Guild Wars 2

“let the meta settle” nothing should be “fixed” or “nerfed” right off the start. all they have to do is fix bugs.

i’m not sure if sigils count as a crit, if so, remove the ability to crit on them which should bring the damage down. otherwise nerf it by 30%.

Sigmoid.7082:

Jekkt.6045:

not by itself no, but i feel like i get more from spite (which would be the only one i would think of switching out). especially because it’s quite handy to use before scepter 3.

Its the only one with an aoe. With the trait its very powerful for removal and healing. The radius increase to 600 means its far more likely to hit % targets now aswell. Maybeon a condi build you would get more from spite but you wont bnefi from the power opposed to the increased move speed allowing you to get around faster, especially with your lack of horn. May be beneficial to try it out.

gonna try various things anyway also with different comps as that’s also an important factor.

not by itself no, but i feel like i get more from spite (which would be the only one i would think of switching out). especially because it’s quite handy to use before scepter 3.

afaik the trait is +10% damage against foes with vulnerability in general. it’s only on the axe trait because axe auto applies it with every hit.

good to see that i’m not the only one seeing theoretical potential in this build^^

@zin
the reason i took contagion over the weakness was for self sustain. even of the weakness is nice, a dead necro doesn’t support anybody.

i’m still not too sure about the focus, on paper it is the best synergizing weapon for the build but i can’t tell how effective it will be in practice.

what do you mean with signet of the locust? the signet in general or is there a trait that i didn’t see that procs it? the reason i didn’t take locust in my utility choice is because i felt like the other signets were stronger in comparison.

would still be happy about some feedback, especially now after the ready up.

now that vigour is 50% you don’t even need renewing stamina because the scepter trait is a perm 50% increase.

Dolores.5471:

Jekkt.6045:

condi ele was never viable and won’t be.. what condi ele was is a cheesy 1v1 spec that doesn’t help your team at all. d/d isn’t the strongest 1v1 spec in the game but the best in terms of support, cc and damage, that’s why it’s meta.

You seem to be confusing builds with weapon types, you can run condi builds with any weapons of our class, including d/d.. and some of them offer as much team support as their power counterparts do.

no i’m not confusing anything. carrion condition doesnt give you enough heal to support allies and you will drop too fast in teamfights, rabid and shaman are even worse because of the 12k hp you will have with them after the patch and the damage output is crap.

condi ele was never viable and won’t be.. what condi ele was is a cheesy 1v1 spec that doesn’t help your team at all. d/d isn’t the strongest 1v1 spec in the game but the best in terms of support, cc and damage, that’s why it’s meta.

i’m just wondering if it was a good idea with the new power creep damage some classes get.

it’s not only about mobility of the sword but also if it can block or evade or offer any sort of damage mitigation or avoidance.

after going through the necro changes several times, theorycrafting and reading about the new “necro jesus trait” i started putting a build together for pvp.

some clarification first: i have my fair share of experience on all of my classes, including necromancer on which i have 500 games, but i would not call myself, obviously, a skilled necro. that’s the reason why i’m posting this here to discuss and get advice.

role

the role of this build will be to deal condi damage, to corrupt, apply vulnerability to increase the damage of the team, soft ccing with chill and to support allies.

gear

the amulet that will be used here is rabid because siphons don’t scale too well with only healing power so settler is not enough increase in healing for the loss in damage. rabid is prefered because of on crit procs, works with carrion aswell but not as good.

the build will run with staff + scepter/focus with energy/ice on staff and geo/energy on scepter/focus. instead of ice you could also take hydro. the reason why i took chilling sigils instead of frailty is because with frailty you can more or less stack up to 3 stacks, you can do the same with ice and get the 3 vulnerability stacks from the trait.

why focus and not dagger? focus is perfect for applying vulnerability and chill and removes conditions so it’s the perfect choice for this build. you will already have enough condi cleanses from traits and signets so dagger is not needed. having said that, nothing is final and if dagger proves to be the better choice it would obviously take focus’ place.

as for the runes i’m torn between undead and scavenging. undead providing more toughness and condi damage, scavenging more vitality and lifeleech (hopefully this will work through shroud too).

