I actually found it more interesting that chronomancer. I was worried after they announced mesmer F5 that all elite specs would just get an extra Fn ability and they would call it a day. This shows they are willing to really shake stuff up and rework the Fn abilities.
If the Spear of Justice works as a combo of the current traited F1 as well as the guardian GS#5 shackle, this will be a really fun ability that will spam/stack burning as well as condi based “shackle” as well. Scepter/Torch will still probably be my long range setup for guard but the Fn mechanics truly shakes up the play style of the class even if you stick with the old weapons. The mesmer shield/F5 don’t really give me that feeling for mesmer. It’s cool but just doubling up on the same.
Heck, just Demon Hunter would be better because Dragon’s are what everyone’s hunting. Dragon Hunter is in a weird place because everyone is hunting dragons. We have built an army for hunting dragons. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the Guardian.
I’m not a huge fan of the name but I wonder if people are interpreting the name wrong. It’s not a hunter of dragons but a dragon inspired hunter akin to a Dragon Knight. The elite is called Dragon’s Maw. The wings to leap with F2 for more “dragoning.” This doesn’t sound like someone that hunts dragons but is “becoming one.”
If this is a case, it’s more of the former white knights somewhat succumbing to corruption to fight fire with fire.
They sort of set that ball rolling making it kill a dragon in the video.
I’m 99% certain that was a dinosaur like the ones in gw1 jungle. It didn’t even look corrupted by Mordremoth.
“Welcome, friends. I’m Karl McLain, and today we’ll be talking about the guardian’s new elite specialization: the dragonhunter—a ferocious big-game hunter that specializes in ranged combat and back-line support.”
They are hunters in the way that a dragon knight is a knight. That doesn’t mean they specifically hunt dragons although we will be fighting one.
Heck, just Demon Hunter would be better because Dragon’s are what everyone’s hunting. Dragon Hunter is in a weird place because everyone is hunting dragons. We have built an army for hunting dragons. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the Guardian.
I’m not a huge fan of the name but I wonder if people are interpreting the name wrong. It’s not a hunter of dragons but a dragon inspired hunter akin to a Dragon Knight. The elite is called Dragon’s Maw. The wings to leap with F2 for more “dragoning.” This doesn’t sound like someone that hunts dragons but is “becoming one.”
If this is a case, it’s more of the former white knights somewhat succumbing to corruption to fight fire with fire.
DS is a problem. But it can be left in tact and our problems solved. We have no extra active defence. And we are forced to use DS as an alternative. Which doesnt work in a lot of situations. Theres a simple solution. Give us traits that tie active defence to DS. So you enter DS and you get an aegis. Or you enter DS and you get 2 seconds of reflect/evade.
After seeing the mesmer reveal and thinking about gw1 mesmer, I started thinking about necros back then as well. Lifesteal was much stronger back then but so was the sacrifice associated with it. Example: sacrifice 17% of your life but give a life steal aura to all teammates. It lasted 5 seconds.
Translation to gw2 necro elite specialization:
F2-F4 for the GS necro are now auras/sacrifices that default to sacrificing life force. If there is no life force left, drain the necros health.
F2: Aura of the Lich Sacrifice X% of life (force) per second to maintain a vampiric aura. 10% DPS buff that heals allies too.
F3: … something about reflects/blocking.
F4: Shadow form (Assassin skill in gw1): Become immune to damage for Y seconds. When it ends, lose 50% of life (force).
This way the devs don’t need to worry about Necros being too tanky with death shroud while having too much other good stuff because it would be mutually exclusive. Would also help necros a lot with the PvE team buff meta. Don’t think it would be too OP for PvP as random spamming would quickly become suicide.
I wanted to take a second look at the idea of quickness spam in PvE.
Before going forward though, we need to look at how long the fight lasts before this matters because of the following:
Fights that last less than 11 seconds: F5, time warp. Time warp is ready for the next boss.
Fights that last less than 22 seconds: F5, time warp, F5, time warp. Signet of inspiration doesn’t work with this combo. Each pulse of time warp gives 1 second and then wears off, so you only ever share 2 seconds with double time warp (assuming it stacks and pulses twice).
Double time warp is basically killing this builds diversity before it even gets started =/. Let’s assume that fights are too long for time warp to really come into play. Alternatively, this build needs to be so good at providing quickness without time warp that we will bring a different elite. F5 will likely be too long of a CD to realistically affect this combo unless used at the start of a fight for a quick burst.
So basically just Tides of Time and Furious Interruption (Domination VI) for sources of quickness. The combo actually becomes really easy once you factor in Inspiration VIII (Signet of inspiration on phantasm summon). Cast tides of time behind allies. This will hit your allies twice. I’m assuming it can only proc on yourself once as you catch it to reduce the CD. It’s also a stun which, if timed well, will proc Dom VI. Then weapon swap and summon a swordsman/duelist. Maybe even do this as the shield is returning to save a bit of time. That’s 3 procs of quickness from the shield and 3 seconds from Dom VI spread to your allies. So 3 + (? x 3). In this build of domination, inspiration, chronomancy, there is no options of boon duration from chaos. If tides of time has a 1 second quickness: 6 seconds base every Y seconds could actually be ok. Tides, swap, swordsman, heal, swordsman, swap to shield 9 seconds before tides is off CD and repeat. Maybe a complicated combo at the start of each fight. Sword 3, F5, Tides, F5, Tides, swap, swordsman, heal, swordsman.
Eh… I give up. I’ll wait until tomorrow when we get more concrete numbers.
I’d also like to point out the additional reflect we get. Now we have Focus and Shield giving reflection.
Additionally, that’s another potential reflect in PvP/WvW that Greatsword Mesmers can just smile at while they use their lasers :-p
Absorb, not reflect. However…it does sound like a potentially high-target stun. That has obvious implications.
Not sure if you meant what I was thinking but if this works the way I think it will, mobile static field/line of warding has no target limit. Double halting strike on an entire zerg
Are we sure it’s an F5. What if the new shatter replaces F1?
This is also possible but I would think it’s more likely to replace F4. Both defensive and should have long cooldowns.
The linked article explicitly says that Continuum Split is on the F5 key. They wouldn’t include that detail if it wasn’t in their press kit.
I saw that but I still think f4 might be possible with more balance passes. both require illusions for duration and are really strong built in defense measures. Speaking of duration, how many seconds per illusion? I don’t think it can be more than 1. Can portal shenanigans really go that far in 4 seconds?
inb4 mesmer and F5 gets nerfed to the ground because OMG SO OP IN PVP QQ.
Are we sure it’s an F5. What if the new shatter replaces F1?
This is also possible but I would think it’s more likely to replace F4. Both defensive and should have long cooldowns.
Is anyone a little worried that shatter skills are not going to be instant anymore? I kind of want to assume it’s just for marketing purposes/ease of view but those videos do show an active finger pointing for shatters and for mirror images.
I use a similar trait set up to braindead afk tag stuff in open world PvE. With sigil of str, runes of strength and fried gold dumplings (or omonom creams for mf), 25 might stacks are a given as you tag like crazy. It’s not bad outside of dungeons.
This is all assuming that the flame thrower auto applies the same kind of burning it does now though. If burning will stack in intensity but be weaker… burning on every #1 tick? I wouldn’t worry too much about the changes.
I know that happens and PU would be hindered sometimes.
