Guild Wars 2

You know, the nerf to make shortbow 900 range down from 1200 was originally because they wanted Longbow to have the 1200 niche, but that’s not even a thing anymore since Longbow is being made into 1500 range baseline.

What the hell?

The charr would though.

Bhawb.7408:

Well first off condi/MM mix has never been good. Minions work for PvP, they’re fine unless its your plan to be on a “pro” team, and they can work in roaming for WvW, but in PvE they really only work if you get stuck in a group so awful that they need the minions to be able to tank the boss for them a bit.

There’s one other situation where they’re good – if you have a team with 3-5 minion master necromancers, they collectively deal monstrous damage and the sheer number of bodies on the field means that enemy AoEs very rarely hit the intended target. It’s a dumb setup and requires more than a couple people to do this, but It’s astonishingly effective.

Still not really worth it, though.

You know, people say that constantly, and I have to constantly correct them.

DPS pets are the ones that die instantly. Spec into Beast Mastery, manage the positioning of your pet better (such as by choosing a ranged pet), or choose a tankier pet, and this ceases to be a problem. Additionally, Drakes are better when fighting groups because they’re more capable of dishing out damage to groups, as they have AoE capability, while still having a high level of survivability.

It’s not a matter of pets being too weak. It’s choosing the wrong pets for the job.

Pets have a higher base health in purely PvE environments. I think it’s to help with tanking, but honestly I don’t know for certain why they did this.

ronpierce.2760:

If it can’t heal/support I will have many tears.

I’ve got a set of exotic cleric gear waiting and ready for the sake of playing a healer, and have a cleric stat ascended staff. I will be exceedingly upset if druids can’t do any healing.

So, here’s a thought.

Reaper Shroud #5 causes a stun and a large cold field. #4 is a big ol’ spin to win move that shoots out a massive amount of cold bolts and similar when used in a field.

Let’s get into traits here though. Just from the Reaper Line, we have Chilling Nova and Chilling Force. Basically, you cause chilling explosions on the areas you hit, increasing the number of chills all around, and every time you hit a chilled target you gain a stack of might. It won’t be hard at all to cruise into an enemy zerg on 25 might stacks and keep spreading chill around like a monster, while the might you’re generating also heals you or adds to your life force in massive chunks.

But wait! There’s more! Because ground targeting is becoming baseline for wells, there’s nothing stopping you from taking Soul Reaping and Blood Magic on top of being a Reaper, allowing you to do the chillsplosion dance while fighting people inside wells.

So, I don’t really see there being a problem here. Reaper feels like a direct upgrade.

Serenke, that’s just unhelpful and mean spirited. some of us actually like the idea of commanding an undead legion, not to mention they’re almost guaranteed to be buffed to usefulness when HoT comes out, or even before.

Sadly, Bhawd has the right of it. These would be a “one step forward, two steps back” scenario.

So, I was just taking part in a Stronghold match. the enemy team had a necromancer on their side, and normally that would be no big deal. At least until it came time to channel mist essence for a hero.

See, When she went into Plague Form, she started channeling, and it basically made her invulnerable to any attempts to stop the channeling. Hitting her did nothing because of the increased toughness and vitality transformation skills grant, and plague form prevents knockback through stability stacks, all while inflicting effects on those of us trying to melee due to being in plague form. I’m not certain whether this is intended or a bug, but if it’s intended it needs to be changed asap – transformation skills shouldn’t allow for automatic captures like that.

Uh, no. That’s a thing WoW does?

That’d be a problem in WvW, but you don’t really see that type of Ele in sPvP. It’d be a problem in maybe one or two unfortunate situations and really good in all the rest.

Coulter.2315:

Actually sex is a very important part of intimate relationships.

I disgree. Intimacy is about bonding and sharing your life with someone, the good and the bad. I’m asexual and have been in a relationship for nearly a year now, and I’d say we’re pretty intimate even if we don’t have sex.

Clearly, we need more cultural food dishes ingame.

