Guild Wars 2

What gets me is that Guild Wars 1 had a district system so peeps could manually select a map instance and meet up. If the district was full then it was full but you could try.

All we have is the “Join in…” method which requires another player to be an anchor. Many of us are familiar with the “map search” people that try various methods to land on a certain IP and then ferry people over. It’s so crude. The technology now is worse than it was over 10 years ago in the previous game.

Not only were GW1’s districts dynamic in adding additional districts as player demand for a map grew, I’ve seen this stuff in other games like TERA where they have a district list at the top centre of the screen. The system will assign a player a district automatically when they first enter the map, but there’s always the manual option to attempt to get into a particular instance.

Why on earth this type of tech isn’t in GW2 when it’s old tech is beyond me. It’s not even like the megaserver system is incompatible with it, it’s just not there. I can only assume some form of institutional memory loss through staff turnover else why would something so basic and useful be missing?

Tempered Spinal Blades in Red/Green/Blue/Gold (the existing 4 colours).

These were worn by Scarlet’s legendary assault knights and already have assets for flying about. It shouldn’t be toooo much work to make the backs work as gliders for players (which would be awesome!).

I’m getting great sustain on my daredevil with Invigorating Precision and their heal skill + heal on evade, albeit they’re squishy against a spike. My mesmer’s the same with Restoritive Mantras, very decent sustain there and plenty of defensive layers to back it up.

No, where I find the least sustain is on the berserker.

The berserker only seems to have one gear when it comes to healing. There’s no decent supplements that lie in Arms/Discipline/Berserker, which are the lines you take for effective berserking i.e. condition damage and the most frequent adrenaline unloading.

The base warrior has nerfed healing shouts (compared to pre June 23rd patch) and Adrenal Health heals based on camping adrenaline, i.e. goes against the fundamental berserker’s mechanic of going rageface and splurging it as frequently and violently as possible on “those enemies over there”.

The berserker’s maximum supplemental healing in Arms/Discipline/Berserker is Inspiring Battle Standard paired with Banner of Tactics, of which the skill 2 heals for a miserly ~600 points and the regen is negligable without some healing power investment.

Now there’s an argument there for “well, invest in healing power silly”, except that nobody needs to do that on a daredevil or mesmer, dragonhunter, reaper, elementalist, engineer or even really druid… hmm, did I miss any classes? Revenant. Hmm, nope. Then it’s just the berserker whose supplemental healing is terrible.

This isn’t a problem in team settings like raids because the berserker sits in a raw DPS role and gets support from team mates. Soloing random HoT open world content on the other hand is more brutal on a berserker than on any other class by a mile. Healing Signet, mango pie and banner regen don’t cut it, but hey maybe the berserker just wasn’t designed to be outside a team.

A good healing supplement might look like heal on adrenaline unload (or not?) incorporated into Fatal Frenzy. Also while on topic of the berserker, please ArenaNet move Burning Arrows out of the Tactics line, like the lost puppy it is, and put it in the Arms line where it will be appropriately loved and adored. I suggest displacing Ususpecting Foe to have Burning Arrows compete with Deep Strike and Blademaster. Then watch berserker archery immolate all the things.

Moira Shalaar.5620:

OK so the coins were the right item. Here are the final amounts:
Mystic Coins 26
Mystic Crystal 12
Chocolate Chip Cookie 1
Bottle of Etonian Wine 9

LOL!

Zommoros’ Bullingdon Club membership confirmed.

Glad I found some time to catch up.

I read the patch preview and the increased speed of the sword auto vis-a-vis weakness application on the 3rd hit should address some of the damage mitigation concerns I have on the thief. I always thought that auto chain already hit pretty hard… it might be pretty scary with the buff.

The impression I’ve always had with the thief is that’s it’s always “almost in a great place”, if only the last couple of tweaks could be identified.

It’s interesting that D/P came up a fair bit in this thread so far. I also consider it the premier loadout that doesn’t waste a single skill. It fills a different role to aoe melee though, which is what I’ve been missing on the core thief sets. Stress on “core thief”. You shouldn’t need to be a daredevil to dance your way through a crowd of mobs.

S/D and S/P somewhat managed it. In each case skill 3 is your evade but neither feels defensively solid for a variety reasons. I’m biased by the defense/recovery I get on other classes, certainly. I’m adamant that sword 1 and 2 are fuctionally solid, though seeing the guardian’s Smite Condition go from 1 to 2 conditions removed in the preview (now… I play this and I was fine with 1), I think there might be scope for Infiltrator’s Return jumping up to 2 conditions removed as well. I hope so. Whether or not a small ~900 heal has any scope for being added… heh.

