Guild Wars 2

Jski.6180:

That true if each player did not have there own set of heals evades and def tools. That 4:1 ratio is not reflective on how things work out.

Which precisely why out of a zerg of 40 people none of them be +Healing based since the start of the game. Back line can largely avoid the bulk of the bomb damage and their self heals and a modicum amount of tank is enough to survive on through. Meanwhile front line can survive entirely through targeted water fields (Elementalist) and through refreshes after an engagement (blast finishers). Unless they reduce the base amount healed on a blast finisher and vastly increase the amount from +Healing there will never be a point where taking +Healing based players is preferred over damage.

The classic example is the D/D ele in GvG or Zerg groups. It’s fallen completely out of the meta at this point. Even then it’s vastly superior to D/W Tempest because it actually brought damage, blast finishers and and strong boon support. D/W Healing Tempest on the other hand offers a modicum more healing (couple 100 in a game with 20k HP frontline average) from the base for a massive reduction in damage (zero crit) because it has to give up all damage in order to slot enough HP/Tough and Healing Power.

Again I’m not knocking the idea of a Tempest healer for parts of the game where it might be viable like raid encounters that are designed to require it…but WvW is not a place where it’ll see much use.

Honestly the sources of healing for Elementalist were never bad. There’s plenty to be had with Staff in fact.

The main problem has been and always will be that there’s always vastly more individuals dealing damage than there are healing. Lets say, for the sake of argument, you had a healing version of Lava Font. You, at best, negate one source of damage. But when there’s 4 people damaging for each source of healing (and that’s a very generous 4:1 ratio) the 1 can’t possibly hope to keep up. It’s like you’re spitting on a raging house fire hoping to put the flames out. It’s been tried to death in WvW and just doesn’t work.

The only way I see healing becoming a thing is if they either vastly increase the output of healing to be on par with DPS or for some kind of raid encounter with HOT.

Swiftwynd.1685:

I think you are seriously underestimating the healing potential of a full cleric’s staff ele.

Allow me to direct you to my post on tempest healing:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Maximum-Healing-Potential-Tempest-BWE-3/first#post5510323

Staff healing is already almost as potent already, we’re just missing some of the good healing tools of the Tempest.

With JUST Soothing Mist, while traited, you’re healing allies for 750+ per second. Water staff 1 is easily over 1,200 per second. Geyser is worth what two blast finishers alone would do, and you can blast it as well. AND regeneration certainly adds up over time as well, though in WVW you need more instant healing than over time generally I suppose. That said, tossing down Geyser + spamming Water 1 will out heal any blast finisher spamming player, and this will especially be true once we have “Rebound” “Wash the Pain Away” and Overload: Water in the mix.

You heal 5 people for 750 per second. Enemy is 40 people deep at least 25 of which are all AOE bombing for multi thousands of damage per second. No amount of healing will let you sit in damage let alone mitigate damage because there’s simply vastly more damage than there will ever be healing.

This is why WvW follows the “engage -> refresh” model. Because you engage (aka: “bomb”) the enemy and then pull back to refresh by dumping water fields that Guardians and Warriors blast as well as blast as they engage (such as guardians using Hammer 2). Healing 5 extra people in here for a couple hundred more is redundant and wasteful when refreshing 10-15 people. I suggest watching any number of top tier WvW videos on youtube to show how this works or any number of GvG videos as well.

Edit: Tempest is bad. Leaving it at that. Without serious reworks it will have no place in the meta as the base Elementalist is superior in every way.

I got one key to drop in WvW the other night on Reset. Second key drop ever since release.

Not a fan. This restriction should be on F2P accounts only.

I would still like to see this ability be changed to remove the Stability per Pulse and add a flat stack of 3 stability AOE for 5 seconds upon casting. The way the road builds and then it’s active is very clunky and I’ve actually been CC’d out of the road area before it even builds/activates and another scenario the 5 target cap actually excluded me from my own skill.

There is really no sweet spot between the two. Celestial gives you healing power which is 100% wasted on a Staff support build. I know that doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but it’s your Guardians/Warriors who will be blasting Water fields for heals and not the fields themselves that do the healing. It also gives you Condition damage which is largely wasted by a power based weapon. Sure your Burn will burn for a bit more but otherwise it’s really points better spent in Power.

That said Celestial stats aren’t going crack the sky open and unleash the four horseman of the apocalypse down upon you.. 100% Celestial with a Berserker Staff still gives you reasonable stat spread all around even with points wasted (mostly because it gives you more over all stats as an armor type). Yea you end up with -300 power where you could be, but a lot of that is moved into Vitality in addition to still getting that additional 500+ Condi/Healing.

Unless you really planning on taking it super hardcore with some Guild vs Guild group who is all super extreme time I wouldn’t worry about it and just play D/D stats with a Staff when you group up with a zerg. Even then if you do join one of those guilds, they will tell you exactly what they expect out of you.

DeceiverX.8361:

I wouldn’t care if there was a reasonable way of getting scraps that didn’t involve farming 30-50 of these things per effective ticket.

