Guild Wars 2

Every new raid wing has unique skins, minis, and sometimes infusions to acquire. Those are the ever-expanding rewards you’re looking for, whereas legendary armor is the ultimate reward that you can earn from all raids.

As a relevant aside….

It blows my mind that so many pub groups struggle through bosses without voice chat when they intentionally waste DPS opportunities with full healer Druids and multiple Minstrels Chronomancers for ‘safer’ runs. The bar for success in a silent raid encounter is so much higher than a voiced run because it takes a level of awareness that very few pubs are really capable of. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and get ten of those extremely great players in a full pub, but you’re really stacking the deck against yourself by hoping for that.

Seriously, some players are really solid, but might not notice when certain mechanics are happening, and all they need to go from “good DPS but misses mechanics” to “correctly does everything” is someone on TS/Discord calling what is happening. This applies to so many fights, from calls of poison at Matthias to bomb calls at Sabetha to even where the tank wants the next shards cleared at Xera.

You’re making things harder on yourself by insisting on silent runs. Just create a temporary Discord channel and bark out mechanics and you’ll see much higher success rates across the board.

I think it’s fine. If you’re among the elite few who not only raid but could complete your first set of armor and still want the other sets, then you’ll be more than capable (and willing) to do whatever it takes to get them. The other side of my opinion here is that as more raid wings get added to the game, the time gate shortens, so they definitely had to future proof this a little bit.

I still prefer my boon duration runes with Herald in WvW. It’s too helpful having 100% boon duration and getting long duration Resistance, Protection, etc. I could potentially work around this by running the new Bounty rune in conjunction with F2, but it just doesn’t seem as helpful as other sigils overall.

Just play your Revenant in WvW and feel like a beast. Hammer does a ton of damage, you barf out amazing boons in an AOE, and you provide key Resistance for your group to counteract the prevalence of conditions. I’m currently running around in WvW with a healer Herald and it’s great fun; it really keeps the class alive for me.

I would prefer some level of clipping.

In general I favor not having things float off of my character. It’s very jarring, whereas clipping on this order only bothers me if I’m zoomed in really close. This not only includes backpacks, but also includes shield attachment points with the legendary armor.

While we’re on the subject, can we please have Asura ears and Charr horns clip through the medium hood and heavy helmet? I’d vastly prefer this to having them get chopped off, making those characters’ heads look all misshapen.

Thanks!

Bloodstone Dust: Becomes Toxic utilities for massive profit.
Dragonite Ore: Now becomes Magnanimous utilities for personal use.
Empyreal Fragments: Feed it to the Star of Gratitude to keep it from taking over my bank.

Uzunari.1964:

- You can get only 13 LI’s a week?

This number will only go up over time as new raids are added.

Uzunari.1964:

- You don’t get decent material rewards from doing Raids? (that would matter and draw you closer to getting legendary armor).

Raid monetary rewards are actually pretty good if you turn your Magnetite Shards into infusions and sell those to then buy materials. Liquid rewards are pretty weak for sure, though.

Uzunari.1964:

- Are legendary insights account bound?

Makes sense to me so that when you get legendary armor it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you earned it yourself. This creates a sense of prestige for the set. That said, I certainly cannot speak for ANet here.

Uzunari.1964:

- There is no trade ration in between Legendary insights and Magnetite shards?

I’ve always said that this is a good idea, though I think it should be one way from LI into Magnetite Shards (They could make LI salvageable into 40 shards or something!). You should not be able to fail repeatedly at Escort, get 150 shards, and then buy LI with that. The purpose of LI is to prove that you’ve killed a boss / beaten an event.

You can buy it from raid vendors for 25 LI and 5g.

Meanwhile, any one of the OP’s “PEASANT” classes can bring a build which packs the equivalent DPS of all three “GOD KING OVERLORD” classes combined (or at least most can). Funny how that works.

Yes, you will be able to do that. As described, all it requires is a cleared instance.

It would be pretty cool if this only took 1 buff icon to reduce buff bar clutter, but it’s so minor in the grand scheme of things that I’d feel bad if even a couple hours were taken away from future Fractal development for this kind of change.