Ehecatl.9172:

It’s also worth remembering that the charr are a carnivorous species. It takes substantially more farmland to produce a certain quantity of meat than it would to produce the same quantity of vegetables and fruit. Combine that with the charr being somewhere between 800-1,500 pounds (just eyeballing them and estimating the weight) while having a high activity metabolism befitting a mammalian predator, and the charr would need a massive source of food to sustain their population.

It’s extremely unlikely the charr Legions are comparable in size to major human empires in the real world. The sheer amount of farmland they’d need would be tremendous.

I feel this is actually a really important note. Humans are capable of a much wider range of diet because of our omnivorous diets. Charr, on the other hand, have a much lower rate of growth because of their carnivorous diets.

As far as their weight goes, in Gates of Maguuma Taimi says that her, Scruffy, Braham, and Rox altogether weigh “as much as ninteen kasmeers”. I’ll assume that Scruffy took up about 45% of that weight, being a contraption of metal and magic and such, leaving Braham and Rox (assuming they both weigh about the same) to be 27.5% of the weight.

Kasmeer seems to be an “average” human woman (curves notwithstanding) and stands about 5’6" therabouts. That puts her weight at about 130 pounds. Doing a little math, that puts Rox’s weight at 680 pounds (rounded). Now, female charr are smaller than males by a few inches, so we can presumably look at them and simply add about 40-50 pounds. This gives us an average of 700 pound weight to charr.

This is important because it gives us a sense of scope. Large male siberian tigers can hit up to 700 pounds, while females weigh closer to 400. so the average siberian tiger (weighing in at 550 pounds for the purposes of this) eats about 20 pounds of meat per day, up to 60 pounds if they’re starving. Now, because of Charr society they’re most certainly not starving, and the added weight means they have to eat about 25 pounds of meat per day or so. We can pare that down a bit if they have a metabolism similar to humans, but even then that only takes it down to about 6 or 7 pounds per day.

That’s still huge. Let’s assume for a moment they can eat like hyenas and eat bones as well for the marrow (not an unreasonable assumption, given the hyenas that live in Ascalon) and it’s still pretty massive. As Ehecatl pointed out, they simply don’t have the farmland necessary for too big of a population. Add in the fact that they’re apex predators, as well as the fact that females don’t actually like to be sidelined due to pregnancy, and you’ve got 100k-200k Charr in Tyria being a reasonable estimate. There’s only about 3200 tigers left in the world after all, and that’s with only about 7% of their natural habitats remaining. If anything, charr are facing overpopulation for the land they have.

So, a thing we’ve got in a few places is NPC characters that are in some way taking care of one another. Somewhere in the Shiverpeaks (can’t remember specifically where), there’s an orphanage run by a Sylvari who feels depressed because she can’t have children of her own. In Gendarran Fields there’s an event chain where a norn lionguard is basically a father figure to a young asura and wants your help in getting her back. In Pre-scarlet LA, there was also a pair of children, one hman and one charr, playing together.

This makes me curious why we haven’t seen anything to the tune of a multi-racial romantic relationship yet. Now, I’m not going to expect there to be something like a human/charr relationship (though I’m certain the Legions would love that), but Sylvari, humans, and norn are all similar enough in appearance at the very least that I could see a relationship forming, and it’s stated that Sylvari have no problems flirting with other races.

I think this is actually a good chance for some ambient dialogue in the new Lion’s Arch, particularly if one side of the couple in question is a Sylvari, as it’d let us get a look at the long lasting prejudices in Lion’s Arch by talking to these NPCs.

I dunno. Just a thought that popped into my head.

Maybe, maybe not. I’ve found this setup more effective for me. Beastmaster’s Bond is one I pointed out as easy enough to be swapped out for something else, and it’s the primary reason to keep your pet out rather than swapping.

As far as humans running around with their heads cut off… maybe. We simply don’t know how the meta will develop there, so for now I’m going to stick with my own prediction over that of another. If it turns out I goofed, I’ll freely admit it.

You know, I Just put together a build for this not even an hour ago.

Two things.

