Guild Wars 2

EriskRedLemur.7153:

Aeolus.3615:

Concecrations are ment to be used on allies or on front of you, not on yourself most of the cases, it is a support utility line, where u stay back and try to control the fight helping your group.

Now when running tripple concecration for support(WvW), i dont run WoR, since sanctuary has been loved.

THIS. And THAT’’S WHY I love the changes. Because personally, I play Guardian FOR the support; I love that role. Solo or trying to be frontline or roaming yeah it’s not great; thus why I’d shift from consecrations for solo/other play. And if backline/heavy support isn’t your thing then you’ll have opinion as the OP which is fine, and I AGREE under that mentality/role – it is boring then. But if you’re about being the ultimate supporting player it’s not boring at all and I think Master of Consecrations is fine for it

Also as said HG is not easy to strip and has uses, but won’t always be on your bar it’s situational IMO. And better for PvP.

You seem to imply that I find this boring because it is support. It is not the case at all. I want those skills precisely for the support. I just wish the trait had some more flavor than cooldown+duration. I wished it brought an additional support effect, something which would make me want to take more consecrations on my bar.

Also, I once had a reaper put a well of corruption on a pulsing stability, let me tell you that was hell

Despite the buffs to some consecrations and the added trait synergy with Virtuous Solace, I still find the consecrations to be hard to use, and I feel that the main problem is the trait master of consecrations. The 20% recharge is standard, but I find the the 2s extra to be simply boring. I would like an added effect which helps the “support” effect of these skills.

I first thought about healing allies, but this is not overly original and also would be a bit more difficult to apply to wall of reflections. Anyone has an idea?

Also, I have hard time seeing “Hallowed Ground” as a good skill. It feels to me like it is outclassed in most ways by “stand your ground”. Considering that you lose the benefit of mobility, what is the point of this skill?

Capricorn’s large size is actually interesting. For example, it prevents a mesmer to guard a point with a portal from another point since all points are too far from each other (except the 4th temporary point which has good distance to all 3). This is the kind of differences which is the whole reason for having different maps. Ideally, the meta should vary from one map to another.

Also on the list of positives, the map is really pretty, and overall, I find it enjoyable.

On the other hand, as mentioned, the exits are weird. Also, I do not like very much the secondary mechanics. It is just another capture point, meaning that it will be one more objective that is contested for a long time. While the overall theme of the map is nice, the gameplay feels totally unrelated to it. Are we actually fighting a pirate ship? Well it’s not obvious.

It is in 2 parts:

• https://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/74475333
• https://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/74492058

Before the tourney, I had my bets on rank 55 and considered TCG a wildcard. We hadn’t seen TCG performing against a top team with their new roaster. We saw that they were very dominating against smaller teams (more than rank 55) but that did not prove much.

But when I saw their first games against PZ, I saw a very impressive team and I immediately changed my bet: if they could maintain this intensity, they had it in the pocket…. and they did!

They were truly impressive and it feels that none of the 3 other teams stood a chance. I hate to see how this will fuel Helseth’s arrogance, but this was a well deserved win. Congrats TCG!

On a side note, the news free camera spectating was awesome.

It does not need to be a problem. I would argue this is actually good in the sense that Reaper is more meant to be in large fights which is also when you want to play support (unlike more 1v1-centric necro). The problem is that it just adds to the list of things making reaper superior to necro and contributing to the overall HoT power creep.

Kasteros.9847:

1. Poll should be about which hot class nerf first. Next should be about nerfing condis. But wait… Anet would lose profits from hot if they would do that so… I don’t think so. Looks like they like how gw2’s pvp became p2w

Well nerfing condi is not so clear cut. Condi are now somewhat balanced in PvE. And in PvP, they are also in the sense that half the classes use them, half use power. Nerf condi and they may get irrelevant in high-end play.

So the problem is not “nerf” condi but “rebalance” condi. They have some flaws in their whole design which make them hard to balance. So this is nowhere near an easy thing to do.

Now, the question is what polls do we want?

Some random suggestions:

1. Priority: balance and build diversity, new maps/modes, QoL (build templates, matchmaking, activities while queuing etc…)

to be honest, I don’t expect “balance and build diversity” to be included in the poll since it is a separate team, but one can dream (yes, this would be my priority)

2. Maps: improvement of old maps, new conquest maps, new stronghold maps, new game mode
3. Maps cont’d : should Skyhammer or SW be included in ranked rotations?

4. Ranked PvP: MMR based (old leaderboard) or pip based?

5. Competitive scene: continue with pro league or go back to Go4 and others?

and to continue on things we will never be asked:
6. Class balance priority: reduce power creep, improve unused traits/skills, reduce passive play, reduce visual noise. (hint: 1 2 and 3 are all great, a-net is focusing on #4)

I suspect that PvE and WvW are top priorities currently. PvE because gw2 is a PvE game and WvW because the mode died some years ago and need proper rezzing.

PvP is still breathing, even barely, so we are not high priority. Maybe the end of this pro league season this week-end will mean that a-net will have to redefine their strategies for the future of this game mode.

I think ideally, DE should be a GM in the “Illusion” traitline (since it is based on illusion generation) and all the condi traits of “Illusion” should go to the dueling line (the condi line). This is what I suggested in my rework for example (signature).

