Guild Wars 2

Think about it.

2 hyenas means 2 knockdowns and 2 cripples instead of just 1. They also both do damage so that makes up for the half power.

The problem is definitely bigger then just the longbow itself. There are quick fixes to the problem, like getting rid of the range requirement on LB 1. The greater problem I believe lies in Ranger’s class design as a whole. Traits need to be moved around and some need to be compressed.

Read the Wind should be combined with Eagle Eye and remain a grandmaster trait: ala increase range by 300, speed by 100%. Heck even drop the 5% dmg boost and I’d still be happy. Once combined it should be moved to the SKirmishing line. Also move Spotter to the Skirmishing Line. This would make room to allow both Trap traits to be moved to marksmanship.

Also I think Empathic Bond should be in the Beastmaster line. Natural Healing in the Nature Magic line, and Survival of the Fittest in the Survival Line. But that’s just me.

I’ve noticed since the patch that certain tooltips aren’t adjusted when you take on traits that modify your pets abilities.

For instance Commanding voice does lower the CD of F2 but the tooltip still says the original CD. Same for condi duration.

Now, a interesting issue; Expertise training says it increases condi dmg by 350. That does not show up in the pet stat info.

EDIT: Ok, Expertise training DOES NOT increase pet condi dmg like it says it does. Also beastmastery does not increase pet condi dmg stat.

I quoted a single sentence, not the entire paragraph for a reason. Don’t pretend like " (that you probably wont get)" isn’t a backhanded way of saying I’m dim witted. ok?

Second. Anet says a lot of stuff and likes to contradict themselves. There are enough examples of classes that have gotten buff after buff with no strings attached (cough warriors cough).

Third. The shortbow. It has 900 range. The axe. It has 900 range. These are our two primary condition weapons. Traps are our primary condition utilities. But traps only have 600 range. You see the issue here right?

If there is any class in need of some ‘power creep’, it is the Ranger.

So I was right after all. Kay. A political joke won’t get a post deleted but

“scathing sarcasm aside (that you probably wont get)”

personal attacks will.

I didn’t even read your medi trap stuff. Sorry it was TL:DR.

But I get the gist of it. You think anet will nerf traps if they buff them.

That’s silly. Anet has buffed LOTS of things without nerfing them at the same time. They upped Maul and LB damage in the past(not nearly enough, but they did buff it). What about Dhuumfire? That was a crazy buff with no tradeoffs for necros and it took almost a year for them to semi nerf it.

But put that aside…

Not even being able to request a buff out of fear of a nerf is just plain bass ackward. Its ridiculous on its face. That is what this forum is HERE for. If we can’t even discuss a buff for a utility that needs it for fear of the wrath of god Anet, we might as well just close up this forum right now.

The longbow still under performs.

This post is based around the maximum possible dps layout. This is to hold that variable constant. It’s also assumed that the Longbow is a dps weapon. It is not a defensive tool or a support tool.

SO, If geared for maximum possible damage with the longbow, the ranger will still not do as much damage as other classes geared in the same way. The most direct comparison being GS mesmer and Staff Ele who both will do more dps.

Ok, so the LB Rangers do less dps then the above classes. Surely they have something to make up for it. They’re more survivable, right? They have awesome group support? They are more about burst damage of course?

Nope, Nope and Nope.

Assuming again the max dps layout, the Longbow Ranger has absolutely no defense what so ever. Unlike the Mesmer, Thief, and Ele who all have built in defense mechanics independent of traits/stats (stealth/clones, defensive attunements, ect) the Longbow Ranger has nothing.

Again, the Ranger threw out all group support to achieve their max dps potential. And as we all know the longbow has no burst. It’s all about a smooth stream of steady damage.

Whats that you say? Longbow Range? Range alone is not a effective defensive mechanism. A skilled thief can cross a 2000 range gap in less then 3 seconds. Other classes have block and reflect that let them rush the distance unharmed.

