Guild Wars 2

One thing I thought about for 10 man instanced content would be the removal of the 5 man buff limit would be needed. Only needing one warrior to fully buff everyone in a 10 man group is a lot more freeing than requiring two, or two thieves needed for stealth etc.

I would hope that the party buff limit is removed so we can get a bit more diversity than 2w, 1g, 2t, 4x ele.

No, I’m not taking it too far. There are five players in a party. That means at most only 5 professions can be “meta” at any time.

So who are you looking to replace?

Ele? To do that you would have to find group-wide Fury somewhere and also have superior DPS than a staff ele with glyph of storms which is highly unlikely.

Guardian? Necro isn’’t going to take that role.

Thief? Role is too unique.

Warrior? To replace warrior you’d have to offer better team buffs (25 Might and banners and EA is pretty crazy to try to beat) which isn’t going to happen.

So I’m not seeing where you think Necro has a realistic chance of being meta. The absolute best you can hope for is that their DPS is good enough and rotation fun enough that people won’t feel too bad replacing the second ele with one. Which is exactly how people feel now about engie and ranger.

dboylolz.3916:

Imagine I was new to the game and just started doing Arah. When I’m doing Lupicus for the first time I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be thinking that his autoattack is bugged, because if it does not hit, it serves absolutely no purpose other than giving you free time to do whatever the kitten you want. If the change was reverted on the other hand, I’m pretty sure I would’ve wondered what the actual point of the attack even was, as it does not hit in melee range and does kitten all.

I just like that your hypothetical new player experience involves meleeing Lupicus your first time fighting him.

When sports teams run a play, do they do it in an organized and deliberate manner? Or do they run straight ahead chaotically and hope for the best result?

You’re not going to be a “candidate for the meta” unless you do better AOE damage than Staff Ele. Or have better team buffs than a warrior. Since those two things are basically impossible you should moderate your goals. As I’ve said multiple times, it’s reasonable to expect to be buffed to Ranger/Engie level but not reasonable to expect to be a meta profession.

Jiyn.3158:

Not everyone has adapted to the change and I’m sure there are a lot of people that don’t want to since it forces them to change their playstyle. I personally enjoy the new Lupi as it makes you be more active during the fight. However with this new Lupi, people are opting for the cheese way and just Wall-on-Wall him as I’ve seen in many videos on Youtube and streams on Twitch.

The sort of people who use the wall on wall at lupi for their daily runs are the type of people who would have done it anyway. Those people didn’t adapt their playstyle because that was already their playstyle.

Jeremlloyd.6837:

If you would adapt to the new attack instead of QQing, that’d be great.

Everyone has adapted to the new attack. You can both adapt to it and also want it changed back. It’s quite reasonable.

I dont think the issue is that orders would be OP in pvp, its that they wouldn’t be playable at all. Without pure healers the concept of saccing HP to do anything is dubious. So unless you just change them to buffs that don’t require a sac it’s hard to envision them being played. At that point they just become Thief venoms except better in every way.

Technically Necros don’t have to rely on their party for Fury or Might if they don’t want to.

Although it would be OP as hell in PvP imagine a trait like.

“Aura of Misery: All enemies within 600 range of the necromancer have their endurance regeneration reduced by 15%. the Necromancer gains 15% faster endurance regeneration per enemy affected to a maximum of 30%.”

Jerus.4350:

Am I the only one thinking they still need evades/blocks or at least vigor?

Thief will be granting party-wide vigor with high % uptime when the specialization patch goes live.

It’s a shame that the Spite trait Vuln on chill competes with a 5% damage boost. Necros need all the % damage boosts they can get so that means a really synergistic trait gets pushed aside.

He was referring to Team Aggression.

Thorwyn.8469:

And yeah, it often feels like NA is way behind the EU meta. Skale Venom was nice back then, when you could use it beside a dungeon potion or sharpening stone/oil. Now you only use it, if there is nothing else to use.