I think the desert borderland should stay. In general, I think having diversity in the borderlands is a great thing, and DBL have had a lot of work invested in it which would be a waste to just throw away. On top of that, I think they looked great and some of the mechanics were positive.

I am not a hardcore WvW player, so my opinion may not be representative, but I feel that the main complaint was that the map was too large and with too much empty space (especially in the middle after removal of the event). This is probably not trivial to fix since it affects the whole design, but if this could be reduced, I think that the map would be acceptable.

Also, the verticality feels a bit gimmicky and more annoying than constructive. If gliding was allowed (I don’t advocate for it, I really don’t know what effect it would have), this verticality could be justified and it may create interesting game play (especially if we intend to have different BL, even if the previous poll was against it). But as it is, it feels more like “we could do it so we did it” kind of thing.

Finally, if DBL was improved, I think the overall opinion about having different BL active at the same time may change. I suspect many voted no simply because they didn’t want DBL.

Forum bug
/a few more chars

Just bumping to remind Rym we are waiting for more details

Ok, but do you think it is a good suggestion then?

From my experience during the unranked season after the Skyhammer and Spirit watch change, those maps are still the least favorite picks, especially Spirit Watch. While I think the changes for both maps were positive (though Skyhammer seems to be more controversial for some), they apparently did not make them enjoyable enough for many.

On top of that, there were discussions about e-sport and the question of making games more interesting to watch. Overall, I feel that one of the problem of gw2 compared to some more popular e-sports is that the conquest gameplay is very linear. There is essentially permanent fight on 3 points during the whole time. Only in close games do we get a peak of interest towards the end, especially on beasts/lord in forest/foefire or the commune in Temple.

So I thought: what about making Spirit Watch less linear? The idea is that currently, the secondary mechanics (the orb) can be outright ignored, because abandoning a point (especially in a sustain meta) can be more detrimental than the orb points you will get from it. So instead, I suggest:

• First, pure conquest until the orb appears (as it is right now)
• Then, when the orb appears, the points are frozen (cannot be capped/decapped except with the orb), no point tick. The game becomes a pure “capture the flag” type game.
• When the orb is capped (or after a given timer if not successful orb cap has been made) the conquest game restarts.
• Repeat the orb after 2 min (like it is currently if I remember well).

I don’t know for sure if this change is better than the current version. On the plus sides:

• The secondary mechanics will not be ignored anymore (as it can easily be in the AG I have watched so far)
• game play is less linear. It brings everyone towards the orb, and thus creates a short burst of interest. A few times where I saw a contested orb in AG, it was really fun. I really feel that it could make watching this map very interesting.

On the minus side:

• A little more complex to understand at first. People may be disoriented if the points stop reacting during the orb time. This could be reduced if the points look different during this time (to show they are not active while still keeping their color)
• the way I suggest it, we lose the other strategical element of the orb which is to uncap the point before the enemy team brings the orb there, to reduce their point income. There may be a better suggestion similar to mine but without this problem.

So this is just a suggestion and I just wanted to know your opinion about it.

These 2 posts exactly show why this is a bad trait.

The devs indeed expected the conditions to be something you play around or even benefit from. As HardRider says, you can transfer them or benefit from them with your heal for example. But let us be honest, it may work in PvE, but in PvP, it is not that obvious.

And the trait is not the only problem, the skills are too (though recently Boon corrupt and the projectile thingy have been improved).

The way I see it, corruption would be great if they just damaged you (your HP or shroud) but gave you strong benefits. The reasoning is simple: our mechanics (shroud) and our high HP means we have high passive sustain but we pay for it with fairly low PvE DPS, low burst and lack of active defenses. I would love corruption to be a way to trade some of these extra HP for some active defense (evade/invuln), burst, support or damage-augmenting utility.

I will ask you something that I thought was an interesting question in the necromancer forum:
Is there any trait or mechanics that you think offers strong limitations for future elite specs? Since all core traits and skills should work for the elite specs, some may create difficult interactions and prevent some good mechanics change.

My personal feeling on this is that it is indeed difficult, and I suspect this is one of the reason why the chronomancer did not affect the F1-F4 shatters. For example, if I take the previous post by Unterkiefer, we see that the traits (mental anguish for example) prevents removing damage from shatters to change them into buffs.
When I tried to imagine a sustained damage elite spec for mesmer, I also tried to change shatters to be passive buffs or others, but the interaction with traits made this near-impossible (or rather, I didn’t find any satisfying solution).

What traits/mechanics limit us and how could we change them to help new interesting elite specs?

While I liked the world linking, I don’t think this should be the end of the story, and overall, I don’t think there should be relinking.

For me the goal was to start with a much healthier population spread. I do not know if this has been properly achieved, but world linking is too coarse of a population adjustment regardless. I personally prefer stability, as it creates link between different servers and guilds. I am therefore not in favor of any new linking, except if the stats at a-net feel that one more is needed to fix the flaw of the first one.

The next solution should be at a finer level, essentially based on world transfer, but with better incentives. Something like “transferring to a lower population server (or server pair in our case) is free and gives increase WvW rewards for a short period (1 month), transferring to a higher population server cost between 800 and 2000 gems”.

