Guild Wars 2

Mr.E is Glints child.

SPOILER:

That deep voice in the end of the new chapter who gives the master of peace the egg.

Updates like this when a dev actually mains a class. Grouch mains engi.

Do blast finishers that grant boons to allies (eg. light field = retaliation) give healing with altruistic healing?

If confusion was applied on immobilize instead of stun, wouldn’t that make this trait immensely more viable because then the actual condition weapons (sword/longbow) can use it without the warrior needing to waste utilities or power weapons?

I cannot see this being overpowered with sword#1 spam and leg specialist. Know why? Because the counter to someone spamming auto attack on you over and over is… well, a lot of counters… How often is someone auto attacking you to death with axe or mace or any other weapon in the game? Yeah, never. So it wouldn’t be overpowered with leg specialist simply because no one gets auto attacked to death, ever (from melee weapons, anyway).

Rifle#1 should do increased damage the further away a target is.
Rifle#3 should give 1 adrenaline per hit.
Rifle#4 should apply revealed for 6s.

And then, we have a very nice weapon.

I would only ever even consider mace if mace#2 blocked all ranged attacks like sword#5.

THEY’RE JUST SKINS

flow.6043:

Reply

Spiteful Marks: Yes, this would include yourself. The only problem I could see arising is necromancers being “forced” (by others) to take this trait in WvW or TPvP. The solution would be to make the base healing terrible, but make it scale well with healing power so that you can’t be fully offensive and defensive at the same time. Would go very well in a settler stats build.

Quickening Thirst: I agree completely but I couldn’t come up with a replacement trait upon combining the two that did something that the other traits don’t cover already.

Similar to the last thread of ideas that I made but with some changes.

I know it’s probably pointless to theorycrafting potential ideas because devs rarely read them, but it passes the time waiting half a year for the next balance patch.

Shaogin.2679:

Having issues there buddy?

Watching allies go ham on an enemy condition necromancer who activates spectral armor who then proceeds to kill them, is very annoying to see, yes.

…when they have spectral armor on. It is basically defiant stance. All you do when attacking them is allow them to enter death shroud for a prolonged period of time which in turn allows their skills to come off cooldown until they out attrition you.

Don’t attack them at all when they have spectral armor active. This goes for spectral walk as well. The only time you should attack them is if they recently left death shroud, their health is low enough and you have the potential to burst them down.

For some reason, this has never became a thing whereas it instantly became a thing when the more obvious defiant stance was added. Trust me, you’ll enjoy seeing a necromancer only have ~5% life force the next time he goes into death shroud rather than 50%+.

New video is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqQYY9VLhb4&feature=youtu.be
2 clips on my engineer in it as well.

Atherakhia.4086:

If you don’t want them to deal damage beyond the channel, then they shouldn’t have a wind up time either. I press the button damage starts instantly. When I move, damage stops. Heck, make them permanent! It will channel forever and ever so long as I continue to stay still! Now that’s something this game needs!

I agree with the no wind up time and damage stopping once you move. If you don’t want meteor or barrage to cause you to kill yourself against retaliation, you should be able to stop it if you want. If this means that it starts 1 second earlier, good.

Disagree with the obvious sarcastic permanent channel though lol.

I don’t think I explained my point well enough.

These skills should not last past the channelling bar, at all. These skills should only be doing damage while the player is in the animation. The way they currently act is totally different from the rest of the game.

If a ranger is no longer in the animation where he’s shooting arrows, then arrows should no longer fall. Same with meteor from elementalist.

Bogy.2953:

Zefrost.3425:

shadowpass.4236:

they cant be cast while moving

You can walk away about half way through and they continue going off.

no they don’t

I’m really not going to waste my time uploading proof for you lol.

shadowpass.4236:

they cant be cast while moving

You can walk away about half way through and they continue going off.

These skills should not keep being cast once the player starts moving. If this isn’t an exploit, then:

- Life transfer should continue channeling if I use it and get disabled.

- Stomps should continue channeling even if you’re interrupted.

etc.

If we’re going to have 2 skills that do that, might as well be consistent and do it for them all. Only makes sense.

Edit
I don’t think I explained my point well enough.

