Guild Wars 2

For utilities: Shadow Refuge has a long cooldown, but is a really good “I’m going to lose this fight” button in PvE. You get the typical 3 seconds, then you can run around freely with the 9 seconds to get to somewhere far away and safe.
Shadowstep is also great, because it’s a stunbreak twice.

You could try a S/P build, they tend to be pretty safe / strong. Always go in with Infiltrator’s Strike so you have an easy out, then Pistol Whip your target to death (if 1v1) Against a group, try and round up the mobs and use blinding powder to render them all harmless while you just auto-attack cleave (or pistol whip, if you’ve got the initiative) them to death.

For the armor, maybe try a mix of valkyrie and knight’s? (Primaries of Power & Toughness, plus secondaries of vitality, crit %, precision and power) Your damage won’t be through the roof, but the extra survivability would do you good.

It would actually increase the damage dealt by retaliation. Obviously you’d have to acquire the retaliation before entering plague (or have a helpful team-mate) but it could happen.

Free, useless stat boosts that aren’t even in the skill description are mostly shrug-worthy, in my opinion. I just can’t bother to get annoyed abou—

Wait I just remembered, wells and things will actually increase their damage if you drop them then switch to lich form, the same principle should apply to plague.

Anyways. I still can’t bother myself to be annoyed about a free stat boost I can’t really use that the game never told me about or indicated in any way.

Edit: Wow that is not what this thread was about. Sorry!

I’d play it, but it would have to have a good amount of structures in it. My main complaint about underwater is that it’s too easy to accidentally traikittenmobs, and it’s also easy to lose your relative position in a 3D void of empty water. I feel like more underwater structures could help on both counts.

ArchonWing.9480:

Let’s see. My wishlist…

Siphoned Power— Also grant 10% life force when triggered. I mean really, getting hit under 25% health should have some more dramatic effects.

Foot in the Grave: Death Shroud also breaks stuns when entering. (10 second cooldown) Oh come on, it’s a grandmaster skill.

I kind of agree that Siphoned Power could stand to be more dramatic. I’m not sure adding a defensive measure is the right way to go though. I’d rather just see a greater intensity in the might stacks. (2 stacks per hit instead of just 1? The base might duration is fairly low.)

Having Death Shroud break stun would be great, but that cooldown has to be at least 30 seconds, if not higher. 10 second cooldown translates to literally every time death shroud is up (You didn’t take Near to Death) and would possibly be the shortest recharge of any stunbreak in the game. There’s about two stun breaking utilities that have recharges less than 30 seconds, which was my guideline for the bare minimum recharge time.

ArchonWing.9480:

Chill of Death— One change only. The skill should be casted without delay. Why the heck would I want to interrupt my attack chain just to cast this mediocre spell?

Decaying Swarm: Casts the actual Locust Swarm Skill and not this piece of dung. Suddenly a godly escape skill is born.

These skills already do these things. Chill of death doesn’t interrupt your casting / attack chains, and decaying swarm grants swiftness.

Schroedingercat.7065:

Can we also let death shroud inherit agony resistance and not take double damage from all conditions while we are at it? :p

Some relevant threads. (Check the latter half of both threads. General conclusion reached was that Death Shroud takes condition damage normally. I don’t know about agony, but I’d presume it works similarly, though it may use the % health of your actual life pool rather than a % of death shroud.)

It seems like the sort of skill you could add a targeting reticule to. It would slow down the skill, (Press button, select area, click as compared to press button) but it would let you select who exactly you want to have revived. (Unless multiple people die close to one another.)

Good / bad idea?

I’d actually advise trying to share / split mob focus and damage with your pet, rather than relying on them to do all the tanking. Troll unguent and heal as one become significantly better when you utilize both halves of the healing. (This doesn’t mean you should both stand in melee cleave or anything, just get your pet on one side of the mob and yourself on the other)

So far on my ranger I’ve enjoyed having 5 points in wilderness survival for natural vigor (+50% endurance recharge, so dodges are less expensive), and I frequently hear 5 points in beast mastery toted as essential (2s of quickness on pet swap, which is pretty nice)

Beyond that you probably need to find out which weapons you like. What have you experimented with so far?

