Guild Wars 2

Changing Healing Breeze into a Consecration for Guardian and making it a PBAoE that pulses on the ground around the player when cast.

And become subject to either of the Consecration traits:
Reduces recharge on consecration skills and increases their durations (20%).
Consecration skills use ground targeting.

Would change this seldom used heal into a fantastic group support option in all areas of the game. PvE, WvW and PvP.

I’ve never seen a Guardian use this heal since Beta Weekend 2 and the severe nerf before launch.

I wish sPvP got Traveler Runes.

Because it’s not at all possible that one of the players on the blue team immediately left when the match finished, before the screenshot was taken.

Nope, not possible at all mini.6018 who just happens to play a FOTM Warrior (albeit badly) and is a massive Warrior state of balance apologist.

Tarsius.3170:

Ludus Rex.1562:

I’m really bothered at the 30s CD. I just want one short CD heal to trigger certain rune sets. Ah well..

Well, with a medi build you will probably have 10 points in Valor at least, so it’ll be 24 secs.

I was kind of hoping for a heal that would ease the need for points in valor, but Litany seems like yet another cattle-prod to put all 30 points in there.

I’m guessing the “80” is the base heal per hit while active and then the damage percentage is added on to it. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for more than a 0.2 modifier

Say your whirling wrath conservatively hits for 10k ( all 14 strikes ) – you’ll be hitting for an average of 714 per strike ( ignoring the difference in projectile co-efficients ).

Our heal would be 80 + ( 714 * 0.1 ) = 151.4 or a total of 2119.6 (5299 per minute)
with a 0.2 co-efficient it would be 3119.2 (7798 per minute) and 0.5 would net you 6118 ( 15295 per minute )

So how charitable will Anet be given though our other skills come in between about 9.5k and 17k of healing per minute with 1000 healing power?

In PvE where you can do 40k+ Whirling Wraths with the right group, this would equate to 9.1k per cast of healing with a 0.2 coefficient and a 21k of healing per cast with a 0.5 coefficient

No, the 80 appears to be the level 1 number.

Shelter is 75 and Resolve 150 in the same database.

So Litany will probably heal for around 5k base at level 80 with 0 Healing Power.

The 5s Healing effect is % of damage inflicted on enemies based, we don’t currently know the %.

Farzo.8410:

I hope this new heal isn’t too much based on Berserker gear, so to say. At least what the ‘datamined’ skill says.

I run pretty much full clerics, with some Berserker amulets, my damage isn’t too high.

- or I might understand this datamined skill completely wrong.

It’s not aimed at you, your Clerics build or a defensive playstyle.

Most of the new heals are aimed at specific playstyles that are currently lacking for each Profession, to provide more build options and viability.

Necro – Group Support
Ranger – Group Support
Ele – Group Support
Thief – Solo offense making a Venom build worthwhile (If Venom sharing also shares the heal then we will see why the devs said it will change things up).
Guardian – Solo offense
Mesmer offers a new option – most builds are pigeonholed into Ether Feast

Warrior heals looks to be the way to bring back the charge in do massive damage and then absorb any enemy counter after your bust combo.

Engi heal looks like a solo dream, especially against players that don’t pay attention and just spam attack.

Ludus Rex.1562:

Don’t all these proposed heals look to good to be true? A heal specifically for DPS guardians which can be modified by all meditation traits to heal for more, have a reduced cooldown, and grant fury? Yeah, I wish. Sounds like we’re being trolled though.

Scene as the devs are aiming to buff damage Guardians, specifically looking at their performance and offensive build variety in sPvP. It makes complete sense.

Aza.2105:

It will have nice synergy with monk’s focus.

I hope it’s synergy rather than necessity.

What’s the line all the Necros keep posting on the forums?

“We’re not in a condition meta”

…

sPvP build using PvE gear and food buffs.
4 Spirit Weapon traits with Hold the Line, Wall of Reflection and Stand Your Ground.

:jackiechanmeme:

Symbol of Wrath used to be on a 15s cooldown and grant 2s of Retaliation every tick =/

Fello.8673:

It doesn’t look like burst is because you are not getting all this hits in, if they all hit, its burst. You have to use it in a way for them to all hit. Scepter immobilize and switch to sword 2, 3 is incredibly bursty. Sword is not constant DPS because you can’t ever stick to a target long enough to do any damage.

Incredibly bursty? Using Sword 2? Yeh the 1/2 second aftercast delay before being able to use any weapon attack really adds to the burst.

Against any competent opponent they are dodge rolling away by the time Zealot’s Defense starts to activate.

The way to get burst out of Sword is to pre-cast Zealot’s and use Judges Intervention to get on top of your target while it is channeling, otherwise it won’t hit.

This of course uses up a stun break and 2k heal just to initiate combat.

Something has definitely happened to the animation for Sword Wave during the past year.

Mostly it seems to be during the transition between Sword Arc and Sword Wave, it’s very clunky and there is often quite a delay between the 2nd and 3rd chain, which results in lots of misses.

Even standing still against a target Golem the Sword chain has become very ugly with the delay before Sword Wave, it just looks awkward and it is awkward. It’s even worse when you introduce mobile combat.

It was much smoother during beta, something has changed since then, either a stealth nerf or an animation problem that has caused this unwarranted effect.

