Guild Wars 2

Another thing I’ve noticed when using GS, is that I often use Gravedigger just to bait dodges. I’ll be in Soldier ammy in sPvP focusing more on RS for damage, but if I want to get a dodge out of the way, I’ll roll in with Gravedigger. People almost always dodge it, and it doesn’t really mean much to the grand scheme of the fight for me. If it happens to land? A few thousand damage is nice.

Sometimes having an ability they have to dodge is a benefit if you don’t want them to dodge something else a few seconds later.

@Vague: Yeah, I agree with your general sentiment. There are too many variables thrown in. It feels like everything is on the gas, and nothing is on the brakes, and balance will be attained by the sheer number of variables. Classes have more access to conditions, so there needs to be more condition clearing available. Classes have more access to boons, so there needs to be more boon stripping/counterplay. Then there’s more boon stripping/counter-play, and suddenly classes need more access to boons. It’s a philosophy of “more, more, more”, when I really think there needs to be someone to say “whoa, we need less” (or fewer).

I don’t subscribe to that method personally, and think less is more with respect to meaningful PvP interactions (active mitigations, condi application, boon usage, etc.). At this point though, I’m concerned it isn’t going to go through a super serious overhaul, so I’m working on taking my favorite class/build and working on nuances in gameplay to overcome certain fights/situations. I may not win tournaments, but at the very least I can enjoy my time with such a mentality shift.

And if after extensive play I conclude that something feels like it’s unbeatable, I’ll provide feedback on it. However, that will come after teamplay/role/etc. analysis. One person beating me in a 1on1 consistently because of evades isn’t necessarily OP or a design flaw if it can be countered by teamplay.

brannigan.9831:

hackks.3687:

What’s the point of whining about something that won’t come back?

Oh, because Abjured keeps winning, so haters gotta hate. I get it.

It has nothing to do with hater’s hating. I could care less whether Abjured wins or loses. I mostly solo queue I could care less about the e-sports aspect of the game. What I don’t like is that a few of these people have a-net’s ear enough that one week in they geot an amulet removed that wasn’t even working properly (the buff duration was broken) without any kind of real explanation. To me if the healing power of a certain calss aka Druid was the problem that should have been nerfed not a amulet that is not all that much different then Cleric. This was a good choice for bunkers guardians to deal with the ridiculous burst damage that was added with A-nets poorly balanced HoT expansion. 5K extra vitality is somehow broken? It annoys me that in a game where thousands of people pvp a handful of people are the only ones that are listened to for balance purposes. It’s a shady process and quite frankly I could care less what Chaith’s opinions are. He is one person. You can be a toady and just do the father know’s best routine but quite frankly I think its pathetic.

If one amulet is tailor-made to bring a class above and beyond, and you nerf the class, what does that mean for their diversity? You’re balancing a class around an amulet. Is that good design?

Garo.5304:

It’s because this forum is particularly obsessed with melee grade DPS. For some reason necros have to be able to do it to. If you win a fight even though the math says you’ll lose. The math is no longer valid.

I don’t think the math has ever said Necros will lose a fight. It just says that another class might win the fight faster.

Competitive players should abuse any comp they can get their hands on. If you’re in a competitive tournament, your goal is to win. When you abuse something that the developer feels undermines their design philosophy, it’s a brighter spotlight on what they need to act on.

Plus, it should force other teams to try to figure out ways to beat it, even if they bring their own crazy comp. Nothing should be taboo.

Vague Memory.2817:

Cogbyrn.7283:

You only give very large changes a week and a half or so to settle before deciding you’re playing perfectly, and it must be the game’s fault?

You’re doing yourself a disservice.

I play and have played a lot of PvP, when 21K health feels like you are made of paper, or you can only land 3 hits in a 1v1 because of the obscene amount of mobility, evades and invulns I don’t think you have to wait until things settle, because that is what is happening now.

I’ve played several games where a daredevil was literally just using rolls and the stomp/evade skill, and was doing really well. There just doesn’t seem to be any common sense or testing of this stuff at all. Having rev, daredevil, or engi immortal builds is obviously not good for PvP, nor is massive boon or condition stacking. I regularly see might or vulnerability stacked up to 20. I’m genuinely baffled what game play design or philosophy (if any) the devs are using. It’s like a bunch of 8 year olds got together and said I know this would be cool to have and gave no thought to tell signs or counterplay.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that boon, condition, and mitigation spam are a little silly. Conditions seem to just squirt out of nowhere incidentally, boons happen the same way, and some classes chain together active mitigation in such a way that you can’t know the windows unless you sit down and practice against them, or play them yourself.

