Guild Wars 2

Artaz.3819:

Chaba.5410:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Swagger.1459:

You should try to comprehend what I’m asking for before you sling that silly “l2p”…

condition is 5k over 5 seconds, so it takes 5 seconds to ramp up to 5k a hit, at anytime in that 5 second window you can cleanse the remainder instantly. this is all the mitigation you need.

And if you have Resistance up for 4 seconds, you’re only going to take 1k of condition damage over those 5 seconds.

By “counter” I mean “counter-play”.

That’s the fallacy. It doesn’t take 5s to ramp up to 5K per second damage anymore and to maintain that damage. On my chrono, it takes me less than 3s to get to over 6K-10K damage per second (variable based on whether you decide to use abilities and move after). And that can be done when the target is under the full effects of daze/stun or allows immediate invisibility after.

People will argue that they can do 6K-10K after second 1 with direct damage (but that’s not the point) as it is usually more than half mitigated so everything past the first 3s (yes, just 3s) is in favor of condi to do more burst damage if everything hits.

The myth is that condis are slow to apply and take time to ramp up in order to do damage. And then further, can’t be spammed over and over for every single encounter (also untrue in the post-HoT game thanks to specialization lines/core trait line redos).

If you add a stat that mitigates condi damage, Resistance boon also needs to be reduced from 100% mitigation.

That’s a problem with condition Chronomancer not condition builds as a whole. Condition Chrono/Mesmer has been overtuned for a long time and 95% of the Mesmers you meet roaming are going to be condition builds because it’s easy.

Yes there are other professions/builds that can deliver high condition bursts but most of them are gimmicks and aren’t seen nearly as often because of it. Their power counterparts are just flat out better so most won’t run condition variants unless they prefer them.

I’m not understanding how people can say “I can do 6 – 10k condition bursts on my Mesmer, conditions need a nerf.” That’s like saying I can do 20k+ Gunflames on my Warrior, Ferocity needs a nerf. The phrase, “common sense isn’t common” is so painfully true on these forums.

You can:

Remove conditions

Evade condition application

Become temporarily immune (Resistance)

Reduce duration via traits/foods

Reduce damage via traits/foods.

With your suggestion, this could mean a player could potentially be immune to condition damage with Resistance, assuming the new stat you request can stack, with foods and traits, possibly up to 100% reduced incoming condition damage, with runes, reduced condition duration and with good old fashioned dodges, avoid the application as well.

How about. No.

archmagus.7249:

Here’s a fair Nerf for Epidemic:
-Reduce range to 800, effect radius to 300
-Increase cast time
-Cap number of condis to 5, and transferred duration to 10 seconds.
-Cannot target siege, pets, or minions.
-Cannot transfer fear or taunt.

tldr = Remove Epidemic.

Ann Jay.2950:

5 gold says that the OP plays a bear/bow ranger……

And if he was, even if on teamspeak and following orders, I’m sure he’d be put in a trash party and not revived if downed.

If you read earlier in the thread, you’ll see that I agree teamspeak is necessary. But so is acting as a team. Which is something I’ll bet 5 gold you don’t know how to do.

DanAlcedo.3281:

Can you play against condi? Well yes you can , BUT there is one problem.
You have to give up so much just to get to a good level of condi cleanse.

Lets take Guard for an example.
First you need to Trait Pure of Voice.
Second you need the rune of the Trooper.
Third you need to use shouts ( You mostly only use 2 shouts both have there own uses and will not be used as anto condi. So you have to use bad skills.

It’s not giving anything up if it’s going to prolong your life.

You don’t “give up” eating fatty foods, you outgrow it.

ArchonWing.9480:

Can’t say I’ve gotten epi-owned in small scale; condi owned yes, but maybe that’s just my luck. I run power and have about 15k health.

However, I’d like to say that a lot of this so called “advice” dispensed to Straegen here simply will not help, because simply linking skills and broad advice does not address any real world scenarios. Easier said than done, so to speak and this kind of thing I find comes across as patronizing.

Anyhow, I think the tactics described aren’t going to be effective in winning any given fight, because you have built around dying slower and not really winning a fight. So what happens is that you’re surviving, your allies die, and you’re all that’s left, which means you will either die or have to run. If your enemies know that you can’t actually kill them, then they can press whatever buttons like that.

It’s the same principle as fighting a glass thief. 90% of people get rekt by them because they panic and run. What they don’t know is the fight looks really different when they hit back.

The other thing of curiosity is how are you in 600 range of so many people to begin with? There’s little reason unless you’re ressing people. Sure, when it’s 1v1 as a thief, you can pogo stick around any time you want, but you have to be conservative when you’re subject to focus.

CC/Pressure necros. Now before you say “omfg they have 40k hp”, I didn’t say kill them. But if you can stop them from offloading their payloads as long as you can, then the rest of your group may be able to pressure the rest down, and obviously, you as a speedy thief can shift gears much faster than a necro can. Of course, if your allies are garbage, then it’s time to jet and you shouldn’t blame yourself. It’s just how the game mode works. Sometimes you will lose, and it’s not on you.

Hard kiting is the strategy I find most effective in small scale fights. Talking 5v5 – 10 v 10.

Get the attention of a few players and bait them in to a chase. Assuming you’re using a build that has moderate mobility and you’re capable of using the terrain to your advantage, it’s usually quite easy to split a group apart. At which point you put some damage in and if you can get kills, great, if you can’t, keep them away from the rest of your group until they start to gain the upper hand.

Sometimes you don’t need to bait so hard that they chase you a significant distance either. Just get them offsides so they’re briefly out of the picture and it can be plenty enough time for your group to take the win.

I think I’ll lay the personal examples to rest after this comment but I’ve done a looooot of WvW and a loooot of solo/small scale… I’ve been using vanilla builds on all my characters since HoT and I’ve designed all of them with condition removal and mobility in mind. Literally the only times I’m overwhelmed by conditions are; When I get run over by a zerg, when I get jumped and caught off guard, when I get greedy against a condition Chrono. Besides that, I don’t think I’ve ever been hit by an Epi in a small scale pug v pug and rarely am I careless enough to let conditions stack on me to the point of no return. With the amount of power creep in the game, the advantage that condition builds have in armor and health isn’t much of an advantage anymore. You can easily blast through them if you plan your attacks instead of gambling them.

And PS I wasn’t directing this at you, Archon.

I’m content that the nerf wasn’t over done. I’m upset that Resistance just got a huge buff.

It’s nice that the skill still functions the “same” as it did. It’s a bit frustrating that this favors the boonshare tank meta even more. Though I’m not at all surprised given how many people cried about it, I am surprised they didn’t overdo the nerf.

A radius reduction + not allowing it to work on siege was what should have been done but digress, at least it still has it’s niche in tact.

Straegen.2938:

Lately, I have gone to running Lyssa runes, Shadow Step, Signet of Agility, Escapist’s Absolution, Pain Response and Trickster with Withdraw. More than a dozen times last night I was unable to clear alpha strike condi fast enough to survive in skirmish. Either I get bombed with so much condi no clear can do the job or I purge them only to be reloaded a second later.

What on earth are you, and everyone else, doing to attract so many conditions? I understand that for frontliners the problem is a lot more prevalent. They’re forced in to taking heaping wads of damage and conditions. But if you’re a Thief, or any kind of mid/backliner, you shouldn’t be getting loaded with condi’s every 5 seconds. I can literally frontline (at least during a winning push or in certain opportune situations) on a full glass vanilla Ranger. I can remove 8 conditions if I blow all of my utilities and you know how often I have to do that? Almost never. At maximum I’ll get 5 conditions on me at which point I’ll quickly retreat to recover and wait for cooldowns to come off.

You’re better off retreating for 60seconds to let your cooldowns and health come back than overextending and subsequently dying. If you’re not a frontliner, don’t frontline or if you can’t handle it, don’t do it.

