Guild Wars 2

The idea of boon power is as old as it is bad. All boons except regen are designed in a way that you know exactly what you get from it. If nonsense like boon power is introduced, there is one big problem in addition to several smaller ones: boons would be no longer reliable when coming from other players. So especially the defensive ones (vigor, protection, aegis) would become essentially worthless because you’d have to treat them as if they weren’t there.

FLiP.7680:

Yeah sure, mesmers… because engineer and rangers with 15s knockback are not annoying at all.

Huntards are just as bad (or even worse) and there are not enough engineers to notice them. But since this is a mesmer thread, there is no reason to mention them.

Diego Vargas.3058:

CptAurellian.9537:

Every time I see a mesmer use GS #5 in PvE, I wish there was friendly fire in this game …

Most people are not running a BI/CI build or know when it is appropriate to use it…

If they knew when it’s appropriate to use it, they wouldn’t run such a build in PvE. They wouldn’t even run that weapon, since it does not offer any advantage to the alternatives.

Every time I see a mesmer use GS #5 in PvE, I wish there was friendly fire in this game …

Phenn.5167:

This thread needs to stay at the top of the first page until it gets significant red posts.

So it needs to stay here until the end of the world? Well, good luck :P

FailNet …

/15 charrs

Fewix.4250:

your dmg is poo poo. you cannot die. and your heals are amazing. therefore your group also cannot die in a dungeon.

Surely you can provide a good explanation how all that amazing(ly useless) healing would save me from getting instagibbed on my guard/ele/thief if I failed to avoid any serious attack … of which there would be ample opportunity in a group with such a player, since fights will last significantly longer than necessary.

Corpse Flakes.5369:

Most people are saying Berserkers but that won’t cut it in WvW. I’d suggest knights or soldiers armor of the eagle with soldier earrings and berserker or Valkyrie rings/back/amulet. I have a meditation build I could link when I’m at my computer.

I run a soldier DPS build and can hit for 12k or so without might/stacks. I also have 6 heals, but I’m more gravitated towards WvW instead of dungeons.

Berserker is no problem in the typical PvD zerg, so it should be appropriate for “occasional WvW”. In the worst case, spend 7 silver to switch builds twice. On the other hand, the stuff you suggest is just bad for dungeons.

pswendel.8179:

What do you expect from Living Story Season 2? Greatness? CDI adjustments? More cash shop marketing?

Nice answer? I expect nothing.

Honest answer? A kittenload of rubbish. An incredibly stupid story, mindless zergs, tons of grind, no permanent content, lack of balance updates … exactly the same stuff we know from Unliving Story Season 1.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If you like the writings of ten year old school children, than the living story is right up your alley.

One good thing, at this point, is that its almost over.

Not sure, but I think my three year old cousin could write a better story than this unliving rubbish – if he could write at all, of course. Personal story was already pretty bad after the first quarter, but the Unliving Story has fallen below even that low level by orders of magnitude. Season 1 was a total failure – not only was the story incredibly stupid, it also prevented the addition of any meaningful permanent content that deserved this designation. After one year, the world of Tyria has not advanced any step further in terms of content – that’s a real achievement!

xsquared.1926:

AP means nothing past 1500-2k. Most people understand the basics of their class by then

Or they don’t, but then they also won’t at 15k.

Carighan.6758:

CptAurellian.9537:

have already lost interest in the game due to the total lack of content updates

You mean balance updates? Either this is the wrong thread, or the argument makes no sense. The point is that they’re prioritizing the new content too much versus patching balance faster and more often.

Both, in the end. However, I disagree with the description of the Unliving Story junk as “content”, but discussing that would stray too far from this thread. I’ll leave it here, since you’re right. I personally care more about (real!) content, but this would be the wrong thread for that.

Excellent posts, Malthias. However, I fear that ANet has already missed the window of opportunity, unless a miracle happens. Most people I’ve been talking to, no matter whether PvP enthusiasts or dungeoneers like me, have already lost interest in the game due to the total lack of content updates. It will be virtually impossible to change the course of a big tanker like GW2 (especially with such a willfully ignorant crew – if you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at the “interactions” with the dungeon community …) before the upcoming MMOs – TESO, Wildstar, etc. – arrive. And as soon as that happens, a lot of people will leave.

Another one of the good things that have been suggested about a million times. Unfortunately, ANet doesn’t care about anything that can’t be sold in the gem shop.

There’s a big, fat sticky by obal …

Painbow’s right. Just to illustrate the numbers if you dodge just to activate EP:

With perma-vigor and assuming 1000 DPS …

… if you dodge, you need to do it once every 5 seconds, so you deal
(5 s – 0.75 s) * 1100 D/s = 4675 damage
in those 5 seconds.

