Guild Wars 2

Chaos Archangel.5071:

I’ve seen yer build Silver. Chronomancer may actually still be an upgrade over Dueling.

Chaos/Inspire/Chrono with shield offers stronger healing and more unique (as in can’t be replaced by ele/guard) boonsharing.

I can’t say for certain though, the two builds I explored (lockdown and alacrity support) weren’t geared towards boonsharing but a friend of mine explored boonshare and their notes are really promising. They called it the “Boon Fatty” xD

However, a discussion on core Mesmer support vs Chrono support may be in order in a new thread.

Well the update on shield is sure a candy on its own for self survivability. Also the possible might generation from CI with the shield interrupt is looking promising though I may end up using BD instead (stability). For the healing, the sad part is that the healing well CD was increased but the shared healing wasn’t so except if using mantra of pain (which would replace the wells or null field), I don’t see much healing output.

So at the end, I am not sure that I should invest in healing power for chronomancer. Either I’ll try to go celestial or somewhat more offensive.

Well yes sorry, this is not the right thread for that. Chronomancer is a very nice elite spec, and I will for sure play a lot with it at release (which is soon now ).

Fay.2357:

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t really agree that chronomancer is a straight upgrade. I can think of many good builds which would not work with chronomancer (like the one I’m currently running). Giving up a trait line is not free.

However, chronomancer does add a lot of depth and new playstyles.

I feel like elite specializations should not be the only way to access weapons and I really hope they will change that. This is especially true with this first expansion where many specs are straight out trying to fix something missing in the class. This means that many of the weapons will be severely lacking in the core class or the future elite specs.

I would love if elite specs were simply a new trait line with the only difference that it also changes the class mechanics (which is why you can have only 1 elite spec active).

The “danger” is that many elite specs currently shine more by their weapons than by their traits (DH, Tempest) and would risk being completely abandoned if players could take the weapons without the trait lines.

I never said it was free, I just said it was better. If not roaming wvw, what exactly is the build you’re running better at?

A support build with dueling, chaos and inspiration. While chrono allows for powerful support (mostly through alacrity/quickness), it is different from the one you can do with this build (healing + boonshare). You just cannot put all together.

So my point mostly is that in many cases, it’s not necessarily better, but different. For sure, I enjoy chronomancer and it adds a very unique flavor, it does things no other professions can do (while boon + healing is very much what a guardian does).

It seems initially the design of the staff is:

• if you want power damage, use the phantasm
• if you want condi damage, use the clones

Now condi damage at this time was a slow attrition playstyle while we have now moved to bursty condition builds (burst confusion for mesmer, burst burning for guardian etc…). So in the current standards, the staff clones are weak (no boost when burning became intensity stacking).

I believe the old design could work if the conditions on staff AA were boosted (and if damaging conditions were added to chaos storm).

I don’t really agree that chronomancer is a straight upgrade. I can think of many good builds which would not work with chronomancer (like the one I’m currently running). Giving up a trait line is not free.

However, chronomancer does add a lot of depth and new playstyles.

I feel like elite specializations should not be the only way to access weapons and I really hope they will change that. This is especially true with this first expansion where many specs are straight out trying to fix something missing in the class. This means that many of the weapons will be severely lacking in the core class or the future elite specs.

I would love if elite specs were simply a new trait line with the only difference that it also changes the class mechanics (which is why you can have only 1 elite spec active).

The “danger” is that many elite specs currently shine more by their weapons than by their traits (DH, Tempest) and would risk being completely abandoned if players could take the weapons without the trait lines.

Fay.2357:

Anyway, regarding the pDisenchanter:

pDisenchanter is still awful. Phantasm builds aren’t viable in PvP for a lot of reasons, so that means you’re taking it in a shatter build. Taking it in a shatter build means you can’t just have it sitting around chewing on stuff, because you’ll shatter it. So the alternative is you bring it out when you need it. Seems fine?

Nope.

When do you need it? Well, you need it when you’re condie loaded. If you’re condie loaded, 95% of the time you’re blinded, which means you can’t bring it out. Additionally, depending on the severity of the condie load (burn guardian burst anyone?) you need that removal now, not 1.5s cast time, .5s for it to gain a target, and another second for the attack to execute, and then hope that they didn’t dodge it, blind it, block it, or reflect it.

It’s too unreliable. It doesn’t fit the mechanics of the builds you have to use it in, nor does it just function well in general.

I think before changing its attack rate, the priority was to reduce its cast time. Both utility phantasms have currently a 1.5s cast time, which is insane. Their strength does not justify it. We already have mantras if we have a strong taste for long cast time.