As I’d said recently in other condition related threads, I’m about 99.9% certain that people are just blowing things out of proportion/have no idea how to watch the flow of a fight. As a very mediocre player and someone with motor skill issues and backwards keybinds… I should be having the same problems you are but I don’t. So I’m pretty darn sure this is L2P and/or straight up lying.

Siphon.8405:

FYI A visible ghost thief is in trouble because they have to burn there only 2 dodges to generate caltrops and they don’t have room on there utility bar for teleports (traps are in that place)

A ghost thief literally has to burn his steal, both dodge rolls, and all his utility to take a target down. If this damage is cleansed or stun break is used then the trapper looses the kill entirely and the target runs away.

So in short conclusion a trapper thief has to burn his entire repertoire of utlity and dodge rolls, and steal to take down 1 target, how is that OP?

If he kills an entire group of players that refused to bring heal/cleanse support then you all deserve to die.

It’s WORLD vs WORLD vs WORLD not 5v5 sPvP. It’s not fair and it’s not an even matched game mode, it’s survival of the fittest.

BRING A BIGGER ARMY!

Highlighted in bold what I’m responding to specifically but quoted the entire comment since it’s also relevant.

It’s not OP. It’s mechanically broken.

As you’ve stated, you need to burn your entire repertoire to kill someone. It would be OP if it only required one skill, like Steal, to kill someone, while still having access to a plethora of other deadly skills. That, on top of being highly mobile with high sustainability, etc. etc. (having too many good things with too few weaknesses).

It’s broken because it exploits the stealth mechanic (which in GW2, functions poorly to begin with) by denying opponents the ability to see, predict and react while still punishing them with high condition dots. You have no clue where your target is, if you’re hitting them or if they’re about to hit you. There are ways to prevent them from staying in stealth but those options are easily avoidable for the Thief if they’re not completely stupid.

The build isn’t OP because it has a high condition burst. Lots of classes can do this, trapper Ranger being a good example. You need to burn a lot of utilities and skills and you sacrifice defensive skills for offensive ones. The difference is that you can see the Ranger, you can react, predict and counter. With ghost Thief, you don’t have that and that is absolutely broken.

It used to have unlimited range and targets. People just like to blow things out of proportion. You can see the domino effect if you sift far enough through the threads how one person brought attention to it and everyone else hops on the blame train.

Just going to say the same thing I’ve said in the last 3 Epi related threads.

By no means do I always make the right decisions but I do practice, observe and think on things that are giving me or others trouble before making a statement about balance. I don’t care if I absolutely hate something or if I absolutely love it. My opinion isn’t what matters, it’s whether the skill/trait/rune/etc. etc. are performing properly or not. If after practicing and observing I still find something to be over powered, then I will discuss it with others to see how they feel about the matter. And from there, depending on the people, we hopefully have a reasonable discussion about ways to balance it without putting personal emotions first.

I know I’ll get blasted for saying the following but yes, I do play a lot of Necromancer. In fact, it’s the class I’ve played the most of but I don’t consider it my main. I rotate between all of my characters evenly, though my Necromancer is the oldest. Still, I feel it’s valid to say this before I continue.

Epidemic does need to be adjusted, but not in many of the ways people suggest. What I would consider to be reasonable adjustments are:

• Reduce the radius to 240. It is currently twice the size of Meteor Shower and that’s massive.

• Reduce range to 900. Necromancers don’t have the ability to take the kind of beating that a Guardian or a Warrior can when being hit by the full force of a melee train. Reducing the range would add a risk/reward factor. Risk getting pulled -> blobbed to land a good Epi or stand back and only get small ones.

• Disallow it from working on high health NPC’s and siege. It was a nice change allowing conditions to affect siege but it inadvertently gave Epidemic a massive buff. Transferring conditions from siege/NPC’s allows for the kind of one-shot condition nukes you’ll see in videos like what has been posted in separate threads on this forum.

All of these are fair adjustments that wouldn’t remove Epidemic from the meta, but would greatly alleviate some of the pressure that people are feeling.

As a final note, though to some it will be the information they try to use against me in the Epidemic torch and pitch fork brigade… I’d like to add that all of my characters are vanilla builds (Necromancer, Ranger, Warrior, Engineer), I rarely/never use Teamspeak, I rarely/never am in the zerging squad and I rarely/never use proper zerging builds. I still frontline, I still save people who have downed, I still survive longer than many people who are in squad/TS/with a proper build and yet I have impaired motor skills, play with backwards keybinds and don’t use a mouse… I feel that a great deal of the complaints about Epidemic are people coming out of the woodwork because they’re too lazy to, well… Git gud… Because with all those disadvantages, I still manage to do just fine and to almost never get hit by Epidemic bombs. In fact, I die a whole hell of a lot more to pulls, random CC, lag and 10K CoR’s, Gunflames, Trueshots, Meteor Showers, etc. So maybe… Just maybe people need to learn to cleanse better and to position better and to pay attention… Because without skills like Epidemic that break apart the tank meta, fights will never end.

I just want to point out that most of those conditions came from a Mesmer before I start the following rant.

By no means do I always make the right decisions but I do practice, observe and think on things that are giving me or others trouble before making a statement about balance. I don’t care if I absolutely hate something or if I absolutely love it. My opinion isn’t what matters, it’s whether the skill/trait/rune/etc. etc. are performing properly or not. If after practicing and observing I still find something to be over powered, then I will discuss it with others to see how they feel about the matter. And from there, depending on the people, we hopefully have a reasonable discussion about ways to balance it without putting personal emotions first.

I know I’ll get blasted for saying the following but yes, I do play a lot of Necromancer. In fact, it’s the class I’ve played the most of but I don’t consider it my main. I rotate between all of my characters evenly, though my Necromancer is the oldest. Still, I feel it’s valid to say this before I continue.

Epidemic does need to be adjusted, but not in many of the ways people suggest. What I would consider to be reasonable adjustments are:

• Reduce the radius to 240. It is currently twice the size of Meteor Shower and that’s massive.

• Reduce range to 900. Necromancers don’t have the ability to take the kind of beating that a Guardian or a Warrior can when being hit by the full force of a melee train. Reducing the range would add a risk/reward factor. Risk getting pulled → blobbed to land a good Epi or stand back and only get small ones.

• Disallow it from working on high health NPC’s and siege. It was a nice change allowing conditions to affect siege but it inadvertently gave Epidemic a massive buff. Transferring conditions from siege/NPC’s allows for the kind of one-shot condition nukes you’ll see in videos like what has been posted in separate threads on this forum.

All of these are fair adjustments that wouldn’t remove Epidemic from the meta, but would greatly alleviate some of the pressure that people are feeling.

As a final note, though to some it will be the information they try to use against me in the Epidemic torch and pitch fork brigade… I’d like to add that all of my characters are vanilla builds (Necromancer, Ranger, Warrior, Engineer), I rarely/never use Teamspeak, I rarely/never am in the zerging squad and I rarely/never use proper zerging builds. I still frontline, I still save people who have downed, I still survive longer than many people who are in squad/TS/with a proper build and yet I have impaired motor skills, play with backwards keybinds and don’t use a mouse… I feel that a great deal of the complaints about Epidemic are people coming out of the woodwork because they’re too lazy to, well… Git gud… Because with all those disadvantages, I still manage to do just fine and to almost never get hit by Epidemic bombs. In fact, I die a whole hell of a lot more to pulls, random CC, lag and 10K CoR’s, Gunflames, Trueshots, Meteor Showers, etc. So maybe… Just maybe people need to learn to cleanse better and to position better and to pay attention… Because without skills like Epidemic that break apart the tank meta, fights will never end.

I agree with this one, unlike the Epidemic fiasco.

