Guild Wars 2

Dusty Moon.4382:

Kraljevo.2801:

I’ve been playing with this lately and its insane.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAT8YjEqUua7KerQ1ag/ga9AkvBQrag9D8BhQBraA-TVCEABZfQA4e/BCeAAbpEkJlfGcBAyU9n20NAwRAIAACwNvZ2sNDGv4Fv4Fv45m38m38m3sUAwsMC-w

Swap out Viper’s nest for Signet of renewal if you need, I personally only use Sigil of cleansing and it works fine for me.

The only duel I lost against was a perma torment scepter mesmer (which is incredibly overpowered if played right).

EDIT People tend to accuse you of hacks because they are not aware that trapper runes exist, LOL. Happened to me twice yesterday. Sweet, sweet tears.

Well, you can’t have 2 of the similar runes on your weapons. Your longbow is setup that way and they negate each other.

April 15 feature patch says hi

Uriel.6310:

Is carrion gear or celestial the best for this build?

Even if the healing power is a bit wasted, I personally find that celestial armor and trinkets with berserker weapons gives the best overall stat spread for my preferences.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

winterchillz.2564:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Most elites are crap, what else is new?

10/10 would laugh again.

Maybe you’d like to enlighten me as to what engineers, guardians, rangers, and necromancers have that are actually worth using as something other than an afterthought then.

Supply Crate can win a fight
Renewed Focus can turn a fight in your favor
Entangle can turn a fight in your favor
Rampage as One gives 20 seconds of stability
Spirit of Nature can revive allies twice in its lifetime
Lich Form can snipe people for over 8k in a power build

You were saying?

Been playing this in hotjoins and tpvp and while it has its obvious weaknesses, it also has some pretty good strong points.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAodhMMqb23wsBf0ANA24TQI4FIuAEA+glyCA-TJBFwAJOBAt2fAaZAAPAAA

Earth sig and E3 can help you land some pretty strong bursts and you can keep up decent condi AND physical damage pressure due to fresh air, not to mention a low CD stunbreak that covers stomps real nice. Focus is also REALLY strong in the current meta, especially with traited air CDs.

Obviously it’s weak to condis and extreme spike and being able to safely disengage a fight with snares to heal is a requirement to play it well. It has really low in-combat healing ability.

EDIT: Whoa, just refreshed the page to see gw2skills has updated for the feature pack changes. Awesome!

I think what people are neglecting to mention is the pitiful radius on this skill. 240 is NOTHING for a boon like might. 240 makes sense for boons like protection on Elemental Attunement because protection is a powerful buff and EA has high uptime. This might, however, is a measly 5 seconds. It deserves at LEAST a 360 radius, but 480 or 600 are much more in-line with comparable traits like Phalanx Strength or with other guard utilities like shouts.

MonMalthias.4763:

• S/F builds – at least those that try to run in WvW – incorporate Traveler’s Runes . Your proposal echoes the old One with Air where IMS stacked over time to maximum of 25% – but was not taken due to being awfully underpowered for a Major Slot.
• In my opinion, Zephyr’s Speed should have had the old One with Air effect put on, buffed to 10% per 10 seconds; first tick on Air Attune, max 25%; and called good. This puts X/F at 25% IMS after 20 seconds, which is more than fine as it forces a camped attunement. Unfortunately, this has some negative Synergy with Fresh Air but let’s be real, it’s a 5 (1) point Minor.
• On the other hand, if you make split Elemental Attunement’s Boon effects into each 5 (1) point Minor, then this wouldn’t even be an issue in the first place.

I like this too, and it probably makes the passive 25% more feasible from a balance standpoint.

MonMalthias.4763:

• Pretty strong for an Adept tier trait, considering Evasive Arcana requires not only a dodge, but for enemies to be around you when your dodge completes. It’s also difficult to counterplay, especially for Fresh Air specs. I can imagine a lot of Warrior hate incoming if this was to be implemented.
• Just make it so “your next attack inflicts Blind for 4 seconds” after attuning to Air and add a Buff icon for transparency. Air is traditionally single target focus, and a way to limit its power level is to make it single target.

This is fine too, but remember that this will produce an instant 900 range blind upon attuning to air with the 3 point air trait which is arguably just as powerful (although scepter already has this, so I guess it’s not that bad.)

