I agree that it doesn’t seem that bad, thats why I called it a change instead of a nerf. Slow arguably has less defenses against it and is a rare, powerful condition. Its breakbar value is the same with daze while it ignores Stability and can be more commonly boosted in its duration than daze. As far as enemy players are concerned, it may be used both defensively and offensively.
It finally happened. Traps no longer daze, but slow instead. How do you guys feel?
Thanks for the responses. I tried for condi ranger for the first time in fractal last night, and of course my friend chose the ones with afflicted and toxic trail to troll. Although I died a lot (even SB #3 myself off a cliff) I had a lot of fun. However, I realized that I simply can’t do much to contribute the party aside from dps and that bothered me. So I think I will get Druid next time.
Hello Rangers and Druids! I have finished gearing my condi ranger for T4s but I have some questions. My questions result from the fact that I have to pug (and please keep this in mind while answering) T4 almost always, and are mostly build related.
So, my first question: is taking Druid for condi worth it in fractals? I can theoretically increase group dps with Grace of the Land, but how has been your experiences in pugs with buffing? Also, is taking Nature Magic worth it in pugs? Stone Spirit seems to give a lot of Protection on range when traited but is it really that necessary? If I wanted to take Druid or Nature Magic, what traitline do you think I should drop for them? Lastly, if I have Druid should I chase around allies and heal them or heal only those near me?
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And let’s not talk about the shield…
Shield is good CC, projectile defense, block and prot. Torch is good… damage? Even Torch 4 is bad as it can miss when target is in range and in same elevation.
I don’t think we need to have instances for world bosses, as map population limit serves the same purpose on a larger scale. What we need is increased difficulty (Triple Wurm is balanced enough), increased rewards, decreased cost for guild spawn and decreased spawn cooldown. These changes should encourage people to put more effort to secure a kill while decrease the penalty for failing it.
I didnt include vendors and crafting, because my argument is about loot tables and how you cant get all rewards from a single tier, so by that account its impossible to get to full ascended only by ascended drops from daily chests in T1. Sure, I could have put a better example like Nightmare fractal – grinding its normal mode doesn’t give access to the Caustic skins in that you have to do its achievements first (including doing it in T4) and then complete challenge mode. Or another in form of raid loot system in WoW (arguably ‘the’ raid game) – each difficulty has gear quality associated with it and if you grind normal mode you don’t get a full set of armor from mythic mode, not ever.
I don’t know if you even actually read what I said. You may not like the example I put but that doesn’t change my point. My reasoning is there if you read it; tier rewards should be exclusive to their tiers. That means, even if lower tiers are able to give some parts for legendary, people would still need to do/grind hard (or current) tier to get legendary armor. This is very similar to how we obtain Ad Infinitum.
Raiders spent a lot of time learning, practicing and organizing to be able to grind the raid. Its only fair easy mode players spend more time grinding than current raid players. However, in order for time spent grinding easy mode to be ‘reasonable’, they would need to do hard mode to get other necessary components.
I just want to say that if or when we get tiered raid system, their rewards shouldn’t be the same at all. In most other games the gear you obtain from lower tiers are different and/or weaker than higher tier gear, and serve to power up the players to withstand damage in higher tiers. You do not grind lower tiers to get higher tiers’ loot. Likewise, it would be unfair for raiders if an easy mode offered same rewards – even if it would take longer to get them in easy mode.
Fractals have this in a way. Loot tables of daily fractal chests show that Initiate’s Chest doesn’t yield any ascended chests, Adept’s has a small chance to yield only weapon chests, Expert’s has a higher chance to yield weapon chest and a small chance for armor and Master’s has an even higher chance to yield weapon chest and higher chance for armor. Each tier’s reward prepare for the higher tier, in form of agony slots. You can’t hope to grind T1 dailies for full ascended (not counting crafting and vendor).
Raids need organization and time for success (much more so than even t4 fractals to compare), and if an easy way out to get its rewards is to be introduced it would break the raid community apart. I mean, who would show the time and commitment to get better if they can just grind it in a failproof way?
