Guild Wars 2

Pentzski.4620:

Waitwait, you’re comparing dueling to botting and griefing? Now THAT’S funny.

Yes. Botting in battlegrounds/warzones/warfronts is actually a perfect comparison. PvP botters are people who take up a slot and contribute little-to-nothing to a group and justify their actions with selfish reasons.

Yes. It took me 15 minutes to get in. Not only that, but apparently our forces actually fighting were stretched so thin that Kaineng managed to take a bunch of points on the map.

Saying players enjoy it is hilariously fallacious. Players enjoy botting in games too, and others enjoy griefing. That doesn’t make it right.

The fact is this directly hurts WvW efforts. But don’t take my word for it. Colin Johanson is the one who complained about people taking queue spaces.

Krakah.3582:

It’s due to the serious lack of PvP resources from Anet. No Dueling option and no GvG is why you see players using WvW areas.

Probably, but it doesn’t justify the bad behavior from players.

In a Q&A released just now, Colin Johanson said, "For the jumping puzzle, I would prefer that it would not be in the WvW map and have it be a separate thing. I think it takes up the queue space and disconnects players trying to get in. How we answer that is going to be interesting, but in the long run it’s very likely it’s going to stay as it is.

…

I think for the jumping puzzle, I would prefer that it not be in the WvW map and it’s a separate thing that. Especially when there’s a queue like that and people are trying to get in. I think it disconnects players from the content they’re trying to play. How we answer that is going to be interesting. There’s a lot of different ways that we can separate them now, but I think in the long run it’s very unlikely that it will stay in the WvW map where it’s eating up population queue. It will go somewhere else. We’ll have to figure out the best way to do that."

Interesting twist. It seems I’m in the right with this thread.

I don’t know why you guys are talking about zerging. Even the developers have stated that zerging isn’t the best way to win in world vs. world. The best groups I’ve been in were small and could take on huge numbers, which created openings for keep sieges that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Other great groups I’ve been in were split into small forces that took multiple keeps at once, making objectives much more difficult to defend for a mindless zerg.

By the way, I love dueling and arena-style matches. I was a gladiator (top 0.5 percent of arenas) for multiple seasons in World of Warcraft, and I dueled a lot in that game. I just know it has no place in world vs. world because it detracts from the zone’s purpose.

The weirdest part about this thread is how objectively bad the arguments in support of this kind of behavior are so far. Every critical response in this thread has been some variation of a straw man, ad hominem, or appeal to authority.

akamon.2769:

hmm you could argue for every person they are dueling against, that’s also one less invader, well, invading your world.

Maybe if all three servers were taking part in it, but that wasn’t the case. Judging by what I saw on the map and was told, Kaineng, the server not participating, made significant gains while this was going on because Tarnished Coast and Blackgate were outnumbered. In my screenshot, you can even see people asking in team chat where “the rest of our team” was.

I’m not here to argue about it; I’m more interested in an official response. You guys are basically trying to justify someone AFKing in a battleground/warfront/warzone with blatant fallacies.

Because it was directly hurting players who were taking part in world vs. world as it’s intended. Server cooperation is supposed to be about forming alliances within the rule set of world vs. world, not defeating the entire purpose of world vs. world and ignoring its mechanics.

I saw this earlier. It was just a bunch of people dueling from two servers dueling each other.

From what I saw in map chat, it was directly hurting our efforts in the rest of the map. These were people who were essentially taking up a world vs. world slot while failing to contribute in any way to the group. It’s basically the equivalent to people AFK botting in a battleground in other games.

No, they can’t.

No single class can reliably maintain 25 stacks of bleeds.

Attrition does not mean face tanking. What makes necromancer the attrition class is all the tools the class has to prolong fights while wearing someone down with bleeds, such as Death Shroud, fears, poison, weakness, chill, blind, and condition transfers.

If you were ever expecting face tanking to be a part of Guild Wars 2, you simply don’t understand the fundamentals of the game’s combat.

It’s actually not a question; it’s a mathematical fact. Necromancers do more condition DPS than any other class. The only class that comes close is ranger.

This thread is flat-out wrong. Epidemic is probably the most amazing AOE tool in the game.

Also, thieves die a lot more easily than necromancers, although necromancers do take more skill to stay alive.

Plague Signet, but it’s not worth it. Consume Conditions removes conditions as well.

There’s no double standard. I said “one-to-one comparison” for a reason. Precision wins out when it’s a six-to-one comparison, which is what the comparison between Carrion and Rabid is.

