Guild Wars 2

Xillllix.3485:

It’s not just the Dragon Hunter that has been balanced poorly. Ever played staff ele in PvP? Yesterday I got destroyed by a reaper with 5-6k cleaves and 1-shot by a Daredevil with a 11k vault and a 6k uppercut following.

Meanwhile on staff ele it takes 3-4 seconds to channel any kittening skill that does 40% that damage. GW2 skill/class balance is soooooo bad now.

5-6K cleave on Reaper is Gravedigger spam. Either that or your cleave numbers might be exaggerated?

Anyways, I agree that virtually all of the elite specs need to be brought down in some fashion.

Because it’s fun to be tanky. Soldiers gives you ~30% base power damage reduction (relative to Valkyrie), so it definitely helps whether you notice it or not. Soliders can still hit decently hard as long as you are good about stacking might (i.e., purely passively via the Spite line).

That being said, I’m not surprised that you’re having great success with Valkyrie—between the high weakness uptime that certain builds offer, Rise, and the 50% damage reduction from Shroud, Marauder and Valkyrie builds can still maintain high damage reduction with much better DPS than the Soldiers variant. I prefer Marauder’s myself, but Valkeryie is a great choice with the Soul Reaping line.

Dec. 1

+1 to OP

Frost.1503:

Salamander.2504:

You don’t need to use vital persistence with Reaper. Obviously it’s nice, but if you remove it you’ll get used to it.

????
Try to play in pvp without it

I haven’t PvP’d with Vital Persistence Since Oct. 23rd. Averaging 60-70% win-rate since HoT with Marauder Amulet. Curses, Blood, Reaper.

Orcinus Orca.8627:

livlaender.8790:

if you want to play with gs as you used to play with dagger/warhorn pre hot, than youre right…., gs doesnt rly work, its weaker

gs offers a new, unique way of playstyle, wich is different from dagger/warhorn, but not worse…, learn it and get used to it

If you’d go in detail and would describe what you mean by “learn it and get used to it” your post would be valid. But as it stands right now it’s nothing more than deliberate provocation and untenable assertion.

I don’t read that as provocative at all: GS functions very differently than what we’re used to, which nobody can argue with. GS requires being used in a weapon/shroud swapping rotation, where-as pre-HoT dagger DPS was gained by auto-spam. The poster you quote is merely saying that you’ll get used to it with time, and that we’ll uncover new synergies with GS and other aspects of the class as we gain more experience with it.

As a light-hearted aside, his point doesn’t require more detail (myself an outsider was able to interpret it), and I fail to see how it is “untenable”.

Hooglese.4860:

I have yet to see a good tempest but I’m not ruling it out. I’d like to see a good tempest.

Oh they are out there all right…

Deth, I think it’s more about the Cleave Wars 2 mid fights where AOE dps spam wins the game, rather than the case of 1v1’ing, where the base classes and elite specs are much more balanced.

glaphen.5230:

Looking at your post history I clearly see Druid everywhere.

Deth.4109:

…I have pretty much been playing all of the same builds I was before along with new elite spec ones and…

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

cakeonroof.7385:

Lavexis.5360:

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

not sure why you guys complaints..sure berserker spec is underpowered, but a regular gs/axe shield warrior can stomp dragon hunter and reapers without using rampage.

endure pain alone can counter dragon hunter pretty hard.

and if you use rampage then it should be ez stomp for you.. all these complaints make me wonder if you guys even play warrior at all.

Clearly, you don’t play warrior at all.

let me sort out your fail logic

Endure pain counter DH= (Berserker can have Endure pain )= Berserker Counter DH
and then you say Berserker is UP..idk what your post is about tbh..

you are kittened..

just use endure pain and tank the traps and then press rampage ..problem solved you just beat DH

what so hard about that

berserker spec being underpowered is a whole another story, but telling people that warriors cant beat the new spec is just plain stupid.

update: if you want to disrespect the dh, you can try go berserker power build with that crit trait and use berserk then go rampage.

This has little to do with DH 1v1 but more about warriors esp berserker trait needing a buff so it synergizes with the remaining traits, and weapon skills.

As of now, berserker isn’t rewarding to the player for as much effort it takes to make it function.

