Guild Wars 2

Ya’ll do realize that toughness is a % mitigation and as such scales with damage taken. Any power creep real or imagined is irrelevant because % reductions scale with damage.

SlayerSixx.5763:

If youre insistent on playing your class but want to fill another role, then by all means go ahead. Just know that swapping to an entirely different class who does the role you want to accomplish would be more effective.

And then you realize that every one of those meta builds where considered “non-meta” once upon a time.

It wasn’t too long ago that axe necro was considered unplayable. And it wasn’t too long ago that condi warrior was considered better than power.

Believe it or not some people break meta because they have real reasons to believe the meta is wrong. Not because of vanity.

SlayerSixx.5763:

But theres a reason WHY they’re out of the meta.

Because the metabattle curators decided it was so?

Luciferior.4802:

In regards to the shroud kicking you out sometimes this happens in relation to the Unholy Sanctuary trait Idk if you use it or not if you do I note you said it happened a lot during a fight but sometimes when people use that trait and they get low the trait procs when the player doesn’t expect it they panic and drop shroud I play necro my self I don’t encounter any bugs where I enter shroud and it getting canceled early unless I fat finger it and cancel my self I will note sometimes the ping in the area I am currently in affects my shroud going off a lot sometimes ill be in a laggy instance ill press my shroud key it wont go off then suddenly itl pop up and ill have already hit shroud again canceling it and it will be on CD if none of that has any relation to your specific shroud issue then nvm my post

I don’t use Unholy.

supa suop.8026:

Crinn.7864:

Sarrs.4831:

CTTB is the easiest elite skill to dodge & interrupt. Get good at dodging and interrupting.

Signet of Undeath is definitely easier to interrupt.

True, but he did say elite skill after all.

Signet of Courage is definitely easier to interrupt.

Wait people still use the term “cyber” in 2017?

Sarrs.4831:

CTTB is the easiest elite skill to dodge & interrupt. Get good at dodging and interrupting.

Signet of Undeath is definitely easier to interrupt.

The satire is thick in this thread.

Toughness definitely works, and it’s particularly noticeable when used by light armor classes. Yes active mitigation is stronger than passive mitigation, but that’s always been true.

sephiroth.4217:

Is Rev + Thief a good duo combo? I haven’t tried that one yet.

Double roamers usually isn’t a good idea unless both of them are exceptionally skilled.

EDIT: trolled by forum necros.

Lonami.2987:

The problem with that is that you’re just writing weapon combinations. You need to think about the theme, and also the mechanics connected to it. In my amazon idea, it’s a swamp stalker, heavily inspired by wild tribes and jungle poisons, and with an in-lore connection to the hylek.

Just “guy with x weapon” doesn’t work. You need a context. Also, said theme/darkness won’t usually come from the weapon skills, but the mechanic and the utilities.

No, mechanics are designed first and then themes are fit around the mechanics. A class’s theme is communicated more through it’s asthetics than through it’s mechanics.

Example:
Take Necromancer. Change all of their effects from green/black to green/gold. Replace all the spectral/skeletal hands with vines. Rename the spectral skill type to spiritual, and rename the corruption skill type to Rots. Replace minions with animals. Change Lich and Plague form to Arboreal and Insect swarm form. Rename Shroud to Nature Avatar.

Now the dark evil necro class has become a hippy nature class with zero mechanical changes.

Obviously there are some limits, for instance making a class all about group support, and giving it the thief theme would not make sense, but beyond direct contradictions themes can be fit to almost any mechanic.

NeXeD.3042:

tried recreating this “bug” for about an hour to no avail. And i have occasionally situations where im at full ds and full health where i “flash” DS to proc either the curses gm or the spite gm or for fury. Back in the day there were actually builds that flashed DS

A quarter second ICD is not going to stop you from “flashing” You can’t even complete the auto in a quarter second. Just stop and think about how long a quarter second is.

I’ll make a note to run OBS next time I pvp so that I can show it.

Zintrothen.1056:

Necros don’t need buffs.

tbh Necros could use a Condi elite spec. Specter auto is literally the only thing that has kept condi necro viable since the Deathly Chill nerf. With how traits in Reaper work, condi necro has to trade way too much DPS to get survivability to the point that condi necro has to go glass or go home. Meanwhile power necro makes no such trade because BB doesn’t cost it, and power only needs spite and doesn’t have to double up offensive traitlines to function.