I’ve already shown the math, so I think it speaks for itself. Carrion jewels are worse than rabid jewels for both direct damage and condition damage.

That would be a DPS downgrade even if my precision was low. Condition damage completely stomps precision in a one-to-one comparison.

But I already have 52 percent chance to critically hit with full rabid.

I didn’t take offense. I was just explaining my take. Glad you like the guide.

I’m not really sure who that’s directed to. Tuning Crystals are mentioned in the guide.

Master of Corruption is a much smaller DPS increase than Terror, but it’s also mentioned in the guide for Epidemic’s utility, not damage.

Quintal.6594:

What are you thoughts on incorporating +100% bleed duration via pizza/runes/spite if you’re in a group that doesn’t have other condition users (so you don’t hit the cap)?

Getting the extra tick on the earth sigil seems like it may be worth it

That would involve giving up well traits and utility to go into Spite, which is absolutely not worth it in group PvE situations, in my opinion.

Getting 100 percent seems somewhat arbitrary, anyway.

You actually lose about 1.5-4 percent crit chance depending on how many ascended pieces you have, which is a big deal for just a few pieces of gear.

While power scales better with staff and Death Shroud, you really should not stick in either staff or Death Shroud for long in a fight, if at all.

Again, the problem is power’s coefficient on scepter attacks is so low that precision is actually a better boost to direct DPS, on top of severely hurting bleeds.

Here is the math that shows the chrysocola set is a loss in bleed DPS, despite it giving more condition damage:

Chrysocola jewels: 18.06 DPS = 25.8 condition damage * 0.05 coefficient * 14 bleeds

Crests of the Rabid: 22.152 DPS = 0.04 crit chance * 0.6 chance to bleed on crit with sigil * 130 bleed damage per tick * 6 seconds of bleed + 0.04 crit chance * 0.66 chance to bleed on crit with trait * 130 bleed damage per tick * 1 second of bleed

I 100 percent advise against chrysocola jewels.

I did the math for it before, and Chrysocola is a DPS downgrade because of the lost precision.

Power is really bad for scepter. The coefficient for power on scepter attacks is really low, and precision boosts direct DPS better than power.

Yeah, I like agony.

My guess is they have internal numbers that completely contradict what most of the naysayers have to say.

I have this with my own roll trait as a condition necromancers, so it probably has something to do with roll-based abilities.

Condition necromancer is one of the best 1v1 builds when played correctly. It absolutely counters glass cannons.

I paid particular attention to it last night in world vs. world, and it definitely seems like there’s some sort of conal or projectile element to it. It’s fine if the ability is going to work that way, but there should at least be some visual element that makes its failure obvious.

The ability is still amazing enough to keep in my bars even when it occasionally fails (I’d say it’s about a 20 percent failure rate), but it does need to be fixed.

It works on aegis.

It’s supposed to be possible to dodge it, and it shouldn’t work on invulnerable enemies.

Most people struggle with it because it has strict range and facing requirements, but the ability works fine.

One thing to remember is people will almost always roll after using a big defensive cooldown, such as Armor of Earth. So always wait a second or two before using it.

This patch did me in on this subject. I really thought the ascended rings lacking stats was just an oversight. This patch confirmed it’s intended design, considering how many people complained before. That’s worrying.

The people bragging about beating him recommended equipping swiftness for the run-back. I don’t think ArenaNet removed res-rushing in dungeons only to make it necessary for a world boss.

The problem isn’t that the boss is difficult so much that the AOE is blatantly over-tuned. It’s way too difficult to avoid for how much damage it does, particularly in large groups.

The enormous limitation in stat combinations is genuinely troubling. At first, I thought it was some sort of oversight for the rings, but it seems like it’s intentional that only 10 stats — none with meaningful healing power — are supposed to be available.

The event is over-tuned. It’s possible to mitigate the AOE by spreading out, but it still does way too much damage on top of being nearly impossible to avoid.

The unfortunate side-effect is people will probably begin ignoring the temple altogether, much like Priest of Balthazar before yesterday’s patch.

Chase.8415:

There is no reason to get ascended gear except for the agony resistance. Using any type of defensive build in a fractal is detrimental since agony scales to your health, rather than a flat value.

That is why a lot of the stats are offensive, because it simply does not make sense for anyone to run a tank centered stat build in a fractal. The only way to survive the higher levels in fractals is to simply NOT get hit.

Toughness and vitality are still useful for non-agony mechanics, and those are still very common in high-level fractals.

Besides, ascended gear provides more stats. That makes it important for more content than fractals — most importantly, world vs. world. There’s no reason some builds should benefit from higher stats, while others should not.