I want to use the Sword more but the delay between Sword Arc and Sword Wave and the delay after using Flashing Blade just makes this weapon feel too slow and clunky, even the Mace feels smoother.

Edit: After doing some tests against target golems it seems like the animation delay between Sword Arc and Sword Wave doesn’t always occur, sometimes the animation is smooth and chains instantly, but sometimes there is a 1/2 second delay after Sword Arc before you start to cast Sword Wave. And the animation seems to bug out when this happens as the character does a half lurch forward then back and then channels Sword Wave and stabs forward.

There’s another instance where the animation completing Sword Arc finishes slowly, which delays the start of Sword Wave.

The combat delay after Flashing Blade is very annoying though, it makes the Sword feel very slow and clunky.

The results are only pre-determined when you pigeonhole yourself into a pure condition build (conditions being the mechanic that is based most heavily upon passive stats and procs).

A Condi Necro has ways to do direct damage and push past this trait if it comes into the game. You need to adapt.

But you don’t want to do thinking, you want your spammy condi stacking build to be king. Where you can overpower a player with conditions stacks far more than they could possibly dodge, avoid and remove them.

Your threads are all about how there’s too much condi removal and too many anti-condi traits and passives.

But look at condition mechanics, they are more passive than anything.

Conditions build up in small stacks, there are no key long cooldown high damage skills with clear animations to dodge – unlike Power builds with obvious high damage skills.
Conditions need just 1-2 stats for effective damage, unlike a Power build that needs 3.
Conditions are damage over time, you spam your ranged skills then dodge combat while your damage ticks for you.
Your damage is ranged, positioning during combat barely factors for you in comparison to what a melee payer must do, Scepter auto has 0 travel time.
Conditions are unaffected by Toughness and Armour.
Conditions are unaffected by Protection.
Conditions are unaffected by Weakness.

There are far less options for players looking to avoid the damage and deal with conditions than to deal with direct damage.

The mechanics of this game completely favour you and your spammy ranged auto proc condition overload play style, yet you whine and complain and want more.
Even at the top of the meta, you still want life made easier for you and nerfs made to the rest.

It’s pathetic.

You made a massive whine thread all about how you believe you will never be able to inflict 1000 direct damage as a Necro on an Elementalist.

And you ask us if we know how to PvP?

You’re a childish entitlement whiner that wants his profession and pure condition spec to have no counter at all in the game, you want an i-win button. Are you 13 years old?

Let us suggest that you need to grow a pair and learn to play.

A Necro with Rabid Amulet and 916 Power using a Scepter hits over 1000 direct damage during the second chain of Scepter auto-attack.

Average non-critical hits ~ 149 + 149 + 227.
Average critical hits ~ 273 + 273 + 454.

Average damage after 1 chain = 811
Average damage after two chains = 1585

You’ll be fine, but we know you’ll still whine.

Entitlement kids these days, playing the most mindless condition spam class in the game that has been buffed multiple times over the last year to be given 2 extra damage conditions, a buff to Weakness which significantly impacts any Power build they face both burst and bunker. Yet still they whine about how hard it is to play Necro.

The threads of this forum are hilarious really.

Conditions are fine! ~Signed Necro, Engineer, Spirit Ranger.
There’s too much condition removal! ~Signed Necro, Engineer, Spirit Ranger.
Diamond Skin will be OP! ~Signed Necro, Engineer, Spirit Ranger.
Berserker Stance is OP! ~Signed Necro, Engineer, Spirit Ranger.
Engineer Automated Response is OP! ~Signed Lordrosicky.5813 Necro.
Necro is hard to play and completely balanced with passive condi procs ~Signed Necro.
We aren’t in a condition meta! ~Signed Necro, Engineer, Spirit Ranger.

I think some of the condition problems are mechanically to do with more of the game than just the conditions themselves.

The game is built around dodge rolling and watching for animations, there are no cast bars.
Large damage direct attack skills have clear animations, you can dodge these to avoid significant damage.
But, there are no specific high cooldown skills that contain lots of condition damage and so there are no key skills to dodge in the same way.

Take a Power vs Condi fight.

Typically this will also be Melee vs Ranged.

Now the condi build is ranged, most of his skills aren’t aimed, they automatically hit the target and some also have no travel time like the Necro Scepter.

So the condi class can focus most of his attention on watching the enemy melee player and be ready to dodge the key damage skills to avoid his damage or kite him. All the while pushing his own ranged attack skills, most of which apply some kind of damage or control condition which is all good as the idea is just to keep applying conditions till his enemy is dead. The result is ranged skill spamming.

The melee power build on the other hand is at a disadvantage.

The melee needs to get in range, then he needs to stay on top of his target to keep applying damage at 130 range, he also needs to look down at his UI constantly to look at what conditions he has and micro-manage his condition removal while attempting to remove the damaging conditions rather than all the control conditions that are stacked on top of the damage. He can’t really dodge anything specific from the condi attacker as the conditions come constantly from all attacks especially trait procs, a little at a time building up steadily over time.

So the problem we have is ranged, no UI management who can focus all their attention on watching for skills to dodge.

Vs

Melee – needs to split his focus between the player to stay in range and adapt to his movements and also watch the UI to micro-manage his condition removal + nothing specific to try and dodge.

