It seems that of the players who believe the leaks that revealed mounts, not many took the time to look at the accompanying images for masteries which revealed how they are going to work.
Without wishing to get this thread locked and myself infracted for referencing specific details, I think that based on that info we can thoroughly debunk three possibilities: that mounts will function merely as a simple convenience boost to land speed; that the fliers will function as WoW-style flying mounts and serve to bypass platforming; and that mounts will be completely disconnected from the game’s combat system.
Instead to me each mount looks like its own navigation system, on par with the HoT systems of gliding and mushrooms, but with better combat support in the core design.
@OP A question: if you place such a premium on having your individual choices affect the game world, then may I ask what exactly is drawing you torwards playing a MMO game? If the answer is “not much” you might be better off with a solo game or a smaller group campaign.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Snowfall
A slightly odd request I know given how niche this rune is for normal PvP, but now that the brawling pit aka Arena exists I think it has… potential. My reasoning is threefold:
1) Being able to enter the fray by freefall jumping, without dying to fall damage, would make it easier for the player to engage their opponents on their terms.
2) The rune 6 effect is a potent and interesting effect for certain builds, e.g. Reapers using Deathly Chill or Mallyx Revenants running Abyssal Chill. Especially for this mode given that it is an AoE.
3) The brawling pit seems like a fun place to play around with gimmick builds that wouldn’t cut it in proper matches.
And yes, I am discussing buildcraft for what is in effect a PvP sideshow ::D
Now that Flashpoint has been out for a while and the PvP update has been thoroughly datamined I thought it might be fun to make some detailed speculations regarding the end of Season 3, so I can look back later and laugh at how wrong I was ::D
So, my blind guesses informed considerations are as follows:
Schedule
I think we’ll get the trailer within a week or so, and then the next PvE patch will be episode 6. This would then mean that the rift events would either have to be resolved within the patch or after it, as an epilogue and filler between episode 6 and the expansion.
The trailer itself will feature Aurene, Braham and Balthazar and will show a new arctic map representing Jormag’s Domain. The trailer might or might not mention a new fractal but regardless one of those will also arrive in the same patch. After the trailer and before the update we will see some Aurene and winter-themed items in the gem store in order to build hype, just like the Jormag Dyes and Godslayer bows have done.
Story
It’s very hard to speculate how the patch will end without knowing the story of the expansion it’s going to bridge to, but I can at least try to guess how they will bridge the episode 5 story to the new map.
The patch will open with either Taimi or Aurene calling the commander to Tarir, either because they expect an attack from Balthazar or just to have a conference about the problem. Either way the first story instance will be an attempt by Mr. B to kill/steal Glint’s scion – Taimi, Poobah, a weapon-equipped Scruffy 2.0, KasJory, Caithe, Aurene, Ruka and The Luminate will mount a spirited defence and successfully drive off the zaishen/mercenary invaders, but in the process Tarir will be burned and/or the Exalted slain. At the end of the mission Rox will appear to report that Braham has led a war party of headstrong Norn to Jormag’s domain and is poised to make final assault.
Since we now know that both possible outcomes of this action (Braham slays the dragon/Braham wakes the dragon) would be disasters we, along with the rest of Dragon’s Watch (minus Rytlock), resolve to head north to the new map to try and save the world, taking Aurene with us since there is no longer a Tarir to keep her in.
Either the idea of using Aurene to absorb the excess magic from a dead Jormag is floated by Taimi in this instance or it will be introduced during the map tour.
Braham of course won’t listen to us, and so after the doing the secondary story in the map tour we will have a final story instance that involves a four-way showdown between Braham, Dragon’s Watch, Jormag and Balthazar and ends with the setup for the expansion 2 arc.
Thoughts? Anyone else have speculations you’d like to share?
Sad to see several of my favourite maps being mentioned here. Some brief comments on what others have said before I drop my own list:
- The meta event in Dragon’s Stand is stellar as challenging open world content, and focusing the map around supporting that event as well as possible makes perfect design sense to me. Even when the event is not running however I enjoy exploring the map as it has good rewards (easy hero points, pods) and a wonderfully lonely and threatening vibe.
- Draconis Mons is another masterpiece in late-game open world content, a proper final exam for all the exploration skills the player has developed in HoT/LWS3. The rewards and the systems which give them are great, learning the map makes navigation progressively easier and the jumping puzzle is worthy of all the praise it has garnered and more.