These skills should not last past the channelling bar, at all. These skills should only be doing damage while the player is in the animation. The way they currently act is totally different from the rest of the game.

If a ranger is no longer in the animation where he’s shooting arrows, then arrows should no longer fall. Same with meteor from elementalist.

The build that I prefer the most for engineer is 2/4/2/6 HGH, flamethrower and elixirs because it has a little bit of everything. I currently use celestial and hoelbrak. If I went with cavalier then I would use lyssa runes.

Sometimes I play around with bombs and/or elixir gun because they’re good, but I don’t really like either of them.

Which is better for damage and survivability? Cavalier or celestial?

So when the staff auto attacks get their +50% velocity increase, they will be 50% stronger than axe auto attacks.

Axe auto attacks will never be worth using over staff autos, ever.

The only issue that could possibly have ever arose from zealous blade having high healing to begin with would be in tanky builds, but there wouldn’t even be an issue at all.

“Worst” case scenario that I can think of would be something like full clerics specced for any of the grandmasters (Monks Focus, Altruistic Healing or Pure of Voice) and that wouldn’t even be tankier than a guardian using mace/focus or mace/shield. You can’t take more than one of these grandmasters… so…

No tanky build with a greatsword will ever be tankier than a build with a mace in it, for multiple reasons.

If we look at meditation builds specifically then it still wouldn’t be overpowered because you have to spec 4 into zeal which makes you lose out on a lot of other defensive abilities. Your spec would most likely be 4/0/6/4/0 or 4/0/6/0/4.

IMO Zealous Blade should scale off of healing power because if it just scales off of damage done or power than PvE players will be invincible. Healing power scaling would keep the healing negligible in PvE but actually useful in PvP/WvW if it was buffed.

Why is Anet so afraid of buffing this trait? Even if the healing was doubled it would probably be barely viable.

Any build taking this probably lacks condition removal. There are counters to a player spamming skills to heal.

The 2 reasons why WvW profession balance is imbalanced:

Reason#1 – Food
Some food is too powerful. +40% condition duration food should only be +10% condition duration (like sigil of malice) and the useless +15% specific condition duration food should be +20% duration (like sigils such as sigil of smoldering).

There are very few issues beyond condition duration food.

Reason#2 – Stat Mixing
The ability to mix stats together totally destroyed any possibility to actually balance WvW combat. This should be the same as SPvP where you have a single stat combination. A lot of people would cry :‘’’( QQQQ because they are no longer god mode and they can’t play anything remotely skill based, but it would be healthy for the game. (Will never happen though)

Being able to mix stats basically gives you a superior version of celestial.

Every fight a full berserker warrior? They are balanced and can be killed.

Personally, I don’t mix stats at all because I feel that it hinders you in SPvP because you get used to playing a build that doesn’t exist there.

Those are the 2 reasons why WvW profession balance is imbalanced.

Here is a perfect example:
http://i62.tinypic.com/2lne3ar.jpg

It is rare for an item to have that much of a price different between buy and sell orders. Real players, such as myself, could be making gold but people have bots doing it for them. Where I can make hundreds of gold a day, they can make thousands.

Protip: A large percentage of rich players in the game (in every game) are botters – very easy to investigate and ban.

Want to know what a lot of them are most likely doing? Using a different copy of the game because you like to have discount sales so much. I myself have a second copy of the game, but I don’t use it. Though, I’m starting to wonder why I shouldn’t if nothing is done about botters. Trading post botting has obviously been going on for a long time now.

Why should I spend hundreds of $ on the game (like I have) when you can simply bot and convert gold to gems instead?

I’m not going to, but there’s you incentive to actually ban people – they aren’t buying your gems with real money.

Life Siphoning needs to be buffed – buffed to where it’s “meh” in 1v1 but scales to be better with more opponents (5 maximum) to the point where it actually helps you survive focus fire like blocks, invulns, evades, etc. do.

The general game balance is actually pretty good but there are some bad traits for every class that need updating as well as animations. An example for something that needs better animation is Point Blank Shot from the ranger. An example of another trait line that sucks… well… Guardian Zeal traitline – might even be worse than Blood Magic.

