Guild Wars 2

Swagg.9236:

You say “more skill” is required to kill your average dungeon mob than skipping them. I’ll grant you that. But how big is the margin of skill between killing a dungeon mob and skipping it? That gap is insignificant given the average dungeon mook’s attack interval and variety of skills. If you look at most dungeon enemies, they aren’t much different than what you might encounter in overworld PvE. They might have 1 or 2 more abilities, but then they also have 1000% more hp for some asinine reason.

This results in a slightly more complex fight (Oh look, I have to dodge when it opens up to attack now) than what you would expect in overworld PvE, yet still very reminiscent of those typically face-roll-y sort of encounters, except that “Now that you’re in our fancy, challenging dungeon!” they drag on for 3 minutes because of enormous enemy health pools. It’s not fun. Killing them isn’t satisfying because there’s nothing skillful about dancing around an enemy for 3 minutes while pressing 1. Finally, their rewards also equate to what you might receive off of a normal overworld PvE enemy.

Often openworld PvE is open and mobile while dungeons can add environmental complexity on top of the standard fare of dodging their skills and killing them. With traps, pits, other mobs, cliffs, blocked passages and so forth. It’s the ‘dungeon’ part of a Dungeon, really and you completely disregard it and negate much of it when you skip.

I don’t understand what you mean by “decreasing productivity,” but I can say that simply drastically lowering dungeon mob hp across the board would probably help thieves indirectly. Since they specialize in single-target damage, they could leap to the back lines and assassinate targets.

Me speaking about dungeon productivity isn’t aimed at you but feel free to discuss it. It was more a question regarding the overall state of dungeons, loot and reward systems for people in the know. If the devs see a problem with how much gold and loot being produced by speed runners or not can be adjusted in many ways although just ramping up diminishing returns or adding another factor to weigh loot tables by feels boring and contrived. Simply making the dungeon longer could be a factor to add, giving more/better loot to longer paths or factoring time.

Really has nothing to do with profession viability or dungeon difficulty but simply a statement about rewards.

Enemy dungeon mobs need more skills (specifically, more single-target skills and gap-closers) and less health. The encounters need to hit harder and go faster. That kind of pace would not only make combat more fun and engaging, but it would also allow thieves to shine better since they would be focusing down enemies with health pools more proportionate to the damage that they can put out.

In your opinion.

Frankly, I find it hard to decide just what a dungeon should be as the experience varies on how you run it. How much HP or how fast things go doesn’t have any correlation to fun. Personally, I find randomness fun. Not knowing exactly what comes next or having to react on the fly. It’s why I enjoy PuGs a lot of the times.

tolunart.2095:

I wish time travel was possible, just so that people from today could go back in time to meet George Washington. After an hour or so trying to communicate, both time traveller and G W will be yelling at each other “Speak ENGLISH!”

And then he’ll drop kick the time traveler in the head.

Don’t eff with GW…

Curo.2483:

Einlanzer.1627:

Curo.2483:

All my life, I thought it was “goh-lem”, like the pokemon Golem. But I never heard it pronounced that way anywhere else. Everywhere else I hear “gaul-em” like LotR’s Gollum.

No

Thank you for correcting my actual life experiences. You must be some kind of guru. Silly me not knowing what I actually heard.

Lol I laughed at that too. It was all like “I grew up thinking Metroid was the guy you play because I never beat it. When I was 16, I actually found out she was a girl…” then he was like “No, Metroids were the alien creatures, Samus was always a girl, you were never 16 and you never grew up.” Lol okay…

…but yeah, why do people care? I’d sooner care if they went and Alt+F all mentions of ‘Golem’ in the game and replaced it with ‘Goughlim’ so that it could be however they want since it’s a funky spelling of a different word. I mean, what we see in game is actually a translation of New Krytan to English so that would could be whatever they want.

Blude.6812:

Dojo.1867:

Blude.6812:

ANET! Just put all the changes in a txt file and post in the forums. That was painful to watch. I found the Ranger info to be about 30 minutes into the video.

Wow you managed to completly miss what this is supposed to do. They will release patch notes when the changes are about to go life. SOTG is supposed to communicate withplayers and explain their thought progress. If you dont want to watch the video then dont and wait for the patchnotes. Your comment is stupid.

