Guessing this is a WvW build ? As there is no reason to ever use condition damage for PvE.
My suggestion, Don’t bother with the condi damage stuff. Condition cleanses are so common in WvW that unless your a engineer/necromancer you won’t be able to do enough condition damage to make it worth the investment.
My advice would be to use a mix of zerker & soldier gear. and have around 14-15k health. A 2/5/6/1/0 build will work wonders for damage & survivability, also health steal on crit food is great.
As for sigils a mix of air & fire is insanely good for burst.
As I have said in past threads they can add all the “New” crap to WvW they want, but until they fix the problem caused by having servers with vast difference in numbers facing each other WvW will likely continue to die for many servers.
There have been many suggestions for an Alliance based system that would be guild focused (alliance of guilds) and have a cap on how many players could belong to each alliance & have the ability for the hierarchy of each guild to remove members. (who have been inactive, or are caught spying)
Such a system would also need an non ranked tier for people who do not care about WvW enough to maintain membership in such a guild however. In which case it could simply toss people randomly together like it does for EOTM (with some consideration for friends/guild mates)
If a system like this were to be created it would solve a great many of the problems with WvW.
Personally I’m hoping that great sword will have decent power scaling, cleave a bit of CC & some group support in the form of protection.
Something like
1: Slash, Slash, Frozen spin (like Marj)
2: Something similar to a well, that does AOE pulses of cripple and high damage on a low CD. (between 5-8 seconds CD and 5 pulses)
3: Some type of pull with a weakness application or a 600 range leap that applies AOE weakness on land (moderate CD, say 15-20 seconds)
4: Again something similar to a well, albeit one with low damage but applies AOE protection per pulse (CD between 15-25 seconds with 1 second protection per pulse, 5 pulses)
5: Execution (A high single target damage attack that also causes AOE fear when it hits.
if you run it with a meditation build its great.
The build is rather supportive but maintains good damage making it great for front line use.
For the last utility you can use stand your ground for stability & retal (plus condi coversion if traited), purging flames for a fire field & condi removal, wall of reflection or contemplation of purity.
For the 2 traits in honor you can use pure of heart, superior aria or protective reviver.
For the 2 empty traits you can grab master of consecrations, consecrated ground or firey wrath.
The build can also be quite good with a great sword as your secondary, just port in put up ring of warding then swap to GS for symbol of wrath & whirling wrath.
No it hasn’t existed since launch. There have been times where it was fine, worse, complicated as all hell, there are all kinds of issues that AI have had but it has not been constant.
I’ve played since beta and can say with certainty that my minnions have always been idiots.
They might work for a minute right after I summon them but their brain activity always reverts to idiot level quickly.
Yes guardian hammer is very defensive. But it is also very high damage. Its not far below greatsword sword focus rotation. Which is why its so popular for fractals. Its very high damage and provides the group with so much safety its pretty broken. I always cringe when people think of weapons as being so stuck in one role. Because its simply not the case most of the time. Even necros scepter can be used as a direct damage weapon. Although thats one of the only cases where it doesnt work out too well.
Thats not to say the guardian hammer doesn’t have it’s pitfalls.
The auto chain is so slow that against moving targets the symbol will often never hit them beyond the original pulse.
Symbols also require you stand still in them to get the full benefit which can also lead to organized enemies nuking you down or lining up CC spam (or a mixture of both)
The launch on number 4 is also incredibly slow & telegraphed.
It’s annoying that Renewing Blast isn’t a bit easier to heal allies with, as that is really the trait’s only problem. The amount it heals sure isn’t. It’s placement is all right as well, really (a bit odd, but being in the same line as Vital Persistence and Unyielding Blast provides a nice 3-major trait synergy).
I have also suggested for a while that they change renewing blast so that it puts a debuff on the enemy which heals everyone who attacks it for X seconds.
That or make it AOE heal enemies around the foe you blast.
Either one would be a great improvement over trying to aim an attack so that it “might” pass through allies.
If you don’t already have a weaponsmith I’d suggest that instead of armorsmith.
The stat difference between ascended armor & exotic is very small unless you do high level fractals and need the resistance.
However ascended weapons have about a 10% direct damage bonus over exotic. (its like going from rare to exotic due to the pure weapon damage stat.)
