Guild Wars 2

This is not the necromancer specialization we deserve.

what do you want? playing the game in order to get rewards that only matter in the game is purposeless.

pets arn’t just damage and utility though, they are HP too. mucking with that is dangerous when you are looking at any fight except those against bosses with super strong AOE attacks. Granted, that’s a good chunk of the game.

there’s no 60 second penalty, only a 60 cooldown, it’s way different. if you lose a pet a swap to bring out another pet and lose that one within 10 seconds your pets are getting turbo dunked. in that case the real problem is that the fight turbo dunks pets, and pets need solutions against getting turbo dunked.

IE you might as well not have a pet for the first part of fighting tequatl, unless you are on a defense team. Would rather have a fix for that instead of a faster CD

why couldn’t they?
stun break plus stability

good point on ancient seeds, though thats mostly a problem for astral form only.

if you just assume the enemy is dodging all your best stuff everytime you’ve already lost the theory-matchup against literally everything

however, even if they dodge your hits, most druids are going to be tough as balls to take out by virtue of healing alone. you have time to get it right

hell, with Glyph of Unity, you can miss every shot and still win a fight

there’s 16 druid skills, including a heal skill. 8 of them do damage, and 6 of those are AOE.

I’m sorry Anet for liking to be able to actually hold my games in my hand, putting them on my bookshelves, and NOT having to rely on websites and their servers (which I have no control over) for all downloads and possibly redownloads.

Those website will last longer than your cd will

Also you have to download (often huge) game updates anyway (it’s mandatory)

I mean feel free to prefer physical copies that you have control over, but it doesnt mean much with MMOs

And of course, you can still dodge while Dazed so what if your foe dodges, leaving you there to spam 1 heals.

- only a concern in pvp
- Ancient Seeds auto-entangles dazed foes every 10s
- Dodging works on kitten everything anyway
- you can spam more daze than they have dodge though

Is this why druid looks so terrible and has no synergy whatsover with the pet?

healing, control effects, and ally buffs have obvious synergy with a pet

Both NPCs and players have counters for Daze (defiance, stability, stunbreaks)

If control wants to be on the same level as damage its going to need complete bullkitten like that.

I guess if you think about it you have not even begun to bullkitten without taking into account glyph of equality and glyph of the tides as well

….it might get kinda outta control in pvp :O

You can do damage and heal between cooldowns. You just need to use Lunar Impact every 5 seconds (its cd) to stack daze.
Plus 2900 heal (with 0 healing power) + blast finisher.

what are you doing in Celestial form to deal damage? heh.

i believe part of the idea of celestial is to give powerful control, powerful enough to be a viable alternative to damage. really high daze damage = amazing ability to DESTROY defiance bars.

incidentally, just to be clear, daze doesn’t stack; overlapped duration just gets wasted

if you REALLY want to theorycraft

Hilt Bash to stun for 3s daze
throw down a storm spirit
swap to staff, use the vines (3s daze)
go Astral
use lunar beam to daze and also inflict entangle (druid trait from hitting immobilized) (6s daze)
use another lunar beam (6s daze)
exit astral
activate the storm spirit (6s daze)
swap back to greatsword and hilt bash again (3s daze)

—> 33s, or 30s if you just use one rotation

it’s pretty powerful, but you’re inflicting daze instead of damage in celestial so nbd

I don’t really see why Glyphs should be balanced around a Glyphs-only build. They don’t need a stunbreak and it makes zero thematic sense.

…Except checking the wiki i see an Elementalist glyph with stun break. Well, kitten it then. Give em a stun break! Other than the Celestial one.

I think Glyph of Equality looks pretty hilarious when combined with Moment of Clarity. One trait, one skill, and a greatsword is potentially 7 seconds of daze. Also, gaining Attacks of Opportunity!

Evidently no-one pushing for stationary spirit viability in PvP is actually familiar with high level PvP. An immobile spirit is a spirit that’s going to be destroyed before the fight over a point even begins, thus defeating the whole point of the spirit build and rendering the Ranger useless and without 2-4/5 utilities on their bar. It takes a single Mirror Blade from my Mesmer on the way to the point to eliminate a spirit, a MW on another, and there goes 50% of the Ranger’s utility and the whole point of the spec.

