Guild Wars 2

Fear Me More! would make for a great shout on a necro :p

Im crossing my fingers for the elite spec cause right now spite is the only traitline that has traits i would like for a pve build, Blood Magicis really really bad but maybe the wells help? Soul Reaping has a damage modifying minor but none of the traits help outside DS, curses has fury on DS and crit/condi minors, Death Magic has toughness to power? so idk what to do…

Shiki.7148:

Strill.2591:

zapv.8051:

Strill.2591:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes)

For PVP maybe, but Mesmers in PVE are still worthless. Mesmer damage is balanced around the assumption that you’ll have three phantasms out all the time (i.e. you never shatter), and even then you’re still the lowest DPS because armor runes don’t affect illusions, and there are barely any damage multiplier traits.

With all the on-shatter traits, it’s just a spit in the face of PVE Mesmers who can’t ever make any use of them.

If they actually want to fix Mesmers, they need to decouple the Mesmer’s damage from phantasms.

Necros are far worse in pve than mesmers, mesmers bring reflects, condition cleanse, stability if necessary, invis for skipping, the best boon stripping, aoe pulls, and portal for absolute maximum speed runs. The damage might not be the greatest, but many record speed runs bring mesmers simply for their incredible utility and portal skipping. The class is certainly not worthless in any sense of the word.

I couldn’t care less about skipping. It affects a miniscule proportion of the population.

Also most of our reflects are being moved to are most useless specialization line (Inspiration). The reflect skill is literally the only worthwhile one I can see in that line.

Question : When was the last time you actually did a dungeon? There are basically ZERO groups that do not skip certain parts of dungeons. Eg. Arah path 1, where massive amounts of enemies get skipped. “Full clears” are the exception, not the rule. Mesmer Portal is also incredibly useful for certain “traps” people love to mess up on like the path with the exploding bombs in CoF or simply annoying areas (like the laser jumping BS in the mt. maelstrom dungeon).

probably a pvp mesmer complaining about net being able to play his class in pve as sword focus is almost mandatory.

I’d be happy if they turned AA3 into a single target slash that does the same damage (no projectiles) that way no melee range reflection, obstruction, or misses happen. As for the # 3 Id remove the root and make it actually deal 10-15% more damage than the auto attack. almost forgot #2 needs a damage bump so it’s not within the double digits nothing too big but its a freaking joke right now. ( If the funny de from the live stream sees this hell probably make the damage 100 just for me :p)

Derenek.8931:

Black Box.9312:

Derenek.8931:

Hopefully the Guardian bow will be party support and not DPS. Imagine long range AoE healing arrows. Or blinding arrows. Or arrows that lay down protective fields. That would be much cooler than just rehashing the thief, ranger, and warrior bow skills.

No thank you. I’d much rather have a DPS-oriented weapon. Guardians already sacrifice way too much in the name of “support”.

The support capability is what separates Guardians from warriors.
The expansions should emphasize what makes the classes different instead of making them all homogenous and clones of each other

nope what makes guardians guardians and not warrior is lack of stances, lack of adrenaline lack of burst, lack of physical and having symbols, virtues, meditations and consecrations :p.

Derenek.8931:

Hopefully the Guardian bow will be party support and not DPS. Imagine long range AoE healing arrows. Or blinding arrows. Or arrows that lay down protective fields. That would be much cooler than just rehashing the thief, ranger, and warrior bow skills.

Nope, a decent ranged option is a necessity staff already fills the support role pretty well.

Drgori.5724:

yeah I know, but I have weapon and armor smith to 500 which makes sense for a guardian, now huntsmith for a guardian is kind of odd… Iwill have to spend more money on other toon just to get an ascended bow for a guardian…

Staves, tridents, scepters and foci are made by artificer, every other profession has to mix and match crafts to make all their weapons.

Drgori.5724:

Since we getting a long bow, are they going to add long Bow to the weaponsmith list for crafting?

Nope go make a huntsman

Yay we r getting wings just what I wanted to jump off sky hammer when I cant escape.

biggs.4702:

Death Shroud traits need to span multiple lines or your traits for it would be too limited. It would also mean they’d have to put minions into a single trait line, too, because why should Death Shroud get its own line but nothing else? No profession in the game has an entire trait line devoted to its core mechanic, so let’s just let that idea go. It’s not viable.

Death Shroud itself, its existence or how it works is not a problem. The problems are the lack of any real diversity or synergy in the traits you can select for it, and the lack of desirable group utility.

