiser, adding a decent amount of damage an thread. DS is lacking a real purpose. I think DS could work better with a “ranged” concept, where RS wants you to be close to an enemy at all times, DS should be more centered around keeping your distance from your enemy.

DS 1 : Damage is now always the “below 600 range” damage as base, this damage is reduced by 50%, casttime and aftercast reduced by 50%. Make this a 100% projectile finisher OR add a condi either 6 second torment or 6 second poison.

DS 2: Changed to: Spectral Locust – Turn into a spectral locustswarm removing all movement impairing effects and blinding nearby foes. Dash a fixed distance (600) while evading. Leave a cascade of locusts in your wake for 3 seconds that cripple and corrupt a boon. 10 second cd.

DS 3: Fear is now 2 seconds, you corrupt 2 boons on your foe before attempting to fear.

DS 4: Summon a Lifeleeching vortex onto the target area. Like it is now, dealing damage but groundtargeted like a well (900 range, 240 radius). Generates lifeforce and healing for yourself per enemy hit. Applies pulsing protection to yourself and your minions and bleeding to your enemies.

DS 5: Grants you Stability on cast (3stacks, 5 seconds), now applies weakness per pulse, doubled the stacks of torment. Deals 4x the base physical damage if the bond is broken.

The idea here is to turn it into a shroud that is like a ranged power weapon thats aimed to keep the distance – Elementalist staff, LB ranger, LB Guard, Rifle Warrior. The lifeforce generation is weaker compared to RS in general, but the damage should be higher then base DS is now. By turning skill 2 into a “insect” theme this makes for a good opportunity to introduce a trait that improves “insect” kinda skills, warhorn 5, dagger 4, plague etc.

Gliding is really nice, makes map completion in core tyria much more fun.

WvW goes in a better direction, the amount of dolyaks needed is a bit too much

Lunar New Year is meh. Rather boring, no real replay value, mostly a thing of messing with the market. The Backpack upgraded is nice though.

Balance Changes: Balance will be much better then before for the most part.
Thief buffs are a bit over the top in all areas of the game.
Engie, Guard, Ranger buffs are good changes.
Mesmer change are needed. Mesmer was slightly too strong even before chrono, now with chrono it was just way over the top.
Ele changes along with the amulets are good as well, for the first time i get the impression that an elementalist actually has to focus onto the things he wants to be good at, increase in build variety.
Warrior: Sustain changes are good, the Rifle changes are… not really needed, rifle was one of the stronger weapons of the warrior. Killshot / Gunflame is too strong for how frequent it can be used.
Revenant: Needed changes, the weaker legends need a buff.
Nerco: Changes are okay, may provide more build variety, still too many things untouched. The announced “change” for the base DS is a insulting joke.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Brujeria.7536:

It will never, ever be overpowered. In any competetive game mode you could do so much more usefull stuff then using the AA waiting for the full chain for a single boon corrupted, skill 2 and 3 have fairly low cooldown, you have DS / RS skills that are much more potent. Also you have a second weaponset. While it looks good on paper, it really does not come into play that often in a real scenario.

You’re forgetting that you want to land that 3rd auto for the Poison anyway.

Necros tend to want a lot, most of the time you’re so under focus and pressure that you just can’t afford to wait for that. Sometimes you just can’t even wait that 2 seconds for warhorn 4, or warhorn 5 before going into DS. If you are in a spot where you can freely cast all the spells you want without getting focused chances are that you will win the fight anyway.

Focus 4 is okay, no real need to change the boon to fury. They should improve the tracking, the skill is way too unreliable against moving targets.

Focus 5 does need some more flavour. The chill was strong at launch, when condi remove wasn’t as easy as it is now. Boon remove again was strong at launch, now they just get reapplied so fast, this skill is barely worth the cast time in most cases.

It will never, ever be overpowered. In any competetive game mode you could do so much more usefull stuff then using the AA waiting for the full chain for a single boon corrupted, skill 2 and 3 have fairly low cooldown, you have DS / RS skills that are much more potent. Also you have a second weaponset. While it looks good on paper, it really does not come into play that often in a real scenario.

