Guild Wars 2

The current system is fine:

Being higher level means you have more traits, better gear, more utilities (Both more utility slots (3rd one at level 20) and more skill points to unlock more skills)

Sure the gear gets somewhat scaled down with you but it still doesn’t stop my level 20 characters killing level 14-15 things in 2-3 hits while scaled down, nor does it stop my level 80 characters literally one shotting things up to level 40ish.

As far as experience needed to level not scaling? Well the fact that exp gained scales based upon you actual level (Along with zone level based scaling) means that I can go to complete a level 1-15 zone on a level 80 character and still get 1-3 levels.

Oh, and removing level scaling is unlikely to happen as it’s supposed to make map completion somewhat challenging rather than a “I can run past everything since it’s all way low level and won’t attack me”

Okay, so Minions received a few buffs in the last patch but they still have glaring problems such as their AI not being consistent and their complete lack of usefulness in areas where AoE are present.

I was playing around with some minions earlier and started thinking about ways to improve on these problem areas, I came up with:

• Reduce their toughness but increase their vitality to compensate – This will lower the chances of them getting aggro meaning that they will live slightly longer.

• In combat and out of combat health regen – Giving them decent health regen out of combat will increase the fluidity of Minions as it’d reduce the likelyhood of entering combat with a Minion that has low health (Or if swapping Utilities to dismiss it, waiting on the cooldown for said minion) whilst giving them a small amount of health regen in combat will assist in their ability to stay alive through small amounts of random cleaves/AoE

• Weapon Skills causing minions to attack current target – Improves how minions initiate combat, removes the issues caused by AoE heavy weapon sets (Staff) and makes target switching more reliable – Optional weapon skills with no target makes them attack the nearest target

• Dodging to make Minions also dodge – Allows minions to be able to avoid high damage attacks that are easy to notice and avoid by players Optional Make dodging have minions disengage combat and head for the player (So as to be able to position them via Dodge, if coupled with the Weapon skill combat initiation it should be fairly fluid to engage/disengage combat like every other weapon skill and utility in the game)

Anyway… If you can think of something else it’d be nice to have some ideas on how improvements could be made.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Actually, the stats the weapon has will only be applied when you hit with that weapon.
So if you have +5% to accuracy from the sigil for example on your offhand weapon, you don’t get the accuracy bonus while hitting on the mainhand weapon.

Sigil effects are not restricted to the respective weapon’s skills. For example, a Sigil of Force on an off hand weapon will also increase the damage of mainhand skills or utility skills.

Sigils that trigger on critical hits can trigger on any critical hits dealt by the player, with any skill.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil

Though there is a character sheet error where the 5% crit sigil isn’t added to the crit chance on the character sheet when on an off-hand weapon, it still has its effect of increasing crit chance with any attack by 5%.

On Topic:
2 Handed weapons may not get the benefit of 2 sigils (Double Stacks for stacking sigils, or a % damage increase AND a proc sigil)

They have other benefits, such as all 5 of the skills are affected single traits (Not all classes can dual wield like weapons meaning that 1 trait will provide benefit to 2/3 skills) and they have higher damage which impacts their scaling by a decent amount (2 handed weapons do about 100 more damage average, which considering is multiplied by power has a big impact)

Daecollo.9578:

Well, you can’t “always” hit the mob, you could also be knocked down, CCed, Frozen, Rooted, Or just away from the mob not able to hit them. So you can’t always hit them.

1) You can’t “Always” have Regeneration (Except for a few builds on certain classes) and it can always be removed by various boon removal tools.

2) At least 1 of the procs is upon being hit, which is a 2 piece bonus and would do more than triple the HPS than another runes 6 set bonus on average

Hmm…

3 separate life steals on what seems like 3 separate 1 second cooldowns…

Allowing for up to 975 HPS or on average about:

48 HPS for the Sigil (Assuming 50% crit chance)
97.5 HPS for the Rune procs
About 243 HPS along with 243 DPS (As life steal does both damage that is unmitigated by armour as well as healing)

Compared to Dolyak Runes (30 HPS) + Mango Pies (85 HPS) and Regeneration boon (130 HPS with no healing power, about 317 HPS if using full Healing Power gear)

At what cost? 50 points of a secondary stat and some (Usually) lackluster 6 bonus plus a cooldown sigil which may or may not be more beneficial depending on build?

I like the current runes, increasing the healing of a healing skill by 975 whilst also making it do the same damage is great as well as the proc heal (Though I sometime wish it was 10% chance…)

The only issue I have with the 6 bonus is that is for some reason shares cooldown with traits that proc on % health…

The explosion from the Bone Minions can crit.

It’s just that they use their own stats and get no benefit from yours meaning they won’t have your Power/Precision/Crit damage and therefore a low crit chance/no massive damage boosts.

Life Siphon (Dagger #2) the damage is affected by Power/Precision/Crit damage – The healing is only affected by the Bloodthirst trait.

Life Transfer is affected by Power/Precision/Crit damage.

smezmer.1206:

The fact that necromancers only get one elite skill that works underwater doesnt really help much either.

