Guild Wars 2

Why stealth cannot capture point?

Answer :
- Stealth used to be able to capture point.
- It felt broken for the vast majority of the PvP community.
- Lot of pvp players complained about it.
- Anet nerfed it along with all invuln effect.

Rangers/druid/warrior have no invuln effect since conditions pass through them
Gardian/DH only have shelter has a block utility with no blind spot that allow caping.
Reflect only prevent incoming projectiles to hit you (not all range attack, which make a very big difference, trust me)

Block/reflect/invuln/blur/dodge are short lasting effect that allow your ennemies to still keep track of you.
Stealth may be stacked to the point that you end up perma stealth and you can’t keep track of a stealthed ennemy (especially if you don’t know that there is one)

What you want would only end up in stealth wars 2 where the meta game would revolve on 2-3 professions playing in PvP : Engi, thief and on a good day you may see 1 DH or ranger.

if your chosen Legends are Glint, Ventari, or Jalis, when you enter water you will literally have no access to any utilities (including no self-heal!) whatsoever.

I’m afraid that is false.

You do not have access to these utilities the very first time you go underwater. The moment you set up the underwater legends the stay in memory and you don’t need to set them again the next time you enter underwater even if on land you were wearing glint/ventari/jalis. (At least for me it has always worked like that).

Beside for every profession the underwater skill are kept in memory as well and may vastly differ from the land skills. There is no real reason to feel upset or more limited than any other profession.

What’s the most crippling in revenant underwater is more how Unyielding anguish work, keeping ennemies out of it.

To the title : Yes

xiao.2614:

no pve casual random ppl allows to post here
allowed only discussions about title

Î
This kind of comment should earn a flag.
PvP balance always impact PvE.
PvE balance… there is nothing like that in Anet dictionnary.

On mesmer, whatever the gamemodes, GS is part of the almost all power build. Any drop of power, nerf of all kind directly impact all those gamemodes. And, it may be something that you don’t know but in PvE, enemies have vastly more health point than in PvP so a drop of damage due to a loss of rebound on mirror blade hurt a tons more than in PvP.

Vayne.8563:

DeceiverX.8361:

Vayne.8563:

Excellent Name.9574:

Are You saying that there was free server transfer at the HoT release? That would explain the server merges then indeed?

No. I’m saying at launch of Guild Wars 2, due to the fact that guesting didn’t make it into the release, that everyone loaded up on the top servers until they were full.

The population problem in WvW is years old. Therefore it can’t be due to HoT, because the problem preceded HoT by at least a couple of years.

The population problem in WvW is an old problem, not a new one.

HoT didn’t do WvW any favors with the new map, but that’s another story. The population problem existed before the new map drove WvW players away.

And WvW has come back a long way since then.

Again, server mergers in WvW (and only in WvW) have nothing to do with HoT.

I’d have to disagree to some extends. If they didn’t start making sweeping changes to stop the bleeding and get a few people back into WvW (also putting PvE requirements like GoB in the reward tracks to make people join), it’s very arguable HoT killed WvW.

It was definitely bleeding quite badly before, but the mass-scale exodus from the format at or near the release of HoT permanently reduced player populations. Servers that were once full are now not. Queues are shorter across the board for previously-populated servers. Tons of guilds have quit entirely solely quoting HoT-only content such as the guild halls removing all upgrade progress and the DBL’s themselves (before you say people have been voting for the inclusion of DBL, the data is skewed to favor it since most people who were against it (a large number) have since entirely stopped playing GW2).

WvW’s been in dire straights for years, but HoT was a killing blow. We’re seeing some attempts to resuscitate it, but it’s questionable if they’ll work into the future. The classes are still terribly imbalanced, the gear combinations are still swinging builds wildly, and the sheer powercreep has tremendously hurt the format and peoples’ willingness to consider it seriously.

But the population problems on low servers existed for years. Are you denying this?

Well the general population server issue for WvW have always been here. Very few WvW guild or player stay on a same server. Peeps just wanna win and to do that they jump from server to top server.

On Eu server there are good exemple of that :
- SFR
- Vizunah
- kodash

All of these servers have got their age of surge and decay of wvw population. This population didn’t go try PvE or PvP. They didn’t let go of the game. They just jumped on the flavored server at that moment. There is no population that is more nomadic than the WvW population. No lingering affection for a server, just want to win and stop being rekt by giant blobs in front that do better than them.

The same way, casual wvw player that farm Edge of the mist want to jump on the winning color (usually green buldoze through the 2 other color due to large excess of wvw player playing Eotm when queueing for wvw on winning server). To be honest, the Eotm balance is even worst than the wvw one since strong server stack on the same color usually.

Ritualist as an Espec for revenant?

Well… I’d give it a MH pistol or a scepter.

As a legend… hummm there is no way I’d bet on Togo (this guy never gave the feeling to want to come from the dead to pursue any kind of goal). If I had to give a legend it would definetly be Razah (The most enigmatic guy possible).
As for it’s skills, I got the feeling that it would be more a set of ligthning mental spell with maybe some boons attached.

F2 is easy, It would be an upkeep (7) that give shape to the current legend that you use.