Hanza.6872:

Silverkey.2078:

Nice wall of text, with this as base:

• Berserker amulet: 1282
• Paladin amulet: 1001
• (old) Soldier amulet: 863

• Viper: 1304 (58% of it being condition damage)
• Mercenary : 1035 (53% being condition damage)
• Dire: 846 (72% being condition damage)

Nice wall of text. However, one very important part not being shown is the actual damage a skill does with those stats. Some condition attacks are way out of bounds, reaching 15k+ in a single application (yes yes, if not cleansed).

I am very much aware of that, which is why I basically mentioned that to make a balanced condi application, it seems that you approximately need 600 damage “coef” and 6.5 bleeds to compare to a coef of 1000 for pure power damage. Both of those would do approximately the same total damage for the same number of offensive stats.

It is really the key part: you cannot do one without the other. First balance the application, then only you can remove cleanse.

Shala.8352:

well i wouldnt like to sound mean, but rlly you needed a whole math bible calculation to say what i said like 10 mounths ago???

The maths was only to show that condition damage can be balanced “despite using less stats”.

Otherwise, happy to see someone on the same boat. It sounds unobvious for many that to prevent conditions from being OP, you need less cleanse…

GLOR.2489:

I am not agree with what you said,

First you are saying that there is a few weappons that are not fully for conditions damage. Thats not true, there is plenty of weappons that are specialize in condition damages. As the scepter of mesmer, the pistol of the engineer, every torch in the game, the long bow of the war, the staff of the necro, the scepter of the necro, the short bow of the ranger, the axe off hand of the ranger, the mace of war in zerker specialization, the mace of the revenant, the axe off hand of the revenant…

All the weapons you cite are hybrid weapons. What I mean when I say “not fully condition damage” is that very few skills have ONLY conditions, they usually also apply some power damage. And overall no build can do 100% of its damage through conditions, you always have some (usually significant) part being power damage.

Forth, you are not talking about the rapidity of application. Because there is a lot of classes (like mesmer because I know is what you play) that was a insane RE-application of conditions such as confusion/torment/bleed/weakness. So dispels are good but not that good when the enemy can RE-apply all conditions instantly.

And that is a good reason why my suggestion would be nice. Currently, in order to exist with all cleanses there is, conditions need to be reapplied very fast. The only condition builds you see are those which have OP application (warrior, necro, mesmer). With my suggestion, you will not cleanse torment/confusion/bleed but you will rebalance the application so that those builds work without being OP.

shion.2084:

Generalizing in that you are performing the fallacy of hasty generalization attributing characteristics which affect one class to those of all classes in an effort to argue your point. It may be the case that only the condition trait is required for a given class to be effective, however that doesn’t mean that all classes share that attribute.

Logical Form:

Sample S is taken from population P.

Sample S is a very small part of population P.

Conclusion C is drawn from sample S.

There is really no need to argue the semantics between generalization and simplification as we were kind of both saying the same thing… but since you decided to take the opportunity to correct me, I will say that it may also be simplification but I was quite right in calling it a generalization.

I did not “correct” you to imply you were wrong, but simply to emphasize the reasoning for this “generalization”: it makes things simpler to calculate. If you have to include on-crit effects, you have to add assumptions about the average damage per hit which makes the results much less generally applicable.

My example was an example showing that you can get balance “despite using less stats”. This example applies easily to all classes, just change the condition types (bleeds, torment, confusion or bleeding) and adjust the numbers accordingly.

Just to add a bit to why I think my argument is still useful: the exception you suggest (condition on crit) is the main exception to this example and indeed most classes have such traits. But

1. they are not always used (example dueling is rarely used for condi chronomancer, curses is often but not always used for condi reaper) so my example works well in those cases.
2. since they add a dependence on another stat, they are even easier to balance wrt power damage.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Soooooooooo let’s make every class have no damaging condition clear? rofl

It’s already bad enough that conditions are hilariously easy to cover to cause enemies to blow condition clears. Weakness and protection affect power only while vulnerability also affects conditions. Resistance is hardly available. I don’t think you even factored -50% damage reduction effects such as Bulwark Gyro, “Rise!”, “Guard!” or Phantasmal Defender. A necromancer that puts weakness on me and casts “Rise!” becomes essentially immune to my 94% crit chance Marauder Invocation revenant. And with all this power damage hate in the game, you think it would be “healthier” to remove the only thing we have to negate conditions.

silly idea, nice try bub

I don’t understand why people seem to only read 1/3 of what I wrote. Yeah sure, I wrote a long text, but you can’t deny my argument by reading only 1/3 of it.

The first and main element is : LET US BALANCE POWER VS CONDI OUTPUT. Second argument: LET US REMOVE CONDITION NEGATION AND INCREASE CONDITION MITIGATION. So now, point by point:

• I suggest making resistance less strong (only half damage taken instead of full negation) but making it more available (i.e. on par with protection, but on different classes or traits so that people have to choose what type of damage protection they want)
• I suggest adding a new condition like weakness but against conditions
• All the pets absorbing damage absorb also condition damage as far as I know. If it is not the case, it should be changed so.

