Guild Wars 2

Grawl confirmed for next great Species. We’d never see it coming.

First things first, Kudos to you for actually wanting to contribute, realizing that your Condition Build is Subpar in this Aspect of the game and going out of your way to be more helpful. We need more people like that.

Now, you want dungeons? There are Three Professions that are welcome basically everywhere, even among bads and scrubs: Warrior, Guardian and Elementalist.

Warrior: Easiest Professions to Learn and Play with. Doesn’t bring anything particularily noteworthy to the Table except for their Banners, who are unique Buffs. However, they have High DPS, Reliable Survivability and Can stack Might on their own fairly well, though that role usually falls on the Elementalist. They’re bit of a Jack-of-all-Trades profession: Good at everything, but best at None.

Guardian: Unmatched Defensive Support, Great team Buffs, High Damage. Guardians have a lot on their shoulders though and aren’t as forgiving to play as Warriors thanks to their low HP and reliance on Active defenses. Still, with plenty of Blinds, Aegis, Protection, Heals, Condition Cleanses and Projectile Reflections, they’re the one profession in charge of Support and Defense in the group. And they do all this even when Geared out in Full Zerker.

Elementalist: Highest DPS in the game with Fiery Greatsword, Best Profession for Stacking Might/Fury with the party. Easy access to Fire/Water Fields and plenty of Blasts to go with it. The elementalist’s job is to Pump up the party, and then pump out as much DPS as possible. A good Elementalist can wipe the floor with most enemies and bosses before they even know what hit them. They’re squishy as they come, however, as you’d expect from a Nuker profession.

Aside from those, Thieves and Rangers also bring something good to a Dungeon team, even if the general populace prefer to overlook this. Mesmers aren’t as useful as people might think, but they’re indisensible in particular dungeon paths and high-level Fractals. The learning curve on Mesmer however prompts me to suggest another class until you’ve made yourself familiar with the game mechanics, dungeon paths and team synergy overall.

For Dungeons, where you eventually will want to run with Zerker Gear because they’re the most effective, wether Warrior or Guardian is the better choice is really debatable.

Guardian will shine when the Boss attacks Slow, slowly enough for you to never run out of active defenses (Aegis, Dodges, Invulnerability). The Guardian is also Resonsible for most of his team’s defenses, no matter the gear.
Warrior will shine against Bosses that has a few Weaker but more Frequent attacks, as their HP will allow you to facetank the Few weak hits, allowing you to keep on DPSing and save your dodges and fewer Active defenses for their big attacks.

In short, it could be said that Guardians reward an Active Gameplay, while Warrior reward a Perceptive Gameplay. With Guardian, you need to actively react to just about everything the Boss does, while a Warrior needs to make a split-second decision on wether to Avoid the attack (Dodges or Blocks), Facetank through it or Kite around the boss to avoid the attack.

Qror.7562:

Actually I have a question about historical dungeon. Before Twilight arbor got changed to have the aetherpath (because appareantly only Arah is allowed to have 4 paths), Fyonna’s Path was forward/up. But where did up/up lead? Who was the final boss of that path?

Ah, Fyonna… So annoying.

Basically, her path was the worst of the three. The Sub-Boss was Vivenna, who Blink-spammed around, entered Stealth constantly and spammed conditions with Winds of Chaos and Chaos Storm. She was mostly annoying, but PuGs would get destroyed by her easily.

Then we have the boss, Fyonna… The Spider Tree. Basically, loads and loads of Spider trash mobs swarming the party, including (I think) those darn Stonetouch Spiders. Also a PuG destroyer, as back when I did that path everyone was certain that Ranging from the entrance was the one and only way to do it.

Oh, oh, another one. Lemme see, where’s my card…

Bingo!

“Don’t worry, it’s just basic security measures.”

Spire proceeds to do absolute Jack about it.

Fiery Greatsword is considered a Conjured weapon, which is Considered a Bundle for all intents and purposes. However, I’ve never considered if it might be both a Bundle and a Greatsword.

hendo.1940:

About serious discussion, does anyone know why mesmer’s who reflect alphards bomb pull with feedback/curtain deal like 4k damage, but when phantasms reflect it, they deal about 24k damage? Been trying to figure that one for a while now, yet can’t come up with any logical reason.

Is it possible that during the Damage Calculation of the Reflection, the game takes into consideration that you have 3 Phantasms reflecting the attack, making the damage boost stack Additively (Or however you spell it) whereas with Feedback it only accounts for the Mesmer’s personal DPS boost?

I.e since each Phantasms get the Damage boost for Increased Phantasm/Clone damage, it’d be x% x3 since all 3 are reflecting? Or have I misunderstood how reflect damage is handled with Clones?

No Pulse.2967:

TheSwede.9512:

I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out the right path through the Golem scraps in CM p1. No matter how I run, those pesky elites seem to follow me despite of stealth so I can’t get initiate my second Stealth Stacking. Somestimes I manage, sometimes they just hound me halfway across the mansion like Scooby-Doo monsters.

Anyone know which path is preferable? Should I go right into the big room first from the stairs, or left for the one furthest away?

Wall of text incoming!

It’s better to go right first and then to the first boss (because of the door that opens after you have done all golem scraps). Take 3 points in Shadow Arts and choose Master of Deception. 2 points in acrobatics for the movement speed increase. Use smoke screen + shortbow blasts first and make sure that the NPC is stealthed too (this was the no.1 reason mobs were aggroed on me back when I didn’t know what caused it).

Run inside, use Hide in Shadows after you interacted with the first part. Then run right, use SB 5 to get to the next part faster, interact, run to the next one. Use Blinding Powder if you haven’t done that yet. Maybe throw in a harpy feather if really needed. Interact with the next one. SB 5 to the beginning of the last room. Use Shadow Refuge and after it expires, SB 5 to the next part. Interact, SB 5 back.

Run back to where you came from, Smoke Screen+blast at the corner where you took the previous part. Go left and then straight until you’re in front of that room with fire turrets. SB 5 behind the turrets and get both parts there. Smoke Screen+blast for stealth here again (make sure to stealth the NPC, too), but not too close to the right wall, it will reveal you. Use your remaining stealth skills to get the last 3 parts, run through the opened door.

Cheers for the answer. My only problem now is that Traffa is sooooooo kitten slow. I have to stand and wait at the 3rd interact because when I get there she’s only halfway to the 2nd. Otherwise, it seems to work just fine.

I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure out the right path through the Golem scraps in CM p1. No matter how I run, those pesky elites seem to follow me despite of stealth so I can’t get initiate my second Stealth Stacking. Somestimes I manage, sometimes they just hound me halfway across the mansion like Scooby-Doo monsters.

Anyone know which path is preferable? Should I go right into the big room first from the stairs, or left for the one furthest away?

Thieves -do- have their Venomshare builds though! Do not underestimate the Venomsharing! Cause Sharing… is Caring (But not for smooth runs).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa4anMJSRT20EWNB/TmImg4e5/oHedGtbwCCAA-ThyBwAAOCA2U/5oyvDm/ecSAOp3xkmAIKBfu/AmHAAA-e

(I threw in a Dual Pistol Spec just for good measure)

My suspiscioun is that Bearbows run the 4/4/0/0/6 before they can tag the Arah Gatekeeper and get Read the Wind, in which case I’d suspect they split between those that go 6/4/1/0/3 and those that wants to keep their Ubertanky pet with 6/2/0/0/6. If they’re running the New Invigorating Bond, they’re prolly running Sylvanhound besides the Brown Bear cause ZOMG Heal Pet!