Daecollo, stop making threads whenever you get bored.

Edit: I’d be more willing to actually engage this topic if OP provided clear, defined examples of the traits they felt were lackluster, alongside an argument demonstrating how enough of the traits qualify for this moniker to necessitate implying all thief traits are sub-par.

AreUMadBro.6907:

Ok, almost getting my twilight, and now the doubt is ressurging. Should I use it with my ranger? Was thinking of a gs/shortbow build. I saw this post about the gs’s buff and would like to know what is it…

As far as I know, during the ranger segment of an interview with the devs (State of the Game, hosted by GW2guru) they mentioned a buff to Maul.

Whether that’s the entirety of the changes nobody really knows. I think you can expect the changes to be in the next patch though, along with all the specific details. (Due around the 26th of March, I think?)

Yes.

Stealth tends to be pretty tactical in its application, rather than a general “You are invisible always and forever.” There’s only one thief stealth to my knowledge that lasts longer than 5 seconds, but you can leverage a lot of power / control even with the default stealths that last about 3 seconds.

Roll a thief, get a dagger off-hand ASAP, and experiment from there.

MarcusGood.5270:

This is Spvp bug report. Sorry didnt make that clear.

and I am fully aware of the cd and icd and all that. It is from plague form, I play 20-30 tournaments a day and know if I hit plague then my sigils are useless.

PS, I just tried something, it appears if I manually leave plague before the timer on it runs out then the sigils still work, its when I run it out to its full run time they cease to work.

Yep, that did it. I was leaving plague early when I tried it earlier. Letting it expire procced the sigil on leaving the form (as is usual) but then locked it out completely from all weapon swaps afterwards.

To be clear: Equip a weapon with sigil (In this case, an axe with Superior Sigil of Geomancy), then while using the axe, activate plague. Let plague time out. You should proc the sigil once when the form ends. While remaining in combat the entire time (Multiple target golems in heart of the mists), switch to your offhand weapon set, then after the 10 seconds, switch back to the sigil’d weapon. You should see a sigil proc, but in my case of testing this bug, I did not.

It’s kind of late here, but I’ll try and check tomorrow to find more details on this. I suspect that this sort of lock-out is happening on multiple / all transforms across classes and that it’s not just plague being affected by this.

Edit: I stopped being able to proc the bug. I suspect the sigil I added on my other weapon while testing things was interfering. What sigil combination are you using exactly?

I posted this in the buglist thread, but I realized you might not check back there:

Where is this happening, exactly? (PvE, PvP, WvW?) I like to try and test bugs myself, but I can’t seem to reproduce this in Heart of the Mists, and I’d love a little more info before I buy a Superior Sigil to test this. Do you have the sigil equipped on just one weapon? Both? What weapons specifically?

This is bizarre and I really want to nail down exactly what’s causing it.

MarcusGood.5270:

The last little tornado/plague patch you threw in completely broke Geomancy sigils.
Every time you enter plague while superior sigil of Geomancy are equipped to your weapons they go dumb and stop working.
They dont start working untill you RE-enter plague which is 120s cd. It completely nullifies my build atm and really sucks, I can either go with the pet or use plague only once per game.

Where is this happening, exactly? (PvE, PvP, WvW?) I like to try and test bugs myself, but I can’t seem to reproduce this in Heart of the Mists, and I’d love a little more info before I buy a Superior Sigil to test this. Do you have the sigil equipped on just one weapon? Both? What weapons specifically?

This is bizarre and I really want to nail down exactly what’s causing it.

Still, a resolution of +0 / -320 health is nice.

A couple things:

This trait functions while in combat. If I start a fight, then do a run-by cloak and dagger I can definitely see the speed boost in action, and feel the slowdown when I come back out of stealth.

Positioning in combat is pretty useful, especially if you’re trying to line up a back-stab (or get back into range so you’re not point-blanking a sneak attack). And if you decide to bail out of a fight completely, the extra 50% movement speed helps you cover 50% more distance in your three seconds of running.