And now for the thing I don’t write but I agree: there is currently too much damage mitigation. Too much protection, weakness, damage-absorbing pet skills etc… This should definitely be brought in line. Of course, so should damage, and revenant damage is definitely top of the list. We all agree that the power creep (power used in a general way so it includes defense) has reduced the quality of PvP, but this is a subject on its own.

Tomiyou.3790:

I might have missed it, but if condition cleanse only removed debuffs, how would you remove damaging conditions themselves? I mean, there are so many random conditions flying around (right now they are both debuff and damage ones) that without any way to cleanse damaging conditions, you would get overwhelmed with damage condis (since a randomly applied damaging condition deals much more damage over time, than a random physical damage hit).

Well that was the point of the first part. You do not have condition damage cleanse anymore. Instead, you have more access to condition mitigation (resistance and a corresponding debuff).

But the main point is that condition output has to be balanced with power. So for example, I showed that a “damage coefficient” of 1000 can be converted to 600 + 6.5 bleeds. So precisely “no more damage over time than a physical damage hit”. An essentially balanced output, with the main difference is the armor-ignoring feature and the fact that it requires a different build (resistance instead of protection for example) to counter it.

Supreme.3164:

The OP of this thread is a well known necro main after all, so ofc this thread ends up being a veiled “buff me, nerf them” kinda of thread

I didn’t realize I was “well known” anything. But no, my post is actually asking for a condi rebalancing not a buff in any ways (probably a nerf). My main is a mesmer and I do not play condi chrono because I do not like it. I currently play mostly power shatter… a build which is in big part dead because of condition damage.

My point is simply that currently, once could say that power and condi are balanced. About half of the meta is condi, the other one power. But this is a unhealthy balance, which puts high pressure on build diversity since you have to spec everything you can to deal with condis.

My suggested change may allow support necromancer to become a bit more viable. But not to make necro overall stronger, just more diverse. I love diversity and I hate unbalances. If you look at my post history, you would see me asking for nerfs to my main countless times. Build diversity means nerfing the OP things and buffing the UP things.

Tomiyou.3790:

I really like the idea, it is very good, however it is certainly not the biggest problem right now in terms of balance. The problem is that the changes this idea would take are massive and would require a great deal of changes from Anet. Either they do it all at once, or they fix the current imbalance. Or they stick to their fashion and simply continue with the current “balance” :P

This is indeed true. This change is mechanically easy but implies a lot of rebalancing. But the devs have shown in the past (june 23rd patch) that big changes are possible if they are needed (in that case, it was to streamline the trait system to allow elite specs). So one can dream…

Rezzet.3614:

you seem to be ignoring the biggest factor

Conditions have Debuffs
Poison cuts heaing by 33%
Confusion deals damage over time and massive damage un skill and evade use
Torment deals damage over time and double when moving
Weakness reduces crit chance and endurance gain and a chance for normal attacks to deal 50% less damage

I agree with poison, and I simply don’t think poison should be a significant source of damage, the healing reduction should be the main point of the condition (it is already somewhat the case, very few builds have poison as a main damage source). Torment and confusion have mechanics, but they are not really debuff, they just do damage. Weakness has no damage component. You could cite fear which can be damaging for necros.

then theres the fact not all professions have low cooldown condition cleanse whereas conditions get to be spammed non stop

Actually that is the whole point: the main reason to invest in cleanse is currently the damage. I want damaging conditions to be uncleansable and dangerous soft CC (chill/immobilize) to have additional cleanse (like thief for example). Then because of the lower amount of cleanse, the condi output can be reduced. Vulnerability and weakness should not be spammed but should be as frequent as might and protection (well I think protection is already too frequent but you get the point) but be given to different classes so that boons are not ruling supreme.

simply put Conditions were never meant to have equal nor superior damage over power

Initially no probably. But then a-net went for it, especially for PvE. Now that is part of their design. I don’t want condi to be superior, but an equally viable alternative, with a different focus.

shion.2084:

Hmmm, as far as what you need to make conditions effective you are over generalizing. For instance for an engineer to be most effective they ideally want to take something like firearms that applies vuln and bleeed, and burn on crit. AND gives crit bonuses when bleeding. Which means you want to critically hit. Which means you probably want precision.

I am not over generalizing but rather over simplifying. Yes, there are traits on most classes which give a condition on crit. Those need to be taken into account in the balance. My maths are just an illustration, you would need a little more work to balance all possible builds.

There is a lot of discussion about the balance between power and conditions. Here is some maths as well as some personal opinion on the subject. Since I believe the question of boon vs condition is also related, I added it to the discussion. The takeaway is that things are not as bad – as some people think, but they probably still need a rework.

How many stats for power and conditions

One of the most argued thing about the power vs condi balance is that condi only need 1 stat (or 2 including condi duration) while power needs 3. Therefore condi can more easily add defensive stats, making the gameplay « easier ». The truth is not that simple for the very simple reason that there is no such thing as « condi » weapons or « condi skills » (or very few at least) but usually « hybrid » weapons or skills. So to reach the max damage, a hybrid skill needs not only condition damage and condition duration but also power stats. And you can actually balance the condi/power ratio of skills to make them balanced to a corresponding full power skill.

