Guild Wars 2

Did CM this morning that was the same. I stayed just to see how many exploits they were going to use.

1. Were able to have Traffa destroy the basement objects through the 1st story floor.
2. Ran by Sure-Shot (no biggie there, you don’t have to fight him in path 1).
3. Glitched the bomber guy in the barn by having the initiators of the fight hide under the stairs so he didn’t attack at all.
4. Climbed up the wall to bypass all the halls and fell through ceiling to fight Victoria (oh woe is them, the rock exploit didn’t work so they had to fight the boss straight!)
5. Went back and climbed the wall again to get to Frost. Stayed on a rock so frost couldn’t use his cone of cold gun. He was able to freeze someone every now and then which is why he didn’t go into invincible mode.

I didn’t bother taking any chests. I just accepted my tokens and quit.

Leo_G: Goodbye PuGs!

/em is in a PuG right now.

DancingPenguins.9875:

nicbet.1820:

I did AC and Fractals 12/20, yesterday with the usual group. Instead of smooth, easy runs we went to a wipe fest.

There are almost no encounters any more where you can stand still long enough (30 seconds?) to resurrect a downed player without major risk to your own life. It usually ends up in a chain reaction and 2 people trying to res a downed player die themselves.

Give us a heal class. Or at least, give us spells to pick up players with a reasonable cast time (5s?). The only reason players WP rushed in the first place was because ressing is so screwed up that just reviving at WP and running back in was the only viable way.

You weren’t supposed to be alive when you have 2 people who simply drop everything and res. Never have more than 1 person res, learn to res a few %, back up, then go back in again. If you are giving bosses 2 stationary targets for 30+ seconds, then it’s your own fault for dying.

If you are dying in fractals and AC, you are doing it wrong. Stop face tanking anything and learn to hit and run. Unless you are running all necros, you have access to reflect/block skills. So use them accordingly and position as such.

Another thing one can do besides the ‘rez some and back off’ approach is to just take utilities that you can extend your time to rez. I only personally play mesmer, warrior and elementalist, but they all have different approaches:

-Elementalist has a LOT of ways to help them rez dead team mates. Mist Form, Arcane Shield, protection on earth swap, heal on water swap, the Focus off-hand weapon has projectile shields/reflects and invulnerability. And all that I just mentioned (except for Air focus’ swirling winds) can be used WHILE you’re rezzing without disrupting the process.

-Mesmers have illusions to take attention off yourself, stealth for you or allies so the boss can leave you alone, and with a specific build, you can still contribute decent DPS while sitting around rezzing someone who’s dead. There’s also the distortion shatter when you’re down to your last leg.

-Warrior still has good HP and can be built sturdy. If you’re like me though, and just have regen banners and sigil of life for a bit of extra +heal, you just have to be more savvy and keep yourself non-dead. Endure Pain helps live through direct attacks but conditions go through it. Use shield to defend yourself, warhorn for vigor and weakness, greatsword for mobility and an extra dodge, mace/hammer for stuns (not that useful on bosses) and your wits.

Rezzing isn’t suppose to be easy. When an ally dies, it’s suppose to be a setback. How you recover from a setback will determine success. This does worry me, though, that newbies might be shunned more no matter if they’re sharp and quick learners.

Towren.1745:

Oh my god, thank you, thank you for restoring my faith in the player base!! It’s so easy to just do basic things such as take a hit (or block) for your team and yet people just don’t seem to realise it. You can join our guild any time, you’re exactly the type of player we take in.

Heh, well I wouldn’t mind a dungeon guild. I just got into a new guild for WvW…they aren’t super great in dungeons :P

Sages.3496:

Jzl.8715:

Sages.3496:

if they realy wanted to gain players ROLL THE PATCH BACK FOR DUNGEONS!