skills

the healing skill will be consume conditions (and hopefully they will remove the corruption category from this one).

the utility skills can be filled with 3 signets or 2 signets and spectral walk, armor or flesh wurm.

as for the signets i would use plague – cd down to 30 with the patch and your 2nd condi cleanse, undeath – for jesus, and spite because everybody loves it.

your elite will be plague for the safe stomp it provides and the survivability on demand.

traits

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB1AKoBPw~

spite

adept: chill inflicts 3 vulnerability for 8s
master: spinal shiver at 50% enemy hp.
gm: signets -20% cooldown, 3x might for 15s, corrupting 2 boons.

i think for this traitline my picks should be pretty comprehensible, they have a good synergy and signets are kind of the core of this build. chills inflict vul which is good for you and your team because it gives you more damage and a cover condi.

curses

adept: if you have 3 condis your next crit casts plague signet
master: shroud 2 corrupts 2 boons and chills
gm: heal 10% of your condi damage

adept was pretty clear for me, a free corrupt, transfer and 3x might on a 24s cooldown.
the master trait was a bit more difficult and i decided to go with more corrupts and chills instead of terror because i don’t have the +50% fear trait from soul reaping.

the grandmaster was most likely the most difficult one and i went for more survivability there, lingering would have been my 2nd pick because 100% condi duration is crazy. when i test this on the 23rd and i feel like the heal is negligible i will switch to lingering instead.

blood magic

adept: 4 stacks of bleed on enemy casts minor vampirism signet
master: you and allies siphon health with every hit
gm: shroud4 heals, downed players ported to you

adept because of the signet trait again, 28s cd life leech and heal is not that bad.
master for the team support and because it’s better than its 2 rivals
transfusion because it’s op and the main jesus trait in the build

commenting traitline choices

i did not go into minor traits much but they are very decent in those 3 lines

i would have loved to have dhuumfire master of terror and terror but sadly it was not possible to have everything so i decided to go with the lines that i picked because i felt like they have the best synergy for the role that i want to fulfull with this build.

death magic’s gm trait that heals in shroud and other traits from soul reaping will be missed but sacrifices had to be made.

negatives

the damage is lower than the one of a full condi necro and the usual necro problems of lack of stability and mobility remain but you can at least provide a useful support for your team.

feel free to comment and share your view about the build and give me feedback.
nothing is set in stone

from the builds/classes you listed the most viable would be double ranged shatter mesmers. the build is even getting very solid buffs in a week so there’s nothing wrong with picking that one. you will have your difficulties against thieves but other than that mesmer has quite good matchups, counters being heavy condis and thieves.

elite specs and revenant are expansion only, stronghold is free. that’s a normal thing for expansions, new classes are never free and were not in gw1 either.

they should either nerf withdraw aswell or remove the skill category. fyi ether renewal is on a 18s cd (from 15 before) now so it would only be fair if everything gets the same treatment. same for consume condis.

focus will not surpass dagger for the sole reason of ride the lightning and cleansing wave (which is even better because of the unnerf). dagger fire skills offer more damage, d/f ele lacks damage, but earth on dagger is meh.

leaving weapon choice aside, and i do personally like focus, d/d ele is by far going to be the most op pvp spec. even with a nerf to celestial the build will see an increase in power stats, in toughness, condi, precision, ferocity while getting less hp (1600), less healing power (160) but getting 15% outgoing healing and cleansing wave unnerf, 20% less boon duration but 15% faster attunement recharges.

on top of that d/d ele gets stone heart, the 10% damage reduction minor, rock solid, probably 100% protection uptime and a 33% retaliation uptime from elemental contingency.

Jski.6180:

littlenana.8150:

Guys…it is a horrible, terribad, useless buff.

Now lets talk about how awesome, great, fantastic that they get rid of Fire Embrace.

(last thing you wanna do is to praise the goodness of a trait or post a build based on it)

Fire Embrace we will miss u!

By all 30 of you in all of gw2!