First, this was put together in response to the fact that we have a Stronghold Beta tomorrow, before specializations go live. This build is for tomorrow, not months down the road. I do appreciate the comment on what it should look like in the far future, yes, but that doesn’t matter for the beta happening now. Still, since you’ve pointed it out, I’ve whipped a build together using Dulfy and That_Shaman’s Specialization builder that I’ll edit into the opening post in a moment.

Second, did you play the last Stronghold Beta? While I was running around on my ranger, 80% of my fights were focused on killing NPCs, not fighting other players. There was times when opposing players outright ignored me to go about what they were doing. So, no, I’m going to have to disagree on that point.

Trait Choice: Now, this is a bit of an oddball, I’ll admit. The reasoning is simple – all the longbow traits are in Marksmanship, and being our power line we take it to the top. the two points in Skirmishing are to increase the damage output of the pet. I know that Drakes have a comparatively low precision, but they still crit a decent amount and thanks to Opening Strike and Beastmaster’s Bond. A tail spin is an impressive source of damage when it crits, and drakes sometimes open with it. The trait points in Beastmastery are to make it so that when you send your pet off to take on enemy NPCs, it doesn’t get mulched. The trait choices themselves are a fair bit more fluid than the other two lines, though.

Variants: As I mentioned above, the Greatsword is an optional weapon at best. The longbow is important for its DPS and long range, but the Greatsword can be swapped out for a sword and [insert offhand here] without any real trouble. that’s up to your preference as a player.

Pets… Drakes are definitely to my preference since they’ll actually have more HP than you. If you want to be absolutely certain your pet won’t die, go for a bear, but that sacrifices a lot of damage and the drake’s AoE capability. If you care less for your pets survivability and more for murdering things as fast as possible, cats are a good choice, but they’re squishy and are only single-target. Same with birds. Canines can give you some additional battlefield control through their takedown ability and through their howls, but frankly in the PvE style scenarios you’re liable to encounter in Stronghold in my opinion being able to do that to a single target isn’t enough.

For Skills, if you feel the need for some additional healing for you and your pet and/or stability over a stunbreak, Signet of the Wild is a good choice. It gives you and your pet some additional tankiness, benefits from the Signet Mastery trait, and a damage buff at the right time can do wonders for you.

For traits, like I mentioned above the Beast Mastery Traits are the most fluid. if you find your pet is being downed too much or you’re swapping quite a bit, perhaps Beastmaster’s Bond should be swapped out for Compassion training, to improve the benefit of Natural Healing. Rending Attacks could be replaced with Speed Training to allow your pets to dole out their attack skills more quickly. Natural Healing could be replaced with Invigorating bond, which would allow you to have additional healing when necessary. If you’re not feeling Pet’s Prowess, Companions Might should mean you can maintain a good number of might stacks on your pet instead.

If you feel berserker armor is too squishy for you, try Knight’s. It still has high precision and power, but toughness in place of ferocity allows you a bit more defense when push comes to shove. Still, it is a DPS loss you’ll feel, so bear that in mind.

Now then. Any thoughts on this setup? It was originally built for PvE with some minor changes to account for a PvP setting, which in a strange way is exactly what Stronghold is. I felt it’d be best to have a build that reflects that.

Alright, with the Stronghold beta tourney up tomorrow, I felt I should share a build I know to be quite effective in it. There’s a few things you may find odd, but these are in place because it’s what I use, not necessarily what’s best. I’ll be adding a Variants section down near the bottom.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMq0yaBLOsQ1ag+ga9DEAjNrK491uthbGH9xrI-TJBFwACuCAA3foaZAAPCAA

(At request, I put together a small build for when the Specialization changes hit. Check it out. http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgUFdAHcA-Q~ )

The basic gist of it is this – you’re a power longbow ranger with a twist. Your job isn’t to hunt down other players (though you can certain;y do that if given the opportunity) but instead to slam NPCs. The the pet can act as a tank for you when you’re assaulting enemy gates, to take out the guard NPCs, and can even tank the enemy lord for you for a little while.