- Verdant Brink is probably the best map for environmental storytelling in the game with all of its rich outpost storylines. Content is easy to get into, the terrain is wonderfully varied and clear layering makes its verticality easy to naviage.
- Tangled Depth is… admittedly not my favourite map. However it’s not in my bottom 5 because several elements of the map are rather good: in particular I would single out Rata Novus, the SCAR event chain and Zinn’s JP as being a cut above.
With that out of the way, my list:
1. Southsun Cove: An exceptionally barren map. And compared with the other level 80 zones this map is far below par in terms of innovation and exploration.
2. Bitterfrost Frontier: I feel this map is somewhat flawed, even beyond its AFK problem. The meta-mechanics (Elixir, Torch, blizzard) are not substantial or attractive, and I feel that the content is not well distributed throughout the area (e.g. boring areas like the ice sheets are packed with events whilst interesting areas such as the forest treetops or Kodan township have none).
3. Plains of Ashford: I wouldn’t call this a terrible map but I feel it is the weakest of the starting zones, with less NPC/terrain variety, fewer secrets to explore and fewer events to get involved in.
4. Black Citadel – aside from the navigation issue mentioned by others, this city has had less support since launch than Rata Sum, the Grove or Divinity’s Reach which have all had LW story relevance and two of which have race-specific festivals. That said all of the city maps feel a bit vestigal at the moment and could do with some rebuilding of purpose.
5. Hard to say for this last one, I guess it would be whichever of the mid-level core zones is the most forgettable.
Leaving aside this talk of trailers, where did you get that footage from? Because what’s shown here is quite interesting and I’d like to know if there is more.
The only things you would miss out on by not playing live are the items that were available from Black Lion Chests during the time of each patch. So in all the important ways you will get the full experience, and it’s not impossible that some of these gemstore items will come back at some point.
I would recommend buying it, or at least buying certain episodes. The big content change in season 3 is that each episode came with a map, and buying the appropriate episode gives you access to that map as follows:
Episode 1 “Out of the Shadows”: Bloodstone Fen
Episode 2 “Rising Flames”: Ember Bay
Episode 3 “A Crack in the Ice”: Bitterfrost Frontier
Episode 4 “Head of the Snake”: Lake Doric
Episode 5 “Flashpoint”: Draconis Mons
Episode 6: Not yet out
The maps and story instances are generally speaking high-quality content, with some really impressive experimental design that does a lot to shake up the core and HoT gameplay. That said not every player has enjoyed every episode equally and I would certainly recommend some over others for players who cannot or don’t want to buy them all.
I’m not quite following you – are you asking for traits that give the Revenant more energy? Or more traits that apply effects when spending energy?
I personally would look into changing Shiro, sword/sword and Devastation at the same time, tweaking functionality and costing so that more skills see more use and so that assassin DPS revenants handle their energy in a different way from demon DPS revenants.
You see to me, the big problem with Impossible Odds is how it tends to hog all of Shiro’s energy – I’d love it if Shiro builds could use their full range of skills without compromising their DPS. A lenghty uptime of superspeed and swiftness is simply too generally useful for the other skills to compete. Therefore I would be tempted to make radical changes to the Impossible Odds, including either scrapping the skill or scrapping its energy cost and balancing from there.
@ShadowRain X Sounds like Demonic Defiance (even in its current incarnation) would be a good candidate for split skill balance across game modes. Resistance is one of these weird effects (like Taunt) that’s inherently unbalanced across game modes: in PvP you can’t gear for maximum power and condition damage at the same time, so permanent resistance will shut your build down if you choose the latter; whereas across different attacks a PvE challenge will often deal deadly direct and condition damage, so permanent resistance only shuts down a couple of threats.
Also, although I wasn’t there for beta I’m not surprised I am unconsciously apeing earlier designs: from what I hear the old Mallyx had greater cohesion of design that was compromised over time by tweaking ::)
@InsaneQR Right now I am currently conceptualising the Mallyx legend as being about three things in particular: dealing close range condition damage; having resistance and benefiting from having conditions on self; and stripping boons from foes. You can see each of these three ideas expressed in the 7-9 Mallyx utilities and with the my proposed changes two of these ideas have a 3 trait sequence:
- Condition procs = Venom Enhancement, Abyssal Chill, Diabolic Inferno
- Resistance = Demonic Defiance, Maniacal Persistence, Pulsing Pestilence
Right now boonstrip only has a the Opportune Extraction minor trait and Spontaneous Destruction from the middle set of options. I’m considering therefore a GM that works with enemy boons somehow but before I’m happy with a design I’d have to do a pass over Replenishing Despair and Spontaneous Destruction in order to see how they could work as a set.