I usually prefer (and still do) vanilla Necromancer over Reaper but I had to see how absurd this Deathly Chill buff was. And, not surprisingly, it’s very broken. At least in large scale, the amount of pressure you can apply by basically facerolling across your shouts and skill bar, is just a little bit stupid.

ANet seems to have trouble with balancing this trait. Every 4 months it goes from OP as all hell to totally useless. I’m starting to think they should remove it and replace it with something different entirely since they can’t seem to find a happy medium. As is, it needs to be nerfed, no question.

I’ll work on it. But be warned that I do not have/use any editing tools so it may be rather bland and there may be minutes between fights. Assuming I manage to find the same Thief/a different one with the same build soon after killing one.

It is possible to play effectively without teamspeak but hearing commands is advantageous whether some people want to admit it or not. Instant communication will always be better than written because you can’t always type while in combat and you won’t always read.

Some people can operate just fine without teamspeak and can even do better than those who are using it depending on the person(s). They still won’t know exactly what the commander is saying if they aren’t using chat however so no matter how good they are without TS, there will always be times they miss crucial information.

I agree with those who are saying that it’s silly and frustrating to be dumped in the junk groups just because you’re not on TS but commanders don’t have the time to evaluate each players individual level of skill. Being on TS shouldn’t be an automatic pass to get a squad invite and a proper sub-group either but again, they will have the advantage of knowing what the commander is saying where the players who are not in TS won’t.

Putting players in proper sub-groups with those who are in TS and those who are not is what commander’s should do but 99% of them won’t. To clarify since I explained that poorly – Create proper sub groups for the ones not in TS instead of dumping them all in trash groups. Put all the ones who aren’t in TS in the same groups and make them proper comps instead of having one huge 10+ person sub group of randoms just because said people aren’t in TS.

There are any number of reasons some people won’t/can’t use TS and no one should be blamed for it. That said, those players need to accept that it does add an important layer of co-ordination and detesting it won’t make that fact not true. Commander’s should learn to treat people who don’t use it with respect instead of acting like they’re all trash and people who don’t use it should stop acting like they’re too good for it.

Imbalances mean people transferring. People transferring means money for ANet.

Haematic.4913:

Epidemic needs to be reworked, plain and simple.

Bandaids aren’t going to balance this issue.

The skill can be balanced and still be a powerful tool for condi-spikes and carrying out numbered fights.

1st .. the “25” condition cap is broken and not working as intended, we’ve tested this, and the .gif I’ve attached in the OP is proof of this as well. This could easily follow the same condition table as Corrupt Boon https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupt_Boon … and what I mean by this is – it will apply a multiplier from this table as you see it I.E. 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x what’s currently on the table, per Epidemic cast on target, if those conditions exist.

2nd .. the cooldown is way to short, cleanses to counter an EPI spike don’t share nearly the same cooldown I.E. Virtue Of Resolve (when traited, can clear up to 5-conditions on Guard, and 3-conditions on allies); this has a 30-second cooldown whereas Epidemic has a 15-20 second cooldown reduction depending if you trait for it or not. This is just one example. Other examples can be reviewed here .. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#Skills_that_remove_conditions

3rd .. there’s no clear indication that the Necromancer is channeling such an aggressive skill. A poster in this thread mentioned implementing a floater signaling Epidemic is being cast.

4th .. it’s unblockable, IMHO if you want this to remain unblockable make the core skill blockable, then make it unblockable if it’s traited for; so it doesn’t get abused by power necro specs as well.

Edit: For illuminati reasons, you should know that I mentioned my guild utilizes this skill and coordinates EPI-Spikes on targets. Even against organized groups we’re matched up against, we’re still insta-gibbing 2-3 players minimum on top of the original target. We still intend to use Epidemic after the rework, but the skill as it currently stands is overpowered because of the way it exponentially scales.

- Post of mine from earlier in this thread.

Reasonable Epidemic adjustments

Reduce radius to 240. The current radius is massive and twice the size of Meteor Shower. A radius reduction would be more than okay.

Reduce range to 900. Although this would be a pretty heavy nerf, especially with the radius reduction as well, it would add a bigger risk/reward factor to the skill. Getting close to targets in zerg fights as a Necromancer isn’t a good idea. Reducing the range could promote more skillful decisions.

Disallow it from working on high health NPC’s and siege. It’s not fair to be bouncing so many conditions off of things that normal players cannot survive. This would be a perfectly acceptable change.

What the community wants

Remove it!
Make it transfer only one condition every few seconds!
Quadruple the cooldown!
Increase the cast time!
Long winded rant about how it’s broken and a half baked idea to completely rework the skill so that it functions completely differently and no one ever uses it again because reasons. (You fit this one well).

What ANet will do

Half-listen to the community, knee jerk nerf it to the point that it becomes even more niche than what it currently is.

Community cries that bunker meta is too stong.

Reasonable Epidemic adjustments

Reduce radius to 240. The current radius is massive and twice the size of Meteor Shower. A radius reduction would be more than okay.

Reduce range to 900. Although this would be a pretty heavy nerf, especially with the radius reduction as well, it would add a bigger risk/reward factor to the skill. Getting close to targets in zerg fights as a Necromancer isn’t a good idea. Reducing the range could promote more skillful decisions.

Disallow it from working on high health NPC’s and siege. It’s not fair to be bouncing so many conditions off of things that normal players cannot survive. This would be a perfectly acceptable change.

What the community wants

Remove it!
Make it transfer only one condition every few seconds!
Quadruple the cooldown!
Increase the cast time!
Long winded rant about how it’s broken and a half baked idea to completely rework the skill so that it functions completely differently and no one ever uses it again because reasons.

What ANet will do

Half-listen to the community, knee jerk nerf it to the point that it becomes even more niche than what it currently is.

Community cries that bunker meta is too stong.

Haematic.4913:

See my response above in response to berserker warrior, from the other poster.

Also, you’re hitting what looks to be a new player / quite possibly an up level who isn’t geared in EOTM, and you’re posting a screenshot of hitting an EOTM champion. LUL.

Out of respect of your counter arguments, I’ll say thanks for trying, but you’re just making Epidemic look even stronger.

I promise you they were not uplevels, though I have no proof of it, I’m not one to lie over such a silly thing.

The hit on the champion is just showing the kind of numbers I can max out on. Epidemic maxes out when used on champions/siege, so it’s perfectly relevant.

Ash.8127:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

snip

exactly this.
i regularly try condinec in zergs and regurlarly end up going power when things go rough.
WHEN we roflstomp them and run quite some condis we can kill them even faster with powerbuilds cuz they suck, simple as that.

so what if the enemy stacks condi? get some revs and push them hard, they dont have a directdmgbomb to prevent it. light field + whirl is ur friend.
they can corruptbomb a few of you to remove boons and get very low condistacks. if you fail to keep cleansing the group at an adequate rate they even get 10+ stacks via other attacks.
now luck kicks in when trying to hit epidemic: target cleansed just before epi hits? random dodge? blinded? (epi wont hit, a lava font will still be placed;)) target goes down just before epi its? target dies just before epi hits? obstructed maybe? (nonluck: u cant just place it on the ground and keep running, need to be in range)
sooo u managed to epi those stacks. what now?
right! the majority of them still has resistance, u can only strip a few ppl, they get heavy dmg now and u can train them.

u can spice up ur comp once u reach blobsize to epi the condis applied by directdmgbuilds, this can have a bigger impact than a 15th powernec.
i played condinec as kind of a delayed/second bomb since many cleanses are bound to heals that get spammed when the primary bomb hits plus i can epi some downs.

there are ways to increase the chance of epi hitting. but dont powercomps also have their own tactis?

hitting epi during purge spike means a huge burst, if their revs are competent they give resistance and have probably already activated dwarf elite while engaging. so u get 1 – ticks in at most.
the burst this way is higher on single targets than the regular wells/staff ele hits.
over time/bomb condi deals a lot less dmg.
a lucky epidemic can help create downs.

