Not until level 40 or 60.
At level 40 you can switch to the Lightning Hammer build, the Hammer’s auto attack blinds nearby foes and thus greatly increases your survivability; use a Staff as your regular weapon for DEs. Or you can go 15 Water for the heal every time you swap to Water, and 20 points in Arcane Power to reduce the attunement cool down to ~10 seconds; with enough Precision gear Arcane Power VI becomes also powerful, especially in dungeons.
At level 60 you can add Evasive Arcana to the latter option which is another significant boost to your survivability.
That one thing I hope they’ll fix in the upcoming Ranger patch; move the trap traits to Wilderness Survival.
I think very few will disagree that Warriors are one of the best PvE professions.
However most of the complains arise because Warriors doesn’t perform that good in PvP, especially tPvP.
I’m pretty sure the algorithm for finding suspicious gold movements is smart enough to exclude gold transactions between players that have been in the same guild for a longer period of time and/or frequently play together.
I think that ANet must change only 80lvl to be able to join SPvP and tPvP.The lower lvl may still be able to hang in the Heart of The Mists to train at Golems,npc’s,Svanir,Chieftan e.t.c and to see the shiny armors of the others and inspire themselves.This will ensure that no FOTM by any class will be ruining the experience.
Yeah, it’s not like one of the biggest selling points of GW2 is that its PvP is easily accessible…
Hammer #5 is very useful during certain DEs where you have to defend an outpost; you can simply place it in the the foes’ way and the will bump into it and fall down, and by the time it runs out most of the foes are already dead.
Do melee pets do more damage than ranged pets? If not, why not?
in Ranger
Posted by: DesertRose.2031
Here’s a small list that shows how fast those pets can kill a golem:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60919-what-is-currently-the-highest-dps-pet/page__st__30#entry1903391
Let’s do quick napkin math here: You use Steal, then Cloak and Dagger, and then Backstab. That’s 6 initiative used. Unless you have done something else, you have 6 initiative leftover. With 6 initiative leftover, you can not only execute almost any move in your arsenal, but also switch to another weapon and play defensively.
Actually you have 9-10 Initiative left over because you use Cloak and Dagger before Steal and with [Kleptomaniac] you regain 3 Initiative and you may regain 1 Initiative while preparing your Backstab.
Do you have used the Training manual by clicking on it twice in your inventory?
1. First off Ele dagger is the most melee this game has. There is no other profession as stuck in this range as an Ele Dagger/dagger period. And I have no Idea what skills you are talking about to keep distance… What Dagger/Dagger is trying to keep distance? Get up in there and wreck some face! But that is off topic.
2. It sounds like what you are saying is. Range cannot be as good of DPS as Melee DPS so that’s why the “Mage” in this game is a melee DPSer That doesn’t make sense though because there is plenty of ranged DPS in this game… So… I’m not sure what that means. It seems you are stuck on another topic entirely. I dont know where you draw the line, but different people draw it at different places. You dont seem to have a problem with Elementalist being a melee class. (Neither do I I love my Dagger/Dagger) But what if they only had melee? What if they wore heavy armor? What if they didn’t cast spells at all their weapons were just enchanted with elements? At some point you have to agree that the class no longer would feel like a Wizard. Elementalist has always been the wizard of Guild wars. all the OP was saying is that for him. They dont feel as wizardly as they should because to deal high damage you have to be a melee magic rogue.
1.) Equip Conjure Fire Axe or Conjure Frost Bow and you can have access to multiple 900 range weapon skills; the real question is how can we make them desirable? Or maybe they already are but we simply haven’t tinkered with them enough to find that out?
Even though a MH Dagger Ele want to be relatively close to their target they want to be further away than 130 so that melee characters cannot hit them.
2.) In GW1 Elementalists were most useful to a group if they debuff foes, buff allies and use their superior energy management to use secondary profession skills that were to energy-intensive for the other profession itself to effectively use it, and in PvP additionally to assist spikes; because the core game mechanics of GW2 and GW1 are quite similar I expected the Elementalist to excel in the same areas as its GW1 counterpart. Playing a staff Ele feels a lot like playing an Ele in GW1; I buff my allies with Might, debuff my foes with Chill, Stun, Cripple, heal my allies (okay, that’s new, unless you were playing an ER Ele in GW1) and all the while dealing medicore damage.
I think what opened the eyes of many to this “issue” is that you don’t run around in teams anymore. In GW1 you could play a Fire Elementalist, contribute next to nothing to your team but still feel high and mighty after your team carried you to the next mission. In GW2 you have to carry your own weight, and if you don’t play your profession properly you’ll fall flat on your face.