This flaw in the game mechanics becomes exacerbated when in a fight against two players ~ a condi build and a power build, your attention is split all over the place trying to micro-manage your condi removal by looking down at the UI while also trying to watch all the action to dodge the key direct damage skills.

Conditions have become something that’s applied far too often from too many sources. Every fight has conditions all over the targets, especially in AoE.
This shifts too much focus away from the action on screen and turns it into a UI micro-managing game of condition removal.

This flaw needs to be sorted by drastically reducing how often conditions are applied. (Removing auto-attack condi’s. Auto-attack damage should be Power based).
Reducing all the condition removal.
Removing all passive proc conditions.
Removing all passive condition removal.

Then significantly increasing the potency of conditions so that they become short term high damage with a high cooldown and clear animation or short term key control conditions.

GW2 has become a game dominated by conditions and condition management.

Either offensively by spamming the target with as many as possible while building up damage over time and staying away from your target with various control conditions.

Or defensively by attempting to micro manage your condition removal to remove the key conditions amongst the several that are always on you during a fight.

Most professions and builds are spamming conditions currently, and it’s not fun.
Playing against conditions you spend most of your time looking down at your condition bar rather than watching your target which is not fun at all. Trying to play a melee build that needs to maintain positioning, make sure your key skills land and micro-manage the conditions affecting you.

~~~
I’d half the amount of conditions in the game and drastically reduce the access all professions have to conditions across multiple skills.

Conditions would become key skills with long cooldowns that have a larger impact.

Condition removal would then also become much rarer, it would need to be used at a key moment to negate the powerful condition affecting you, it would also be on a long cooldown.

Poison – reduced healing (counters bunker and high healing builds)
Burning – the damage condition (pure damage)
Immobilize – to root a target in place – prevents dodging and evade skills (setup skill)
Chilled – slows movement speed and skill recharges by 66% (counters mobility)
Confusion – damage when using skills (counters skill spamming, especially auto-attack)
Blind – next attack misses (counters key burst damage skills)

Would be the remaining conditions.

Fear would become a CC effect like knockdown, knockback and no longer a condition, it would simply be managed through stun-break / stability. It would inflict no damage.

Conditions would no longer be maintained permanently, they would provide immediate consequences for the target.

Poison reduces healing and deals some damage, used to help pressure a healing target / push past a bunker’s healing.

Burning would be pure damage, it would always be 5s or less in duration, it would now stack for the condition weapons. So it would be treated like a high damage skill for a power build. Like 5k burning over 5s on a 30s cooldown.

Immobilize would no longer stack in duration, it would be a maximum of 3s but it would stop any evade skill being used while under it’s effects.

Chilled would be limited to 5s max but stays as a tool against mobility and skill spammers.

Confusion would become 5s max but deal 1000 damage per attack. Becoming a good counter against a skill spammer.

Blind stays as it is.

AoE condi’s would have much longer cooldowns and clear animations when being cast. No more 0 travel time unblockable Necro Staff marks.

Pure condi builds would no longer be viable for damage.
A condi focused build would now become a control support build.

Damage specs would now have to build for condition damage, power and condition duration for top damage ~ 3 stats like Power builds. With more pure damage coming from auto-attack and other skills.
Mists Amulets balanced to reflect this.

No more condi’s on proc traits, runes or sigils.
Only weapon swap sigils like Doom and Hydromancy remain. Geomancy changed to 1s immobilize.

All passive condition removal skills and traits gone. Condi immunity gone.

Remove Initiative from Thief, give the weapon skills cooldowns instead.

It is a condi meta, it’s been a condi meta since they added burning to Necro, introduced Torment, buffed Weakness, buffed Terror and made Spirit Rangers so strong.

You either join the condi specs or die trying to play a Power build.

The only reason Warrior works and is used is because it’s the only class that can make a viable Power spec in this condi meta due to it’s huge condi removal and condi immunity.

Conditions dominate everything.

Lordrosicky.5813:

2, It is totally passive and skilless. The way the best player in the world will use this trait is identical to a rank 5 noob. It is completely ridiculous and skillless.

1, Losing to people 500x worse than them just because of spam/lame hard counter passive traits (see s/d thief spammers and immunity people).

Welcome to the world of playing a Power build in GW2 2013, the year of easymode condi spam plus AoE and trait procs.

Power vs Power build fights are a real duel, you can watch for each other’s big skills and dodge them, you now know that the damage has been avoided for x amount of seconds when you do so, if you mess up you are instantly punished.

Playing against a condi spammer there are no key attacks to dodge, the condi’s just continue to build up and up from every single attack the enemy makes (due to how auto-attack stacks condi’s and trait procs) doing more and more damage as they stack.

Because condi removal is limited and you have so many different condi’s on you, you need to use a multiple condi removal skill (because you can’t target the bleeding stack, or burning, or torment that’s doing all the damage (unlike how you can dodge the Eviscerate or 100B). So you need to remove the vulnerability, weakness, cripple, chill, immobilize and confusion too in order to get at the bleeding, burning or torment.).
