The only departments at which I would call them “meh” is at high fractals/raids
What class do you see as ‘good’ in high fractals then? Warriors that are forced in range and cant stack might? Necros that can be played by chimps? Mesmers that have to rely on others to not to suck, because all they are allowed to do is support and 0 damage? I can go on.
Guards is one of the (if not the) most adaptable classes in the game and they have a lot of builds that are viable and can work in different situations, so much so that every weapon is viable at some point (even staff when running or pre wall). Unless you are in a premade comp in paperland where everything is orderly and dandy (and even then), Guard is a top pick. Its a very pug friendly class that can provide anything your group needs and can even carry them.
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With higher vitality it should be easier to keep Scholar bonus as it depends on your health percentage as well.
From a fractal perspective we are in a good spot. So much so that dying in fractals as a necro has become a meme.
From WvW perspective we were fine to begin with and we didn’t receive any nerfs regarding our place in PvP. If anything I might dust off my power build for PvP.
I don’t know what to say about Necro in raids as I am not that experienced, but they may still be needed in places they were used (Sloth, Matt etc).
I may sound like I am ignoring the nerf but it is apparent that balance patches has hit a nerf trend – I am just glad Epidemic is still the same as it was and there wasn’t any other nerfs.
I was expecting nerf to the second part of the heal. Nerf to initial heal was pretty low and negligible. Cooldown and cast time increase do hurt but I wouldn’t worry too much. It looks like Anet is trying to stop power creep slowly but steadily, so eventually heal wouldn’t look bad. Its not that bad even now.
They do listen to reddit a lot. On general its why we have so many wings in gem store and on a more recent note, we saw the DR nerf removed in labyrinth in short notice. They just don’t listen everything, and for good reason.
Maybe they were aiming to stop this perma quickness nonsense? In any case, if the raid bosses can’t be done without perma quickness devs can just nerf the health of bosses. Nerf of SoI was done for the sake of all modes, not just raids.
I honestly didn’t know I could reflect/absorb those fires, and found about that you could jump shockwaves this week. Its my first month or so in fractals after so long, and I am wondering just how much potential I am missing as a Guardian.
I am happy with the changes as a Guardian, considering most other classes didn’t get off this easily. That being said, we may see an increase of Engis and Eles in PvP, which is bad news for us in there.
I guess their intention was to generalize the usage of Lich Form minions so that they don’t require heals to be effective, or Death Magic to last longer. I don’t know what Necros that raid will do now.
Again, you are so focused on SoI that you are missing the real problem.
1 – Perma stab, perma protection, perma resistance are much more powerful than perma quickness is. And those are not possible with just SoI because mesmer just does not generate enough of those boons to do it.
2 – SoI is fine. Illusionary inspiration is overtuned, especially considering its just a trait, but that doesn’t make SoI overpowered.
3 – This still wouldn’t be a problem if elite specs weren’t farting out the most powerful boons every other step. Like it or not, chrono can generate a lot of quickness, and I didn’t exclude them. But quickness is hardly as powerful as perma protection, stability, and resistance.
1- Perma Quickness > Perma Prot no contest. You not only have a solid %50 increase to dps, but can also cast any long channeled skill (heals, strong skills balanced by long channel) in the blink of an eye. As for permanent Resistance, you again have SoI to thank for that.
2- SoI cannot be seperated from traits and class itself. So long as Illusionary Inspiration exists, its a part of your usage of SoI, and the fact that it lets you spam the skill is overpowered. Looking at the other end, nerfing Illusionary Inspiration would still nerf SoI, and it would have been perhaps for the better instead of this change – but we will never know.
3- Without SoI we no longer have perma Quickness and Resistance. With Rev also being tuned, major contenders of the boon spam are being brought in line, except for Druid which I admit I don’t know much about. Anyone else is already bound to either mostly stationary targets and attacking (PS warr and hammer DH) or blasting fields (ele) – not to say it wouldn’t be justifiable to nerf them as well, but they are simply outclassed in their boon spamming by Mesmer and Rev.
But then you would be unintentionally buffing necros, and they cant have that. /s
Jokes aside (or not), that would do wonders for the Condi Necro meta we have in fractals. Now they will have quickness and transcend beyond need of any other class.
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…Boon duration, while still powerful, isn’t nearly as powerful if classes weren’t spitting out the most powerful boons every other step..
You mean Mesmers that are spitting out most powerful boons, namely Quickness? Its a joke that perma Quickness has became the norm. Perma Fury and 25 might were always there, even before spec patch – but not Quickness. Yes, Quickness wasn’t a boon before, but the moment it was made into a boon should have been the moment SoI was looked at.