That’s not limited to Necros though.

Engineer is the only class that has more than 1 Elite that can be used underwater (Though doesn’t help that their Elites are really bad anyway…)

On Topic:
As far as build variety underwater, it’s not too bad you’ve got nice Power build support (Spear does nice Direct Damage as well as Trident 5) there’s Condition build support (Trident, Death Shroud, improved cast times on Epidemic and Blood is Power) Minion build support (Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend and Bone Minions are all available underwater, with massively improved cast times)

The main thing that’s missing is any of the wells (No wells can be used underwater…) but I don’t think that’s too big a drawback considering how fluid everything else is (With lower cast times than on land, nice weapon skills that feel smooth and are decently strong)

Hmm… So it looks like the Mist itself is hit or miss (Whether it’ll actually give Invulnerability or not, it seems consistent in it’s removal of skills(

It also appears that it may share Cooldown with the Minor Trait Last Gasp (Which will proc at 50% life and so will nearly always occur less than 60 seconds before going down to 10%) thus making the 6th rune redundant in any build that goes 15 into Spectral trait line…

leman.7682:

Why the hell do you keep comparing these two elites?

This. is. pointless. This thread is really pointless.

Why compare 2 elites?

Well, unless you’re hacking or something you can only run with 1 elite at a time (Not counting the ability to swap out the Golem if the Charge is not on cooldown)

Thus it’s only logical to try and theorycraft which elite is the best one to run with.

Just like it’s logical to theorycraft trait selections and which weapons to use with what builds etc.

Admired.7461:

Another thing, if you know anything about math, you’d know casting Marked for Death isn’t worth it. You would have to do at over 13 auto-attacks within a 10 second time frame for it to be worth it. 100 / 8% = 12.5 Duration is 10 sec and the CD is 10 sec.

Careful with involving Vulnerability calculations into PvE content, especially dungeons since every other person attacking the target gains benefit from it.

If you would ~8 attacks for about 2k damage totalling 16k damage or 7 attacks for ~2.1k damage totalling 15120 PLUS an extra 8% of every one elses Direct Damage. An average Hundred Blades would already do an extra 1k+ (1200 for a 15k HB, 2000 for a 25K HB) while used during the vulnerability for example.

So I’ve just been testing a glassy life siphoning build in the mists and can’t seem to get the 6 point set to work (At 10% health become Mist. 60 second cooldown) on the runes and am wondering if it’s a bug or if the runes share cooldown with other “When reach X% health” procs such as Last Gasp (At 50% health gain Spectral Armour. 60 second cooldown) and Decaying Swarm (At 25% health gain Locust Swarm)

I’ve also tried using a blank build and trying to get it to proc, and while it does turn me into mist, I don’t get the invulnerability.

Wondering if it’s just an issue with the PvP version of the runes or if the PvE versions also suffer a similar fate?

They haven’t gotten around to adding effects to it.

They recently added effects to some Legendaries that either didn’t have any or had little (Predator, Moot, Dreamer, Quip, Kamohoali’i Kotaki, Frenzy, Kraitkin and Howler)

They’ll eventually get around to adding and polishing effects for the other legendaries (Meteorlogicus, Minstrel etc.)

More thinking has been done!

Elite skill suggestions:

Unstoppable – Reduces damage taken by 50% and provides immunity to Cripple, Chill and Immobilise. Duration 20 seconds. Cooldown 180 seconds.

Blood Leech – Siphon Life dependant on how much life you are missing. I’m thinking something like a 10k Siphon if below 10% health (Life Siphoning cannot crit but also isn’t reduced by armour and both deals damage and heals) 90 second cooldown.

Inspiring Presence – Grant Stability to nearby allies whilst giving Weakness to nearby foes lasting 1 second. 20 second duration. 180 Cooldown.

Will think up some weapon skills soon, trying to incorporate “When target is below 75%/50%/25% life” and “When you are below 75%/50%/25% life” effects to keep the weapon skills interesting considering there’s no weapon swap available.

The reason there’s little to no leveling guides is because the sheer number of different builds that can be used to level from 30-80 and the extreme lack of any customization pre-30 (Where you’ll have at most one major trait and all gear is single stat…)

But things I did while leveling (Note – 2-30 is often best to try out all weapon to find ones you like whilst wearing Power gear)

Dagger/Dagger + Power/Precision
Dagger/Dagger + Condition Damage/Precison
Sword/Pistol + Power/Precison
Pistol/Pistol + Power/Precison
Pistol/Dagger + Condition Damage/Precison
Sword/Dagger + Power/Precision
Shortbow + Power/Precision
Shortbow + Condition Damage/Precision

That’s just for weapons, I could go on and on about the different trait set-ups I tried (Since it’s rather cheap to reset traits and I was earning a bit of money from selling things)

Usually it ends up being favourable to go into the Power line for the first 10 points as having an extra 100 Power at level 20-40 really helps, after Power you can go into anything you like the look of and at level 40 (When you can use Master traits) is the time to look a bit more into making builds.

