Guild Wars 2

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I’m definitely loving the new trait tooltips! Duration increase, percentage increase, etc are all very very helpful in actually testing out builds and stuff.

But some still has info missing like Internal Cooldowns and some other percentage increase/decrease. One more polishing runthrough and they’d be awesome!

Sure, they could stand to be better. in some cases MUCH better (Rangers have new tool tips that are flat out WRONG). But evidently that takes so much of their limited time that actual BALANCING has to be shelved for the 3 months it takes them to go through their database and annotate things properly.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to jump in and say thanks for keeping things constructive!

Well, let’s see if I can bring a little ‘balance’ to your roses and unicorns perspective on what just happened.

The idea right now is to see how the current changes impact the meta, and then do another set of balance in an upcoming patch.

What changes? No, seriously, WHAT CHANGES?

The trait facts were a lot of work, but the clarity they give you guys is VERY good for you.

I believe you that they were a lot of work, but let me clarify for you what you really just did. People that cared enough about their building already knew the tooltips were garbage, and had bashed together better player-made resources so that they could do some actually deep building. And at the end of the day, testing those builds tells you more than any tooltip, past or present.

And the other 97% of your player base? They plain old don’t care. They throw together whatever looks good from the written description (not the tool tips) or copy a build from these boards and see how it plays for them.

I LOVE good tooltips, but don’t for a moment think you’ve radically altered “the meta” by writing out in longhand what we could already see by doing the one thing the Balance Team is regularly accused of not doing… PLAYING THE GAME.

We didn’t want to change all the trait facts and also add in a lot of balance changes on top of it.

Well frankly, you should have, because the PROBLEMS, the grotesque INEQUITIES that exist in your meta for every aspect of play are continuing to FESTER.

We’re planning on doing another round of updates to traits for every class (either changing #‘s, shifting tiers around to make more builds viable, or doing trait reworks), and we also have our eye on a few “apex” builds. But, again we don’t want to shave those too much.

How is that different for every other day of the week? As far as we are concerned that’s you PRIMARY #(^&^$!! JOB and you haven’t seemed to be doing it for months now.

We’ve had our Dev response – they have basically proven repeatedly today that where Rangers are concerned slipshod work and abject failure to give a dang are the creed by which they live and the class dies.

Was just pondering that myself…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Refiniments-for-a-30-0-10-30-0/first#post3020318

I was looking at a mix of Valkyrie armor and Assassin trinkets – spreading some points into Vitality where our top-tier HP multiplier can give you an obscenely large HP and Lifeforce Pool.

It actually doesn’t matter if stealth is “Flawed”. What matters is ANet is not satisfied with the gameplay that emerges from it as it exists now. Sic Em is a prototype (there WILL be more tools that apply revealed), but it’s also a signpost as to the way the wind is blowing in the only place that matters: the Dev’s ideaspace.

This new direction is not going to go away, so you might better spend your time figuring out how to reduce your reliance on stealth so that when a class that isn’t pathetically broken gets their hands on a new ‘Revealer’, you’re ready for that awful 4 seconds where your opponent has just told you to kitten off with your bad old self.

Dollars to donuts the Mesmer wall that grants stealth to allies will paste a big old revealed on stealthed enemies that touch it before the end of the year.

So… the thread warning us about upcoming changes said some of the numbers for Ranger weapon skills (presumably damage, range, or cooldowns) were going to change.

Did they bother to play a Ranger long enough for anyone to see ANYTHING that might be related to that? Mouse over a weapon skill briefly, perhaps?

Spotter (group bonus to precision) is a 20 point commitment too. Maybe they just wanted to make both the offensive version of uniform cost?

I run a typical super unicorn in Full Settlers.

Its frikken indestructible and dishes some vicious bleeds. Self heals on every single hit and every single point of initiative spent is insane with D/D button 3 – you actually have to pace yourself a little to not over-heal during the first few seconds of each engagement, expsecially if you find opponents packed tight enough you’re getting more than the basic three hits (it cleaves…). Plus the self-heal you get from pressing Daggerstorm in even a small group of enemies is breathtaking. 60-80% self heal while stable, reflecting, and damage/crippling/bleeding? Um, yes please?

