Guild Wars 2

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, the druid is really like Shaman in early WoW days when they were the only ones who brought Bloodlust.

WoW solved this by giving the Bloodlust buff to other classes, but right now the buffs druid bring are exclusive to that spec and stack on top of whatever other classes bring.

Many WoW buffs were unique in the beginning and became more widespread in, dunno, WotLK? Feels like an eternity ago. To be honest, I think that’s the only reasonable way to make GW2 raids independent from certain classes. At least in the sense of being reasonably effective without having to bring exactly class X, class Y and class Z.

Spreading all buffs to 10 people (at least in raid settings) would be a band-aid fix I’d still like to see over the current balance, but even that would mean certain classes are required at least once, while others are irrelevant. The optimal state would be a system where we don’t need any certain class, but having a healthy mix would be beneficial.

Zefiris.8297:

In WoW, you used to have similar mandatory buffs that meant some classes were always taken, while others never were.

The solution there was spreading the buffs around.

I’d definitely prefer spreading buffs around to the current, well, horrible balance. They don’t need to have the same name (for our RPers), but be mutually exclusive.

FB+Rev may get a shot if the numbers are right, since FB support for a condi group is pretty substantial. However, currently I don’t really see that happening, since support FB isn’t even remotely viable at its current state.

TexZero.7910:

Nick.6972:

I’ve finished 100CM about 6 times so far.
Assuming you get people who know all mechanics and know how to play their class properly, at this point, it’s faceroll.

Unfortunately, you have to become semi-elitists and ask for title to get people like this.

100CM is nearly perfect at this point, and should be left as it is.
As for normal mode, if people can’t do it, then it should be adjusted.

I have to respectfully disagree.

If people still cannot do normal mode then they need to improve, otherwise the gap between normal and CM is too vast for any players to feel realistic improvement.

Right now normal is a joke once you learn the mechanics, problem is the current people in fractals are ostrich’s when it comes to adamantly refusing to learning/doing mechanics.

I tend to agree with Tex. Haven’t done HM yet, so I can’t judge the difficulty gap, but 100 normal is more or less fine if you adjust for it. It’s just the “one guy stupid, whole group takes massive damage” mechanics that I still don’t like.

Ragnarox.9601:

mazut.4296:

How wide is the cone? Is it 90? I Didn’t test Guard much

yup plus if your enemy is on little higher or lower ground tome cone skills wont touch them. Awful firebrand design.

Are you sure it’s even 90 °? I rather had the impression it’s just 60 °.

For me, this weekend has been a pretty clear indicator that we can’t make any reasonable conclusions about new metas before stuff really goes live. Right now, we don’t have reasonable numbers for PvE and a lot of things should still be in flux (at least I hope so, because otherwise it would be an amazing level of incompetence).

If (big if) the devs make the right adjustments to certain classes, I can see the meta easily being broken up. One subgroup will probably remain chrono-druid-cPS-2dps in any case, but the second might look quite differently. That will probably depend on whether support firebrand becomes playable under realistic conditions. With the current pitiful state of mantras and, in consequence, quickness sharing, I don’t think it will be a viable alternative, but the necessary changes aren’t big enough to completely rule them out.

Brutaly.6257:

My char gives regen behind him same with might, testning now.

Negative. Tested it at the indestructible golem with human male/female and mantras have no effect behind me, just as expected.

Brutaly.6257:

Doesnt mattor what they said on the stream. I used all the mantras in pvp except the offensive ones (which do have cone damage) and all of them give boons to allies behind me. No matter what tooltips or streams have stated.

Unless the devs have introduced some interesting bugs dependent on what area you’re in, mantras still are frontal cones. Testing in HotM showed nothing has changed at all.

RabbitUp.8294:

Main-hand torch would have been? fun.

But then ele would have had to become firefighter instead of weaver :P

I can’t confirm that. Tested it right now (with some patch since yesterday) and all four support mantras remain frontal cones. The only way to give quickness to someone behind me was the on healing skill trait.

