Guild Wars 2

flow.6043:

Hesacon.8735:

I don’t see the value in thinking about just the AA of weapon A vs. weapon B…

Just in case you didn’t see the thread title, it says “Rending Claws”.

In case you didn’t read the original post, the OP was trying to make axe a “viable weapon.”

Hesacon.8735:

When you look at the actual DPS it works out to be ~10% including utilities, close to the 13-16% you claim for just the weapons.

Like DeceiverX said, adding other skills to your calculation is pointless.
You might as well say: first I start with 1 hit of Rending Claws, then I switch to RS and Gravedigger spam until target is dead. Conclusion, Rending Claws + other skills does 99.999% of the damage you’d do without that first RC hit, therefore it’s “in a better spot than people want to think it is”.

Gravedigger is a greatsword skill, not a reaper’s shroud skill. Reaper’s shroud drains when being hit and cannot be sustained 24/7 except under special circumstances. But yes, I’d consider Reaper’s Shroud part of any weapon’s kitten nal. To not use it would be to give up necro’s professional mechanic. It would be like a mesmer doing damage with just a sword vs. a sword + shatters.

Just to make this clear, yes you do use other skills in actual fights, in fact your rotation will consist of mostly those other skills and you’ll occasionally be stuck on Rending Claws. But RC is weak and brings zero utility, and adding other skills to your calculation doesn’t change the fact that it’s bad.

RC doesn’t have to be overpowered to make the entire weapon good. There are skills on other weapons that are underwhelming but people don’t dismiss those as bad weapons because of them.

Hesacon.8735:

I know in fractals a lot I end up with my axe and 4 condi necros, and for whatever reason I end up being the only vulnerability source. A 25-stack of vulnerability is like adding a 5th condi necro, except I get to use an axe, so that’s nice.

Really? 5 necros in a fractal group happens a lot? I don’t believe you.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. In the off chance you’re not, it’s very common in T4 fractals to have 4-5 necros. Go over to the fractal forum and you’ll see people complaining about it. If you watch T4 LFG, you’ll often see parties that are “necro only” or “condi necro only.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Current-state-of-fractals

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Necro-not-optimal-for-fractals

Also, what kind of argument are you trying to make here?
You were in a group that was totally subpar in terms of dps, not just for the lack of applying vulnerability but also might stacking and other stuff. So for this extreme outlier you were able to add a few stacks of vuln with your axe aa? And that is supposed to make Rending Claws look good somehow?

Fractals had had toughness scaling until this week, so condi classes ruled high level fractals. People like seeing giant stacks of bleeding and bosses would melt. Epidemic bouncing is a common practice as well. Because of toughness scaling and other fractal mechanics, 4-5 necros would out DPS any other party distribution you could put together. It was the meta until Tuesday (new meta hasn’t been fully worked out yet).

So it’s not an extreme outlier and a 25 stack of vulnerability is like adding an extra DPS to the party because the DPS of 4 condi necros becomes equal to that of 5, and you haven’t yet factored in your own damage. In most of these situations, the axe is the only source of vulnerability in the party.

Which means that those vulnerability stacks on Rending Claws are a lot more useful thank you think and in the case of a common fractal practice make it a good choice for parties.

Hesacon.8735:

A well timed Axe #2 will drop a thief/guardian/elementalist in wvw.

A well timed anything can drop anyone, so argument invalid.

Not rending claws.

If no one is online and you are heavily outnumbered, you weren’t going to take SMC anyway.

SMC doesn’t auto upgrade, you have to run yaks to it. Deny them camps and yaks and it can’t upgrade.

Muchacho.2390:

Hesacon.8735:

Tim.6450:

Hesacon.8735:

If you doubled the damage or attack speed of Rending Claws it would become meta instantly. Dagger already barely beats it on DPS.

I’m not sure where your math is but dagger auto attack is still 60% percent stronger the axe auto in pure damage. bareley does not cut it. I ‘m not even sure axe will be meta if they doubled the auto because dagger isn’t even close to meta.

I went and whacked a golem in the raid test area. A power necro is almost certainly going to use wells, so drop those. The damage difference is like 10%. You’re also not going to only use auto attack. A weapon is a set of skills, not one skill.

He was talking about the auto attacks and he is right the difference is about a little more then 60% for the auto attacks. And if you factor in the axe trait and ghastly claws the damage difference is around 13-16%. Without the trait is is probably more around 30%. Also wells dont matter since they dont depend on the weaponset.

But honestly i think a big problem for axe is its skill set. While unholy feast is a really good skill i dont think it works well for axes intended purpose of a ranged weapon. Unholy feast is a skill i would rather want to use in the middle of a fight, while the other 2 skills are more about staying back and attacking with safe distence. So even if unholy feast helps with kiting due the cripple, i think it is a little out of place. I dont know but i feel it would better if dagger 3 and axe 3 switched places and dark pact got a range increase to 900.