But that might be a bit too clever for the regular Ranger Bearbow.

It’s not on the official forums, but I once wrote an entire guide to playing a Cleric “Healer” Ele in dungeons…

Does that still count? I don’t even want to dig that up again, you’ll have to do with the scaled-down version: (Warning, what’s written below is so horrendously bad and stupid that you may attempt to remove your eyeballs from their sockets with the nearest, most conveniently sharp object. You have been warned.)

TheSwede.9512:

I run a similar build, all focused on Healing Power and Water element, however with some slight differences. Mine is a bit more defensive when it comes to Utility skills and it splits focus between buffing and healing, rather than focusing on either.

Signet of Restoration Instead of Glyph of Elemental Harmony – I’ve found that the Heal-on-cast HPS by far outclasses most other heals available to me (338 hp per cast). It’s also because of my runes being different, and I never activate it since just casting 10-11 spells outweighs the activated Heal (Which is ~3600 hp or so). And Since I can already use Geyser in a pinch, followed by blasts or dodge rolls, I’m not exactly starving for emergency heals anyway.

2 Superior runes of the Monk, 2 Superior runes of the Water and 2 Major runes of the Monk instead of 6 Superior runes of Dwayna Puts my Boon duration up to 70%, and since that also affects my teammates it means my Regen and Might buffs last much longer, therefor making for more of an impact (3 stacks of might for 30s per blast finisher in a firefield).

10 trait points into Earth instead of Air This is to get Armor of Earth on autoactivate, so I won’t have to put that into my Utility skill bar. The increased tougness in Earth also helps. I also don’t use Cantrips a lot, neither do I use Frost Bow outside of AC, so my Water traits are a bit different: Aquamancer’s Alacrity (Trust me, 4 seconds off of Geyser and 9 seconds off of Healing Rain is noticable) and Cleansing Wave (More condi. removal on attunement).

Burning Retreat should actually be your main fire field, rather than eruption. It lasts longer, so if you attune to earth while rolling you can actually manage to catch it with Eruption’s abyssmal cast time, meaning you can start the battle with several stacks of might for your party.
My Usual chain goes like this: Burning retreat > Attunement: Earth > Eruption > Dodge roll for Churning Earth > Arcane wave While rolling

That’s 9 stacks of Might for 30 seconds on the team, and I can stack another 4 when my Fire attunement comes off cooldown (Eruption + Lava Font). And in perfect conditions I can keep this chain going without ever touching Water, which I save for emergencies.

My Utility skills are also different, I use Arcane Wave, Arcane Shield and Glyph of Renewal, though I might pick up Mist form instead of Arcane Shield and I generally exchange Glyph of Renewal for whatever the situation calls for (Such as Ice bow) but I generally run with it as it has really helped me out a few times (Especially the multi-revival of Earth).

Overall, I’m in perfect agreement that Staff Elementalists should be more supportive, however after having tested other classes I can only sadly add that currently, they’re not the best at that either. In most instances, Guardian simply do a better job than they, and they come with heavy armor and won’t need to throw loads of HP into the pan to be good at it. They stack Might faster, remove Condis faster, heal the team for more and has greater access to defensive buffs. Sad but true.

Here’s a cavalcade of shame, travesty in its purest form. You’re welcome to laugh (I sure do nowadays.)

Far as I’ve experienced, initial Aggro seems to be determined by:

Highest Toughness
Lowest Health

This is only initial Aggro, after that it’s a DPS race. Zerker Ele can pump out mad amounts of damage in a short amount of time, and your low Vit probably attracts some level of attention if the above-mentioned theory is correct.
Generally, I’ve found Dodging to be quite useful in losing Aggro, but it might be worth it to deliberately lower your DPS while pugging in order to lose Aggro (Such as use Water AA with Dagger.) If you keep aggro constantly while pugging, you can just assume that your teammates aren’t doing their job correctly anyway. The most likely reason to why she’s targeting you is that you’re leagues above the PuG in terms of damage (Can easily happen even in a Full Zerk run, with people who don’t know how their rotations.)

Another thing to note is that you cannot divert Aggro from an enemy until they’ve finished a Queued action. If they’ve targeted you, they will use a Skill on you before diverting their attention unless CC’d. Dodge the first attack and hope one of your teammates bursts Tazza enough and gains her attention. If that doesn’t work, well, there’s always Focus #5 in Earth?

If you can’t play Zerk, don’t play Zerk. But don’t blame your lack of skill on others, that’s not being a Team-player. Go for Knights, or Soldiers, and run casual until you know each encounter in and out, then you’ll have -more- than enough G and experience to get some Zerker gear and rock out.

OMG, 3rd Row is OP. Nerf 3rd Row, it’s just a Crossout Race. So toxic, killing the game. gg OP. I’m going back to <Insert MMO of your choice here>.

Great read, any chance that you can dig up and cite or link your sources though? Some things there are things I’d take with a grain of salt, such as Malchor being Grenth’s rumoured father (Pretty big thing to have going for you.)

Otherwise, it was a great read.

Warrior

• Dual Wield Agility – Arms: Reduces Activation time of Off-hand Skills while wielding an Axe, Mace or Sword in your Off-hand. Reducement: 50%
• Brawler’s Recovery – Discipline: Switching Weapons while in Combat now Breaks Stun. ICD 75s.

Guardian

• Amplified Wrath – Zeal: Merged With Kindled Zeal.
• NEW Crusader’s Discipline – Zeal: Striking a Burning Enemy grants you Fury (5s). ICD 10s.
• Radiant Retaliation – Radiance: Also Increases Damage by 10% while under the effects of Retaliation.
• Communal Defenses – Valor: When you grant Protection to Yourself or an Ally, the affected player also gain Aegis (5s). ICD 30s.
• Purity of Body – Virtues: Virtue of Resolve now Also restores Endurance for Nearby allies when Activated. Endurance restored: 50. Radius: 600.

Ranger

• Read the Wind – Marksmanship: Now Also increases Strafing and Backing Speed by 50%.
• Strider’s Defense – Skirmishing: You and Your pet gain Evasion (1s) on Critical Hits in Melee range. ICD 6s.
• Poison Master – Wilderness Survival: Poison Applied by you Also Reduces Healing by an increased amount. Healing reduced: 66%.

Engineer

• Experimental Turrets – Alchemy: Turrets now also Explode in a Puddle of Goo when destroyed, granting the Specific Boon to nearby Allies for extended time.
  Flame Turret: Might (3 stacks, 15s)
  Healing Turret: Vigor (6s)
  Net Turret: Swiftness (12s)
  Rifle Turret: Fury (8s)
  Rocket Turret: Retaliation (6s)
  Thumper Turret: Protection (6s)

Elementalist

• Blinding Ashes – Fire: Burning now also Blinds enemies at a Set intervall after being Applied. Intervall: 3s.
• Elemental Contingency – Arcana: Switching Attumements now Breaks Stun and Grants a Specific Boon when it does: Fire – Retaliation (6s), Air – Fury (10s), Water – Vigor (6s), Earth – Protection (6s). ICD 60s.

Necromancer

• Renewing Blast – Soul Reaping: Life Blast now Heals in an Area around their Target instead and Transfers a Condition from the Necromancer to the target. Radius: 240.

Mesmer

• Disruptor’s Sustainment – Inspiration: When you Interrupt a Foe, gain a Buff that will Heal you and Nearby allies the next time you use a Heal Skill. Radius: 600. Base Healing: 2.350. Buff Duration: 30s.