But this means waiting until the Bleeds have stacked high enough to warrant using your main condi removal skill, by that time you’ve already taken significant damage.

So you use your condi removal to clear the damage, but now all the condi’s start stacking again because of how they are constantly applied by every enemy attack and because your condi removal removes multiple condi’s it is on a long recharge.
A recharge much longer than the high damage condition trait procs.
~Dhuumfire / Incendiary Ammo (10s) vs any multiple condi removal skill (30s+).

You can’t counter a condi build with condi removal / dodging the same way that you can actively counter and outplay a Power vs Power fight by dodging his damage and making sure yours lands because the condi’s are built up constantly over time in little pieces to become huge chunks of damage ticking away.

All you can do is try to burst the condi spec down. But most condi specs are half bunker because of the Amulets and stats required for damage. Plus they either have DS (Necro) to absorb burst. Lots of evade and healing (Ranger) to avoid burst. Or huge healing, dodge and CC (Engi) to avoid burst. Plus all the standard CC conditions to keep you out of range anyway.

What it comes down to is power creep with conditions, they keep adding more and more to the game. The condi’s are applied to targets with far too many abilities and they are added in small stacks across multiple abilities which means you have a spammy style of play.

Instead of waiting to use your key attack skill like a Power build you can just spam all the attacks and land some poison here a few bleed stacks there and then some burning with a proc and throw some cc around to. It promotes skill spamming.

To counter this ANet keeps introducing more and more condi removal and immunity, which then creates a huge imbalance. And on we go, constantly adding more condi’s, more condi traits, more removal, more removal traits.
Condi immunity, damage immunity. It’s bad, bad design.

Condi’s should be more limited across each Profession, each one only having 2 damage condi’s. And they should be applied with big damage skills, 1 main skill should apply a huge stack of bleed with a long cooldown and clear animation.
Similar skills in place for huge damage burning, torment and multiple confusion stacks.
Now there are key skills to try and dodge, or key skills to use your limited condi removal against.

Rather than the spammy mechanics of constant application and removal we have now.

After watching the livestream about the creation of Skyhammer it’s clear that the original concepts and designs for the map were far superior from a game-play perspective. The map had a better layout, it wasn’t in the sky making any fall off an edge instant death, it didn’t have loads of glass panels that turn cheesy CC builds and mechanics into lame fights.

Skyhammer fails because it has too much added to it in one map.

The undodgeable cannon.
The glass floor panels that break.
The sheer drops around the edge.

One of those mechanics alone on the map would make a good secondary mechanic, all 3 together makes for a terrible map.

It seems the map designers don’t know when to stop, either because they don’t really play the maps or PvP and can’t identify what makes for fun game-play, on both sides of a fight and both sides of a mechanic – the user and target.

Watching the designers talk about how they created the map I’m left with an image of a child making porridge for the first time and adding heaps and heaps of sugar into the bowl with the thinking – because one spoon of sugar tastes good, 5 spoons of sugar must taste even better!

No.

Of course Necros could kill things before the patch, they have been awesome before. They have been in the meta several times as general conditions, Wells, Epidemic. All before Dhuumfire and Torment. Go look at the old footage when teams actually played this game in tournaments and we had a population above 1000 players, Necros were in high-end teams.

Torment is a terrible mechanic just like Confusion.

It punishes people for moving, you take less damage by standing still but that of course means you have no positioning and are open to attack, so you are punished for playing the game. Just like Confusion punishes you for playing.

These Conditions would only be good if they were very limited in the game, but they aren’t. Torment and Confusion are widely available.

I’ve watched you play Necro and you’re nothing special. You’re just propped up by the current condition overload mechanics that make winning 1v1’s and joining team fights so easy right now for a Necro. Hence you’re such a condition spam apologist.

There’s a reason so many people have quit this game and aren’t coming back, it’s not fun. The condition spam is not a fun mechanic to play against and for any gamer that wants to win fights with skill it’s not a fun mechanic to play as either.

40% condition duration, standard traits 30.20.0.0.20. No Earth Sigil.

Count them. 6 ticks of Burning, 4 Bleeds that each last 8 seconds and 5 seconds of Poison. From one 900 range instant hit auto-attack chain that takes 1.5 seconds to complete.

Even if Dhuumfire magically becomes 66% less duration in sPvP you never needed Burning and you never needed Torment. This is just rabid power creep of the devs adding conditions to the game while trying to counter it with more condi removal.

Necros could kill all professions fine before both Dhuumfire and Torment, it used to be a skilled class. Now it’s the epitome of condition spam easymode.

Arachnid.4062:

This thread annoys me.

First of all, how many power necros do you see running scepter? No one good, that’s for sure.

Second, condition damage is easier to avoid than power damage. Why? Because even if you get hit with a condition nuke you can cleanse it. If you get hit with an eviscerate or backstab, you aren’t getting that health back.

Firstly – Any decent Power Necro still takes Scepter, for the reasons described in this thread.
The easy access to 3 damage conditions makes for horrific overall damage.