We were apparently talking about different things then. I don’t see the value in thinking about just the AA of weapon A vs. weapon B, I see the value in seeing what the actual DPS capabilities in combat of using A vs. B are. When you look at the actual DPS it works out to be ~10% including utilities, close to the 13-16% you claim for just the weapons.

I know in fractals a lot I end up with my axe and 4 condi necros, and for whatever reason I end up being the only vulnerability source. A 25-stack of vulnerability is like adding a 5th condi necro, except I get to use an axe, so that’s nice.

I dunno, I think axe is in a better spot than people want to think it is. A well timed Axe #2 will drop a thief/guardian/elementalist in wvw.

Tim.6450:

Hesacon.8735:

If you doubled the damage or attack speed of Rending Claws it would become meta instantly. Dagger already barely beats it on DPS.

I’m not sure where your math is but dagger auto attack is still 60% percent stronger the axe auto in pure damage. bareley does not cut it. I ‘m not even sure axe will be meta if they doubled the auto because dagger isn’t even close to meta.

I went and whacked a golem in the raid test area. A power necro is almost certainly going to use wells, so drop those. The damage difference is like 10%. You’re also not going to only use auto attack. A weapon is a set of skills, not one skill.

If you doubled the damage or attack speed of Rending Claws it would become meta instantly. Dagger already barely beats it on DPS.

Jeknar.6184:

The problem is that if you leave tomes out, people who only play WvW cannot level up as WvW no longer award exp… Ideally we need more “WvW themed” Reward tracks that give us siege (Hero Weapon and Triumphant armor give some) while the Dungeon ones keep giving tomes for people who need them.

Or maybe let us trade tomes for siege…

Every wvw rank gives a tome as well. Either the rewards track or rank chests could have tomes removed without harming the ability to level.

Warrior, Thief, and Necro are all pretty selfish classes, everything else is fairly good at support in some way.

I think it’s so they can sell plushies later.

/tinfoil

Yes, the Arena #2 guild hall upgrade lets you do more or less whatever you want within the arena.

The thing with axe is it’s a ranged weapon that isn’t a projectile, which puts it in a fairly unique place. It behaves a lot like a power version of a scepter, but doesn’t suffer from the ramp-up-time and an enemy’s condition cleanse.

There’s a fine line between underwhelming (where most people agree it is right now) and royally overpowered. We’ll know we hit that point because everyone and their cousin will be clamoring for a nerf.

Last class adjustment adjusted Ghastly Claws to be a lot stronger. The boost was a 5-6% increase in the weapon’s DPS. It’s hard to say what could be done to boost the weapon without breaking it, but there are some small changes that wouldn’t break things like

• Increase Axe #1 vulnerability duration or damage multiplier
• Add an AoE multi-target to Axe #1
• Make Axe #2 a whirl finisher
• Make Axe #3 a blast finisher

But anet is going to do what anet is going to do, so conjecture is probably not going to affect them and is probably a poor use of time.

Carlin Sanders.3587:

It’d be a colossal drain on resources but it would be such an epic scene to watch two elder dragons duke it out directly, or even just seeing the minions of one dragon warring against another for territory and resources (WvW dragon style)

They’re saving that for a direct-to-VHS movie.

I do, but enemies run to you and fractals like cliffside require hammer use.

Guild halls and wvw have nodes that give all tiers of materials.

Paulytnz.7619:

You don’t have to do wvw for badges as they still drop from AP chests.

Yes, 100 from the regular chests, 200 from the large ones. A commander tag only costs 250 of them.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Achievement_Chest

By the time you hit 1000 achievement points you will have enough badges of honor to buy one.

Being within shouting distance of toxic trails is like being submerged in kerosene-soaked cyanide-laced plutonium that is on fire. It’s a little much when it hits like 20k damage in 3 seconds.

I wouldn’t be upset if they did it, but they’re not going to do it, so I can’t spend much mental bandwidth thinking about it.

I made The Minstrel and Astralaria and I much prefer The Minstrel. Why? I can buy the precursor and cut out the grinding.

Eureka has been good for my gold wallet since material prices shot up as people are rushing to make it.

Donari.5237:

I’ll agree that the “nice second life, shame if something were to happen to it” line (paraphrased) seemed like a chihuahua yapping at a wolf. Overconfident much, Commander Boss Poobah?

I thought it was a great line and in character with things I would say. Then I got to see Lazarus fight and he was nearly useless. He couldn’t even hold aggro on the boss, telling you what Primordius thinks of him. An arrow cart would have been more effective than this “god,” and a single yak delivers enough supply to build 2.5 of them.