Yeah that EU meta 2 advanced 5 me.

If/when higher level fractals ever get opened up ghost pepper poppers and skale venom will be much more in demand. As would Necromancer if Wither Precision ever got un-nerfed.

Assassin X.8573:

PVE Phalanx Strength dps
PVE Phalanx Strength Banners

You don’t want Dual Wielding in Arms. In order to maintain 100% uptime of maxed out Berserker’s Power you’re going to want Furious. Also, since the build doesn’t have Fast Hands you won’t be swapping to Axe set so that trait doesn’t do so much for you.

In solo play, you will probably want Strength, Arms, Discipline for Fast Hands since being stuck on Axe for 10 seconds isn’t really great for boss solos and Phalanx Strength isn’t especially exciting when solo. The new Heightened Focus will be especially powerful in solo play where it will be a massive overall DPS boost.

spoj.9672:

Yeah. Its mostly guesswork. I dont predict dagger to beat gravedigger spam. But i do expect it to be a better pure damage auto above 50% health. But we might end up auto attacking in Reapers Shroud instead. And never need dagger again except for the immob and maybe lifeforce.

Yeah I was envisioning a rotation like…

1. Start in d/f, use Reapers Touch, well of suffering
2. Swap to gs, Nightfall
3. Enter deathshroud, use whatever skills are best for dps (probably spin and autos?)
4. Go back to GS at 50% and spam GD until boss is dead.

I’ll reserve judgment I guess. Even a small inaccuracy like it being 1.4 in stead of 1.5 seconds with cast and aftercast would make a huge difference in dps calculations so I’m hopeful it will land in a good place.

Here are a few explanations of why the AI is done in certain ways. Not saying the AI can’t be improved, because it definitely could, but this will at least make you understand design choices a bit better.

1. In GW1 the meta strategy was to ball all the enemies up around the tank and nuke them with AOE like Spiteful Spirit (to name one). When hardmode came out they introduces new AI that ran out of AOE. Essentially, all that change did was make certain skills unusable. AOE skills like Firestorm or Spiteful Spirit or Ray of Judgement became unusable. Those skills may not even have existed. People defaulted to other means of DPS that didn’t trigger the anti-AOE ai. People switched from one set of OP skills to another. Since all AI is inherently limited, people found the new limits and defeated the new system. the lesson is that they made a big change that accomplished very little other than nerfing an entire set of skills. If anet wants to nerf all AOE skills then fine, but I suspect nerfing a bunch of skills indirectly isn’t the goal of any AI change.

2. PvE mobs that dodge, evade, or kite are inherently annoying. You said it yourself, you don’t like going slower in combat. When enemy mobs snare you it’s annoying because it very rarely means you’re going to die, it just delays the inevitable. By the same token there are plenty of mobs in GW2 that have built in evade (Kohler, CM archers etc) and they are simply annoying rather than fun. Let’s say a mob dodges 1/3rd of all attacks. OK, well how is that any different from just having 1/3rd more HP when all is said and done? It really isn’t. The end result is the same but it’s much more annoying for a player to miss with his skills than to land with his skills even if kill times are identical. People playing the game like their big flashy attacks and spells. They like seeing big numbers. If my choice was a boss who evaded every third attack and one with 33% more HP I’ll take the second one any day.

3. I think the biggest problem with the trash mobs in this game is that the mobs aren’t balanced parties except in Arah and Silverwastes. When you encounter a bunch of spiders in the open world, they are all the same: poison inflicting and bite attacks and the occasional immobilize. In arah the Elite Risen mobs run in mixed packs with the ranger, mesmer, ele, warriors etc. They have more powerful versions of the player’s skills, lot’s of AOE attacks and are very difficult for unprepared players. That’s pretty much the level of mob difficulty we should be getting in challenging content moving forward. In GW1 Nightfall they did a good job of introducing the mixed packs of mobs in the open world and as a result Nightfall had the best open world PvE of the original game. I think there is a good lesson there.