I think the Rune/Sigil system are part of the problem, honestly. I think runes/sigils should be extremely basic and weaker, mostly just extending durations of individual boons/conditions, increasing damage by a bit, or providing effects on weapon swap (like life steal, etc.).

However, one thing I’ve really been working on is tempering my frustration with respect to active mitigation spam. Sure, initial appearances are irritating. You feel like you can’t get any hits in, when you do they feel ineffectual because of heals/etc., and it can feel fruitless. I’ve felt that keenly in the past, especially since I play a Necromancer, a class where they seemed to still believe in the idea of graphical tells. It felt like they could just “roll their face” across all of their mitigation, while initiating attacks/dazes/etc. instantly to counter almost all of my abilities.

I know that irritation when another class feels like it has the advantages, but is it truly a bad thing to have to learn another class? Imagine the case where you practice for a long time against a Daredevil using stomp and evasion, then you run into one in a game and obliterate him. Now what does he do? He’s already spamming evasions, so where does he go from there?

He has to learn what you’re doing and use his mitigation properly instead of spamming it. If he spams it, he’s predictable, and if he’s predictable, he’s probably counterable.

Is this good design? Eeeeeeeeh, hard to say. It makes the barrier of entry annoying for new players when they are evade-spammed and feel helpless, potentially constricting the influx of newer players. On the flip side, many games have instances where your first encounters with certain heroes/levels/etc. are difficult/feel impossible. There’s something to be said for persevering and actively wanting to become a better player to overcome those difficulties, so I think in a sense it’s fine.

Combined with condi spam (especially blind) and boon spam, it feels like too much. I’ll agree with that. I think more people need to separate themselves from the emotional frustration of early failure, though, so they can explore solutions and grow as players instead of just quitting. Otherwise, they’ll end up hopping from game to game, quitting whenever things get difficult. If they enjoy that, that’s fine, but I don’t know if you can design a game around it, unless it’s an easy, non-competitive game.

cillard.3986:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Good lord, you have the privilege to help mold a game mode by providing feedback, for a game you supposedly love, and you act like it’s this huge chore that ANet should grovel at your feet for you even thinking about doing.

I would have loved to have been part of the feedback process, regardless of what they did with said feedback. It’s an honor to be brought in to be a part of any sort of feedback process for any product you love/enjoy.

Beta testing software isn’t a privilege and it isn’t an honor. For a gaming company it is free labor to leverage people heavily invested in the product to do something they lack internal resources to do themselves. A non-gaming software company pays internal staff to beta test as well as opening up to the outside if it is a new version of an existing product. For other businesses, beta testing is a matter of self preservation to make sure that the product or process they are implementing doesn’t hurt them.

Also, the entire purpose of the beta test is to ensure that the product is viable before being released. Viable, meaning that it is free of any major bugs and does what it is supposed to do. If you find out during testing that your product has a major design flaw, you don’t just go ahead and release it anyways. No point in beta testing if you have no intention of fixing glaring issues before release.

I am glad you are a fan of the company. Good for you, but don’t you dare attack me because I am displeased with my time being wasted, my feedback being ignored, and being sold a product with a major design flaw.

I’m not attacking you as a person. I’m attacking the idea that you, and others, think all of their feedback should be incorporated immediately, because they know best. You have your opinion, you provide it, then the company collects opinions and acts however they think is best. Sometimes that involves not following your opinion. Or is there a major bug/exploit on the Desert BL that doesn’t make it a sandbox PvP experience with objectives to center activity around? Successful and viable are two different things, and based on what I’ve seen, Desert BL is perfectly viable. It just might not turn out to be successful, and perhaps the feedback you gave is shaping internal discussions on what to do in the future.

Business doesn’t move quickly. If you’ve never worked with/for a large company, that’s something to know. And if you think ANet dropped the ball, get a refund, delete your account, and move on to a different game. Vote with your wallet. Throwing money at an organization while simultaneously saying they wronged the community isn’t the way to prove a point.