You’re kidding, right? I’m just glad it’s finally about to be released, regardless of what it looks like.

Blaeys.3102:

But we all need to do a better job of not belittling the opinions of others (and we all have to accept that our personal stances are just that – opinions).

The real problem with threads like these is that no one is going to change their mind over these discussions. There’s nothing new that can be added to this topic, and it has been discussed a thousand times before (oftentimes with the same people present). As a result of all of this, about the only thing that these threads really tell ANet reliably is that people are divided on the topic.

ANet has even responded that they are looking into ways to make the story more accessible by some means. While I have pretty strong feelings that this won’t be a “story mode” and will probably instead be something like a recap cinematic or whatever, who really knows. We should wait for more information from them.

Feanor.2358:

But it’s fine when the balance nerfs another class based on the same premise, right? Sheesh.

The funny thing about being salty regarding Elementalist nerfs is that it’s still better than literally every other DPS class in the fights it excels at.

apharma.3741:

Um no, these are numbers from actual raid scenarios where condi thief pulls higher numbers due to combo fields.

No kitten, lol. Maybe you should read your own quotes where they’re pointing out “overseer” as the boss (AKA: DPS golem boss).

Maybe we should nerf condition reaper too while we’re at it. I was getting 36k on Deimos last week. That number is so scary and big compared to those other normal classes, it obviously needs a shave.

apharma.3741:

Considering it’s getting 38k and some claim they’ve seen 40k then a 3-4k shave would bring it to a solid 34-37k range where it still vastly outperforms most options on a much easier rotation. There’s your reason to run it, it’s like math is hard. Sheesh.

Yes, we should totally balance all classes based on how they perform on the DPS golem boss. It’s like understanding context or words is hard. Sheesh.

We’re still recruiting, unsurprisingly!

I’m not going to write a big post this time, but we’re definitely still looking for both raiders and casual players who are interested in doing guild missions and having a good time. We’re exceptionally laid back, which is a huge part of why we have such loyal members, and so I’d market that as a pretty important part of the guild. Let an officer know if you have any questions!

If you factor in the bosses where condition thief is terrible (Deimos, Slothasor, KC, and VG) and then factor in the bosses where it excels (Gorseval, Matthias, Cairn, Mursaat), you find that it really doesn’t need any kind of a shave. If you reduced it by 3-4k DPS, you’d just find that no one would run it anywhere because it doesn’t offer any advantages over other classes that can either produce damage at range, cleave well, have unique/beneficial utility, or whatever.

I sure hope ANet looks at this stuff more holistically than a lot of the posters in these recent balance threads that have been coming up. Sheesh.

If you’re CST then you’re probably NA, which means that EU guilds won’t work. Let me recommend you browse the Looking For forum on this site for any that catch your fancy!

It would be a nightmare if people had to grind that much to get the last item. Even “true raiders” don’t have the luck or magnetite shards to unlock everything like that in a reasonable amount of time.

Feanor.2358:

Consider an average player who can get 20k by autoattacking on a staff thief or struggle to hit 12k on ele. Don’t you think it hurst build and class diversity?

No, it doesn’t. A player who is not comfortable with a class will down, miss DPS regardless, and require a lot of carrying. If you’re comfortable with a class you’ll have more DPS windows and easily pull modest, comparable damage numbers without ever being a master at the class. I witness this frequently with extremely average players on every DPS class; they pull their 20k DPS numbers on whatever they’re most comfortable on, regardless of what that DPS class actually is.

Feanor.2358:

Does it give any incentive to master the hard class?

The incentive to master the hard class is because you enjoy the hard class.

apharma.3741:

Edit: About your quoted paragraph. If, in your example, thief did the same damage as condi engineer but the latter is considerably harder to play then what is the incentive to play or learn engineer?

The incentive is that you find it fun, which is all that is needed for a player to play something a lot and get good with it. Every class being comparable in numbers with variable difficulty is OK because then it means that it literally doesn’t matter what you bring and it all falls back on “what you are comfortable with and what you enjoy”. I play with guildies who ask me to bring their engineers all the time just because it’s fun, regardless of the piano you play to get great DPS numbers.