ArenaNet have stated ascended gear is supposed to be the next tier for everyone. The emphasis on fractals is something they actually want to move away from.

There really, really needs to be more stat combinations on ascended gear. I don’t see why ascended gear’s stat combinations need to be more limited than exotic gear’s stat combinations.

This bug is the worst.

Trollhammer.7439:

Only if you are close enough. I.e. is someone got downed by PBAoE and people tried to rez them. There is no reason to be there in the first place. PBAoE he throws by itself is enough to down people on 30+.
Simply going max range on the boss at 50% solves that.

I disagree. Melee range means more melee damage for most classes. It’s pretty easy to melee and dodge his PBAOE. Most groups I’m in have done it fine.

Thanks for the notes, Trollhammer!

Some of what you mentioned is actually in the guide.

I’ll add the Son of Svanir Shaman information, though. The boss is so easy that I think a lot of players, including myself, overlook some of his mechanics.

The part about the Ascalonian boss doesn’t match with my experience. I have seen him run around with greatsword at 25 percent.

Was there a hotfix or is my husband getting really lucky? He’s getting as many rare drops as we used to when we farmed Orr before the November patch.

Habib, will the fixes for culling in WvW work for PvE events too? Culling can be pretty annoying in the PvE world too.

You just proved part of what I said. In general, scepter’s skill coefficients for power are about 10 percent, meaning it gets about 10 percent of power in its DPS. (This is a rough estimate because each skill is slightly different, with Feast of Corruption scaling the best.) The auto-attack in particular scales horribly with power.

Each bleed scales with a 5-percent coefficient for condition damage, but since scepter can reliably stack way more bleed stacks (I was using 8 to 10 in my math to be generous, but it’s really more 12 to 16). That means scepter gets about 40 to 50 percent of condition damage in its actual DPS numbers, so it gets a roughly 40-to-50-percent DPS coefficient.

Dagger obviously gets next to nothing from condition damage, barring traits, which makes condition damage’s DPS coefficient close to 0 percent. Its power coefficient is about 40 to 50 percent, though.

Here’s an example for how power, precision, and critical damage interact: For the sake of simplicity, let’s say I have enough power for 2,000 DPS without any critical hits, and I want to find out how much I benefit from precision and critical damage

The formula for this is D = 2000 * (1 + P * (0.5 + C)), where D is DPS, P is precision, and C is critical damage.

Now, let’s say I have enough precision for 10-percent critical hit chance and enough critical damage for 0-percent critical damage. My DPS in that case would be 2,100. If I got another 10-percent critical hit chance, I would get a 10-percent DPS increase to 2,200; with 20-percent more critical hit chance, I would get a 20-percent DPS increase to 2,300; and so on. It would scale linearly.

But let’s throw critical damage to the mix. Let’s say for every 10-percent critical hit chance I get, I also get 10-percent critical damage. (That’s actually pretty realistic with how gear currently works in the game.) Suddenly, I will be getting exponential increases: Getting 10 percent in both stats means 2120 DPS, 20 percent means 2280 DPS, 30 percent means 2480 DPS, and so on. Each increment is increasing exponentially.

That’s what I mean when I say the stats scale exponentially when put together. As all the stats are increased, they work off each other to become stronger. That concept applies for power, precision, and critical damage when put together, and it applies to condition damage, precision, toughness through consumables and runes, and condition duration when put together (I usually leave condition duration out due to bleed cap, but it works until the cap).

I hope that clarifies my math a bit. I’m not just using the basic formulas for each skill and stat. It’s a more complicated analysis of the math behind overall DPS.

EDIT: Changed this post up a bit to have more math!

Sheobix.8796:

For once, god help me, i have to strongly agree with xil. Hybrid builds are the golden key to the best dps. This is found in curses25, and both grand traits for spite and curses. If you flush both types of damage in a generally balanced manner, you can get enormous dps for very little setup.

There are mant ways to do it so that defense is gained through crit procd vampirism, or ds, or both.

I run every hot build i get my hands on through my holy grail excel sheet, and i can assure you that hybrids rule.

This isn’t a matter of opinion or agreement. It’s math. It’s numbers. One is greater than the other.

Condition damage and power do not scale with each other at all. They both scale linearly regardless of how much of the other stat is there. Meanwhile, condition damage and precision work together to scale exponentially, and power, precision, and critical damage also work together to scale exponentially.

