Guild Wars 2

What? Allies will never have anything close to perma-alacrity. And your ability to dish out the maximum to them is based on maintaining it permanently on yourself for the Continuum rotation.

The priority of buffs is perma self-alacrity, quickness to as close to permanent as possible, then allies alacrity in a distant third. You should never sacrifice quickness uptime (<100%) for alacrity on your allies once you already have it permanently on yourself. Quickness is better.

I don’t even get this debate. Perma-alacrity can be achieved with nothing but well of recall and spamming shatters on C/D. You don’t even need to use Continuum split. Hell, you can even do it with ZERO illusions just by adding Calamity if you wanted. Stand around in town, cast those 2 wells and spam shatter on C/D with no illusions = permanent.

It isn’t exactly difficult to do. Quickness uptime is literally the only thing that matters, because if you aren’t getting perma-alacrity you’re doing something wrong.

Yes, it’s instead dependent on the match-up. I’ve gotten pips from winning 4v5 because the team we beat wasn’t terrible in comparison to us.

How exactly do you expect A.Net to award you bonus pips for a DC in a balanced way that couldn’t be exploited?

Spoiler: there isn’t a way. You won 4v5 because the team you fought was terrible. You wouldn’t have won any pips for beating them 5v5, so you didn’t win any pips for beating them 4v5. Deal with it.

Oh I see, I didn’t notice it with anything else. Probably because I’m more used to the range of other skills. Thanks for the info.

I have no idea what causes it. But the reticle will be green, I’ll cast, and it will say out of range. Usually corrects itself for the next cast. When I pay attention, I can notice that it is pretty clearly too far despite being green.

Anyone have experience with this or know specifically what causes it? It is pretty common in my experience but I havent been able to nail it down.

I always just stuck with Traveler due to WvW and the necessity for the run speed. Now that I’m looking at switching out due to the Time Marches On trait.. I’m finding that I think I want to stick with Traveler anyway?

My reasoning for that is that it is the only offensive rune set with boon duration (even if the 6 set is a waste, maybe switch 1 rune out for something else or w/e). It actually bummed me out a little that I couldn’t mix it up haha, so I’m wondering what everyone else is using!

If you’re not crashing, I would hold off on this client. That is just based on my own testing.

My rig isn’t top-of-the-line anymore, but with a GTX780/3570k I don’t have any problems running the game on max and have never crashed OOM (I wasn’t even aware this was an issue for some). Compared to the 32bit client, the 64bit client nets me a loss of 5-10FPS and uses about 500MB-750MB more ram. Since I don’t crash I don’t see any reason to use it.

If it helps you, great! Just giving my own results. Cheers.

Ohoni.6057:

No, that’s the core of the entire argument. If people were happy with the existing Precursor prices then there would be no need for the crafting quests in the first place. The ENTIRE point is to drive the prices back down to a reasonable level.

No, it wasn’t. The point of the quest is to give a way to work towards the precursor over time without having to rely on RNG. It’s not designed to make it easier, cheaper, or more attainable to casuals who want hand outs at the expense of everybody elses goals.

A.net did the right thing.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

New Phantasm meta confirmed. Everyone adjust your builds accordingly :P

Implying phantasm was ever not meta for Mesmer in PvE, outside like 2 seconds of Alacrity testing.

I don’t understand what you think you are showcasing in that ranked video. You got a single kill in the match at about 10 minutes in 1v1 versus a Ranger, barely. The rest of the time your team had the numbers in virtually every encounter. Your damage and utility didn’t seem very impressive, and your sustain certainly wasn’t either as you dipped fairly quickly any time the numbers weren’t skewed in your favor. I didn’t notice a single instance in which Chaotic Interruption “kept someone in a well”. And on top of that you threw your shield into obstructions no less than 5 times, which just makes it looks inconsistent at best.

I didn’t even see anything to show that you even fulfilled a role for the match. What did you think you were showing us?

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want Signet of Inspiration (maybe even Illusionary) if the entire point is to spread Quickness to the party?

Is this just based on current fights not lasting long enough for that to have an impact? Because it would seem to me that doubling the quickness duration is a no brainer versus Calamity.

This seems to be fixed in BWE3 I think? Not that old of a post so just wanted to bump and confirm.

