Guild Wars 2

King James.2659:

Warrior class is beyond broken. Just because one prof is good in PvE doesn’t mean they’re balanced in PvP. Completely different scenarios, because in the end, nearly anything is viable in PvE lol.

No, because when LFG posts say “warrior for speed run or pizz off”, it’s not really a scenario where everything is viable.

You try running a kitten group, especially in Arah, without warriors and the difference in experience is huge. A warrior or two in your group will likely halve the duration of the run. They easily double many classes’ damage output. In case of the necro, triple.

Bunkers exist because thieves and mesmers and warriors exist.

You try to play a non-thief/mesmer/warrior glass cannon build and see where that gets you. Taking a dirt nap is where that gets you.

Engineer glass cannon doesn’t exist. Ranger glass cannon doesn’t exist. Necro glass cannon doesn’t exist (they’re just glass anyway). Guardian is not glass cannon at all.

So, when you can’t dish the numbers in the short time windows warriors/mesmers/thieves can while still remaining fairly fragile yourself, you realize that you might as well go bunker because that’s the only way you can play.

Trust me, many rangers and necros and engineers and guardians would love to have glass cannon specs comparable to thieves/mesmer/warrior.

Autoattacks only have a 20% chance of triggering the field.

lbow is horrible.

The GS counterattack should knockdown, not back. The last thing you want on a melee weapon is to move your opponent from you. Especially a melee weapon with no good cripple.

Are you seriously linking a wvw video of a thief pwning upleveled people who don’t care to even stunbreak or dodge the moment the first spike hits?

The mesmer in the first few seconds only did 1/5 of the thief’s health — a proper glass cannon mesmer easily cuts a d/d thief’s health in half with a 6-7k whirl, and a shatter alone will bring a thief down to 10-20% health. The mesmer didn’t even try to Blurred Frenzy the steal combo.

Flowerpower.6795:

Full conditiondamage + epidemic can do more damage than a berserker build. Sure, its pretty situational..

No. You will never do 20-30k damage every 6 second cycle or 12k mindwracks+6k blurred frenzies every 12 sec cycle.

The problem with overlooking things is that most people will play mains, and people who have 3 characters or more to draw comparisons will be in the minority. Single class mains who haven’t played warriors will deem themselves just fine because they have no experience with the numbers.

In a PvE setting with 109% crit damage bonus and 200 power proc food.

NinjaEd.3946:

Zenith.7301:

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

I use Valkyrie Armor, eagle runes, and berserker trinkets. I still crit for about 55% of the time and have atm 104% crit dmg, and I hardly call what I do to mobs “melting”. Trash mobs maybe, but with soo much investment to dmg I should get the little kick I paid/worked for. I don’t think nerfing stats is the solution, as much as reworking these boss encounters. 1 shot mechanics, do not promote a support build, if you’re going to die if you don’t dodge why not just go full dmg you know?

Firstly they should do what they can to remove these 1 shot mechanics and add more group oriented mechanics like shared dmg or staying away from each other due to targetd AoE’s or pulsing fire (they have some of these already, and they are quite unique but they are few and far between).

Additionally, they need more stat combinations to better build support and condition builds. I could go on about the builds they “need” but I’ll leave that in the hands of developer’s who can put together the missing pieces if any are found.

If you think 5-6k autoattack crits and 30k damage 6 sec cd 100b’s and 16k eviscerates compared to every other class who at best sees 3.5k autoattacks and 12-13k burst is not “melting”, you haven’t run a dungeon group with 4 berserker warriors and a mesmer with time warp.

I wish people would hurry up with publishing parsing tools since anet is afraid to publish meters so that people can stop deluding themselves that the numbers are anywhere close to balanced.

Condition damage does not come close to even touching berserker build specs. Not even close.