What about the pet? What about it? The pet still can’t hit a moving target. It definitely can’t hit a leaping, teleporting, rushing target. What good is pet cc if the pet can’t apply it?

So in group fighting, even if left completely alone the Longbow Ranger will do less damage then other ranged dps classes. If focused, the Longbow Ranger is much more likely to die due to lack of active defenses.

….

So hopefully I have established the the Longbow is still under performing. Now lets look at why…

1. A ranger’s defense mechanics are too heavily tied into traits and gear. On the extreme end, a bunker ranger is nigh unkillable, but such a ranger needs to run all melee (so no longbow), typically a condi bunker (so no power) and has to spend all of his trait options to get his utilities to actually provide some defense (looking at you Signet of the Beastmaster, Empathic Bond, and Survival of the Fittest.) On the other end, the Longbow is a trait heavy weapon (to be effective it needs Steady Focus, Quick draw, Eagle Eye, Piercing Arrows, Hunter’s Tactics and Read the Wind….OOPS, you can’t even slot all of these traits together. Another issue entirely…) So that means you can’t take any kind of defensive trait without further lowering a relatively low dps output. Now you have one of the easiest kills in the game.

2. The Ranger’s Longbow damage coefficients are too low. If they are low because Rangers have a pet then what does that say? That any investment in power a ranger makes will yield less then for another class, because the pet (the ‘reason’ for the lower multiplier) does not scale with stats. Why even give Rangers a power option then? Might as well make Longbow a condition weapon.

3. Pets can’t hit moving targets. This is a huge issue. If pets can’t hit a moving target, that means the pet can never function as a defensive mechanic for the Ranger in a PvP or WvW setting. The only time pets are effective is when you catch a enemy off guard or CC’d. Too bad the Longbow Ranger has no effective CC that hits out to 1200 that might give the pet a chance to deliver it’s own CC/damage.

And that is pretty much it. So what are some solutions…?

The simple brute force remedy is leave everything else as it is and increase Longbow damage to compensate. If Ranger is the squishiest, easiest kill in the max dps configuration…..it should also be the most deadly when left alone, pet or no pet.

The more complicated solution is to overhaul Ranger utilities as well as the Longbow itself to make the ranger more defensible without having to go all or nothing in traits/gear.

What do you guys think are some good solutions to the Longbow Ranger’s woes?

(I am aware of 6/0/2/6/0, I’m also aware that this build has a subpar DPS/survivability ratio like every other Ranger LB power build. It’s just better then anything we’ve had to date. That doesn’t make it ‘good’)

So some of you who use traps are against having them buffed? You are against something which is beneficial to you…

You don’t happen to be republicans by any chance…?

Our Zerg Busting group has been developing a Anti-Hammer train approach since hammer trains are so prevalent. I won’t say what it hinges on since we do actively GvG too and its working thus far (we are undefeated). Unfortunately, Rangers still are not a part of this approach.

Personally I don’t want Rangers to have a niche. I don’t like seeing classes pidgeonholed into specific roles because it smacks of the holy trinity this game was suppose to do away with. Warriors don’t ‘fill a niche’ they can do what they want. Same with Guards to a lesser extent.

All the other classes in the game are playing a second fiddle to the soldier classes. While Soldiers can run whatever build they want: Deeps, Support, Tank, Hammer CC…the other classes are expected to bring one thing only:

Ranger: Entangle Bot
Mesmer: Veil Bot
Necro: Boon Strip Bot
Thief: Backstab Bot
Engi: Condi Spam Bot
Ele: Static Field + Rain Bot

If you don’t slot the above abilities in your build you are basically told to GTFO by (skilled) WvW commanders. It’s not their fault either; it’s Anets. Anet made every other class a gimick class. Rangers are not alone in this problem.

No it doesn’t block non-projectile attacks. It’s description is pretty specific. Also when fighting a mesmer I didn’t notice any blocks while running it.