/endrant

Lahmia.2193:

I will say I am absolutely 100% dead against any kind of split second cooldown upon entering shroud. They already tried it with reapers shroud in beta and people hated it.

Not on entering shroud. On exiting shroud.

As in you enter shroud, but will not be able to exit for another 1/4th second after you entered.
I honestly cannot think of a situation where you would willingly want to enter and then exit shroud within a quarter of a second.

I say this because I’ve been told in the past that the bug is because the game will “queue” skills in order to making casting more fluid. However with instant no CD abilities like the enter-exit shroud the game will sometimes both activate the ability and queue it at the same time.

Lahmia.2193:

Are you sure you’re not double tapping shroud? Maybe your keys/mouse have worn to the point that they’ve started double tapping.

I’m positive it’s not double tap. If I was having double tap issues, I’d be having “skill recharging” text all over the place when using class mechanic skills on other classes.

I have a similar issue with thief weapon skills going off twice. I suspect the cause is the same for both issues. I doubt all of my 1-5 buttons are worn out on top of Shift+1.

flow.6043:

Yes, direct damage is more common, but that doesn’t change that fact that you will take other sources of damage as well. Saying it’s a non-factor is completely ignorant. And no, you don’t need a mesmer or condi-whatever-build on the other team for that.

Necros can easily handle condi without needing to resort to vit stacking. We have more than enough tools to do so. We don’t have the tools to deal with power damage.

Also, again, life force and Shroud completely ignore all of the advantages you get with healing effectiveness because lf regen is always percentage based. Plus, it’s way more easily generated than regular hp, even when you get supported by allies.

Increasing the mitigation of shroud increases the value of shroud even if the HP value is lower. The EHP gain may not be nearly as much as vit point for point, but the value is there. Meanwhile toughness is extremely valuable to us when we are outside of shroud while vitality is less so.

Moreover for theorycrafting purposes LF can be equated to healing, it’s just healing a buffer rather than direct. If you have more mitigation you don’t need as much LF gain to sustain yourself.

Sigmoid.7082:

Shroud deals with lots of smaller hits better than it does single big ones due to how it will check if it would overflow first.

The size of hits is irrelevant. Shroud has a fixed EHP value the size of hits does not affect how much damage your shroud will take.

Died again in pvp because I had a entire fight where everytime I tried to shroud it would instantly eject me from shroud with shroud on full cd. Happened twice in a row.

This bug occurs on a daily basis, and I am tired of losing fights because of it.

Please ArenaNet put a 1/4s CD on exiting shroud, it would fix this eternal bug without affecting the class.

nothelseth.4621:

I think this thread would have been much better if you brought up the much needed discussion of steal having a 2.5-3s cast time.

2.5 seconds?
I hate thieves as much as the next necro, but 2.5 second cast on anything is nuts in this game.

I do wish thieves had more telegraphs, but they are no worse than the old school power mesmers.

What I really think this game needs, is a class capable of actually running a thief down. Right now the only way to handle a thief is with another thief.

DeceiverX.8361:

You can follow them with Flesh wurm and spectral walk which are both on the same or lower cooldowns, or just a ranged weapon.

Is this a joke. Flesh Worm has too long a cast to be practical as a case utility. Unless the necro can predict the future and place the flesh as the SS spot ahead of time.

Spectral Walk is even worse as a case skill. It’s only teleports the necro to where the necro was when he started the SW. So unless the thief intentionally choose to SS to the start of the SW, it’s aint gonna do crap.

Namer.9750:

The solution is quantum computing. It’s a tad expensive and experimental, so I hope you understand if ANet is unable to implement it.

By “tad expensive and experimental” he means that the technology doesn’t actually exist outside of labs. Late 2016 was when the first reprogrammable quantum chip was made and that thing is just a lab experiment.

Also you can’t really apply it in gw2 anyways because quantum computing does not play well with binary computing.

The more I read these threads the more I’m convinced that “low skill” is just a term bad players use to describe stuff that they die to.

SkyShroud.2865:

Berseker is highest dps only after you include other modifiers like fury and traits that further boost the crit rate.

