Guild Wars 2

Isn’t that creature on the right the head of the thing that was chasing a player during one of the HoT teaser videos? It was like a cross between a reptile and a feline. It chases a player until they leap off a ledge and glide into the mursaat city.

Ive managed to find very good uses for the boon producing moas. However sadly my favorite pet type is my least used. Devourers. If for no better reason than there ‘evade’ skill. That one ability more than any other on the planet causess me to simply never use it. If anet got rid of that. Id actually consider taking it just for the sheer coolness factor of carrion devourers.

Hey maro. From what ive read and from what ive seen implied it seems like most of the harder content (i.e. raids or getting a guild hall) will be based around the idea of having 10 players.). But as far as guild halls/activities/missions. Id imagine there possible with 5. Though it may be difficult.

That said. Theres no concrete information to give you on this. So all the playerbase atleast can give you is guesses. Youl have to wait and see or hope for a red post on the subject. Cause the players themselves know as much as you do.

There can be some negative feelings towards ranger in the game. Though its actually rare than not that people will act on it. Ranger has some mechanics that while they are easily countered. When the ranger is in that ideal situation those mechanics are REALLY punishing to go against.

A few things that I think has caused this.

For a long time power based ranger builds were considered HIGHLY suboptimal. Infact it was generally considered a joke spec for an extremely long time (first 2 years of the game). This ended up creating a few builds that most rangers ran that were very frustrating for an opponent to fight.

Condi bunker regen ranger/ Cruise missile pet ranger/ Burst Maul ranger.

Cruise Missile pet ranger isn’t possible anymore and burst maul builds don’t do the damage necessary to be considered a viable playstyle on its own.

Condi bunker regen rangers are still around and gaining rage to this day. Though its not as out of control as it was say during the spirit bunker age.

Now alot of rangers play power longbow/gs. Its kind of one of the iconic symbols for rangers in todays games. And its what drew alot of people to the ranger in the first place.

Since it has been buffed longbow ranger can do its job of punishing distracted players very well. Making it a rather good +1 build. Though still not (typically) on the level of thief and mesmer. Though were close enough to thief we can fight for a spot in a team with them.

The thing is. A longbow ranger is very annoying to get hit by. Watching your health get shredded by someone off screen while your fighting someone else is going to generate rage. As if they have already burned cooldowns they feel like nothing they do can save them. Which is of course why the ranger is effective at +1ning.

Secondly. Not many rangers really use there build to the fullest extent. Youl see many that are afraid to engage in close combat to fight for dominance on a point. Despite the fact that rangers are actually quite dangerous in melee.

While there are situations where you shouldn’t engage on point. (its 2v3 on mid your not going to get reinforcements and you know you won’t be able to rez your team mate when he goes down in a couple seconds but you might be able to down someone and stomp them to get a rally if you nail your rapid fire/swoop/maul or rapid fire/path of scars combos.) Typically giving up a point to fight at ranged is only worthwhile if its securing an advantage for later in the match. So its heavily up to the ranger to know when he should and shouldnt snipe.

This has caused a bit of a stigma on ranger in pvp despite the fact that the ranger is actually quite capable of dominating in the conquest game mode. Ultimately its up to the rangers individual habits. But alot of rangers have rather bad habits. Either brought over from open world PvE or out of a fear of engaging say a thief in melee to contest a point. This colors peoples opinions of us quite a bit.

Not to mention taunt is annoying as kitten.

The way protect me works.

Your pet stops attacking and takes damage for you. ANY ORDER GIVEN TO THE PET I.E. F1-F4 or the use of another shout will CANCEL the skill.

Thus its possible you accidentally canceled your own utility. This causes more rangers deaths than the squishiness of the pets. Though people still like to blame it on that. I can’t tell you how many good rangers ive fought talk about how terrible the skill is when they didn’t even know they were canceling it on themselves.

Also its not really meant to save you from being ganked by multiple people. With its stunbreak nature its more used to save yourself from a single devestating situation. I.E. You just got stunned by a hammer/greatsword warrior and hes about to blade trail through you. Or you just got bassied and you know your about to get burst by something. It breaks you out. Protects you. And then you cancel it once your out of initial danger and can fight back again.

For a blanket (saved from gank) skill signet of stone is much better for that situation. You can sit there and be beaten.

Protect me is for when you just want the opportunity to fight back and a lower cooldown oh kitten button.

I kind of like this idea. though ideally the shouts would be reworked slightly to encourage there use in the first place. But a trait like this would definitely go a long way towards helping out in certain situations. Stab on search & rescue is a kittening must before I take it. either for me or my pet.

Quickness on strength of the pack synergises very well thanks to the nature of the skill and with its lower duration would help to get us back some of the overall might stacks we can no longer generate.

I agree that aegis should be on guard and protection on protect me. Either that or vigor for protect me. Its already possible to get very high protection uptime.

Giving each shout a more specialized role woudl encourage using them in the correct situations. Hell…it would encourage using them. Very few builds use full shouts after all.

