Guild Wars 2

The reason precursors feel so nasty to acquire isn’t that they’re too rare. Based on my knowledge of MMOs, players will literally grind for anything. The problem is that they’re too distributed.

Spamming autoattack on world bosses and farm trains shouldn’t get you essentially the same odds for a precursor as Arah or FotM 50. There’s absolutely no reason for there to even be a minuscule chance of them dropping off of trash mobs.

When so much faceroll content has odds of dropping a pre, the odds for any given activity have to be crazy low to keep the supply limited. Players are pushed into this global lottery where nothing feels like progression. Why work my way up to harder content if it won’t even improve my chances?

This leads to a situation where the most effective method is to find the easiest gold grind and buy it off the TP, rather than actually putting any effort into playing the game. This feel cheap to do, and is the reason why legendaries have near zero prestige right now. When you see a legendary these days, all it means is “farmer” or “RNGeesus”.

My suggestion:Take precursors off of trash mob loot tables. Take them out of afk-auto world bosses. Dramatically raise the odds of them dropping in actual content, so that players get to feel like they can do something about getting them, and they regain a bit of prestige factor.

What do you guys think? Would it actually help the process of getting a legendary feel more special, or would it see too much casual backlash?

You can just reject join requests you know.

Boneheart.3561:

Linnael.1069:

We DO want to know what’s in development.

No I don’t. Surprise me.

There would be no change in how surprised you are.

Only when that surprise happens.

lordkrall.7241:

Have you seen what happens on these forums if something that have been announced is ever changed even in the slightest way?

I’ve certainly never seen the entire front two pages be flooded with posts insinuating that ANet does nothing at all with their time. I’ve never seen a wholesale crash of player confidence. I’ve never seen anything warrant a flood of dev responses, a return of the CDI, and a bunch of game designer posts regarding high level company policy.

We’re pretty much all in agreement here. Regardless of whether or not you think this will allow condiscepter mesmer to hold/cap in PvP, we all know that allowing it to do so by giving it this mindless, counter-free playstyle is a bad change.

The only people who are in support of this change are the people who think that this will cause condition scepter mesmer to suddenly become viable in PvE. I have yet to hear a convincing statement in support of that claim.

Even discounting the aggro/screen clutter benefit, thieves guild drops a scorpion wire, black powder, and unload in the first 3 seconds after use.

If you can’t figure out how to win any 1v1 with that then you’re not even thinking and no elite will save you.

BlackBeard.2873:

Linnael.1069:

Will scepter mesmer be able to hold or cap point in PvP? No.

This is exactly what Helseth (best mesmer universe, so I pretty much trust his opinion) predicts will be true. Condi mesmers won’t even need PU, potentially, and will still have ridiculous 1v1 capability with a completely mindless playstyle. That is a bad thing.

I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, though I’m still not really convinced they’ll be quite as stupendously strong as he’s saying.

Either way tho, a bad thing like you said.

Dirame.8521:

10 stack upkeep is a best case scenario with doubled durations. Quickness works the same for everybody. Even if you could permanently maintain 25 stacks you would still not do more damage than any other power spec. It still takes you 4+ seconds to reach stack plateau. You are not in a position to talk about high level PvE if most bosses you fight are walking around more than 20% of the fight. Stop Trying.

Mayama.1854:

So you want nike elementalists too? Arent nike warriors enough in WvW?

Enough for what, exactly?

After the nerf it can’t be used to wreck camps. Leaves it as a running tool.

I’d rather build to win the fight than to run away.

We’re talking about all game modes. As an elementalist I would literally rather take a fourth utility than any of my elites, no matter what I’m doing where or when.

Supply drop dominates spvp like nobody’s business.
Thieves guild is a won fight when soloroaming.

Supply drop and thieves guild are two of the best elites in the game. Try to be considerate to others and not post on this forum if you’re just going to mislead people.

If you’re talking world bosses they cap out already.

If you mean dungeons, torment does not do “a crapton of damage”. The best case scenario is that you’ll be able to maintain 10 stacks. This is worth less than 10 bleeds.

