Guild Wars 2

Strill.2591:

Thaddeus.4891:

Strill.2591:

It’ll have no effect at all for me. I already have to choose trait lines with worthless defensive stats and I’ll still be getting them anyway in the new version.

?? Trait line won’t give you stats so no.

Read the post. They’re giving everyone a boost to all base stats.

They will give you 74 power, 74 precision, 74 toughness and 74 vitality that’s all. 1104 of the 1400 stats points you get from trait now will be from gear. I guess that for some specific build you will lose some stats, but overall for the vast majority of build you will have more control over your stats.

Gibson.4036:

Thaddeus.4891:

But they didn’t lock stuff that we had access to previously. When they reworked the trait system it was bad, but for people that already had their trait unlocked, nothing changed.

I had characters who had access to grandmaster traits, and no longer did after the trait system rework until they leveled to 80.

Your character was like between level 60 and 80?
Once you were at level 80 did you have access to all basic grandmaster trait or you had now to unlock them?

The first problem I understand, but it’s really not a big deal. After all you pass only a fractal of the time between 60-80 compare to the time you play at level 80.

The second would be a huge problem. That would be stupid if Anet did that.

I had all my character at level 80 so It wasn’t a problem for me.

Strill.2591:

It’ll have no effect at all for me. I already have to choose trait lines with worthless defensive stats and I’ll still be getting them anyway in the new version.

?? Trait line won’t give you stats so no.

My guess is that they simply want to seperate skill point that we use to unlock skills while we level up and skill points that we use to buy crafting material for the mystic force.

At first I though that this new stuff would be a currency equal to skill point. But now I believe that it will just replace all the item we can buy with skill point. Let call this new crafting material MA for Mystic Agent.

1 skill point = 10 MA

Recipe that need stuff that you can buy with Skill point will now use this MA.

1 Philosopher’s Stone will now be 1 MA
1 Crystal will now be 6 MA
1 Siege Masters Guide will now be 10 MA
1 Augur’s Stone will now be 200 MA
1 Eldritch Scroll will now be 500 MA
1 Bloodstone Shard will now be 2000 MA

Obviously now you have a problem because you can’t put 500 or 2000 MA in one spot for the Mystic forge. Maybe you can still trade MA for Eldritch Scroll or Bloodstone Shard. Or they change the value of Philosopher’s Stone and Crystal and they change the recipe that need those, but that would need more work for no reason.

What i’m really not sure is Boon Duration and Condition Duration.

We already know that Power, Precision, Toughness and Vitality will be provided by base points and equipment.

Condition Damage, Healing Power and Ferocity will be from gear alone.

For profession unique stats, the base amount will be increase and the rest will come from simply taking the right trait line.

But what will happen for Condition Duration and Boon Duration. The other stats are pretty fairly distributed accross different stuff. But for boon and Condition duration it,s all over the place.

You don’t have condition from armor, no boons duration from weapons and neither of them in ascended quality. Will we have proper boons duration and condition duration gear? Will we have more than 1 kittenty stats distribution? Because giver is seriously stupid.

It would be a good way to introduce Condition damage, Condition Duration, Precision gear.

‘’Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge. Items and activities that were previously repeatable sources of skill points will now also provide that same crafting material.’’

From what I can tell. We only gonna have enough skill point to unlock our skills. If you already unlocked all your skill then skill point shouldn’t be an issue anymore.

Every other skill point you have and will earn will be transform into a new crafting material for the mystic forge. It just seem that they make a division between skill point that you use to unlock skills and skill point you use in recipe. You won’t lose anything, they just gonna change the name and the icon, in the end everything will be the same. The only difference is that a recipe that need 50 skill points now, will cost 50 ‘’insert a name here’’.

370 points? There is only 4 primary stats : Power, Precision, Toughness and Vitalily. Only those 4 stast will be increased from 926 to 1000. All of the other stats have no basic stats. They are zero until you put point in them.
1000-926 =74

74*4 =296

Zania.8461:

Doing some math: Currently you gain 1600 attribute points (primary and secondary) from traits. 74×5=370 (only primary stats and class mechanic is getting increased). This leaves ~1230 stat points being destributed across the entirety of armor set. Primary stat gets 50% more than secondary stats, so about 360 360 540 (not quite, but gives a rough estimate).

You get 1 400 stats points from trait, not 1600.