The aggro/target drop and super speed would still make for one really annoying mesmer that can kite and drops “invisible” aoes with “perma invis” and “perma protection” that make kiting harder while all that “cheese ai” does the work.
Key word: Annoying: I don’t think it would actually be OP.
It would get the class nerfed as a whole somehow =/
They also announced a specialisation with traps. Feel like it’s for the mesmers and I must say (even if I’m against this specialization name) that it could fit for the so called chronomancer that would be able to trap it’s foes in temporal loops…
0/0/6/0/0/6 with a wild card!
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Trapper
Super speed and stealth on trap
Illusion spam!
PU!!!
Get nerfed =/
It’s a cool idea but could wind up broken mostly because of those runes. I think the traps are going to go towards a class that can “abuse” stealth with more traits. They could nerf the runes but that’s unlikely.
Glamour mastery and temporal enchanter will likely be merged. (based off of the new cantrip mastery or vital striking aquamancer merge). Shattered conditions & vigour on shatter will probably get merged. Or heal on shatter.
Traits like halting strike could be merged with power block or confounding suggestions for a new grandmaster. Or maybe power block/confounding into 1 trait. Illusion of vulnerability/halting strike could be another combo. Halting BLOCK!
Clone death traits could maybe go for a merge. Even though in 3 different traitlines, I think this will happen.
Mantras… 3 charges and shorter CD into one? Seems like a decent mantra mastery. 4% more damage per mantra is a good PvE choice but boring trait. I hope it just gets buffed some other way. Restorative mantra and disrupters sustainment; I want this combo to work somehow with a mantra build that interrupts while charging other mantras. Currently, the base heal is too strong and scaling too weak though. Since stability has been changed, maybe a rework or buff to protected mantras to give it stability. So a bunker that gains armor/stability while charging mantras. Heals after charging mantras and if interrupting while charging (F3/MoD) will get a bigger burst heal.
While DE is nice, and if I had a choice, I’d chose DE..
I think that IP would make more sense as a default ability. I think the Mesmer should count as a shatter by default.
However, seeing as how they made Aquatic Benevolence (Grandmaster XIII for Eles) into a minor, I could see that easily happening to DE.
I would really hope this happens for IP not DE. Having IP as a minor would never hurt any build. It could also open up an combos with imbued diversion or maim the disillusioned as well.
Having DE as a minor though would be really painful for PvE phantasm builds. Even if it makes other major traits of the same tier “dead” for PvP it would prevent further harm to PvE mesmer.
The blog post mentioned that the base stats will be spread out on the character and gear, does that mean gear choice will become even more dominant? (e.g. Zerker)
Gear choice will probably be the only influence on your stats, although they mentioned Arcane influencing attunement cooldowns for Elementalists, so we might have Shatter cooldown reduction on Illusions.
Seems like a good thing to me, you don’t “waste” your attributes on stats that are not contributing to your build (like for example condition damage on a power shatter build).
Will they finally get rid of useless traits? e.g. Downed Traits
really hope so!
If you look at the proposed elementalist water traits and compare it to the old ones, only two traits were taken away (fall damage which is probably in a different line and a terrible trait that will probably get merged with an arcana trait or deleted). Only 9 majors instead of 13 but 2 of the “new traits” are 2 old traits merged together. One trait even got a huge buff with frost aura instead of regeneration on crit. It has a less is more effect/quality over quantity feel.
Overall, if you play ele a lot, these changes look awesome. What’s amazing about the redesign is I can already see so much flavor in just ONE traitline. Full dps in water or full support or cantrip bunker or auramancer can be “viable” playstyles that will change how you play the class. Stop drop and roll is still that one weird trait thats… maybe some niche can be found.
Stats being removed/shifted to armor is a good thing IMO. Gear will just be knobs used to tune power, condi, defense, and sustain up or down as you wish. This is actually how it’s always been…. but some peoples skulls are really think and this change will hopefully get through to more people.
So if the ele preview is anything to go by, what does this mean for mesmer? Glamour mastery and temporal enchanter will likely be merged. (based off of the new cantrip mastery or vital striking aquamancer merge). Shattered conditions & vigour on shatter will probably get merged. Random crappy traits removed etc.
For domination worries about traits like halting strike, keep in mind that grandmaster vs adept doesn’t mean anything anymore as far as power level/dipping is concerned because you will ALWAYS go 6 or nothing into the trait line.
So there is no reason that halting strike couldn’t be merged with power block or confounding suggestions for a new grandmaster. Or maybe power block/confounding into 1 trait. Illusion of vulnerability/halting strike could be another combo. Rending shatter… deleted or merged with something stronger. Halting BLOCK!
When I first thought of what the new specialization would look like, I guessed there would be a 6th traitline for that spec and I was hoping for a bit more stat freedom but I didn’t think Anet would be willing to rework so much. I am really looking forward to these changes.
i dont think anyone is calling for a nerf for it yet from a wvw standpoint. the pvp community cries about slick shoes a bit, because trapping an opponent without a blink is pretty easy. and apparently a 24-27 sec (30 base) cd stunbreak with a reset is too good.
its too early for wvw to cry for nerfs. engis arent even meta in zergs yet.
I don’t wvw that often but given the “pirate ship” meta that I’ve heard of has less stability, wouldn’t a few “torpedos” like
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqOlUUpkrdex+qRcMmR2xKhM6pFd2DEAA-TVhRABGq+DA7PYiSQC1DQpyPxAUE-w
work wonders at chain CCing an entire zerg. Just slick shoes then elixir S to charge through them. I went with full nomads + all the dmg/condition reducers for “uber tank” so it could survive an initial charge before getting close enough to slick-s a zerg. PVT + some retal could probably help a bit for the offense but whatever.
Unlike the other CC walls at choke points, this would bring the cc to the enemy zerg. Anyone try this sort of thing after stability patch?
Friend found out that you can use hammer 3 to “teleport” to a mastery orb and activate it. This was to an orb that seemed not accessible by normal means: initially assumed that hang gliding mastery was needed to get there.
I’m pretty sure a class specific skill/mechanic shouldn’t work on this. Probably should disable a few things/interact button when teleporting with one of the new camera change teleport around mechanics.
61 stacks of Bleeding in the Stress Test?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DuckDuckBOOM.4097
You guys honestly think that 61 stacks of bleed is survivable?
Just because the cap is raised, doesn’t mean that suddenly classes will be able to reach 61 solo. This has nothing to do with survivable or not. It’s just making condition builds not as bad in group content.
61 stacks of Bleeding in the Stress Test?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DuckDuckBOOM.4097
Sadly I did not notice the double (or whatever multiplier) of damage after break bar kicking in for conditions. So even if stacking isn’t a bug, having CC not matter for condi dmg is still a big gap in potency.
No CD on swap outside of combat. 9 second CD on swap in combat. Large scale combat… is combat and so any idea of crazy skill spam the OP has is wrong. Also damage reduction… you don’t spam that dwarf stance elite.
I’m really not seeing the OP side of things and I actually didn’t find the revenant that fun to play: too clunky. I hope the other weapons to come will fit my playstyle more
I was under the impression that crit chance shown in the hero panel is a guide line that assumed you were fighting an equal level enemy. Isn’t there a 4% loss in crit chance for each level that an enemy is higher than you? And even though I get pretty high with sigil of accuracy, I rarely hit 100% crit chance on most of my alts so I don’t consider it wasted on most of the casual day time runs I do.