Nobody will move the boss and sacrifice hb/lava font/ice/meteor showers for your pitiful 10 torment. Nobody will give you time to spawn clones and tick conditions when the boss should be dead in under a minute. Nobody will ever be deluded enough to think that scepter conditions are more valuable to bring than another power spec.

Nobody will welcome a condition scepter mesmer in PvE. Expecting upkeep of less than 10 stacks of torment to make a difference is ridiculous.

As far as game impact goes. A small amount of people (wvw roamers) will hate it, and nobody else will care because stealth camping is still useless in pvp/pve.

The real question is why this is even happening.

Will scepter mesmer be even a mildly acceptable PvE condition build? No.

Will scepter mesmer be able to hold or cap point in PvP? No.

Will scepter mesmer be able to use clones or deal AoE in a Zerg encounter? No.

Will scepter mesmer become even stronger while requiring even less skill to play, in the one tiny niche (wvw soloplay) where it was already so ridiculously good that the singular response is “just walk away”? Yes.

So really, why is this even happening?

Low model quality also makes things look ugly, not just uniform. Like really, they’re implementing a quality of life feature, but just not letting you use it unless your playing on an organised team? How is that even reasonable.

Simple. There’s no reason at all not to give this option in hotjoin/WvW. Tournament players are not the only people who get annoyed by asurans, and it matters just as much if not more in WvW.

If its a huge load on the server that’s fine, but please don’t assume that the rest of us don’t want this. We really, really do.

Approximately quoted new ambient dialogue from LS ep 4.

This is pretty much my theory of choice now.

updraft and shocking aura are your best friends here. save your aoes for shadow refuge, and dont blow dodge when they cnd, spam aoe instead. Trying to get protection up for their burst is iffy at best given that you’ve just wasted cooldowns if they happen to have sword on swap.

Also ignore the swasima guy. you have no good weakness options and deathblossom is lolworthy.

So there’s a theory floating around that we killed zhaitan by hitting him with some sort of poisoned magic. Makes sense given that elder dragons eat magic. But where do we actually get confirmation on this? As far as I can tell the only sources are the few missions dealing with Gorr’s Vacuu-Magic Polarizer. Clearly where the idea springs from, but there’s never any indication of us actually scaling it up for the Glory of Tyria.

Can anybody bring to light more solid evidence that this was, in fact, how the Mega-LIT cannon actually worked? I played through all the order missions and I’d hate to have missed something so big.

He’s been standing there since release. I specifically remember standing there to listen to him on my first playthrough and being really impressed by how anet characterized the sylvari warrior.

I don’t think there’s an actual problem with mobility investment for most classes. Outside of a few apparent cases, such as the gtfowarrior and shortbow thieves, leaps and dashes are fairly nonspammable, and using them to engage locks you out of using them to leave the fight for what I consider respectable times.

The problem is that most people get roaming confused with dueling. Disengagement is mandatory in one and superfluous in the other, so when people roam with dueling builds, they get into alot of cases where they’re winning the 1v1, and then the other guy has a way out/back in that they don’t. This leads to alot of people complaining that “I should have won that but he got away”, when the only reason they should have won was because the other guy built to get away.

Full investment backstabs will hit for upwards of 12k on most targets, including medium armor classes. When playing the build with the classic all in mug combo, I have never failed to down any light/medium armor class that didn’t see me coming. The damage is there, no question. Of course, full investment is also rendered useless for 45 seconds by literally any reaction, so nobody ever uses it.

The 3.5-7k setup people are talking about can be easily achieved with room for the holy grail: six in shadow arts. In other words, in the hands of somebody that can play it, that damage cannot be seen coming or going. Neither you nor your 20 buddies will ever kill a good thief playing a build like that. You might drive him away from objectives or make it impossible for him to kill you either, but it’s the safest thing on the market bar none.

Celestial does everything sort of well, but I’d recommend you look really closely at what you want to do before investing. In my experience the healing power/survivability stats aren’t worth the tradeoff in spike potential, as you’re still able to pump out respectable healing without stats, and your survivability shouldn’t be tied to stats. IMO its overrated for most roles.

Fresh air is kind of a full offensive setup. Start with full zerkers as a baseline, and add Prec/toughness/power ascended trinkets, or Valkyrie armor as necessary until you feel comfortable. I use two pieces of valk armor and the pre/t/p rings on my D/D, but you should be able to go much squishier with scepter mainhand.