Then, I guess like all phantasms, you would need to have high toughness and invest in the full inspiration line and maybe even bring signet of illusion to keep them alive… But if you’re into inspiration, you don’t really need iDisenchanter anymore…

If at least those were like ranger spirits that you can just hide them somewhere and get the AOE benefits (when you’re hoping something is as good as a ranger spirit, you have hit the bottom). Instead, they need to stand in the field because LoS…

Necro probably came to try their improved scepter. Believe me it’s not OP.
Ranger probably came to try the condi damage on their pet. Don’t think it’s OP, but haven’t tried.
Mesmers… nope, I don’t see why it would be.

I believe it does pulse 2 more times. When you mean the pulse count, do you mean the one displayed on the tooltip or the “actual” pulse count in-game?

Zenith.7301:

frifox.5283:

Also, Disenchanter is nuts. Attack every 2.46 seconds with PH, which is more or less the same as sword AA rate! 2xDisenchanters (with mimic) with your sword AA now strips 2 boons every second!

Those cute necromancers in the necromancer forums who say necro does boon strip best

To be fair, with 2 disenchanters, the DPS drops quite considerably… Without DPS loss, we have sword AA, necros have well of corruption, which is probably somewhat similar. I think at the end the difference is like druid vs ventari: necro can remove many boons in a burst, mesmer usually takes more time (+corruption is a bit more potent than plain removal)

People don’t like conditions. If they take a 10k backstab from stealth it’s fine, but confusion ticking during 6s for 1.5k damage is OP.

Yes, condi mesmer suffers from a lot of QQing in other parts of the forum (mostly from WvW roamers). You could expect that with the stealth nerf, this will change, but when people start to hate a build, it takes long to undo it (people still complain about mesmer power bursts even after the mirror blade nerf, while it is infinitely more counterable than a backstab)

Also, DD would not have been OP in any real situation. In theory, against a dummy, 3 iDuelist + mesmer sword AA was a higher DPS in sinister/rampager than 3 swordsman+mesmer AA on a berserker build (not by much). When is the last time you managed to keep 3 duelists alive in PvP???

I decided to have some fun yesterday and started changing the trait lines (mostly reordering but also some modified/new traits) in a way which I prefer. I initially did that for myself only, especially since I do not expect the devs to reorganize things so much. But at the end decided to share it anyway.

I used a very rationale approach, with a set of rules:

• a clear theme for each line
• GM actually build-defining, often centered around the phantasm, shattering or interrupt playstyles
• always something useful for any build on each tier (not necessarily ideal, but useful): this one is obviously tricky so I don’t think I necessarily managed
• associate weapons and utilities to the most obvious trait line, never put 2 weapon trait on the same tier
• when a weapon is only one hand, the trait also has a benefit non bound to the weapon to increase choices and keeping traits as strong

The traits are arranged as 3 minors, 3 adepts, 3 master and 3 GM

Domination
direct damage line. Weapons= GS, sword/spear. Utility = mantra (mantras are bursty and usually damage related). 3 GM adding big damage.

• Dazzling (3 vuln for 5s), Illusion of Vulnerability (5 vuln for 8s), Fragility (multiplier apply also to phantasm)
• Fencer’s Finesse, Furious Interruption, Shattered Strength
• Imagined Burden, Harmonious Mantra, Confounding Suggestion
• Power Block, Mental Anguish, Empowered Illusion

no much changes, mostly exchanging the two first minors to reward interrupts more than dazes and acknowledging phantasm builds as “being a thing” and not a side. Because Dueling was changed to a mostly condi line, many dueling traits ended up here.

Dueling
mostly condi line (we know condis are best for dueling and not group) but also crits to be still useful to power builds. Weapons= scepter. 3 GM themed on confusion

• Master Fencer, Phantasmal Fury, Master of Misdirection
• Duelist’s Discipline (without the bleeds on pistol but including Sharper Images), Maim the Disillusioned, Tormenting reflection (reflected projectiles inflict torment)
• Distracting perplexity (add 20% crit chance vs confused enemies), Malicious Sorcery (+ increased torment duration) , Rending Shatter
• Mistrust (Reduce daze duration to 0.25s, dazed foes are blinded, interrupted foes are inflicted 4 stacks confusion for 5s), Illusionary Retribution, Confusing Combatants (Phantasms apply 2s confusion on crits)

This is the biggest change. Most of the condi traits from illusions are transferred here. Illusionary Retribution in particular is now GM, because let’s be honest, it is very strong and defines the condi shatter build. One can still use this line to good effect for power builds mostly thanks to Distracting perplexity. Really not sure about Tormenting reflection, but was lacking idea… Reduced daze duration for Mistrust is I believe a great way to not counteract the confusion and torment. Confusing combatants can be used on fast hitting phantasm (iDuel/iWar) for high condi damage or on regularly hitting ones (sword) on power builds to just maintain permanent confusion to proc Distracting perplexity.