One trait that’s very similar to the problems that we have is: Zealous Blade - Attacks with your greatsword deal an extra 5% damage and heal you.

Terrible healing scaling. In any build that I ever wanted to use it there was always a better reason to just put points into something else for damage which also, overall, gives me more healing/health in the end.

6/x/x/x/x
Pistol/Whatever
Balthazar Runes
Rabid or Celestial
Doom Sigil
Geomancy Sigil
Grenade Kit, Tool Kit, anything else (usually Elixir S)

Let me put this into perspective:
- When you heal you AOE burn for 5s.
- When you do literally anything you burn for 8s.
- Every 9s you inflict poison for 7.8s.
- Every 9s you inflict 3 stacks of AOE bleed for 13s.

Really? On top of everything else that an engineer can do?
None of that is balanced. It’s not the classes that are overpowered – it’s the EQUIPMENT.
(other than the odd exception of an overpowered trait such as incendiary powder)

How do you fix this?:

Sigil of Geomancy – Inflicts 1 stack of AOE bleed for 5s on weapon swap.
No long defines an entire build. Comparable to Sigil of Earth because this is AOE.

Rune of Balthazar – Reduce burn from 45% to 30%; burn is now 1s instead of 3s.
Every other rune in the entire game is 30% burn duration. A 3s burn is also better than any burn that any other rune in the entire game inflicts – those burns being 1s long.

Sigil of Doom- 30% chance on hit to inflict poison for 2s (cooldown:10s)
Why should this even be a weapon swap sigil? This balances the sigil like sigil of ice.

Incendiary Powder – Nerf it like dhuumfire.
How? I do not know.

I only have 400 hours on my engineer (probably 100 AFK) but I would like to share a build that I’ve really been enjoying a lot lately. I certainly “feel” like a juggernaut using this build – partly because I’m using the biggest norn possible.

Of all of the builds that I’ve tried so far (full turrets, turrets/elixir gun, healing bomb variations, static discharge variations, full elixirs, elixirs/flamethrower and other random builds with tool kit or grenade kit) this is my favourite build yet. I have never liked grenade kit which is why I don’t use it in any builds.

This is the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpWrVWxdLseNSdBF6dWwPDyAUARuwYA-TJBBwAAuAAeeAA92fAcZAA

After watching one of wolfineer’s guides, I try not to ever waste any of my combo finishers anymore. I very frequently use napalm from the flamethrower and dance around it to be able to get blasts from my flamethrower on it while hitting my opponent or to leap at them with rifle; sometimes I’ll use other blasts on it depending on the situation, but not usually.

I’ve been finding that because of the short cooldown of the blasts from flamethrower and elixir gun that I almost never need to detonate my healing turret for its effect, I can combo with other blasts and then pick it up again – that’s a big deal.

The amount of blast finishers, might stacking, CC and reflection (turrets and flamethrower) is really fun on this build.

- Old look
- New look.
..

“Double click 10 Black Lion Claim Ticket Scraps to create a Black Lion Claim Ticket.”

Now you can delete the need to do this at an NPC.

This also frees up 1 category for your weapon NPC that now has his category list full with the new Tempest Weapons.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zefrost.3425:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zefrost.3425:

LCV.7245:

Honestly, Zefrost, you sound like someone who complains about ideas they don’t fully understand…

No, I understand counterplay and rock paper scissors, but power ranger is a new counter to necromancers and it’s one that can’t really be dealt with other than LoSing. Berserker stance and warriors were the counter before, but the ranger is an all new ball game.

Let me give you a really impossible situation for the necromancer to deal with:
- Necromancer died and had to respawn.
- Berserker ranger has went to necromancer’s spawn and set up camp at vantage point.
- Berserker ranger ‘pew pews!’ necromancer from full to death before he can leave the vicinity of his spawn.

There is literally nothing you can do against this unless you try to leave through a different spawn exit (in which the ranger just has to reticule you and follow you). There are no reflects we can do, no evades, no blocks, and no amount of toughness or protection will negate what they can do. This could honestly become meta – just pew pewing necromancers when they respawn.