PopeUrban.2578:

Froptimus.6741:

PopeUrban.2578:

Condi D/D Daredevil with signet of malice and mad king runes already fulfills your criteria of area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds.

I can absolutely engage 15+ mobs at a time using the build, and do it frequently.

Sorry to go off topic, but would you please link the full build if you have time? I’ve been considering a condi DD for pve and I’d like to see how people are doing it before I go down that road.

Actually you’re ON topic!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Here’s the PvE build I use:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn8MBNPhFmCePB0PhlWCbeEuCfhaBgDwCwrMcHmDA-TRyBABAcIA2b/h+0H4lyP0PBA3fEAgUJoHPAANV/JAwBg5nf+5nf+mf+5nf+5DA-e

The jewelry on it is my “baseline” but I’ll often swap one or more pieces for settler or viper stuff depending on my party composition and what I’m doing for content.

I don’t usually run this in raids as it pays for its great suriviability and multitarget utility by being less good at single target DPS, so I switch to a venomshare build for raids so I can use most of the same equipment.

Important PvE tricks for the build:

Bunch up foes! Your Signet of Malice heals scale your survivability based directly on how many enemies you can bunch together. deathblossom strikes three times on up to 5 targets, which is a 2130 heal each use if you can get 5+ enemies together. Get melee to follow you on to ranged attackers, etc.

Be careful with bandit’s defense. Practice hitting and then immediately canceling it as letting it block and kick in large groups of mobs can get you stuck in the kick animation and killed. The low cooldown, however, makes it a great stunbreak. just practice dodging as soon as you use it to cancel the block so you can stunbreak without getting stuck in that kick animation in situations where it would be bad for you.

Your elite is a burst heal thanks to mad king runes. Each bird strike counts as an attack for the purposes for signet of malice. This means, like deathblossom, it is more effective at healing you the more targets are around. Swap to another elite if you want to use it more often, just remember the rune cooldown is 45 seconds, so you probably won’t want to use your 40s elites like BV right on cooldown. Personally I usually keep Daggerstorm on the bar as this is an aoe build, and daggerstorm is powerful healing and stability already. The MK runes also provide substantial bleed duration as well as a good source of power, which is going to make your backstab from stolen stealth worth using, and is going to make your heartseeker actually hit for damage worth their initiative.

This build has zero problems taking on up to 20 or so enemies, and is effective in pretty much any dungeon or fractal situation with very few exceptions. If you find melee to be a problem with some dungeon bosses and range it out. For bosses with shields like Thurmanova fractal you’ll want to keep a pistol in your bag, as you can’t deathblossom those targets, so you’ll want to play p/d for those encounters so you can still stack decent amounts of bleeds while using your dodge caltrops and lotus dodge daggers. You could also spam SB at close range for the same effect, but Its overall less single target condition damage. Provided you’re not in the zerg donuts in DS you should be able to solo most things with it. Feel free to vary up the sigils. I like the blight/purity sigils, but other people in my guild that have picked up the build use a variety of stuff for personal playstyle.

Good luck!

That was an interesting read, thanks I’m not going to run it but it’s nice to know that it’s there.

I picked up a staff again after a long break from it to try D/D again, which is one of the reasons D/D has been on my mind. The staff gives vaulting on the spot for quite rediculous damage with evade frames thrown in, plus there’s another evade on 3 that breaks immob for good measure. I hadn’t realised 4 is a 600 range nuke because the description makes it sound quite fluffy and harmless, but it’s a blinding aoe nuke that doesn’t even need targetting to work great. So after playing this coming straight off D/D I was in this bizarre world wondering why Death Blossom is the way it is.

Now I proposed a way of switching between condi and power variants of Death Blossom via a trait (which I mistakenly called Caltrops from Trickery instead of Uncatchable but hopefully people followed). Some people liked that idea, which is great. It is very much how the daredevil changed the dodge functionality too, which I hadn’t thought of at the time. I still like the idea of a power variant and a condi variant for these iconic thief weapons.

Anyway, the travel aspect of Death Blossom I like as it is, where it somersaults you over the foe and has you land behind. That’s different to how the staff works with its ground target and helps to differentiate them. The endurance gain in the dagger auto chain (10 from Wild Strike) is another nice defensive boost that the dagger has over the staff that again differentiates them, and of course there’s the readier stealth access for single target elimination.