MonMalthias.4763:

So at a stroke, let’s create a new build just by putting in this mechanic:

• Arcane Lightning: Your Arcane Skills inflict Daze for 2 seconds. Inflict 5 stacks of Vulnerability if you Interrupt a foe.
  • We have just created an Interrupt build if we then combo it with Lightning Rod
  • Alternatively, combo it with Tempest Defense, allow TD to proc its damage increase with Daze as well, and all of a sudden you have a huge counterpressure build.

This sounds good in theory, but would be VERY powerful with Arcane Power producing a 2s daze 5 times. However, were it made such that only the first attack produced a daze, this would sound like a pretty good idea to me and also makes the current iteration of Lightning Rod fine.

It’s really hard to reasonably get us out of water. Having Cleansing Water and Ether Renewal at our disposal kind of makes it so that any more traits/skills that would remove conditions would push us over the top. I think the only thing that could have condition removal reasonably added would be a grandmaster trait in a line (probably fire or earth) that would make auras produced by you remove one condition. This would give signet builds some sort of condition removal and still be able to run the signet heal over ether renewal, which would instantly make a signet build FAR more viable.

However, as outlined in my opening posts, I think getting us out of arcana is pretty easy. The “mancer” traits in each line could have attunement CD reduction added, vigor uptime from renewing stamina could be halved, elemental attunement could be nerfed a bit (and made baseline, if you’re in favor of that) and more defensive options could be added to the other lines. Bam, 4 points in arcana is no longer a requirement for most viable builds.

Glyph Changes (most of these changes taken from ILobo in this thread )

• Glyph of Elemental Harmony: Reduce cast time to 1 second and increase healing power coefficient to 1.0
• Glyph of Lesser Elementals: Completely scrap this glyph. Change to Glyph of Elemental Shielding: Gain an aura based on your attunement. 8 second fire aura duration, 4 seconds for the other 3 auras. 40 second recharge. Stun break (instant cast time.)
• Glyph of Storms: Reduce recharge time to 45 seconds. Increase range to 1,200.
• Glyph of Renewal: Reduce cast time to 2&1/2 seconds. Reduce recharge time to 150 seconds.
• Glyph of Elemental Power: Remove stun break. Add 1 second cast time. Reduce skill recharge time to 40 seconds. Increase trigger chance to 100%. Reduce burning duration to 2 seconds. Reduce weakness and cripple durations to 3 seconds.
• Glyph of Elementals: Reduce recharge time to 90 seconds. Make it so that activating this skill again while an elemental is summoned will cause it to use its special skill (like a necro’s minions, ranger’s spirits, etc.) with a 30 second recharge time on the activation.

Those are all the changes I have thought of. I feel that most are pretty reasonable. As noted by the disclaimer above, I obviously would not expect ALL of these changes to be simultaneously implemented due to problems with OPness.

Thoughts?

• Water II – Shard of Ice: Renamed to Flash Freeze. Remove old effect. New effect: Inflict 2 seconds of chill and 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds when attuning to water. 240 AoE, 3 Targets.
• Water VIII – Aquamancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of water attunement by 20%.

• Arcane Grandmaster Minor – Arcane Precision: Changed from 10% chance to apply conditions on critical hit to 10% chance to apply conditions on hit. Burning duration increased to 2 seconds. Weakness duration decreased to 2 seconds. Bleeding duration increased to 10 seconds. Vulnerability application while in water changed to 2 seconds of chill.
• Arcane II – Renewing Stamina: Increase ICD to 10 seconds. This will hurt, but with the changes made to other lines being able to maintain permavigor with only one trait is simply too much.
• Arcane VIII – Elemental Attunement: Because of the change to make the boons provided to the ele baseline to the profession, this trait would now double the duration of the boons provided and make them AoE to restore the current functionality of this trait albeit with slightly nerfed durations.
• Arcane IX – Arcane Resurrection: Revive speed increase set to 25%. Auras gained upon revival increased in duration to 6 seconds.
• Arcane X – Arcane Energy: Change effect to give 25% of your endurance back when using a utility, heal or elite skill.
• Arcane XIII – Elemental Contingency: Changed to use the Evasive Arcana style of internal cooldown where the 10 second ICD is individual to each attunement.

Weapon Skills:

• Dagger F5 – Fire Grab: Widen the cone slightly.
• Dagger A2 – Lightning Touch: Widen the cone slightly. Reduce cast time to 1/2 second. Reduce weakness duration by 1 second. Increase affected targets to 5.
• Dagger E2 – Ring of Earth: List reflection skill fact.
• Dagger E5 – Churning Earth: Reduce cast time to 2&1/2 seconds.