I’m not spending money on keys again. I’ve done so a few times, and I’ve also farmed them a few times for skins I particularly liked and/or saw massive resale potential in.

I’d buy scraps, but sorry, not buying keys. If the drop rate was what it was like at launch (I got a few in a week), then I can see this being fine as key farming via repeating the 10 PS is a stupid concept.

Hell, I might as well just stop buying gems if this is the nature of the game we’re seeing.

This is the nature of the game as it’s been since release. First halloween was first debacle and I bought 50 keys and didn’t get a single skin. It would have been far more efficient for me to take those same gems, and just buy my kitten skin.

Now that’s how I see it. 100g is around 600 gems (it floats). Most new skins when they come out are 80-100g. So when new skins come out I can basically straight up buy the skins I want for X gems. Really it’s the same with anything. Permanent Bank Access is 1000g? That’s 6000 gems. Is it worth it? Up to you. Most people it won’t be. But the keys are just an awful deal and not worth going through. Let some other sucker deal with that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The reset for the level 10 key is the same as the guild missions and gold cap reset. It’s Saturday (in the US) when the game resets. I did my key run after the last reset and got my key.

For me in the US the weekly reset is in about 9 hours from now, not on Saturday. That’s when all the guild missions and everything resets. Considering when this was implemented, Tuesday, this weekly reset hasn’t occurred yet so I’m unclear how you can be 100% sure when this event hasn’t happened since patch time yet.

Don’t take me wrong, I’m pretty sure it’ll be tonight as well, but we can’t know for 100% sure until weekly reset tonight.

rhapsody.3615:

I didn’t want to go back through 12 pages to be sure no one else mentioned it- I decided to level a new ele. I got a key for level 10 yesterday and for level 40 today. If I have a character without level 40 story done, I will try to get it done this week to be sure only level 10 is impacted.

Success! I got a key for level 40 story on two different characters today.

The only impacted key is the Chapter 1 Key. The Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 keys are not impacted and can be gained as many times as you want in a week.

The big question is if it resets tonight or if it individually tracks when you got your key. I have a throw away account I’ll be testing with tonight that’s at the final part.

CORuin can’t hit oil pots unless you are up top. Neither can Phase Smash, but it will give you the target to do it (but you’ll leap against the base of the wall/door). Auto Attack can hit as well Drop the Hammer can as well (and stun the operator).

There’s actually a lot of various rules for Hammer when below/above targets and generally speaking the above covers all rules.

And yes, because of our natural high armor and medium health pool we can largely afford to go mostly offensive to the point being very similar to a PvE build. I’m still working out how to minimize my over all gear foot print (not a fan of having tons of different armor sets for different things).

So originally my back line build largely revolved around Mallyx and Corruption mostly revolving around area denial back line with Displacement from Unyielding Anguish. Unfortunately that’s been largely scrapped at this stage. From that point we basically have two ways forward for WvW.

First is to just use the Front Line oriented build above with a back line play style. For example since we’re on the back line we don’t need as much Armor. With that in mind we can simply swap in some Berserker/Valkyrie (because we don’t need crit with +40% crit with Perma Fury) Accessories and we end up with a build looking like this. If you were going to run this full time and had no aspirations for front line, you could probably swap out the Hoelbrak Runes for Rage runes instead or something else. You’d still use Gaze for stun break or swap to Jalis if really locked down. Warning now that Infuse Light is pretty lack luster on the back line because it doesn’t get near as much bomb damage (which makes it shine) when played properly.

Second is you can go for a much more selfish/dps oriented build. I call it selfish because you don’t really offer that much to your team with this build and it’s more designed to maximize damage and self survivability by staying in Shiro a lot. It can dish out tremendous damage, and I’ve seen CORuin up to 9k hit plus a 2k follow up with Enchanted Daggers. In the new BWE3 Devastation we’d take Malicious Reprisal and still keep Assassin’s Presence. This is because when you fight you’re going to see a lot of blocks due to passive benefits of Guardians. Use Riposting Shadows and Impossible Odds to stay mobile. At 235% crit damage (Presence) plus 12% damage with Fury on it’s going to hit like a truck. Jalis is there mostly as a swap for stun break (swap → Rite is 2 stun breaks) when you need to stun break and keep going forward rather than retreat with Riposting.

A lot of back line is mastering CORuin. I’m still working on this. There’s a lot of nuances to CORuin with hills and distance traveled. For one it’s only about 1000 range, not 1200. This is because the animation goes further than the hits register so you can look like you hit but you won’t. If you are on an incline, it will go up and over the incline. If you’re below an incline it will stop when going up after 1 tick. If you are above an incline it will stop usually on the incline as well. De-Targeting players is huge with CORuin as it turns it into a dumbfire Shot gun. Knowing when to target a player and when to not have a target is huge for proper usage (getting most hits in).

No. While the cast times, previously, were an issue (take X seconds to move the thing, Y seconds to cast ability) the main issues remain.