^7/10. The blue wings kind of clash with the staff and armor, tho the rest goes together fairly well.

*Edit, was gonna also do a closeup but I can’t figure out how to attatch multiple images. owell

Permastealth is possible, with blinding powder, SR, smokescreen, dagger mainhand/shortbow. It’s not really useful for anything but scouting, but it’s very possible.

Heartseeker spam only comes across that way because it buffers into itself and you’ll cast alot more than you think you have, exacerbated by lag/fps etc. However, there is some issue with how, when the enemy is below 25% hp, it’s pretty much always the best option.

dancingmonkey.4902:

If you read the post a little more closely, I quote IP, or any procced burn effect, for about 5k. An underestimate by your calculation. The four per ten base duration is easily reproducible on stone shards ele or PU mesmer to name a few, so this is not a limited case. Condition builds of other types, for instance PU mesmers, don’t load this all at once but still have the same problem; improper damage mitigation for the amount of counterplay put in. Against the axe warrior, if you avoid 50% of his autos, you avoid 50 percent of that damage. Air and Fire sigils, due to their relatively low per activation damage and higher rate of activation, work closer to along these lines, being more homogenized in terms of applications over time. Against these rng proc builds on the other hand, if you avoid 50% of the autos you avoid significantly less than 50% of damage application. Consider also that there is little condition damage penalty for being at range, due to these effects applying equally at 1200 range, and the fact that you’ve selected a melee direct damage comparison against a low toughness target where auto attacking is only a few percent short of the highest possible dps for that weapon. The same can rarely be said of condition damage specs, and toughness is entirely a non-issue. I’m pretty much totally fine with a melee weapon in pvt gear doing more damage than a condition damage setup from range with only one stat difference and more difficult to avoid mechanics

Again, I’m not the one simplifying here.

In addition, fights are not dps races. Forcing your opponent into defensive actions reduces the damage you take while making it easier to apply damage. This is why a hard open is so critical. When a large amount of potential damage over the next ten seconds is lumped into one auto, there is an invaluable component of immediately beginning fights with offensive advantage. Now the opponent needs to both clear conditions and setup defenses that will stop you from interrupting them, while you setup whatever you like and lose much less through this downtime, as a larger proportion of your damage for the following time frame has been applied already.

For you others, yes, I’m fine with 12k backstabs. They can be avoided by spinning in circles and to do so both the thief and I would both need to be built completely glass. I’m a soloroaming zerker ele and I’ve only gotten hit for more than 10k twice. Both times fresh air deleted him immediately after. Condition builds have no such glass requirement, for either the target or the caster, neither is their damage reduced by turning around.

To the person saying that we’re not thinking about application, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. My whole point has been about how condition application is problematically easy and impossible to mitigate, leaving active removal the only real counter. Outside of gimmick cases, you should never be hit for more than 4k with a skill that didn’t have a massive tell for at least 3/4 of a second or some other specific mandate for application. We’ve already agreed that even condition autos will pop you for significantly more, so I think it’s pretty clear why active defensive options considered less valuable against conditions than against power builds, which is the real problem. I’m not complaining that condition damage is too difficult to get rid of. I play an ele, that’s not an issue. The issue is that you should be able to deal with condition damage builds the same way as direct builds. Evade, block, blind big tells. This is the play/counterplay system that arenanet has set up, and it works well and is interesting. What is not working well or interesting is the imbalanced nature of condition procs, which devalue active defense and turn the entire combat system into “Do I have enough removal?” This is why people take issue with “bring more removal” as the counterargument. There should be the option to outplay, via the same mechanisms in the rest of the game, if you find yourself in a condition fight. Instead, when you run into a condition build along these lines, you’re forced into a little mini-game that cares little for the majority of mechanics anet put in as defensive options. When people get owned by axe warriors, the responses are “dodge, blind, block, aegis, outrange.” What kind of response do you have for the person who gets owned by condition builds? “bring more removal” That should be an option, but not the only option, and the way condition application is working right now, it pretty much is.

scerevisiae.1972:

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

Check the patch notes more often. Basic info bro.