Khenzy.9348:

Full glass cannon backstab build. Equip Devourer venom. Do a fake entrance wasting his traps. Waste his Empathic Bond with trash conditions. Do a quick hide in shadows to cleanse conditons. Apply venom and proceed to burst Ranger down and finish it with Shadow Refuge on. Trap Rangers don’t have any on demand condition removal and are extremely vulnerable to the immobilize condition, abuse that. Be ready to dodge the AoE fear on your burst process or your stomp.

If the Ranger sees you coming, he will precast TU making things harder if you attack straight away, just back off for 10 seconds with shortbow and proceed to perform your burst. Or just don’t let him/her see you coming.

Signet of Renewal is something plenty of rangers run with, including myself. Lightning Reflexes, Signet of Renewal, and Fire Trap. So, two passive condition removals, a condition removal on initial heal+condi removal every other tick, and an on demand condi removal with signet of renewal.

And, by the way, serpent strike or stalker’s strike still evades while immobilized. If you use a greatsword, you can also use the block>knockback to waste the venom.

ensoriki.5789:

Zenith.7301:

Unload won’t do anything against a ranger that knows bows outrange pistols. And trap rangers have a 600 throw trap range.

That and the ini cost making it a rather all or nothing tactics.

Just be happy that trap build is the only way a ranger is going to beat a good thief. You can easily run away from a ranger as a thief and being a trap build forces them to fight on a point, meaning their damage is not that mobile.

Why would I settle for that? Being contempt with mediocrity is quitter talk.
If the counter for trap ranger’s is unorthadox for a thief, I don’t mind that but settling with “Just deal with it” is redonculus.

So, do what most classes have to do when they see a thief or mesmer: Run the other direction. Or run with a group.

If they have support builds maybe, you shouldn’t have any fear of a thief if you’re alone maybe if you’re a necro, but this isn’t the necro boards :O.

Let’s see…. glass cannon ranger cannot beat thief. Glass cannon warrior cannot beat a good thief. Glass cannon ele (not bunker) cannot beat a good thief (full glass cannon ele is about 14k hp at best with 916 toughness; Mug+CnD alone will kill him instantly without any need for backstab). Glass cannon engineer cannot kill a thief (the engis that kill thieves are bunker/cc spec). Glass cannon necro cannot kill a thief.

Basically, any non-mesmer glass cannon is a guaranteed kill against a thief. Simply because their HP and defenses cannot survive a backstab>heartseekerx2 even if they use a stun breaker to avoid the steal combo, and they certainly won’t survive a thieves guild+new burst when the thief pops a shadow refuge once they’ve wasted their stun breaker. The thief’s ability to reset a fight and begin it on his term by assuring he lands burst first makes him a complete foil against glass cannons that don’t have short cooldown immunities like the mesmer.

Unload won’t do anything against a ranger that knows bows outrange pistols. And trap rangers have a 600 throw trap range.

Just be happy that trap build is the only way a ranger is going to beat a good thief. You can easily run away from a ranger as a thief and being a trap build forces them to fight on a point, meaning their damage is not that mobile.

So, do what most classes have to do when they see a thief or mesmer: Run the other direction. Or run with a group.

Bathos.6341:

I’m not so convinced Berserker gear is so OP as you seem to think. Having tried it I only really ended up with one character with Berserker armour. My engineer is a dual pistol condition/crit spammer and I find Rampager gear more effective for him. As for my warior, I find berserker accessories useful, but if I want to be able to survive boss battles in melee I need something more resiliant, I ended up opting for Knight’s Toughness, power, precision stats on my armour. Only my ranger uses Berserker gear, and even then not a full set.
Berserker gear does give you good attack power, but you can’t take any damage if you use it for everything. Especially if you play melee, you can’t expect to dodge everything, just the really big spike attacks. The rest of the time the limits of your endurance regeneration rate means you have to be able to absorb that punishment.

You really should see the Arah speed run videos. 4 berserker/knight warriors, 1 mesmer.

You don’t need high toughness/vit when bosses die in 45 seconds and trash groups are cleared in 20 seconds tops.

Why would you waste a utility on a couple of proc bleeds when you can bring a trap with half the cooldown, aoe, and more damage.