@op: u think epi is unfair? then tell me how is this fair? my gunflame can be unblockable too. i need to build glassier than condinec but on the other hand my dmg comes way faster, more reliable, …
(pls note: i did not have high might stacks, target did not have vuln on them, i didnt even have all dmgmodifiers and best food …)

edit: why stack 4-5 condinecs when 2 riflewarrs get the job done too? (less condipressure which btw is applied by powernecs too [condipressure is not just about dmg] in exchange for quite sure spamable kills)

Hey while we’re sharing pictures, let me share a couple.

Now, I understand that Eviscerate is not an AOE skill nor does it increase in strength depending on the number of targets. I understand that it is a different profession and the numbers shown are under different circumstances entirely.

My point only serves to show that while Epidemic can be deadly if used properly, or if the players on the receiving end are lemmings (95% of the time, it’s the latter), power builds/skills are and have been stronger.

Even with Over 3k armor and 20k health, I’m able to hit those kinds of numbers and can even make it unblockable.

I know that my thoughts on the matter are a drop in the pond but I’m very confident that this is a player related issue and not a skill related issue. Epidemic does need to be adjusted but it does not to be nerfed in many of the ways people suggest. People need to practice and to prepare and to stop blaming everything but themselves… If I had the proper editing tools (and I may invest in them in the future) I would happily record vanilla full glass frontline Ranger play to show how often I get hit by Epidemic bombs (hint: it’s never) and how often I die to Spear Of Justice pulls or random 10k+ crits from out of seemingly no where.

Stop standing near downed players, stop using cleanses when you have one stack of Bleed on you, stop being where you’re not supposed to be (as in, if you’re backline, don’t be in the frontline – yes I realize I was just talking about frontlining as a backliner. That’s because I can, not because I should) and if something is giving you trouble, bring the skills to deal with it instead of asking Anet to remove everything that hurts you.

I am seriously astonished that a dev replied to that. This community is full of nothing but complainers that spam salt threads until they get what they want.

As I’d said in another Epidemic related post, anyone who is having trouble with this skill is either a frontliner without properly co-ordinated group cleanses and/or they’re not using their cleanses properly, or just terrible players not taking the proper measures to deal with it all together.

I’m not special, I’ve been hit by big Epidemic bombs as well. But as far as I can recall, it has only been twice that I’ve insta-downed. I am rarely if ever in a squad, almost never on teamspeak, play vanilla roaming builds on all my characters and I often push to the frontline with builds not designed for it, but I don’t die and don’t get Epi nuked. How is it that I’m not having the same problem so many others apparently have? With as much time as I have invested in WvW, I find it incredibly difficult to believe people aren’t over exaggerating. As far as I’m concerned, this is just one of those things people hate and want gone even though it’s not as much of an issue as they claim it to be.

Yes it’s devastating if it’s coming from a co-ordinated group and yes it can insta-down you if you’re not careful. It’s a powerful skill but the amount of times it kills me/forces me to retreat and recover while zerging is a whole lot less than the times I lose 50 – 80% of my health in one hit from a CoR even on builds with 3k+ armor. And that’s not a complaint about CoR, just a statement that it causes me a lot more problems than Epi’s do.

As I’d said in other Epidemic complaint related threads – I believe it would be fair to adjust this skill but the way people kitten and whine about it and the way ANet always folds to that kind of behavior, I just know it’s going to be gutted and the bunker meta will return in full force.

I very rarely say this but if you’re getting Epi-nuked constantly and you’re not a commander… Get. kittening. Smarter.

Necromancer at 3.6k hours and Ranger at 3.3k.

I’m a ranged player at heart. In any game with sniper rifles or bows, that’ll be what I use. Even in the Soul series (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, etc) I would do full runs with only bows. And those are games that aren’t effectively designed around ranged combat.

I like to depend on my own potential and no one elses and ranged classes often do that well. Observing the situation from afar and assessing how to proceed. Learning enemy weaknesses by baiting attacks and striking with force when it’s ideal.

In Guild Wars 2, the ranged class was an obvious choice for me but I stuck with it because of it’s grace. Ranger is the only class that has a real finesse to it and I enjoy the smoothness of built in evades, leaps and other mobility. Beyond that, I also love my pets, despite much of the hate they get. Both in game and IRL, I’m a very solitary person. I can be chatty, but I value my space and I often only have animals to keep me company. In GW2, my pets are my trusty companions. They don’t always behave exactly as I’d like them to but they’ve literally save my life more times than I can count. Can’t tell you how satisfying it is when someone in PvP/WvW is about to stomp me and my pet finishes them off or stops them long enough for someone to help.

As for Necromancer, I’m a die hard horror and death metal fanatic, I love dark fantasy and, well… I can an intense person, I suppose, lol. The dark caster is often my secondary choice but in GW2, for some reason I began playing it before Ranger and even stuck with it for longer. It doesn’t feel as scary or intimidating as I’d like it to but over the years I’ve become very attached to GW2’s interpretation of the Necromancer.

I love vanilla Death Shroud a lot more so than Reaper Shroud, which is something not a lot of people will say. Dark Path, Shroud skill #2, is just a very satisfying skill to land for me and I prefer most of the other skills as well.

I also love to debuff people because I’m evil and get a rise out of turning defences in to threats, lol. Corrupt Boon has been one of my favorite utility skills in the game for a very long time and I was screaming like a school girl when they buffed it. Besides that, I also just enjoy being obnoxiously difficult to kill despite not having blocks, stealth, mobility or amazing healing sustain. Proper Shroud and Life Force management is all it really takes and it’s hilariously fun sometimes to watch people get frustrated that when one health bar gets low the other is full.

Pictures of them attached below

Digikid.7230:

havoktwo.2147:

Digikid.7230:

How are so many people missing that this thread was meant for funny/original guild names? Do you guys actually read?

What about Den Of Thieves (DOT) is funny or original?

Have you actually read the OP?

You can disagree with the names, but its what the thread is supposed to be about……..

If it’s supposed to be about funny names then I think my favorite has got to be “Hold My Starbucks I Cant [Even].”

As for cool sounding ones, “Represents Our Sacred Elements [ROSE]” is without contest, my favorite. I like guild names that have initials that spell something but 90% of the time when people try to do it, it looks really obvious that they were picking and choosing words to spell something out. With this particular name, it just fits and sounds so gorgeous to me.

I love naming things and I appreciate lyrics and poetry. I’m envious of the person who came up with that name for their creativity.

My two cents

Every class should have it’s place. Thief and Mesmer (among others) happen to be most at home in a small scale/solo environment. They perform better in these circumstances because they have better tools to deal with 1v1/X (up to a maximum of 3 assuming all players are mediocre. More of they’re terrible) than certain other professions. Low cooldowns, moderate – high mobility, stealth, quick-cast interrupts and strong, reliable healing skills are more efficient than high cooldowns, low mobility, little – no stealth and high risk heals. These things give these professions advantages over professions that fall in to the latter category because they can persist for longer.

Of course you can be an effective roamer with any profession if you are skilled with it and your decisions but some come with more risks than others. The same can be said with zerging, some professions come with more risks than others. Thieves die very easily in large scale combat because they don’t have the tools to survive a bomb like some other classes do.

It’s certainly true that Thieves are the dominant predator in the roaming scene and that, when played properly, they do not suffer the same risks as other classes, but there are risks all the same. There is skill in damage avoidance regardless of whether people want to admit it or not. That isn’t to say it’s highly skillful but there is still practice and patience involved, at least in the case of players who don’t mash evade repeatedly and get results because their opponent is as bad as they are.

Roaming is not a matter of balance. It’s a matter of strategy. Though there are times when things will clearly need to be adjusted, for the most part, it’s about choosing your battles and learning from the experiences. Thieves, Mesmers and other top-dog roamers are going to give you trouble 100% of the time if you’re using something that isn’t as strong or that you’re not as good with. And if you’re running a zerging build and getting rekt by roamers you kitten well better not cry “OP, OP!” because they’re prepared and you’re not.