Sirendor.1394:

I think this actually is what the warrior does. Nothing new here, sorry.

Warrior: High health pool.

Utility skills types:
Stances – Short term buffs, no negatives (Aside from Frenzy)
Shouts – AoE boons (FGJ), Conditions in a single target (On my Mark) or AoE (Fear Me) or condition removal (Shake It Off)
Banners – Placeable item that provides stat bonuses (Not boons unless traited to provide Regen.)
Physical – Does small damage (Can be traited to do average damage) and control with Bull’s Charge doing movement.
Signets – Passive boosts with actives that give a variety of beneficial effects

Class mechanic – Adrenaline charging that allows use of an increasingly more powerful ability (Or traited to be ignored and for Adrenaline to give up 12% more damage, 9% more crit and 360 health per 3 seconds)

Nothing there about percentage health, nothing about harming yourself to give benefits, nothing about Risk vs Reward (It’s all rewards giving rewards) nothing to suggest an highly active and visceral fighting style (Dodging being required and careful consideration of cooldowns and current health and effective health)

Or are you just thinking that because it’s a Soldier class whom uses a Greatsword to hit things that it’s just a Warrior?

Okay, so I know this won’t be implemented and also probably won’t be liked too much (On paper it looks both OP and UP) and may not fit in with GW2 or even have been suggested before/similar to another class in another game I haven’t played but I’m a bit bored and thought “What the heck” since I was thinking about it whilst playing.

Profession type: Soldier

Armour: Heavy

Health: Medium

Class mechanic:

Bloodlust – Damage increased by 0.5% per % of life lost (In the form of a stacking boon icon that goes from 0 up to 99)

F1 – Bloodcraze – Drain 1% of life per second.
F2 – Taste for Blood – Gain Swiftness for 10 seconds (10 second cooldown) Lose 5% life. Available at 75% health.
F3 – Hunger for Blood – Gain Fury for 10 seconds (10 second cooldown) Lose 5% life. Available at 50% health.
F4 – Bloodrage – Gain Quickness for 10 seconds (60 second cooldown) Lose 20% life. Available at 25% health.

Weapons – Single weapon set (No swap)

Greatsword – Melee cleave + Direct Damage
Hammer – PBAoE hits + Control
Sword (Main hand) – Melee cleave + Bleeds
Sword (Off hand) – Melee Bleeds + AoE
Axe (Main hand) – Ranged Single Target
Axe (Off hand) – Ranged AoE

Skill types:

Rage – Short term offensive boons that also applies conditions to yourself
Willpower – Short term defensive boons
Aura – Pulsating AoE boons that last short durations
Presence – Pulsating AoE conditions that last short durations
Physical – Damaging abilities that provide mobility

Heal Skills:

Calm of the Storm – Heals X health and removes conditions
Bloodlust – Attacks siphon Y health
Blood Refuge – Heals Z health and provides Protection for a short duration

Trait Lines:

Anger – Power + Condition Duration
Torment – Precision + Critical Damage
Pain – Toughness + Boon Duration
Blood – Healing Power + Vitality
Fury – Condition Damage + Increases Bloodlust by 0.1% per point

Example of utility skills:

Rage:
Give 15 stacks of Might and applies 15 Stacks of Vulnerability for 10 Seconds (30 second cooldown)
Give 20% critical damage and applies Weakness for 10 + 20 seconds (40 second cooldown)
Give Fury and applies 5 stacks of bleeding for 10 seconds (30 second cooldown)
Give Quickness for 4 seconds and applies 10% increased damage taken, 10 stacks of vulnerability and 5 stacks of bleeding for 10 seconds (90 second cooldown)

Willpower:
Provide Protection for 10 seconds (30 second cooldown)
Provide Regeneration for 15 seconds (40 second cooldown)
Provide Vigor for 10 seconds (30 second cooldown)
Provide Retaliation for 15 seconds (30 second cooldown)

Aura:
Provide Protection to allies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (50 second cooldown)
Provide Regeneration to allies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (50 second cooldown)
Provide Vigor to allies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (50 second cooldown)
Provide Retaliation to allies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (50 second cooldown)

Presence:
Apply Bleeding to enemies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (30 second cooldown)
Apply Vulnerabiltiy to enemies in the area with 10 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (40 second cooldown)
Apply Weakness to enemies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (50 second cooldown)
Apply Burning to enemies in the area with 1 second duration. Lasts 10 seconds (60 second cooldown)

Physical:
Charge forward, knocking down all enemies in your path. (40 second cooldown)
Leap to target location causing PBAoE damage. (30 second cooldown)
Charge to target, crippling all targets in your path and immobilizing your target for 2 seconds (50 second cooldown)
Charge a short distance, dealing damage to enemies in your path. (20 second cooldown)

Various trait ideas:

Increase healing power with Bloodlust.
Increase precision with Bloodlust.
Provide Regeneration at health percentages (2 seconds at 90%, 3 at 80%, 4 at 70%, 5 at 60/50/40/30/20/10%)
Increased damage with number of boons.
Increased damage with number of conditions on self.
Increased toughness with Bloodlust.
Increased toughness with number of conditions on self.
Provide Protection at health percentages (1 second at 90%, 2 at 80%, 3 at 70%, 4 at 60%, 5 at 50,40,30,20,10%)
“Vengeance” style life prolonging on down.