30 in Spite + runes with 10% condition duration as any decent Necro would take yields:

From ONE Scepter auto-attack chain- 4 stacks of Bleeding for 8 seconds. 6 seconds of Burning and 5 seconds of Poison. That’s 1992 + 2556 + 615.
5163 in condition damage from one Scepter auto-attack using a Berserker Amulet….
700 + 700 + 1000 (all crits) from the normal damage too.
So with a Berserker Amulet a single Scepter auto-attack chain = 5100 in condi damage and 2400 in pure damage. Wait what?….

That’s why Necros take Scepter, whether Power or Condi built.
The target has damage coming from 3 different conditions making it harder to cleanse and their healing is reduced by 33%.
Plus if you take Chill of Death you automatically cast 7s of Chilled, rip 3 boons off and do damage when the target hits 25% hp (soon to be buffed to trigger at 50% hp).

Your second point – Even if I get hit with a condi I have a chance to cleanse it? Let’s see.

Eviscerate has a clear animation, you have time to react to it with a dodge roll, blind or block to avoid the damage, you then know its on cooldown for 8 seconds and you have avoided 5k damage.

How do I dodge Dhuumfire? It’s going to do 2500-4000 (Berserker/Rabid) damage to me every 10 seconds, but I don’t know which attack will trigger it. So I can’t dodge it.
It could be triggered by any of the instant hit auto-attack chains or a skill.

Now it’s on me, but it’s not just Dhuumfire, I have Poison and Bleed from the Scepter auto-attack. So I need a condi cleanse that removes at least 3 conditions in order to cleanse that burning. Cleanses that remove 3 or more conditions are on 30s + cooldowns. Dhuumfire procs every 10s.

That would be a best case scenario, in reality against a Necro I will also be suffering from Chilled / Cripple for much of the fight, Weakness, possibly Immobilize and without a doubt at some point there will be 2-4 seconds of Fear doing 1000 dps.

Suffice it to say – There are too many conditions, they are applied too often and there are too many easy auto proc mechanics from traits that add huge damage like burning.

There are far too many conditions in the game.
5 damaging conditions. (1 does more damage for moving, 1 punishes for using skills, 1 reduces healing).
3 movement impeding. (1 significantly increases skill recharge time).
2 damage reducing. (1 is a huge reduction to any pure Power build – bunker or burst, but does nothing to condi builds).
1 control (that can also become a huge damaging condition).
1 damage increasing.

I like this idea from another thread to try and deal with the condition spam that can be achieved by condi builds but also by Power builds from condi spam professions like Necro and Engineer. One of the main issues is just being able to apply so many different conditions so often as these two classes, it takes no skill at all as most of it comes from auto-attack or AoE.

Mightymealworm.8409:

I think that access to damaging conditions should be limited to 2 per class mechanic, a primary condition and a secondary. Third and fourth conditions could be applied via sigils and/or runes for ‘cover’ conditions. Example:

Elementalist: Primary-Burning (from fire attunement), Secondary-Bleed (from earth attunement) The other attunements offer non-damage conditions. This provides a healthy amount of variety without the ‘spam’.

Guardian: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Retaliation* (Well, its not really a condition, but I think the retaliation boon tries to fit in here for the guard.)

How I would like to see the other classes: Change skills so each class has native access to only 2 DAMAGE conditions. (does not include utility, control)

Necromancer: Primary-Torment, Secondary-Poison

Ranger: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Burning

Warrior: Primary-Bleed, Secondary-Burning

Thief: Primary-Poison, Secondary-Bleed

Mesmer: Primary-Confusion, Secondary-Torment

Engineer: Primary-Burning, Secondary-Confusion

Or something like this. I think it would still allow for a lot of Condition Damage potential, especially if the right 2 or 3 classes got together. It does, however, prevent a class from relying on their own conditions alone to take down enemies.

The condition mechanic is out of control, it’s spammy and easy ranged damage that takes no skill and has no consequences for poor play.
Watching most Spirit Rangers, Scepter Necros or Grenade/Bomb Engi’s play and you will see random dodge rolls that don’t evade anything, using skills as soon as they are off cooldown, everything is on recharge and they just keep spamming ranged auto-attacks. But there’s no punishment for this poor play. If you played a Power build without conditions like this you would be useless.

Conditions in GW2 need a radical overhaul but I don’t think this dev team has the stones to admit their mistakes and do it. I don’t see the fundamental flaws being turned around and so the game will never become popular again, I think most people that are still playing are just filling a gap until something else comes out.

Forsaker.9213:

Ezrael.6859:

Why are you using a Staff as a Necro in a 1v1, it’s the wrong weapon to try and attack a single moving target with.

Guardians need longer cast timers? Are you serious?
Guardians have several of the longest cast timers in the game and many of the most obviously telegraphed attacks / combo sequences. DPS Guardian damage is easily avoidable. The Scepter won’t hit strafing targets and the GS is very easily avoided.

As far as the Scepter goes with its 1/4 cast time, please nerf it down to 1/2 second per cast, but in return I want it instant hit like the Necro Scepter, fair.

Necro scepter:
1# 1/2s
2# 3/4s
3# 3/4s
4# 1/4s
5# 3/4s

No instatnt skills here.

Instant hit. Instant hit

hit hit

Learn to read please. The Necro Scepter auto-attack has no travel time, I wasn’t talking about the cast time.

Oh god the Looking ahead GW2 in 2013 post is so depressing to read again now.

The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well.

This just never happened. An entire year, and nothing.

2013 – The stale condition meta with a smattering of Warriors.