- Mallyx would be an unmovable spirit that inflict torment and corrupt boons around him. (In short : a ground targeted AoE spell that inflict torment and corrupt boons)

- Jalis would be an unmovable spirit with hammer whirling around him that grant stability and protection to ally around him (In short, a ground targeted boon providing AoE to protect your allies)

- Ventari would be an unmovable spirit that do the work of the tablet but better and without us having to do it. (In short, a ground targeted healing pulse AoE that also purge condition)

- Shiro would be a movable super annoying fast attacking spirit that stick to the ennemy with constant teleport. (A frenzied minion that do direct damage on a single target)

- Razah… well it would probably be the center of a mist tempest with tons of mental lightning. (A ranged minion that do damage on a single target)

All of this end up with the flavor of GW1 ritualist, without the abuse of stacking spirits.

NB : could also be called mistwalker or mistborn since it’s a razah themed Espec.
Healing skill could be :
Spirit light : Drawing mist energy around you and damaging nearby enemy.
Utility :
Displacement : something like Mesmer’s portal but with a shorter range. (upkeep)
Dissonance : a ligthning spell that would daze the ennemy
Painful bond : Bind an ennemy with a spiritual chain (for 4s) crippling it or chilling it while also inflicting torment. Pulse every second.
Elite :
Spirit rift : A high damaging area spell that also load struck enemy with vulnerabilities.
As for the trait, there are tons of GW ritualist skills that would fit. They could divide it in 3 line :
1- weapon and boons (spirit weapon type traits)
2- [F2] Spirit using line (traitline that take advantage of the fact that there is a spirit)
3- Razah themed trait (traitline making use of the legend’s channeled skills)

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I miss the days when we could send our stealthed Jaguar’s up walls in WvW to kill people on AC’s ):

I miss it so much as well…

Did hot ruin guild wars 2?

Yes and not. HoT didn’t ruined guild wars 2, it’s more that it change a lot of the things that we were used to.
- There is now more area where you can farm for gold
- There are more traitlines
- People were complaining about professions and they still complain
- … etc.

What really hurt the game is the rythm change at which they introduce new content. Honestly people grow tired of waiting. Raids are fine and all but it’s not a content that is addressed at all the players. We are boringly waiting for something new that is not a grindfest and is accessible to anyone.

The revenant’s attribut is it’s ability to switch between 2 legends. And this is support by different traits in the invocation traitline.

Dezember.1295:

1. Does rev do well in Maguuma content by themselves?
2. Would you recommend regular zerker setup for map exploring?
3. Which weapons / stances would you use? I was thinking of basically running my PvP setup with full zerk S/S and something… With dragon (once I reach herald) and assassin stance.

All tips are welcome, and all replies appreciated.

1- Yes it do well. There is no content that the rev can’t bit by himself by my knowledge. Though you may struggle against some of the most boring champions (the leechs hero points)

2- From my experience, even if you stack defensive stats it does little to nothing for you in the end. So yeah, any offensive gear setup is good.

3- Personnally i’m used to use an hybrid setup with both condi and power damage but for my leveling in the heart of maguma I was in zerk and the setup i liked the most was Mace/Sword with jalis/mallyx. The dragon traitline is usefull for it’s doubletaped F2 while solo but that’s all. (Note that I don’t use sword main hand because I just don’t like how it work. If you are used to it thanks to overuse in PvP it might be better for you to use it)

Oh!

3 years ago while I was protecting a WvW camp, I ended up facing an extremly bursty elementalist. After a few bout during which he was kiting my pet, he finally unleashed all it’s burst cool down and I got down.

He then came to stomp me. But at the same time, while down, I used [F2] (I was using a bird this time and the pets weren’t nerfed yet). The elementalist as a good low life glass canon got one shot by the bird who finished him, and thus, saved my life.

This was the good days…

Well, I admit that jalis is not an earthshattering legend but the heal is pretty good, the CC skill is great to deplete breakbar and the whirlwind hammer are a good increase in DPS (especially when you use it with the devastation traitline).

However, the elite skill feel pretty weak (but that’s probably because I don’t know how to use it right) and the stability field is a pain to use.

But all in all I don’t think it need to be reworked.

wow… Everything happen! I never ever expect that one day I’d see a thread with a title saying that ranger/Druid using Sword/Dagger would be Op.

Well, op, don’t panic usually the ranger dodger trend don’t last long.

As for Unholy sanctuary, it is somewhat usefull in PvP and a lot more in WvW. I doubt that anybody use it in PvE (there is no reason for that).

Soul conversion… Well there is no real gamemode where it is gamebreakingly usefull. In PvE you usually don’t care about it, In PvP there is simply not enough death to make it significant. The only part of the game where it could be significant is actually in WvW ’s slugfest in blob v Blob situation where you take tons of damage and there are tons of deaths.

NB.: saying “it’s a PvE trait” is always a joke. Trait are design and balance for player versus player situation. Else the necromancer would probably not end up with it’s disapointing support via condition and tiny siphon.

Life blast :
Superspeed : No no no no no and NO!

This is a boon that fit plenty other profession but absolutely not the necromancer. Please just understand that life blast only need a faster cast time and a faster projectile speed not more damage.

Dark path :
This skill have pretty good effect in itself. Which will lead me to simply say that it need no change except more reactivity. To make it good the dev only need to remove the fact that it is a projectile and make it a teleport. This projectile is burdensome and have virtually no interest for the game in itself. Beside, your idea become totally broken as soon as you take the trait path of corruption.

Doom :
Honnestly don’t touch this one, this is probably the best interrupt skill of the necromancer due to the fact that it’s one of our very few instant skills.

Life transfer :
Agree

Tainted shackle :
Not sure that it would end up better than what we already got.

anduriell.6280:

We invert the roles here: the pet autos become like the solar beam from the staff. A weak attack but that is able to hit reliably.