I’m not saying sigil of accuray is the best though. I just want to see some hard math on sigil of air because napkin math and my gut is telling me it’s a bad choice for PvE.
Air doesn’t crit though while backstabs/eviscerates or just power coefficients are normally doing about 230% dmg.
Doesn’t weapon attack speed also factor in? Assuming 100% crit chance, an attack every 0.7 seconds for example would have a 50% chance to proc every 3.5 seconds and a 25% chance to proc @ 4.2 seconds and so on… Grenade engineer with 100% crit chance on the other hand would proc air 87.5% of the time on 3 second CD.
Since I never run with a frost spotter in my group, I’ve defaulted to just force/accuracy when not running specific sigils. Trash mobs are easy but I still like having my sigils affect both single target and aoe. Is there full math anywhere showing that Air would actually be better than accuracy for single target stuff?
I can’t think of a single fight that becomes impossible if you don’t kill the enemy quick.
The endboss from the citadell of flame p1 could outheal you if you lack to much damage(at least he did in the past, nowadays with almost everyone running zerker, that alsmost never happens anmyore)
On p2 you have to kill the assassins in time before they reach magg.
And those are only 2 things where zerker deffinitly goes better than healingpower. Belive me I wish you could prove me wrong here because I want to play my cleric-guardian more, but sadly thats just the way it is.
Find a guild with players that like running zerker but that also don’t mind a good healer in the mix. I’ve done entire dungeon tours with a clerics guard before and it makes things faceroll easy for me on a zerker character. It’s ok if you do low damage if you can keep your dps allies going. Is that not what being a healer is all about?
CoF p2 assassins: I 2 hit KO them on my thief. I’m fairly certain that 5 clerics guards could still kill them all in time. Or just don’t stack 5 healers. Those mobs can be a pain to survive in pug groups and a healer (not some pvt AH scrub “tank”) can be appreciated there.
CoF p1 boss: I actually have a very specific memory of this boss. Way back when I ran with 4 cleric/pvt guard/warriors in my group and I was the only zerker (warrior) I decided to swap to my alt when the boss hit ~10% health so that I could level my alt. By the time I rezoned in, the boss was at 20% health and the party had almost wiped. I relogged on warrior again and basically solod the boss from his now 40% health to zero as the pvt/clerics were ressing each other. It’s not even that they lacked damage but they were too focused on trying to survive that they never hit the boss. It’s also about understanding the mechanics back then. Poison alone would have greatly reduced his healing (I carry hylek poison darts on my alts that don’t have access to poison for this reason) and breaking the crystals reduced the bosses healing stacks (PVT breaks those just as well as zerker). Rather than learn the mechanics, people whined and it got nerfed 2 years ago. People also learned what attacks to dodge and can focus on dps more. 5 clerics guards could definitely kill him now.
Simin is actually the only boss I can think of where it used to be a serious DPS check and even then, it only took 2 decent DPS players to duo her… then she got nerfed. Before the nerf, my guild went into arah p4 with a PVT hammer warrior, PVT sword/shield warrior, GS cleric shoutheal warrior, rabid guard (she though F1 used her condi dmg) and myself on a zerker reflect mesmer (the worst kind of dps for simin) Keep in mind that this was before trait swapping and stuff. We actually hit a wall for her and had to fall back and ooc. I asked 1 warrior to swap to triple dps banners/fgj (discple/strength/warbanner) and we destroyed her. That’s all it took despite having the worst combo of dps in the game.
And again, comparing heal/dps ratio of cleric to zerker is not ideal cause you are also forgetting toughness. Compare dps of zerker/zealots if you want to think about healing vs dps.
As much as people talk about the idea that bursting bosses down is the best strategy (and it definitely is for actual meta guild optimized speed runs) and it can be for some dungeons for sure, I don’t think that’s always the case for most pug groups especially for fotm @50. I’ve pugged enough to know most of the zerker players out there aren’t that great at dodging. Furthermore, even if you go crazy on the active defense/dodging, your dps starts to drop a lot.
This link really needs to be emphasized more. This is a cleric guard that holds aggro at fotm 50 and doesn’t dodge while fighting mossman or archdiviner. If you’ve pugged fotm 40/50s, I’m 99% certain a guard like her would make runs much smoother: not necessarily faster for full meta groups but just easy going and not that much of a loss in dps/time taken because having 4 dps people be able to go through perfect dps rotations without worrying about aggro/dodging is kind of a big deal. As an FYI, fotm 40/50 have pulsing agony as part of the instability and that reduces all healing by 50% and that cleric guard is still making it work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uczgA8AJITA&index=7&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS
Don’t even bother clearing the poison here which also reduces healing by another 33%.
It may not be optimal but I would definitly consider this viable.
My post was not only directed at you (Manuhell). There are multiple people giving different ideas of what’s wrong with HP that I disagree with and the common idea is that scaling is bad.
For you specifically:
So the whole part about a meta engi in zerker gear or even zealots having minimal dps loss while being able to utilize healing well is…. irellevant to your idea that we need more ways to use healing? A zerker necro changing a single trait and suddenly becoming an effective healer in death shroud is “too much of a sacrifice to heal a bit”?
Your argument sounds the same to me as someone saying I have max condition damage/dire gear but I don’t want to use a condition weapon and condition traits so conditions are broken. It’s ludicrous that all weapons should have healing built into them. So of course you need to spec into healing somewhat/choose the right weapons/traits etc. Why should someone NOT have to trait for healing to become better at it?
Healing isn’t a binary function that suddenly becomes good the second you have all healing stuff turned up to 11. Why else do you think celestial is great on engi or ele in the pvp meta? It’s not that they maxed out healing power. They have a lot of little sources of healing that add up really well. If you don’t believe it’s the encounter design of PvE or healing power scaling that is the problem, then PvP rules apply here as far as good sources of healing being completely viable at mid tiers of healing investment. Same for power/condition dmg with those classes/builds: zerker and rabid are better at each individually but being a hybrid and utilizing both at 60% efficiency is still great.
Guardian mace 1/2 and staff 2/4 and F2 have built in healing. Ele staff 1/3/5 and ice bow 1 have built in healing or just ele water attunement in general. Healing turret, well of blood, signet of vamp, healing springs, healing breeze are also all heals that affect your allies but (except healing turret) are all worst at personal healing than other selfish heals. Is that not what you just asked for?
At this point I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree because I don’t see a moderate investment in group healing as useless and some imaginary switch suddenly makes it viable. I also don’t agree with someone investing in healing should be able to make use of their dps stats as well as a full glass cannon and I disagree with the idea that someone investing in healing power suddenly does crap dps. There are many shades in between.
As dmg coeficient is almost always equal or higher than 1.0 I think healing scaling with 1.0 would be balanced and fair.
True story. While we’re at it, condition scaling is also unbalanced and unfair. They should have a coefficient of 1 so that my 25 bleed stacks does 51k damage >_>
For reference, gs warrior auto attacks are .7, .7 .9 with 100b being .53 × 8 with only the last hit being 1.1
@ Wexxes, this was before a bit of the AI change but here you go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMltxyvAvo
While she doesn’t do her poison aoe in that video, I’m sure a group of 5 can survive with group healing. It’s not nearly as scary as lupis aoe barrage either. As for solo… I’m fairly certain a few classes in nomads gear could pull it off. I’ll have to mess with it later.