It’s easy to say other weapons don’t do any damage when the rest of yours do absurd amounts of damage relative to everybody else.

GoZero.9708:

Power, precision, and vitality equipment would be more broken than Berserker is now.

You got it wrong. It’s pow/prec/vit/critdmg, with what used to be critdmg halved and turned into vit.

The best idea would be to trade the crit damage for vitality, mimicking the spvp jewel. The crit damage cap in PvE should go to 60%.

THIS IS NOT A WVW POST. For full disclosure, I have a full berserker mesmer with ruby orbs.

The issue is that Berserker’s pow/prec/crit damage synergy by far dwarfs every other possible stat combination, and on top of it all it devalues support builds because with group setups of 3-4 warriors in berserker with 1 mesmer or a mesmer and guardian, support becomes secondary to the speed with which bosses are downed and trash is cleared.

Pow/prec/condi damage, and condition damage as a whole will never be viable so long as the synergy of pow/prec/critdmg in PvE continues to be what it is. The problem is a) the conversion benefit ratio of condi damage stat and healing power, and b) condition stack cap introduces diminishing returns for condition users, while stacking berserker builds never hurts those involved.

More importantly, because berserker warriors and thieves can sustain the damage they do in berserker gear, the group is less exposed to protracted battles where someone can die. I invite you to see videos like the Arah speed runs. A 20-30 min Arah path happens because bosses simply melt to the damage of berserker builds, especially warriors.

Conditions also suffer setbacks in PvE, like Poison and Chill having diminished value because mob recharged skills cannot be noticed and outside very few fights, mobs don’t heal.

Why not buff condition damage instead of nerfing berserker itemization, then? Because the value of support and tankier builds diminishes when you have a game where groups can brute force something so reliably that survival doesn’t become an issue.

A lot of the mitigation in this game is dodging. How many dungeon groups do you see where people are wanting to build into toughness and vitality and pure group support traits? At best you’ll see one or two members of the group geared like that. Damage output is simply too valuable in the current state of the game. And in the interest of actually having more build options and strategy on encounters, berserker gear needs to take a hit. That and removing the condition stacks cap would go a long way to making other stat combinations in gear desirable.

I love when warriors compare themselves to ele heals, as if that were baseline for all eles and not the effect of evasive arcana and water line traits.

When eles can spec heavy into fire and air like you guys spec into your crit and power lines and have an ability that when landed is a guaranteed KO, then you can get back to us. Because no ability in-game does 30k damage to a standing target like 100b can.

If your 100b were to be made reliable to land, then Whirlwind and it need some good nerfing alongside mainhand axe damage. Because the fact is your damage is ridiculous on a target that is immobilized.

Oh, and in PvE you are actually the god class of speed runs. So it’s definitely nowhere near the situation of the ranger and engineer classes.

There is a reason speed runs are all about warriors and the one mesmer they bring to time warp them.

Warrior is god of damage in PvE — you don’t know what you’re talking about when you say their damage doesn’t blow everything else out of the water.

It’s not just HB. Axe mainhand also does kitten tons of damage. Their autoattacks can easily hit for 4-5k.

And just to clear some stuff up — Greatsword warriors NEVER use adrenaline because keeping it filled at the latest level gives them far better returns with traits than spending it on a weaker attack that only gives them might (which they already stack via crits and sigil of strength).

It’s just this game has been terribly balanced numberswise since beta.

At one point rangers and necros were putting out incredible damage in beta. They got nerfed, and the ruined classes you see now numberswise are those that used to be god tier in beta.

The ranger greatsword at some point could melt people. Post beta nerfs, it now does even less damage than the ranger mainhand sword, which has more mobility, evades, and customization via offhands.

And don’t forget, melee is king in PvE when you have either high hp and plate or a guardian around, because melee not only does significantly more damage than ranged, but it also does it in cleave. So that 17k Rapid Fire you did is to a single target while that 13k shatter+6k Blurred Frenzy from a mesmer hits aoe and the Warrior does 30k to a group as well.