As for initiation, I think you’d be surprised at the distance you can cover in 3 seconds. Especially if you only need to get within 900 range for shadow shot / steal / infiltrator’s arrow.

Whether it’s “worth it” or not in your build is up to you, but the trait certainly has its uses.

Wanderer.5471:

Softspoken.2410:

I mean, stability for 6 seconds, invulnerability for 6 seconds… I’d praise signet of the hunt’s 50% bonus damage (Remember the thief’s old signet of the assassin?) if the ranger had better access to spike damage skills.

signet of stone doesn’t give you invulnerability, it only mitigates direct damage, condition dmg classes probably won’t even notice you used it, as conditions are applied and dmg as normal.

Ah, point. Still, ignoring all direct damage is still nice against a condition heavy spec. Plenty of skills that apply conditions still have a direct damage component.

Bran.7425:

The cool downs on those really strong active effect come with more than negate the balance issue of signet on ranger without having to select a grandmaster trait to just get 3 of the 4 to act like normal signets.

Maybe the better solution is to just rename/retype the signets as well as the shout as they only function in the barest definition of skills in the shared type.

I won’t try and argue balance. I don’t have nearly the experience required with a ranger to push that point.

But by the Guild Wars 2 definition, ranger signets are consistent with all other classes. Signets provide a passive benefit until you use the active, at which point you lose the passive benefit until the signet recharges again. This is true of Rangers. They just have the theme of basing their actives around your pet, rather than yourself / allies / enemies.

I feel like I’ve gotten afield, since now I’m arguing that yes, ranger signets are signets, rather than “Signet of the Beastmaster lives up to its grandmaster status.” And given the way it changes how a few skills play to a significant degree while also giving the player a healthy boost in power, I’m inclined to say it does.

Evasive purity is befuddling to me. I feel like an auto-attack is generally a cheaper investment to remove a blind than a dodge roll. I can see the appeal of removing poison, but removing just poison?

It’s not a terrible idea, (though still weak for a Grandmaster) but it seems kind of limited in scope since it relies on your opponent using poison in the first place.

Bran.7425:

Signet of the Beastmaster as it is a grandmaster trait that basically has a shared game mechanic work the same for Ranger as it does for the other profession that possess the skill type (read all but Engineer)

My issue with this is: different classes, different signets, and some of the Ranger signets have really strong active effects.

I mean, stability for 6 seconds, invulnerability for 6 seconds… I’d praise signet of the hunt’s 50% bonus damage (Remember the thief’s old signet of the assassin?) if the ranger had better access to spike damage skills.

Burn is best comparable to 6 stacks of bleed, extending in duration*. It definitely doesn’t match the 12-20 stacks that some classes can manage (I think warriors and elementalists are pretty good at stacking bleed?), but it’s still a fair amount of condition damage.

The build I’m currently pursuing has about 20 points and one off-hand weapon worth of investment in burning, and I’m finding it to be pretty sufficient. (20 in radiance for renewed justice and radiant fire, along with a torch off-hand) I get very good uptime on burning, and can spread it rather nicely among allies.

So all I’m saying is, you can do pretty good burning damage and still do a lot of other things with your build.

DeathenShada.6397:

Ya they are talking about weapon swap, they haven’t said anything yet on DS UI…. They’re probably just busy or too lazy to deal with it right now.

I’m somewhat of the opinion that ArenaNet needs more programmers badly. It’s not founded in fact or anything, but I get the impression they have these massive swaths of the game (WvW back-end, Event coding) devoted to two people each. I mean I think they do good work, really I do, but the pace is glacial.

Edit: So when you talk about a changes to the profession sector of the game, and more to the point one specific profession out of eight, I feel like there just aren’t enough work hours available without delaying work on the overall game.

Zuldar.5093:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Just make sure you understand how to make support good, ignore those who cry havoc, and run the end-game like a boss.

Take a mesmer and 4 warriors, and rush end-game like a boss. Why should we break our brains trying to do something complicated when we can brainlessly spam 2 and wait to click “Collect” ?

I’ve got a question for the forums in general about this. Doesn’t the typical 4 warriors & mesmer run rely on warrior shouts to stack up AoE might, coupled with the mesmer’s signet of inspiration to double it?