Pet Choice: We’re using drakes rather things like canines or cats. The Drakes have an excellent balance of survival ability and DPS, helped by the fact that they can cleave. Damage-wise, River Drake and Marsh Drake are superior to the other types, but the difference is small enough that if you want a different type of drake, you can get it without too much lost. Beastmaster’s Bond makes it so that your pet becomes hard to kill the longer you avoid swapping it – this is important if you’re playing the pet as a tank, as any time you swap the pet, the aggro it’s accrued will be transferred to you.

Weapon Choice: The classic Longbow/Greatsword combo here is my preferred playstyle, but to be honest the Greatsword is optional. You should be spending at least 75% of your time with the longbow in this build, and only swap to the melee weapon when you’re getting overwhelmed. We have no traits related to the use of the greatsword, so if you have a weapon you’d prefer to use in its slot (perhaps a sword, maybe an axe? it’s up to you) feel free. The Longbow with the Eagle-Eye trait allows you to do two things. The first is sit back from a safe distance while your pet is tanking defender NPCs. The second is that you can play turret from your own fortifications – Doorbreakers and archers, at least from the last beta, simply didn’t have enough HP withstand the hail of arrows a longbow ranger can put out, allowing you to be a team’s best gate defender. The Fire and Air sigils shouldn’t need an explanation, but just in case – Rangers tend to have mediocre burst, so this adds some. Simple as that. They also combo nicely with Opening Strike.

Skills Choice: The power trait line gives us access to Signets as a strong resource. We should all know the power of Signet of Stone by now, and a 20% reduction in cooldown for other signets is useful as well, as that’s what we’re using. Signet of the Hunt gives both you and your pet a 25% speed increase, though because the pet also gains any speed boosts you do, your pet is actually getting a 50% speed boost, neatly solving the requirement of agility training. Lightning Reflexes is good as an escape mechanicsm, an immobilize cure, and a stunbreaker, mostly meant for use when you need to get some distance on an enemy player.

Healing Spring is important because it’s your only condition removal. With the greatsword skill Swoop, or the Jump combo from the sword, or maybe even the warhorn’s Call of the Wild, it adds additional healing to your party. A combo field is never a bad thing to have. The Elite skill, Entangle, is used for hindering enemy NPCs. To my knowledge, not a one of them has any real condition removal, meaning if you’re being overwhelmed by doorbreakers and archers you can pop entangle and hold them still for a moment to take the pressure off. Also effective against heroes, though they’re much more likely to be escorted by players who’ll go out of their way to break the roots entangling their Man-shaped super-weapon

Armor Choice: Berserker armor is important here. As anybody who’s aware of the old Bearbow paradigm knows, pets aren’t affected by your stat deficiencies, so it won’t cease playing tank just because you chose to spec for damage. This is important because while Rangers have a decent amount of damage, it’s sustained damage rather than burst. By making it more likely to crit, increasing ferocity, and the base damage through power… well, you probably know this spiel already. Suffice to say, there’s no reason not to go for this in the long run. Since you should always have your pet alive with this build, Rune of the Ranger seemed like a natural choice.

Yeah, I’m thinking this’d probably be better served as a “Mechanics change” as part of an elite spec, since they seem to like the idea of adjusting a character’s profession mechanic with a given elite spec. A sort of Warbeast Tamer or something to that effect.

And yeah, I know Sourfang is a Rock Dog. I was just commenting on how extremely different he looks froma rock dog, but I guess that little jibe fell flat.

Hmm. How would you design this with the Specialization system? I ask because if I try to use your build, I’m going to want to be able to use it after the old trait system becomes obsolete.

I really appreciate that you’ve shown a few losses here as well. Most build videos simply don’t, and that irks me.

So, here’s an idea I had for those of us that prefer our pets to be big and strong, and I think it could potentially solve a few pet related problems we have at the moment. By necessity, it’d have to be part of a Grandmaster trait, probably as part of the Beastmastery line, or as part of an Elite Spec.

Here’s the idea; in certain places, you can tame overgrown versions of the normal pet types. A drake broodmother, for example, a siege devourer, whatever the hell Sourfang is, and so forth. However, there’s a condition. To tame these animals, you need to have the trait in question, and you need to keep it to have such pets out – if you swap out your trait, you’ll automatically be forced to pick a different pet, but the big ones you’ve tamed will still be available when you swap your trait back to Great Pets. Or perhaps for convenience’s sake, the trait simply upgrades the pets you already have out.