Well, if we’re talking big picture, you could start looking at all the support a druid offers, too. As to the 33% healing from the tome, it’s already in that calculation.

perry.9645:

it would also kitten off every chrono trying to get 2 shield phantasms

That would be acceptable. There’s usually a bunch of other things around, which you can block if you want.

jief.2509:

Turn your character and get as many as you can? I see a lot of people bringing this up and there are other games that have this mechanic and this is what you do, back up a little and turn then go back to dps.

This doesn’t work in a highly mobile environment like PvP, while it will gut your personal dps in PvE when you have to do it every few seconds. Unfortunately, a PvE support firebrand needs to do substantial damage to justify bringing it over a chrono.

RabbitUp.8294:

Azoqu.8917:

This idea, instant cast or 1/4s cast to enter, and 360 mantras are what are needed for this spec.

Not enough. The tome cooldowns are ridiculous.

Have you actually read the suggestion?

That idea sounds quite nice for the tomes. However, they’re only one of the issues that will probably kill FB if they remain unsolved.

Darknicrofia.2604:

Arnath.2319:

Then don’t use Firebrand in PvP/WvW? That is perfectly ok to so and is ArenaNets design intention.

Make an entire elite spec.

Don’t use it in 66% of the game modes.

Okay.

Rather 100% of game modes. Ok, the pure condi dps part may (or may not) work in PvE, but the support part certainly won’t work at the current state.

Then they would be nerfed into the ground and shouts would be useless.

Shouts are mostly useless anyway.

I’d like to love FB, if it wasn’t gutted by all those spectacular design failures with regard to providing support. At the current state, I’ll stick to DH.

Syktek.7912:

That’s not intended so it’s definitely not a nerf if it comes around.

This. We don’t need one broken trait for quickness generation, we need working mantra skills.

Byron Miller.4629:

We’re made note of these inconsistencies and will be standardizing all boss damage auras alongside the next raid release.

Check the raid patch-notes for details at that time.

Can you make all damage auras unblockable then? That would at least give aegis some reason to exist.

WildHeart.8209:

The best solution possible for me is making firebrand a tank.
That way most of your party member will be in the front of you.
(if you are facing boss away from them)
or having them using scepter instead.
But we have yet to see it in actual PvE setting before coming with any conclusion.

Why would anyone make FB a tank when you can have a chrono? They have the better package in every single aspect (defensive stuff, buff uptime, other utility) that’s relevant to the job. If anything, FB could replace the second chrono if it offered perma quickness and some reasonable dps, and that would probably have been a close call since you’ll have to work around alacrity and distorts. With the current mantras, FB support is just dead.

Doombringer BG.3740:

Why have Chrono when you can have FB with perma quickness, s**t ton of other buffs and condi dmg at the same time?

Oh, and that’s just HIS skills, God forbid you happen to have 1 Chrono on the team xD

Chrono wipes the floor with a FB trying to give out quickness. Not to mention alacrity, distort and the craptons of other little things chronos can bring along if they want.

MichalAniol.5807:

EDIT: In my opinion FB will be great in PvE (raids for example) when they give some stat combo with concentration and expertise.

As long as mantras are cones, FB will just suck as a supporter because the only character you’ll give quickness to is your own.

+1

Probably more useless than the old spirit weapons.

Jimaruto.5389:

To sum up, Firebrand is not only great at HEALING but epic to giving to all allies QUICKNESS!

Raid parties prepare your Firebrands!!

And now you try to hit your allies with buffs while being in range to attack the boss with your axe. Have fun with mighty 60 ° cones.

At the current state, firebrand support is a total failure that won’t even come closely to replacing a chrono. I have no idea how anyone could be stupid enough to make the mantras a cone when the axe is already a melee weapon.

Azoqu.8917:

The support aspect will be near useless since you’re melee but everything is a cone so it will never hit your allies.

Indeed, with current mantra implementation, the support aspect is a stillbirth that isn’t even worth to be remotely considered.

So, I’m hoping that feedback is more visible here than it is in the old threads that have been going on for a while.

The support aspects of firebrand, that’s sure after very short testing, are fatally flawed. I’m not really sure how a dev can be stupid enough to combine a melee weapon (130 range) with frontal cone mantras, but that’s the current ingame state. How exactly is that supposed to work for any game mode?