Here I totally agree with you. Ideally, the pet should become in the players mind something like an anoying damage overtime with an ability to either support, debuff, burst or being extremely resilient based on the choice of the pet’s owner via the [F2] skill.

anduriell.6280:

As i pointed out in this thread other changes would include to be able to directly control with F2 and F3 up to 2 skills from the pet: one for utility (swiftness from the birds or the knockdown from the dogs or the Harmonic Cry from moas) and another to burst when needed (the mauls like from cats or the smoke assault in the Smokescale)

While it seem good, it become overly complicated and [F3] become a tasteless skill that aint supported by any trait in any traitline. Beside the best would still be to retain the actual layout.

anduriell.6280:

And if when they add the new utility and Burst skills to the pets they add new skills from other professions so the ranger can choose to have access to 2 additional effects otherwise the ranger would not have access to (like pets casting Guardian’s Shield of Absortion, or Heralds Gaze of the Darkness) it could make every single pet unique in their uses.

It would be stepping on the toes of other professions and I don’t think anything justify that. totally against it.

anduriell.6280:

At last to give them one trait line for pet family so you as a player can even customise how the pet plays in some sort of way as it was in GW1, but nothing fancy, traits already other professions have but applied exclusively to the pet (like having the choice to apply Diamon Skin to the glassiest families or traits to increase their attack speed)

Honnestly, they can’t even keep in memory the name of the pet. I think it’s best to delay this kind of idea when the real issues will be corrected.

While I understand that it’s painful to wreck ourself with corruption, it seem Anet think it’s a strengh of the necromancer to be able to do so. At this point I only hope that they will make the necromancer more resilient to their own demise through tweeks on core traitline or a dedicated elite spec.

Simply put the new scepter AA replace easily the old corrupt boon that you seem to regret.

While, most of it is pleasant to the eye, there is also a need for balance in change.

It would be a lie if I didn’t agree with your change on the elite skill though.

Otherwise, I kinda agree with SpellOfIniquity. Corruptions need to remain as they are. But I also think that some traits that fully take advantage of this risk/reward are badly needed for the core necromancer as well as futur elite spec. At the moment MoC enhance the risk but the reward is still meh. Slightly modifying Unholy martyr so that it also allow the necromancer to gain life force upon inflicting himself a condition would give a lot more depth to the whole corruption thingy.

Useless parasitic contagion and spiteful spirit also need to be looked at. These 2 GM traits are either unusable in any game mode or totally underwhelming.

Lightsbane.9012:

Dadnir.5038:

Just because nobody said it :

A shovel.
Skill 1 : Whack/smack/slash
Skill 2 : Throw dirt on the face of the enemy
Skill 3/4/5 : produce minions.

hey, that way if you put a skilled named gravedigger on it it’ll make kitten sense.

My gosh! you’re right! I didn’t even though about that!

Just because nobody said it :

A shovel.
Skill 1 : Whack/smack/slash
Skill 2 : Throw dirt on the face of the enemy
Skill 3/4/5 : produce minions.

Teraphas.6210:

dadnir if its the pet i am thinking about it was a cat. and mostly i think it was becuase people like me made builds that in wvw let us be well out of range have our cat go running in stealthed, burst a lot of damage on a yak(even escorted at the time) and kill it and then swap pets before the stealth fully fell away. We would also use a couple rangers to use these ninja cats to assassinate enemy commanders if we could identify them before the two sides clashed.

if you did it right the one shot damage was crazy. you were useless for much else but that cat could out damage the player with that move.

Well, age ago, before they butchered pet’s damage and though that giving pets more toughness and vitality was what’s needed to allow pets survive without breaking the game… I indeed liked to use the cat’s stealth ambush as well.

But, even before that, they nerfed Guard!. And yes, I truly enjoyed wrecking the guys that were defending tower or castle by sending a bird on the wall to one shot those poor glass canon thieves.

Well, in reality, I’ve already got pass those 2 event (maybe not but…) and I’m thinking more specifically about how fast they took care of the bristleback and the smokscale.

And I don’t even talk about the leash lengh nerf.

We can agree that core pet are not OP (in any game mode). They brough them down less than a year after launch. Any ability that made pets usefull (like guard!) were nerfed as soon as it annoyed other professions. New pets came with their share of pretty fast nerf… etc. I find that each little buff to pet are even harder to come with than buff to the core ranger. If you look at the new shouts, in no way do they favor the pets.

Simply put, the pet is a thorn on the side of the ranger due to it’s state of uselessness. It’s also a thorn on the side of the developpers because it’s an easy rant source for other professions that will point out that an AI shouldn’t be threatening in a PvP environment. And this is most likely why we are in the stalemate that make the pets as they are right now.

The only way for this stalemate to not be broken should be to smoothen how the pet behave And that’s mainly why I think that removing the AI utilities should be a good way to remove some of the unneeded action that cripple the behavior of the pet. After that, allowing the pet to still move while performing it’s non-threatening auto attack should also be a good thing. (and honnestly nobody care about the fact that it could be awkward to see, In this game we are killing dragon with weapons that are not even long/large enough for the dragon to be a toothpick.)

In the end, there is also the terrible inbalance of the pet between each other. Some pets are smoother due to short induction time (the panther and it’s instant stealth being one of them) while we got the awfull induction time shout of the melandru cat for a short lasting number of might stack. There is also the fact that short CD [F2] work way better with a lot of the rangers trait… etc.

