Seen the same thing happen with various classes (though rangers seem to be easiest because of pets).
Also see it happen allot at world bosses. People will do just a little bit of damage then afk.
It makes me really hate open world stuff because them simply being there means it scales up.
This leads to arena.net needing to make the fights excessively easy because if they didn’t between the AFK leechers and people who have know idea WTF they are doing the few who are paying attention would not be able to carry the event otherwise.
This in turn makes me wish they would implement instanced raiding.
They could make the events harder, and reward as much as they wanted. If people complained they could say it’s intended for organized guild groups or at least organized groups of friends.
Frankly the whole design of the zeal line is just sad.
You pretty much have to take a mace or hammer to make any good use out of it.
This is partially because of the minors and partially because the majors have a lack of real choice in them due to half or more of them sucking.
Really they just need to buff the crap out of the minors and swap them around with a few of the majors (which also need buffs) then swap around their placement a bit.
Guards don’t output enough might to justify strength runes. Scholar is the best choice.
R-really? So, which classes can sustain might? Warrior and Ele?
Warrior and ele if played right can easily maintain 25 might stacks for a group.
Guardian struggles to maintain 5.
Your much better off using scholar, flame legion or pack runes (depending on how much gold you have)
Mind giving zeal another pass over while you guys are at it ?
The whole line is just designed in a very sad way and pretty much requires use of mace/hammer to get use of the traits.
Zeal could be so much better designed over all its just sad.
To make any real use of the tree as is you pretty much have to have mace or hammer.
After hearing this, i’m not sure how Guardian is “in a good place”. They have an entire set of traits & skills that are useless.
I figured after 3 years they’d make the skill at least worth using.
Its a problem common with all summoned objects. The only reason its not considered a problem on the Mesmer is how they are used as ammo for Shatters. Take away the shatters, and the problems with those skills become painfully obvious.
Below someone suggested making them like banners… but I agree that’s not very exciting at all. If the Reverent isn’t getting Weapon spells, I would suggest making those the Active effect of the summons, and changing the overall mechanics to make them more durable overall.
Its doubtful that will happen though.
At launch they were invulnerable but did horribly low damage.
Even then people cried wha wha its invulnerable.
If they wanted them more durable they could have easily made them so any time in the last 2 years but they haven’t.
Try greatsword + sword/torch or greatsword +scepter/torch
Then go zeal 2, 5, 9
Radiance 1 or 2, 5, 7
Virtues 3, 5, 7.
Then for gear go a mixture of carrion/sinister armor/trinkets
With flame legion runes & air + fire sigils
The straight up damage isn’t bad but the amount of burning you can stack is insane, especially in AOE.
If you want more support however & run with a dedicated might stacker you can go with celestial armor & sinister/rampager trinkets and drop zeal for honor.
It brings allot of support and some decent healing.
And thanks to the might stacking you still have a ton of damage.
Been suggesting since launch that they make them more like a mix between warrior banners & ranger spirits.
By that I mean they are invulnerable, immobile & have 100% up time when traited into.
You place them in a spot to grant all allies nearby a static stat boost.
Then they can be commanded to grant the guardian a special effect on their next attack.
Sword could grant + precision & command could be for the guardians next attack to inflict X stacks of bleeding for Y seconds.
Hammer could grant + power & command could be for the guardians next attack to inflict a knock down.
Shield could grant + vitality and the command could be to create a projectile absorbing bubble which moves with the guardian.
Bow could grant + healing and command could cause the guardian to radiate healing & condition removal for X seconds.
How about instead of nerfing burning they
1: Change protection so it also effects conditions
&
2: Give access to the new boon resistance to every class via weapon skills/traits/utility skills (as is only warrior and mesmer have any real access to it and its extremely nice)1 would help allot
2 would be incredibly good (playing on my warrior I can say with certainty resistance is frekin awesome)
The combination of both would bring conditions in line easily.
So burning is the problem and your solution is to nerf every condition?
Burning is far from the only problem.