Raid rewards are already RNG related and may not worth a whole lot, trinkets you can get from them are inferior to some much easier to get LS ones (blood ruby) and raid themed stuff are more often than not are put to gem store. Easy mode, if its ever implemented, shouldn’t take away the stuff raiders cling on to.
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It would be fine if it rewarded a skin etc exclusive to the story mode upon completion or its achis. As long as everything exclusive to raids are obtained through raids only, I think story mode can have some rewards with flavor.
On fractals you can survive decently, provide reasonable amount of boon support (depends on the weapon you choose) and self buffing, break a boss almost by your own, provide excellent ranged dps (rankings make more sense when its a raid or its organized) that is easy to maintain, provide a very long duration projectile defense and have some key blocking skills you can use for big hits against yourself or allies or use them while rezzing a teammate.
@Wharrgarbl
I do use Retreat a lot, it can work especially well with Unscathed Contender as it is our longest duration on demand Aegis. However, reason a signet or a trait is still better for movement bonus is that they can be changed at will before combat, whereas you have to actually activate Retreat for speed bonus. It may look minor, but if you play Guardian for a long time it starts to be annoying.
Meh, the weapon themes themselves can be scrapped. I am just suggesting to keep the main ideas behind them and a bit more, like in the case of Bow its condi clear and heals.
@Aeolus
I was thinking to scrap the healing arrows thing and have instant heal. Projectile part of the skill already require positioning so requiring allies to be somewhere again for its duration might be too much.
In general I am thinking something like Mesmer Shield 4 in terms of the projectile area and speed. Not all of the spirit weapons can be translated directly to this version so alterations can be made.
Hammer of Wisdom’s projectile counterpart can stunbreak allies it passes through, and its detonate stuns for 3 seconds. Sword of Justice’s projectile can increase the damage of allies it passes through for %33 for the next 2-3 seconds and deal nice damage on detonate. Shield of Avenger’s projectile can give 2-3 seconds of Aegis to allies and 2-3 seconds of Weakness on foes and put a dome of projectile defense for 20 seconds on detonate, cooldown increase on detonation is adjusted for the big effect as Shield of Avenger is a unique skill for its long projectile defense and it should stay that way. Each of the skills have 20 second cooldown, and the cooldown increase for each skills is x2, except for Shield which should be x4.
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It would be nice to direct SoA towards where we need projectile defense, but why would we need the AI between the command and the action? I say we remove the AI completely, and make them skills we control.
I was thinking something like a mix of a projectile and area effect, like Staff 2. For example, skill replacing Bow of Truth can instead send a projectile that converts conditions to boons on allies it passes through (including self). You can detonate the projectile and heal in an area but cooldown of skill increases.
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Just a hunch, but I can see spirit weapons changing come next expansion. Otherwise, asking for fruitful changes now seems wasted by the design/development team. It could also be a route they don’t want to take Guardians in anymore – use of AI.
They didnt have to make fruitful changes. Make them unkillable again and reduce CD. SW would be useful again.
I don’t want them to be Necro Minions 2.0. AI builds are boring. If they make them untargettable (so they don’t aggro) that is a different story. But even then, its better to have their effects on player rather than seperately on them.
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It’s not like we can’t be threatening and bossy in character. Our dialog with Caithe in the last 2 chapters of HoT story shows this. I mean, who cares about Eir or rest of them? Player character was the one to take their pettiness and infight, bring them back and remind what is at stake. Player character was the one to form the greatest organization against dragons in history. Player character was the one to press 1 and slay Zhaitan. Player character was the one that lead the fight inside Mordremoth’s find, and he/she was the one to end it personally. How can any of the Destiny’s Edge members compare, less so Braham? Of course it is only up to us players to choose when to fight dragons Braham, we killed Zhaitan when you were in your Norn boy shorts.
A guardian can use Staff to build near-permanent switftness. The swiftness stack lasts longer than the cooldown on the staff skill. So, each time the staff skill comes off cd, stop and build switfness.
Over time it’s possible to stack an impressive amount of quickness and run far and fast.