And if you think beta testing is free labor used to leverage people, why did you voluntarily take part in that system? It sounds like you don’t think very highly of it.

msalakka.4653:

White Knight Apologist:

Knee-jerk reactions are what gamers do best when it comes to change. Also, sweeping generalizations must be in season, because everyone is speaking on behalf of “everyone”. Those are are really rejecting the changes are the vocal minority who are frustrated enough to log into forums to complain. Many others are just doing Halloween/expansion content.

EDIT – Forgot the second part. Even after profuse complaining, many people will eventually come back and tool around. sPvP just doesn’t provide the experience you’re looking for when you are a WvWer, so though it is shiny and chrome right now, the pull will happen eventually.

No, they won’t. They’ll go to CU as soon as it hits beta or some other RvR. WvW fanatics don’t just suddenly become PvE enthusiasts because the same tired Halloween event returns.

Lmao, very nice touch changing the name. Maybe some people just get angry when children throw tantrums in public.

And MMOers are always advertised as about to leave a game for some new upcoming game. Heck, people have a “Countdown to 0 subs” timer for WoW, because everyone just loves the idea of an MMO that doesn’t 100% fit their ideas perfectly in every way dying horribly so no one else can enjoy it.

cillard.3986:

Notsoperky.2348:

At least they admitted they released the new maps without really testing them or finishing them Maybe next time they will ask real wvw players to test from an early stage and then listen and act in the feedback.

My worry is that it may be too late.

The absolutely DID invite entire WvW guilds into the beta testing. My guild is one of those that was invited and we perhaps one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, WvW guilds in NA.

We took our time to test their game, because we care about it that much, and spent our time writing up feedback about the glaring issues we found with the new maps. For the most part, they were completely ignored. Whether it was due to lack of resources or lack of importance, who can say….. but those people still defending ANET at this point need to get a grip. These forums are getting spammed with complaints about the very issues we raised to ANET literally months and months ago. They chose to ignore them and implement the maps as is.

(read this before it automagically disappears, as criticism usually does)

Good lord, you have the privilege to help mold a game mode by providing feedback, for a game you supposedly love, and you act like it’s this huge chore that ANet should grovel at your feet for you even thinking about doing. You must have expected that every piece of anything you submitted would be immediately changed, but that isn’t how feedback works.

What was your feedback? You spent your time writing it up, what sorts of things did it involve? What do you feel is a reasonable timeframe for those issues to be resolved? What feedback did ANet receive from other guilds? What feedback resulted in changes (since you said “mostly”)?

I think ANet made a mistake with the Desert BL design, but I’m still giving it a shot. Regardless, this spoiled child attitude is something I’ll never agree with.

I would have loved to have been part of the feedback process, regardless of what they did with said feedback. It’s an honor to be brought in to be a part of any sort of feedback process for any product you love/enjoy.

You only give very large changes a week and a half or so to settle before deciding you’re playing perfectly, and it must be the game’s fault?

You’re doing yourself a disservice.

vespers.1759:

Company sets unreasonable deadline that results in unfinished product… fanboy claims we’ll yell at them for “releasing late” when they are not required to make a release announcement at all. Not my fault they couldn’t deliver on their promises. They didn’t have to rush HoT out the door, they chose to.

Also many other games including Bioshock Infinite were applauded for pushing release back to make sure the game was as good as it could be. I would actually be PLEASED if they had postponed HoT to make it better, as would anyone that wants a decent expansion. Instead we get something rushed and Anet shrugs, pockets your money and promises to do better in the future.

You’re right. Because I don’t hate a developer, I must be a fanboy.

The Desert BL looks pretty finished to me. All of the HoT content looks pretty finished to me. The Reaper spec I’ve been playing feels very polished and finished to me.

The community was demanding they own up to their mistakes. They mentioned that they didn’t make as much progress as they wanted, but the things mentioned in the quote include:

Population, which I have no idea how they are going to “fix”. People are going to be people, leaving and joining new worlds on a whim, or not queuing if they are further behind than an obvious train would suggest.

Nightcapping, which I personally don’t even think is an issue. WvW is a 24/7 game mode, recruit the coverage or deal with the loss.

Scoring, which is probably going to be a fluid system change, not some one-and-done “fix”.

Rewards, which, I don’t even know what exactly that means. I don’t WvW for rewards, I WvW to fight people.