Kelthien.8593:

Nike.2631:

I have good fun with my Mantra of Pain spammer now. Looking forward to the extra perks being thrown at a build I already enjoy.

And better tooltips FTW.

how do you make Mantra of Pain work? For me, it’s about the same or less DPS than an auto-attack while consuming a utility slot.

Mantra of Pain traited for heal when you prep a mantra (and most definitely NOT for extra charges when you prep…) is something you prep when the group has taken a big hit (for the AoE), then you dump the two extra charges during other casts – they are like shouts, meaning you can cast them simultaneously with other actions. Since I’m usually rocking sword main-hand, I often prep mantra/heal, hit something with Sword 2 (damage + invulnerability) and dump both charges during the induction so I’m ready to heal again. Even if you get deep enough in the suck where you’re just spamming MoP alongside say Staff auto-attacks, if you’ve already got a few phantasms out they’re plinking away and radiating perma-regen.

Basically you’re trading prep time for heal, the two charges are just gravy after that.

Until we can actually use our button 6 heals while transformed, you could turn them into 0-seconds cooldown toggles and they’d still be a bit sketchy.

Kadub.8743:

Moa’s with deployable back armor that pops out robot arms that can equip weapons.

That’s actually a pretty good description of one of the junior engineers in the post-TNG Star Trek: Titan novels. At least which class he plays would be pretty obvious .

You know how Rangers have a nasty negative damage coefficient because of their pets?

I’m guessing Elementalists have something similar for having 4-modes of attunement on their left-hand bar instead of the 2-modes weapon-swapping most classes use.

Roll Norn. Reach level 30. Buy/Slot Raven Spirit Elite skill. Click…

…Play Tengu (briefly) .

Exosferatu.2961:

They said there will be no expansions. Never. Cantha will be released through Living World, apparently.

No they didn’t.

You couldn’t get any Dev on Earth to use the word ‘never’ when discussing something that could generate revenue if they had the manpower to deliver it.

Welcome to the ebon folds of necromancy!

$100 – no questions asked – for playable centaurs.

Hylek are cool, but kind of a nightmare from an art assets and animation standpoint.

Cantha? Gimme. ((Waves cash around))

I have good fun with my Mantra of Pain spammer now. Looking forward to the extra perks being thrown at a build I already enjoy.

And better tooltips FTW.

Well, it looks promising to me , though I’ll probably experiment with sword + torch rather than scepter + torch.

Thanks for the inspiration!

goodcannedsam.9841:

Thank you for your time and input.

That’s very close to my build and I have no real difficulty in getting through dungeons happily. One nice thing about SB/Axe is they have the same range, so you’ll get very used to the precise orbit you can skirt while still pouring your damage in. Just remember to use the right tool for each job – SB-auto for single targets (and flank!), Axe-auto for groups, swap as needed to bring your other 8 weapon skills to bear when they offer advantage.

A few more bits you could add for effective dungeon running, but they apply to all players, not just the Ranger class.

• Know the content. And if you don’t know the content, be sure to say so and ask that strategy be outlined before each boss fight starts.
• If you are an experienced runner of the current path, try to be aware of sections that have multiple effective strategies, and ASK the group which way they are going to do things. Just by raising the question you can typically get the whole goup on the same page and in step for the coming fight.
• Keep an eye out for perfect fit opportunities. Sometimes you will be the one training the whole pug on how to get through an encounter. Make any suggestions positive ones and not demands. It doesn’t matter what class I’m on, if we’re about to do a fight that some specialized skill with just tear in half and someone with that class is present, just say “[skill X] is awesome right here.” The person playing that class may be more comfortable with their current loadout, but at least you’ve got them thinking about it.
• Lift the team up, don’t pull it down. This is both an in combat and a social behavior. In combat: don’t die, and keep a sharp eye out to rez others if it won’t get you killed in the process. But it also means don’t sit there and kvetch in chat. Share a positive attitude. Recognize and point out that even if your team wipes, they can improve with what they learned just now.