SoI was strong, but not broken. It was a bit overtuned and a small nerf could not be horrible. But all it did was highlight what was really broken, the constant boon generation from rev and elite specs. If that isn’t addressed and the only “fix” is nerfing SoI and facet of nature then this patch will be nothing but an undeserved nerf for mesmers.
Boon generation from elite specs is the problem but the fact that you can cast SoI 4 or more times in a row and effectively send 4x of duration/stacks of those boons to everyone is just a symptom? Its the other way around. You are effectively saying SoI is fine and rest of the game is broken, like what?
SoI is an utility skill just like any other, and it should act like it. At the moment its better than most elite skills in the game and is easily the best ‘utility’ skill in the game.
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SoI is the most overpowered skill in the game, and Mesmers can cast it multiple times in a row with traits and Continuum. Epidemic comes nowhere close to that.
It’s mandatory in every single non PvE power build.
Anet doesn’t care about power necros unfortunately.
Other nerfs you suggest directly change the skills themselves, not in a good and thought out way too. At this point in game they will not change any skill entirely but instead play with numbers. To touch on the skills you mentioned (note that I dont think, maybe except for Spear of Justice, any skill needs any changes):
- If they must nerf Shield of Courage they should reduce the duration of it to 3 or 4 seconds and/or remove the Aegis component from the active. Along with that they could reduce the cooldown of Virtue of Courage drastically (to 40 seconds), so vanilla is actually an alternative.
-If they must nerf Spear of Justice they should either make it blockable or a bit slower, but not both, and make the pull component actually dodgeable with 3/4 sec instead of 1/2 if its really too hard to react (but I don’t think so). Along with that they could increase the stacks of burning from Virtue of Justice active and maybe have it daze or immobilize foe on next attack (by player only).
-I don’t think Hunter’s Fortification needs a nerf and I can’t even think of a nerf. It can at most cleanse 1 condition per second if you continue to attack the DH. Your attack is blocked and he cleanses a condi – shame on him, you attack again and he cleanses again – shame on you.
Sounds reasonable, more so than other nerf calls.
I cant post a build from phone, but mine is basically Zeal (Zealous Scepter, Kindled Zeal, Symbolic Avenger), Virtues (Unscathed Contender, Absolute Resolution, Permeating Wrath) and Dragonhunter (Piercing Light or Dulled Senses, Zealot’s Aggression, Hunter’s Fortification) with Scepter Focus (or Torch if I dont need it) and Shield. Scepter has Sigil of Force and I have Scholar runes etc. but offhands always have Sigil of Concentration. If I do it right I will always have 18+ might with peaks to 25 most of the time with Procession of Blades (more might if I use Torch 5).
I tended to use Chocolate Omnomberry Cream because people don’t even use any food as far as I could observe and I am cheap when it comes to food (but spend 40g for sigil for lolz), and it gives me Magic Find and Boon Duration (which is more might, prot and aegis), but out of request from a friend I also use the %8 damage on movement food (the one you can get for free from provisioner). I am experimenting on usages of Torch vs Focus, it is better on adds and fights where a lot of stuff is unblockable already (a lot of fights it seems, namely Chaos and Urban last boss aoes). Unblockable actually makes Shield better in a different way as you don’t lose its Aegis (Unscathed Contender dmg boost) and make use of Prot.
Edit: I agree that it is easier to stay alive in range, but its not just that. You have Scholar Rune, Unscathed Contender and damage bonus from movement you need to preserve. Shield and focus is really there for the obligatory damage prevention, cleanses and utility – which can also correspond to more damage due to damage bonuses you preserve (Shield 5 ‘protects’ your Aegis from projectiles). Torch is there when you can preserve bonuses without worry and if you have a good group like you have then its not an issue. In fact, it should be useful in stuff like Mai Trin when you all stack.
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Its not melee vs ranged they are trying to do in fractals I think, but rather having players use them both effectively. It is apparent from instabilities that they don’t want players to just camp melee, but we also have breakbars that are always there in an important attack, encouraging players to melee and break it. If they made breakbars more worth to break in T4 as well (such as in swamp) with a damage increase, melee may be more balanced with range and the end result is a more fluid gameplay of defensively ranging for the opportunity to go offensive with melee.
@Amaimon
If health sponges are too hard to deal with now and we have multiple threads like this, adding your changes will only make it worse. Not to say it wouldn’t be great to have extra mechanics to deal with instead of a health sponge, but just saying.