You cant base your argument on hotjoin or a couple low tier unranked matches vs the experience of veteran warriors (not me I’m average) on this thread

i don’t play hotjoin.. I play unranked, and its definitely not low mmr. Either way, even if its low mmr..it doesn’t take much to play reaper or dragon hunter.

its your problem if you don’t know when is the right time to pop endure pain, and i agree that berserker spec needed some buff, but that doesn’t mean warrior as a whole class is weak.

for warrior timing is very crucial, and if you suc at it then don’t play warrior.

that’s definitely low MMR…medium at max for being generous

just admit it that you are bad..heres another screenie of a warrior going against 2 reaper, 1 dh and 1 chronomancer (premade) yet still win the match

all of these guys are rank 80 so stop with the whole bullkitten " you go against nub crap"

l2p

what…what makes a rank 80 automatically a top MMR..
now rank 80 is so easy…if there were unlimited ranks, i would already be like 500 rank…

any way, im up for duels anytime since you called me noob

Salamander.2504:

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

cakeonroof.7385:

Lavexis.5360:

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

not sure why you guys complaints..sure berserker spec is underpowered, but a regular gs/axe shield warrior can stomp dragon hunter and reapers without using rampage.

endure pain alone can counter dragon hunter pretty hard.

and if you use rampage then it should be ez stomp for you.. all these complaints make me wonder if you guys even play warrior at all.

Clearly, you don’t play warrior at all.

let me sort out your fail logic

Endure pain counter DH= (Berserker can have Endure pain )= Berserker Counter DH
and then you say Berserker is UP..idk what your post is about tbh..

you are kittened..

just use endure pain and tank the traps and then press rampage ..problem solved you just beat DH

what so hard about that

berserker spec being underpowered is a whole another story, but telling people that warriors cant beat the new spec is just plain stupid.

update: if you want to disrespect the dh, you can try go berserker power build with that crit trait and use berserk then go rampage.

This has little to do with DH 1v1 but more about warriors esp berserker trait needing a buff so it synergizes with the remaining traits, and weapon skills.

As of now, berserker isn’t rewarding to the player for as much effort it takes to make it function.

You cant base your argument on hotjoin or a couple low tier unranked matches vs the experience of veteran warriors (not me I’m average) on this thread

i don’t play hotjoin.. I play unranked, and its definitely not low mmr. Either way, even if its low mmr..it doesn’t take much to play reaper or dragon hunter.

its your problem if you don’t know when is the right time to pop endure pain, and i agree that berserker spec needed some buff, but that doesn’t mean warrior as a whole class is weak.

for warrior timing is very crucial, and if you suc at it then don’t play warrior.

that’s definitely low MMR…medium at max for being generous

Out of curiosity, how can you tell?

the player base in this game is so small, if you’ve been on high MMR long enough you would know by simply looking at the players..

and saying people who are rank 80 = good, he really knows nothing better lol…

I guess I’ve just outed myself as low MMR then :’(

Booms.2594:

@nova striker
I kinda disagree I think DH is definitely S tier but not as broken as all the idjits in this forum believe.
I’d say it’s something like
S
Dragonhunter
Scrapper
Herald
A
Reaper
Chronomancer
Druid
B
Tempest
Daredevil
C
Berserker

What I’m interesting in knowing is where the base classes fit in all of this? Are they all C’s? Where do all the elite specs need to be brought down to so that they are on the same playing field as the base specs?

It seems that there is a psychological effect of losing to condi’s because you may have had many soft cc’s and little red boxes on you at the time of downed, but the truth is that condi’s actually offer more counterplay than power (which is why they aren’t used in tournaments). Like power damage, you can block, blind or, evade the initial condi application, in addition to personal and AOE team cleansing. In fact, condi mesmer arguably has the most counterplay of any condi build because both of it’s damaging condi’s can be mitigated simply by paying attention: If you have 12 stacks of torment, stop moving. If you have 12 stacks of confusion, stop [auto] attacking. That is my (free!) DIY advice on how to mitigate 70% of condi mesmer DPS without even using a cooldown.

Also, please stop derailing the discussion. This thread isn’t a broad discussion on condi builds, but rather about how the nerf to MtD has made condi mesmer unviable in PvP due to the huge DPS loss working in tandem with the power/sustain creep from all of the elite specs.

Thanks for all the responses.

glaphen.5230:

Spartacus.3192:

terrorshard.3854:

I think we can at least agree that DH’s are everywhere though

Its interesting you say that but ive played a fair number of games in the last few days and in about one third of the games i was the only guardian in the match. In the others it was one other guardian (DH of course) on the other team. (so 2 players out of 10)

So unless matchmaking is really messing up for me im not seeing this “DH’s are everywhere” that you mention.

Admitedly i didnt play a big enough number of games to be statistically significant but still.

I still usually get 2-3 DH per game in high MMR.