About the damage, it a risk versus reward thing. I’m sure you’ll agree that being around 130 range away from a foe is more dangerous than being up to 1200 range away. As such the melee guy should have some kind of advantage over the ranged guy to make it desirable to put yourself at greater risk. This can be done by either giving the melee guy flat-out more damage or making their damage of the ranged guy easier to avoid.
An glass cannon Elementalist that uses Fireball, Lava Font and Flame Burst doesn’t deal that much less damage than a glass cannon warrior… if the foe doesn’t leave the AoE.
There’s also another reason why Elementalists take yet another hit to their damage: They cannot get rid of their utility/support; e.g. a Staff provides you with 3 heals and 5 skills that hamper the opponent’s movement.
The solution to this has been already provided by ANet: The Conjure Weapon skills; you toss most of your utility/support away and be rewarded with more raw damage. And that goes back to the previous point: How do we make them desirable?
(edited by DesertRose.2031)
The most important way to support your team is being able to stay alive so your allies don’t have to hamper themselves to rezz you.
[Vigorous Precision] (Honor 5 points) gives you 1 second of Vigor (and thus more dodges) for every critical hit, so some Precision for a steady crit chance is a good way to make yourself more durable. [Selfless Daring] (Honor 15 points) heals yourself and nearby allies for some health on each dodge.
[Altruistic Healing] (Valor 30 points) heals yourself for giving yourself or your allies boons, which fits greatly both into the keep yourself alive and supporting allies agenda.
Someone made a very extensive guide about a Guardian build relying on those traits:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/A-Guide-to-Hammer-and-Altruistic-Healing-gameplay/first#post536189
The statement “ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack” isn’t so far from the truth. It sounds more like it’s something an Elementalist is able to do occasionally, not every other second; it doesn’t state that the Elementalist makes a good DPS profession.
Eruption can deal up to 8k damage, Lava Font and Fiery Eruption (Conjure Fiery Greatsword #2) more than 10k and several other skills that deal 5k+ AoE damage. If one of those skills hit more than one foe they deal an amount of damage only a few characters can match with a single attack.
Or change it so that it gives 2 seconds of Swiftness at the end of the dodge roll.
Heart of the Mists should have an 1on1 function, hopefully it will come if we can open own “PvP servers”.
1on1 should stay in PvP though, there’s a reason why one part of the game is called PvP and one part is called PvE (there’s W3 too but that’s special).
Even an Elementalist going full glass cannon has support/utility like stun, blind, cripple, freeze, knockdown, knockback and such, and unlike e.g. a Thief always 300+ range; this would make the Elementalist OP if they had a similar damage to one-dimensional glass cannon professions.
Eles can only be given a comparable damage if they would lose their utility and their range advantage; the Conjure Weapon skills could possible provide that.
It’s easier to be bad with the Elementalist than with most other profession. So, players seeing the first Elementalist dieing all the time, then the second, then the third…
At some point they are convinced that profession itself sucks because every Elementalist they had in their party sucked so they simply don’t invite them to their party anymore.
However this happens a lot less now because many Elementalist players have learned it’s a bad idea to go glass cannon and are starting to show off what the profession is capable of, restoring the faith of non-Elementalist players slowly but surely.
On this subject, I am also curious about how stacking Swiftness from different sources works; for example does the Swiftness from Elixer H stack in duration with that from Elixer B if you drink both (and get the right effects)?
Swiftness from different sources will stack, Swiftness from the same source (Guardian’s Symbol of Swiftness) only refreshes the timer.
The profanity filter also ignores blank characters; e.g. if the last few characters of one word and the first few characters of the following word have the same sequence of characters as one of the words in the filter it will be censored as well, e.g.
Finish it!
edit: Hm, seems they have to removed that feature…
Why go melee if ranged has equal or better dps? Because people like different styles.
(…)
Melee is not more dangerous; there is no justification for less damage from afar.
Yeah, having up to ~80 times bigger room to move to avoid AoEs, having a better view at bosses and sub-bosses to see their tell, being able to attack every melee mob without having them having the ability to retaliate in the very next seconds among other pros doesn’t make ranged combat any more dangerous, sure.
And surely everyone will still welcome you in their party even though you die twice as often without any advantage to a ranged character because you like the style of your swords…
Eles were often the main DPS profession, and they has almost no party support skills.
If you mean by “often” “only in highly specialized team build” and “only in specific areas” (like e.g. DoA) and with “DPS profession” “one of the four to five characters that simultaneously used all their AoE spells to spike down foes” you’re at least correct with the first half of your sentence; I won’t even start at the second half of your sentence.