As is yours, there is no reason not to post them, if you want to watch feel free, I don’t.
Maybe reading is a problem??? LOL

You’ll just have to wait. When they finish with the stream, someone will post the transcript, saving the devs the time needed to create the text file while also actively communicating with the players live.

Daecollo.9578:

Leo G.4501:

Would you like to outline the implications of such a change?

No, why would I do that?

Then there’s really nothing to discuss if you basically just fart out an idea and don’t bother to think what it’d do.

Causic.3798:

I love the 3% damage per boon!
We can now hit Guardians for more, and I heard Thieves will hug Guardians so we can be good against those too! =P

And Warriors will be bursting you for another nearly 10% damage considering you’ll likely have might, fury and swiftness.

It’s a dumb change, IMO. Could have done a lot more interesting things with the idea of boon hate.

Awe.1096:

There are many aspects of the game and balacing one will also affect the other. Sure, for example healing does not scale well enough in dungeons when compared to power/crit. So buff healing? And guess what, that will make Bunkers in conquest PvP be from there and after called Unremovable Bunkers a.k.a. you need 4 people to kill me. And dont forget to buff toughness as well!

You’re forgetting that the devs can split PvP and PvE changes, especially if they are simple scaling/number differences. They are even adding in WvW split too, if I’m not mistaken.

Would you like to outline the implications of such a change?

Another OP suggestion for conditions:
When duration/stacks are maxed, skills that apply their effect just do their damage up front discounting any duration increase.

So a skill that at its base applies 3 stacks of bleed for 6 seconds but you have 100% duration increase turning that into 12 seconds , what would occur when applied to a target with 25 bleed stacks is 756 damage (if 0 condition damage) would be produced instantly rather than over 42 bleed * 3 stacks spread over 6 seconds.

In a player vs player scenario, the likelihood of surviving 25 stacks of bleed is minimal (that’s over 1000 dmg/second with no condition damage not including any direct damage that would occur to apply the conditions, you’d have less than 5 seconds to live if you don’t remove them) so any direct damage from bleeding beyond the stack limit would be overkill.

kikittener.9578:

what the uking problem whit zerker? learn to play and leave the other use whatever they want. Jesus Christ why so many jelly?

What did the English language do to you that you’d butcher it so heinously?

Indoles.1467:

People don’t dislike ranger because it isn’t fun. They dislike ranger because ranger is pigeonholed into very few viable builds for both pvp and pve in terms of endgame content.

Yup. Now look at elementalist. Although you can pretty much swap to whatever weapon that fancies the moment, your build will likely be 20+ water, 20+ arcane and the rest doesn’t matter as much.

You’ll go to Warrior. While your trait specs can vary, the playstyle and effect does not. You can dip deep into arms, or pick up healing shouts or even get a more tankier build with defense and gear, but it all amounts to the same tactics, utilities and likely the same weapons for damage.

I’d like to say Mesmer builds are nice and varied for PvE, but likely no one cares if you’re a tanky phantasm build, a bursty shatter build or some blend of support in between. Likely you’re just a portal jokey and a dispenser of time warp.

With Ranger, I think a portion of the variety comes from the pets available. Beyond that, they do have some good weapon choices I’ve yet to fully explore. PvP is another story. I don’t think Ranger is in need of a lot when it comes to PvP except perhaps WvW zergs…but even then that is a really specific (if not abundant) combat situation.

I don’t have trouble with dungeons on a spec that relies on the pet to do much of the damage. But then I haven’t done high level fractals…or fractals at all with my Ranger yet.

Can’t Rock Solid let you break stuns (earth trait that grants stability upon attuning to earth)? If they just made the Earth line a bit better, that could be a viable answer right there. 10sec cooldown stunbreaker. Go wild with your utilities from there

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Arachnophobia is a pretty cool bow, but I want Rox’ bow. Screw the Legendaries.

But those aren’t purple!!

What’s the second pic for? And it might help a bit if you zoomed into her face.

Also, if the character is only level 1, you can always just test it and see if it really is that story option or not. I’d do it but I don’t have the slots, unfortunately.

Sil.4560:

How about a trait where mace attacks ignore protection. Historically a mace/hammer would’ve kittened your body through your armor pretty hard.