As a front line Revenant you are forced to have a big bursty heal ready to go and you can see many cases where if I didn’t have Infuse Light ready to go I’d just straight up be dead. All of Ventari healing is sustained healing with many tiny (1000 here, 1000 there) heals and heal pick ups (good luck finding a healing globe under a pile of AOE indicators).

The main issue continues to be a lack of stunbreak or stability. Back line pressure is very real and you have to have a way to manage that. Other Legends, such as Shiro or Jalis, are great at this but all your Ventari benefits disappear soon as you switch to them. Compare this to an Elementalist who retains Water staff abilities yet still have strong access to triple Cantrip for defense. All it takes is a single forward Static Field (Lightning Flash → Static Field on backline) and you’re pretty much done because your only options are swap out of Ventari, thus not using it, or stay there and get ran over. That scenario was incredibly common during BWE testing.

In fact the changes indicate that it’s less likely to be addressed. By decreasing cast times, cool downs and energy costs it makes it highly unlikely there will be a stun break component added. WvW balance is always considered dead last in developer decisions and at this point you just learn to expect it. A great example is the stability stranglehold that Guardians have and continue to have over WvW groups. They remain the only source of “good” stability (aoe, 3-5 stacks, 3-5s duration, 25-35s cool down) and continue to introduce abilities that grant a single stack of stability on ridiculous duration of 1-3 seconds.

Ventari will most likely be regulated to environments where personal survivability is less important such as certain PvE encounters.

Booxos.8715:

Kodiak, would You be so kind and give me a link to that?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/WvW-Herald-Front-Line-Feedback/first#post5473418

Has both vids.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQJAWin3gWNSuQrJRboBlsP0fS4I6QJ4EdrklZlh9lb2RNgEewO6r/G-T1CEABLqSQUKpcSZQcPAgEV3pLlgSpUpNdBAcEAe4SAEz+DkBgZMA-w

That’s the final build I’ll be using with BWE3. Few changes from the original. For one I’m using Hammer/Staff because the Mace/OH combo just wasn’t very good for WvW combos and left you impotent in range situations. Shield was exceptionally useless. The Hammer also works better on front line in ranged scenarios because of projectile absorb as well as the ability to pop Necro marks with Phase Smash with no negative effects (since it’s an evade). CORuin acts like a shotgun blast as well.

Has great team support with Glint. The combos I figured out by the end of testing BWE2 were Nature/Light/Elements when running. Upon ready for engagement I drop Elements, charge Darkness. At engagement I use One with Nature (all boons) reducing me down to -3 upkeep which is manageable for combat. This only after Stability however as one of the biggest advantages we bring is that +50% boon duration to Guardian Stability. Use Burst of Strength and Chaos Release when in melee range of enemy for additional damage (double tap). PvDoor use Strength for might stacks.

Jalis adds a lot of toughness. In addition to a really strong heal, -50% damage taken for your party is big in addition to being a stun breaker on a reasonable cast time now. With Enhanced Bulwark Inspiring Reinforcements is once again usable as a multi-function tool providing damage, stability and weakness. You can see in at least once scenario I even flip on Vengeful Hammers for the -20% damage taken.

Pretty easy to swap to the DPS version. Basically just swap out Herald -> Devastation, Glint -> Shiro. Knight Jewelry -> Berserker Jewelry. Boom, done. Or keep Herald/Glint and just play back a bit with more DPS jewelry in. Works great.

Oh I think Revenant is great for WvW. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be making one as a primary WvW player. I think there’s a difference however between “Revenant in WvW” and “Revenant Healer be in WvW Meta.”

As I showed in my videos and review of BWE2 a strong Herald/Retri/Invo with Glint/Jalis is super strong for WvW front line support and does fairly decently in back line as well. In my experiences you usually want a legend with a real heal (IE: Jalis or Malyx) and combine it with a lighter heal (Shiro, Glint, Ventari) as it’s more reliable survivability. In fact BWE1 I had a lot of success for personal DPS with Shiro/Jalis being able to crank out some massive numbers on Deva/Invo/Retri with crazy high Crit damage and they increased it since then. I also had a lot of success with Malyx/Shiro but the CC aspect of that no longer exists (Displacement) so that’s a less appealing combination now.

Kain Francois.4328:

coax.2951:

No, it’s too powerful in its current form. You can stack crazy amounts of low duration boons (e.g. quickness/resistance) for your party in seconds. It’s crazy OP currently.

Make up your minds, community. Either Tempest is bad, or it’s very good. Augh. -.-

Heat Sync is like the diamond in the rough. It’s really the only decent reason to take Warhorn. The problem is if they nerf it to only share Might, then taking Warhorn is largely pointless. If we wanted to share/generate Might, we already do so with /F or /D in our off hands and with Fury with Persisting Flames.

Tempest, as a whole, is bad. The Auramancer style play they are pushing as lackluster and inferior to the base Elementalist play styles already established.

No. WvW revolves around 2 core concepts: Mobility and AOE.