Well axe has its uses, i dont think the scepter buff could change anything. Axe 3 is a AOE skill, thus you can hit stealthed targets around you easy. Scepter 2 isnt even compareable to that. It can provide decent sustain with Blighters Boon and has a good retaliation uptime against mesmers and rangers, sometimes even scappers. They just need to tweak the skills a bit. For example:

Axe 3: Let it corrupt 2 boons, the boons prioritized are always protection and stability, the boons always get converted into vulnerability.
Axe 2: let this skill extend the vulnerability duration on foes, add bonus damage based on the number of stacks of vuln on the target.
Axe 1: Add a second attack to the AA chain, creates ghastly rift at the targets position that detonates after a small timeframe for AOE damage, you get might and lifeforce per foe hit by the explosion. That way you add some power that is counterable by moving, providing a higher skillcap because you need to lockdown your target in pvp in order to get good damage.

This way they could give this weapon a clearer direction then it is now.

Yeah, we still have nothing against a decent thief. And, you know thief is only getting more dangerous with the balance preview. Especially as condi necro you are an easy target for a skilled thief.

Ravezaar.4951:

Going from haveing 1 Necro/Reaper in the top 8 teams in EU to actually be “the Meta” is a huge step and control your hype ppl. There are several things needs to be adressed and mainly “The Power Weapons” are weak: GS,Axe,Focus (ps:idc if GS is good in PvE,real targets move)

But also from what I understood Shroud 1 now pierces on baseline so thats meens atleast 1 NEW trait we get then and thats intresting or atleast some change to it.

I honestly dont think we get a new trait. They will just keep it at DS 1 causes vuln.

These are good changes. Corrupt boon and CPC being strong, if they improve BIP as well and work on the curses line more maybe we will see more varieity in the pvp builds. Signets have become so boring..

Hmmm my wishlist would be:

DS 1: Reduce damage by 50%, decrease cast time by 50%, now applies one stack of torment 8s as well as being an 100% projectile finisher
DS 2: Now groundtarget, reduced base CD to 10 seconds. Leaves an ice field.
DS 3: Now corrupts 2 boons before fearing your foe.
DS 4: Now applies stability, protection and retaliation on each pulse.
DS 5: Increased torment stacks to 2 per pulse.

Vital Persistance is now baseline.
Vampiric Contagion now siphons a flat amount when applying a condition, is working in shroud.
Spectralwalk now removes and prevents all movement impairing effects.
Spectralarmor now applies 5 stacks of stability and retaliation when cast.
Spectral mastery changed, no longer gives a flat Lifeforce per cast, spectral skills now recharge DS cooldown.

Very nice. Almost makes me want to go condi reaper What build where you using?

Its rather weak, i feel like the #6 bonus should be added to #4, with a range increase to 600. Then add a new function for #6 “Upon using a healing skill you remove a boon from every enemy within 600 units, gain health for each boon removed that way, 10s icd”
That way you get a rune thats really good for reaper (due to the low CD healshout) and not OP for everyone else.

Axe is terrible. That being said it was buffed a small bit, but when compared to any other ranged power weapon its just awfully weak.

I played much TD today, in total i opened around 250 chests over the last week or so, and i have not even got a single egg. The Droprate really needs to be higher. I mean you need The map currency to get the keys to open the caches to get the eggs, and additionally a lot of currenty to get a weapon, but you know, playing that map for a few hours and making exactly 0 progress upon a single weapon is kinda unrewarding. I have a stack of Ley Line Sparks and not a single egg.

We had a strange bug in Dragons Stand. We just cleared the 3 towers and went onto the final phase of this event, we did fight for like 3 minutes and then my entire party got a loading screen and we have been ported out of the map, into a different map, at the exact same spot :/ this was not a DC, it was a regular loading screen and my entire party got it. This is annoying as hell :/ The meta description on the top right also changed to a strange version..