As for the second I would suggest chef as its easy to level and food buffs are always nice.
Depends on team,the reason are siphon don’t work in DS,they are small but they help,if they worked I wouldn’t mind staying in it longer but they don’t,that extra LF is not of much help and I lose my weapons skills which are more useful then the ones in DS,Transfusion is high CD as well. I tried well focused healing but it’s too stationary and gimmicky.
Edit: If a trait that could transfer your siphon to allies it would help as well,instead of whatever the new trait was for Blood Magic. Swap spectral armor for well of power more sustain.
I have actually suggested for a while now that the trait vampiric rituals should instead cause all of your attacks to steal health from enemies & share it with nearby allies including yourself.
This would make it rather useful for sustain & group support.
Probably due to the extra damage it allows life blast, life siphon etc to do.
You also do not really lose any condition damage either. Also it can work quite well with rune of scavenging if you want extra life steals.
The only thing you really lose is on crit effects.
Frankly if rampager actually devoted all it’s stats to power/precision & condi damage then it would be the better option. Sadly it puts focus on vitality as well which makes it not work as well.
Its a bug, should hopefully be fixed with expansion.
It’s a bug that has existed since launch.
It’s due to the AI’s pathing mechanics.
I want a skill like “Cleave” in ESO with a similar animation but it will inflict AOE fear instead. Hopefully.
Personally I’m hoping the greatsword has good cleave but also has good ally support.
Imagine if it had marks that scaled well off of power and provided things like blast finishers & AOE protection as well as possibly some mobility.
Colin did not specifically say that they will not lose access to weapon skills or utilities, only that they would not lose anything, and then went on to talk about how you can swap whenever you want OOC. This does two things: 1. it implies that there is a reason to swap (meaning specialization has to not be a direct upgrade, so there is something about the base profession that you can’t use), and 2. it doesn’t say any specifics about whether base profession will or won’t lose anything, only that it isn’t permanent.
My guess is since he said that they do not lose anything is that some things will still be accessible but scale less effectively then they normally would.
My personal hope is they see the design flaw in death shroud.
By this I mean that if you look at every other class & it’s damage mitigation abilities you will notice that they always reduce damage by a set %.
This makes them just as useful if facing multiple enemies or a single enemy.
Death shroud however simply acts as a second life bar, which makes it very powerful vs a single enemy, but much less so vs multiple enemies. On top of that life force degrades naturally while in death shroud & life force starts off at zero when you spawn.
If they would simply change death shroud to a flat % based damage mitigation & get rid of the decay over time of life force while in death shroud then death shroud could become balanced & possibly even allow for some healing effects while in death shroud.
Short of that however I’m hoping that death shroud gets some support tacked onto its abilities at base then has said support boosted via traits.
(I’m also hopeful that life steals/siphons get changed to work while inside death shroud)
Here are a few more speculative thoughts:
1. GS auto attack probably hits hard but slow and has cleave. Should be roughly equal to staff’s AA but trades piercing for cleave
If Marjory uses the skills we’ll be getting, the auto-chain is actually rather fast, taking 2.2 seconds to entirely cycle. Dagger auto takes 2.1 seconds, for reference.
Her chain also applies a chill on the last AA which has about 50% uptime untraited.
Or do the opposite with health. Like
Blood Frenzy
Gain attack speed as you lose health.
<75%: 5% increased attack speed
<50%: 10% increased attack speed
<25%: 15% increased attack speed.
I really hate Traits like that & siphoned power because they require you be nearly dead to gain the most of your potential.
Having them be effected by enemy health however works fine.
They said in the angry joe interview that specializations would gain access to new effects, weapons etc…
& that they will not lose access to weapons skills or utilities.
They did not however say that certain skills would not suffer from less effective scaling in order to balance them out.
Could be intrusting.
Though I think it should require fast reaction to reach the updraft.
At the end of the day I would prefer if they made the virtues a bit more akin to warrior/death knight stances in WoW instead of having stances on weapon skill #5.
They could have an effect when you switch to them similar to what their activation is now.
Then they could each have a passive effect which could be traited to become stronger.