• Scepter F1 – Flamestrike: Reduce cast time to 1 second.
• Scepter F2 – Dragon’s Tooth: Increase damage radius to 240.
• Scepter W2 – Shatterstone: Halve the time it takes for the shatterstone to detonate.
• Scepter W3 – Water Trident: Increase radius to 240.

• Focus F4 – Flamewall: Increase burning duration to 2 seconds and add damage per pulse.
• Focus F5 – Fire Shield: Change to Fire Aura for OCD purposes. Increase duration to 8 seconds.
• Focus W4 – Freezing Gust: Increase chill duration to 4 seconds. Reduce recharge to 20 seconds. Make unblockable.
• Focus W5 – Comet: Increase radius to 240.
• Focus A4 – Swirling Winds: Provide swiftness for 10 seconds to allies inside of the 400 radius when the skill is used.

• Staff W2 – Ice Spike: Halve the time it takes for the spike to fall.
• Staff A2 – Lightning Surge: Decrease cast time to 1/4 second (blindness on this skill is pretty pointless if it can’t realistically be used to stop an incoming attack in time.)
• Staff A3 – Gust: Change to knock back foes in a fairly wide cone in front of the player (say 150 degree arc with a 400 unit range.) Reduce recharge time to 25 seconds.
• Staff A4 – Windborne Speed: Reduce recharge rate to 25 seconds.
• Staff E2 – Eruption: Reduce time it takes for the eruption to detonate by 33%.

After doing a lot of reading and theorycrafting I feel like I’ve come up with some pretty realistic changes for the ele. The primary goal of these changes is to increase the viability of the fire, air and earth traitlines for defense while gently nerfing two of the arcana line’s major players in order to stimulate build diversity across all the lines. I would also love to see some bumps to certain weapon and utility skills, so I’ve made some suggestions for those as well.

Disclaimer: Obviously I would not expect ALL of these changes to be made. Power creep would be strong AF.

Starting with one mechanic change:
Make elemental attunement boons baseline to the class with the following changes and durations:

• The boons are NOT AoE baseline.
• Fire: 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds
• Water: Regeneration for 2 seconds
• Air: Swiftness for 2 seconds
• Earth: Protection for 2 seconds

Traits:

• Fire Adept Minor – Flame Barrier: Boost trigger chance from 20% to 50% while attuned to fire.
• Fire Master Minor – Sunspot: Add 2 seconds of burning to this trait in a 240 AoE. Increase the damage radius to 240 to be more in-line with other attunement effects. Reduce affected targets to 3.
• Fire VII – Pyromancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of fire attunement by 20%. Without any points in arcana this would provide for a 10&3/4 second fire attunement recharge time; with 6 points in arcana, the recharge rate would be 8&3/4 seconds.
• Fire IX – Fire’s Embrace: Increase fire aura duration by 1 second.
• Fire X – One with Fire: Completely remove current effect and create new effect: burning applied by you deals 20% increased damage.
• Fire XII – Pyromancer’s Puissance: Remove and replace with new trait Retaliatory Fire: Attuning to fire grants 4 seconds of retaliation (NOT in an AoE.) Retaliation granted by you deals 30% increased damage. Along with flame barrier, this would make striking an ele who has just attuned to fire a potentially dangerous prospect.
• Fire XIII – Blinding Ashes: Either make it so that AoE applications of burning now blind all affected targets if the trait is off cooldown -OR- make the ICD individual to each enemy (the latter being more powerful than the former.)

• Air Adept Minor – Zephyr’s Speed: Movement speed increased to 20%, or even 25%. This would only work while attuned to air, so it would mainly be useful for travel. My thoughts when boosting this trait revolve mainly around the focus – does anyone else enjoy being a turtle in WvW just to use the (severely underused, mostly due to mobility issues) focus? I don’t.
• Air IV – One with Air: Increase superspeed duration to 2 seconds and add 4 seconds of blindness when attuning to Air in a 240 AoE affecting 3 targets. This would allow attuning to air to be a skillshot blind in order to stop that earthshaker or suspected incoming backstab.
• Air V – Soothing Winds: I honestly don’t know anyone that uses this trait, so change it to Vigorous Auras: Auras granted by you last an additional second and grant 2 seconds of vigor.
• Air VIII – Inscription: Increase might granted while using a glyph in fire attunement from 1 stack to 3 stacks and decrease base duration from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Air IX: Aeromancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of air attunement by 20%.
  Air XIII – Lightning Rod: Change to deliver damage and weakness on delivering a critical hit with a 10 second ICD. As it is, ele only has like 2 interrupts at most per weaponset with generally long cooldowns, making this trait a pretty poor performer.