Group utility traits I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud grants might and resistance (the new boon) to allies.
• Entering Death Shroud casts the new slow condition on enemies in a radius
• Entering Plague form absorbs projectiles in a radius around the caster

Survival trait I’d like to see:

• Entering Death Shroud or Plague causes the caster to evade all attacks for X seconds or grants aegis

Not everything has to be about Death Shroud. Plague and Lich forms could use some love too.

Yes but no other profession have their class mechanic as half of every single traitline Guardian just has 3 minor traits outside the virtue line that work and add great utility to virtues. While the rest dont have to choose between class mechanic trait vs class mechanic trait for almost every tier, at most they have a single class mechanic trait per tier while having 2 more general choices unrelated to the class mechanic.

Are there any grandmaster traits attractive to non DS power necro outside spite? Vampiric rituals is as close as they come but i cant seem to find another one.

Pistol would be a boring main hand, I wish mesmers could use MH dagger from range doing a space rending slash kinda like the necromancer axe.

Dolphins have been documented to beat porpoises to death and then play ball with their corpses, and i dont have much other than hearsay for this one but I heard that they use their phallus as an arm to hold a victim and drown them among darker things.

Tigaseye.2047:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Most shark attacks on humans are mistaken identity and the shark stops after it starts chewing on all those bones, fish/seals etc don’t have bone/meat ratios like we do.

Yeah, that is probably true, but the fact that a large chunk of your leg may have been spat out, after it’s been bitten off, isn’t too much consolation is it? xD

Especially if you’re bleeding profusely and that is putting your life at risk and possibly attracting any other sharks in the area to have an experimental bite, as well.

Having said that, it is possible that if you had a shark as a pet, so it recognised you (and didn’t view you as food), it wouldn’t be much of a risk.

But, what if you accidentally surprised it, or something?

That’s how I feel about big cats – they’re lovely, but if you think of domestic cats, even the very friendly ones can occasionally bite and/or scratch and if that was a lion, or a tiger, that one mistake could be fatal.

Whereas, with dolphins, I think they would be less likely to accidentally hurt you badly and you would generally have more warning that you had a bad tempered/hormonal one (if you did) and the other, more gentle, ones would probably be relatively reliable.

Again, more like humans.

Idk bleeding out vs drowning, call me a wuss but ive heard bleeding out is far more peaceful than gasping for your last breath.

Neros are not lacking in mobility or support they are just lacking in offensive support and the tools at their disposal are clunky. They have 3 blast finishers, but 2/3 are unusable in any scenario and the last one is only useful for pre fight blasting. They have 2 teleports ,but one has a long cooldown and the other requires you to land a slow moving easily avoided projectile. They have decent boons for themselves (signets, blood is power, reaper’s might) they just cant share any offensive ones.
While I agree with you that deathshroud isn’t the only cause, it’s still occupying more space in the traits than it should. If I want to make a warrior that completely ignores burst skills and adrenaline I can come up with several builds using multiple traitlines without having to chose between 2 adrenaline traits for the same slot on the necro you have to tiptoe around every traitline and you still need to make use of deathshroud to receive the benefits of some minor traits outside the deathshroud line.

That seems great for pvp but for PVE moment of clarity should be replaced by steady focus, beastly warden by zephyr’s speed, and im not quite sure on the math but the whole wilderness survival could be replaced by skirmishing for spotter.

Guardians will be warrior monks therefore they are getting mantras :p

So I was looking at the new build planner on dulfy checking out what could potentially be my necro dungeon build in HoT and as I was scrolling through the different traitlines i noticed something odd. The class specialization (DS), instead of sitting quietly in its own line (soulreaping) was splattered all over the traitlines with some of the traits being pathetically weak.

Spite : Reaper’s Might, Death Shiver
Curses: Weakened Shroud, Furious Demise, Path of Corruption
Blood Magic: Transfusion, Unholy Martyr, Deathly Invigoration
Death Magic: Armored Shroud, Shrouded Removal, Beyond the Veil, Unholy Sanctuary

Each trait line is supposed to have their own focus but with DS all over the place the choices are very limited. Spite seems like the only direct damage oriented line.
Curses is conditions and death shroud Blood magic is siphon and deathshroud, death magic is minions and death shroud. Other than mesmers(which was improved a lot with the specialization changes) no other profession has the class mechanic taking choices in every single traitline nor do other class professions lock out your utilities and weapon skills. The traits seriously need another look and merging and moving has to happen if necros are to be taken seriously outside of pvp.

Tigaseye.2047:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Tigaseye.2047:

Aylpse.6280:

Dolphins are amount the most violent and dangerous sea creatures (among other things I wont get into)

Trust me when I say the Shark is a safer option for a pet. Thats not saying much becuse the ocean is a horrible place filled with demon spawn that science has passed as “Wildlife”. If it doesn’t sting or bite, it most likely will suck your soul out.

