Guild Wars 2

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Second, Death Shiver requires you to sit in DS for extended periods of time, so without traiting into Soul Reaping, DS would end up gimping you in the time it takes to get a second tick from Death Shiver.

My idea would remove the “in DS” requirement.

nearlight.3064:

And if the debuff is a condition, which you imply, then necromancers will still amount to nothing in pve.

Where did I imply that? If wanted it to be a condition (which I don’t) I would have written it. It would be just like ‘empower allies’ just that the effect was reduced tougness and applied on the enemy. So the only way for the enemy to get rid of the effect is to get the necro either outside of range or dead.

nearlight.3064:

A new GM in curses called army of corruption. What it will do is apply an army of corruption effect to allies for say ten seconds when you use a corruption skill. This effect would be a flat minor boost to precision and condition damage (the theme of the tree) and also provide a minor target the weak like direct damage increase, say 1% additional damage per condition on enemy(s). This would encourage the use of applying both damaging and non-damaging conditions to enemies for a party wide DPS increase without actually promoting condition builds that just leech from the zerker meta.

The only way to get an uptime of 100% (which would be practically required), Is too take epidemic and another corrutpion skill with the two corruption traits. Which means you have to sacrifice a well and the warhorn trait. The enemies also need to have at least 8 conditions on them all the time to equal a frost spirit/spotter ranger in terms of group support. So I don’t think this trait is the solution.

Bhawb.7408:

Necromancers are not foreign to buffs, despite ANet not wanting us to have boons. GW1 Necros had plenty of support options that still very much fit the theme of Necromancer and were very strong.

It’s not that I don’t want necro’s to give buffs to the allies, it’s just that when you look at offensive support there is already so much buffs given (might, fury, spotter,frost spirit, empower allies, banners, venoms and quickness) while debuffs have vulnerability,signet of vampirism and that’s it.

I aggree that necromancers need team suport but why does it have to be in the form of a buff. Why can’t we invent a nice debuf that is given to our enemies? Like:
death shiver becomes ‘nearby foes lose 150 toughness’.

How much toughness do you have? The more toughness you have the weaker you are playing against conditions since you are wasting a stat and delaying the fight which is in their advantage. Even if you stack some toughness, it should not be that much of a problem, since you need around 2320 armor to make an opponent’s basic scepter bleed scale better with condition damage then an axe auto attack scales with power.

Golem is fine. It is practically a guaranteed interrupt against defiance stacks. I also use it in my condition build as structure destroyer.

Well the first thing I noticed is that the editor shows a cooldown of 34 seconds while the guide said 32 seconds. The trait description also suggests 34 seconds. A minor flaw but not unimportant.

The second thing I noticed is the lack of underwater combat in the guide. It still has a role in PvE ( two path in HoTW and the Aquatic ruins fractal come to mind), so maybe a build and rotation can be written for that as well.

For the rest it was a good guide.

IchigoHatake.5098:

No it doesn’t…. everytime we fight the spider queen we stack, as a mesmer I would use time warp and null field, while somebody else would use their aoe condi clears/projectile reflection and somebody else (e.g. eles) would stack might with their combos. If you can’t stack your dungeon group is bad

So you’re standing the entire fight in those poisonous fields?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Except it doesn’t work that way. Current PvE dungeon meta is stack & smack.

Well they are working on it, look at the spider queen in Ascalonion catacombs. It now literally punishes stacking.

I don’t think that engineers need more removal, I just think that the current personal removal removal is just low or not suited to the engineer and needs some adjusting.

- Elixir C: With it’s short cast time and short cooldown it becomes, one of the most powerfull full cleanses in the game. The biggest problem I feel with this skill is that engineer have little room for their utilities due to kits (I think most builds have two kits and you need a stun breaker as well).

- Super elixir: nice skill in itself but low personal cleansing capabilities. Giving it more removal would make the skill too strong for it’s current capabilities and cooldown.

- Toss Elixir R: just too long too be ever usefull.

- Toss elixir C: 1 condition on 30 second cooldown, is just too little.