The perma regen mesmer was to show how easy it would be to quickly start to “exploit” healing power that scaled well. I’m aware of it not stacking well with teams but if someone tells a group, I got 1.5k healing power+32.5% outgoing heals for 500 healing per second, don’t use regen, I’m sure most ppl could hold back on regen spam.
Bomb heals stack, super elixir stacks, soothing mist stacks, guardian F2 mace 1/2 stacks, symbol heals stack, necro heals stack, water blasting stacks, mantra heals stack, sigils stack etc. etc. Regen is just 1 boon so I don’t really consider your counter argument as an actual counter argument given how many other sources can stack with it as we are talking about the usefulness of healing power in general not regen.
Stacking regen intensity sounds interesting and I could get behind that but I’m not sure anet wants more of that for the same reason that conditions are capped at 25 and weigh heavy on server performance. Good idea though.
3 second water field timed well when ppl need healing is not a problem. PS warriors also don’t care about fields for might.
Most of the changes you recommend would really mess with PvP which is why I prefer the +% outgoing heals as those don’t affect pvp balance nearly as much. Ideally there isn’t a split because I don’t think there should be a huge “healing difference shock” when going back and forth. Even if we ignore that though, let’s think about a mace guardian with symbols that heal. So what coefficient does that symbol heal get? What coefficient does that mace auto heal get? 1 as you say. Add regen and virtues to that and the +32.5% bonus, your coefficients would give a mace guardian about 2 coefficients per second… with 1k healing power that’s 2.6k healing per second to allies… with just mace 1/2 spam. Maxing it out a ~ 1.7k hp would give you 4.5k heals per second. So like… healing signet x12 to your allies. I have 11k to 15k health on my characters at lvl 80. The idea that someone can bring me from the brink of death to 100% with 2-3 auto attacks sounds fundamentally broken for gw2.
@ Seishiro, I disagree. If people like myself and others can solo dungeons in zerker gear, it’s not about fights not lasting long enough or not having sustain battles. Those solo fights are very much about sustain and not screwing up. Usually the sustain is in dodges/blocks etc but it still is very much about sustain. The dungeons are almost 3 years old, they’ve been figured out/solved. I can’t think of a single fight that becomes impossible if you don’t kill the enemy quick.
But zerker gear (or whatever gear, for that matter) doesn’t inherently depend on such food/runes/sigils/traits to be used. Or either skills, for that matter – the offensive ones are the large majority, anyway. Sure, they increase their effectiveness quite a bit, but they aren’t strictly needed just to use said stats.
On the other hand, healing power is either all or nothing. Any in-between is just a waste of points, as many of their applications -
Wrong:
Food, runes, sigils and traits all have a lot of 10% modifiers for dps. They easily make up for 40% buff if not closer to 100% buff to the damage of a max zerker. The good thing about wanting to go healing builds is that they don’t take up all of these slots to start making a difference unless you really max things out. For food specifically, I notice that most tyrians in dungeons are always starving. A few copper for simple rice balls that even beggars can afford is a nice buff to team heals ^^. Only seaweed salad is a 10% buff to only a few classes/builds and the good stuff is expensive. My point was that it’s so cheap, why not use it when most ppl are not bothering with food.
I still want an answer for anyone that states that scaling is borked and needs to be improved. Again, how much of an increase in necessary? What is “GOOD” scaling?
Like if I go zealots on any class instead of zerker, it’s a 14% dps loss. With everything else held constant and kept to a zerker meta trait etc setup, that’s really not that bad. Healing power gained… 710 for every class.
So if I apply perma regen from… a meta reflect mesmer build. The bonus healing is 710*.125 per second or 89 health per second. It’s not “amazing” but that’s a passive trait while having just 1 phantasm alive. That takes no effort for a mesmer. So what is good scaling for this build. Like ACTUALLY GIVE ME A NUMBER! Is .5 good? Does 710*.5 = 335 bonus health per second from a passive minor trait with 14% dps loss gear sound balanaced? Is a scaling of 1 good? 710 health bonus health per second? Do you not realize how quickly broken regen would become as it increased in scaling? That’s also before any of the +% to outgoing healing kicks in or any other trait or heal.
Engineer specifically: Saying that regen and bomb heals and super elixir scaling all sucks is ignoring the fact that you can have all of these going off at the same time if you want. If you drop the bomb heals, you can basically go full meta engi with the 6/6/0/0/2 and still have super elixir and aoe regen. That alone is basically a 0.1 + 0.125 at the same time. Is .225 per second bad scaling? That’s before food or water blasts are factored in. Given that engineers dps is about 1/3 condi based even in zerker meta builds, zealots is closer to a 9% dps loss. Consider that they are amazing at vunerability and ok at might stacks and it’s not like that 9% even matters as far as the group dps. Like zealots engineer in otherwise full meta setup compared to full zerker engi is like… maybe a 2% loss in dps for the group. 710 HP with regen and super elixir scaling is 159 bonus per second for scaling. That’s half a healing signet for the group without even trying to be good at healing and again, a minuscule dps loss for the group.
Seriously give me a number. What is good scaling? Do you honestly expect your healing to somehow exceed that of the base healing of each class? Cause flame blasting a healing turret overchange every 15 seconds already surpasses healing signet even when wearing zerker gear. Add 710 HP and the super elixir/regen and a 2nd or 3rd blast finisher and you are healing a significant amount with minor dps loss in zealots gear. If there was a healing power main + precision/power food ~30% dps loss over zerker and even better healing. Add a +%outgoing healing bonus and it gets even better. So no, it doesn’t require full investment to start having decent healing.
If you expect a healing weapon with a scaling of 1 on auto attack then it has to be a class that has ZERO other healing abilities and even then, you will still get 2.3k heals on auto attacks just from scaling alone. Add the fact that there is always a base heal in there and you get a completely broken game.
Tldr:
Don’t just say there is a problem. GIVE ME A “GOOD” SCALING NUMBER! If you can’t, there is no point in continuing this discussion.
Then make AI and encounters that necessitate the use of these conditions. Make something like the Mordrem Lurcher in the labyrinth that can one shot you and ignores aegis/is immune to blinds, voila you actually need to control it.
Immune to stealth as well? Do you really think anet should reduce the number of choices in order to increase build diversity? Just like all those quotas…
Well, yeah. Maybe the mobs should just not attack at all so your choice is made easy and you just stack might and get your gold 1 minute after.
Since that seems to be what you people are after. Just stack on something and zerg it down with ice bow as some type of amazing, engaging play.
Make more 1 hit KO mechanics… because that will totally make healing power more useful which is the point of this thread. And that will definitely make tanky gear more useful too >_>
The thing is, chill, cripple and immobilize are useful, especially against some of the harder 1 hit KO fractal bosses. Sometimes, I cast glyph of storms in water/earth instead of air. Serious dps loss but perma chill/mass blinds is worth it. Sometimes my engi takes shorter CD on rifle/explosives instead of 10% more dmg with those because shorter CD on chill/immob (+ exploit weakness for cripple) is worth the dps loss. I still do that in zerker gear because it’s not like mossman or the legendary arch-diviner aren’t going to “1 hit KO” me anyways.
Even the healing builds provided had basically to focus on piling as much bonuses (food, runes, sigils) and the few traits/skills that would make use of healing power to make such builds even minimally useful.
But that basically means that unless you use some very specific build, healing power isn’t worth of being used. Especially since you’re greatly diminishing your dps in doing so.