Chaos
Defensive line. Weapons= Staff. Utility = Manipulation. 3 GM based on boon generation (interrupts, shatters and Stealth, as currently)

• Evasive Infusion (gain 5s vigor when evading an attack, 10s iCD), Metaphysical Rejuvenation (+Illusionary Membrane), Chaotic Persistence
• Master of Manipulation, Mirror of Anguish , Ineptitude
• Evasive Mirror, The Pledge (+ Desperate Decoy), Chaotic Dampening (+ Descent into Madness)
• Bountiful Disillusionment, Chaotic Interruption, Prismatic Understanding

Not many changes. Evasive infusion replaces Critical Infusion (makes more sense in a defensive line I believe and still accessible to the current meta shatter builds to proc DE). The fall trait was merged with the staff trait because let’s be honest, it is very situational and thus currently reduces build diversity.

Inspiration
support line. Weapons: focus. Utilities: glamour. 3 build defining GM: phantasm, boonshare, supportive shatter

• Healing Prism (percentage of healing you give to self also heals allies), Mender’s Purity, Chaotic presence (nearby allies gain a random boon every 3s)
• Warden’s Feedback (+ Medic’s Feedback), Mental Defense, Inspiring Distortion (+ whenever you dodge your phantasms get 1s distortion)
• Temporal Enchanter, Protected Phantasms, Restorative Mantras
• Persisting Images (buffed to 100% health+ Phantasms grant regeneration to nearby allies), Bountiful Inspiration (cast signet of inspiration whenever 4 or more boons on you. Whenever cast signet of inspiration, convert 2 condis on nearby allies to boons), Restorative Illusions (slightly buffed and AOE now)

not many changes. Added Chaotic presence as an “aura”, like all other classes but engineer has that gives unique support by “just being there”. Tried to significantly buff phantasm survivability here.

Illusions
the illusion line, focused on both illusions and shatters. utility: illusions + signet (signets have no real themes, but many affect illusions, my other idea was dueling since many also affect conditions). 3 GM : different ways to boost illusion generation

• Illusionist’s Celerity, shatter virtuoso (Reduces recharge of shatter skills), Master of Fragmentation
• Compounding Power, Blinding Dissipation, Blurred Inscriptions
• Phantasmal Haste, Shattered Concentration, Illusionary Defense
• Deceptive Evasion, Persistence of Memory (buffed), Sum of All Fears (cast a clone whenever you interrupt a foe)

I know some people suggested that instead of being forced into dueling for DE, we should add one illusion generation on each trait line. However, having played often without DE, I really think DE is not needed. And in particular, with this trait changes, I tried to make sure that non-shatter builds (in particular interrupt and phantasm) are viable.

As I said, I don’t expect this to be used, but since it took me some time, I would welcome comments and suggestions.

Grigneg.1630:

Corrosive Poison Cloud destroys unreflectable/unblockable projectiles like the poison darts of little Tom in the Harpy Fractal or the Lightning Stuff of Mai Trin.

Necro finally meta
Enjoy while it lasts

nearlight.3064:

Ross Biddle.2367:

How you know it was never “working as intended” as previously stated :p

Signit Heal now with no clone heal pulse. Somemesmer somewhere might be happy.

One streamer I know plays cele Mesmer with blurred inscriptions and sw/p staff. I’m sure he’s overjoyed, and also that duelists discipline finally works for his build, which he was complaining about for a while.

I’m also playing cele mesmer with DD. Happy I finally gain more than just cooldown reduction.

I’m not overly surprised of the nerf to DD. DD + sharper image made iDuelist a bleed-god. Each duelist would have stacked bleeds better than a necro :p

Lingering curse was NOT nerfed. They just moved half of it to be baseline for the scepter (you can do the maths, it works). But then that means the only new thing for the scepter is the increased damage on 2 and the change from damage to torment on 3 as well as the more reliable LF generation.

People wanted lingering curse to be baseline, well that is exactly what happened (though only half of it) so the scepter now does not ABSOLUTELY NEED lingering curse. That means better build diversity.
edit: also now instead of 2 long bleeds on AA we get 3 shorter bleeds. The total cumulated damage is the same but it is more bursty. A long bleed is a cleansed bleed!

A lot of changes for us (including duelist’s discipline though somewhat nerfed). Most are very good and long awaited!

