I’d love if they lived longer and removed the c/d so I could have a dozen of them following be around as trophies for my kills. I dont care if they actually do anything.
Badges of Honor- Is the system good where it is at, or does it need improvement?
in WvW
Posted by: NatashaK.9418
At least the bags drop near you and it’s not like PvE where you have to chase. I don’t like combat looting in general though.
I hate jumping puzzles in all aspects of the game. I wouldn’t care if they were in WvW other than the fact that people talk about them every few minutes while the rest of the team is trying to defend a keep.
I dont really care if more badges drop or less do. There’s nothing to do with them other than buy siege equipment. Perhaps they could have broken the gear out different so you could buy a gear insignia token and a gear skin token….if you dont like the stats or look of the gear, there’s no reason to WvW for badges at all.
sPvP is great for testing out your end game build and gear. It’s fun. It doesn’t cost anything. You can lose at it all day and you still get points for showing up. Most of the other people also have no idea what they’re doing and are just testing classes/builds/gear.
WvW is a lot of fun on a ranger. Less than 30 hurts because you wont have your slots full but after than it barely matters. A 30 in greens is not that different from an 80 in greens. (Yes, an 80 with loaded gear is noticeably stronger). You shouldn’t be trying to 1v1 much anyway…if you’re losing, you have a lot of tools to run away.
Building one seems like a waste…building an army over the course of days with mesmers helping to escort them around is effective.
As ya, you’ll have to deal with the random drunk driving your golem.
Agreed with minimum possible reward for the server. They got that right.
Yes I agree with rewards / rankings for players and guilds.
This gets people to keep fighting no matter how bad it seems out there.
Shattering is not killed. Basically you either want to build your clones for offence (shatter build) or defense (disable enemies if they’re killed).
Or ignore clones and use phantasms for damage.
You have to go class cannon it you’re stacking precision / crit damage. Because they multiply. Glass cannon mesmer plays just like a thief “rock would beat scissors but rock can’t find scissors”. You’re either hiding in plain sight by running with the zerg or you’re using clones and LoS.
My assumption is that they deliberately made it hard to make attrition builds which just stacked condition and defensive stats. Nercos would do the same thing.
I’d love toughness. But it’s just too difficult to itemize for. I’d value:
condition damage > toughness > vitality >> power >> everything else
Ya, always use staff for one of your swaps.
Then decided between dagger (melee), axe (ranged power/crit), and scepter (ranged conditions).
You might just take a few of these builds and hot join sPvP matches with them. It will give you a feel for what the end game is like.
Your links are mangled. Use a url shortner.
Staff + Bounce Trait + Skills 1 and 5 = Tag ALL the things!
Nope! Projectile is slow and it’s conditions after all.
Focus + Phantasmal Fury Trait + Skill 5 = Tag ALL the things!
Nope! It has cast time, remember?
Both work not so good in zerg events.
Ya, those will only tag if someone else in your group is doing real damage. Staff auto-attack will not tag mobs solo if there are more than a few people around.
The shatter builds certainly do the damage…but you really need to instantly have those clones out, send to the right place, and shattered. e.g. if a champ summoned adds around him, you could have the clones just sitting there on the champ and mindwrack to AoE tag the adds. Usually you have a situation where a clump spawns in a new location with a vet and normal trash…tagging the vet is easy…tagging the normal mobs before they melt is extremely difficult on mesmer. Many classes are spamming AoEs waiting for the mobs to even render on the screen.
I like the idea of hybrid builds. I just dont think they work for mesmer at this time. Feel free to prove me wrong.
If you’re using GS (power/crit), you want either shatter or phantasm
If you’re using staff (condition), it’s either conditions or glamours
Really just annoying in WvW when you end up in the water all the time. I’d be perfectly happy if he re-summoned when i got out.
I hate to think there’s one build to rule them all like that, and if there is, I’d expect nerfs.
Ultimately, I’d expect a shatter heavy build, a phantasm heavy build, and a condition heavy build to all be viable regardless of the current FotM.
In a power/crit build staff is a defensive weapon rather than an offensive one.
290 ms
San Francisco
Conditions don’t crit. But precision may proc conditions depending on build / weapon runes.
Mesmer has the same problem. Not only are your conditions useless but confusion and feedback are ineffective against anything that doesn’t fight back.
I carry an axe around, regardless of build.
The easiest PvE classes are guardian and ranger.
Ele is one of the more challenging as a twitch class as you really can’t take a hit and expect to live.
Mesmer is challenging because gear itemization and builds are very specific – Frankenstein builds and gear really do no damage.
Necro is also very good for pve and pvp.
People are either good at thieves or they aren’t…they can be extreamly frustrating for beginners and devastating in the right hands.
I can’t confirm this. As a general rule, the 5 target AoE restriction is based on one thing triggering damage. One arrow getting reflected has only one target. So even if 1000 people are in a feedback bubble shooting arrows, each one is only hitting one target. Thus feedback doesn’t really have the 5 target restriction.
Krait farming is crazy good money.
I dont really make money in WvW. But I cant really say I lose a lot. A ram or an arrow cart here and there isn’t all that expensive.