In the end, ther is a need to :
- look at the behavior of the pet (pathing, uncontroled use of utility skill… etc.)
- balance their [F2]
- and balance their utilities skills
What’s worse is that it’s a needed first step in the right direction to make the special ability of the ranger something really usefull.

Well, that’s exactly what I meant. Precise that it must be a threat for player and not a a stupid thing like putting more aggro generation on npc mobs. In the end, if you just look at how you worded it, as a developper it’s :

“Yeah, let buff the invisible value “aggro” of the pet, in the end it will change almost nothing except in PvE that we don’t care since our mighty sPvP is much more important".

If you create a thread that sort out the flaw of the pet, it’s better to not create new flaws out of it. “Aggro” outside of the taunt effect do not affect players. And you can’t force player to target a pet with invisible mechanism.

What’s important is to clearly state that the pet need to have enough firepower to become a threat in the eyes of the other players so that they have to be warry of them. The pet do not need to “FORCE” anything to attack them, they just need to pose a strong enough threat so that player stop ignoring them.

At the moment, the only pets that the players are warry of are the bristleback and the smokescale, just because they have decent burst skill that can land on a target. Other pets don’t have that.

As depressive idea, I recall that as soon as there is a player that complain about a ranger pet being able to shave of a bit of it’s health pool, they imediatly nerf this pet. Well, I’ll stay on the idea that I post on the precedent thread about the rework of the pet’s utilities. It’s definetly the most balanced way to get rid of a lot of the pet’s flaw. Giving only auto attack damage to the pet’s AI and allowing player to chose 1 and only 1 pet utility skill that they can controle freely is the best way to fix the horrendous state of the current system. And since with that the pet won’t attemp numerous useless failed use of their utility skill, their attack speed can only go up and it may even be possible that in the end they will start to dish out a bit of damage. On second though, granting to their auto attack a cleave status could also help a bit.

NB.: looking a second time at your reply, I think, it would be sufficient to just change the word enemy in the sentence by player. It’s a small semantic change but it mean a whole lot.

The ability of the pet to FORCE an enemy to recognize it as a threat and to tempt said enemy to do something to actively hinder the pet.

I feel like the wording is bad here. Personnally, in my way to play ranger I prefer when the ennemy don’t see my pet as a threat (mainly in PvE). The wording here could lead to solutions that would harm a lot the ranger in PvE group content.

I think what you meant was to say that the pets skill/auto-attack lack a clear impact that would lead other players to be more warry of there existence. At the moment, except for a few exceptions, the pet’s skill are not threatening enough to make other players, in PvP, even take a glance at the ranger’s pet. Which mean that there is little to no reason for the extra long induction time of the pet’s skills.

Pet behavior : I couldn’t agree more with what you said. I’d include the pathing issue. (It cost nothing to continue to hammer it)

Beorn Raukar.4328:

What I don’t understand is people were complaining that raids were getting so much high quality content, and that is one release every 4 months. We told them that those release were HoT content spread out over time. Now that they are getting the same cadence that they praised before with raids (and even much much faster at a chapter per 2 months) it is “too slow” and “locking content”. ANET can never win.

That’s because when players read “living story”, they already gave up on expecting :
- new map
- boss needing weeks of balance to challenge a 10 man team
- new mob design on each map
- new skins
- etc.

What player expect when they read “living story” is a lore development that will lead them to uncover mystery that bother them since a while or help them focus on a new direction in the game. In this regard, I know that a lot of people hated the LS1 but that was a content that was really worth it’s name of “living story”. Peoples are looking for solo content with a background that make sense in the current GW2. (sure it would be cool to see new maps but nobody expect more than 2 map for the whole LS3 and 1/4th of map every 3 month with an average entertainment duration of 40 minute, the first time you do it, is bound to be disappointing)

NB.: Yeah I’m generous with 40 minutes

Except than the super advertised raids wings that less than 20% of the player bother with, Anet only delivered casual content.

- Fractal? you need between 2 minute and 10 minutes to finish one (and since it’s how they work now…) → super casual
- sPvP league? There is nothing more casual than sPvP.
- Semi invisible little event rewarding some AP (bandit/ley line)? casual!
- Cash shop item? lol (imo the cash shop release skin at an unbelievable rate that make one wonder how it’s possible that Anet have issues when it come to release new “free” skins)

That’s all they released since HoT. Sure it feel frustrating that the content have a very slow release rate but it’s not because something is more advertised than the other things that Anet care less to the casual. I believe the “elites” feel the same about how slow the elite content is.

I think a lot of us want torch, it’s probably the weapon that fit us the most at the moment.

Off-hand axe could, maybe, give some hope to the existing axe trait which wouldn’t be a bad thing in itself.

main hand focus (same reason than off hand axe but with focus trait, also, it would be bad kitten and fit the necromancer) (Edit : Oh god, I just imagined someone using 2 minstrel and I got depressed…)

Hammer, take staff skills and give it a melee AA that cleave. that would be almost perfect

Since I got some time, let’s just dig in the pet’s skills and pet skills system (note that this is only a suggestion based on my own preferences).

Pet skill system :

I never found the actual pet skill system satisfying, the main reason being that the pets use utilities skills at the wrong moment and their overall performance are crippled by theses skills. Note that those skill usually end up being wasted and have abysmal impact on any fight.

The main idea behind the change would be to leave the pet with only it’s auto attack and give the ranger the ability to select which utility skill he want on F2. The pet AI having less “personal” choice to do should already help a lot in regard of the reliability of the pet’s behavior.