All in all, saying it’s an unfinished product is over-dramatization to the point where I imagine you sweeping your hand exaggeratedly up to your forehead and saying “Woe…” after finishing your post.

If you’re unhappy, get a refund, delete your account, and leave the game forever. If you really want to make a point to a company, you have to do it with your wallet. I’ve enjoyed this expansion so far, so they can keep my money. I’m going to get a whole lot more enjoyment out of it in the months to come. It isn’t like this is Batman: Arkham Knight. They just need to do some more work on some of the systems to try to accommodate what people claim they want.

Yes we can get 100% chance to crit without stats. But those crits are going to be tiny.

Are you sure you want Ferocity with absolutely no Power?

ReaperJr.5967:

Gave a decent explanation of why it wasn’t op yet trying to convince forum warriors is like playing chess with a pigeon; they knock all your pieces down, kitten on the board and pretend they have won.

Gave up and concluded the thread on the note that d/d ele would be phased out once HoT hits. Guess who was right.

I hate how true that statement is. Not that everyone has to always agree, but declarations of victory on the forums are just incredible to read.

Wasn’t the Minstrel amulet removed from sPvP? Why would they maintain threads that continue to discuss something that doesn’t exist?

Maybe because even this thread about those threads has devolved into team-bashing drama. If you really want to stick it to Abjured, go beat them at their own game. Use their exact comp if you want. Put them in their place, or sit back down, because no one is impressed by the fat guy yelling at the professional quarterback through his TV.

vespers.1759:

This comment is literally a giant middle finger to us.

Why?

Because he admits they kitten WvW and rushed it out the door before it was finished. They will still take money for this of course, despite it being a broken and unfinished product, with the vague promise it’ll be fixed “in the future”

Well it’s been 3 years and WvW is still garbage so what makes this time any different? They set an unreasonable deadline and instead of respecting us and waiting they went forward and screwed us.

The gaming industry is plagued with people that enable this kind of behaviour and it kittenes me off. If you ordered a hamburger and it came undercooked you’d send it back. If you bought a car and it had no wheels you’d send it back. But for some reason people are happy to purchase unfinished games and wait for a mysterious point in the future that it will all be fixed… except that never really works out does it?

You’re purchasing an ever-changing service, not a product. I’ve played WvW fairly regularly for the past 3 years, even in its “garbage” state, and had an absolute blast.

If they release late, they get yelled at by someone else other than you who says they are giving players the middle finger by not hurrying up. They push out what they have done at their deadline and continue work, and someone like you comes out and says they are giving us the middle finger by admitting that they didn’t get as far as they’d like and they still have work to do.

Please. The era of the pre-purchase and kickstarter promises in the gaming industry isn’t exactly the best thing in the world, but put your torch away. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of the expac, as I knew what to expect. Can’t wait to get way, way more than my money’s worth out of the rest of my time playing.

I spent $60 for access to 1500 hours worth of enjoyment. I’ll probably get at least that much again over the next few years. What an incredible deal, even if the WvW map isn’t just right to please me.

Saleen Jso.2645:

The community is clearly rejecting the changes. WvW activity is down significantly and every player I have conversed with regarding the changes have expressed dismay and are rarely playing any longer. They either play PVP or no longer login.

Knee-jerk reactions are what gamers do best when it comes to change. Also, sweeping generalizations must be in season, because everyone is speaking on behalf of “everyone”. Those are are really rejecting the changes are the vocal minority who are frustrated enough to log into forums to complain. Many others are just doing Halloween/expansion content.

EDIT – Forgot the second part. Even after profuse complaining, many people will eventually come back and tool around. sPvP just doesn’t provide the experience you’re looking for when you are a WvWer, so though it is shiny and chrome right now, the pull will happen eventually.

Now we’re thinking! These are important points. For Gravedigger, we’re looking at potentially missing attacks. With a lower number of total attacks factoring into damage, each one missed has a larger impact on total damage done. With smaller, faster attacks, missing an attack or two is minimally impactful.

However, what if a boss has a transitional phase, or temporary invulnerabilities? This has already been demonstrated with certain boss phases, where the boss vanishes from the fight or otherwise cannot be hurt for a period of time. How much condition damage is lost when all of the stacks you’ve put on tick away/are removed suddenly? Everyone’s damage drops to 0 during a phase like this, but the potential for a condition build dropped by potentially thousands of damage. In the grand scheme this might not be a big deal, but any raids that involve any sort of cleansing shouldn’t be ignored.