There’s nothing about this argument that favors mobile spirits. They’re far more vulnerable to your single mirror blade or mind wrack when theyre following the ranger.

Long buff aura range may not be a perfect solution, and may not be enough. However, it is a straightforward useability/QOL improvement widely applicable to both pvp and pve problems without significant dangers of breaking them.

No, there should not be a penalty at all. There are some instances where it is totally unavoidable. Imagine if other classes were penalised like that? Nobody else is, nor should Ranger be. A dead pet is already the loss of 4 skills and a decent % of our damage.

if you balance pets around content where pets are getting massacred like dungeons and fractals, you make pets really strong in regular (baseline) content: open world champions, veterans, etc.

Rangers already have an easier time with those enemies than many other classes simply because of the hits their pet can take from that. that’s why brown bear rangers are a thing: it’s a path of least resistance.

people should also need to care if their pet dies. being able to swap to the next pet a few seconds later no matter what means you don’t get invested even a little in keeping your pet alive. It also tilts the game away from tankier pets and towards damaging pets.

pets just arn’t built to take the damage thrown out by attacks you are intended to be forced to dodge in higher difficulty content. Sometimes they are immune to these sort of dangerous attacks, sometimes they are not. It is applied inconsistently throughout the game. Pets deserve a unified solution to this problem that doesn’t force people to take a certain skill.

like a ‘wary’ buff in dungeons/fractals/etc. that just makes them highly resistant to environmental damage in big boss AOEs, or dodging when the player does, or somethin.

It’s like you’ve never even heard of starving artists~

Snide commentary aside, there is a fame economy in cinema. Getting your name officially credited opens up doors that were closed to you when you were just some schlub. That’s not just for big name actors, it’s for all those people in the credits list.

You can also look at academia, and the often cuthroat battles to get on projects or to get credited as an author or coauthor.

A third place to look is executives of large companies. A lot of them are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and obtaining wealth makes functionally no difference in their day to day lives. Rather, prestige and power are what matters (Although having a bigger salary, or doing ostentatiously expensive things with money often = prestige)\

EDIT:

I’ll counter with a question – if high scores and leaderboards were enough back then why is it that today’s games reward you with items – cosmetic or gameplay-related at almost every turn?
Is it perhaps because lederboards, high scores and being first is no longer enough?

it doesn’t have to be enough! nor did I say it was enuff. there’s already rewards for raids other than prestige. If legendary items arn’t enough I don’t know what is~

though if you want to be philosophical about it, pretty much every endgame reward is one of prestige and keeping up with the Joneses.

the core reward people receive from playing a game is the satisfaction and enjoyment derived from doing a thing well and/or solving problems. There’s also the competitive impulse, striving to be better than someone else either directly or indirectly. If you rely just on Pavlovian shinies your game fails.

Rauderi.8706:

I’m a bit surprised at the Druid support (20%). o_O

Considering the community’s kneejerk reaction to “git gud no helz” and “zomg not wow trinity stahp”, I would’ve assumed a healing-heavy spec to get thrust to the bottom. (Right on top of Dargonhurrdurr.)

I got my biggest squees from Reaper and Herald, though.

if you watched the stream in real time, the twitch comments were a lot more positive than the forums reception has been

//readwhatyouwantintothat

I really don’t think that this particular glyph is ever going to be good for pvp without being extremely strong in pve.

IMO It’s okay if some skills arn’t that good in pvp.