Rarnark.5623:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I could be wrong, but I’d expect a move to heavy burst.

What makes you think that?

He’s a condition meta apologist that tries to deflect attention away from how easy yet overpowered condition application (spam) has become in this game.

Dhuumfire needs to go, giving Necro Burning from auto-attack spam was a stupid idea, they never needed the extra damage.

Torment needs to go from sPvP, it’s a massive damaging condition and we didn’t need yet another damaging condition on-top of the 5 we already have. What is this condition supposed to promote except condi spam and STANDING STILL to take less damage? Worst game design I’ve ever seen.

Incendiary Powder needs to go, if an Engineer wants Burning they have the Flamethrower just for that. 50% up-time on Burning just for spamming auto-attack is an utterly abysmal game mechanic.

The game mechanics just get kitten on when you introduce such easy passive play as high condition damage procs to a game supposedly based on animations, you can’t dodge the auto-attack that applies Burning because it will keep trying to proc every time until it lands the damage and THEN it goes on cool-down, unlike a Power build where you CAN dodge the big damage attack and it goes on cool-down for 0 damage.

You also can’t cleanse condis often enough as they are re-applied far too fast due to the fact that so many skills apply several conditions, instead of them being tactical applications of damage or soft control.

sPvP has been completely ruined by condition spam just so that players in PvE can do some more damage.

That’s just from a standard 2v2 fight in normal solo queue game, but the same can be found in team queue and even 5v5 hotjoin.

Go and spectate any fight involving either an Engineer, Necro, Spirit Ranger, condi Warrior or Mesmer and you can quickly take a screenshot of a condition stack like that.

This is what PvP looks like in GW2 right now.

You are taking 2500 damage per second from Bleed and Poison.
Your healing is 33% less effective.
You are crippled and move 50% more slowly.
Your skills are recharging 66% more slowly, this also makes you move 66% slower.
You are immobilized and can’t move at all for several seconds.
If you use any skill you will take 800 damage.
You can’t do anything because you are feared and taking 1000 extra damage per second.

Imagine if we added Burning too?

You can’t dodge roll while stuck in an immobilze that stacks in duration, so you want to cleanse?
Most cleanses will remove one condition, but it’s the latest one applied to you though, not the 20+ Bleeding stack that’s been overlapped by 3-4 conditions for the duration of the fight.

If you did remove these conditions most will be reapplied because the ground is covered in AoEs that pulse these conditions, or convert your boons to conditions.
You have to stay in the area because the game-mode is entirely built around standing in a small circle, a small circle the same size as all of the AoEs that apply conditions.

Or you will build up Poison and Bleeding from the enemies auto-attack spam and soon Burning will proc too for 50% up-time at 700 damage per second, no skill-shot required, just auto-attack from range.

This game has had a disgusting amount of conditions added to it. Power creep gone mad.

We have 12. Twelve conditions. 5 do damage for all professions. One can also do damage for Necros. Six! Damaging conditions…
It’s not that hard to get 12 Bleed stacks, Poison, Burning, Torment and Fear on a target as a Necro.
An average PvP build doing so would cause around 3000 damage person second on the target, the target that has no control over their character.

Spammy ranged conditions and stunlocking crowd control. The two worst mechanics, combined in GW2 for a truly terrible gaming experience.

Kindled Zeal: Virtue of Justice’s passive effect now applies blue fire (which is cooler) this reduces the target’s healing and movement speed by 25%.

1 – Ray of Light
Fire a ball of light that damages a foe then returns, healing you.
3/4s – 400dmg – 100 Healing – Range 1000.

2 – Burst of Light
Fire a piercing arrow of light, burning foes in a line.
1/2s – 1000dmg – Burning 3s – Range 1000 – 8s Recast – Combo Finisher: Projectile

3 – Symbol of Courage.
Sear a mystic symbol into the target area that damages foes and grants might to allies.
3/4s – 5x 1750dmg – 5x Might 1s – Range 1000 – 15s Recast – Combo Field: Light

4 – Zealot’s Wrath
Fire a slow magical arrow that explodes on impact burning nearby foes.
3/4s – 1500dmg – Burning 3s – Radius 180 – Range 1000 – 20s Recast – Combo Finisher: Blast

5 – Wave of Light
Send out a soothing wave of light, allies are healed and lose one condition, foes are blinded.
1s – Healing 1500(1.0) – Radius 600 – kitten Recast

Damage numbers are based on a lvl 80 character tooltip.

Kindled Zeal: You now apply 1s of Poison and Torment when you apply Burning because a pure Burning condi spec on a profession with 10.5k base HP is bad.

Tone down.

We’ve had far too much power creep in 2013 with conditions.
Burning added to Necro, Torment added to 4 professions, Terror damage too high, passive proc builds made strong and Weakness buffed too far.

All to try and make condition damage more viable in PvE, while completely ruining the balance of PvP by making conditions dominate everything.

The game is spiraling out of control with condition application everywhere, across AoEs, auto-attacks and worst of all high damage Burning from trait procs.
Gone are the thoughtful condition builds, with tactical application of conditions and condition removal, it’s just become a spamfest.

Mesmers already have such an easy time not being found through teleports, invisibility, multiple clones and the current targeting system in your favour.

Yet you want even more?

Why are you using a Staff as a Necro in a 1v1, it’s the wrong weapon to try and attack a single moving target with.

Guardians need longer cast timers? Are you serious?
Guardians have several of the longest cast timers in the game and many of the most obviously telegraphed attacks / combo sequences. DPS Guardian damage is easily avoidable. The Scepter won’t hit strafing targets and the GS is very easily avoided.