A part of me feels that reveal should still be part of the game. However I feel that it should be a rare thing. Which involves sacrificing a utility with a decent cooldown to get. Seeking sounds like as you said. A softcounter. Which means it can be given to encourage the use of certain skills. The ability to disrupt a stealth gank isn’t something to be sneered at. And I can see it being used in certain places (Im looking at you ranger guard shout. Not a single person uses you for your utility. Just to spam swiftness. But if the pet had a chance of hitting opponents the ranger itself can’t see. Well thats worth taking.)

My question however is. Would you wan’t this to replace reveal entirely. (I.E. Glints Gaze gives seeking instead of revealed. Analyze grants seeking. Sic Em would have to be reworked entirely. Because giving the pet the ability to see stealthed foes is useless since it won’t attack them anyway.) or would you wan’t reveal to still be in the game. Just a rare effect only certain builds are capable of.

Edit: also how exactly do you in-vision this functioning. Would I just press sic em 2.0 and be able to see ALL stealthed foes. Or would I still have to target the player first. And it would only allow me to see that one stealth foe and no one else.

If so I have to say no to that. Being able to attack stealthed foes would be a buff in some respects even if that means my allies can’t. But if its still single target. Requires me to have them targeted first. AND my allies can’t help me nail the kill. Then it becomes something that isn’t worth taking.

Individually you won’t see massive bonuses per piece. but theres a definite difference in power once you have a full set together. Not massive. but noticeable. As you you generally know as an ascended geared player when your fighting someone who isn’t.

With the creation of the revenant it seems like now more than ever would be a good time to add this amulet to the selection. Revenant seems to be able to make use of the stat set more than any other class up to this point. And frankly it seems like it would be able to use it well.

With traits such as life siphoning in shiro and active healing procs from ventari you can pump out a decent amount of healing to your party while still being able to contribute to the fight in other ways. The amulet would leave you squishy (Power Precision Healing power) but would promote a decent and IMO skillfull balance of offense and support while maintaining yourself through active defense. As it is now though the closest comparison is clerics gear. Which doesn’t have enough offensive stats to enable you to really make use of the playstyle the revenant provides (that constant swapping between modes has alot of potential. but without the stat combos to back it up it seems like some of them won’t be feasible in a competitive environment.)

What do the rest of you think on the matter?

Edit: By now Im referring specifically to the release of HoT. Not at this time during the beta haha.

Haha well that explains the core misunderstanding. Atleast its cleared up. Hope you enjoy the rest of the beta.

Deimos. Seeing as how beta character doesnt actually withdraw from your bank. Only a copy of your bank. Yes its beta content. Seeing as how the wallet form what I understand is copied over. And not your real wallet. Yes its beta content.

Likewise doing pvp reward tracks on a beta character is also beta content. as its simply a copy of your account while not really BEING your account.

Edit: also it doesnt really consume your dailies to do it on a beta character. you cna turn around and do it on your primary characters immediately after on the beta character. the reason they left it all in is to probably make it less jarring for people to play said characters.

Alright. Wanted to say thanks for posting your experiences thus far. Wanted to do an update on my own experience over a night of pvp.

BW is a decent hope against the sword 3 for revs. However unlike our rapid fire we cant actually stop that attack from sticking to us so in the end we really will have to rely on BW itself to save us from this. Which is obnoxious because it was already hard to justify NOT bringing this trait. do we really want even more reason to take it?

Reaper is decently dangerous up close thanks to there application of our worst nightmare chill. I agree with what others have said. Ranging it down is gonna be our best bet here.

Chronomancer definitely feels like fighting an upgraded shatter mesmer. However it seems to be generally more kiteable. And I had more success landing ranged attacks on it than I do the standard mesmer build. (yeah for another reason to go ranged >.>) The slow is obnoxious as hell though. Probably always will be.

Beserker I havn’t had much experience with. However headbutt kittens you up pretty good if it lands. Keep a finger on a stun break >.< big time.

Daredevil I honestly don’t know whether or not I have fought them. If I had they didn’t play massively differently than they normally do. Which leads me to believe they weren’t making the most of there new build. Ill wait on this until I start fighting thieves I can look at and think “Yeah this is a kittening daredevil”

Dragonhunters….Aren’t a threat. Except in extremely niche situations. But they havn’t recieved many of the changes there going to have in the NEXT beta weekend. so Ill hold judgement till after that.

Hey all. Wanted to ask what everyones opinion was on fighting the new elite specs and the revenant in its new form. I understand it takes some time to get used to fighting them but I thought id go ahead and mention what I found so far.

Namely. Many of these specs simply are fun to play…but there not fun to fight.

The revenant sword 3 for example. Its basically “Im going to attack you four 4-5 seconds and there is litteraly nothing you can do to stop me except burn a cooldown…but evasion cooldowns won’t work cause Ill simply teleport to you.” Its extremely frustrating when im getting hit by this since the only thing I can do to actually stop it is pop signet of stone. If this skill actually had an aoe in which it was active but it would cancel if the target left that aoe I feel it would be okay. But even popping lightning reflexes doesn’t do much here.

The slow on chronomancers is pretty frustrating. As it can happen at seemingly random times. Causing you to get locked into a movement animation simply taking damage while your waiting for it to end (using sword against chronomancer is a terrible idea. as all the skills are movement based) Sure you can use it to run away occasionally. But thats done more accidentally than on purpose.