I would be surprised if the comments like this with pure biased personal opinion not at all fully backed up by logic or statistics not being removed.

look at how many people are kitten off about this change then look at your stupid comments. this change will impact this game regardless of what you think. this makes it realy hard to play dungeons anymore. go do ac explore and tell me you can beat kholer without dying and the boss resetting over and over with newbies. then come post here!

I have. In fact, AC and CM were the first dungeons I tried once the patch released. I talked with all the parties (all PuGs) about the changes and their opinons. Lot’s of people didn’t like them, several times in the dungeon, when a person died, they weren’t able to WP even when no one was in combat. I can tell you what we did:

-I rarely ever get yanked by Kholer anymore and the times I do, I use balanced stance. When several other members get yanked and downed, I use Warbanner to res them or one-by-one.
-When someone fully died during Kholer or Rumblus, I simply took out time from fighting and rezzed them.
-When a sniper snips a member, I stand in front of them with my shield up while another member rezzed.

The things you do to help the team, the faster you can take down the content.

And no, I’m not elite (I practically only run PuGs). I wear beserker gear, I use axes and warhorn, I use mainly offensive traits except for regen banners and condition conversion on warhorn. I often don’t run with stun breakers (I just dodge) and use offensive utilities (FGJ, OMM and Discipline Banner) with offensive food (squash soup for crit dmg and precision).

It is NOT hard to face these dungeons straight.

What is hard is having 2-3 of the team wanting to cheat the mob and either wanting to stand in a safe zone while leaving the others to fend on their own or simply do nothing to add support to a team.

You don’t have to have loads of team support but realize if your team members are struggling, it’s better to help them unless you can just solo the boss yourself. So think twice about what type of tactics and utilities you use when marching into a dungeon…

Lithuen.9067:

“res-rushing” That’s so funny. Invent a problem to solve it. There are so many other little problems in the game – “we’re so busy with the [changes] we’ll get to those…” The mere fact this game repopulates cleared dungeons on you means there’s no rushing back, regardless.

If it took a group to get to the “scene of the wipe” how can one person make it all the way back in a repopulated dungeon to rez the rest? Preposterous. For the life of me I’m still trying to imagine this “problem” as a problem…res-rushing…who in their right mind would….Oh yes…it’s the 21st Century. “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway then tell everybody how smart you are.”

Hahaha, I like how you ignored the actual problems of dungeons, focused on a coined term, gave the term a misinterpreted definition and proceed to break down your incorrect definition.

Res-rushing has nothing to do with rushing back to ‘the scene of the wipe’ and rezzing everyone but ‘rushing’ back to the boss and tagging them either before they reset or before the team kills them and you don’t get a reward off its corpse.

DeathPanel.8362:

Leo G.4501:

Another thing that might help those ready to rage-quit dungeons: EAT YOUR FOOD BUFFS!

I’m still seeing people with no food buffs running dungeons. Those buffs are no joke, they really do help, from getting might on crits, life steal on crits, to might on dodge and a huge chance to remove conditions when you heal or just simply regen HP constantly to save you from needing to spam your heal.

Is this the MMO’s version of, “let them eat cake”?

You do realize more casual players don’t even know which food to get or even what food buffs do right?

Not to mention alot of players run those dungeons in order to get GEARED in the first place and are only decked out in only greens/blues.

I’m not sure what your argument is.

Are you fighting to keep people ignorant? Or making the point that green geared people can’t drop 10copper on some pie or ghost poppers?

Another thing that might help those ready to rage-quit dungeons: EAT YOUR FOOD BUFFS!

I’m still seeing people with no food buffs running dungeons. Those buffs are no joke, they really do help, from getting might on crits, life steal on crits, to might on dodge and a huge chance to remove conditions when you heal or just simply regen HP constantly to save you from needing to spam your heal.

When I read the title I already knew what the issue was going to be.

Several times while doing that part of the dungeon, the lasers were able to kill me AFTER WAYPOINTING (this was before the patch, mind you). I could already tell, if the lasers are hitting you even though you’re dead, you’re going to be considered ‘In combat’ and it will block you from respawning.