Its a major buff effectively you have 4 air atuments on-top of having a base 10 sec cd on atuments with the ability to push it down to 8.5 sec. Its more then d/d though or s/other staff can get use out of the new fresh air due to its persisting dmg effects images dropping a metor and jumping to air each time you get a crit. Soon staff ele is going to be able to gank in wvw or even spvp. As for pve the dmg out put should be all the higher.

come and gank me with your 3/4 casting times on staff… berserk staff ele will never be viable in conquest and this won’t change with the fresh air change either.

how is apm going up if we still have the same amount of skills and cooldowns and the gameplay is staying the same just with the addition of some more on-hit traits…?

it’s not like ele is getting weaponswap

you’re better off buying the wildstar humblebundle package for 1$ and get the 30 days for free, play them and later the game will become f2p, enjoy it until HoT gets released.

to make it fair, give everybody who bought his main game that he / she is gonna upgrade with the hot expansion a free character slot. i pre ordered the core game at the full price almost 3 years ago so it would only be fair to give me a character slot (the core game is 10$, char slot is 10$) because i can’t bite anything off that “core game included in hot expansion”.

fresh air has never beaten mesmer to begin with because of the utilities, the hp pool and the range of the weapons..

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Jekkt.6045:

rangers and necros still bottomfeeders

Necros maybe, Rangers nah. Maybe Reaper will bring them up to par, and still have to see how the condi changes affect them.

then tell me what is the benefit of having a ranger (with the new changes) in your team?

thief war mes ele will stay the same

dps guard might change slightly

engi will change

rangers and necros still bottomfeeders

^so no, not much will change, probably.

no it’s not viable.
doesnt add anything for your team, needs constant babysit and gets overshadowed by other dps that achieve more with investing less.

please, how can you forget churning earth?

another possibility is gadgeteer, an overcharged version of med kit drop that also halves the cooldown (to 30).

basically the same outcome but you get the overcharge added which could be something like some condi cleanse drops or fury, or just more bandages.

they better tune all numbers on amulets, how do you wanna play a 11600 hp cleric staff ele without 3k from water line….

with all the power creep it’s time to introduce nomad zealot dire and sinister, won’t make a big difference anymore anyway.

and because we all know how good one trick ponies are it would be totally viable to just sit in air for 3-5s after wasting all your attunement cooldowns….

why would you even do that, rushing through all attunements without using the skills and just going for air all the time. it leaves you with all attunements on cooldown and you sitting on air.

what i say is that it’s not as crazy good as some people or karl might think.

if you think it is then take it, i think it’s not so i’ll take what i want.

you’re right, it can’t. same for healing signet. it takes longer to recover from big chunks of damage. the 4k heal won’t make the difference in most of the cases.

if you get bursted the difference will be the following:

4k mighty blow
3k shadow shot
6k shatter

you heal 4k

vs

protection and stone heart

1500 mighty blow
1000 shadow shot
2500 shatter
no sigil procs which is another ~5k

you could even just take mortar for lyssa runes to get the 5 condi convert every 45 seconds assuming it works like med kit with lyssa runes.

problem with dagger focus is, you don’t really want to go in melee range with 1800 armor and 14k hp.

celestial engi won’t be meta anymore. maybe we’ll see a valkyre or knight variation.

the change to fresh air removed the icd of the skill that used to be 5 seconds.

on first thought this might sound interesting but it is not that great after all.

what will it do? it will allow you to proc air strike on attune and superspeed more often, but what will you lose?

it will encourage you to skip through your other attunements, putting them on cooldown just to switch to air again. the problem is, if you do this without calculating in your air cooldowns you will be a sitting duck, getting that strike and superspeed but not having any skills left if you wasted them before. normally those 5 seconds of icd would were enough to use necessary skills on other attunements and it was also enough to recharge your lightning strike on scepter.

it is a very situational “buff” and if used wrong it can be your certain death. if used right you can make use of instant blinds and movement when needed

it also won’t make up for the loss of the air damage modifiers.

the 4k heal of the signet won’t keep you alive if you get bursted so i would take stone heart over written in stone very time.

the only situation in which written in stone is actually better is against other celestial classes but then again those fights are endless and it won’t make a difference.

well it would need reducing from 350hp or how much it is down to around 230.

the icd is not such a problem because it prevents siphon burst and heal burst but the problem is the 6 seconds it lasts. you can make use of 5 stacks and that’s it, the other 20 are usually wasted.

the activation time is ridiculous, it needs to be 3/4 and the cooldown reduced to 30s. if they nerf consume conditions they should at least provide a viable alternative. and the shout heal is also crap.

why is this not a thing.. this would turn an actual trash heal skill into something more useful now that consume condition has been nerfed.

the active is crap, casting and cooldown are way too long. it’s nice that it works in shroud now but why only the active? cmon robert

and increase the duration of the effect. 6 seconds is just lol. make it at least 30s.

even if you have to tone down the passive heal it will still be better than it is now.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I was a bit confused by flash shell as well. It looks like all it does is form a light field with no additional effect? Why would I want to do that?