What are your impressions on hte new specs from a rangers PoV? What builds are you running when you fight them? What tricks have you learned to kill them.

Not so much CC but dragonhunter with longbow staff symbol traits and traps makes an insanely good area denial spec. You can pump out a kittenload of damage in an area when the triggers all start rolling together.

So its not a “im gonna keep him here” its a “Im gonna make him wish he wasn’t there”

Edit: Though I can’t reccomend taking dragonhunter into ranked que in its current form. If you use the build as intended it simply has no method of fighting classes like revenant or mesmer with lots of invulns/evades. Your effects that you NEED to hit simply won’t.

Zenith.7301:

Shadelang.3012:

Zenith.7301:

Tommyknocker.6089:

I agree with him here. If ANet had gone along with their original plan and nerfed the ice bow as they said they would all classes would be more “wanted”. In this case Anet listening to the whiners about how it was a bad move was not the right decision to make.

If you have no place in making the ice bow quicker, be it by using time warp for more DPS or stealth to skip, you are a useless gear in the machine according to the “meta”.

I may be one of the few but I was VERY happy they were going to change it, as I was when they nerfed the fiery great sword. No one skill should ever be better than ANY other skill (let alone class) in order to have balance!

Nerfing ice bow changes nothing. Why are you people clueless about the appeal of a staff ele.

Without ice bow ele still achieves DPS competitive with thief single target, yet it’s AoE instead of the abckstab thief’s single target, the ele provides perma fury with Persisting Flames, permanent blast fields with lava font in addition to two water fields and 2 AoE CC for mob control (earth 4 and air 5).

Glyph of storms is a utility that grants 25 vulnerability stacks on top of damage, and that same utility skill is basically a better version of Well of Darkness.

They can nerf ice bow, people will still bring 1 ele for persisting flames perma group fury as no other class can do group perma fury by pressing a single button that’s part of their normal DPS rotation, and the highest AoE and single target DPS ingame.

If HoT brings high toughness mobs, you replace the elementalist with sinister engineers instead.

If you think nerfing ice bow increases the chances of necro/ranger/mesmer being brought in larger numbers or at all, you’re fooling yourself.

Yes, ice bow needs nerfing, but don’t think for a second that this will fix the lopsided class balance because the truth is that utility and damage balance across classes is so ridiculously skewed in favor of classes like ele/warrior/guardian/thief.

Well…As far as perma fury goes. My ranger gives that with one button to 5 people >.<. And without ice bow prebuffing itself loses alot of its impact. Which is a big part of why eles are viewed in the same light as the captain of your high school cheerleading team. And while nerfing icebow might not get other classes in the meta. It shortens the gap by quite a bit. Also. ice bow four in its current form NEEDS to disappear before raids. Or else someone will get the idea to bring 10 eles with icebows. And I have a feeling theyl melt a massive chunk of the bosses health. If they dont kill it outright.

And what button is that? Because you get 15 seconds from clarion call on a 30 second internal cd, and if you use warhorn for an extra 15 seconds you are achieving perma fury, yes, but by trading a suboptimal DPS offhand instead of your offhand axe. If you use s/a+s/w, you lose opener vulnerability and burst from a quickness barrage into rapid fire, or you lose s/a+(empty)/a Path of Scars benefitting from Quick Draw.

Meanwhile persisting flames provides a permanent fire field to blast for might on top of perma fury, and lava font itself does a ton of damage.

Buffing does not lose its importance without ice bow. 25 permanent might stacks is an immense damage increase, with or without ice bow.

I will also say that it is true this community is delusional, because by far this game’ PUG community is the most vile and self-aggrandizing I’ve encountered out of any MMO. It almost feels like this game’s PvE community is made of the usually toxic PvP players you’d find in LoL or some MOBA/RTS.

But Nemesis doesn’t help himself when he calls people scrubs and he shows videos of him eating several mossman axe throws or using life blast from greater than 600 range on the Molten Duo boss fight.

I do hope this game’s PvE evolves to more diverse combat than “stack 25 might/fury and just stand in the boss’s face while blocking/CC’ing any form of potential damage to turn the boss into a target dummy”.

Well…to answer your question the button is f2. The trait investment is a minor trait in the nature magic line. The dmg I give up is taking a red moa. But I still have a cat on the swap so whatever. Fights don’t last long enough for me to worry about having to swap back to moa. Between a Red moa and jungle stalker thats perma fury and perma 5-10 stacks of might that I don’t have to worry about being in melee to get (not counting other procs). So its a pretty nice deal for ranger’s that dislike the hump the boss meta. (err I guess its called hte icebow meta now)

Second. Your obviously agitated man. It shows in the way you type. Calm down. I wasn’t saying I was in anyway superior to ele. Just saying that the whole fury thing isn’t that impressive. Also. The biggest issue is that the time it takes to prebuff is time you could spend fighting the mob and doing your might rotation on him. Instead of stacking up ahead of time you can be a bit more skillful and do it on the move.

Hell. Why the kitten did we get moving fields with elite specs if not for that?