Hey thanks for the tip. Took me a while to get around to testing it because of work. Did they buff hydromancy damage? It hits pretty hard now. Thanks to this I went back to using wolves. Much better dps that way.

<333 this build so much.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQJARRjEqUwa/KWsw1agY9AQEaQsH8XRAwVAVjIK-zkxA4/ARcCU2rIas1zioxqsxUvER1kCwMlRA-w

With the recent buff to sigil of intelligence, this build is now viable. It’s even better thanks to the buff to Runes of the Wurm. Traits are 30/30//10//

II, IV, XI
IV, VI, XIII (or XII)
V

This build is tricky because of how easy maul is to dodge. In honesty this build plays like a cross between a 100b war and valk backstab thief.

It’s a simple synergy: GS has 3 big attacks. Sigil of int gives you 3 100% crits.

You have a alpha burst using Sigils of the Hunt and Wild in conjunction. You have a beta burst of just using SotH. Finally you have a standard burst from just criting. Timing sigil usage to weapon swap to attack is also tricky, but very rewarding. Like 20k damage in 2-3 seconds rewarding. Aoe cleave damage at that…and a awesome tank that can let you charge in, drop your burst, and walk out with just scratches. Kinda like a warrior :p

There are some downsides though: GS has kitten poor CC. One dinky little cripple with a short range. You could slot entangle instead of RaO but y’know life as melee without stability is a kittene. Ask any necro. My answer to this issue is to use spiders, and use Malicious Training trait. Of course spiders like all pets can’t hit a target that’s running away from them. So this requires my enemy come at me. Easy enough to achieve, I’m a ranger after all. A few /waves and a /laugh and soon they will be charging right at me

Side note: I have thought of a variation of this build. Axe/Axe + GS. I think this variation wouldn’t be as strong since the axe set only has 1 big hit (which hits twice and is unreliable.). So really you would only be able to burst every 20 seconds, instead of every 10 with GS/GS. But then you would have range and CC, which this build lacks.

Originally I was running a trapper ranger with Fire and Frost traps.

Right now I’m trying out Axe/Dagger as a alternative to shortbow. That would let me leverage the chill duration a bit better.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQJAVRjMqUwazKuqQ1aAYpAwAbP4kSMdKK90TmxzaA-zkyAoLIEGAVBg+Al/KiGbVtIasqaBZ9Cm2MpeElVSB4n0I-w

My Rampager Ranger.

This kills very fast, and overwhelms people with the two pronged physical/condition assault. Can’t wait till 2 handed weapons get 2 slots. I will probably slot a sigil of corruption in the GS and a sigil of ice in the shortbow.

Well I do stay in DS and spam life blast. I run 10/0/30/0/30 with Runes of the Pack for 1 button perma swiftness. Mostly knight’s gear with a lil zerker, valk and pvt thrown in.

There’s nothing wrong with fighting that way. In fact the best sustain a necro can manage is to simply fight from DS until it runs out, then fight with daggers until DS bar is full again. Rinse and repeat. Typically your heal comes off CD around the same time you get knocked out of DS. So you can cleanse all the condi’s you gathered while in DS and heal the hp you lost during your previous period of time out of DS.

I think this play style works best with high toughness though. It adds value to both your DS regen and Heal skill, as well as any external heals you receive. With the big buff coming to the Death Tree in the near future, I see my build becoming more then just viable.

Zerker Longbow Ranger? A build that is bad at 1v1 but excels at dropping bombs from a distance…

Staff Ele does it better.

Condi/Bunker Ranger? A build that takes loads of damage and deals consistent high condi pressure…

Engineer does it better.

Spirit Ranger? Unique Aoe buffs that help the entire team…

Banner Warrior does it better.

_Valkyrie Maul Ranger? A moderately tanky build that uses sigils/traits to crit instead of precision so it can stat vit instead?

Valkyrie Evis Warrior/ DS Necro does it Better.