In general, DPS from fast attacks has almost always been more reliable than DPS from slow attacks. Your sample size for hits increases, the randomness from crits/misses/whatever other RNG (which I understand isn’t always present for a Necro, but still) is more normalized, and you generally have a more consistent experience.

All of these are variables that shouldn’t just be ignored. Fights need to be analyzed alongside to really evaluate effectiveness in a game like GW2. Simulations only go so far even in a game like WoW.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Substatic.6958:

AAAaaaand today fractal guilds were looking for players again in map chat, guess which was the only class being left out in their list?

NERF NECRO!

Why would you want to play with morons?

This is another good point. If nothing else, this is a good litmus test for who you probably don’t want to play with anyway. Not that they are necessarily wrong about Necro being less optimal than other classes for super duper record runs, but I always preferred to play with people, not classes.

Vydahr.4285:

Substatic.6958:

AAAaaaand today fractal guilds were looking for players again in map chat, guess which was the only class being left out in their list?

I really hope that Anet realizes that that sort of exclusion is a thing… Not that it seems like they’re going to do anything much about it -.-

The only thing they could do is provide meters in the game. Even if they buffed Necros into the ceiling for some reason, it would probably take a substantial amount of time for that to propagate into the community.

The size of your weapons makes me really, really happy.

(Mained a Warrior first, love me some large weaps).

Unfortunately I do not know why they removed those from the game. I did want to give you kudos on the title of the thread, though. I actually barked a laugh out loud reading it.

I also use Staff for the utility. RS serves as a damage source for me, so my Staff provides utility while the Greatsword provides more melee threat and area control.

Also, with Death Magic alongside Reaper, Staff #3 alone gives 10% damage reduction with Poison and 10% damage reduction with Chill from any targets I hit, Staff #5 creates space/chills, Staff #4 gives me much-needed condi transfer since I dropped Consume Conditions, and Staff #2 is great for breaking through Aegis/Blind, triggering Engi’s Transmute, etc. And if all else fails, Staff #1 is nice to get some buffer Life Force.

No.

I want to give the new maps a fair shake, and I haven’t been able to yet.

Puck.9612:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

I don’t want to play a game where every other character plays like Puck, and half their play-style revolves around becoming invulnerable long enough to wait for cooldowns or allies to show up.

Wtf did I do?

Hahaha, this amused me. You may be aware, but if not, Puck is a character in DotA 2 that is very well known for his ability to escape ridiculous circumstances by blinking around/phasing out to be unhittable.

As far as the OP, for me the sum of the parts feel out of hand. Constant protection, seemingly frequent invulnerabilities, frequent blinds, block chaining, evade ability/roll chaining, frequent stealth usage. You can do a little something to each of these, but they are laid on so thick that it feels crazy sometimes.

Fighting these classes/builds is like double-dutch, and it goes against our sense of fairness if they get to do it but we don’t. The risk/reward in chaining unhittable circumstances is skewed insanely towards reward. The only risk is an opponent knowing when your little windows are, at which point you actually have to fight your opponent instead of chain through your abilities.

However, I don’t know what a good fix would be, because they’ve also set a precedent for instant cast abilities that are extremely punishing, along with having boon and condition spam happening almost incidentally as opposed to intentionally. Without these chains, I’m not sure how long these classes would live, so I think our best bet is to organize practice against them with friends/etc. and get a feel for how they function.

Lmao, twice as much damage? Where do people even get this information? This game needs meters in a big way.

Arenzo.3298:

TheDevice.2751:

This is ridiculous.

No pvp GS Reaper would ask for nerfs.

I mean, why do some people think pve is the only mode in the game?

personally, i wish theyd just split the balancing for pve, pvp, and wvw. that would be the ideal solution. and there are plenty of people who suggest nerfs for things that are good in pvp but garbage in pve

Splitting PvP and PvE might work, but WvW is just their OWPvP, which is always in a PvE universe. There’s absolutely no way they’ll ever balance something differently between PvE and WvW. In fact, I bet it’s technologically impossible, unless they were to create a separation in the systems (which won’t happen, and would just be confusing if they did).

Dakarius.3284:

Spartacus.3192:

Im still amazed at the number of scrubs that see my DH standing on point and they all run to attack me in melee range.