@InsaneQR That’s a really, really big question, one which probably deserves one or multiple threads in its own right. It’s also not something I would commit to without some thought. Right now I’m considering how Jalis/Retribution could be reworked to create a classic tank rev that is equipped to draw aggro, survive a beating and punish foes who hit them but I need more time to meditate on it.
@InsaneQR Thanks for the compliment ::) Regarding abyssal chill there’s definitely competition there, but I think the use cases are sufficiently different that both traits could exist. The current revenant chill effects are quite bursty in terms of their DPS, whereas with the right balancing this resistance skill could give more sustained damage. Perhaps to accentuate this further the trait should provide longer bleed stacks instead of shorter torment ones.
@Dagger you make a good point. There is wriggle room with the approach I’ve laid out and I’ve tried to make clear the reasons for these suggestions so they can stand independently of the specific numbers. In retrospect balancing numbers based on the player spending 100% energy on Mallyx was not the correct use case, so unless playtesting were to show the numbers to be OP I would be happy to balance based on a 50-50 split and double the original numbers. These numbers would then compare as follows:
- Empowering Misery: 2-4s of resistance becomes 1-2s
- Pain Absorption: 4-8s of resistance becomes 5.5-9s
- Banish Enchantment: 2-4s of resistance becomes 2-4s
- Unyielding Anguish: 2-4s of resistance becomes 3-6s
With Embrace the Darkness adding an extra second per skill on top of that.
Thanks so much for the feedback both of you, it really helps! I’ll update the original post accordingly.
The hammer weapon does feel a little odd to me right now, but I think this is less to do with numbers and more to do with how it doesn’t synergise with Jalis/Retribution and how it lacks a strong direction on its own.
For instance: the hammer right now has a bunch of slow-firing circumstantial plays that are cast out to a long range (more damage on far away foes, blast finishers, frontal projectile shields, knockdown &c.). However, the strongest play with Jalis right now is to use Vengeful Hammers, an activate-and-forget close range skill that fires quickly and is used to proc on-hit/on-crit effects. However the Retribution traitline has no such effects, making Jalis more attractive to Corruption users who have little use for a power hammer weapon.
These kinds of anti-synergies are all over these three elements of the Revenant class, and so I think we can’t adjust details like hammer autos until we resolve the broad strokes of how these pieces should fit together.
Rounding out
These are all the changes that I would want to make to Demonic Defiance. However, the Maniacal Persistence trait was recently reworked in order to pair it with Demonic Defiance which meant it inherited the 5 second cooldown as well. Removing the ICD from Demonic Defiance would therefore just transfer the problem to this trait unless Maniacal Persistence is also reworked. Independently, Maniacal Persistence has been criticised for being in the same trait tier as Pulsing Pestilence, the only trait in the whole Corruption line which synergises with a self-conditioning condition build. Lastly, Bolstered Anguish feels out of place as a direct damage trait in a very condition-focused line. I think there is a good way to resolve all of these problems in a single fix.
Maniacal Persistence suggestion
My suggestion would be to drop Maniacal Persistence by one tier and use it to replace Bolstered Anguish, then change its effect to:
“Every second you have resistance, inflict bleed on yourself and nearby foes for each condition on you.”.
If one then changes Pulsing Pestilence to copy all and only damaging conditions I think that this whole series of resistance traits could then be in a really good place.
(edited by Professor Sprout.1560)
Preamble
Demonic Defiance is a fun trait which does a lot to distinguish Mallyx revenants from a generic condition damage class. Unfortunately, making the most of the trait is difficult in practice thanks to the trait’s 5-second cooldown. Not only is this invisible cooldown hard to track for the player but it also does not mesh well with how bursty the Mallyx playstyle can be.
My suggestion is to remove the ICD from the trait and balance by scaling the resistance gained to the energy cost of the skill. This will make the trait easier to use, easier to build around, compatible with a burst playstyle and less likely to distort the relative value of the Mallyx skills.
Demonic Defiance suggestion
With no ICD my recommended values of resist gain per skill use (assuming no increases to boon duration) are as follows:
Empowering Misery: 1 second
Banish Enchantment: 2 second
Pain Absorbtion: 3.5 seconds (on top of skill effect)
Unyielding Anguish: 3 seconds
Embrace the Darkness: adds +1 second to the duration of all incoming resistance effects whilst the upkeep skill is active.