Basic stats will increase by 296 points. So there will be 1104 points that will be distributed accross an armor set. For now a full ascended set will give you 1087/745/745 stats. It will be 1553/1064/1064.

Harper.4173:

And if they fix the cap on condis they might actually do a similar amount of damage.

No. Condition build will see be being in term of dps in group situation. Several condition build won’t screw themselves, but individually, their dps will still be inferior. Damage modifier + vulnerability make the difference there.

But they didn’t lock stuff that we had access to previously. When they reworked the trait system it was bad, but for people that already had their trait unlocked, nothing changed. It was only for new character/players who didn’t had access to those trait in the first place. I don’t why they would change that now. If you already have stuff unlocked, they will most probably still unlocked with the expansion.

True, but at the same time they kept Piercing Shards into a adept tier and it’s similarly powerful.

The best gear would be Bezerker. You can get them from the trading post or dungeon tokens (CoF, CoE, Arah). You can also get them with Karma or badge of honor, but then you can’t salvage them to get your runes back if you later change your gear.

you can take a look at gw2metabattle.com for some good build.

- GS + Sw/Focus or Torch are the best setup presently.
- GS + M/Focus or Torch. It’s a bit less dps, but give more healing and a block.
- Hammer + anything (GS and Mace are best as secondary). A bit less dps, but perma protection.
- Sceptre/Focus or Torch. It’s the best dps setup for the guardian but ONLY against large slow boss. Otherwise it’s a backup range weapon, if you need it.

Edit : I fixed the word Sceptre just for you Jerus

Actually Phys I think that this new system will give more possibility to the general population. Trait line like Honor and Valor for the guardian will now be a lot more viable than they are now. They probably won’t be part of the optimal meta, but putting point into them will give you new possibility while not sacrificing too much of your dps.

Engineer will probably be a bit easier to play. 6/6/0/0/6 will probably be the meta with improved endurance regen as grandmaster trait. Tool kit will probably be a better choice with the Master trait Power Wrench. Especially since we won’t be able to take both Precise Sight and Fireforged Trigger, decreasing a little bit the Elixir gun and Flamethrower. I guess that rifle mod will be the master trait of choice in Firearms now. Perma Vigor will be a harder choice to make now since you gonna need to sacrifice Precise sight to get it.

For Warrior, we won’t be able to have it all. 6/6/0/6/0 won’t have the reduce cooldown on weapon swapping. 6/6/0/6/0 will be a GS camping build now and won’t give much Vulnerability. 0/6/0/6/6 will be the most supportive as it will give both Might and Vulnerability. While 6/6/0/0/6 will give the best DPS.

For guardian both 6/6/6/0/0 will probably be a solo build, but 6/6/0/0/6 will for sure be the new meta with both the best dps and support. 6/6/0/6/0 will be more like a pug build with decent dps, vigor and might.

I don’t see the thief change much. 6/6/0/0/6 will be the best dps setup. 6/6/6/0/0 will be the group stealth build and 6/6/0/6/0 will be the survival build. Not much different than the 6/6/0/0/2, 5/6/3/0/0 and 5/6/0/3/0 build of right now that does the exact same thing. You just have to sacrifice less dps to get the ’’stealth’’ or ’’survival’’ build.

For Ranger 6/6/0/6/0 will probably be the best setup and will allow your Frost Spirit to follow us without sacrificing something else, which will be a nice QoL feature in dungeons.

But it may change much with change in trait themselves.

Phosphia.7813:

Will you force WvW players to do PvE content for the new class specialization?

Currently sitting on around 7 % world completion on all my characters, not very keen on the idea. Will there be an alternative like the current trait book merchants?

Can you develop? You pitch a generic sentence, but can you point to a sentence or several sentence that indication something specific? How do you want us to respond if you give nothing specific.

Yes the 3 lines reduce build diversity, but on the other hand separating stats from trait will give us more diversity.

Yes we gonna have less trait choice, but they will be more meaningful without all those useless trait.

We’ll see what will be the details, but even if i’m not a fan of some particular points the overall system seem better than the current one.

Why? With a good portion of the stats from trait going into gear, a full zerker gear will make sure he have the maximum power, precision, ferocity stats.