In the quest they took to compensate melee for their risk instead of adjusting mobs to not be so overly punitive to melee compared to range, they overshot the numbers of said melee damage.

Unlike PvE, PvP has a lot to fear from new additions. The more you add to a PvP game, the more balancing troubles you introduce.

Prolonging the fight is not in your favor, since his heal removes conditions and his burst sequence can happen more often than you heals and defensive buttons can happen.

Run a high HP build — toughness does crap and the stats on toughness amulets don’t give you enough offense to put the thief on the defensive.

If you can’t pressure a thief, you die.

I run staff/axe+dagger against them. Axe aoe cripple+retal is rather sueful, and Rending Claws will put the hurt on them.

Spectral Walk/Armor for stunbreaker, use it quick when either they immob or stun you to get life force and DS their burst. You want to ruin their momentum by disrupting the cheese combo. Once you survive their steal>backstab burst attempts they are dead.

Save plague for Thieves’ Guild. Many thieves are dumb and run the weaker Basilisk Venom, but Thieves Guild is by far the stronger elite.

Only thieves that should be giving you problems as a necro are pistol/pistol or pistol/dagger thieves since they do more ranged damage than a necro and cure conditions well enough while being able to stay out of axe range. Necro damage in general is very poor, especially from range.

Fistsfall.7501:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s very simply. The Ranger’s current incarnation requires use of/reliance on Ranger pets.

If you don’t like this, your options are:

(1) Stick with the Ranger and learn to live with it … maybe even learn to like it

(2) Stick with the Ranger in the hopes this will change … but don’t hold your breath

(3) Play a different class. There are plenty of classes out there to choose from; all with their own pros/cons

Show me another class that can use a bow and be efficient with it other then just using it for AoE in this game other then ranger.

Thief.

Malediktus.9250:

Takes much longer than solo on a warrior so not worth it I guess.

Because guardian melee doesn’t have any abilities that can hit for over 14k.

Don’t be dumb. A thief can melee 24/7 just fine, don’t pretend he has to go in and out like the cat should. Ditto with my mesmer and ele.

What kind of stupidity is this.

No, your pet will not survive against the Ascalonian generall or warriors or ele in lv20+ fractal even with protection. Nor will it survive the Lupicus pull or CoE aoe spikes.

It’s kinda adorable that you think wasting a dodge roll to give pet prot is fine because you somehow sit at range with your little bow not needing the dodges, but some rangers actually choose melee and have to conserve their dodges for when THEY need it.

Then you might consider rewarding better than blues and greens. Not just blues and greens with the odd rare and an infinitely small chance for an exotic and even smaller chance for a Precursor.

Ditto for the dragon encounters and other temple events.

Update to Meteorologicus and Minstrel,pls!

#willingtosellfamilyintoslaveryforupdate

For goodness’s sake, it’s not the kitten HP that’s wrong with spirits/pets/minions. What makes them dead on arrival is the fact that your dungeons and WvW contain lots of hardhitting constant AoE that they cannot dodge/block out of! On top of being prioritized for attack by mobs!

How hard is it to give minions/pets AoE damage reduction/avoidance?

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Right, because doing a full level 10+ fractal run is equal in difficulty to doing daily achievements.

If you want to get your ascended rings by just doing your dailys, then you have that option.

Doing your dailys for 10 days shouldn’t be the same as doing a level 10+ full fractal run once a day for 10 days.

People who aren’t willing to do fractal still have the option to get their rings, they just have to wait longer.

A lv10 fractal is easily done in 20-30 minutes.

Your daily solo will take you about the same amount of time, especially the one asking for “events” and underwater kills and gathering and kill variety.

If you think lv10 fractal is hard, I don’t know what to say to you. Other than you’ve clearly not run lv30 or Arah/Sorrow’s Embrace.