If you don’t have those modifiers then Assassin’s is optimal DPS. And Assassin’s is a three stat amulet.

flow.6043:

First of all, when you argue that toughness mitigates direct damage, you also have to accept that extra hp “mitigates” armor-ignoring damage like conditions or leeching.

That is a criminal misuse of the word “mitigation”

Vitality stacking still means that you are taking the full damage value. That value has to be accounted for with healing or else you will die. All Vit does is delay the inevitable.

Secondly, amulets with just one minor defensive stat (560 vitality or toughness), for example marauder and demolisher will give you about the same effective hp against direct damage.

EHP is a terrible measurement because it does not account for healing. Mitigation becomes more valuable with healing access, up to the critical point where the incoming damage is reduced below the incoming healing value at which point you can no longer die.

The choice for most classes comes down to: healing effectiveness vs a condition damage buffer. (it’s PvP, you will almost always be taking some condition damage)

That condition damage is hilariously low. Before s5 when we had actual post match damage breakdowns, I made a point of always looking at the power/condi breakdown.

Do you know how often condi equaled or outstripped power damage taken?
NEVER
Not once in all my time did I see a match where condi damage was anywhere near my power damage taken. Even when I was trolling around with a Knight’s Rousing Resilience Warrior I still took more power damage than condi.

Moreover Condi damage is a non-issue for necro, We have some of the best condi management in the game. But at the same time we have the worst power damage management in the game. Which makes toughness that much more valuable.

Also look at the meta, Chrono is the only remaining condi build. (although necros seem to be split 50/50 between the new axe BB build and various condi builds) There just isn’t much condi damage in the meta.

Condi is simply a non-factor.

And if you look outside of sPvP its not much different. Mobs rarely if ever deal condi damage. (This argument is moot in raids because of how threat is handled.) WvW probably has the highest condi damage ratio, but even then I doubt it outstrips power damage.

Necros, however, have basically no healing of their own and life force regeneration is percentage based. Also, when you factor in the damage reduction in Shroud, any extra point of hp will increase your lf pool by 1.38 life force, or even 1.587 life force with Soul Reaping.

Which is perfectly fine argument for 1v1. But in practice it’s rare to not have some external source of healing. If you are duo’ing with a support you’d be stupid to not run toughness.

imho large shoulder pads look good on Charr. The “buttcape” is archtypical for medium armor (Rox is a medium armor ranger)

Although I do get annoyed by buttcapes that don’t have a slit for the Charr’s tail. (arrggg clipping)

I am perpetually having issues on my thief with my weapon skills going off twice, regardless of how careful I am. It doesn’t happen everytime, but enough to prevent me from playing thief in PvP with any level of competency.I have a similar double tap issue with necro shroud but it’s less common.

I’ve been told that it’s latency related but my latency is fairly good <100ms most of the time.

Anyone else have issues with this, and is there a workaround?

@Crinn
The OP wants to make his shroud more durable. In shroud the relative difference between armour and no armour becomes smaller, smaller still with protection and smaller still again each time damage gets cut. The % difference is the same but the numerical difference gets smaller and so does the total additional % damage reduced from the original. Shroud will also cut condition damage in half.

I’m well aware of how multiplicative percent work. But just because the DR on shroud reduces the toughness value, that value is still there.

Vitality does not provide mitigation period, and the increase to shroud HP is not as exciting as people think. Moreover not having toughness leaves you vulnerable to getting deleted by power builds when out of shroud.

5 is enough to value teamfights and rotations, but not so many as too allow teams to leave node guards. 4 would result in rolling 1v1s the entire match.

The first time I PvP’ed I had not utility skills because I didn’t know about sPvP being different. It was a Courtyard, yet despite me only having weapon skills my team still won.

4 stat prefix gear does have numerically more stats than 3 stat prefix gear.

That said it doesn’t automatically make 4 stat better. Berserker’s is still the best power DPS prefix.

Anet made the 4 stat likely because they realized the need for “predominantly this but with a touch of that” but they needed enough of “that” to make a difference.

For instance Zinn doesn’t give enough vitality to be worth anything. Marauders however does have enough vitality to be worth looking at for situations that value vit.

Obtena.7952:

If there was no reason to optimize in this game, there would be no meta but people will always end up playing the class that they like playing.