The passives & actives however could be stronger (or have shorter CD’s then now however) to make up for the fact you could only have one active at a time.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
I really don’t see where HEAVY armor just screams, “Give me a bow!”
I mean c’mon, bows and rifles for warriors? Longbows for guardians?
Heavy armor screams, “I WILL BASH YOU IN THE FACE!”
Just fix the freaking scepter for range(fix traits or otherwise), and give us axes or offhand swords as our new weapon.
They’re not going to buff scepter’s aa.
The weapon can do 1200+ crit damage not counting fire and air sigil procs. If they make the aa faster and more accurate they would have to increase the duration for each attack, or reduce its damage, to compensate for its very far 1200 range. Then there would be no need for a bow.We’re not a smash and bash class. Warriors are.
Guardians scream, “I’M GOING TO BASH HIM IN THE FACE, AND HEAL THAT NEARBY SQUIRREL OVER THERE WHILE DOING IT.”I’m perfectly fine with that. I’m a Guardian.
The bow is the only weapon that “doesn’t make sense, but works”. Just like Staff for Ranger and Great Sword for Necros. None of it makes sense, but Anet will make it work, as per that class’s specialization.
Personally I And allot of guardians I know don’t want them to make the scepter AA faster moving.
We want them to turn it into a channeled beam that hits everything between us & our chosen target (like mesmer greatsword). Having it be a beam means it could be nearly instant hit & would even be worth a slight drop in DPS.
Many of us would also love it if they changed smite into a ranged symbol. As is now it’s not a true AOE, but if it were a symbol it could interact with allot of traits.
Short of these 2 things however, we would accept a bow that is designed in a mainly offensive manner with some support (Protection/regeneration/might stacking) in mind.
Since they are not doing the former by the looks of it, here’s hoping they get the later done right, then continue to add weapons in the future.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
First off, seeing as how your not using staff I would suggest traveler runes
Second, while the sword has less predictable burst, the cleave is much much smaller.
Lastly, while you will do allot of damage I don’t see you lasting very long once your meditations are down. Your health is still extremely low. Given how high your crit chance is I’d say it’s safe to drop a couple zerker pieces for more valk, or possibly even celestial.
Lastly while the sharpening stone you have is decent, I’d suggest quality oil instead. It will bump your critical chance up to near 100%. Its also much cheaper.
Is there a way to revert it to just a daily win that isn’t profession specific? So maybe win 2 matches as any prof instead of 1 as a required prof?
This.
Make it X number of wins as any class.
Maybe have another for avoiding/blocking/dodging X number of player attacks.
The having win as a specific class dailies are just bringing in people who do not care about PvP & expect to be carried.
At the OP.
Condi specs may not kill people quite as fast as zerk specs however they do provide quite a bit of pressure & are the bane of high toughness specs.
So while I do not have much experience playing mesmer or ele I can say for certain that a venom share thief while not meta can be quite effective when used in a team play scenario
I will delete my necro if greatsword auto turns out to be ranged.
I could take it either way but frankly I see it being more likely that they would make it a ranged weapon then have it be a high mobility melee weapon like so many want.
And at the end of the day unless it has some useful support on it what good would another melee weapon be when you already have dagger.
I see some adjustments with some traits and skills that see little to no use. Unholy Martyr seems like a prime candidate for changes in the expansion. Along with skills like Corrosive Poison cloud. The entire blood magic line needs some major work in it.
This ^ more or less.
I can see a ton of traits that need looked at as well as a few utility skills & possibly a couple weapon skills.
Many of the blood magic traits being among them. It’s supposed to be the supportive trait line but all it’s skill are so underwhelming it never sees use.
My guess is that Greatsword will be higher DPS against 3+ targets while Dagger will be better against 1-2. Gives both a role, then.
Greatsword auto, assuming it is the same as Marjory’s (a pretty likely scenario), is a 4-hit chain, causing 1 second of Chill on the third hit. The entire chain takes about 2 seconds to complete with total cycle speed of 2.2 seconds (so the attack speed is pretty close to dagger AA). The 3rd and 4th hit are opposite ends of the same animation, so they are likely the same skill.
So, it looks like ~50% chill uptime from the auto attack, untraited. Given the strength of Chill, I doubt it will be a high damage attack.