Everyone knows this already just by looking at tooltip. It is also apparent that we need to stand in the symbol for Swiftness, an oxymoron in itself.
By the way guys, you can jump over the orbs and focus on the orange circles only. Just spamming jump and moving away from orange circles get you a long way ahead.
Maybe they could make a solo story instance. They could add some achis with a skin from the meta reward of it. I am just writing what I think could be OK:
Events happen before raid and you are accompanied by Countess Anise to investigate kidnappings and White Mantle activity in raid area. Anise would be following you from afar invisible while you would be in White Mantle disguise to get information, and in the instance you get to meet with Sabetha, Trio and Matthias and visit or oversee places for non human bosses with White Mantle patrol and help them clear out the remaining Mordrem in the area, stop some Slubling incursions, kill some ghosts etc. By the end you go by Xera to find out whats really going on but she sees through your disguise. Countess appears next to you and is locked in battle with Xera, and you get to kill some boss phantasms of Xera in process. In the end, Countess is overwhelmed and teleports herself and you away in the nick of time.
As for why they would ever make a ‘story mode’, I am not sure. It certainly costs dev resources but so does the raid, and the community it appeals to is a small fraction of players. Story mode might encourage more people to raid.
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Did all achis except the one that requires you to get pasted (and die?) in last boss. Could you maybe change that achi for one that doesn’t need you to get hit?
The difficulty of the fractal was well designed, it was melee friendly and immersive. Puts good emphasis on CC and a bit of projectile defense.The last ‘shield’ part on last boss was really scary, claustrophobic even, but in a good way. I have no idea how will it be with the challenge mote (reduced healing), but I am looking forward to it.
I like the way mysterious asura story is going, but I think he takes us for friendly a bit too soon in fractal? Wish we could talk with him to at least confirm we aren’t bad guys instead of staying silent.
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I think on death stuff isn’t such a good idea. Skills should be affected what you do during the combat not after it, otherwise they won’t be there when you need them. This is why Necros were affected so heavily from Lich Form #4 change, as they have no means to generate Jagged Horrors in combat anymore.
They should change Death Nova’s minion generating part and make it so that you summon a Jagged Horror when your minions die (excluding Jagged Horrors themselves) without cooldown.
If they feel that Jagged Horrors last too much with heals, they can change them as they did with Lich Form #4, but maybe increase the duration to 40 seconds if at all. The duration doesn’t become that limiting as the means to generate Horror would be greatly improved; one only needs to sacrifice/kill minions as fast as they can.
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I only ever saw 1 whirl projectile from Gravedigger. I am not really sure though. If its 4 as you said than it should be great on an Ice Field.
In PvE spirit weapons can be decent. Shield is one of our best tools for projectile defense while Hammer is one of our best tools for CC. Sword is OK for a filler role. Bow definitely sucks.
On other modes they can be just spiked down immediately. I don’t think long cooldowns are problem if skills have powerful effects (Shield and Hamme definitely do). I think the main problem lies in skills being AI and buffing the AIs in anyway wouldn’t be really healthy for us.
Skill itself is perhaps only good indirectly, like me and Ghotisyx mentioned, for F1 procs. Its utility is bit clunky but manageable. What it desperately needs is something to benefit self, even self-cleanse when you cleanse someone else effect would go a long way.
Norn male as humans cant be that wide.
Not that I am complaining much. Necros needed their break. Its just that playing necro in fractals is pretty much easy mode, so Necros you get from pugs think they can do no wrong.
We could have Necro GS auto similar to Guard Hammer, where the third attack doesnt give 2 sec chill to 5 targets but instead places an Ice Field on the ground that lasts for 2 seconds, and pulses 1 second of chill and damages for 3 times. Some of the auto’s damage is reduced to compensate for the damaging field, but it should be made that its an overall damage buff to GS.
Gravedigger could perform 3 whirl finishers instead of of one as it feels silly and redundant that an animation that powerful only has one. Due to the nature of whirl finishers, they are unreliable on range as they dont track really well, however, they can their target with great accuracy on melee. So with this change Gravedigger also allows you to stack a lot of condis if you use it on a combo field.
