Guild Wars 2

Considering the tease of Vampiric Aura, and how there’s a possibility that leaps and blasts through Dark Fields will provide it I’ve been thinking. Vampiric effects currently do a set amount of bonus damage+healing, then scale with Power and Healing Power affecting either side of the equation separately.

So, why not have Guardians continue their duality with Necromancers? Have Retaliation be reworked to block a certain amount of damage and then reflect that back onto your foe. The damage reflected can be amplified by power and the damage blocked can be increased by your Toughness.

This helps Guardians (a new mitigation skill that makes Retaliation more useful than an extra bit of damage if you fail to block an attack with your low base health pool), Warriors (Spiked Armor in the Toughness line would actually be something that ties really well with both the trait line and everything Warrior), and Necromancers (With the new Spite grandmaster trait and couple of other Retaliation modifiers, it would tie into that “hit me” style Necromancers have that doesn’t actually work right now).
Retaliation is a pretty lackluster boon right now, especially since it needed to be nerfed shortly after launch. This turns it into a new mitigation boon that makes sense for classes with low/no access to Protection, while tying strongly into Guardians, Light Fields, and Light Auras.

(We don’t have to increase Retaliation damage for this. Just keep it at the same it’s at right now, or possibly even lower it since it will be doing double duty).

Considering the tease of Vampiric Aura, and how there’s a possibility that leaps and blasts through Dark Fields will provide it I’ve been thinking. Vampiric effects currently do a set amount of bonus damage+healing, then scale with Power and Healing Power affecting either side of the equation separately.

So, why not have Guardians continue their duality with Necromancers? Have Retaliation be reworked to block a certain amount of damage and then reflect that back onto your foe. The damage reflected can be amplified by power and the damage blocked can be increased by your Toughness.

This helps Guardians (a new mitigation skill that makes Retaliation more useful than an extra bit of damage if you fail to block an attack with your low base health pool), Warriors (Spiked Armor in the Toughness line would actually be something that ties really well with both the trait line and everything Warrior), and Necromancers (With the new Spite grandmaster trait and couple of other Retaliation modifiers, it would tie into that “hit me” style Necromancers have that doesn’t actually work right now).

Retaliation is a pretty lackluster boon right now, especially since it needed to be nerfed shortly after launch. This turns it into a new mitigation boon that makes sense for classes with low/no access to Protection, while tying strongly into Guardians, Light Fields, and Light Auras.

(We don’t have to increase Retaliation damage for this. Just keep it at the same it’s at right now, or possibly even lower it since it will be doing double duty).

You don’t really have to do much other than have it match the other current boosters. Or, rather, I’d keep everything on par with the current boosters except for percentage, rather than number of days.

Although, this also depends on how fast influence is gained from solo players and parties doing arenas.

There’s still WXP. You can even increase gold rewards.

Sube Dai.8496:

This might actually be good for build diversity.

The fact that you can currently take zerk ammy and still have 1500 toughness is the reason things like knights and cavalier are useless.

This should make make other amulets viable by giving you no other way to get the stats you need.

This is what I’ve been thinking lately too. The most valuable amulets in the new system will more than likely be determined by game mode now, and it’ll be easier to keep a clamp on extreme or do-it-all builds.

At the very least, if you kill someone within range of an objective you own, you’re defending. Outside of any other markers for defense that we would like to have, why don’t kills made near an owned objective at least get increased WXP and Magic Find? Is there some exploit I’m not thinking of?

And on top of all that, we have no idea how condition damage stats scale with the actual conditions anymore, nor do we know if all conditions are uncapped or if some of them have extra small caps or even have new effects (like confusion now ticking per second along with damage on skill use).

Gryph.8237:

Methane, the thing that irritates me the most , is that now if I want to have a decent duration on my conditions, I will be forced to pick up Lingering curse, when most of the condi builds depend on having fear to do spike damage. In WVW this is especially important because of the amount of clears, etc. that effect conditions. Now chosing fear means, you will have less condi duration, and will only be able to increase it by the use of food, and that is not enough. Chosing lingering curse means, you will have no fear damage, at all. It is an unwarranted changed, and it will impact all our condi builds, and it is another nerf. Our damage will drop in either case.

Huh? You know the numbers on this? You know whether or not we’ll be compensated with Condi duration from other sources enough to make you not have to take Lingering Curses? You know what level of damage conditions are dropping to, and level of duration our base skills are going up to? You know how much condi damage we’ll be able to build to later?