Doesn’t mean it won’t have high burst abilities though to make up for a weaker AA.
Besides chill is pretty darn useful, especially if it were a ranged attack.
Mind linking where u saw the necro using the greatsword & what it was doing ?
Here.
Who knows, seeing that the necro greatsword AA could still end up being ranged.
For all we know Marj using that at melee could just be due to crappy AI
To put it into perspective they would have to do something like 1.1, 1.1 and 1.4 for the chain. Thats ridiculously high.
They certainly won’t considering that the attack chain finishes with a chill. If it had no other effect, I might accept really high coefficients, but because it does have an effect I expect pretty mediocre ones.
Mind linking where u saw the necro using the greatsword (other then Marj) & what it was doing ?
Honestly the problem with necromancer lies in the death shroud mechanic & the fact they bring very little in the form of group support.
All other classes have damage mitigating tools that scale off of a specific percentage base.
This ensures they are of the same use no matter how many enemies your fighting.
Death shroud however simply acts like a second health bar (one that you must fill up).
This means that at the start of a fight your at a disadvantage if you do not already have life force & life force becomes weaker for each subsequent enemy in the fight.
If they would simply
1: Make the necro spawn with a % of his/her life force already filled (say somewhere between 30-50%)
2: Change death shroud to reduce all damage taken by a set % while active instead of absorb damage.
3: Get rid of degradation of life force via damage while death shroud is active (make it time based.)
4: Allow some forms of healing to go through death shroud. (siphons, steals etc..)
5: Change up a few weapon & utility skills to provide things like protection, retaliation & regeneration for allies.
After these changes necro could be perfectly fine. Short of them though your just throwing bandaids on a infected wound.
Personally I’m hoping the greatsword will be a ranged power build option with good life force generation.
Short of that I hope it has decent damage with some viable group support (Protection, retaliation & healing. Maybe via marks that do direct power based damage.)
dagger already has decent damage & melee but no support.
The main reason necromancers are never brought is because they bring nothing to the group that is not done better by someone else.
(edited by Ragnar the Rock.3174)
Well it’s not just guardians that have bad elites. From all professions the utility skills are much better than their elite skills. Anet really bombed at making the elites in this game.
I don’t know. Mesmer elites are all pretty good. Supply crate from the engineer is exceptional as well.
Granted, it sure would be nice if every profession had elites that you actually wanted. Or if you could replace the elite skill with a utility skill
Many classes have been asking for the ability to replace elites with utility skills since launch.
Most elementalists, necromancers & engineers would love it. I know a fair number of shout guards who would as well.
Short of a complete redesign I doubt anything would truly fix the problems.
What is really needed is A design based on an alliance of guilds with a strict cap on membership that is much lower then what an entire server could be.
One where said alliances are voluntary, in that you can leave your current one at any time but joining a new one would cost gems.
One that has 2 separate types of tier system, 1 being organized for those belonging to an alliance, 2 for people who do not belong to an alliance & are thus tossed in a randomly placed in groups against each other every week..
On top of this they should make it so the reward for WvW is tied to active participation in WvW so that people do not come to a specific alliance just to leech off of it’s bonus effect.
Also guilds should have the option to vote out people as well so as to remove dead weight, spies & people who otherwise troll causing enemies to gain an advantage.
I’d suspect that any new content would be more in line with the existing open world events. Marionette was probably the most challenging open world content Anet has made. Vinewrath is a somewhat easier version, which isn’t to say it never fails but it certainly fails at a much lower rate than Marionette did.
I’d say Anet would go for something in between the two. This is taking into consideration the release of the Wyvern mini boss fights. There’s probably something beyond that like “bring down multiple wyverns while other meta events are going on.” that sort of thing.
I quite like the idea of map wide events. Although in the grand scheme of things it’s just a lot of turn the handle and spank the boss, there’s just enough risk of failure, factoring the average skill level of the players, to make it interesting. Small scale (10 players or so) raid type instanced content is significantly less interesting to me
This kinda makes me sad.
As I said before you can only make open world bosses so tough before random people who don’t know the fight screw it up for everyone else by simply being there and causing it to scale up further.