Footnotes
The these figures are based on the fact that Revenant energy recovery is 5 points per second; on a conjecture that a Revenant will on average split its energy use evenly between utilities and weapon skills; and with the aim that if Revenant follows this split they should not get 100% resistance uptime from this trait alone. The guideline used therefore was that each skill should give base 0.5 seconds resist per 5 energy spent, which would then rise to 1 second of resist when at max boon duration.
The heal skill is above this guideline because the resist gain is balanced by the 30-second skill cooldown.
Since Embrace the Darkness would have very weird values following this guideline and since ticking resistance every second would be awkward I think it is better for the skill to instead improve the resistance gained from other skills – not only does this allow for resistance bursting it also works with the grain of the elite as a buff to other skills.
(edited by Professor Sprout.1560)
Best LWS3 episode. Only advice would be to tie more events to reknown heart progress. Since reward progress here is heavily tied to repeating daily hearts having more events per heart would increase variation; would also keep group-only events from being underpopulated.
Similarly I would recommend that super-events like the destroyer wyverns progress multiple or all hearts simultaneously (points divided between hearts not yet complete). This would maintain populations for content balanced for whole-map zergs.
Scattered around the Ember Bay map are Skritt Stashes, chests which can be unlocked with keys of sorts to give trash items. These chests also have a very slim chance of dropping the “Strange Rock”, an item that can be taken to various thematically appropriate locations in the map to gradually convert it to an ascended ring.
Now, from what I hear the same team that did Ember Bay also did Draconis Mons. This map also features chests in the form of Zinn’s Stashes which can be unlocked with keys of sorts to give trash items. My question is, do they have an equivalent drop to the Strange Rock? Has anyone ever received any weird items from the chests?
I would recommend a sword, particularly if you are not using Jalis. You need something to destroy condition-immune targets that are associated with reknown hearts and events.
Greetings revenant subforum!
As the more experienced revenant players might know the revenant is somewhat lacking when it comes to ranged condition damage: axe/mace is a close range weapon pairing; Elemental Blast and Unyielding Anguish are both limited to 600 range; and hammer does poor condition damage even with the help of ice combo fields. I don’t think there’s much that can be done about this in most game modes but there is an item that can help a little in the open world and fractals: the hylek blowgun https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hylek_Blowgun
Ignore skills 2 and 3 and instead focus on skill 1, “Poison Dart”. Each shot does 6 seconds of poison damage and the fire rate of the weapon is approximately 2 shots per second with around 1000 units of range. My brand new revenant has only 80% condition duration and no Ice sigil but even I can maintain 20 stacks of poison on enemies when using Impossible Odds on Shiro. The weapon also looks pretty nice as it’s a pistol that silently fires poison bullets rather than a blowgun.
It’s certainly not as OP or exploitable as the Frost Gun used to be but it does free you from having to run hammer in your other weapon slot. Just thought I’d share this in case it helps anyone.
As someone who uses celestial gear across multiple characters in T4 fractals and solo dungeon runs (currently gearing a celestial necro for solo CM100 use) I disagree with the assessment that celestial stats are useless, but agree with the assessment that they will not allow the OP to be flexible with their role and legend choices. In my experience celestial gear is not a jack-of-all-roles stat set: rather it is the set for defensive self-sufficiency, of most use when soloing group content or carrying an uncoordinated group. It is also a stat set that works better on some classes than on others, and I’m not sure how good a celestial Revenant would be.
Hm. Interesting question, never considered it before.
For my necro (a human female with the goth face and a gothy appearance) it would have to be something really doomy and minimal, e.g. “Milk” by Undersmile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph0q1P5CJY0
For my engineer (female sylvari, gone a bit feral from spending too long in the fractals) it’s definitely got to be some kind of hard-as-nails classic metal with a female vocalist, something like Chastain’s “Seventh of Never” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNk-kLq-_3A
@Pandaemonium many different stat combos are fine for flamer builds, so I would advise that you use the one which supports the playstyle you like the most. Celestial works for me because I can leverage the extra health/toughness/vitality to better support my group – but if you prefer to just focus on DPS that is also fine. Now whether you’d get more DPS from power gear than condition gear is something I feel I am not qualified to advise on.