Lets take the guardian for exemple. With a 6/6/2/0/0 build I miss on 200 ferocity and now i’ll probably be able to get it fully. The improvement of basic stats will probably make me lose a bit of power, precision and gain a bit more vitality, healing power and boon duration. You lose a bit and gain a little bit, overall it will be similar. Now take trait. With the new system I will have the equivalent of a 6/6/6/0/0 build now. I could take Mace of Justice and maybe the the new Meta would be now GS + M/F with an overall better dps.

I guess that yes, some build could have a bit less dps, but other build will have more. Overall, I don’t think we’ll see a lot of difference in dps.

Yes a lot of people asked for this Tyrantis.

Sorry if this is bad for you. Some people will prefer this method and other will dislike it.

Personally I LOVE it. This will put more emphasis on trait and will open more build diversity. For exemple putting 6pts in Honor for a guardian in PvE is not really view as a good choice. But getting two-handed mastery, might on crits and superior Aria without losing on the offensive stats would a valid choice.

A meditation guardian with Zeal, Radiance and Valor would probably become a better solo build than the normal dungeon build.

What I like about the information we have about the new system
- Stats and traits are seperated. This put more emphasis on trait. Good trait were never used because they were on a trait line that were not giving good stats. It open build diversity a lot.
- Less trait, but making them more meaningful. Let’s face it, there is a lot of useless trait. Even if you check across all 3 game modes there is a lot of trait that nobody use except for giggle. At the same time they only removed 3 adept trait and 1 master for each line so we still have a good amount of choice, and if they do their job right we gonna have more meaningful choice.
- A new way to get trait. Good for me I already had 8 level 80 when they changed how we get trait, but I’m glad they change it. It was always a obstacle for new player when I was trying to explain different build.

What i dislike about the new information
- We need to choice 3 trait line and complete them. No more 2pts in some line just to get something specific that could help us in a particular situation. This limit build diversity a bit. Most guardians in PvE get 5pts in Radiance it’s bad if you have to go full 6pts in this line if you only have two handed weapons while the other 2 grands master trait are pretty bad. You end up with a grandmaster trait that don’t really help you.
- Accumulated skill points will give you some crafting material?? I’m not sure to really understand this right. What will happen to ALL those mystic toilet recipe that need some skill points??

VodCom.6924:

If the answer is YES, then there is little than Anet can do to satisfy Nike, NoTrigger, Spoj and many others. We’ll likely have dungeons/raids/whatever that they will complete in no time and then spend their remaining time trying to break world records with small size parties.

That’s just not true. Mai Trin level 50 is feasible with any composition. Arah is feasible with any composition. And they are a lot more fun and challenging than CoF path 1 or AC.

It’s not black and white here. You can create content that is more challenging and engaging than the basic dungeon, while not forcing a team into certain composition. They did it already, we just want that kind of content not to be some exception, but to be widespread. Or at least that new content will be more like this.

Element Two.7316:

I stand corrected then.

Mace is better is some situations, although some people use the small DPS difference as justification to run mace in long, easy fights because they enjoy the safety net of the block and healing.

Saying that they use it as a justification mean that they do something wrong. So I suppose that you never run an imperfect composition, you always use the best/most expensive food, always switch between slaying potion even during the same dungeon when there is different type of enemies? Because all of that improve your damage by more than a Sword over a mace.

People running a staff need a lot of justification for their choice, it’s such a bad PvE weapon. But with such a small difference in dps??

Element Two.7316:

EcoRI.9273:

didnt dekeyz showed math that mace was just as good as sword?

No it showed it was almost as good, but people use it as justification to use mace.

It’s pretty kitten good justification if you ask me. GS + Mace/Focus is around 1% less dps than GS + Sw/Focus in a 30sec fight. It’s better in a shorter fight. Sword give you a blind. Mace give you healing and a block, but can screw up might blasting.

They are both top weapons.

Jana.6831:

I don’t disagree with that but it always sounds as if the “more AI” has to be applied to everything and I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.
In the end every character gets mail once they hit level what 25? 30 and so on with an invitation to a dungeon – so we thought we could do that and we couldn’t.

Yes you can, we did it 2,5 years ago like everyone else doing dungeon since the start of the game. There is some issue with the introduction of dungeon to new player I agree. AC isn’t the best dungeon to serve as an introduction. The burrows can be a huge challenge for low level character, too many of them as they learn the game don’t have enough power to go througth this small dps barrier. Maybe they should rework it a little. But in the end it’s a really small problem that affect only a small portion of the population by now. It have nothing to do with the fact that some dungeon are braindead easy for level 80 and they are so old that everybody know them by heart, making them even easier.