I ask because wouldn’t that mean they’re all running support and damage simultaneously?

Fungalfoot.7213:

And it’s a 10% chance to remove boons on attack. A fairly useless trait all things considered.

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but I looked it up after I posted but before you replied, then started changing my post appropriately. (There was a brief “Wait! It doesn’t work like that” message in between.)

Edit: Aw darn. I really was hoping for a response to the new post. I’ll still say that while I don’t have hard numbers about how many boon rips one could expect in 30 seconds, I still assert that periodic over-time removal has a place, just as much as spike removal does. The difference between the two differentiates between corrupt boon and necromantic corruption to make them difficult to compare, even beyond the utility skill / trait mismatch.

Fungalfoot.7213:

The single highest source of boon stripping would be corrupt boon which just so happens to fall under the one competitive build we do have. Minions are far too unreliable when it comes to attacking and when you see those boons light up you can’t rely on them to get the job done in a competitive environment.

Corrupt boon converts all boons on a 32 second cooldown, whereas necromantic corruption is a 10% of removal on each attack. Some minions (bone fiend, shadow fiend) attack rather quickly, and you can have quite a few minions out at the same time.

If you were to assume bone fiend (Attacks twice per shot, iirc), shadow fiend (Attacks quite rapidly), flesh wurm (Attacks pretty slowly) and flesh golem (Standard rate?), there’s probably… 2 attacks per second overall? I’m trying to low-ball that estimate a bit, but I don’t really want to bother testing every minion’s attack rate just now.

Anyways, that’s somewhere around 60 attacks over the same cooldown as corrupt boon, so pretty reliably 6 boons removed. I’d put it as comparable overall, myself.

Of course, the timing difference is probably the most important part. If someone is constantly applying boons to themself, one corrupt boon isn’t going to stop them for long. But if a Ranger burns Rampage as One and you counter it with corrupt boon, that’s a serious reversal of momentum.
With necromantic corruption, you won’t be able to respond as quickly to a boon spike, but can keep chipping away at boons that are being reapplied.

Edit: I feel like you’re really overstating minion AI issues. They stop attacking about as frequently as corrupt boon / similar attacks are blocked by phantom obstructions.

Kardiamond.6952:

And I was just laughting at the fact that they took Minion Master as an example. That’s the part you didn’t seem to catch.

Really? Because that is certainly not how your post reads. To be honest, you sounded mad.

So when you’re running this build, what’s your crit rate before/after Fury?

Ezeriel.9574:

DS is for jumping off cliffs, running from zergs, or maybe long range dps for Axe users….

If I see a person pop DS for any other reason, I actually take the time to whisper them, and explain just how stupid I think they are.

What an atrocious thing to do.

Well, maybe they’ll pursue making it a more potent transform. As it is, it doesn’t have the “oomph” factor that a lot of transformations do.

In any case, not expecting much this patch. Maybe some tweaks to the numbers of some skills, maybe a few bug fixes, but no big changes.

Karolis.4261:

Dual.8953:

Like if you miss an attack or always? Either way, as thief player I have no problem with this and actually promote it so long as it doesn’t interfere with my rotation which this shouldn’t.

You know what rotation does ? makes you predictable.

Depends on how long the rotation is. And how many you have.

I kind of wish that they wouldn’t do these sorts of interviews if they can’t actually speak freely. It’s just frustrating to have so much of it be “Well we can’t tell you about that, sorry”.

That or we need some sort of secret code. Possibly based on when people take shots…?

Edit: Overall I’m interested to see this AoE change. If I recall correctly they described it as “completely changing how Guild Wars 2 plays” so it’ll probably be more involved than tweaking damage numbers. So that could be interesting.

As well, I get the feeling that they just have other priorities before pushing sPvP. There seems to be worries that the underlying game isn’t solid enough yet, so they won’t stress about the systems to really promote PvP until then. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but that’s the vibe I’m getting.

holodoc.5748:

@Tobias Trueflight
Here you go since you asked so nicely…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqU9ZCU7zvo

A couple of things to note.

1) I made this video just about an hour ago (uploading took some time).