Just about any casual run will go faster than 5 speed-runners who get so wound up that somebody rage quits (twice!!) and end up sitting there looking for a body to fill the resulting hole(s).

darkace.8925:

Here’s hoping most/all of the changes aren’t done with PvP/WvW in mind…

I’m sure they were so proud of themselves and the work they did adding an anti-stealth component to a Ranger shout skill because of all the trouble players have with Skelks…

…Yeah, no.

Sarrs.4831:

Nobody really got much of anything. Necros got a few traits changed a little bit and their Minion HP boosted, which while nice, aren’t things that people are really bothered by. This patch was, overall, a bit overrated, IMO.

I’d say one reason for the high expectations is we know they don’t want to make major balance changes during the first WvW season – which means if its not done RIGHT NOW, then no new skill/enhancements/improvements will hit the game until either the mid-December or late-December update if they are still on track for their many, many “We’ll get it out this year” projections.

Frankly, two more months of letting these inequities go on is gonna probably make me skip Season 1 altogether as a player.

So they spent hunks of their limited time previewing things we already knew from the first three post of this thread ?!?!

Seriously, let me get my trident and torch, because the castle on the hill needs a good mob to go burn it down.

I’m aware of their intent to add more skills, I just didn’t think it’s coming in this patch . basically I would have expected any advance on that front to be much more highly touted. (and we know that if its not tomorrow, it won’t be until after Season One of WvW… a.k.a. sometime in December if this year.)

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Just curious, as I only very, very briefly skimmed the preview, are there only going to be balance adjustments in this patch, or will they also be adding new skills/traits in this patch (or is that still tba)? Thanks, guys/gals.

In the sense “will there be more than 12 choices for each trait line?” almost certainly not. But we’ve already seen that some traits will become permanent/automatic benefits for all members of that class, and mechanically completely new traits (which grab the names of the now defunct option to seize an air of legitimacy) have already been announced.

Less than 3 hours to the REVELATION.

Followed by 8 weeks of balancing lock down for the WvW season.

In their homebrewed trinity of DPS, Support, and Control, their eye is on enhancing the contribution of support builds with this pass… maybe in mid-December Control can be allowed to have the slightest impact whatsoever on endgame PvE encounters .

The thief ones apply an additional ‘condition’ if you’re positioned right… its just that condition is usually “holy heck that’s a lot more damage” .

I find the positional rewards speak a lot to the intended role of the shortbow – its a group weapon or possibly in conjunction with a tanky pet or a carefully placed opening shot with SB 5. Stun them facing away and put a few more arrows into then before they turn around.

spoj.9672:

“vulnerability last 50% less time. " means the duration is halved.

Not with food it doesn’t. In this game if an effect has both a + 50% duration modifier and a -50% modifier applied to it they are combined additively – leaving it with 100% duration (100% + 50% – 50%), not the multiplicative result of 75%. I don’t know if the protection bosses enjoy takes the form of -50% or “halve the final value” but they are totally separate things.

Certainly worth exploring. I’m sure I can find something big enough to poke with my axe that has that quality while no one else is around.

As to Rending Claws having an aftercast, that would indeed be an issue. Time to find a stopwatch!

Read it again. If it does reduce it by half (and -50% is NOT the same thing in this game) my vulnerability duration for Axe 1 is still 6.75. Rending claws fires every .75 seconds, not every second~ 18 stacks. On a boss. That’s just hitting #1 and walking away. There’s quite a few other tools on that bar. That my personal DPS is sub-par is irrelevant when 4 (dungeon) to 15 (world boss) other characters are enjoying the boost to all of their damage .

Point of order: some thief skills are directional.

Shouldn’t be hard to do the math.

Rending claws ticks every .75 seconds, applying 2 stacks.

Condition duration effects for players are additive, rather than multiplicative, so with my +90% and the boss’ -50% leaves me with +40%, times the base duration of 7 second means it lasts 9.8 seconds. Likely that’s reduced to 9.75 since the tool tips all round down to nearest quarter second which makes me suspect those are the length of the server ticks.

So the skill fires 13 times (9.75/.75) times before the first stacks dissipate… applying 2 stacks each time. Looks like with the new tweaks it’ll put 25 stacks on a boss. (incidentally this is what will happen firing through the revised Guardian’s Purging Flames in the new patch – not to shabby)

IF bosses actually benefit from a multiplicative reduction, unlike players and invoking an entirely separate code structure, then the duration drops to 6.75 seconds leading to 9 (6.75/75) applications and a sustained 18 stacks.