Camping melee should only work when you can both outmaneuver the purple squares and multiple people are melee or close too (optimally all party) so you are not focused by the boss all the time. Just have a longbow as your second weapon, its not bad in warrior as I heard and your weapon swap cooldown is even lesser than others so you can jump to melee when opportunity rises.
They could make good chunks of explorable paths in each dungeon a fractal, and have those dungeon specific fractals reward dungeon specific tokens times the tier number it has been completed – say T1 is 60, T2 is 120 etc. Explorable paths themselves do not have any effects in real game lore so it wouldn’t break anything either. Sure, some paths are just going to be abandoned, but we had a lot of years to do them.
From that point on they could assign each different fractal a token with the exception of Aetherblade, Mai Trin and newly put Aetherpath fractal – they should have Blade Shards as currency. Then it would be a simple matter to add some token specific skins/items in fractal vendors (like dungeon specific skins), such as Assault Power Cores for Blade Shards, Bloomhunger Branch skin for Etheral Swamp Moss etc.
I did fractals way before, probably around the year they were implemented and it just didn’t stick with me. I stopped doing them and didn’t go back unless I had to for a collection. I was interested with the changes fractals got thoughout the years but I thought I simply had fallen behind and was afraid of not knowing what to do. But I went ahead and tried it out a month ago so I could play with my friend. Yesterday was my first run at T4 and boy I had so much fun. Here I was trying to kite the ice elementals in final boss in dredge, having the mark on me and bam I got downed by Champion Rabbit. We wiped that fight due to rabbit and mobs, but we learned from it and finished the run. I got an ecto while other people got ascended chests, but it was very worth it anyway.
Torch is for groups that are already good. In such groups you dont have to worry about CC, survivability and all the other stuff that actually matters. This may be the case in T4.
I am currently on T3 and I have never seen a PS giving might, breakbar is never broken at time and more often than not you are undermanned as people just die. Torch offers me nothing to help me stay alive and actually finish the run. Min maxing damage will not do any good if I have no might.
I basically use Scepter + Focus/Shield for blocks, prot, cleanse and cc. I have to use Zealous Scepter trait to have might. I have to use Hunter’s Fortification as stuff live long enough to apply condi that actually matters in T3. Basically, torch is there to kick poor boss/mobs that are already on the ground.
There is also the repeatable achievement for AP, but those who are bored with dungeons probably did enough to cap on the max AP from that achi.
Dungeon recipes are among the few niche drops you can get from a specific place. Even better, you can’t get them from TP and their drop rate isn’t abysmal like a precursor.
Things you craft from the recipes don’t provide gameplay advantage, you craft some exotic trinkets with somewhat unique stats – except they are not unique and you can get ascended trinkets with those stats if you want.
I wish we had more stuff like this for people who like to focus on one content. While they reward a player’s choice to focus on one content, they also makes the loot more interesting. I don’t think adding it to vendor is the same thing. I think it would have been perfect for Anet to not have included the option to buy Fractal Tonic, but still put the option to exchange it with something else, so that the ‘interesting, unique-loot’ factor is always there. Likewise, it will be great to have thr option to exchange the dungeon recipes for tokens, say 1000, but not buying them.
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Well, Aetherpath is still not done as fast with your average pug – but even then its easy to finish them fast.
the only real reward in them is the 5 gold and 150 tokens of choice after ding 8 unique paths
Not withstanding the gold and the tokens you can exchange for rares.
Lets say that you don’t have any dungeon recipes. If you choose dungeons over and including CoF for seven of the paths and choose Aetherpath for your last path (weapon skin from end chest can be worth anywhere between 3g to 20g); you are going to get 26-28 rares from tokens, around 50 ish silver from each path that accounts to more or less 4 g, 5 g more from chest reward and atleast 3 more from Aetherpath end chest weapon – which isn’t all that bad. There is the champ bags, additional loot/salvage and even some Lodestones you can get from bosses.
If you happen to have some good dungeon recipes, you will beat most other gold methods out of the water. Of course, you need a good group to run these fast and efficiently, but what are guildies for anyway?
Well, Lazarus can still just slip to Mists to save himself. So, survival isn’t his only goal. If he were to slip into Mists and returned when dragons slept again, chances are that there wouldn’t be anyone else left. If Lazarus wants to rule the world, he has to save it first. He has to kill every last dragon to ensure that, as he also knows that remaining dragons become stronger as their fellow brethen die. Therefore the world isn’t safe even if only one dragon remains, as that dragon would just absorb the power of others – assuming Lazarus can’t simply drain the dragons we kill to the last drop and prevent others from getting stronger, which seems unlikely. Whether if he is truly in good will or not is not really relevant, as he has to be of opposition to dragons to the bitter end. Now, it may seem entirely plausible that he get rid of us once he sees the opportunity and carry on the fight with his White Mantle, but why would he do that if he can use more able fighters for his cause? So he is our ally while we save the world, regardless of his newfound altruism.