“on Wings of Gold” Is bugged, it does not give Lifetime rewards

Tim.6450:

Robert Gee.9246:

To provide some context on this change:

We felt that Blighter’s Boon was providing too much survivability, especially with the amount of boon output that Heralds and Tempests can provide. (This is especially true in WvW and large PvE Zergs). I did like the interaction this trait had with your allies, but boon application from allies is too broad of a category for us to reasonably balance in all modes of the game.

We considered a lot of other possibilities for this skill including adding an ICD, limiting the procs to specific boons, limiting the number of procs from allies, but the majority of these types of fixes ended up taking agency and control away from the reaper which we felt wasn’t optimal.

Ultimately we felt this change helped to make the trait more specific to some builds rather than the best trait in all situations.

So how is a melee spec going to survive in a group fight (especially if the foes can focus) when most of it scaling defense is so little that it is basically irrelevant?

Especially when the only other trait line that makes this trait somewhat good is purely offensive, limiting our sustain and defense even more. This trait is now the pure opposite of the entire reaper design which is highly groupfight orientated.

Its especially sad that they always shaft our sustain skills. Parasitic Contagion is useless. Our siphons are very weak compared to revenant. Our sustain line partially does not heal us while in DS. Even mark of evasion has an absurd icd. I mean i didnt like the power it could cause in a perfect situation, but nerfing it like that is just horrible. They cant even up the numbers much more, as some few builds and traitlines are okay with it; thats another trait for the garbage bin now.

“Significantly” = 25% more base healing + Scaling is 5 healing per 150 healing power.

Depending on the situation, really. Decimate defenses and zerker gear give you basicly 100% crit. The ramp up time on reaper for vulnerability is really fast and steady, by just autoattacking in RS you can maintain 25 might and 25 vuln permanently. Picking Death Perception here is overkill. The Burning ticks for 1700 by the time your might stacks are up, some more enemies have been added with high toughness, which make those burn stacks so much more valuable.

I dont know if you can max out DPS more with Sinister or Vipers gear but for me its much better in the long term fights. Also because unlike DP its not limited to DS / RS.

Map completions do not give rewards, is this intended or bugged?

I just completed the map of Tangled Depths, but i igot no reward for map completion, is this intended?

I like the way these hero points are earned and that you actually have to do something to unlock and master the elite spec. Its mostly a casuals thing, the people coming back for the expansion or that didnt bothered much with world completion got some work to do, but thats fine.

I dont like the implementation of the unlocking though. You basicly get a bar and put skill points in that, no lore, no info on how you get to use or how you discovered this new powers for your class. I would have loved a instance or that being inbound into the personal story how you learn these new insights.

When dying during the final encounter and retrying the phases get mixed up. Bossfor example uses all of his skills during each phase (fly phase, clone phase) making it impossible to proceed, on my second try ( i created new instance and i died at 3rd fly phase) the same issue, i died during the fly phase, i reentered trough the retry mote, and he was at 25% health in his last stage while a clone was bashing at me the entire time.

Also the jump pads for the fly phase are buggy and wont bring you into the air, then arent accessible a second time for a few seconds.

TL;DR The retry function mixes up phases and does not properly reset the fight. Jump pads are a bit buggy.

Sigmoid.7082:

Brujeria.7536:

No channel time decrease, else it just feels too much like axe 2. The channel time is okay, the healing also, simply increase the damage a bit or the scaling, its just too much of a dps loss at the moment.

It’s supposed to be a DPS loss.

Yeah, however the gap is too big to jusitify the healing you currently get. By increasing the damage you reduce the dps loss a bit making the skill work better while still feeling more unique.

Bhawb.7408:

Not denying that it is bad, but it is a PvE only trait regardless. If it needs to be replaced that’s a side issue.

You could simply change it from a PvE trait to a generall sustain trait based around condis. Flat heal when you apply an condition (per stack), lifesiphon if one of your conditions gets removed.