I’m pretty sure Anet is saving all the Asian stuff for later when they reopen Cantha. I hope they let us go to Cantha first. Not a big fan of deserts, and while I loved my dervish, I see Cantha offering a much wider variety of enjoyable content.

Reminds me of O brother where art thou “Is you IS, or is you NOT, my constituency??”

Bhawb.7408:

Lorelei.3918:

pole arms is another word for a spear.

It’s really sad, but our underwater spear is as close as we will ever get to a scythe weapon that we use like a scythe.

Scythes as a weapon are considered polearms. Halberds, spears, naginata, etc.; anything that is a weapon at the end of a long pole is considered a polearm. Spears are just the most basic form.

On a side note, true scythes are unlikely to be put in the game, because they would only make sense for magic-based professions, as the kind of scythes you are thinking of are not weapons, but farming tools (and pretty bad weapons). The cases of scythes being adapted to warfare is a modified scythe where the blade was reattached to be straight out from the pole, instead of at a right angle.

TL;DR, scythes will probably only be a subgroup of staff in this game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_

(OK OK I know there is a difference between a sickle and a scythe. They do prove that a weapon with a blade set at 90 degrees to the shaft can be weaponized.)

Walls and Gates need about 15x more HP then they currently have.

A zerg should not be able to roll through a fully upgraded keep in less then 3 minutes.

It’s impossible to defend a keep if it can be taken before defenders even realize it’s being attacked.

NPC’s should have radar. As long as the NPC is alive, all enemies within a certain range of NPC’s show up on the map. Archers and scouts have a 2000 range sight. Warriors have a 1200 range sight. They will however only aggro at their normal distances. This will make Ninja-ing things via hidded cats much more difficult.

That said, enemies still inside a keep should be able to ‘throw open’ the gate if left unmolested. That is, they can interact with the gate, starting a long channel that is interrupted if attacked. If they complete the channel. The gate is thrown open.

Vice versa, allies can close the gate by starting the same channel, only it is only half as long for defenders to close.

I understand all of these principles.

But I don’t follow them.

I don’t have the patience to wait on markets to change. When I want something I want it NOW.

pole arms is another word for a spear.

It’s really sad, but our underwater spear is as close as we will ever get to a scythe weapon that we use like a scythe.

or 222 spam? Don’t hate, Karolis.

Besides I do use my other skills.. CnD to stomp and escape. Heart seeker as gap closer and on people who are low hp (I have 2k power, even if they don’t always crit HS still hurts) and whenever I get feathers I stealth and do a back stab (usually crits around 3.5k). I also use my short bow when the enemy aoe is too heavy and also as escape tool.

I main a necro, so going to this is like night and day. I’m having way too much fun with this build.

Come to the dark side.

30/10/0/0/30 Carrion/Rampager gear with poison utils, earth sigil and withdraw/basilisk/Runes of Lyssa.

Compleeeetely different playstyle. 20+ bleeds on a target + poison, torment, weakness, immobilize and decent physical damage on top. This is what anet was thinking of when they made the D/D set.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNAW4Yjc0UZbLN20whbCQmx1PPpg7xjZMcwA-zUDB4fQoLwIMA0CAkfQEBw5PFRjtGsIas6FYaXRW9KpaYAOEYkCwPlRA-w

I was feeling nostalgic about the days when I was leveling and ran a well + staff hybrid build.

All I do is wvw now. The gear is based off what I have available at the moment, its not an ideal load out.

I just tinkered around a bit in wvw with this build but not enough to get conclusive results. So what do you guys think? Workable?

…

Ok after more testing this works much better.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQEQNAW4Ylc0oymt0wmG8rNBIz46njZMcwUKWndA-zUDB4fQoLwIMA0CAkfQEBw5PFRjtGsIas6FYaXRW9KpaYAOEYkCwPlRA-w

I just swapped the 20 points in blood for soul reaping to get soul marks. Before my build was just LF starved to death.

