Guild Wars 2

Looks pretty good, but I’d personally shy away from the Blood Fiend heal. Imo, practically any other heal would be better, but otherwise looks like an interesting setup.

In all honesty? Yes. The only game mode that these utilities will be weak in is sPvP. These skills will be very strong in PvE and in zerg fights — in fact I fully expect Reapers will be mandatory for any guild wanting to do any sort of zerg busting. The only lack-luster skill is the heal, and I only say that tentatively as I’m not 100% sure how epic the reaper shroud will be (and thus, the importance of life-force gain). These skills will be viable in any game mode where you can expect to be out-numbered.

“Rise” + “Death Nova” in a zerg situation? the little jagged horrors will die instantly in the AoE, triggering bursts of damage and poison stacking (which if you take death magic, will also increase your defense).

“You are all weaklings!” is a great source of weakness — its not high uptime on its own but that is aoe defense for your fellow zerglings. The +20 stax of might is gravy for a follow up skill and will allow you to hit a disgusting “Gravedigger” in the middle of the enemy zerg to mow down your foes.

“Suffer” is a good defensive shout with condi transfer and chill application (due to Cold Shoulder trait), though the chill isn’t all that long.

“Nothing can save you” is a great boonstrip that caters to power builds: if you take the Decimate Defenses trait you will get +20% crit chance when removing two boons IN ADDITION to making your attacks unblockable and the +10% dmg you get from the vulnerability. This skill is freaking epic.

The elite “Chilled to the Bone” is going to absolutely smash zergs — 2s stun on 5 targets plus heaps of chill and equally long RESISTANCE boon on self. You will have no problem tossing this out in a zerg even if you don’t have stability because odds are the 2 people that notice YOU and what SKILL you are using will not have the time to process this before the effect goes off, simply due to the chaotic nature of zerg fights and dealing with 10+ enemies at once.

I know numbers might change, but kitten, these skills are strong and give the necro a defined role in two out of three game types :/

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Besides. Assume for the moment that Cold Shoulder’s damage reduction vs. Chilled is 10%, like Putrid Defense in Death Magic. Taking both means that any enemy who is both Chilled and Poisoned, which should be fairly easy for a Necromancer to contrive, is now dealing 20% less damage to you. That’s more than half of Protection’s damage reduction, and Necromancers can gain Protection pretty easily, too.

Gotta say, I’m liking the sound of Death Magic/Soul Reaping/Reaper. Given that we know relatively little about the Reaper thus far, true, it’s hard to tell what would mesh properly with it…but Death’s extra defenses help a melee Necromancer, and frankly the concept of a five-fold Death Nova off “Rise!” sounds pretty entertaining. SR gives you faster movement while in Shroud as well as a fat gigantic Crit boost to really punish enemies with that scythe. Not as much normal-mode damage as Spite, of course, but something’s got to give, and Death has some hefty options for extra punch. Toughness-to-Power’s a nice conversion to get in Deadly Strength, especially at 14% in Shroud. As I recall Ryn’s currently sitting around 1300 Toughness. Add 180 from the upcoming new Death minor, and you get over 200 extra Power while in Reaper’s Shroud from Deadly Strength and slightly over 100 out of Shroud. 3 and 7-ish stacks of Might worth of Power, respectively, just for existing. I’ll take that.

Yeah…I am quite looking forward to seeing what this sucker can do tomorrow.

Human Reaper’s will have an edge using the elite ‘Reaper of Grenth’, especially since poison now stacks intensity. +4s of chill per second as well as 3s stacks of poison will make a very interesting build. I wouldn’t be surprised if a human Reaper could permanently maintain chill if you build for it, with this new specialization (kinda assuming at least one of the specialization skills will chill target, due to the stated focus on chill).

Of course, that is if they don’t mess with the racial skills in HoT.

Death magic: 3, 6, 7
Soul Reaping: 3, 5, 8
Reaper: ? ? ?

Gonna be epic

piano man.1672:

“1. It would be the first Scholar class to gain access to them.”

I’m not sure why this would be a reason for Necro’s getting shouts, but all of your other reasons make sense to me.

I could definitely see Necro’s having shouts or something similar, and it definitely would help them in group situations. Although, I’m not exactly sure what shouts they’d get.

Shouts can be seen, thematically, to indicate leadership as you are ‘shouting’ to rally (buff) your allies or to indicate which enemy to attack etc. We have medium and heavy professions who can fill this role, but no light/scholar ones.

Also: guardians got traps, which were previously locked to the Adventurer category, so they are clearly thinking to bring skill types to professions from completely different archetypes.

Hoo boy, this elite specialization is great. I realize we never got to see 99% of the Chronomancer traits, but the full monty we got today of the Dragonhunter has me excited!

The folks over at dulfy have gotten all the info up, including into their trait calculator, so i thought I’d share a few builds and playstyles that the new spec will open up and/or improve. I won’t be discussing gear for these builds due to the upcoming changes, but rather general idea of them and what sort of stats you will want to mix and match. I’m not claiming the ideas as my own as (imo) these should be pretty obvious.

Note: highlight ALL the text of the link and copy/past to your browser to view the traits.

Bursty Solo Roaming

The DH’s traps all deal direct damage or enhance direct damage through vulnerability. This build is meant for solo or small group roaming.

Weapons: Hammer & Greatsword

Gear types: Focus on direct damage boosting sets like Zerker but you’ll need to mix in some soldiers/knights to get a bit of defensive stats.

Heal: Your fave.

Utilities: Procession of Blades, Light’s Judgement, Signet of Judgement

Elite: Dragon’s Maw

Traits: http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=guardian&traits=“Dragon Hunter”,3,5,9-“Zeal”,2,5,9-“Virtues”,1,6,7

This build is based on trapping your target with Dragon’s Maw to land the full force of your Procession of Blades. Main combo would be to immobilize the foe using either Wings of Resolve or Zealot’s Embrace then locking them down via ring of warding. Next drop your three traps (Procession of Blades, Light’s Judgement then Dragon Maw). Put Dragon’s Maw last as by the time it arms your ring of warding is probably gone, but this might need to be moved in the combo to ensure the foe is trapped. Next swap to Greatsword and place Symbol of Wrath, land your Binding Blade and start spinning with Whirling Wrath. Next step: collect loot bags.

General use Condi-build

Weapons: Sword/Focus & Hammer (Possibly replace sword with mace)
Gear: Rabid/Dire mix
Runes: Runes of the Trapper
Sigil: Sigil of Torment & Sigil of Doom on Sword/Focus, Sigil of Corruption and Sigil of Doom on hammer

Heal: Purification (heal trap)

Utilities: Procession of Blades, Judge’s Intervention, Light’s Judgement

Elite: Dragon’s Maw

Traits: http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=guardian&traits=“Dragon Hunter”,1,5,7-“Radiance”,1,6,7-“Virtues”,2,4,9

Trap your enemies within Ring of warding then unload your offensive traps to spike with condi’s (19 stax of bleeding plus ~7 stax of burning with 2s durations plus 5s of torment). Use your gap closers to set up RoW, and block whenever you can via Focus5 and Shield of Courage. The heal trap has synergy with runes of the trapper to give you Stealth + super speed then the burst heal as you are chased.