Jana.6831:

Trice.4598:

I am a firm believer that the game mechanic is fine, but the boss battle aren’t in general. longer fight, with multiple phases/mechanic is what we need.

Yeah, but that’s not what people new to this game need.
I could tell endless stories about my first noob guild in this game and what we thought we’d have to do. Yeah, it was some stupid stuff.. we bought our guild leader a commander tag because he thought he could bring more people to a dungeon with that “This isn’t working, we need more people”. Yeah well, it didn’t work too well- in fact it hardly ever works well, so basically every fight has been a long battle for me and that until around last month.

There is enough low difficulty content in the game to introduce new players into the game and it’s not like the vast majority of the player base now is new players. It’s been 3 years, it’s about time they start to give more content for veteran players rather than to new players. After all veteran GW2 players will probably bought more expansion than completely new players.

laokoko.7403:

LucosTheDutch.4819:

tramwajarz.2369:

If you want healers to matter, remove all skills number 6

Even then healers would still not matter in good parties.

If you want healers to truly matter you need to bring back the traditional “holy trinity” (which is still being used in modern games for a reason).

Pretty much. Anet could just nerf base healing. So unless people put stats in healing power, they can’t heal.

Also nerf might stacking and give monster more hp. So people dont’ kill boss with full might icebow in a few second.

Would probably make fractal 60 interesting if Anet did it.

- Now the optimal choice is zerker, but you can play with any stats. But you want to force people to play only with gear with healing power? Gear diversity much. What happen if I don’t have any healing power? I can’t use 1/10th of my skills and all those other skill and trait that give healing would be useless without the right gear?
- They just nerf might stacking less than 2 months ago, you want them to nerf it again? We can’t kill boss from fractal 50 in few seconds, niether several of the boss from Arah like Lupi. It’s normal dungeon that have some issue with that. It’s a content issue, nothing to do with might.

Palador.2170:

Thaddeus.4891:

- I don’t know what the new utilities should be, but they should either replace spectral or minions skills (probably minions).

I truly hope they don’t replace minions. With my human necro, I tend to just rush in and fight with daggers, while my minions (hopefully) jump in and do damage as well. I’m really looking forward to using a greatsword, and having to choose between it and the minions would ruin my desire to play the specialization.

(Yes, I know what I described is not anywhere near the best setup for a Necro. But it’s fun for me.)

Specialization create new utilities that replace one of them. If you like how you play now, then don’t use the speciality, just keep the standard Necromancer.

EcoRI.9273:

I hate to say this but seriously in the current meta, you don’t need to blast might, you don’t need to dodge, you don’t need to do dps rotations. Things will still melt.

What??

I agree that most dungeon with just decent build, might and fury the majority of bosses can be killed so quickly that it’s just silly. But that’s a huge jump saying that the only thing you need is meta build and with no might and no dps rotation everything melt without the need to dodge once. That’s pretty pathetic.

Well randomness is good when use properly.

Let say the boss have 5 type of attack, you want some randomness in the order in which the boss will use his 5 attacks so you can’t predict which attack he will do next.

Random AoE pattern, but still telegraphed will force you to not only react to the presence of the AoE, but also in which direction you need to do it.

Yes if they could make the necro specialisation all about PvE it would help the profession a lot.

It should concentrate on power build.

- GS should be a good direct damage dps weapon
- The new trait line should replace either Death Magic or Blood Magic, have a good amount of damage modifier, and maybe concentrate on weakness, vulnerability or another PvE support capability.
- I don’t know what the new utilities should be, but they should either replace spectral or minions skills (probably minions).

NikeEU.7690:

Reasons to nerf Berserker gear offered so far… My responses on parenthesizes.

1. Bored. (you’re bored of the content. playing a healer won’t make doing AC more fun)

2. Diversity is a good goal. (We already have build diversity. gear diversity is enforced naturally by the challenge or lack thereof of the content)

3. I enjoy playing other roles than DPS… (so go play them, no one is stopping you!)

4. …but I don’t want to be ineffective. (So you really just want your roleplay build to get buffed)

5. Different gear should enable different playstyles. (Actually, it doesn’t have to do anything. There is no law that says that. Anet designed the game to have traits be a more meaningful determinant of your playstyle than your gear. Simply put, you WANT gear to enable playstyles but that is a far cry from saying is SHOULD enable playstyles.)