• Shatter Skills: Updated the description of these skills to include the effects added when Illusionary Persona functionality was made baseline.
• Arcane Thievery: Updated this skill to transfer blindness.
• Chaotic Dampening: Increased the recharge reduction from 2% to 2.5%.
• Duelist’s Discipline: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from granting a bleeding chance to your Illusionary Duelist. Lowered bleeding stacks applied by this skill from 2 to 1.
• Fencer’s Finesse: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to apply ferocity when reflecting projectiles. Fixed a bug that could cause the ferocity boon to be applied when attacking with weapons other than swords.
• Harmonious Mantras: Increased the duration from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
• Inspiring Distortion: Updated this trait to prevent the distortion granted from being applied to objects.
• Null Field: Updated the skill description and skill facts to reflect that this skill removes boons and conditions on pulses.
• Phantasmal Disenchanter: Reduced the attack recharge by 2 seconds. The attack from this phantasm is now referred to as “Disenchanting Bolt” in the combat log.
• Portal Entre: Updated this skill to show an icon for the duration that you have to place the exit portal. Fixed a bug that could cause a noninteractable portal entrance to remain in the world if the mesmer died before casting the Portal Exeunt skill.
• Prismatic Understanding: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from functioning while downed. Reduced the stealth duration increase from 100% to 50%.
• Signet of the Ether: Updated this skill to include an additional pulsing heal when no illusions are present.
• Temporal Curtain: Removed functionality that prevented the swiftness applied by this skill from applying to allies that already had swiftness. Now applies 12 seconds of swiftness to allies the first time they cross the wall and 1 second of swiftness to allies that cross it again after receiving the initial swiftness.
• The Pledge: Fixed an incorrect skill fact that displayed the recharge reduction as a percentage instead of a duration.
• Mind Slash: Increased damage by 10%.
• Mind Gash: Increased damage by 10%.
• Mind Spike: Increased damage to targets without boons by 10%.

Those are great
There was indeed more than what was announced saturday (especially axe and scepter)

Onerios.4962:

May be a bit of an “out there” idea, but he and brazil should work together more. Nemesis often comes up with some great points, but then gets bogged down in arguing with everyone, he needs to get someone else to present the points with him (or someone else to do it on his behalf) to tone down some of the silly comments he makes and let people discuss what’s being said rather then who is saying it.

Back on topic, that run is a great baseline and thanks for doing it, but could be optimised further; better gear choices, need to have a look to see if power or condi could do it better (power dummy dps is better but does condi have better uptime in the fight or enable kiting that can’t be done with power?), way fight was executed ment that time was “wasted” on utility skills and healing instead of higher dps options. Still a kitten sight better then I can do though.

I think the reason for which both nemesis and a bit after Sesshi use condi builds is because most of the AOE of necro are on condi weapons. There are wells, but except for that nothing. The dagger cleaves only 2 targets which is not enough for the wolves and also require melee which is a bad idea. Also, condi allows more defensive stats without having crap DPS.

Bhawb.7408:

Here is the problem with this thought process, the very act of transferring them takes an entire extra skill. That extra skill carries all the power budget of transferring conditions, regardless of their source. If I use a corruption and then transfer it with Putrid Mark, I didn’t gain any power, my corruption didn’t suddenly become stronger than another skill, because the entire reason I have putrid mark on my bar in the first place is to get rid of conditions. If anything, the conditions transferred have to be significantly stronger than normal conditions to warrant me losing out on my condition removal tools.

Think of it this way, you have a core build that already has just enough condition removal to deal with whatever you’ll face in the content you are playing. You can either load up the rest of your build with non-corruptions, and don’t need to waste any power budget on more removal, or you can take Corruptions, which not only take up power budget on their own, but also require additional power taken away from something else in order to deal with the fact that you now don’t have enough condition removal. In practice, this means you now have to take both your corruption and say Plague Signet, whereas in any other situation you would just take a single skill and it wouldn’t need an entire extra skill just to mitigate its downsides. In this way, Corruptions have to have nearly double the strength of normal skills, because they effectively take two skills to use: the corruption itself and the skill used to mitigate its downside.

Now, if you equip a corruption and don’t take anything to mitigate its downside, all of a sudden you are down on condition removal. If you transfer that bleed from Blood is Power, you now have one condition removal less than you would have had, and when you get hit with that long immobilize or huge bleed burst, you won’t have the removal to deal with it because you instead used it on BiP.

The self-applied conditions for these reasons are not a “plus” to the skill, because they innately require other mechanics (which by taking weaken you) to deal with. Because of this, the corruption skill itself doesn’t hold any “extra” power just because another skill can be used to take advantage of the self weakness.