The proper way to give feedback is that you’re concerned you won’t do enough condi damage because you feel like you need to choose between spike damage and duration. This then can either be an intended change, or there could be some changes to weapons/runes/sigils to help compensate, or they can change some other numbers.

Something new?
Super buffed traits: New Signet Mastery. New Well Mastery -> Vampiric Rituals

New types of traits: New Axe Training needing auto-attacks to earn the bonus. Quickening Thirst is similar. Spite line is now all about interacting with health thresholds.

More inclusive Minor traits: Target the Weak now useful for both Power and Condi specs. Beyond the Veil in Death Magic and Vampiric in Blood Magic is useful even if you’re not running Minions.

Oh boo hoo, we can’t pick certain powerful traits together anymore. We can’t get easy condi duration trait with terror. Eles can’t have Evasive Arcana and Lingering Elements. We can’t have reduced life force degen with spectral mastery. Thieves can’t use Ricochet with Invigorating Precision. Every class has been given trade offs in their grandmaster lines. Jeez.

I’m just… I don’t know. Necros aren’t great in PvE and something has to be addressed about that. But the point wasn’t to just create new traits to buff classes but to rebalance the trait lines under the specialization system and any new traits added to keep current theme and balance going.

So what I’d do is focus on our strengths and our mechanics. That’s what the devs tried to do. They don’t want to just give up and make Necros more like other classes. Else, why did you come and play Necros? Make more suggestions that fit Necros as they are just like the devs are trying to do.

Edit: Other examples include, Thieves need to choose between blind on stealth and rejuvenation in stealth. Warriors with their lovely hammer trains have to choose between Hammer mastery and Burst mastery. Rangers choose between consistent damage and spike damage with the new Remorseless and the new Longbow mastery. Hammer Meditation Guardians have to choose between Hammer Mastery and Condition removal on Virtue use. If Mesmers are to believed they pretty much lose Greatsword training forever. Want more?

I agree. I just don’t think anything they do with Blood Magic is going to work without being able to be healed in Death Shroud. Make it so that all incoming heals work at a 50% rate while in Death Shroud, alright, but it needs to be able to interact with everything. Make it a minor trait if you don’t want to make it baseline and then people still have to spec into it.

I disagree. With an off meta Power build I need that extra precision. Plus, it now doesn’t completely ignore Condi builds speccing into Curses. You can make up for the damage loss with new access to this trait: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_of_Undeath and any other things that pop up from rune/sigil/skill changes. You can also build for less Precision and more Power or Ferocity too.

On the recent stream they asked about having Permeating Wrath to be changed and having it’s AoE proc around the targeted enemy instead of the player character. I’m here to throw my weight behind that and make sure it’s more than just a possibility. It wouldn’t have much if any change for melee weapons and it allows Scepter (and any future long range weapon sets) to get in on the action.

I think you’re misunderstanding Feline Grace. It only activates on a successful evade, AND THEN goes on its 3 second cooldown. This means if you’re perma dodging and actually evading attacks, you’ll have vigor for 2 out of every 3 seconds it activates. And if you have boon duration or just factor in the improved vigor trait…

And what if you’re a build without interrupts/Pistol 4?

And what are they going to do about Death Blossom… There’s almost a condi build there too.

I like the presentation, but I don’t like the ideas…

For the Axe, you compared a Master trait to a Grandmaster trait, Winter’s Bite is the Ragner’s Axe 3 trait and not their auto-attack, and Axe is considered good not bad. If you want AoE for tagging or clearing minions you have Staff and Dagger mini-cleave. Plus, depending on how much the recharge is off of auto-attacks, you may get a faster than 20% reduction on Axe 3.

Plus, recharges based on actions sound a lot cooler than automatic passive recharges. Mesmer, Warrior, and Thief are getting a few of these and other classes really should too.

Reaper’s Precision change would make it so much less general… how many transfer abilities do we have? Maybe if it was on placing a specific condition, like one of vuln/poison/chill/cripple it’d be better. Otherwise just keep it the same and buff the numbers.

As for the number of blast finishers… honestly Necro just needs more fields and finishers in general. I’d make that a separate topic because it’s a much bigger deal than the trait changes, at least to me.

I’m excited for the Spite changes. The new grandmaster is actually kinda interesting as you’ll have near on demand cripple, retaliation, and boon rip. Vulnerability on Chill is also exciting, although I wish we had just one more source of Chill through traits.

The new minor Grandmaster Curses is a god send. At least with my Power Necro, building to a decent enough level of precision was always difficult, and now I have a way to boost my precision super easy during fights. And Condi Necros that also depend on on-crit effects now get a helpful boost too.