6. It makes the game too easy, fights are over before you have to dodge. (Thats a content problem not a gear problem. People who solo bosses take minutes to kill them and dodge a lot and wear berserker so they aren’t being blown up in seconds)

7. In Silverwastes Berserker isn’t meta (It is, but either you aren’t skilled enough to survive or you are but just aren’t aware of it.)

8. Well they should eliminate all gear stats and make all gear the same. (no one here disagrees)

9. Berserker isn’t fun for me. (That’s probably a content issue. Or a roleplaying issue. Or an issue of you not referring to my response to #3)

Best summary.

For WvW or PvE?

For PvE it will be Zerker (probably not assassin because of the fury trait). Unless they fix condition in PvE completely (which would be awesome), but I have little faith about that it’s been almost 3 years and they didn’t even attempted to fix it so.

For WvW, you are better to wait because it will depend on build and weapons and we don’t have enough information for make a good decision.

Bubi on that we are on the same page. Most if not all of us want more challenging content. More Lupi, Liadri, Mai Trin, etc. Less CoF path 1, AC final boss, etc.

Where we disagree is when people talk about gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity because they want Knight or Soldier gear to be more than just WvW or training wheel gear.

Bubi.7942:

No on is arguing about (at least from what I read) about highly skilled players shouldn’t survive with zerker stats. It’s more about everyone and their mother can survive in zerker (again, back to my old posts, not talking about solo/speedruns).

90% (made up number) of the players shouldn’t be able to complete the supposed to be hardest content in the game waering full glass armor. If they are able to, something is definetly broken.

Well it was the case 1 or 2 years ago. But after almost 3 years, everybody know the content by heart, so it’s easier for everybody to survive. It’s not that the content is so easy, but with time people just get used to it and perform better.

And still, if for regular dungeon most ppl play full zerker and meta build, it’s not really the case for the hardest content in the game. How many people bring a range weapon in fractal 50? How many people have a tankier gear or defensive trait there? How many people do Arah on a regular basis? Arah is the most profitable dungeon and still people avoid it because it’s harder. A large portion of the community play zerker, but they can’t really play it everywhere.

In the end, most of us agree with you. We need harder content so it’s difficult to play full zerker. I want to need protection, weakness, vigor, sigil of endurance, etc. I want content that push us to use every single bit of support we can.

Arken.3725:

-Worst ranged weaponry in the game(scepter is still easily strafe-dodged)
-Little-to-no cc/mobility to keep up with your enemy
-Sustain dmg is non-existent
-Too easy to predict burst

- Well the auto-attack is pretty bad for PvP, but your main goal is to land the Smite as a burst. Forcing the guy to take the hit inside a node or with immobilize.
- Yes and no. You still have Judge Intervention and 2 immobilize (Hammer/Sceptre) or 1 CC and 1 leap (with GS). So you have a good cc/mobility, but it’s short duration. If we can’t burst down with down, we gonna have a problem.
- Yes, but we have many shot CD burst which allow a good rotation. Mighty Blow (5sec CD), Smite (6sec CD), Smite Condition (16sec CD), Whirlwind (10sec CD), Symbol of Wrath (20sec).
- Well it depend how to use it. You could say that of a lot of burst skill. Lich Form, Rapid Fire, Backstab, etc. Good players know how to recognize them, but good players also know how to use these burst at the right time. Judge of intervention allow you to put a burst without allow much prediction and smite condition is instant cast. Overall I don’t think it’s a huge problem for Medi Guardian, but we still need to be think about it and play around that, like most other burst build. If the first thing you do as a ranger is Rapid Fire, you will waste it too. If you use Lich Form at the wrong time people are gonna be able to burst you down or immobilize and fight behind you.

Well double kit condi is still a really good build for both Roaming and sPvP. It was the meta a while ago. The reason why celestial rifle replace double kit as the ’’meta’’ is because of the its versatility.

Both have about the same defensive problem. They both have limited condition removal and stun break/stability. Making them both vulnerable to heavy cc and condi pressure. But the difference is in the offensive capability.