4. Lastly, your “battle sense” comment is very similar to people who want PvE mobs that behave more like PvP players. I think this comes from a few misunderstandings. At the mechanical level, as I explained before, dodges, evasions, kiting and snares are annoying to fight in PvE. Not many of the people advocating for more pvp-like combat in pve have thought through the implications of that from a fun perspective. Next, you have a big issue: properly balanced PvP fights are close affairs. If you are equally matched to your opponents you will only win 50% of your fights. Nobody wants to play PvE where you only beat the mobs at each encounter 50% of the time. In reality, I don’t think this is even possible to design but in theory it doesn’t sound particularly fun.

The last criticism of that thought is that wanting more pvp-like combat comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of why people play PvE at all levels. Sure a person with a WvW or PvP background might wish pve was more like PvP since it would relate the gamemode to their skillset and the combat that they like. However, from a game design perspective this is no what most PvE’ers want. PvE players want to feel powerful: big attacks, big spells, flashy animations etc. PvE players want the mobs they fight to feel significantly more powerful than themselves. For a PvPer the best fights are ones where you fight an opponent of equal skill level that is like a cat and mouse chessmatch. In PvE the best fights are a group coming together to utilize synergies to defeat epic scale powerful bosses, whose mechanics do not look like human players in any regard. I think if more of the people making requests for “more pvp-like combat” understood what the audience wanted they would understand why their request makes little sense.

Looks to me like fun DPS rotation is covered with Reaper. Big fan of Nightfall → Reaper shroud burst → back to GS at 50%, spam gravedigger until dead. Without knowing the coefficients/second it feels like it’s going to be pretty competitive especially once the target hits 50% and Close to Death and Gravedigger start going to work.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Jerus.4350:

NikeEU.7690:

What group buffs does a meta party need? You don’t need Might, Fury, or Vuln. If you mean some unique buff like Spotter you can ask Ranger how well that works out for them being part of the meta.

Necro just needs a low cool down blast finisher, a fun rotation, and comparable dps to every other profession.

Might = PS War
Fury = Ele
Vuln = group as a whole, Lightning Storm/DH guard/Engi/really lots of options
Projectile = Guard/Mes and other little things from the group

So yeah, exactly.

It’d be nice for their overall party worth, but in the meta you already have the main things covered.

How about a party damage boost?

Like, make signet of vampirism actually be good for damage?

When they implemented signet of vampirism, it seems they didnt want to make it too powerful, so now it’s almost useless for damage and provides mediocre sustain.

They could make it simpler and more effective: when active, all party members drain life for 30% of the damage they deal, for 8 seconds. Only 10% (for example) of that life heals them.

There, you have a nice burst skill, that only necros can provide, wihout giving necros the offensive buffs that don’t go well with the profession. The equivalent to rangers spotter or frost spirits.

I would be a huge fan of a lifesteal on crit aura like EA/SPotter but as we can see from the Spotter example that in and of itself wouldn’t be enough to get into the conversation. The key is comparable DPS, a fun rotation and a blast finisher for QoL. If you got the lifesteal aura but had bad dps, 111111 rotation and no blast finishers people still wouldn’t care, so I look at the three things I cited as sorta the minimum needed to get on par.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/guild-wars-2-has-no-healers-or-tanks

“There are no dedicated healers that do full healing. Every profession has some form of support to a greater or lesser extent, but none of them enough that they aren’t also fighters,” Peters told PC Gamer.

Jon Peters’ quote is enough to show that the idea a “dedicated support character” was never intended. All characters are intended to be “fighters” who bring “more or less support” which is exactly the system we have in PvE right now.

EcoRI.9273:

NikeEU.7690:

EcoRI.9273:

Everything except for corner stacking and that ac story sounded like legit reasons to me.

So you think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is an exploit? You agree with him that chain immobilize is an exploit? You think managing defiant through team coordinator to land powerful CC is an exploit? You think use stability, reflects and aegis to prevent cc, block projectiles and stop big hits is an exploit?