Mobility, beyond simple things like Swiftness, also includes how mobile you are capable of being. That includes concepts like stun breaks as well as Stability to prevent a loss of mobility. Front line characters typically require the largest amount of mobility and generally require leaps and the like to keep mobile where as back line characters have a little bit more time to position themselves properly. Ventari has virtually no mobility to it as a line nor does it facilitate mobility as a legend. In fact due to the micro management of the Tablet, some of your mobility will likely be lost while micro managing as you may need your effects at X but have to travel the tablet from Y. Compare this to a straight Elementalist camping Water who can simply place the fields as desired. The worst is a lack of stun break/stability which means in order to get these effects you are forced out of Ventari which immediately ceases all benefits from being in Ventari for 10 seconds. Many times during trying Ventari in WvW I’d simply get caught in CC and ran over because of this.

AOE is a different concept in WvW. For one you’re almost always dealing with over target cap. For two the amount of offensive AOE will always outpace the amount of defensive healing. This creates a sort of “engage → refresh” style of play where people engage, then group up to refresh after and heal up using water fields, blasts, and heals. Look at Natural Harmony, pretty great healing right? Except lets say even if you stacked maximum healing and you get it up to a 4k heal that’s nothing. My Elementalist’s Lava Font on a nothing cool down will tick that much damage. Let alone Necromancer Wells and all the other various sources of stacked AOE damage in WvW. This leads back to Mobility being the only real viable way to deal with this kind of burst, namely being able to avoid it entirely by getting out of the AOE.

Does this mean you can’t find any use for it? No. You can probably find some scenario where some part shined but on a whole it will be lackluster and definitely not meta. I’m sure someone, somewhere will go on about projectile block in a choke but it’ll be a far cry from meta. More realistically it was introduced to help raid healing, such as healing 1 tanky character who has to sit in an area and tank something.

Linfang.1087:

Is anyone going to instant level 80 via scroll/tomes and then do the personal story to amount additional exp after level 80 to put towards a mastery track? I was under the impression Tomes of Knowledge would work giving you exp after 80 but I believe that is not the case. I have 85 tomes, also I have like 20 tomes that can only be used by characters under level 80 I think this was a personal story reward at the end. All I know is they do not stack :\ Along with a few year 1 and 2 level 20 birthday scrolls.

I also took my alts and parked them at rich iron ores and used a alt to rotate the other maps with the watch work pick for Ascended farming. the amount of deldimor steel you need is too dang high! If the armor does not wipe you, you will be hard pressed for weapons.

First goal I have is to unlock Pact Mastery by any means necessary. That means personal story, world completion, anything and everything with Birthday Booster + Heroic Booster on.

I was using tomes for Key Farming (level to 5, tome 5, farm key) but they ruined that with this nonsensical patch to nerf F2P accounts key farming. It also means when I do my 2nd Revenant I’ll want to level him up after Sunday reset so I don’t waste his Chapter 1 key.

Honestly I find spending time farming money to be vastly superior than gathering. While parking alts is a slick move every Ascended item I craft I just spend a few hours in Silverwastes, sell everything, and then turn around and buy whatever I need.

Instant 20 Scroll +60 Tomes for Charr Revenant
Instant 30 Scroll +50 Tomes for Human Revenant

Ascended Armor Set (Berserker)
Ascended Armor Set (Mixed – Reroll as Needed)
Ascended Staff, Hammer, Sword, Shield, Axe (Berserker)
Ascended Spear, Mace (Sinister)

Various Ascended Accessories as well as 48 Guild Commendations and 60+ Pristine Fractal Relics for Rings. Ascended Zerker or Cavalier back piece.

Full 20 slot bags. 3 bag extenders. 1 bag extender for charr revenant. 5 18 slot bags for charr. 2 total makeover kits. 7 Heroic Boosters, 18 XP boosters, 11 item boosters, 5 birthday boosters. 250 of most basic food mats for whatever food. Usual account benefits (perma bank/trade/merch/mystic account bnd). Perma tools. Perma salvage (copper, silver).

Ready to go!

What will be interesting is if we get 2 rune sets. There’s already a base rune set for each profession, and another rune set coming out for each Specialization.

Khalic.3561:

Aura traits are still spread out into every single line. Two in fire/air/water, one in earth/arcane, and three in tempest.

Yes but you had to take Fire before to generate any kind of real amount of Auras for the Signet aura generation. So you’d be trapped in Fire/Water/Tempest. With the new system you have generation on Shouts and you’re only trapped into Water/Tempest with Fire/Air as the alternatives (or Earth, if you’re masochist).

CETheLucid.3964:

Mm, I remember at least several threads with people complaining about how the new trait revamp ruined their aura share signet builds.

I didn’t use that variety much myself (maybe a couple times in WvW), but it was a thing apparently.

Good news, everyone! It’s back!

They killed the old Auramancer because it required too many lines to be effective in the simplistic “3 lines” system compared to partial traits in the old system (IE: 20 fire, 10 air, 10 earth, 30 water). You have One with Fire (Fire), Zephyr’s Boon (Air), Elemental Shielding (Earth), and Powerful Auras (Water). When you throw on the fact that they got rid of Signet generation as well it left you with very few ways to generate auras.