Finally, we can increase Death Spiral’s range, reduce its aftercast but increase its cast time and make it so that it shoots piercing projectiles (think Unload or Rapid Fire with 900 range). The new Death Spiral can also shoot 10 times instead of 6 with every projectile doing same damage as hits in old skill but every hit gives %1 life force and inflicts 1 stack of Vulnurability to each foe they hit. Basically, Death Spiral can now proc projectile combos (%20 chance per projectile), has a higher range, smaller aftercast, much higher damage and hits everything in the line at the cost of being denied by reflects etc, more cast time and a tiny life force loss.
With these two changes we can now chill our foes more reliably both from melee and range. This also opens up the opportunity for GS to become a hybrid weapon when Deathly Chill is used.
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Radiance has %10 more damage for Sword, %20 less Sword cooldowns and %25 Sword crit chance in traits, not to mention high amount of blind spam, Big Game Hunter synergy and Greatsword synergy. Zeal is a good staple for builds, but having a Sword build without Radiance is like having a Hammer build without Honor.
Guardian was allowed in the dungeon meta though at least. You never saw “no guardian/necro/ranger” parties, just the two latter.
I literally got kicked as a Guard from T4 because I didn’t have a Necro. Granted, they specified they wanted 4 Necro cancer team in LFG, but I saw different classes in team so I figured I might join too because it was the only full daily LFG available. And this is only one example, just look at LFG and it is filled with groups like this that exclude any non-Necros. How the tables have turned.
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I use it when I use scepter as it is the only cleave the set has aside from symbol. It can also be useful if you have a F1 passive build.
I would expect an ICD of 1 sec as we have different sorts of limitations in all of our on block traits; such as of course ICD, opportunity cost (on Aegis block traits, we cant really chain Aegis reliably), weapon choice (have to pick Mace for Invigorated Bulwark), attack speed (Defender’s Dogma) and upkeep demand (Retributive Armor effect has short duration).
Warr or Guard.
Warr and Guard have amazing build variability and can both range and melee effectively. Guard has one of the best dps at the moment and can bring a lot of defensive support, while Warr is staple for almost all teams with their amazing offensive support and solid dps.
Both of these classes, if you build and play right, can be extremely survivable to play and great self buffing in solo and is a good pick for soloing dungeons or going around open world. Where other support classes and dpsers such as Ele, Mesmer etc may fall short without a good group in fractals, Guard and Warr can thrive in pugs and even carry them. They are easy to pick up but can have a lot of room for exploration and improvement. You cant go wrong with either of them.
Warr can achieve perma Swiftness easily and have one of the best movement capabilities in the game, probably only second to Thiefs. Guard is slower than Warr, but can achieve perma Swiftness on their own right.
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Maybe something in between would be the best. Don’t forget that we actually have to go in allies’ face and blow cooldowns for this, and the fact that we are taking the signet means we aren’t taking RF, so it has to be worth it.
Hammer is good mostly in group play. One can expect it to be good on solo as well but you wont be mitigating as much damage as you think, for you have no blocks, blinds and have to go melee. However, it also has its upsides, mainly in good symbol and prot uptime and massive CC. If you want to play hammer for solo, I suggest you don’t camp it and pair it with something else. Sigil of Agility on Hammer is also a good idea, as it reduces the time you are initially using your auto without Prot. You can also use the sigil for the CC skills if that is the reason why you swapped to Hammer.
Hammer auto has some tricks that can be useful on solo. For one, you can use the next step of auto chains if you already started it, even though you killed your foe. This also allows you to use the third step of your autoattack two times. So when you kill some mob, use 1 again for another symbol. You can also dodge in between the second and third steps of the chain and not reset the auto. Finally, if you decide to use Hammer with a range weapon, you can start to go to range as you are done with second step of auto. You will cast the third step of chain in range and the symbol will be placed between you and your foe. After that you can swap to your ranged weapon and enjoy your on range Prot symbol.
Its a bug for sure. There is no reason it should behave differently than other symbols.