I’m sorry when exactly did necros lose their ranged attacks? Dodge towards him, lay CC’s and condi’s on him, proceed to laugh at the ranger that didn’t bring any condi removal.

You don’t understand.

When a necromancer dies, he will have zero life force. Even if a necromancer has a little bit left, life blast does less damage when a target is further away – it’s the opposite of mesmer and ranger. Any other attacks are only 900 range which aren’t even nearly as much of a threat as 1500 ranged attacks from a powerhouse is. Also, spectral grasp has some of the worst tracking in the entire game, so you can’t even attempt to pull the target.

Let me show you 2 situations on legacy where there is no where to LoS the ranger and the ranger can keep you pinned down in your own spawn area.

.

Do you even play a necro our are you just grasping at straws to try and justify a nerf? My necro does 1200 range with ever one of its staff skills, which have the added bonus of cc’s and condi’s.

You’ll just have to fight against good rangers on a necromancer to understand.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zefrost.3425:

LCV.7245:

Honestly, Zefrost, you sound like someone who complains about ideas they don’t fully understand…

No, I understand counterplay and rock paper scissors, but power ranger is a new counter to necromancers and it’s one that can’t really be dealt with other than LoSing. Berserker stance and warriors were the counter before, but the ranger is an all new ball game.

Let me give you a really impossible situation for the necromancer to deal with:
- Necromancer died and had to respawn.
- Berserker ranger has went to necromancer’s spawn and set up camp at vantage point.
- Berserker ranger ‘pew pews!’ necromancer from full to death before he can leave the vicinity of his spawn.

There is literally nothing you can do against this unless you try to leave through a different spawn exit (in which the ranger just has to reticule you and follow you). There are no reflects we can do, no evades, no blocks, and no amount of toughness or protection will negate what they can do. This could honestly become meta – just pew pewing necromancers when they respawn.

I’m sorry when exactly did necros lose their ranged attacks? Dodge towards him, lay CC’s and condi’s on him, proceed to laugh at the ranger that didn’t bring any condi removal.

You don’t understand.

When a necromancer dies, he will have zero life force. Even if a necromancer has a little bit left, life blast does less damage when a target is further away – it’s the opposite of mesmer and ranger. Any other attacks are only 900 range which aren’t even nearly as much of a threat as 1500 ranged attacks from a powerhouse is. Also, spectral grasp has some of the worst tracking in the entire game, so you can’t even attempt to pull the target.

Let me show you 2 situations on legacy where there is no where to LoS the ranger and the ranger can keep you pinned down in your own spawn area.

.

LCV.7245:

Honestly, Zefrost, you sound like someone who complains about ideas they don’t fully understand…

No, I understand counterplay and rock paper scissors, but power ranger is a new counter to necromancers and it’s one that can’t really be dealt with other than LoSing. Berserker stance and warriors were the counter before, but the ranger is an all new ball game.

Let me give you a really impossible situation for the necromancer to deal with:
- Necromancer died and had to respawn.
- Berserker ranger has went to necromancer’s spawn and set up camp at vantage point.
- Berserker ranger ‘pew pews!’ necromancer from full to death before he can leave the vicinity of his spawn.

There is literally nothing you can do against this unless you try to leave through a different spawn exit (in which the ranger just has to reticule you and follow you). There are no reflects we can do, no evades, no blocks, and no amount of toughness or protection will negate what they can do. This could honestly become meta – just pew pewing necromancers when they respawn.

Use pirate rune

Before ranger longbow was buffed, you could kind of make an argument to use rifle as a warrior; whether you did greatsword/rifle with phalanx strength or some destroyer build or you did hammer/rifle as a front line and back line build.

Now, there is never a reason to ever use rifle warrior instead of a longbow ranger – rifle does nothing better. Rifle doesn’t stealth, it can’t AOE, the knockback is worse but not terrible because it affects more than 1 target and rifle can’t even BURST. Killshot is technically comparable to rapid fire because rapid fire does a lot of damage over time whereas killshot does it all at once. But then we have the rifle auto attack… the damage is laughable compared to ranger longbow auto attack – laughable. Rifle isn’t even 1500 range!