How exactly are we quantifying/defining “high MMR”?

Agreed that a modest range increase would be welcome (thanks for the well-thought out post), but I vote against an AOE chill on the AA chain. There’s quite a bit of it already, and it would diminish the value of the AOE chills available from the Chillin Darkness trait.

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

cakeonroof.7385:

Lavexis.5360:

lighter.2708:

Lavexis.5360:

not sure why you guys complaints..sure berserker spec is underpowered, but a regular gs/axe shield warrior can stomp dragon hunter and reapers without using rampage.

endure pain alone can counter dragon hunter pretty hard.

and if you use rampage then it should be ez stomp for you.. all these complaints make me wonder if you guys even play warrior at all.

Clearly, you don’t play warrior at all.

let me sort out your fail logic

Endure pain counter DH= (Berserker can have Endure pain )= Berserker Counter DH
and then you say Berserker is UP..idk what your post is about tbh..

you are kittened..

just use endure pain and tank the traps and then press rampage ..problem solved you just beat DH

what so hard about that

berserker spec being underpowered is a whole another story, but telling people that warriors cant beat the new spec is just plain stupid.

update: if you want to disrespect the dh, you can try go berserker power build with that crit trait and use berserk then go rampage.

This has little to do with DH 1v1 but more about warriors esp berserker trait needing a buff so it synergizes with the remaining traits, and weapon skills.

As of now, berserker isn’t rewarding to the player for as much effort it takes to make it function.

You cant base your argument on hotjoin or a couple low tier unranked matches vs the experience of veteran warriors (not me I’m average) on this thread

i don’t play hotjoin.. I play unranked, and its definitely not low mmr. Either way, even if its low mmr..it doesn’t take much to play reaper or dragon hunter.

its your problem if you don’t know when is the right time to pop endure pain, and i agree that berserker spec needed some buff, but that doesn’t mean warrior as a whole class is weak.

for warrior timing is very crucial, and if you suc at it then don’t play warrior.

that’s definitely low MMR…medium at max for being generous

Out of curiosity, how can you tell?

No.

terrorshard.3854:

I think we can at least agree that DH’s are everywhere though

More fresh meat to practice on.

nekretaal.6485:

Reaper is crying for an axe fix. Crying… The major thing holding back the reaper is lack of ranged pressure.

#Anetfixaxe

And again, the ranged pressure doesn’t have to be great but it does have to exist.

I’m worried about the Blighter’s Boon nerf. Necromancer couldn’t get access to boons because of Blighter’s boon, but now the trait is bad and the Necromancer still doesnt have boons.

Would have much rather had increased boon application across all trait lines than the 25% or whatever increased heal they gave.

Axe DPS with cele or soldier is useless, but it’s actually amazing with Marauder. It’s easy to underestimate the DPS we can get from a weapon that can’t be juked/reflected. I think that’s why the axe goes so well with the GS. Although independently they can be complained about (low axe damage, slow GS attacks), they can really work in tandem if you’re willing to use an aggressive amulet.

You don’t need to use vital persistence with Reaper. Obviously it’s nice, but if you remove it you’ll get used to it.

Dear Dev’s,
Can we get a response on this topic? It would be such a great QoL change to see the cooldowns of our utility skills while in Shroud.

Thanks!

Dear Devs,
Offhand dagger is the only weapon with no way to generate life force whatsoever. Can we get some life force generation on the offhand dagger? If not, why?

Thanks!

Is it me, or is condi mesmer pretty lame now in PvP? Ever since Maim the Disillusioned was nerfed by 50%* when HoT was released, the class can’t compete at all anymore.

*Thanks to other forum users for recently alerting me to this disappointing nerf. I had noticed that post-patch the DPS had a huge decrease but I had no idea why because the MtD nerf slipped past me.

ANet, can you make condi mesmer viable again? What was the point of the MtD nerf? This was a totally legit spec and now its bottom-tier.

<——honest guard/necro main with no mesmer bias. Feel free to educate me if I’m wrong.

Salamander.2504:

Frequently after being immobilized, my character is unable to move after the condi is gone/removed. The only way to break the bugged immobilize is to dodge or /dance out of it.

I’m going to bump this as there has been no response or even any acknowledgement of the problem. In addition to myself, a lot of the people I play with are also experiencing this bug.

Please look into it. It’s totally gamebreaking in PvP.

Do mediguards autoattack with their GS?

Is mediguard GS “unviable”?

Stop trying to auto-attack with GS and you’ll find that it’s great.