One important difference is that condition ignores armor. This is a very important feature and actually a very nice one. We do not want power and condi to be equivalent, ideally, both should fill a slightly different niche and adds some depth to the playstyle and in particular the team composition choice. So thanks to this armor-ignoring characteristic, the niche for power and condi is obvious: condi should be better to take down « bunkers » and power to take down « squishies ».

The take-home message from this is that the way stats work, you can get balanced damage output despite the alleged « less stats ». Actually, as you can see, with only damage stat (the others being defensive stats), power is a (slightly) better investment.

One additional point which needs to be mentioned is damage multipliers vs condition duration increase. Power damage is usually increased by traits adding some damage multipliers. They are usually on the order of 10%. On the other hand, there are many traits/runes (and food in other game modes) that increase condition duration by 20% or more. If we balance the base power vs condi balance, those « multipliers » also need to be balanced. It does not need to be reduced to 10% (since unlike power builds, in hybrid builds only a portion of the damage comes from conditions or power) but it definitely needs some balancing considerations.

How boons/debuff affect the output

Another important question is how do damage-augmenting boons (might, fury), and damage reducing boons and debuff (protection, resistance, weakness) affect the overall power/condi balance.

So overall, for balance, the base tick of some conditions should be increased slightly so that might does not get overly stronger on hybrid builds compare to power builds. Burning is a good example of a « balanced » condition from that perspective. Also, resistance should have its efficiency reduced (for example by half) and a debuff should be added that reduces condition damage output.

Condition cleanse and the boon/debuff balance

While I didn’t mention it specifically, all of those maths above only make sense if you assume condition do not get cleansed. If they do, then that will of course reduce the condition output and favor power builds.

This is I believe the problems we have currently with conditions. In order to be balanced, the cleanse have to be taken into account, and conditions have to be made comparatively stronger.

Overall, negations make the game unhealthy. So condition cleanse/resistance are unhealthy, the plethora of blocks and reflects is unhealthy etc…

An additional problem is that there is really 2 categories of conditions:

• damaging conditions (bleeding, burning, confusion, torment)
• debuff (blind, chilled, crippled, fear, immobilize, poison, slow, taunt, vulnerability, weakness)

Poison is technically hybrid, but I consider it mostly a debuff.

Because the main way to handle condition damage is condition cleanse, we have now an lot of cleanses and AOE cleanses flying around and debuff are very fast removed. Because of this, they cannot play their role as a boon equivalent.

My suggestion (and I am not the only one to suggest it) is simply to split those 2 things. Then, a good way to proceed (according to me) is to make condition cleanse only affect debuffs (and reduce significantly the amount of cleanse available). The soft CC debuff (especially chill and immobilize) probably need additional specific cleanses (it is already the case on a few classes, and taunt and fear can already be stun-breaked) considering they can be more dangerous (more CC than debuff). You would then have boons and debuffs mirroring each other, with condi cleanse and boon rip also mirroring each other. We would get both power vs condition damage balance (from above arguments) and boons/debuff balance.

A small (but nice) benefit to this is that we could start to gray out condition damage in our HP bar, allowing to more easily see he damage we take for each enemy skill and learn to react to it, and also just get an idea of how low our actual life is.

But the most important point with this balancing is adding build diversity. You would now have builds supporting their team thanks to boons or thanks to debuffs (currently, debuff support is much weaker than boon support such that necromancer or thief is considered unviable in a support role). Some classes have natural preference for boons (elementalist, guardian, engineer), some have preference for debuffs (necromancer, thief). Some have mixed (mesmer for example often has this duality). On the other side, some classes can AOE cleanse conditions (guardian, necromancer) while some can AOE boon rip (necromancer, mesmer, thief should probably get that too). You also have classes which can share protection to everyone (elementalist/guardian), some which can share resistance (revenant, mesmer), some which can spread weakness (necromancer, thief) some which can spread whatever new debuff to reduce the condition damage output.

This creates a great rock-paper-scissor which puts more emphasis on strategy in team comp selection and is much healthier than the current system.

mazut.4296:

Why do you want to get rid of Shroud? I find it really good. Its esentially another weapon set and More HP on top of that. There is nothing negative about that. Except some skill behaviour and 1-2 Death shroud skills that need buff.

Shroud is a strength, but we pay it with severe weaknesses: no mobility/escape potential, no block/evades/invuln… All of this makes us the easiest target in a team fight. If we want to have different role, this is something we need to get rid of in some elite spec. Which is why in my suggestion, the shroud is still there (for traits) but does not act as second life bar.

Chaith.8256:

Resistance is really not fine, just mitigated by there being very few strong kits that include it.

I think in an ideal world it should be weaker, yet more available for those wanting to build tougher against heavy condition pressure without trivializing conditions.

I am a fan of the idea of making players choose between resistance and protection in traits/utilities, and Resistance would be changed to suppress the effect of conditions by 33%, including non-damaging effects.

I think the big reason we’ve seen a rise in Condition builds since the expansion is because Protection and damage reductions have heavily increased, but condition removal frequency hasn’t increased.

I have made some maths and for resistance to be as effective as protection, it would need to be approximately 50% damage reduction from conditions. I will make a post explaining my reasoning and an overall discussion on power vs condi balance.

My initial design idea was to have “shroud skills” as F1-F4 and always available. But I had to change it to “first activate shroud and then have access to shroud skills F1-F4” because of the traits based on entering or leaving shroud.