By allowing for this, it opens up certain things. For example, increased size of pets means that increased attack distance would be available, making the whole “pets can’t track targets” much less of a problem because they don’t need to track the target as far. Increased base damage would make the points when it does hit more meaningful, and increased vitality and toughness would solve an issue that many complain about (though I’ve never had an issue with) in that a lot of pets are easily killed.

There’d have to be a tradeoff, as this would be a huge upswing for Rangers, and without an overhaul of certain things it’d become basically a required trait, which is something to be avoided. A damage debuff for the ranger in question seems like a decent answer to me – maybe something to the tune of 10% or 15%, but I don’t think more than a 20% reduction would be at all wise for a variety of reasons. This’d move the focus away from the ranger being kitten with their scruffy animal tagging along and more to their pet being a powerhouse supported by their trainer.

Maybe it’s not an amazing idea, but it’s been kicking around in my head for over a month now and I figured it was time to share it, see what the community thinks. Maybe it wouldn’t solve every problem, but it’d solve several, and that’s a step in the right direction.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Nike.2631:

One thing to keep in mind is the Druid pets will automatically be weaker than Ranger pets.

hoT Rangers get a free 300 points of pet stat buff as per their current trait line 5.

Druids get 150 of this bonus and 150 of something else. Their pets will be noticeably weaker.

And they are getting a heal, 4 utility skills and an elite from a skill type they don’t have already, so they are NOT going to focus on anything Rangers already have like spirits, shouts, or traps. You can get those things using your 2 flexible specialization slots but the Druid line is going to be something new.

I was under the impression that pets would be getting a 150 stat increase across the board and another 150 IF you trait into BM, which the Druid would also be able to do.

We already know we will get something we don’t have currently.

You are correct in this, Heimskarl, as it was confirmed by the devs. As a matter of fact I’d hazard a guess to say druids will make pets stronger, as I’ve no doubt the spec will include some pet-centric traits.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I would not hold off on playing Ranger because of the condition cap, you can hit 25 bleeds, but its not like you can maintain it or anything. Poison not stacking is not a big drama really, condi builds are very stong for us.

I’ve always loved playing a trapper ranger, and stacking conditions just makes it better. Viper Nest and Burning Trap in particular, since they’ll have the chance for burn and poison stacks.

I could see one of the skills Druids get being essentially an area of dazing smoke – target the area and a flower sprouts that sprays around spores. Whenever someone tries to use a skill in that area, they’re automatically interrupted (perplexity, go!). It’d be complete area denial without stopping enemies from passing through.

I think it’s either level 12 or 13, actually. It’s been a long time since I leveled a ranger.

Regarding the “Religious” aspect of druids, there’s a few things to keep in mind.

The first is that I can almost guarantee we’ll be learning to be druids from the Maguuma Druids, a group of human nature magic users. This is important because they didn’t become the first of some nebulous ‘druid’ concept – their tribe was called the Druids, even before they became one with the land. Their purpose is to slumber as arboreal spirits, and return to the world when the Maguuma jungle is in need; and Mordremoth definitely qualifies there. They achieved a zen state, but I wouldn’t say that’s religious.

The second is that three out of five races are non-religious, one to the point where they’ll punch you in the face if you suggest they’re worshipping something. The last two don’t worship nature – humans worship the gods, and while that might involve Melandru, a good amount of humans don’t even think the gods exist anymore. The norn worship the spirits of the wild, but even then that’s entirely different from worshipping nature. Giving religious overtones to this simply will not work, from a story and roleplaying standpoint.

Sylvari can, as a racial skill, already summon a druid spirit. What the bleeding hell does this mean for druids? Who the hell knows!

The Druids are much more likely to be teaching us druidic skills out of desperation than anything else. Mordremoth is a crazy threat, like all the Elder Dragons are, and spreading around their mojo is likely to be the only way they can see to really protect the jungle. Magic in Tyria is areligious – you don’t have to worship Balthazar to use elemental fire, you don’t have to worship Lyssa or Raven to be a mesmer or thief, and that means there’s going to be no religious aspect to the way druids work. It is, simply put, going to be a skill set for working with magic in a particular way.