You gain 1 set of ready-to-use skins (i.e they can be applied to a piece of armor without requiring a Transmutation Charge) and the Skin is added to your wardrobe to use on any character of the appropriate armor rating, however applying the skins from the wardrobe will cost you Transmutation charges as with any other skin attained in-game.

Armor Restrictions still apply, you can’t use the Strider Skins on a Heavy Armor profession, for example. Exceptions are unrated skins, which are unlocked for all armor classes once purchased. These include mostly headwear such as glasses or eyepatches.

A good way to handle Conditions in PvE would be to introduce something like Rupture skills, attacks that consume all Stacks of conditions on an enemy and damages them depending on how many stacks were consumed. The Damage would scale of Condition Damage and would Scale Exponantially, meaning that with below 13-15 stacks (or seconds if talking Poison/Burn) it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but each stack above 13-15 would substantially increase the spike damage. This way, it wouldn’t necesserily affect sPvP a lot, but it’d make a change in general PvE.

Ruptures could have different effects depending on Condition:

Bleed/Torment: Deals a large amount of damage to the affected Target.
Burn: Deals a moderate amount of damage to all nearby targets.
Poison: Deals a moderate amount of damage and prevents Healing for a short time.
Confusion: Deals a moderate amount of damage and Dazes the affected Target.

Each class could get 1-2 Weapon skills that ruptures different damaging conditions:

• Warrior: Final Strike (Bleed/Torment), Smoldering Arrow (Burn)
• Guardian: Zealot’s Fire (Burn), Flashing Blade (Burn)
• Thief: Backstab (Bleed/Torment), Surprise Shot (Poison)
• Ranger: Crippling Shot (Bleed/Torment), Stalker’s Strike (Poison)
• Engineer: Detonate Flame Blast (Burn), Acid Bomb (Poison), Magnet (Confusion)
• Elementalist: Fire Grab (Burn), Hurl (Bleed/Torment)
• Necromancer: Feast of Corruption (Bleeding/Torment), Enfeebling Blood (Poison)
• Mesmer: Phantasmal Warlock (Bleed/Torment), Chaos Storm (Confusion)

That is mix and match. Top Is Krytan Armor Skin and Bottom is Viper Medium Armor Skin. (Both are Gem-purchased only, though.)

Those with a Wyld Hunt are called Valiants. You’re continously referred to as Valiant during your personal story. Thus, you do indeed have a Wyld Hunt. Congratulations.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Valiant

Ryoki Hokishami.2756:

TheSwede.9512:

Lessee…

• Main Ranger

Can’t have a topic without the ranger hate. Seriously though, what’s everyone’s problem with this? Didnt want to play a pet class?

I have little to no Problem with having a Pet. I have a problem with the low level of control of said pet (And the fact that I can’t have a Dolyak. I want a Blazing Dolyak). But that’s neither here nor there in this thread, and hopefully I can cross this off of my list if the CDI amounts to anything.

Back on topic, here’s a few more Mistakes I’ve made:

• Tried to Solo a Zerg in WvW once. I don’t know what I was thinking. Probably something starting with Leeroy.
• Once used Fiery Rush off a cliff. “Once”, ahem.
• I no longer count the amount of times I dodgeroll into something spikey. Or on fire.
• Did you know jumping of a cliff cleanses all conditions?
• Once wasted 6 transmute crystals on an outfit I then later salvaged for Ectos anyway.
• And that’s without mentioning all the dungeon tokens I’ve wasted on the Wrong armor class or Stat combination.

Lessee…

• When I outfitted my first character, I thought Rampager was a workable alternative to Berserker.
• Decided that my first Elementalist was gonna be a Healer. Leveled to 80 through PvE in Healing Power gear. And Staff.
• Can’t get myself to get rid of or replace said Ele’s Cleric gear due to nostalgia, so created and leveled a second Ele which is outfitted in Zerker gear so that I could Dungeoneer on an Ele.
• Wasted 30 laurels on an Apothecary amulet because its icon looked pretty.
• Decided to reach 500 in some Discipline when Ascended weapons were released. Choose Huntsman over Weaponsmith or Artificer.
• Wasted almost all my G on getting Tailor to 500, only to realize that I won’t be using it anyway.
• Was convinced that my Sword/Axe Warrior was the epitome of DPS. In Soldier gear. Seventeen faceplants in WvW later, I know different.
• Main Ranger
• Bought too many character slots. And Krytan Armor only for the Chest piece. Deleted said chestpiece later.

I can prolly think of more, but I don’t want to.

Their April’s Joke will be them saying that the big feature patch is an April’s joke. It’s a joke hidden within a joke.

Forgive me for disputing, but I feel there are a few points I’d like to add to this convo.

1) The Kodan Saved the World, without them we wouldn’t have known of the Dragons

Going to argue this, including the sub-point of them indirectly forming the pact. Knowledge of Jormag did nothing to help against Kralkatorik or Zhaitan, but even if they had we may never have seen The Vigil as an order, simply because General Soulkeeper formed said order only after the Brand claimed her warband.

Furthermore, I’d say that The Asura being driven from their subterranean city by Primordius has had a bigger impact on the world than the Kodan’s migration. The Asura might’ve never felt the need for the extensive communications and trade program that is the Waypoints and the Asura gates if they hadn’t been driven from their home, which would’ve severely crippled the world’s defenses against the dragons.

2) Vizier Khilbron saved the world

While an interesting point, and not one I disagree with, I’d like to remind you that if the Charr had taken Orr, it would never have sunk, so when Zhaitan had awakened there’s no guarantee that all the Charr on Orr would’ve perished (Certainly most would’ve, but not necesserily all). The Charr are not the kind of species to just bow down and die that easily.

3-7) The Races of Tyria

The Inquest isn’t a nation, but a Metakrewe. They’re similar to the ruthless and amoral corporations you find in every Dystopian novel.

Humans are not numerous, they’re actually in a steady decline until recent events. Furthermore, the whole watchknight spectacle must’ve bankrupted the crown, makes you wonder what the heck went through Queen Jennah’s head then and there.
All things considered, humans are by far the weakest of the 5 prominent races on Tyria, if we consider technological advancement, political structure, sociological position, economical position, military might and physical ability. They’re not the worst off in all those points, but they’re not the best off in either.

What the humans -do- have going for them is Landmass and Natural resources. Kryta is bountiful with wood and minerals for trade, fish and game for food and plenty of soil for expansion of farmlands and mills. (Provided, of course, that the Seraph could drive the bandits out of Northern Brisban already.)

The Asura, or rather Rata Sum, doesn’t seem to possess any mills, mines or farmlands. Most likely they trade for such needs on demand rather than produce it themselves. Sylvari to this point doesn’t seem to have any need for such operations either, as everything they build or eat is homegrown. Norn aren’t interested in claiming landmass. This leaves a lot of resources open for humans.

Charr lands are -not- safer in any shape, way or form to human or norn lands. Besides the Flame legion, it’s infested with undying spirits, ogres, all manners of aggressive beasts and the freaking brand. No wonder Charr take their military training so seriously, basically everything in Ascalon is out to gut you.

The biggest issue with the Charr is their distrust for magic, which leaves the Flame legion with a huge advantage over the other legions, how else would 1 legion be able to stand against 3?

8) LA and Ebonhawke

I agree on Ebonhawke, however LA will most likely rise up and rebuild itself. It’s a free city state, and because of that it can’t count on any other nation to support it more so than out of charity. But as the hub for trade and commence, it’ll probably get back on its feet. Eventually. It was created by pirates, after all, so it’ll take more than one measly invasion to take that down, I believe.

Yesterday, I had my faith in newcomers rekindled.

