Guild Wars 2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

1. Dagger main-hand needs to not be purely out-classed.
2. Greatsword damage is fine as-is, but Necros lack modifiers in general. Without these, our DPS will never be top of the pack. Still, Gravedigger spam puts out very good DPS.

I wouldn’t mind if Dagger was pushed into more siphoning-centred weapon. It’s already weapon that gets best value out of siphons due to number of hits. Buffing Life Siphon (reducing cast time by 1,5s, maybe affecting up to 2 nearby targets with 50% effectiveness/healing allies?) skill, reducing it’s cooldown for completing auto attack chain and Life Siphon giving Quickness if all 9 siphon ticks hit.

Greatsword is a weapon that was added for it’s theme and PvE cleaving, not because it was meant to be useful. Nightfall on it is decent and every other ability would need major changes/replacements for it to become viable in PvP.

I guess for PvE you could just raise numbers and people would cheer and call meta.

Get Blood Magic and off-hand dagger. In adept traits you will have a trait increasing your speed by 25% when you have dagger equipped.

I’m not a fan of running Signet of Locust. You never use it’s active part in PvE nor trait it, so it just takes utility slot you could use to bring more useful utilities and swapping out every time you engage in combat might be good in WvWvW, but is just a chore in PvE.

For Open-world PvE I generally run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRIQNArYWnc0Ad3glbCW3As3gliBLeHOETiRBgBQCYaFMDiBA-TRgABAgeAA-e
Gear, stats are up to you and your budget, as long as you have Condition damage stat on it

Lorelei.3918:

Why do people say Power reapers aren’t viable? That damage looked pretty kitten viable to me! c:

Actually hitting someone decent with Greatsword in PvP is a wonder and weapon itself has only one good skill – #4. Everything else is slow, incredibly short range, buggy and there’s nothing that would let you stick close enough to kiting of popular PvP builds. You are also more or less stuck with staff offhand for range and utility, which isn’t great power weapon.

Power Necro’s damage compared to Revenant, Thief, Scrapper or even Druid is also low and harder to execute.

Not to mention to do any damage you have to commit to it with very agressive setups that are free kill for Thief.

Unless you’re confident you can eliminate him within 10-15 seconds with burst or he’s low on hp, don’t engage Reaper 1v1. If you have to, don’t even try fighting him in Shroud, just kite and use Precision Strike on cd to keep the pressure.

I have a suggestion.

A single new glider skin I can get from other source than gemstore.

Tempest is still a heal and protection bot. Bad design of Elite Specialization, but viable.

There are too many, but a single trait I have never used for more than 30 minutes after Spec patch release is Fear of Death followed by Unholy Martyr.

I think it is amazing already and doesn’t need any changes besides maybe increasing radius of #1 and bugfixing #5.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

In PvP, it also speeds up stomping.

Hm, interesting.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

This suggestion is exactly as old as the trait itself.

Also, add regeneration, Blood Bond, Spiteful Renewal… and we’d be almost halfway there to getting a properly working class mechanic.

Seriously, requesting a trait to not fail half the time isn’t as much a plead as it is stating the obvious.

The real question is: if it worked, would you take it over Weakening Shroud, especially now that it was buffed to corrupt boons?

Probably not.

My personal idea:
Whenever a foe you poisoned is healed, you heal for half that amount.

Essentially, poison you apply steals a portion of their healing instead of reducing it.

Could work as very, very brief effect, but as a permanent trait? That would be hillariously broken.

Hm, interesting. I will take a look at it later on.

You people have to be seriously bored to come up with these threads. Removing weapon swap, removing traits…

If they were to add new heal to Necromancer, they would have to add 1 bonus utility to every profession. With exception of Revenant, maybe.

Judging by ANet’s pace with changes and content creating now, I can’t see this happening.

kitten , I’ve been trying to have fun on couple weird builds including Greatsword and minion jihad ones for couple days, but sadly I have to face trihardinios practicing (?) their rerolls for the League finals. No loves for fun builds. FeelsBadMan.

Good vid!

Why do you post this video on all the sub-forums?