… if you don’t dodge, it’s flat 5000.

Therefore, dodging just for EP is a damage loss of at least 6.5 %. Under normal circumstances, it will be more, since you won’t always dodge perfectly between two skills.

Guess you should have read those definitions, since a 0/0/0/0/0 is also “capable of being […] used” and even “capable of succeeding” in PvE.

Viable for what? In case of PvE, it’s about as viable as a 0/0/0/0/0 build.

Ethics.4519:

AR is a horrible idea. It should have never been implemented.

This. AR progression is so ridiculous – as soon as you have enough of it, it takes away the deserved punishment for playing badly. That’s absolutely brilliant game design.

Aza.2105:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

And they were already trying to do soemthing for a condi build. One of these changes, which albeit fell short, is via Kindled Zeal.

I can’t honestly imagine what they were thinking when they gave guardians that trait.

Simply nothing. Nothing at all.

AH builds should be close to perfection for mindless zerging. You’ll always have enough allies around for maximum healing and it makes you quite sturdy.

With those priorities, go for a full zerker set and have a look at obal’s hammer build. Cleric and soldier gear are outright bad for dungeons and while knight, as some kind of training wheels for starters, would in principle be appropriate for you, hammer builds have so much defense by their perma-protection that you should not need it.

LampGhost.9658:

I must have missed that the real notes are out there too!? or how the heck does everyone know the actual patch notes will be trash?

Experience, though they aren’t out yet. Even the patches which have been announced as very exciting (like the December one) have been trash, so why should that change now?

wharone.1809:

Oh god, it hurts. Just the fact that the leaked notes show more competence around diversifying guardians than the official team did makes me sad. Oh well.

As if it was difficult to show more competence than the official team …

But we probably should have expected these notes to be fake, right because of the level of competence that was in some parts of them.

Hunter.4783:

AH dungeon builds will also become more competitive. Toss in boon duration and EM and you have perma 25 might stacks

Nope, AH in dungeons will stay a useless crutch. However, 10/25/0/25/10 and such stuff will become more interesting for people who usually don’t run in halfway organized groups.

xFireize.6318:

Someone posted this ~5 hours ago and got deleted.

There were at least two threads here, as well as a bunch on the other class forums.

For the changes … well, nothing I’d care about. Torch stays useless unless they massively increase #5’s DPS, Zeal is not worth going into for more than II and VII and EM might become a funny gimmick, but nothing else. 5 seconds duration and 240 radius aren’t worth 20 points in Honor, unfortunately.

Obtena.7952:

It certainly doesn’t give anyone the indication that trinkets will be nerfed more than armor. That seems more like wishful thinking than anything.

‘sigh’ Of course it does. They introduce Ferocity to normalize the conversion of stat points to critical damage, besides the useless nerf to total tamage. Right now, we have massive disparities in this conversion rate: on armor items, it’s 12:1 or greater, while the trinkets have a conversion rate of 8.5:1. Even if there was no nerf to overall damage, the only consequence of normalization would be a buff to armor and a nerf to trinkets. With the damage nerf, the effect on trinkets will be even larger, while the effect on armor depends on the final conversion rate.

However, that conversion rate has nothing to do with the ratios between exo and asc. Asc has 5 % more stats than exo, so after the patch, it will have 5 % more crit damage than exo (whatever exact amount that will be). That’s what the post was about and that’s where you’ve missed the point all the time.

There are no tanks in this game.

And what’s that build supposed to accomplish? The meta has significantly more DPS and also more support by a large margin, while being on the same level of survivability.

Obtena.7952:

CptAurellian.9537:

Gambit.8425:

It’s also hard to know how the crit nerf is gonna affect gear, zerk exo to asc might become even less difference than it is now.

Nah, it’s pretty safe to bet that crit damage ratios on the armor pieces won’t change significantly. Right now, asc armor has 6 % more crit damage than exo, after the nerf it will be 5 % more. Nothing you’ll notice. However, the trinkets will get a severe nerf.

Really? That’s a pretty strong statement considering that DPS with a zerker’s setup is going down 10%. If they aren’t going to take that 10% off by adjusting crit damages (and therefore, ratios), then … how will Anet accomplish that? I believe this is exactly what will happen … Anet will hit the ferocity conversion hard to accomplish this. Once crit damage is replaced by ferocity, the ratios will indeed change because we have been told it will be treated like a secondary stat.

You missed the point completely, since the Ferocity -> Crit conversion is irrelevant for the comparison between asc and exo pieces. Right now asc armor has 17 % crit damage, while exo has 16 %, so it’s 6 % more. As a secondary attribute after the nerf, it will be 5 % more, like power and precision now. Besides, I’d bet some gold that the armor pieces won’t feel much of the stupid nerf, if anything at all. It’s the trinkets that will get a massive punch in the face.