In effect, the only current solution for this is to logout and log back in or have the whole party dead. This is a terrible bug and I’ll probably avoid that dungeon until it’s fixed.

There seems to be a bug with this new feature.

It won’t let people wp when the team exits combat. This means mainly, if someone dies on a part people run past you have to go back and rez them otherwise wait for everyone to eventually die.

I can see this being a real pain for some things such a SE where people skip the bridge part.

Excited for the new dungeon wp changes. But with these changes, I’d like to suggest a decreased to the downed penalty in dungeons too.

If I were suggesting changes, it’d be to remove the -% HP and simply make it a 3-strikes and you’re dead mentality. There’s lots of ways this could be rebalanced besides that though.

But the main reason I ask is, more times than I can count, I use a rez skill on a downed player, they pop up confused for a split second, try and get back into a fight only to be downed rather quickly again. Apparently there’s no hope to get the rez skills improved (they just keep getting nerfed) so making this state less a ‘spiral of fail’ would help encourage having team utility skills.

I’m so excited about this change! I can’t wait to give this a try in some PuGs.

The only thing I’d suggest to change along with this is downed penalty needs to go. That or the duration needs to be decreased. Need to encourage rezzing, even from death, but when you get downed you’re more likely to go right back into downed until you finally spiral down to death.

Would you really be able to ‘own’ your own land, though? Wouldn’t it be more likely that you’re a part of a kingdom who owns the land? You work the land and make your profit but then you also have to pay taxes for access to the land, paying the workers hired to do most of the labor, the cost of refining crops into something that can be shipped out for production.

Basically what I’m saying is, there could be lots of variables that would actually make such an aspect of the game an actual game. And considering all the dangers in the world, there’s also the need to control enemy forces and the movement of wildlife to ensure your crops aren’t endangered.

If you can ensure the success of your crops, I probably wouldn’t think it wise to transfer that success directly into good as that would flood markets with materials and make their value plummet. Instead, it could benefit the kingdom you’re producing for in some way, assuring better stock for villagers and troops etc.

I stand by my opinion. An Asura shouldn’t be capable of so aptly simulating an imbecile.

The correct solution is to add around 2 extra saying for each shout for each race, the Charr FGJ just being their Battle Roar copied over, and have it randomly cycle the 3 depending on environmental factors (namely other Warriors/Guardians around using shouts).

If they can do it for elementalist attunements, why not shouts too?

I’m going to take a guess and say Asura with disabilities are frowned upon like the inferiors of their race, sometimes even discriminated against by the harsher Asura (heck, Inquest wouldn’t think twice of using even smarter Asura as lab rats, they probably wouldn’t even want to use the ones with learning disabilities as they are probably considered ‘defects’ and would present unintended variables in their experiments).

The asura with straight out mental disabilities are probably used for labor if they aren’t fit for lab work. Either that or they’d have to stand out in other ways to gain respect or prestige by their peers.

IMO, I think Efut probably has some learning disabilities just by going on the things she says. But she’s definitely got respect and prestige as a warmaster of the Vigil.

Warmaster Efut: Leave that part to me. The Vigil may not understand your boo-boo-matic wheeze calculator, but we know plenty about killing undead.

I wouldn’t underestimate the Sylvari, that’s probably what they want you to do.

Next thing you know, it’s gonna be The Happening all up on your tail and you go killing yourselves.

…actually, I was tempted to name my Sylvari mesmer to something of that effect but them remembered that movie was lame :P

Nutshel.7264:

ok… Didn’t expect so many people to care about this regardless of your reasons.
Anyways, my point wasn’t really that clothes should or should not be revealing, or that players should or should not wear them. Frankly I don’t care what others use on their toons.
My problem is that when I finally decided to get some good looking gear for my toon I started looking around what was available, turns out most of gear wasn’t to my likeing due to most of them look like things courtesan would wear and these that didn’t had spikes and skulls and flames and what not everywhere and that’s not how I want to dress my toon. Strangely though heavy and medium armor got good choice of gear that is neither whorry nor overtop.