Face it, the guy barely makes a coherent point and is basically been carrying a 2 year case of BM because his condi-Necro build is garbage. He is just a more verbose variant of the people who want the game changed radically so his special snowflake build is meta.

I think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is lame. I would prefer to have a button that does it automatically for me. Kind of like what they did in gw1 with the 4weapon sets.(Build/gear templates please anet)

Sure, they should make it so you have two combat sets (or 1 if youre an Ele/Engie) and the others useable out of combat to make it more elegant. But the system is not the issue he brought up, he think’s its an exploit to swap weapons quickly to prestack 25 might with a single Ele, for example. He is wrong, it’s a moronic point.

Icebow 5 is lame, I personally think alot of hard CCs don’t work well in this game.

Ice Bow 5 wouldn’t be lame if bosses in downscaled instances didn’t die so fast. Though I am annoyed by HP sponges with no mechanics, you have to admit that Ginva the Butcher is a boss where freeze, strip, freeze, strip, freeze is a challenging and fun tactic. I will grant you at AC and so on when you kill bosses before they do a single mechanics it’s not great. But at level 80 it’s much more reasonable display of skill and coordination. but thats more of a downscaling issue than an Ice bow issue.

I don’t like that guardians can get over 40seconds of constant projectile protection. It is pretty passive play which goes counter to the active playstyle of gw2. I would prefer a lower duration lower cooldown system where players have to react to the projectiles to reflect them.

Luckily double wall is soon to be a thing of the past, and hopefully the new content will require fights to be very mobile so standing on one static spot behind a wall for a long time is less than useful. But again, using reflects vs projectiles isn’t an exploit it’s just using a powerful skill to hard counter a powerful mechanic.

Nemesis is fairly disingenuous in that he shows Lupi wall spoit as an example of all reflects being exploits, but he fails to show the dozens of other dungeon encounters where reflects are perfectly reasonable responses to the challenge of the boss.

His main argument was that berserker is too dominant and too good and that nuking bosses down in under 5seconds is lame. That I agree with.

Again, that is a low level downscaling issue. Even when bosses take 5 minutes to kill berserker is fine. The nuking them down in 5 seconds with berserker is a kittened argument. Soldier’s is 40% worse DPS than Berserker. those 5 second bosses would die in 7 seconds with Soldiers builds. That’s not any more challenging. So clearly it has nothing to do with gear and everything to do with down scaling.

EcoRI.9273:

Everything except for corner stacking and that ac story sounded like legit reasons to me.

So you think weapon swapping in hero panel/inventory is an exploit? You agree with him that chain immobilize is an exploit? You think managing defiant through team coordinator to land powerful CC is an exploit? You think use stability, reflects and aegis to prevent cc, block projectiles and stop big hits is an exploit?

Face it, the guy barely makes a coherent point and is basically been carrying a 2 year case of BM because his condi-Necro build is garbage. He is just a more verbose variant of the people who want the game changed radically so his special snowflake build is meta.

The shouts were never going to be better than Guardian defensive support. Or better than warrior banners. Or better than Shadow Refuge. Or better than Ice Bow/GoS. If your expectation was to replace any of those roles you had unrealistic expectations.

Any frankly, yes, it is unjustified whining since they haven’t showed all the shouts or all the traits. That’s pretty much the definition of unjustified.

You can complain about the shouts but its not like people are in love with the Dragonhunter’s traps. Only one of those traps will see pve play, and I’ll bet at least one of the necro shouts is worth using. Much QQ about nothing.

Yes, twitch vods are easy to upload directly to youtube. They should do that.

I don’t get it. They submitted a record. Approve it and move on. “Oh it will lead to more people submitting bad records.” So? Approve them and move on. If you get frustrated enough to submit tuned record runs to replace them, good.