As for drops, they get much better in a party. It seems the mob tagging requirements are just lower in a group.
Get the backpack too. It’s nice for low levels and you’ll have both a condition damage one and can get the zerker one from the story quest.
If you’re not enjoying soloing you can 1) craft away 10 levels. 2) slot feedback and run around with the zerg doing wvw.
As with any class, check out the builds sticky.
Every class forum says their class is under powered and buggy.
I should also point out that just because you can focus on condition damage, doesn’t mean you should. Maybe half the people are condition and half aren’t. (No way to really know.)
The first two things that made me love the necro are:
1) the staff is awesome and unless you really have an advanced, tweaked out build should always be one of your swaps
2) the axe is actually ranged rather than melee, so you can kite in circles throwing axes just like a ranger…you’ll probably use the scepter though, if you’re going all in conditions
Ya, I dont get reanimator either. If I got one for every kill, then it might be worth putting points into them doing something.
I really like spectral grasp.
I really like rtl. Even though I 90% of the time I just used it for more speed rather than to actually close a gap. And about a third of that time I’d go a random direction and kill a rabbit. But it was too much trouble to try to juggle staff and daggers.
I’m confused. I understand that my ele had basically 10k hp vs 20k+ for my mesmer and necro. And both have a ton more survivability tools. But as an Ele, I certainly dont lack damage. And despite the frustration of soloing personal story quests, WvW is where Ele really is king. I had twice the karma of any of my other toons at 80 because I really only did wvw.
Crazy run speed in air. Hit 5 at a choke point, switch to fire and hit 123 until everything melts.
I’ve sure ele is a difficult class in sPvP where glass cannon builds are much less successful. But WvW is about killing a zerg of PvErs trying to collect their 500 badges….and it excels at that role.
It frustrated me a lot too. But my assumption was that it was designed to help the underdogs. By this I mean, if you’re pushing a base on the opponents turf, they have a much shorter run time than you. This may mean that a 2:1 disadvantage could be overcome due to quicker reinforcements.
It depends on your build. Decide what you want to do first and then gear and trait for it.
What I’ve come to realize is that mesmer simply performs poorly with mismatch gear and traits thrown all around. Far more than any other class, you need to go all in with a certain playstyle in order to be effective.
1) Shatters are our best burst. But I simply don’t like them in a 1200 range, AoE happy environment. If you can break from the pack and make the enemy come to you, I’m sure you can do just fine in one of those sPvP builds everyone qqs about.
2) Glamours are our signature PvZerg skills. But specing for this can make you feel naked in a dueling situation
But you have many choices about what weapons to use, whether you want condition or straight damage, clones or phantasms. If you go with clones are they offensive or defensive. These are really just the extreams.
I have 5 classes. Necro is the one lagging on getting 80 simply because several other guildies had one.
1) Guardian: basically a ret paladin. (or any melee healer spec’d for dps) Incredibly easy to level. The only weakness is range capabilities are near zero. You have good pulls, speed buffs, and gap closers though.
2) Ranger. Everything you expect.
3) Mesmer. The two tricks to mesmer is that it probably doesn’t play like anything you know and you kind of have to go all-in with a certain playstyle. If you aren’t min/maxing gear and traits you’ll do almost no damage.
4) Ele. You really are a glass cannon. Like a necro with half the HP, not draining any HP, and no f1. Eles can also be spec’d very defensively or make good healers.
Dont try to compare anything to a ranger (or guardian) in PvE.
I had a really hard time leveling up necro until I discovered two things:
1) The staff is simply amazing. The CDs are short and you can basically keep a clump of mobs crippled and bleeding while sucking out their health.
2) The Axe is a ranged weapon (just like the ranger).
So you can just circle strafe around whatever mobs you have dropping marks with the staff and hitting with the axe from range.
I’m not 80 yet on my necro but have played it over various betas and again now. I consider it easier to level than either of the other cloth classes (mesmer / ele).
I’ve suggested this before, but I like’d RIFT’s system much better than transforming gear at all. You had one tab for your gear and a separate tab for what it looked like (as an override). You could store multiple looks. This was great for leveling up where you could keep your favorite shoes for looks but keep grabbing stuff with the best stats.
That’s really the point. To give you a taste and have you pay something for the game. Like more bank space.
Would love this gear on either necro or mesmer. I hope they give more choices in the future.
Actually I think it’s pretty good. Not perfect, but probably the most fair of any MMO I’ve played.
1) You get contribution if you tag the event. i.e. kill something that gets you XP within a reasonable time-frame of the even completing
2) If you’re built highly for support and have a hard time tagging, you still get credit by standing within the circle
You have to check and see if your trait setup gets and advantage from precision. e.g. minor that makes bleeds on crit…otherwise, it’s better to go carrion.
If you decide you want both precision and survivability, there are pieces out there with +cond, +toughness, + precision. But this is not a craftable set.
GS is nice, but ya, no synergy and you can’t have an offhand. Sword is really nice for PvE but in WvW I’d rather have the scepter for range. If you’re fully +cond, you should probably stick with the scepter regardless.