Not saying dolphins are harmless (I know they’re not), but I’m still pretty sure you would be safer with a dolphin pet than a great white shark one.

It’s more that dolphins are surprisingly (to some people), potentially, dangerous; as opposed to sharks being predictably so.

But dolphins murder and kitten for fun, while sharks kill for food.

Some do, but so do some humans.

They also show empathy and help other animals; not just members of their own species.

Judging them based solely on the behaviour of some young males is as unfair as it would be to judge all humans on that basis.

Most sharks kill for food, but some attack humans, even though they apparently don’t really rate us as food.

I don’t know about you, but I know I would feel far safer around a female (or in fact, virtually any) dolphin than I would any shark.

Not that I dislike sharks, at all – I’m just wary of them, in the same way I would be of a tiger, or whatever.

Aye female dolphins >>> shark> young male dolphin

Tigaseye.2047:

Aylpse.6280:

Dolphins are amount the most violent and dangerous sea creatures (among other things I wont get into)

Trust me when I say the Shark is a safer option for a pet. Thats not saying much becuse the ocean is a horrible place filled with demon spawn that science has passed as “Wildlife”. If it doesn’t sting or bite, it most likely will suck your soul out.

Not saying dolphins are harmless (I know they’re not), but I’m still pretty sure you would be safer with a dolphin pet than a great white shark one.

It’s more that dolphins are surprisingly (to some people), potentially, dangerous; as opposed to sharks being predictably so.

But dolphins murder and kitten for fun, while sharks kill for food.

With HoT Anet had the chance to remove all the bad condition traits that were created post launch. Kindled Zeal(KZ) and Radiant Retaliation(RR) are some of the worst traits currently available to the guardian compared to Amplified Wrath(AW) which is probably the best of the traits they added to guardian in the feature pack. Instead of calling them a mistake and replacing them, anet transformed the radiance line into a decent condition damage based traitline by moving Kindled Zeal down a tier so it can stack with either AW or RR. They also added the made some interesting changes to Radiant Fire, Inner Fire and Radiant Power that work well with both condition and power builds. Does this indicate that the new Specialization or at least the weapon skills will be condition based?

Amplified wrath will trump radiant retaliation EVERY SINGLE TIME. heck even for power builds it seems like the best GM in radiance due to us not having a precision signet.

FYI mesmers cannot have all of what you are desribing at once, they have to decide what utilities/weapon/traitline they have to drop to play chronomancer.

alacrity on shatter is likely a minor trait that comes with the specialization.

Most mesmer damage in pve comes from phantasms the mesmer’s own skills hit like wet noodles.

Sword is the meta weapon, best AA damage, only weapon with cleave, nice evade on #2, a gap closer on 3 and passive boon removal.

The base stats well get back through gear, problem is wth is gona give us boon duration and condition duration.

I find it laughable that people are calling this a blow to dps guards or meditation guards. The trait is goes mostly unused in PVE due to the light field on the hammer for min-maxers and hammer’s sluggishness for casuals. In pve it only became a thing after the tournament with the one meditation hammer guardian on the winning team, which is a couple of months old. Before that very few guardians actually ran this trait in pvp.

Make them invulnerable in Pve as they were on release and they’ll be good to go.

rajule.8054:

I guess I can chalk that up to me only really playing guardian. traits that cast utilities is new to them but I guess not other classes.

but even the traits you reference activate weapon abilities, or general class effects. These new guardian traits seem to activate utility skills in their entirety. It’s similar to existing traits, but not quite the same thats why I wanted clarification on the functionality.

Ok ranger omen of clarity, necro death nova, warrior’s last stand and all the other auto stance traits, the auto shake it off trait etc. You really make it difficult to make you happy you know that…

What nerf? ALL of the changes(excluding the gimmicky glacial heart) seemed like buffs heck they even trimmed a decent amount of useless traits or fixed broken ones into something interesting.

rajule.8054:

well I hope thats the case cause it could mean the difference between some fairly useless traits to some potential awesome ones.

That has always been the case look at chill of death, weakening shroud, every single fall damage reduction trait etc.

SlimChance.6593:

I’ve been telling you Mesmer’s for years..

“TimeWarp is THE BEST elite in sPvP. Why aren’t Mesmer’s playing it?”

Now tomorrow, we’ll see the Chronomancer and everyone’s going to be dropping MI and Moa so fast. Let me just say….

I TOLD YOU SO!!!!