Whats funny is this ALREADY HAPPENED after the FGS reset when everyone uploaded their tournament practice runs as records to “fill in the leaderboard.” No one cared when it was DnT, SC and qT doing it.

Man up, approve the records and then beat them if the thought of having a casual run as a record annoys you.

Ranking what they need to be “viable” to the point where you don’t feel like you are gimping your team by bringing a Necro…

1. Blast finishers
2. DPS
3. Fun rotation
4. Unique support

The more and more I though about it the more I realized how important the blasts are to a coordinated team.

If you set the bar for you happiness at “Reaper will make Necro meta” you were doomed from the start. Try setting more realistic goal based around what is applicable to the game’s design.

There are a lot of paths no one has bothered to do a record for in the current meta. I’ve always noticed that a path will stay undone until someone kicks off the competition and people respond. I see nothing wrong with that. A leaderboard with a lot of easy to beat records looks a lot better than one with empty spots.

But are these submitted to be restricted or unrestricted?

Thaddeus.4891:

- Ghost Eater. No need for Purging flames. At worst he can give your team 2 stack of bleed, but reflect+aegis should protect you. Shield of Avenger is only needed if your team are gonna use 2 traps. If your team have enough dps to kill him in one trap (what should happen) Shield of Avenger is useless.

Purging Flame is often recommended for an extra fire field for situations when the Ele’s won’t be able to prestack a lot of Might/Fury. Also Ghost Eater can put a ton of Vuln on, it’s not uncommon to end that fight with 20+ vuln on the party. So while I wouldn’t think you need it for condi cleanse, it isn’t totally wasteful to bring some. And yes, just being a fire field is useful.

What group buffs does a meta party need? You don’t need Might, Fury, or Vuln. If you mean some unique buff like Spotter you can ask Ranger how well that works out for them being part of the meta.

Necro just needs a low cool down blast finisher, a fun rotation, and comparable dps to every other profession.

You can’t judge anything without the traits.

Only 5 professions can be meta anyway, so it’s not fair to expect them to be. So long as they are buffed to Engie/Ranger level of “fun to play, good DPS, good utility and not a detriment to the party” that will be good enough.

Axelwarrior.9084:

NikeEU.7690:

Once you start a forum thread you don’t get to control where the conversation flows to after you hit ‘submit.’

I obviously don’t have the power to stop you from derailing my thread, but that doesn’t make it right for you to do it.

When humans communicate with each other informally, there is no set agenda. Conversation topics move and progress.

Axelwarrior.9084:

wauwi.9162:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Guys, please don’t argue, especially for matters irrelevant to the thread.

It does matter in the end.
Lines must be drawn to judge what’s “bad design”, what’s an “exploit” and what is “working as intended”.

Here’s the problem, though: As far as dungeons go, it’s pretty much anarchy right now in that regard, because anet doesn’t (seem to) give clear answers anymore, so everyone comes up with their own rules and different interpretations of the word “exploit”.

For example, i draw the line, when something’s clearly glitching, like noclips and the use of third-party-tools (technically, memory hacks) to get access to informations, someone normally wouldn’t have, like exact DPS and enemies current HP/max HP.

Only once, we’ve gotten that issue out of the way, you can get a clear answer to your initial question.
I have the feeling, that this won’t be straightened out anytime soon, though.

But you’re discussing the matter in regard of speedclears and on a specific “tactic”.
My questions were more general.

Once you start a forum thread you don’t get to control where the conversation flows to after you hit ‘submit.’

The problem is the enforcement of the rule, not the rule itself. I’m all for Wethospu enforcing the rule as written.

spoj.9672:

Trying to satisfy people who dont know what they want is what i meant by that comment.

So I’m the one who dictates but you are the one who thinks he knows better what people want than they do?

Also where you draw the line is fuzzy and unclear. Where i draw the line is impossible to misinterpret. Thats the difference.