Death Magic feels mostly the same, Blood Magic had all the Well traits combined which is great, it just sucks that vampiric builds are still not very feasible.

I noticed that the Minor Grandmaster traits in Deadly Poison and Trickery only affect direct damage, when you’d think they’d help pure condition damage specs too. Do I need to be hybrid to make the most out of these traits?

Wanze.8410:

Maybe I missed it or did they remove the stance trait?

All the stance traits got combined (Last Stand, Cooldown Reduction, and Vigor on Stance). The new trait is a Major Master trait in the Defense line. They also said it looked too strong so they were probably going to remove the Vigor portion.

Yeah, more people of my guild, a primarily PvE guild, are dipping their toes in hotjoin at the very least. I’m glad they added more servers the other day. The reward tracks along with the WvW tournament means that everyone is getting more interested in fighting better.

Can anyone reveal what was causing the bug? I was one of many that didn’t notice the increase, and I played on the receiving end.

As a step to avoid people easily farming in Custom Arenas, reward tracks only let you complete two out of the eight tiers per day if you only play Custom Arenas. Solo and Team Arena has no cap.

It happens when all the official servers are full, and then it will drop players into any custom server that has Progression Enabled. If you don’t want to put a password on, then disable Progression

Your analogy sucks ronpierce.

Football players get paid because of their value as entertainers and to sponsors. That’s why only the top % get paid, and much of the money comes from people who do other productive parts of society (fueling the economy by creating goods, like the farmers in PvE).

So what you really should be looking for are ways for PvE players to pay you to play. Leagues, Tournaments, and other stuff where PvE players can buy tickets to see you, make bets off of you, or somehow else spend money on you to earn some amount of value or entertainment from you playing in return. If no one in-game wants to subsidize you playing, then find someone outside of the game.

ANet does give out gems to the winners of the weekly ESL and Mistpedia tournaments. Win those regularly and hey, you have a decent income earned similarly to football players.

Something does seem wrong with the Play Now button. The only thing noticeable seems to be checking for is whether or not progression is enabled.

Put me in the camp that would prefer if it was 5v5 ANet servers only.

Lordrosicky.5813:

RaZaC.1963:

Instead of increasing the amount of damage across the board they should nerf the sustainability of bunkers. If they continue this mentality of adding more and more damage to the game any non bunkers will die way to quickly.

Well yeh. You are right

By increasing the damage but not nerfing the sustain options, it allows people to take parts of the sustain, part of the damage, and have balanced builds that fit better into the game than they did at launch. Presumably.

Honeyboy.9167:

Could be lvl 2’s playing without the benefit of the extra armor provided from helms and shoulders

They removed the armor value from helmet, shoulders, and gloves, and consolidated all of it onto the three parts characters have from level 1: chest, legs, and boots

I feel like Fractals should remain a PvE exclusive thing. Both its challenges and rewards. We’ve had dungeon skins in PvP already for a long time, so that’s a separate issue. Assuming we’re getting a league system later this year, PvP will be gaining a new system with exclusive rewards. Until then, sadly, all we have is the Bathlazar reward track.

Egret.9374:

i’m asking it to the community because lot of my guild member who usually play pvp feel themselves very squishy. They think the problem is here.

Characters in PvP will use the same armor and weapons from PvE.
All items give zero attribute, rune, sigil, or infusion bonuses in PvP.
All items function as level 80 exotic-quality items.
—-> Chest, leg, and boot armor still contribute to the total defense value.
All attribute values are consistent with the old system.
PvP gear now includes unique rune, sigil, and amulet slot.

What does it mean? chest leg and boot….. Shoulder, head and gloves?

This is a carryover from how PvP has been since launch. You know the armor differences between Light, Medium, and Heavy armor classes? It has always been on the otherwise statless armor.

Having a bank and trading post npc would be really nice. Just place them a distance away from each other and away from the two portals.

Traits aren’t unified. You have a PvP build option for separate traits.

Weapons are unified because of skins. If it bugs you then switch to a white weapon before jumping into a match.

I’m in the camp that considers the amulets to have proper drawbacks. They also are distinct enough from Berserker, Soldier, and Valkyrie. I just don’t like how Knight steps on Barbarian’s toes.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Barbarian stat spread in PvE too.

I’ve been most interested in using this trait with Frenzy, honestly.