On the original topic, hydromancy is amazing and you need to at least give it a shot. It’s cheap as hell on the tp, and it’s so good i’m just going to let it speak for itself.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Linnael.1069:

Bhawb.7408:

Linnael.1069:

2k over ten seconds is laughable. Learn about some condition builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQJArImgYokC0clRHAWAA-TJRAwAAOBAKeAAM3focZAA

You were saying? No one even runs that build, but that is a very high condition damage and its only 2k for an auto attack over 10 seconds.

I can pick out an infinite number of builds nobody runs that only do 2k condition damage per autoattack. Generally, trying to be knowledgeable in a conversation like this demands that you know the builds people do run. Like really, I have no idea what you’re even trying to prove now, and even less of an idea why i’m still responding to these things

The build he chose was also set up to maximize the damage from said auto-attack. It still didn’t even reach 2k over 11 seconds.

If the maximized auto-damage build isn’t reaching 2k over 10 seconds, how the hell is anyone getting higher on a condition build?

Nobody relies on just stats and base applications, and I never said the problem was that every auto will do crazy damage. Take an auto attack. Throw on incendiary powder, burning precision, glyph of elemental power, dhuumfire, etc, take your pick. There’s a myriad of passive effects along the same lines. Add on hit sigils. Add on swap sigils. Suddenly the next auto you get hit with is slapping you for another 5k of burning, 3k of poison, and is throwing another damaging cover every time it lands. It will not have a cooldown until you take that damage, it will be up every ten seconds or less, it will not be telegraphed.

All of a sudden it is mandatory that you have at least three plus cleanses up every ten seconds unless you want to eat 10k damage from the next rng auto that rolls your unlucky number. This is the problem. The counter-play is minute. Now add the rest of the build, the part that is guaranteed to not be squishy enough to eat comparable direct damage, the part that has it’s own damage on top of that.

Now show me how I can get my next power autoattack to do an additional 5k damage every ten seconds, only going on cooldown when it pops.

As a side note, you’re going to be doing this damage to anybody. That warrior is going to be plinking away on anybody with real toughness for less than 1.5k autos.

None of you got the GW1 reference. It’s pretty funny.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hamstorm

Bhawb.7408:

Linnael.1069:

2k over ten seconds is laughable. Learn about some condition builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQJArImgYokC0clRHAWAA-TJRAwAAOBAKeAAM3focZAA

You were saying? No one even runs that build, but that is a very high condition damage and its only 2k for an auto attack over 10 seconds.

I can pick out an infinite number of builds nobody runs that only do 2k condition damage per autoattack. Generally, trying to be knowledgeable in a conversation like this demands that you know the builds people do run. Like really, I have no idea what you’re even trying to prove now, and even less of an idea why i’m still responding to these things

OK that summary wasn’t so final. You may note that the proscribed course of action will raise the skill cap on elementalist offense, resulting in a possible larger elementalist burst. It will.

Bigger potential offensive capabilities are the only way you will see offensive/defensive build option parity given the atrocious but at this point irreversible decision to give elementalists the single lowest base defense in the game

To get around making the elementalist so dependent on choices that allow it to stay alive, you’re going to have to make it banging amazing when it chooses to forgo those options and be offensive. This is proven to be balance-able already. 94k is the potential 1 second ele burst, but nobody complains about that rotation being too big, because it’s hard to do. So just push that further, give us more stuff like that.

Weakness: Low Baseline Power This is something that is a is integral to a class with having a lot of tactical options as its identifying trait. If you fail to use those options, you will not be effective. However, this weakness was implemented as a flat statistical deficit (base vitality and armor). This is the laziest and poorest way to do it. Compare Anet’s system to League of Legends or DotA, arguably the most successful esports currently out there, and it becomes immediately apparent what the problem is.

In well designed games, baseline power deficit is mostly not a result of base stats. Instead, high skill cap options demand high skill to use by being conditionally good. Lee Sin and Invoker are trash when played poorly, but that’s not because they start the game with half the health and armor of other characters. Lee sin actually has stat advantage over most of the cast of LoL. They are skill dependent because of the way their abilities work, and the elementalist really has nothing close to that. Beyond Fire Grab nothing is actually dependent on player skill for its efficacy. This means that the only things the ele player can improve on are landing abilities at the right time/countering dodges etc. Essentially things that every profession has to deal with.