Til a few months ago TW was 10 seconds of glory 200 seconds of excuciating pain and wait now its only 170 seconds of pain and wait so just because youll be right in the future does not make you right in the past. Something something clock something something twice a day …

Necromancers do have boons they just can’t share them, they have mobility it’s just wonky and requires a target or a useless minion that takes up one utility, what necromancer lacks is easy access/use blasts, non-targeted mobility on a weapon skill, and projectile defense.

rpfohr.7048:

Similar to a build I’m going to run…

6/6/0/0/6
Call of wild, Moment of Clarity, Remorseless
Most Dangerous Game, Spotter, Quick Draw
Resounding timbre, Two Handed Training, Beastly warden

GS + whatever 2nd weapon you want (perhaps SB is light of feet gets moved to master)
Heal as one + Sic Em + Sig of renewal ( need condi clear )+ X + ROA

Pets will help proc Maul set ups so hard its not even funny. Here are Maul combo’s
Pet F2 Taunt > Maul
Weapon Swap > Hit Bash > Maul (combo up again in 10 seconds!)
Pet F2 Taunt > Weapon swap > Maul > Hilt Bash Stun> Maul again! (thanks -66% CD)

Imagine that F2 is a drake F2 and they are stuck running towards your pet!

Now this is a build I look forward to running!

I see Bear Arms, Bear Arms everywhere :p

Obtena.7952:

Jerus.4350:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Why would camping mace beat the greatsword when greatsword still has access to a symbol and better damage coefficients on the skills ?

If you’re in a PUG with no fury right hand strength MIGHT make it superior, that’s a maybe, not a certainty unless someone has done the math. RHS + 25% + 50%+ will be 90% without fury. Of course the alternative to RHS is potentially 80% fury so…

This, including higher symbol uptime on Mace. I believe that the 7 second weapon swap is going to limit one’s ability to apply a symbol when you are on the second GS rotation because it’s still on cooldown? If that’s true, your rotation is going to force you to camp mace for two-ish rotations anyways. Mace2 -> GS 2,3,4,5 -> Mace 2, mace filler, mace 2 again -> GS 2,3,4,5. Some theorycrafter will revel in all this detail.

Sitting on mace longer is not an issue, I know mace has the more reliable symbol, i just interpreted “camping” as in completely ignoring the greatsword.

Jerus.4350:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Jerus.4350:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Why would camping mace beat the greatsword when greatsword still has access to a symbol and better damage coefficients on the skills ?

If you’re in a PUG with no fury right hand strength MIGHT make it superior, that’s a maybe, not a certainty unless someone has done the math. RHS + 25% + 50%+ will be 90% without fury. Of course the alternative to RHS is potentially 80% fury so…

80% of 20 is 16 % so even without a meta group 2h can give RHS a run for its money

Aye for sure, but again, it’s “potential” you need to keep burning at 3+ stacks to trigger it.

Well Im glad that we have traits that we can debate about which one is better by ~1%. Compared to the amount of garbage traits we had before, being able consider more than one choice feels nice. They should still clean up some of the retaliation traits but I say theyve done a good job.

Jerus.4350:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Why would camping mace beat the greatsword when greatsword still has access to a symbol and better damage coefficients on the skills ?

If you’re in a PUG with no fury right hand strength MIGHT make it superior, that’s a maybe, not a certainty unless someone has done the math. RHS + 25% + 50%+ will be 90% without fury. Of course the alternative to RHS is potentially 80% fury so…

80% of 20 is 16 % so even without a meta group 2h can give RHS a run for its money

Why would camping mace beat the greatsword when greatsword still has access to a symbol and better damage coefficients on the skills ?

Thoth Divine.8642:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Valor / honor/ Virtue will be awful to fight against in pvp and wvw and godawful to carry in dungeons while they brag about their full nomad set.

Well, I play PvP, so for a support build it seems pretty hard to match.

As for medi, doesn’t matter how hard the burning hits for, with +25% crit vs burning and a whole lot of ways to apply it, in addition to +15% crit one hand, you can get kitten close to 100% crit. All while maintaining protection through Focus and a very decent defense, especially compared to what it is now, AND great support through virtues.

Great for you then, I was just making a joke on how a great pvp wvw build can be a hindrance in pve in the hands of the wrong player.

Spectral Armor, Spectral Wall :p

Obtena.7952:

Fury isn’t a reliable buff, but again, my point isn’t crit uptime, it’s symbol uptime. GS just doesn’t have it. Frankly, maintaining that Fury in PVE is a pain in the kitten if selfed.

You should see Inner fire remake when ever you hit a burning target you get 8 secs fury.