Molch.2078:

Here is the Problem: Every half decent group can stack ~10 vulnstacks by themself. To reach 25, your build needs to maintain 15 Stacks on its own, How to do this? Well, first you rush in, use Well of Suffering, maybe use DS4 or axe 2. Screen is filled with numbers, good feeling. After 6 Seconds your Well runs out and you need to use axe autohits to maintain the Stacks. And thats bad. I doubt that, with this gear and build, you even reach 4 digit dps with your axe auto. Dagger/Warhorn can reach Warriorlike 8-9k dps if buffed, geared and played properly. 15 Stacks of vuln wont close that gap.

Now look at the engineer. Grenades, to be precisly. They deal good dps and stack more vulnerability than your necromancer.

Good feedback.

In an earlier build with slightly less condition duration, I was seeing the axe 1 building and maintaining 18 stacks by itself. I’d use Focus 4 or the well to jumpstart the stack, but the axe stacks would be well established before either opener wore off. This may be slightly overkill for group play (where I expect some of my DPS deficiency to be made up by giving the other 4 players that extra 15% damage from maxed vulnerability, assuming your “10 stacks from other places” is typical).

I’ll try to do some DPS tests on it and see where it falls and what I can eek out with a little less vulnerability duration. OTOH, I’d expect dagger main-hand to a bit more damage, as its melee range compared to the axe’s 900s. Axe 2 s actually something you cash in with – pause in your vulnerability maintainace for a damaging channel and a surge of lifeforce. the pop a focus 4 or well to refill the gap in vulnerability and get back to hammering.

Hmm. To the lab!

Chrispy.5641:

Nike.2631:

…snip…

So, what you have been saying is, no matter what…ignore our class mechanic, and go play like a Warrior, because there is no other ‘right’ way to play the Ranger?

Well you’re up against a general wall and a class specific one.

The general wall is that ranged damage sucks compared to melee damage – even within the same class. Which is why so many people are saying “Hey, Ranger damage isn’t so bad ONCE YOU PUT THAT STUPID BOW DOWN AND PULL OUT A SWORD.” Its just how the basic game balance is arranged, and it punches rangers in the nose every time they try to do what they think they’re supposed to be doing – hanging back and putting a feathered shaft through Mr. Badguy’s eye.

The class specific wall is a significant part of your expected damage as a Ranger has been sectioned off and moved to your pet… who is literally too stupid to live. I don’t think that’s the class devs’ fault per se, rather its the dungeon devs went completely insane for dodge-or-die mechanics in practically every encounter.

When you’re up against two walls, it usually means you’ve been backed into a corner. Maybe we could just get a trait early in a line no one cares about…

Beastmaster’s Vengeance: While your pet is dead, you gain +25% damage.

I’ve played all the classes, thanks. There is a LOT of flexibility with 70 trait points to spend, and its a spectrum, with each class gravitating to different points in the range. Is selfless your only goal? Guardian kinda dominates the field, but if you want to offer defensive & offensive synergy with a dungeon group while still pushing respectable damage, Necros have something to say. In particular, necro heals are direct heals, NOT Regen. Consider that most other classes do their group healing and self healing via Regen. A direct heal like Well of Blood or a life steals from comboing through a dark field actually works simultaneously with Regen rather than sequentially (the way two regen strategies would). They may not glow or be touchy feely as some of the other classes, but they can absolutely turn the tide when an attack goes off the rails. Decisively. You call it “not that great.” I call it “Drop a well of Darkness into that clusterfrack, and suddenly incoming damage STOPS for 6 seconds while my side picks up their teeth and sorts themselves out.”

Are we talking about the same class? Wells can be traited to give protection to everyone in them. Well of darkness is a bloody fortress for your allies, dropped into melee (pulsing blind). Its probably the best vulnerability stacker in the game with axe 1/focus 4/well of suffering. Well of Blood is an AoE heal. You provide fields like crazy. Staff 2 is an AoE regen, staff 4 is a blast finisher. Focus 4 bounces regen allies and focus 5 strips boons quite nicely.