2) I did not specifically choose a location for filming but simply looked for the first high ground I could find after logging in to the game.

3) It seems that the “Invulnerable” text is much harder to see now however that doesn’t change the end effect in this case (read the video description).

4) Please view in 1080p in order to clearly see what damage is reported in the Combat log window.

You missed a few things. Such as the part where the mob you’re attacking is capable of doing damage to you. This is just classic “No path to player, so no fighting” behavior, which is there to prevent zero-risk farming. (A type of farming easily exploited by bots.)

Edit: I feel like this thread is splitting into a few different directions. If I’ve got it right there’s:

• Enemies that can deal damage to you while having invulnerability.
• Enemies that leash and go out-of-combat too easily, and reset their own HP bars without the player leaving combat before the mob re-engages.
• Enemies that stay out-of-combat and remain passive if you attack them from unreachable locations.

I believe the OP was referencing the first. You gave an example of the third.

I’d also recommend plague form for kiting gravelings. It gives you a 20 second break, if nothing else, since you can cripple them enough that they can’t really swarm you, and if you do get caught once the stability keeps you from being knocked down. Plus blind spam if they’re going for Hodgins.

Unload and pistol whip are ideal applicants for the skill, yes. As is the first attack of the dagger auto-chain, the shortbow with its bouncing auto and cluster bomb attacking multiple targets multiple times, and death blossom across multiple enemies. Not to mention the ever-popular caltrops and the anti-zerg healing provided in dagger storm.

I realize that any list I give is going to be both incomplete and still show that the skill shines in limited zones but that is the point. The healing skill has areas that it is strong, and areas that it is weak. It forces a choice, and allows the player to create and use organic combinations that simply don’t exist by default.

By taking signet of malice, a player realizes that for their healing, they need to attack as frequently as possible, or have bursts of high-hit volume that are then interrupted by using the signet for the shot of healing and surrendering the passive. It creates game play styles and alternate priorities in combat.

By homogenizing the skill such that it is procced at mostly the same rate no matter what weapon or battle techniques you use, that depth of play is removed completely.

I don’t even really care about the balance of power in the skill: the healing bases and ratios can always be tweaked. But the suggested change, specifically the cooldown, removes that gameplay dynamic.

Daecollo.9578:

Problem is, even high hit rate attacks have several weaknesses, and the thing is, HHR attacks like Pistol Whip would heal about the same, because you would still get 2 procs from the attacks, same with Unload.

So its kind of a nerf, except not really because its healing for about the same.

Then why do it at all? It just makes the skill unnecessarily confusing / restricted and destroys the ‘hit as quickly and frequently as possible’ goal.

So it makes Signet of Malice stop working for builds with high hit-volume in exchange for increased healing on slow-hitting builds.

I have no idea why you would do this.

Warriors don’t start with full adrenaline, do they?

You can quickly get 100% AoE chill uptime, which is useful for kiting, if you rotate through dark path, chillblains, spinal shivers and spectral grasp followed by epidemic on the focused enemy.

So Staff & */Focus, with epidemic / spectral grasp, and possibly condition duration. Runes of Ice & Grenth boost chill duration I think, and are easy enough to get.

It’s not a ‘build’ per se (I kind of agree with Bas: having 100% chill on a group isn’t really enough for a PvE build, you need something else as well) but you can accomplish it fairly easily. With a little condition duration, you can also drop spectral grasp from the rotation.

Targuil.3741:

Dont forget our downed mode combo field.

True. I kind of file it under the same category as underwater (needs special conditions to be accessible) but it is a dark combo field and all around good skill.

Does anyone know for sure what happens when you use Signet of Renewal with the Signet of the Beastmaster trait? As far as I can tell, both of you pull all conditions, but your pet’s goes second. So if you’re near your pet, your pet gets everything and you get a clean slate.

So on one hand, if you’re really far away from your pet when you use it, you get stuck holding the bag. But on the other, you extend the range of condition pull to include everyone near your pet and yourself, with everything going to the pet.

That being said, the obvious uses of Signet of the Beastmaster are Signet of Stone and Signet of the Wild, and they’re powerful enough to justify its grandmaster status, in my opinion.