25% from striking a burning target + 20% from Fury = 45%, If zerker you have 50ish % from gear.

Obtena.7952:

Suns Dusk.7201:

For very short fights I think you will be using mace/focus + gs 66006.

^^ I don’t even think that anyone will even need GS for short fights. The frequency of the symbol on Mace doesn’t compare to what you get with GS and that damage multiplier is not insignificant. I suspect 1H weapon setups will also be very close to 100% crit rate, buffed self, maybe without food even. I don’t even think that trash will live through to the first auto rotation if they are in a symbol. It’s going to be stupid.

Just going into radiance gives you a potential 40-45% crit + 50% from gear 1h or 2h doesnt matter unless you are switching your gear from zerker to something tankier.

Valor / honor/ Virtue will be awful to fight against in pvp and wvw and godawful to carry in dungeons while they brag about their full nomad set.

Black Box.9312:

Either way, the protection mace grants currently is incredibly unreliable, because it only procs if you can go a full 3 and a half seconds of channeling without getting hit by a single attack. Mace 3 really needs to be reworked to function like other weapon blocks, so that it only counters when in melee range and has a subskill that cancels the channel and provides a different bonus (in this case, protection without having to channel for so long).

Thats something that Ive always commented on the mace 3 should be a sequence skill like all the other ones similar in nature that have a 2nd skill when pressed again if the block is not used without having to wait the whole duration.

Black Box.9312:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Black Box.9312:

Pitman.9210:

This trait is just terrible gamedesign. When you think about stuff like that you need to look at how fun it is to play with it and, more importantly, how fun it is to play against it. If you can’t take it off you have to wait it out but the duration on some skills is really long. In addition the ‘+20% dmg while under aegis’ trait makes waiting it out even less viable.
Just triggering it means simply no counterplay. You could try to shoot something and dodge before it hits but thats just stupid.

Honestly, I’d argue the opposite. I’ve held the opinion that Unscathed Contender is the trait that’s counterintuitive, because it encourages the preserving of aegis when aegis is meant to be used to block an attack. Of course, UC is good for that initial burst, but as far as damage boosting traits go it’s not very reliable and shouldn’t really be counted as a boost to long term DPS.

I agree on long AoE heavy fights ( world bosses) UC is hard to maintain, but on shorter or more telegraphed fights UC can be maintained most of the time especially with retreat on a shorter cooldown .

That’s my point though. It’s really only good for initial bursts, and furthermore it counteracts the purpose of the aegis in the first place: to be USED to block an attack. It’s a counterintuitive trait, much like the current iteration of Berserker’s Power for warrior that is going to be scrapped in favor of a version that will reward the USE of burst skills.

One can argue that passive aegis itself is a counter intuitive mechanic since it allows you to face tank single hits that otherwise you’d have to time to avoid. So in a way UC makes you a better player? :p

I wont argue about the later 2 but mace is a great weapon that will probably overtake the sword if the changes make it live due to SA.

Arken.3725:

Vizardlorde.8243:

Arken.3725:

I’ve always considered Guardians to be the Retal/Protection profession but it seems unless you run heavy into Virtues/shouts, you’ll essentially have none.

Not really protection is easily available to the hammer which is getting a nice buff, and retaliation is available to any weapon with a symbol.

Again, this being limited to 1 weapon and a dedicated tree to obtain a little bit of protection. Anyone smart enough to keep moving(which they will) will hinder your ability to maintain that protection.

Edit: Not asking for permanent protection at all. Just it’s really situational.

Its not just 1 weapon the lel shield, the mace and the lol tome provide protection its just that people are holed up on the max dps build and demand the defensive boons be also added to the max dps build without making any sacrifices.

Black Box.9312:

Pitman.9210:

This trait is just terrible gamedesign. When you think about stuff like that you need to look at how fun it is to play with it and, more importantly, how fun it is to play against it. If you can’t take it off you have to wait it out but the duration on some skills is really long. In addition the ‘+20% dmg while under aegis’ trait makes waiting it out even less viable.
Just triggering it means simply no counterplay. You could try to shoot something and dodge before it hits but thats just stupid.

Honestly, I’d argue the opposite. I’ve held the opinion that Unscathed Contender is the trait that’s counterintuitive, because it encourages the preserving of aegis when aegis is meant to be used to block an attack. Of course, UC is good for that initial burst, but as far as damage boosting traits go it’s not very reliable and shouldn’t really be counted as a boost to long term DPS.

I agree on long AoE heavy fights ( world bosses) UC is hard to maintain, but on shorter or more telegraphed fights UC can be maintained most of the time especially with retreat on a shorter cooldown .