Edit: Best part about using pets to generate boons is you can reach both the ranger AND the melee with them. They have more than enough range just gotta use them as there otw to the boss.

Zenith.7301:

Tommyknocker.6089:

I agree with him here. If ANet had gone along with their original plan and nerfed the ice bow as they said they would all classes would be more “wanted”. In this case Anet listening to the whiners about how it was a bad move was not the right decision to make.

If you have no place in making the ice bow quicker, be it by using time warp for more DPS or stealth to skip, you are a useless gear in the machine according to the “meta”.

I may be one of the few but I was VERY happy they were going to change it, as I was when they nerfed the fiery great sword. No one skill should ever be better than ANY other skill (let alone class) in order to have balance!

Nerfing ice bow changes nothing. Why are you people clueless about the appeal of a staff ele.

Without ice bow ele still achieves DPS competitive with thief single target, yet it’s AoE instead of the abckstab thief’s single target, the ele provides perma fury with Persisting Flames, permanent blast fields with lava font in addition to two water fields and 2 AoE CC for mob control (earth 4 and air 5).

Glyph of storms is a utility that grants 25 vulnerability stacks on top of damage, and that same utility skill is basically a better version of Well of Darkness.

They can nerf ice bow, people will still bring 1 ele for persisting flames perma group fury as no other class can do group perma fury by pressing a single button that’s part of their normal DPS rotation, and the highest AoE and single target DPS ingame.

If HoT brings high toughness mobs, you replace the elementalist with sinister engineers instead.

If you think nerfing ice bow increases the chances of necro/ranger/mesmer being brought in larger numbers or at all, you’re fooling yourself.

Yes, ice bow needs nerfing, but don’t think for a second that this will fix the lopsided class balance because the truth is that utility and damage balance across classes is so ridiculously skewed in favor of classes like ele/warrior/guardian/thief.

Well…As far as perma fury goes. My ranger gives that with one button to 5 people >.<. And without ice bow prebuffing itself loses alot of its impact. Which is a big part of why eles are viewed in the same light as the captain of your high school cheerleading team. And while nerfing icebow might not get other classes in the meta. It shortens the gap by quite a bit. Also. ice bow four in its current form NEEDS to disappear before raids. Or else someone will get the idea to bring 10 eles with icebows. And I have a feeling theyl melt a massive chunk of the bosses health. If they dont kill it outright.

Ive done it on necro before was interesting. Though to spice it up I also disabled my dodge button so I pretty much could only use blinds/weakness/deathshroud to mitigate damage. Ended up getting a whole new respect for debilitating condtions. And found myself building for that kind of debuff build instead of raw damage (either power OR condi).

Restricting yourself is a great way to forcefully learn new skills. Odds are you are going to find yourself learning things you normally would have laughed at or considered unimportant before.

Good luck to you on your run stick with it. Cause if you don’t make it to 80 with it. you know what happens :P.

Ranger is a class that is very easy to fall in love with once you start playing it. The only class I have nearly the same level of affection with is necro and POSSIBLY revenant. The shear number of tricks you can pull off with a ranger despite us not having the combo potential of say an engi or ele is insane. And most of them are things you learn accidentally while playing.

Some people have issues with the pets. Others don’t. The pets take some getting used to but for players that prefer pet based playstyles the ranger is decent. (though they still need survivability mechanics. In a game about dodging having a pet that can’t dodge CANNOT fly.

When it comes to ranged combat or kiting based combat ranger is above average. When it comes to close quarters combat or condition combot were above average.

The issue is the people were competing with are significantly higher than above average in all of those situations. What that means is rangers can be beasts in 1v1 situations. But in group situations where having a specialized role is more important than general capability. Ranger will often be bypassed for a class that can do certain things at a higher extreme.

Im afraid revenant like the elite specializations will release with HoT. You will be able to play it during beta events however. It simply hasn’t been completed yet though.

That laugh. I swear he had a chubby after that clip. I don’t even play warrior that often and I had one.

Honestly? Traps fit the dragonhunter playstyle more than wells. Punish people from long rage encouraging them to engage you. And making sure that they always engage you on your terms.

Its not meant to be a full ranged class. But more a ranged/ambush style class. Where you actually have to think about what your enemy is likely to do. Pro-active instead of re-active (re-active is what most of our current playstyles are)

The slow cast time on the longbow 2-4-5. The design of the longbow 3 as well. Each of hte weapon skills seem to take into account prediction as opposed to reaction. Heavy impacts on all of them. However they rely more on foresight than twitch reactions.

The traps fall into that theme as well. Knowing what your fighting and having a general idea of how you need to act BEFORE the fight starts. Is it a thief coming? Odds are dragonmaw to interupt its initial burst and test of faith to lock it near you are going to be your friends.

Ranger? Dragonmaw can stop its pet from nailing you with a cc while you use your longbow skills to counteract its ranged pressure.

Necro? Procession of blades and the reveal/vuln trap (im sorry I can’t remember the name) will help with chewing through its heavy base defenses.