That’s how I’d hope ‘boon hate’ works. Rather than just ‘get this trait to do x% amount of damage per boon on target’, if it were somehow ingrained in the weapon to counter a specific boon, it wouldn’t seem like such a cheap out.

When people were discussing boon hate, they started mentioning how boons would be a detriment in that case…which was stupid and untrue…but if it worked like ‘mace bypasses protection’ among other things, then you can’t really say it ever is a detriment.

Sartori.1962:

Can’t we have a bit more serious looking hardware?

So what you’re saying is we need a Cupid’s bow that shoots cartoony hearts instead?

Duke Blackrose.4981:

I read the title expecting a proposal to eat babies. I am disappoint.

Or at least using babies as feed for Ranger pets.

But yeah, some of the mobs I’d like to have:

Griffons
Skale/Skelk
Raptors
Windriders
Karka (ultimate ranged pet)
Ooze

skstylez.1526:

Leo G.4501:

I don’t follow…

My character has red eyes even though I picked silver

Pics?

I don’t follow…

Swagg.9236:

Truth be told, skipping requires more skill than fighting these types of enemies since in order to skip them, one must know the proper paths to take and also when to dodge or which skills to use when if things get hairy (which they often don’t because combat with these enemies is pretty dull).

Moot. You have to know when to dodge and which skills to use…more…while you fight mobs vs dodging them once. It doesn’t take more skill to skip. Skipping is simple. It just takes a different kind of skill to skip which is wholly different than requiring more skill. But IMO, remembering that special spot you can jump down or on so the mobs can’t chase you is just memorization and has nothing to do with skill.

If mobs were unleashed, it might increase Thief popularity in dungeon runs which I don’t think is a bad thing. If you want your speed runs, requiring an additional specific class just puts another speed-bump in their productivity.

At that point, you have to ask yourself if decreasing productivity is what is best for the game?

Hate it.

Hate it all. Hate stacking, don’t care for skipping, hate not being told why I need to do something, hate not being asked if I want to do something vs being told just to do it, hate minimal conversation, hate people repeating crap over and over like it’ll make me more enthusiastic to do it.

I personally take the st-bleep-u approach. If all you’re concerned with is getting it done with minimal and simple communication, do it with people experienced and you can go the entire run without typing a word except “Which path are we doing?”.

In groups that don’t know what they are doing, you better prepare them for future challenges by giving them the chance to figure it out themselves. If they fall, pick them up. If they die, you can try and finish things up then inform them what they did wrong and if they ask for advice before, try to be as informative as possible. Then, when they face a dungeon challenge that is new and with others inexperienced like themselves, they aren’t running around in circles not knowing what to do but instead reading animation tells and their intuition about their skills.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the OP’s approach, I just hate it. I’d rather just watch a walkthrough video guide in that case (which I’d never do >_>).

My sarcasm meter must be on the fritz. It was ticking for a second but now nothing…

Also, the Ranger was playing more defensively than needed. Half the time, his heal was off cooldown and he didn’t need to use it, a quarter of the times he used it and didn’t really need healing and I couldn’t tell you if he could have relied on his natural regen more to restore his health more than he was.

All in all, in such an encounter, he could have pulled out more CC to keep the elementalist pinned and still have decent survivability…but then from the looks of it, the elementalist seemed to be showing off rotations more than trying to use them timely and effectively so who knows. It’s a good watch to study those rotations before getting tackled by them.

Snow White.9680:

I wish they did something more exciting with bows rather than ’shoot an arrow, shoot 2 arrows!"

Which Ranger skill shoots 2 arrows?

Solid Gold.9310:

And as I have said before, warrior can only use a longbow, and thief can only use a shortbow. So niether of them can play an archer role.

By definition, any character who can use a bow to shoot arrows at a target are Archers. If going purely by innate skills, Ranger, Warrior, Thief and Elementalist are Archers because they all have profession skills that fulfill the definition of Archer.

Perhaps you mean Toxophilite, which by definition, is an expert at archery. Why we’d need a profession to be an expert at archery is beyond me when that hugely limits the concept of weapons it’d use. Why would an expert of archery use anything but the two bows? So it’d be a class with two weapon options?