I perfectly agree with you, and yet that is how the devs look at it. That is for example exactly what they explained in the stream for the specialization patch. We both know it does not work this way, but that is how they sell them.

Personally, the way I prefer to look at the corruption theme is: since necro has a lot of passive sustain, we cannot be bursty. Corruptions are a way to trade some of our sustain for some burst. That is I believe a niche where corruptions could shine. However, they currently don’t, because they don’t really reduce our sustain but actually prevent us from bursting (they are often non-damaging conditions like blindness, cripple or weakness) and do not offer anything that strong in exchange.

Imagine a corruption which uses our LF but increases by 25% our damage in the next 10s. PvE players would love that since currently the shroud is not a DPS increase if you already max crits. Or one where you use some LF but become invuln for a few seconds (trading passive non scalable sustain for active scalable defense).

flow.6043:

Silverkey.2078:

Let’s be honest, if we allow heals on shroud, some things would need to be rebalanced, and that mean we would be temporary OP or UP depending on how a-net does it.

But currently, necro is good in 1v1, and sucks in 5v5. Allowing healing from allies on shroud would reduce this disparity.

You do see the contradiction here, right?
You say we would need a nerf to compensate for the added healing. But it would change almost nothing in 1v1s and add more team synergy for bigger fights, at which we currently do indeed suck.

I’m not sure what you mean, but with the nerf, our 1v1 abilities would be reduced and our 5v5 increased. It goes both ways. And I think loosing some 1v1 sustain is perfectly fine. Let’s be honest, currently, if we build for it (for example MM) we can be near-unkillable in 1v1. We won’t become bad in 1v1 even with a (well thought) nerf.

Bhawb.7408:

His videos at this point are on par with climate change deniers or creationists releasing “science” to “support” their opinions. His complete refusal to accept what our issues are right now serve only to hold us back by avoiding the actual source of our problems (and therein denying the changes we need) and instead blaming them on the “berserker meta” or people just not following his most recent build.

I do not think he denies our issues. He actually has videos explaining the problem with necromancer’s balance (for example the lack of scaling defenses).

His main problem with the “berserker meta” is not the berserker meta as such but those who blindly follows the metabattle “rules” without understanding the logic behind them or without acknowledging they are not good enough players to adhere to the “meta”.

He knows necro does less DPS than other classes “in ideal conditions” and has less (=almost none) direct support. But he also knows that the lower DPS comes with higher sustain (though with the problem of lack of active/scalable defense) which is why necro is pug-friendly and can out-DPS other classes if not in ideal situation.

Again, I just think he insults so much everyone we could forget what is his message.

Let’s be honest, if we allow heals on shroud, some things would need to be rebalanced, and that mean we would be temporary OP or UP depending on how a-net does it.

But currently, necro is good in 1v1, and sucks in 5v5. Allowing healing from allies on shroud would reduce this disparity. I sometimes play support guardian while my gf plays necro, and it is very difficult when I try to help her to tell “please leave shroud I’m going to heal you” and then for some reason I get interrupted or whatever and I just killed her because she’s now without shroud AND with low health.

I definitely thinks NCSY should be a debuff on the enemy not a buff on the allies. It says “nothing can save you”, not “nothing can save you from me”.

The problem is that the way they are designed, they are very hard to balance. If you increase their potency + increase the self-harm “to make up for it”, it can be actually too strong because you can send back the self-harm to the enemy.

I actually think some of the skills were balanced assuming you transfer the conditions back. That is why I think something like “you loose LF when using them” instead of a condition makes sense because this is easier to balance (this is a negative effect, not something you can send back). The only problem is that if it was like this, then you cannot use the skill if you have low LF, which is very dangerous with CC for example!

spoj.9672:

Im sorry are we listening to the same commentary? Nemesis is always quick to insult and spew cringe worthy ego comments. He also has a very abrasive tone in most of his videos which just irritates a lot of people. Honestly i feel his tone reminds me more of a child than many of the insults provoked against him. Maybe thats just me?

Im pretty sure he continues to do a lot of these things because it gets him exposure and views. I personally could never bring myself to say such cringe worthy things and embarrass myself like that though. Props to him for having no shame in that department.

Point is, you cant really blame people for not properly listening to him. When often times it makes you want to drink a bottle of bleach and scrape out your eardrums with a rusty needle. Also along with his sometimes valid points you get a load of contradictory bullkitten which makes no sense or is just flat out incorrect, irrelevant or just a pointless bash the meta comment thrown in. So its difficult to take him seriously. “DPS uptime” anyone?