So yeah had my first real solo encounter. Killed a guard + 2 uplevel rangers. In fact I probably killed the guard by giving him the bleeds his ranger friends were loading me up with. (I got staff 4 and dagger 4 to transfer my condis with.) Not too bad. Will report further results

I rate guardians so highly based on a certain few builds that do 1v1 very stronk. One person I fought, and a lot of other people did too, was simply unbeatable. She went 15-0 against a whole assortment of builds and classes. I believe her setup was Sword/torch + Hammer. It wasn’t stupendously tanky but it had good sustain and amazing damage.

Most guards don’t 1v1 very well because they aren’t built for it. Guards are mostly pigeonholed into team support in wvw. But the ones who do build for it are pretty OP.

The 1v1 meta of this game has turned into Warrior vs Guardian. Then everybody else.

That’s the state of class balance right now.

Anet needs to significantly boost the damage potential of all the light and medium classes. (Especially Ranger, Necro, Power Engi, and power mesmer.)

That has been the classic trade off since forever. Less armor = More damage. Right now a well built heavy can smash the defense of light classes while simultaneously cleansing every condi, locking them out of their skills and face tanking any damage they do.

I think it’s fine we have a exploitable weakness. Every class should have one. We need stronger emphasis on what we do well to offset it instead.

Simple idea; place above the life force bar some very small boxes that represent the 5 ds skills. If they are on CD they should be dark, and when off CD they should give a little flash and then be bright. Maybe we could have similar small boxes above the 5 weapon skills to show when the alt weapon set skills are off CD.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNBmQDbkjmibbtx2G+bTIyMumnB+w7R9AeYnPE-TsAAyCnISSlkLJTSyksJNIYRwuAA

I played around with this in sPvP and its surprisingly effective. Just go around popping the squishy targets with life blasts and putting aoe pressure with the staff and DS 4+5. I think this trait setup would work with a variety of power leaning stat layouts though.

Condi Bunker Mobility Warriors are OP (As most condi bunkers are currently, but warriors get to have the best mobility on top of it)

Hambow is OP

Healing Signet is OP

Warrior Mobility is OP.

What makes you think your class deserves the ability to get away from every other class scott free whenever they feel like it? You have the most gap closers in the game PLUS effective immunity to movement impairments.

Because you are a melee only class? Waow let me introduce you to Guardians, Power Necros and Thieves. Of those 3 only thieves rival warrior mobility. Maybe that’s why you always try to change the subject of Warrior OPness over to thieves. To get rid of that one pesky class that still sometimes gives you a sorta kinda hard time.

Don’t even mention mesmers. We all know about PU mesmers and their OPness. Losing to a PU mesmer doesn’t mean your class is under powered.

I don’t agree that warriors are ‘face roll’ easy. That is because to realize the true OPness of the warrior requires using a myriad of skills in concert. Warriors are built around weapon swapping, effectively giving them twice as many weapon skills to juggle. They also have a plethora of Utils that actually work (As opposed to many classes who only have a handful at best that are useful). Tuning 10 weapon skills, to the right utils and traits is not ‘face roll’ easy. I know because I have a warrior alt.

TLDR Warriors are OP when played right. Anet needs to find a way to better balance the risk/reward of being melee only. Right now there is no risk thanks to the super high mobility + condition immunity, yet very high reward (damage potential).

I use it succesfully as a out of combat movement device. It doesn’t cause you to slow down if you didn’t hit anything. If you think it does, that just means you hit something and didn’t realize it.

Speaking of hitting but not hitting things, Warhorn can be used on bridges in eotm to rebuild LF without going into combat. The same way thieves can C&D off of them too.

On the issue of Ranger vs Necro 1v1

Most roaming necros run condi. Condi range is 900 for the most part. Condi build doesn’t run a immob other then DS 5 at 600 range. Ranger passive cleansing clears anything the staff puts out. Necro has no reliable gap closers and no escapes.

So kite at 1200, pew pew, collect bag.