With the new Auramancer, Tempest, you have shouts that generate Auras based on shouts, such as Frost/Magnetic/Fire instead of just a bunch of Fire. In addition you have other traits that generate Auras as well. This creates a kind of clear Tempest/Water base with either Fire or Air. It’s a tough call what’s better, Fire or Air, because both have Fury generation and it comes down to whether or not the ability to repeatedly overload Lightning is superior to the rest of the sustained damage Fire can add (usually only to Fire which you don’t usually stay in as Dagger/X).

I’m 100% on board with everyone else and agree that Auramancer was the last thing I was looking for on my Elementalist. But it’s what we’re getting. You want to know what they think is so unique and amazing about thee Tempest? It’s the Auramancer support. There’s around 4-5 weeks now till HOT release, the core concept isn’t going to change at this stage. Either embrace it and try to get improvements or just chaulk it up to a dud specialization and ignore it (that’s what I’m doing).

Xillllix.3485:

Heat Sync was the only really cool new skill and now it does the same as we’ve always done blasting might, more might. Didn’t they nerf might in the first place because of the ele? All of this makes no sense.

These are just bad decisions. It was a cool skill with a high cooldown. Warhorn doesn’t do good damage anyway.

I 100% agree with you man. I’m just trying to objectively look at the situation and the intent behind things. I get that Auras aren’t good and that most of the functionality they add already exists. Using Auras to share boons we can already share without Auras is pointless and taking away the good aspects to the new weapon will just drive us to use the old options to get the same effect.

Really what they should have done is give Auras a way to spread boons we don’t already have access too. Things like Retribution, Stability, etc or change/improve the Auras when you are Tempest like attacking a Fire Aura weakens you or attacking a Shocking Aura blinds you etc. New things, but alas more of the same.

I mean, they didn’t remove a single condition management trait. You’re going to port in and do 10-15 stacks of Burns and the Revenant is just going to do Pain Absorption and be immune to your conditions for a few seconds till they fall off or heal and be immune to condis again for a few seconds after. In fact due to the change with Pestilence, you’re even more likely when applying your 10-15 stacks of burn to apply them to yourself.

The difference is now when you encounter a player who ISN’T stacking a lot of Condis then you will perform better against them in Mallyx as well.

While I’ve certainly lost most of my desire to play Mallyx it’s more due to the fact it’s no longer a complete tool set that had “everything” (previously had condi, condi copy, resistance, boon strip, AND cc with displacement) but there are plenty of other viable alternatives.

Valfaros.6908:

Mallyx was only a hard counter to condi builds if you were running condi dmg yourself because the transferd condis are based on your condi dmg.

Wow someone who knows how it works :o

Neko.9021:

What really gets me is that Tempest was advertised as a Support Elite Specialization, or at least partially. Yet once you change Heat Sync, the Tempest really doesn’t offer much in the way of support at all. So now I’m just sort of at a loss as to where the Support is. Even speccing for full Shouts and Support Traits, it really doesn’t seem to add much to a team in PvE, PvP, or WvW. The Boon Share was the thing that made the spec passable, and now that’s gone.

When you look at the Tempest class in a vacuum, you can see the heavy emphasis on Auras. Every shout applies AOE auras. There are traits that generate and synergize with Auras. The class mechanic (Overloads) are short range similar to Aura Share ranges. So clearly the impression is that sharing and generating Auras for your party is unique aspect that the Tempest expands upon from the base Elementalist. There’s also some group support such as AOE Vigor, AOE Might and AOE Stunbreak in the traits and Heat Sync kinda fell into that category of stuff the Tempest gains.

Where things go horribly, horribly wrong is when you put things into practical game play. Auras, generally speaking, aren’t that useful or impactful and Tempest doesn’t really improve Auras it instead only increases the amount of Auras you can generate. The other kinds of support they added Elementalist already largely had such as generating boons (Might, Fury, etc) through self combos.

Seems like there’s a disconnect over all with what the players want, and what they developers are looking to accomplish with it. It’d probably help if Karl expanded upon the intent of the Tempest and how it’s a unique role that Elementalist doesn’t already fulfill so constructive feedback can be given in that light. Cause even if none of the players want an Auramancer specilization it seems like we’re getting one regardless.

These kinds of decisions usually boil down to while it’d be ideal to fix Break bars for PCs compared to NPCs there may not be enough time to make it happen and so the idea is being scrapped until a later date (maybe next round of Specializations?).

I figure it’s one of two things.

1. They didn’t meet their key sales numbers when Keys were on sale during the anniversary sale and they’re blaming Key farming.

2. The F2P people figured out you can farm Black Lion keys and Anet is putting the pinch on lower level keys to prevent it cause it’s a decent source of income with the skins (decent, not the best).

Either scenario not happy. This was pretty much the only way I bothered with keys. In every scenario its’ better to buy what you want out of the chest by buying gems, selling gold, then buying the item because of how crappy the drop rates are of useless garbage in the chests. No one wants an armor booster Anet. When we get Booster, Booster, Repair Cannister it’s a kick in the balls.