You don’t equip zerker gear and suddenly do massive damage. You equip the right food, runes, sigils, traits/skills weapons etc that you mention. It’s all a sliding scale of more of increasing 1 thing means not increasing another. Keepers gear still has high power/low precision and is only a ~14% dps loss compared to zerker. Those rice balls are dirt cheap too compared to max dps food that can cost upwards of half a gold.
Again, those builds I posted were healing about 2k per second in an aoe. At what point will buffing healing power suddenly become useful? Will 10k healing per second make you happy? 30k per second? At the end of the day, experienced players that can use active defense (which includes support/CC) won’t need those heals no matter how high they are. As much as people think zerker just blow stuff up and don’t know how to dodge, how else do you think those same zerker players solo bosses like mai trin and lupi? I don’t go full tank/heals for those.
Let’s go the other way, what if you take like 1k "unavoidable damage per second?
Then you just get a 5 warrio zerker meta with 6/5/3/0/0 for healing signet, adrenaline health and life steal food to counter it. Is that any better than what we have now?
To clarify, I want more bosses like mai trin and lupi so don’t pull this kind of crap argument because I disagree with making healing mandatory.
Since that seems to be what you people are after. Just stack on something and zerg it down with ice bow as some type of amazing, engaging play.
Edit: Also can’t believe I forgot a trait I use to solo arah p2 with on my thief.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invigorating_Precision
because face tank and healing for some bosses is better than 20% more dps <50%
Either Anet makes people start to take over 2k unavoidable damage per second and so optimal healers are required or healing stays something that helps imperfect play but still leaves room at the top for perfect play in zerker. If they make the 2k heal check required, they kitten everyone off. They kitten the people that don’t want the trinity obviously. They also kitten off all the PHIW because 2k heals per sec still requires a lot of optimization/specific class specs.
(edited by DuckDuckBOOM.4097)
I don’t think all healing skills need to have their base reduced, however I believe all outgoing healing should have their base reduced and ratios ramped up to compensate.
The way I see it is there really isn’t a reason why someone running an offensive set should have a similar OUTGOING healing output as someone running clerics. For things like vigorous shouts or water blast finishers, I want to say regen but I feel like that would hurt peoples self sustain.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Monk
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Benevolence
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Delicious_Rice_Ball
which adds an extra 32.5% bonus healing to allies.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRUQRBIhdu1JNi0Sj10g1NwhjJqFKorzAYGi6EouNOjCG-TBCBABat/wCHBgKV/5MlgYp8DgHAQe6HC4kAAA-e
That is a “zerker necro” with 1 trait, rune, sigil and food changes from the pug meta. DS#1 heals allies for 585 health per auto attack.http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRUQNAodWn0ISnNWaDG1ABdmoXomNI6B4CAq7iroeB-TxxDABMcCAIUJYlq/80+DXp8DP9BA8AAAA-e
That is a full “healer” with DS #1 healing 1500 per use.
Stop spreading misinformation. Healing power doesn’t need a buff and the changes the OP recommend would just screw over PvP balance. Embrace the +% outgoing healing stuff and ask for more.
Those healing life blasts are so unreliable to land, it’s a joke I’m not even sure why you’re pretending people are going to receive that healing when slight ground elevations and character size bugs have been documented with life blast not healing.
1) If it’s so unreliable, then how is the OPs changes going to fix anything?
2) Huge monsters can cause problems with the life blast angle but the few times I tried it with unyielding blast, I found it able to hit allies fairly consistently as long as they were stacked in front of or flanking the boss.
3) What about the engineer, ele, and guard links I have in the 2nd post? Are those so unreliable at hitting allies? Is shout healing/compassionate banner too hard to hit allies with?
And the simple fact is, you will never have gear variety if you don’t design encouters that MANDATE different gearing.
That’s the whole point of raids in other games, everyone would be DPS if tanks and healers were not necessary.
So if you’re going to make a set of stats that is virtually worthless and only useful to “noobs”, that’s a monstrous waste of development assets. Might as well take those armors off the game.
And the simple fact is that GW2 is about making sure there is NO MANDATE! So I could care less about other game’s raid trinity setup.
What’s wrong with having a noob set? How would removing the noob sets in a casual game be a good idea? And I don’t use noob as a derogatory term: I was a noob once when I started this game.
I’m in a play how you want guild. I run zerker 99% of the time and a lot of my guildies do as well. However, we do also have a few healers that do a good job. Like… full zerker ele and I won’t dodge a lot of the so called 1 hit Ko attacks. Just face tank and get healed. Is it optimal for speed runs? no, but I appreciate it and our runs take maybe 1 minute longer and it’s so much easier for me at least. If anything, my dps goes up cause I don’t waste time dodging/canceling channels. When I do pug, I often find myself being last one standing as I solo a boss in zerker gear. While not meta, an optimized healer would have been optimal in those pugs.
The bigger issue is that most phiw players don’t optimize. Like I had necro join a zerker group at fotm 12 and all he did was spam staff #2… When I asked him what he was doing he called himself a “clutch condi/healer.” That necro’s gear was the least of their problems. Just because something isn’t optimal in the meta doesn’t mean that there aren’t 2nd tier optimal/optimized builds.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/249pc7/effective_power_and_effective_health_of_all/
Just because something is not meta doesn’t automatically make it 100% useless for the common player. Even clerics has 60% of the effective power as zerker. Removing ferocity would make the ratio of offense/defense on tank sets too good that your recommended change would make glass cannons obsolete. That isn’t increasing diversity. It would also destroy PvP/WvW balance.
As I said in my second post, ask for more options/gear like zealots and +% outgoing healing.
1 “argument” against zerker is how it’s “3 stats for dps” while all other aspects of the game are controlled by a single stat (even though that’s wrong). +% healing to allies is another “stat” if you really want to specialize in healing and a 32.5% buff to both the base portion of a healing skill as well as the HP scaling portion is still great. It also prevents uber tanks from dominating point capture in PvP. Zealots/keepers which is sadly very expensive for recipes (from marionette) also has a relatively minor dps loss compared to zerker.
If you want to talk about engineer healing builds:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdUQJAqOlUUpdr9ZxWrRULoQfjcEAQdBRLL3G-TxxDABEqEs4TAQlq/80+DXp8DP9AA8AACAcA8e3DgjP+4jP+4e/93f/93DA-e
Bomb build that heals about 548 per bomb for allies every 0.84 seconds for 653 healing per second. Super elixir: 1845 on initial pulse + pulses of 500 for 10 ticks on a 16 second CD. Regen/vigor/heals on healing turret and 2k heal blast finishers in water fields which this build has great amounts of on short CDs.
The necro healer can only do that in DS and it doesn’t stack well with other heals. For someone like an engi that can have super elixir, bomb heals and regen all at the same time, of course the scaling shouldn’t be as good. It still adds up to around 1500 sustained healing with great burst healing on water field blasts.
A guard
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVUQFAZl8ApdolBxTI8DNxDBlp5jdDCRGucABA-ThxDABEqEsS1fea/hrU+hnOAAeAAAA-e
An ele
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFUQFAWnMIS1D2yAONAdEGADwIvCeBfQRBgyzgbQPA-TxxDABMcBAIUJYlq/80+DXp8DPdAA8AACAcA8+7BgjP+4jP+4e/93f/93LFw3ysA-e
Water #1/Ice bow #1 auto attacks.