Skill durations/effects/cooldowns are just ideas and not concrete.

Was trying to go for a high potential “Risk vs Reward” style play, where you can deal some great damage if you risk being at very low health (So, kill someone in a few hits and also be killed by anyone in a few hits) or do decent but not extreme damage at a safer amount of life.

That would be the PvP version of Superior Runes of the Nightmare.

It provides 6% for the 2 bonus and 14% for the 4 bonus rather than the stated 4% and 6% respectively.

In my experience, Greater Earth Elemental is capable of tanking 2-3 normal guys for it’s entire duration or 1 veteran for 90% of it’s duration making it an excellent tank.

Ranger pets (I don’t have much experience with the tankier ones, as in I’ve never used one) tend to only be able to take a few hits before going down.

Flesh Golem for me lasts 1-3 hits from enemies making it pretty bad at tanking (Though that is while leveling in places +6 levels to me, unlike my Ele and Ranger testing)

Toughness = Less damage done by Direct Damage.

Vitality = More health to soak damage and larger Life Force.

Life Force in Death Shroud takes more more damage from Conditions than Health does.

Toughness does nothing against Conditions.

Necro’s have a bunch of ways to remove conditions (DS can be traited to remove them)

Toughness causes aggro to go your way in PvE.

There’s merit in going for either.

I know I went “Sod choosing” and use PVT gear so have both (At the cost of crits, but use extra high power + some high damage utilities to try and counteract this)

Zeivu.3615:

It would take away from the Dailies though if you could take out two+ birds in one stone.

You mean like how you can find Veterans in some events to do Events + Kill Veterans?

Or how you can do Events + Kill X things daily requirements at the same time?

Even the Kill Variety can be done with Events as it can lead to some less encountered enemy types to appear (Pirates in some zones for example)

Events and Healer ones can also be done at the same time, especially the “Take back this town” ones.

Scepter/Dagger favours a Condition Build.

Staff can be used in a Condition Build, Hybrid Build or a Bunker Build.

Well of Corruption and Well of Suffering are mostly for Power or Hybrid Builds (Though can occasionally by used in other builds when for example Epidemic isn’t useful)

I’d suggest going towards Condition Damage and Precision with that set up (Also look into running with Epidemic, as it’s amazing for AoE as a Condition Build) with the goal to be getting Rabid gear (Condition Damage/Precision/Toughness)

The issue is that Signets don’t really offer much, most of their actives aren’t that great (Signet of Spite – 1 stack of all conditions for 5 seconds… Oh… Yay….)

That combined with their long cooldowns (Even with the trait, the shortest cooldown is 48 seconds) means the Might stack trait does very little (Up to 9 stacks of might on a 20% uptime at the cost of 3 utilities compared to Blood is Power that without traits is 10 stacks of might on a 40% uptime and still allows for 2 other utilities to be used)

Thus leading to the conclusion that rolling with other utilities is better (Though Locust is still pretty nice for the passive, especially if going Dagger/X in WvWvW)

manaa.5436:

i’d like to know if the following trait work with bombs, mines, grenades :
- Tool, grandmaster trait : +10dmge when endurance is full

Yes that trait works with all direct damage you deal.

manaa.5436:

Are powershoes (inventions VIII) and leg mode (tool X) cumulative ?
Are they cumulative with the swiftness effect ?

No and no. When multiple speed boosts are in effect, only the strongest one is used.

This would be nice.

Every single time I get the “Kill 5 Veterans” daily, I go do my 5 events and after killing 5 champions I say to myself “Well… Now to find some veterans to kill…”

It seems silly that tougher enemies won’t count towards this daily which seems to be designed as a “Kill something tough” that is designed for players of all skill (If it was “Kill 5 champions” then casual players or people whom don’t build for soloing champions easily would struggle, especially if they play at a time where events with champs in aren’t being done)

Bellamy.9860:

An attack that is casted in less then a second should have a higher damage per second then its actual damage per cast.

Theoretically, yes.

In practice, there is a delay between casts that affects the DPS, so I use that attack speed rather than purely the cast time.

Similar problem with the Dagger chain, which even though all parts of the chain have a 0.5 second cast time it takes 2 seconds to complete the 3 part chain.

Duelist Chest

Vigil Legs

Tier 2 cultural legs

Tier 3 cultural legs

To an extent- Whispers Chest

Okay, so:

Mango Pie (85 HPS)
Dolyak Runes (30 HPS)
Healing Signet (200 HPS)
Adrenal Health (125/240/360 HPS)

Allowing 675 HPS in an X/X/15/X/X Build.