The traps in my opinion <—key word there. Are actually well designed. Though some feel under tuned (Looking at you procession of blades). And during my time using it I quickly found that certain traps were VERY good at dealing with specific threats. Limiting there capacity to either hurt or resist me. Which I feel is the idea behind traps in general.

Im not suprised you keep getting reminded to sign up. Account security is a pretty big deal and this goes a long way towards making it more secure if the red posts on the subject are any indication. Otherwise its like your willingly walking around with a gap someone else can crawl in through. Id reccomend getting the authenticator program for your computer if you don’t want it on any external advice.

Its better than the alternative of leaving your computer vulnerable. When I still played wow I ended up getting hacked. Issue is my ranking in my guild was high enough they got access to our guild bank. Which they promptly cleaned out. I ended up leaving the guild even after it was restored due to the fact that the guild bank itself WASN’T restored. And nothing I could have done would have been enough to repay the guild for that my laziness cost them. (several mounts that didn’t drop anymore. Extremely rare weapon skins. High tier equipment for people that wan’t to get into raiding. And months worth of consumable buff items)

Id have to say bite the bullet and get the authenticator program for your pc. Its the least invasive. And its better for the people you play with as well as yourself.

At any other phase of the meta I would agree with you. However as it is right now I actually feel that certain classes stealth are a bit shafted. Especially with a new class coming out with an AOE reveal. (the first of its kind I believe aside from the guardians trap which ahs to be placed preemptively).

On the other hand. I despise Prismatic Understanding.

Thief stealth however can already be interfered with. Through interupting the leaps or blasts. And this is from the perspective of a ranger.

Honestly I feel like the rev is gonna be input as a counter to mesmers and there large scale aoe stealth. Im really worried about how hard theyl hit thieves however. So im hesitant to push for a new counter when one is already on the way.

So that people have a chance of knocking you out of stealth >.> muahahahaha

The issue is an ICD would completely destroy the trait unless they massively increased the actual amount of life force or healing you gained. Then instead of being a tool that is used largely in synergy with boon poppers such as guardians/eles/mesmers it will instead become a (gain healing every x seconds) trait with no synergy in a team fight. Which is what seems to be blighters boon’s purpose.

Other than that. The reaper in a 1v1 only makes use of this trait if they bring methods of providing multiple stacks of boons to themselves. Which means there trait and utility choices are largely predetermined. So a specific build will be using this when there build for 1v1s. Its more likely they will be built for team fighting. Which means this trait addresses one of the biggest issues that necros in general have. “Weakness to focus”.

Then we have the second factor. Reaper is very easily kited or negated. Due to the nature of its damage output as well as its mobility speed. Reaper damage can quite easily be negated by blinds or blocks. Meaning that the reaper itself has to be built for the long haul. As it will have to slowly grind through active defense before it can begind doing damage. Blighters boon enables it to do this. An ICD would prevent this from happening. ESPECIALLY in a team fight.

I honestly believe the reaper is quite fairly balanced at the moment. As it has limited chase capability. Yet is highly reliant on melee combat. Those two factors go a long way towards justifying there high recovery rate.

Ahh. I was playing a human female so maybe that had some effect on it. It’s possible that the human female voice just resonated with me better. Since I see we have some fairly mixed responses here.

This is gonna sound a bit off. And to the people that only care about combat MECHANICS you may be thinking “why should I care” but bear with me.

This first instance this happend was in Verdant Brink. I had been afk for a minute only to be attacked by a mordrem stalker. Those of you that have been hit by these know they can melt your health pretty fast. So I came back and used the heal shout.

When it attacked it started off by shouting “Mordremoth will take you” or something similar to that. It was what qued me in that I was being hit actually. And when I hit my heal it sounded almost as if my character was responding to that with “Your Soul is MINE!” That psuedo interaction between my character and the mob made that fight seem much more real to me than many of the others.

In WvW I was being ganked by a pair of thieves. I guess tehy didnt realize what I was. I ended using “You are all Weaklings” in order to reduce there damage and prep me for a big hit (got them both with rs5 followed by 4 with the bitter chil trait on. Much damage was had). And again I was struck how fitting my “response” was to that event.

In TPvP an engineer I was hitting popped out his tool shield. I ended up using “Nothing can save you!” and AGAIN at that moment the fight felt alot more personnel.

I guess what I wanted to say was. Significant kudo’s to the developers of the shouts as well as the voice actors involved. These utilties (even if I wasn’t in love with there functionality) have actually made my necro more immersive to play on a personnel level for me. And im going TO HATE seeing them go. I guess ill just have to “Suffer!” through it I guess.

Velimere.7685:

Shadelang.3012:

You can have the bounce back but then it loses its unblock able status. It simply has the potential to do WAY to much damage in its original form not to share the same counters of every other projectile.

Good luck getting that “too much damage” on a single target in a team fight; a Ranger’s Rapid Fire has a better chance of doing more damage. I’d give have Confounding Suggestions only increasing Daze duration and never inflicting Stun if it meant having my old Mirror Blade back.

In all honesty I would be fine with that as well from a rangers perspective. The biggest issue was being stunned in the middle of a team fight and getting mirror bladed. due to the proximity of my pet the mirror blade is almost guaranteed to do full damage on me (unless I can get it away from me in time).