Dragonhunter Bunker for sPvP Conquest

Weapons: Longbow & Mace/Focus (possibly change mace/focus to hammer)

Gear: Defensive (Soldier, Sentinel or Celestial)
Runes: Melandru

Heal: Purification

Utilities: Fragments of Faith, “Stand Your Ground”, Contemplation of Purity

Elite: Renewed Focus or the new Signet of Courage

Traits: http://dulfy.net/2015/05/02/gw2-specialization-calculator-that_shaman/#profession=guardian&traits=“Dragon Hunter”,2,5,8-“Honor”,1,5,7-“Virtues”,2,5,9

Drop your heal trap strategically before enemies arrive so that it’s off cooldown when you need it — just make sure to kite your foe into it to proc the first one before laying a second trap down. Plink away with Longbow if they stay at range and laugh at them if they try to melee you — you have an ungodly number of blocks thanks to mace/focus and the new ‘Fragments of Faith’ trap.

Any thoughts about these? Or other builds to suggest?

FrownyClown.8402:

Deny its current name. everyone just refer to it as paragon. it will stick eventually. from now on its just gonna be a paragon. agreed?

They can’t. Paragon’s were all about shouts and related effects; they can’t give 6 more shouts to a class that already has them as that does not give more diversity to the class. I loved paragon’s in the original, and it would make sense to make the Guardian Specialization similar, if they wanted to include Paragons at all, but Guardians already have tonnes of options for group support and the general theme of the specializations seems to be shoring up the weak points of the various professions, rather than accentuating their strong points. They have to do it that way, or else there wouldn’t be a reason not to take the specialization over the base class.

There are several reasons to think this.

1. It would be the first Scholar class to gain access to them.
2. The most obvious choices for shouts already have them.
3. Npc Necromancers have leadership roles (Trahearne and Marjory)
4. It would address the issue of party-support that Necro’s lack in.
5. Lastly, the existence of a set of skills from GW1: Orders.

Orders were a series of skills that Necromancers could use to apply specific effects to allies that triggered on landing a hit on the enemy. While I do not expect the exact effects to be applicable in GW2 gameplay, the name type would fit very well for a shout skill.

These were the GW1 skills:

Order of Apostasy: all allies remove an enchantment (read: boon) whenever they attack. 5s duration, lose 15% of your life-pool whenever a monk enchantment is removed.

This could be implemented as is to let every ally strip one boon for a total of 5 removals.

Order of Pain: Allies deal increased damage on attacks for 5s.

Could be a generic Might buff or vuln?

Order of Undeath: Minions deal increased damage on attacks for 5s, lose 2% max health whenever a minion attacks.

Not likely applicable, but the name could be re-purposed for a heal ability.

Order of the Vampire: allies steal X life on attacks for 5s.

Another possible heal ability.

So. Just sayin.

Necro’s will get shouts.

The Traps

Most of the negative posts I’ve read involve the disappointment that Guardians will be getting 6 new trap abilities, and while I can understand if you were hoping for the ‘Paragon’ of GW1 to return, traps are a great addition to the Guardian’s kit, especially considering the area-denial and control abilities it already has.

Very little info is currently available about what the Dragonhunter traps will do, but keep in mind these abilities will likely inflict conditions, and may open the door for a condition damage spec to become viable.

Healing trap:

as all new skills being added by the Elite specializations will be of the same type, Dragonhunters will have a healing trap. This ability is described as healing for a small amount on deployment, then for a much greater amount when triggered by an enemy in addition to dealing damage and blinding affected foes. Many deride this as a potentially useless heal, I disagree. This is a pre-emptive heal. You can drop this (ignoring the smaller instant heal) and have it immediately go on cooldown before the fight. The cooldown is unknown, but most heal skills vary between 15 and 30s. This means you can kite your foe back into this trap to gain a big heal, then potentially drop another shortly after, if you placed your first trap strategically and let the cooldown come back before you needed it.

Dragon’s Maw: This ability isn’t described in the blog apart from it’s name, but we can speculate it’s effect from its name. Due to the imagery being of a dragon’s mouth, there will likely be an aoe cc effect (likely immobilization) and due to the Guardian’s general preference for the burning condition, several stacks of burning applied to targets. This is just speculation, there will be more info tomorrow.

Lastly, and I know it’s been stated in several other threads, you can use Runes of the Trapper. This will give you condition damage, stealth on trap placement (which will actually be useful now due to the addition of arming times) and super-speed on placement of traps. This will give the already incredibly tanky guardian increased survival and mobility, and this should definitely not be ignored.

The Profession Mechanics

These have been stated to work with current traits and will retain A passive effect when not on cooldown. While they do not explicitly say that it will be the same effect, the passive mentioned for the new “Wings of Resolve” appears the be the same as the current Virtue of Resolve.

Spear of Justice:

Wording of this ability could be considered vague, but it appears to fire a projectile at a target enemy (or perhaps a target area using a ground target in a line) and pierce all enemies. These enemies will be bound so long as they stay within a certain radius (whether its based on the guardian or the distance between linked units is not mentioned) and foes will take ‘searing pulses’. Perhaps it will apply a second of burning whenever the Dragonhunter attacks a linked target, but that is pure speculation.

More information tomorrow.

Wings of Resolve:

Player leaps to target area (unknown range, estimated 900) and apply an aoe heal on landing. Specifically mentioned to keep its current passive and that a trait will be included to add damage to the ability.

Shield of Courage:

Create a wall that blocks all attacks in front of you, this ability will intercept attacks aimed at allies behind you, but is directional and has no effect on abilities or attacks coming from the sides or behind you. It is interesting to note that the blog specifically mentions attacks and not projectiles so there is the possibility that it will block everything so long as the attack originates infront of your character. No duration was given for this effect, but it is likely to be no more than 3s due to its potential as a very strong ability.

Conclusions:

The Dragonhunter, while it may have cliche’d name, is a strong addition the GW2 lineup and fixes a few of the area’s that the Guardian lacks in.

Do you think this an accurate portrayal of the Dragonhunter? Tune in to the Ready Up live stream tomorrow for more detailed information!

I know, I know, there’s a thousand and one topics about the reveal already and anyone not particularly interested in the Guardian or it’s new specialization is likely annoyed with all the chatter. The reason I’m making yet another topic about the Dragonhunter is to outline what I perceive them to be capable of — and as this will be a lot of text, I didn’t feel like boggarting someone else’s thread, and it’s in the guardian subforum so others aren’t inconvenienced by a rational analysis of what has been revealed.

And yes, I realize there will be a livestream tomorrow to outline further information.

Guards have had significant disadvantages with ranged gameplay, mostly due to the largely lack-luster implementation of the Scepter. The longbow will provide this with it’s higher base range and suite of skills. Another sector they fall short in is condition damage, and while we have very little information about the new utilities (more to come tomorrow) traps in general usually apply various conditions, with only a couple of the Thief traps varying from this vein to apply more specialized effects. Lastly, the updated profession mechanics which appear to be a straight up buff across the board.

The Longbow

While they only specify the effects of two abilities in the blog post, all five are shown in the teaser video. What is not known, is the total effects and damage, but here is what I can see from the teaser.