For the record, I hate Thieves as much as anyone else. I’m not a particularly amazing player but I love solo/small scale play and I get pounded by Thieves all the time. I know how to kill the bad ones good and easy but the Thief mains, the ones that balance their evades and initiatives, etc. almost always feel like an uphill fight. And that’s why I made a build that I can use against the good Thieves for those times I’m running in to a lot of them. It’s not their fault when I’m using a glass Ranger or a vanilla Necromancer that I’m an easy kill. It’s mine because I’m stubborn and I play what I enjoy.

I’ve been on a lot of servers and have followed a lot of guilds. I’ve watched/participated in lots of GvG’s and I’m always stalking the guilds I respect when I know they’re on a map.

It may be a matter of opinion more so than fact but the guilds I’ve had the most respect for were; [Rekz], [PA], [VP], [MR], [Woe], [DINO] and on EU [BOO].

I respect and trust guilds that frequently win outnumbered fights without relying on gimmicks, that wipe when it’s reasonable and that respect their server mates instead of acting above them. I’m not impressed by guilds that run 50 deep and behave like pugs or guilds that barely scrape by every fight and chest thump. The ones I named might not be the best to many but they were the best to run with for me and the ones I never questioned the actions of.

OnS, KEK, TW and BoRP might have reputation but their quality doesn’t say to me that it was earned through positive performance. Just like with pop music, they’re as one dimensional as their lyrics and they’ll be forgotten the second something bigger pushes it’s way through.

Anet needs the revenue, they won’t add something that prevents them from getting cash. GW2 won’t last forever and they’ll get what they can from it while it’s still alive.

People will always bandwagon because the majority of players aren’t interested in challenge, they’re interested in victory. Even if victory means winning against numbers a fraction of their size. As long as people can blob down their enemies, they’re going to sniff out the biggest blob for the most safety.

Auburn.2456:

I make it a point to always kill people in wvw. Everything is fair in wvw. Me and a buddy love to go and throw rat wells at duels. If people want to duel, go to OS or guild hall, there are even PvP maps you can go to.

And I love to watch duels, not participate in them. Because it’s almost guaranteed some moron will come along trying to stop it. Which is when I run in to kill and siege bury the player(s) that interfered. The hate whispers always make for a good laugh because “GO DUEL IN OS SCRUB OMG.”

It has already been stated by others but to add to the echo -

Expect there to be backlash if you’re interrupting a duel or a GvG.

Red is dead, yes. You’re entitled to attack who you please but just as much as you are allowed to attack who you wish, others are allowed to not attack who they wish. Remember that red is also a person just like you. Maybe all you know of them is their character’s appearance, their rank and guild, but they’re just playing the game the same as you. You don’t need to have anything more than a competitive dislike for them, otherwise you’re making it personal. When you try to stop people from doing what they enjoy, in this case duelling, it can feel personal. And that can lead to consequences you may not wish to experience.

I assume you accidentally (or perhaps purposefully) interrupted a duel and the people watching chose not to help you. It can feel pretty crappy when that happens but you have no one to blame but yourself if it was intentional. If it was accidental, then yes that sucks but you can easily redeem yourself by going back to the site of the incident and standing by passively to show that you’ve learned.

WvW is free game. You can do many different things and no one is entitled to tell anyone else how to play, other than how they wish to play themselves. Assuming no one is breaking any rules (ie. harassment, hacking/exploiting, supply/siege abuse), they can be as aggressive, obnoxious or downright unfair as they want when it comes to combat and competition.

To those who say “git gud”/“L2P” etc., or that they found the fight easy – I thought I made it clear in the OP that this fight isn’t difficult, it’s artificially difficult. There’s a big difference.

I did this fight on a semi-tank Warrior and I didn’t die at all, though I did down a couple times getting greedy. The fight wasn’t complicated or hard, it was annoying. It was annoying that I was being punished for things I couldn’t avoid/couldn’t see and it didn’t teach me through example. It’s like giving your dog a treat for doing something right and scolding it for doing something wrong versus giving it a treat for no reason and scolding it for no reason. It’s not going to stop crapping on your carpet if you’re not scolding it when it does.

Those of you that it was easy for had good RNG. Hate to break it to you, it isn’t skill. There are no amount of evades or Stability stacks that can prevent every CC in that fight unless a) you end it in under 60 seconds or b) RNG is on your side and you’re not hit while you’re trying to DPS.

There are lots of encounters like this in other games that teach you nothing and are poorly designed. There’s nothing “wrong” per-se with doing this, it’s just lazy is all. If people are asking for more difficult fights in GW2, give them more difficult fights, not gimmicks. I’ve seen enough comments that agree with me when I say many people came out of that fight not feeling good about it. Most just decided they wouldn’t do it a second time.

So again to clarify, I didn’t find this fight hard. I found it cheap and crappily designed because I was being punished when I shouldn’t have been and rewarded when I shouldn’t have been.

Anyway /end rant. I’m not angry about any of this, I just felt it was necessary to add my opinion to the growing list of others who didn’t enjoy this encounter. Perhaps ANet will try to design some actual difficult fights in the future rather relying on gimmicks. I know they’re capable of doing it and I’d like to see it happen.

EDIT: Thank you for the changes to the final fight. By the looks of the patch notes, it will be much more bearable. The following post was how I felt prior to the changes and is no longer relevant.

As someone who enjoys challenging content. Someone who intentionally plays vanilla builds in WvW/PvP because she both genuinely prefers the vanilla builds and because she enjoys that it makes fights more difficult. And someone who is always most interested in video games that don’t hold your hand (a Dark Souls/Soul series veteran, Dragon’s Dogma lover, Act Raiser and Super Meat Boy fan)…

That final fight and a number of other fights in the Living World stories prior to this one was awful (yes, I believe “was” is grammatically correct).

It is not difficult. It’s artificial difficulty and it’s nothing short of obnoxious. There’s no way to avoid/negate every CC that’s thrown at you unless you build full tank. In which case the fight will take all day and even then, I’m sure you’ll still get slapped around like an Irish nanny at least a couple times.

A challenging encounter is when you immediately recognize your mistakes and learn from them. Either you understand what punished you or you allow yourself to be hurt again so you can observe and memorize the tells.

Having so much crap thrown at you that it becomes a matter of RNG whether you’re hurt or not isn’t difficulty. It’s artificial difficulty and that’s the worst kind because it doesn’t make you a better player. Maybe some people will enjoy it but they won’t approach the fight differently the second time.

I appreciate that Guild Wars 2 is a free to play game and that there’s so much quality content. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game, but fights like this have to stop… Enough with the CC spam, very few people like it and no one gets better by being exposed to it.

I legitimately cringe at the thought of future Living World bosses because of how consistently bad they’ve been. The new maps, the story, visuals, everything is great but holy mother of Grenth, please consider not turning your dear Tyrians in to pin balls… Especially as someone who has been a Necromancer for the last 3 years, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I’ve had plenty enough of being knocked around, thanks.

Justine.6351:

I didn’t know about the falling into portals = no fall damage. That’s fairly big thing to know.

It can save your life if you’re being chased to the top floor while a zerg is attacking the lord. Can confirm this after having done it a number of times, lol. They’ll just stay at the top floor staring down like “YOU WIN THIS ROUND.”

A couple for EBG, in order of the spots:

Placing siege near the vista in green keep. It won’t get refreshed but it’s difficult to spot and difficult to kill if your keep is being attacked from this gate.

The opening to the off the map cave in the Dredge tunnels.
Inside the opening and waving at my pet.
Looking down in to the river that goes no where.
You used to be able to get on top of a cliff in this place and build siege but you can’t anymore.