My stance is clear too, I am for banning the arah p3 door thing too since it violates the letter and spirit of the rule. Unfortunately there was politics involved in grandfathering in that exploit, namely Sandy wanting to preserve the record for rT since they just finished it a few days/weeks prior. I was fine at the time for grandfathering it in, if it meant a wholly superior ruleset in every other respect. But no, if you asked me my position I would say it violates the rule and should be disallowed. My position is crystal clear on that issue and all other pertaining to rule 5.

The problem is when there is a lack of these rules there is no competitive scene.

I explained the reasoning pretty simply, I’m not interested in parsing my words further. My advice, go do a record run on a high-RNG path and you will see how disinterested in you are in adding another RNG element to it.

LOL Arah p3 is obvious exploit but jumping over COE door is A-OK.

Did anyone actually say anything about a meteorshower nerf?

dlonie.6547:

NikeEU.7690:

For those who haven’t done records (or haven’t done a lot of records) there are lot’s and lot’s of reasons to reset a run and start over. Most of them have to do with an individual messing up on something minor but impossible to live with because it costs significant time. Then you have resets caused by rolling for RNG, which is the second level. After enough runs people generally stop messing up little things and the record goes into rolling for perfect (or good enough) RNG. I personally don’t want to add a 3rd layer of resets based around 4x perfect linecasts for every boss.

I totally agree that the current linecast/deepfreeze tricks are bad for strategy innovation, but isn’t getting perfect linecasts just a case of the bolded scenario? It seems like one of those things that a high-end group should be expected to master if they want to compete for records. Just like nailing a perfect rotation, consistently executing a perfect linecast should be something that the speedclear elite should strive for.

There is randomness to it even if done properly. It’s one thing to have to reset a run because someone got put in combat on a trash run when they shouldn’t have, is a whole other level to reset an otherwise perfect run because someone’s linecast landed half a character model behind or in front of the boss. It’s just another frustration. But you’re right, it stifles tactical innovation too.

The rule as written is perfectly consistent. The rule as enforced is not, clearly. I’m all for enforcing the rules as written, even if it means making Arahp3 records for the current meta (is there even one?) invalid.

I can’t support the gradual breakdown of the restricted ruleset by suddenly allowing jumping over doors or outside of maps or whatever, which is pretty clearly also the opinion of the majority of the community too.

Jerus.4350:

spoj.9672:

Jerus.4350:

Pretty much the same reason we all voted against line casting being allowed for Record Runs. Sure, you can do it, but at a certain point abusing things just takes the fun out of it. It’s going to be a bit subjective, but I think that pretty much sums up the opinion on where the line is drawn for things you just shouldn’t do.

I thought it was voted against because most people couldnt do it properly? And they didnt want to have to linecast in every record. Scrubs?

Its not really any less or more fun. It certainly required a bit more skill and setup in some cases.

True, I may have been misremembering and projecting my own thoughts on it instead, the mind is a crazy thing. I know some things got banned because it sucks to get to the end of the path and screw up a small detail that ruins a record. Like I think that’s why many people hate the goating that you can do in unrestricted. So you may be right. Though line casting is also arguably an exploit, as I can’t imagine they’d intend for you to be able to greatly increase your meteor damage and land every single one by placing it on certain walls and dodging back.

I don’t know, it’s all so grey now, there is just “the powers that be said ok” and “the powers that be said no”.

I don’t know why others voted against it, but for me it was the concept of ‘once you allow it in records, it becomes mandatory in records.’ i.e. if you want to be competitive you have to line cast each and every boss in each and every path. Meaning if one person fails to line cast on a boss you have to reset the run.

For those who haven’t done records (or haven’t done a lot of records) there are lot’s and lot’s of reasons to reset a run and start over. Most of them have to do with an individual messing up on something minor but impossible to live with because it costs significant time. Then you have resets caused by rolling for RNG, which is the second level. After enough runs people generally stop messing up little things and the record goes into rolling for perfect (or good enough) RNG. I personally don’t want to add a 3rd layer of resets based around 4x perfect linecasts for every boss. Oops we had a perfect record run with perfect RNG and execution but one person messed up his line cast on the last boss better reset. No thanks.