It is definitely equally as annoying with Mender’s Purity, but at least then you know with 100% consistency when it is going to occur and play around it (aka mash your next phantasm after signet of ether lol).

I am glad it’s not just me

As much as I love the extra support I feel it brings to the group (even if somewhat random for longer fights), I may just have to give it up out of frustration.

Does this bother anybody else as much as it does me? It’s so jarring and really messes with the flow of combat. The most common frustration occurs when I try to weapon swap (or Ether signet) after summoning a phantasm. The swap won’t occur because I’m stuck in the animation for the Signet proc. Often times I don’t even realize right away.

It’s easy to deal with on the opener when you know the CD is up, but over the course of the fight it’s quite the nuisance. I feel like these kind of things should really be off the GCD. Am I alone here?

IMHO there is really nothing trait wise from the Chronomancer that appeals to PvE. The only significant change could come from Danger Time, and the possibility that it makes Berserker’s > Assassin’s depending how it works with reflects. 30% crit (wiki currently says it’s a damage increase, but that doesn’t match the description so I assume its supposed to be crit) is a lot and would easily nullify any needed commitment to Assassin’s as we currently have.

Skill wise I don’t think Continuum Split would be too much of a factor in DPS rotations since you’d have to shatter. Alacrity/Quickness bot with wells is possible but a stretch, and speccing shatter for your own Alacrity will ultimately come down to whether the personal DPS loss is a net gain for the party. You’d probably need Chaos for boonshare if you go that route, as well as Inspiration for the extra signet. Leaving you in the terrible state of missing out on both Fragility/Blurred Inscriptions and both Fencers+Harmonious Mantra.. which is quite crippling for PvE DPS.

Mantra Strength is part of Harmonious Mantras, giving you a buff every time you activate a Mantra.

When you spec into the Inspiration Tree, ALL heals pop the Mantra Strength.. not just Mantras. I tested both Mirror and Ether Feast. My guess would be Mender’s Purity being the culprit since its already bugged to hell in many other (well reported) ways.

Ironic since one of the other bugs with Mender’s Purity makes it so the third cast granted by Harmonious Mantra’s doesn’t give condi removal.

They’re the same as they ever were. Vastly superior for everything PvE related, not worth considering for most PvP/WvW scenarios.

I’ve tried 4-5 times now and haven’t gotten it. Everyone is saying it’s fixed except Incognito.

Here to confirm. When I exit to desktop and re-enter, the FOV is not retained. My FOV slider will still be at max, but the camera clearly is not until I move the slider once again (a single tick down and back up seems to do the trick).

Signet of Illusions is pretty much necessary for a lot of PvE encounters, how can some of you not be using it? So many enemies have abilities that 1-shot phantasms otherwise. Beekeeper in the SW is a good example. He rotates 4 attacks, 360 degrees in a circle, and doesn’t do much else. Being able to survive a hit lets your Swordsman survive for a full rotation and ups damage significantly.

It’s certainly not useful everywhere, but never? Comon now.

I didn’t think it was possible to die on this, unless you goofed and got hit by the boss while you had the 1hp buff. How could it possibly be overtuned?

Sylvari.6083:

See this: http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki for builds.

You might want to look at the answers everybody is giving versus what your website says as meta… before everyone realizes that the website sucks.

It should be noted that the only reason Assassin’s is better in a meta party is because you’re approaching a soft-cap on Power with the extra might stacks.

This shouldn’t be an indication to “Switch to Assassins”, but rather a “Switch a few pieces and/or food until youre below the power softcap”. Some combination of Zerks+Assassins will undoubtedly be better in this instance.

Not only is it a bad idea, but it seems extremely contradictory to the rest of the “Fresh Start” feature post. If you don’t know what they said, here it is:

This means that if you pick up a new weapon for the first time after already unlocking multiple weapon skill slots, you’ll automatically learn the skills for that weapon, rather than having to learn each weapon’s skills individually.

Everything else you mentioned in this post is designed to not overwhelm the new player; to ease them in. This change will have the opposite effect. Do you have any idea how overwhelming it is to learn 5 new skills every time you find a new weapon? The individual learning system was PERFECT in this regard, and I feel like the change will go against when you are trying to accomplish.

Just my feedback, cheers.