1: single projectile that deals direct damage and does not apply conditions. Possibility of effects such as piercing or unblockable to give flavor and interest. Estimated (read: assumed) 1200 range. 28s into the trailer

2: Single target blind, appears to have a roughly 5-8s base duration depending on whether they fudged it for the teaser video. 30s into the trailer

3: Symbol of Energy — symbol cast at range that applies vigor to allies and appears to deal damage to enemies (appears to proc Virtue of Justice’s burning effect) 34s into the trailer, described in the blog post

4: Deflecting Shot — described to destroy projectiles along it’s path, unknown range or flight speed and radius of effect, but likely similar to the Revenant’s projectile shield but moves in a line away from your character. described in the blog, not present in trailer

5: A channeled AoE ability similar to the Ranger’s barrage (at least in animation) that deals multiple strikes of damage and appears to either trap enemies within its area of effect like ring of warding. 40s into the trailer

Like I said, what we do not know is the base damage, nor the scaling of these abilities but the kit seems well rounded to provide both dps potential and party support. The two aoe DoT abilities (#3 and #5) which could be chained to keep a foe within the symbol for max dmg, in addition to whatever effects are hidden on the auto attack. And having access to a blind (#2), aoe Vigor (#3), projectile destruction (#4, possibly with a trait to reflect instead but that’s pure speculation) and an aoe snare on #5 are all strong tools to help control the foe from range.

While I expect they may temper the base damage of the bow’s abilities due to the large number of strong effects, I fully expect it to become a staple on many damage-oriented Guardian builds due to the great utility it provides — imagine being able to force an enemy to stay within your symbols for their full duration while you spin on them with your greatsword. Also, being able to provide aoe Vigor isn’t to be underestimated in a support role.

Khenzy.9348:

Diovid.9506:

The combination of utility/healing/elite skills, traits and changed/added profession mechanics (such as an F5 ability and alacrity) together are far more important than whether or not you get 2 new weapon skills or 5 new weapon skills.

In practice, that’s not true, at all. Weapon skills are the ones you press 90% of the time, they are the prime build defining feature of any build and playstyle.
No matter how they twist it, some professions getting 5 weapon skills and others getting only 2 is an enormous difference.

What they said of the professions that are getting off-hand or one-hand only weapons is that they’d get something “Just as good” as getting the remaining 2-3 weapon skills.

You can see this in practice with the Chronomancer reveal: the mechanics the new spec brings into play offers a LOT, more than enough to outweigh a couple new weapon skills. I’m referring to the new shatter, Continuum Shift and it’s incredibly powerful effect.

It is unreasonable to expect that every profession will gain something as intrinsically powerful as Continuum Shift as their new profession mechanic, or even the supplied new effects/skills/traits. It is a good move on Anet’s part to limit the other benefits of the new specialization in the cases (like the mesmer) where the new mechanic is extraordinarily powerful.

As such, expect any profession set to have a new 2-hand weapon to play with, to have a much more limited mechanic for that specialization.

Sorel.4870:

Your design is rather cool. However, I think that one of the well already applies slow on ennemies.

I don’t think that the amount of CC on this elite is too much. Unlike on “Entangle” for example, or any transformation elites, the ticks on the Gravity Well are easy to see, so it’s easy to stun-break just after the first tick, and dodge out of the well during the second. If you don’t have any stun-breaker, tough luck, but in that case the well is only a tad more powerful than, say, Slick Shoes, Ring of Warding, Entangle, Earthshaker, and other lower CD disabling abilities.

That’s true, Well of Action does apply slow as well, but we have very little information on other ways to apply it as the Chronomancer (well, other than the shield #4). I suppose one utility, one weapon skill and most likely a trait or two will be enough, I don’t particularly see a problem with another way to apply it — it seems to me that the slow condition is meant to be an integral part of Chronomancer play.

During the livestream, it was mentioned by the dev that they were looking into tweaking the new Chronomancer Elite “Well of Gravity”. Currently it deals damage per tick in addition to pulling affected foes that do not have the stability boon to the center of the well. At the end of the well, it applies a ~2s Float to affected enemies. It was a concern that the ability would be too much CC on a single ability in terms of competitive play — after all it would be cc’ing the target every second for a total of 5s (3 individual pulls plus the 2s float), and that is a very strong aoe ability. It was mentioned that presently they might remove the final CC, the float, and do something different.

Here is my suggestion: keep the float, alter the 3 ticks that precede it. Float on land is a unique effect to have, and its very interesting and flavorful. I, personally, would love it if they would keep the float effect as the final portion of the skill. But if the current effect is thought to be too strong something must be done. In order to keep the float, I suggest that the 3 pulls and damage on the first 3 ticks are removed and replaced with pulses of a 2s duration application of both chill and the new slow condition.

This works thematically as the targets are ‘weighed down’ by the gravity and move and act slower, this would also help land the final effect without completely shutting out counter play — after all the enemy can still move and act, so they can actually escape if they use their dodgerolls and counterplay wouldn’t be restricted to the stability boon. This would also give a large and long-lasting (7s total) aoe chill and slow effect, which is very powerful for control and utility.

While I personally think this change by itself would be both interesting and powerful, perhaps they could also add a 5-10stacks of vulnerability for 2s while the float is applied — as they are ‘helpless’ in midair. Most elites in this game do not deal direct damage, and I think it an odd choice for the devs to include it here. Again, I’d be very happy with simply the slow/chill and float, but if I’m going to be asking anyway, might as well ask for a bit of vuln as well xD.

Thoughts? Changes?

Zaoda.1653:

I’m ready. Although I think OP forgot to mention one of the good things – some traits are being merged, so while quite a few will be removed, some are being combined. People need to know this because it’s not all doom and gloom.

Annnnnd my post does mention this:

Oberon Vex.1389:

Traits

Traits have been changed in several ways: they no longer give attributes, you are now forced to take major traits in their designated tiers, and the traits themselves have been culled, merged and re-arranged.

Nothing about this thread was meant to be disparaging or ‘doom and gloom’. Sorry if that was your impression.

Just to start off: this is not a troll attempt, nor is it (in my view) much of an exaggeration.

Warning: wall of text ahead.

With HoT coming and the proposed changes to traits, skills and gear, GW2 as it is today will disappear. Rather than simply introducing new content, the devs have chosen to rework pretty much every aspect of build design.

Traits

Traits have been changed in several ways: they no longer give attributes, you are now forced to take major traits in their designated tiers, and the traits themselves have been culled, merged and re-arranged.

Let’s take a look at how many you get per ‘specialization’ (read: trait line): you now get 9, where before you had 13. Now there were MANY useless or exceedingly niche traits that could definitely be safely removed without much fuss, so this reduction in total number is likely a good thing. However, keep in mind they have also said they are introducing new traits as well. So not only are you dropping 2 traits on each of the adept and master tiers right off the hop, but some other current traits may have been replaced with new ones.

New traits are a good thing, but considering the list of sweeping changes, they will also be a lot of new information. Devs have explicitly stated they intend to keep many of the current builds viable, but I can’t help but think this is lip-service — not because they aren’t keeping key-traits, but rather the trait changes in conjunction with the OTHER changes they are implementing will almost certainly uproot currently established meta-builds (which I, personally, like).

Also, as a side note: there were several builds that went into 4 lines or even all five. These builds are now impossible to use.

Skills

Some of those removed or replaced traits will have their effects tacked onto existing skills. While it was vague whether this meant solely utility skills or whether this included some select weapon skills and such, this is another big change. Skills currently held to be strong may have some competition (which is good) from skills currently considered niche or underpowered. Additionally, the ‘elite specialization’ (which I personally think is a poor term as it denotes a higher level or efficacy than the ‘base/core’ specializations but that’s a different topic) will give you access to 6 new skills — that’s 54 entirely new skills to learn across all classes, in addition to re-learning however many of the current skills that got a facelift.