Sorry but they deserve to die if they do that.

Pro Tip. If you see a DH standing in the middle of a point just shooting at you from range with his longbow DO NOT RUN ONTO THE POINT.

And what am I supposed to do as a thief? His ranged damage is far greater than mine. Oh that’s right, thieves aren’t allowed to 1v1. Never mind, carry on.

Could you Shadowstep onto the point, then Shadowstep off immediately, blowing the traps before engaging? Or maybe touch the point to engage the trap, then dodge-roll/port off until the traps dissipate?

Try stuff.

However, I think it’s silly to say “See a DH on a point? You don’t get to fight him in melee range!” and act like that’s an OK thing to exist. I’m pretty sure the key is to trigger the traps, wait, then engage.

I’m currently resting on the conclusion that traps are a gimmicky pub-stompy build that players run for the magical scenario when everything lines up and they kill 1 person. If I had to guess, it’s a fad that will die down.

Bhawb.7408:

In roaming yes. You can’t argue that roaming in WvW gives you a high level of competition when you can’t even guarantee the people you fight are even level 80. So by and large you can “get by” because those players are, the overwhelming majority of the time, worse than you. In PvP build is secondary, important but the difference in power between builds of similar types across different professions isn’t nearly big enough to make up for how important team play is. Basically, a great PvPer who understands team and map play will beat a player with superior mechanics but no game sense.

It’s true that roaming isn’t really about competition in a traditional “I want a good, clean fight” sense, as it’s more about the thrill of not knowing what might happen for me. However, it was actually very, very infrequent that I ran into someone who demonstrably didn’t really know what they were doing. Often, roamers were the ones built to win small-scale/1v1 fights, and I would argue the overwhelming majority of the time I ran into people who knew what they were doing.

Then again, if an encounter was a complete one-sided win on my end, it was pretty forgettable, so I may just be misremembering. Brains are terrible like that. In either case, with all the power creep and non-sPvP runes available, it wasn’t exactly a competitive environment. That much is true.

And even so, roaming as a Necro was, I found, really enjoyable. It took some of the most hardcore meta builds to give me trouble, and you can’t expect to beat everyone anyway (because that isn’t balance either).

AngryBear.8741:

spoj.9672:

The anti meta propaganda is really getting tiring at this point. You do realise its now switched to a sinister meta for fractals?

But things have far from settled. So all this continued bull about the meta is no longer relevant. Please just let it go.

I think issue is more about how it came to some situation, not the situation itself. It is not important whether it was zerker meta, or sinister meta or whatever. The important thing is what created such atmosphere, because even though meta shifted, such mindset can repeat itself over and over again.

Every MMO I’ve played, which has been a pretty large number of AAA titles, has developed some sort of exclusionary meta environment for basically all game modes. If you don’t do what the meta says, you’re dumb/bad/whatever.

Is the right answer to “meta propaganda” to run a propaganda campaign against them? Honestly, Booger’s post above reads, very literally, like a real propaganda campaign, appealing to emotions, yelling via capital letters, etc. Is that really necessary? Or does it make the “other” side just look crazy, too?

A meta is going to exist. In every game you ever play. I don’t care if it’s a single player game, if there’s an online community, it will develop some sort of “this is the best way to do it”mentality.

In actuality, what this game needs in particular for PvE is a robust meter. Let the data speak for itself. If you’re in a group with a meta build, and you destroy them in damage, the data doesn’t lie. You can prove your own usefulness demonstrably with data, instead of theoretical math.

TL;DR: People created the meta atmosphere, and they’ll continue to create it forever. If you don’t want to play with people who have a severely exclusionary mentality when it comes to a meta, find people who just want to enjoy the game. They exist.

You think they are going to knee-jerk replace/change the Desert BL maps? They are going to be in place for at least a few months, I’m guessing. At a minimum.

Might as well work on adapting to the map. I think they realize that people have issues with the design, at least at first.

posthumecaver.6473:

Every thing what you save above only tickles the guys in stealths and except DS4/DS5 I have all of them in my Reaper build plus RS4 deals 5K power damage and I am seeing poison damage ticks for 1K for 4s and the cleave of RS AA 1.5K/1.5K/3.5K with %100 crit chance against medium armor guys.

Sry but you can’t even compare DS cleave with RS cleave.