- Cleansing Formula 409: It has the potential to be strong but it is tied to utility and engineers need kits to function properly.

- Cleansing burst: 2 conditions on 15 second basis is actually good but since blasting your own turret is far more optimal it becomes 20 seconds and lost thus 75% of their cleansing power (6 conditions per minute instead of 8 conditions per minute).

- Transmute: This is not a cleanse just a removal of an applied condition and is just weak.

- Drop antidote: one condition on a 15 second cooldown: weak.

Here is what I think could improve condition removal:

- Transmute: make it convert complete stack, maybe needs cooldown adjustment max 5 seconds.

- drop antidote: I think something special can be done with this skill for 3 seconds you are immune to the removed condition. Either that or just make the cleanse to 3~4 and adjust cooldown to the new cleanse.

- cleansing formula 409: I think replacing this one with a better condition removal would be for the best, since the only way it can be used is to make it balanced around 1 or 2 elixirs but than it will be too strong if a person takes more elixirs.

- Elixir C & toss elixir C: I feel conflicted about this one (I have a strong belief in class diversity and identity but it can be necessairy). Remove all boon generation from elixir C but make it a stun breaker (not instant though so add a second of stability). This will help with the low options for utility skills and with nercomancers since necromancers would just corrupt those boons. Toss elixir C would be remove 2 conditions but may need cooldown adjustments.

I did not touch the other skills since as skills they are fine and adding extra removal would weaken the other aspects of the skills. I also do not say that all these ideas should be implemented, just some of them .

Liewec.2896:

all you need to do? you have 3 utility slots, one will undoubtedly be for a stunbreaker,
one should be used for some form of stability/invulnerability, so you have one utility slot.
so you expect one condi removal every 30+ seconds is going to do anything in a fight against a class who’d auto attacks spam multiple stacks of conditions on you?

do you sacrifice your stunbreaker and stability? why must we sacrifice everything else just to not melt under a pile of conditions?

You have sigil, runes, healing skills, traits, utility skills which can be used for condition removal.

Liewec.2896:

see above. – condi gear only offers -25% duration max.

only 25% ?? A reduction of 25% of normal damage on a light armor class requires to increase your armor from 1804 to 2405. It also functions on effects like cripple,fear, chill, vulnerability, etc.

and against a class whos autos cause conditions with every hit, you will never slot enough condi cleanses.

Oh no fear the 2K auto attack from the warriot which takes 16 seconds to do it’s full damage. Oh the horror.

i’ll leave you with this, a few of the death breakdown pics i took in a single night of pvp

Oh the humanity, 50928 damage over 68 seconds which is 748 damage/second. Fear it , fear it, fear the dps of 748.

Why not giving them a shadow weapon that they can swap to on a 10 second cooldown (engineers need to do this while wielding a weapon due to practical reasons) which activates on swap effects but keeps the weapon the same? The swap replaces the swap on kits/attunements. Isn’t this truly balanced?

Liewec.2896:

thats what duration enhancement does.
when a 1 second burn is turned into a 3 second burn it is essentially multiplying the damage by 200%.

First this is impossible there is a cap limit on duration at 100%. So you can only double your damage with duration.

Liewec.2896:

and again its pretty much a one way deal, with rune of melandru being the only rune set that reduces condition duration and only by 25% and you have to sacrifice all other (more useful runes) to use them,

Don’t forget resistance/ hoelbrak/sunless/antitoxin. On top of that we have food, traits that reduce duration like automated response and diamond skin and traits that reduce non damging conditions.

to negate direct damage all you need to do is pop protection or add some toughness to your build.

to negate condition damage all you need to do is pop condition removal after the hit.

Liewec.2896:

spec as tanky as you like and eviscerate will hit you for a tiny amount, conditions will always deal full damage.

Unless you cleanse them/ wear -condition duration.

Liewec.2896:

imho condis need to be made like all other damage, remove the caps but make them effected by armour, toughness and all other damage mitigation.

Then we will have the toughness meta. Btw caps are not a balance change just a mechanical problem.

Liewec.2896:

and all other damage mitigation.