Gear

With moving attributes off of your trait lines (which I approve of, at least in theory — traits should be important by themselves) you will almost certainly need to make new gear to optimize your build. Even if you are close, the limit of having 3 different stats per piece of armor will likely mean you numbers will be a little wonky — maybe only a little, maybe a lot depending on your current build. Now exotics are easy to get, but Ascended gear is more expensive be a large margin, and there isnt’ an alternative way to get it (currently).

Conclusion

Combining all these factors, there is a LOT of new information to learn. In a way its a great thing, it will breathe new life into a stagnant meta — but at the same time it is pretty brutal to do it all at once. Perhaps its cleaner and you garner less outrage overall (rather than adding a world-changing tweek every 6 months or so), but it remains a near total overhaul of current systems.

Reducing/changing the major traits, forcing a trait to stay in its tier, an unknown number of drastically altered core skills, and 54 NEW skills is tonnes of change. You will be pretty much re-learning how to play gw2. Are you ready?

“Stance of the Betrayer” has a pretty epic ring to it. High single-target dmg and evades. I ship it.

They are finally FIXING PvE. With enemies being able to apply this condition as well, there will be a POINT to run supportive sets in PvE content. This means there will be more accepted build diversity in Dungeons/Large-scale PvE content because something OTHER than pew pew will be needed. You will likely be able to make a viable build that is still full glass (if you actually enjoy that) and just bring some party-support utilities/traits, but this sounds like a step in the right direction in terms of game balance.

Revision 1

Here’s how I interpreted your two inputs, kind of mashed the together. There’s Perma-Swiftness from Foste and more Ferocity. Still losing like 4k hp, and ~100 power off the base build, but the Ferocity is up in normal zerk range. Still has Good armor.

I swapped out Wall for Well of Darkness as I was unaware of that protection point. I guess The uptime was so big I didn’t keep track of it

More blind + more chill = more living so that works too. Having a thief steal your protection is pretty terrible, but tbh I really don’t run into it all that often. Maybe its just the server I’m on though.

The original inclusion of Dagger offhand was based on aesthetics mostly, that and the trait, but I agree that those points could be better spent elsewhere.

Hey, I’m sure there’s plenty of guides and builds available, but I thought I’d share what I’m rolling with as its working well for me! It’s intended for 1v1 and 1vx scenarios, but would work well in small-scale fights as well.

WvW Protection Roamer

This build is very durable owed largely in part to the exceedingly high up-time of protection. It boasts five sources of protection and long duration at that. Unless it is stripped from you, you can have 34s of continuous protection — and if they some how manage to get you below half you add another 18s to that. It has near 100% uptime.

This is a power spec utilizing D/D and staff to further provide survivability via blinds, cc and condi removal. Sigils of Mischief are used to add more blind and chill, and Plague form is used as an ‘OHSH__T’ button (using the pulsing blind you can maintain chill on your opponent making your escape easier).

Other builds will no doubt have more damage, but this set-up is a well-rounded mix of damage and survivability.

Astral Projections.7320:

On that note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxmkAoLC6_4

Oh Lord I love this vid. Thanks for bringing it up again xD

A Massive Headache.1879:

Lurker.3609:

As much as I like Trahearne’s character (as opposed to most GW2’s characters) I think it would be a nice finale of his story if it turned out that after the Pact fleet’s crash we know nothing about him for a while only to find out later that he got corrupted by Mordremoth and became his lieutenant, leading a new army of mordrem sylvari. And at some point in the living story we would get to kill him. What do you guys think?

corrupted trahaerne would be too op. Have you seen caledbog? We could never win.

Just calling it now: he does get corrupted and its BECAUSE of Caledbolg. We know that the Pale Tree and the Sylvari were created as the dragon’s minions, and the Pale Tree gave Caledbolg out to its own champions. There is a very high chance that there will be a plot element involving this legendary sword being a more concentrated form of the Pale Tree’s (and by extention Mordremoth’s) power. The thing might even be a TOOTH of Mordremoth.

Whether we end up having to kill Trahearne or not, I fully expect that he will fall under Mordremoth’s influence at some point in the storyline. It just makes so much sense as a mid-story twist: the brightest hope turned to fight for the enemy — its a pretty pervasive trope for a reason! Redemption stories almost always make for a good read/playthrough.

Keep in mind though: there’s a part in Orr where you cleanse a corrupted Orrian chicken of Zhaitan’s influence, and some of the Sylvari are cleansed as well (Canach & players most notably atm). So even if he does turn, we may end up trying to save him via purging Mordremoth’s influence.

RashanDale.3609:

Oberon Vex.1389:

I don’t know why they named dagger 2 that :/ The functionality is nothing like Dark Pact. I guess the animation has you ‘cutting your hand’ to cause it, but its pretty strange when compared to the original.

The original? the original was a cheap, generic damage skill with life cost and your suggestion is not at all like it either.

My suggestion allows for spammable damage at a cost of increased incoming damage. It may not be a copy of the original, but it does take the core effects/themes of the original. And by themes I mean: a pact between the player and a fictional entity to gain a powerful effect at the cost of ones health/safety.

RashanDale.3609:

Elite Skill: Dark Pact

Elite Corruption skill. For 5s, your weapon skills have no cool-down but every skill use applies 5 stax of vulnerability to self for 5s. Consumes all stored Life force.

you might need a new name for that. dark pact is already a thing. also, why vulnerability? i’d prefer bleeding, cause thats more similar to HP sacrifice.

“Soul Barbs”: Consume all Life force. Apply a debuff to target for 1s per 10% life-force spent. Deal X dmg to target foe whenever a unique condition or boon is applied to target.

Good one. How exactly do you intend ‘whenever a unique condition or boon is applied’ to work? does that mean that if a target is already bleeding, further bleed stacks wont trigger it? or that a single bleed-inflicting attack only triggers it once, no matter if it applies one or three bleedstacks?

I don’t know why they named dagger 2 that :/ The functionality is nothing like Dark Pact. I guess the animation has you ‘cutting your hand’ to cause it, but its pretty strange when compared to the original. I chose vulnerability over bleeding because while bleeding could make a health-cost per action (like the original), vulnerability has more of a risk to it. If you used 5 abilities, you would take 25% more damage from the opposing player, which is a judgement call you as a player would have to make — is the enemy a power spec? Will he be able to burst me because of this? It would make the skill more than just a tool to spam everything. Also, bleeding has a set duration and then you’d have to figure out who’s condi damage is used — the player could take no condi dmg and make the cost minimal, or if the enemy doesn’t use condi dmg. I suppose facing an enemy using a condi-build would have a similar effect, but it opens up more counterplay imo.

As for Soul Barbs, there is already at least one skill that deals with unique conditions on foe: Feast of Corruption. I suppose it would be easier to implement if the skill was described as “for the next X seconds, deal X dmg per second per unique condition and unique boon”. And yes, this skill would not deal more damage if the foe had five bleed stacks.

JEFFARR.8163:

Lol at dark path 5 sec no cd on wep skills
Spam me some #5 fear marks with terror
Gg wp

There would be no access to dark path in this specialization because you no longer have deathshroud. And YES, there would be certain weapon sets that this would be a very strong skill on, but it is supposed to be an elite skill. This elite would give players a small timeframe in which to greatly change how a particular fight is going. Even then, necro’s are fairly uncommon in WvW because there isn’t a strong role for them (there are several better roamers and only one or two builds are worthwhile in a competitive zerg scenario). Something like this would make fighting a necro 1v1 a challenge.