I like the AC changes. People building un-counterable siege was ridiculous.

Rather they err on the side of caution and not allow it than go back to AC’s that were impossible to counter.

Neko.9021:

Because obviously the one thing Tempest did well, it shouldn’t be allowed to do.

There’s literal mountains of text on this forum explaining why Tempest just doesn’t work with dozens of great ideas and endless constructive feedback and it’s almost entirely ignored at this stage. You can go to literally any other forum and see how constructive feedback is making a positive impact on the each specialization except here.

To be honest I’m at the tinfoil hat stage of believing they’re gonna leave Tempest as a huge dud just to offset how strong we doing in every other game mode currently. None of the decisions make sense in any other capacity.

Stinja.9612:

Not to mention its a block and so other Revenants will be able to shiro+staff 5 you out of the skill anyway. Lets add un-blockable Necro marks into the mix shall we? There are tons of things that make this a bad skill when you cannot move.

Haha right? I’m SO looking forward to using Malicious Reprisal now that they changed Assassin’s Presence to Master. Oh are you blocking? Who cares!

FLiP.7680:

I think you guys are not giving enough credit to the heals on shield.

Off-hand sword can block on the move, great! In 24 sec you can have 4 sec of block + high damage skill with an unreliable pull. Using shield you can have 3 sec of block + 8k heal + 4 sec of protection. In terms of survivability I can’t see how oh sword is better.

Your numbers are wildly inaccurate, with shield in 24s you can have 3 sec of block and a 4k heal that also roots you as well as 2s of protection because you can’t recast it twice in 24s.

The point of contention that people are making is that being rooted will lead to you ultimately taking more damage than you will heal/recover from with Shield5. This is based on experience with existing effects that also root you. They are also typically very powerful as well, but generally speaking the power of them doesn’t offset the fact that you’re setting yourself to get bursted into the ground the second you come out.

Again…in a game where PvE teaches you to move out of things, PvP teaches you to move out of things, and WvW teaches you to move out of things…giving you a skill that keeps you into them is just backwards design.

I pretty much don’t buy keys because the wide variety of garbage that’s in them (outside of super crazy discount sales like during Anniversary). Getting booster, booster, repair canister is a kick in the balls. Every time I’ve bought keys with gems I’ve ended up regretting not just selling the gems and buying what I wanted off the auction house.

Black Box.9312:

Okay.

Then use it in those specific niche situations, and then don’t use it when you don’t need it.

Wow, that was simple.

Except, it really isn’t. You may have one SPvP match with that in there, next one have none. You can’t afford to half-n-half the gear and with Mallyx you’re either full Condi or not and full condi in the scenario where you face no conditions wasn’t enough. Not really feasible to go half in or half out depending on the scenario, either.

Gaaroth.2567:

it’s a friggin 4k heal on 20s cd…if you want to move, u gonna loose that, because otherwise is just a stronger version of the blocks you mentioned. There MUST be a drawback otherwise this skill would be OP.
To me is balanced given the strong effect. Can’t understand how is not that obvious. Changing from breakbar to block was the greatest thing ever.

If you asked me what was the literal worst thing you could imagine having to offset an ability in this game it would be mobility. Giving up your mobility is never worth it. Ever. It sounds flashy, it looks flashy, but functional and practical game play will invariably show it just not being worth it. Every part of this game mechanically speaking requires mobility be it PvE, PvP or WvW. It is the entire reason I don’t even look at Soothing Bastion because getting rooted at 25% HP out of position in a competitive scenario is simply a death sentence.

I’m a “pick your battles” kind of guy and this isn’t one I’m really going to fight. The ability and changes sound too good on paper. However you look at any ability on any profession that roots you in place and you’ll see none of them are even used (I even struggle to think of the very few there are). As I said originally, it’s going to be one of those abilities everyone is gonna cheer on until 12 months down the road. It’s doubtful I’ll convince you of it, so we’ll just wait and see.

Tricare.2946:

Not sure why AC’s are not like the rest of siege.

They should be used how they would actually be used. Hold the button down and the AoE goes further like a Catapult/Trebuchet.

Just make the AC turn fast and such. You shouldn’t need LoS for an indirect fire weapon. Just saying.

Then they’d be called a Ribauldequin

As an aside, I’m happy for any kind of siege reduction, especially ACs. It hopefully will keep the focus on fighting player vs player rather than player vs siege. I’m all for the ability to defend yourself, but being able to stack an unreachable arrow cart behind some corner because you use a zoom hack and can zoom the camera out as far as you please was just too ridiculous. Rather they err the side of siege being less powerful than more powerful.

Gaaroth.2567:

What’s wrong with you guys? It’s a strong heal, 4s block on 20cd. And you moan against being static? Umadbro?

3 second block. Compared to our other skills with a 2s block on a 10s cool down. That roots you. Am I saying it’s the most worthless thing ever? No. Am I saying there’s superior alternatives? Yep. Am I complaining about being static in a game that from the earliest levels teaches you that keeping mobile is the key to not dying? Yep.