Does that preclude the whole “Sun and Moon” concept? Not in the slightest. But it does make it much less likely, especially since the Druid Spirits are focused on the well being of the jungle, not on celestial bodies passing overhead.

So, with the reaper, we got something interesting. Gee stated that each of the three trait lines you could get as a reaper were “themed” – one for a defensive sort of character, one for a chillomancer, and one for a sort of “unstoppable nightmare” type. I took a quick look at the Chronomancer and the Dragonhunter, and noticed something interesting – with a little bit of shuffling, you could very easily make themes out of their trait lines as well.

With this in mind, perhaps we can make some predictions regarding what the druid will capable of. What their themes could be. As I’ve stated elsewhere in this forum, I can imagine three major things being a big part of the druid elite spec. Namely, Support, CC, and a buff to pets. I don’t put much stock in the idea that Anet might do transformations. I can’t see transformations into animals doing anything that basic weapon skills don’t already do, and to my knowledge they’ve stated that two-handed weapons granted to a class will have a larger focus on those particular weapons, and transforming isn’t conducive to that.

What do you think? I feel like a druid could be themed around pet buffs, support, or debilitating enemies with this idea, personally, but discussion is where it’s at.

Howardjones.7645:

So being a druid as I hear is essentially choosing it in the trait specialization screen and putting points into it. So its not a complete class overhaul like I think some of you have come believe. This being said I don’t think they will gain any additional utility skills and I don’t think weapon skills will change; so you can probably still pull out a longbow with same skills. I do hope however choosing the elite spec will change my proffessikn name from Ranger to a druid.

I hear they are removing the trait to allow Ranger’s Spirits to go mobile. Can anyone confirm this? That being said I think the druid elite spec will allow the ranger to control spirits better as well as field utility with the staff. Not giving them new utility spells but enhancing spirit spells. Regardless on what they can do I plan on at least trying it out.

The devs seem to be keen on adding new things to existing classes, rather than working on previous skills. That said, yeah, slotting in a new trait line is how you get it – it won’t directly change your profession name, but you’ll always be able to say “i’m a druid” and everybody will know what you mean.

As far as the staff goes, I’ve no doubt that give the vines and overall nature-y feeling that is growth, we’ll be seeing lots of healing, control (binding roots!), and team buffs, alongside the pet being buffed in some way to allow for them to be more relevant.

But my pet is usually dead within seconds in WvW.

Then don’t let it traipse willy-nilly into a zerg. Or choose a tankier pet. Or spec BM for extra defense and toughness. Any combination of these will solve your problem.

What you want to do two attachments in a single post, attach the first image and then preview your message.

We don’t know if they are – Speculation says it could go either way.

robertul.3679:

Harnel.6810:

Oh. Well, I don’t really play warrior – I just see the Signet way more often than the others.

Yea like staff is mandatory for guardians in every game mode. I keep seeing them so it must be true, right??

Funny. I actually meant that I took a cursory glance through Metabattle and found that Signet of Rage was overrepresented.

Are you just going to make snide comments, or actually contribute to the thread?

Most of the racial skills I can see being removed for game play reasons and not really have any effect. After all, not all asura are golemancers or scientists, not all Charr have a warband or engineering skills, not all humans are six-gods devout, and not all sylvari have an affinity for nature magic.

The exception however, is just like you said, the Norn, they are ALL shapeshifters, without exception. Take that away and they will just be big humans, something people already complain about with how little attention the Norn tend to get as a race in the personal and living story.

I personally like Wooden Potatos’s concept – hero point tracks for each race, where you start off with the one for your race unlocked and have to unlock the others as you go, eventually allowing you to choose something from any race you please.

There’s a few problems inherent to that idea, but all the same it would mean they could bring the power level of the racial skills up to par, since everybody would be able to pick them at that point.