Dead.5829:

Bhawb.7408:

YSIM out heals CC, as long as you have condi removal, traited YSIM is literally the strongest heal we have before you count the LF.

I don’t think I can echo this enough. This heal is insanely good, especially with Augury. It also opens up a lot of runes to be much more usable. Rune of the Trooper with just traited YSIM and Suffer is disgusting.

I really don’t get why it has such a bad rap.

Do soldier runes clear condis for allies with YSIM and Suffer? I’m guessing not since YSIM and Suffer don’t actually target allies?

Windwalker.7421:

Agree with most of what OP said, although I think Condie Shatter is sadly in a pretty bad state. The nerf to MtD was both necessary in light of Chrono, but also is a large reason why Condie Shatter is now underwhelming. Not to mention that w/o Chrono to chain shatter, it’s in an even worse state. So once again, Chronomancy required for even a subpar Condition build.

That and the nerfs to Torch #4 (indirect nerf), and the Phantasm (direct nerf), has left Condition specs in a really bad place. Then to top it all off they nerf the Pistol trait before ever even letting us test it….it’s single target and a slow multi-hit attack for christs sake! I don’t know what they thought they needed to nerf there.

1) We need at least 2 stacks of Burn on The Prestige, just to bring it back up to where it was before, and ditto for the iMage attack.

2) Add back the old +50% bonus to Torment damage on MtD, you know the one you nerfed before ever letting us test it? Now that you’ve nerfed MtD into oblivion, I think it’s safe to say this bonus would be a very good compromise between the old MtD (2x Torment per shatter) and the nerfed new one. This is a “middle of the road” giving significantly more Torment damage when people do move, with the trade off of the same low damage when they’re not moving.

3) Confusion is simply not a Condition that you can base a class around, especially when the only real AE Burst has very short duration and is on twice the CD of the Power-based relative! At the very least, increase the base duration of Confusion from Cry of Frustration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.

4) Why are all wells Power oriented? Why are there no Condition damage oriented Wells? Well of Calamity could easily apply 2x Confusion (2 second duration) per pulse, and a final burst of 4x Confusion for 4 seconds. You could do that without the need to change anything else about it, because Confusion damage w/o Condition damage is extremely bad anyway.

5) Mistrust is in really bad shape. I have no idea why ANet claimed this thing had any potential at all, when it was obvious on paper that it was a poor GM. Traitline defining? 2 stacks of Confusion? Really? I’d rather trade this non-existent synergy that relies entirely on an extremely rare event, for a simple 5x AoE Confusion for 5 seconds centered around the interrupted target 240 radius. And even that is not enough to compete with other GMs, so it would need something else…something cool and unique to make it worth creating a Condition interrupt build around. (Which currently just isn’t viable!)

It’s sad because they had some really good ideas early on, and for some completely whacked reason went off on a nerfing parade. When you think about not only the MtD and Torch nerfs a bit ago, but add to that the PU nerf and adjustments to Chronomancy it’s easy to see why Condition Mesmers are where they are….back in the gutter where they’ve always been, even before they ever saw the Chrono patch go live!

People cry loudly about Power Mesmer burst damage, but they cry even louder whenever there is even a semblance of a competitive Mesmer condition build!

When did the MtD nerf occur? j/c

Atheismo.5164:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

and your scepter auto isn’t going to be boosted by Alacrity.

Uhhh…name a weapon who’s autos are affected by alacrity?

I think he’s just pointing out that the only skill that generates a clone on the scepter doesn’t benefit from alacrity, whereas sword 3 does.

shadowshark.7056:

I forgot about chilling victory, since its usefulness is inexistent towards the buff capability of decimate defense. They should honestly swap the spots of chilling victory with shivers of dread. Oh and kinda curious. why don’t they have any shout that generate life force? I would seriously love a shout that just added life force per mob hit. But currently I generate a decent amount just with the sigil of might+Blighters Boon

Swapping chilling victory with shivers of dread would cement the requirement of the spite traitline for blighter’s boon, which is a bad thing.

The heal shout YSIM gives LF per hit. The others shouts can only give LF when traited. For example, YAAW is a guaranteed 5% LF with blighter’s boon. If you take chilling victory, suffer+YAAW in a mid fight is up to 15% LF (if it hits 5 opponents). If you wait a half second and then cast any other shout, that’s another 5% LF (procced from chilling victory).

Vydahr.4285:

Fatalyz.7168:

shadowshark.7056:

…Why not make a trait that does something like "if attacking someone with ice on them gain life force. Could also put a cool down on it and I’d still be happy. That way ppl will get their life force inside shroud and also have quicker life force out of it….