Yes, that’s what I meant by soft cap. And yes, I feel all that was adequately covered by what I said.. though you went into far more detail than I was willing after showing the calculations

The conclusion itself does not change, however. Obviously all three stats are important.. but if you begin at a reasonable starting point you should never intentionally prioritize anything over Power.

It’s nice to say “but sigils! but traits!” however it simply doesn’t matter when you do the math. They don’t magically go away just because you built for +Power, and it’s not enough to close to gap. Go ahead and crunch the numbers for Sigil of Fire with multiple targets and Sharper Images if you’d like to see how far behind Precision will remain (phantasmal fury only increases the value of Ferocity.. which is the weakest of the bunch. Even with 100% crit rate, Ferocity is still worse than power). Again, this is assuming a reasonable starting point and not abnormally low critical stats like you would see in a PVT build as I described in my original reply.

And when you start talking about things like Critical Infusion, then you’re no longer talking about DPS and would have to start calculating effective health with active dodges. Good luck with that one!

Ross Biddle.2367:

Powers fine but crits and ferocity are where the damage is.

I seem to be running 2200 with 50-60 crit chance (70-80 with ferocity from runes/boon steal) and 220% critical damage.

Watch numbers risk/reward here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9zUSHO0HQo&feature=youtu.be

This is wrong. If you’re not softcapped (which you wont be), Power scales considerably better than Precision/Ferocity. It’s simple math, the damage formula = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor), and the DPS formula = Base damage * [ 1 + Critical Chance * ( Critical Damage + 0.5) ]

Since this thread is about WvW roamers, we’re talking either shatter or phantasm. Swordsman modifier is 1.925, Duelist is 0.275 (8 hits, total 2.2), and Mind Wrack is a weapon attack.

Lets use swordsman as an example since it’s the best DPS Phantasm. And lets assume an even 1000 weapon damage (max damage for a 1H exotic sword, and a nice round number), 2200 Power, 50% crit, and 200% crit damage as I think those are decent starting numbers. Lets also assume you’re fighting a target with 2000 armor, which should be about average since most WvW players will build with at least some survivability.

1000 * 2200 * 1.925 / 2000 = 2117.5 base damage. Now lets factor the crit rate with that number:
2117.5 * (1 + 0.5 * ( 0.5 + 0.5)) = 3176.25 DPS with the above stats on the above target.

Now increase power by 100.
1000 * 2300 * 1.925 / 2000 = 2213.75 base damage. With crit:
2213.5 * (1 + 0.5 * ( 0.5 + 0.5)) = 3320.25 DPS, or a 4.533% DPS increase from +100 power.

Now, increase precision by 100 instead of power (every 21 points of precision adds 1% to crit chance):
1000 * 2200 * 1.925 / 2000 = 2117.5 base damage.
2117.5 * (1 + 0.5476 * ( 0.5 + 0.5)) = 3277.043 DPS, or a 3.173% DPS increase from 100 precision.

Now for Ferocity (15 points of ferocity adds 1% crit damage).
1000 * 2200 * 1.925 / 2000 = 2117.5 base damage.
2117.5 * (1 + 0.5 * ( 0.5667 + 0.5)) = 3246.869 DPS, or a 2.223% DPS increase from 100 ferocity.

I’m not going to do every skill in the game for you, but that’s the comparison for our best DPS phantasm. And I promise you using different skills won’t change the results very much.

TLDR: Power > Precision > Ferocity. The only rare instances where increased crit stats will outweigh power is in PVT builds… and thats because your crit stats are at a super low starting point and you may be approaching a softcap on Power. And even THAT only applies to your food choice in very specialized situations (ie: crit food may be better than power food if you’re built full PVT with bloodlust stacks and might).

Thus concludes today’s lesson. You’re welcome.

[edit] By the way, when I said DPS above I didn’t actually mean damage-per-second.. but rather the average damage per strike. You would obviously have to multiply that number by the attack interval to get the actual damage-per-second for that ability. Doing so is insignificant for the purposes of this comparison though, and the percentages would remain identical.

Hey guys. I’ve been AFK since Dark Souls 2 came out and just boomeranged my way back I don’t see too much recent discussion on these new traits, are they all pretty sub-par?

I can see Triumphant Distortion maybe being OK in a WvW build. Possibly something interesting with a shatter build around Bountiful Disillusionment + IP… even though I don’t think going down the toughness line would be very good for shatter because you’d lose so much.