Land Staff 5 and Staff 3, maybe use #2 or #3 on scepter if you fancy, then leave. They should die from that.

.

Wolfric.9380:

But you can´t use a bow without 80 + get the skill points for mastery on guardian.
Also druid has a pet that makes life much easier.

Ah i personaly play elementalist with scepter. But in pvp this is considered weak.
So if you like ele try staff and scepter.

It was asked on PvP forum and mentioned as for PvP, so PvE leveling doesn’t matter beyond lvl 2.

The only two problems I have with Shield are: Soothing Bastion still hasn’t been fixed to increase boon duration despite me bug reporting it almost monthly since BWE2 and the fact they forgot to increase Healing Power scalling of Crystal Hibernation when they nerfed base value with recent balance patch, kittening Revenants using HP again.

That sucks. It should surely be majority of the team making decisions. Hope you guys can sort this out somehow with ESL.

And never fully trust people who you know on the internet but have never met in real life.

I run Berserker’s with DPS setup and basically no condition clear and I do good.

You just don’t try to be a hero and 1v1 a Reaper. You can help with killing it as Power Revs can now have totally wicked burst, but don’t trade hits with it.

At the end of day, Reapers are just a single common condition damage build you see in PvP. Most professions run Power builds.

I don’t really get the purpose of Glyph of Unity, but I’d say that rest of Ranger elites are pretty kitten good.

AivenPrimus.9184:

1. First, … DH, is the only Elite spec, that has a clear, base buff on their Class Mechanic Skill,

Reaper Shroud is a clear base buff over Death Shroud in pretty much every single way.

Your best bet would probably be Dragonhunter/Guardian as it is primarly ranged damage dealer, has bursty nature, can maintain range and it’s longbow isn’t boring.

Wouldn’t suggest Druid/Ranger. Ranger longbow isn’t that good and even if picked it’s more for annoying knockback than damage, while Staff isn’t really an interesting damage dealing range weapon because all the damage comes from beam autoattack and has supportive nature.

None. I don’t really like the idea of yet another profession with greatsword.

One handed weapons fit Revenant’s playstyle and design more and I wouldn’t like this profession to be next cliche design.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

How did you get those tooltips to look like they do in game?

http://tooltips.thatshaman.com/

So, I’ve been working for fun on next concept of E-spec of mine after the first one, this time one that could maybe fill the “support” role, have a bit of vampiric theme and come with a risk of using both Life Force and Health as your resources if you want to make “plays”.

Running with Pistol main-hand that, together with new Shroud, would ideally provide necessary tools to make Staff no longer required (although still useful). Somewhat inspired by Tremere & Tzmisce clans in Vampire The Masquerade universe. A lot of it is still stuff I work on for fun from time to time, but I could share some early concepts:

Thaumaturgist

Thaumaturgist is a Necromancer who devoted himself into understanding and having control over Life itself and all it’s aspects – from blood to whole body of both his allies and enemies.

Mechanics: Offerings [F2]

Outside Shroud: Offering of Blood
Draw on the power of blood, weakning boundaries with the mortal world to reset Shroud cooldown and gain Life Force. The less health you have, the more Life Force you gain. 1/2s cast, lose 20% base health on activation (3,842).

In Shroud: Offering of Life
Draw on the power of Life in order to shorten the cooldown of next Shroud ability and heal allies. The less Life Force you have, the bigger the healing is 1/2s cast, lose 15% Life Force on activation.

Note: I think most “On entering/leaving Shroud” traits have potential, just lack that little something now. This F2 mechanic could give them much stronger presence.

Elite Specialization-specific utilities: Orders
Orders are Thaumaturgist-specific skills that manipulate vitae of both enemies and allies and can be modified depending on previously used Utility skill type. (In Combat)

Check attachments below for examples

Note: By “ability negation” in Order of Defeat descreption I mean not only being interrupted, but also failing an attack i.e. attack being blocked or evaded.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Traits:

Check attachments below for examples

If anyone has ideas or would like to suggest some improvements, please let me know. Everything is still a concept and in development and numbers are there for the sake of it.

It’s already been posted here.