With the axe, you’ll have to stand close to the enemy in order to deal damage. On the contrary, mantras require you to stand at some range if you want to hit allies, since they are a tiny 60°-cone (I don’t think it’s substantially more and certainly not even 90° or higher). Even in a comparably static environment like a PvE boss mob, that doesn’t work. I really don’t want to know what would happen in PvP – I guess you typically wouldn’t hit anyone.

The (potentially) supportive principle behind firebrand looks fine – handing out perma-quickness and some nice smaller things, while dealing some reasonable damage. However, for that to work, the implementation of mantras needs to change. The cone must go and be replaced by a player-based circle. A full circle. For PvE, I assume 300 range will work in most reasonable cases, but the other modes probably require 450 or more. If that doesn’t happen, firebrand support is dead on arrival.

Oh, and axe #2 needs to provide some buff to allies, because it’s the only symbol not giving any buff. For obvious reasons, it should be quickness.

STIHL.2489:

Now, In all my time, I never saw a ‘goof around’ or “test” build running in anything above T1

Go pugging T4 fractals for a while and tell me what you’ve seen. There’s literally everything around there – longbow rangers (has that ever been more than a bearbow joke?) and guards, staff guards, pure shortbow thieves, staff necros, all those greatsword mesmers and I don’t know what else. I don’t need a dps meter to tell me that they are bad, but I don’t want to know what remains hidden behind seemingly reasonable gear choices. When I do as much damage as the other four combined (yes, I’ve seen that happen), a lot of things are wrong.

I like Ori’s idea to provide a very limited daily or weekly amount of mystic clovers. The food idea wouldn’t be bad either. And another idea, adding an option to re-select stats on ascended trinkets in exchange for a hefty relic fee would be great.

I agree with Feanor. If ANet ever implemented a dps meter, I’m pretty confident it would be useless.

No. Unbound magic + map currency.

If the laurel vendor doesn’t have them, Valkyrie is probably one of the few old stats that can only be obtained via raid or LS3 trinkets.

Stop whining, the condi food gives about 5% damage boost. Power food users don’t get more.

If mantras and all that stuff are a cone, that would be amazingly stupid. A circle with 300 range radius would be fine, but the combination of cone and melee weapon would be a fail of epic proportions. We’ll see on Friday.

Vayne.8563:

Class forums for almost any MMO are never happy. That’s because the most disenfranchised people are the ones who post the most on them.

True. I’m reserving judgement till I have the opportunity to play the new elites next weekend. Firebrand, what I’m most interested in, looks interesting, but has some serious issues that may break the spec. If they really have kittened up, I’ll join the chorus of people cursing incompetent devs.

Nightrous.6732:

Why not begginer mode raids? getting meta is a bit of a learning curve to ask off casual newbs. but lots of casual nubs would like to raid. Begginer mode to kindle a passion for raiding instead of all the hassle of being perfect first raid, or more likely…. being the carried burden.

Let me put it that way: We have a kittenload of beginner content of various difficulties (from vanilla open world faceroll to T4 fractals and all the stuff like dungeons in between) and how much does it help? Little to not at all, obviously. The experience from WoW with all its different modes is the same, people don’t learn from easy content.

AegisRunestone.8672:

I don’t think other players—especially guildless ones—will stay long if this continues.

This is profound kitten. This stuff happens as often as we had posts like “I got kicked because of AP/weapon X/class X/whatever” in the past. There are some jerks around (which MMO comm doesn’t have them?) and they’ll kick based on any (pseudo-)metric available to them. Nothing has changed at all, except that now we at least have a reasonable metric.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Link to research please.

Won’t happen, for obvious reasons.

maddoctor.2738:

At least now we know what happened. When a PUG sees an Elementalist they expect a damage dealer because that’s what an Elementalist is good for and that’s what they are best at. Elementalist support isn’t good and usually other builds take on that role, builds that are superior to the Elementalist in that role. The group saw terrible dps numbers from you, assumed you were a terrible player and that’s why they kicked you.

Sorry doc, but the middle part is nonsense. Eles aren’t healer meta due to their lack of GotL and all that offensive stuff, but they do the healing (and defensive support) part just fine, arguably even better than druids. For fractals, that’s more than enough, as long as the group actually needs some healing (which the vast majority of pug groups do).