AC expl. with friends, we had one spot left and find this Guardian in base colours and chainmail asking for a spot in /s. We go “Welp, spot open” and invite him to our team. Turns out he’s lvl 28 with 305 AP, and had never done a single dungeon before. He was new.

You’d think this scenario would spell disaster? Nope, not at all. Of course we carried him, but you can basically duo or solo AC nowadays so it’s not like it was an inconvenience, but anyhow…

He listened to everything we said. We told him of stacking, he stacked. Told him of skips, he skipped with us (Like a pro, I might add. Well, all things considered, he got through the Gravelings after Spider Queen and the Spider room after the first burrows on p3 on the first try. Still better than a lot of PuGs.) After the dungeon runs, we sent him on his way with some build advice and a crash course in “How to use Utilities”. Seeing him marvel at the whole 3g he had earned made me all warm and fuzzy inside.

My only concern is that the next time he PuGs AC, it probably won’t be with an Ele, a Warr and a Guard blazing through everything without a care in the world. We might’ve spoiled him.

PS: When was anyone going to tell me that you don’t need Ice bows at the burrows in p3? Went much faster by just stacking Might in firefields and blasting it. (Finally got to use my Hammer on my guard, wooh).

Grok Krog.9581:

This seems like a good place to ask a question for you dungeony DPS experts. I don’t play my Engineer all the time but I do use him occassionally. 30/30/0/0/10 Bomb/Grenades etc. my last skill I can never decide on, between Thumper Turret for 3 blast finishers, or Elixir B, or something else. Was wondering if it was worth it damage wise to have Flamethrower on the bar just to use Flameblast

The last slot is my personal “Tailor-for-the-moment” slot, which I toss in a specific skill depending on the situation. It’s important to NOT lock yourself down in a mindset that you should never change Utility slots:

• Thumper Turret is good IF you do not have An Ele that can stack might -and- you expect the fight to be over within 20 seconds or so, as the long cooldown makes it less ideal for continuous use over longer fights.

• Throw Mine Is a sorely underestimated skill. It’s an 18-second Blast finisher that can be delayed and also pushes enemies back, and its Toolbelt Skill deal pretty decent damage if you get all mines in on a target. In terms of Versatility, this is one of my favorite skills. You can use it to blast the short-duration Healing Mist Water field, you can use it to stack might regularily and you can use it to position Bosses to your liking.

• Elixir S and Rocket Boots are useful for Skipping, though the Elixir takes the cake here as it’s both stealth and invulnerability, while the latter requires a smoke bomb field for Stealth. However, cooldowns are a factor, and the Elixir’s long cooldown makes it more suited for longer skips.

• Elixir U is useful if your Guardian or Mesmer hasn’t got the memo about WoR or Feedback (Though the most useful skill in that case is the “Leave Dungeon” Skill.), or if neither of those exist in your team. While it only has a 50% chance to reflect projectiles, it’s better than nothing and you get Quickness to go with it. Of course, no use in bringing this to a non-projectile heavy fight.

A few other skills, like Elixir R, Elixir Gun, Tool Kit, Elixir B or Elixir C have mostly situational uses. The above listed are more useful in general.

No.

We wanted Dragons. We got Dragons.

CHIPS.6018:

Erukk.1408:

There is a quote I want to say, but for the life of me I can’t remember how it goes or where it came from. And google is no help, since it only brings me to pages related to terrorism.

Kill a man, and he becomes a martyr.
Wound a man, and he becomes a hero.

I can’t remember the last part, but it went something like…

Discredit a man, and he becomes no one.

Jennah can’t really kill Caudecus for these reasons. Because if any harm comes to him, no matter the circumstance, he will be used as a rallying point for Jennah’s enemies to gather under. Her keeping him under her watch offers more advantages.

1. It puts him entirely at her disposal.
2. It heavily restricts his actions.
3. It allows them to monitor any of his remaining actions much more closely.
4. As long as he’s alive, it constricts the bandit actions through lack of clear leadership. His death would only allow for another leader, outside of her knowledge and “care”, to take his place

That method is a very honourable way to govern. Unfortunately it is too idealistic, in believing that the wicked enemies will have a change of heart due to the Queen being honourable. No they won’t. They will merely take advantage of the Queen’s kindness and honour.

You said “If Caudecus is killed, the Queen’s enemies will rally around him as a martyr.” Well actually we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Why? These enemies already gathered to plot against the Queen. Your worries has already happened.

There is no way to change their hearts to make them fall in love with her. They will keep plotting against her until either the Queen is removed/dead, or they themselves are killed.

We are dealing with the aftermath by this point.

Machiavellian believes "It is far better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. "

In this case, love is clearly out of reach. So fear is the only thing left to keep these enemies under control.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is great that the Queen is kind and is specially nice to the poor and lower classes. However she must be ruthless against her enemies if she wants to survive.

Machiavelli never spoke against noble goals a leader may have. But to fulfil those noble goals, a leader must first destroy/control his enemies to maintain power. Without keeping power, a leader cannot change anything nor protect anyone.

Long story short: The ends justifies the means.

I think you’re utterly mistaken about Queen Jennah’s intentions. She’s not a “MLP lovey-dovey all is sunshine and rainbows”-kinda ruler. She’s trying to get a dying race back on track, everything’s about as brown as it gets what with the constant war, bandit raids and the occasional Elder Dragon. Everyone is free to bash her all they want, but the simple fact that Human society has not degraded into corruption and savagery already speaks volumes about both Jennah’s and the Ministry’s ability to run a country.

But back to my point, Jennah’s not keeping Caedecus alive out of Compassion or some self-percieved sense of Justice, she’s keeping him alive because of Politics. As has been stated before, you Can’t just kill a politically important figure, covertly or by making it look like an incident, without causing a giant rupture in a frail system. If Caedecus were to die, no matter who caused it, All blame will be thrown at Queen Jennah in one way or the other, because she’s Caedecus’ greatest enemy and the Ministry wants him on the throne.
That’s why Caedecus is so openly “hostile” to the queen, it puts her in a catch 22:

• She can’t remove him, because then the entire Ministry will cry out and turn it against her.
• She’s forced to allow him his position at a place of power as a result of the above statement.

As such, Caedecus being alive has nothing to do with Jennah being soft-heartened. It’s only because Caedecus himself is a political Genius with years of experience on intrigue compared to Jennah. I’m going to use the quote from Sun Tzu here:

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Survival Skills and how to improve on their uniqueness

Goal of Proposal
To increase the diversity of Survival Skills, making them useful in more situations than as of now.

Proposal Functionality
Healing Spring

• Is now a Survival Skill, making it synergize better with Traits and allowing for players to Spec into its use. Possibly Increased Cooldown as an effect of this.

Lightning Reflexes

• Changed functionality. Instead of directly causing the Ranger to roll backwards, this Skill now takes on the Block Animation. If attacked, the Ranger dodges backwards, curing Cripple, Chill and Immobilize.
• Additional Skill. If the Ranger isn’t attacked, he can interrupt the Block Animation with a Lunge, similar to Warrior’s Bull’s Charge, that Stuns an enemy on impact. Range could be around 900-1200 Units.
• The idea behind this split is to allow this skill to be used both for offense and defense, while still retaining the very valuable mobility that is a Ranger’s forte. Might require an increase in Cooldown, or it could be split between the Dodge and the Lunge (It you just use the Dodge, Cooldown is 25s. If you use the Lunge, Cooldown goes up to 50s, for instance)

Muddy Terrain

• Now Knocks Down on creation instead of Immobilizing (Because Slippery mud).
• Instead now stacks Weakness (1s) with each pulse along with Cripple (Because it’s extremely tiring to move about and fight while knee-deep in mud).
• These changes are for the sake of increasing its usefulness while fighting stationary enemies, against which immobilize and cripple have little to no use. Increased Cooldown is probably required.