This is false. Meta arise because the human brain doesn’t allow us to accept to different things as equal. We are perpetually trying to rank and optimize things regardless of whether said thing needs to be ranked or optimized. It’s why we have a obsession with “Top 10” lists, its why we ask our peers for advice on even the most trivial and meaningless things.

There is no such thing as “if there is no reason to optimize” because the human brain will try to optimize regardless of whether there is a reason to do so.

Sigmoid.7082:

Its just were do increases fit? Is the increase calculated before hand i.e the outgoing hit is amplified but then overall reduced?

Offensive modifiers should apply first since they originate from the attacker and not the thing being hit.
I don’t have proof of that, but that’s how it’s worked in every RPG I’ve ever heard of.

Also toughness will still always be better than vit against power builds because it will still net better overall mitigation. It also proves mitigation out of shroud which vitality does not do.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Mr Godlike.6098:

Blue.1207:

I know how to rotate, I win my 1v1’s and hold out during 1vX/disengage when appropriate. My teammates on the other hand are seemingly straight outta Best Buy with their CD keys. Yeah I make mistakes too and I’m well aware of them, but man, oh man.

You are aware that this is your SUBJECTIVE opinion?

Are you discrediting his opinion as “SUBJECTIVE” on the basis of your own “SUBJECTIVE” opinion?

Are you sure you know what you’re saying?

Well technically “his opinion” was actually a anecdote+hyperbole not a opinion.

lukejoe.1592:

So when are we ever going to get the longbow elite spec for Rangers? The greatsword elite for Guardians? Or the daggers elite spec for thieves? These are the weapons I want to use when I play these classes. They are WHY I play these classes, but now mandatory specs come out that…don’t make my Ranger any better with a bow or offer anything of value to that playstyle.

Especs don’t mandate their respective weapons. All the Especs work without there respective weapons.

Also seriously weapon swap is a thing.

Generally speaking unless something goes horribly wrong there will never be GW3, Anet will just keep GW2 going a long as possible.

flow.6043:

He was being sarcastic.

I can’t tell anymore these days. :/

Stand The Wall.6987:

why are people saying necro has no sustain? isn’t that what the 2nd health bar is? granted you have to land certain attacks to fill it up, but still.

Buffer != sustain.

Ok I actually watched it. I’ll preface this as someone in the division as you.

You weren’t winning equal fights. You and your team needed +1s on everything, including your 1v1s.

Not rotating as fast as you could. sword 2 is a excellent mobility skill for getting between nodes, use it.

Delayed cooldown usage. At a number of points you ate major damage and only evaded afterwards. A good example was that 1v1 against the LB ranger where he LB4’ed you and was obviously going for a #2 burst, but instead of negating it with SoS you ate the entire thing and only popped SoS when you where down to 3-digit HP. The only thing that saved you was the inability of the other ranger to follow up.

Decay is not related to volatility. You do however get both from the same cause (not playing for a prolonged period)

Elo hell doesn’t exist in a game that doesn’t use Elo.

Also again it’s Elo not ELO, it’s not a acronym.

Vicariuz.1605:

vault isnt the issue, the issue is bound, 4k dodges when u have upwards of 9+ is excessive.
vault can be countered by having good ping, and hitting them at the top of the vault. the evade frames are only for the first half of the skill.

Bound is not the issue, it’s such a minority of the damage output of staff as to be laughable.

alemfi.5107:

Crinn.7864:

duster.7013:

Necros are a teamfight class that need ele/et cetera support,

Metabattle’s power necro is actually a better 1v1 build than it is a teamfight build since axe is a mediocre teamfight weapon.

Condi Necro however should avoid all 1v1s and stick to it’s support.

“mediocre team fight weapon” , “better 1v1”, sorry these statements are triggering me and it doesn’t sound like you understand necromancers role. Necromancer is basically the anti bunker right now. You have very few meta-matchups that you should win against on paper 1v1, with an advantageous matchup arguably only being 1v1 engi or ele (vs ele should almost never happen because that is a poor use of those professions on both teams). Axe is good focus target damage and burst life force generation. It is not a 1v1 build.

Power necro a better 1v1 by necro standards of 1v1. (which is low)

Condi necro a better anti-bunker than power. The only reason power necro is even on metabattle is because power necro can get high LF gain without sacrificing dps, while condi necro has to gut it’s own dps to achieve similar survivability.