• Earth Master Minor – Earthen Blast: In addition to its current effects, this trait now causes attuning to earth to be a blast finisher centered around the player.
• Earth VIII – Rock Solid: Add 4 seconds of aegis to this trait in a 240 AoE affecting 5 allies along with the stability. This would allow attuning to earth to be a skillshot block in order to block that pin down or suspected incoming backstab.
• Earth IX – Geomancer’s Freedom: In addition to its current effects, this trait now grants 3 seconds of retaliation when you are affected by chill, cripple or immobilize. 10 second ICD.
• Earth X – Geomancer’s Alacrity: In addition to reducing the recharge rate of attunement-based weapon skills, this trait would now also increase the recharge rate of earth attunement by 20%.

Yeah, I have to agree that this is a pretty bad suggestion IMO.

Apolo.5942:

Fashion Mage.3712:

The guardian profession can be a lot of things, and a “paladin” is most certainly one of those things, but a paladin is only one of the things it can be. Maybe one of the archetypes a guardian was intended to represent wasn’t “ninja guardian” or whatever, but don’t merely call a guardian a paladin. It comes off as extremely simple-minded to me.

And i would be ok with it, if making a proper paladin (thus playing the class propperly) would not incredibly kitten your pvp viability.

Who are you to say that playing a “paladin” is playing the class “properly?”

Archon.6480:

Ha ha, yeah the best way to survive in fractals is to strip off all survivability and go full zerker gear will no support. Golden!

All joking aside, celestial armor with traveller’s runes and zerker/celestial trinkets seems to give right amount of Armour to survive the inevitable damage you will take. I also hear knights Armour works well. Bring signet of stone and protect me with drake or arcdotus for 12s invulnerability to pull off revives in tough fights or if you want to aggro enemies to save allies.

If your team is really skilled, drop signets for spotter and bear for red moa. Replace protect me with Quickening zephyr. Swords, LB, axe, Warhorn and dagger all work well.

If you have less than 2400 Armour and no invulnerability you are a liability to all but the most experienced groups as you won’t be able to revive allies without being downed. As an experienced guardian, I am sure you realize how important it is to pull aggro at the right time and revive allies quickly! Guardians == GW2 masters You’ll love ranger.

A lot of this is all really bad advice and one of the primary reasons that rangers are looked down upon in PvE content.

Thanks for the helpful opinions, guys! I think I’ll drop the runes but I’m going to stick with offhand pistol.

Talking about a traditional 3-kit rabid 6/2/0/4/2 build for WvW roaming, using either a sigil of battle or strength (possibly both.) Does this seem like a good idea, or am I barking up the wrong tree here? I know the current suggestion is typically something like Balth or Antitoxin but I had enough seals laying around from the dungeon and the runes looked interesting.

Also, as a secondary question, is offhand pistol viable for WvW? Not running anything that procs off interupts so shield feels like kind of a waste in WvW.

I created this build today to play with my 4-man roaming group. We run quite a bit of condi clear in our group and we have all tried to run specs that spread out a good amount of support between each of us. My focus is 600 AoE offensive and defensive support / condi remove while maintaining strong damage. I am also the swiftness maintainer for the group.

Please tear it apart. <:D

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBHhNakpjOPLDxyD6QDUFEYrC0dn+87F-TVCHwAAV+V4QAY4EAA4BAQS9nI6Dat/wgjAwTlgECo8WA-w

So I got to thinking about the alacrity traits and came up with this idea. The trait would read like the following:

Fire VII – Pyromancer’s Alacrity: Reduces recharge on all fire weapon skills. Reduces recharge on all fire-based utility skills. Increases recharge rate of Fire Attunement.

• Weapon skill recharge reduction: 20%
• Fire Signet, Cleansing Fire, Conjure Flame Axe recharge reduction: 20%
• Attunement recharge rate increase: 20%

Repeat for all four attunements and their relevant utility skills. I don’t really feel like this would be overpowered. There is already precedent for double-CDRs with Mesmer’s Clone/Phantasm skills, and the alacrity traits are extremely niche. The only part that has the potential to be overpowered in my view is that, in conjunction with 6 points in arcana, you could have a 7&3/4 second recharge rate on any specific attunement you traited this way.