Anchoku.8142:

Make grouping automated with no exception.

That’s about the worst possible suggestion.

Zaphir.7210:

What’s so different in the PVE content in GW2, especially post-HOT?

A bunch of mechanics have become more meaningful, which isn’t difficult when vanilla mechanics were faceroll in general. Since dealing with these mechanics requires active efforts by each individual player, I’m not surprised that stuff feels much harder with a high ping. GW2 isn’t WoW, where passive stuff has a much larger influence.

Aenaos.8160:

I wouldn’t use ARC since it is not TOS compliant,and it gives Anet the right to ban you for using it if they choose so.

I assume you refer to the function to see group members’ dps with arc. It has been stated very clearly by the devs that this is allowed.

As to the topic, kitten happens. There will always be idiots and in doubt, they will kick because of whatever metric they find. I’ve been pugging T4 fractals for a year, using arc myself for half a year and I’ve never seen someone trying to kick another group member because of dps. I’ve never even seen any comment on that, although there were countless people whose performance was a joke.

Which leads me to a much more common issue than dps meter elitism: isn’t it rude to join a group and make content much more difficult for 4 other people because you are too lazy to understand even the basics of class/game mechanics?

Zenith.7301:

The level of coordination this fractal requires (and frankly, it does feel like a druid healer is necessary compared to other fractals) is not balanced to the pay out of completing the fractal.

It probably doesn’t matter whether it’s a druid or another healer (since tempests are also pretty good at this job), but that’s what I’ve noticed, too. It’s a mighty difference whether you have a healer or not. Nightmare and all the others weren’t that way – sure, a healer is always nice when doing that stuff in a pug, but in the end, it was just the difference between facetanking some avoidable stuff or being more awake. Here, avoiding all the damage at Vi…something and Arkk feels much more difficult.

Never played the carpal tunnel rotation, but I’d estimate guard rotation is somewhere in the middle of the pack with regard to difficulty.

With regard to the OP, without long testing I got to 31k pretty consistently when using qT’s realistic buffs. As I know that I don’t really get above 90% of the qT benchmark, that would put us at about 34.4k. I expect the final benchmark to be slightly higher still, since I didn’t even try to optimise utilities (played ToF/PoB/BS, spirit sword might get higher than ToF) and consumables.

Yobculture.5786:

DH sucks, you say?

Hmm

That was an interesting statement indeed. If I extrapolate my results at the dummy, DH probably ends up somewhere at 33-36k against a small hitbox target. This time, I’m really curious how the qT-Benchmarks will look like.

In the past, I’ve always been against the inclusion of mounts. However, having played the beta a bit, I must admit I’m pretty impressed. The raptor feels … right, with great animations and especially due to its inertia. Also, it’s not too fast, so I guess they won’t be as bad to the vanilla areas as I feared before. Good job, mounts team, you’ve definitely surprised me with some quality work.

zealex.9410:

We killed 2 dragons kicked the ass of various bad guys and held our ground pretty well against a god. 1v20 seems like quite a fair match.

Indeed. I had no issues on my newly created DH, though I think the weapon combination you initially get (GS/Sw+F) isn’t optimal. A scepter instead of the sword would have been nice, since the boss’s ground fire AoE sometimes was at nasty positions for a pure melee setup. On the other hand, they even gave us marauder training wheels. When using a real character, I expect that stuff to be little challenge.

There’s little reason to publish any specific raid-related things right now. We know there will be raids, but I’m pretty sure they want us to play the other stuff first. I expect the first raid to hit a few months after PoF launch, so raid material will probably be published in time for that release.

From the design of fiebrand it’s obvious that quickness stays a group-wide thing. With regard to warrior, kitten happens. It’s hardly a surprise that not all specs are designed for all game modes and I guess the new elite is simply a PvP spec.

Joxer.6024:

But then the trend I did see and really felt this week raiding is us being responsible for our own boons.

I don’t see that happening at all. There will be some more flexibility for the means of boon generation, but I’m 100% sure that we will still have certain classes who are responsible for might/quickness for the whole group.