The main problem is the amount of conditions that can be thrown up in such a short duration of time and how many stacks can be thrown up in such a short duration of time.
My solution would help mitigate the issue.
Another solution would be to look at the sources of burning and adjust them on a case by case situation.
In many cases you will notice that several stacks of burning can be applied at once.
If they were to lower the number of burning stacks but increase the duration & or lower the cool down of the ability that would go a long way towards solving the issue.
1: Increase the damage scaling of number 1 by a fair margin (as much as 30% if not more.
2: Move the life force generation from number 2 to number 1, but make number 2 hit harder. (its supposed to be a burst skill but is laughable)
(If change number 1 & 2 mean axe skills number 1 & 2 need to become projectiles then so be it, at least they will be useful)
4: Make number 3 a blast finisher.
5: Change unholy fervor/ Get rid of the + damage portion of it and make it instead increase the range of number 1 & 2 on the axe by 300 units.
After that axe is a perfectly fine power weapon for medium range.
Zerker armor can work.
Though frankly with the buffs to burning I would suggest a mix of rampager/carrion till you can get celestial.
As a necro you cannot go full condition. It lacks burst and relies far too much on stacking bleeds.
Best counter to elementalists I have seen as a necro is the new signet traits with http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBlAKkBVg~
For utility skills use consume conditions, plague signet, signet of the locust, spectral armor and lich form.
A mix of rampager and celestial works quite well with this.
For sigils use fire & Air
For weapons use staff & either axe/dagger or scepter/dagger.
The idea is to do good damage with added condi pressure. Along with sending any conditions you get back to the enemy as well as corrupting their boons.
How about instead of nerfing burning they
1: Change protection so it also effects conditions
&
2: Give access to the new boon resistance to every class via weapon skills/traits/utility skills (as is only warrior and mesmer have any real access to it and its extremely nice)
1 would help allot
2 would be incredibly good (playing on my warrior I can say with certainty resistance is frekin awesome)
The combination of both would bring conditions in line easily.
If you can do so get some condition cleanses. That helps allot.
On my warrior & guardian I am running shout builds with trooper runes and it more or less makes condi specs useless.
That being said I have been suggesting since the patch that they make the new resistance boon readily accessible to pretty much every class via either traits, weapon skills or utility skills.
That ^ would bring conditions in line without straight up nerfing them.
These specs your talking about are easily countered so long as you or a ally have cleanses.
I have been runing a shout guardian & a shout warrior recently with pure of voice & or trooper runes and that negates the vast majority of condition damage potential.
So how about before we straight up nerf conditions we add some more counter play.
Protection could be made to effect conditions as well as direct damage.
Or they could spread the new resistance boon around some more.
As is only the warrior and the mesmer have any real access to it & after playing my warrior and can say with certainty it helps allot.
I run a condi transfer build using signets & spectral skills.
Between the signets, staff dagger off hand I don’t mind the vulnerability stacks.
I just transfer them along with whatever else is on me to my enemies.
Sadly yes increasing the number of burns applied or extending the burn (by much) would make it too powerful when used in group settings.
This means it would have to be improved in other ways.
They could roll the blind on activation in as a base effect, then change the trait.
They could lower the cool down, but that would lessen how useful the second minor in radiance is.
They could add in some other effect like say having it also cause effected allies to cripple enemies when they attack next.
Or they could add more stuff onto it to make it worth activating.
Before they straight up nerf things, especially things that some specs/classes are heavily reliant on maybe they should make it so more classes/specs have more ready access to the resistance boon.
They should also make it so bosses have access to condition cleanses.
After that then they can adjust condition damage.
Cant tell is serious or trolling
As someone who plays pretty much every class I can say with certainty that all MTD really needed was an internal CD.
It didn’t need to be changed so much, it just needed a slight adjustment to keep it in line.
In most game modes I likely won’t drop anything for it as it seems kinda meh.
However in wvw I often roll with a few friends who have rangers & thieves.