I feel like a trait like this could REALLY help us get out of arcana and open up more build options.

Divinity runes were valued highly because they gave a whopping 12% crit damage. After the ferocity nerf, they only give 78 ferocity which equates to 5% crit damage with 3 points of ferocity to spare (it takes 15 points to make 1%)

I thought I’d make a topic where we could suggest small bumps to any area of the ele in order to allow for a more versatile, fierce class without actually making it overpowered as many suggestions have. Feel free to make any suggestions for alterations of traits, skills or weapon skills here.

Disclaimer: As ArenaNet’s class-balance philosophy is to make small boosts in certain areas over the course of multiple patches, I think it’s best to not go crazy. In fact, I might even advocate making a slightly unimpressive change or addition, because let’s be honest, these are the changes that are more prone to happen.

I’ll start with a few ideas I have been bouncing around in my head that propose changes to some traits.

• Fire Adept Minor – Flame Barrier: Boost trigger chance from 20% to 50% while attuned to fire.
• Fire Master Minor – Sunspot: Add 2 seconds of burning to this trait in a 240 AoE. Increase the damage radius to 240 to be more in-line with other attunement effects. Reduce affected targets to 3.
• Fire X – One with Fire: Completely remove current effect and create new effect: burning applied by you deals 10% increased damage (I get that this is the guardian’s bit, but this trait would (and should) be considerably weaker. I thought about 1 second of quickness when attuning to fire but I think that would be a little too powerful with meteor shower.)
• Fire XII – Pyromancer’s Puissance: Removed. Replaced by new grandmaster trait Rapid Fire: Recharge Fire Attunement when you execute a blast finisher. 5 second internal cooldown (Two main problems here: potential to be overpowered and the removal of PP. However, air has a similar, stronger trait and it created a whole new build without being QQ’ed about by the playerbase much.)
• Fire XIII – Blinding Ashes: Reduce internal cooldown and blind duration to 2 seconds for obvious synergy with Burning Precision. AoE applications of burning now blind all affected targets if the trait is off cooldown. This would allow the ele a good option for defending its squishy body in a power build with a 6-point investment. I think this is fair.

• Air Adept Minor – Zephyr’s Speed: Movement speed increased to 20%, or even 25%. This would only work while attuned to air, so it would mainly be useful for travel. My thoughts when boosting this trait revolve mainly around the focus – does anyone else enjoy being a turtle in WvW just to use the (severely underused, mostly due to mobility issues) focus? I don’t.
• Air IV – One with Air: Increase superspeed duration to 2.5 seconds.
• Air VIII – Inscription: Increase might granted while using a glyph in fire attunement from 1 stack to 3 stacks.

• Earth Master Minor – Earthen Blast: In addition to its current effects, this trait now causes attuning to earth to be a blast finisher centered around the player.
• Earth IX – Geomancer’s Freedom: In addition to its current effects, this trait now grants 3 seconds of vigor when you are affected by chill, cripple or immobilize. 10 second ICD.

• Water II – Shard of Ice: Renamed to Flash Freeze. Remove old effect. New effect: Inflict 2 seconds of chill and 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds when attuning to water. 240 AoE, 3 Targets.

• Arcane Grandmaster Minor – Arcane Precision: Changed from 10% chance to apply conditions on critical hit to 10% chance to apply conditions on hit. Burning duration increased to 2 seconds. Weakness duration decreased to 2 seconds. Bleeding duration increased to 10 seconds. Vulnerability application while in water changed to 2 seconds of chill.
• Arcane VIII – Elemental Attunement: Might duration from attuning to fire reduced to 10 seconds. Increase might gained when attuning to fire to 3 stacks.
• Arcane IX – Arcane Resurrection: Revive speed increase set to 25%. Auras gained upon revival increased in duration to 6 seconds.
• Arcane X – Arcane Energy: Change effect to give 25% of your endurance back when using a utility, heal or elite skill.
• Arcane XIII – Elemental Contingency: Changed to use the Evasive Arcana style of internal cooldown where the 10 second ICD is individual to each attunement.

These were the major ones I could think of for the time being, and I’m sure some of them could cause reductions to be made elsewhere. I have ideas for weapon skills and utilities as well, but I’m sure some of you have your own ideas. I’d love to hear them, as long as they don’t involve the creation of new and ridiculous game mechanics or cause complete pre-nerf hambow syndrome. Maybe we could catch the attention of someone from the balance teams if our suggestions are reasonable!