I agree with the OP that condition ranger is fine. People want to nerf it because it’s “easy” which isn’t even true. Condition Berserker these days hits identical numbers and is the same difficulty, meanwhile condition Daredevil can go higher than anything else and it has a comparably simple rotation. People keep looking at this like “Sc/W Ele and condition Engineer are hard, so nothing else should match their DPS”, which is terrible from both a design perspective and an overall build/class diversity perspective. All you’d achieve by nerfing “easier” classes is hurting build diversity by forcing everyone to play Ele/Engi again.

I posted this in another thread and it’s relevant here:

More important than anything is that classes can pull comparable numbers within their own playstyle regardless of the difficulty of that rotation. If condition Engineer could pull 35k DPS “just because it’s hard to play” and everything else could never go higher than 25k, then you’d create a situation where you’re only ever realistically allowed to play Engineer in the meta and you’d hurt build and class diversity substantially. If people enjoy the challenge, they can play their Engineer right now and enjoy that playstyle in raids without infringing on the ability for others to play other things. It’s good the way it is.

I said this in another thread and it’s relevant here:

Rising Dusk.2408:

More important than anything is that classes can pull comparable numbers within their own playstyle regardless of the difficulty of that rotation. If condition Engineer could pull 35k DPS “just because it’s hard to play” and everything else could never go higher than 25k, then you’d create a situation where you’re only ever realistically allowed to play Engineer in the meta and you’d hurt build and class diversity substantially. If people enjoy the challenge, they can play their Engineer right now and enjoy that playstyle in raids without infringing on the ability for others to play other things. It’s good the way it is.

Feanor.2358:

For pretty much autoattack and dodge? No.

I disagree. More important than anything is that classes can pull comparable numbers within their own playstyle regardless of the difficulty of that rotation. If condition Engineer could pull 35k DPS “just because it’s hard to play” and everything else could never go higher than 25k, then you’d create a situation where you’re only ever realistically allowed to play Engineer in the meta and you’d hurt build and class diversity substantially. If people enjoy the challenge, they can play their Engineer right now and enjoy that playstyle in raids without infringing on the ability for others to play other things. It’s good the way it is.

This skill doesn’t need more functionality. It already does a ton of stuff.

• Blocks projectiles
• Damages in a line up to target
• Blinds in an AOE when the skill finishes
• Leap finisher
• Mobility skill

abullenfla.9632:

Chaos only offers self protection and damage reduction that isn’t needed for any encounter not even deimos and domination offers more group protection with reduced signet cd if you get some protection from somewhere else like Herald runes while also offering more quickness.

While I am 100% in the camp of Domination over Chaos, the AOE stability spam that you get from Chaos is super useful in encounters like Samarog CM.

A lot of people point to the personal story as a reason for not getting this, but I’d just as easily take a 100% reset story with 0 rewards in exchange for being able to change my character’s races. I realize some people may find it easy to just create a new character and start over that way, but there are so many soulbound parts of the game and I’ve invested so much time into each one that it’s just not worth the effort. This would be an easy 2000 gem purchase for me.

OriOri.8724:

@Rising Dusk – I’m not trying to argue that our elites aren’t some of the best, because I think they are among the best. But that doesn’t mean that I think they are “elite”. To me, all of them except SoH and gravity well are just utility+, yet SoH is on such a long CD that its not worth it unless you run chrono and use it during CS. I’d like to see elite skills on all classes buffed, some more significantly than others.

If your goal is to suggest changes to the fundamental design of what elite skills are, then that’s different than what I thought and I don’t really have any feedback for you. I, personally, like the state of elite skills and Mesmer elite skills in particular. There are definitely some elite skills on other classes that I dislike a great deal, most of them being underwhelming transformations that don’t effectively synergize with the rest of the class’s kit.

My only comment on this thread is that Mesmer has easily among the best elite skills in the game right now, where all of them are very strong for different applications, and all of them see regular use. None of them need to be revamped, in my opinion.