@Riktasi those builds look fine to me. I would advise however that traveller runes and Streamlined kits are probably overkill, at least in fractals – you already have permanent swiftness in combat thanks to Heavy Armour Exploit and a fractal mobility potion can give you a constant +25% move speed the rest of the time. The other thing I would suggest you consider is running Elixir Gun instead of one of those elixirs. The elixir gun can actually make it easier for you to stack might on yourself (thanks to the instant cast toolbelt and skills 4&5) and it provides a lot of group utility as well.
A lot of people are losing interest (or getting frustrated) by these style of maps. I’m sure there are people who enjoy it, but… I just don’t see an equal amount of those folk.
Also whenever someone explains this map I laugh because it just sounds ridiculous.
Because folks who like things tend to play them and not complain in the forums.
Exactly this. I think this new map is my favourite of the entire season and one of my favourite maps of the entire game (along with Caledon Forest, the Silverwastes, Verdant Brink and Dragon’s Stand). Especially the jumping puzzle, and this is coming from someone who disliked the Chalice of Tears.
Keep up the good work Arenanet!
Depends on how much you want to stay in flamethrower mode. If you want to use the flamer as your main weapon then I’d suggest something like the the so-called “Scrappernaut” build that uses a combination of Juggernaut, HGH, Mass Momentum and Applied Force to give you permanent might and stability. Right now the flamer is something of a hybrid weapon however so I can’t say whether this setup would do more damage using power gear instead (since when I run it I use celestial gear).
If you want instead to use the flamethrower as one source of DPS amongst others in your build you might instead want to consider something like the “Four Kits” build that uses flamethrower, bomb kit, grenades, mortar, pistols, Incendiary Powder and the explosives traitline to maximise DPS. That one requires cycling between a lot of different skills very quickly however so it may not be very casual.
I’m happy that this series has worked with a limited cast of characters per story instance as it has helped to keep the story focused: as much as I like certain characters (e.g. Canach) it’s clear to me that not every episode nor every instance would have benefited from adding them in. Limiting the core characters who link the 6 episodes together to just Poobah and Taimi was a smart move.
That said if my assumptions about the episode 6 are correct we could see a big cast reunion for the final showdown.
To avoid any confusion, these are:
1) the questline that begins with the player touching a sad anomaly and ends with them giving the Shadowstone to either the Priory or the Consortium; and
2) The questline that begins with the player going to Gillscale Pond and ends with them upgrading to a Mark II Rift Stabiliser.
Has anyone discovered anything that continues these two quests beyond the steps mentioned? Or heard anything on about whether we can or will ever be able to continue these quests?
I know there was a dev comment on Reddit saying that not every achievement associated with the rifts had been discovered and another saying that the rifts storyline was incomplete, but since around LS3E3 things have gone quiet on this front. As far as I know there was nothing in the Caladbolg quest that related to these two questlines.
My guess is that Anet wants to limit any announcements like this to its official channels – understandable, what with the leaks and insider trading Anet has had to deal with in recent months.
Guess we’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see if it drops. Lovely if it does come, but I’m fine waiting another couple of months since it sounds like it will be worth waiting for.
Actually it’s just one asura – my crazy speculation is that Lazarus = Arkk ::D
Perhaps it is an unpopular opinion, but I both use and value gear with defensive stats in PvE (Celestial gear to be precise, the one that provides a bonus to all stats). Even for me though the nourisment buffs you complain about OP are not my preferred choice for the following reasons:
1) If you are using conditions but your defensive gear does not give expertise then you get a bigger damage bonus from the toxic nourishments that give +10% condition duration.
2) If instead you focus on direct damage then you’ll get as good an increase to an offensive stat (or better, if focusing on just one defensive stat) by running the appropriate furious nourishment – these also give a +100 bonus to your defensive stat of choice.
3) If I am in PvE content where nourishment actually matters I’ll likely be using an appropriate potion instead, e.g. Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet’s armies in the T4 nightmare fractal. +10% damage and -10% incoming damage is an order of magnitude better than what the other nourishments can provide.
4) And finally if I’m not in content where nourishment really matters I’ll just use one of the halloween items. As the tankiest guy in the group I tend to do the most resurrections and it is fun to dye allies pretty colours whilst also boosting their stats.
Talking of which, @Mr Arnold could I perhaps tempt you into dropping some kind of intriguing yet frustratingly cryptic hint re the new fractal? ::D
Extreme Quaggan Dance Party.