Adding in perma regen would add another ~170 HPS (Up to ~845 HPS)

It can work, you can still go a high damage build with 675 HPS with the only requirements being: 15 trait points, some runes and food. All of which provide minor increases to damage if used for damage instead (Aside from the 15 trait points which provide 15% crit damage for glass cannon specs)

Admired.7461:

My only problem is your numbers for Lich Form.

Oops… I forgot to account for the tripled base power when calculating both the coefficient and the amount of power for the equation…. The same Power/Armour would actually end up as:

1000 * 5343 * 0.86 / 1800 = 2552
Making an average DPS of 2552 * 0.75 = 1914 DPS

Testing out the Flesh Golem he appears to attack once every 0.85 seconds
He does an attack chain than on average armour hits for ~640-700/640-700/1000-1200
On high armour targets he hits on average for ~580-600/580-600/940-1000

Which would cause him to do an average of 2440 / 2.55 = 956 DPS on average armour targets and 2150 / 2.55 = 843 DPS on high armour targets.

This isn’t including his Charge (As it can vary wildly the damage it does) nor is it including the Spite 20 trait that would increase his damage by 30% (Which may be more effective than the Marks deal 10% more damage trait in your build noted in the OP)

Using an average amount of Power and Armour:

Dagger #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.6 / 1800 = 762
953 * 2400 * 0.4 / 1800 = 508
953 * 2400 * 0.8 / 1800 = 1016
This chain takes 2 seconds to complete so it ends up being 2286 / 2 = 1143 DPS

Lich Form #1
1000 * 2400 * 2.6 / 1800 = 3466
Attacks approximately 0.75 times a second so it ends up being 3466 * 0.75 = 2599 DPS

I can’t find out the attack rate of the Flesh Golem, but do know that minions don’t scale off your gear so would be a flat amount of DPS regardless of build.

The numbers would favour the Flesh Golem for overall DPS (With 11% uptime Lich Form would provide 285 DPS overall)

But Lich provides the highest burst damage, combined with other cooldowns (Such as Time Warp) Lich Form becomes much better against bosses.

It would also depend on if you’re fighting things with a lot of AoE aswell, since the Flesh Golem could be killed off (I know mine dies within 1-3 hits due to my liking of going against tougher things)

Ideally you’d use Flesh Golem for trash and swap to Lich Form (Since as long as he’s not dead and cooling down and Charge isn’t cooling down you’re free to swap elites) for boss fights to get the burst damage (After popping Utilities/weapon skills etc)

Huh… I’ve also just noticed some other things:

Consume Conditions – 1.25 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Summon Blood Fiend – 1.5 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Epidemic – 1 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Blood is Power – 0.75 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Signet of the Locust – 0.75 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Signet of Spite – 0.75 second cast on land – 0.5 in water.
Signet of Undeath – 2 second cast on land – 1 second in water.

No wonder Necro feels so smooth and fluid in water, all their cast times are reduced by about 1 second…

Just noticed something whilst playing my Necro some more:

Summon Bone Minion – 1.5 Second cast on land, 0.5 in water.
Summon Bone Fiend – 1.5 Second cast on land, 0.5 in water.
Summon Shadow Fiend – 1.5 Second cast on land, 0.5 in water.

Would be nice to have summons being 0.5 at all times (Especially for Bone Minions/Shadow Fiend whom will die often and Flesh Wurm who needs summoning every fight)

Theldrin.9863:

also i just started so i have no idea what “wells +power build is” im currently putting my trait points in spite

Wells build = A build focused around using the “Well” utilities – Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, Well of Power and Well of Darkness.

Power builds are ones that are focused on getting high Power and getting critical chance and damage and focusing on direct damage instead of going for Condition damage.

Theldrin.9863:

what about the other pets? like flesh golem or spectral shade or whatever? im asking if they get better as they level i.e blood minion/bone minion

Some people praise the Flesh Golem as being great for tanking and doing huge damage if it’s charge is used on a target that is against a wall (So it get hit multiple times)

The Flesh Wurm also does pretty good damage even with the downside of being immobile.

The Bone Fiend does pretty decent damage and is ranged (So less likely to be hit by things) and can immobilize enemies to help control the fight.

The Shadow Fiend is the weakest of the Minions, while it does do decent damage it’s a melee minion that doesn’t have the tankiness of the Flesh Golem.

Minion Master builds (If you look around the forum for MM builds, these are builds focused around using minions) can work and also can be pretty strong.

Bas.7406:

Every single minion will attack your target 100 percent of the time if you begin your attack with a single target ability. They will not attack if you begin with Marks, aoe abilities, or anything that might hit multiple targets at one time. They will sit and wait for you to focus than wait a bit more to make sure your target is not going to change.

Interesting that you say this but yet about 40% of the time (About 95% for the Jagged Horror from Reanimator) my minions stand around doing nothing, meanwhile I take out 3-4 enemies from 100% health with only Single Target abilities (Dagger #1 as it turns out)

I don’t do fancy “Hit something then swap targets” to confuse them, I just run up to a dude that’s hitting me, wail on them with single target stuff and look back at my minions whom often are standing around doing nothing, being killed by something while doing nothing or attacking an inanimate object I’ve done 0 damage to.