If you don’t bring things like this up now, in the development phase, you end up sitting on them for potentially years before they’re looked at again as working or not working. I’d rather say how it is now than basically regulate shield to yet another useless or ultra niche weapon alternative in this game.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

While it does roots you, it is a long block that also heals you for a large amount. Basically like some of our lower heal skills right now. If you could move while using this skill it’s power would need to be brought down a lot.

It’s a 3 second block with a heal that also roots you currently. When you look at the other alternatives:

Staff: Warding Rift: 2s block – 10 cost, 10 recast – mobile.
OH Sword: Duelist’s Preperation: 2s block – 10 cost, 12 recast – mobile

So really, adding a second of extra block and a heal on it is nice and all, there’s already cheaper and faster CD blocks on other weapons that give us more total block up time and are already mobile. Considering the increased cost and cool down, really isn’t that far fetched or that much out of balance. The root just isn’t justified and goes against the entire principle of the game of avoiding mechanics through mobility.

It seems unlikely to change at this time.

This is going to be one of those “give it time” topics where we’re gonna have to leave Shield is the way it is, let people get wrecked in SPvP with a shield because players adapt and simply time out the block and follow it up with massive burst in their location just like used to happen with the Engie shield. People stop using it, it gets adjusted to what it should have been now, life moves on, and we get back to a more consistently designed game where (regardless of game mode) mobility is life.

At least Axe is still pretty amazing. Still honestly mulling a Frostfang.

Gaaroth.2567:

Kodiak.3281:

Rooting yourself in place in a game where mobility is life is just not useful or defensive.

as said above, since not stated otherwise, you are still rooted.
Imho the skill is really strong now..and no, not always you HAVE to move, as long as you get greater benefits

I mean…straight from level 1 the game teaches you that mobility is life. Any kind of real (player) opponent is going to time out your 4s block soon as it happens and unload everything on you where you’re left standing soon as it’s up. The same thing used to happen with Engineer shield as well.

It’s fine, it just means Axe continues to be the king of off hands in every scenario.

Black Box.9312:

I think the idea was that Mallyx was meant to be more of a counter to high condition damage/low condition removal specs like Condi Engi and Condi Mesmer than just a buffer against conditions in general. Now you can’t really do much against those builds because their condition output will always exceed your resistance uptime.

But that idea was, ultimately, viewed as flawed because (and I’m just going off what Roy said) too niche. It only performed incredibly well in that niche heavy condition scenario. In other scenarios, such as light to no conditions, it was under performing because there wasn’t as much stand-alone condition output (something that was increased). In addition, your own team worked against you in team scenarios where you’d want to pile up heavy conditions onto yourself but any kind of group AOE cleanse would actually hurt your performance because that was less conditions you could transfer. That’s not easily addressed in a team environment because it’s not like you are targeting who is and isn’t affected by your 600 range AOE cleanse.

While there is, somewhat, an argument about the idea of condition management through punishing people who use conditions on you there other ways to achieve it. For example my ideas would be:

1. I would fold Pulsing Pestilence into Embrace the Darkness by default, but leave it at 15% with same ICD.

2. I would replace Pulsing Pestilence with “Mirrored Torment” where anytime you receive a condition (bleed, burn, poison, cripple, chill, torment, weakness, vulnerability)(notice I left some out) a similar condition is also put on the source (5s ICD).

Actually Mallyx didn’t lose any tools to deal with conditions.

1. The primary tool, Resistance, is still there in every form. It’s there as Demonic Resistance and it’s there on Pain Absorption. As always it continues to be the mandatory take for Mallyx/Corruption. This means we lose out on more condi output from Venom Enhancement and more condi “management” from Replenishing Despair. To be honest it should be made base line and the whole line reviewed cause it lacks clear order (IE: Condi offense Trait, Boon trait, Condi defense Trait) in each tier.

2. The copy conditions means we lost condition output off of Darkness cause we no longer copy conditions. However copy conditions never removed conditions (IE: Transfer) it simply copied what you had. You still had to keep them on you.

3. We gained more base conditions because Unyielding Anguish now always applies torment and chill each tick, AOE which will allow us to force dodges for people to get out of it or sit in it and eat Chill/Torment. We also gained an extra stack of Confusion on Banish Enchantment.

4. The heal we got in Malyx just became stronger regardless of condition status. Before it required a lot of Condis to really shine, now it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t shine as much with condis. This makes it a strong alternative to the powerful Jalis heal as well with a more offensive tool set (I personally hate pairing up Shiro/Glint because the two super weak heals and always took Malyx/Jalis with Shiro/Glint).

So our biggest changes were to condition output and not management. Over all I think the net result will end up being we will suffer against high condition opponents compared to previously but do better against lower/no condition opponents because we’re able to stack more Torment now.

All I want to know is can we move with it on or not?

In a game where there’s so many things going on that standing there, even invulnerable, is often times 100 times worse than simply keep moving. This entire game was built around avoiding mechanics and AOEs on the ground. PvE has tons of it. PvP has tons of it. WvW is built around it these days. It’s why Renewing Wave had to change as well cause it’s usefulness was very limited.

