And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.
Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.
You have not utilized the old AH/VP combo to its fullest then.
There was literally no ceiling as to how much you can heal out of those traits, you just need to stack crit and use as many multi-hit AoE abilities to hit as many enemies as possible (even symbols qualify) and spike heal yourself for hundreds to thousands of hp per ability. It was fairly broken, to be honest.
Which is still only 1/5 as much healing as you were getting from EM/AH.
2.5% damage reduction to every person in your group. Yes, the choice is obvious, statistically, and it’s not RA.
Failure to take into account trait-synergy.
+3-4% crit chance means 3-4% chance more to proc ‘Empowering Might’ and gain additional healing from ‘Altruistic Healing’ for each might stack.
They’re both solid. Neither is better. It’s a matter of picking between defense or offense.
Learn to compare traits in context, not in a vacuum.
I am, and it still falls short.
Learn to compare traits by looking at the effect on your whole group, not just on you.
I would rather see endurance regeneration rate increase by 1% for each trait point, as warrior is a class that rely heavily on dodging, so this will help warrior more without making us OP…
Endurance is not class specific, and this trait line enhances the class mechanic for each class. It needs to be some kind of bonus to burst skills or adrenaline.
It takes me probably 120 hours. And I enjoy all of it.
The number of JP required is a little high.
What’s disturbing though is the number of people who are proudly exploiting to complete this achievement. This is what MMO’s have come down to…
The 5 events are usually the first I end up completing, although sometimes it’s the gathering. The one that’s super annoying is killing 15 different enemy types. On days where I decide to complete the daily, I almost always have to go way out of my way to make that one happen.
How is that possible? 15 enemy types is nothing. Each zone easily has 30+ enemy types. If you guys are doing nothing but sitting in Orr, then yes the dailys will be awful to do – 1 enemy type and just a ton of grindy events.
If, however, you do them as you play – they will complete themselves in no time and you won’t need to go out of your way at all.
It’s possible because it doesn’t take a whole zone of killing to get 5 events done. You can often get 5 events done in one or two heart areas if you’re lucky, meaning you killed maybe 3-5 different types of enemies.
I also have the different enemy types always be last to complete.
I like how I’m supposed to do fractals on my lvl 50 character.
Nobody forces you to begin such things before the max level.
20 Mystic Coins and 10 Jugs of Karma isn’t useful at lvl 50.
Funny, because I could swear those things were the reward for dailies as well…
GW2’s content is very casual, almost insultingly so. It’s less casual and more “we assume our players are idiots.” There is no real challenge so much as there is extreme tedium. High HP pools on mobs to burn through, instant kill moves with no telegraph for when to dodge, Lengendaries where the only thing legendary is the grind to aquire them.
This has nothing to do with having a trinity or not.
It’s not about masochism, it’s the desire to be challenged and to overcome those challenges. There’s a reason WoW, even with it’s pug friendly Looking for Raid has a market for Heroic Mode raids and why Rift with it’s audience releases PVE content that’s a challenge to overcome. You can argue that we’re the minority among PVE players and I wouldn’t say you are wrong, but other developers have shown their ability to release not only content for the masses but also content for those who crave difficult endgame. Hell Rift’s entire niche in the market is due to it’s sole focus on a singular endgame difficulty.
See, that’s the thing. I do enjoy challenges and overcoming them, but I’ve never understood why people put such a tremendous emphasis on them to the point where the game becomes TOO difficult for most players to digest. That sort of design doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t disagree that GW2’s challenges aren’t at that same level of difficulty, but I’m not actually sure that’s a bad thing, either.
As for Agony, I think it shouldn’t exist at all, to be honest.
That’s why the successful MMOs have learned to make multiple versions of content that everyone can experience, but can still be skin rippingly difficult based on the setting. It appeals to everyone without leaving one group unsatisfied. The problem here is what can you do to make GW2’s content more challenging?