This is everything I could have hoped for and more.
cries manly tears of joy
@OP to add something extra regarding the aforementioned Nightmare challenge mode – to unlock it at least one partymember needs to have completed all of the achievements given under “Nightmare Fractal” in the questbook, then the mote becomes available at fractal level 100.
Also the new fractals Chaos and Nightmare form something of a continuous narrative since they deal with an asuran called Arkk who (like the players) has come from Tyria to the mists in order to research something. Hence if you want to get involved in this story you should play Chaos first, then Nightmare and then hopefully the one they are working on right now.
Talking of which, @Mr Arnold could I perhaps tempt you into dropping some kind of intriguing yet frustratingly cryptic hint re the new fractal? ::D
(edited by Professor Sprout.1560)
This is what I use in fractals up to tier 4 http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUh2tY5VwWLQ+FL3FF4C+gBA9qH7zuYB1D5AA-TBCEABCqE0u9BM4CAolyPuXYAT1f6THAAPAARBkZA-e
She runs elixirs rather than mortar/grenade/bomb kit so you don’t have to worry about juggling multiple kits to maximise DPS: just use the hammer and elixir gun when you need the utility and otherwise stay in flamethrower mode for damage.
Note that this build is a lot tankier than others since it runs celestial gear – if you prefer something more fragile then feel free to adjust gear accordingly, and maybe swap adaptive armour for applied force.
Whoa! Please cool your jets everyone – there’s no need for accusations and name-calling in our friendly game forum.
@Chris Mavriplis I guess that celestial comment was aimed at me since I was talking favourably about that stat set in the other fractal thread FrostDraco was commenting on. Again @FrostDraco if you’d like to have a discussion on this topic I would be more than happy to oblige you, but I think perhaps it would be better to make it a separate thread since it would take a thread like this on a rather substantial tangent ::)
Regarding the viability of Death/Blood Magic: it simply depends on what you want to get out of the class and get out of the build. If your premise is that the only goal of necro theorycraft is to maximise DPS then on this basis you may conclude that the non-DPS BM and DM trees are sub-optimal or even sub-viable. But I think it is important to emphasise: that assessment of sub-optimal or sub-viable is only true (if indeed it is true) for that paradigm. Hence if you think that there are other legitimate goals for necro theorycraft then your assessment is likely to differ.
For fractals I think that balancing DPS and survival/support is also legitimate goal for the reason given in my previous comment and within this paradigm Blood Magic is strong in pretty much all fractals. Death Magic is also good, although as narcx mentions you might only want to run it in certain content.
@FrostDraco To keep this thread from fragmenting too much I won’t go into detail here about the merits of celestial stats on a necromancer. I do run it on multiple characters across all fractal tiers and from experience I find it works very well – if however you would like to debate this point in another thread I would be more than happy to put my case ::)
The build I am using currently might be the sort of thing you are looking for OP, but only for PvE:
Blood Magic gives you Vampire (adding lifedrain to every attack you and your minions make) and Vampiric Presence (adding lifedrain to every attack you and your allies make). The rest of the build uses Death Magic, Reaper, Greatsword/Staff and Minions to trigger these two traits as often as possible, and the overall effect is to create a necromancer who can endure a lot of punishment whilst carrying the group and without neglecting DPS.
I have avoided using the Scavenger runes or Blood sigils as they work differently from the necro’s own lifedrain abilities and are hampered by internal cooldowns – instead I’ve been using Mad King runes for the extra bleed damage and the rather cool effect provided by the 6th rune: whenever you use an elite skill (including the charge attack from a flesh golem) it summons 3 flocks of birds that each hit a target 16 times. Each one of those hits triggers both Vampiric Presence and Vampire for 3*16*2=96 lifedrain procs in total, or roughly 3.8k hit points recovered.
Celestial is in general also viable for fractals: it will take longer to clear fractals when you have a skilled group with good build synergy, but you will be able to prevent more wipes when with less experienced or coordinated players.
When choosing stats remember also that in tier 4 it is common to use the fractal potions https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Potion. So build on the basis that you’re going to have those extra bonuses.
Greetings raid community! As a fractal player I have a question: is there any raid content that could be cleared based on the following critera?
A) A full 10-player group is used;
B) All players have at least exotic 80 gear;
C) The players are experienced in higher-level PvE GW2 content but not necessarily raids and are willing to talk and take instruction;
D) The players are LFG randomers using the in-game chat to communicate;
and most crucially
E) no restrictions are imposed on what classes, builds or stats any player uses.