Getting people in the f2p game is better marketing than trying to get people to spend money on a game they haven’t touched yet.

Would never happen. They seem to be designing condi necro around low LF, while power necro drowns in LF. Probably because power necro is predominantly melee (excluding axe) while condi is ranged.

Although personally they seem to be overkilling condi’s access to LF. We have to drop so much damage just to get respectable LF.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Honestly the connection rate is much better than rs2. I would say i hit close to 100% of ds2 when i played pre hot

You always gets value out of RS2.

You only ever get value out of DS2 if it connects.

RS2 still connects better either way. Had a rev last match walk out of DS2. Never have that crap happen with RS2. RS2 is a proper mobility skill, DS2 is just plain crap.

duster.7013:

Necros are a teamfight class that need ele/et cetera support,

Metabattle’s power necro is actually a better 1v1 build than it is a teamfight build since axe is a mediocre teamfight weapon.

Condi Necro however should avoid all 1v1s and stick to it’s support.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Epidemic should be an Elite.

That would be a huge buff considering how crappy necro elites are.

SkyShroud.2865:

Junkpile.7439:

SkyShroud.2865:

Junkpile.7439:

Yes nerf skill even more. Maybe players were just better before because it wasn’t problem in launch when it got unlimited range and you didn’t need line of sight.

It wasn’t a problem at launch because people were abusing boonshare, no conditions can cut through the unlimited spam of resistance.

Valid point, but need to remember that resistance was added in game june 23, 2015.

Keep in mind that condition stacking is added on the same date.

Edit: Also, I thought your launch was referring to HOT and not gw2 launch. Afterall, this issue only start to explode in HOT with the pre-hot condition buffing.

Except Epi is a recent trend not something that started with HoT.

The problem is that people these days don’t take as much condi clear as they used to. Used to be people ran condi reduction food and supports typically maxed out their cleanse capabilities.
Nowadays people just run power defense.

Supreme.3164:

Crinn.7864:

Wolfric.9380:

Now repeat it playing elementalist ^^.

tbh ele is the best carry class behind Mesmer.

And yet..you play necro….

support ele + necro is one of the easiest ways to snowball a match.

Zenith.7301:

Crinn.7864:

Zenith.7301:

Part of the reason why warrior/thief is more contained in spvp is because they can’t jack up their survival the way they do while still maintaining incredibly high damage bonuses.

Defensive stacked classes don’t do “incredibly high damage”

WvW meta builds do well under half of the damage output of a optimized build. The problem is that classes base health in this game is so low that you don’t need anywhere near optimized DPS to blow people up.

A warrior in knights/marauder is gonna do more damage and be tankier to me than some pitiful greatsword necro in zerker gear.

I could play a zerker dagger ele and not even get around to doing damage because my damage is all air autos and burning retreat and I’d be dead by the third air auto to some warrior in knights who turned around and chunked half my health in two hits.

There are simply classes who can get away with more offensive stats since they have greater baseline defense and a greater spike damage sponge by virtue of higher base health pool or better recovery tools.

You also bring up HP pools as an issue, but in spvp the TTK is longer because crit damage is capped at 60% crit damage bonus, people can’t reach 100%+ crit damage and almost guaranteed crits, they can’t reach ridiculous amounts of condi duration or use food to up their damage even further. They can’t just easily farm mobs/uplevels for bloodlust stacks and they die more frequently (the punishment to a thief for disengaging is losing the point, a weakness that doesn’t exist in WvW).

You completely and utterly misunderstood what I said.

WvW builds do crap damage. Go look up what a raid composition does in DPS, and compare it to what a equal sized WvW composition does in DPS.

PvP builds are not high damage in any way shape for form. People think they are high damage because the base health pools in this game are hilariously low. That is the point I’m making.

Lordrosicky.5813:

4, Arc divider – the damage of this thing is crazy given its range and lack of CD. Came in at an OP rating of 1367.

Arc Divider has a 5 second CD, and can only be used during berserk.

Arbitrary rating is Arbitrary.

Also as a fellow necro I’m going to point out that AD isn’t what is killing you, it’s M/sh weaponset on warrior that gives necros issues.