More HP on mobs? It’s already too high
Mobs hitting harder? With only two dodge rolls before needing to recharge that’s not viable.
I already covered how Agony is bullcrap, so no more needs to be said.
See what I mean? Without a solid foundation to design encounters around, without something more than “dodge and kite” there is no way Arenanet can appeal to anyone but the most ubercasual players. That’s fine, but even casual players want more at some point. I may be into hardcore content but I never underestimate a casual player’s desire to challenge themselves, a mistake Arenanet is making right now. They assume casuals will be content with this boring, ultra easy PVE for all time. The truth is they won’t be.
They can do the same thing that games with a trinity can do. It’s also interesting to note that those other games with “multiple versions” basically just make the bosses hit harder and mistakes less forgiving. The very thing you are ranting about being the only option for GW2.
I like how I’m supposed to do fractals on my lvl 50 character.
They are doing a horrible job of taking care of this. For some insane reason they expect players to do the reporting, when the bots literally can’t be reported because they’ve vanished. The very act that is a violation also protects the offender because ArenaNet doesn’t put the tools in place to deal with it.
AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.
The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.
It fits all those because it’s overpowered. The base heal value is far too high and it doesn’t scale with healing power, so that makes it extremely powerful self healing that requires absolutely no sacrifice of stats. You can go full berserkers and heal yourself for the same crazy amounts as you can in full clerics. That’s broken.
Cut AH base value down to 20 or so and make it scale far more with healing power, so that full clerics will make it heal for about 100. Then it would be balanced because you’d have a trade-off to make. Do you want ridiculous self healing or do you want good damage? As it is now you get both.
Clerics is bad already, that insignia shouldn’t exist.
So you agree with me that AH should be nerfed?
I’m just pointing out that it’s a bit misleading to claim that it gives a full heal when discussing group support, since that full heal isn’t a group benefit.
AH doesn’t need to be nerfed, there just needs to be more viable options. Yeah it’s better than most options, but saying it’s overpowered is assuming everything else is balanced and doesn’t need improvement.
The reason almost every Guardian runs 30 Valor with Altrustic Healing in their builds isn’t because it’s overpowered. They run it because it fits into bunker builds, support builds, and damage builds.
It fits all those because it’s overpowered. The base heal value is far too high and it doesn’t scale with healing power, so that makes it extremely powerful self healing that requires absolutely no sacrifice of stats. You can go full berserkers and heal yourself for the same crazy amounts as you can in full clerics. That’s broken.
Cut AH base value down to 20 or so and make it scale far more with healing power, so that full clerics will make it heal for about 100. Then it would be balanced because you’d have a trade-off to make. Do you want ridiculous self healing or do you want good damage? As it is now you get both.
And AH was nerfed pretty hard due to the Vigorous Precision nerf.
Hardly. You lost out on about 150 self-healing every 5 seconds. Oh noes. Compared to the 350+ you heal yourself every other second just from Empowered Might.
Some traits should be nerfed as well. AH and Selfless Daring come to mind.
Selfless daring was nerfed already.
In PvP.
staff 4 is a full heal every 15 seconds.
Full heal for you (with lots of ppl standing around you), not for other players. That’s not particularly useful.
I have to agree with Guanglai. Playing support guardian, because he’s called guardian, is just gimping yourself. You can wear full zerker, get some defensive traits/utilites and do much more damage (worse than only warrior probably) than support/tanky guardian while doing similiar level of support.
By “similar” support, you mean far less right?
People the point of games is to have fun, not playing WvWvW because there isn’t enough rewards is silly because there will obviously be more in the future and more stuff will come. Play stuff because it entertains you, why do you always have to be rewarded for what you do?
Seconded. Will never happen though. People like to sit behind their computer monitors and complain. :P
‘I WANT IT ALL AND I WANT IT, /NAO!/’
And when they do get it, they find something else to kitten about.This does /not/ include complaining about something that is game-breaking broken, however. An exploit is an exploit, plain and simple.