I’m curious but haven’t gotten around to doing a proper test yet. Does Might gained from Fire Aura (Leap + Fire Field) also count for the Phalanx trait?

@Jerus It sounds like the new traits don’t fit any concepts you feel fit the Guardian. But other people don’t see the Guardian the same way you do. An example shows in your analysis of the Honor trait. “when I’m going into honor I’m usually already going to be in a more defensive build as it just suites that play style.” Okay, cool, but is that the way to use the trait? Is the rule that going into Honor is only for builds that focus in defense? Honor is the trait line with Vigor on Crit, which other classes have shown is very useful for offensive builds to stay alive. Honor is also the traitline with Two-Handed Mastery. Honor also has a trait that grants Might on Crit.

I guess I’m just bothered by the fact that most people dismiss the traits because they don’t fit neatly into the current set Guardian meta. They weren’t supposed to.

Had this issue happen to a friend. I’ll go ask how many alts he had.

The language issue is kind of a problem. I personally like the idea of cities actually mixing different cultures together. But since most people talk in map chat it doesn’t help too much.

If you could have more bank areas/crafting stations/etc. so that people could converge in multiple areas and use /say chat, it could be a workaround. But it wouldn’t be what people are asking for.

Settler’s, I guess.

Blizt.3086:

Proven.2854:

Reward tracks give skill points periodically.
Ranking up gives a bunch of skill points as long as you’re above rank 30 (Large rank chest).
Below rank 30 you get one skill point per rank. It’s also faster to rank up when you’re under rank 30.
The Reward tracks do give Champ bags, which means more skill points.

Your example assumed that you’re low ranking, that you can still rank up a lot of time (and relatively faster).

But consider this, you’re rank 55, and then you decided to make maybe 4 alts to play PvP, would you still say that it’s easy to get skill point then?

Also, it’s not like Champion bags are guaranteed to give you a Scroll of Knowledge every single time.

Anyone with alts will be hurting for skill points, no matter if you’re PvP primary or PvE primary. But skill point acquisition between the two modes is at about the same rate, or faster for PvP.

Custom servers should try lowering the score count necessary to win dramatically.

Reward tracks give skill points periodically.
Ranking up gives a bunch of skill points as long as you’re above rank 30 (Large rank chest).
Below rank 30 you get one skill point per rank. It’s also faster to rank up when you’re under rank 30.
The Reward tracks do give Champ bags, which means more skill points.

I would love a bank in the Mists as well. Either that, or a Black Lion Trading Post guy.

Isn’t this issue part of the reason why Sic ’Em was buffed?

I watched it and said, “woah.”

Yeah, these are really good.

Hot kitten . That just happened.

Won’t touch the versatility argument, but what are the requirements of a proper team support build?

No, no Ready Up this week.

Avead.5760:

Proven.2854:

Won’t Sc/D bunker be possible to run again now? Signet of Restoration and Cleansing Water are all it really needs, right?

Old signet was bugged.Not many people are aware of it but the big nerf wasnt the 20% less healing. It used to heal you 5 times just for casting earth 2 ,2 times or even 3 when dodging with evasive arcana. If you calculate how much that healing was..well its insane
This isnt coming back.Also rtl and its reset potential alongside the use of ether renewal while using mistform arent coming back either.But some far bunker will probably emerge perhaps with new stoneheart and cleansing water.As long as it isnt super fast while tanking 2 people and being able to decap it wont be anything more than annoying.. Also the current close point defenders are in several ways stronger than the older ones. A bunker s/d ele could literally kill an average mesmer with the fire elem out eventually and would definately force him to leave node ,but it cant kill a todays mm necro,warrior,spirit ranger for sure or even force a decap against them

I do know about that issue, but I’ve also seen some people experiment with Signet of Restoration as it is now and find it still pretty strong even if squarely in the underpowered range. Even with the less overall healing I think increasing the healing to current PvE levels is enough to bring it back. But maybe not as bunker build…

With the new map, and setting a point limit (since teams still get 5 points per kill), can’t you do this anyway with the PvP gearset once April 15th rolls around?

Avead.5760:

True! Having someone push far all time is an evil comming with the game mod. But at least now a necro or another condi class as a home defender will be able to shut him down easier i think.
But still those ccs..they need at least bigger casting times.

This is why Team Fortress 2’s push capture point mode locked the capture point behind you, so you were only ever fighting over 1 or 2 points. GW2’s method does increase the depth of the game through coordination, rotations, etc. But TF2’s method made it easier to just draw a battle line and focus on fighting, which I think is better for any uncoordinated play.