Then I’ve seen human melee dressed in some cool looking not over the top gear, asked him what that was as it turned out again something that i though could look good on female again anet decided to make look whorry.

@ANet In future please refrain from altering title of topics if you can’t do it in such way that message and impact is carried on after alternation, thank you.

The remedy to this is simple and I’m surprised no one even mentioned this yet: Composite Armor.

You don’t like the spikes, flames and skulls on light armor? Replace that part with something neutral. Think an armor set’s look is nice but shows too much skin? Replace the chest piece with something else.

There are PLENTY of armors that don’t have flames, spikes and skulls on it (actually, there are really only 4 armos that have flames/spikes/skulls!! We probably need more varied types like the use of feathers, fluff, and the like for more combinations).

I mean, if I like showing off my asura’s dark skin tone or the fur markings on my charr, I often work in 1-2 parts into a set of armor to get that effect. If I can do that, why can’t you do the same but for opposite effect?

Puandro.3245:

It’s not my problem, i am fully aware trying to stick to 1 attunement to max my dps in a dungeon group is horrible thats why i don’t do it, and i think its dumb that if i decide i want to play that way i can’t achieve high dps. You say our utility is a swap away but really if you go full dps you aren’t putting any points in arcana or water, and you are using arcane spells for dps. Lastly i wouldn’t call a small ground target heal in water and Healing rain real heals, or an imob. Warriors go 20/25/0/10/15 for max GS dps and they can carry a 2nd weapon set for cc and buffs also and swap back to GS in 5 seconds. Don’t give me that crap that we can bring so much more utlity and heals/cc than wars when the tradeoff is not worth it.

I didn’t mention much about swapping attunements for DPS (actually, I believe a build can outperform an attunement dancer at specific tasks if built for it, specifically a fire mage focused on maximizing burn, burst, might and positioning).

I was pointing out the discussed comparison of potential; that a max geared DPS elementalist can’t reach the same geared warrior.

And I point you back to the video you seem to be QQing about (the solo arah one). No, he’s not using a secondary weapon for CC. He’s using a secondary weapon for range and that’s for self preservation, not utility, because equipping a mace or hammer (traited or untraited but likely not) in PvE isn’t going to tip your survival any if you don’t have the toughness to get in the mob’s face.

As for the ‘crap’ you’re referring to, I’ll simply say that’s YOUR personal problem and either suck it up and deal with it or play a different profession with the hopes that one day we can throw away water or air attunements and get a bigger bang from fire. Disregard the heals and CC you INNATELY get all you want, but they’re still there and Anet has balanced the class knowing an elementalist will always have access to them REGARDLESS of what weapon they use or how glassy they trait themselves.

Might I suggest rolling a human?

Puandro.3245:

The problem is that ATM there is no way an ele achieve warrior DPS in PvE even if they give up all of their utility and buffs. Let’s not even mention being twice as easy to down in PvE if you decide to go that route.

There is currently no way for an elementalist to ‘give up all their utility and buffs’. Regardless of if you use them or not, take advantage of them to their fullest or ignore them, they are still there when you DO need them.

The difference here is, a full-on DPS warrior cannot provide the team support that a full-on DPS elementalist can be that support via heals/regen, CC or damage buffs from might stacks off of fire fields. All they have to do is press F1-4 and those utilities are at their fingertips.

Conversely, a full-on DPS warrior is likely using a GS which only has vulnerability and cripple as side-benefit and a rifle or something (but why use that? 100blades all the way!! :P) The amount of support available to him at any given point will offensive in nature and therefore limited in application.

I believe that might be your (and others’) problem. You can try to specialize elementalist as much as you want but that doesn’t erase the fact you do have versatility in your other attunements no matter how hard you try to ignore them…versatility that a warrior lacks.

How much you value that versatility is probably a whole other topic.