It’s not possible to create PvP or WvWvW that is 100% pure fun. There has to be something to motivate you through the dull and boring bits. If there isn’t, less people will play meaning fun parts are less likely to happen so more people stop playing, repeat until game dies.
Some traits should be nerfed as well. AH and Selfless Daring come to mind.
I tried it while leveling up and quickly gave up after I got killed a few times and had no idea what was going on. I will probably give it a shot when I hit 80 but I don’t see much point in it really.
Is it realistic to run fractals before lvl 80? This is my gripe with the monthly.
Whats the point of high precision if you don’t even have base damage?
Procs. This is what makes precision significantly better than power if they had the same damage increase, so it’s why I imagine that power has a better return on pure damage than precision does.
It’s the only skill that does any decent healing and has any decent return on healing power. I suspect at some point it will get nerfed (not just for PvP). I don’t think a minor trait is supposed to be our primary source of healing. With permanent Vigor you’d have ~2000 heal every 5 seconds…
Dude….do you even play Guardian? Have you ever tried using a Staff? Staff has 2 skills that heal, 3 if traited for healing symbols, all at range. Staff also applies an almost constant 12 stack of might to everyone around you.
Yep, 1 heal that sucks and the other that requires you to be rooted in place for 4 seconds. “Almost constant” doesn’t mean half the time.
Well, technically, when one uses Tome of Courage, they basically become a healing monk. :p
This is an insult to Monks and their amazing gameplay.
In PvE, as long as it feels like you’re contributing, and not dying more then you should, then it’s viable.
Still, I’m surprised people take Retributive Armor so readily over Strength in Numbers.
More crit chance = More Empowering might
That synergy compensates for the preceived difference you see between RA and SiN
Actually it doesn’t. You greatly overestimate how many times EM procs, and the value of 1 Might.
In PvE, as long as it feels like you’re contributing, and not dying more then you should, then it’s viable.
Still, I’m surprised people take Retributive Armor so readily over Strength in Numbers.
More crit chance = More Empowering might
That synergy compensates for the preceived difference you see between RA and SiN
Retributive Armor = +3-4% crit chance, depending on whether you’re wearing Toughness gear.
Strength in Numbers = +2.5% damage reduction.
Choice is obvious, statistically.
2.5% damage reduction to every person in your group. Yes, the choice is obvious, statistically, and it’s not RA.
Mostly because that 70 toughness Per person isnt going to change much of anything. Where as it is about 20 perc per crit % so it adds about another 5% crit or so if you are running 2k tougness. Which isnt that hard in full knights armor.
And that’s not really going to change anything.
Basically you’re saying toughness is worthless as a stat.
Strength in Numbers is better than Retributive Armor…a lot better.
dungeon ranks:
1. Guardian, after talking to guardians and watching them in action and so on they are very clearly at the time without question.
2. Mesmers, the utility, and distractions via clones make them very hard to beat <my personal favorite by far
3. Warrior, damage… (can be moved up to #1-2 for certain dungeons, Eg. AC)
4. Theif, party support/stealth combined with damage is extremely good
5. Necro, aoe, minions, conditions (which benefits other classes that sort of have some conditions, but ignore them in favor of another stat) and survivability
6,7,8. engi/ele/ranger just don’t notice much effect from themGeneral pve:
1. warrior everything basically gets 1 shotted
2. theif, less survivability, more damage than guardian
3. necro, good survivability lacks damage of theif
4. guardian op as kitten, but doesn’t kill as fast as others
5. ele, great potential damage, often wasted though
6. ranger all rounder pet makes it nice, not as much kill tagging capability as ele
7. engi, actually tied with range due to aoe , i’ve not much experience with them..
8. mes. low damage, next to zero kill taggingpvp.