You just described a trait that we already do have, called Chilling Victory.

Unfortunately, Chilling Victory is incredibly underpowered and not useful at all for, well… anything, really, but especially not for powering Blighter’s Boon

Actually, the passive LF and health generation from the might provided by Chilling Victory adds up to quite a bit. All you have to do is cleave 3 chilled people (clones, pets, minions) 3 times (e.g., drop a nightfall with the blind—>chill curses trait) and you’ve got 9% LF. Follow that with an auto attack (from GS, staff, or axe, doesn’t matter), and you can weasel out 1-2% more depending on your chill uptime. That’s almost like dropping all of your staff marks, except the chilling victory trait gives LF/health on both of your weapon sets, and Shroud.

Unlike the spite traitline, which rewards shroud autoattacking (can you say snoozefest?), chilling victory+blighters boon rewards using your skills in (mildly) intelligent ways (nightfall, or suffer+YAAW, etc…).

To play devil’s advocate, I don’t think we should stress too hard about the Blighters Boon nerf. Between strength sigils, chilling victory, RS #3, YAAW, and the entire spite line, we’ll always be able to get mileage out of it (and no, Spite line is not necessary). We just won’t be able to start a match with 8k LF, or have phenominal LF regen in a mid fight. Trying to think positively, the old blighter’s boon does build bad habits because so much of our LF generation required 0 user input from ourselves. RS is a powerful mechanic that should require work to use. I should never be in a sticky situation and look at a full shroud bar in pleasant surprise. RS activation should be planned, and having so much generation from allies took that intelligent/tactical use away.

I’m as bummed as anyone (who likes nerfs?), and I’ll certainly miss the old blighter’s boon, but if this is what it takes to start putting all of the elite specs back in line with the base classes, it’s a good thing in the long run.

If anything were to be reverted to rebuff blighter’s boon, perhaps the simplest solution is to combine the current iteration (our boons give health+LF) with allowing boons from allies to heal us through shroud, but not provide LF.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Clairenix.2780:

At this point, I’d consider decimate defences to be the GM trait in it’s place.

I wonder how swapping them would affect current builds..

That wouldn’t be a good idea. Reaper’s Onslaught can’t compete against DD as a DPS trait.

And all synergy would be lost with Chilling Victory and Blighters Boon if they compete for the master slot.

Robert Gee.9246:

To provide some context on this change:

We felt that Blighter’s Boon was providing too much survivability, especially with the amount of boon output that Heralds and Tempests can provide. (This is especially true in WvW and large PvE Zergs). I did like the interaction this trait had with your allies, but boon application from allies is too broad of a category for us to reasonably balance in all modes of the game.

We considered a lot of other possibilities for this skill including adding an ICD, limiting the procs to specific boons, limiting the number of procs from allies, but the majority of these types of fixes ended up taking agency and control away from the reaper which we felt wasn’t optimal.

Ultimately we felt this change helped to make the trait more specific to some builds rather than the best trait in all situations.

It looks like you increased the healing a bit to compensate for the change, which makes sense, but perhaps more importantly, did you guys consider scaling the lifeforce generation up from 1% to 1.5% for example?

Could you be more specific? I’m 100% not against some nerfs here or there (most of the elite specs could benefit from them), but it’s important to isolate what changes are necessary.

Some examples that I couldn’t follow from your post:

—The typical soldier reaper or cele signet d/wh necro doesn’t really do berserker-like damage, and they have the worst control of their might stacking of any might-stacking class. Realistically, only a zerker or valkery reaper does zerker-like damage.

—The only way to get 10k LF in 3 seconds is to be running Reaper with Blighters Boon and get ~50 boons applied to you (or hit 5 targets with GS#3, followed by Axe 2 + receive 28 boons from yourself/allies for example, or some other combination, but you get the point).

—Reaper isn’t tankier than base necro, with the exception of the Rise utility. Necro has always been weak to sustained/burst pressure/cc/focus (who isnt? :P). Reaper does alleviate some of this with more reliable access to stability.

Xillllix.3485:

It feels like everything has to be re-balanced from scratch.

Really? I think some small balance tweaks here and there and then everything will be spot on.