Though when they work, they do pretty well at keep up with target swapping in larger fights changing targets immediately once a single target ability has been used on a new target.

Damage dealt depends on the level and power of the retaliation’s source. At level 80 this is:

198.45 + (0.075 * Power)
Retaliation is not reduced by the target’s armor.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

At low levels I found the most efficient way to level was by using a bunch of pets, kept alive via the AoE regen granted by the Staff #2 skill Mark of Blood.

Then at around 30ish Wells + Power build starts to pick up, also Condition Builds pick up at some point (I’m not too sure about them, I couldn’t get into it)

I recently started playing around with the Bone Minions though on my Power build, their explosion is pretty strong (For me it’s hitting about 1.5-2k at level 50), I have the trait to lower their cooldown so every 16 seconds I summon them and immediately explode both of them.

The thing about minions is that they don’t scale from gear, meaning they’ll do full damage even if you gear for high Toughness and Vitality (Also by doing so you increase the chances of things attacking you rather than your minions due to Toughness = Aggro)

I’m not 100% sure on the ideal ways to beat them but things that will help take them out:

Every 3 seconds they will attempt to go into stealth using Cloak and Dagger which is a melee hit which can be dodged and will most likely leave them with little spare initiative to do so again.

Dagger #3 – If used just before they stealth (They’ll steal every ~3 seconds due to Revealed debuff) will lock them into place so they can be hit (They still take damage while stealthed and not be able to move if immobilized)

Dagger #4 – Turn their bleeds (Their damage source) back at them, giving you breathing room and making them take extra damage/blow a cooldown to remove the bleeds.

Death Shroud #2 and Focus #5 – Chill can reduce their movement speed making it easier to predict where they are when stealthed allowing them to be attacked

Dagger #2 and Death Shroud #4 – Channels will continue even if the thief stealths allowing damage to be done and the trail of orbs will show their location.

Consume Conditions – If used shortly after they appear from stealth it will remove their bleeds just after they’ve been applied thus negating a lot of damage.

Well of Power – Can remove some more bleeds from them if you need it.

Well of Darkness – Can make them incapable of stealthing as they won’t be able to hit with Cloak and Dagger

Well of Suffering – If placed within Shadow Refuge, will ensure the thief takes damage (If they leave the area of it they lose the stealth gained from it)

Using a combination of these can allow pressure to be kept up on the P/D thief either resulting in a kill or the thief leaving you alone.

Daecollo.9578:

I am sorry, but dagger is probably the weakest weapon set in the necromancers arsenal, yes its fast, but its power and damage is single target and lousy, and I kind of like discussing how “OP” it could be when you discuss it with my idea.

Dagger #1:
953 * Power * 0.6 / Armour = Damage for both hits.
953 * Power * 0.4 / Armour
953 * Power * 0.8 / Armour

Axe #1:
953 * Power * 0.47 / Armour = Damage for both hits.

Staff #1:
1048 * Power * 0.45 / Armour

Scepter #1:
953 * Power * 0.22
953 * Power * 0.32

Death Shroud #1:
1000 * Power * 0.9 / Armour

So, with a decent amount of Power the DPS of these (Excluding Vulnerability/Might/Conditions caused) on an average target are:

Dagger #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.6 / 1800 = 762
953 * 2400 * 0.4 / 1800 = 508
953 * 2400 * 0.8 / 1800 = 1016
This chain takes 2 seconds to complete so it ends up being 2286 / 2 = 1143 DPS

Axe #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.47 / 1800 = 597
Axe attacks approximately 1.7 times per second so it ends up being 298.5 * 1.7 = 507 DPS

Staff #1:
1048 * 2400 * 0.45 / 1800 = 628
This attacks approximately 0.75 times per second so it ends up being 628 * 0.75 = 471 DPS

Scepter #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.22 / 1800 = 279
953 * 2400 * 0.32 / 1800 = 406
It takes 2.5 seconds to complete the chain for this so that would be 984 / 2.5 = 385 DPS

Death Shroud #1:
1000 * 2400 * 0.9 / 1800 = 1200
This attacks approximately 0.6 times per second so it ends up being 1200 * 0.6 = 720 DPS

These attack rates where not calculated, they were tested in game and timed.

These results don’t factor in Critical Hits but Daggers high attack rate would increase the chances of dealing a critical hit per chain thus increasing the potential damage gained from crit.

Softspoken.2410:

The full chain of dagger 1 averages out to around 1.5 attacks per second, not three. I’m not aware of a quick way to reset the attack chain that won’t make you lose damage overall, so I think you have to take the full chain into account.

The axe attacks slightly more quickly (1.7 attacks per second?) on its auto-attack, but still nowhere near three attacks per second.

Each part takes 0.5 seconds to do.