The idea I have in my mind for a power based Death Blossom is actually medium damage, high defense. So, not great against 1-2 targets but worthwhile over 4-5 certainly. What concerns me most is the initiative nature, being able to chain over and over, like it needs a 1s icd so that at the very least it has to be alternated with dodges or autos, like a revenant has small cooldowns on energy skills. I’m not saying cooldowns should be a general feature of thief weapon skills, but on certain problematic ones it could be a good idea to avoid degeneracy.

With balance changes in the works it’s time to put my 2c in on the PvE front, which on the thief forum… well I usually have the impression this place is more PvP / WvW roamer. So anyway, with all the formats stepping on each other’s toes I’ve been trying to brainstorm solutions to the terrible state of an open world HoT PvE thief without destroying things elsewhere.

Main area the thief is lacking: tanky melee aoe.

3 things need to come together: a decent area attack, damage mitigation and sustained recovery from wounds all at once. I stress: all at once (but there is ebb and flow to this, or should be for balance). Think about how you would take on 10-15 HoT mobs in a Verdank Brink night defense where you can’t slink away in stealth, you have to hold fast and kill wave after wave without faltering.

Now, those 3 elements already come together on a meditation hammer guardian, dagger well necro and greatsword ranger. Add their elite specs (Dragonhunter, Reaper, Druid) and all 3 get even better at wading into mobs and wrecking everything, so I’m just looking at getting my thief to the level of my other characters. I guess I have to do it somewhat subjectively, because I get my guardian, necro and ranger to do crazy stuff my thief can only dream of, which again just highlights those 3 areas, all of which the thief is failing at. So, number 1:

Melee AoE in the Core Weapon Sets

I read the thief section in

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/profession-balance-goals-for-the-winter-2016-update/

and honestly wondered if I was playing the same game. The dagger and sword autos do enough damage don’t they? I’m a fan of both and I’m going to start with daggers.

Dagger/Dagger

From a PvE point of view, D/D skills 1, 2, 5 and Backstab are great power moves that can take out 1-2 targets. What it needs is Death Blossom to be a bigger aoe power move (wait for it condi players!) with ~210 range, ~1s of evade frames and just raw power damage instead of bleeding. There could be some debuff conditions for flavour but I would add these through traits, keeping the move vanilla like the original GW1 version (which was straight area damage).

Condi dagger would be a new feature I’d add through a trait, and it would cause the dagger moves to flip over to condi variants. This trait would be Caltrops in Trickery, already taken by death blossom spamming condi thieves as it is, and it would also alter the other dagger skills to reduce their power damage and add damaging conditions instead, such as bleed, poison and torment.

By separating power dagger and condi dagger with a trait, the full weapon bars would become useful. As it is, there are a few lame skills depending on whether you’ve gone power or condi and this is entirely fixable.

Next is Dancing Dagger, slot 4, which I would replace with the Flanking Strike / Larcenous Strike combo. Note this keeps the combo for S/D but moves it along a slot from 3 to 4. Partly this is to open the boon stealing up to any X/D build along with the evade, partly this is to open the S/D dual skill up to something new. The throwing dagger thing would be gone of course… would anyone miss it? Well, not me. Players can get throwing daggers in utilities now.

Sword/Dagger

I just covered dagger 4 above. The “new” dagger 4 evade actually puts it in the same slot as the ranger’s dagger 4 evade, which is good for muscle memory in case anyone plays both (as I do).

I think of the sword as a bit more defensive than the dagger, what with weakness on the auto and the jump in / jump out nature of Infiltrator’s Strike. It’s a good candidate for additional sustain, as you’d find on other class’s weapon sets. I would increase the conditions removed to 2, and add a heal of ~900 on Infiltrator’s Return. This is somewhat like the minor supplemental heals you see on staves, the elixir gun and such and doesn’t depend on stealth or doing something dangerous and stupid.

The new S/D Dual Skill I’d go for would be a defensive skill called Blades of Steel… I’m not sure about the scope, so other than a defensive crowd-busting move I’m not certain. Perhaps it could be like an inverse version of Vault, where the damage happens first in a Cyclone Axe-style double-swing and then the somersault out to a ground target, landing without damage.

Supplemental Healing

Minor wounds should be replenishable without leaning on the 6 skill. Acro and Daredevil lines both offer options (heal on initiative spent and heal on evade) that should be decent in a big melee. “Heal on evade” in particular could be burstier and so here’s an idea:

Driven Fortitude would grant 10 stacks of a driven fortitude buff that you’d see on your status effects.