Sharpening Stone

• Aside from just stacking Bleeds on your target, this skill now increases the damage of your next 5 attacks by 5%, making it viable for a Power Build as well.

Quickening Zephyr

• No need to increase the effectiviness of this one.

Master of Survival

• This trait now also increases the duration of Survival Skills by 20%.

Associated Risks
Might make Survival Skills a bit too powerful, resulting in too high Cooldowns to have the same steady use they have right now.

You’re gravely misinformed if you think Rapid Fire is a Burst Skill for Ranger. Or a DPS skill in any way, shape or form. It’s not. Furthermore, 5k DPS is deplorably low by PvE standards, which is one of the many reasons you can’t hope to translate sPvP to PvE.
Not to mention, that DPS is nothing compared to Necro’s Dagger AA or Ranger’s 1h Sword AA, -even- with 100% crit chance in DS. I’d look up Spoj’s Necro guide for PvE and Dungeoneering if you -insist- on bringing a Necro into dungeons (Which, really, should only be the case if you don’t have any other Profession at lvl 80, because of Necro’s lack of Team Synergy and Support.)
Ranger brings two unique Buffs to the team (Spotter and Frost Spirit), Perma-Fury and Decent Might, making them good Offensive Supporters. They also bring a long-lasting Water field that removes conditions, and a reflect. Necro brings none of these, barely any defensive buffs, Paltry excuses for Heals in their Life-steals (Which you have to Trait, in trees that are otherwise of no interest to you) and only decent Vulnerability and Blind. Both of those latter points can be done by a Guard or a Thief, and they both bring better support than the Necro. They -can- pump out pretty good single target DPS, with a smaller army of Minions out, though they tend to die pretty quickly against AoE’s. Furthermore, Necros lacks Cleave, which is situational in sPvP but downright essential in PvE.

TL;DR – Ranger > Necro in dungeons (Generally speaking, as mentioned in other posts Necro has a few uses but more often than not, Ranger takes it.)

General PvE: None. None. None. Absolutely not Warrior, Guardian or Ranger. Definitely not Elementalist or Necromancer. Engineer, Mesmer and Thief shouldn’t even cross your mind.

WvW: I wouldn’t know. Possibly none, because Healing Power scales extremely poorly. Possibly Guardian, but I doubt it.

sPvP: I see some Bunker Guardians running around with it.

The answer to this is simple.

Warriors only have access to 3 out of 5 DoT conditions through weapon Skills (Bleed, Burn and Torment). They gain access to Confusion through a Strength Master Trait.
Compare to Necromancer, who has access to Bleeding, Poison and Torment, and can trait for Burning and Fear.
Compare to the Elementalist Trait which also Increases Damage to Bleeding targets as well.

There’s your answer.

Specific Game Mode
PvE; Traitlines

Proposal Overview
Returning to the topic on Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival and Traps, I’d like to offer a different viewpoint on how the Traits correlate with the skills. Skirmishing Can still remain the same thematically, however instead of helping the Ranger stay two steps ahead through tricks and traps, it’d be a more straight-forward version with modified Weapon Skill traits rather than Traps.
Furthermore, I always personally felt that the Trap skills of a Ranger adhered more to the Hunter archetype of the Ranger, rather than the Scout/Skirmisher Archetype, setting traps for unfortunate Prey.

Goal of Proposal
To keep the overall theme and feel of the Ranger trait trees, however still optimizing them for their purposes Game Mechanics-wise.

Proposal Functionality

• Trapper’s Expertise – Remains unchanged and is moved to Wilderness Survival, as a Master Trait.

• Off-hand Training – Remains unchanged and is moved to Skirmishing, as a Master Trait. Thematically, having an increased range is a real good boon when Skirmishing, as control of Range can be the deciding factor between life and death.

• Trap Potency – Remains unchanged and is moved to Wilderness Survival, as a Grandmaster Trait. Only stands to reason that the Ranger who knows what makes the best tools, position and ingredients can make the best traps.

• Martial Mastery – Is moved from Wilderness Survival to Skirmishing and made into a Grandmaster Trait. Increasing it a tier will allow you to add something to the Trait to make it more interesting.
  Suggestion 1 – Decreases Cooldown on Sword, Greatsword and Spear Skills. Break out of Stun and Gain Stability (3s) when Switching Weapons while in Combat. Cooldown: 90s. – This Increase will give the Rangers a very useful Trait that will allow them to turn the tide of battle even with the odds against them, such as when an enemy attempts to lock you down before scaling the distance. With such a Trait, the Ranger could retaliate in an instant, avoiding the attack or set up a counterplay, preying on audacious enemies.
  Suggestion 2 – Decreases Cooldown on Sword, Greatsword and Spear Skills. While wielding a Sword, Greatsword or Spear, Duration of Movement Impairing Conditions (Cripple, Chill, Immobilize) is reduced by 100%. – While this might sound overpowered, remember that it only affects Movement Impairing conditions and only treads into effect while the Ranger wields melee weapons. However, this change will allow the Ranger unparallelled levels of mobility, another key feature of victory. This trait would have its uses both for engaging and disengaging enemies, making the Ranger a tough enemy to escape or pin down.

Associated Risks

• The Trait changes might be difficult to Balance properly, but it shouldn’t pose much of a problem to add some form of increase to their effectiviness.

Specific Game Mode
PVE

Proposal Overview
Ranger’s Pets are, as you say, very much tied to the class but our control over their actions and movement. As changing the functionalities of the Ranger and its specific Profession Skills (F1-F4) would require a massive overhaul, I suggest the following band-aids as solutions to the problem that often causes Pets to feel redundant in PvE, where they spend the majority of the big battles dead.
Also, some trait changes could make do for the Ranger as well, that has to do a bit more with Pets but adds also an extra flavor to the Ranger.

Goal of Proposal
Rangers are currently lacking in PvE due to the fact that they have visually no control over their pet. Especially in open-world content such as Lion’s Arch they will see their pets get burned down in an instant by AoE’s and the like.

The goal of these revamps would be to increase the Pet’s Survivability and usefulness in PvE but make it so that it’s more reliant on Player skill than just flat stat increases.

Proposal Functionality

• Attack – Now adds a Unique Speed Buff (Similar to Sic’ Em) to the Pet, which will allow them to chase down distant targets attempting to flee. This extra effect could be on a 10 seconds Cooldown, to avoid spamming it in WvW.

• Return – Would now add a 1 or 2-seconds Evasion Buff (Similar to Mesmer’s Blur) which causes the Pet to avoid attacks as it returns to you. This will let Rangers manually control their pet’s evasiveness, so that they can avoid having them downed in one go by A world Boss’ Deadly and Telegraphed AoE. This could also be at a 10 seconds cooldown.

• Skirmishing and Wilderness Survival – This is something that has always struck me as odd. Why are Traps, who are exclusively Condition Damage-based, located in the Trait tree that adds Precision and Critical damage? It makes no sense as a Trapper Ranger won’t be using Critical Damage if he’s specced into Condition Damage. Same with Wilderness Survival and Melee Weapon Skills, such as Martial Mastery. Greatsword and Spear are generally Power-related weapons, why’re they located in the Condition-damage tree? To me, it feels like these two focuses oughta switch places, to make the Ranger capable of focusing more on one or the other without being forced into either tree.