This is particularly exacerbated by how the weapons work. Dagger’s overall coefficient for power is about 40 to 50 percent, while its coefficient for condition damage is very close to 0 percent. Scepter’s overall coefficient for condition damage is 40 to 50 percent, while its coefficient for power is about 10 percent. That means stacking the right stat for each weapon is extremely beneficial.

Staff scales decently with both condition damage and power, but it also has middle-of-the-road DPS to make up for its AOE and utility capabilities. So it’s not ideal to use staff in any DPS-focused situation.

The basic math is in the post. The post is long to give it context.

If you want to talk about dagger falling behind due to the opportunity cost, then yeah, I agree with that. That’s one of the reasons I run a condition build.

Like I said, that’s not what the math shows. You’re obviously free to disagree, but I think my post gave a more objective analysis.

PinkFloyd.1469:

im sorry guys when i said wvw i meant pve i got the two confused and thought they were the same thing. But thank you lopez ill look into your guide for some more details

Sounds good! I do have both a PvE and world vs. world guide, so both should help.

XiL.4318:

You want both Power and Condition Damage. Necro has no true Power options because the majority of Necro damage is not affected by power. There is no exception to this rule.

Actually, main-hand dagger scales well with power. The downside is it scales horribly with condition damage because it doesn’t have any conditions.

Scepter scales well with condition damage, but its coefficient for power is really low (about 10 percent).

Staff is in the middle; it scales decently with both condition damage and power. It can be used for AOE and utility for condition builds and AOE and range for power builds.

Also, the math shows it’s counterproductive to stack both power and condition damage. It leads to less survivability and DPS. The survivability part is obvious; it’s harder to obtain toughness when so much is being put into DPS stats.

The reason it leads to less DPS is because proper power or condition builds combine power, precision, and critical damage or condition damage, precision, and occasionally toughness to make damage scale exponentially. Here is an in-depth description for how this works that I wrote before for my guide:

The main reason hybrid builds are mediocre in Guild Wars 2 is because the stats from the main DPS archetypes — condition damage, precision, and toughness in rabid and power, precision, and critical damage in berserker — scale semi-exponentially when they’re placed together.

For example, with berserker gear, precision is geared toward making critical strikes more frequent, but in the same set-up, critical strikes actually get stronger. So every percent of critical strike chance (21 precision at level 80) actually becomes better as the critical strikes triggered become stronger through power and critical damage. The math behind this is simple: With no extra critical damage, 1 percent chance to crit, or 21 precision, only adds about 0.5 percent DPS. With 50 percent extra critical damage, that 21 precision suddenly adds about 1 percent DPS because the critical strikes triggered are now doing double the damage.

It’s the same concept with condition damage, toughness, and bleeds in the rabid set-up. With rabid gear, precision triggers more bleeds, while condition damage and, to a much lesser degree, toughness all add to bleed damage. So each point of precision becomes stronger with each point of condition damage and toughness because the more frequent bleeds also tick harder.

In other words, it’s better to focus on two or three main stats, especially as each individual stat gets higher, because of how the stats synergize with each other. If a hybrid approach is taken to gearing, the lack of focus actually makes a build do exponentially less damage.

An extremely aggressive condition necromancer can definitely wade into a zerg and routinely scare it away with wells and Epidemic.

I’d try to offer more details, but I cover this all in my in-depth guide. Here is the thread for it if you’re interested: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Massive-guides-for-condition-necromancer/

Condition builds felt unbelievably overpowered when people didn’t have condition removals. There might be a bit too many condition removals today in some cases (elementalists, guardians), but I definitely understand why so many exist.

As someone pretty familiar with statistics, I used to think people were just spouting conspiracy theories when claiming world drops had been greatly reduced. Now, I’m certain something has changed.

When I first got lv. 80 in September, I typically got one to three yellows an hour from Orr. I was actually upset and surprised if I didn’t get one. This is how farming was for me until a recent patch.

Shortly before the patch nerfing Plinx, I stopped farming events in favor of dungeons and world vs. world. I just wanted to spice up my gameplay, and I had done so much farming that I decided to take a break for a bit. This was made relatively easy when the November patch came, and my time was consumed by fractals.

But I decided to jump back into farming recently. What I’ve found is that I’m surprised if I get even one yellow within three hours of farming. I still make okay money off the blues and greens, but I am getting considerably less yellows than I was before the November patch. Also, my bags are filling up considerably slower than I remember, so it seems other drops have decreased as well.

I know this isn’t perfect data, and I personally don’t like anecdotes too much for this sort of investigation, but in this case the anecdote is so obvious that I think it’s relevant.