• Other players would see it too if they clicked on you, like virtues, boons etc.
• Each evade you succeeded would deduct a stack and grant you a heal. That is, X simultaneous evades would give you X heals, until you ran out of stacks (exhausting the trait for now).
• Each stack has its own 10s timer, so after 10s that stack comes back.
• This is similar to the current 1s icd, except allows for burstier replenishment and periods of exhaustion. Better for crowd-diving and then taking a breather.

And that’s my 2c on what the thief needs in HoT PvE to go brawling with crowds of mobs like I do on other classes. It’s a fair bit behind right now on aoe damage, mitigation and recovery but it’s fixable.

I’d encourage the devs to think about dedicating weapon sets to either fully power or condi and then using traits to flip them from one to the other. I think that has some real potential.

I quit my ranger and became a druid. I got to keep my favourite bits, greatsword and pet, and added crazy healing. It’s like I took my DAoC Ranger and Druid and merged them together… kinda. Anyway, it’s good for my playstyle.

I should just add that I’m having a lot of fun with it! xD

This is why Bloodstone Ice Cream is amazing, but it still takes some self-inflicted conditions to finish the job. Actually any bloodstone food will do, but “+5% karma” toxic ice cream is actually useful outside of killing yourself. Cheapest karma food out there.

The new stats are on legendaries to look at (and indeed equip). For a 2-hander the ascended/legendary numbers are:

Sinister

• 251 Condition Damage
• 179 Power
• 179 Precision

Viper’s

• 215 Power
• 118 Precision
• 215 Condition Damage
• 118 Expertise (+7.86% Condition Duration)

So with Viper’s over Sinister you will lose some Condition Damage and Precision, but gain some Power and Condition Duration.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Sublimatio.6981:

Do we even know if there is a recipe for them?

Ok then. ANet, please add the +7 Mighty, Precise, Malign etc. infusion upgrade recipe to either the vendor or to the Mystic Forge.

Poweeer creeep!! Hehe, yeah I was trying to upgrade these things too. I’m not actually sure if I want them to be upgradable as the specialist +7 simple infusions would have a reason to be slotted. The current choice is actually a choice: +5 to a stat or another +2 AR. Maybe this is more interesting.

I’m surprised the Central Tyria masteries were locked behind HoT because that is surely core content. Feels wrong. These masteries are an opportunity for folks without the expansion to get a taste for them.

Then there’s the issue that core WvW players (“core” as in “without HoT”) get their new map, which is great, but core Fractals players are hosed without the mastery. The WvW players got what they should have but the Fractals ones not.

No masteries also means no legendary precursor hunts for core players either, which is just rude. How long have they waited for that? I’ve got the xpac, so I can do the hunts, but I expected people without the xpac to be able to do that as well.

Hard to get a blue flame that I liked but otherwise the quality is off the charts. Great outfit.

If like me you’ve been wanting an easy way to swap your infusions around, ArenaNet have added Infusion Extractor consumables to the fractals mistlab.

There’s a new merchant locked behind fractals mastery #1 (which is pretty easy to get), basically you talk to a “MAST-ER” golem who sends you to a nearby island with the new merchant on. Well worth checking out for all sorts, but the main thing to catch my eye: Infusion Extractors for 24s each! That’s a massive reduction from the crazy 350 gems it used to be for Upgrade Extractors.

So, re: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Better-infusion-extraction-options/first#post5189184, thank you very much devs!

Also I’m loving the cat golems. Very adorable.

I imagine Zealot’s will become more readily available.

I already made Keeper’s armour and weapons thanks to getting a Wurm armour drop and that being the stat choice I went for… it was that complete accident that I bought the full set of recipes for a song and crafted it all up. No idea how long I’ve had that gear… a long time.

That gear has already proven itself to me in WvW where you need a strategy for health recovery in say, keep fights. While I’ve found healing power worthless on many classes, that’s not been the case on the ranger. I honestly notice a difference.

Currently there’s no Zealot’s trinkets and I’m keen to see if there’ll be any in HoT. In the mean time I’ve been using others and switching them has been enough to flip from “pretty glassy” to “pretty tanky”. A bunch of Nomad’s trinkets is the fastest way to suddenly get tanky and if there were Zealot’s trinkets it wouldn’t even affect healing power when you swapped them.

~2,000 hours on my ranger and I still hate the auto attack. I’m mostly WvW and open world PvE oriented and solo a fair selection of fractals for a hobby (the harpy one is probably my favourite). Anyway.