• Trait line Stat increases – Should be applied to the pet, but in a lesser extension (Maybe 1/5th of the total increase, giving them +60 on a full traitline?).

Associated Risks

• Changes to Attack and Return needs to be carefully maintained so as to not make them overpowered in other game modes.

Virtue of Resolve’s passive effect is really just extra cake. It’s not there to give you a passive regen, it’s there to give Your team an extra heal, source of Regen and Condi cleanse (If traited).
Buffing the passive effect would only encourage more selfish hogging of the passive ability, and we don’t want that. (And no, even with Battle Presence it’s still not made for Passive play because, as already stated, the passive effect is negligable and it’s the Activated effect that’s the real deal here. That goes for basically all Virtues, anyway.)

hendo.1940:

<Snip>

The first thing I’d like to note isn’t that giving bosses certain bonuses should make them impossible to beat with the wrong setup, because that’d be as you claim forcing people into specific Gearsets. Instead, these changes would only change what’s Optimal, meaning that if you’re facing an enemy with High Tough you’ll be able to beat him in say 30 seconds by Nuking him with conditions, but it’d take 50 seconds with zerker builds. It wouldn’t at all force people into a specific gearsets, only those that really want their dungeon runs to go as fast as possible.

PS: I do not have something against Zerker gear, I use it all the time in dungeons. I just think it’d be better if all manners of builds had carried some value across the board.

Improve Boss AI
Change how Bosses think and act, make them more dynamic to fight:

• Give them all Dodges, and make specific Skills into “triggers” for these Dodges (Such as Warrior’s 100 blades, Guardian’s Whirling Wrath, Thief’s Cloak and Dagger etc) or if the Skills never show, they use it at regular intervall or when they’ve taken a certain amount of damage. This will add another layer of tactics onto fighting, as teams will have to “Bait out” the dodges before nuking the boss, or risk wasting their entire game. Skilled/Organized teams will easily pick up on BossDodge CD and how to bait it out, unorganized teams will find themselves wasting their skills and prolonging the fight.
• The frequency of these Dodges increases depends on how many players are within say, 300-600 units or so of the boss. It won’t be undefeatable with 5 people in Melee, but the frequent Dodges would lower incoming DPS to the point where it might be Optimal to run with 3-4 in Melee, 1-2 at Range, for instance.
• Intelligence, make them learn from their mistakes. For example, primarily ranged bosses will keep their distance even if LoS’d (if possible) BUT will switch to Melee once they find their attacks Reflected. This means they won’t stand at range and fire arrows continously at your Wall of Light, instead you’ll have to time that application, same with Smoke Screen or Feedback.

Encourage Build Diversity
I’m probably gonna get chewed down for this, but I don’t think the current Zerker Meta is at all optimal. I follow it, of course, but I’d rather see a game where every stat combination at least amount for something (Hey, let a guy dream, will ya?)
Phases and “Miniphases” is one way this could work. For example, a Boss could have different “Modes” that he shifts between regularily (Or different bosses have different permanent modes.)

• Stalwart – The Boss gains a HUGE buff to Toughness but their attacks deal less damage. This mode would be perfectly dealt with through Condition Damage, as seen in the Wurm events.
• Brutal – The Boss gains Health regeneration and increased Damage, but attacks slower. Basically, DPS race with higher stakes. Go Zerk or go Home.
• Ferocious – The Boss’ Damage and Defenses drop slightly, but they attack much more frequently and have much shorter Cooldown on their skills. Might require the team to run with Soldier/Knight gear.

More Unique Mechanics
Nothing is as refreshing as coming face to face with a Boss, and realizing you won’t beat them by just smashing the most conveniently placed blunt object against their forehead and hope for the best. Unique mechanics is what keeps things fun and interesting.

Mesmers are Gimmicky, generally a lot more durable than you’d first think. They’re the go-to class for mind-games, and can easily throw inexperienced players off their game before they even started. More experienced players might see through your tricks though.
Their mobility isn’t all that good, since they lack any perma-swiftness or Movement speed signet, but they gain access to Blinks, Stealths and Portals. In PvP they can be Bursty with a Shatter build, though I mostly run into Condi-Mesmers (I can’t speak for this, really, as I suck as Mesmer in PvP). Mesmers are usually valued for the Supportive abilities however, at least in PvE.

Engis are usually built for Condition Bunkering, both in PvP and WvW. They’re very sturdy and good at what they do, good Engis can usually keep a point indefinitely. With good access to many Conditions, A frequent Waterfield and a decent amount of Blast finishers, they can generally outlast just about any other class. I wouldn’t call them bursty though, as their role seems to primarily be as Bunkers.

If you want High Burst, High mobility and Gimicky, then it’s either Thief or Warrior. Thieves with their Backstabbing, Stealth Stacking and extreme Mobility makes them the ultimate single target Glass cannon. Warriors have if possible even better mobility, very High Burst damage and extremely good defenses even when built as a Glass cannon. Both are usually a One-trick Pony when built for bursting though, making them rather predictable and you’re often better of retreating if you don’t down your target in the first 10 seconds or so.

Then there’s the vagueness of the word “Experienced” as well:

See, some people have a rather generous assumption as to what “Experienced” mean. They think that having run TA up once, CoF p1 umpteen times and maybe a failed bout or two at AC (Either path) makes them “Experienced” at dungeons Over All. Including the dungeons they have never once ran before, but their logic goes “Hey, I’ve run other dungeons before, how different can it be?”.

And then we have those who think “Experienced” is all about knowing your Profession, and they know exactly how to play their Cleric Guard. In WvW. While staff-camping. For Swiftness.
Or they run their Terrormancer in PvP and “win every solo queue they join”, so obviously their build is the bestest of best in every practically applicable scenario ever created.

And last but not least, the typical 5-7k AP people who have played since launch, but never got around to doing a lot of dungeons for whatever reason. But hey, they’ve got a years worth of playtime, of course they’re “Experienced”.

Anierna.6918:

The meta is 25/30/0/0/15. But my thief is in 25/30/15/0/0, and the 2 people who sometimes thief for me during my daily tours are also in that spec. There are 2 reasons for this:

1) Regain of 2x init via Infusion of Shadow each time you use dagger 5. You’re using that very frequently in your single-target rotation of dagger 5 > backstab > 1x AA chain, repeat, then spamming heartseeker once boss is below 25% health. The 2x init regain per rotation will allow you to maintain enough init to spam heartseeker at the end; if you use the conventional 25/30/0/0/15, you will run out of init and not be able to use heartseeker.

2) Longer stealth via the 15 minor in the 3rd trait line. You’re only ever going to bring a thief to CM and Arah (when you actually need stealth), so in those dungeons, the extra stealth is very helpful. For all the other dungeons, the thief in our group relogs to a different class.

While I can definitely see the appeal of this build for skipping, I’d say that in the case of Infusion of Shadows vs Flanking Strikes + Kleptomaniac + Preparedness, the latter still comes out on top now that they’ve increased Initiative Regeneration for thieves. Considering that you’ll be spending about 75% of any boss fight only switching between AA and CnD – Backstab, you’ll have more than enough Initiative to play around with. Once the boss hits 25% HP, you can just use the following setup:

Assassin’s Signet – CnD – Backstab – Heartseeker x2 – Smokescreen – Heartseeker – Backstab.

Normally, the boss will have gone down at this point, or is about to, seeing as you’ll have 4 other people hacking away at it alongside you. Even if you stick to spamming heartseeker, you still have an extra 3 Initiative and a quick refill on Steal + Any signet that should be able to keep you going. I myself have never found myself starving for Initiative with the Meta build.