Even introducing the other bow to Warrior/Thief, I think it’d hardly be for the reason of creating another Toxophilite professions and more to do with fulfilling a playstyle option for that professions. So what could that playstyle be, exactly?

Meglobob.8620:

If you work it out 1000g / 1643 hrs = 61s per hour…

61s per hour isn’t that good really, a lot of people can earn 2-3g per hour and some wiz kids, 5-10g per hour…

But still 1000g deserves a well done…

Not really accurate. I see other things that could be sold for profit (like those dyes you should give me) or used to obtain more gold along with a lot of other slots unseen. Then there’s the fact the value of gold has decreased so 61s 5 months ago would be worth alot more than 61s now.

naphack.9346:

I’d totally do it
But I’d have to create another character first. Peacemaker Napp is way too busy cracking skulls with his disproportionate hammer.

Yeah, I think alternate-reality Lovemaker Napp would fit right in with the Inquest, using his trio of Vibro-Golems and his disproportionate [redacted] on his unwilling test subjects thus achieving the climax apex of knowledge in the eternal alchemy.

The concept of the ability is “What pain you feel, so do the enemies around you.” You stack 3 confusion on the foes around you which cause condition damage to them every time they use an action (includes clicking abilities or dodge rolling) and you gain retaliation which does damage to anyone that attacks you.

Here’s some educational viewing of Xsorus’s Asura Ranger in WvW utilizing this deadly skill

Give me those dyes!

I don’t even have that many varieties of dyes across all my 6 characters
The most I have unlocked is maybe 40 on one character and alot of repeats.

I always thought they just grab a bucket and a spoon and visit the outhouse for their lunch and dinner :P

Congrats!

Now send me that stack of 106 U.I dyes!

Olba.5376:

The way I see it is that the useful Stances are very situational.

Hah, yeah that’s true. I think the only ‘universal’ stance is Balance Stance. Use and abuse that puppy for its stun break/stability because it’ll likely be recharged by the next time you need it…and Boon Duration improves it

Sadly, Frenzy and Berserker Stance have massive issues. Frenzy is currently rather weak, but I think the nerf was necessary, CC>Frenzy>100B wasn’t even funny. Berserker Stance has far too much competition when it comes to switch adrenaline gain for a Warrior, mainly with the traits in the Discipline line and Signet of Fury/Healing Surge.

I never really used Frenzy much…I did use Last Chance though. Seemed like a better use than that skill, IMO.

Honestly, I think Berserker Stance could use a full redesign, considering how inferior it is to the other options for gaining adrenaline. Not sure on what could be done with Frenzy, as increasing the effect duration wouldn’t really make it any more useful due to cooldowns, but I like the idea behind it: it’s our glasscannon thing.

On the subject of Berserker Stance, I’ll always suggest the solution for it being more uses for adrenaline. More uses for Adrenaline and Burst skills would create a need for that stance but I dunno what suggestions would be good and balanced…I can only keep throwing ideas at the wall and maybe someone else will think they are good ideas.

…but if not any of that then yeah, I guess reworking Ber.Stance into something else would be the other better option.

I was going to remake this thread since I got cut off when about to post in it…

Yeah, I agree. I like my skimpy armor and I farmed for about half a week getting the tier 3 cultural ‘coat’, gloves and boots for my human female ranger (took the vigil pants and just whatever for the shoulders as I don’t show the shoulders) which revitalized my will to play the character (the weak armor choices really turned me off playing for a while but thankfully, Rangers are fun).

This isn’t to say I like looking at half-nude females only…I have 2 female characters (human and sylvari) and 3 male (charr and asura). I like them all in skimpy stuff. There’s just not many options for the asura male elementalist. Heavy armor I’ve got a couple of choices.

I’d like to run another Charr but I’d probably be recycling looks since there’s not any other options. Maybe not something like this, but close:

Olba.5376:

Daecollo.9578:

The passive effects need improved really, not the active effects. Other active effects like “Stances” however need greatly improved. Perhaps these ideas could be stances instead?

Stances need improvements? Have you seen how many people run Balanced Stance or Endure Pain?

If you ask me, Berserker Stance is the one that needs looking at.