Double kit is extremely powerful against other build with weak condition removal, but suffer a lot against build like Shoutbow.

On the other end, celestial rifle can burst with both condition and direct damage, making it more versatile as you can put different type of pressure on different build and exploiting their weakness.

But Double kit still remain a solid build. It will do better then celestial rifle in some fight, but will do better in other fight.

It’s this little thing call balance.

Warrior survivability is all about pure stats. High Hp and High Armor.

Guardian survivability come from different source. It have high armor, but low hp. But to compensate it have a hp regen outside of his healing skill and he have access to a large quantity of active defense : blind, aegis, reflection, protection, etc. All stuff that Warrior don’t have access or very limited access to.

Kodiak.3281:

Except in the end of the current Berserker meta, that’s exactly what they are doing. They’re ignoring any defensive traits they have in favor of kicking out the most amount of damage.

It depend what is the strenght of your profession and what the situation need.

For exemple, elementalist is better at dmg so they focus all on damage. It’s their strength in PvE, why would a meta go against that? But still Renewing Stamina is often presented as an alternative for those who need it.

And then you have other profession like Guardian that more than often bring master of consecration for more condi removal and reflect. And the 4/5/0/0/5 general purpose meta build with Absolute Resolution. Or you have a reflect build for Mesmer.

But you are right, now much defensive trait are use there. Most of the defensive aspect of meta build come from weapons and skills. That’s why the guardian bring retreat, WoR and purging flames so often. That’s why focus is such a popular choice. Or S/P is a popular choice with Pistol Quip for thief. Or Smoke Field that blind.

And that’s all part of the standard meta. How many people suggest Sigil of Energy or Arcane Shield or Guardian Hammer build, etc, etc for people than need a bit more defense than the standard meta.

To add to what Jerus said. People can solo about anything in the game in zerker gear and if you solo if that mean it’s 5 times longer (even more) than with a full group. If you can survive alone with zerker gear with more than 5x more times to make mistake, i’m pretty sure than 5 people in knight gear won’t have much difficulty to survive. Unless you are telling me that 5 ppl in knight gear do less damage than 1 guy in zerker?

phys.7689:

when i say its uneven, i mean your gain from being say berserker and being say knights is uneven, the proportion of survivability increase is not equal to your damage decrease, which means there is no logical reason to use knights. you are more likely to fail.

Weird I use to have knight gear and I never failed. You can use whatever gear and you can still complete all content so this is just not true.

Lets compare stats. Let’s have a 1 100 dmg weapon with 1000 power hit a target with 1000 armor. Skill coefficient of 1.

1 100 wps x 1 000 power * (1 / 1 000 armor) = 1 100 damage

Now we triple the power.

1100 × 3000 x (1/1000) = 3 300 damage so 3 times more damage.

Ok let get back to the initial situation and triple the armor instead.

1100 × 1000 x (1/3000) = 366.66 damage so 3 times less damage.

So I add 2000 power and I do 3 times the damage. I add 2000 toughness and I receive 3 times less the damage. What is uneven there?

Vitality? If you are a guardian adding 2000 vitality will make you 2.8 more resistant. While for a warrior you will be 2.1 more resistant. It’s less efficient than toughness against direct damage but it can’t be bypass by condition. So I find it pretty even there too.

Precision? Basic critical chance is 4% so you won’t hit of 1100 but 1122 instead with the 150% basic critical damage. If you add 2000 precision you end up almost at 100% crit chance and an overall damage of 1650 so 1.47 times the base damage. It seem not that even there true. They should boost precision no? Especially since there is a cap on it at 100%.

Critical Damage then. In the best scenario with a character that have 100% critical chance but zero critical damage you will hit of 1650 damage (still with 1100 for weapon and 1000 for power). Now we add 2000 ferocity or 133% critical damage.

1100 × 283% = 3113 damage which is 1.88 times more powerful than the initial number.

Of course these number are exemple and will change depending on how many stats you have at the start. Most of them will decrease in importance as you increase them, some won’t and other have a cap. But you see the picture. Your statement is just untrue. The proportion of survivability increase is SUPERIOR to your damage decrease. But active defense which is not affected by stats is more powerful than defensive stats. That’s the reason defensive stats is view as less meaningful than offensive stats. The stats themselves are perfect, but the design of the game emphasis on powerful active defense.