But after a while, I felt that this was better and this helps keeping the necromancer identity. So I am fine with most. Unholy sanctuary was actually the most difficult problem because it forces us to have shroud as a second life bar (while in my design it isn’t since I think shroud as a life bar is sometimes a curse).

Honestly necro is fine. I have much more problems with mesmer class mechanics…

The superseed and resistance are actually nice. I use it very often in PvP, as a great gtfo tool (on null field usually). I would argue that the nerf it got (as part of the bunker chrono destruction) was unjustified and that the 3s resistance (I think) were by no means OP. But well…

+1
we indeed often don’t see when our teammates are there.

I think the comments about necro being bad are mostly historical. In the past, necro had the lowest DPS of all classes (with mesmer) and no utility to make up for it.

But reaper improves on this and now reaper is competitive in all aspects of PvE. Open-world, necro/reaper is amazing (self-buffing is really high) but it also works now in instanced content, including raids (condi reaper mostly).

So go for it, you may or may not like it, but it is viable and overall PvE is currently well balanced.

Just wanted to do a bit of statistics very fast. Don’t over blame me if my counts are wrong.

• Weapon choice: torch by far winner. I counted 7 suggestions where torch was the new weapon (one of them being main hand torch). Necro seems to fit with the idea of burning people to death. Special mention to shield and main-hand sword with 3 “votes” each.

• Utility skills: surprisingly varied. No clear winners, but I did notice many utilities involving “pets” (minions, spirits, illusions etc…). Necro seem to be for many people the “minion” class. One can also note than mantras and consecrations/desecrations were often suggested.

• Role: I did not spend too much time looking at everything, so I did not try to find the role that each specialization was bringing and only analyzed the roles that submitters mentioned. Support is a clear winner, probably showing that this is a role many find lacking most in the current toolbox.

Here it is, good luck to all and thanks Rym for organizing this fun contest.

I think an important point is that this trait should not compete with MtD.

Also, on a note, might has more effect on condition builds (because conditions scale better than power). It is irrelevant anyway because condi builds need MtD.

I’m a bit confused with your answer. You got your nomad gear. Great. Have fun with those in PvE and WvW. In PvP, we don’t use gear. So you don’t lose half of your HP or your toughness or anything. You just do like everybody, you choose one PvP amulet which will then give you a set of stats. If you want bunker, you can use clerics, or even more hybrids like Mender, Sage, Paladin etc… I often use Sage for my necro when I feel for playing more support-y (which I often do).

Saying that you lose something means that you had something to start with. But you don’t. PvP is a game mode on its own, where you don’t need any gear. You choose an amulet, all amulets have about the same amount of stats (4 stats amulet have a somewhat higher total which is unfair, but that is a different subject). So if you use cleric, you have less HP than a Nomad, but you have more power. Power is the stat which scales the best, so actually this is not a bad trade of.

Virus, don’t you see how everyone here is saying the same thing and instead of listening you just repeat the same nonsense?

Let me try to be very clear. In the current state of the game bunkers are NOT at a disadvantage. Bunkers are still extremely powerful. Support elementalist is arguable the most essential build of the game currently, used by every single pro league team (if I remember well). And this is despite their very low HP making it susceptible to burst. Druid is also a very popular build.

With highly defensive amulets like minstrel or nomad, the advantage of those builds just go through the roof, and you would have 2 or 3 full damage players absolutely unable to take down one bunker within a reasonable amount of time. The games would be like in season 1: put one bunker on each node and wait. We had many games with 0 – 0 (yes strict 0 points) for 7 or 8 minutes. This is insanely boring to play and watch.

The problem is that defensive builds do have an advantage in conquest AND the sustain traits and skills have been blown up to insane levels. All of this gives and UNFAIR ADVANTAGE TO DEFENSIVE BUILDS. So the amulet choice is meant to reduce this advantage and get a more even play field between offense and defense.

Finally I would like to add: which class are you trying to play as nomad? Because you can be efficient bunkers in PvP, and if you do not manage to survive and support efficiently, it is probably because you are “carried” by your stats in other game modes and you simply have to improve. But do not expect to survive 3v1 indefinitely, this can already sort of happen, and this is very unhealthy for the game.

From a person who likes to play support.

Yep, we rule!
Literally

Necro is already the king of unblockables, I don’t think more unblockables is healthy for the game. I would only like if NCSY was AOE unblockable (an interesting form of “support”).

I think there are many things, let me cite the 2 which I think are the most important:

• build diversity: in most popular e-sport, the team composition is an important factor. Look at LoL, the time spent at the champion choice. Good news: we are finally back at a point where we have different team compositions! Also the team composition should imply a different playstyle. This is actually the whole point: watching different team comps should mean that each game look different, so that watching 8 games in a row (current pro league format) does not feel like 8 times the same game. In gw2, we see that with thieves and to some extent with mesmer. They bring things which no other classes bring (insane mobility for thief, portal/moa for mesmer) and which affect the overall gameplay. I don’t feel it as much with other classes and this is sad. Finally, LoL has more than 9 champions… Gw2 has a build system with the potential of some classes playing very different roles but barely uses it. Now that inter class balance has been (almost) brought back, I think a-net should focus on intra-class balance. One big thing which would help is that builds should not be good at everything like they currently are. The bruiser meta is clearly more boring than a roamer+bunker+DPS meta. Currently, all builds are sustaining themselves, doing good damage and control, etc… This reduces the influence of team comp.
• Game progress. The game play of conquest is fairly linear for the most part. People fight, fight fight fight fight, sometime they die, sometime they get caps. To attract viewership, you need a less linear story. Look again at LoL, there is a lot of setting up, and then sudden burst of fighting. You could argue that gw2 has more actions, considering that in between the fights, LoL is fairly… uninteresting almost. But this allows to have this big bursts of interest. If you look at gw2, the most interesting things to watch is precisely when the gameplay is less linear. A big lord/boss push, a big rez/stomp event, basically any moment where suddenly the stakes get higher. The problem is that the lord/boss push only work in “close” games, which are not that frequent in gw2 (probably because of low competitive population). On the other hand, I think the downstate mechanics of gw2 is really the big saving factor. Those are often big moments in the fight, dangerous for both sides and where big outcomes can emerge (team wipes). I guess stronghold was created to improve on the linear conquest experience, but it needs a lot of refining. One map which I think would work well for that is “Spirit Watch”. I know it is currently not the most “loved” map, but the one competitive game I saw on it (AG) was really fun. The orb push was really nice, with players pushing, then abandoning the orb to heal while another one takes it, etc…

So in summary:

• improve build diversity, and make sure that different team composition imply different strategies and gameplay.
• make games less linear. This is mostly the map design. In Foefire, the lord works great but only for otherwise even teams. In Forest, the boss are usually only contested at the very end in very even games (or when they are killed before it is usually uncontested). Temple often sadly ends up being 5 infinitely contested objectives, but is still often an interesting map. Kyhlo has nothing… Spirit watch could be a lot of fun and I would love to have it in competitive rotations. Skyhammer… meh. Stronghold concept could work, but needs a lot of refining. I don’t think the current SH map works at all.

I just wanted to add that the reason I think the sustained damage should be fixed at the core level is not just that I want core mesmer to be relevant: the reason is that if you fix the damage only with an elite spec, all other elite specs will not benefit from it.

For example, you will never be able to be a chronomancer with good damage. Now that may be a good thing. After all chronomancer is already strong in PvE despite its abysmal damage. But the shield is probably the best weapon for a bruiser role (PvP) or in a big fight in WvW, yet we cannot go there because we have no damage (and not that good utility) to bring.

Another way to phrase it is that all elite spec will be relying on a faulty core class. We all know how chronomancer works in great part because it fixes (at least partly) some of the inherent flaws of mesmer (e.g. chronophantasma so that shattering does not completely destroy your illusions); will every single elite spec have to create new clever ways of fixing the bad designs of core mesmer or maybe it is time to fix core mesmer at the core mesmer level?

Yes, to all of you who don’t want “yet another support” elite specialization, I agree, I would like to have a DPS specialization.

And while I think this should be fixed for the core class, I also guess it won’t happen. This is a significant rework, and they have rarely or ever done that (you could consider the big trait rework, yet they did it because they had to, to be able to have elite spec).

My question is how to have an elite spec for sustained damage?

I don’t think increasing the phantasm DPS is a good idea at all. For the health of the class, we should not put even more of our damage on AI, especially since this prevents our damage to work in WvW or PvP.

An elite spec can change the shatters to reduce the burst and thus make high sustained damage less problematic. But an elite spec cannot change weapon skills to increase their damage coefficients, so we would either be forced to use the new weapon or have insane damage multipliers in the traitline or in some mechanics.

One thing which could work (but is against the current mesmer design) would be to have a damage multiplier (from a trait or a mechanic) which would be smaller for each active illusion (an inverse Compounding Power on steroids). While I don’t see a-net implementing this, this would be great in places where you cannot have illusions anyway or you simply don’t want to spend time casting them (you want immediately good DPS).

One thing which I also suggested long time ago is to have the shatters work like signets: a passive and an active effect. For F1 for example, the passive could be a damage multiplier and the active a burst damage (like current mind wrack). F2 same with condi, F4 a mini-regen, F3 I don’t know.

How do you think we could increase our sustained damage (and if possible in a non-AI dependent way) with a new elite spec?

Chrono.6928:

Recognizing you are on a bad team doesn’t change the fact that you are on a bad team, and screwed lol.

There should be away to “bet” on a game. When you start, you bet on whether you win or not. If you bet on a win you get the pip as usual, but if you bet on a loss, you gain or lose nothing.

Of course there would be many ways to abuse this system, but sometimes you know from the start that you have no chance.

Yeah, I also play chronobunker and people tend to think that since I don’t play the meta build I won’t do kitten.

But then after a few rez, some insane CC lock, etc… it does not work that bad after all :p

messiah.1908:

i think for our next theme is will be bruiser

support we got
dmg we got (need to buff it)
condi we got
bruiser we dont

so with shouts or trap (with stealth) we can sustain the fight combine with illusions

how to fixed them – give them more health

so soi give 50%, insp line 20%, so maybe the new elite will doable it . as we cannot choose 2 elite so no CP. so it will be ok to have 1 phantasm

now the concept probably wont match anet goals as they state they want mesmer to shatter more. but who knows.

the bruiser will handle 1v1 on point. some 1v2 and can do dmg. i see lots of similarity to scrapper with defender , block, evade, reflect stealth, moa

weapon will be hammer i guess to puts us in melee

We already have a bruiser build, it is called condi chronomancer. High sustained pressure, high survivability, this is by definition a bruiser.