1. Mes, only by a narrow margin.
2. Necro, can often kill mesmers, MM’s are scary, wells are deadly as hell when used in the right hands
3. Theif, VERY VERY close second/third great utility and party-support, stealth makes them hard to kill, they can apply pressure and often assassinate key targets with relative ease
4. Eles, they make great bunkers and great roamers lots of damage, lots of survivability, and utility to spare, easy to target however, unlike theives (due to stealth), mesmers (due to clones) and necro’s (due to minions or their natural positioning within groups)
5. guardian, meditation is the only way to go from my perspective, those who try for bunkers tend to be absolutely terrible at everything and fail hard, meditation provides great mobility and just keeps you in ur opponents face all of the time
6. Warrior, excellent burst damage, if you can catch someone, they will die.. keyword being… if
7. Rangers, recently with alot of sword-based builds they’ve started to show up in tournaments and play excellently, i was tempted to say 8
8. engi’s generally unwieldy, they’re not discounted they’ll still destroy alot of the other classes in several area’s, they’re just seemingly weaker than one would expectwvw:
1. ele dat aoe finally gets used to it’s fullest potential
2-3-4. theif/necro/ranger all have great range and aoe, theif you will almost always see near your spawn point where they will be picking off lone players, necro’s and rangers just finally get to use their range/survivability and aoe to their fullest potential
5-6-7-8 engi/mes/war/guardian, guardian’s i’ve heard are amazing, but i just don’t see it, warriors have excellent single target damage i myself frequently pick off lone players with the rifle (12k+ kill shots anyone?), engi’s similar to guardians, heard they’re good, i’ve not witnessed it, mes’s were absolutely amazing until the phantasm line of sight nerf… they suddenly became next to useless in my opinion, i’ve heard they’re still amazing particularly reflection-based, but again.. not witnessed.I’m sorry but these are horribly wrong and probably biased views. If you want an insight on the professions you should experiment for yourself.
The hilarity of calling someone’s opinion wrong and biased, based on your opinion.
Empower Allies is a warrior trait in the Tactics line, our version is Strength in Numbers in the Valor tree, it gives Toughness.
also whilst in the mists your gear is not only nerfed but you cannot consume food buffs like the Omnomberry Cream.
sadly this game lacks any real damage testing area for such theorycrafting.
Food buffs don’t really have much effect on your crit rate and therefore Empowered Might.
Funny that I got confused between Warrior and Guardian traits. Still, I’m surprised people take Retributive Armor so readily over Strength in Numbers. One gives less than 100 precision while the other gives 350 toughness split among your group.
Is Knight’s armor from PvE different than Knight’s Jewels in sPvP? In sPvP it gives you Vitality, not Toughness.
you were testing it on golems right? you cannot critically hit the target dummies in LA which means EM will never proc.
I tested in the Mists.
The Might buffs only last for 5s. You’d have to crit an average of one time per second maintain 5 stacks of Might, which seems very unrealistic especially for a hammer build that has only 35% crit or so. The odd thing is that I see a lot of people put this in their non-crit based builds but ignore Empower Allies which is a permanent 2 stacks of Might.
(edited by Yaki.9563)
My view is that some people seem to believe that, since there is no healer role, they should not invest in a “wasted” trait. But since there is ALSO no DPS role, by the same logic you “should not invest” in power, precision, and critical damage. Either that, or you actually believe that there’s only ONE viable “role”: DPS. Which, from the ample gameplay choices we are given in the game, is simply not true. This game is not about “trinity” roles, INCLUDING DPS. People that invest heavily on Healing Power DO NOT stay on the back doing “nothing but heal”, but are rather using an effective, fun way to play the game, contributing to the party/allies in ways more than the usual DPS-which is also cool and viable.
Actually DPS is a (and the only) viable pure role. All other variations are hybrids of DPS and support. The reason is that they made DPS skills not only abundant with short cooldowns, but significantly more powerful than the heals. It’s also quite necessary since all you need for leveling is DPS, if that wasn’t a “role” the whole leveling process would be much slower and less engaging.