CommunityScabies.2587:

The idea of gaining an Aura as a skill w/ greatsword seems foreign to me.

“Withering Aura” is a skill from GW1, though perhaps it should function more like Locust Swarm and just passively inflict Weakness on nearby enemies, if it makes more sense than to use the “aura” terminology.

IMO: take Flame trap and Frost trap. YES spike or poison trap will give you more damaging conditions, but you are NOT revealed from stealth when frost trap goes off, so it can be a good escape tool (this is using “runes of the trapper”). Then i’d make sure to take a stun break. Since you are taking up your utilities with trap skills, Signet of Renewal is a pretty good option (stunbreak AND condi clear).

Sigil of Force is a solid choice, just a flat 5% increase in damage dealt. Since you are running a zerker set up, you could use Sigil of Air to increase your burst potential (it deals an extra 1-2k dmg on crit every so often). Those two would probably be safe to run in almost every situation.

Alternatively, you could run Sigil of Strength to give yourself some pretty solid might stacks, or Sigil of Fire which deals less damage than Sigil of Air, but does it in a small AoE. These 4 are generally the accepted ‘high direct damage’ setups. You could then roll Sigil of Energy and Sigil of Bloodlust on your second weapon set. This would give you half your endurance whenever you swap to your second set, and killing foes with your second set will increase your damage with both sets.

For more defensive situations, you could run Sigil of Generosity which would transfer a condition from you to your target when you critical, or Sigil of Ice, which applies chill on-hit which will let you kite a bit better.

Hello all! I know many of us are excited for the new xpac, and I for one am really hoping for some drastic changes to how Necro’s work in gw2. I REALLY liked the class in gw1 but was fairly disappointed with the result we got in GW2. That said, here’s a list of traits, abilities and effects that I would personally like to see implemented for the necro in the coming expac! Feel free to leave a comment with your own speculation/wishlists or modify my suggestions!

Class Mechanic: “Soul Furnace”

They’ve said the specializations will modify the current class mechanics, and though I have a love/hate relationship with the current life-force system, I can see a possible use for it. Instead of having a toggle-able state that acts as a secondary health bar, accumulated life force affects player skills and can be used as a resource system similar to adrenaline (with the caveat that life force does not drain out of combat, but is harder to acquire). Weapon skill damage is increased by 1% for every 10% life force accumulated. New utilities and heal skill interact with life force levels. Life force is lost on downed state.

Weapon: Greatsword

We’ve been told necro’s will be able to use the GS, which is awesome! Personally I’d like it to be a power-based weapon that can apply several non-damaging conditions.

1. Chain skill
1.1 “Slash” — Deal X dmg
1.2 “Shadow Slash” — Deal X dmg. Unblockable.
1.3 “Lifebane Strike” — Deal X dmg, deals increased damage if target is above 50% max hp.

2. “Necrosis” — Deal X dmg, Damage increased per unique condition on target. 5s CD

3. “Weaken Armor” — apply 5 stax of vulnerability for 8s. 15s CD

4. “Withering Aura” — Foes striking you are inflicted with Weakness for 2s. 8s Duration. 20s CD.

5. “Fearful Strike” — deal x damage, inflict 1s of fear. 25s CD.

Elite Skill: Dark Pact

Elite Corruption skill. For 5s, your weapon skills have no cool-down but every skill use applies 5 stax of vulnerability to self for 5s. Consumes all stored Life force.

Heal Skill: Soul Feast

Consumes all Life-Force. Gain a % of your max health that corresponds to amount of Life-Force consumed. 40s CD

Utilities

“Soul Bind”: Consume all Life force. Foes in target area are immobilized for 1s for every 20% life force you have accumulated. 240 radius. 900 range. 50s CD

“Soul Leech”: For the next 5s, whenever target foe attacks, steal X life. Life steal from this skill is increased by the % of life force you have accumulated. kitten CD

“Soul Barbs”: Consume all Life force. Apply a debuff to target for 1s per 10% life-force spent. Deal X dmg to target foe whenever a unique condition or boon is applied to target.

Traits

“Awaken the Blood” — Gain 4s of Regeneration whenever you are critically hit.

“Blood Bond” — When suffering from bleeding, apply 5s of regeneration to all nearby allies, 240 radius. 30s CD

“Contagion” — when downed, apply all conditions on self to up to 5 nearby enemies (900 radius). 90s CD.

“Blind Fury” — When you are suffering from blind, gain Fury for 5s. 30s CD

“Defile Defenses” — on dodgeroll, nearby enemies lose 25% of their Endurance.

“Demonic Flesh” — gain 0-200 vitality, depending on life force you have accumulated.

“Desecrate Boons” — when removing boons from enemies, deal X dmg. 15s CD.

“Aura of the Lich” — when downed, summon 5 jagged horror minions at player’s location. These minions last for 20s. 90s CD

“Gaze of Contempt” — when removing boons from enemies, daze foe for 1s per unique boon removed. kitten CD.

“Price of Failure” — When blind you apply is removed, inflict 5 stax of confusion for 5s.

“Spiteful Spirit” — Confusion you apply deals damage in AoE, 240 radius.

“Tainted Flesh” — when you are critically hit, apply 10s of poison to foe. kitten CD.

“Toxic Chill” — when applying poison to target, apply 3s chill. 15s CD.

“Well of the Profane” — enemies lose 1 boon per pulse of your wells.

Edit
Not sure what is wrong with the number ‘fourty-five’ followed by the letters C and D is… but that’s what the ‘kitten CD’ is, if anyone is curious.

With the reveal just a week or so past, and the lack of concrete information, I feel the need to speculate and make my wishes for the new Mesmer Specialization! Obviously there isn’t much to go on, but here is a list of effects I’d personally enjoy seeing — feel free to leave a comment on your own wishlist or changes to my own!

Class mechanic wish: Fast Casting.

Lots of people are expecting the specialization to draw from the ‘Chronomancer’ idea, and mesmer’s original mechanic (in GW1) was ‘fast casting’ which allowed for faster skill use. Now, most skills have 1s or less cast time, but here’s a few effects that fall into the same thematic niche:

Replacing the shatter skills with (but keeping clone skills):

F1: Time Freeze: your next attack applies a 2s Stun on effected Targets. 80s CD
F2: Rewind: Your next weapon skill is instantly recharged. 60s CD
F3: Slow Time: Your next attack applies -50% move speed to effected Targets for 5s. 60s CD
F4: Fast Forward: All non-weapon skills have their cooldowns decreased by 5s. 80s CD

Healing Skill:

“Illusion of Pain”: Apply a buff to self for 8s. After 8s, heal self for twice the damage sustained during during the buff. 30s CD

Elite Skill:

“Guilt”: Apply a debuff to target (and glow effect to their character model) for 8s. After 8s, damage self for twice the amount of out-going damage during the debuff.
— Mesmers are more than just a deception class, the original was a PUNISHMENT class. I for one would really like to see them implement a punishing mechanic that can be strictly controlled (rather than confusion, which multiple classes get, and multiple skills apply).

weapon skills:

We know we are gettin a shield, but even with the trailer showing A skill, we don’t know if that was a shield skill (could have been something like the ‘time freeze’ i suggested).

4: “Phantasmal Avenger”: Create a phantasm that knocks back foes every 8s. 30s CD.