I think it’s partly because they are the only decent source of Stability and damage reduction on Warriors…

Frankly, Endure Pain (traited) is rather crap compared to Ranger Signet of Stone (traited, has nearly the same recharge, the same duration but Ranger gets constant toughness when it’s not in use + pet also takes no damage). Balance Stance is moderately good compared to other stability skills and the other two seem meh.

I don’t think stances are bad, but there’s nothing special about a build that revolves around stances…which is sad because that’s what I wanted to do.

Grok Krog.9581:

As for stances, make Endure Pain give 5 seconds of Protection when it ends, Balanced Stance is fine, Frenzy just needs to have the damage you take reduced, make Berserker Stance increase damage by 20% for half the duration

As I mentioned before, I think Stances would be about perfect if they just added to Sure Footed. Make it “Increases Stance duration and gives Protection”.

Endure Pain = the protected stance. You get something like 10sec of Protection from using EP with that trait.
Balanced Stance = a steady stance. Gain 3sec of protection for each CC effect you nullify while the stance is active.
Berserker Stance = a frontline-fighter stance. Gain 3sec of protection for each Burst skill used while under its effects.
Frenzy = the raging stance. Gain protection for its duration. Basically reducing part of its penalty.

Stances are good, currently, because they break stuns too and are instant. They only need a small push to make them something really nice that you can make super strong with the right build.

Daecollo.9578:

Leo G.4501:

Stances have their own problems.

Honestly, I’d say stances only really need a good trait or two to get procs off of to make them perfect.

The entire point of signets though is there passives, there active effects should be a lot worse then other active effects, just an added bonus.

That’s one viewpoint.

Arguably, that viewpoint isn’t true for most signets while in combat except for some of the healing signets. In more cases than not, the point of signets is to provide ‘something’ while you’re not using them but also ‘something more’ when you do.

It may be possible to give the passives some decent effects for Warriors, but unless they can fulfill something other active skills cannot do, they’ll just suffer from poor use. And to me, it’s poor design to create something you can use and punish you for it. It makes no sense. Why even give them active abilities if you get next to nothing for it?

Another means to fix that though, is a trait that gives you something for activating signets (other professions have traits that do things from granting stacks of might, to gaining fire shields, distortion and many other effects). The only trait warrior has for signet effects is keeping unused signets. Adding something like blocking attacks for a duration after using a signet would be something like I’m talking about and feel rewarding for using the signets even if the active isn’t very useful.

The point though, is actually making them useful advantageous skills. Simply buffing the passive effects doesn’t really do that, not by itself.

Stances have their own problems.

Honestly, I’d say stances only really need a good trait or two to get procs off of to make them perfect.

Yup, which is why I suggested the Priory.

There’d be too much bloodshed trying to get non-Asura into the colleges.

I feel Signets has room to improve. The devs have improved the banners and they still are pretty useful for team-wide stat buffing that you can’t get from other utilities.

Some people want the passives improved (and I’d say some need to as well), but I’d prefer the actives to be improved. When you get to a certain point, relying on stat boosts for having all signets is a detriment as you need stun breakers, CC, cleansing and all that good stuff. So why not add to the actives instead of the passives? Make them useful somehow as click burst effects.

For ideas in what to do, I’ve suggested one avenue before. To me, it seems like stat mod utilities are kind of Warrior’s niche, especially with the banners. I’d love for that to be taken into the signets, giving their click effects something like +% to a stat…basically, buffs that can’t be removed and amplified by boons.

My previous suggestion was this:

Dolyak Signet
Passive: Same as now.
Active: Gain stability (8s). Improves boon duration and lowers duration of conditions on you (15s)

Healing Signet
Passive: Maybe improved a bit.
Active: Heal yourself. Improves healing power, 10% Toughness and 10% Vitality become a bonus to Healing power (20s).

Signet of Fury
Passive: Possibly a bit more precision, like 120.
Active: Gain adrenaline. Go on a rampage for every bar of adrenaline used(15s). Each bar of adrenaline grants 2sec of rampage. Rampage = grow larger and red, gain stability, gain 25% bonus to power and HP. Note: you can still use your own weapon skills, not the ones you get during Rampage.

Signet of Might
Passive: Should also improve condition damage.
Active: Gain might. 10% of Power and 10% of Condition Damage is given as a bonus to Toughness (15s).