Christmas has come and gone. For the most part, so has Wintersday. The events will run through Jan. 3, but no new content is scheduled between now and then. So I think it’s time to give some impressions if how ArenaNet’s second jab at holidays in Guild Wars 2. The short verdict: I had a lot of fun.

Art

This needs its own section because ArenaNet once again knocked it out of the park. The redecorated Lion’s Arch and mini-game zones look absolutely gorgeous. Not only do the decorations and zones fit the holiday setting, but they keep the Guild Wars 2 style of big, surreal set pieces.

The attention to detail was also impressive. When I first logged into Lion’s Arch after the Wintersday patch, I saw someone in map chat remark, “I guess we got a big blizzard.” It made me pause for a second, wondering how a beach-side city was suddenly washed with snow. It wasn’t until I later panned my camera up that I saw the Asura snow machines, pouring snow all around Lion’s Arch. At that moment, I realized just how incredible ArenaNet’s art team is. Some have called them the best in the MMO industry, but I think that’s an understatement. I would say they’re among the best in the entire games industry.

Winter Wonderland

The jumping puzzle for Wintersday was definitely easier than Halloween’s clock tower, but it was still challenging enough to require some effort. Personally, I finished it after two tries, but I have since done it a few more times because it was fun. (It also rewards 3,500 karma on a daily basis.)

I totally understand why ArenaNet decided not to attach a challenging jumping puzzle to a holiday event that runs for a limited time. Holiday content is supposed to be first and foremost about enjoying the holiday. Gating that kind of content with difficulty goes against the spirit of it all. It’s one thing to put a difficult jumping puzzle in Southsun Cove; it’s another to attach it to a limited-time holiday event.

Bell Choir

After some key rebinding and personal adjustment, I grew to love Bell Choir. From a purely technical standpoint, it’s impressive ArenaNet managed to deliver a Guitar Hero-like game in a setting that’s prone to high latency. From a gamer’s standpoint, it was just fun. I had no problem completing the achievements because I was enjoying myself so much.

My only complaint is I wish there was a way to queue into Bell Choir with friends. ArenaNet clarified in a post that it’s something they would like to do, but they didn’t have the time or resources to get it up and running for Wintersday. Still, it’s a shame group-based activity queueing couldn’t make it live because it could have led to more “Billie Jean” moments during free-play sessions.

Snowball Mayhem

At first, I wasn’t really feeling Wintersday’s PvP, capture-the-flag mini-game. I started out with the heavy gunner, and then I tried the supporter. Neither of the classes did much for me. But then I tried the scout, and the first time I stealthed into a Sniper Shot, I knew I was going to have a lot of fun. I found myself completing the achievements for Snowball Mayhem in one sitting, and it was absolutely worth it. Picking up a damage boost and killing a flag-runner with a Sniper Shot followed by Rapid Fire felt so good.

As an aside, I really hope ArenaNet are using holiday PvP mini-games to test out future structured PvP modes. With Snowball Mayhem’s capture-the-flag mode and Halloween’s MOBA-style gameplay, it’s clear the Guild Wars 2 developers are very capable of designing modes that aren’t conquest. I’m very excited to see what will come out once all the e-sport features are in the game and ArenaNet can work on more gameplay options.

Open-world content

To be honest, open-world content was the only big disappointment of Wintersday. I’m probably being greedy, but I really liked investigation quests from the Halloween event. It would have been nice to see similar content in the Wintersday event.

But the available open-world content was good. Building snowmen and opening giant presents provided decent encouragement to travel around the world for special tokens that unlocked skins. I understand some people didn’t like the Christmas-themed skins, but that’s part of the holiday spirit. Seriously, what warrior or guardian doesn’t want to run around and kill people with a giant candy cane while dressed up as Santa Claus?

…

Post was too long. Read the rest at my blog.

I’m just saying it scales so poorly that it’s a poor choice for any power build. Dagger and staff are much better. As a power build, it would be better to just sit in staff than it would be to switch to scepter.

Scepter scales horribly with power. It generally gets about 1 point of damage for every 10 power, while staff gets 2-3 points of damage for every 10 power and dagger gets 4-5 points. (Keep in mind this is an average of all abilities. Feast of Corruption scales better.) I’m not sure about axe, but it definitely scales better with power than scepter.

In other words, use staff for a ranged power weapon and dagger for melee.

I love the class. I think people tend to exaggerate how bad the class is because a major aspect of it — minions — just doesn’t work right now. But there are a few other viable builds, and they’re really good in PvE, structured PvP, and world vs. world.