5: “Backfire”: Block for 3s. Attackers take 100% of blocked damage. 40s CD

Utility Skills:

“Energy Drain” — steal 50% of target foes endurance. kitten CD

“Extend Conditions” — double the durations of conditions target foe is effected by. 75s CD

“Keystone Signet” — Passive: Other signets have their effects increased by 50%. Active: Reset all other signet cooldowns. 90s CD.

Traits:

“Accumulating Pain”: When applying a condition to foe, deal XXdmg per unique condition on that foe.

“Mirror of Disenchantment”: when a boon is removed from self by a foe, remove one boon from that foe. 10s CD

“Auspicious Incantation”: When casting a Mantra, gain Vigor for 5s.

“Clumsiness”: When blind you apply is removed, foe takes XXdmg.

“Crippling Anguish”: When applying cripple, apply 5stax of Torment for 5s. 10s CD

“Drain Enchantments”: On interrupting a foe, remove 1 boon. 15s CD

“Delirium”: When applying a condition to a foe, if that foe has 3 unique conditions, apply 2s daze. 10s CD

“Persistence of Memory”: Your interrupted spells recharge instantly. 30s CD

“Shared Burden”: Movement-impairing effects you inflict effect nearby enemies (600radius). 20s CD

“Spirit Shackles”: When struck by a critical hit, foe loses 25% Endurance. 10s CD.

Some Druid traits that could be interesting:

“Call of Protection” — whenever using a shout skill, apply 5s of protection to self and pet.

“Extinction” — On killing a foe, deal 300(0.15) dmg to surrounding foes (240 radius). 10s CD.

“Symbiosis” — Allies under the effect of a spirit gain 200 Vitality.

“Predatory Bond” — for 10s after using a shout, your pet deals an extra 50 damage (0.3pet power) and heals you for 50(0.3pet healingpower).

“Vigorous Reflexes” — on succesful dodge, apply vigor for 4s (8s CD)

“Trapper’s Speed” — gain 50% movespeed for 2s after using a trap skill.

“Disrupting Accuracy” — apply daze (1s) on critical, 30s CD.

“Apply Poison” — When using Sharpening Stone, your next 5 attacks cause poison (7s).

“Pestilence” — On killing a foe, spread any conditions on that foe to all nearby foes (240 radius). 20s CD

“Serpent’s Quickness” — Upon poisoning a foe, gain quickness (3s). 30s CD

“Equinox” — Upon applying a condition to a foe, remove the opposing Boon. (10s CD).

Natural Resistance: Halves the duration of conditions applied to the user.

— As a grandmaster trait, this could be possible, but I think (if they went with something like this) they would limit it to -33% or less. Remember, with -Condi-duration on self food and runes, you can get -65% already, without any traits. So any -Condi-duration traits will HAVE to be -33% or less. If its a blanket “all condi’s”, then I’d ballpark at -15% duration or something like that, even as a grandmaster.

Aspect of Oak: Reduces incoming critical damage received by half. 9 seconds. Interval 3 seconds.

- Cooldown would need to be much higher, and there would need to be a trigger mechanism. "Upon losing 10% of your current health in one hit, take half damage for 5s. 90s CD.

Calamity Aura: Increases condition duration applied to enemies by 10%. 9 seconds. Interval 3 seconds. 600 radius.

— AoE condi effects should probably be shifted mostly to the necro. That said, I’d probably phrase a condi-trait with this name as : “When applying a condition to foe, apply one stack of Vulnerablity (5s) per unique condition on that foe.” — Rangers are already one of the best applicators of Vuln, so I can see us getting different ways to keep that.

Natural Purification: Gain 60 (0.4) health whenever a boon on you ends.

— going by the name, I’d suggest: “Whenever a boon you apply ends, remove one condition. 10s CD, allies have their own ICD.”
— We need more condi-clear, and a trait like this would make us more viable in a supportive sense.

Nature’s Wrath: Increases damage by 1% per condition on you.

— not bad, but a little counter productive. To get anything out of this trait you would have to maintain several conditions, which will probably end up killing you. I’d re-phrase this to: “On stun-break, apply 5 stax of might and fury to self (10s duration)”

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMp0plPxvJ0PNBTBxdBCwA8+EtY9ddBA-TFyCABAcEAu4UAc8DAAQ9Beq+TiKB1b/hsU+RKgJlGB-w

This should have a good mix of damage and defense. Best-case scenario it tops out around 3k condi dmg and has several stealth mecahnisms to keep lots of bleeds on via sneak attack. 2 stunbreaks and average condi-clear via shadowstep and the ’shadow’s embrace’ trait.

Runes of Aristocracy coupled with traits will give you an EASY 15-20 stacks of might early in the fight.

Shadow trap is there for the long duration stealth coupled with 12 stacks of might — can use it to get out or offensively to finish them off.

Going heavy into the shadow line will keep you very healthy via shadow protector, shadow rejuvenation and shadow’s embrace. Steal applies confusion giving this build access to three damaging conditions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa6Yl0Mp3plOx8J8PNBOBtdE2dC0KAd/jkUEA-T1CEABJcCAKUJoTKxiS5hCPAgl2fIR1KaT/AAHBgGVV5hDCApAGVYE-w

I am not currently running a P/P build, but if I was, I’d probably be using this.

Rationale: As has been noted in this thread, a major weakness of a p/p setup (or a ‘stealthless’ thief) is the ability to create distance, so I do have withdraw and RFI in there for the evade and gap-making. I chose blinding powder and shadowstep as those are both skills I use on pretty much any build due to their ability to be used both offensively and defensively and are pretty much a guaranteed reset (unless you are 1vZerging). Elite is entirely superfluous in this setup, but I chose basilisk for the cc (poor as it is). Thieves guild may be interesting to run on this set up.

The stat spread may seem a little on the tanky side, but you NEED that as a thief if you aren’t going to go for a stealthy-cheese build.

Second set is P/D for the added gap-maker of Shadow strike and the ability to stealth on CnD — always nice to be able to stealth to get outta dodge.

Sigils are in place to synergize with the traits I’m using: this build has 60% crit chance (which I am aware is a bit lower than some people run, but is really all you need, especially with a multi-hit skill like unload) and you will be applying TONNES of vulnerability and might to yourself. I know most people stand by sigil of force/air, but since unload hits 8 times and each can crit…. frailty just outperforms force in this set-up. YES it can be cleansed, but I can pretty much guarantee you that you will be back at 8+stax of vuln in very short order.

I went heavy into acrobatics to get the most out of dodging (since you will be doing a lot of that when you aren’t stealthed). Extra might from Power of Inertia, and extra dodgerolls from vigorous recovery. The grandmaster trait helps deal with some damaging conditions since the only condi-clear on this build is shadowstep.

Runes are a matter of personal preference in this build: the statspread is pretty well rounded, though I’d suggest something from the power lines. Brawler will take advantage of your low CD heal and give you more damage. Another option would be runes of Strength due to the large amounts of might you will be stacking on yourself (in fact that would likely be the better route, but I don’t feel like getting a new link to change it). Runes of the Pack would give you more offensive stats and 50% fury uptime to bring your crit-chance to ~83% or so, but as the build already has a decent amount of crit-chance (imo) I felt a more power-related rune would be better (such as brawler or strength).