Also just because many people were bad and used Eles as DDs doesn’t mean they were good at that role; it amazes me that so many years after GW1 was released and all the game mechanics are known there are still people thinking that Eles were good at DPS.
I hope among the “some bugs being fixed” is the Crossfire+Quickness bug.
I generally feel like Thieves could use some PvE love, but I mean support/dungeon when I say that, not solo or DE.
Are you saying Thieves need a buff to be made more valuable in dungeons? With virtually perma-Blind and a very spam-able blast finisher Thieves are one of the best dungeon professions in the game. I rather expect a nerf than a buff.
DesertRose.2031If you have played GW1 you have already experienced that all kinds of mages are support while the physicals are the damage dealers; I am wondering why you expected that GW2 would totally break with its predecessor’s general profession designs.
while this was true in GW1 you have to remember that GW2 was advertised and marketed as everyone can do everything the trinity is gone. Instead you have support DPS and control skills. I think that The OP and many Ele’s just figured Elementalist would be primarily ranged. But so many run with at least one dagger and are in melee. It’s funny the Dagger/dagger Ele is the only pure melee in the game since other classes can swap to a ranged weapon mid combat.
But either way its not about that. Its about the archetype. Elementalist dont fit what a lot of people thought they were going to be as an archetype. When people generally think wizard, mage, elementalist, shaman, sorcerer and those types of archetypes. Daggers in melee isn’t what comes to mind Merlin, Gandalf and such is what we picture.
“No holy trinity” and “mage archetype” are mutually exclusive. If an one-hitting boss attacks anyone randomly would you ever pick a melee character when a 900-1200 range character would deal superior damage?
Less range has to have greater reward, otherwise no one goes into close combat and professions that specialize in it are left in the dust; maybe it’s because I extensively played GW1 that this seems common sense to me…
Also, Ele Dagger is not melee, it range varies from 300-600, and some abilities, mostly those that help you to keep your distance, have less range. That’s why it deals less damage than a 130 range weapon but more than a 900-1200 range weapon.
Something like Erruption as a Blast Finisher though seems odd, it has a 3 second explosion delay by which time most fields would be gone.. I reckon fields should last longer, maybe not the spells effect but the combo field should maybe linger for an extra 2 seconds?
The sequence is Eruption → combo field.
Somewhat on topic is the frustrating fact that “History repeats”, Anet split skills as far back as Prophecies in GW1 (…)
The skill split in GW1 was introduced in May 2008, that was almost a year after Eye of the North, the last Addon to GW1, was released.
I guess the trap traits will be moved to Wilderness Survival.
GW1 PvP was not intended to be played as competitively as it was. My understanding from interviews and old-school players was that it was intiailly a diversion and only later a major component. This means that fundamental mechanics and balance decisions were made for PvE, not PvP.
GW1 was announced as a CORPG, a Competitive Online Roleplaying Game; PvE was originally planned to be a sort of tutorial for PvP and the endgame was supposed to be PvP. ANet was surprised that so many players preferred to continue play in PvE and later changed their focus on PvE players.
Also the typical roles in MMOs (melee tank, ranged DD, healer) don’t work in PvP because players will be smart enough to ignore the tanks and go for the DDs or healers.
That’s why the professions in GW1 worked fundamentally differently; melees dealt insane damage but were easily countered, mages dealt pathetic damage but provided excellent support, “healer” provided medicore healing but had the ability to transform someone into a superior tank for a short amount of time.
GW1 already had broken with the “holy trinity” but in the end ANet decided to not force their (PvE) players to actually learn to play the game because then many of the old school MMO players would have left quickly.
If the Thief in your party isn’t one of those “I need to do r0xx0r damage and don’t care about my survivability or group support” but integrates well into your team, most noticeable with Blinds and a very spam-able blast finisher you have one of the best group supporters in the game.
Absolutely not, because blowing up one mob in 2 seconds and then fighting the rest of the mobs for the next minute in a crippled state without your cooldowns is neither overpowered nor a good strategy for any PVEer. PVE is about sustained DPS, not blowing your load in 2 seconds and being flacid for the next minute.
Considered, and debunked. By the time the one-hit wonder burst builds are ready to go again, mobs have already respawned twice. Plus in the upper levels it’s pretty rare to be able to pull just 1 mob.
Have it ever crossed your minds that I wasn’t specifically referring to the most recent patch which in fact didn’t included nerfs to PvE Thieves because of those “whiny PvP’ers” but the general thesis that PvE gets destroyed because of PvP?
Btw: Any of you have played GW1? Remember when PvE started its nosedive down the gutter? Ironically it was the very same day ANet implemented the PvP/PvE split.