Defensive stats don’t need a fix. The only way to make them useful is to make them more useful than active defense, which will change drastically the whole game. If you want that, there is plenty of game for you, gw2 isn’t one of them.

Isnt.5037:

Thank you so much Thaddeus! Your reply was perfect. I never took into thought that each players conditions are in a way, competing. Super interesting stuff! I guess I’ll have to save my condition build for PvP then~ Or find ways around it…

I’m probably going to keep coming back to your answer in the future. Super informative and articulate answer. Thank you.

Keep in mind that during the closed beta of HoT there were no cap on bleeds or at least you could get to 99. After that the bleed had a little ‘’!’’ on them. It was only a test, but it could mean that Anet is working on ways to improve condition for PvE.

Nice overview, but i’ll add some stuff.

- Turret engie are relatively hard to play against for some meta build for the reason you said but it have huge weakness. They don’t have the mobility or the versatility to compete with the meta. Yes if you try to fight them head on with celestial meta you could have difficulty, but you can simply ignore them and concentrate on the other two point to gain an advantage in term of numbers to win fight.

The turret engineer can then rotate to the other point, but he can’t rotate as fast as other profession because of his turrets. He can pick them up, but won’t be of any use during the cooldown while he rotate to another point.

The second weakness is against organized team or at least group of player know what they are doing. If your team have a lot of celestial and a terramancer, then focus on the engineer with condi pressure since he almost have no condi clear. If you pack ranger and power necro focus the turrets. If he spread his turret then thief and medi guardian can focus them as well. But in most pug team it can be difficult if no possible to end up with a strategy and communicate what is the target. A team could have a terromancer and 2 celestial, if someone target the turret engineer the team will probably attack something else even if they should attack him and focusing turrets are even harder to communicate.

That’s why turret engineer are a pain in pugs group, but are so weak against organized group. They place right build against it, us the right focus and make good rotation to make the Turret engineer useless. Things that are hard if not impossible to do in a pugs where turret engineer can be frustrating.

Axe offhand don’t offer much for dungeon. The skill 5 does less damage then you Axe main hand auto-attack (I know it’s kind of stupid, but that’s the reality). Skill 4 is a lot of dps but give yourself fury, but it’s not much. Take a look at offhand Mace, it give a fair amount of vulnerability and it’s the preferred option for almost everybody in dungeon.

Except if you are not the only warrior in your group you want to bring both banner of strength and discipline. That’s the main force of the warrior. For Great Justice is a good skill, but fury is so easy to create for an Elementalist that it’s only worth using when you are in some group without anyone giving fury (with is rare). Your standard loadout should be the two banner + signet of fury. You can change after to adapt to your party (need more fury? a warrior with one of the banner?, etc).

Your trait are all over the place. Here some focus depending what you prefer.

Pure Axe build?
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Pure_Axe_EA

Or GS + Axe build?
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_GS_Axe/Mace

Condition are very powerful while you are doing sPvP are WvW Roaming. But in PvE, condition have a couple of problem.

1) Condition is capped for technical reason. So if one condition build is alright, two or more will fight each other for dps. The cap for bleed is 25, so if you have two guys putting 20 bleeds each, then there will be 15 bleeds wasted. Same with duration condition. If we put 2min of burning on a boss that die in 1min, then half of the burning is wasted. Since more than one condition will be useless, nobody want to play condition because you never know if you gonna be useful or not. Additionally, power build also put condition. Not much, but when you have 5 of these, they add up. For exemple, a guardian and an elementalist can keep perma burning even with power build, meaning that any burning condition build will have to compete with them. An engineer and warrior can put a serious amount of bleeding even in power build.

2) First come, first served. The first condition put on an enemy will be the condition that is use, even if that condition come from a power build with terrible condition damage. On my guardian power build i’ll put burning for 5 second and that burning will do small damage, the guy next to me have a condition build and put another 5 second of burning but with higher damage. During the first 5 second of the fight it’s my low damage burning that will tick.

3) No damage modifier for condition. In PvP condi and power are similar in dps, but very little damage modifier are use there. In PvE on the other end you stack as much damage modifier as you can. These little percentage are so much powerful that they can more than double your damage and are the key of high dps profession like Elementalist because it can stack A LOT of damage modifier. But these damage modifier only affect power damage, not condition. So in high end PvE the condition dps is too low compare to power dps. This is not so bad in solo situation, but in group the difference can be higher than 33% more dps for the power build.