Because of this, Elementalist has a bar of very strong skills balanced by a set of very weak base stats and cooldowns. Neither of these things are interactive with the player.

This is why you see so much water/arcane. It isn’t because of the traits in particular, but because of the fact that the elementalist’s deficit in survivability, which is just a numbers game, is alot easier to make up for than it’s offensive power is to raise. Getting your elementalist to be better offensively requires nailing all the universal mechanics that other professions have to nail anyway. It’s easier right now just to take our tactical defensive options and use the base strength of our offensive skill bars, which outside of a very few skills, all have damage that doesn’t really rely on skill to apply.

Essentially, the elementalist was intended to have many options, demanding strong offensive and strong defensive power. Because the devs didn’t make these options skill dependant enough, the elementalist just has strong offensive and strong defensive power, held back by cooldown management and low base defensive stats. None of these factors are enjoyable or interactive with the player. Due to the fact that the defensive stats are the only ones that Arenanet changed, it is now much more effective to take defensive options than offensive ones. Why? Without stat deficit the only thing balancing elementalist offense is inflated cooldowns demanding cooldown management. Cooldowns are pretty much impossible to lower outside of exclusive traits, and even taking those traits will not raise your power level in a single encounter. The fact that offensive specialization actively attempts to minimize the number of cooldown cycles that one needs to go through makes specializing offense actually counterproductive.

What needs to be addressed Not the power level. Eles are fine right now from a matchup balance standpoint. What needs to change is how they feel, to build and play. Make elementalist offense more conditional, harder to apply, but make it a LOT more rewarding when applied well. Then bring up our built in defense baseline, or get rid of cooldowns as balancing entirely, as neither will then be necessary. If you pull off the number tweaking, this results in an elementalist that is just as effective (power output over player skill input) as it is currently, has a higher skill cap, and doesn’t have a lopsided preference for defense as a result of lazy design.

Final Summary: Make the elementalist offense more skill based and more difficult to apply, so the elementalist can get a stronger baseline defense (more built in evade/blinds/blocks). Nerf the whole kit floor down to match it’s defense baseline, then build up both offense and defense with more skill dependent, active options on both sides. This should let us build where we want to be strong, instead of just patching up where we are weak.

I know this is long, but if you are reading this please, please read it all the way through. I’ve been on elementalist for thousands of hours, and the design philosophy behind it is something that I’ve always felt needed talking about, way more than the superficial power of it at any point in time.

Strong Point: Flexibility

Both in combat and at a metagame level, elementalists should always have options. Note that this should also include the option to give up some of that tactical flexibility and specialize instead. I feel that this is strong on a metagame level right now. Elementalists can be great dps, great burst, great bunkers, and anywhere in between. However, this is weak on a skill/utility level for many weapon sets. D/D is semi-passable, but only for reasons that I will outline below. This is even weaker on sets like staff, where alot of skills do one thing without much interaction. See air/water 2, and most of its skills to be honest.

Note that skills don’t have to have alot of of crazy utility tie ons to be flexible. Updraft does, and its cool, but compare to electric field. It can be also be an escape, a travel tool, a damage setup, and can even provide those things to allies at range. And its premise was just stuns in a circle. This is good game design. Contrast with things like ice spike, which are just straight up lazy design. (What can you actually use ice spike to do?)

Bhawb.7408:

Linnael.1069:

Exactly the kitten point. You can’t.
kitten you must have been so confused by that post.

Because an auto that deals 2k damage over 10 seconds is too strong, but a power auto that does 3k instantly is fine. Gotcha.

2k over ten seconds is laughable. Learn about some condition builds.

Darox.8069:

Or Zhaitan was a blatant bug all along ?

This is my concern. Was it actually? Or is this somehow intended? At this point I wouldn’t put it past Anet, and I’m just looking for a little restoration of faith here. Red post would make my day.

pierwola.9602:

Linnael.1069:

Tell me how many pistol autos i’m supposed to dodge.