You’re correct. There are essentially no combo finishers on the necromancer. Bone minions (and apparently flesh wurms?) provide blast finishers when you sacrifice them, staff has 20% projectile on the auto and a blast finisher on putrid mark and… That’s it, really. Unless you go underwater, but people tend to laugh when I bring that up.

Combo fields are pretty good if you’re willing to use wells. Outside of those your options are pretty limited… Spectral wall, chillblains (Also on staff, hmmmmm), corrosive poison cloud, and I think death nova from the grandmaster trait.

So yeah, if you’re aching for more fields, you can take wells and things, but if you just want finishers… Bone minions, I guess?

In my opinion, dungeons aren’t so much of a gear challenge, but a mechanical challenge. There’s a lot of emphasis on knowing the general mechanic of a fight before you go in, or learning it the first time you die to it.

Gear-wise, all you really need are at-level (or within about 5 levels) masterwork gear. But in terms of fights, you need to know where the big AoEs are, which attacks you must dodge, and hopefully have someone willing to call targets for you if it’s your first time.

In terms of getting gear, dungeons are a great source of level 80 exotics, and I don’t feel like ascended gear is all that necessary for… Well, anything except high-level fractals. And that’s because of the infusion bonuses against Agony.

Volrath.1473:

Imo it is not bad but it isn’t very good either. The stealthed ability Is useful for pistol/dagger condi thief but it is plain bad for pistol/pistol burst.
Why do ppl say that p/p thieves have no stealth? Don’t they have healing/utility slots?

Pretty much what TeamBattleAxe said, but also:

Heals / utilities don’t quite match the access that a /D or even a D/P build has to stealth. A /D just needs 6 initiative. A D/P needs a lot more (9, I think?) but can do so without being near their opponent. Both of those tend to be recharges shorter than the typical stealth utility.

I think the necromancer should be particularly good at applying debilitating conditions. Chill, weakness, cripple, poison: not actual control effects, just conditions that make life a struggle. Of those, I feel like chill is present enough, which gives cripple a bit of a pass. But poison could stand to be much more ubiquitous, and weakness could have a bit more presence as well.

EDIT: Oh hey Bhawb!
I do feel like necromantic control of conditions is exceptional, I just think the application of a few of them could be upped in availability.

Stooperdale.3560:

Even once you have a good pistol build you might find yourself doing more damage in melee with sword/pistol, so keep that in mind as you develop your play style.

You probably will, since it’s a melee weapon. For a thief the advantage of P/P is not having to get close to what you’re killing at any point. So it’s a damage vs. safety issue.

Because different classes, different skill?

Also, into the void doesn’t have nearly the pull distance that spectral grasp does, nor does it guarantee the direction of a pull. I find the skills to be useful in different circumstances: one is for dragging a mob directly to you, one is for interrupting a crowd and throwing off their position.

Edit: Oh nevermind you’re just taking the opportunity to poop on spectral grasp. Then I’m done here.

First, I’m saying this from a PvE (World, dungeons) perspective.

If you’re using P/P, you can aim to use unload as much as possible, while also staying safe at around 800 range and healing constantly. When I tried this, my ‘rotation’ was something like Unload -> Dodge -> Vital Shot. Rinse and repeat, interrupting with head shot and black powder as needed.

Build wise, I’d suggest something like this . Gear should have a healthy amount of Power / Precision, but straight Berserker’s could be unwise: you want a little bit of defense since you don’t have great access to a stealth-out-of-jail-free card. So a few pieces of Knight gear seems wise.

Although I’d also recommend trying these traits:
Acrobatics IX (Quick Recovery, 2 initiative / 10 seconds) if you can’t keep up your unload spam, and aren’t having trouble healing up damage done to you via signet of malice.
Critical Strikes X (Critical Haste, chance for 2 seconds of quickness) it’s a quick burst of damage + healing (with Signet of Malice) but is in my experience too unpredictable to be especially clever with. Still nice, but I like always having my signets ready.
Acrobatics II (Power of Inertia, Might on Dodge) the reason for vigor on heal is so if you have to burn SoM because you can’t attack your way back to health, you get a few extra dodges while you’re waiting for SoM to come off of recharge & for your initiative to regenerate.