Instanced content for multiple groups would solve this & contrary to some peoples opinion you could make raid content without the trinity. (it would just require bosses to be designed differently then most of the ones currently in game that will 1 shot people)
I don’t understand the usefulness of Kindled Zeal in comparison to Amplified Wrath. In what universe does a conversion of 13% Power into condition damage, trump +33% burn damage?? Non. It never does. Even if you add Power signet.
That trait is complete junk along with Radiant Retaliation. Which by the way, is also broken.
Personally I’d change Kindled Zeal to one of the following.
Kindled Zeal: Gain precision equal to 10% of your power.
or
Kindled Zeal: Gain vitality & healing power equal to 8% of your power.
The first is a nice precision boost and viable option, the second gives you more of a battle cleric option.
Considering they tried as hard as they could to avoid answering the question, I doubt it.
that makes sense.
any other opinions?
I get that vibe that its coming. Along with the Trinity mechanics added, it makes sense for instanced PvE fights honestly.
There are no trinity mechanics being added.
Your most likely confused about how the new taunt abilities will work.
They will be resource intensive & or be on long cool downs. They wont be like other games where you can gauge threat & spam high aggro abilities then taunt when all else fails.
Well they did put out a memo months back saying they were specifically looking to hire a team of designers with experience designing raid content.
So I am hopeful that yes instanced raids will be coming.
However given how much they skirted around the question when AngryJoe asked it I think it is likely something that is giving them trouble & could take longer then expected.
God knows the game really needs it though. You can only make open world content so hard before random people come along and ruin the fight for everyone else because they have no idea how the mechanics work or what they should be doing.
The problem like many WvW problems stems from the fact that WvW is based on what home server a person is from which causes number of players & how often said players participate to vary widely, in addition to encouraging use of spies/trolls.
If WvW were to be redesigned around alliances of of guilds with a set cap on how many players could belong to an alliance (to ensure somewhat evenly balanced numbers) with the ability to remove people then a great deal of the problems in WvW would be solved.
Granted this would only be a real solution for the people who have a real intrust in WvW. Other people could just be randomly tossed into groups like they are for EOTM.
Siege in the zone around keep area can be dismantled for a refund depending on damage ranging from 100%-0%
Limit Golems to one every like, 10 minutes. Zergs will be totally unaffected and still able to build Golems quickly but it would take a troll 30 minutes to build 3.
The first part could be easily abused by spies as well.
Imagine building defensive siege just to have them dismantle it.
Personally I’d love to see the tomes redesigned to be a bit more like conjure firey greatsword.
In that it lasts for a set amount of time as is now, does not give you a static boon but instead allows you to access your utility & heal skills.
While I would like to the 3rd AA to cleave I believe it would require a nerf somewhere else.
The nerf would likely end up being the block.
Personally I think its a combination of things.
1: The ele is able to stack allot of might stacks. (this effectively counters the lower condi/power of celestial.
2: The ele has allot more incentive to swap attunement then allot of classes have incentive to weapon swap.
3: Several of the on swap & on crit sigils are a bit to powerful when used in conjunction with each other.
4: Celestial stats in Spvp are just a bit high.
This leads to things becoming a bit too powerful.
Personally I would reduce celestial stats just a bit, then reduce the duration of geomancy bleeds a bit, reduce doom sigil poison by 1 second, then finally make blasts on fire fields give 2 stacks of might instead of 3.
This reduces the effects of some certain builds slightly without destroying them or others.
They could change the entire design of WvW but unless they change the problems causing massive imbalances in the number of WvW players each server has then many players will likely not return for long.
Agreed
It should just be a 1 possibly 1 & 1/2 second block that blocks all attacks.
It would also be nice if the projectiles were faster on it.
It would also be nice if the sword auto #3 were a real tripple hit melee attack with some cleave. As is it’s considered a ranged attack (can be reflected) & does not have projectile finisher chance.
Also it would be nice if the mace block were not the only melee block in game which can be triggered & ended by ranged attacks.
Conditions are indeed weak.
Ferocity is fine as it is.
Healing power is useless because it should be useless: anet stated many times that they don’t want parties to be unable to complete content due to lack of healer
Damage traits may be “boring” but they’re what determines a class’s viability and usefulness. So they’re fine.
And necromancers are indeed weak right now.