Against power necro, if you can maintain range you can win but they have way more movement impairments (cripple on axe/wh, immob on dagger, chill on focus plus DS stuff.) plus very strong dps so if they get close you are done.

I know this because I have logged 800 hours as a ranger, then 1300 as a necro.

It slows you down in that it tends to tag random ai mobs while the zerg is going here and there. Combat speed is slow. Its easy to deal with if you think ahead a little bit though.

Also yes I love warhorn now because it has good synergy with wells. It also has good synergy with life siphons and any other proc on crit/hit effects you may have. Lastly it is good damage. While not as bursty as the focus, it is aoe and is better overall dps.

I used to run dagger as my other OH but now I prefer staff. The way zerg fights go, that moment when you are getting overloaded with conditions is also the moment you need to turn and run away because you are being focused. You can’t cast dag 4 backwards to clear your conditions, but you can drop a mark behind you. and its instant and unblockable with the right trait. Pluss mark 3 for aoe chill to slow chasing enemies and having a ranged option for wall fighting…its nice.

One thing; are you sure you want to spend 20+ gold on 2 bloodlust runes? If not, figure out which weapon you could do away with so you have 2 swap weapons and 1 constant.

Second. Your idea about using Svanir to go from 1 DS to another is interesting. However in advanced wvw (zerg busting) its a bad idea. You need to be able to stay on your driver, especially as a heavy character. If you self root for 5 seconds and your commander decides to go left, fall back or really maneuver in any way beyond “Bomb dead center” you are screwed.

For roaming though it would get you some troll points, which is always a good thing =D

As for helping you choose…I’m inclined to go with the toughness myself. I was running something like this for awhile but moved on.

I roam as a power necro. Full Pvt gear, runes of exuberance, applied fortitude, sigils of accuracy and perception. 0/0/10/30/30 build. I have 34k hp and 27k DS hp with fortitude…so 60k hp combined. My crit in DS is around 75% with a full stack and asparagus steak. I can rebuild my HP with dagger 2, my heal and regen buff. I can build LF with dagger 1, and focus 4. I have 2 full cleanses via heal and dagger 4. Well of Power gives me vigor, regen and protection. Wells give me protection. Best of all thanks to dagger speed trait I don’t lose speed. You can’t strip it, it doesn’t take up a util slot and it works in Death Shroud. If I want to be a real kitten I can slot plague form as my elite instead of lich.

I’m not mobile beyond my 25% run speed. I show up and I either win or die. I usually win, even when outnumbered. In a long fight I could take over a 100k worth of damage or more. It takes a zerg to burn me down, and even then it takes awhile if they’re too stupid to interrupt my skills.

My only real concern are other heavy sustain enemies like cleric wars/guards/eles. I have to overwhelm their healing with my burst because their sustain outpaces my own and will eventually negate my 40-50k hp head start.

Its possible for a necro to have that much hp in spvp. At the cost of any real offensive punch. It requires barbarian trinket and vit runes AND 30 in blood. Trying to take down that guy is about as dumb as trying to take down a bunker guard on your own.

Life steals should contribute to Life Force while in Death Shroud, and contribute to HP while out of death shroud.

Life stealing is suppose to be one of our major defensive mechanics along with death shroud. However the two don’t play nice with each other. While in death shroud any siphoning you do goes to waste, and reduces the value of siphoning in general. It’s definitely a class design problem when one defensive mechanic steps on the toes of the other.

Personally I think it should contribute the amount it heals for directly, not a percent. That way is easier to implement since DS hp has a numeric value attached to it now.