The unresponsiveness into evades is my main bugbear, followed by how dangerous the sword is to use in elevated fights on rope bridges and platforms. If skill 3 animated like Death Blossom and Hornet’s Sting activated as fast as Lightning Reflexes, I could almost forgive the speed with which Monarch’s Leap times out (please be available longer) and the horror show of the auto attack.

Speaking of which, I wonder how the auto is going to fare with Action Camera. Anyone going to try that?

Alpha Training’s a big reward for taking Beastmastery so no, I don’t agree that rangers should get the Beastmastery goodies for free. If you want the stats then spec the line.

Frankly I’m extatic they made Beastmastery such a great line for my playstyle – pets and greatsword.

If you have a problem with Marksmanship then okay, the 3 Opening Strike minors probably should be a single minor. That leaves 2 marksmanship-themed minors: say extra critical damage vs vulnerable foes for one and a chance to inflict vuln on crit for another.

I don’t like the idea of arbitrary cripple spam on minors, nor do I like minors in markmanship that have anything to do with taking advantage of snares. I’d prefer the theme to be around vulnerability and damage multipliers.

Marksmanship should be about precise, killing blows without much nonsense.

Most Dangerous Game reminded me a lot of the Guild Wars 1 inscription, “Vengeance is Mine”, which gives a 20% damage bonus when the character is under half health. This is simply the inversion of Executioner, Bolt to the Heart, Close to Death etc.

It would have allowed for a beautiful mirror effect in PvP when the ranger dips under half: the ranger’s opponent gets a 20% damage bonus but, oh, so does the ranger. Plus the bonuses are instant. The whole business of floating under half health waiting for might to pulse just doesn’t do it for me personally. I’m not playing that game.

So anyway, I find it surprising MDG hasn’t gone the 20% under 50 route yet.

Hmm, well for the auto attack there’s only so many animations they have to choose from unless they schedule an animator to make another. Either the sunray shoots from the tip of the staff or the character’s finger.

Idle stance-wise I’d probably prefer the caster stance too. Like the guardian / mesmer / ele.

Charging the avatar is pretty much shooting thin air 3 times with the auto attack… though I wonder if mango pie and signet of the wild were doing anything… no I’m pretty sure it’s just a case of 3 auto attacks at thin air.

Anyway, I took it to Claw of Jormag to spam-heal all the frostbite sufferers and it did pretty well. Target limit was an issue but the green numbers kept on rolling. Very good mobility by chaining staff 3 with greatsword 3 by the way…

I confess to keeping my utilities/elite the same… two wilderness survival stunbreaks and two sources of stability (sig/elite).

Then again I’ve only really been looking at the staff and avatar.

I’d like to shout-out to the artists who did the skill effect work. Amazing job.

Celestial Avatar in particular makes me look like a living legendary

Just having a blast finisher on staff 3 is pretty nice, finding out there’s a water field on 5 is even nicer!

PvP aside, I’ve been having fun trying them in PvE…

• The smoke field is so easy for a gs/staff druid to get stealth out of. I likey!

• The fire wyvern ignores your target it seems when hitting F2. It just dumps the fire wherever it happens to be… which is not so good. Otherwise it’s sweet.

My 2c.

I’d say Zealot’s (to have dps too) and Cleric’s (maxed healing power) are the best go-to power sets.

If the max life is an issue, as much Nomad’s can be switched in as necessary. Pretty sure Nomad’s was missing from the stat selector too. Well with live coming up in ~3 weeks, soon enough we’ll be able to test this stuff with real gear.

Y’know, testing after release >.>

I’m already resigned to it.

The ideal stat set for druid, possibly, and it’s not in the beta. The final beta.

I have this stat set in ascended on live, but due to a mistake on my part I couldn’t try it out in the beta… I wish I could re-copy my bank over when I screw up like I did.

Even better would be if the beta exotics actually just gave us Zealot’s as a choice so we can run a dps/healing set.

I’m pretty annoyed about not being able to test my live gear on a beta character before HoT goes live, but this is what we get for only having a single beta before live and an unforgiving beta bank copy system.

I pottered about in Verdant Brink for 10 minutes or so before giving up. I can’t get the right stats to give this a real test so what’s the point? Trying a zerk/cleric mix just didn’t work, I was short on healing power and had all this ferocity that I didn’t want – useless.

My brief experince on 320 healing power was not good.