Utility wise, you’re kitted for 2 stun breaks and significant initiative regen, plus a condition cleanse because you have zero condition removal as is.

I mostly made this up on the spot, but I recall running something a lot like this. It worked amazingly well if I could kite my foes even a little, and got scary fast if I got swamped by conditions. You could probably switch some things around (10 into Deadly Arts…?) for more condition removal, especially depending on your secondary set.

Zinwrath.2049:

Ya, i meant quickness. And no you did not understand. i was using it as another example of a buff that is not a boon and thus cannot be dispelled by boon wipes. Just like the part of spectral walk that allows you to gain lifeforce from damage cannot be dispelled by boon removal skills. Double speed is not the same as Swiftness either, as one is a drasticly larger movement speed enhancer. Swiftness will always be static unless you have an increased swiftness movement trait/rune.

This is in responce to (RashanDale) saying “what would be the point of having the Boon-system and boon-strip skills when Anet starts to add undispellable non-boon-buffs that have the same effect?”

I was just giving examples of buffs that are not dispellable. After rereading it i realized you said that do the same thing as boons. There are some that do, but this one is different.

Ah, I missed Rashan’s complaints about boon removal, which is probably why I missed the thrust of your post so badly. I think I understand what you meant now.

When I did my tests , I had some bonus vitality from blood magic. Death shroud still appeared to be about 60% of my maximum health. I strongly suspect death shroud’s total is just calculated based on maximum health.

Zinwrath.2049:

Also, double movement is on other skills (like engineer slick shoes). And haste is undispellable. there are many undispellable buffs that overlap with boons.
And double movement is just that double movement, where swiftness i beleive is 33% increase out of combat…not sure what it is in combat 10-15?

So giving it atleast a little burst of speed at the start would allow you to actually get away from whatever you just fled when you used your stun break. Maybe it doesnt need this, but ya never see it used in spvp….few times i do its by someone who doesnt know what they’re doing in a hotjoin, but its definitly better than spectral armor.

Oh and flaw with both these abilities, death shroud cancels them.

So I could be reading it wrong, but it seems that you’re implying quickness (as granted by Haste, Time Warp, etc) grants increased movement speed. It does not. You take actions twice as quickly, but your movement speed from point A to point B is the same.

Super speed (Engineer slick shoes toolbelt) is actually the only skill I’ve heard of that increases movement speed more than swiftness does. (The thief’s swift shadows also does, but it is a trait.)

Swiftness is still 33% bonus movement speed in combat, just 33% compared to the normal in combat speed, rather than the out of combat speed. So you’re still 33% faster than the guy that you hit / hit you. Just not the guy who hasn’t gotten involved yet.

Going into death shroud only cancels the “Gain 3% life force on being hit” effect. The other effects of the skills (Spectral recall, swiftness, protection) are still preserved.

The major reason I fell out of love with spectral wall is that it won’t apply protection to allies who already have protection from another source. So it feels finicky if someone else is throwing around protection, because now yours doesn’t work. I also have trouble positioning it so enemies go through it twice, especially in groups, but that may just be me.

I do love spectral grasp though. My current build can take a hit or five, so if a silver is chasing around a squishy in a dungeon it’s nice to be able to drag them over to me and chill them at the same time. Also: lots of life force.

I think we have the similar views on spectral walk & armor.

For me spectrals are more about filling a gap in a build than being a build all on their own, so they don’t get as much discussion as, say, wells.

Pendragon.8735:

At the very least 30 points into Soul Reaping should get you to Life Force equaling 100% of health. Thus 70% should be base if they want to make it lower than 100% off the bat.

You’d need a base closer to 75% of your health as Death Shroud for that. 75% * 1.3 = 97.5%

I disagree with making it match health naturally. While death shroud does decay, you can also gain it back fairly rapidly through weapon attacks and such. Not to mention spectral abilities. It makes it life force gain an (odd) sort of heal, and in my opinion the hidden “life leech” build that people try to make vampiric into every once in a while.