The only things left are protection/weakness/-X% damage. They in return are affected by cleanses/-X% duration but don’t work with vulnerability and + X% damage (which can become quite nasty since necromancers have ‘target the weak’ +2% damage for every condition on the opponent or ‘close to death’ +20% damage when opponent is below 50%).

So wait you’re asking that players who are given utilities that matches their stats should be nerfed because it matches their stats and not another?
It’s like asking for conditions to scale with power since when power users use condition skills they don’t get much damage from it but players with condition damage do.

In wvw it gets even more fun when you pull down people because they overextended in the believe they are safe on their wall/cliff, but my favorite moment with spectral grasp was on the first day of season 2. Our world had claimed the hall at the beginning off Obsidian Sanctum and was murdering people who dared to come down. So after a while people were just staying at their waypoint waiting for the group to move, so I just pulled them with spectral grasp while the rest of the world killed them off. I got my kills achievement that night.

what about wraithlord crusher in Arah path 3(Forgotten)?

You’re hitting an enemy at least 21 times and your enemy didn’t die?

Getting a legendary was not a grind in my opinion. The only thing I considered was the precursor which took me around two weeks what I would call farming. The rests I did with single task: do some wvw for obsidian shards (I was lucky that season 1 started), do dungeons for tokens which I converted to ectoplams, do the dailies for the T6 materials, run around the world for some resources (wood, iron,…), …. . The rest I bought with gold which I got from my dungeons or selling my inventory. After two months I got my legendary. All I can say it does not require excessive grinding just dedication.

I also would like a reward track freeze for 15 minutes when you leave a match before the match is over.

I actually hope on a tribal track.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

The only classes I can think of without a viable condition build are Elementalists and Guardians.

And what are the classes without viable power builds?

SonOfKrypton.4357:

Tim.6450:

It would mean that we have to introduce that enhances condition damage which is not a good idea.

Tim.6450:

I just don’t believe we have a condition meta.

MMMMKAY.

Yes I don’t believe that we have a condition meta, but that doesn’t mean I want to see an extra condition that is the condition equivalent of vulnerability. Introducing extra conditions needs to be done with care since it would make cleansing with limits weaker. They would need a buff. So condition players then need to play more diverse in their conditions and therefore reducing class diversity.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

This logic is invalid. You’re assuming that all 8 classes are used evenly.

Indeed, warrior and guardian are not popular I take it?

Kukchi.6173:

Its not really balanced if you can burst with condition. The number of players switching to condition is probably increasing, since they are realizing they can have ticks of 3k+ and can burst ppl down ignoring toughness and armor. I highly suggest you make other classes and play them out they all have the ability to run condition but those stated above have the highest potential of bringing unbalance to condition play.

Ticks of three 3K+ is the equavalent of a condition necro in PVE having 25 stacks of bleeding. Even with burn and terror (which is a serious investement) you need at least 1,2 K damage and that is 8 stacks of bleeding. So I don’t believe they can “burst”.
I do play other classes and warrior has good condition burst. Better the necromancer unless the enemy thinks of playing lots of boons or throwing conditions at the necromancer.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

Tim.6450:

So wait you’re saying that almost every tpvp team/match up has at least 3 players whose main damage type are conditions?

Am I the only one who finds it extremely indicative that the only players in this thread who are adverse to the idea of this boon play Necromancers. There’s a reason Necromancers were given Daggers, Axes and Warhorns. They’re called power builds.

Doesn’t Carighan play a mesmer? Also the fact that necromancers are against this at a boon says a lot since they can easily strip/ corrupt it. Besides I never said I’m against it, I just don’t believe we have a condition meta.

I do am against though it for 2 reasons:
-Such thing already exists it’s called purging flames. I see nobody taking that though. And if you say it doesn’t reduce “damage” (which it does but later in the fight), I say you this that exists as well it’s called cleansing.
-What will it be corrupted to? It would mean that we have to introduce that enhances condition damage which is not a good idea.

Kukchi.6173:

I see it a lot. Most engis,necro,thieves run condition meta builds. Yes the condition meta is here. Its just the people that abuse it want to keep it under wraps.