In general, chronomancer has many tools to be a bruiser. Shield is the main example for on point defense. But while it does not quite work, danger time for higher crit chance while using low-crit chance (because more defensive) amulets is a bruiser trait, which made sense while using the (RIP) crusader amulet.

On the other hand, damage we don’t. We have burst, nothing else. You can’t damage in WvW or in a team fight because illusion die. Even with 100% more health, they will die. We need to remove damage from phantasm, I don’t see any other way around that to balance our damage in large fights.

There is nothing wrong with targeting a warrior. Let’s be clear, if you let a warrior without pressure, you will pay it dearly!

You need to at least force them using their CD (endure pain etc…) and once those are out, a warrior can die fairly easily under focus.

Here is mine: the warlock.

With a-net telling that they are working on a next expansion, it is natural to assume another elite spec. So far it feels like elite specs were meant to open the class to a role/position they couldn’t fulfill before. Ranged and selfish combat for DH, team fighting for reaper and chronomancer, etc…

So what role would you like for the next mesmer elite spec?

For me, there are a few roles which I would like to improve on. The first example is phantasm-free sustained damage. Sadly, I don’t see how this can be done at the elite spec level, so I feel this should be fixed at the core level (as usual see my suggestions in my signature).

So instead, my second idea would be mobile support. Mesmer has many good support tools, in particular wells and glamours. However, those are almost always ground targeted. Mantras are the closest thing to mobile support, with AOE cleanse and traited AOE heal. You could even include AOE stab, but this mantra is mostly good for the short CD stunbreak, not the AOE component. So I would really like an elite spec allowing that, with skills like shouts or anything functionally similar. Many of us have suggested a music-themed elite spec, so shouts and warhorn offering support skills could work.

What do you think?

I really don’t think precog is worth it. I am currently playing chrono bunker, which is very similar to your build, but I use recall and null field. And it is doing well.

Damage is really not that bad. I get about 500k. That is less than other classes, but the CC makes up for it, and this build is still fairly good for rez/stomp (thanks to CC and stability).

I am on AR, a “dead server”. And guess what… I didn’t bother playing because whenever I go there, there is no one else on the map. I don’t play WvW to run solo killing doors and AI. Else I would be playing PvE.

Now I am joined with YB and it is a lot of fun. Whenever I go, there are people to play and interact with, as well as enemies to play against.

Sure, it feels more than before that my own contribution is diluted. Sure, my small guild group cannot completely swap a map as it could have before. And sure, there are queues…. But I have more fun by a large margin.

So I don’t think the world linking has solved all population problems, but it is a much healthier start.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Ithilwen was around long before this song was being toted by mesmers in videos. When chrono came along some people thought it was the perfect song.

If you listen to the lyrics though (beyond picking up the odd word like “shatter”, the lyrics are more along the lines of a jewelry box ballerina with some manner of sentience who’s life is otherwise tied to the ticking of her clockwork. Then there’s the undertorrent of breaking out, or breaking free, or breaking apart just for the hell of it – or whatever.

When you look past the varnish, it’s not mesmery at all XD

The aesthetics of the video, with the pink dresses, the clocks, the butterfly etc… is still very mesmery.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Oh, and also, my Killshot Mesmer was the clear winner of that competition.

I surely liked your twist

You are simply experiencing what lower-tier people experienced in amber last season. Actually you are experiencing probably a milder version of it.

I was in the very similar situation to you. Last season I flew my way from amber painlessly and only slowed down around ruby to finally reach diamond.

This season, I started sapphire and took a beating the first day. But after a few days, it has gotten better and I now have more balanced games.

Instead of 1 big population with the low tier getting beaten repetitively by high tiers, we have 3 smaller populations with in each the low tier getting beaten by higher tiers. You and I were in the high tier before, so we sailed smoothly, now we are in the lowest tier of the tier 3 group and it hurts. But the important point is that this new system reduces the skill gap (us getting beaten by legendary is still better than amber being beaten by legendary) and helps to reach faster overall convergence.

And I actually feel that you see it by the lesser number of complains on the forum compared to last season. It’s not a perfect system, but I would argue this is a better system.

Crinn.7864:

I don’t understand this game’s community.

GW2 has less powercreep than any mmo on the market, yet the players here kitten about powercreep 3x more than any other game on the market.

At this point I feel like people have just decided that something isn’t right, but can’t actually figure out what’s disturbing them, so they just blame power creep and call it a day.

Because it many games it may be an accepted fatality. For example most MMOs increase the level cap. That is necessarily power creep. You know it.

Now instead, we have a game which pretends “ooh we won’t increase the level cap, and the new specs will be side grades and not upgrades”. When I heard that statement, I was super happy: no power creep, more build diversity, yeah!!!

Instead we have power creep and reduced build diversity.

And honestly, outside of just feeling cheated, this does hurt severely the game play experience.