Current Meta is 25/30/0/0/15, but as you level I suggest running 25/30/0/15/0 for Endurance-on-Dodge and Vigor-on-Heal, as it’ll let you dodge around more often while only losing out on about 5% flat DPS and better Initiative Management. Once you get better at using Evasive Weapon skills (Death Blossom/Pistol Whip) you won’t be needing to actually dodge roll often and can switch over to the former.

Traits are:
Deadly Arts: III (Standard), VI (If your team lacks Vuln.), IX
Critical Strikes: III, VIII, XI
Shadow Arts: Not in the Meta
Acrobatics: III (While learning the class)
Trickery: IV

Healing Skill: Withdraw (Standard, among the highest HPS in the game), Switch to either Hide in Shadows or Signet of Malice if mobility is compromised (Fighting on bridges without rails, near falls or other mobs etc.)

Utility Skills:
Smokescreen (Blocks projectiles, uptime equal to a traited WoR. Can Heartseeker through it for stealth twice if you’re fast.)
Signet of Agility (Precision buff, but the active effect is the most useful. Curing one condition on every nearby team member and refills everyone’s Endurance. Very useful while skipping longer paths, I tend to keep this on all the time.)
Shadow Refuge (Long team stealth, for skipping stuff only. Healing is miniscule, and dark field messes up Blasts so refrain from using this while stacking with a half-competent team.)
Assassin’s Signet (Power boost, active effect can be used to burst down bosses once they reach 25% HP: CnD – Backstab – Heartseeker x3.)
Infiltrator’s Signet (One of the best Stunbreakers in-game, with it’s low CD. Use if you got a slot open and don’t trust your dodge key or the team Guardian to set you up with Aegis/Stability.)

Weapons:
Dagger/Dagger (Highest Single Target DPS)
Sword/Pistol (Cleans out Mobs easily and safely with Pistol Whip and Black Powder. Trivializes just about any mob encounter.)
Shortbow (Use it pre-battle to spam the blast in Fire fields, or Smoke Fields if you’re skipping and SR is on CD/You need both. -Don’t- use it in the actual fight, but that goes without saying.)

Question 1
Warriors, exactly how do they work Lore-wise? I’m mostly wondering because of how they seem the be the very basic class, but they can pull off some mad stunts like leaping 600 units in full plate armor, throwing their greatswords like boomerangs and even cause the ground the quake beneath their hammer blows. Is this something you people envision the Warriors of Tyria able to do? (The heroic kind, rather than the NPC standard mook kind) And if so, is it magic at work there?

Question 2
How do you envision Ranger Spirit magic to work? I’ve heard people liking it to that of Ritualism from GW1 (I personally never played it myself, though), but what about the Skills that are most definitely magical in some way, but not explicitly stated as such? (Such as the Weapon skills that has those “Spirit animals” back you up, like Maul, Swoop, Serpent’s Sting etc, or the Utility skills like Healing Spring and Quickening Zephyr).

Question 3
What exactly is Arcane Magic, that Elementalists are using? Is it some raw form of Destruction magic, or some high-end fifth element of sorts?

Question 4
Is there any chance of there existing Fractal planes within the mists of events that has yet not happened? As in, could there ever come up a Fractal in which we’re thrown Forawards in time instead of backwards? (Cause that’d be awesome.)

So, currently the only way to get Ascended armor is through drops, or a painstaking crafting exercise. Couldn’t there be alternative ways?

Maybe if you could “Upgrade” dungeon equipment to ascended by a simple Mystic Forge recipe:

Dungeon Armor Piece + Appropriate Gift of … + 250 Bloodstone Dust + 10-25 Dark Matter = Appropriately Statted Ascended Armorpiece

For example, to create Zojja’s Breastplate (Or maybe just the same skin but with ascended stats), you could for example go with Flame Legion Chestplate:

Flame Legion Chestplate + Gift of Baelfire + 250 Bloodstone Dust + 25 Dark Matter = Flame Legion Chestplate (Ascended)/Zojja’s Chestplate

Overall, this would also serve to work as a sink for all that Bloodstone Dust you accumulate through dungeons. Alternatively, you could use Empyreal Fragments as well.

Overview:
All recipes include Bloodstone Dust/Empyreal Fragments and Dark Matter.

AC Ascended Armor: Ascalonian Armorpiece + Gift of Ascalon
CM Ascended Armor: Noble Armorpiece + Gift of the Nobleman
TA Ascended Armor: Nightmare Armorpiece + Gift of Thorns
SE Ascended Armor: Dredge Armorpiece + Gift of the Forgeman
CoF Ascended Armor: Flame Legion Armorpiece + Gift of Baelfire
HoTW Ascended Armor: Kodan Armorpiece + Gift of the Sanctuary
CoE Ascended Armor: Inquest Armorpiece + Gift of Knowledge
Arah Ascended Armor: Arah Armorpiece + Gift of Zhaitan
WvW Ascended Armor: Invader’s Armorpiece + Gift of Battle

I’m still not convinced
This’d counter the Stun Meta in PvP and WvW, as people would have to take out an important stat for the sake of being able to control an enemy better. Terrormancers for instance would have to sacrifice either Tough or Vit for their fears to have desired effect. M/S + GS warriors would see their Crit damage slither away and our of their grasp.

But that just makes it useless in PvP, and it’s still not useful for PvE!
I’m not done, furthermore I think that a Controlled enemy, wide open as it is, should be given a rather unhealthy Damage Resistance debuff for the time that it is Controlled. This Debuff would be dependant on how much Extra Balance damage you do with the Control effect. Say your Impact deal 140 Balance Damage (70 Base with 100% Impact) and your target has 100 Balance. BAM! Those 40 extra points are added as a 20% damage bonus as long as the target is Controlled. Add another Control skill and the Entire Balance damage is converted into Extra damage since the target already has 0 Balance left until the Controlling ends. a 25 Balance Damage attack? 12.5% extra. Another? 12.5% extra.
In PvP, this number would -obviously- be much lower.

TL;DR – Damage is at a good place as it stands right now, Support is decent. What needs to be upped is Control and Difficulty. I propose doing this by giving Control a Stat of its own: Impact.

Disclaimer: All numbers below are a subject to change cause I haven’t bothered with a balance check.

Now, as we all know ANet wanted to base combat in Guild wars around 3 basic aspects: Damage (Raw damage and Condition Damage), Support (Boons, Reflections, Specific buffs and sustainable Heals) and Control (Crippling conditions and Stun/Knock effects). However, because of the current implementation of the big bads, namely Champions and Legendary enemies having Defiant Stacks that makes them entirely immune to Control for most of the battle, making it completely unneccesery to Spec your character with weapons focusing on Control, such as Warrior’s hammer, while playing PvE contant with larger groups. The most obvious lack is seen in Dungeons, but you all know the story of the Zerkers and how everyone wants them.

Doesn’t have to be that way. My idea would require much reworking and is a very long shot, but I feel it’s worth mentioning anyway as it might spur a compromise somewhere (Yeah, right).

Anyway, the basic idea is that aside from just Stun Duration, another stat would be introduced that’s called Impact, and it would come with an entirely new Meter: Balance. Impact damage would be recieved whenever someone uses a Control move and this Impact Damage would deplete Balance of the target. Once the Meter hit 0, the Target is effectively Stunned, knocked, feared, what have you, depending on the Skill used. However, it’s not necessery for a Control Skill to be effective at all, because without a proper amount of Impact stacked, control effects would be less effective than they are now. Nonetheless, the Balance meter would only recover to full after combat, or after you’ve been effectively Controlled once.