It’s true that some nerfs (DH damage or CC, some aspects of Tempest sustain and Scrapper boonfest, the Rev 7k evade nuke, and TBD on Reaper, to name a few), and buffs (I’m looking at zerker warrior, base thief, fixing the long list of base-class ranger issues, for example) are probably needed, but in truth I’m impressed at how balanced the game is right out of HoT release. With only minor tweaks to a handful of skills/traits/classes, things could be nigh perfect!

meow one twenty.4376:

Salamander.2504:

GS is actually great in PvP, but you don’t want to camp it. Pair it with the axe, for example, and you can pressure people really effectively until the time is right to switch to GS (i.e., you’ve set up your attacks). GS is awful to camp (its too slow, predictable, and kiteable) but makes a great rotation inbetween shroud and your offhand (which is preferably ranged to keep up unkiteable pressure).

This. Most of you are failing to adapt.

Maybe try using Sigil of Speed and doing a Swap->GS 2 for Gravedigger + Quickness? Done quickly you really increase your chance of landing hits.

To add to this, a great analogy is that you can think of it just like playing a medi guard, which no one can argue is an inferior spec. No mediguard camps GS; in fact, you don’t even use the GS auto (nor should you on the reaper)…mediguards camp scepter/focus for ranged pressure and then swap to GS when they want to burst. This style of play is exactly how a GS reaper should function, except its even easier for a reaper because you have an entire 3rd weapon swap (shroud) to use in a dps/cc/stomp/stalling rotation!

SlayerSixx.5763:

1) if you’re full trap and the first round miss, you have SoW and Shelter to fall back on for almost 3 seconds of immunity to most forms of damage. After that, you’re as squishy as a thief.

2) not going to argue true shot’s effectiveness.

3) you neglect to mention that, again, you’re burning up all of your utilities for this burst. Since you can’t stop them from dodging (which every experienced player is capable of) your age old JI+ww combo, you’re now defenseless. Assuming LB+GS, you don’t even have SoW to fall back on. Is the burst powerful? Definitely. Are you completely screwed if someone dodges it? You can bet your kitten you’ll be down in seconds. As for the new F3, it does nothing to stop melee. If your targets would stop being idiots and either LoS you or (if they’re sure you don’t have traps under you) charge you with melee, you’d be kittened again.

4) people dying due to their ignorance of the spec/game.

1) Ehh…sort of…medi guard is a fairly durable spec (it was not soo long ago that many cried OP faceroll), and it commonly busts it’s utilities for a burst. High armor + strength in numbers and a ton of stability uptime means DH is always going to be a lot tougher than a thief, just saying, but I’m not here to quibble about the small stuff. Agreed that busting all utilities leaves you vulnerable.

3) You’re not wrong, but if everyone dodged the JI—>WW combo, it wouldn’t be a thing. shrug ?_? Miss WW? No problem, 6k true shot+2k autoattack is enough to carry any poor player such as myself. Also the F3 does block melee, as far as I recall.

4) Only time will tell.

I tested out a DH last night to see what all the fuss is about, and here is my assessment:

(1) The traps have such low cooldowns, if the first ones miss it doesn’t even matter, they can be reapplied shortly thereafter.

(2) Even in the case where the DH uses no traps whatsoever, with a Marauder amulet, their bow autoattack crits for 2k, and they have a 4s cooldown 1200 range 6k crit. They apply more ranged pressure than a ranger, a killshot warrior, or really anything.

(3) Mashing buttons led to kills. It was boring and brainless. There’s too much reward for ranged autoattacking/sniping, and the instant-drop traps led to nuke combos like JI—>WW+ instant traps that offer a 20K+ burst with almost nonexistent counterplay. Attacking during the F3 block allows you to inflict massive AOE cleave burst with virtually no risk.

(4) I’m usually remiss to say anything is OP, but you can’t say that DH kills people due to the victim’s stupidity, as much as you love your new DH.

Source: Guard main

GS is actually great in PvP, but you don’t want to camp it. Pair it with the axe, for example, and you can pressure people really effectively until the time is right to switch to GS (i.e., you’ve set up your attacks). GS is awful to camp (its too slow, predictable, and kiteable) but makes a great rotation inbetween shroud and your offhand (which is preferably ranged to keep up unkiteable pressure).

I’ve been using Rise all weekend too, and it is very powerful, but I don’t feel that it brings Reaper into the realm of “overpowered”.

The minions have to be attacking for the damage reduction, and the damage reduction doesn’t stack per minion. The minions appear to be stationary (dazed?) for the first second or so they are summoned; they don’t start attacking immediately, and need to catch up to the target before they begin attacking. I’ve noticed that the minions have a hard time sticking to a juking/mobile opponent. They get cleaved pretty easily too, and they are taking 50% of your damage.