Pet’s utilities skills balance :

In attempt to put all pet into an equal footing in regard of the ranger’s traits, what would be necessary is to divide thoses skill into 3 possible skills from weak to strong, the weak skill having a low CD and the “strongest” skill, a long CD.

Core pets :
- Bird :
Swoop : reduce to 6 second CD.
Current [F2] : Slightly reduce damage on blinding slash and chilling slash, slightly improve damage on lacerating slash. standardise CD at 12 second.
Quickening screech : change swiftness duration to 20 second. (being able to keep up perma swiftness thanks to an F2 skill shouldn’t hurt any game mode)

- Dogs :
Crippling leap : Reduce damage to auto attack level or slightly lower, reduce cripple duration to 2 second. bring CD down to 6 seconds.
Current F2 : Remove offensives howl damage component. Remove support howl healing component and induction time. Standardise CD to 15 seconds.
Brutal leap : Just reduce CD to 30 second.

- Devourer :
Tail lash : change it into a ranged interrupt that does low damage with a 8 second CD.
Devourer retreat : reduce CD to 12 second evade for the whole induction time.
Current F2 skills : kept them as it is.

- Drakes :
Chomp : reduce damage to autoattack level, keep the self heal and reduce CD to 6 second.
Tail swip : halve current damage, reduce CD to 15 second.
Current F2 skill : standardise CD to 25 seconds.

- Cats :
Bite : this one is ok
Maul : reduce CD to 15 second
Current F2 skill : standardize core pet skill to 30 second CD. Mighty roar become instant (no need for any animation).

- Moa :
Frienzied attack : change into shattering peck, hit one time inflicting vulnerability. CD 6 seconds.
Harmonic cry : halve healing value, reduce CD to 15 seconds.
Current F2 skills : Standardize CD to 25 seconds. Make protective screech and furious screech instant.

- pigs :
Maul : remove bleeding, reduce CD to 6 seconds.
Forage : reduce CD to 15 seconds. after the skill have been used, replace the F2 by the bundle skill. Bundle skill affect the pet or happen at the pet position if it’s an external skill.
Brutal charge : reduce knockdown to 2 seconds, reduce CD to 30 seconds.

- Spider :
Poison gas : now become an instant skill that lay a poison field around the spider for 3 second. This poison field do not do any damage, it only unable poison combo. CD 6 seconds.
entangling web : reduce CD to 15 seconds.
current F2 skills : standardize CD to 30 seconds.

- Bear :
Bite : reduce damage to auto attack level, reduce regeneration duration to 4 seconds, reduce CD to 8 seconds.
Current F2 skill : standardize CD to 15 seconds. shake it off remove 1 condition, Poison cloud duration reduced to 3 seconds, remove offesive roars damage component.
Defy pain : reduce CD to 30 second. (This is a pet, it’s not gonna be gamebreaking if a pet become able to mitigate damage on a 30 second CD)

HoT pets :

- Bristleback :
rain of spike : become spike, gain retaliation for 4 second. instant skill, CD 6 seconds.
spike barrage : stay as it is.
Sharpen spine : stay as it is.

- Tiger :
Bite : this one is ok
Maul : reduce CD to 15 second
Furious pounce : standardize this skill with other offensive skills. CD become 30 second, double the damage component.

- Smoke scale :
take down : remove damage component. 8 second CD.
Smoke assault : remove might gain. 15 second CD
Smoke cloud : stay as it is.

- Vivern :
rework auto attack.
Tail lash : reduce damage, reduce cripple duration to 3 second. CD 8 seconds.
Wing buffet : reduce or remove damage component (that’s just wind) and reduce CD to 15 seconds.
Current F2 skill : standardize CD to 30 seconds.

I honestly don’t like these improvments.

- Change on F1 would come with it’s share of bother and people complaining about doubletaping.
- change on F3 seem to be legitimated by the change on F1 while today, it’s perfect with F1 meaning “attack!” and F3 “come back!”.
- Change on F2 won’t reduce the dps of the pet.

On this subject, I’d rather see them have a clear work of balance on all the skills of the pet and change just the pet so that it only have an auto attack and a F2 that you can chose out of combat from the 3 utility skill that the pet have. In order to make all pets competitive, it would be good to see all pet having a skill with 5s cool down, 10-15s cool down and 20-30s cool down. Ideally, we could select one of the 3 as F2 and outside of that the pet would just auto attack. (In fact the pet just auto attacking would probably improve the dps of the pet)

They do not need to adds different skills on the pets, just improve the existing skills so that they are less a bother and more usable. Let face it pet have almost always been looked at only when they are licking the wound of an ally. Otherwise i’m pretty sure nobody even look at them even when they enter into their super long induction useless skills. A balance of pets skills into instant skills is what is needed, if stupid animation disapear because of this… well I won’t cry over them.

NB.: I think that hard control should stop the current action of the pet, making lick wound interuptable is something that I feel needed.

The only thing needed for pet to be able to connect with their target is to allow them to perform action while moving. We know that the engine is already here since except for a few skills our characters can do it.

They do not need to dash, attack faster or whatever, they just need to be able to continue to track the target while using their attack. At the moment, they have to :

- reach the target
- stop
- use a skill that root them.

The idea would be to just change the damage to be done periodically in front of the pet without bothering with the animation that hurt the whole process for who know what reason.