Lastly, I think siphons from gear should also work this way. Other classes get mechanics that sync closely with runes and sigils. I don’t see why we shouldn’t. Obviously runes of vampirism were made with us in mind. Sigils of Blood and Leeching also. Siphoning Power should also be able to work with these gear pieces.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhhG1IjWnelmmGDfCY6B3ePeMDkXm+w6A-jUyAYrQjuCEFJQEhQnALiGblsIas6aMlrgs6NpSBknyI-w

0/25/0/30/15

This is what I am currently running. This works really good if you play it right. Also works great in spvp with a zerker trinket. Just remember a few basic principles: wh+wells siphons can be used two ways: if you are out of life force, the life steals will counter incoming dmg and the crits + WH will fill your life bar back up. If your DS bar is full, you can drop the combo and go into DS for DS 5+4 and piercing life blasts for even more aoe pain. If you REALLY want to fk the enemy up, you can drop wells+wh on top of a enemy and then immediately go into lich form…. >;)

Also I keep dagger offhand as alternate in case I get overloaded with conditions or my warhorn skills are on CD.

This build doesn’t have 100% swiftness on its own but its close. Well of Power can give you over a minute of swiftness in the right circumstances and of course you can get swiftness from other team mates and maintain it with your warhorn.

The stat bonuses are enough to make the difference in a close fight, especially for power builds.

I’ve said this for a good 10 years of gaming:

A suggestion forum is to a game developer like a spam folder is to your gmail account.

Yeah.

This change at least shows the devs of this game actually care. Though I wonder how these forums will become without that spam folder…

I thought vT was pretty cool for not ganking me when they could have and actually dueled with me the other day. The engi beat me but I’m pretty sure I put up a better fight then a coyote. You also didn’t interrupt that stupidly long duel with the warrior either even though he wasn’t vT. My necro isn’t really set up for 1v1 duels though.

1. Too many apologists. You can’t grow unless you acknowledge your shortcomings.

2. PvE gameplay is too cut and dry, the lore is shallow and uninvolving. To qualify; even as a die hard pvper I liked raiding in wow because it was a large team effort and because the lore read like a novel, not like a series of random short stories.

3. sPvP still plays like it did during launch. WvW players are still a poor and malnourished welfare class. If you care about these two modes of game play at all then this shouldn’t need any explanation.

Kinda got sick of all the "Guild wars too is so awesum’ posts. We need some balance in the force.

WoC and WoS are straightforward damage wells.

WoP is a stun break and the only source of vigor a necro has. Its defensive qualities are right up there with spectral armor.

WoD is meh on its own, but when paired with Chilling Darkness trait it becomes the snare which locks enemies into the damage wells.

No well is the best. WoS is best dmg well. WoP is best defensive well imo. WoD and WoC are special purpose wells that work very well together (no pun intended).

They did state that WvW is supposed to be unbalanced. Class balance is a part of that. They don’t balance classes based on performance in wvw and that is a fact. So in essence my statement it correct.

As for rewards. If WvW is tied to pve, and they introduce vertical progression to PvE, then it is also introduced in WvW.

Saying WvW shouldn’t be about rewards is the same as saying that people who spend their time in wvw should have less money and poorer equipment then those who pve most of the time and only wvw occasionally.

If you think its suppose to be that way then, well…good for you.

Simple question.

If they do, then why do they state that they don’t care about class balance. Isn’t class balance critical to a enjoyable pvp game mode?

Secondly, if they care about WvW, why doesn’t anet make WvW as rewarding as PvE for the time spent playing it?

Try to keep your answers short and simple, so a person could quickly parse the entire thread and get a feel for every ones feelings on this. TL:DR; no walls of txt, plx

shiri.4257:

This was a pathetic showing by CD’s NA crew today. Not to mention a terrible run tonight by my own group. We were supposed to take this week off and break some new guys in. Hopefully this is a wake up call for us and people start getting the memo to step up. Thanks for showing us up today NSP.

Now that we are officially losing, thats it. All of our pve hordes will go back to grinding karma some other way. Like water, pve nobs always take the path of least resistance.

Its not said nearly enough, but one of the driving forces against vertical progression is WvW. You can’t have vertical progression in WvW because there is no way to properly reward a player in it.

How do you reward a player for selflessly walking dolyaks and capping ruins? If the rewards were good you would have frikkin dolyak trains and ruin trains.

And that’s just it.