You dodge auto-attacks ?

Exactly the kitten point. You can’t.
kitten you must have been so confused by that post.

The people above you are are right about strength being the op factor. Ele’s gained from the might stacking even more than other professions, because thats what the bunker ele gets its damage threat from. Tone down strength runes and all you have is the old never die ele that never dies but never does anything else either.

You’re also not talking serious competition in soloq. If you’re thinking builds and posting on the forums, you’re guaranteed to be better than most people out there already, and ele is a high skill cap profession. When you’re better it shows, and that’s exactly how it should be. If you wanna seriously examine a build/profession, go into a 1v1 server and just keep going at it.

High damage zerker ele is perfectly viable, however I would highly, highly suggest you go thirty air. One of the great struggles of playing elementalist is getting locked out of your damage due to the attunement mechanic. With Fresh air, not only do you get way more hydromancy/shocking attunement bursts, but you get attunement flexibility without needing to invest in arcane, helped by the fact that lightning whip is promazing. You then get to take both bolt to the heart, and zephyr’s boon.

Stone splinters is a good choice, and that one plus renewing vigor are the only real mandatory picks for damage. I like throwing the last 4 points into water, but thats up to you.

Saint.5647:

I don’t mind some of the Story Modes. Some are actually tougher than the regular paths and are not as well known. Arah is a disaster though. More false endings than LoTR and the worst boss I’ve ever fought.

If you cut out all the airship bullkitten, it isn’t bad though. The Mouth of Zhaitan is a decent fight with some mechanics behind it. The ground portions with their bosses are not bad either. It’s that kitten airship with the 30 minute time gating and obnoxiously awkward turrets that drag it down.

Honestly I loved the bit with the giants and dragon champs. There’s a place for set pieces, and that was definitely it.

How they managed to make the final boss less interesting that the three preceding it totally escapes me tho.

Carighan.6758:

Linnael.1069:

WvW roaming is dominated by condition thieves and PU mesmers which are condition and hybrid. Everybody else has to outplay to catch up. The ONLY reason that conditions aren’t more popular is the condition cap, which makes them useless for anything outside of solo roaming WvW.

Right. That’s why tPvP is all condition builds I take it, especially at the top end?

tPvP is a different beast. When you have the team coordination to not cap out and the small team size/relative prevalence of 1v1/2v2 scenarios, it plays alot more like the soloroam scenario than anything else in the game. You should also note that the same issue arises. Conditions overpoweringly effective when in the 1% of situations where the cap isn’t making them useless.

I know I did. Then I finished the personal story on one of my alts. Did the mission with three other people who had never done it. Lemme give you a few highlights from chat:

“what do i need to know for the next bit”
“lol”

“wait is that it”
“where do we go now”
“i think its over”

Granted most of the snark is me, but I honestly thought this was kind of embarassing. I’ve been promoting the game to try and get my friends to play it with me for a while, and I had to think, what if this was what they saw? I have to say, the final boss, the climactic ending to your story, the Big Bad, would make most people want to run as far away as possible from getting this game.

Keep in mind, we hardc0re players that have been playing for a while tend to see the personal story as, well, small fry. But remember that for the first hundred-odd hours of the game, that was the game, it’s what the story is all here for. And the finish to that, where you get to finally face the boss that’s hounded you for ages and taken so much from you, is still just pressing 2? Honestly, if somebody made a list of dumbest final bosses in mmo’s, who do you think would top that list?

I guess what I’m asking for, beyond the chance to rant for bit, is to just get some confirmation that this is not intended. I’m a little afraid that Anet’s somehow rationalized the need for an easy boss so that everybody can feel like a hero, but come on, even easy bosses can have cool mechanics and stuff. Literally everything else in the dungeon prior to zhaitan is better. So please, to any devs out there, come tell us that you’ve got something in the works, that this is somewhere on your priority list.

Honestly I love how the skill feels right now. Its kinda like, I need to actually touch this person, but when I do, they asplode. The only thing this needs is better payoff or lower cooldown. It’s significantly harder to land than eviscerate/backstab, is conditional, and is on a cooldown thats 5-10 times longer. I don’t really think it needs more damage attatched, but autocrit for flaming targets is a great idea, as would be a cooldown buff to something like thirty seconds.