I personally like the current implementation because it encourages completionists to give raids a try when they might otherwise not do so. A good number of my guildies have started off with the opinion that “Raids are terrible for GW2!” and moved on to “Raids are awesome and I’m glad I gave them a try!” after asking the guild for help unlocking the mastery track.

fishball.7204:

That wouldn’t do much since you’d be taking shiro/ventari which means you don’t pulse heavy boons like Herald which means…shared empowerment only does so much. Then when you swap out of either legend you don’t get either quickness or alacrity.

Due to max quickness stacks you’d have 10 seconds of AOE quickness when you leave Shiro, which is enough to legend transfer, do a bunch there, and legend transfer back right when quickness is ending. It’s not ideal, but it would work. Assuming alacrity was at least a 2 second pulse every 1 second it would be OK too for the same reason. (It’d be tight, though, no lie)

Also, due to the way IO pulses Quickness and Ventari tablet pulses regeneration, you should still be able to maintain significant might uptime with the Shared Empowerment change I suggested. At least as much as a condition PS Warrior (especially with Dumplings as your food).

fishball.7204:

I also have a feeling that the build would do very little damage since all your energy would go towards ‘buffs’.

Yeah it certainly wouldn’t be a DPS class, but it’d pull at least as much damage as a regular Chronomancer does.

fishball.7204:

They just need to rework rev completely from the ground up instead of trying to band-aid fix

I can safely say this will never happen. The best we may at some point get is the removal of energy costs on weapon skills, but they’re not going to ever rework Revenant from the ground-up.

The problem with what a lot of people want ANet to do is that it depends so heavily on how you play WvW. Quite frankly, for the way I play WvW it feels great (though obviously not without faults) and I’m looking forward to the further skirmish reward updates to hopefully not make WvW a negative profit time expenditure. That said, we don’t get a lot of even playful banter from the devs here, and it makes people feel ignored and leave.

There’s a way as a company to do this well and communicate with the players without overpromising. The silence on topics like Ghost Thief and Epidemic is pretty shocking, as there was very nearly unanimous support for the skills being addressed. I realize both of those did eventually get fixed, but with no communication from ANet prior. Even some developer posts in the WvW forums saying “We’re looking at this internally now for possible adjustment” would go a long way toward benefiting the community and keeping people happy in that regard.

TexZero.7910:

Or remove the ICD on crit might stack from guards… either way really.

Sure, I guess I just think Revenant needs the love a lot more than Guardians right now.

zealex.9410:

what does shared empowerment does on herald? isn’t buffing herald gonna make it eevn more must for the class to work properly? I would suggest buffing sword 2 and 3 dmg and remove the energy cost from weapons

Shared Empowerment applies might to nearby allies whenever you apply a boon with a 1 second ICD. The 1 second ICD coupled with the duration of the might currently limits Herald to about 13 stacks of sustained might. If they got rid of the ICD and made it only apply when you applied a boon to yourself, voila, you can now supply 25 stacks of might to your subgroup.

Coupled with a few other choice team support changes (as I listed above), Herald could be a competing force with Chronomancer and one of your two PS Warriors.

Feanor.2358:

New might stacker only addresses PS. We’d still have Druid and Chrono as mandatory slots in both subgroups.

Every Revenant Has His Day

• Shared Empowerment no longer has an ICD and only triggers on boons you apply to yourself.
• Impossible Odds now pulses quickness to you and up to 4 nearby allies.
• Impossible Odds now only has -7 upkeep.
• Ventari’s tablet now pulses 2s of alacrity on up to 5 nearby allies without requiring Natural Harmony to be cast.

zealex.9410:

or idk introduce new mightstacker on expac 2 and uhm remove all the stat buff traits ^^

Just remove the ICD on Shared Empowerment on Herald, make it only take effect on boons you apply to yourself, and you could see one this expansion pack.

rabidsmiles.5926:

I have 100% boon duration from everything else + the Sigil, so no need for the plat doubloon. Hence the want to find a nice useful sigil for that off hand

Transference is your best bet then for sure. Your main sources of healing are the regeneration boon and the Mantra heal trait with the inspiration minor grandmaster trait.

