Guild Wars 2

nontheless he never died a single time and killed plenty of enemies. jebro is not a necro main so i didnt expect him to do that well.

the only problem i really see right now is the greatsword, looks cool and all but the cooldowns are way too long and the life force regen is 3rd class at most.

dagger > gs for now

reaper looked insanely strong on stream just now, the only concern i had was the life force regen of gs, it was really bad.

tbh i feel like if you wanna focus on reaper shroud you kinda have to run soul reaping to sustain it enough and the might from spite is just insane for dhuumfire, you will basically be putting out constant 3-4 burn stacks that tick for 300 each while your auto attack hits around 2k.

i agree that the weakness in curses is strong, that’s the reason why i’m thinking about running the weakness shout. it’s 6s weakness on 25s cd, not as good but still something and it’s aoe with 4 stacks of might per target hit, some more fuel for blighter’s boon.

PvP is endgame, not PvE, so their focus lying on that game mode is not a wrong decision. but even in PvP necro doesn’t shine, especially not in group utility.

a “difficult mechanic for newbies” is a bad excuse that has been used for a couple of things in the past. as i said, with PvP being endgame there is no reason to cater towards newbies.

healing signet in that case would be around 1k-1,25k. that’s why i said 12-13k hp

the only other ele skills you have to avoid are the ccs IF they are followed by burning speed, so you stunbreak them.

and the other one being fire grab which is a bit harder to avoid.

you do not dodge drake’s breath, you interrupt / block or just cleanse it. if you try to dodge it you wont be able to dodge the full channel and if the ele wants to he can even double drake’s breath you if he stays long enough in fire and you would not be able to dodge it.

it would be very nice if we could have them back maybe in the laurel store for 15-25 laurels and a bit of gold?

a d/d ele at 25% would be 4200, a water dodge and dagger 5 are 4k hp. if you count the 4k from water attunement, regen and water 2 you will be at around 12-13k hp again. idk where you’re taking your numbers from but if you ask me that’s not 100%

if you’re not capable of dodging burning speed then your skill level is not higher than hotjoin and you don’t really have a right to complain.

now on topic: s/f used to be a high risk high reward spec that was able to burst down many builds when waiting for the right moment.

right now it’s not anymore, it’s just a high risk spec that rewards you with not enough damage while every other build in the game can achieve better results.

nearlight.3064:

Jekkt.6045:

the big question for reaper will be how much you will have to spec into life force gain and how many other traits you will have to sacrifice in order to get enough life force.

while greatsword does not have many ways to get life force it is by nature a more defensive weapon than for example dagger imo.

another thing is what role the reaper is supposed to fill (or rather what he will), a duelling build or more of a teamfighter?

this weekend will be a lot of work i guess.. i have a couple of builds in my mind, some traits that i have to test in game to find out what benefits me more.. reaper won’t be the only one i am going to test. reaper, revenant and tempest will all get some long pvp reviews from me..

The GS and RS skills seem generally geared towards teamfights, as are the shouts. I honestly think it’d be better to drop GS for dagger/WH with reaper just because dagger will be way better 1v1 and give more life force and RS should give you enough cleave. Add a staff with soul marks and you’ll be good to go.

it depends how good greatsword will actually be. what will decide for me if gs will be a deal or not is if it can handle the current threats better.

against mesmers? will most likely not make any difference because both are melee and both could cleave then clones down.

against thieves? i feel like gs could be better because if its similar nature to the guadian’s gs with aoe’s and the blind field, pull. on the other hand the auto attack is way too slow to get through the blind field, then again skill 3 seems quite good for that.

another thing is gravedigger, as far as i understood this skill has 0 cooldown as long as you hit a target with less than 50% or in downed state.. this is basically a permanent backstab skill under the perfect circumstances.

another thing is if gs + blighter’s boon + lf when you hit a chilled enemy + heal shout will be enough life force regen or if you have to take other skills or even dagger to make it recharge enough. that’s all stuff i’m gonna test in the beta..

what i currently plan on playing is gs + staff celestial spite soul reaper with dhuumfire, hoelbrak blood strength as i believe that this will be the best allrounder build in terms of damage and survivability.

things i’m not sure about yet are

- close to death vs signets of suffering (more damage vs life force from might due to blighter’s boon)

- decimate defenses (crit chance for vul) vs chilling force (might and life force when hitting a chilled enemy) is the selfsustain high enough without chilling force? is the damage high enough without the crit chance of decimate defenses? should be around 30% with celes

- speed of shadows vs soul marks, movement speed vs life force regen, is chill enough or is the movement speed needed? is the life force regen already high enough or is soul marks needed?