In that case I may occasionally drop valor/honor for it and roll as a radiance, virtues/DH glass cannon with full traps.
Even then though it will just be so we can all stack traps at a breach and laugh as people get melted by AOE burn, poison, bleed, knock down, cripple with stacks of burning/bleeding being well over 30.
Purely PvE/WvW perspective here:
What it boils down to is this:
- Offensive builds lack CC, be it hard or soft and largely lack swiftness as well. It’s too easy to kite an offensive guardian after they use their teleport/leap skills. Scepter helps in that regard, but doesn’t fix the problem.
- Defensive/Bunker builds in PvP want some additional vitality to offset low base HP, but can’t get it. And if the meta shifts away from full bunkers again, defensive guardians lack good options of offense.
This ^.
What little CC the guardian has is on long CD’s and all hard CC so it is negated by stability/resistance.
The guardian lacks any soft CC.
Defensive guardians are also out done by defensive versions of other classes because while they are defensive they also manage to bring CC & more condition damage.
1: I along with allot of other guards have been using the new feel my wrath in PvE yes.
Renewed focus however will likely stay the go to for PvP though because you pretty much have to have it to survive focus fire.
As for the new signet, I know allot of people who have tried it. I know of very few if any who plan to use it.
Mainly for a few reasons like
1A: The cast time being so long
1B: The healing being pathetic compared to other choices utility
etc…
2: Yes I have seen a decent number of guardians (including myself) who are using or considering using carrion/rampager/sinister now both in PvP, PvE and WvW.
As for spirit weapons, no I don’t know anyone who wants to use them (besides shield, even then only when something to stop projectiles is absolutely needed) in any aspect of the game even after trying them with various builds.
The reason being they just die so easily & their still so reliant on a crappy AI.
3: Symbols are really only useful for world bosses & dungeon bosses that don’t move around allot. Any intelligent enemy simply avoids them.
Even then having to decide between the shout grand master trait & the symbol trait is a no brainer (if you have shouts & symbols u take shout GM over symbol GM every time).
Frankly the symbol GM’s in zeal and honor could stand to be merged, even if it meant symbols lost their very small healing per pulse.
(Zeal could also stand to have it’s symbol minor traits buffed and swapped around with it’s majors so it didn’t feel like you have to have a hammer/mace for it to be any good)
4: Yes, though there are allot of traits that could still be worked on. There are also several traits with internal CD’s which could stand to be reverted to previous versions where they were less powerful but had no ICD.
There are also a decent number of weapon skills (and utilities, looking at spirit weapons) that could stand to be adjusted or redone)
Been suggesting since the patch that every class get at least some ready access to resistance.
Keep hearing people complain about conditions & on my warrior they are basically a non issue.
Why ? Between the cleanse on shout use & the 6 second resist on a 20 second (16 when traited) cool down they are much less of a threat so long as I play intelligently & time my cleanses/signet use right.
So I feel everyone should get some access to the boon.
After that then Anet can look at how powerful conditions are in PvP.
Frankly I think they should give out access to the resistance boon to every class in varying amounts.
Then they can see how much things need to be nerfed.
How about instead of nerfing things they instead give every class varying levels of access to the new resistance boon.
As is only the mesmer & warrior get any real access to it.
And I can attest to how useful it is on my warrior.
Only place I find the axe useful is PvP because of the #3.
Honestly I think they should just remove the vulnerability stacking & buff the crap out of the 1 & 2.
1200 vitality, 900 power & 900 healing power would be nice.
So would 900 condition, 900 power & 600 precision/600 vitality.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
Here’s an idea.
Instead of flat out nerfing conditions (some of which some specs are solely reliant on a single condition or 2), how about they make it so more specs/classes have access to the resistance boon.
As is only the warrior and mesmer have any real access to it & I can speak from experience that on my shout warrior with trooper runes & heal signet I can ignore or cleanse conditions most of the time.
How about instead of nerfing conditions (especially ones that some specs are reliant on as their soul damaging condition) we instead look at other ways to fix the problem.