You can ignore their party synergy, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have it when they choose to.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNAndWlQaq0GqRZDg9EgUBsnew94iD9I3adG-jwCBYNERjEEYUEQUCChpPFRjtEMIVRRrOKs6FY6VER1+EFRrGA-e

Pretty much a straight forward power-based vulnerability/wells build with really really long vulnerability conditions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNAndWlQaq0GqRZDg9EgUBsnew94iD9I3adG-jwCBYNERjEEYUEQUCChpPFRjtEMIVRRrOKs6FY6VER1+EFRrGA-e

Only quirk is mixing a bit of Valkyrie armor / Assassin(Opal) trinkets to give it a bigger health pool.

As there’s no third condition duration rune pair, I’m kind of at a loss what to stick in the last 2 rune-slots.

Well, the Devs seem to think Blood Magic can use some love on Tuesday…

My wells/vulnerability Necro is just looking at that and wondering if it’s her birthday.

nolop.8095:

Necros have an attrition playstyle, they slow down and burden every group they’re in.

He’s right – necros don’t typically do amazing burst damage. (snicker)

We’re not designed to kill measly 15k HP Players…

…We’re designed to obliterate 390k HP GODS.

(power Necros do just fine in dungeons, thank you very much, but its true, mindless minions are pretty mindless when working indoors )

Varani.9207:

Rangers can apply regeneration endlessly through shouts which is especcially useful in WvW roaming. In full clerics gear it´s over 300 per second. A warrior with healing signet together with ranger´s regeneration receives over 700 heal per second. So actually it´s not bad at all…

Ranger heals don’t suck. Their self heals are definitely first tier with 2 different “off the books” self-HoTs that work with the standard Regen boon. But keep in mind warriors can also establish group-wide perma regen with their banners and also have 2 off the books self-HoTs. Guardians also have one with their virtues, and can trait to share that partywide as a passive effect. Mesmers can set up shared perma-regen with their phantasms, and the Engineer’s equivalent to healing spring pretty much forgot to have an expiration date (well, 5 minutes, but still…).

Perma-regen just isn’t that uncommon .

Chrispy.5641:

Numbers, I showed you numbers for the Ranger. Now show me numbers for other classes, since you just mentioned 5 of them that can apparently heal for as much with less resources. don’t forget to account for the Moa bird and the spirit of nature when you decide to compare notes.

You discuss 5 seconds of healing, counting all the spikes (horn & water runes) – a Mantra Mesmer in similar gear can keep up that kind of group healing every five seconds forever by spamming Mantra of Pain (and I for one am looking forward to better tooltips so I can just read the heal directly from there ). This is at the cost of 40 of their 70 skill points (20 dueling, 20 inspiration) and one whole utility slot. They pick up AoE perma-regen centered on their phantasms as a by-product of their weapons skills along the way without having to lock down any right-hand tray choices. Ironically this is a build that’s going to get buffed even further in the next 48 hours. Let us hope rangers have it half as good this coming week .

All of which misses the point: you could heal twice as hard and if you group knows how to take care of themselves, all you are doing is cutting into the collective DPS and exposing them to greater risk by making the fight take longer. You’re bending over backwards to protect your pet, when other classes have class-mechanics they don’t need to shelter against the big bad boss.

…And I laugh at every Zerker(well, anyone who doesn’t invest any into toughness) I come across in dungeons (especially Guardians) who curse out loud every time they get 1 shot by a boss, which is, quite a bit it would seem.

I’d laugh at them too – but most of the ones I encounter have no such intimate relationship with face-planting. My guard’s in a support build too, but it’s Assassin-based, so it’s not substantially tougher than ’zerk, and I rarely get one-shot.

More than anything else, the Shortbow is a positional weapon – it does more if you are flanking or behind the target. It rewards constant attention to the target’s facing.

Dumping the bleed makes it a head-on weapon. If that’s the playstyle you are looking for, you’re better off with a longbow.

Hekotat.2497:

How are these patch notes not out for the public yet?

I was just thinking that we should be seeing data-mining by now.