So if you see it a lot then you there are occasion it is lower? So I can be safe to assume that the amount of condition builds in a team should be around 50%~60%. Isn’t that balanced?

Also you only specified three of the 8 classes. What about the other 5? What do they run?

SonOfKrypton.4357:

We’re playing a different game, honey.

So wait you’re saying that almost every tpvp team/match up has at least 3 players whose main damage type are conditions?

It is ridicously easy to do it as conditionmancer (6/6/0/2/0 with rabid gear and parastic contagion).

haviz.1340:

First of all, 18% + possible fury + possible banner + possible food gives 50% chance to crit.

This does say enough since you have to change your playstyle which now involves relying on allies (and staying near them to keep recieving buffs) to make it work without gear.

Couple it with the fact that all, except one of all those critical procs, have 5 or 10 seconds cooldowns

I counted three, 2 bleeds and one vulnerability.

haviz.1340:

and the fact that engineer hits a lot of times per second thanks to all of the AoE and it doesn’t seem absurd.

And what if you fight a single enemy?

haviz.1340:

Moreover, what about comparison between gear like Berserker’s, Valkyrie’s, Knight’s and Assassin’s? They only change precision/power ratio or increase your survivability.

Zerker = highest dps , good amount of crit-procs and good chances for your high burst moments to crit. No extra survivability.
Assassin = high dps, most crit-procs and best chances for your high burst moments to crit. No extra survivability.
Valkyrie= low~medium dps , low amount of crit-procs and low chances for your high burst moments to crit. Short term extra survivability against both physical and condition damage.
Knight = medium dps , good amount of crit-procs hit and good chances for your high burst moments to crit. Long term extra survivability against physical damage.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Yes, there are certain builds that require certain stats (the more the better in some cases). However, why is precision necessary in the build you linked? Because critical procs are a choice made by selecting traits (crit yields blind/swiftness and swiftness yields vigor). Blinds and vigor yield defense, ergo you’re using an offensive stat (crit chance) to gain defense. A similar dependency exists between certain guaranteed crit skills and Ferocity. There are a lot more builds that can be used regardless of gear.

I don’t get what you mean with all you’re saying. Precision is neccessairy to get all your procs of as soon as possible. I don’t get that because I choose those traits, I suddenly don’t need to proc them anymore?. How does the fact that I use an offensive stat for defense has to do with it?

What is the dps of a full dps ranged ranger including pet? I’m quite curious.

Ropechef.6192:

Your “playstyle” is defined foremost by your weapon choices, skill choices and traits. If you choose utility skills of a support nature, along with melee weapons and use traits that give defensive benefits to your team, you are a support melee character. If you choose offensive boosting skills, ranged weapons and DPS boosting traits, you are a ranged DPS character. These things are true regardless of your gear prefix. Again, who you are is defined by your weapon choice, skill choice and trait choices.

Separating gear from playstyle is absurd. Gear improves the effectiveness of the choices made in traits, weapons for your playstyle. Let’s look at this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUp8q9ZxALseNSaBB6XkiMKqQ+5GcgAA-ThQFABA8AAS+CAAA-e
This build would be useless without precision. Also gear defines how you can use your skills. If you have a higher survivability, you can use your skills for protecting your allies instead of yourself.

Wethospu.6437:

What would happen if half were tanks and half glasses? Would tanks need to wait until glasses catch up? Or is the boss a pushover which can be quickly killed even by 1-2 tanks?

If tanks have to wait because they can’t take down boss on their own then mix of tanks and glasses would have the slowest kill time. And full glass might be still faster than full tank if boss has high enough health.

However, if the boss is really weak then it wouldn’t make much difference if it didn’t exist at all. So you would have an encounter entirely relying on defensive stats (puzzle). I’m personally fine with this but would this really solve anything? If the time difference is really significant then enough people would be required to have both armor sets.

I thought that if you have 3 players you can defeat the boss in reasonable time. Even if you are alone you can contribute by distracting the boss since it can’t snare your allies anymore.

Wethospu.6437:

As long as the bonus damage doesn’t ignore your offensive stats then glassy players would have to stand there shorter (than tanks) as they can kill the boss faster.