And the last one, looking down at the portal from the top floor of SMC. If you jump just right, you can avoid taking any fall damage by landing on the portal.

All things I’m sure most people know. There are a number of other secrets I know of but some of them require owning structures we didn’t currently own when I was taking these pictures. And I was just plain too lazy to do the jumping puzzle to get to the top of that crumbling tower across from Quentin Lake, plus a lot of people know you can climb it anyway.

Maybe I’ll take more pictures tonight and add them.

Anyway nice video, I learned a couple things!

Let me explain this to everyone

Bring meta classes and builds to get squad invites. Doesn’t matter if you know how to play it or not, commanders will want you because even if you’re bad with it, you’re still providing more support than a personal build or roaming build.

There’s nothing wrong with playing what you like and playing how you like it but zerg play is team play and requires the teams co-operation. Which means doing what the commander asks of you.

It is not okay for a commander, or for others, to berate you for playing what you like but unfortunately it is the mentality that metas breed. You can ignore it or you can fight upstream.

You probably won’t get invited to a squad if you’re not a meta class/build but that doesn’t mean you can’t play effectively if you’re comfortable with what you play. Pay attention and don’t be a rally bot.

Every class offers something unique and should be accepted regardless but realistically, it would take far too long to evaluate individual skill levels and builds. It’s easier to accept only what’s most effective and to hope the person playing it can play it half decent.

Don’t be personally offended just because a commander doesn’t want you in their squad. Make yourself useful if that’s what you want to do and forget about trying to get in to the self-entitled cool kids squad. Better yet, squad/party up with friends and make a picker group, sniping off siders and backliners.

It all comes down to the fact that, unfortunately, some classes are better suited for zerg play than others. You can try as hard as you like to validate your special snowflake build but it will rarely grant you a space in the group if you’re not running something meta.

You do you and stop worrying about what others think. Don’t be a dead weight and contribute how you can, that’s all that matters.

Jeknar.6184:

But back on topic. I couldn’t care less about what people think I should be playing. If I want to play mesmer, I will play it, and the commander can go kitten himself if he want me to change profession. But I never bothered entering squads before and I continue to do so.

I’m the very same.

I’ve been in a whopping 4 guilds since I started playing 3 years ago and I’ve never taken WvW seriously enough to care about running meta builds or using TS.

I understand meta is meta for a reason and that TS provides unique communication but I literally do not give a single kitten about any of it. I play video games to have fun. I don’t care if I’m good, bad, playing what’s meta or isn’t, etc. All I care is that I’m relieving stress and having fun as long as my enjoyment isn’t intruding on other people’s enjoyment.

It’s unfortunate that so many people get personally offended when you bring a Ranger to a zerg or use a personal build on a meta class, etc. I’ll never understand why it matters so much to some people how other people play the game. In large scale combat, it hardly makes a difference if some people are playing non-meta builds/professions/playing more casually. Yes, it’s definitely problematic if a large percentage of people are doing this, but that’s just a pug blob and you can’t expect GvG tier quality from that 100% of the time.

When commanding, you should work with what you have not with what you want.

That’s what I do when commanding in EOTM. Yes, I know EOTM is a whole different beast but my point is that I’m not screaming at people to pay attention or to change classes, etc. If they’re not good at open field fights, I look for other ways to fight. If they’re all dying on inc., I avoid fights all together unless we’re able to surprise the enemy. If they’re listening well and doing great in fights, I make sure to dominate the map.

I’m not going to deny that what I choose to play/how I choose to play isn’t always beneficial to the zerg I’m following. I understand how to “properly” play, but I ain’t gonna if I don’t wanna and I’m not gonna be made ’ta.

I feel I’ve more than proved my point the many, many times I’ve gone front line on a vanilla, full glass, non-Marauder, Ranger and lived longer than the front line Guardians. I didn’t bring any kind of support those times or any other times but it shows I know what I’m doing and know how to stay alive regardless of whether I’m getting support or not. If that’s not worthy of a squad invite, you’re not worthy of being revived when I see you go down.

No. Get better. That’s the answer.

Choppy.4183:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Here is my exact build

As I’d said in the initial comment, 1 stack of Signet Precision is active + Fury. 25 stacks of Bloodlust + the foods as well. All I did before taking this picture was activating Signet of Rage because it’s a pretty realistic circumstance since that’s often one of the first things you’ll do upon entering a fight.

You can select 25 Bloodlust stacks and adjust the Might stacks on that page to see how the stats increase if you like.

Also, no. With a 16second cooldown on Healing Signet and with Last Stand granting longer duration Berserker’s Stance + 2 conditions removed on weapon swap (Cleansing sigil + Brawler’s Recovery) I am not at all weak to conditions.

Fair enough. It’s a legit build and you’re not stacking the deck. My comment about conditions (possibly) wrecking it was contingent on you running full signets (which you aren’t doing).

Healing signet’s more of an “oh man, if I better clinch this or bail” sort of skill. More often than not it gets stripped if I use it, and then I’ve got a bar of condis and no incoming healing (unless AH is still running, because a blind on the bar with no resistance will keep me from proccing that too).

Despite the raw numbers, it’s not a particularly strong build, at least not relative to what’s out there. It’s viable and all, but it won’t supplant the more common warrior builds, even the str-def-dis vanilla warrior. Would it be fair to say you haven’t had much of a problem with vanilla warriors seeming OP in a while?

I just wanted to provide an example of how power builds are, in the vast majority of circumstances, better than condition builds and are capable of achieving both high defence and offence if planned properly.

I’ve argued against the “nerf condi’s” thing so many times I’m running out of ways to validate it. All I can say anymore is that while yes, there are certain condition builds that are over performing, conditions as a whole are not. Some professions/builds get greater benefit from certain stats than what they should but that doesn’t warrant a blanket nerf to Expertise (condition duration) or conditions as a whole.

Power builds having low toughness and/or health doesn’t make them balanced. Lots of them (not all) have enough passive/active defences via blocks, evades, procs or otherwise to compensate for their armor stat short-comings. HoT brought a lot of power creep and power builds aren’t innocent of being imbalanced. I just wish condition builds would stop taking centre stage for hate and nerf cries when there are far less condition builds that are imbalanced than power builds.

Back to the build, you’re certainly right. It’s viable but not amazing. Regardless, I can crit 10k+ while having 3.4k armour. Yet no one’s pointing fingers at things like this.

Choppy.4183:

^^ Looks suspicious. Please post build.

To give you an idea, you have about 400+ more power, 6% more crit chance, almost 10% more crit damage, and 1k more toughness than a zerk warrior there. That you cut the bar out of your screen cap, I’m guessing you’re running full signets and a bunch of buffs.

If so, ironically, condis would slaughter you.

Here is my exact build

As I’d said in the initial comment, 1 stack of Signet Precision is active + Fury. 25 stacks of Bloodlust + the foods as well. All I did before taking this picture was activating Signet of Rage because it’s a pretty realistic circumstance since that’s often one of the first things you’ll do upon entering a fight.

You can select 25 Bloodlust stacks and adjust the Might stacks on that page to see how the stats increase if you like.

Also, no. With a 16second cooldown on Healing Signet and with Last Stand granting longer duration Berserker’s Stance + 2 conditions removed on weapon swap (Cleansing sigil + Brawler’s Recovery) I am not at all weak to conditions.

Was messing around with builds on my Warrior and landed on a fun one. Thought I’d stop in just to share these stats. ‘Cuz, yeah… All power builds are balanced and condition builds aren’t /s.

And for context: Arms/Discipline/Defence. Cavalier/Berserker. +10% damage reduction food, Toughness -> Ferocity utility food. Fury + Signet Precision (one stack, Signet Of Rage active. Which means using only that one Signet, I go up to 55% Precision. 26% base).