There’s a few quests which heavily favor ranged classes. But in all the rest guardian was easiest. Generally guardian > ranger > necro > mesmer > ele for the characters I’ve played since release. (In personal story, other times it’s totally different). I had a really hard time with thief in the betas, but I can’t say for sure what’s been adjusted.
Some of it though is really understanding how to trigger next phases of the story. i.e. should I kill everyone or is that impossible and I need to run through? Mesmer generally didn’t have the dps to outkill anything with respawn. Ele would be fine if there were a few NPCs to “tank” the mobs and useless solo.
Yes, I play both classes. I know what both give up. I thought necros got the better deal in early beta and played necro exclusively for 1-2 BWE. (Because I really like how staff/marks work and hated the mesmer pets).
But ultimately, necro pets are terrible. And I’d rather have 10% more runspeed, pull people off walls, etc. (Or in mesmer’s case, feedback, null field, portal or blink).
Buffs and nerfs for sPvP dont bother me much. I can create any class at 80, and give it whatever gear / spec I want. People playing this can be assumed to be the best and no one cares about the low skilled players trying to get through their personal story.
If I have a PvE/WvW character and they nerf say the GS and I have to swap all my zerker gear for carrion (or whatever) that hurts a lot.
I’m pretty much never going to beat anyone 1v1 in a fair fight. So I don’t spec to try, and I focus on strategy so that the fights are never fair.
For the most part, if you’re tagging kills you’re doing the right thing to get badges. (You can tell you’re tagging if you get xp.) Beyond this there’s nothing special to get the badge. (Unless someone can confirm that MF makes a difference.)
I’ve gotten roughly 750 badges for 4k kills or about 20%.
Ele is a rough class for solo PvE. If I had to rank the 5 classes I have in terms of easy of doing the personal story quests, I’d say:
1) Guardian
2) Ranger
3) Necro
4) Mesmer
5) Ele
But I’d probably reverse that order in terms of what’s fun in WvW. Ele is so fast and literally throws fireballs and rains fire on people. So much damage, cc, AoE, combo fields, healing and utility.
Every single class forums is full of people complaining about their class and wanting a buff. I recommend trying every class. (Of my 5, only the necro isn’t 80 yet.)
Mesmer is not very fast, and I’m not doing a ton of damage. But I have a ton of HP and really a lot of survivability even with fresh 80 crafted rare gear.
I admit i hit 2 too fast and think i rallied or otherwise get confused. But it’s certainly a positive change. I can fairly often get out of arrow cart range or out of LoS.
If you’re running with a guild, everyone should chain speed buffs for the group. This puts everyone at the same speed +33% (doesnt stack). The issue only comes up if you get left behind for other reasons.
I’m someone who always manages to get lost somewhere. If that applies to you, an ele is a great choice which a pile of passive and active speed buffs plus multiple gap closers.
You have to realize that he’s wearing cloth and can only do this at melee range. No armor, no toughness might have a lot of HP, but it goes fast.
He’s given up the ability to stack a bunch of confusion or use feedback to throw your arrows back at you. If he’s using phantasms for damage, he can’t fool you with clones.
Mesmers are a strong dueling class in the right hands but they cannot be everything at once. Each build will have a lot of weaknesses to it as well.
Camps should be easy to take. It’s really important for WvW to have things for really small groups to do. Otherwise it’s all zerg vs zerg.
It might have changes a lot since beta, but I found ele easier to play than warrior. Warrior had little choice but to get in the face of mobs while ele could kite/strafe/dodge. Guardian was different due to the heals and damage avoidance, it was just so much more tanky. But I probably only got to 20 or so on warrior.
Ele is a great class for learning how to strafe and dodge roll. It will make all your other classes seems easy. The class somewhat corrals you into being a glass canon. It exels at this role. If you dont like it, you can chose a different build or class. None of my other classes at 80 can touch what ele can do damage wise…but they dont get one shot by balista either.
We’d all like this. But figure things are balanced around how it works now and if you wanted things to work different, there’s be a lot of nerfs somewhere else. I think we’ve gotten used to it by now.
Necros have to give up all their slots for their pets. Its nice not having to do that.
Ya, dont compare mesmer to ranger. Dont compare anything to ranger. Or guardian…both are crazy OP for solo PvE.
Mesmer is tough to balance at low levels because you’re not sure what kinds of stats to stack, what weapons to use, whether to keep your clones or blow them up. And unfortunately, trying to do a little but of everything just doesn’t work.
Honestly, I get my mesmer to 80 by doing a lot of crafting and taking a lot of supply camps.
The sword does great damage. You just have to get in and out a lot. Either use the staff defensively or use the GS for more damage.
You’re not sabotaging anything. The supply in the keeps are meant for upgrades. Players should carry supply from camps for all other things. Repairing the door from the supply inside the keep is basically the last resort before it gets turned over to the enemy.
This was complained about in early betas. People wanted daily quests so that active WvWs of any level could get free siege equipment. What we got was the jumping puzzle. The intent is there…I just can’t even do the jumps to get the vistas, let alone the jumping puzzles so it doesn’t help me.