As far as the Scepter goes with its 1/4 cast time, please nerf it down to 1/2 second per cast, but in return I want it instant hit like the Necro Scepter, fair.

Zenith.7301:

Ezrael.6859:

Zenith.7301:

They need to nerf Stand Your Ground.

30 sec cd AoE stability for the group is so ridiculously overbudget. Other classes pay a much steeper cd for a SINGLE player stability cd.

Other classes have viable condition builds, viable ranged weapons and mobility.

Which are those classes. I count only necro and engineer, with spirit ranger somwhat cutting it.

Viable ranged weapons lol. Guardian scepter auto has the highest base damage even if the speed of the projectiles is slower to make up for it. And in a format where close quarters combat is mandated to conserve points, arguing about ranged weapons is moot.

And none of those condition builds or ranged weapons make them mandatory. You can swap a conditionmancer for a spirit ranger or engineer for largely similar results in aoe condition pressure.

You cannot build a team without a guardian bunker. No other class is as essential as a guardian.

Ranger has many viable condi builds. Bleed stacks and Poison from weapons or Spirits or Traps.
Mesmer can build for condi spread mostly Confusion and Bleeding.
Warrior can build for Condis with Bleeding and Burning + Torment and Confusion.
Thief can build for Condis, mostly Bleeding and Poison, LDB Thieves were all the rage once.
Necro and Engineer are naturally full of condi spam.

Ele is in a similar place to Guard, Power based with low base hp.

Scepter has the highest single target damage in PvE or against target golems.

In PvP against players that move the orbs still have terrible accuracy, Smite lands 2-3 hits out of 15 against any competent player and against a group the hits are all spread out as it’s not a true AoE.

The Scepter is good on paper, terrible in reality.

You can build a team without a bunker Guardian, you just have to do some thinking.
A bunker Guardian makes it nice and simple by providing a base player that can do some group heals, condi clear, apply boons and a little cc. From that base you add your flavour of damage.

You could build a base with a bunker Engi, or Ele or Warrior. But then you need to make sure you have group condi clear somewhere else, or cc from another place.
It requires more thinking and most players don’t like thinking. They like simple.

It’s why they all run similar team builds, why individual players all copy a single build and we have 2 Hambow Warriors and Spirit Rangers in teams, all using the exact same builds they copied from the exact same place.

DanyK.3842:

Condi-bunker meta is really strong because:
If I don’t have berserker’s stance off cooldown I won’t even engage an engineer. Cleansing Ire is not strong enough to deal with all the conditions especially because they get instantly reapplied. With berserker’s stance up I have the full duration of the stance to win the fight. As soon as it’s down I’ll start to have to play extremely defensively against a bunker class! My burst on the other hand is not enough on a zerk hambow warrior to take a decent engi down in a 1v1. If they dodge the 2 right skills they already won. Almost the same goes for necros. If my zerk stance is down I won’t even bother 1v1. In team fights my build is just way too strong although once we lost a 3v3 team fight with 2 warriors and an ele on our side and 2 guardians and a power necro that got downed almost instantly on the enemy side. The damage log showed 14k retaliation damage. Later when I checked the recording all they did was spam gs symbol and syg with empower chained for 100% uptime of protection, regen and retaliation. I think that’s a nice example of bunker meta.

This.

And now imagine what it’s like to be an Ele, Guard, Mesmer or Thief against these builds.

The Necro, Engineer and Ranger builds that have the survivability of a bunker but significant damage output due to condition stacking plus all the soft cc that comes with conditions need to be toned down.

This game is overflowing with conditions.
4 damage conditions, one also reduces healing.
3 movement impeding conditions.
2 damage reducing conditions.
1 punishing condition for skill use.
1 damage increasing condition.
1 crowd control condition which can also be made into a damaging condition, bringing the total damaging stack to 5 (during which the target would also be CC’d).

Necro Marks need to be looked at, they should be colour coded to be clearer, they need a travel time or an activation time.
0 travel time instant unblockable AoE activation at 1200 range is crazy, especially when you have good damage + Chill, Poison, Bleed, Fear and condition transfer.

The amount of conditions in the game need to be reduced but ArenaNet keep digging themselves into a hole here so it probably won’t happen.

So instead the amount of conditions on auto-attack need to be reduced so that conditions can be tactical instead of spammy and instantly reapplied after they are cleansed.

Conditions need to use 3 stats to do serious damage the same way Power does.

Condition Damage is far more powerful than Power which leads to build imbalances when you can take 2 defensive 1 offensive Amulets like Settlers and become a bunker that can 1v1 most others.

5% damage + Zealous Blade can be used on the move.

5% damage + Zealous Blade applies Chilled 2s.

5% damage + Zealous Blade applies Crippled 2s.

Zealous Blade now grants 2s of Block while channeling

Pure of Heart is a terrible trait as most of the times Aegis is removed you are at 100% hp, so it does no healing.

But we have many terrible traits so that’s nothing new really.
Only 4 of our Grandmaster traits are worth going for and 3 are in Honour and Valour. Hence the majority x x 30 30 x builds.

According to GW2Wiki Contemplation of Purity

Confusion should be converted to Retaliation, but I just tested in The Mists against the Mesmer NPC and it was converted into Regeneration.

I wonder if there are any other conditions it is converting incorrectly.

I also think that Torment should convert to Regeneration because Torment is a massive damage condition, it makes no sense that this would convert into Might.