Have you “PvP changes break PvE”-guys have ever considered that if a specific skill, trait or a combination of them is so strong that it outshines all other options of the profession or even all profession and thus is nerfed may have been too strong in PvE, too?
As long as a skill has the same effect, same recharge time and same activation time I don’t mind a PvE/PvP split like the Confusion one.
Once skills have a different recharge time, activation time or even completely different effect things start to get messy because all your timings are off; everyone who has played both PvE and PvP back in GW1 knows how horrible a skill split between PvE and PvP can be implemented; I hope they have learned from their mistakes and don’t repeat them.
If you’ve played a mage/wizard from other games or an ele from GW1 you expect long range high damage glass cannons.
If you have played GW1 you have already experienced that all kinds of mages are support while the physicals are the damage dealers; I am wondering why you expected that GW2 would totally break with its predecessor’s general profession designs.
my build on the test golems.. (build focusses on bs)
OLD=mug 2k, c+d 1.8k BS 15k = 18.8k
NEW=mug 2.3k, 2.07k, bs 11.5k = 15.87kapprox 18 to 19% NERF
Assuming your numbers are correct that’s a 15,5% damage nerf; you’ve mixed up the quotients.
Care to explain how the recent patch made your current build weaker?
Because the change to Assassin Signet made it overall stronger, there’s only one clear nerf (Whirling Axe), the rest are either bug fixes which have nothing to do with PvP or buffs.
If the quote option isn’t there just post some non-sense like “I want to quote”, once you posted in a thread you’re able to quote and edit/delete your own posts (weird bug, huh?). Just delete your non-sense post afterwards.
You can now use Assassin Signet before the Cloak and Dagger, Steal and Backstab combo to gain +15% damage on every attack. Not only does this make the Backstab combo easier to perform but overall it reduces the damage by just about 6%. A slight nerf, yes, but now your next two attacks do +15% each in case your target survived the initial burst.
Overall this change may have made Backstab Thieves even better. On top of that Assassin Signet synergies now better with skills other than Backstab.
Lol @ people who call this a nerf.
All combos:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
Short explanation of combos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrzwFP1vCag
4. For getting 15 seconds of swiftness which I use when I travel long distances (in conjunction with glyph of restoration and windborne speed [air4] to get a total of 30+ seconds of swiftness):
Static Field > Arcane Wave
I’m wondering why you don’t use Eruption > Static Field for this, too.
Dunno if it requires better timing than the other combos but it’s still possible.
A reduction in the damage buff to 15% is significant. If people continue to QQ then we will just continue to tell them to L2P.
But now it’s +15% damage to Cloak and Dagger and Steal(?).
If we assume Steal deals about as much damage as Cloak and Dagger the damage of the combo was reduced by ~6%, and the two next attacks deal +15% damage. Overall it may have made Backstab Thieves even stronger.
On top of that it’s now easier to perform the Backstab combo.
However,if those kind are your main problem,someone cleverly suggested 4xSuperrior runes of Earth.If you are not glass cannon as well this will finish your one-hit problems.
Yes, I’ve read that thread. If I remember correctly the thread also states that there is a ~42% chance that protection doesn’t trigger during the Cloak and Dagger->Steal->Backstab combo.
DesertRose – thieves always have access to steal – 90% of thieves use it exclusively as a shadowstep. If every thief has access to it then it means you will have to learn how to counter it. How is that? By what I said – dodge and start using your spells.
You do know that the infamous Backstab Thief build uses Basilik Venom and that you can use Steal during Cloak and Dagger? If timed correctly Steal and Cloak and Dagger will hit at the same time making it impossible to dodge; at that point only a stun breaker can save you from the subsequent Backstab. The only way to counter this combo with a dodge is to distinguish the Cloak and Dagger animation from an auto attack animation (from a range up to 900) and use a dodge BEFORE the Thief uses Steal.
About PvP though – you will automatically be in a team. Expect there to be thieves so expect to stay closer to your friends. If you are alone we will kill you and there is very little you can do about it – but if you have a group of friends we can’t do much at all. Sure we can jump in and slash at everything nearby but we don’t have the armor or hp to survive for long at all – we will die quicker than any other profession in those circumstances and any effect we have in doing so will be minimal.
Lets ignore that in PvP there are plenty of situation where you have to be on your own, how exactly does standing besides an ally protect me from the Backstab combo?
Is it just me or are Survivability warriors nothing compared to guardians?
in Warrior
Posted by: DesertRose.2031
Having a high HP pool and heavy armor doesn’t make you super durable in this games because most of your survivability comes from dodges and abilities.