Updated versions of previously posted characters.

Guardian
Warrior
Engineer
Ranger
Thief
Elementalist
Mesmer
Necromancer

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJAoYhEmQbwx5gjDAkHwcCLDFhMSRBNzA-j0BBoOBkkGk6AITqIasl1FRjVPjIqWfETIgFrBA-w

This is the build I have been theorycrafting for a long time, and I’ve boiled it down to this. There is a variant of it that loses 10 from water or arcana to go 10 more into earth for diamond skin, but then I felt the need to swap out Ether Renewal for the signet heal (to keep health above 90%) which would have left me too vulnerable to conditions if the health threshold was dropped below 90%.

Essentially, though, the idea is to have superior regen, condition clearing, and protection/stability uptime in conjunction with high vitality and toughness (for an ele) to survive direct damage bursts and prolonged fights with condition users. Regen uptime will pretty much be permanent (and you’re curing conditions on each application) and it will be ticking for 204, which is decent in conjunction with soothing mist ticking away at 123.

An explanation of skills:
Ether Renewal – Preference, could be swapped out for signet and I would probably advise that if Earth 8 (Rock Solid) isn’t taken.

Glyph of Elemental Power – Mostly for the burn upkeep when out of fire attune, but could also be used for the cripple or chill to prevent being kited or the weakness when a heavy hitter is all up in your grill. Once used, your condition of choice would probably be best applied in air or water due to rapid autos.

Armor of Earth – Could be swapped for your stunbreak of choice but I like the stab and prot too much to give it up. Will be better after balance changes (hopefully).

Lightning Flash – Obvious synergy with the only real bleed applier, earth 5, and for combat mobility.

Glyph Elite – Just use whatever, I would go with reaper of grenth if I was a human. FGS may be a better idea anyways to get out of the fight and either choose to run or reset before re-engaging.

The only REAL problem with this build is its killing power is going to be pretty low, so it’s like… What’s the point? I can outlast (hopefully), but why would that matter if I can’t kill? It would be fun to play, but in the end, I don’t see a reason not to take a necro, engi or mes if you need a condition applier in your group.

Arenanet completely destroyed the fun aspect of fractals with the Fractured! patch and did not compensate us with increased rewards (instead choosing to nerf them.) I think it’s pretty fair for us to demand a response at this point. We have developers on these forums talking about how much they love their new heart-themed weapons or saying their favorite “this thread is now closed” line, but we can’t seem to get a simple acknowledgement of the problems being faced by everyone that used to love fractals.

Arenanet completely destroyed the fun aspect of fractals with the Fractured! patch and did not compensate us with increased rewards (instead choosing to nerf them.) I think it’s pretty fair for us to demand a response at this point. We have developers on these forums talking about how much they love their new heart-themed weapons or saying their favorite “this thread is now closed” line, but we can’t seem to get a simple acknowledgement of the problems being faced by everyone that used to love fractals.

The dagger skin “Dragon’s Jade Kris” has been suffering from a texture error since it was added to the game during Dragon bash. The red cloth hanging off the hilt is visible from one side, but when viewed from the other it cannot be seen at all. The Dragon’s Jade Avenger greatsword skin suffered the same bug and that was fixed within a month, but the Kris remained unchanged. Attached are two simple screenshots to see the texture error in action.

Do you find that a 27% chance crit rate is enough to proc firearms 5, or is that not really a dealbreaker? I know it’s enough for Explosives 9, my experience running a Dire Necro with 19% crit chance tells me that.

Hello, engineer forums! I’m an experienced player with extensive knowledge of 6 classes, and I’m looking to make engineer my 7th. I’ve played around a lot with builds while leveling and done a lot of reading about the class.

Now, though, I’d just like to get the opinions of some players. I’ve settled on a condition build for small-group roaming as the focus for my engineer, as that seems to be its strongest suit. I see a lot of people toting Rabid/Dire/Apothecary as the optimal condition sets, but I’d like some player opinion on some stat thresholds they usually like to meet when building a condition engineer.

Of course, you’re welcome to post your build if you’d like / make rune and sigil suggestions / etc. That would be great as well. Thank you in advance!

I was actually looking at making something very similar.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEUQJAoYhEmQbwx5gjDAkHwYCLDFhMSRROzA-j0BBoOBkkGk6AITqIasl1FRjVPjIqWfETKgFVWB-w

It uses a mix of dire and apothecary to reach my desired levels of vitality, toughness, and healing power while maintaining respectable condition damage. I don’t imagine you’ll be gaining very many stacks of might with this build so I feel it’s important to have a high baseline condition damage.