Wise.8025:

Allow me to sum up cause I think it’s funny how this works:

Trait for x skill and x skill becomes better.
Don’t trait for x skill and x skill is likely not the focus of your build.

GENIUS!

I’m not a big mesmer player although I have one at 80, but I am a fan of mesmers and I just wanted to say I agree with this.

I wish other professions had traits like this and I actually feel the devs could buff more of mesmer traits so it wouldn’t just be “IP is sooo good, must have it!” but more like “I really want IP but….there’s X trait and Y trait in those other trees that I’d like for this build”. I only wished there were some game changer traits like that for Auras on elementalist. Powerful Auras has left me alot to be desired considering the best utilization for them is spreading fury/swiftness (woop…) or protection to allies but this comes with the stipulation that it’s only ‘casted’ auras that spread not to mention the limited amount of auras to begin with…

MarzAttakz.9608:

3k attack rating with how much hp + armour? Combined with almost perma fury, swiftness and minimum 5 stacks of might? And people kitten about ele boons. About the only bad thing warriors have going for them is less condition removal than an ele (who is traited for it). Biased much?

You don’t have to trait for condition removal. You simply take Ether Renewal.

Zenith.7301:

Hah! 2.7k attack only and you “destroy” things? Don’t wonder then why people don’t take you seriously when you consider such a mediocre attack stats (berk warriors easily boast over 3k) to be “destroying”.

OMG! That’s why warriors are so awesome! They have gear that can get them over 3k attacks and no one else can!!!

News flash: attack is just a stat. EVERYONE can get over 3k attack, not just berseker warriors. Now they are the only ones with Forceful Greatsword, having a chance to get might on crits. But might stacks is a whole other issue.

Weindrasi.3805:

It’s hard to ignore media messages when most of the men and women around you follow them. It’s hard to ignore them when you have to put up with them over and over again, every day from childhood. If we were all born as wise adults, then the media wouldn’t be a problem. But we aren’t—we are born as naive children. As naive children, we do let the media dictate our values—and by the time we grow up, the media has dictated our values for so long that we struggle to change them. It isn’t some imaginary entity, and it does have power.

No one said to ignore media nor has anyone said it is an imaginary entity. The media is not a living breathing thing, but just a collection of messages. People that study media inclined subjects understand that and how it influences what people think, say, do, etc. Once you understand this, you understand what the messages are actually trying to do, and a lot of times it’s to get you to buy something.

There’s probably more helms that do cover ears than ones that don’t…unless you’re medium armor. Medium armor has lots of hats and masks which leave the ears exposed.

http://www.gw2armor.com/

I see it more that your taste evolves and you can’t appreciate the quality of a dish until a certain point :P

As for potions and food leveling, some food already scales with your level, like foods that grant regen probably scale down so they aren’t overpowered but still provide better HP return than lower level food. Other foods, like the ones that have a chance for an effect already scale: chance for might on dodge is still 100% for lvl 80 food but the might stack itself is augmenting your scaled stats.

The pure stat boost foods probably scale down too, giving you effectively less return for the cost of that consumable.

However, potions don’t scale and shouldn’t. If you’re using level 80 Inquest potions in metrica province, you should get the 10% damage…but then that’s 10% more of your downscaled damage…so it still scales in a way.

Monagan.6925:

Leo G.4501:

This argument…makes no sense. There’s no logic in this at all.

As a male with a nice build, you want to flaunt it. That’s only natural. In particular to pixelated avatars, people spend good effort combining colors combinations, designs and accessories that often are just covered up by armor.

Actually, I don’t want to flaunt it if it doesn’t fit my character. I don’t want a scantily clad guardian, or thief. In fact I spend a great deal of time on my outfits to make them look the characters. It’s not always easy.
I never said male characters shouldn’t also have a choice of sexy armor. I said the majority of armor choices for both character genders should be nonsexy. Unless it’s some sort of sexy game.