For instance: Assume the Balance Meter has the same base as Endurance (100). Someone with 0 Impact might cause 50 Damage to Balance, thus they fail to Control the target. However, say someone with 100% Impact comes along. Suddenly the same move deals 100 damage to the Balance meter, thus depleting it entirely and Controlling the enemy.

But hang on, wouldn’t this make Control even -less- Viable?!
Well, yes it certainly would. For Burst or Bunker Specs that put all of their points into Offensive or defensive stats. However, the idea is that someone who Stats into Impact will be able to dish out even More control than with the current implementation.

Yeah well, how will that matter in Dungeons and against World bosses?
Easy. With Defiant stacks removed (Actually, reworked) bosses will be more susceptible to get locked in stuns and left as sitting ducks, For a while. See, bosses as well would have the same Balance meter instead, meaning a Control-speccing player will be able to control them for longer periods of time, while non-specced classes might struggle to maintain Control at all. The Defiant stacks would now show After a successful Control effect ends, and would only double their resistance to Control effects until the Buff disappears. However the duration of the Control can be extended by using other control skills that override the previous, while the boss is still stunned (I’ll explain why you’d wanna do this later on).

So Say a Boss takes 100 Balance Damage and is controlled. But then the Boss gains a Defiant stacks and suddenly you need 200 Balance damage to control it again. Woohp, woohp, in comes the Controller, dealing 200 damage on his own with a strong Control ability like say Backbreaker or Banish. This while unspecced players would’ve needed twice or three times as many strikes for the same result. In return for this possible increase in control, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to boost Bosses’ damage in certain spikes or telegraphed attacks.

But I’d lose so much DPS, it’s not even funny!
Not necesserily, remember that Impact would only be one stat. There’d be several options to stack is, such as POW/prec/imp or TOUGH/pow/imp or COND/vit/imp.

Ranger
Can become a Beastmaster, in which they truly become one with their companion through Sacrifice skills, which drains the health of your pet and stows it away in return of great buffs to the Ranger themselves, or vice versa. They’d gain Rifle and Shield as new weapons.
They could also become a Druid, focusing on defensive and supportive magic with the help of Shamanism, calling forth the wind to block projectiles, or a cause the skies to crack into rain or lightning. They’d gain Staff and Scepter as new weapons.

Thief
Can become an Assassin, focusing entirely on destroying their enemies from stealth, without them ever knowing they were there. They’d gain new Assassination skills, which are offensive skills that gain increased potency from Stealth and sets them up for devastating, new stealth attacks. They’d gain Sword off-hand and Rifles as new weapons.
They could also focus on becoming a Warmonk, their new skills called Maneuvers being used to quickly regain lost initiative, endurance or resist damage and gain the upper hand. They could use Staffs and Axes main-hand as new weapons.

Engineer
Can become a Thaumaturgist, which mixes the technological advancements they’ve found with all manners of magical applications. They’d gain new Tool kits such as the Tesla Kit, which focuses on Control and overcharging turrets, as well as new Magitech which mixes magic and technology into marvelous (And possibly dangerous) contraptions. They’d gain Staff and Scepter as new weapons.
They could also forgo the hippietalk and become Warmongers, gaining new weapon kits such as the Multigun kit, an abominable lovechild of the Gatling gun and a Rocket launcher, as well as new Ammo skills which adds a specific flavour to each attack that the enemies won’t soon forget. They’d gain Hammer and Mace main-hand as new weapons.

Elementalist
Can become the mysterious Arcanist, who can conjure forth specific elemental Seals on the ground beneath their allies or enemies, granting Boons or strengthening Allies, weakening enemies with conditions or other crippling effects depending on their attunement. They’d gain Longbow as a new weapon.
They could also focus their efforts straight on the offense as a Battlemage, gaining access to a wide variety of new buffs in the form of Charms, that’re conjured forth and grants the wielder specific boons and empowers them as long as they remain active. They’d gain Sword main-hand and Shield as new weapons.

Necromancer
Can become a melee-focused Reaver, charging straight into battle with the help of their new Syphon skills, which drains large amounts of health from enemies, absorbs their endurance or boons, while severely weakening their prey and granting life force to the Necromancer. They’d gain Greatsword and Mace main-hand as new weapons.
They could also focus more on attrition as a Harbinger, using their new Stigma skills to brand an enemy with a specific, unremovable debuff that constantly applies crippling conditions to them for a short time, making escape very difficult. They’d gain Hammer and Axe off-hand as new weapons.

Mesmer
Can become a Minstrel, who can now summon specific Ethereal Instruments, which lands on a specific spot with an Illusion constantly playing a song that Strengthens allies and weakens enemies. If the Illusion is destroyed, the Instrument can be picked up as a bundle, and new illusions would automatically seek out the instrument if it’s vacant. They’d gain Dagger Main-hand as a new weapon.
They could also focus much less on subterfuge and more on direct conflict as a Duelist, gaining new Counter techniques in which the Mesmer blurs and readies a counter maneuver, be it an attack, stacking conditions or just moving out of the way, whenever the next enemy attacks. They gain Pistol main-hand and Shortbow as new weapons.

Core idea
Once you reach Lvl 80, you get a mail from your respective trainer asking for you to meet with them. They explain that you’ve gotten as good within your class as you could possibly get, however there’s now the option to seek out one of two masters of a Specialized aspect of the class, to learn their secrets and new abilities. You’d then find these people and be given a new set of “Duties” similar to Dailies, in that you have to clear 5 different tasks set by the Master. You can choose which set of duties, or Path , that fits you the most:

Path of the Adventurer: Tasks are Focused around PvE and Open-world.
Path of the Conqueror: Tasks are focused around PvP.
Path of the Defender: Tasks are focused around WvW.

Once you finish all 5 tasks and return to the Master, he then teaches you your new Specialization, which comes with a variety of new Utility Skills (And possibly a Trait tree) and weapon skills.

Warrior
Can become a Barbarian, which focuses heavily on Damage and all-out offense. They’d gain new Rage skills, which increases their offense further by paying a price in health, defense or other areas. They could use Shortbows and Torches as new weapons.
Can instead focus on becoming a Knight, which focuses mostly on defense and support. They’d gain new Rally skills, which are similar to Banner however they’re instead focused around the Knight themselves and offer a different buff, such as Increased Endurance regeneration, pulsing Condition Cleanse or increased Condition duration. Knights could use Pistols main and offhand as new weapons.

Guardian
Can become a Crusader, which uses their magic for a punishing offense to lock down and control enemies, gaining access to AoE burns, immobilizes and knockdowns with their new Condemnation skills. They’d gain Axes mainhand and Longbows as new weapons.
They could also become a Zealot, which gains powerful defensive and supportive skills in the form of Rituals, which are lengthy in cast-time and Cooldown, but make up for it by giving a Unique buff to the team which persists for quite some time and are meant to be cast before a difficult encounter. They’d gain the use of Daggers main and offhand.

We all know that Guardian’s 4th Shield skill is not even situational, but merely downright useless in most scenarios because of the High CD, low damage and meager Protection buff. Well, I have a simple solution to that:

Replace the Protection buff with an Aegis Buff. It would give Guardian an activated Block (Like all Shields should have, because it -is- a shield after all), it would also justify the long Cooldown on the skill (Since Aegis is a powerful buff) and it would still retain the virtue of being a Supportive weapon as the buff affects nearby allies as well. Suddenly the Shield wouldn’t be so horribly underpowered in comparison to Focus.