4) Ramp up time. This isn’t really a problem by itself. In my opinion condition should take longer to reach their top dps, but have higher total dps compare to power build. But in reality it take longer AND have lower total. Condition don’t do their maximum damage right away. They need a couple of second to reach their maximum stack and do their full dps. With the current meta most mobs are dead before condition build can reach their full potential or at least shortly after. This is mostly a problem with easy dungeon (CoF, AC), or with speed run group.

MeththeMadman.7420:

Gotta be honest, the back and forth is confusing the crap out of me…

I get that I should have SYG on my bar…

Do I want Retreat?

What utilities should I be using at level 22? What are some good ones come dungeon time that I should definitely invest in?

Currently I have Bane Signet, SYG and Retreat. My heal is the default, which I believe is Shelter.

Don’t worry about the back and forth. Just try everything you can, all skills and weapons until you reach level 80. At level 80 you can start to worry about what is good or not, you’ll have more knowledge of the game at this point.

1) And I responded that yeah in some very limited aspect, but it’s not worth it most of the time because how bad is the duration of the might and how bad Staff is in PvE. If you don’t like being challenged on what you say on the forum, that’s not my problem.

2) Ok then. But you didn’t said that initially. You didn’t say, Tome are nice but mostly fun. Renewed Focus is the best for PvE and PvP. That’s not what you said.

3) 6/6/2/0/0 you get AW and more power. I know this sound not so interesting, but if you actually test it you will see that it’s actually a little bit better dps than 25% uptime on UC. It’s also a more reliable DPS than 4/6/0/0/2 because like you know UC can vary a lot.

4) You are right. In PvE you always need stab, stab is god and we always need it to do anything. Mobs in PvE always chain cc you in all dungeon, in all situation. And anyway, it’s not like every respectable record guild and meta build out there use retreat right. Nobody use it since it’s so bad. Anyway PvE is laughably easy and WvW is only a blobfest. What I’m doing playing this game, Jesus.

Healing Power work perfectly. It’s not the fastest way, but the easiest.

They are only 3, one of them is a healing guardian and they are still able to do fractal in a decent time. The run was just easier with an cleric guardian.

rotten.9753:

This will teach you good habits and not to expect tools that you won’t have access to when you are full Berserker.

Doubtfully, if someone knows he doesn’t have to react because a passive defense will decrease the threat of an attack, he won’t get any good habit. On the other hand, using an active defense management is a conscious act.[/quote]

On that particular thing he got a point. For exemple, getting use to permanent vigor can be hard to adapt when you switch to a normal build. While for defensive passive stats it’s relatively easy to increase the number of zerker pieces gradually.

Both School of thought are right in the end. It depend on what the person want, what are his goal, etc, etc. Some people prefer to go for zerker right away and change build over time, other prefer to change gear over time. Both method have pros and cons.

Kodiak, it’s Zelyhn’s guide. He don’t need to put what you think should be there if he don’t want. That’s not an official Anet guide. That’s just a guide written by a player where he give the information he think is best.

If obviously think that the best way to go for new players that can’t go full meta is berserker gear with more defensive build then he have all the rights to write that in HIS guide. That’s debatable, there is other options that will fix better depending on each people, but he don’t need to put alternative gear if he don’t think that’s a good idea. You are free to create your own build and if more people think your way is better, then more people will follow your guide. It’s not like Zelyhn dodged the question all together he clearly wrote in his guide :

‘’It is advised that even beginner elementalists invest in Berserker gear, as defensive stats are an inefficient way of gaining defence. Instead in section 3 we disclose a number of builds making use of defensive assets that can be helpful for new players.’’ I think it’s pretty clear and fair.

Well each year between may and august there is less ppl playing video games in general. I stopped playing GW2 in the last two summer, my guilds have just enough ppl to do 1 set of guild mission each week, we have around 20-40 ppl online at all time.

Compare that to the two full guild mission per week with 50+ ppl on our TS and around 50-100 ppl online all the time during the winter.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I suppose that it’s like this for everyone who live in the northern countries (Canada, northern US States, France, German, UK, etc). Nothing to do with the game in particular, just that a lot of ppl start to work again during the summer, and more ppl do stuff outside and play less video games.