Signet of Stamina
Passive: Same as it is now.
Active: Cure all conditions. Gain a 2.5% bonus to all stats for each condition removed (15s)

Signet of Rage
Passive: Same as now.
Active: Gain fury, might, and swiftness. Share fury with allies around you.

Granted, yeah, those numbers might be a bit over the top, but it was more an example. For instance, you mentioned “when am I going to have all conditions for Sig of stamina?” and I agree. You’re likely only using it when you have an insane amount of bleed or like 4+ conditions. Regardless how many conditions you remove though, adding a bonus might make that cooldown not so harsh….or if you have to click healing sig for emergency healing, it could also come with the bonus of bolstering your applied regen or your water combos until it’s off cooldown.

But yeah, that’s just my take on possible improvements to the profession and its concept.

Jabberwock.9014:

If fear was much longer it would probably be too easy to keep people off of control points in spvp. On the plus side it is not affected by enemies stacking condition duration decreasing food and runes.

That is a plus, I didn’t think of that.

I was going to also ask what are the pluses of Fear vs other conditions too. Considering how many people are adopting the Melandru runes + lemongrass poultry combo in WvW, it does make a significant difference against players without high condition duration or CC extention bonuses. I didn’t know it didn’t work with fear though it makes sense.

Wolfheart.1938:

What about immobilize? Does condition duration work with it?

I think it does.

As for fear duration, how long would it last if 100% condition duration affected it?

nakoda.4213:

I am not your “buddy,” guy.

And I wouldn’t call you that…you sound like an Asura that’d take it personally and send an army of golems to ‘educate’ me. I get in enough trouble as it is, my Asura buddies are getting tired of bailing me out.

Runiir.6425:

Honestly the pet is more of a boon than a detriment. the fact is you are just lazy and cannot micro-manage your pet very well. Do so and you are a huge anchor point for your group in dungeouns. the problem is so many people want to skip all the time (which is pointless as all you do is trigger DR faster if you skip…and skipping also typically only saves you 10 minutes).

Off topic about skipping: depending on the mobs being skipped, I find it particularly good to have the pet out on passive. Likely, the pet will aggro the mobs, I’ll run past and swap. This doesn’t put me in combat (so long as I don’t get hit) and it keeps the mobs busy just long enough to get past them without any cooldowns.

So often, and across many dungeons infamous for skipping (AC, Arah, TA, SE) I can often times dance in those skip areas (not literally /dance, but rather than getting by by the skin of my teeth, I can go back WHILE foes are aggroed, pick people up, act as a distraction, what have you). Granted, I wouldn’t suggest attempting it in TA specifically…but actually easier from my experience to skip content.

The exception would be CM. Trying to use the pet to skip = instant dead pet more often than not.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

lordkrall.7241:

Warriors can use Longbows quite good, give it a try.

I have. It would be my first choice, were it not for the fact that they’re literally DISALLOWED from using lighter armor.

I get that it is lighter, it requires getting used to and a warrior who has worn plate mail for ten years might feel awkward in a tunic alone, but come on. I don’t like the idea of a bowman wearing heavy armor, so ranger(pets required) is my only option.

There are light options in the heavy armor choices. Some are even lighter than medium, practically exposing the upper body. Some even look like a tunic (although somewhat adorned with reinforced plate) and coat. I’d suggest actually seeking a look that suites you before dismissing the class because of their armor grade name.

I mean, what do you do if you want a heavy-looking armor on your necro or elementalist? Give up? No, there are options to make your caster look armored. Trust me.

I’m honestly confused why people want to use two of the same weapon type.

That’s like crying about Thieves using a long sword and a short sword (dagger) but not wanting to be stealthy and squishy. I mean, I guess, yeah…but the weapons themselves aren’t some kind of identity in and of themselves, they are simply a style. Long Sword tends to be a sweeping, power weapon while Dagger is a short quick weapon, often with mobility and movement.

The bows are the same. Longbow is more of an AoE centric weapon while the Shortbow is a single target one. So wanting to use both, has nothing to do with being an ‘archer’, IMO, but instead wanting to have both modes of play.