It’s a great skill, but Reaper isn’t overpowered because of it when compared with all of the elite specs. I think the problem is that all of the elite specs were brought inline with, for example, D/D cele eles. Having a D/D cele ele on the opposing team wasn’t a gamebreaker, but it’s always an “ahh kittena” moment. Now we have a bunch of “D/D ele level” classes running around, and the base professions are still the base professions. We all know what a pain in the butt it was to fight a pre-nerf d/d ele. The exceptions to this, which I’ve found to compete just fine with the new elite specs are: (1) base mesmer; (2) base engineer; (3) base necro MM; (4) burn guard; (5) base condi ranger. Probably more that I haven’t tried…

Zanther Deathbringer.4762:

mazut.4296:

Troll topic or not, its obvious that the new specs are not an alternative to the old. They are more powerful. Made an experiment and went back as bunker guard. Much harder to stay alive. Spike damage is higher then ever. Maybe on par of Thieves few years back.
So the whole “alternative” play is empty words…

They are more powerful, or weaker, because metabuilder isnt there to hold your hand yet. Theres no builds that factor in the new skills for people to copy and paste, and are realizing that they aren’t as good as they think they are when there isnt someone there to tell them how to play.

I went through 10 Reaper builds before I found one that works really well. That means I had 9 builds that were either semi-good, or got completely roflstomped.

I like this post.

Frequently after being immobilized, my character is unable to move after the condi is gone/removed. The only way to break the bugged immobilize is to dodge or /dance out of it.

As an aside, I have to strongly disagree with everyone saying that the GS will be useless in PvP. It gives you an AOE pull, a pulsing blindfield, and a “downed-securing” gravedigger (spam to prevent rezz), which are all incredible. Just learn to mix those into your RS/offhand rotations. I mean, seriously: do you just spam your autoattack with every other weaponset? Gee Golly! With the introduction of RS, necro is in the least danger of just spamming auto-attack now, so you can afford to have a GS for the excellent utility/cleave without even using the AA which everyone loves to hate.

nearlight.3064:

Just in general for condi people: condi bomb the necro and LoS like crazy so his transfers get obstructed and watch him melt.

Also @Vague Memory, 50% damage reduction, what? Thats not a thing for necromancers unless they run putrid defense and reaper and spectral mastery and somehow keep poison/chill up on you the whole time, and even then their protection uptime is only 48% uptime at best.

I think he means that the intrinsic 50% damage reduction from Death Shroud itself.

“While in Death Shroud, direct damage is halved, except when the hit depletes all of the life force. This damage reduction isn’t shown in the combat log.”

I.e., https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Death_Shroud

For anyone who missed it (like myself):
http://dulfy.net/2015/10/16/gw2-guild-chat-new-legendaries-and-changes-livestream-notes/

cakeonroof.7385:

Salamander.2504:

cakeonroof.7385:

Salamander.2504:

Well, if you did try playing a burn guard, you’d know that burning accounts for only 50% of their dps…Do you want to QQ about their damage coefficients too?

really????

What burn guard build does physical dmg as much as burns? Are they running celestial? are the numbers kinda low like below 50,000 dmg for each condi and direct?
smh

Yes, really. Any burn guard that uses a carrion amulet and a few Meditations will be doing a ton of power damage. When I run a carrion burn guard (GS, Sw/T), I typically clock in at ~200-300k power damage and ~200-300k burn damage. In most cases (~90-95%), the power damage exceeds or equals the burn damage.

Will post screenshots when I’m home later tonight!

That’s really good. Please do post your results. For me, physical damage is only around 1/3 of burn damage total. Ex if burns 150,000 direct is around 50,000 sometimes less.

Here is just a normal game; I didn’t play well at all here to be honest, but it gives you a sense for the type of damage a burn guard does. As you can see, my power damage exceeds my burn damage by a small amount.

Go Lily go!

cakeonroof.7385:

Salamander.2504:

Well, if you did try playing a burn guard, you’d know that burning accounts for only 50% of their dps…Do you want to QQ about their damage coefficients too?

really????

What burn guard build does physical dmg as much as burns? Are they running celestial? are the numbers kinda low like below 50,000 dmg for each condi and direct?
smh

Yes, really. Any burn guard that uses a carrion amulet and a few Meditations will be doing a ton of power damage. When I run a carrion burn guard (GS, Sw/T), I typically clock in at ~200-300k power damage and ~200-300k burn damage. In most cases (~90-95%), the power damage exceeds or equals the burn damage.

Will post screenshots when I’m home later tonight!