As weak as the Pact is after Mordremoth victimized them, the White Mantle is much weaker. Lazarus’s ineptitude in battle and desire to form an alliance proves this.

The 3 silver from finishing them is pretty trivial. They do seem to be vendors for different items, but it’s unclear if it’s a daily rotation or not since buying some things changes the offers.

Cecilia.5179:

Hesacon.8735:

WvW has leather nodes now, this should help supply.

Those nodes aren’t guaranteed to drop t6 leather, so that’s debatable.

They’re not, but when the price is 80 silver for the refined leather, it’s not going to take much to move the needle.

I think the problem is it doesn’t always show up as a buff. It’s not that the +5 is missing, it’s that the entire aura is missing.

Malediktus.3740:

SlyDevil.3952:

Malediktus.3740:

They are literally worthless, they dont even cost much if you buy them from NPC

That’s the point, and yet they are still taking up a place on the daily drop tables for what ends up being 1c if you get it(and already have the infinites).

They are a consolation prize, considering the low NPC costs to buy them, they probably never were supposed be feel rewarding

Exchanging them for some relics, even a low number of them, is better than nothing.

Removing them from the drop tables would be nice too.

The infinite potions are probably worth the buy, but it’s something you need once. 5000 and 8000 relics is fairly steep, but not really unreasonable.

I experienced the same thing, the behavior is the same as before.

WvW has leather nodes now, this should help supply.

They don’t all have to be easy to get. A lot of people have a lot of relics to burn that otherwise are sitting around doing nothing.

Map currencies/trophies were already out of control and we have yet another new one. I’m getting close to needing an entire bag just to store these things. Spending any time in new content maps is a disaster for inventories.

I will finish making Astralaria this weekend, I’m excited to see how it looks with The Minstrel update.

What’s the story behind The Minstrel?

It doesn’t negatively affect condi builds in any way. It just makes them not the only meta available.

Wargameur.6950:

finish gift of battle and don’t activate it again. Anyway you will get used to it at one point. I play mainly pvp and the track keep reset to crucible of eternity.

It does the same to me, I would love to select an overflow track. Since I keep repeating bloodstone fen, I wish it would auto-restart that each time.

On the bright side, the patch notes had this:

Adjusted the Gift of Battle reward track to make it more legendary themed.

I think people are embarrassed they lost a 1v1 and their ego can’t take being stomped.

Chaba.5410:

Hesacon.8735:

Chaba.5410:

Is this the sarcasm thread?

Half-sarcasm, half-snarkiness.

You sayed it!

“With YB and SoS bleeding glicko points to CD (despite CD coming in third), there is a glicko wall forming that will prevent movement between T2 and T3.” – Hesacon

Amazing how predictable glicko rating is.

Haleydawn.3764:

I’d really like it. I loved the old LA, such a beautiful city, hub of trading that actually felt like an old trading city. The new LA doesn’t give me that feeling anymore. It’s too clean cut, to flashy and too bright.
The old LA encapsulated the “pirate stronghold” theme quite perfectly, and fit the entire theme of Kryta where it was situated.

At last resort, I really hope Anet creates a fractal based in LA, not just a section of it, all of it. There’s a great story to be told there anyway.

Scarlet appears in the Thaumanova fractal, so there would be precedent for a fractal around those events.

There are events required for collections in Orr that require a map to fail. Good luck finding one.

Condition duration builds might be nerfed in some way because the builds melt enemies in fractals/dungeons/raids. Content that wasn’t intended to be soloable is being solo’d.

Chaba.5410:

Is this the sarcasm thread?

Half-sarcasm, half-snarkiness.

Increasing duration or radius might be an alternative to damage.

At the end of the day what is wvw? A game or a competition? If it’s a competition, I’ve never gotten a prize, so let’s call it a game.

If you want people to play a game it has to be fun. Last week’s T3 matchup involved Anet developers on the map observing the situation first hand, but other than that was a total blowout.

By the end SoS was bored, SBI was bored, YB was bored. This was likely to repeat itself for 2-4 more weeks had no adjustment been made and Anet wants people to play wvw. Each successive week would have seen fewer T3 players play and since many wvw players play GW2 just to play wvw, they would have likely stopped playing GW2 for a while. This doesn’t help Anet, this doesn’t help the players.

Anet acknowledged their mistake with CD last linking and came up with a solution. They opted to use the solution they created. YB is competitive in T2. They are currently winning, but they’re not running away with it.

I think it’s great, maguuma is keeping the game’s gold inflation in check with its converting gold to gems. It’s also driving gem sales. Good for the game.

Liston.9708:

Hesacon.8735:

Liston.9708:

What these last 2 re-links has shown is that some sort of glick reset is needed when new links are made….

At the very least an adjustment on how matchmaking works.

well yea, but that seems liker a bigger task to undertake.