0 seconds -
0.5 seconds Dagger #1 (2 attacks)
1 seconds Dagger #2 (1 attack)
1.5 seconds Dagger #3 (1 attack)
2 seconds Dagger #1 (2 attacks)
2.5 seconds Dagger #2 (1 attack)
3 seconds Dagger #3 (1 attack)

8 Attacks in 3 seconds which is a full chain in terms of attacks per second which ends up being 2.7 attacks per second (~3, other abilities will interrupt the chain increasing the number of Dagger #1 attacks and such)

Also could account for Warhorn #5 causing at least 1 attack per second.

Axe #1 hits twice in 0.75 seconds = 2.7 attacks per second.

Daecollo.9578:

Maybe you could get that with burst attacks, but DPS / HPS is going a little to far, don’t you think?

Dagger #1 = 3 attacks per second = 3x 150 = 450 DPS

With Vampiric Precision a crit = 2x 150

Dagger #1 with a decent crit chance = up to 6x 150 = 900 DPS

Rennoko.5731:

All marks should be 1/4 or 1/2 second (like chillbains).

All marks are 3/4 cast. Including Chillblains…

Also Warhorn #4 is only 1/2 cast which is relatively quick for an AoE Daze (Other AoE Daze are 3/4 cast time)

The only skills I feel have a long cast time are:

Focus #5 – Which is very noticeable since a large reason to use it is to remove Boons applied mid-combat which breaks the flow by a huge amount.

DS #1 – It’s very slow at a full 1 second cast time, it may do high damage but it’s pretty terrible when compared to Dagger #1 which will complete 3 attacks per second… The slow cast time of this also makes using the #2 and #3 skills much harder to do without crippling the damage you’ll do in the short time you can stay in DS.

Cayl Bourne.8073:

Bloodthirst does affect the damage.

So it does… I guess that’s what happens when you don’t sleep.

Cayl Bourne.8073:

Although, as you stated, you couldn’t max both healing and damage, you seem to have forgotten that Cleric’s has power and Shaman’s/Apothecary’s have healing power and condition damage. If you gave a scepter/staff conditionmancer that much extra healing and damage he would be a monster. It could be a viable bunker build with a good damage out put.

To be perfectly honest I’d not actually looked at Shaman’s/Apothecary’s gear but just checked the stats to see the highest healing you could get whilst still having condition damage (Essentially full Apothecary + Ascended and food):

1297 Condition Damage = 45 damage siphons, up to 85 damage with 25 Corruption stacks and 25 Might stacks.
1288 Healing Power = 51 healing from siphons

Bearing in mind that Condition based builds will not leverage Axe or Main Hand Dagger to achieve the 3 attacks per second and will tend to use Scepter (2 attacks per second) or Staff (1.25 attacks per second) making them do 90/56 DPS and 101/64 HPS rather than the really high stuff I mentioned earlier (Which is going complete max possible using those stats and still going at least 15 points into Blood Magic)

Cayl Bourne.8073:

Overall I think these are decent suggestions (don’t like the “chance when hit” bit personally), but you have still left all of the vampiric traits with any real power in the first 20 points. This means it can be a secondary function of nearly any build. I still maintain that almost any buff to vampiric traits must require 30 points in Blood Magic.

It’s possible that Traits could be shifted around (I only put in the “Chance when hit” because: It’s thematic for the profession to be harmful to things around them and it’s thematic for the trait line to focus around staying alive through being hit (I.E. Being tanky increases tankiness)

Maybe have the Vampiric trait becoming a Grand Master Major trait, making Vampiric Rituals a Master Major trait thus requiring a 30 point investment in order to access the strongest Life Siphoning. It shouldn’t affect Well Bombing builds too much since unless they go 30 points they’d have to decide between the 20% cooldown reduction or the Life Siphon from Wells (Though the healing they could get from 4 wells… Though only for 5 seconds/45-60)

pahldus.1678:

mattenator.4328:

This is mine, still a WIP

I’m not sure about the boots/gloves/shoulders, which is why I came in here for inspiration

Also: Please ignore the staff! Haha

Please do tell what pieces those are and what your color scheme is. I really like it, I might try a variation of it on my elementalist as my mesmer is a male.

Looks to be:
Head – One of the Necromancer starting options (I forget the name of it)
Shoulder – Human Tier 2 Cultural
Chest – CoE
Legs – HtW

Not sure what the Gloves/Boots/Exact dye selections are…

Hammer is quite solid in PvE, it doesn’t have the sheer DPS that Axe or GS provides but it does still hit quite hard which when combined with the control it provides causes it to be a very solid choice.

Weakness application in the #2, AoE cripple with #3 (Longer duration and slightly lower cooldown than GS), knockback with #4, knockdown with #5 and an AoE stun with the burst really helps keep a group up on its feet and ploughing through the mobs.

Not to mention the nice defensive traits that are picked up if going for the cooldown reduction on Hammer.

Greatsword can be great because when things get close you can just Hundred Blades > Whirlwind Attack your way out of there and Bladetrail to cripple everything while you blast away with rifle.