Depends on the scaling. example:
Player A has a dps of 1000 while player B has 2000. Player B can stand in the area for 5 seconds while player A for 7 seconds. Now let’s say that dps is doubled with every second in the area. Player B will after 8 second have done 2000+4000+8000+16000+32000 = 62 000 damage in 5 seconds which is a dps of 12400.
Player A will after 7 seconds have done 1000+2000+4000+8000+16000+32000+64000 = 127 000 damage in 7 seconds which is a dps of 18 143.
So yeah shows enough right?

I also think your on crit bleeds are a bit of on the non duration builds. The links say around 300 damage.

Are those calculations with the 100% duration cap? Because bleed is at 135% without lingering curse (which works outside the cap). So perhaps change agony for earth in the precision/condi/duration section and bursting in the damage/duration section.

Waffler.1257:

I actually watched that bit, and I noticed when they described what berserker stance does, they said it greatly reduces condition duration. Are they aware that berserker stance actually just makes you immune to conditions?

I think that they are very much aware of it. They were also completely silent about adrenaline gain of berserker stance (purity of purpose, riiiiiight) . This makes me think they intentionally chose berserker stance to place themselves in a good light or maybe I’m just paranoid.

They used engi as an example and said, well when I see berserker stance come up I just use my mobility to kite the warrior around or back off, then come back when the stance is over. So the counter is mobility… welp.

Also the 2 classes with lots of conditions are engineer and necromancer, two classes with little escape options and you need escape options against berserker stance, go figure. Let’s not even talk about cc where those classes are also weak against.

Pelopidas.2140:

unholy sanctuary+ wh5+1-2wells siphoning, all that while the necro camps in ds, sounds pretty overpowered to me..
More stability or a block would be nicer

I think this is not a problem since all the skills except unholy sanctuary have cooldowns so even if you pop all those you’re without 3 powerull skills for at least 24 seconds.

The marionette fight. It was so enjoyable that I didn’t mind losing.

I had a bit of hope when they talked about hard counters they would say something about diamond skin. But alas they chose berserker stance (which I think is intentional).

Vargamonth.2047:

• Low HP long range boss
  I don’t get what is achieved with this. A Long range boss would probably rely on projectiles, making it easy to burst down in melee while protected by reflects.
  Even if those projectiles are made unblockable (which is a design I totally dislike), there are still high chances on AD mashing being effective.
  Then dodge out any possible AoE and the boss is probably down, easily.

When I said this I had two ideas in mind:
- The first one was a long range sniper of sort but of reason posted above it would be easely countered.
- The second idea was a trap room/hallway with a boss doing nothing but snares until you get in his face and then you can easily kill it. The point would be that the traps would completely surcompass active defenses through numbers and variety. Like you have projectile traps ,spike traps, mines, flamethrowers,… . The respective defenses would still work but there would be so many that the player/team cannot take all of them for the entire fight, at most they could specialize in one or two but not all.

Afterwards I realized that the ranged idea would just be a gear/build check. So to solve that I thought of leaving ‘safe zones’ (a wall , a room not trapped,… ) so that the player/team can recover. People who are more tanky then can move on quicker through the fight while more glassy specs have to take a breather in the ‘safe zones’.

Vargamonth.2047:

• Temporary defense boost if a certain DPS threshold is reached.
  If the defense boost is high enough, this would make groups right below the threshold the optimal ones. If not, full damage groups would still be prefered.
  It’s close to placing a DPS cap, which obviously works but feels terrible design wise (pretty mcuh like uncrittable foes :P).

The idea was a bit more dynamic. Let’s say that every 2K damage the boss in total lost would result in the boss receiving a stackable buff that reduces damage. The buff would disapear after a second so you would have several degrees of damage reduction based on the current damage output. Gearing more dps would still do more damage just very little.

The idea behind it is to shift the risk/reward ratio in such way it would promote a bit more defensive playstyles. Full dps would still be optimal in the reward/time ratio but the risk would be so high it would not be worth it.