Honestly with the nerf to mantras id be curious to see whether or not the instagib combo that was possible before is still spammable. (the biggest issue is you would stun break one stun/mirror blade combo only to be hit with it again soon after)

Mantra of distraction could quite possibly have been the bigger offender when compared to mirror blade. And I actually agree with many mesmers ive talked to about it that if they had to nerf it it should just have been the mantras and then they should have waited to check.

The issue with mirror blade for me personally is that dodging it is the only possible method of avoiding it as it ignores gs 4 and axe 5. And skilled mesmers know to aim it at my pet in order to guarantee hits on me unless im lightning fast on my pet swap (Ive gotten significantly better at this but it can still be a hair trigger gimmick)

But that is more a personnel vendetta on the aspect of my playstyle than a calm decision. And I shouldn’t have made my previous post based on that alone.

I guess what im saying is. Mirror blade is terrifying from hte perspective of certain opponent types due to its nature and its useability with things like stealth and distortion to guarantee hits. HOWEVER. Possibly the biggest part of the previous mesmer “issue” was mantra of disctration/CS combo. Which has since been toned down significantly.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the old mirror blade come back. However I would ask that the devs watch it EXTREMELY closely for awhile just to be sure.

Thats from the perspective of a non memser though. Im sure you all see it differently.

You can have the bounce back but then it loses its unblock able status. It simply has the potential to do WAY to much damage in its original form not to share the same counters of every other projectile.

Legionnaire.8703:

Shadelang.3012:

I believe what you recieved was an RNG drop. The only guaranteed exotics are account bound rewards relative to specific tracks. The bags you receive from them have the same loot tables as there PvE counterparts. Meaning you got touched by Cthuloot in this case (rip).

Meaning that I could get this again if I’m lucky enough?

Yes. but the odds of getting the same dagger is low. Its possible. but your far more likely to recieve a completely differnt exotic next time.

I believe what you recieved was an RNG drop. The only guaranteed exotics are account bound rewards relative to specific tracks. The bags you receive from them have the same loot tables as there PvE counterparts. Meaning you got touched by Cthuloot in this case (rip).

Your suggestion reminds me of a trait in the beast mastery line for rangers. We have a minor that increases our pets dps by 10% if were above 90%. Theres also a minor in the WS line that reduces the damage we take if were above that threshold. So some things like that exist. But having it be a comeon theme across classes may indeed encourage builds that can keep people above a health threshold.

Yes The roles for the playstyle and the mechanics necessary exist. The issue is at this time no content in the game is difficult enough to considering running such build types. Though you can see in the elite specializations encouragement to branch out of PURE dps roles into hybrid roles. So its likely HOT content is designed around the idea of making sure that multiple roles is viable. I doubt youl ever seen content that NEEDS 100% dedicated tank builds. But I imagine there will be content where having someone that can keep you topped off or having someone that can take the attention of mobs like risen abominations (which do simply too much damage to fast for active defense to compensate without heavy kiting) will be useful.

Wolfey.3407:

I must say, I was expecting this thread to go full blown troll/ flame fest.

Good job everyone on staying civil.

Well now youv gone and kittened it up u.u JK JK

From a longbow rangers perspective I actually hate D/D ele less than I used to. As the fight seems to be a bit faster pace and I know as long as I time my condi removals right I can atleast survive for a long time even If it isn’t possible to break through that sustain in close quarters.

If I had to pick one build to hate. It would be Cele signet necro. My build involves ALOT of quickness uptime. (4 different sources of it ftw?) which makes boon corruption the bane of my existance. Slow is kittening BRUTAL to get hit by. And when you rely on quickness to land your bursts youl get hit by it fairly often.

However I don’t feel like there a passive or unfair build to play though. Feels very much like a fair counter.

stof.9341:

The permanent retaliation from hounds is the most boring and annoying PvE mob feature the game ever implemented XD Just let it die.

haha you have to admit though it butchered people that mindlessly aoed. And my necro actually took boonstrips to get rid of that stuff. The issue is they just popped it to quickly and it lasted to long. it should be constant if its not ripped of. but ripping it off should give a decent amount of damage uptime without it.

Rampage.7145:

NOBODY likes this new map make a freaking public pol and see it by yourselfl, if you feel like you really need to add this garbage to the game just make it optional like EoTM. Do not force WvW players to play on this map since we all dislike it please.

Unlike you may think there are actual players who ONLY DO WvW and we do not care about karma training we want to fights and kill people. Do not ruin this game mode, if we want to PVE we will just go to the silverwastes please, listen to your players.

We want maps that force you to fight insteand just hiding on walls, we want points per kill, we do not want more siege please. LISTEN to your players.

As others have said. Speak for yourself. Im in bloody love with this map. The keeps don’t have to be within treb range of eachother to be interesting. And im looking forward to a spread of fights depending on where the engagement is. I also don’t mind the idea of PURSUING people to kill them rather than two grps being forced into eachother cause theres no way around. I enjoy sieges. I enjoy open field. I enjoy using siege in open field sometimes (sue me I know) I enjoy ripping people off walls and shooting eles that are raining meteors down on my team. I enjoy watching a memser portal bomb a zerg the second it thinks its one. And this map takes NONE of that away from me.