That is my main problem with him. He wants to be the messenger for the necro community to save us from the unjustified discrimination in pugs. He makes many valid points. Sure necro is not meta, because in optimal situations (which the meta is defined on) another class will be a better choice. But for 90% or more of the dungeon runs, this does not matter because

1. in an optimal run, the time lost is not that significant
2. in a non-optimal run (especially in pugs), the situation is rarely optimal so applying blindly the meta does not make sense.

Most of these facts are points that I believe we pretty much all agree on, and if the message could spread, that would be great.

But this message is diluted in a flow of insults and abrasive tone so much that its meaning is lost and all is left is pointless fights in forums and reddit. I do not think he helps the necromancers!

One of the problem of the current corruption trait is that it is meant as “increase risk increase benefits” but the risks increase more than the benefits. Had they simply reduced the cooldown without the added benefits, then we would already self-inflict conditions to ourself more often, which is particularly annoying as our condi cleanse/transfer (except CC) do not scale the same.

So if the trait does not ALSO increase benefits, then we are just increasing the risk/benefit ratio.

With the change of CPC, corruptions are becoming more attractive. Many of our corruption skill are arguably some of our best skills:

• Consume Conditions: simply our best heal
• Blood Is Power: one of our only party buff
• Epidemic: if used at the right moment, can be devastating both in PvE and PvP
• Corrupt Boon: our strongest boon corruption
• Corrosive Poison Cloud: now stronger and with projectile destruction
• Plague: a strong defensive skill

Yet, I feel (and I believe many others too) there is something not quite right about them, this “je ne sais quoi” which prevents them from being used more often. The problem is most likely the self-inflicted condition. Basically, there are 2 ways to look at it:

• the conditions are too punishing
• the conditions are not strong enough to justify wasting a condition transfer (and thus being vulnerable to a condi bomb)

So I was wondering what the community thinks would be the best way to make those skills great while keeping the theme. Here are some suggestions:

1. the skills should be buffed to make up for the self-inflicted condition
2. the self-inflicted conditions should be damaging conditions only (no weakness, crippling, blinding etc…)
3. the self-inflicted conditions should be buffed significantly to be worth using a transfer after
4. there should not be any self-condition but life force used (or HP, but makes little sense for the healing)
5. Master of Corruption should not add a different condition but increase the one already inflicted (to prevent covering conditions too much)
6. Master of Corruption should buff the effect instead of just decreasing the CD (more might, more poison, more condition copied, more boons corrupted, more healing etc…)

Please, vote for one or more that you think should be done, or please suggest your own (I’ll keep the list updated if necessary).

I’m not sure how useful the healing power is on this build. I usually like to have healing power on a build which has many sources of healing including outgoing healing. You only have your heal skill, which does some outgoing healing, but not that much… You’re essentially gaining 1500 healing on a 30s (maybe 20ish with alacrity) cooldown, including 1000 outgoing. It’s not amazing…

First a few thing: low level open-world PvE is not the best place to see the combat mechanics shine I believe. For most part, the enemies are not very smart and you rarely need all of your skills because you can often just deal damage and melt everything without too much thinking.

I personally feel like the combat system really starts shining at higher levels and even more in competitive modes (sPvP in particular).

I personally didn’t like the combat system at first. I even quitted the game without any of my char going pass level 25. But I came back some months after, finally found a class which ticked (mesmer in my case) and I managed to go up to level 80 with it, and the more I leveled up, the more I enjoyed the combat system. Now I have all professions and I love everyone of them (though I still have my favorites). It just takes time to get to love it.

Why do people often assume that being tanky or having a healer means face-tanking. The content is meant to be very difficult. So you will have to pay attention to the enemy, dodge and use all your active defenses intelligently like before AND still need the extra healing/tankiness to survive. So essentially, you make sure to avoid the biggest chunk of damage, and the support profession makes sure you can survive the small chunks you can’t avoid.

Also, they don’t force you to play a healer or be tanky if you don’t want to. You’re free to play whichever role you want in the raid. But if you go DPS, someone will have to be more supporty.

apharma.3741:

Temporal curtain I’m liking.

PU kinda saw it coming after so many whiners, guess I have to run traveler until chron comes out.

Any plans to increase the base stealth on veil? 2s is terrible and when it is at 4s with PU everyone is loving it. Buffing it to 3s base would be really nice during that patch and retain its use in WvW.

Any chance they will make so that veil can add stealth even if you’re already stealthed like temporal curtain does with swiftness? If this is the case, the lack of duration will be highly compensated!

The PU build used to be taken by mesmers in WvW but not in PvP. And at this time, PU was 1s increased stealth, which is usually less than 50%.
So it won’t kill PU builds.