With a Warhorn a Warrior has a good way to get Vigor for more dodges but he hardly has (good) defensive skills.
Dolyak Signet gives 10+Level Toughness, Banner of Defensive gives 90 Toughness; while this bonuses might be good at low and mid levels they are nearly meaningless at max level with good gear. Double Endure Pain can give 10 seconds (4 if still bugged) invulnerability every 90 seconds.
If you wanted to play the sturdiest profession in the game you sadly have chosen wrong, but that doesn’t make the profession itself bad.
One thing about GW1 I liked is that it had a healthy mix of somewhat realistic and revealing armor, for both male and female characters. Before Insignias were introduced the +Energy armor of each profession was very revealing, e.g. a Necro was running around in pants/bikini and tattoos covering the whole body, a Warrior had somewhat similar to the typical barbarian/gladiator armor, and a female Ranger’s body was covered with leaves almost only at the naughty parts.
I don’t understand why they didn’t included some revealing armor for each armor type and gave them offensive stats like Rampage or Berserker; they could have used a similar “excuse” for revealing armor as they did in GW1: “Duh, they are all-out offensive, a character wearing this armor doesn’t care about their defensive so their vital organs are not protected by armor!”.
Also, as a leg lover GW2 has almost nothing to offer for me…
From what I’ve seen so far there’s ONE light armor which expose the legs of a female character and two or three more from the front or side, ZERO medium armors which expose the legs and two or three skintight ones. I haven’t extensively looked at heavy armor yet but the situations seems to be even worse for them.
Most attunements of each weapon set are not specializes on one aspect but two or more; so your complain “if you switch out of your DPS attunement you do awful damage the next 15 seconds” is void.
Also the Conjure Weapon skills are your “weapon swap” and way to play more straight-forward; if you feel those skills don’t fill this role well enough point out why and maybe even make suggestions how to improve them.
I agree! A lot of people miss what a Staff Ele can and is supposed to do in WvW. It’s not all about killing people. If I can force the guys on the edge of a fort to back up, then my team is safer standing there taking the door down. Or if we need to push people away on a ground fight somewhere, what better way then to throw down a bunch of AoE’s. Either they get caught in them and take damage/get slowed/etc., or they back up. Either way, I have achieved my goal. Of course there’s more than that that we can and should be doing but the benefits of AoEs are undervalued by some I think.
Do players get rewarded for doing that? I don’t play WvWvW but as I’ve heard you only get rewards if you damage/kill something, you don’t get anything for area control.
If that’s the case the problem lies more with the reward system than the profession mechanic.
I guess since no one really knows the aggro mechanics of the game, I will put in a bug report on the Bug section of the forums.
I would advise anyone else (regardless of profession) to put in a similar post and/or add to mine so that we can get Arenanet to take a look into aggro and see if this is just some very weird mechanic or a bug. Without further information into aggro mechanics I cannot see us players being able to sort this issue out.
It’s intended that we are left in the dark about the exact aggro mechanics in this game because otherwise we would be able to abuse them.
The complains about Thieves mostly arise not from them being OP or not but because it’s not fun to play against certain Thief builds. Those Thieves pop in, “one-hit” you and run away to do it again x seconds later; if they didn’t managed to kill you they run away and try it in x seconds again.
If fighting against a certain character comes down to “React perfectly within one second every x seconds or die” it stops being fun for most.
If you “perma-blind” you cannot attack.
Boss mobs in PVE are immune to blind.
AoE Damage has long range, but takes forever to get to the target, easilly avoided unless your in close range.
If “cannot attack” is auto attacking, then yes, you’re correct. However if 4 members of your team have to worry less about surviving and can focus more about dealing damage often means that your team as a whole deals more damage.
I may to not have been clear about this but I was talking about dungeons, the AI hardly tries to dodge your attacks, and most dungeons are so narrow you’re rarely fighting from max range.
If at all it should activate slower so you have more time to dodge the Steal+Cloak and Dagger combo.
The activation time stated in the tool tips of the auto attacks don’t match with the attack speed of weapon. Another player explained that the value in the tool tip is the time it takes from pressing the button to hitting the target, and then there’s a small cool down when your character gets ready for the next attack.
Afaik the attack rate of Warrior’s Greatsword is 0.7 seconds.
Okay, this thread won’t let me quote, so…
Thief? What can he do?
Run Away.
Damage.
Permanent Blind.
One of the most frequently useable blast finishers.
Good ST damage.
Good AoE damage.
The Elementalist is not a mage in the sense it’s not a squishy (one-dimensional) long-range nuker as a mage is in many other games.