I’m sorry but there is 1 tiny thing that prevent them to remove pet and that’s not “lore”. That’s called :

Traits

All in all to prevent some traits to become useless with an elite spec, the pet need to remain. I’m not saying that they can’t change form or whatever but there are traits that :

- Directly buff the pet : Alpha training, expertise training, Fortifying bond, Pack alpha, Companion’s might, Natural healing, Pet prowess

- Use the [F2] command (which need an active pet) : Invigorating bond, Go for the eyes, Wilting strike, Beastly warden

- Use the pet to take some comdition outa you : shared anguish, Empathic bond

Those are mainly the 14 traits that would make a spec without pet impossible sinc you basically need a pet alive and kicking to make use of them. Well, I guess the F2 use could be bypass but that’s all.

Beside, there is not only traits, there is also a whole skill family that need the pet, It’s called Shout but they are more command at the moment. Without pet, this skill family have little to no use. Without pet, no sick’em, Protect me or guard!. Without pet no strengh of the pack, well at least, no might on this shout.

The core ranger is designed to have something with him that have an health bar, that can hit a target (well that point is in theory though), have an [F2] skill and that you can swap.

Your idea in the hand of the developpers would probably end up keeping the pet and giving the ranger an [F5] that would become either :

- A burst skill à la warrior.
or
- A temporary buff.

NB.: note that traits that I don’t think that traits that affect both the master and the pet prevent this idea. I just list those who directly prevent it.

Well, I don’t think there really is a need to go the long way and describe each pet familly flaw. Pets are simply crippled by a few design flaw which don’t really have any reason to exist :

- Animation induction : players can move while hitting, pets simply can’t. they are slave of their animation and it hurt their whole capacity to actually hit a target.

- Cool down and cast time : most of the pets have terrible skills with cool down and induction time that seem pretty stupid. There is a huge need for a balance work across all of the pets skills, at the moment most of them are unusable. The game promote reactivity while most of those pet’s skills spit on the face of this design.

- self utility skills : the skills that our pet use without our consent outside of the auto attack are a pain in the a**. They either need to be removed, have an option for us to prevent our pet to actively use them or change the F2 skill in a way that we can chose which one we want to control.

- inability to dodge : Baseline, our pet should have a moment of blur when we dodge. Dodge is the very basic of survival in GW2, the fact that we don’t have any way to help our pet in it’s damage mitigation cripple it’s survivability.

NB.: I don’t think that pet based trait are in a bad place, most of them are pretty good but depend on how well our pet fare in combat. Beside, if I had just one pet trait to change, that would be invigorating bond, a promising trait crippled to oblivion thanks to an awful 20 second ICD. Reduce healing value to 1/3rd and remove the ICD (If dev think that elemental bastion is balanced then with this change invigorating bond will be balanced as well).

NB².: It could be also interesting as well to see runes set bonus also applyed to our pets. Perhaps, we could finally make some use of the 3 second induction, 40s CD ridiculously weak shout that our pets use with the help of solidiers runes or reaper’s runes.

Well, the values I’ve wrote were set so they would feel balanced when you take the specifics traits. Lich form with the trait last 22 second and have a CD that is a bit more than 90 s. Beside, you benefit from the support and 10% more damage for both condi and power is pretty good. It’s clearly something that PvE raid group would look for since there is no competition for this flat damage boost.

If they were to ever change lich form, at least they should get rid of the boring transformation. As suggestion, I think it would be better to end up with something like that :

- Lich form (Spectral elite skill) : You and nearby allies do 10% more damage (condi and power). Base duration 15s, cool down 120s. While in lich form gain stability(1) every 3s. Being in lich form prevent LF natural degeneration while in shroud. (can stack with other spectral effect)

- Plague form (Corruption elite skill) : You take 50% less damage (power and condi). Enemies that hit you are poisoned for 4s (no ICD). Duration 20s, Cool down 180s. While in plague form gain stability(3) every 3 second. (can stack with other spectral effect)

The design behind those 2 is simple, It’s to get rid of those useless transformation that we have and replace those by elite buff that are designed to make our special mechanism stronger while still being usefull out of the shroud if out of LF.

The lich form become a party friendly effect that can prevent LF drain, something that would help spectral mastery to fight against vital persistence.

The Plague form become a tanky ability that punish enemy that hit you, giving a new flavor to the whole concept of “wanting to be hit”.

NB: there is no need to keep the visual animation for lich form (yes I hate it). A faint graphic green aura à la Embrace the darkness of the revenant should be more than enough to replace it.

Deepcuts.9740:

Padd.1479:

which reset the fight

This just made my day, coming from a thief

That was exactly my thought!!!

It feel like he say : “I, a very skillfull thief, master at resetting a fight through the use of stealth, think that it would be more rewarding if other classes had less way to reset the fight through healing themself or using invuln.”

I also note that peeps agreeing to that have sign like “100% thief”

Before any new pet, I’d want a true fix on core pet. But, I could see :

- Griffins coming with an opening of the cristal desert, because griffins are super slow attacking mobs with a boring knockback.
- Wurms because it will feel useless enough to not cause any rant in PvP. Almost no movment speed while in combat and stupid retreat move that bleed and knockdown.

But, to prevent the complaint of most of the ranger community, I want an elite spec that remove the current pet list and summon instead spirit/golem type pets that don’t have to be tamed and, hopefully, are less flawed than what we got right now.

Grinding is doing one thing over and over and over. To gain the achievment point you only have to do the achievment once.

Simply put, If you do the content once you got the point you need. There is no grinding involved here.

Forced to grind raids for Specific stats because although it snot pay to win, its grind raids to have best stats for wvw. AKA buy HoT so you can do raids to win.