Don’t change what you said. You said the argument for more revealing armor for men was ‘silly’. Do you want to rephrase that then?

As for your character, it’s you just didn’t spend as much effort designing the ‘avatar’ as much as you did ’character’s armor’. I don’t have norn characters, but I’m sure plenty adore the tatoos they chose and colored and want them visible. I like my charr’s coat color and pattern because it’s natural and not common and I’d like that visible.

As for it being a ‘sexy game’, I toned my posts to be tongue-in-cheek because the discussed topic is pointless as I’m positive the company that made the game has a team of people who poll players and consumers for this information to come to their decisions. They pay people to do that stuff so people pushing their agenda that isn’t related to the game or its content at all seems overly dramatic to me.

I’m simply pointing out the lack of customization options for male (as well as non-human/sylvari/norn) avatars not because I have a hard-on for them but because it’s better for showing other costume options.

Dang you, Efut! You turned me on to Charr

Malthurius.6870:

Leo G.4501:

You should never be as cute as Tybalt.

Yeah, I’m not saying faces exactly like them; I just wish there was the option for a similar smaller lower jaw and teeth, or rather, I want a closed mouth.

Sorry, I just wanted to be apart of the conversation :P

Weindrasi.3805:

We also hear so-called jokes like: “No fat chicks allowed!”. Female businesspeople, workers, and politicians are frequently criticized for their appearance, not their policies or decisions. Among young girls, eating disorders are rising every year because society tells them they have to be hot to have worth. When a video game sexualizes the women, but not the men, it reinforces all of this.

I’d like to comment that, it’s probably more important to identify that media itself is simply a source of communicating messages. ‘The media’ is only alive if you’re deluded enough to believe messages can dictate your values for you.

Stop giving power to an inanimate entity. THAT’S the problem, not what the media says is important.

Monagan.6925:

I think the argument for more skimpy male clothing is silly as well. I wouldn’t want to play a guardian in a plate thong. That means I have to consider women might not enjoy having to do that either. That is the problem here. It’s not “there’s not enough sexy armor for men”, it’s “women don’t like being forced to wear sexy armor”.

This argument…makes no sense. There’s no logic in this at all.

As a male with a nice build, you want to flaunt it. That’s only natural. In particular to pixelated avatars, people spend good effort combining colors combinations, designs and accessories that often are just covered up by armor.

You should never be as cute as Tybalt.

All you have to do is take the soul bound item, use a transmutation stone on it + a white grade item. It will say the results will be soulbound but they always end up account bound. Then plop the new item in the bank and take it on the desired character.

I took the glowing necromancer eyes and have it on my elementalist for one of his outfits.

Oglaf.1074:

Leo G.4501:

Oglaf.1074:

Sorry, but the next Profession must be a Soldier.

Please understand the difference between need and want.

What you want isn’t what everyone needs and what Anet wants isn’t going to be what everyone wants.

I’m pretty sure they’ve hinted on multiple occasions that the next planned Profession will be a Heavy Armour one.

I fail to see how that invalidates what I said. Whose to even say they are bound to having the profession type decide their equipment? Anet makes the rules, we just interpret (or misinterpret as the current case may be) them in simplified form.

No info?

If the the bolts are really purely random, I’m starting to think the combo type may be underpowered since the effects seem weaker than just projectile finishers.

Oglaf.1074:

Sorry, but the next Profession must be a Soldier.

Please understand the difference between need and want.

What you want isn’t what everyone needs and what Anet wants isn’t going to be what everyone wants.

Did.2683:

“Quite a reward!”

I love when my asura says that. The way he does is adaaawwible.

FacesOfMu.3561:

I am advocating for the ability and choice for both genders to wear what they want, and wear equally skimpy clothing amongst their choices, and have an equal number of choices across the genders.

And since female avatars have the ability to wear skimpy or modest (the majority being the latter), this simply means male avatars need more skimpy options and leave the female options alone.