If you take the same amount of effort that zerker meta optimizers put into doing dps and apply it to healing builds, you can get about 1.5-2k healing per second with decent burst heals out of most classes. Scaling is fine. If anything, you should ask for more +% outgoing heals modifiers and those have been added into the game. Also ask for an alternative way to earn keeper/zealots gear again (Power/precision/healing power 14% less dps than zerker) or some variant of like HP/power/precision.
Edit: as others have said, a healer should never be required. With protection boon though, most 1 hit KO attacks are not actually 1 hit KO attacks. With healing like ^ it can actually make some encounters face roll easy to have a healer. The only way players that want healing to be required in some way, to get what they want is to have unavoidable damage that ignores toughness. That would be terrible for the game. As long as active defense possible/sufficient, decent players will end up going glass. Most players though… honestly could use a healer in pug groups. (I am a full zerker person even in pvp/wvw but I do like theorizing about healing)
(edited by DuckDuckBOOM.4097)
Elementalists, the most squishest class, don’t even use their healing skill to heal. What would that change?
Wouldn’t change anything for meta groups that know how to dodge. Plenty of players don’t though. New content means people won’t know what to dodge on day 1 (although instincts and general gw2 skills are much more developed for some than others).
healing power and defensive gear is overpowered.
This ^ was before changes/additions of
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Monk
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Benevolence
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Delicious_Rice_Ball
which adds an extra 32.5% bonus healing to allies.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRUQRBIhdu1JNi0Sj10g1NwhjJqFKorzAYGi6EouNOjCG-TBCBABat/wCHBgKV/5MlgYp8DgHAQe6HC4kAAA-e
That is a “zerker necro” with 1 trait, rune, sigil and food changes from the pug meta. DS#1 heals allies for 585 health per auto attack.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRUQNAodWn0ISnNWaDG1ABdmoXomNI6B4CAq7iroeB-TxxDABMcCAIUJYlq/80+DXp8DP9BA8AAAA-e
That is a full “healer” with DS #1 healing 1500 per use among other heals such as regen that will pulse 461 health per second. Leaving deathsround, signet of vamp and dark field combos for more healing…
If you can self heal (as well as heal others) close to the same in zerk as you can in clerics something is very wrong.
That is clearly not the case. The cleric necro I linked above is like giving your allies healing signet x 5. Most other classes (besides ranger/thief) can hit healing numbers like these. Healing power doesn’t need a buff and the changes the OP recommend would just screw over PvP balance.
“Every blind will tick it and blind is scaled. Let’s say – blind takes a fifth of its duration. Blind is pulsing for 3 seconds and pulses 3 times. That’s 9 seconds of blind. A fifth of that is around 1.8 seconds – if my maths is right – so that pulsing blind field will do less than a Backbreaker. What’s detrimental to the pulsing skills is that by the time the third one occurs the Breakbar is regenerating so fast that the first pulse is probably gone.”
http://www.tentonhammer.com/interview/guild-wars-2-interview-jon-peters-and-kevin-stocker-talk-defiance-wyvern
I’m curious as to how much “stun” will be required of a group of 5 to break that bar. Also wondering if this will scale in dungeons so that soloing stuff is still reasonably possible. Would they realistically expect the average pug group to time 5 seconds of CC at the correct time? Especially with incorrect timing of CC sounding like it can be actively detrimental.
Something like flash grenade on engi in a meta build (5*3*1.7*.2) is still worth 5.1 seconds of “stun.” 8 or 10 second CD. If this break bar comes up often in the old dungeons, and if the generic stun is 3-4 seconds on a boss, that sounds really good for locking down a boss.
“We’ve also improved both quickness and slow. Currently, quickness will cause your cast bar to cut out early. With the improvement, your skill cast bar will smoothly update when you gain quickness or slow, even during the middle of using a skill.”
I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone comment on this. Quickness has never worked that great with most mesmer builds as it doesn’t affect our burst/phantasms much.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Furious_Interruption
That sucks because it currently forces you to wait for an interrupt before charging a mantra. With this change, you can interrupt while charging a mantra for a “boost” mid charge.
With a few more chronomancer traits that maybe give alternative forms of quickness this could make mantra builds a lot less tedious. You would be forced to take 2 charges per matra with that GM trait but idk.. like some kind of interrupt mantra healer with that terrible +1000 HP trait >_>
A lot of my speculation is based off of what they mentioned with how it’s like gw1 dual spec class changing. Each class had 1 unique/primary “traitline” just to that class. If we are changing specializations, I think that 1 unique traitline will be changing; balance wise it wouldn’t makes sense that the core mesmer would have 5 traitlines and then new specializations would have 6 avaible at once. It would be a bit of a nightmare to balance. Devs have also mentioned that some class mechanics will be changing in specs.
@ChaosA.
So I think the new chrono spec will still have Dom, Duel, Chaos, Insp but won’t have Illusions. Those 4 trait lines have the traits you mentioned but without IP, IC, PH etc, a phantasm build is weakened and a shatter build completely neutered.
So if you lose the illusion (it’s even in the name!) line, why not lose the shatter mechanic. It’s what makes mesmer “viable” at high pvp lvls with huge aoe spike/boon strip. What would replace it? AOE’s we could place ourselves without relying on illusions.
I don’t think it will remove all illusions. It looks like mesmers are only getting 1 offhand weapon for the “chrono” spec and assuming we still have a weapon swap there will be illusions available. It’ll just be that illusions don’t need to be used as ammunition for F1-4 and that most of the dmg will be shifted towards the mesmer instead of phantasms. I do think a few traits from the 4 “core” trait lines might be changed to better balance the new specializations.
Although thinking more… I’m not sure they would actually needs to be changed. Assuming the new line affected CD of the new F1-4 skills and also had traits for the new heal, utility, elite skill subset and also a new trait for the shield…. How many points would you spend in an old lines for to make a “PvE” phantasm build that had 50-70% of dmg from phantasms while also putting points in the new line to benefit with actual specialization? It wouldn’t be inherently broken/op.
Of the current ones? Spear on land because Kamohoali’i Kotaki is best weapon.
If I get to pick any? Sickle&Chain!
Any class that gets land sharnado will instantly become my main.
I don’t want to go into speculation as to how Specializations will work with so little information…
What I will presume is that this new specialization will NOT be damage-focused. Anet knows Mesmers strength right now is heavy damage via illusions and shattering…
Speculation but I was hoping/thinking (mostly hoping) that this might be a more aoe personal DPS focused specialization and of course CC.
I’m getting the impression that the 5th trait line of each class will change based off of specialization and would be mutually exclusive.
Example: Currently the base Mesmer has the illusion trait line with shatter recharge/condi dmg and various traits on shatter/illusions. The “chronomancer” traitline would only be available with 0 points in illusions and placing points into the chronomancy line would block off the illusion line.
Chronomancy line would have CD reduction to a new set of F1-F4 abilities and traits affecting the new utility/heal/elite and shield. While condi dmg seems like the obvious other stat, having something like power would be able to up mesmer DPS through raw stats. The shield may not even have a phantasm associated with it (defender already has a shield anyways). The reduced illusions/shatter potential would allow for F1-F4 becoming strong AOE spells with CC attached to them.
So something like a 2/0/6/0/(6.2) chronomancer could maybe be a new aoe shutdown build that doesn’t have it’s DPS held back by illusions.
I’ve been trying to figure out some way of bringing the healing role into a gw2 “raid” setup so I tried to draw inspiration from a few places in gw1 that I loved. Importantly, I didn’t want to have a dedicated cleric guard or something required for this.