Yeah, closing to melee is going to be the biggest hurdle for Reapers. Still, if you can put chill or cripple in your off-weapon set, you can make it so they can’t maintain a lot of range on you while you’re closing. Spectral Grasp would be an extremely useful skill for most reapers, as well. And hey, it inflicts Chill!

the trick here is probably going to be setting up in such a way that people either have to avoid you, or deal with the fact that you’re a powerhouse – the first means you don’t need to worry about them in the first place, while the second is putting them within range of your pulling abilities, allowing you to turn them into mush given a little time.

I, personally, am going to be using Traveler Runes so that I can manage movement speed well enough without using up a skill slot for Signet of the Locust. If that works, I’ll be golden, as it’ll mean I can catch up with the enemies I’ve chilled or crippled, which solves a whole host of issues Reapers bring to the table.

LastDay.3524:

Something to mitigate damage spikes.
I don’t think we got this.

Assuming you’re not being pegged at range, cold Shoulder covers this nicely. 15% extra damage reduction is nothing to scoff at.

Oh. Well, I don’t really play warrior – I just see the Signet way more often than the others.

I think a sad part about a few of the classes is how limited their selection of elite skills is. Not in terms of how many they have, but in terms of how many are viable – for an engineer, if you aren’t running supply crate, you’re nerfing yourself. For a warrior, Signet of Rage is almost a requirement if you’re not running banners

If they can rework the mortar kit such that it keeps up with Supply Crate, we should see a massive increase in where it can be used.

Is anybody else as excited for this as I am?

One of the potential traits they also introduced in the Explosives Specialization, since it was still to be determined which choice they were going with, was adding a blast finisher to the #1 skill for this kit, and I don’t think I need to tell you what an amazing trait that’d be. Basically anybody using any sort of fields would appreciate constantly proccing blast finishers as long as there’s a field to use (Such as the ranger’s healing spring. So much healing.)

Additionally, since they’re reworking everything with it, it means that it might deal damage that’s actually on par with what should be out there – the current iteration of Mortar kills slower than a ranger pet assuming the target is stationary, and that my friends is a low, low bar.

And, finally, the stylistic concern. Remember Horrik? I’m thinking we’ll be able to do the shoulder-mounted thing too. It’s what inspired me to make a charr engineer yesterday. Iron Legion sapper!

Oddly enough, Wolfineer did a build regarding bomb engies in WvW not too long ago.

It’s a zerg playstyle, to make use of the AoEs because the enemies won’t evade you in the midst of the grand melee.

http://www.wolfineer.com/the-bomb-engineer/

I agree Kury. It’d need to be balanced, and there’d have to be some kind of timer in effect if you used it in combat, to prevent you from just vanishing into thin air in the middle of a fight, but should you manage that you’re golden.

Crimson, Engineer has a tricked out shotgun. Warrior has an assault rifle. It stands to reason a long-range, single-shot setup is missing from the roster.

Additionally, “assassin class” means a hell of a lot of things to a lot of different people, so you may want to clarify. What you mean here is the stabby glass cannon, right? A sniper wouldn’t be breaking the theme of the thief, much to some people’s consternation. At that point it’s an ambusher setting up so that when prey comes close, it can shoot and kill as easily as possible. Thieves are not, and never have been, just stabby fighters.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Mymoney’s on big buffs to the pet to cover DPS loss for the druid being support and control focused.

A fair point, but we do at least have an idea. Of particular note is the ascended ring Druid’s Circle, which has cleric stats on it (Healing Power/Power/Toughness). given how many things that they’re adding to the game with HoT that they intended for there to be from the start (there’s an engineer trainer wielding a hammer, for example, but that’s the only one I can remember off the top of my head), I’m fairly certain this is a clue as to the type of playstyle we can look forward to with druids. It very heavily suggests support – if I’m wrong, I can accept that, but for the moment, this is what I find to be most likely.

Muchacho.2390:

Harnel.6810:

Muchacho.2390:

But none has a 25 seconds cooldown. They are all 40 seconds +.

Can’t remember the name of that one trait – Foot in the grave maybe? I dunno – but it gives you Stability on entering Death Shroud, and on a ten second timer that’s the shortest cooldown stunbreaker in the game.