I will say, using RS #4 inside a Shadow Refuge feels really, really good.

Also, I use GS #3 for the LF + Vuln stacking + Blind removal (while still getting benefit). It could probably use a range boost though.

Koviko.3248:

If you have any idea what you’re doing, then you don’t need to wait for the “meta” to settle before making judgments. GW2 isn’t a brand new game where we all have no idea how its mechanics work.

Classic fallacy made by players who hold themselves in a regard that’s probably too high.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If you change state, you need to wait a period of time for the data to come in. The analysis done on these forums is often so shallow that it is difficult to get anything tangible from it. Builds, comps, and teamwork need time to develop, especially in a community that seems to hold the game in such a low regard with respect to skill.

Be careful with Patchwerk-style analysis. When it comes to conditions, the peak DPS performance occurs when they hit the upper bound of their condi stacks and it rolls. If any fight disruption causes those to drop, how long does it take to get back to that point? Ramp-up time should be a serious consideration in a game that has the potential to be more active like GW2. You might be dodging, the boss might go invulnerable, etc. Gravedigger spam does not give a single lick about ramping back up, because it is constantly balling at its most outrageous. Dhuumfire stacking will take a few seconds to ramp up, as will might/vuln self-stacks (if they are necessary).

I really liked how you specifically mentioned all of your assumptions, but you also have to realize they are dangerous assumptions to make. I am sure your plan is to overestimate to see where we land against other classes, but you also cannot take the numbers from those other classes just at straight-up face value. They have their own considerations with respect to assumptions, ramp-up time, etc.

It’s been a little over a week. WvW isn’t necessarily dead yet.

Don’t lump me into your generalization, please.

Nemesis, please start saying “damage uptime”, not “DPS uptime”. I’m having a more difficult time taking what you say seriously when you continually make that conceptual mistake. I know you know how DPS is calculated, and I can’t help but think of some mythical damage-per-second-squared metric whenever you say it.

Also, assuming that all Zerker builds are going to get splattered is the flip side of the coin to assuming that Zerker builds are going to continue to dominate the meta. You’re basically doing the same thing, just at the other extreme, and it sounds just as ridiculous.

Let’s not jump to conclusions until all of the facts are in.

And it isn’t fake math. It’s real math. It’s the responsibility of the players/community to analyze and understand it properly. Running a propaganda campaign against it is no better than running a propaganda campaign for it.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Arenanet should hire some senior talent to develop WvWvW and start real communication. One dev post per week isn’t communication: it is a slap on paying customer’s face. I am talking about long intelligent posts, with future vision, admitting mistakes and discussing the weaknesses of the current system.

You bought the ability to play GW2, not the ability to lead the design vision of the game. You’re along for the ride, and any communication whatsoever from the developer should be an absolute joy and privilege. If they posted their vision, a group would yell at them. Any vision. It doesn’t matter. If it was exactly your vision, people would still yell at them, berate them, demand they change it, threaten to stop playing, etc.

I’m going to commit more time to learning the maps, I just really wanted some experience against the other classes, and spending 10 minutes getting to an NPC shrine wasn’t the ticket that night. I’ll be curious to see how WvW unfolds in the next few months.

Dristig.9678:

Spite Faceroll I actually play:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnc0AV2gt0AebCs3glaBLeLOGXjUjh5Q1CqrFAmBA-TBCEABJcBAg4gAko6PbpEkp9HlfG8AAaTHAAHBAA-e

Fixed that for you.

EDIT – I meant that in a playful way, because after even just a few hours in sPvP games, I find it really amusing how the “everything I don’t play” category is lumped under being faceroll/braindead.

Theoretical math has its purpose. It is neither fake, nor irrelevant. Like all data, it can be used correctly, or used incorrectly. It’s just data. It has no pride, nor ego.

If a bunch of people just ran with some theoretical numbers and were exclusionary to others based on them, you can blame the lack of scientific thinking in people. I always wonder why we blame the shepherd instead of the sheep.

Also, not everyone thinks Necros are bad. People shoot for fixing Necro issues in the top .5% of game situations, but that doesn’t mean the other 99.5% are major issues. For example, all I hear is that GS #5 never lands, but in sPvP last night I had it land regularly, especially in teamfights, even pulling people down stairs. I really, really love that pull, but still there are claims that “it literally has never worked ever”.