as for the utilities i might run the heal shout, spectral armor, plague signet, you are all weaklings (4 might 6s weakness shout) and plague form if i decide not to run the signet trait. if i decide to run it it will be the healing signet, plague signet, locust and spectral armor with plague form.

and one thing that i’m really looking forward to is: boon stacking pre matchstart will give you life force

let’s just hope that tempests are not allergic to bees, otherwise nerf bees.

the big question for reaper will be how much you will have to spec into life force gain and how many other traits you will have to sacrifice in order to get enough life force.

while greatsword does not have many ways to get life force it is by nature a more defensive weapon than for example dagger imo.

another thing is what role the reaper is supposed to fill (or rather what he will), a duelling build or more of a teamfighter?

this weekend will be a lot of work i guess.. i have a couple of builds in my mind, some traits that i have to test in game to find out what benefits me more.. reaper won’t be the only one i am going to test. reaper, revenant and tempest will all get some long pvp reviews from me..

Ara.4569:

2 ele in every competitive team when there’s 5 spots for 8 professions. Clearly a l2p issue.

sorry but your argument is invalid.

basically all shoutbows and celestial engis have switched to eles so it’s only logical that you have that many now because what else should they play if they want to keep the same role.

and why have they switched? because their builds have been trashed instead of keeping them alive and viable and the same will happen if they trash ele. maybe it’s gonna be 2 necros next or whatever is good enough.

buy the ones you like, if you’re going for meta weapons you’re doing it wrong. i have a legendary scepter on my ele, who cares if it’s meta as long as i like the skin.

this meta is just a continuation of the last one with even more damage and shoutbow/engi replaced by more eles and sometimes necros. there is so much damage in the game now that many bad players get carried by it. if everything hits hard there is no reason anymore to count dodges or bait stunbreaks.

burning as a whole needs rebalancing, it’s not only the ele’s fault.

the sustain on ele is fine, it’s lower than pre patch so i see no problem with it.

the meta as a whole will still not be good when burning damage is adjusted. overall there is way too much damage in the game right now and as long as this doesn’t change the meta can’t be in a healthy spot.

ele is fine appart from burning, burning as a whole is too strong. if you can’t take out an ele in a Xv1 situation then it’s your fault.

and everything else than d/d ele is weak and needs buffs. just because there’s 1 strong build doesn’t mean a class is fine.

scepter = ranged weapon
warhorn = close range weapon

i’d say no. nothing beats focus for scepter when you play dps.

wrote this a while ago

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Suggestion-PvP-Class-Ranks-Longterm-Goal/first#post5272253

blitzkrieg.2451:

Everybody complaining about using skills while stunned, specifically weapon skills like scepterblind and staff #2… Please keep in mind these are not stun breaks. I don’t get to swoop away with ranger greatsword to avoid getting hit when I’m stunned, why should anybody else when CC’d? I’m confused by this logic entirely.

it’s always possible to use instant skills with no casting time when cc’ed…
swoop does have a casting time so obviously you can’t use it.

just use fire grab after drake’s breath. people will wait for burning speed to dodge so they won’t see fire grab coming. the damage is also higher when the target is burning. tbh landing fire grab is easy as long as you don’t do drakes, burning speed, ring, fire grab because at one point they will dodge and that’s when you’ll miss the skill.

as for churning earth, forget that skill exists.

blitzkrieg.2451:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Nothing should hit through evades. The end.

Then I guess get rid of static field , and guardian wall on staff? Hmmmm

Quote: “the broken thing abount taunt is that it switches the target and doesnt even let me switch back so that i could at least use some insta skills to mitigate damage or whatever. taunt is supposed to be the opposite of fear, if i get feared i can do all those things.”

Uhmm you have a target to do things while you’re cc’d , it’s the pet that taunted you. You have a target to do any targetable stun break , this is why they implemented it like that. If they made it to where you had no target at all , it would be absolutely broken. As for instant skills, you can use any instant skill while taunted. It works like any CC skill, that includes stealing the pet , using something like signet of stone, fear shout on warrior, etc.