Back then all we had was a 5-7k heal every 25 seconds (+1.5 hours cast time)…
Oh the good old days. Cast times were so realistic back then.
Yes, heal allies on block for passive seems a lot better than what I put. But what would you say about the base value of heal, its scaling and range? Personally, I think base heal should be like third or half of Pure of Heart, same healing coefficient (0.5) with it and 240 ish range so we have to block stuff next to our allies, ideally block attacks meant for them.
Here is something I used before:
You basically rotate between blocks and dodging for survival. You have high endurance regen, so you should be able to dodge (and heal and get might) like every 4.5 seconds if you do it right. You can also get a lot of protection barring perma with the sigil and rune. You have a lot of blocks, and each of them give you might, healing power, toughness and cleanse while Aegis additionally heals you. Even with solely Mace 2, you have 440 ish heal per second on minimum. You have a decent amount of healing power that scales really well with your heals.
I think for passive effect they should just remove the healing interval completely and give something unique to it like ‘heal allies when you heal yourself’ or ‘heal allies when you apply a boon on them’ etc, something that encourages an action or give rise to some interesting synergy instead of giving healing every 8 seconds. Swiftness pulse is also a ood idea, but we can all agree that we will never have passive movement bonus.
As everyone else agrees, active cooldown should be shortened and its activation time reduced to 2-2.5 sec. Movement limit should be balanced if we have short enough cast time to compensate for it.
Example:
Signet of Courage: (2.25 sec cast time, 120 second cooldown)
Passive: Heal allies around you when you heal yourself.
Active: Fully heal nearby allies.
Active Heal: %100
Passive Heal: 10-15 (little to no healing coefficient on purpose)
Number of targets: 5
Passive radius: 240
Active radius: 1200
Combat only.
Healing value may look pitiful, but when we dedicate ourselves it can become strong. Between Altruistic Healing, Writ of Exaltation, Virtue of Resolve passive, Zealous Blade and many more self heals it suddenly becomes powerful and rewarding of our choices.
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Necros I have seen so far dont use Epidemic very well, rely on Shroud instead of dodging, still use Lich Form instead of Flesh Golem and think they can solo everything. Good Necros are still an easy pick in fractals though.
You are playing solo right? Etterwyn put some good advices there but if I may add I would advice you to bring atleast one stun breaker. Our defense is pretty strong when we can use them, Blocks, Prot etc, but when you are stunned you wont be able to continue attack chain for prot and you dont have instant blocks aside from Focus 5. I would advice Signer of Judgment for solo play.
I would advice you to use Dragon’s Maw or Renewed Focus on solo. Feel my Wrath is good, but you are not in a dps race and can use some more defense. Dragon’s Maw, while giving you 10 mights, also conveniently shuts down groups of mobs for its duration and destroys breakbars, giving you some room to breath. Renewed Focus is probably our best elite and is one of the best elites in the game. It has unparalleled defensive capabilities and is essentially a reset button for you when things go wrong
I think there are better options for solo survivability than Hammer. Perma prot is surely tempting and looks good on paper, but it is just better to avoid damage altogether. If you are keen on melee, I would either go with your previous Mace + Shield or Focus, Sword + Shield or Focus or Greatsword. All of these choices provide active means of mitigation in some form of CC, block or blind, and can have higher burst dps than Hammer which reduces the time you are in combat taking damage.
If you want to try ranged, I suggest you try Scepter with Zealous Scepter or Longbow with Retribution and Unscathed Contender. You can stack plenty of might while ranging with Scepter, and when you are solo that might is more valuable than Fiery Wrath. You probably need about 7-10 stacks to break even. I can cap myself on might pretty easily with a group of foes, and with Procession of Blades and Permeating Wrath I can cap and maintain might on myself on a single target. I am currently experimenting with Rune of Strength and Sigil of Concentration on T4 to get as much damage as possible when I cant rely on might from party or Scholar bonus.
As for Longbow combo I told, it shines on a group of mobs and bursting, which is what open PvE is all about. Start with F1, which will give you %30 damage from Retribution, Big GameHunter and Zealot’s Aggression combined, use Retreat (and possibly Save Yourselves) for Unscathed Contender and Power of the Virtuous and use Longbow 2 for absurd damage.