Gambit.8425:

It’s also hard to know how the crit nerf is gonna affect gear, zerk exo to asc might become even less difference than it is now.

Nah, it’s pretty safe to bet that crit damage ratios on the armor pieces won’t change significantly. Right now, asc armor has 6 % more crit damage than exo, after the nerf it will be 5 % more. Nothing you’ll notice. However, the trinkets will get a severe nerf.

yayuuu.9420:

I think that it won’t be damage nerf, but it will make defensive stats more viable, because if critical damage will give you less than “power / precision / toughness” for example or the new “power / precision / healing power” might be really cool additions. You won’t loose that much damage and gain more sustain.

How should useless defensive stats suddenly become viable by nerfing crit damage? They don’t.

You really don’t mean PvP, but PvE? In that case, I’ll just quote myself from another thread, because the build you suggest is about as effective as an AFK player.

CptAurellian.9537:

The good old 0/30/0/25/15. Both weapon sets sword-based, since all the other weapons are junk.

The might and fury your build provides are pitiful compared to any ele. Not to forget that they’ll deal approximately four times your damage while maintaining 100 % fury and ~20 stacks might.

Ranger runes are better than scholar if you don’t manage to stay above 90 % for at least 50 % of the time. However, they will be made useless with the ferocity patch as they’re going to fix the 6th bonus. Anyway, that patch will probably change quite a lot and might open new possibilities, but right now, that’s it.

Pyroatheist.9031:

In an organized group, nobody cares if you’re applying protection and vigor and regen.

With this wording, I tend to disagree. Those boons, especially protection, are valued, but only as long as you don’t sacrifice a significant amount of DPS for them. That’s where this boonstorm stuff completely fails – hammer guardians, on the other hand, are an example where the concept works. Perma-protection for the price of ~5 % DPS and a bit of condition removal? A rather good deal in many cases.

PvE in this game dont really need some particular build

Same can be said for the PvD mode.

Kasei.8726:

You can shoot Cleansing Flame through gates in WvW. That’s all it’s good for at the moment.

Now that’s amazing … not.

For PvE, that build is literally crying for a kick from any halfway competent dungeon group.

The good old 0/30/0/25/15. Both weapon sets sword-based, since all the other weapons are junk.

Fitzil.1680:

I’m aware that Torch is generally considered mid-range not terribad but not good

Now that’s new to me. I’ve always had the impression that the only people that don’t consider the torch terribad are those who think that the big number at the end of skill 5 is great. Right now, I can’t think of a single situation where I’d want to equip the torch instead of the focus – even the shield would be more useful, and that weapon is rubbish, too.

Junkpile.7439:

Low quality trolling since launch

Indeed.

EP calculation on buildcraft is sufficiently consistent if you manually correct for the damage modifiers where it produces rubbish (e.g. elusive power, but those are the exception).

Erm, what’s the point of this whole post? fadeaway reported a comparison between the meta weapon sets a month ago and showed that hammer is clearly viable DPS-wise. Without the exact numbers, that was known a long time before. So if you want to have a look at the really useless weapons, I recommend to adopt fade’s test settings. Otherwise, it will be pretty useless due to the lack of comparability.

As to the build, why did you omit Honor 20? That’s a boost of ~23 % on the hammer auto, so I’m pretty sure that 15/25/0/20/10 will beat this build by a fair margin – without lacking any support or survivability.

After thinking a bit more about it, I now really welcome the new spirit staff. It will lift the glorious spiritual searing druid to a new level

Obtena.7952:

Take 1 part junk (spirit weapons) and add another part crap (burning) to make something terrible.

So it’s perfect ANet logic. Therefore, I guess those notes are true :P

Open world is a joke anyway. So who cares for it?

The staff is going to be soooo epic …

spoj.9672:

Zealots does more damage than knights. So i would prefer players to run that.

True, but tbh, I don’t see any reason not to run zerker if thinking of zealot. The window in which the additional healing power will save me is just tiny. I’d still need to dodge anything that oneshots a zerker. The only advantage is healing a bit faster after small amounts of damage. On the other hand, knight at least makes some deadly attacks survivable.

I find the warrior heal funny. Either it’s utterly useless (most situations) or it’s absolutely overpowered (big NPC attacks or stupid enemy players). There’s no middle ground at all with that skill.

ajhak.9716:

It takes longer to get 500 dungeon tokens than it does to get 30 wvw ranks. It’s really not that hard at all.

Well, that’s a rumour. Depending on the legendary and the dungeon tokens needed for it, it would take me roughly 2-6 hours of dungeoneering to get the 500 tokens. I don’t see how I’d come from 0 to 30 in PvD in that time.