Judging from how Anet has tried to work around the problem, I think they have more control over matchmaking than they do glicko itself. They do not seem to keen on adjusting actual glicko values, perhaps they feel it might break something if they did.

What they are willing to do is temporarily adjust glicko for matchmaking purposes, as well as reset volatility when re-links happen. It may be adjusting actual glicko scores would get them accused of favoritism and they hope the matchmaking knobs they can turn will solve the problem without it coming to that.

Liston.9708:

What these last 2 re-links has shown is that some sort of glick reset is needed when new links are made….

At the very least an adjustment on how matchmaking works.

Not exactly. Anet can adjust the glicko scores used in match making without changing their actual scores as a way to break bad matchups like the 4-server-CD in T4 or last week’s curb stomping YB gave to T3

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Glicko-Rating-Manual-Adjustments-7-29

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Glicko-making-it-impossible-for-CD-to-move-T3/page/2#post6244179

Xenesis.6389:

Why bother having glicko ratings anymore, if players just come in here, make a request for a server to move out and it gets accepted. Is everyone happy where their opponent servers are right now? should we just lock the tiers?

Personally I’d want a different matchup every week. Two different opponents is nice, but even one changes the dynamics. For months T3 was “locked” with maguuma, SBI, and SoS and it was really boring. It wasn’t until YB fell down and CD was adjusted up that the matchups finally got interesting again.

When you play the same opponents every week, you get a feel for how they’ll attack you as well as their coverage.

insanemaniac.2456:

there is a non rng method to obtain gold weapons, but 10 gold relics is ridiculous with current drop rates.

A couple hundred relics for a gold relic would bring that in line with reasonable.

Cerby.1069:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

We adjusted Yak’s Bend rating by +150 so they would move out of tier 3.

Do you guys ever reflect on how you tend to only reward those who complain loudly with selfish requests?

I mean not to downplay yb’s position or anything…but they were asking for 1 server to get preferential fidgeting on the almighty untouchable glicko. I mean…that is HUGE that you granted this server request when there are countless others asking for the same thing. You didn’t even give a reason why yb out of all the servers was granted this…its like all the other grants you give off these forums.

1) I was polite and said please, that’s rare around these parts
2) Anet acknowledged the issues with CD last linking, that’s why the new system exists
3) After the double-reset my server ended up in T4 anyway, which I guess is okay, it’s a matchup we’ve never had before, which is nice

Thanks, McKenna!

Tim.6450:

Muchacho.2390:

Honestly i would rather run reaper shoud without the reaper traitline then the reaperline without reaper shroud.

Who wouldn’t? The majority of reaper traits are trash.

For almost any build you’re taking one of the traits not because you want it, but because the game yells at you for leaving it blank.

QuickRain.4735:

TBH it doesn’t matter YB will move up and the T2 reject will come down, its not like t3 will improve because of it, but just having them out for a week people would come back, but the massive PPT push yb is doing is pushing SoS and SBI players away if T3 is to stay healthy YB should move up even if its only for a week
otherwise t3 will be 2 darkhaven servers and YB

YB was a T1 server before the last link and, it would be like if you threw Blackgate int T3 and said go to town.

I’m not saying YB is being obnoxious (they’re not, they’re just bored), but that still doesn’t make the matchup worth playing. It’s basically one big k-train as either SoS or SBI reclaims their stuff while YB attacks the other side. As much as I like rank-up chests, that’s not why I play.

Heimlich.3065:

I don’t see how more manual tinkering with Glicko rankings (despite changing server composition & turnout) is supposed to fix the prior round of tinkering with Glicko rankings.

What this highlights is that Glicko is a bad tool for making matches for WvW. It’s not about the values themselves but the entire system is unfit for its use.

Here’s the problem. What we have is Glicko. Anet possesses the tools to adjust matchups using Glicko. They could take action using Glicko today.

A new rating and/or matchmaking system would be nice. The problem there is that if they decided to start work on it today, it would be weeks or months until it’s functional enough to put on live servers. The skirmish system is a step in the right direction for scoring, but does not help matchmaking.

It’s better to focus on what can be done today and worry about what we want to have for that letter we’re going to write to Santa.

Jeknar.6184:

Hesacon.8735:

Last linking CD was adjusted 200-300 points to escape the same types of blowouts in T4, please adjust YB so they can properly be in T2 where they belong.

You just forgot to mention it was done after CD spent 5 WEEKS locked on T4.

When it was T4 locked with a bad matchup, all T3 people were like “no, CD shouldn’t come up, they don’t belong to T3 and blahblahblah.” Now suck it up and have YB for several weeks, like us on T4 had CD before.

There was no glicko adjustment knobs they could turn, they developed those because of the bad T4 matchup. I was relieved when CD moved up, the T3 matchup at that point was stale, it had been the same matchup for months.