Rooting yourself in place in a game where mobility is life is just not useful or defensive.

Just putting this out there, Mesmers can already boon share a rediculous amount of most of these boons like mad. Other day in WvW was a few Mesmers stacked up and they were boon sharing around 60 seconds of Resistance to everyone.

Not exactly sure what the problem is when it already exists in game.

My initial reactions:

1. Are we able to move with Crystal Hibernation on? Honestly the Defiance bar never mattered to me so I am okay with it going and being replaced with Blocks instead of Invulnerability but the biggest question is can we move with it on? Not being able to move with it on is wrong in every way that not being able to move with Renewing Wave was wrong.

2. Yay to being able to move with Renewing Wave! Staff was already one of my favorite weapons and it’s just getting better and less clunky.

3. Displacements…well we knew it was too good to last. Displacements were nuts and just too good in just about any game mode. PvE they let you endlessly kite things. PvP they let you infinitely decap a point. WvW it wrecked whole zergs.

4. Malyx – Eh I’ll have to see. It’s definitely disruptive to a lot of ideas involved with it. For example Anti-Toxin runes I was planning on using are out of the question now cause the 6/6 doesn’t work without the Elite applying Torment to yourself. While I think over all it probably got stronger condition output, it’s really too early to tell at this stage. Unyielding Anguish was powerful CC in the Malyx line that also got removed as part of the Displacement changes in favor of more AOE damage instead. Without that CC, it definitely removed any notion of a back line Malyx play I had for WvW for sure because that CC was pretty much the main reason to go it (for back line protection).

5. Eye for Eye changes does this mean Redeeming Protection goes on a kitten internal cool down with Eye for Eye? If so that’s kinda bogus. The reduced effectiveness of Weakness is interesting though!

6. Forced Engagement – Not sure why you think this is some great skill, but it’s really not. For one it’s a 2 second taunt, not some 5 second CC. 2 seconds is nothing. For two, it slows the target which is entirely pointless since they’re already taunted and attacking you. It’d be like putting 2s of Cripple with 2s of Immobilize. It’s…like…why? I can only assume there’s some kind of feared PvE application you’re worried about that we haven’t seen yet because honestly I don’t see what the fuss is about.

Ascended Armor is difficult to predict. It’s tough to tell because right now they’ve mentioned higher level fractals are gonna scale Precision/Toughness meaning they’ll crit more (more dmg) and reduce Power based damage (Power/Crit/Crit Dmg). This means we might potentially need tankier or condi based setups as well. Also who knows what roles are going to end up and land for raid requirements for all we know we’ll end up desired as Ventari Cleric healers in raids.

For now I made a full Berserker heavy set and am massing mats and recipes for other off sets like Sinister/Nomads just in case.

Celestial works okay with Condi based builds (mace/x), but outside of those it wastes the condi/healing parts of Celestial and better to go power based stats. It’s serviceable, but probably better other options.

Disappointed not by a lack of things they could have brought back but the lack of new things.

Just to clarify you can swap Utilities around, but not new utilities in. So for example I prefer Inspiring Reinforcements on my first Utility slot, I am able to swap it there.

Post Fresh Air nerf (where they moved Bolt to the Heart up to GM) it’s pretty much lost it’s usefulness as a burst weapon. I mean it’s still serviceable and you will kill stuff with it, but it’s not as good as it used to be post change.

Only real uses for it these days are destroying siege through walls in WvW with Dragon’s Tooth and Might Stacking for PvE.

For WvW it’s fairly unusable because it’s too slow and no stun breaks which leaves it incredibly vulnerable to CC. Usually means you have to swap out of it which means you lose all benefits.

Pretty much see it introduced for raiding purposes.

Making the top end reward (20+ contribution stacks) only really possible by being anti-social and quick tagging events (IE: kill 1-5 creatures, then running to next event leaving others to finish) is poor design. It encourages us to play a certain way to get maximum rewards.

If you want to encourage people to behave in a more social nature and work together the rewards should be tied to how many events are completed in the zone instead and given to everyone who participates in a minimum of those events.

Designing systems in fear of people exploiting them for rewards is silly when most of the good rewards are account based. The zero rewards (xp, loot, karma) is ridiculous waste of time. Oh no we might get champ bags? Because we can’t get that infinitely with Chest Trains in Silverwastes? Seems a little silly.

Most of our weapon skills are all 1-15 second cool downs so weapon swapping is less of a Elementalist style setup where you frequently run into 20-45 second cool down weapons kills that you swap out of. This means the weapon you use is usually by wanting that tool set it offers (IE: Range, Combos, Mobility, etc).

There really weren’t 2h Swords in GW1, the only 2h martial weapons were Hammers and Scythes. Most renown 1h Sword users that come off the top of my head were Rurik and Turai Ossa (Ghostly Hero). That said GS really doesn’t fill any niches we don’t currently already have except maybe extreme +Power burst damage? I imagine we’re likely to see more of a ranged condi option, or one would hope.