I don’t know that the tool tips can really be considered that accurate. It was in the PvP lobby, and we have no idea what amulet stats he had equipped, if any. Could’ve been magi stats for all we know.

I think it could have potential for WvW or PvE. Dunno about sPvP though.

light field + projectile finisher = condi cleanse. mortar auto is a 100% projectile finisher so you get like an insane amount of cleansing out of it… yes cleansing, something that engi doesn’t have access to too much.

cleansing wave will get unnerfed so there will be a bit more healing already, (around 500 i guess) so the signet heal is not really needed. stone heart negates bursts and shuts down crit procs.
prot + earth gm minor + stone heart = goodbye burst.

it’s actually a good change to boon removal and corruption. usually stability is on low priority, now it’s on an equal chance with the other boons.

fire is still crap, just blinding ashes is good.

disappointed with skill changes too, dragon’s tooth still not ground target.
rtl still 40s
shatterstone still useless

fresh air will be nice when you really need air but if you fail at timing your swaps you will be sitting in air with all attunements on cooldown. while it sounds nice it’s actually not that great.

was thinking about the focus skills a but… tbh i was never really disappointed by them.. i guess i just accepted them for what they are. so i thought about what vould be changed because i do understand what other players dislike about them.

freezing gust could be turned into a cone skill, like necro’s warhorn interrupt that aoe chills 5 enemies (bypassing the aoe limit like maul) and chilling them for 5 seconds, leaving the cooldown on 25. the damage.. well it’s not a damage skill so i guess that would be fine.

comet, the problem of this skill is the delay and that it doesn’t hit a target when they use a movement skill. remove the delay and/or speed the whole skill up, maybe make the affected landing spot an aoe daze.

flame barrier could be made bigger, the size of the revenant fire field.

fire aura.. tbh.. no idea.. maybe just fix the condi duration..?

Laraley.7695:

Jekkt.6045:

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

I can’t agree with the fact focus is fine. Fire shield and freezing gust are close to being useless. Fire shield is on freaking 40 sec cd and all you get is fire aura, how is that good lol? Freezing gust is a 3 sec of chill on 25 second cooldown and the damage is not super awesome either. Focus has some great skills, but some should really be revamped.

freezing gust is an amazing skill to kite players with chill, no idea why people don’t appreciate this skill. fire aura is well.. an aura skill.. sadly the worst one of them all but not too bad if you run elemental shielding and it also provides a -20% condi duration.

i don’t think they will ever change flame shield to something else so my guess is focus will just stay the way it is.

it’s pretty perfect for focus and the ranged combat. the only attunement that can be a bit weak is fire.. flame barrier can be used under dragon’s tooth to give yourself might. many enemies will dodge dragon’s tooth anyway so it’s just to waste their dodges and give you might. least utility and not offensive at all sadly.

water is nice for poking and kiting and interrupting banners or smoke field leaps.

air is perfect

earth is perfect

Xillllix.3485:

Jekkt.6045:

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

Air is getting nerfed to the ground, so Scepter is not getting a buff at all.

scepter is scepter, air is air. damage gets traded for utility, wether that’s good or not is something we’ll soon see.

focus doesn’t need a buff. focus is like the best ele weapon in the game lol.

on topic: i just hope that if some changes would be bad that we can complain about them again and give feedback so that they take enough time to read that before they release it.

don’t think d/d will be nerfed (if they get elem attune right). scepter buffs are always welcome. glyphs will be eternal trash and i also don’t believe in tornado buffs.

in theory it works but in practice it doesn’t. especially not with the low amount of pvp players currently.