I’ve never done any tests in regulated environments like those, so that’s really good context to have and lines up similarly with what I’ve seen (though I’ve never actually tried Engi healer). I also have never tried anything other than builds that I run for raids, so no Minstrel’s Druid or Staff Elementalist (since both run Magi), though that shouldn’t change much for these tests outside regeneration duration.

I also think things are generally tougher in real raids for classes that rely heavily on regeneration for HPS because Chronomancers naturally apply so much of it in high durations, meaning your regeneration never ticks. Besides that, obviously not everyone needs healing every second, so numbers get saturated as you noted. Regardless, it’s really cool to have the numbers from those vacuum tests!

• Remove energy cost of weapon skills.
• Corruption needs to merge the torment duration / torment application on crit minor traits and have another new minor trait to help the trait line out more.
• Diabolic Inferno needs to have no ICD and Embrace the Darkness needs to be given a 2 second cooldown on activate/deactivate.
• Unyielding Anguish needs evade frames on it.
• Venom Enhancement shouldn’t have an ICD and should have its poison application’s duration reduced slightly to compensate.
• Other legends need to have better support for condition application; Glint really does very little for it outside of Elemental Blast. A good way to do this would be to put bleeds on Shiro skills.
• Revenant really needs a secondary condition application weapon set outside of Mace/Axe. Hopefully a future elite spec helps out here.

Optimally it’s a platinum doubloon as seen here, but if you’re running chaos or have a general excess of boon duration then transference is best.

Ryudnard.2587:

Full zerker P/P theif may work in raid?

You don’t ever want to camp P/P (it’s really bad), but realistically the Staff power Daredevil meta build doesn’t use its weapon swap except for cases of extreme CC needs (Pistol 4). If in encounters like VG you desperately need another ranged player to get in the green circle, you can replace the Dagger mainhand in that weapon swap with a Pistol mainhand so that you can overload spam between melee opportunities and maintain a portion of your DPS.

Jayjaydee.3827:

@ Rising Dusk. Ty for those healing numbers by class. Where did you get them? I looked for such numbers, but wasn’t ever able to find them. Is there a reference or just from experience?

They’re the rough average of what I’ve seen personally while using DPS meters which measure healing during raid encounters. If you really want to go crazy and have a group eating stupid amounts of damage, you can push the numbers higher than what I’ve listed. I’ve seen YouTube videos of Elementalist healing of 6.5k HPS over the course of a Matthias encounter.

P/P is only really a tolerable substitute if you’re running power Daredevil on green circles in VG, and even that is pretty bad. If you’re a condition build you really should be in melee range or you will lose a significant amount of damage. Send your elementalists, condition warriors, condition rangers, and druids instead and you’ll have a much better time.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Fixed that for you.

Let me tell you, I’ve seen things.

Fatherbliss.4701:

Kinda hoping we wind up against SBI. Woo! Could have we have a server marriage ceremony inside the garrison of the other server we are against? Those are the best.

Looking at the weekly projections we could see each other as early as next week! We haven’t been opponents for years now since TC’s original climb to T1. I’m sure we’d find time and ways to mash each other and our opponent up in all sorts of places.!

I play it because it’s fun and my server is hilarious / pub-friendly / good enough to win fights. I also really like the triumphant armor skins and it’s way better than PvP S6.

Vinceman.4572:

The problem of insisting on a certain number of KPs would exclude many players. For example I’m one of three ppl raiding in our little guild and we’d like to have all gold statues. This is why I don’t collect them personally rather than spending them to the guild vendor.

• I deposit all decoration tokens for my guild.
• Whenever someone asks for KP in a pub I join, I just show them an equipped mini from that boss instead. It’s impossible to fake and has worked every time.

In optimal compositions your Chronomancer will be the tank, and it will definitely focus on the concentration stat some when gearing in order to reach 100% boon duration for quickness uptime. Very few other classes really use gear stats to reach 100% boon duration, however, with the only one I can think of being healer Herald.