WvW roaming is dominated by condition thieves and PU mesmers which are condition and hybrid. Everybody else has to outplay to catch up. The ONLY reason that conditions aren’t more popular is the condition cap, which makes them useless for anything outside of solo roaming WvW.

If you are a roamer, you will immediately recognize how stupid this system is. Conditions are OP in situations where the cap is not reached. There’s only one stat you need to invest in, and you can out-dps berserker builds by spamming uautoattack on a number of builds. Tell me how many pistol autos i’m supposed to dodge. Tell me how I’m supposed to counter their attrition build with burst, when they get to have max damage while carrying around Vitality/Toughness on every piece of gear. It’s mindblowingly broken.

In any other game mode, it’s hardcore shutdown by the condition cap. This leads bad players to think that “conditions must be ok, nobody uses them”, but really they’re just in a binary system, where they either suck balls or are totally overpowered depending on the case. In the game as it stands, not many people roam compared to pve, and thus you don’t see many condition users.

I’ve been running a similar build for a long time for wvw soloroam. I’d suggest a few things, that should patch up most of your weak spots.

Drop Evasive arcana and elemental attunement. I know I know, it seems crazy. But if you take the time to play around without them, they really aren’t necessary. Even if you only take ten out of arcane, you can put it into water. Thats gonna get you a bigger heal on water swap, to balance out the loss of the water dodge, as well as give you instantcast condition removal, which goes a long kitten way towards dealing with condition necros.

Personally I go zerk and take another ten out of arcane for stone shards, but thats not really necessary. It plays similarly, only the fights are(have to be) shorter.

Essentially, I’d heavily recommend pulling ten out of arcane and dropping it into water for healing ripple/cleansing wave. If the icebow thing is not working out due to uncooperative teammates/smart opponents, i’d also slap a signet of air into that slot. It’ll deal with the longer controls and make the stun turnaround even harder for your opponent to deal with, given that blind.

Furthermore, against thieves arcane shield is basically a won fight, and way more effective than armor of earth against boonripping mesmers/thieves. If tempest defense is on cd for their burst, such as the common midfight gank scenario, you can shield to break basilisk, and their blocked backstab will proc the shocking aura you just activated. You’re now free to bomb them with aoe. It works on hambow warriors similarly, given that as soon as they pull out hammer they have nothing to rapidly pop it.

I’d highly recommend you read the original post. This is about the personal story allies not having their stats reduced after the trait rebalancing, and thus walking all over the personal story enemies, which were nerfed. Go play a midgame personal story on any alts you might have, its immediately obvious.

Azrael.4960:

Rouven.7409:

Finally this has been fixed and I can be a commander. NPC’s attack! stack! For Trahearne! For Trinity!

Oops.

Edit: All joking aside I really never felt like a “commander”.

I corrected that for you.

Joking aside. It wouldn’t surprise me for Anet to overlook this aspect. There’ll probably be a ninja update at some point to sort this out.

TBH it wouldn’t surprise me if Anet never figured this out. The chances that they have people going back and retesting personal story missions for balance rather than blocking bugs are kind of abysmal.

Pretty sure at this point there’s no real argument against an open world dueling system that is auto-declinable and optionally invisible. The people afraid of harassment are for some reason ignoring the fact that harassment and anti-harassment countermeasures are in the game already. They’re also ignoring the fact that the people who want to pwn n00bzorz4dayz are not the people who want to spend ages trying to find a stranger to randomly accept a duel request. The ones who want to 1v1 for no gain but fun times, are not the people who go around harassing for duels.

That said, I have an inkling that Anet’s lack of response may be due to technical limitations. I haven’t seen anything in game that turn friendly players into enemy, targetable units, in a PvE map. The only approximation would be the first BWE finale event where players got corrupted, and that thing was buggy as hell. I’m of the opinion that the matter is settled on duels being a good idea, but Anet is having problems with implementation.

redslion.9675:

Seriously, I hope I’ll never pvp you.

I fear a thief applying stacks of confusion might be disturbing.

I know i’m necroing but I can’t resist.

Like holy kitten you predicted the meta perfectly.