While you do need to explore a bit the HoT PvE content to learn insigna and inscriptions recipe, everything else you can buy it to the trading post. WvW players, thanks to their eternal grinding of each other are filthy richs, just spend a bit of what you gain from the zerg farm in the trading post.

It’s because the shroud reaper with the right traits gets might and vuln on auto-attack, leading to 25 vuln and 22-25 might with no external buffs or food. I don’t think any other class has anything like that.

Seem like you got a lot to discover about other profession in GW2. This much should be manageable by any warrior, mesmer, elementalist, engineer, ranger and probably revenant. Note that it shouldn’t take to much of an investment to include thief in this list. It may be a little bit harder for the guardian but it shouldn’t be impossible to achieve.

The necromancer in PvE is :

The good : solid with an ability to spread condition
The bad : unable to be healed by it’s allies when in shroud
The ugly : bottom tier when it come to anything other than dps

The issue of the necromancer in group content PvE have always been it’s selfish design. being the best at inflicting vulnerability is, sadly, the worst joke of the game since it’s cap at 25 and any profession is capable of doing this much. Meanwhile, other condition that are extremely potent in PvP, are almost useless in boss encounter. The focus of support on downed allies hurt my mind and my heart…

Well… Considering that the core necromancer in GW1 was one of the best support profession while the elementalist was just a stupid glass canon with little to no support. We can say that they switched their roles at some point in the hundreds year of history between GW and GW2.

Well, I’ll miss the shouts (all of them) and if it happen to be an elite spec that do not change the shroud… I’ll definitly miss the reaper shroud because DS is still in a state that make it unwanted.

Viper armor set (13.8%)
Viper weapon (7.8%)
4-5 runes of nightmare or 4-5 runes of tempest (it’s easier to get) (15%)
rare veggie pizza (20%)
Toxic focussing cristal (10%)
superior sigil of malice (10%)

Base = 76.6%

Add :
some viper jewels

And you reach the 100% mark.

However, I don’t think reaching the 100% mark for all conditions is the best way to gear. As a necromancer/reaper, I think it better to focus on bleed duration (since this is where anet desperatly push us) and look for higher condition damage. Though I may be wrong.

Edit : Oh my bad! boon duration?

that would be :
wanderer armor/weapon/accessory.
Platinum doubloon
runes of surging
boon duration food : bowl of nopalitos sauté
Bountiful maintenance oil

Thanks to platinum doubloon 100% is easily reachable.

Well in fact the only thing that made spirit “strong” was the fact that traited with nature’s revenge it was possible to spike to death people that destroyed the spirits mindlessly.

Now, the passives are somewhat usefull in PvE (At least it help a bit) while the actives are almost never used whether it’s in PvE or PvP.

For me, the best solution would be to make it so that the ranger’s pet become the embodiment of these spirits, so that we could finally be able to land some of those active skills.

NB.: I just want to add that I would be delighted if they were to get rid of the useless animation that uselessly slow the spirit use of the active skill. And since they are at it, they could use a bit of time to shave off a few of the useless pet animation that kill the responsivness of the ranger’s pet. Well… I’m dreaming…

Usually cheese build are build that counter the current meta allowing you to be effective with little to no effort and granting you tons of hatred from player that you counter. This kind of build work great until you reach a level where people have enough personal skill and teamplay to cover the overall weaknesses of their character build.

It would be a shame too for a full dps build to not even achieve 3k per second when being free cast

First, some of it’s life blast reach 2k6 when it’s oponent ain’t under prot, wich is reasonnable. And if 3k dps on tanky spec was available, you could just throw the game in the trash can since power creep would just destroy any non-tanky spec in 2-3 second. Beside all the pvp crew would probably rage against spec that do this amount.

Life blast is not a “burst” skill. It’s a skill that allow you to do a slow and heavy pressure but that’s all. If you want to burst with a necro, you need to stack a bit more damage sources (wells for example).

Now, i’m not saying that life blast don’t need work but at least the output is balanced.

More like :

Lion’s Arch:
About 85 Degrees Fahrenheit (29 Celsius)
About 25% Humidity

Divinity’s Reach:
About 70 Degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius)
About 23% Humidity

Black Citadel:
About 80 Degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius)
About 10% Humidity

Hoelbrak:
About 25 Degrees Fahrenheit (-3 Celsius)
About 30% Humidity (it’s often snowing and snow is water)

The Grove: (near the coast, and it’s an undergrowth environment so it should be pretty cool)
About 75 Degrees Fahrenheit (17 Celsius)
About 45% Humidity

Rata Sum: (yeah tropical)
About 90-100 Degrees Fahrenheit (32-37 Celsius)
About 50% Humidity

So true :

Given that the asura were an underground race, I don’t see them enjoying high heat very much. Rata Sum would be air conditioned.

StickerHappy.8052:

Dadnir.5038:

StickerHappy.8052:

Again flanking is smart play, why do people want a braindead 1111111 weapon like engie pistol?

Might as well have some rewards when executing skillful play. I think flanking is there to compensate the high rate of fire of the SB.

Remove the flanking and you’ll get:

Rabid gear + Sigil Of Earth + Crossfire with No Flanking + Sharpened Edges = X stacks of bleed.

Is this really fun for you? I mean it’s a little bit like that now even with flanking.

Well I have your point but I can’t agree with you.

Be it any other attack than the auto attack, you can say that using it require smartplay. But an autoattack shouldn’t in any way being destroyed by a clumsy mechanism. There is absolutely no reason for this autoattack to be the worst in game and be gated by the flanking mechanism.