I truly don’t know how people have such a grudge against condition builds when you can make power builds like this that can crit 10k+ while blocking (Dragonhunter), evading (Daredevil) or just being absurdly tanky (Warrior) among other things, and while sacrificing very little. Face it, condition builds are second best and only good at killing bads or the unprepared. If you’re consistently dying to them, you’re one or both.

Famine.7915:

Never liked the Dhuumfire as it is now. Necro has no traits to support burning and you get very little burning from what is a “Grandmaster” trait. Never worth it IMO.

In PvP/WvW, it’s a good cover condition. That’s about all it has use for. Less conditions = easier to cleanse.

babazhook.6805:

Nikkinella.8254:

Cygnus.6903:

babazhook.6805:

That p/p thief I am talking about has just over 20k health in wVw in a power build along with 2400 armor. He started with more armor then that (using sentenils) because he WANTED to. he found that as he scaled back his armor for more power and even more damage his survival went UP because he can kill people including your condition builds in their 3.2k armor faster. He was not forced to do this.

~snip~

Dire and trailblazers is NOT an issue. If my power thief can kill a warrior in 3k+ armor and 26k health , he can kill a person in dire with 3.2k armor and 26k health. Against that power warrior my thief can not afford any mistakes. Against a condition build he can make more then a few.

This is so far off from reality, it’s quite obvious to me that you approach this from a theoretical point of view.

A thief with 20k+ health and 2,4k armor will not kill anything quickly. 8k unloads also seem highly unlikely. I know this, because I run a full berserk thief with Scholar runes quite often, and those numbers don’t occur unless you fight something equally glassy. On a sidenote, I think its funny you say its 8k damage on a single attack, as most people (with a brain) will dodge 3/4th of your unload (which is a single button press, but 8 attacks).

If you can show me a vid of you beating a Dire warrior (or any other class for that matter) in 3,2k armor and 26k health with making several of your allowed mistakes, I’ll be surprised.

At least when you are fightign that power warrior, the ’can’t afford any mistakes’-mentality goes both ways. If the warrior screws up a bit too much, a good thief will punish. The Dire warrior can take backstabs and /dance.

That’s usually the case with pretty much every person that’s pro-condi. All theory and speculation based on stats on paper, without anything physical to back it up. Whereas there’s already numerous videos from top roamers disproving everything they claim when they say condi isn’t op. which is why i tend to just dismiss everything they say. Its all BS. Its just a case of bad players that don’t want their crutch taken away from them, so they argue with theories even though in practice what they claim isn’t the least bit true.

Quite frankly this a pathetic response. I have 10+ various Toons and only three of them condition. I prefer power builds.

The bias being expressed here is really quite obvious and that is POWER builds losing to condition and unable to face up to their own shortcomings blaming it on the build they face.

Take more cleanses. It your CHOICE to do so. If you do not take cleanses or are unable to avoid condition applications against youserlf, this a personal failing and has nothing to do with the fact that the person you face wears dire or trialblazers.

I am in WvW withabout 80 percent of all time in GW2. I use power as a roamer more often then condition.

In other words YOU are full of BS.

Same story here. Something like 80% of my play time in GW2 is in WvW, only one of my four characters are condition and I partake in all areas of WvW; zerging, roaming solo/group, havoc, scouting and commanding. Condition bunker Chronos (well played ones) are the only condition builds that ever give me trouble. All you need is appropriate condition removal/management and to avoid the hard hitters.

Condition builds may be a bit easier to play in most cases but there are difficult to play ones as well. Being squishy doesn’t automatically = skill. I can blast through health bars so quickly on my glass Ranger skill doesn’t even come in to play. People just die before they know what hit them. But I guess that’s balanced because it’s not a condition build going by the logic of some of the people here.

Also round of applause for that response, Babazhook. I agree 100%.

Condition version

Skill 1:
Rend your foe causing Vulnerability. Bleed if the entire channel hits.
Activation time: 2
Attacks per second: 3
Range: 200
Vulnerability: x2 (3s)
Bleed: x3 (3s)

Skill 2:
Quickly spin in a circle, reflecting projectiles and increasing the duration of Bleed you have applied.
Activation time: 1
Recharge: 10
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 240
Bleed duration increase: 3s

Skill 3:
Pull your chainsaw through the ground kicking up dirt, Blinding and Crippling your target repeatedly. If this attack hits a second target, it knocks each of them down.
Activation time: 1/2
Recharge: 15
Number of Targets: 5
Range: 300
Blind: x5 (2s)
Cripple x5 (2s)

Skill 4:
Overcharge your chainsaw causing the blades to burst in to flames. Your next five attacks cause Burning.
[Note: This skill behaves similarly to Incendiary Ammo but it will only apply Burning for the next few Chainsaw specific attacks]
Activation time: 1/4
Recharge: 20
Burning: x2 (3s)
Duration of buff: 30

Skill 5:
Overfill your chainsaw causing it to become soaked in gasoline. Each hit following this attack increases the duration of Burns you apply by a static duration. If this attack is interrupted, Slow your target instead.
Activation time: 1
Recharge: 25
Burn duration increase per attack: 2s
Duration of buff: 20

Power version

Skill 1:
Rend your foe causing Vulnerability. Cause extra Vulnerability if the entire channel hits.
Activation time: 2
Attacks per second: 3
Range: 200
Vulnerability: x2 (3s)
Vulnerability on final hit: x4 (3s)

Skill 2:
Quickly spin in a circle reflecting projectiles and gaining Stability.
Activation time: 1
Recharge: 10
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 240
Stability: x2 (2s)

Skill 3:
Pull your chainsaw through the ground kicking up dirt, launching your target. If this skill hits a second target, each of them are launched for a greater distance.
Activation time: 1/2
Recharge: 15
Number of Targets: 5
Range: 300
Initial Launch: 200
Launch if multiple targets are hit: 750

Skill 4:
Overcharge your chainsaw gaining Quickness. Each time you land a critical hit, increase the duration of Quickness by a static amount.
Activation time: 1/4
Recharge: 20
Quickness duration increase per critical hit: 2
Duration of buff: 30

Skill 5:
Rush at your foes with your chainsaw above your head, deal damage and cause Fear at the destination.
Activation time: 2
Recharge: 25
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 240
Range: 900
Fear: (3s)

I obviously didn’t think this through too much but I would love so much to have a freaking chainsaw.
I may have to come back to this idea later to redesign the skills with some more thought behind them. I just wanted to share anyway!

A few things to note:

Skill 4 will only cause your next five chainsaw specific attacks to cause Burning on the condition version. Skill 5 will carry over to other skills, however.

Skill 5 would be similar to the Warrior greatsword Rush skill except that it would cause Fear upon landing the attack in a PBAoE.

Justine.6351:

Ok I Did It.2854:

I don’t believe that 1 skill can be causing so much problems in WvW, does no one bring condi cleanse anymore, or does everyone just want to run brain dead max damage builds that cant take condi damage.

There are several other skills that would need looked at in WvW also if your asking for an epidemic nerf.

The biggest complaint of epidemic stems from huge condi stacks on NPCs and siege that then are transfered to players. Talking condi dmg spike so large you cannot think to press condi cleanse. I assume to a lesser extent bombing off a player with resistance is possible too.

This is exactly why I suggested in a separate thread that one of the changes they could make that wouldn’t gut the skill would be to disallow it from working on high-health NPC’s and siege.

Using it on downed players can be dangerous as well but because of how often they die before you can even cast it or you’re forced to move out of range, I don’t think that ability should be changed.

Minor adjustments are all it needs. Even so, had no one started crying about it, I wouldn’t have ever suggested changes. I personally think it’s fine as-is but if it’s going to receive nerfs, I want to have a say in it so it gets nerfed properly instead of in to uselessness.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Sure, there is a lot of dmg reduction in the game, but there are lot’s of cleanses too. If people prefer to take toughness, protection and similar over cleanses or -condi duration, it is actually a sign, that direct dmg tends to be more dangerous without passive counters. You can’t compare power dmg vs target with lots of defense against power and condi dmg vs target with 0 condi defense. That’s obviously not a fair comparison.
Are some condi builds op? Sure. Are all condi builds op? No. Are some power builds op? Yes. So you can’t really nerf condis in general, let power builds untouched and call it balance.