Fully anticipating trying some massive aoe burn games with the dragonhunter and incoming zergs. Though going frontline reaper sounds REALLY fun.

I also want to give a zerg support revenant a try. Using shiro to attack gankers and ventari to support the melee train.

Chronomancer I think also has some really good possibilities in wvw. (double self portals) (double timewarps) (double veils or mass invisibilties).

Its a bit off topic. But WoW had two abilities granted to the hunter called Eagle Eye and Eyes of the beast for a very long time.

Eagle Eye allowed the player to view any point thats withing los of them as if they were standign right there while leaving there body behind.

EoTB allowed the player to mind control there pet and scout with it.

I could see similar skills enter gw2 but there were some flaws.

Eagle eye let you see who was in the area but that was it. You gained ultimately nothing and you couldnt see stealthed enemies. Making it worthless as a scouting tool.

If we could scout an area using a spell and have it show us stealthed players WITHOUT UNSTEALTHING THEM. we would be potentially be able to be prepared when we get hit from stealth. In that way it wouldn’t take away there strength but it would give you an idea that its coming.

Eyes of the beast (closer to what you mentioned) was nice however it had similar issues in that functionally it wasn’t actually useful. The pet itself couldn’t do enough to be dangerous to enemies. And leaving behind the players body was too risky to use as a scouting tool when you could easier turn your camera around the corner and see whats inside without risk.

I woudlnt be against skills like those entering the game with the forge drones. However they would need to have additonal functionality ONTOP of that. (like say. a controlled drone could do things a normal drone couldn’t do that was actually relevant to combat as Are mentioned)

or else theyl end up like the skills I mentioned before. Which were deleted entirely from the game.

gin.7158:

FallenSentinel.6439:

conditions get cleansed the moment something has died, the tentacles tend to still attack after dying if they started a channel beforehand, could this be what has been happening to you?

O yeah… I think so.. So that’s normal, right? I just need to dodge when it attacks after it died? It’s so weird, zombie tentacle LOL

If it helps think of it as a part of jade maw itself in a literal since. Tentacle may have zero health. but the kittened of sky squid is still kicking.

The thing is they didn’t want to get rid of healers or tanks. They wanted to get rid of MANDATORY healers and tanks. The issue is the mob ai in this game can’t keep up with that goal. So they buffed mob damage to the point that even those specialized in defense sometimes have a difficult time keeping up with it. Especially seeing as active defense doesn’t scale with defensive stats. (A zerk guards aegis is the same as a bunker guards aegis)

Since every build has access to every skill you very quickly ended up in a situation where it was actually RISKIER to take defensive stats on average. Since proper use of active defense and higher defense meant you kileld hte boss BEFORE you ran out of active defense.

Enough backstory.

They wanted players to be able to pick one or two roles and accell at them. As well as being able to swap roles on the fly. However it ended up negating multiple roles as far as PvE is concerned. You see more support/cc/bunker builds in TPvP and WvW.

On that note. HoT seems to be changing hte paradigm atleast as far as class design goes.

The biggest method of showing that is in the elite specs themselves as well as teh revenant.

The rev is by nature a duel class. No two legends do the same thing.

The reaper is not a super high dps class but it is VERY much a tanky “higher than average” melee bruiser style focused on attrition combat.

The chronomancer has unique methods of support in all of its utility skills as well as its weapon skill and class mechanic.

Dragonhunter offers a very high area denial capability (control). As well as ccs on its weapon and traitline.

What im trying to say is. It looks like Anet still doesn’t want the hard trinity. Which I agree with.

But they are attempting to encourage players to step outside the pure zerk meta. And HoT mob design reinforces this idea of mine.

I would HIGHLY reccomend waiting until HoT.

If you want to be a healer the revenant may actually be your calling guard.

A Shiro/Ventari zealots gear revenant (making use of shiro’s lifesteal and melee combat capability on one hand and ventari’s ranged heavy support on the other) seems like it will be a rather strong spec. And may be worth looking into for you.

The issue is whether or not the mob design of HoT can encourage people to step outside of the pure zerk meta without rendering the zerk playstyle irrelevant. Some people think it can only be one or the other but trinity games themselves show us thats not the case. (Very highly skilled grps in trinity games were know to complete content that shouldn’t have been possible for them to complete by playing full dps builds near perfectly even without any tank or healer)

Tldr: Anet doesn’t want a hard trinity. They have said MULTIPLE times they wan’t a soft trinity. With builds spanning multiple roles AND builds specializing in individual roles. The entire idea behind Anet’s PvE philosophy as far as I have read is that they wan’t people to be happy to see other players joining the fight. Which isn’t really the case as it is now.

Keep an eye on it till HoT. As I believe anet is attempting to address this issue in both mob design and character build design.

Its hte most satisfying feeling in the world nailing someone with that. Cause it misses so often accidentally.

Edit: but when it lands. god kitten is a brutal.