Blind should become Aegis, Weakness should become Fury.
And Fear should be converted to Stability, scene as Corrupt Boon changes Stability to Fear.

This also brings up an interesting point, if Burning, Bleeding and Poison are converted into Regeneration, you convert and all 3 are on you do you still get the base 5s conversion or do you get 15s of Regeneration? (5s for each different damaging condition converted).

If it’s just the base 5s then that’s a huge disparity in the amount of damage that’s been inflicted upon you by these conditions and the healing you gain in return for using a very high cooldown conversion ability, compared to how quickly condition classes can reapply and spam their conditions. I feel condition conversion is pretty weak right now.

But then condi builds have been getting nothing but buffs recently with Torment added to 4 professions, burning given to Necro.
And Weakness changed to become a huge nerf to power builds.

Dynnen.6405:

Know what I’ve been saying since beta?

FIX OUR GD WEAPONS. I mean every time I cast sword 3 I break another keyboard through the rage it causes me.

Our weapons have several issues.

I just had a fight with another Guardian on a capture point, my Leap of Faith took me in the completely opposite direction to my target three times during the fight, resulting in it being neutralised as I leapt off the point away from him.

Utterly ridiculous and it’s been like that since beta.

They need to fix it, or just make it a teleport.

Smite is a hilarious example of PvE vs PvP design, in PvE against mobs that don’t move with large hit-boxes this is a huge damage skill.
In PvP it’s a terrible skill that lands 2 or 3 strikes out of 15.
It’s a similar story with the auto-attack.

I fear that Jon Peters balances our weapons against target golems and thinks ‘mmmmm it’s got good damage’ but he’s never actually used any of them in mobile combat against actual players.

Dynnen.6405:

Know what I’ve been saying since beta?

FIX OUR GD WEAPONS. I mean every time I cast sword 3 I break another keyboard through the rage it causes me.

Our weapons have several issues.

I just had a fight with another Guardian on a capture point, my Leap of Faith took me in the completely opposite direction to my target three times during the fight, resulting in it being neutralised as I leapt off the point away from him.

Utterly ridiculous and it’s been like that since beta.

They need to fix it, or just make it a teleport.

Bunker Engi with Healing bombs is very skill-less for the amount of sustain it has, plus a smattering of nasty control and damage conditions against enemies means he contributes to the team fight without trying and can even win some 1v1’s because Condi classes can build bunkers that can kill in 1v1, unlike Power classes.

Most of the problems in this game and in balance come from the conditions we have in GW2. Too many conditions. Too many that ruin gameplay instead of enhancing it, the designers never watched the video “What is my skill like to play against? Is it fun?”
Conditions being able to build tanky while also doing great damage because of how condition damage and stats work is a broken mechanic.

Zenith.7301:

They need to nerf Stand Your Ground.

30 sec cd AoE stability for the group is so ridiculously overbudget. Other classes pay a much steeper cd for a SINGLE player stability cd.

Other classes have viable condition builds, viable ranged weapons and mobility.

Mightymealworm.8409:

anking.6245:

How bout instead of a 5% dmg boost, it allows us to use Sword 3 on the move?

Having to trait a weapon to fix it’s fundamental issues is the wrong way to approach it.

That’s exactly how these game designers have made GW2 work though.

Plus introducing terrible game design like being punished for using skills (Confusion), moving (Torment) or attacking enemies (Retaliation).

And remember, they said GW2 would never need diminishing returns on CC as there would never be too much in the game.

Except Necros can fearlock to death. Warrior can stunlock to death and several professions can chain immobilize that stacks >.<

They balance with this

That’s the bunker Guard.

Not the DPS Guardian. The DPS Guard is easily kited, gets torn up by condi pressure and does most damage at melee range. This means he takes huge cleave and AoE damage. (Weaknesses that make him balanced and easy to counter – not OP).

Bunker Guard is a must because people want one class to handle condi removal, stability stomps and rezzes and the Guardian can do that with a very straight forward setup.

Other professions can bunker well, Engi, Warrior even Ele. But they don’t do everything as straight forward as a Guardian, even though you could build a team to work with it. People don’t like change.

The bunker Guardian offers a simple base to work from. People like simple.

It’s a thread because the devs have mentioned that this trait is on their radar as they think Guardians in general have access to too much Vigor with this trait.
They are currently removing and toning down a lot of Vigor access for 6 professions.

In the future when they come to look at Vigorous Precision I would hate to see it moved away from a 5 point trait as that would destroy a lot of basic survivability for squishy Guardians in a DPS build.

So, by moving it back to 1 second of Vigor on crit it becomes balanced for the different Guardian builds.

Those that are more squishy and do DPS will keep their high Vigor access which they rely on for survivability by landing many crits.

Bunkers however, will not gain as much access to Vigor which is a fair trade off for high Toughness and Healing power, it helps to balance the Cleric’s build dodge rolling spam with Selfless Daring.

Give us earrings and rings back + the gems to slot into them by redistributing the stats from amulets.

Let us customise our stats better like we could during the beta weekends.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when we had more build diversity during the first beta weekends and since then we have seen less and less.
Every patch seems to make entire professions run one identical build in sPvP.