Unlimited Infusion Extractor

My defensive infusions are all over the place. They cost me 5 laurels +125 badges of honor, or 50 WvW tournament tickets each, too expensive to replace! I need to extract at least a dozen and re-assign them.

Help me gemstore!

Saiyan.1704:

Anyone else notice that you’ll apply 3stacks of burns to yourself if you use it inside the Ele’s Swirling Winds? Swirling Winds suppose to destroy projectiles, but instead, it’s like my fireball explodes in my face. The concept is cool but it’s not really suppose to happen. …or..is it?

I would be terrified to be an engineer throwing Elixir X. How many engies have moaed themselves and their team with that thing?

Perhaps the shield #4 to act similar to the revenant staff #5, pushing enemies aside as the guardian charges forward in a generated shield-wave.

Instead of doing any damage, the guardian’s shield-wave gives an aegis to allies they pass through (synergy with aegis traits). This also means the guardian can use this as a mobility skill (perhaps breaking immob/chill/cripple too).

It needs a total redesign.

I would compare it to the Lancer of TERA. In TERA, the shield is exquisite. It blocks, it swipes, it stuns and it helps you push through a mob of enemies. In GW2, it’s fighting to find a moment of relevance before going on a long cooldown; 99% useless.

All I want is to occasionally shout “Shoryuken!” when I throw torch #4, and I will be happy.

(I’m just kidding. I’m already happy with the torch.)

The spec will add an F5 skill that allows us to meld with the pet. Behold I give you – MOA BOY! And lo, it’s like polymorph moa but forever and self-inflicted.

Or how about… again you get an F5, but this allows the pet to stow the ranger. You get to run around as your pet! Ok so that’s useless too.

A bow that fires jaguars?

So far the only thing I even remember was the odd lightning-surge vine-launch thing that norn druid was doing in a video. That much would indicate a ranged staff.

Thinking to the DAoC druid, they had ranged area control using vines, what were effectively boon strips, little actual damage (rather, controlling an area so allies could do the dirty work.) Maybe an area control theme could work. But it could also be pretty obnoxious… there’s already a “pirate ship” meta in WvW to a degree with all the lines and statics, if there were more aoe immob in the mix as well… mhmm, that might not be fun.

Well, staff aside… what are we getting for utilities do you think? We’ve seen a load of shouts go in, but rangers already have those so it won’t be shouts. Glyphs?

In WvW the ranger feels great! Though, survivability in WvW is proportional to time spent in WvW.

I play necro a lot in WvW too; both classes get hammered in these forums and yet they feel strong to me out in WvW. But then I know the format really well and don’t try to do too much stupid kitten.

Since the trait change I’ve been really surprised by the shortbow in my power build, so I do greatsword/shortbow and float behind the frontline, immobing all-the-things, skirmishing, abusing piercing concussion shot… oh it’s great. I’d still say doing well is more down to experience than anything though, because if you do stupid kitten then you’re dead no matter what.

My favourite lulz moment recently was my dog taunting a stealthed thief to reveal himself, getting instantly immobed by the dog and then exploding as everyone jumped him. So dirty!

As good as Rebound may be for allies, I have to find it out-of-theme and basically a Chronomancer skill. In fact it’s blatantly treading on the Chronomancer’s toes and certainly nothing to do with storms or tempests.

I would suggest bringing back Maelstrom. Shouting “MAELSTROM!!” would be really cool anyway, as it has to be a shout, right.

Have the GW1 style of it dropping out of the air and putting down a five-second aoe pulsing daze with a tiny damage component. Done. I know the GW1 original lasted ten seconds, but whatever.

As a WvW player I see a lot of potential in Wildfire. Seems like a pretty big boon strip to me, like a super-sized Well of Corruption. Plus all the might blasting… actually a lot of the warhorn skills could be good if the ele can get in close without vaporizing.

For open-world PvE, and I’m thinking HoT / Verdant Brink type areas, the overloads could be really nice for dealing with hordes of trash mobs. There were a whole lot of those in the betas.

Raif.9507:

I doubt you can swap to another attunement while casting the overload. Most likely will cancel it as you’re no longer “in the correct attunement” and it’s an attunement specific skill.

Like switching from Fire to Water mid-meteor shower to take advantage of Piercing Shards? Nah, you’ll be able to start the cast and swap like any other spell.

Also I’m imagining you’ll be able to overload while wielding a Fiery Greatsword or Lightning Hammer for extra stats.

All that tempest stuff is desperately short range, which after a long night of WvW is giving me visions of exploding elementalists. All those spinning tops are going to get immobed and bombed into oblivion.