This.

Especially the part about when people used to run anti-condition things and how no one does now.

I just want to state that I’ve been playing a vanilla condition Necromancer for 3 years. Without +Condition Duration food, even in full Trailblazers (mind you without +Duration runes), I feel like I’m losing out significantly on damage pressure without food. Which means even with Expertise, I still need more duration to be dangerous because of how easily people can shed conditions. In full Dire, which has no +Duration, I don’t think I’d be killing anything that had cleanses. It would basically be the equivalent of being in Soldiers at this point in the games life. Expertise is the condition version of Ferocity and you need it if you want to be dangerous against anyone who has cleanses.

Condition bunker Chrono is the problem and people not taking ample condition clears is the problem. Don’t blame conditions as a whole. Yes some could use reworking but again, stop trying to get them nerfed across the board just because you dislike them.

The Game Slayer.7632:

shagwell.1349:

Fun part is that this topic is about Trailblazer and Viper but not mentioning Marauder/Commander.

I’d venture to say that anyone who tries to compare tb/dire to mar/com doesn’t really know a lot at all about opportunity cost and how stats work. But that’s just me.

My Engineer (no Scrapper) is in Celestial/Commander’s with Durability runes. I can crit people for up to 12k and have rifle skills that regularly do between 5k and 9k. I can full heal in about 2 seconds, have perma-Stability, Might, Fury, have 82% critical chance with traits and Fury (+30% in melee range at almost all times), 2.9k armor, 23k health, 173% Ferocity.

I am way, way more tanky on my Engineer than my condition Necromancer. I am way, more tanky on my Marauder Dragonhunter as well.

No matter how many times the complaint about Trailblazers, Dire or conditions in general is brought up, I’ll never understand how people think it’s OP. You got rekt by a condition bunker Chrono, okay, we all do once in a while. They’re over tuned. No need to punish everyone just because one profession is over performing and getting too much benefit from certain gear stats. If we’re going to nerf it across the board, I want all power stats to reduce the users maximum health by 10%.

Omegas fire projectiles.

Build 6 Shield Generators behind the gate or at a location that can reach outside the walls if they’re hitting walls and GG.

Setis.2863:

Can you please explain me why you want more bleeding-duration (or fire) on Blunderbuss? What kind of condition-dmg do you expect to do with the rifle? Or is it just for a hybrid build?
Maybe it is something that I just don’t see.

Because Rifle works nicely with hybrid/tank builds. Even with heavily defensive stats, Rifle can do some solid damage. I run a Commander/Celestial Durability rune build (WvW) and Rifle works great with it. I maintain 15 – 20 stacks of might and Jump Shot can crit as high as 12k on players with 2.9k armor, 23k health and 173% Ferocity.

I wouldn’t be upset if the conditions were removed from any of the attacks, I just feel that it’s nice for hybrid builds because it can help to maintain pressure post-burst and through blocks.

Also need to consider that Pistols are condition, Hammer is power, so it makes sense to me that Rifle is hybrid. Again, I wouldn’t complain if it became a fully power based weapon though.

coro.3176:

Yeah.. Rifle was meant to be a mixed-range weapon but that was back before HoT happened.

In theory, what you wanted to do was something like:

Jump Shot on top of an enemy, surprising them; dodge their counterattack; hit them at close range with Blunderbuss, then dodge again if necessary and hit them with Overcharged Shot to cc them and put some distance between you; Net Shot to keep them there and keep pew pew-ing until you can repeat that.

(obviously, other skills go in there too depending on your build. Eg: Magnet-PryBar-OverchargedShot-ThrowWrench-NetShot-GrenadeBarrage, for example)

But it’s really difficult to get any of those combos off any more. CC was supposed to be Rifle’s utility and defense, but it no longer works. Overcharged Shot is more likely to hit defense like block or aegis or reflect, or a projectile wall than not. When you do land it, your opponent is likely to have stability or have the cc canceled by a passive trait. Net Shot is a pretty weak cc to begin with, but it’s almost insulting how easily it’s countered by thieves and warriors’ immob-breaking traits.

I prefer Hip Shot x # of times → Overcharged Shot → Net Shot → Jump Shot → Blunderbuss → Acid Bomb.

I still prefer rifle over hammer but it definitely needs a bit of a damage boost and some adjustments to the other skills. Such as; increasing the duration of Net Shot’s Immobilize, perhaps grants Engi 10sec of Swiftness if it’s evaded. Increasing the Bleed duration on Blunderbuss or, maybe change the condition to Burning. Reduce knockback duration on the Engi from Overcharged Shot and increase the range it launches the target. Increase the velocity of Jump Shot.

Hm… So, if all the blobs are on one map… EBG… Then…

Wait for it…

The borderlands would be perfect for small scale. Which they are already.

It’s a lot safer to roam in the BL’s because the zergs congregate in EBG for the most part. If you want a map that’s better suited to small scale, you already have it.

Lahmia.2193:

-snip- Revenants and guardians can easily make short work of conditions.

And usually do. Frontliners especially drop conditions so fast you’ll hardly see any of them make a single tick of damage before they’re removed. Unless the person is offsides, I pretty much never bother with trying to Epi frontliners because the conditions are gone almost as quickly as they appear. I honestly do not understand how people think there aren’t enough cleanses in large scale.

There has been so much whining over this skill that I thought it would be a good idea to make a thread about ways to balance it rather than ways to ruin it. I’m not suggesting all of what I’ve listed be done at once, just things that would fine to change. Either way, I hope it stays untouched because it’s rarely an issue except for those that don’t bring the appropriate skills to deal with it. Which, apparently, is a lot of people.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

coro.3176:

Crinn.7864:

coro.3176:

I have video of a fight where I take 13k!!! ticks of condi. I immediately start casting my heal (only clears 2 condis ’cause lol engi, but gotta try, right?). My heal is 75% of the way through casting when I take the second tick and die.

13k ticks would be the work of 5 or so sources in most cases.

Do you realize how hard 5 or power classes would hit you?

You can see power damage coming and dodge or block it (with the exception of insta-teleport thief steal+venom combos). You can’t be constantly clicking on allies to see which have conditions on them. Furthermore, it’s very difficult to tell when one near you is being epi’d and whether you’ll take a few conditions and not care, or take 13k ticks and die instantly.

the initial condi applications can often be avoided.

It’s certainly true to some extent you don’t know how hard the epi bounce is going to hit. However, 13k ticks are either coming from siege/lord, or, from multiple epi bounces. Possibly both.

Again.. it’s ultimately an L2P issue.
Adapt or die.

Go look up this page:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

There is an entire section on skills that remove conditions from allies.

/circlethread

The initial condi applications can indeed be avoided, but in wvw there is a 99% chance there is a noob pug inside a 600 radius to you. 600 units is absurdly large, and having it be unblockable is icing on the cake. You are only as good as the worst player within 600 units of you is when it comes to epidemic.

Meteor shower? Walk out of it. Epidemic? Clea- nvm you’re already dead and so are 4 other people near you.. It’s an over-performing skill, and I don’t personally want to see it viscerally gutted, but it needs some small shaving done.

Gonna keep sharing my thread here where I suggested ways to balance Epidemic without gutting it.

I’ve also already said this a number of times in this thread but if I have 7k hours logged strictly in WvW (according to GWEfficiency) and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been one-shot Epi bombed… Then the people that are dying from it constantly are doing something very wrong. Yes it has potential to do massive amounts of damage but those situations are so obvious you should have learned how to avoid it by now.