I dont like the spirit theme that much. The raven and general runes on the staff are great, however all these ghostbird animations.. i dont think they fit very good for a necromancer, at least in my book. It might look awesome on norn necros, as it fits thematicly like perfect, but meh. From pure looks its more necroish then the Bifröst, but i don’t think i will like it much.

Now if we only could change the color of the animations to that nice green of our lifeblasts.. hmmm.

No channel time decrease, else it just feels too much like axe 2. The channel time is okay, the healing also, simply increase the damage a bit or the scaling, its just too much of a dps loss at the moment.

No, really not neccessary. Its just a QOL change at the very best. Necromancer has way too much counterplay compared to other classes already, staff is already a very weak weapon to begin with. There really is no reason to add anything like that at all.

On a higher level this would cost resources that would be much better invested in important stuff. Maybe, at some point if all necromancer problems are fixed they can do this kind of polishing, giving each and every skill a animattion as a “call” like dragons tooth (which would look great from an optical standpoint) but at this point dont even try to consider such a thing.

Runiir.6425:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ponders

So, each gen 1 legendary requires 1 gift of mastery, which we get from world completion. 2 per character. The per character is the key phrase here.

Gen 2 requires the gift of maguuma mastery, which requires “materials that can only be acquired after completing all of the Heart of Maguuma Masteries”. This is mildly perplexing, considering masteries are account bound. Do we get materials after each tier in a track, or only after mastering the whole track?

Considering there are only (currently) four mastery lines for Maguuma , will one line give enough materials for one gift, or will you need an assortment of lines? I’m sure we’ll be able to do the whole gen 2 set, I’m just curious how they are going to handle it, considering masteries aren’t repeatable per character.

Maybe, just MAYBE they will bring back the legend in legendary and you only get to have ONE.

Frankly I think the whole multi legendary thing is a problem of itself. They aren’t legendary if you can just keep crafting them. A legends stands above and beyond, we should have to make a choice and be stuck with what we make.

We only get to see 3 of 16. We couldn’t even make a proper choice at release if we wanted it yet.

Soon.5240:

If i read correctly, you will also be required to participate in PvP to acquire the Gift of the Mists?

This game is officially becoming, “Play the game the way WE want you to play.”

Well thats not too bad, if i’d want a legendary that bad i will play every part of the game to get it.

The real kick in the face is that they devalued the entire effort ofpeople that already got the legendaries they want from the vanilla sets and wanted to prepare for the new ones.

Wheren’t those supposed to require the same basic gifts like the current legendaries do?

I mean there are people that did map completion several times just to be prepared and pre crafted these gifts :/. This makes me feel like i wasted way too much of my time

http://imgur.com/uq5MV2k

Corruptions are a nice idea in general. I dont mind the self condis, i mean in every fight scenario you will have some condis on your self anyway, its not like im using a condi transfer just to negate the side effects of corruptions, if i already have bleed stacks on myself i can use blood is power before transfering them, increasing the potency of my transfer while benefiting from the corruption skills effect. That said, corruptions should be much stronger. They are rather niche, epidemic is a great example of that. Corrupt Boons is simply way too weak, it got stuck a few years ago and since then the boons where handed out like candy. It needs to corrupt ALL boons, on a lower cooldown to make any kind of impact. It just falls short otherwise. Blood is power is just a failed concept, and again stuck in the past. 1 min bleeds wont help if condi clears are everywhere. We dont want party might on corruption skills, that is just not a necromancer thing, not a necromancer way of supporting and just feels wrong.

Id really love if they gave our core utility and weapon skills some love after HoT launches. The new stuff they’re adding shows that they now have a clearer vision in mind. I like that, the old stuff (traits not so much) just feels so outdated at the moment.

Its a good idea, however highly situational.

Id like wells to be more exiting in general. They basicly could be the opposite of the guardians Consecrations, giving them special effects, not for allieis but for enemys. Like reduced healing while standing inside well of blood. Decreased duration of boons while standing in WoC. Increased incoming condi duration on WoP. Some flavour that makes our wells more distinct from both, regular AOE fields, and mesmer wells.