They mitigated the need for healing by throwing in dodging. But they didn’t mitigate the need for DPS. Bashing monsters with weapons and spells is still the only way to kill them.
After trying out EM on the target dummies, even maxing out crit all the way, I could never get more than 3-4 stacks (even when AEing vs. 3 dummies) which makes me think that it’s really not all that great.
That build in the post above looks interesting. You give up AH but gain significant damage and utility.
with 1470 healing, banners, signet, and adrenal health (3 bars), my self regen is approximatly 1150 hps.
which is kitten awesome.
that said, i almost never use healing signet, and i burst as often as i can, so my typical self regen is around 650 hps. oh no…
I think your numbers are off. You’re saying banner regen + signet gives you 1000 hps…
I think the advantage of guardian/warrior is their superior AE ability, not their survivability. When you’re trying to plow through content as quickly as possible, you want to do all your damage to 5 mobs not just 1.
It’s very easy to resolve – up the rewards for completing dynamic event chains and watch as people start farming them again.
I do them because I really enjoy that aspect of the game, and my server is one of the most populous so I rarely have a problem getting them done.
Pro-tip, advertise them. If you come across one let the zone know, and link a nearby waypoint. Literally every time I do this a bunch of lone wolves suddenly appear and we get it done.
This. Very well said.
I am also on a very busy server and people advertise events all the time. All it takes is a waypoint link and they will come. When I play solo I have never had an issue because I do this all the time. I’ve even seen people asking for help with personal story quests in map chat.
If you upped event rewards all you’d get is lvl 80’s farming the best events. All the others would still be dead. They’d also need to have harsh diminishing returns on repeated events for there to be any real difference.
I’m thinking the OP wouldn’t be happy no matter what. I do tons of events, mostly solo, and usually at least a few times per day I do group events with other random players. Yesterday I was in the lvl 70 area before Orr and had about 10ish players doing the group events there. A few days ago I did a massive group event in the volcano in the previous zone with again, about 10-15 players. Even many of the soloable events get an extra 1-2 players along, especially the escorts or longer events.
There is no MMO in the world that has bustling and overflowing leveling zones. If you’re going to leave GW2 because of that, I guess you’re simply not going to play any MMO at all.
The leveling experience in this game is far superior to that of any other MMO I’ve played. Certainly leaps and bounds beyond WoW. If all you want to do is race to 80 by farming group events or chaining hearts, I can see your frustration but then again that’s your loss for not enjoying the best part of the game. Once I refocused and worked on zone completion rather than simply gaining xp, the events and experience fell into place by itself.
I’m talking Guards vs Warriors bro in terms overall DPS/Survivability/CC/and other things. I can care less about thieves because I’ve only met one in WvW that basically 1 hit me or combed or whatever. A Warrior Shout build can heal them for 2.1k for every shout. So basic math 2.1k * 3 = a 6.3k Heal and that doesn’t include their Main heal skill.
The base cool downs are 25-30 sec assuming they would also use “Lung capacity” it would decrease the cool down by 20%. So they would get two 2.1k Heals every 20 seconds and another Heal every 24 Seconds while getting buffed at the same time or putting Vulnerability on enemy.Uh Vigorous Shouts only heals about 1k. That’s only 3k per 30s which is only 100/s, which is pretty much what Guardian has on passive Resolve without having to trait anything.
By comparison guardians get either Monk’s Focus or AH. Monk’s Focus is 2k per 20s from just Smite Condition alone, which means ONE meditation heals an equivalent amount as THREE shouts on a warrior. AH is about 70 per tick, so PER PERSON you get 70/sec from Empowering Might, 350 per symbol, and 140 per shout. Multiply that by 5 and you’re getting 350/sec from Empower, 1750 per symbol, and 700 per shout.
Also, guardians have more blocks and blinds, so they won’t be taking as much damage to begin with.
This isn’t 1 warrior vs. 5 guardians.
Also, nice job rounding up guardian heal values and rounding down warrior heal values while ignoring the two warrior passive regens as well as banner regen.