This post quote basically is this: Translation: “I’m a thief and want to use steal and select the target which also isn’t even a stun break to get out of a burst rotation after eating a taunt” or “I’m a medi guard who wants to use my port ability (when i can still use it on the pet to stun break , HMMM) to get out of a burst rotation for eating a taunt” … If you get hit with a taunt, you pay the consequence as is with any CC effect.

if you opened your eyes you would have seen that i’m an elementalist so i can’t use steal or judges intervention… what i want to use is a scepter blind on the ranger, not on the pet because it’s the ranger that wants to hit me with maul, but because it doesn’t let me switch target this is not possible so i’m forced to waste a stunbreak on a 15s broken cc where i would be able to just blind the next attack when cc’ed by any other skill.

the broken thing abount taunt is that it switches the target and doesnt even let me switch back so that i could at least use some insta skills to mitigate damage or whatever. taunt is supposed to be the opposite of fear, if i get feared i can do all those things.

would anybody else be disappointed if the picture of the backpack was the actual legendary? it would fit as a precursor but not as a legendary imo.

drake’s breath -1s per pulse, the way it was before the update.
cleansing fire 1 burn for 8s instead of 3 for 4s
ring of fire is fine, your problem for running through it, this is a l2p.

instant burns need to be toned down overall in the game, the same with guardian.
or there needs to be a burn cap of 5 per player with a total of 25 because 5×5.

and the uselessness of shatterstone, it’s the most unwanted child of that weaponset.

it’s not about the damage of the auto attacks but rather the speed, it’s clunky and slow so if you wanna proc fresh air because somehow it didn’t proc already it’s extremely bad to have such a long casting time. for condition users nothing would change at all if the dps was still the same.

tbh the condis on scepter are mehish, and higher attack speed + lower duration equals the same damage so i don’t see a problem here.

that’s why you need to bait stunbreaks and dodges on fresh air. it has always been like this, i won’t say this is optimal because other classes/builds don’t have to do that but it’s just how it is.

you can cast dragon tooth to bait a dodge and gale to bait a stunbreak (just that you don’t really have a follow up cc…) and land your pheonix then. or if your gale is up again and their stunbreak has a longer cooldown you can 100-0 them with a full combo. tbh playing berserk ele is the build on which you have to know what your facing very well.
the mobility is not such an enormous issue with the superspeed on air against most classes, just thieves and warriors can be a pain.

tbh what i hoped for with the expansion was en elite specialisation with sword/dagger and stances to have a high mobility evasion/block build. instead we got some strange mix of stuff we already had and aura shouts.

having said this, fixing the stuff that i listed above would already help a bit, to make the time we have to wait for the 2nd expansion less painful…

you already keep the air1 channel up out of air to proc the FA so buffing this would not be the best idea as it already is the best auto attack. i’d rather have the other ones brought to usefulness. another reason why air auto is good is because it hits “aoe”, everybody standing in the electro line gets hit, also if you cast it and they go into stealth.

Atoss.1056:

I’m kinda ok with Dragon Tooth as it is now, useful for siege destruction :P

it is good for unreachable siege destruction. but tbh i’d rather give that up to get a better functional skill overall.

cele necros have no mobility, something that’s very important in this meta and offer the least support out of celestial builds that are considered viable.

ronpierce.2760:

Jekkt.6045:

ele’s sustain is lower than pre patch with fire water arcane… earth water arcane is higher but deals no damage and is rarely played.

One of each is used on one of the competitive teams (Abjured might have even been who ran it). Class gets stacked, and is favored in high tier teams, I don’t know what more you want for obvious proof.

they have been doing this pre patch and post patch… the burn is the culprit right now. for d/d ele not much has changed and just because arenanet ruined shoutbow and celestial engi doesn’t mean that they also have to ruin d/d ele.

guess why people run eles, because there is nothing else to run as bruiser.

people demand d/d ele nerfs so i demand berserk ele buffs. if d/d celestial ele is the best performing build next to shatter mesmer then berserk ele is the worst performing build next to berserk engi.

after the recent balance patch the overall damage of most of the classes went up by a lot, not so for ele because of the nerf to air damage multipliers so the build is actually behind in the damage department.

the defense went up due to the possibility to pick a 3rd traitline but is kind of negated because of the overall higher damage in the game.

many of the scepter skills are lacking, but going melee is not a possibility because you don’t want to get kited as a berserker/marauder and berserk staff is more or less a free kill.

a buff to the following skills would be very nice:

scepter fire auto attack – needs increased speed and less burning duration
scepter fire dragon tooth – needs ground targeting (requesting this for almost 2 years)
scepter water shatterstone – needs to become an aoe chill field
earth scepter auto attack – needs to faster and less bleed duration
dagger earth churning earth – double the damage or half the casting time
focus fire flamewall – increase size
focus water freezing gust – needs a wider casting cone
glyph of elemental harmony – increase healing by ~2k
mist form – cooldown reduction to 60s
arcane shield – cooldown reduction to 60s

tornado – no more transformation. instead it summons a ground target tornado for 10 seconds based on your attunement that deals damage, knocks enemies around and is a combo field based on the attunement you are in while casting. it applies conditions to enemies and boons to allies.
fire -> fire field and burn. might for allies
water -> water field and chill. regen for allies
earth -> possible a smoke field but tricky.. and blind. protection for allies
air -> lightning field and weakness. swiftness for allies.
cooldown increased to 180 from 150.