/thread

Now give me my charrspeedo heavy armor…plox >_>

Do the other attunement traits ( Internal Fire and Strength of Stone, 10% damage while attuned to fire and earth respectively) work with Lingering Elements?

EasymodeX.4062:

That’s your opinion based on certain build assumptions, much like “shatters are terrible and phantasm army is the only way a Mesmer can be effective” (as of two months ago). A physical utility build is pretty brutal, although it gets hard countered by stability. I mean, it’s really good, but it is not a universal build, or one that fits the current meta of sPvP (note: it can do rather well in WvW too). Try it out if you haven’t. It’s really fun as hell.

Edit: Specifically, that’s a limitation of the strategy and build approach, not of the Trait itself, which is rather game-changing for physical utility, much like EM for Mantras.

Really. And you play Warrior?

I know a physical warrior can be pretty devestating if they use the environment and surprise, but ‘fun’ and ‘effective’ are not the same thing.

That’s an odd opinion. A 25-33% stunlock with Hammer Burst skills is nothing to scoff at. 50% uptime on Immobilize.

I am a fan of hammer but even I have to admit it is easily countered because of the speed of its attack strings. A physical hammer build, if played right, I’m sure is really good at applying pressure but if it were really good you should see more of them around. I’m stepping out of bounds when discussing PvP so I’ll leave it at that.

The most ironic part is that you are rationalizing why those traits are not as potent, when I could simply ask why everyone assumes the Mesmer is actually in melee range all the time for iPersona?

Well if Sword wasn’t such a good weapon…

Nurvus.2891:

It makes sense to Parry a group as much as it makes sense to Block a group.

But you tend not to be able to block a group. The only block that blocks ‘groups’ is when using a Shield and Mesmer Mimic (that I can tell). Every other block tends to have a number attached (blocks 3, blocks twice, etc).

It makes sense to block a group with a shield. Doesn’t make sense to parry a group without one.

Oh, well you said burst combo so I figured you were talking about burst moves.

IMO, you can only effectively use maybe 1 physical utility at a time unless you’re aiming for the bola + bulls rush combo…but bola does practically no damage. With more than 1, you’re sacrificing a lot of safety (gotta choose between Shake it off and Endure Pain, etc) and that trait doesn’t really do much beyond that. The other stuff (20% cooldown redux on burst skills and increased adrenaline traits) aren’t really much help either considering the various traits that improve performance with adrenaline levels plus the lack of effectiveness on some burst skills (longbow is really the only one worth using all the time and the others are situationally useful) means those traits you’ve mentioned (except maybe Last Chance) don’t come even close to Ipersona.

You’re looking at Forceful Greatsword + Slashing power (2 traits) using a GS to get that level of effectiveness.

Of course, that’s just my opinion.

To add, the pants are exalted (karma).

Honestly, I’d say that combo looks bleh :P

EasymodeX.4062:

Warriors have another one where they deal double damage on half their burst combo.

50% crit chance on Burst skills? Which trait is that? You talking about Unsuspecting Foe?

Kazhiel.8194:

Sabre.1275:

I still think the shatter mechanic is garbage, even with illusionary persona. My character feels stronger when I never shatter at all, and build for durable phantasms.

This is why I lol at the people who say there is no build variety. IMO there are tons of ways to build your char and none of them are invalid.

Are you talking about mesmers in particular?

Or do you feel there’s a proportionate amount of viable builds across the variety of other professions?

paleeshi.1924:

Leo G.4501:

Naurgalen.2374:

I cant try it now cause I’m at work, but if the limitation is not like I write it: 1) The wiki is wrong and 2) Staff is “overpowered” and nobody uses that advantage

Yup, it works.

Funny, cause when I used Ring of Fire + Magnetic Graps a few days back, it didn’t seem to give an Aura to my party. I did it a few times as well. 1st boss in AC, had a few melee players next to the boss and myself. I didn’t know about the limitation, I just assumed then that the combo auras didn’t work with the XII water trait.