The sigil of bursting and the traits can be reworked at will. This is all theorycraft, but I feel it would perform at least decently. Essentially a different flavor of necromancer that trades condition killing power and raw tankiness for more of:

Crowd Control
Mobility
Condition Clearing
Healing Ability
Stability Access

I was theorycrafting a D/F roaming build that geared offensively and ran a pretty defensive trait/skill setup (something like 0/10/20/20/20 with full cantrip/boon duration runes). Before I build it for WvW, though, I was wondering if anyone had tried something similar?

Gotta love dat Juggernuts effect

Guardian
Warrior
Elementalist
Necromancer
Thief
Mesmer

megakittytron.5971:

The thread maker himself states if you go and look back that “I am interested in a developer’s response because if they really want to reduce the match variation they should also take out WvW from the map completion or at least require less from it”. The point of this thread is about wvw being a requirement for map completion. It is selfish to think that this only applies to SOS. What about other people on servers having the same problems with map completion because of wvw then?

I’ll concede that point to you, and as I also stated in my prior post I’d wish for a dev to comment both on the SoS case and other servers facing the same problem. I suppose you’re right, though, and that the two are intertwined.

I still believe that the thing to advocate for in this thread is better variance in color matching, not for a removal of the WvW requirement. I think that that requirement is good as it pushes people out of the base game and into WvW. However, map completion in the base game should only take around 3-4 weeks of casual play, and the WvW map should be in-line with this.

Sipp.7501:

Machspeedtwo.1342:

It would seem that people are again attempting to direct the topic of discussion elsewhere. The point of this thread is not the legitimacy of WvW as a requirement for map completion; it is to discuss that SoS has not been green for three months and that we, the players affected, would like some sort of official acknowledgement of the issue.

If you would like to discuss WvW as a requirement for map completion, please do so elsewhere.

WvW color and map completion is an intertwined subject though. Explain how SoS have been affected (other than the map completion reason) by not being a certain color, in this case green?

While your argument is valid and they are indeed intertwined, my point stands. Yes, the only reason many of us on SoS are distressed over this is because we desire map completion. I fully recognize that. However, the intention of the topic as I see it wasn’t to argue over whether the WvW map should be required, it was simply to ask the attention of a dev on the WvW team to comment and give some sort of assurance that the system would not stick us in red or blue for too much longer.

The reason I do not want the point of the thread to change is because if a dev DOES comment on it, I do not want them to simply state “WvW is a requirement for map completion and this is working as intended.” I would LIKE for them to make a comment about this specific case, and possibly other cases involving servers in a similar situation.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Lua.4163:

Some of you seem to not really understand the reason why I made this thread.

Some WvW matches are simply unfair. My server and FA tried to take the Green Keep for more than 4 hours and we broke many walls down, we killed many players but we simply couldn’t cap it, neither reach the vista. Yes we had the keep open for longer than a hour (both walls) but we simply cant beat the size of TC’s zerg.

Unfair matches are not a problem when they are temporary. However, with the recent changes and the WvW Matchup Variance Reduction it gets silly. I simply can’t hope that next week will be better. Especially since the same unfair match up we had last week remained this week… That is not encouraging. I honestly don’t feel like quitting doing the things I actually like to do in this game to spend all my online time in WvW for one single Vista.

I did not leave my WvW completion for the last minute. I have been doing it since a very long time, even earlier than I started the other parts of the map. Getting that keep is taking longer than it took me to do 301 hearts, 511 waypoints, 725 points of interest and 265 vistas.

I am interested in a developer’s response because if they really want to reduce the match variation they should also take out WvW from the map completion or at least require less from it.

If you had both walls open, maybe you should have stealthed and just rushed for the POI/JPs.

The only set of stairs allowing access to the POI was blown apart with the wall.

It would seem that people are again attempting to direct the topic of discussion elsewhere. The point of this thread is not the legitimacy of WvW as a requirement for map completion; it is to discuss that SoS has not been green for three months and that we, the players affected, would like some sort of official acknowledgement of the issue.

If you would like to discuss WvW as a requirement for map completion, please do so elsewhere.

Lua.4163:

Some of you seem to not really understand the reason why I made this thread.