You have to be careful how far you take it.

Sigil of strength = you lose 5% – 10% dps.
Might food = another 5% dps loss
Runes of Strength = 7% dps loss

These things add up to a pretty meaningful amount of DPS that you could save simply by having staff eles who put the minimum effort in to blast a fire field once per fight.

Ecori has taken trolling to the next level.

Proof: he is trolling seasoned PvF’ers into a froth.

phys.7689:

its good at unique party buffs, and increasing party burst.

so yeah its better for the 30 second party spike, but better overall? not really.

Yeah so double Time Warp double quickness well will only be good in short fights. FWIW, time warp is like casting a skill that does about 250k-300k damage. Getting to cast it twice in any fight is by far the most OP single thing in the game. So yeah, you’re totally right that other specs are way better for PvE.

phys.7689:

Talyn.3295:

The new content is gonna have to be pretty challenging, based on the power creep of the first two specialties.

people are overestimating the raw power of the specs, they arent gonna be that crazy in practice.

I’m not over-estimating anything. A mesmer using Domination, Dueling and Chronomancer is strictly better for PvE than any other mesmer combination. It’s a strict upgrade.

Dragon Hunter is for all intents and purposes an upgrade. More DPS and more Vuln. The only question is do you replace Virtues or Honor with Dragon Hunter, whether you will replace one of them or not is not up for debate at this point.

The only professions where I don’t expect the ES to be a power creep is Warrior and Thief since warrior gets a ton out of it’s worst line (Arms) and Thief’s Trickery is really strong.

After ice bow it will just be Glyph of Storms. Nerf them both and achieve some profession parity.

Lets say after the balance patch (if they nerf ice bow and glyph) the top DPS profession is Thief with around 14k dps, staff ele at 13.5k and the rest falling at about 12-13k. At what point do you prefer a Ranger over the second staff ele? Probably immediately, without ice bow or glyph. That would at least get ranger somewhere in the conversation.

Engineer is pretty much dead after the patch for dungeons. They used to at least have unparalleled vuln stacking. But Guardian is going to get some heavy lifting. Guardian with Big Game Hunter, Writ of Persistance and Symbolic Exposure is going to be able to do 12 vuln sustained with easy spikes up to 25. Engineer won’t have a place at all unless its personal DPS surpasses Thief, which is not incredibly likely to happen.

I kinda came to the conclusion that there are 8 professions and 5 spots in a team. at best, you will have 6 classes be meta (assuming guardian and mesmer are interchangeable) at any given time. There will always be two classes that are strictly inferior. And you know what? That’s fine…. so long as they make those two classes really fun and really interesting to play. Engineer might be getting crapped on in the meta, but its really really fun to play. That saving grace will mean even if its non-meta people will still use it. Hopefully by Friday we have a good idea if Necro will at least rise to the level of “fun to play.”

Tldr; trying to get all 8 professions on such a level of parity that all 8 are completely equally optimal for speed runs is an impossible balance goal, but making sure the “tier 2” classes are at least super fun to play is not and that should be the developer goal.

Acotje.5689:

Vincent.7452:

You’re not producing permanent 25 stacks of might for your team as a PS warrior. Even with a perfect rotation with 100% crit chance you’ll probably average about 10 to15 stacks.

Edit: Unless you’re fighting multiple ennemies but not when you’re fighting bosses which is where it matters most. Granted some boss spawn mobs too.

You can though.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fried_Golden_Dumpling

I still think the optimal plan is to have the staff eles get at least 3 blasts in among themselves and then add whatever blasts the guardian and thief are capable of adding. In certan fights you dont have the time to do a lot of pre-stacking but when you can, you should. In that role the PS warrior is there to fill in the 10-15 might gap and to maintain the stacks at 25 for the duration. A group shouldn’t plan on the PS warrior carrying them from 0-25 alone.