ele’s sustain is lower than pre patch with fire water arcane… earth water arcane is higher but deals no damage and is rarely played.

it’s burn nerfs, not ele nerfs. ele by itself is fine.
and burn nerfs are also needed for everything else, especially the stupid instant 3 stack burns.

isn’t your cheerleader a banner shout warrior :P?

from today’s patch datamines (thank you that_shaman) the elite specialisation background called “berserker”:

http://i.imgur.com/poeKy9c.png

now what are berserkers? because they actually existed and the background is reflecting their use very well.

Berserkers (or berserks) were Norse warriors who are primarily reported in the Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the English word berserk. Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources.

they were reckless warriors that fought without caring about getting wounds inflicted, their sole purpose was to maw down the enemy fighters. you can clearly see this from the background as he is in a “come at me bro” pose with arrows sticking out of his chest.

sadly, unlike the engi spec background called “forge” that depicts a charr engi with a hammer and drones, the warrior one does not show any weapon.

damage + mantra nerf for mesmer
insta burn nerfs for ele/guard
rampage nerf
overall slight nerf to damage as it’s too high.

that’s my wishlist. guess it will be another month.

it has potential but still needs to grow out of its baby shoes.

“need” is also something that applies to the current ele (in pvp) and it’s really hard to drop one out of arcane water earth and pick tempest over it. tempest has good ideas, if they get polished a bit so that you can really make a fair trade between the current traits and the new ones then it will be fine. same has to be said for warhorn, needs polishing.

in the coming beta weekends i will play tempest and write a review about it, a very detailed one.

now is not the time because it’s neither completed nor was i able to get the feel of actually playing it.

sorry but tempest seems to be solely made for pvp.. it still lacks fine tuning but has the necessary potential.

what people also dont seem to get is that tempest is a cc/support specialisation and not a dps one.

i dont see it being too strong for dps so i guess it will only be used for support.

warhorn has some really strong skills but many of them are also situational, something you don’t want to use off cooldown.

the fire field is kinda underwhelming compared to ring of fire even though its size is impressive but it beats the focus skill at least :P

the shouts are rather mehish, cooldowns too long and/or effects too weak.
the fire shout is lame in what it does but is good because of the cooldown with prot on aura and soldier runes.
the ice shout is bad imo because the cooldown is too long, was it at the same cooldown it would be worth taking.
earth could also be on 25s, i mean it’s really not that strong.

the heal skill is fine, pretty good for pvp and the cooldown is also well chosen as it’s close to the signet’s output but offers that aoe heal.

elite could be 33% instead of 25%
the problem i see right now (for pvp at least) is the weight of the current support build (earth water arcane) vs what tempest has to offer.

what you have to drop and what you gain, that’s the tricky choice.. and i’m not sure if the tempest wins here.

from what i understood from today’s blog is that you will be able to overcharge and still stay in the attunement.

so what you can do is: overcharge and then use your normal rotation.

most likely the overcharge cooldown will be triggered after you use it so while you stay in the attunement to use your skills you will already have 3-5 seconds off the actual cooldown.

so let’s say you overcharge and it goes on a 17s cooldown (-15% from arcana minor) and you stay 3 seconds in the same attunement your actual cooldown will be 14 seconds.

assuming it takes 2s to charge the singularity and you stay at least 3s in it you will have 5s off the first overcharge cooldown.

Shiki.7148:

BlackBeard.2873:

lucadiro.4519:

Maybe can also try to see if on glyph of renewal will be not bad. I mean if u are specced into air and u take the glyph CD reducer and the shout u can ress 3 people every 100sec…

This is the thing I find HILARIOUS. Every other class has elites with effects that are like “OMG, that is so strong, watch out for it!!!”

Ele elites are all like “well maybe if the stars align, it can be ‘not that bad’!”

Necromancer. Our elites are WORSE than yours. And that is saying something. And don’t tell me Lich is strong, no one in their right mind will actually get hit by the slowest autos of all time (you can literally run circles around the lich and not get hit), and the only other useful skill on it is the mark that spawns jagged horrors…and Reaper gets that as an always avaiable shout (if he hiots 5 targets, anyway…).