I’m glad my wells are 900 range! However, even if the overcharges don’t get used much, some of those warhorn skills do look pretty tasty. Wildfire strips boons? Did you see the aoe?! Doesn’t that make it Well of Corruption on crack, as a weapon skill? I may have to go back and double-check.

Chilling Darkness is the new Smiter’s Boon. It’s dead Jim!

At this point the trait should probably just be replaced.

If they’re going to put an ICD on it, they should bump the duration up to a four-five second chill to make it a more significant skill-shot.

edit: silly kitten filter!

I love staff / Ventari. I settled on Cleric/Traveler armour, Cleric/Celestial trinkets and an Assassin staff with Air+Fire sigils. Sustain is excellent, though staff damage is poor and relied heavily on the additional punch of sigil procs.

I took it to the Silverwastes to heal critical NPCs and players and it did a solid job at forts, in the Breach and at Vinewrath to heal carriers.

In Frostgorge Sound I was able to tank any of the champions with ease, save the underwater ones.

I had a lot of fun today with Kol Skullsmasher in Harathi, supporting a couple of other players. The on-demand projectile dome negated his boulders and triple-attack with clever positioning, meaning all I had to dodgeroll was the main stomp attack. The boulders were actually being flung at another player, so I moved the tablet to be in the way and just activated the shield for a second or two at a time. I’m finding all sorts of fun uses for the tablet and it’s really unique.

Overall the staff and tablet are a ton of fun. It does feel a lot like playing a traditional MMO healer (particularly the druid/warden from DAoC were coming to mind) in that I could slowly grind mobs into dust while healing and cleaning like crazy.

If I could highlight just one gripe, it’s that the lack of weapon swap makes the class too narrow in their scope. The staff is very low dps and melee, which is too restrictive by itself.

In preparation for the June 23rd patch, I’ve switched many of my ascended items between characters to account for the way stats are being shaken up.

While ascended items are easily moved, I now have totally inappropriate infusions all over the place. These things are pretty high-end and I would love to have an infusion extractor to put them back on the characters I bought or made them for.

To clarify, these are +5 stat / +5 AR and +5 stat / % damage vs guards type infusions that cost either a chunk of gold or a pile of laurels and badges.

I have things like 6 infusions for armour, another 5-6 for trinkets and another bunch for weapons per character. The current Upgrade Extractor in the gem store is an extortionate method of moving so many infusions (in this case, it also unnecessarily removes the rune).

Please consider an affordable solution to help players transition their infusions from the old stat system to the new one. Perhaps a Gold-Fed Infusion Extractor? Thanks!

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

True. What if the rewards for taking the objective scaled off the tier?

Double, triple.

Glad I found this again. I notice Hide in Plain Sight is gone? That trait is amazing since they made it standard stealth. The Shared Anguish + Hide in Plain Sight combo is really nice in WvW.

I’m currently toying with Winderness Survival, Nature Magic and Beastmastery in the calculator. Not all the choices are straight forward… dogs with taunt or aoe Winter’s Bite? Decisions, decisions…

The comment about the Druid line throwing a spanner into the works is a good one. Right now I can’t imagine wanting the Druid line over what there is. I guess we’ll see.

Ok, nice feedback Belzebu & Heimskarl Ashfiend.

We’ve seen greatsword and axe both evolve over time. Would you change axe 2 if you could? Imagine you could do anything with it.

Now, sword as a power mobility weapon. Yes, I agree that it is.

Sword has a lot of issues since release. The fighting style is wild, headstrong and often unresponsive. Hornet’s Sting is an odd skill that is an evade with a tell. An evade… with a tell. “I’m going to evade… not yet! Soon.” And then there’s Monarch’s Leap, which times out so fast you can’t do a whole lot between skills to make it interesting. But then that’s a whole other thread.

I guess the thing with sword is that I like it as a mobility weapon, except the greatsword is simpler to use than the 180 degree contortions and custom camera settings required for the sword. It’s kinda fun to pull off and you could argue “skilful” if you like. I’m ambivalent to that aspect. But I look at newer traits like Poison Master, then look at the sword as the obvious mainhand, and I can’t help but want it to be a lot more hybrid. That means pushing the axe out of that role – and again there’s the shortbow.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is a terrible, awful idea… It does not make sense and the weapons do not “need these changes.” I have no clue where you why any of this sounds logical to you but you need to revise your decisions before claiming things like “need” and “makes sense.”

I have nothing constructive to add to this thread because you had nothing constructive to say.