Retaliation when your low on health.
When they have a reflect of some type going.
When you don’t want to give away your position.
When your out of combat and trying to skate by a fight but you want to have them targeted incase they turn on you.
When your team mate is about to ambush them and you don’t want to force them to pop defensives early and ruin your teams burst.
When your making sure a downed person stays down but you aren’t trying to finish them quickly and instead forcing them to bleed out over time and your auto attacking them would actually help there team.
When its a guardian running avenging wrath.
Mesmers with chaos aur.
Eles with frost aura or fire aura.
When they popped invulns and your trying to time an attack for the split second after the invuln ends.
etc…

atheria.2837:

Shadelang.3012:

Survival skills with SotF. Shouts with soldier runes work pretty well also. Depends on your playstyle really.

If your running longbow odds are you only need to break enough condi’s to get out of gank situations. So either of the before mentioned will work. Putting two survival skills on your bar (I use HaO L.R. Q.Z. SoS and SotP as my utilities) is probably all the condi clear you need to fight “most” classes.

if you insist on getting close to condi spamming classes than you might want to add in evasive purity (adept in nature magic) combined with empathic bond or SotF depending on what utilities you take.

We still have decent condi removal options. We just can’t shed condi after condi without much thought on whether or not its worth burning them on a cripple or saving it for a necros weakness bomb.

He asked for condi removal not stun breakers.

We have so little to remove condi compared to most we melt under any good burst of just a single toon against us.

If we go completely defensive, as some are suggesting, we aren’t much good to ourselves or others.

oh im sorry atheria I assumed the people on this forum new the trait system. But I guess I was wrong -.- those “stun breakers” can also remove 2 condis each when traited. Or were you aware of that and just wanted to be controversial.

Gods. the exageration here is REAL. Do you think your the only ones that reflect or something? Every class except necro and revenant says high -.-.

Yeah. there making a fractal where you can’t completely reverse certain damaging attacks. Good. Its different. In that fractal youl have to do something different than you did in another. Which is the entire bloody point of instabilities.

If the strategy for fighting mobs stayed the exact same for every single fractal level you end up with dungeons. Mindlessly rolled through without even a care in the world.

Its GOOD that there doing stuff that changes it up. When we hit that fractal level and we see that instability were going to have to sit and think (okay. what besides reflection can we do to reduce the damage we take). Maybe bring your slow? Maybe bring one of the new wells that mesmer will have access to? Theres never just one awnser to a problem. If you think that not being able to reflect negates your entire class than I hesitate to think you actually know how to play it.

the precision change specifically interests me. It encourages bringing some weakness coverage which isn’t something people normally do (even though it trivializes ascalon fractal). I feel that at the higher level fractals your gonna need to make sure you have your bases covered. I doubt EVERY mob iwll have high toughness. instead I think wel see cases where warrior type mobs for example have heavy armor. And other types have that higher precision. So having different damage types will be ideal.

Thats what im hoping anyway.

Anet doesn’t have it in them to make content incapable of being completed for certain builds. Make it easier? Sure weve seen that all over the game (and were bored of it). But not a massive impeding wall.

I figure wel see mob types have there own characteristics pushed further into there indivudal extremes. Which simultaneously makes them more vulnerable to there counters. (if a mob is balanced around its heavy precision then weakness is gonna kitten them over even harder. Vuln is worth more against targets that are noramlly resistant to your attacks. Condi’s in general will be nice to have for reducing enemy damage output and getting through there defenses. But burst classes/builds are still gonna be needed to get rid of the enemies high damage yet still squishy classes.

Atleast thats how i picture it in my head when I read what they have said. Having a place for every build has seemingly been a big part of what HoT has been promising.

Edit: At Zenith. Don’t clame to speak for everyone on the matter of ascended armor…or any subject for that matter. I for one (as well as several people I know) actually enjoyed the release of ascended armor. and were looking forward to having the ascended armor we went through the trouble of making be worth MORE with the addition of additional fractal levels. Not everyone wants everything handed to them (oh you hit 80 20 seconds ago CONGRATZ now you can buy the best armor in the game and immediately be at the same level as people that have played for YEARS)

Survival skills with SotF. Shouts with soldier runes work pretty well also. Depends on your playstyle really.

If your running longbow odds are you only need to break enough condi’s to get out of gank situations. So either of the before mentioned will work. Putting two survival skills on your bar (I use HaO L.R. Q.Z. SoS and SotP as my utilities) is probably all the condi clear you need to fight “most” classes.

if you insist on getting close to condi spamming classes than you might want to add in evasive purity (adept in nature magic) combined with empathic bond or SotF depending on what utilities you take.

We still have decent condi removal options. We just can’t shed condi after condi without much thought on whether or not its worth burning them on a cripple or saving it for a necros weakness bomb.

rogues?

/char must be sacrificed to cthuloot to post

For me its because condi ranger just isn’t that fun to play >.< My playstyle is so different that while I can play it effectively I never have that natural feeling when playing it.

I doubt ele will be "crippled’. Frankly its mechanics are too heavily tied together to completely nerf one part of em. Thats not to say it won’t be changed in some way though. If anything though it probably won’t be huge. Im fairly confident your ele will stay a smooth ride if thats what your enjoying now.