Also note I’m talking normal Necro elites, Reapers shout is actually quite good although 2 second casttime is BS. In return the Tempests utility and healshouts sound better than Reapers.. And the “gets stronger with each foe hit” mechanic sucks balls. It should be base as if you hit 3 and better if you hit more than 3… anyway, wrong forum to rant, so I’ll stop here.

i would trade ele elites for necro elites in the blink of an eye. and no, reaper shout is trash; if it had a 50s cd with 1s casting time it would be good.

guardian’s quickness shout is on a 24s cd with the trait so i hope we will get a similar cooldown. would be happy with 45 -20% from trait.

arcana minor reduces attunement cooldown by 15% so that should also apply to overcharged attunement cooldowns.

you know, top tier pvp/pve/wvw all use teamspeak.. and even then you can use it on something like water overcharge…

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Wow. I expected almost nothing and I’m still disappointed. Those shouts don’t even TRY to compete with cantrips, so they will see absolutely no use in pvp and wvw. There’s no way the heal shout will be better than healing signet, and the elite seems extremely underwhelming. So all new skills already suck
Then the overloading. While a neat mechanic and fluffy, 2.5-5(!) seconds channel time means you will NEVER get it off in pvp. Never. And there’s a trait that gives protection while overloading? LOL? We’ need like 10 stacks of stability to finish that channel. Mantra of Distraction says hi.
Also, if you get interrupted while overloading EVERYTHING gets put on cooldown? LOL again? On top of the channeled attunment going on a 20 second cooldown? Are they serious?
The very few previewed warhorn skills sound kinda nice, but I don’t think it’s gonna replace focus for defense or dagger for all around (especially movement) awesomeness.
AND you need to have the elite spec traited to even use the warhorn meaning there’s probably not gonna be a single tempest spec in pvp…

believe what you want but tempest will be op in pvp, it’s basically a d/d ele + a shoutbow.

depending on shout traits you will already take them for soldier runes to drop water or arcane. the support on this build will be insane and if the cc is as good as karl said then tempest will cause havoc in teamfights.

afaik the overcharge that pulses protection is the earth one, the same one that gives you a break bar so interrupts won’t be a problem. interrupts in general have always put the skill on cooldown.. so that’s nothing now and the elite shout is insanely strong when you combine it with other elites.

120s rampage combined with this is 90s cooldown. if you use your overcharge it will only be on a 15s cooldown or less depending on the arcana minor.

i won’t say that i’m happy with what we got because it just builds on what we already have instead of giving the class what it actually needed but i cannot deny that all of it has the potential to be very strong.

PlatinumMember.5274:

oZii.2864:

http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/guild-wars-2/guild-wars-2-tempest-revealed

An exception to this is Earth attunement, in which you’re given a break-bar that will eat a few control-skills before you’re interrupted.

Eye of the Storm! – The tempest will call the storm down on nearby allies and himself, breaking stun on anyone affected while granting superspeed.

At least draw a reference on how the devs work instead of oh mantra of distraction

We also don’t know all the traits they could easily make a trait that grants 1 stack of stability for 3-5 seconds when you use a shout and make it a grandmaster.

We already have a trait that gives us stab every 8 sec if we want to attune to earth that often. Necro can get stab every 8-10 seconds.

It is entirely possible the tempest trait line will have something similar. You know how a mesmer gets no stab but can trait a gm trait and get it every 15 sec.

This is really a weak assumption

Jekkt.6045:

shoutwar ran banner for so long… key is positioning, use your brain and avoid getting interrupted. or use rock solid.

That stability requires you to take earth. So you are going to switch to earth get a 2 second stability so you can use a 2.75 to 5 second channeling, bloody brilliant. I cannot believe I failed to see the brilliance of that combination. I guess the class mechanic has been fixed, go home.

I feel like both of you two are not thinking at all.

yeah you really fail to see the brilliance.

lordhelmos.7623:

Just as an FYI for people spewing Rock solid, I’m sure the description of the tempest said you needed to stay in an attunement for a period before being able to overcharge. If this is the case rock solid would be about as useful as a water pistol in an swat team raid

ele was always able to precast a skill and then switch attunement. i don’t think this will be different for tempest.

shoutwar ran banner for so long… key is positioning, use your brain and avoid getting interrupted. or use rock solid.

what the showcased traits and soldier runes allow for is to drop water or arcana, build diversity here we come.

worst meta ever, not because it’s fast or bursty or whatever you think but because bad players get carried way too much by builds, passives and some op skills now.