TL;DR:
Haven’t tested it, looks good in theory. Should be viable.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNQQRAsY3fjEq0uaLL2rw1aAAhaVA0OFyhwmdD0BfwJ7KFSA-TVyCABAcEAU4EAc8DBQo9HuUtCPVVJRlgZp8TP9DkC4RpRA-w

My condi/trapper build

Elites:

Entangle: an aoe immobilize that applies bleed/s. Nice. Wait. Enemies can break the skill by KILLING IT with cleave. The high damage tool-tip is incredibly deceiving since the enemy will break out of this skill in less than 3s. A lot of the elites in the game are fairly lack-luster, but this just takes the cake as far as class elites go. If the current functionality must stay, make it apply 5 stacks of torment if they break it, or at least remove the 5 target cap so that you can minorly inconvenience a larger number of people… Otherwise I’d like to see this as a high-duration immobilize with a set number of bleed stax on it.

Rampage as One: This is a solid, if passive, elite and the strongest ranger elite imo. Fairly boring in terms of effects, but solid. Main issue is how the pet auto attacks are haphazard and you will never get all that much might from it. From a thematic standpoint it makes sense to make the pet be the trigger for the player’s might gain, but it doesn’t really work out as well as it should due to the pet’s AI. If I could change it, I would take away the Fury and Might boons from it and replace it with the ‘frenzy’ mechanic seen on abominations: every time the player or the pet is hit, their outgoing damage is increased by a percentage up to a cap.

Spirit of Nature:

Suffers from the same problems as other spirits: it can be killed and its effects have a fairly low net result due to the timer. If this could be a heal/s that is slightly stronger than it is now, it would be better in my opinion. That and an increase to the range on the active would be nice.

Survival skills:

Of the current utilities, ‘Lightning Reflexes’ is probably my favorite, but Muddy Terrain and Sharpening Stone are both rather underwhelming. Quickening Zephyr is probably the best non-elite source of quickness (that is until engie’s got ‘quickend synapses’) and doesn’t need much of a benefit.

Muddy Terrain needs a bit more oomph to get more use, and I think its because it is only a cripple field, with an imobo on cast. I think it would get more use if stationary enemies in the field were immobilized for 1s on a 2.5s cd. That is: if they stop in the field they get another small immobilize.

Sharpening Stone is pretty lackluster because weaponsets where you are running condi-dmg usually have built in bleed sources, generally on their auto-attack or low-cooldown skills. Bleed on five attacks isn’t strong enough to warrant one of your three skill choices. I think if they added “next 5 attacks critically strike” it would be a lot more attractive.

Traps:

As zone control and damage utilities these work fairly well, though their effects are rather bland. The main issue with these skills is that all the traits that benefit them are in the precision/ferocity line and they don’t synergize well — in terms of stats. That said, the grandmaster trait is once again necessary to make these skills good. Other classes get decent vanilla skills and their traits make them better. Rangers have to trait to make them comparable to vanilla.

Signets:

All of the ranger signets require you to take a grandmaster trait to get the active benefit… Generally, I’d like to see the current state reversed: a grandmaster trait gives the active portion to the PET, not the other way around!

Signet of Renewal: I’d like to see it as a “Convert Torment, bleeding and poison to regeneration”. Builds that focus on condi-dmg will be able to re-apply them, and this would give rangers a powerful tool to combat condi-dmg.

Signet of Stone/of the Wild/of the Hunt: effects are nice, I’d just like the active effecting the player as standard.

Shouts:

The ranger shouts are all about buffing your pet, and you have to use a grandmaster trait to get any kind of player benefit from them. This makes their effectiveness tied very closely to the state of the Pet AI. Now there have been some improvements on that note over the last couple years, but for the most part they still remain fairly clunky.

Sic ‘Em: This is one of the more useful shouts, and with the ’revealed’ buff it got, it is getting a bit more usage. That said, I think it could use a little more player benefit in the form of ‘Your pet applies 5stax of vulnerability on next hit, 5s duration’. Just a little window for a damage spike.

Search and Rescue: many professions have a ‘ranged rez’ skill — they usually have long cast times or other requirements, so in some regards this is the best of ‘those’ skills, but as it requires defeat to become even available for use… it is sort of counter-intuitive. If its current mechanic is kept (rezzing), the only thing I can think of to improve it, is to make this able to rez from defeated (not just downed).

Protect Me!: I like and dislike this skill. On the one hand it provides damage immunity to the player for a healthy duration, on the other it will kill your pet. Which supposedly accounts for ~30% of your damage. For a class that is supposed to be about pet mechanics, it is ridiculous how many skills and traits rangers get that harm your pet. The only thing I’d like to see out of this, is to swap the ‘damage redirected to pet’ into a ‘pet gets 10stax vulnerability for 6s’. The pet still wont attack while its active, and the player still gets some immunity, but it will not straight out kill your pet (unless they are AoEing it).

Guard: my main qualm about this skill is that it gives the ranger the level of control over the pet that should be vanilla. Again, the skill only benefits the pet, and that is generally what was aimed for, but there should be some sort of intrinsic benefit to the player outside of micro-managing your pet. Perhaps the pet’s attacks apply cripple so there is a control aspect.

Maybe I’m alone in thinking this, but in my opinion, the utility skills for rangers are the worst in the game. Every other professionhas stronger effects on comparable (if not better) cooldowns, and it is my opinion that this is the area that the ranger class needs the most love. At present, rangers need to spend important traits to bring their utilities in line with the utility skills of other professions — when un-traited. Every profession has a few different mechanics that are unique to it, and I’m not suggesting adding new mechanics to replace the current ones, just tweaks to put them in line with other classes abilities. I know lots of balance changes are made for sPvP and tPvP, but most of my suggestions will be focused towards WvW and PvE.

Below I’ll go through what I personally would like to see happen to the current ranger utilities:

Spirits:

At present spirits have a % chance to trigger their effect whenever an ally in range takes or receive damage (depending on the skill) and then the effect goes on cooldown (generally 10s) — and can be killed by enemies. The unreliability of WHEN these effects will take place coupled with the fact that the skill can be entirely negated by the enemy so long as they spend ~2 attacks (or just hit it with AoE) make these sub-par skills unless heavily traited. The active portions of these skills are generally in a good place.

Frost Spirit: gives a 10% damage boost to an ally’s outgoing damage packet every 10s. This is exceedingly underwhelming, when you consider it is unlikely to trigger more than twice in a fight. I suggest making it a flat 5% dmg buff to allies while it is alive, without a cooldown. The fact that this skill can be killed by the enemy is enough of a drawback. Making it larger threat forces the enemy to make the tactical decision of either destroying the spirit (and potentially sacrificing a second or two of dps on the ranger) or take increased dmg.

Stone Spirit: Chance to gain protection for 3s on 10sCD. Again I’d suggest removing the cooldown and modifying the effect. Here I would like to see it effect 5 allies and reduce incoming damage by 10% (does not stack with protection). Alternatively, a buff that makes 5 allies immune to critical hits.

Storm Spirit: Chance to gain swiftness on outgoing dmg on 10s CD. I object to this one the least of the four, but I’d still like to see the CD removed (dropping the swiftness duration to compensate)

Sun Spirit: Chance to burn foe on hit for 2s every 10s. Can’t do the same as the others, but I suggest using a system similar to the Guardians virtue of justice: every ‘x’ attacks cause burning. This way you can plan on WHEN you will burn the foe, and if you stack things like quickness or aoe effects, the spirit’s effect will trigger more often.