Super.2749:

season finals will have 4 classes, We will see all the 4 top teams abusing double revenant. guild challanger qualifier will have 5 classes. we will actually see good balanced games here. They still didn’t decide on season 2, but they will see how terrible the season final will be with every team having 2 revenants.

As far as I know, Pro League Season 1 finals will be played on current patch. Not sure if no-stacking rule applies, tho.

If stacking is allowed, I see stacking Reapers and Scrappers far more likely than stacking Revs.

No. ArenaNet is extremaly afraid of life steal mechanic from GW1 and it’s Necromancer’s niche anyway. Why not design new Elite Specialization for Necromancer in a way which would let allies recover part of their health based on damage done for short time frame? We would have interesting support, different playstyle and all that without passive stat everyone would stack.

ArenaNet did poor job at spacing the content, so after they disabled Ranked PvP black hole appeared and will last untill next season start at least.

Basically, they haven’t released announced WvW patch, announced next raid wing and they basically disabled matchmaking for a month and all that will be coming later instead of spacing up WvW, PvE and PvP releases so people can at least rotate between game modes when some are stale.

It’s basically huge downtime and there’s nothing related to GW2 to stream that people would watch with enjoyment. People may still stream in GW2 category, but they’re being watched for themselves as twitch streamers, not for GW2 gameplay.

Unholy Martyr is just bad concept for a trait and has no synergy with either Shroud. The only Shroud it has synergy with is avalible underwater…

Remove it and give some damage/self-surv option. I’d personally like Quickness trait there which could synergize with Reaper Greatsword in some way to speed up that kitten weapon. Quickness also goes well with life steals.

General answer would be: Don’t try to 1v1 Reaper unless you are good Scrapper maybe. Druids do all right in that 1v1 as long as Reaper doesn’t have too much life force at start. Thieves do okay.

In teamfights it hasn’t changed much. Old focus Necro strat.

I’d say best counter to Reaper is another Reaper and it revolves around Plague Signet use and who opens first.

Corrupt on scepter auto isn’t even a big deal, tbh.

No class stacking in ESLs isn’t really a band-aid for me. There would always be more optimal builds to be stacked, champions/heroes in MOBAs would be stacked too in many cases if you could get more than 1 per team. This rule is just a obvious thing for me.

It’s been obvious they shifted to reddit for quite some time now.

Revenants aren’t any bad in PvP. You just don’t stack them anymore, but they’re still awesome. Yes, you basically instadie if you face competent Reaper 1v1, but most builds melt vs. it anyway. I like Power Revenant more now than before and I feel like going full damage with Berserker amulet and fully offensive setup is both more rewarding and risky than before. There’s also re-incarnation of my old Celestial Mallyx with Mercenary’s Amulet I like and Viper’s build is still good with Leadership rune replacing Durability.

I even use Sword OH from time to time because it works nice with Precision Strike and isn’t that far behind Shield now, although pathing issues on Sword #5 and it’s overall reliability can still suck.

Yes, ArenaNet stopped developing the profession, at least for now, but it’s still okay.

As far as we’ve seen for the profession after Balance Patch, ArenaNet doesn’t seem to know of that rest of Revenant or hide their intentions and changes for the April Balance Patch.

morgul.9276:

Lord Morgul – Master Thief on the Top.

I just want the plot to leave all the Sylvari, Asura and leyline bullkitten behind and move on to the Charr story.

They clearly can’t make interesting story out of all that magic, midgets and plants. Maybe better luck with Charr politics and cooler Ascalon/Brand areas?

Spite is “a bit” too good – it is basically extension of Reaper line. Curses Reaper is actually pretty manageable.

I would look at Vulnerability application and reduce it by ICD or other change, then add missing Vulnerability to Power weapons.

Currently, it’s not only another condition Spite Reaper applies with ease and you have to cleanse but it also increases hybrid damage and, quite importantly, increases Crit chance with Decimate Defenses. That allows Carrion/Mercenary Reaper to get more value out of Power stat and to proc Chilling Nova more reliably, even without Intelligence sigil.