Not an utility skill though…

Your point being? It does the same thing in this instance, and has the added benefits of being on a lower cooldown and not taking up space on your utility bar.

On the point of every class being a ‘reskin of the same thing’ or however you mean it, no, that is not and will not be the case. Every class at current can do direct damage, but eles, rangers, engies, warriors, and guardians all still have a much different playstyle for them, and even sometimes different playstyles within the same class that accomplishes the same thing. So, yeah, no. What you’re asking for there is outside the scope of this particular game, and your concern isn’t even accurate on how things would be handled currently or in the future.

what it sounds like is that you’re whining because Necromancers aren’t getting the support options you want them to have, when they’re instead filling in a different role that Necromancers need filled. It sounds like a classic “You’re getting something I’m not, so I want that instead” like a child, and I have to believe you didn’t intend it that way.

Muchacho.2390:

But none has a 25 seconds cooldown. They are all 40 seconds +.

Can’t remember the name of that one trait – Foot in the grave maybe? I dunno – but it gives you Stability on entering Death Shroud, and on a ten second timer that’s the shortest cooldown stunbreaker in the game.

Ragnar.1546:

Try a necro and get back.

Ranger: Spirits/Boons/Spotter

Don’t get me wrong it’s nothing compared to my Phalanx/Banner Regen War but it’s ahead my Necro for sure.

The problem here being that “At least you’re not [class]” isn’t really an argument. if your support is terrible, being slightly less terrible than someone else doesn’t stop you from sucking at it.

I could see a sort of “stationary combat” style of thief gameplay emerge. They’d be anti-roamers for the most part – assuming the sniper rifle is lockdown and power based, it wouldn’t be difficult to stay in a single spot (assuming you have traits meant for standing still and/or your skills require it) and layeth the smack down on any jabronis what come within thine sight.

The trick, of course, would be setting up ambush points. In sPvP, this is fairly easy, as you can basically guarantee where enemy players are going to go. Maybe you wouldn’t capture while stealthed, obviously, but you’d be able to maintain a position and unload if someone got too close, and there’s tons of choke points you can do this with in all of the pvp maps except for maybe the courtyard. In WvW, it’d also be able to sit and wait for other roamers to show up and then wreck their day, or wait on well-traveled roads to play yakslapper.

Here’s an idea for a replacement for Steal though – Shadowstep to a location and gain camouflage (those who don’t know what that is, it’s stealth that’s broken when you move). When you make an attack out of camouflage, you gain steal effects (Thrill of the Crime, Mug, that sort of thing) on the target hit by your attack. Maybe a grandmaster trait to make camouflage indefinite, as long as you’re out of combat while using it.

@Justine: Several of those are just cleaving melee attacks, not AoE. Traps are getting nerfed (and buffed, weirdly), Muddy Terrain is control but not AoE damage, and the majority of pet activations are clunky, difficult to use, and not able to be aimed if you can control when they’re used at all. Split Blade you basically need to be in melee to use to full effectiveness, and spirits have a host of their own problems, not the least of which is that you need to trait for them to be useful at all. We don’t have any unconditional AoE capability beyond the skills I mentioned, and even then Entangle is more of a widespread immobilization than AoE damage, since you care not a lick for the bleeding if you’re not a condi build, and the damage the roots do is minimal at best.

@Valkyrie: If you’re having troubles with squishy pets, I’d recommend trying out drakes. their survivability is second only to bears, and they’re unique among pets in that they can cleave. The river drake, while being ugly, also has a decently damaging F2 skill as well. They don’t have amazing single-target DPS, but aren’t liable to die every time something breathes on them either, and the cleaving helps to make up for the DPS loss, though it’s not really a loss if it’s standing when a cat isn’t.

That said, I’m personally hoping for strong buffs to healing and control. I want my pet to be buffed in regards to overall capabilities, but I can live without that if it means I can keep the pet standing. At the moment I can get my drakes to tank for me in mid-level fractals, but I still have to manage how they survive and sometimes they can be really dumb in where they’re standing (cliffside chest seal, looking at you.)