Thieves need stealth because all of their profession work around that. Mesmers don’t. Mesmers can live without PU and without stealth altogether. We have other defense mechanisms, we don’t rely on it for our damage…

Remember: a-net wants all profession to be able to fill all possible roles. Guardian didn’t need more support, they already have a very powerful bunker build with boons + healing. Guardians are a fairly balanced profession, with good DPS builds AND good support build. They mostly lacked ranged DPS, which I guess is what DH was supposed to do (with mixed results).

Ranger already have good ranged and melee DPS. It has flaws, but those are mostly linked to the clunkiness of some skills and the pet mechanics, so something which needs to be fixed at the core level, not added with elite spec. They also have some boons (fury, regen), but nothing extraordinary. Finally they had no good form of healing support (they just have tons of regen, but regen does not stack). So druid fills a useful niche for ranger.

Now one may argue about the choice of going full heal instead of a mixed of healing and some other support (boons for example), but a-net also wants each profession to fulfill its role in a different way. So guardians and eles are healing + boons, druid is heavy healing. Sounds like good balance to me.

Guardian still have a role. Currently, I believe guardians are still better because of the boons which reduces the need for healing (protection, aegis) and also significantly boost the allies DPS to compensate for your low personal DPS.

Angel de Lyssa.4716:

I tell you that is very op, if it now is already very strong accumulation condition fear + burn + x1 torment (sigil torment) + poison + bleed in pvp… i do not want to imagine what would be after the update, adding x7 torment are going to notice much difference.

It is very simple to understand to know what’s op, use signet of spite ( x6 condition different) + feast of corruption (x 7 torment) + fear (fear inflict chill dps with specialization reaper) = op

The torment condition is very strong if you’re moving, and fear is a control condition, inflict x7 torment suddenly easily each 10 second is op… It should be reduced 2-3 torment and gaining life force for each condition on them.

Let’s see how it is before calling anything OP. Currently, it is obvious that condi necro is underwhelming. And the scepter needed a buff. Torment is not an amazing condition in terms of damage + they didn’t say how long the torment will last.

Now, I doubt condi necro will be OP. At best competitive. Maybe a concern could be condi reaper, because in the last beta, the reaper shroud in condi build was a beast! The only problem was the lack of condi out of shroud, which will now be fixed in great part. But even that seems fine to me, especially because having the reaper line means you get only 2 more lines. SR is mandatory for Dhuumfire, and if you want terror, you’re locked into curse. I personally thought condi Reaper worked better with spite, so … we’ll see!

Wow so much negative reactions…

Silverkey.2078:

Silverkey.2078:

• Projectile destruction on corrosive poison cloud! Duration decreased to 8s with pulse every 2s (so more bursty).

DPS is mostly negated unless you want to spend one of your mass condition cleanses/transfers on something other than what you should spend it on: that moment when someone instantly applies 6 lethal conditions onto you with no effort and from range. The contrived flavor on corruption skills bottlenecks their usage in a way that is just a nuisance because it’s better to wait for a player to load you up with conditions to transfer away rather than build them on yourself by using a bunch of corruption skills.

If you use a condi build, weakness is not as bad. Otherwise, yes, corruptions are not perfect. I would love either more conditions (that is worth transferring) or less (that does not handicap you). But you cannot deny that this is a buff and an interesting one too!

Silverkey.2078:

• axe : range 900
• scepter condi buff, torment on scepter 3 (2 stacks + 1 stack/condition on enemy up to 5)

Direct upgrades are the least creative and interesting ways to “improve the quality of life” of an ability. The playstyle is utterly unchanged and these sort of changes are on par with “reduced rapid fire activation time from kitten to 2.5 s.” I already called this sort of stuff long before. Anet doesn’t do anything but raise and lower numbers. It doesn’t actually generate playstyles or soft counter opportunities.

Silverkey.2078:

• transforms don’t destroy minions

Technically sort of a quality of life change, but mostly again just a direct upgrade. Nothing really to consider aside from how MMs can now take plague, lich or rune of “I’m going to artificially extent combat by 3 seconds because of passive procs” without losing the minion cloud.

1.5/10. It’s pretty much nothing, but it’s exactly what was to be expected.

Scepter and axe are not bad. They were just lacking a kick. Scepter seems to be getting just that. We don’t know yet all the changes, but this is getting in the right direction.

In case you haven’t noticed, the devs recently worked on an elite spec. In terms of creative changes, I think we got something to look forward to! Also, this confirms they do listen to the forum: most of the changes (the projectile destruction on CPC, the torment on scepter 3, etc…) are changes we specifically ask for.

So instead of being negative, wait for tuesday, see the full extent of the changes, and then try it in game. If you still have complains, then present some constructive feedback!