So FoW and UW were great dungeons that people were able to farm for years and love because of the different paths/open nature. As people got better (and stuff like shadow form were introduced) speed clears were about splitting up into different areas to solo/duo clear parts. With the exception of AC story (and the occasional mesmer portal), gw2 lacks any of these kinds of splits. I think it’s important for a raid to have this feel as it gives first timers the ability to walk in and explore as a group but it gives the hardcore crowd the challenge of optimizing splits and tactics.
So why splits and healing in the same post? Thinking back to DoA HM or even snowblind in fotm, there are areas in the game that cause environmental DoTs. Different paths could have different aspects that cause DoTs. If you kill these aspects “in order” it won’t get that bad but if you delve in further while skipping them, then DoTs really start to hurt and group healing would be required.
I’m specifically not saying a cleric dedicated healer although that could cover the role. On my engineer I still have water fields and blasts in a full zerker set up. A zerker warrior can drop banner of tactics and let the whole party use #2. Healing springs, well of blood, mantras…. basically every class has some form of aoe heal that can be used on the run. A full dps group should be able to stick together and coordinate their team heals so that their team could survive the run to the final boss. The final boss should have some painful attacks that shouldn’t necessarily kill someone outright but when you are constantly losing health, taking a hit could be death. Death of one person with aoe heals —> eventually the rest of the team can succumb. This kind of skip should be REALLY hard but as people learn, it should become doable. Maybe optimal is considered as 1 keepers guy for a bit more heals, kill 1 aspect, skip the others etc. Or maybe a 2/2/1 split to kill 3 aspects then the boss… importantly, something like this would add replay value for the truely hardcore without excluding less experienced players. Shaman, apostate and apothecary condi builds could also work as they only require condi dmg (and duration) to go near max dps while also having healing power.
The other reason I think the DoTs are important is that it would prevent changing weapons, skills and traits on the run. This would give a gw1 feel of entering and sticking with what you have. However, killing an aspect could give an area of OOC to change up which adds further depth to planning.
The DoTs don’t even need to all be perma degen. Something as simple as giving all enemies retaliation every 10-15 seconds. Necros and mesmer would be welcome to strip those and slower harder hitting weapons might be chosen.
I think raids should stick to a group of 5 people. Going up to 10 makes vulnerability and spamming reflects way easier than it already is. Condi stack caps become even more of a problem. The utility of 5 or more people would also be much harder to balance for. With that in mind, maybe a 5 person instance would be considered hard mode with better rewards. A instance open to more people wouldn’t need to change that much. AoE heals affect 5 people and the DoTs would affect everyone. Just make sure the boss cleaves have a bigger target limit than 5 and a bit more health.
Rewards: Tokens for ascended armor/weapons or exotic unique skins. No gear treadmill please. Killing aspects could give a minor amount of tokens each while finishing the raid gives more. This would also incentive people to do the “legit” way while skipping to the final boss would be more for the challenge.
Of course obligatory better AI!
Edit: 1 more thing, add more random events like the AC cave troll but not actually a copy paste of him.
If you want to actually complete zones … Sword + Sword is great as you can reduce all the cooldowns on it once you have 2 Trait Points. It also hits hard, the clones add vulnerability as well, and the phantasm hits like a truck.
Later, if you don’t like sword, use 4 points to get whatever weapon you prefer. If you do prefer sword, stick with it and get 2 points for Sword cooldowns and 3 points in Illusions to lower the block, phantasm, and iLeap cooldowns.
After that, bump to 4 points in Dueling for clones on dodge once you have 7 Trait Points (4 dueling, 3 Illusions).
Some people will tell you to go phantasm build, but I find most things die to quickly for that to be truly viable. Shatters are actually quite nice. It’s also more flexible (in my opinion).
Don’t be afraid to be in melee as a Mesmer. It’ll make you a better Mesmer in the end as if you can dodge while in melee you sure as heck can dodge from 900 / 1,200 with other weapons.
This +
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Speed
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_bloodlust
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food#Swiftness
and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering_Booster
if you have any extra boosters lying around that you can convert.
Make sure to upgrade your gear every 5-10 lvls although the new drop system should take care of that. Max power. Never stop killing/gathering and the big issue of swiftness for mesmers becomes a non-issue. If you don’t max power then phantasm builds become “stronger” but a mix of phantasm + shatter is often enough to down mobs fast. Mantra of pain is now some nice aoe as well to tag lots of mobs while you cleave/shatter.
GS in open world is also very good at spiking targets from range but swap to melee after the initial spike if stuff isn’t dead.
Your maths did not indicate that you were using all the above. 1-2 ticks is still a lot more than zero per clone you claimed.
You said you won most of the fights vs the warrior with -60% condi duration. On top of -60% condi duration, warriors are supposed to be resilient towards conditions.. Condi build overpowering an anti condi build? That sounds OP….
I’m going to go with that was just a bad warrior that is also getting used to his class changes. I don’t think your example proves the changes aren’t OP.
Now, however, iLeap isn’t a normal leap. It’s near impossible to control where the clone ends up, so you can’t guarantee that it actually lands on the curtain for a leap combo. Basically, in normal play you’ll get maybe 1/10 leaps to actually work on curtain, and that’s a big problem.
I was not having these problems when trying it out…
Anyhow, I just don’t think it’s worth it. The runes are interesting… for my ele. Mesmers just don’t have the traits to support an aura build.
Speaking of which @ Doni, the runes only do swiftness on aura. It’s an ele trait that does swiftness and fury. I don’t think that chaos armor is even classified as an aura so the 33% duration is crap anyways.
If you talk PvP, -40% condi duration doesn’t exist
If you are talking WvW then
1) That food is a big hard counter so that’s not a good sign of torment itself being not OP.
2) Koi cakes/Pizza exist. With runes of torment + toxic crystal, domination, sigil of malice and/or a giver weapon = 100% torment duration. Why is your torment lasting 2 seconds base? While some of that is expensive, you should have at least +50% condi duration. Runes of nightmare can also be cheap alternatives with fear to help that torment for at least +50%. Runes of balthazar if you want condi diversity.
In the live stream, the base durations shown were 2.5 and 4 seconds. This meant that in PvP, 2 domination and runes of nightmare would hit 3 seconds on the clones and first hit and 5 seconds on the 2nd hit. Now it’s 2 and 3. Even 6 domination and runes of nightmare wont get 3 seconds on clones now that the base is 2 seconds for PvP >.<. So a lot of whining is still based off of the idea of former glory that never happened.
It also sounds like you aren’t using clone death traits so you won’t have that much in the way of cover conditions. Or sigil of Doom for poison. So you were using a bad set up to demonstrate that something isn’t OP. Or any runes that would benefit this build.
Personally, I think it’s strong but not OP. Your argument is just bad though and your build could be much stronger. Reflects ftw.
Dude nobody mentioned the Temporal Curtain (LIGHT AURA) buff!
Leaps ontop of curtain supposedly grant the new aura.
This is what I found most interesting. Clones often die in 1 hit though. I’m assuming that guarantees the vulnerability. Don’t think it will proc retal on the clone.
If scepter torment seems underwhelming, it’s because it’s now 2 and 3 seconds base instead of 2.5 and 4 second shown in the preview. That makes a huge difference in break points and condi duration.