How can we save the rifle?
I suggested to my friend that you could save rifle by making killshot instant cast that knocks every opponent back that it touches over 9000 range back that also puts a hole through all of their chests which, if left unchecked (no possible way to ‘check it’) explodes, instantly killing every ally near them within a radius of at least 10,000 units. I also suggested to add a hadouken! attack to the rifle which basically launches the opponent in the air (this mechanic already exists as we sometimes see it happen with pull skills) but when the opponent lands they die from falling dmg – this would give a use for fall dmg traits and make falling dmg builds viable.

He agreed that this would make rifle viable.

What are your ideas?
PS. Yes this is actually serious – rifle is totally outclassed garbage now.

Unholy Marty should cause life transfer to transfer conditions from allies to yourself like the underwater version. Maybe a trait for life blast would be alright too. (Then make underwater skills the same as land skills)

It might not be overpowered with a trait like that… I mean, you’re spamming 1 over and over which is really obvious. Doubt we’ll see a trait/change though.

robertul.3679:

How does warrior rifle and mesmer pistol clone have more counterplay than other stuff?

Rifle is garbage because volley isn’t a machine gun with a knockback of 10 football fields with stealth, AOE with super saiyan power levels of damage at far range and pistol clones are obvious when they’re spawned.

Ranger auto attacks can hit over 3k – that’s an auto attack with no cooldown lol.
Good luck doing that with warrior rifle.

Talking about the “pew pew!” from every single class. When the combat meta didn’t have projectiles everywhere, it was a lot more enjoyable. You know, skills with real telegraphs and auto attacks that didn’t hit for damage similar to melee attacks.

What do we have that is totally annoying to fight against?

Engineer (The entire class basically)
- Rifle skills
- Pistol skills
- Static discharge
- Elixir gun
- Nades
- Turrets

Ranger (All arrows are identical)
- Longbow skills
- Shortbow skills
- Axe skills

Warrior (Pew pew I created a fire field bigger than the sun)
- Longbow

Necromancer (1111111)
- Lich form

Thief (Such wow)
- Pistol/Dagger

Now, what projectiles in the game are actually balanced, have actual counterplay, are dodgeable and not annoying to fight against?

Engineer
- Launch personal battering ram
- Throw wrench

Warrior
- Bladetrail
- Rifle skills
- Throw axe
- Impale

Mesmer
- Pistol clones
- Mirror blade

Necromancer
- Deathly swarm
- Reaper’s touch

Ranger
- None

Elementalist
- Elementalist doesn’t need projectiles because it casts 10 skills in 1 second for full health-none which is much more balanced and has much counterplay. (Sarcasm btw)

See how these are all skillshots rather than “pew pew!” spam? More skill, less pew pew please. No one has enough reflection to deal with everything and no one really wants to because it’s not fun. Necromancer has zero defense against all of this pew pew spam going on btw.

PS. It was totally not necessary to buff ranger auto attacks either. Getting close to the ranger is, you know… kind of supposed to be the counter against longbow?

inb4 QQ pew pew

I’ve been messing around with spirit weapons for a bit and they’re not terrible (signets are terrible). I actually feel more deadly in 1v1 situations with spirits rather than meditations – although I don’t really play guardian.

I love the shield because it’s basically 30 seconds of projectile absorption and I love the hammer because it does a ton of damage and can be used defensively too.

All spirit weapons need changes though…

These are my thoughts on spirit weapons:
_________________________________________________________________
Hammer
- Hammer auto attack chain should knock down rather than knock back.

Shield
- Summoning the shield should be an instant cast stun-breaker that grants aegis to allies and weakness to foes. (No damage or bounce effect)

- Active ability should be ground targeted and should create the projectile absorption effect so that you have it when and where you need it.

Bow
- Bow auto attacks should shoot foes and deal damage instead. (Ranged guardian wut?)
- Active ground target ability should heal for more, clear conditions and be instant cast.

Sword
- Sword active ability should be ground targeted and hit multiple times like its animation shows.
_________________________________________________________________

Those few changes would honestly make them not suck and it wouldn’t make them an annoying meta like turrets, spirit rangers or minions. They would simply be “okay”.