Or to put it another way: would I be wasting everyone’s time if I hosted a raid group without imposing class and gear restrictions? I don’t mind if the harder content is out of reach – just if any content is possible at all.
@OP I guess if you’re looking for a no-kit power build that focuses on using hammer for DPS and hedges itself with some defensive traitlines this is probably a way to achieve these goals. But of course this build would likely be stronger overall if you compromised on one of these objectives.
Sounds like you have thought this through so I could see you having success in PvE including fractals, since you can run those at whatever difficulty you feel comfortable with.
Celestial is working pretty well for me – did a solo run of Caudecus’ Manor yesterday despite having terrible gear, something that I was unable to do with my fully equipped celestial engineer. Personally I don’t think of celestial as a “jack-of-all-trades” stat set: I actually conceptualise it as the game’s defensive loadout. Because to me it seems that in GW2 if you want to focus on damage you must put all of your eggs into as few baskets as possible; whereas if you want to focus on survival you must put your eggs into as many baskets as possible, including offence.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWnc0AN1g91AebCs3gFqBTKAMASZTrsKwEI+DWCXhA-TxhaAB+o+zFXCgR0FAgyPO2HAFlgCuwAA-e
Hence my present build runs Reaper, greatsword and Deathly Chill in order to give me as much damage as possible with a minimum of investment, letting me run Blood Magic for group healing and Death Magic for condition clear and damage reduction. Both lines together maximise minion performance which is a big part of what keeps this build alive.
I am currently putting together a celestial reaper on similar lines and the thing that bothers me about krait runes is the elite effect – the rune has an internal cooldown of 45 seconds but Chilled to the Bone has a 90-second cooldown. Does anyone know if the “charge” skill from the flesh golem triggers Krait runes?
As for your build OP it looks powerful but rather fragile. What content would you use it in?
To answer the OP’s other question, the following (speaking partly from experience and partly from conjecture) are interesting options for celestial builds:
1. The 10% damage reduction mussel dishes. 10% damage reduction is huge, and synergises well with the durability that celestial gear provides. Of the four options my favourite is Mussels Gnashblade for its +15% boon duration; if not running boons then the 5% condition damage reduction from Curry Mussel soup is also attractive.
2. Condition duration food. Celestial does not give bonus condition duration, key to making the condition part of hybrid damage work. Your food slot is a sensible way to get this stat. Even for a hybrid a Rare Veggie Pizza is probably the best way to do this as it provides a +20% bonus and is easy to make.
3. Endurance regen food. The only food line I can think of that will let you avoid (rather than reduce) damage, multiplying the advantages that your superior vitality/toughness/healing will give you. Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew is the strongest at +40% and will also let you stack might.
4. Downstate food. Somewhat case-specific, but note that the new Spectral Aid signet buffed downstate performance, particularly for celestial builds. Fire Salsa is the strongest here, multiplying your health by 2 and direct damage by 1.2.
Other foods can be useful for specific builds and situations.
Ran a build with lots of survivability and stability (celestial engineer with flamethrower, all ascended gear). Cleared both Caudecus fights first-time around but by my ears was it hardcore! Toughest story mission in the game by a country mile, I’ve had solo fractals easier than that. Didn’t have a problem with the small encounter spaces or the extra enemies (well okay I was downed a few times by golems and white mantle but the tiny bloodstone golems made it easy to rally) but I was hit almost every time by the CC that you have to counter with the special action. To echo a remark made by another user in another thread, the difficulty of that encounter increases considerably if you have any lag because of how small the countermagic reaction window becomes (the same way that Jade Ocean becomes harder with lag because of how it shrinks the death mark reaction window).
I’m not necessarily going to complain that the mission was too hard or otherwise bad – the writing was great, visuals were spot-on, the story is going in interesting directions and the encounter designs were fresh and creative. Enemy HP and damage felt consistently excessive for a story mission, but fine for the “solo dungeon” difficulty this mission seemed to be going for.
All I would suggest is another quarter-to-half second on the countermagic window to normalise difficulty across differently-performing devices; that you add some kind of dialogue hint in “Regrouping with the Queen” to flag up that the next story mission is going to be significantly harder than any previous GW2 story mission; and that those classes that have limited access to stability/block/invul/stunbreak be given wider access to those abilities if there is to be more build-requisite story content in future.