That’s a leap finisher. Using a blast finisher in an ice field = AoE frost armor = AoE fury/swiftness.

Naurgalen.2374:

I cant try it now cause I’m at work, but if the limitation is not like I write it: 1) The wiki is wrong and 2) Staff is “overpowered” and nobody uses that advantage

Yup, it works.

Well it’d be a build around conditions. Like I said, healing power would also make whatever conditions you apply that much harder to remove. In a PvP environment, it’s effectively pressuring foes to use their cooldowns more. And the builds with no good source of healing power (so practically non-bunker) will be kittened.

Just tossing an idea out there…

What about profession specific endurance use skills or maybe just armor class specific endurance skills?

Like for for light = Mystic Mist: use a quarter of your endurance to block an AoE (any multi-hit skill).
For medium = Duck!: use a quarter of your endurance to evade a single target attack (ranged or melee)
For heavy = Frustrated Counter: use a quarter of your endurance to counter a single target attack (counter is like Mesmer Mimic which lets you throw back an attack after receiving with all the effects attached). Also knocks back the one countered.

I like the idea of Tumble but it doesn’t seem logical to ‘parry’ a group. IMO, the idea should be “use dodge vs lots of enemies” and “use [insert idea] for single foes”. If it were that, you’d be capable of handling a 1 foe more efficiently vs using your 2 dodges to get out of 1 enemy’s reach.

Serp.3264:

Leo G.4501:

Serp.3264:

Damage is damage. Why would condition damage be worse than direct damage? The only thing that could be said is that things like bleeds have a cap which is easy to reach, but maintaining that cap is important. Also, burning increases duration and is a constant source of high damage. It is an amazing condition to keep up. I disagree with your assessment here.

To interject, I’d have to agree that condition damage isn’t as good as direct damage because your main source of effectiveness is via stats. The higher your stats the better your damage. However, conditions don’t seem to be as supported by stats as direct damage is.

You’ve basically got condition duration and condition damage which will scale your damage up with specific skills. However, for direct damage you have:
-Power
-% Critical damage
-Percision/Critical chance
-% Damage

Beyond that, you have things like quickness which will speed up your animations so you can hit with direct damage faster/more often. Now if Quickness also sped up the ticks of conditions (suddenly bleeds tic every half sec, burns/poison every 1sec but last half as long) that’d at least be one way to improve the returns…

But there are just lots of counters to conditions, namely cleansing and -condition duration. Sure, conditions bypass toughness but with the factors for direct damage in play, you can get huge returns quickly whereas you’ll quickly reach a ceiling (stacks/max duration) that caps condition effectiveness.

But this isn’t an elementalist problem, just a condition problem.

This is true in the terms of fight other people, but I was referring strictly to PvE because that is what LordByron was referring to.

You make a good point based on stats. However, 1000 damage from burn and 1000 damage from a sword are both just 1000 damage. That is all I was saying with that comment. The only difference is 1000 damage from burns take more time than 1000 damage from sword. The upside is that 1000 damage from burns is ticking while you apply other conditions and/or hit with direct damage.

I speak of PvE as well since my knowledge of PvP is very limited (I only do WvW and don’t touch tournys or structured).

Yes, 1000 dmg from burn is the same as 1000 dmg from a sword strike….but apply vulnerability and that 1000 dmg from the sword goes up but not for the burn. There’s random buffs teammates can apply that improve direct damage like fury and crit dmg but rarely is there anything to make conditions function more attractively.

PS: I believe condition damage isn’t horrible, it just takes a back seat to actual direct damage. You only use burns and bleeds to supplement direct damage not as a prominent source.

It’s actually why I wish there was a gear set-up with Power/Cond/Crit dmg. I managed to get my scepter/dagger elementalist build to around 35% crit chance (without Fury) and around 75% crit dmg but that means my conditions are pathetic. I’d gladly sacrifice some of my HP so that my conditions were stronger while keeping my crit damage.