I have the feeling the channeling is a nerf. I mostly like this skill for the knock back, then I still want to do stuff. If you cancel the channel, you probably can do as usual, but then you lost the bubble…

First, you can be druid without staff + you have another weapon in any case. The damage of the staff did not seem too bad, though it is obviously not top DPS.
So at the end it all boils down to what gear you use. If you want to use healing power, cleric is not amazing damage but still has power main stat. Settler/Apothecary has a some condi damage and condi scales fine even as the only offensive stat (although bad synergy with the staff).

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t understand why any profession should be able to press a single button and completely delete an entire build’s setup, putting it on full CD without any traits taking effect. How is this even a discussion? If Moa morph put every utility for every build not only on full CD but also erasing their effects from the game the instant it lands the skill would be completely broken and no one would debate this change, yet against AI builds this is worth a discussion? Furthermore, this was a known function that was then added onto Engineer in AoE form.

It makes absolutely no sense, and I guarantee if this wasn’t AI builds we wouldn’t even have to talk about it.

I think what should happen ideally is that your minions disappear during the moa (because moa IS supposed to disable you completely) but reappear when the skill is over. Now I doubt that will happen, but this is exactly how it should be.

MethaneGas.8357:

Holy kitten….

This will buff condi Necros…… A LOT. Scepter is already pretty decent (or at least it used to be) when you chained the auto attack… with the additional bleed (which will scale from stuff like Krait Runes and Barber Precision)… the DPS should be quite nice. And then the Torment…
Krait Runes + Torment Sigil + Tainted Shackles + Feast of Corruption… 12 Torment…. here I come

Corruptive Poison Cloud will be really nice now too, especially on Reaper… I managed to get 22 Poison stacks when using it on Reaper and spin-to-win. At least some good news after seeing Druid…

I already used the spin-to-win in the staff poison field. But that will still be very useful especially since reaper being more melee, a projectile destruction will be a potentially amazing bonus!

Tobias.8632:

Axe range 900? That’s it? That’s the big axe fix? Wow it’s literally nothing

They haven’t announced everything, there maybe something more for the axe. Also they can’t fix all the necro in one patch!

scepter AA: what is written above
Feast of Corruption: 2 torment base, 1 additional torment per condition on enemy (up to 5)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Is it more than one stack on the final hit? Dulfy has it as just a single extra stack.

With the duration decrease it works out to a wash.

Currently:
2 stacks of bleed every 1.5 seconds, or 1.333 stacks/s. Base 5s duration, 100% from runes/minor/food + 100% from LC = 20s duration. This means you max out at 26 stacks from auto attack.

After balance patch:
3 stacks of bleed every 1.5s or 2 stacks/s. Base duration kitten , 100% increase and 50% from LC = 13.5s duration. This means you max out at 27 stacks from auto attack.

This is a pretty useless change unless I am missing something. Scepter is still crap dps.

You are missing that scepter 3 gets 2 to 7 stacks torment. And that they didn’t announce all changes for the scepter so scepter 2 may also get some buffs.

I don’t think this is a troll. Necromancer is I believe a support class the very same way the guardian is. They just use debuff where guardians use buff. PvE neglects that mostly, but it is still fairly strong in PvP.

That is amazing! This was extremely clumsy to use. For example, I recently played some PvP with signet of inspiration and focus and it was hard to sync the swiftness at the beginning of the match to help my team AND myself (the signet procs right at the beginning of the match after the 10s countdown so I could not benefit from the curtain I put on the ground for my allies…)

I think ice bow is just in a weird spot. The AA tricks you into thinking it is a support/healing weapon (the “water theme”), but then you have these massive damaging skills…

Vorgryn.9145:

Little worried about that nerf to lingering curse they briefly mentioned, but without knowing all the other changes to scepter it’s impossible to know what that actually looks like….

Honestly I’m quite fine with this one. The duration is already high, what we were missing was the damage. Now scepter gets buffed but the duration decreased so instead of small stacks which would get cleansed anyway, we get more bursty.

Also this makes the trait less “essential” when using scepter.

Dulfy is currently putting the changes on her site

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-skill-balance-update-preview/

It’s a preview only, more changes will be in tuesday.

It’s currently live on twitch, dulfy will probably post it soon.

• Projectile destruction on corrosive poison cloud! Duration decreased to 8s with pulse every 2s (so more bursty).
• axe : range 900
• scepter condi buff, torment on scepter 3 (2 stacks + 1 stack/condition on enemy up to 5)
• transforms don’t destroy minions

Do they mean the focus now stacks swiftness?

50% PU and portal timer