For PvE it would make sense for boss type creatures to have access to the resistance boon, condition cleanses or possibly even a flat condi damage reduction.
For PvP it would also make sense for every class to be given varying degrees of the new resistance boon.
It could be tacked on to various traits, skills, utilities etc…
That would solve allot of the problems in PvP.
If they continue to persist then other solutions could be looked at.
Really the only reason you activate it any more is
1: You have condi users nearby in your group
&
2: You are all targeting the same enemy
This allows you to do 5 stacks of burning on a single enemy for quite a bit of damage.
You know looking at at all the insane condition damage going around I think they should give every class varying degrees of access to the resistance boon.
And yes it would make sense to have it on the shield.
As for taunt yes it would also make sense to have it on the shield.
Frankly I think they should add taunt to the shield number 4 & resistance to the number 5.
It would also be nice if they got rid of the bubble on number 5 and instead had it do a knock back & apply aegis + resistance to nearby allies.
They need to be permanently out there at the very least before they can be considered as viable.
Even if they were made permanently available like necro minnions they would still suck due to the AI and the fact they can be killed so easily.
Frankly I wish they would just change them to be more of a mix between warrior banners & ranger spirits.
They would be invulnerable, and you would drop them at a spot to give an area buff to a stat.
Then you could command them to give you & or nearby allies a special effect.
Here’s an idea.
Merge the effect of merciful intervention into judge’s intervention (the AOE heal)
Then create something truly useful.
Pick one that has soldier or rabid stats then salvage the weapons/armor with a mystic salvage kit.
With any luck that’s a good 2g you will get from the inscription.
The only real problem I have with traps is the sheer amount of things you give up in order to get them so far as support/defense is concerned.
This really bothers me because you cannot throw traps, they must be placed & they have an arming time.
Perhaps they could move the trap trait up to a grand master but have it also give each trap a beneficial effect either on use or when triggered. (similar to the turret trait for engineers)
(Same can be said of dragon hunter traps on guardian elite spec)
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
The only real problem with burn & poison is
1: PvE mobs and player health totals were not figured in with these being able to stack as they do.
For PvE the simple solution is to increase mob health, while giving mobs more access to condition cleanses and the new resistance boon.
PvP is more complicated but one way to start would be by giving every class some access to the new resistance boon either via weapon or skill.
As is only the warrior & mesmer have any real access to resistance.
I say this ^ because when I was playing on my shout warrior with the healing signet (& shout rune) in pvp I literally had very little problem with conditions.
I could either remove them or ignore them most of the time.
The only time conditions really got to be a problem was when I was fighting multiple people who were specced for them.
If after these changes conditions are still a problem then perhaps they can give PvP a flat condition damage reduction & give bosses some reduction as well.
Really the only thing they need to do as far as conditions are concerned in PvP is spread the new resistance boon around.
As is only the warrior & mesmer have any real access to it.
Give every class access to it on some weapon or skill and allot of the whines about condition stacking teams would stop.
They would still be viable but the whining would stop because people would stand a chance.
IDK about 6 pieces of gear with stats on each but we could definitely stand to have a jewel in the amulet or a ring with the stats instead of having them folded into the amulet as they are now.
The thing is stacking in duration often meant it was useless for people the second someone else came along who could also stack burning & had higher + condition damage.
I saw this happen fairly often on my guardian, engineer & elementalist & it caused a decent amount of damage to simply not happen.
This is because people who had more + condition damage would take priority over yours and push your ticks to the back where they might not ever tick.
Really all they need to do is institute the following 3 changes
1: Reduce condition damage by a set 10-20% in pvp
2: Increase the health of mobs in PvE by a fair margin
3: Spread the new boon resistance around more among the classes (only warrior and mesmer have any real access to it now) & possibly even give it or condition cleanses to bosses
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
Frankly speaking since not all weapons have symbol abilities on them I would say either they need to or they need to make it so other weapons can be viable without symbols which would require a change up in where some traits are.