Water Spirit: Heal on hit every 10s. Firstly, I think this heal is a joke. At present, the healing you get from this (unless you stack a fair amount of Healing Power) is only marginally stronger than a Mango Pie. As a Profession Heal. I’d suggest changing it to “Receive 10% of outgoing damage as healing”

Some of these effects may seem strong, but remember: the enemy can kill the spirit to end it prematurely. A system similar to ritualist skills in gw1 could be used as well: on the stronger spirits, make a set number of times the effect can trigger.

Black Box.9312:

I think that rather than requesting this, we should be asking why the ‘elite’ skills feel so underwhelming in the first place.

THIS. Most elites are very boring, and most classes really only have one (maybe two depending on spec) viable option. In my opinion this is a real shame. Elite’s need to have a more powerful effect. There are many possibilities to work with: high damage but slight charge/telegraph animation, damage with a lingering effect, on-hit or proc effects on a timer. There simply needs to be more options to choose from. I do not think that the elite skill slot should be able to have an extra utility skill fit into it, but considering the long cooldowns of these ‘elite’ skills, the effect just ISN’T that impressive.

To add insult to injury, since people are staying in the zone between events to save their spot in the main server, they often go afk and do something completely out of the game. This means that even in the main server, you might think you have the necessary people to complete the event but in reality 1/4 of those there are actually afk for most (if not all) of the fight!

My suggestion is this: during living world content like this Tequatl fight (in the future at least, if it can’t be implemented for this release) put the same afk-kicking system you have for WvW maps during peak hours, or even just link it to the number of overflows that a certain zone has. This way players must be there to participate in the event or be kicked, and those waiting to get into the main server have a higher chance of actually getting a successful fight in.

Greyalis.2309:

Another option would be to simply allow commanders to change color of their tag. This way guilds and worlds can on a need to basis create purpose and objective of colors.

This.

In many servers there is only one large zerg, but in the more competitive and organized ones it would be nice to have the option to easily distinguish between two groups on the world map to help coordinate roles.

IMO what they should do is remove the current bowstring and put in a special golden one that only appears during the drawing animation prior to firing the arrow. OR have it have NO bowstring while out of combat and when entering combat have a vine grow between the two points of the bow. (and possibly curl up the player’s arm as well :P )

I would like to add that I have never been disconnected during a Teq fight, and I have participated in a successful event. On the other hand, I have been stuck in overflow spamming ‘join party in Sparkfly Fen’ every two seconds for around 35min. That was NOT a pleasurable experience.

Firstly, I would like to say that I am thrilled that you guys have put together some content that is truly challenging in a PvE setting. The changes you guys have made to the Tequatl fight are truly epic and in truth, I sincerely hope the devs are drawing up plans to update many of the other world bosses, especially the dragon lieutenants in a similar fashion. This is the kind of content that is fun to play in an open setting.

Now, as wonderful as I found this fight to be, there are several other indirectly created problems with the Tequatl fight, some which are Anet’s responsibility, others being caused by player personalities. As fun as this new, revamped TACO fight is, it is bringing out some unfortunate side-effects. For instance, in order to successfully kill Tequatl, you need a full map-worth of players fighting in a coordinated fashion. This by itself is not truly a problem, having such a difficult fight that you need to rally together and work hard is truly rewarding, but the problem stems from the overflow system. Players stuck in overflow have absolutely no chance of beating tequatl. There are not enough players in the overflow to constitute a viable force, and players stuck in overflow are usually left without the rallying points of commanders in their fight.

To try to get around this problem with overflow, players are taking to logging in, and SITTING STILL in sparkfly, waiting between tequatl fights. Gamers are feeling coerced into staying in the one zone, just so they are able to participate in the event. It is not fun to remain in the same zone for hours on end just waiting for a boss to spawn, and in my opinion this goes against Anet’s professed vision for GW2.

I do NOT think Tequatl needs a NERF.

I think what needs to happen is that the Devs (in future releases like this) seriously tinker with the scaling of the event, so that it is always a hard and challenging fight, but there is always a CHANCE to beat it with a fewer number of people. Same level of complexity and cooperation required, but adjust the scaling of the event so those stuck in overflow still have a chance to complete the event.

As it stands now being stuck in overflow (especially when you were in the main server with the organized group and then your connection borks, dumping you into overflow once you re-log) is just heaping frustration and dissatisfaction on your players.

Machiavel.6042:

First of all, forget everything that could be, directly or indirectly, to anything that sounds “asian”. Anet stance right now on the subject is pretty firm; bet they won’t change for a single class.

Second, ANOTHER scholar class ? Yay…

Third, you do understand that everything that you mentioned for the ritualist is already covered by other classes, right ?

Let’s be honest, why should they bring it back ? Why the ritualist ? Why not bring the paragon back ? Or the assassin ?

“Yeah, but they’re already here !”

Same for ritualist…

The only asian influence here is the names of the ancestors that were mentioned, a cosmetic problem at best. There is no reason Anet could not just come up with a more Tyrian set of names that occurred in the past 250 years, perhaps from the initial rise of the elder dragons.

The class is scholar for lore reasons only. In fact, based on its abilities I would prefer it to be adventurer class.

The assassin’s entire concept is wrapped up ONLY the thief. Only the Paragon’s NICHE (party wide support) is filled by the guardian, not its mechanics.

Additionally, I think there are several mechanics introduced in my post that are unique. In fact, all of the utilities (apart from signets, which every class has), are unique in function or mechanic.

Weaponspells buff your attacks for the next few strikes, wheras Venoms put conditions on foes for the next few strikes. This is different.

Possessions are short term area of effect buffs. The most similar effect in game at the moment are banners, which last for a minute.

Binding rituals are immobile pets that apply their effect to enemies. The most similar is Nature rituals which apply their affect to allies and have a ‘toggle skill’.

Rituals are charge skills, which (to my knowledge) no other class has. The only charge skill in this game that I have come across is the environmental skill in metrica province when you are capturing oozes.

The functionality of several weapon skills is unique.

Furthermore, a concept does not NEED to be entirely new to be unique. How many classes can summon three pets to attack their foe? Engineer, Mesmer and Necro. What a unique mechanic. OH and human rangers (they can have FOUR if you take runes of the ogre)

This is a pretty sweet idea actually.

Well that was entertaining. I’ve decided not to do traits :P

Chrispy.5641:

I have a Thought for Weapon Spells.

In the Original Guildwars : Factions, Weapons Spells could be made to be used on allies as well. So why not make it to where Weapon Spells Affect you and all Allies around you. Do that and just increase the Recharge time…

Nightmare Weapon – Applies “Nightmare Weapon” to yourself and all surrounding allies. Next three Attacks steal health.

Ghostly Weapon – Applies ’Ghostly Weapon" to yourself and all surrounding allied. Next Attack is Unblockable.

etc.

etc…

Yep. planned on it being a trait though, like venom share.

Traits

Lines:

Spirituality: Increases healingpower and the effectiveness of Guardian Spirits by 1% per trait point. Traits focus on increasing the effectiveness of Guardian spirits and Binding Rituals.

Communing: Increases toughness and boon duration. Traits focus on Possessions and staff use.

Malice: Increases Vitality and Condition Damage. Traits focus on daggers and conditions.

Smithing: Increases Power and Condition duration. Traits focus on swords and weapon spells.

Rituals: Increases Precision and Critical damage. Traits focus on signets and rituals.