Obviously, you do not know what a good player can do on a burst ele. I guess that’s why all of the players rolled with ranger though – no skill required pressing 2 and then 1.

If every single one of you players took up fresh air burst elementalists instead of the ranger because of the new ranger changes, imagine the QQ – elementalist skills can’t be reflected, unlike ranger skills. Elementalist also bursts harder.

Let’s change up the meta!

What is the health of mesmer clones/phantasms? Wiki says that it’s 3200 but I kind of doubt that. And are the stats affected by anything else or just direct traits?

Ever since I made my necromancer 2 years ago, my favourite combo was Spectral Grasp -> Reaper’s Touch -> Weakening Shroud (enter death shroud) -> Life Blast. That was my original power build, but it didn’t take me too long to change from that until I eventually settled on the build that I have today.

Here’s the issue that I have with focus:
It’s a damage weapon that does very little damage.

Focus#4 (Reaper’s Touch) is purely a damage skill. Sure, it gives you some life force if you land it, but it’s still a pure damage skill unlike the other off-hands that are available. Warhorn#4 is a daze (utility), warhorn #5 grants a self/mobile area attack that gives life force and swiftness (utility). The reason that I use dagger off-hand is because it is good against both power and condition builds; dagger#4 bounces like focus#4 but it transfers conditions and blinds and does damage while dagger#5 is AOE weakness – arguably better than a single target chill with a 1.25s cast time.

Focus just doesn’t cut it. I want so badly to switch up my build once in a while because it really does get old running the same thing all the time, but focus just has no purpose or role – none. You aren’t going to burst someone down with it, you aren’t going to ‘wombo-combo’ someone with it from full health to dead and focus#5 has a very long cast time that does miniscule (compared to other classes capabilities) damage. You also aren’t going to run full berserker like thieves, mesmers, elementalists or any other class can because you will be focused to death and you won’t do enough damage to take the risk with what the necromancer offers.

TL;DR
If focus is going to be our off-hand power weapon, then it needs to do more damage. This skill is very similar to Mirror Blade from mesmers, but the damage isn’t. I would like to see either: a damage increase, a different boon granted rather than regeneration or healing allowed in death shroud so that regeneration actually matters.

This may not have a target cap. Any chance it works in EotM?

cheshirefox.7026:

here’s an idea, complete your inventory space
and acquire a bank tab

The problem is not only inventory space, the problem is also alts.

TAKE MY CRAP STUFF! THANKS!

Black lion items (and other items) are supposed to be for convenience; this is not very convenient. I have to swap these between characters anytime I want to use something – so fun.

Been an axe user for forever and the little power creep changes are starting to take their toll, I am starting to notice a difference in my effectiveness against opponents when using axe.

Whether it’s double sigils, rune stats buffed for literally no reason, little changes like evasion on burning speed, might stacking, heals out the wazoo, etc.

It is much harder to kill nowadays, but this is because of the power creep of other classes or abilities (runes/sigils), not the axe itself. The recent buff to the auto attack basically make it double the speed which is very nice; I actually use it to bait out dodges now.

If life siphon on dagger was the same channel time as ghastly claws then I would most likely change to main-hand dagger. Life siphon is total garbage with that channel time.

Tldr; “Meta builds are all about eliminating counterplay”
Please nerf:
- Celestial elementalist
- Celestial engineer
- Might stacking for everything
- Sigils
- Balance the rune sets

Basically, balance the game and add build diversity for classes like everyone has wanted for forever. If you’re going to balance the game with imbalance like that one video talks about, then please add actual counterplay to the game.

Example: Make unholy martyr and plague signet actual viable options to clear conditions from allies.

I think a 3.25s cast time like churning earth would be a good spot to start. Maybe increase to same channel time as tranquility on temple of silent storm if it’s still too OP.

Please add build templates so I can easily switch to classes/builds designed for stealth pulling.

It needs an increased cast time and animation, which it will get or we’ll complain till it does.

:)

If I want my Flesh Golem to look like Big Daddy from Bioshock, can I do that somehow? Nothing would please me more than to use ‘charge’ and pretend he’s a big daddy.

Honestly, the #2 skill that inflicts vulnerability needs to be more useful. Everything else is good.