Some WvW matches are simply unfair. My server and FA tried to take the Green Keep for more than 4 hours and we broke many walls down, we killed many players but we simply couldn’t cap it, neither reach the vista. Yes we had the keep open for longer than a hour (both walls) but we simply cant beat the size of TC’s zerg.

Unfair matches are not a problem when they are temporary. However, with the recent changes and the WvW Matchup Variance Reduction it gets silly. I simply can’t hope that next week will be better. Especially since the same unfair match up we had last week remained this week… That is not encouraging. I honestly don’t feel like quitting doing the things I actually like to do in this game to spend all my online time in WvW for one single Vista.

I did not leave my WvW completion for the last minute. I have been doing it since a very long time, even earlier than I started the other parts of the map. Getting that keep is taking longer than it took me to do 301 hearts, 511 waypoints, 725 points of interest and 265 vistas.

I am interested in a developer’s response because if they really want to reduce the match variation they should also take out WvW from the map completion or at least require less from it.

Very well articulated. The argument that one should just grab a ram and blast your way in is so foolish – TC was being double-teamed by both FA AND SoS for hours and it just didn’t happen. This has been the story since before the season even began.

At a point it just starts to feel unfair – many of the users here say that is a fair mechanic and that it is expected of your server to claim locations to acquire completion. This is true on the short-term – maybe for two or three weeks – but it should NOT be expected for 12 consecutive matchups.

My sylvari. Really happy with the way this one turned out.

My necro. Really happy with the way this one turned out.

I want to make sure that the original point of this topic is not lost. The original point was that the Sea of Sorrows server has not been green in twelve weeks.

A nod from a dev would be much appreciated.

Whoopmeister.7493:

unfortunatley i happened to be in the same boat a while ago , and the solution i got given was to jump onto another server , it may not be the news u want to hear , but it works ,many others have done this to , i waited a couple of weeks and then seeked advice on here and everyone gave the same answer , and also u can as easily jump bk after a week or so of completing it and carry on as u did b4

There is simply no way I am going to pay $45USD ($22.50 each way) in order to attain map completion. Any system that promotes such is flawed and needs to be examined.

I am in the exact same boat. I have waited nine weeks in hopes we’d be green, although I see we haven’t been green for even longer than that. I know we’ve capped lowlands a few times in that span but not during NA primetime, when I am able to play. I would also like some sort of dev response to this. I feel like I have waited patiently for long enough.

Upon further review, it seems the trait only works while in combat, which is rather annoying because placing a lava font down out of combat for might stacking is one of its primary uses.

When I trait persisting flames my lava font is once again not gaining the 2 second duration increase. It stays at 4 seconds both in the tooltip and when it’s casted. Can any other eles confirm?

Random or weekly rotation would be preferable by far. I’ve been sitting on all the components for my juggernaut but have been unable to complete two vistas for the entire season due to the fact that my server has not been green even once. It’s an awful feeling to be so close and yet have nothing to show for your hard work.

FoopOplo.7914:

You goofy goobers are welcome to feel however you want. At the end of the day, the mace won’t get changed because it doesn’t need to be changed. Rather than spending your time posting on the gw2 forums about how much you hate this weapon, why not use that same amount of time to try to get good with it?

Mace is probably one of the best weapons guardians have. The slower cast times keep things “balanced”. That B word is a new concept for some of you, I can tell.

Please stop mindlessly asking for buffs. Play your profession for a while before exposing your inexperienced self to the rest of the community.

That was pretty harsh given the relatively light-hearted discussion going on here. Most of the opinions shared here are pretty much on-point and to call them out in the way you did takes away any credibility you could have had.

Thanks for the advice, Christos! Much appreciated.

I’m wondering if the mix of soldier gear is really needed or if going pure clerics would be just as viable. Namely, I have all 4 (clerics and soldiers) ascended rings, but I don’t want to waste 2 of them just to find out I needed more HP or more healing power. Is soldeirs the purely better option or is full clerics viable?

There are no necromancers on this forum with the this beautiful necro-themed staff? I’d really like to know if the visual bug has been fixed before I create it.

Just play a warrior. :p

I know that a while back, the positioning of the necro scythe on Melandru’s Gaze was bugged in that it would appear midway down the staff. Has this been addressed?

10 pts = Major Adept, not minor major. just clarifying.

I’m interested in creating a WvW LB+S/S build but if I’m gonna do it, I want to do it right. I’ve looked at a good number of builds and watched some vids but I want opinions from those who have played both builds:

What’s better? Rabid stats or apothecary stats with banner regen?