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Necro is easy mode
Is necro still pretty decent, even after the minion nerf?
Lich form nerf did not affect fractal necros much IMO. I encountered Necros before that pretty much spammed the Mark of Horror regardless of there was anyone in the team to heal them, and I don’t suppose those Jagged Horrors with 0 heals lived much longer than 30 second versions Necros have today.
In any case you still have Rise minions that take 0 damage in PvE and are barely affected by their nerf, other minions that can tank for you and transfer your conditions, Shroud’s comparable defense to active mitigation due to longer fights and plenty of unblockable stuff and reasonable damage that you can apply on range regardless of the mobs/bosses’ positioning.
If you were playing condition heavily the bosses should take longer to kill as they have higher healths now. I would advice you to have some power specced people that have good ranged options like Ele, Ranger or Guard. You might also want to choose the fractals without Afflicted and Toxic Trail.
I pug T4 a lot with my friend and it can take from 20 ish minutes to an hour to finish all dailies, depending on how good pugs are. All in all, you don’t need much theorycrafting and preparation really. Key thing is to stay alive and contribute as much as you can after.
I think Shield of Courage can lose its Aegis and Virtue of Courage can have a smaller cooldown like 40-50 sec. Virtue of Resolve can have the same amount of heal with Wings of Resolve with 35-40 sec cooldown. Virtue of Justice should either provide more burning or some other support on its active or have its cooldown reduced to 10-15 seconds.
Take Permeating Wrath in Virtues and don’t use your F1 and your traps will pretty much AOE burn people quite often. Especially procession of blades trap.
Exactly this. You also get Defender’s Dogma in DH that allows you to trigger F1 after you block, which effectively makes F3 a dps cooldown as well. Combining this trait with Amplified Wrath and maybe Rune of Guardian could make an interesting setup.
Torch 5 already provides 10 stacks of burning to 5 targets when fully supported.
Should be even more with Permeating Wrath. I sometimes use it in my build with pugs, and it usually tops me at might with Zealous Scepter, stacks a lot of Cripple with Zealot’s Aggression and a hefty amount of Vulnurability if I use Dulled Senses.
Dont get me wrong; Torch 5 is good for F1 procs and 4th skill is good damage, the weapon just needs some polish in its practical use, and have a more refined role than damage/burning like our other offhands.
4th skill you give a reliable Prot and an Aegis in a large cone to ensure you can buff your allies. Something that isnt really mentioned is that the Aegis application can be used as a dps buff with Unscathed Contender before some combos – especially for a short period of time you know you dont need block (after breakbar etc). Aegis and Prot are both on a ranged, short cast time weapon skill. On every other case where you want either of these boons you have to camp hammer auto, block something with mace, slot shouts or blow F3. With shield you have very little opportunity cost for these boons.
5th skill is a mobile projectile dome that can absorb projectiles from all angles – including from above for stuff like barrage etc. Wall of Reflection is good, but its not always enough. It is also a good CC when you need it and a small heal on top.
If anything Torch needs a bit more help so its utility is less clunky to use, and a bit less altruistic. Reducing the cast time for 5th skill was a good change, it just needs some more tweaking with 5 (something to benefit self) and making the 4th skill projectile more reliable.
They are not that bad. Shield is pretty much mandatory if you cannot trust your teammates for projectile defense, and its duration is almost as long as the cooldown of Wall of Reflection so you can chain a WoR, SoA and WoR again seamlessly. Hammer is also good if you again can’t trust your teammates for CC and don’t want to slot Dragon’s Maw. Sword isn’t bad for burst damage I guess – should be atleast better than using Test of Faith only for initial damage like most people do. Bow is meh, but atleast it has cool visual effects you can use on LA.
If any change is to come, I would rather Spirit Weapons revamped completely to remove AI aspect. Look at how pets/minions cheesed other classes, I dont want that for Guard.
You can delete the elite right away if you think its useless. Rest of us enjoy playing Guardians.