But other than that it all looks pretty meh. Any insight?

Minstrel and Juggernaut is my guess!

Based on my own personal observations having killed the Wurm both pre and post patch, I would say the HP is definitely lower.

I have been sitting on ascended armor mats for quite some time since the Ferocity changes were announced. It is very expensive to make so I don’t want to waste them on something that will end up being sub-par after the change.

I don’t really mind if there won’t be a one-time restat available… but it’s reasonable to speculate since it’s been done before with the magic find change. The knowledge of yes/no would really go a long way here, no matter what the answer is. Will there be a one-time restat available after the Ferocity changes?

No worries, I’m just sorry I contributed to any confusion on a non-official basis Cheers~

Since my comment it being posted all over and Zarzag felt the need to give an official statement, allow me to clarify:

I speak for no-one but myself, not for TTS. What I said was factual and done with the knowledge that I myself was in communication with the devs after the first kill, before the second run, and after the second kill.

Like myself, some/most other TTS members were immediately aware of what happened on the first kill, even though it happened completely by accident. After the P2 DPS struggles we’ve been going through it was painfully obvious. However there were also fair amount of people who haven’t even shown up to Wurm in weeks that strolled in for the second kill to get on the bandwagon. People who had zero contribution to our progression effort, and just wanted to reap the rewards.

That’s the cause of some of the conflicting perspectives coming out, and I apologize if I contributed to it. But this really isn’t as big a deal as some are making it.

Siobhan.5273:

Jabberwock.9014:

It wasn’t really a “tactic” until now, but in every kill that is what happened. It’s just that while it sometimes happened by accident before, we can now do it on purpose and bring it “TO THE MOON” as our most excellent commander would say.

I just watched your video ( http://www.twitch.tv/hellspriest/b/501386388 ), and I saw that the head was dragged way, way, way to the camp. It went down quite fast.

Here is the BG Amber kill video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6TQmzhagY#t=216

Amber becomes attack-able at 14:35
Fight ends with head in center of the red circle at 16:21

I see folks running around chasing it. I never see the head leaving that red circle.

Cobalt never left the circle, I was there for that one, but I don’t think our group got a video.

Crimson kill video for BG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IrIWO7rEbk
I wasn’t at the Crimson fight, but from what I see in the video here, starting at 23:52 the head becomes attack-able, but it is unclear to me whether it is lured outside the circle or chased…. it does not seem to be lured (my husband just watched it with me) but since we have no commentary, it is hard to really know. I didn’t see people stack. We weren’t in the chat channel for Crimson. It certainly died outside the red circle.

Well, I will say this, if you have to lure it outside the circle to kill it, that should be fixed, as that is obviously not the way the fight is intended to work. It’s impossible to complete it consistently the way it is now.

*edit- all video links included and screenshot from the video TTS posted of where TTS dragged Amber head for kill. Ours was nothing like this, not even close.. and there was no luring that I could detect.

Not really sure what you’re trying to say. They both went outside the circle which caused the scaling bug (as with every single kill that has happened so far). The only difference is that TTS actually recognized what happened, repeated it, and reported it to the devs once it was confirmed. There will be a fix for this tomorrow, and they have since shut down all other Wurm runs.

We spent the better part of two weeks trying to get it down with nothing but individual head kills. It just took a bit longer to get the luck that Blackgate/Desolation received earlier. I look forward to it being fixed so we can get back to working on our progression.

It’s luck because the groups doing it are going entirely for melee burns with fiery greatsword rushing. The strategy MAKES it RNG. You can complain all you want that ranged damage is weak, but when you only have 50% melee uptime… figure it out.

It’s obvious that the fight is build around ranged damage while chasing the Wurm, THEN melee burns when he stacks up. There’s nothing wrong with burning when it stops, but there should be damage going out while you’re chasing… not 100% downtime until melee catch up. Go ahead and survey your groups and see how many of them aren’t even using ranged weapons, making them completely useless for half the fight unless you get “lucky” and it gets stuck in a wall.

Crying RNG is an excuse for the inability to adapt. Stop bumping your thread with the incessant whining, you do enough of it in mapchat.

Lol @ Mesmer being the best at single target damage. Not even close, guys.

Really? The big red arrow floating in the air isn’t enough of an indicator?

Wow. Go away.