Anyway, you can’t really compare it straight to a ‘maximum’ frost spirit because of all the difficult to quantify limitations on spirit lifetime (ranging from instadeath to moving away from it.) In the end you have to make an assumption on what a realistic frost spirit uptime actually is in order to compare the numbers.

i guess that did not compute since we already know raids -> legendaries

if legendaries arn’t enough of a reward what is

it would be surprising if regular loot, guild stuff, and perhaps mastery points wernt also a part of this

the core problem with this assumption is that the two five man groups are going to be doing the same thing.

in the one raid revealed so far, that’s not the case.

don’t forget verdant etching. it also functions as a condi clear and small heal, as well as lowering the recharge.

i do agree it might still be a little weak, but traited versions should always be factored in

maybe it should be longer recharge but bigger effect, like 30-40s cooldown with 25% damage boost?

would also make the avatar version less tepid

I believe this is exactly why the pet swap exists. At some point you gotta draw the line and penalize the ranger for losing 50,000 hp worth of pet.

Some people care about their name being out there as Tha Best. Some people are competitive. Some people invest hundreds of hours in getting the best possible time in 20 year old platformers. Will most people care? Probably not. But it adds something for those who do. And it’s not like its complicated to implement. High scores in arcade games were invented longer ago than most gamers have been alive.

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Clearly you’ve never worked in Hollywood

I read your suggestion and it’s still inefficient. 2,000 range is still small considering bunker Ranger isn’t a thing and you’ll want to be actually moving between points.

spirits don’t need map mobility – they can be a ‘stationary’ skill. it’s only 20s from when you don’t need them to when you can recast. but you do need to be able to be in a slightly mobile fight without moving outside their range all the time.

even in a lot of pve content, the encounters either move around too much or have too much aoe for spirits to live. if you could put them further away it wouldnt be a problem.

however, the most important buff for spirits is to not look like oakhearts. Dolphin spirits are about a thousand times better. i’d prefer flying dolphins to oakhearts.

p.s. has anyone else had trouble with the sun spirit burn procs not working at all?

don’t touch warhorn 4 >:O

best skill in the game

Hilt Bash slightly increased range, and stun to 2 seconds.

it does need more range – you can’t hit a crippled player moving away from you reliably. however, 2 s stun would necessitate nerfing Moment of Clarity, nothx.

///

Opening strike should recharge when you switch weapons andor pets. major trait?

would like to see a crit ranger build with ferocity but not much precision be more viable

…there should be SOMETHING resembling commitment to a build in the game.

In Pve there’s no meta because nothing is required – the metagame, in it’s purest sense, is insignificant.

imo, its more like:

we don’t expect to need anything other than zerkers in pve encounters, zerkers are fastest, so everyone should be zerker.

the fundamental problem is not the players, it’s the encounters…

the short answer is No

the long answer is that its too soon to tell how builds will shake out.

the caveat is that you can mix the new elite specs into existing builds for some hybrid results

The problem with what you’re suggesting is that it has already been done – dungeons did this and because every build was viable and could complete it meant that highly efficient builds ( such as full zerker meta) became incredibly effective and gave us wildly fast clear times.

the reason dps builds gave wildly fast clear times is that enemy health bars were the main barrier to progress in dungeons, and when there was a significant threat to players more defensive builds rarely offered a tangible benefits. (hyuge damage spikes, etc.) The dungeons were built to be tough, and even now they still can be. Most fast runs use various means to avoid playing some fights as designed.

the devs are aware of this, which is why you can see in fractals many fights designed specifically so that damage is not the limiting factor in clearing them. Or at least far less so.

It didn’t necessarily lead to more diverse builds though, since it’s not like any amount of armor matters if the Jade Maw stares at you.

It is really bad form to be using twitter for anything other than simple announcements… like, Get in GW2 for Hallow’s Eve, or something similar.

game devs talk shop and game stuff in twitter, it’s not some arenanet thing nor is it a flaw.

i agree that the way pet shouts break when you command the pet to do something else is incredibly annoying and has gotten me killed on numerous occasions. Utility skills shouldn’t just break like that, the slots are too valuable. I want to use Protect Me but its just subpar compared to Signet of Stone.

i’m not sure there’s much they could do with pet ai other than make them faster, presumably they already use the same ai as the npcs.