Only way we truly win is to have something of equal power to Lazarus, as we don’t have the means to rambo our way with fleet and press 1 to kill Lazarus like we did with Zhaitan, not to mention it wouldn’t be very effective if we could. We need to make sure the new hatchling to get his/her fair share of dead dragon magic to have leverage against Lazarus.
I am also a mainly pve player who time to time plays pvp, even much more rarely after HoT came out. Power necro was the way I went as well and it has done good first few times but after I started a routine I realised that I either rock or get rolled over, and the primary factor deciding that wasn’t my build as it should be but my teammates instead. That and how skillful other team was too. A build that is good in a favorable setup (good team comp and skills, bad enemy comp and skills) isnt a very good build.
I know that we are represented by condi too much and you may not like the idea of it, but I advice you try it anyway. I find the playstyle similar and with condi you really are playing to your strengths. You still have your bursts, your survival rotations and all. Your life force generation is lower than power, but learning your combos still can allow you to build up fast. If you want to be anti meta or ruin others’ combos, condi does that better than power.
It shouldn’t be Hunter’s Verdict v2. It just needs a more reliable projectile rather than unblockable.
Restoring Chilling Darkness would make Greatsword a viable hybrid weapon with a nice condi burst. It would bring variability to our condi weapons and open up some new builds.
In other words, its not going to happen.
If I may, I would suggest you drop Spite and go for Curses. I understand the reasons you go with Spite (namely cover condis, signet trait and some damage) but you can get those from Curses as well.
With Curses you have a free condi transfer which is by all means is still useful; you may not be in your staff, you may be in Shroud, you may not want to blow your single stun break etc. (Plague Sending). You may have more corruption for more cover condis and pressure (Path of Corruption), or better access to your heal and poison cloud as well which results in more poison and weakness uptime (Master of Corruption). On Grandmaster line, you may have even more weakness uptime (Weakening Shroud) or longer duration for your poison (Lingering Curses), both of them enhance what you want to do as a poisonmancer. You also get some hefty condition damage, bleed duration, precision and bleed on crit to go with that and your amulet. Since you don’t have Soul Reaping, you wouldn’t be staying in Shroud for too long anyway, which means Furious Demise has a big effect on your Shroud rotations. Lastly, you may use Sigil of Fraility and even Suffer instead of Plague Signet if you miss the cover condis you get from Spite (namely Vulnurability and single target Chill from Chill of Death).
As for elite skill, I would still go with Chilled to the Bone. Lich Form has too much of a cooldown, and although it can be a pretty good condi bomb with 4th skill, you dont get to use it very often. Chilled to the Bone has a much shorter cooldown, and shorter still with your trait. It is true that it has a long cast time, but your setup as it is allow for some combos to alleviate some of the problems: namely Sigil of Rage and Flesh Wurm. In the tips and tricks section of your video you already showed a combo with Wurm, you could do the same with channeling shout first and teleporting. Worst case scenerio is you become interrupted in which to do so they usually have to be in range which is what you want, or they just dodge out which is also not that bad as they already have Weakness they cant easily get rid off – so they won’t be dodging again any time soon.
As a final note, I would suggest a different rune for the same reason I suggested a different elite. The sixth bonus has a too large of a cooldown, and aside from condi duration precision doesn’t really help you a lot. There are a lot of runes you can choose, but I would say that the new Nightmare runes might be interesting with Chilled to the Bone. Moreover, Rune of Thorns is also a good choice as you tried, Grenth can be good for some extra chill. Even Afflicted can be interesting as you yourself can just go in as a suicide bomber. All of those have condition duration and condition damage you can use – and 6th effects that are much shorter on cooldown and controllable.
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Signet of the Wraith (45 second cd, instant cast):
Passive: %10 damage reduction.
Active: Damage foes, gain Life Force and recharge Shroud.
-Damage: something low
-Number of Targets: 5
-Life Force: %15 (not per target)
-Shroud recharge: %100
Well of Atrophy (60 second cd, 1/2 second cast time): Target area pulses, draining Endurance of enemies and Slowing them. If the affected foe has no Endurance left, they are Dazed instead.