The main body of any zerg in all of wvw is a bunch of reward-minded pve’ers grinding karma and achieves.

That’s why when a server starts losing even a little, the pve kids disapear and suddenly a slightly imbalanced match becomes a blowout.

That’s why WvW matchmaking is impossible.

…

WvW needs to become like the mists of GW1

It needs to use the existing pve gear structure so that you can load into wvw with your pve character. However, this ‘copy’ actually has its own gear, similar to spvp. Such that if you earn a piece of ascended in WvW and equip it, when you leave WvW that ascended item stays with the WvW copy.

That way you can have varying levels of ‘grind’ for acquiring gear. In WvW it can be very easy, since that gear will stay there. In PvE it can be hard, and even have more vertical progression, so that they are happy.

Most importantly, none of the rewards in wvw will be relevant for pve. Rewards in PvE can be used in wvw, but it would be silly to pve for gear for wvw when you could wvw for your wvw gear much faster.

At the same time if casual pvers want to drop in and do some wvw they can bring their hard earned lewts with them to show off and let others bask in the shining light of their massive ego.

Think about it. No more karma trains. No more zergs.

The only people playing WvW will be people who actually want to be there.
The only people PvEing will be the people that actually want to be there.

Crazy, I know, right?

I may have just made this build so I can call it a Rabid Vampire…. Rawr! 0w0

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBLRtG2JGRJb2uhzG8boAkKY9kCu9GqQvRPIO4kB-jkCBodhGdBBpRQjWIQEEIUFa0poFRjtaqIasaZER16lYSBkw0I-w

And yes I use SoV on this build. I feel like sov over time provides more healing then CC.

Yes what I posted is all BiS gear. Obviously if you don’t have it use the exotic equivalent. Like on my real necro I use a mix of Rabid and Settler Gear.

Anyway, simple condi spam build. You could swap warhorn with staff but I really prefer warhorn since it synergizes with siphon traits so well. With the high number of aoe attacks and the fast rate of attack on scepter, this build generates a good amount of siphon procs. Furthermore the siphons do damage like condi dmg; armor doesn’t block it.

This build is a lot stronger with team mates. Plague signet will take their condi’s. SoV will heal them and do dmg. My thinking is that siphons are unique to the necro. Conditions can come from anywhere. So if I want to put every condition in the world on my enemy, I just need to pull them off friends and jump into wells and fire, then plague signet or locust swarm the mess to my enemy. That way I can have my condis and siphons too.

It cost me about 20 gold to go from nothing to fully geared in exotics with this build. So very cheap and easy. If you got enough karma for a full set of rabid, it’ll cost less then 15g.

You could say this build is better without SoV. Idk. For a theme build it works ok. Don’t take this build seriously because I don’t.

Well mathematically I could see where they might see the signet as being ok.

Lets say your start a fight against someone. With 300ish healing power the passive heals me for 345. Ok I get hit 10 times and my hp is low enough I think ‘hm I better use my active heal’. With Blood II, the active siphon gives 550 hp and in the 5s the mark is up I can get in at most kittens.

So 345×10+4110+550x5 = 10310 HP gained from the outset of the fight with the signet. Now the signet is on CD, I can’t get the passive anymore for 28 seconds. If it is a pitched, long duel, I may have to settle for a 4110+550x5 = 6860 heal every 28 thereafter.

That’s not terrible but it requires a lot of concentration on your part. You need to maintain the target you marked and hit them constantly for 5 seconds to get the most out of the active part.

I like this signet specifically for the rabid vampire build I’ve been toying with off and on. Mainly because I already had Blood II and signet mastery as part of the build pre SoV.

I’ve been testing a rabid condi-vampire build. I use the high crit of rabid to reliably proc siphon on crit effects from trait and food plus earth sigil procs. It’s probably not a huge dps gain going that way but I feel like all those little ticks of hp help survivability.

Yes I am using vampire signet for the lulz. At least I got it buffed with Blood II along with my Locust signet.