Very short list of things I’d like to see:

- Nerf to on-swap sigils, changing Energy to restore maybe 30 Energy on swap instead of Vigor. Improvements and changes to some on-crit and on-hit sigils.

- This may be tad controversial, but…reduction of Thief’s hard damage mitigation in form of blinds and kiting especially. Thieves restrict all other Power builds. Only power builds used in PvP are ones that can 1v1 a Thief and win.

- Similarily, removal or change of Plague Signet. It shouldn’t be instant.

Lastly, separation between Control (Chill, Cripple, Immobilize, Fear, Weakness, Blind, Slow) and DoT (Torment, Bleeding, Poison, Confusion, Burning) Conditions. Then, change to Condition removals – less DoT cleanses, Control cleanses more popular. Possibly making Fear a hard CC and no longer a condition. Followed by reducing the amount of DoT application and couple tweaks to DoT balance (Burning being very short but high damage DoT without bs like Burning lasting 10s etc.)

Chaith.8256:

KamiKaZe.8173:

it is a very hard profession to master

Bahahaha

Chaith, the silent forum lurker strikes where you don’t expect! Tbh, most popular PvP builds are easy to play and effective, that’s why they’re popular. I like the Revenant because concept behind profession is quite solid, even if execution is lacking in many places. There’s a lot of potential in the mechanics.

In general, at least in PvP, you guys should take a closer look at that Precision Strike. Yeah, it’s buggy af and any AI screws with it, but I kinda like the feeling and damage can be obscene.

State of Power Reaper and many possible Power marauder/zerk builds is that Thief is back and as usual, kills other power builds. Power build is good if it can do something and fight a Thief.

EDIT: Oh, this is about PvE. Well, I guess it works on VG. Power Necro doesn’t have it’s niche (we apply vulnerability, hehe…) and from what I’ve seen still consists mostly of spamming AA and then GS #2. Which isn’t particulary interesting gameplay that would make people play it for fun.

I think Spite might be a little bit too good – providing vulnerability that boosts Chill and all other sources of damage and acts as cover condition. I would probably re-consider Bitter Chill or putting ICD on Death’s Embrace minor.

But Druids have a fair chance in that 1v1, depending on node, even advantage.

They could add Sigil of Energy effect to Deceptive Evasion, so it stays Mesmer-specific.

Nobody uses Spinal Shivers, OP, because Focus sucks in general.

nearlight.3064:

Maybe make putrid curse only poison if the target has no boobs to corrupt, like the damage mod on Mesmer sword auto?

I surely take boobs over bleeding.

People say that there are no imporant abilities of Reaper you should dodge/avoid and they proceed to facetank full Soul Spiral and Executioner’s Scythe.

Open world stuff and other stuff like gliding is okay. General changes to PvP are awesome, removal of Celestial etc. really helped, Unranked is a bit clusterfu..hm.. due to all sorts of people queueing and being matched together, but it’s temporary.

Now, about profession balance.

It is really a strict Balance Hotfix for the most professions and builds and I think people expected more than that.
When some got couple good changes, fixes, reworks to underpowered/outdated stuff like Ranger, Thief or Necromancer, some professions got absolutely nothing, round 0 (Revenant) that would update underused abilities/traits.

It is just rather dissapointing for many, as this was 3 months of waiting and posting good feedback and now it kinda feels like wasted time. And looking at this update, I can’t say for sure than next will be better.

Now, more than ever, Profession Forum Specialists are needed. It looks like many changes could’ve been better if ArenaNet had better ways of gathering feedback.

Around the launch of HoT and during Betas there was a fun period when certain Devs would often contact community on profession forums and actually do visible things based on feedback they got. I understand that many of them have moved on to different projects etc., but little update from Dev/Balance Team every now and then (monthly?) on what they plan to do with each profession and maybe asking for some feedback (this doesn’t even have to be major things, just to let people know there’s any connection) would do a lot of great things.

Last but not the least, I think Devs should post&focus more on their official Forums rather than Reddit. I get it that Reddit is quick etc., but neglecting your official sources of information and places for discussion looks bad. Important info, updates etc. should always be first on Forums or on the official Blog rather than Reddit or Twitter. Talk more.