Vargamonth.2047:

• Damaging area that boost atack
  It’s an interesting mechanic for a boss but not something you could use over and over.
  It obviously depends on how powerful the received damage and the attack boost are and how much HP the boss has (It already exists in Arah, for example, and full damage setup are still prefered).

Yes I know of what you speak and I think that the full dps setups are still prefered not because that boss but due the other bosses.

It’s also extremely biased for different classes. Warriors, for example, would not only have an easier time due to highr HP and armor, but could probably use defiant stance too (maybe even Endure Pain depending on the coding) and get boosted and healed at the same time.

So? If we have several mechanics that bias different classes and we spread them out fairly without concentraiting them too much (like all arah bosses of a path devalue ranger for instance), would the game be fair?

Wethospu.6437:

I’m really interested to hear ideas of encounters where tanking would be a better strategy than a full damage with reasonable difficulty and without gimmicks.

So no stat ignoring environmental weapons or boss killing itself if you tank its hits.

How about a low HP,long range boss? Or a boss with a long invulnerability fase? A boss that gets a significant temporary defense boost if a dps threshold is reached? A boss that receives more damage if you stand on a damaging area the longer you stand into it the more damage you do?

If a necro cared about meta, why would he play necro since necro is not in the meta?

rincewind.9528:

And dont make me talk about the white orbs that pulls you. Several times I died at the same start because one stupid ball spawned in the first Liadri Insta-KO attack.
A ticket lost without even triying.

You know you can kill those, right?

I’m all for giving healing in DS, but recently I’m seeing one potential obstacle:
the blood fiend. While it is not the best healing skill , I think it can cause quite some problems.

I’m in for easy out of combat weapon set switching for all classes. For elementalists and engineer only? Absolutely not. In combat the single set of those classes is considered equal to the double weapon set of other classes, so the out of combat switching of those sets should be equal as well. In fact engineer’s and elementalists get it easier since they only have to swap one weapon set while other classes have to swap two sets.

I was referring to the cons, “lack of unique support mechanics”. Even if we remove offensive support, the warrior still has two unique support buffs namely banner of tactics/defense.

Splatter Paw.7238:

All the while never doing damage cause revealed exists………

wrong, choking gas and caltrops don’t cause revealed.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

From a PVE perspective.

Warrior
Pros: Good bulk and passive regen, good might stacking, unique damage buffs. Decent cleanse when built for it.
Cons: Lack of unique support mechanics

What happened to banners? Empower Allies?

change those runes of the necromancer to runes of nightmare. Your conditions will last longer and fear still has a 100% duration.
Change lingering curse for path of corruption. Most your condition last long enough and corrupting boons will help you and your team alot.
It is probably for the pest to change vital persistance for path of midnight to make some of your most powerfull condi damage (doom and dark path) application come faster up.

correct but in return it can exceed the 100% cap.

Cygnus.6903:

The reason I increase the increments in fury duration is because that way the warrior won’t spam his F1. Getting more Fury per bar is incentive to not use your burst until your bar is full, thus it increases the skill ceiling. Another option is to go 5-11-18.

6-13-20 works fine as well.

Cygnus.6903:

I’d say tone that down to 0,5 second cast time, and you have a possibly usable skill.

Buff the F1 in small increments as to not overbuff it. Increasing the Fury duration is already a significant buff. Perhaps an even more cautious approach is nessecary;

Arcing Slice 2.0
“Slice your foe with an uppercut and gain fury.”
Activation: 0.50 seconds
Damage: 0.8 * Power * Weapon Strength / Target Armor
Level 1 adrenaline: Fury 6 s
Level 2 adrenaline: Fury 12 s
Level 3 adrenaline: Fury 20 s
Range: 150

Does a little more damage, but less Fury in the lower adrenaline ranges. I do want a burst skill to do significant damage on it’s own, that’s just how a warrior ‘feels’ to me.

I like this one better but I think that the damage modifier may be increased to 0.9, but the third charge be reduced to 18 seconds of fury. By doing this you make your skill a bit more intuitive (6 seconds of fury per chrage) but also make the damage equal or higher then any attack of the auto attack chain.