Gate any utility with the flanking mechanism, it’s ok but a weapon should be able to rely at the very least on a decent auto attack. Which, atm, is not the case for the ranger’s shortbow.

Ndlr : weapon’s utility are skill 2 to 5. They should not be meant to be spammed but instead one’s should use it’s brain to decide as to when they will use them. The auto attack, on the contrary, is meant to be a brainless spam! (that why it’s called “auto attack”)

I get your point, but you are forgetting 1 important point. The rate of fire. This is the fastest AA in the game, hence it is gated with the flanking mechanic.

Can you imagine doing bleeds with quickness on SB AA if you removed the flanking mechanic?

How about this then :
- They remove flanking requirement from AA (no more base bleeding)

- Greatly improve AA direct damage

- Add bleeding on flanking requirement on other SB attack something like :
-> when flanking each hit from poison volet add 1 bleed stack
-> when flanking quick shot briefly root your enemy
-> when flanking cripling shot apply 3 bleed

From my point of view it wouldn’t hurt the gameplay but it would also greatly improve the value of the weapon. Beside, we can expect better duration on the new bleed effect… etc.

I wonder what class you were fighting.

But overall, I feel that the numbers are alright and not pretty low like you seem to think. Afterall, if someone build tanky it would be a shame for him to take over 3k critical hits. Well, It would be a shame for the game balance at least.

I can imagine these kind of resilience for anything that have a mesmer supporting it, a death magic reaper, a tempest or an engi.

StickerHappy.8052:

Again flanking is smart play, why do people want a braindead 1111111 weapon like engie pistol?

Might as well have some rewards when executing skillful play. I think flanking is there to compensate the high rate of fire of the SB.

Remove the flanking and you’ll get:

Rabid gear + Sigil Of Earth + Crossfire with No Flanking + Sharpened Edges = X stacks of bleed.

Is this really fun for you? I mean it’s a little bit like that now even with flanking.

Well I have your point but I can’t agree with you.

Be it any other attack than the auto attack, you can say that using it require smartplay. But an autoattack shouldn’t in any way being destroyed by a clumsy mechanism. There is absolutely no reason for this autoattack to be the worst in game and be gated by the flanking mechanism.

Gate any utility with the flanking mechanism, it’s ok but a weapon should be able to rely at the very least on a decent auto attack. Which, atm, is not the case for the ranger’s shortbow.

Ndlr : weapon’s utility are skill 2 to 5. They should not be meant to be spammed but instead one’s should use it’s brain to decide as to when they will use them. The auto attack, on the contrary, is meant to be a brainless spam! (that why it’s called “auto attack”)

Well, as long as there will be boons in PvP, the necromancer won’t be in the “worse than useless tier” in this game mode.

As for the healing through shroud, it isn’t necessary at all. Siphon through shroud already help a lot. More healing would probably prove to be a very bad idea. Especially since PvP player trully hate unkillable profession. We’ve seen what happened when blighter’s boon applied to every boon, we’ve seen what happened to the bunker mesmer and we will soon find out what will happen to this new peculiar spec of the warrior. This suggestion of your’s would only end up nerfed a few day after release, thus beside the fact that it does not address any real issues of the necromancer which is bad at providing usefull support and not really bad at being supported by other.

I like the : “because we all need it, then it’s now baseline”.

Because warrior need fast hand then let’s make it baseline.
Because rangers need fortifying bond then let’s make it baseline.
Because elementalist need short cool down on attunment let’s make Elemental enchantment baseline.
Because necromancer need vital persistence, strenght of undead, soul mark, let’s make them baseline
Because guardian need more vitality, let’s make force of will baseline.
Because revenant need herald whole line let’s make it baseline.

I hope that you understand that asking for that is mere stupidity because traits are choice that you make. Arbitrarily removing the need to take a trait would inevitably shatter the balance of a profession. The main issue when people ask for trait to be become baseline is not the traits in themself but the fact that the player would like to try new build but are reluctant to lose their favourite QoL. You need to make choices getting rid of the choices won’t make the game healthier.

Edit : Oh! I forgot! 25% movement on all profession is mandatory, let’s make those trait/signet or whatever else baseline!

Seriously… I’m tired to say that the necromancer issue in PvE group content is it’s terrible support. All profession can be a brainless DPS, all profession have crowd control. Only the necromancer have meaningless and useless support that need encounter especialy designed to make it work.

- Vampiric skills/aura/dark field? Give me crit immun bosses and it would become great.

- Boon corruption? give me bosses that work like player, generating and relying on boons to do damage or survive.

- Debuff? (First I’d like to say that there is no way we can call this support) Give me bosses that are really affected by effect like poisoned reduced heal/weakness reduced damage/slow/chill longer cool down… etc. Breakbar is affected by some of them but not in the way they are supposed to work.

Giving encounter where boon removal is almost mandatory make the necromancer almost mandatory as well. I’d like to say that this is a good thing but it’s not. A profession should never be mandatory. Necromancer just lack support, it’s not like there ain’t tons of traits that could be bend easily to provide this. (already 4 years that I say it, I’m kinda tired)

Well, OP don’t mind me if I say that all your idea either make the spirits totally useless in PvE or are totally unrealistics.

For me, they should just change the trait nature’s vengeance so that when summoned the spirits dwell into the ranger’s pet. This way, without impacting gameplay that use spirit for bodyblock, we could at least try to hit something with the active part of the skill.

(Un)Fortunately, this kind of feature may become an elite spec skillset.

With it’s Eir lost, shouldn’t we call him Baham?