It’s MMO nature to complain the instant something kills you in PvP. I finally decided to hop into sPvP to check out what it was like to fight some of the new hotness, and sure, there were some frustrating “oh, that’s weirdly effective” moments. Based on that small experience I can understand why there is annoyance, but it’s still incredibly silly to assume people are playing against these new builds at the pinnacle of their own skill at this point.

Too many people have ruled out skill and teamwork as part of the game, so they assume the game is at fault when they are either super predictable, or are caught flat-footed.

I spent about 10 minutes going from my homeworld BL keep WP to a shrine on the west side. I was above it, but could find no reasonable way down that was nearby, no matter where I looked. It was the most unobvious thing I’ve ever seen, and all I wanted to do was jack a shrine as a solo roamer.

I ended up just going to the sPvP lobby instead, since I wanted to practice fighting players (which I don’t see in WvW yet).

I’m definitely concerned something long-term is wrong with the design.

Jamais vu.5284:

Cogbyrn.7283:

The game/damage/etc. is designed around downed state. Small groups would probably just turn into packs of Thieves/Mesmers bursting targets down and disappearing until a group was dead. Is that skill? I’m hesitant to call it that.

Only apply instant down when you have been damaged by n>2 characters.
> solved. Took me all of 3 seconds. Next 4-years-in-the-making WvW dilemma?

I don’t think you know how burst Mesmers/Thieves work in the power creep universe that is WvW. And you just added a layer of complexity that requires logic to try to determine how many unique entities provided damage on the person, which is a layer that just won’t be deemed worthy of development effort. Simply turning it off is a solution that might in a crazy off chance have been tested somewhere, sometime. Your solution is no solution at all, really. It wouldn’t even help small groups, because if they call a target, odds are 3+ people will hit that target, at the very least with incidental AoE. So downed state will still persist, and this “we had fewer people but destroyed a bunch of scrubs” mentality still won’t benefit.

OP isn’t talking about dungeon/raid LFGs. He’s talking about the jungle.

I’ve been loving my Reaper out in the jungle, personally. Built for tankiness with Shroud-based damage, and while other people just crumble around me, I keep the wagon train moving. I love being self-sufficient, and that’s what the design is all about.

The game/damage/etc. is designed around downed state. Small groups would probably just turn into packs of Thieves/Mesmers bursting targets down and disappearing until a group was dead. Is that skill? I’m hesitant to call it that.

Catalin makes some good points. I often found myself roaming mostly for the fights, while also taking camps here and there in the Alpine BL. However, with the new maps, I think it’s a matter of re-defining what the roamer needs to be. At the end of the day, WvW is designed around the objectives. A single person can still accomplish a decent amount, it just won’t be the same as it was.

Is the new roaming “bad”? Maybe, but maybe not. It’s different though, and many people react strongly to change, so we could use some time to let things settle/develop.

I mean, I still get lost on the map, so I’m not going to judge it quite yet.

Anchoku.8142:

That’s just silly talk. Necromancer will be used to heal and res, if it is used at all.

Reaper ranged damage is horrid. It will try to stay behind the boss and heal/res when not auto attacking. None of its conditions or corruptions will be useful and it will be too squishy to tank full time, though it can do so temporarily.

You seem to have a lot of insight on boss design through the rest of the expansion.

Also, Necro can be pretty extraordinarily tanky. I’ll be curious to see how the class will fare as time goes by, as I’ve been really pleased by how well I can solo champions at HPs.

WvW has always been the PvP playground for PvE. That’s why you can have food buffs, ascended gear, etc. Sinking time into doing some amount of PvE to “gear your gear” has been part of it since the beginning.

Now, it’s been a part I’ve largely ignored because I just settle for Exotic armor/weapons and let the Ascended jewelry come in as time goes by, but character grind has always, always, always been a factor. If you want instant character progression gratification, go into the competitive sPvP world. Otherwise, this is just the world you live in.

Nemesis.8593:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Link your videos, along with context around what they are proving. I have no idea where your videos are to even look them up.

I can not do that here, i have been warned… however you can YouTube Nemesis necromancer and you will find my channel easily enough.

I don’t know why you’re trying to make it sound so ominous. You’ve been warned by ANet mods that you can’t post your own youtube video, like everyone else does? If so, that’s ridiculous.

Dat URL.

/15char