Because when you get the sniffles, entire armies die.

That’s right you’re a plague-carrying machine, a Typhoid Mary, a walking epidemic, and you lover to share. Conditionmancy isn’t just theorycraft when you pull on the black cowl, its some of the most brutal sustained AoE in the game. Epidemic is the one-touch annihilator when you copy the 83 conditions on that world boss over there onto every single NPC in a truly shocking radius… Today’s forecast calls for heavy rain – that is to say sheets and streams of white numbers rolling up of off every NPC in sight until they explode like little red water balloons.

Roll Necro.

Because when you can’t find a party, you re-animate one.

You can load your entire right-hand tray with stinking, decaying, fawning, lovely servants who never ever ask for a raise or burst into tears when you tell them to kill 30 rabbits for the daily. No, these guys do what they’re told, and the do it without one word of complaint (the bit of meat sliding off and plopping to the ground was not a complaint). And having 6 NPCs following you around just waiting to do pile that centaur over there at your slightest whim is what being a dark lord is all about some days.

Roll Necro.

For the shear unmitigated awesome of mastering the dark arts.

Deathshroud is just ridiculously fun. Dive into the middle of 6-8 critters, drops wells on them, detonation AoEs and PBAoEs weapon skills like you bought them on clearance, and then when everything in the visible universe hates you with the passion of 1,000 black suns, you turn into a roiling cloud of death and hide your life bar behind a bubbling, hissing mass of even more PBAoEs. Insert maniacal cackling here.

…Then click once to loot the entire graveyard you just had installed.

Roll Necro.

Increase the range by 22%, adds +130% damage against any cluster of 2 or more enemies, and removes the tension between Condition Damage and Power, allowing you to gear all Power, all the time…

What do you think?

…And I learned how to dodge properly, so the damage I take in dungeons NEVER exceeds the amount I can self heal…

Healing is just not that important of a form of support in this game. It’s nice – it allows you to goof up more that you could otherwise, but since all of the content is geared to be done without a healer, there’s no scenarios where its required, and that in turn means there’s a real limit to how much it’s desired.

Don’t get me wrong, making a healer build for every class was the first big theorycraft into live testing project I had for this game. Rangers can heal adequately, but you can heal with Eles, warriors, mesmers, and engineers at least as well and often with less commitment of resources. Heck, my Guardian’s passive and eternal healing via Battle Presence is far less than what you’re describing and yet more than enough to put a spine of steel into most pugs.

Just keep in mind ANet considers throwing 4 things in the Mystic Forge “Crafting”.

It would be totally doable to have a “recipe” for precursors that doesn’t take a single point in ANY crafting trade (much less restricting it to the three weapon trades).

Given that that the 8 crafting trades are already part of making a Legendary (need 2 at 400 to make the gifts) there’s not really any reason they must be part of making the precursor.

Just keep in mind ANet considers throwing 4 things in the Mystic Forge “Crafting”.

It would be totally doable to have a “recipe” for precursors that doesn’t take a single point in ANY crafting trade (much less restricting it to the three weapon trades).

Given that that the 8 crafting trades are already part of making a Legendary (need 2 at 400 to make the gifts) there’s not really any reason they must be part of making the precursor.

Ug, low damage so leveling is a slog? Pass. I’ve played healers in about 6 other MMOs as I enjoy the role, but it makes soloing to endgame a miserable experience.

Healing power could be stronger – like 10%-20%, – but if you know how to use it +100% or more would be insane. If you aren’t getting enough out of Healing Power, re-examine you class/build choices. The value is definitely there if you leverage it (like most stats).

Thing to consider – in this game ALL classes are pretty decent at looking after themselves in the face of damage pressure. You only need a very small amount of healing to tip them over into “indestructible”. I generally find my Guardian’s Battle Presence or my Warrior’s perma-regen via banners to be more than enough to mop up any small spills or mistakes my teammates might make. Dedicated "healers’ would just be a drain on DPS and overall efficiency – the encounters would have to be reformulated to give them a niche, and in doing so make them a necessity rather than a curiosity. I’d rather take self sufficiency any day over having to stop and find a healer before the group can do stuff.