I speak of course about symbolic exposure, symbolic power & symbolic exposure.
So its either swap those traits around with others like wrathful spirit, binding jeopardy & shattered AEGIS. (they could merge symbolic power & symbolic avenger)
It also wouldn’t hurt if they looked at those traits and adjusted them a bit.
Or they could put a symbol on scepter 2 & sword 3.
The reason transfers are good is ironically how broken the condis other classes have. They are literally killed by their own opness. Condi mesmer, ele ranger and engi with massive burns and torment. Killed by their own op condis
This basically.
Its because conditions are so out of hand on other classes that the necro can be decent.
Instead of having to try to keep up with condition cleanses the necro returns them to F#$% up the original sender with their own conditions.
Other then all the boon corruption & new condition transfer necro didn’t really get much that was new.
It’s really quite hilarious.
Its not that you are beating them though, its the transfers, its just that Engis are so OP even Engi can’t beat Engi.
This basically ^.
While everyone else is trying to keep up with the conditions by simply removing them the necro is sending them back to F#%$ up the owner.
Tried a few different ways to build around carrion & celestial after patch.
For a damage oriented build using physical damage & burning I found radiance, virtues & honor worked best in PVE.
Traits were Right handed strength, radiant fire, amplified wrath, master of consecrations, empowering might, pure of voice.
For weapons use either sword or mace + torch with greatsword in the off set and air + fire sigils with flame legion runes.
The utilities were shelter, purging flame, then 2 shouts with feel my wrath as the elite.
This means each voj proc will be an aoe 3 second burn and voj will proc every third hit (which is increased by fire & air procs)
So realistically its not hard to keep up 9-15 burn stacks on your main target and a good 6-8 on surrounding targets.
For WvW or Spvp I would most likely swap out honor for valor as the extra fury uptime and self healing would be needed.
In the end I found that carrion pulls ahead of celestial damage wise until you get a good deal of might stacking & precision buffs (warrior banner, ranger trait etc..) at which point carrion/rampager/sinister is too close to celestial for me to tell without vid capture of a whole fight.
This mainly due to all the ferocity on celestial that isn’t on carrion/rampager/sinister
Makes it worth using in coordinated WvW or for would boss fights.
For uncoordinated stuff I would still take radiance & or virtues over it tho.
I’m running it as condi guardian because the other two GMs kinda suck.
Seems good so far since it can trigger 4 times in a fight.
If your running condi don’t bother with zeal.
Go radiance instead, it gives allot of extra burning & can reset the torch number 4 one every 10 seconds for yet another burn & toss.
Radiance also gives a good 25-30% critical chance.
All this pairs really well with virtue traits to increase VOJ procs and make them AOE.
Them combine it with rune of flame legion for extra burn ticks and + damage to burning enemies.
Only thing zeal is really good for is symbols or a zeal, honor, valor AEGIS spam build.
As much as I like your suggestion Ragnar, we need to stop with these on crit effects. Its starting to get out of hand and honestly, we need to get rid of all this RNG in our PvP. Sure, I like my rage sigil, but we just need to stop. Personally, I’d prefer if SA did around smite condition’s damage per aegis burst, which would be a tad bit OP if you couple it with something communal defenses and fragments of light, but a grandmaster does deserve that much power if utilized properly.
What if in addition to the damage shattered AEGIS also dazed your attacker?
I’d consider that worthy of a grand master slot. Imagine how useful that would be, offense through defense.
Hey at least you guys GET a damage increase from your grandmaster trait. I’m using a 1h sword over here and all of radiance lines GM traits are condi based (except signets but yeaaaah no i don’t use signets)
LOl ya & one of them got stealth nerfed with a 1 second internal CD to.
The signet GM sucks pretty hard to.
IT gives light aura on signet use, Light aura.
You can already get a ton of light aura with a greatsword & it’s not even that good an aura.
Would be so much better if they got rid of the signet passive boost & light aura.
Maybe then they could have it do a condi cleanse & protection on signet use.