This would be great IMO. Doesn’t really need to be its own bar like traditional games, I know you guys try to be minimalistic with the UI. But perhaps being able to keybind from the inventory or something? Maybe drag and drop into something on the keybinding menu? Just spitballing

Tried to post in the suggestion subforum but I couldnt.

Anybody know how long it takes before you get kicked in PvE?

I think Wurm is more geared towards the unique skins, shown here:

http://i.imgur.com/27H8ypc.gif
http://i.imgur.com/d4zlCo3.gif
http://i.imgur.com/gaJFMLF.gif

There’s also a few weapon skins I can’t find atm.

I’m O.K. with this trade off. Teq may be better to farm for profit, but Wurm gives you the prestige items. Therefore giving both world bosses a unique purpose and keeping both active.

A little disappointed that there was nothing listed for Thief. Backstab builds are deadly. They do a ton of burst damage from stealth, as shown in the attached picture. I’m using 3/6 Knights and some soldier accessories, and it was still a one-shot combo to my character.

The problem isn’t so much the damage, but the risk-reward. There is nothing inherently wrong with the CnD-> Backstab combo (IMO). Although CnD immediately puts the thief into stealth, I probably could have dodged before the backstab if I was more alert or saw the thief before steal (I didn’t). But what would that accomplish? Backstab uses no initiative, it has no cooldown, and a missed Backstab does not remove the thief from stealth. Even if I were to dodge the Backstab, another one is coming without penalty and there’s nothing I can do.

I feel like that should change to promote skillful counter-play. Dodging a Backstab should remove the thief from stealth and give them the revealed debuff. Thoughts?

Seeing the endless line of thieves roll in to defend their one-shot combos with “dodge noobs” never gets old.

So what that dodging the Backstab doesn’t even remove the thief from stealth.. it wastes their initiative! Wait.. it doesn’t use initiative. At least it puts the skill on cooldown! Wait.. it doesn’t have a cooldown. Well, nevertheless, as soon as you see a damage number on your screen, DODGE! It’s a stealthed thief that just used CnD to restealth immediately! That’s intelligent, meaningful gameplay. Just try to ignore the fact that you’ll die in 3 seconds anyway.

Shinobi.3240:

Celeras.4980:

You think you got it bad? See below. I don’t care what gear or what spec is being used, nobody should be global’d from stealth without a chance to react. Especially when running 3/6 Knights, 3/6 Valk, and half soldier accessories.

Your situation is obviously somewhat different as full-on bunker, but the point remains: thief damage is too high considering their stealth and crazy mobility.

Nice Sword you got there … Ever tried to use weapon skill number 2?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blurred_Frenzy

I am pretty sure you wouldn´t get hit by the Backstab if you act quick enough.

Lol. Yeah, silly me for being terrible and not seeing the combo coming entirely from stealth. I’ll try harder to hit an evade in between two hits for 22,000 damage.

Except that an evaded Backstab doesn’t even reveal the thief from stealth, so it accomplishes nothing since they just spam it.

Impossible to tell with the bug since mine typically never live long enough to attack now..

You think you got it bad? See below. I don’t care what gear or what spec is being used, nobody should be global’d from stealth without a chance to react. Especially when running 3/6 Knights, 3/6 Valk, and half soldier accessories.

Your situation is obviously somewhat different as full-on bunker, but the point remains: thief damage is too high considering their stealth and crazy mobility.

As someone who has beaten Marionette maybe 5 times thus far, I think I can honestly say that the success rate is far above 1/10. 50/50 seems about right with in my personal experience, and I think that is fine for this kind of content.

Almost all my fails have come on the 5th and final phase too, so I think the community as a whole has the majority pretty much down pat.. just the last one can be tricky if people panic and scatter.

The only people who run the zerg to each Wurm 1 at a time are the ones who haven’t killed it yet.

merforga.4731:

It definitely was bugged in one way or another. If it was a straight fail, the wurm wouldn’t have persisted after the timer ended…

Told you so: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/madness/TTS-defeated-the-great-Jungle-Wurm/first#post3540590

Failed, deal with it.

class.4802:

TTS guild already got it down but event bugged.

It didn’t bug, they just got very close but failed the last burn on Crimson. If you watch the video it quite clearly starts taking 0’s with around 10 seconds left, because the burn phase was over.