To continue the scrapper discussion, my theory is that role expectations have a big part to play in how people perceive the spec. If you look at hammer mainly as a source of DPS as part of a power DPS build you may find it effective but rather boring since as has been noted the rotations are rather simple. If however you see it more as a supplement to your kits it is actually a rather fun weapon: skills 2 to 5 are packed with reflect/evade/block/interrupt effects that will thwart your enemies and keep you alive in challenging content whilst also providing great DPS.
In a similar vein if you are looking for a class that is PvE “meta” (in the sense that it occupies a slot in an ideal 5 or 10 man group composition for raids and fractals) then you may also be disappointed since the function gyro (the unique thing the class offers to a group) offers nothing to the ideal group of skilled players. If however you like the idea of being the safety net that can carry even the most unbalanced or inexperienced groups through high-end content then the function gyro will allow you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I mean, I’ve had fractal runs where I’ve used that skill a dozen times to keep partymembers from dying; and runs where it has let me recover a group from situations where 3 partymembers are in downstate. Other classes can’t boast that.
And again if you are looking for skills in PvE that you can slot permanently as part of a “build” then you might distain gyros as having limited uses compared with kits or for having weak traits compared with elixirs. But if you like to swap skills to match encounters then 4 of the gyros (bulwark, purge, stealth and blast) can be just the thing to make otherwise tough challenges a doddle.
For all these reasons I like the scrapper and I wouldn’t want it to always be the master traitline that is all things to all engineers. It definitely has its flaws (targeting allies for healing with function gyro is hard at the best of times; some of the scrapper traits no longer mesh with the skills because of removed functionality; the whole superspeed facet of the class is underwhelming because of how that buff works; and the healing gyro and shredder gyro are both underperformers despite their great toolbelt skills) but there’s enough to love that it is worth unlocking if you plan to engineer long-term.
As per the topic title – currently my main is a celestial engineer which is great for group play but the whole scrapper traitline has little to offer when solo. I’ve heard hearsay that necro or ranger is best but I hoped I might gather some opinions before I start investing Tomes/gear/roleplay into a character. And I’ve no idea whether max DPS or max defence or something inbetween is the way to go when it comes to doing 5-man content with just 1 dude.
Oh, and if you have a build that can solo raids as well by all means mention it as well ::D (though I assume that even against Vale Guardian this is impossible).
EDIT: Cheers for the replies! I’ll stick with engineer then and practice, practice practice!
(edited by Professor Sprout.1560)
This is a basic scrappernaut build running celestial gear:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUh2tY5VwWLQ+FL3FF9qH75uYB1D5A4CGhBAA-TBCEABcvwggKBtbfAMV/pPdAGcBA0S5HAPAASBk5uK-e
Easier than some other engineer builds because it only runs two kits and has a strong bias towards staying in one kit (flamethrower) for extended periods of time. This way you don’t have to start learning 30+ skills in one go and can gradually integrate more and more abilities into your repetoire as you become more comfortable with the class.
It’s also setup to run with celestial gear which means it will work with whatever as you gear up your character and start to define your playstyle for yourself.
I’ll leave you to look over the build yourself and form your own conclusions about what it’s good and bad at but if there’s anything you’d like me to explain I’ll be happy to do so.
@Xyonon thanks for the breakdown of the different turrets. Regardless of whether one agrees with your conclusion that turrets are in the end worth taking your advice will surely help those who do field them to get the most out of them ::)
Your advice also draws attention to one of the main issues holding back turrets right now: they are not worth leaving out. The only exception to this is (again) the healing turret – giving everyone who stays in the area permanent regen and instant-cast cleansing bursts can be good for point defence tasks in PvE.
Quite a number of engineer utilities have been frequently referred to as having flawed design on these forums, or as being no longer worth taking after being nerfed. Med kit, Medic Gyro, Slick Shoes, Rocket/Thumper/Rifle/Flame/Net Turrets (and hence Supply Crate) and Shredder Gyro all come to mind as having been discussed recently in these terms.
I personally would also question the value of Elixir R now that function gyro exists; I may or may not be alone here since I have not seen this skill discussed for quite a while.
Beyond that various users have complained that some skills are usable but not as strong as they think they should be – I’ve seen a fair amount about rifles in this vein but otherwise opinions range widely as this is quite subjective territory.
Related to this point are criticisms of the engineers traits and traitlines: part of the reason why some people think that gadgets utilities underperform is that they think those skills do not trait as well as e.g. elixirs.