You’re not giving me anything to go on either. Maybe think about it and come back.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Cirian.8917:

Bleeds on a power weapon are not invaluable.

Axe is not a power weapon. Look at the direct damage. It is 170 per axe for each skill.

Sure, the auto relies on bounces and it’s no longbow. To me it seems more about feeding might to the pet than raw power damage. There isn’t any condi damage on the auto at all unless you trait for it, at which point… shortbow.

So the axe isn’t a condi weapon either. There is an argument for axe as hybrid, but it doesn’t know what range it wants to sit at.

My proposal would put Splitblade on the sword. If you want a mainhand to pair with dagger/torch you’d still have access to Splitblade on sword 2, but now you’d also have the poison+evade on sword 3. Putting those two condi moves together on the same main hand seems like a good idea. The sword would still be an excellent power weapon, but it would also become the go-to hybrid weapon.

As for the axe, I say it has already moved into the pet support role. Ever since it had might added to the auto, people have been doing beastmasters with main hand axe because it makes sense to have a pet running around with 25 might. The axe 3 also fits that role nicely. Axe 2… not so much.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I like the sword and I like the axe, I just wish their roles were tighter and they didn’t tread on each other. So, let’s have sword be the melee hybrid with bleed/poison and let’s have the axe as the mid-range pet support.

I hadn’t even contemplated changed F skills for rangers. I suppose if they squished the pet UI up a bit they could add an F5 skill, perhaps give the pet its own sort of “elite” on-command skill like the F2, but for the most part I’m basically happy with the F skills.

Actually I’m more curious about the staff and utilities. I wonder if we’ll get totems, like the grawl use.

Bran.7425:

That seems more than a little selfish there while sword has issues, we’ve been dealing with that since launch, so to put this plainly just because you don’t like some stop trying to ‘ruin’ it for everyone.

I know, right. My agenda is to look at the weapons we have and see about building a consensus for improving them by filling in any gaps and ironing out some of those irksome qualities.

While I freely admit there is a selfish element, I’m here to build consensus because I want everyone to be happy with our weapon sets, not just me. I’ve been struggling with sword since launch, too.

Now, when I see an interesting possibility, I’m going to lay it on the table and then have a conversation. It could be that our weapon sets are already perfect… but they’re not and you know that as well as I do, so let’s talk

Belzebu.3912:

The OP looks just like me a while ago, trying a power build using axe mh as weapon.
While it isn’t exactly bad, LB, GS and Sword have a much better time as power weapon, axe mh is an hybrid.

I wanted to address this specific point because you are very close to my line of thinking, in trying to make a power set (not build, but set) using the main hand axe.

The two obvious power sets right now are the greatsword and the longbow. No controversy there.

We have 4 off-hands that we can roughly split into 2 for condi (dagger/torch) and 2 for power (axe/warhorn). Now I could go off on a tangent and explore the condi options but I’m going to stick with power for this post.

I suggest that there is a gap between greatsword and longbow for a mid-range power set that has a unique focus. The HoT trait changes that are on the way suggested to me that axe/warhorn in particular would have a pet focus, some party boons, emphasis on power damage and a mid range. That’s a really unique focus, something quite different from greatsword and longbow.

Looking forward to these new possibilities then, sure, I started thinking about dropping the greatsword or the longbow for this mid-range pet oriented set. The one thing that kept striking me was that Splitblade just isn’t fitting into this picture. The skill is fine, just not on this weapon.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Ranger sword the power weapon and MH Axe the hybrid/condi weapon?

Okay, so the way the sword stands is that the auto is the highest on-paper power dps weapon, but as we all know it has its issues with user-unfriendliness. My personal preference for melee power weapon is the greatsword, and the lack of a true condi melee weapon main-hand is a current bugbear. Part of my proposal is to cement the sword as a truer condi main hand weapon. In fact, it would be a true hybrid weapon because the auto would still be basically power.

The way the axe stands is that the only condi aspect to the weapon at all is Splitblade, which to be any good has to be used point-blank. You are seriously wasting your time trying to use this except at point-blank, and yet it’s on a 900 range weapon instead of a melee weapon.

The other axe skills, 1 and 3, are very pet oriented. The auto feeds might to the pet with Fortifying Bond, and Winter’s Bite is a nice debuff that helps debilitate and control. Splitblade as it is doesn’t really fit into this theme, so I propose moving it to a more appropriate weapon like the sword and taking Hornet’s Sting across to the axe.

(edit: spelling and quoted who I’m replying to)