1.) the devs have heavily implied that dodging all damage wont be possible

2.) toughness synergizes with healing, particularly healing by a healer build

i woulda made aegis look like the light aura, but i guess that’s a nogo

You are speaking about team spirit, but at the end it’s still the same – someone is being forced into playing the healer.

all games force people into the game paradigm, it’s the nature of games. otherwise its just a sandbox and balance/difficulty is irrelevant anyway.

it’s better with the trait. not amazing, but better.

i do agree it’s pathetic compared to astral grace, but that’s a weapon skill so its a lot less flexible buildwise

the current system is good.

if you have a legendary you can afford to burn money to mess with your build

the economy needs money sinks to avoid massive inflation

i don’t think that’s going to happen.

retaliation could get pretty out of control in earlier patches and they dont want that to happen again.

maybe something like taking a retaliation damage applies vulnerability?

or some post by A-Net dev specifically stated that the whole “zerker meta” is a result of an overall design flaw within the game.

the design flaw is that zerker builds can evade damage with skilled use of dodge roll, not lack of trinity

Or a reaper that deals almost the same degree of damage as berserker builds while still being ridiculously tanky and becoming more dangerous as the fight goes on if not dealt with, thus making the decision to attack them less ridiculous than it would on say, a nomad mace/shield guardian.

that’s not a tank build, it’s a tankmage :p

I think gw2 could use a “tank” that controls enemies, blocks AND dodges attacks (not just facetanking & being a hp sponge) to migitate damage on allies.

Guardian and mesmer can basically do this.

guardian: virtue of courage+retreat

mesmer: copying Distortion to allies, copying boons to allies

oh right, you need the trait to wield the staff

nm on that last

What we’re trying, and clearly failing, to do is convince you that the new meta, at least what it looks like now, isn’t going to fix anything for the people complaining about build or stat diversity, and it certainly isn’t going to get rid of elitism.

….you don’t think a new meta, with more than just zerker builds, won’t do anything for build diversity?

for the record, what i said was:

wherever the meta settles, stricter or not, it’s going to be more in favor of diverse builds than the zerk meta. i mean, that’s the whole point. there’ll be a place for tougher builds, maybe even bunkers.

and i dont know, you’re putting onto me your anger about people who complain that they arn’t getting into groups. :|

the druid traits are healing focused, but you could do a non healing build with them.

druidic clarity -> verdant etching -> ancient seeds

use the avatar to daze & cripple & slow then hop out of it.

you also don’t need to druid spec to use a staff

well to be fair the real druids probably were more like the latter than the former

Why shouldn’t encounters be designed so that support or control or tanky builds are desirable? They already are in pvp and wvw.

That’s what Anet is attempting. That’s what breaks the zerker meta.

The meta is the best way to do things. It’s people evaluating the available options and choosing the best one…but the best option never has and never will be mandatory for completing dungeons.

Damage builds are the best possible choices for dungeons because other builds are unnecessary. Speccing into anything other than damage makes dungeons slower, ergo it is not the optimal choice.

Do you even play dungeons? Have you looked at LFG ONCE and see a request for zerk and built your entire opinion up from that?

i do want to talk about this more specifically. It’s not that people in LFG ask for zerk. It’s that they don’t want people who aren’t zerk, because the nonzerkers slow them down.

i mean, lets talk Sinister. Sinister’s cool. But it’s condition damage. Before the condition rework it was pretty much dogkitten in dungeons. And world bosses. And a lot of places really.

Condition builds can be pretty competitive damage-wise these days but they didn’t use to be at all. That’s zerker meta, that’s the build you want to play being closed off because the enemies and the encounters didn’t support them at all.

The “zerker meta” is just the care bear phrase of choice to rant about and blame all their woes on, as it has been a long time since this “zerker meta” was even a thing to commonly encounter

Take a look in Dungeon LFG sometime.

‘80 zerk p1’
‘experienced zerk only’

etc.

1. The ability to recognize mob tells/cues and react.
2. The ability to determine and use the appropriate ability/skill in reaction to enemies

I fail to see how gear choice or stacking or not stacking…has any bearing on either of these two things.

if you kill everything dead superfast you dont have to worry much about the difference between different enemies, or reacting, or really much at all

i think you have a weird definition of diversity.

builds other than dps being desirable is the entire point.