-Slow: 1s
-Endurance drain: 35
-Daze duration if Endurance is not or partially drained: 1s
-Number of Targets: 5
-Pulses: 5
-Duration: 4s
-Range: 900
-Radius: 240
-Unblockable
-Combo Field: Dark
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How about treating the Tomes like the books they are, and adding a salvage option? Salvage can yield stuff like paper or ink for scribe.
I would like to say its my guardian. I imagine that he was just a regular guy, perhaps a farmer, going on with his daily life until disaster happened (can be anything from Jormag, dredge etc). Observing the catastrophe he was resolved to take action and became a Guardian that channeled willpower to magic.
I have multiple legendaries, perma gathering tools and mail carriers and i got legend in all 4 seasons – what are you implying =.=
That you dont need to be legend and still can get all the others… so you could be God himself playing pvp your words dont weigh more and your wallet is the same as mine or the newbie’s who got his account yesterday. The guy I mentioned above may even worth more to Anet than you because he does not come on the forums to give criticism and make Anet look bad. He’s kept in the illusion that the game is fine. Just like the majority of the population. And the thin layer between the masses and the few beneficiaries are ‘us’ who are actually capable of seeing this game for what it is (a great-great potential wasted away carelessly and for profits) and demanding quality improvements. We are the unwanted journalists who get kicked out from the press conference.
Oh wow. Yes you guys are totally unsung heros, the redpillers, the enlightened. Here you are, humble bragging that you beat a thief who has legendaries etc and acting as if he doesn’t deserve them, and complaining on forums is something revolutionary.
I’d say a ‘newbie’ is indeed more valuable to Anet or the community. At least they are still having fun and not patting themselves on the back for playing the game.
I think mechanics themselves are fine. Problems lie in too much AoE everything, too short cast times, too passive traits etc. Basically the game needs a nerf in all skills and traits as it is too much reward for little risk for everyone now.
thats 2015. wouldnt work well nowadays
Does your damage control stack with Protection?
As much as I hate to say, but we will never be given blocks. Not even that, most of the changes we got so far weren’t overhauls but some additions to the skills’ mechanics (more bleed, more damage, more corrupt etc). In this light, what I think would be cool is to add on a Fire Grab like effect, which if the enemy struck by Enfeebling Blood take additional damage or stunned or recharge Enfeebling Blood faster if the enemy already had Weakness on them.
yea no matter how you twist it…
It is called arguments, ideas and interpretations..
I think way we spawn Jagged Horrors through Death Nova is clunky. Having on death effects are bit out of touch with what is reality, as if you were killing something you obviously dont need much help.
Edit: Minion spawn in Death Nova could be made that it spawns from per foe hit by a Shroud 5 – only skill in shroud which has the least interaction with traits individually. For regular Shroud 5, minions can spawn on the end explode hit (and hit made dodgeable for counterplay), and for Reaper Shroud 5 it can spawn per enemy that enters the ice field (counterplay is interrupting or avoiding the huge hit and staying away from field).
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I think the heal is a bit over the top, and Spectral Wall grants life force for every foe that passes it, but other than that I like your ideas. If I may add, I think it would be really cool if the tether left behind from Spectral Walk was to be an ethereal combo field.
Reducing condition damage could also be what it does. I am not really sure about the direct damage decrease as we have Weakness and Protection doing that. I would prefer a unique effect for Revealed that is also impactful considering that it is short duration but cant be removed. Since people seem to struggle having unblockable skills or access to it, I thought this could fill that gap.
Some of the skills in game can apply Revealed to enemies. Now in theory this is reasonable, giving classes chance to counterplay against heavy stealth users like thief and mesmer, but these skills feel too niche to ever pick in a regular build. What if Revealed also permitted the enemy from blocking as well? It fits thematically and could allow for a much wider use of such skills.
In the way OP suggests I think not, but it would be nice to have an update on all symbols. Mace 3 being “normal” just indicates how far the power creep has gone, so I would leave it. Its just that if you think from a pre spec patch point of view its too much, but what isnt these days?
I just feel that it does a bit too much for 1 skill. It is basically block, block again and protection – all for allies too. In a perfect world this is unbalanced, but with the way things are its not even mentioned.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I like mace a lot and it might be my favorite weapon in Guardian, but I dont know if getting Aegis when you block is necessary. I would rather have something else as I almost feel guilty using it.
Mace is in a good spot (not sarcasm), third skill is even a bit over the top with the block spam. Only thing that need adjusting is the symbol cast time to bring it more along the line to newest symbols.
In the case of having number of enemy necros equal to your blob’s size, you might as well use F1 and jump off a cliff to pull them with you I guess.