If that’s the argument, I can agree, it’d be cool to have more varied modes of play for the weapons, possibly even new classes to make use of the different modes if it’s not viable to add to an existing class.

…but if you’re talking about using the bows for the sake they are bows…why does it matter if you’re only using a longbow and can’t use a short or the reverse? The point of using a bow is to shoot something at range…is it for the skins? I can’t honestly fathom why it’d even matter if a profession is limited to one, it’s the mode of play that’s important.

I see no purpose to give Warriors shortbow as their AoE centric weapon is Longbow and their single target centric weapon is Rifle. There aren’t anymore modes of ranged play other than that needed for the profession. Dunno about Thief but I’m going to guess they don’t have an AoE centric ranged weapon for balancing concerns.

That all said, I’ve been attempting to garner more support for a Bow weapon for Elementalist, either long or short, namely to fill their gap of a single target-centric ranged weapon…but I couldn’t imagine thinking up two styles of bow skills for the class as it’s completely unnecessary.

Well Vonnix,

If you’re using Swords, I’d probably have suggested Rampager gear (Power/Precision/Condition Damage) instead of Berserker gear (Power/Precision/Critical Damage). Swords are a cool and fun weapon to use but require a bit more finesse than the more plain weapons. You might try just experimenting with other weapons like Axe, Greatsword and Hammer to see how you fare with them.

If you find you’re more comfortable using Swords, what you want is Power and Condition Damage. The condition damage will increase your bleed damage that your auto attacks (both the swords and the rifle) as well as the bleed on your burst skill with sword. Your direct damage will go down but you can simply run away/kite the enemy while they bleed to death.

If you want, you can PM me on the forums if you want a weapon crafted. I tend to collect materials but never use them for anything, I wouldn’t mind making a pair of swords if you need them.

boondocksaint.6529:

Now to address the issue at hand. Axe 5 is a great skill in WvW against zergs. It is a powerful, reliable, mobile AoE. Retaliation is the direct counter to skills like this so you will just have to be careful when you drop this skill. Another tactic is to use the sword leap skill, axe 5 ,then endure pain. It will protect you against the retaliation damage, your sword 2 skill will have recharged when you finish spinning and you can jump out and set up your next chain.

I don’t believe Endure Pain works on anything but direct damage so Retaliation would still work against you. I’m not sure if Invulnerability protects against it either since you can still take damage from conditions if they are applied before the invulnerability.

That said, I find it comical the OP wants a counter to a counter. Retaliation is meant to punish quick hits that can only be partially protected against from certain blocks, evades and movement. It’d be like a Thief asking for a counter to Aegis because their huge hit could be completely negated by it, lowering their damage burst substantially.

Also, the retaliation would only do big damage on you if all the targets you aim at have retaliation. OP is asking for a relative nerf to a lone player using retaliation to help add on some damage because if you multiply that to the target cap, you could be burned by it.

The answer to this isn’t to counter retaliation, it’s to counter the situation. If a channel vs 5 targets all with retaliation is truly imbalanced (which I don’t think it is) then a mechanic to only allow the victim to receive retaliation damage from one source at a time is the answer. Because Warriors are not special. If it’s an imbalance, then it’s an imbalance to all professions.

nakoda.4213:

Try actually visiting Metrica sometime and you might learn something about us.

Are you sure you don’t mean Mount Maelstrom? I was warned about Asura like you. Aggression isn’t a wholly bad thing, but you’re downright over-reacting…just for someone referring to you as ‘buddy’? You know, some people just talk a certain way, using a common word to refer to things they mention frequently. I’m sure there’s some linguistic term for it.

I think you’re just a bit unhappy about being incapable of joining the Inquest…did they turn you down because you were too soft?

nakoda.4213:

Pride and ego is out of character for your “Asura buddies”?

Pride and ego in something you had nothing to do with. Don’t not read, bookah

Daecollo.9578:

Where is this “Strength” coming, in this entire thread I said it was gonna be an arms trait, it does not fit strength at all.

You derail your own thread. I said Strength OR Arms. Honestly, they are interchangeable as they are both just offensive lines. If anything, it’s a preventative statement so you don’t go back and suggest it be swapped to that line either.

Well, if I could have this armor, I might be able to accept a straight back…

I’d prefer to just keep my back and have that armor though.