Axe/Warhorn would provide good support and decent melee damage and some vulnerability. It also has the benefit of not sharing Trait slots with Rifle (GS without traits is kind of “Meh”)

Hammer can be pretty nice, things get close then WAM! Stunned for a short while then knocked back ready to be blasted with rifle.

If you want to stay at range you can go Longbow and use the heavy AoE damage and Fire Field from the Burst to increase damage output of a group (Blast finishers = Might for all!)

The main things I use it for are:

The #2 to cause Chill (Which can be powerful when trying to lock someone/something down)

The #3 to cause Fear, interrupting various abilities and giving some breathing room (As a condition build you can pick up Terror and do some really nice damage with it as well)

The ability to use it while CC’d can remove a chunk of burst damage if a stun break is not available.

Mostly though (Even in power builds) I use it to jump off very high places and take no damage (Your health is unaffected even if you take enough damage to completely clear your Life Force) which can be handy in solo PvE and certain areas in WvWvW.

Whenever someone says “Kill Shot is fine, it’s easy to see the dude crouching and dodge it”

I always think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru_rXq2LYg0

But yeah, it’s very strong.

Also people who say “Oh but the warrior needs to build adrenaline in combat to use it” have never played warrior and don’t know that they have a Heal skill that fills their Adrenaline, a Signet that has an on use that fills their adrenaline and also a lowish cooldown utility that can fill their adrenaline up to 2 times if used at the correct time (I know this from making a heavy burst using warrior build and sought all adrenaline gains I could)

Not to mention if you really wanted to you could try going glass cannon Kill Shot build sitting at 66% crit chance + Fury + 8 Stacks of Might and just snipe people and such.

LameFox.6349:

Samhayn.2385:

I also hope they add sickle as a 1h weapon at some time.

The Krait daggers look something like that, I think. Can’t remember if the inside, outside or both are sharp.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait_Ripper

Also to an extent: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper_of_Souls

LastDay.3524:

Namely that adding a new weapon type is a lot of work and to justify it they should considerably add to the game.

I’d assume that Scythes are brought in when they’re already thinking and working on bringing in other weapons, especially since if they only brought in Scythes all classes who didn’t get them (Also classes who did get it but wanted something else instead) would complain.

LastDay.3524:

I can’t think of anything new a Guardian or a Warrior would gain from a Scythe.

Guardians: Symbol based skill set (They have a Trait Line where all the Minor Traits are to do with Symbols, yet very few Symbols to use), additional fields (They get a bunch of Light fields and some Fire fields, they could use Scythes to create a defensive Dark field or something)

Warriors: AoE Bleed weapon (Gun is single target, Sword is only AoE for 2 parts of its #1 chain, also most of the Bleed comes from off-hand sword which skills are a bit lackluster especially if trying to go for a dedicated condition build) some more Vulnerability stacks to combine with other skill sets, additional mobility (Would be a godsend to most if not all PvP warriors to get some extra mobility in-combat)

LastDay.3524:

When you then consider that there are Staffs skinned as Scythes and that Anet is adding 2-handed Axes the chances of us ever seeing a true Scythe are even slimmer…

Everyone says this, but from what I can tell (Looking at every staff skin in the game) there are only 2 Staffs that are skinned as Scythes – 1 of them (As far as I can tell) hasn’t been put into the game in PvE and the other is from a seasonal skin item (Which is unobtainable outside of buying it off people who got it, kept it and are selling it)

Also, could you provide a link to where Anet said they’re adding 2 handed axes?

Daecollo.9578:

Is that a troll? Those trait suggestions are worthless.

50% under 25% Health? …
2 second internal cooldown, 10% chance “on hit?” – Maybe if it healed for 5k.

Mark of Evasion (The trait.) already out heals and out damaged having all three traits combined….

So… Basically you want to be able to do 800 DPS and 900 HPS just from Life Siphon effects (Which would be obtainable with my suggested values for the damage and healing done with the current traits)

Which makes me the troll?

10% chance when hit (Will basically proc constantly when getting hit from multiple sources and will proc often when fighting players) with 2 second cooldown causing up to 75 DPS or 50 HPS (75 when buffed with Bloodthirst)

50% when under 25% health – It’s common for Necro’s to have 25k health with points into Blood Magic you’ll have at least 20k meaning that for the last 5-6k health you’ll have 50% extra HPS from Life Siphon effects which with the suggested values would increase HPS buy up to 150 HPS (This trait alone would provide essentially Regeneration when under 25% health, that stacks with the Regeneration Boon)

Mark of Evasion provides 76 DPS with no Condition Damage/Duration. With a full condition damage and duration build it would do 137 DPS.
With no Boon Duration/Healing power it does 67 HPS, with full Boon Duration and Healing Power it provides 322 HPS.

Mark of Evasion will not do more damage than my suggested Life Siphon, it can provide more HPS (Provided you’ve invested enough into Boon Duration, without the 100% it’s HPS is dramatically reduced) but at the same time it won’t do the same damage and it’s healing doesn’t stack with Regeneration since it is Regeneration.