I’m leveling both and like them both. My guardian doesn’t seem particularly survivable though so I’m not sure where that comes from pre-80.
Altruistic Healing.
Have it, not impressed. It’s really only very good when in a group and since I’m talking about pre-80 that’s rarely the case.
The level 80 areas are impossible to solo. I think that this is part of their “anti-bot” strategy. It sucks because I solo alot to since I prefer open world over dungeons but I don’t think it is going to change. It is well documented that Anet expects players to party all the time. There are rewards (additional drop rates) for being in a party as well. No room for “lone wolves” in GW2!
Which zone is impossible to solo? I’m walking casually around all areas in Orr/Frostgorge without any problems… if anything they need to up the difficulty there, being an end-game zone and all.
Of course this happens afrer you learn your profession and start using “proper” builds. Once that happens and you get the hang of the zone AND your character you should be able to move around Orr while sleeping.
So let me get this straight, What you are saying is there are only cookie cutter builds that are viable and if you stray from those then you shouldnt be able to play the game? Excuse me, then why the build structure at all then? Why not lock everyone into a particular build and forgo the ability to customize your character at all. The fact that I can destroy a normal mob in mere seconds and can take on any veteran mob without worry of ever dying tells me that my build is pretty decent. Yet when it comes to risen and risen ONLY, do I have issues where I can die in mere seconds. My gear is decent, my weapons seem decent, nothing has changed from the entire rest of the game with the exception of the risen being stupidly over powered (which they have been the entire game as well). I watched an interview just earlier today where they talked about not changing the game at 80 (which I am only 78 right now) compared to how it was as you leveled, but that is exactly what they have done in these end zones. We are not even talking about dungeons or whatnot, just the open world.
Anet did and it has showed very blatantly. Role a warrior since they get buffed and never nerfed. Wonder why that is. They wrecked the balance of the game in favor of 1 class.
Then they made the best gear and loot in 1 place fractals.
So yes they did do just that and locked other people out. Ever wonder why a warrior can charge into 10 risen while every other profession has to take 1 out at a time?
You just hate warriors. Nothing you said is true.
I’m leveling both and like them both. My guardian doesn’t seem particularly survivable though so I’m not sure where that comes from pre-80.
Best part of the game is leveling to 80. Once you hit 80 there’s no new content just repetition, so their loss imo.
I think it’s dumb that you can level through crafting though.
I have not found this to be true. I only bought a set of armor from the TP one time, at lvl 45 when it was very cheap. Now I’m 65 and am not even close to being able to afford a full set (at about 2.5g), let alone a full set every 10 levels. I level by doing hearts and DE’s and the personal storyline.
What masterworks are you buying that cost 2.5 gold for a full set?
My mistake, I confused rare and masterwork.
One of the more irritating things in PvE are the mobs who constantly back up every time they are hit, causing your autoattack to stop unless you constantly chase after them.
This has come up before. And last time it was the same, a lot of PvE players that were incredibly against the idea of a “PK server”
It makes no sense to me. It would be a new server, no one would force you to join, why are you so against a PvP server?
Waste of resources, duh.
Again, no one if forcing you to join a FFA server, don’t like the rule set, done play, as for looting, I said non bound items, that being unequipped BoA items, karma, small coin or crafting items.
So wait, you’re saying 99% of people shouldn’t play FFA…and then wondering why ArenaNet doesn’t make a FFA server. LOL.
It always amazes me how oblivious “hardcore” PvP-gankers are.
Where did this 99% statistic come from? have you asked 100% of the player population, calculated the numbers and came up with this? I am sure you did.
Experience playing other games where FFA gankers got their way and had a server created for them so it could be shut down a few months later. Heck, most people don’t even regularly participate in normal PvP…it’s not a leap to conclude that the vast majority of people don’t want to have completely 1-sided PvP forced upon them while they are trying to enjoy the other parts of the game.