T raw.4658:

Salamander.2504:

Gabriell.4856:

T raw.4658:

ronpierce.2760:

T raw.4658:

And the thief hate continues.

Imagine for one instance a mechanic negating an entire line of your build while negating all your defense. That is what these reveals are doing.

Now imagine you try to spec in the other defensive line only to realize it was nerfed to the ground and is not viable.

Finally you take a look at your new elite spec which is supposed to be a defensive trait and save the mutha kittenin day…..Only you then realize it’s not that good.

That’s thief right now. Can great players make it work? Yes they can, but only b/c they are great players. The fact remains if you lose 1v1 to a thief in today’s game then the skill level of that thief is leaps and bounds above yours. I’d compare it to an Professional football team vs your local highschool football team.

AOE fields and minion master? Moa and minion master.

Also, people shouldn’t pretend you can’t counter play the reveal counter play. They are dodgable for the most part. Take a breath and just try to learn how to deal with it before jumping to doomsday is all I’m saying. Reveal as a limited mechanic counter is not innately wrong. Learn the telegraphs and prosper.

Like I said, thief has issues, protecting its stealth is not really one of them. Not to mention, this would be much less of an issue if Shadow Arts was designed to be more active rather than passive. That said, passive things deserve to have direct counters.

You haven’t rolled a thief yet huh?

Currently the reveals are instant 1200 range casts that are not “for the most part dodgable”. The engi trait lock on isn’t a 1 time skill but a spam the nades until you hit

I’m glad you’ve taken up this crusade against current stealth mechanics for thieves. You are quite,the expert on the,subject given that you’ve admitted to not playing thief.

Here’s food for thought. I propose steal removes all built up LF. If you are in DS when you get hit with steal then you are forced out due to running out of LF. Perfectly balanced and on par with reveal changes being made

That’s not far enough. It needs to be a hard counter. How about, “You cannot enter DS for 6 seconds. If currently in DS, you will lose DS form. You will not gain LF for 6 secs.”

My counter to your respond would be stop relying on DS just deal with it.

You are describing a skill that already exists: two classes have access to it. It’s called Moa.

Ah but those are long CD skills…..we need 20 sec CD skills for DS counterplay

What? DS counterplay is embedded in literally every skill in the game. It’s a rapidly depleting health bar. If you want to get the necro out of DS, just hit them. It certainly won’t take you longer than 20 seconds to do so.

Well, if you did try playing a burn guard, you’d know that burning accounts for only 50% of their dps…Do you want to QQ about their damage coefficients too?

Gabriell.4856:

T raw.4658:

ronpierce.2760:

T raw.4658:

And the thief hate continues.

Imagine for one instance a mechanic negating an entire line of your build while negating all your defense. That is what these reveals are doing.

Now imagine you try to spec in the other defensive line only to realize it was nerfed to the ground and is not viable.

Finally you take a look at your new elite spec which is supposed to be a defensive trait and save the mutha kittenin day…..Only you then realize it’s not that good.

That’s thief right now. Can great players make it work? Yes they can, but only b/c they are great players. The fact remains if you lose 1v1 to a thief in today’s game then the skill level of that thief is leaps and bounds above yours. I’d compare it to an Professional football team vs your local highschool football team.

AOE fields and minion master? Moa and minion master.

Also, people shouldn’t pretend you can’t counter play the reveal counter play. They are dodgable for the most part. Take a breath and just try to learn how to deal with it before jumping to doomsday is all I’m saying. Reveal as a limited mechanic counter is not innately wrong. Learn the telegraphs and prosper.

Like I said, thief has issues, protecting its stealth is not really one of them. Not to mention, this would be much less of an issue if Shadow Arts was designed to be more active rather than passive. That said, passive things deserve to have direct counters.

You haven’t rolled a thief yet huh?

Currently the reveals are instant 1200 range casts that are not “for the most part dodgable”. The engi trait lock on isn’t a 1 time skill but a spam the nades until you hit

I’m glad you’ve taken up this crusade against current stealth mechanics for thieves. You are quite,the expert on the,subject given that you’ve admitted to not playing thief.

Here’s food for thought. I propose steal removes all built up LF. If you are in DS when you get hit with steal then you are forced out due to running out of LF. Perfectly balanced and on par with reveal changes being made

That’s not far enough. It needs to be a hard counter. How about, “You cannot enter DS for 6 seconds. If currently in DS, you will lose DS form. You will not gain LF for 6 secs.”

My counter to your respond would be stop relying on DS just deal with it.

You are describing a skill that already exists: two classes have access to it. It’s called Moa.