An acceptable solution to 4/5 of these would be to allow heals and conditions to crit. Then ferocity would apply to conditions and heals, so condi would be a bit more viable and lmaohealer builds can put out more healing (making themselves feel good, but ultimately still remaining useless, as it should be)
As for necros, idk maybe give them some party wide support that doesn’t overwrite every useful field in the game.
I can see this being a good stopgap fix for PvE but I don’t think it should apply to PvP where being a tanky healer with conditions is already rather strong.
As for a way to fix bleeds. If you look at most bleeds in game you will notice something, they are all either applied multiple stacks at a time & or last a good duration per application.
If they were to look at each thing that can apply bleeding then cut either the duration or number os stacks applied then up the scaling it would go a long way to fixing bleeds in PvE.
For burns, a simple solution would be to have a check system in place. The check would be rather simple. Is the target your applying burning to already suffering from more then X seconds of burning ? if yes then you instead apply 2 stacks of torment for the same duration as your burn would have been.
Bam problem for bleeds & burns more or less solved.
For other conditions, I don’t really see a way to fix them.
On the HoT page, they have:
New adventures await you in the heart of the Maguuma Jungle. Confront the growing hordes of Mordremoth’s minions, discover allies from ancient civilizations, and battle new enemies.
- Tackle challenging group content.
- Explore new open world jungle maps.
- Experience new events and storylines.
- Test your mettle in new boss battles.
What this ‘challenging group content’ is is anyone’s guess.
Could be open world events, dungeons or Fractals. Heck, it could even be raids (we had a Raid CDI and they hired a raid designer a while back).
This is what I’m hoping for.
Why specifically put out a memo that your looking to hire people with experience designing raids if your not going to make raids.
And I really do hope they are instanced. The problem with open world content is that it must be rather toned down in difficulty otherwise you get people with no idea how to do the fight right causing it to scale up too much thus making it harder & possibly even impossible for everyone else.
while Zhaitan was not very fun, it sure beat the traditional “hit big boss on toes”. Seems fitting an enemy of that magnitude should not just be beat to death by some tiny adventurers stabbing at his toenails.
I agree it would make sense to have to use some big cannons & pact super weapons to kill him.
The down side came from the fact he just stays there and takes the beating with no real retaliation.
If they made Mord a 10+ man instanced fight however it could have some people on cannons/super weapons while other people were charged with guarding them.
Personally I’m hoping the memo they sent out some months back looking to hire a design team with experience designing raids was a good indication of them eventually putting instanced 10+ man content in the game.
As for Mord, I would hope he/she/it would be one of the bosses that would require an organized raid to kill. I mean if it don’t what possibly could.
One shot mechanics promote zerker meta. If there is someone wearing full zerker and someone wearing full pvt but both insta-down to the same one-shot attack if they dont dodge, then whats the point of having any toughness or vitality stats. There should be a viable option to build or sustain otherwise atleast where pve is concerned, all those fancy traitline and stat combinations are just for show and obselete.
Could you list all those one shot mechanics that affect full pvt geared players?
Not sure if he meant it literally.
But pretty sure he means that the way mobs are designed encourages allot more reliance on dodging, blinds, evasion & otherwise avoiding damage over support & being able to take the blow.
Unless they make mobs do allot more untelegraphed attacks at a quicker pace (faster but less damage per hit) and have them more frequently use conditions this problem is unlikely to change & zerk will still reign supreme.
Could be nice and useful in a relaxed context, since a necro will always have a fear to provide no matter what their build. But as spoj has extensively pointed out, it’s not like necromancers have a significant advantage over anyone else when it comes to hard (Defiant-interacting) CC.
Well you definitely have an advantage over guardians when it comes to providing hard CC.
I suppose so. Aside from Hammer #4, GS #5, and bane signet, I’m not entirely certain what else a Guardian provides*. Perhaps I should amend that to “have a significant advantage over everyone else”, since that’s probably what it would take.
*Although now I’m curious how impassable wall skills will interact with Defiant, or if they’ll interact with it at all. Line of Warding, and all that.
Well currently they don’t even take stacks off.
And if they effect the new defiant I can easily see them being abused by kiting bosses over them several times.
So I imagine they will continue to do nothing to bosses.