Edit: Briefly tested and I can’t get the vulnerability to proc.
Edit 2: Nvm I read it wrong. 8 SECONDS of vulnerability per attack. Clones won’t live long enough to really matter. Especially not 1 clone
(edited by DuckDuckBOOM.4097)
What you do for those examples is switch classes.
Players like you and I would swap classes but I’m in a casual guild and some people only have a mesmer to play so why not give those kinds of people the best advice given the subpar circumstances?
If you wanted to actually interrupt a boss to keep them channeling, take daze mantra, easy. “Go through 2 stacks of defiant” is just you being extremely specific to try and find an example which would fit your diversion example perfectly, but that will basically never happen.
2. mesmers are basically garbage tier so whether a class doing 500 dps can now do 501 dps is basically irrelevant in the grand scheme of a fight.
Ok, warrior was a bad idea but a lot of pug groups don’t stack that much vulnerability. Like I mentioned 4 warrior 1 mesmer as a simple example (clearly not meta atm). Daze mantra only interrupts one skill before defiant kicks in. Nub interpret spam can also get in the way. So why not both? As you said, mesmers are garbage tier dps. So is shattering so that your team doesn’t have to dodge an actual DPS loss for the group? Like 4 people attacking/channeling for an extra 1/2 a second with near maxed vulnerability vs 1 mesmer doing half dps for a few seconds. Sounds situationaly worth it to me.
Biggest pet part of mesmer is to Shatter! I hate seeing mesmers run around not shattering, i die a little inside when i see it not happen! Besides a clutch distortion to save their butts in a pinch. Where is your mindwracks? Diverson?!? Every build regardless of the traits are meant to be shattered at some point in a duel or team fight. Not to sit there with your Phantasms pounding away at someone. That is like a thief who doesn’t steal, a guardian who doesn’t use virtues, An ele who doesn’t swap attunements?! That is by far enough horror to kick off halloween early and is extremely aweful gameplay. Imo, i declare any mesmer who doesn’t shatter; bad.
Sure, i’ll just run full rabid and mind wrack for like, negative DPS.
Because otherwise I’m a bad mesmer.
Taking that statement way too out of context.
So for crystal champs in arah p1 or Brie in path 2, what do you do with your illusions? Both of those mobs are immune to illusion damage. Even summoning a single clone to immediately shatter> just auto attacks. (Torch 4 is also good here) What about when mobs are about to die? Post-patch, there is no reason for warriors not to finish every fight with an eviscerate/GS F1; why would this not apply to a mesmer MW currently? Or let’s think of something simple like 4 warriors in the middle of 100bs on a boss. F3 for 24 vulnerability and go through 2 stacks of defiance to interrupt a boss so that allies can continue channeling. Or an AOE is about to wipe out your phantasms… why not shatter them instead of let them die? Example; lupi when he does his AOE life steal. Why heal lupi/clear his conditions when you can do more DPS/distort. That is real negative DPS!
These are the reason that I (and I’m assuming others) don’t like mesmers that NEVER shatter. I don’t think they are saying to spam shatters always but more mesmers could learn to shatter intelligently.
Shattering 3 illusions every 16.5 seconds seems like a reasonable lowball for SS so that’s 3 stacks maintained in that build.
With the build posted, swapping weapons every 16.5 seconds still maintains 6 stacks of might with sigil of battle.
GS2 and staff auto, as you mentioned, are not always reliable so you won’t necessarily maintain 12 stacks from GS2 (8 second CD for 16.5 seconds might) but I think it’s reasonable to say 3 stacks between the two weapons.
So what it really comes down to is blasting fire vs interrupts. I simply disagree with interrupts being absolutely not viable. If you are trying to interrupt a specific skill, I can maybe see it not being reliable if you have slow reflexes/bad ping but proccing an interrupting itself is not that difficult. I’m assuming that’s what you mean by you can count on them as part of a burst rotation.
If you can purposefully dodge (aka L2 dodge) then you can press MoD instead. With IP, F3 is also an option. There are of course exceptions like blurred frenzy etc but just dodge those. Anyhow, between IP and MoD, maintaining 1 interrupt every 16.5 seconds for 5 stacks of might seems reasonable to me.
So I would say 17 stacks that are fairly consistent. That alone is decent. With MoD being aoe soon, GS5 aoe, getting F3 on two ppl or getting lucky with staff 5, those are bit more RNG for aoe interrupts/having a cast time so I can somewhat understand your mentality behind those procs but if you can get one of those off every 16.5 seconds, the mesmer is at 22 stacks.
I keep throwing 16.5 out there because it’s the duration might produced by everything except sigil of battle (33 seconds) but realistically, I think a decent mesmer can do more than all that every 16.5 seconds.
Did you using piercing arrows with the ranger test? The piercing/laser might act in a similar fashion to the fireball giving extra range to it but that’s still an extra 320 after a 15% boost. Is it just that golem specifically since he might just have a weird hitbox.
When it comes to might-stacking for mesmers, I can only think of 2 ways: Bountiful Interruption and Shattered Strength. Maybe next patch, celestial mesmer can become viable with something like this?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQJARWlknpRt1oxQNcrNCuxYyFaA1BNUSlMgfB-TJxHwADuEAa2fAwTAoYZAA
Only 2 ways? You have GS2 and Staff auto in the build you pinged.
Just the sigil of battle alone can maintain 9 before the GS2 adds another 6.
2 interrupts every 16 seconds is enough to cap you at 25.
Alternatively, just using GS2 on CD will maintain around 12 by itself.
So I’m not getting Pyro and his mesmers cant stack might talk. It’s not AOE so it’s not group support but that’s not the point since we’re talking celestial builds utilizing power and condi dmg.
Persionally I’d run IP or MtD instead of ID in that build. Maybe Sc/P instead of staff.
Wut?
The big part of the build was to capitalize on clone deaths since it’s quite impractical to expect my staff clones to survive for more than a few attack cycles.
Before: 140 × 3×5 = 2,100 dmg
After: 140 × 2×4 = 1,120 dmgMy bleed pressure from clones dying was nerfed in half. Now I’ll really have to make sure my staff clones don’t die and keep applying the bleed/burn through WoC. Not exactly sure how to pull that off just yet…
I guess I just didn’t expect most of the dmg to come from that trait. Like just letting 3 clones with 80% bleed and 49% crit chance attack an indestructible golem, they seem to get around 12 stacks easily. I join in with IE and it easily hovers at 17 ish with perma burning.
I know that’s with all of them alive but with 6 second staff 2 and DE, just make more. If clones now work with IE and you hit 100% bleed duration and 57% crit chance in PvE, 25 stacks of bleed should be really easy. I’m assuming you’re looking at something like 0/5/5/0/4 or so?
Also assuming this is for solo stuff where kiting would happen,I still think that a torment focused sc/p condi build will pull ahead of a staff clone build. Although that would have a lot lower might and fury.
Hah, here I theorycrafted a pve condi build (no pu traits) that just may have been viable… aand anet just wrecked it with the nerf bat, hard.
I still have my hopes up for the IE fix thought, as long as the staff clone aa doesn’t get nerfed. Talking about which, staff clones bleed duration is 5s base and not 7s base as mesmer staff AA so I guess the build is already nerfed by default lol
Wut?
PvE enemies don’t exactly block dodge or blind that often. Why would it suddenly become unviable based off of today’s info? Is loss on a stack of bleed on a 33% chance really going to change much?