Jski.6180:

You did not read all that on the rings there is a new utilities so you can put the +20 % mf gold find and the 15% karma. It makes some way to get rings if you do not run fractal and a use beyond that of just fractal.

Unless that 15% karma works on jugs, nobody will slot utility over raw stats. Certainly not people who care for WvW.

Palador.2170:

This is for the more casual players that may not care about BiS gear. They may not want to run fractals and dungeons, but doing dailies is something they enjoy. When the time comes, they’ll look and see that they can get a good piece of equipment for a set cost in laurels. If it’s worth it or not will be up to them to decide.

Says who? This is for people who do not like fotm, not just casual players. Why are you lumping people who prefer other game formats with casuals?

I have 5 characters. Because the pristine relics did not exist and I was unlucky with rings, I had to level 2 toons to fotm 20 for double daily tier chests until I saw my FIRST ring. I now have 427 fractals completed between those two characters. Naturally, I have rings for 3 of my characters now, but only for one spec (no variety for condition specs or toughness specs).

I’d like a way to efficiently gear my characters that didn’t involve fotm, as cute as capping that 500/500 fractals completed achievement may be.

Palador.2170:

Right now? No. A year from now? Some people will have laurels just sitting around, collecting dust. No harm in putting things in that they may want for an alt or something, when the day comes.

BiS gear is not something you plan for the long term. Let’s turn AC gear token requirements up to 700 tokens per armor and 1000 for a two-hander and see if the long term is that appealing while your toon is sitting on subpar rares.

Palador.2170:

Right now? No. A year from now? Some people will have laurels just sitting around, collecting dust. No harm in putting things in that they may want for an alt or something, when the day comes.

BiS gear is not something you plan for the long term. Let’s turn AC gear token requirements up to 700 tokens per armor and 1000 for a two-hander and see if the long term is that appealing while your toon is sitting on subpar rares.

Ellieanna.5027:

I can now access the rings without ever having to do fotm (example, not me specifically). Now someone can just do dailies (extremely easy in wvw) and the monthly and get a ring with (slightly) better stats then a crafted exotic.

Fast forward: I roll a new toon, work on levelling it while doing the daily, month and in the end I will have earned some tokens towards a ring and not have to spend any money on it. Doing fotm will certainly earn it faster, but now you can earn it another way.

To not reach lv10 fotm is a very rare instance even on people who hate dungeons. Up till 10 it is a forgiving, easy dungeon with nice drops, including lodestones and plenty of rares.

Even with a character only at lv10 you earn the ring three times as fast.

Should people who do WvW/non-fractals be punished that much for their preference of game format?

You can get 40 max per moth. At 35 a piece, competing with the amulets which give better stats and nobody has, the grind for rings for people who do not do fractals is insane.

With the new fractal relic system, I can do lv10, 20, 30, and 40 dailies. I have 2 characters at lv20+, which means I can easily get maybe 3-4 daily chests per day for a chance at rings+ pristine fractal relics.

Assuming I have bad luck, I can get an ascended ring via fractals in 2-3days.

Let’s assume a more conservative scenario of a single character at 20-30 or two characters with 10. Running daily chests would still mean you could make 2-3 per day, it’d still be 4-5 days.

4-5 days VERSUS 35 days of daily chores for a single ring. Competing for the only source of ascended amulets. Ascended rings from fractals function in all areas of the game — ascended rings from laurels only function well in NON-FRACTALS.

It’s insane how overpriced some items are.

And as a suggestion, PLEASE don’t implement patches with dailies 3 hours before the reset. EST players were thoroughly screwed as many of them work/study and get home by 6-7 only to find they are behind and screwed out of earning one laurel compared to Europeans, who had plenty of time to get their daily.

faeral.7120:

in pvp you are usually comparing a glass power thief to a condi trap ranger.

of course the thief will do more power dmg, it’s what he’s specced for. it’s like complaining that a power thief’s bleeds can’t compare with traps.

if you want to test actual ranged power numbers, run 20/25/20/0/5 with berserkers & QZ. you say thief can do 12k with 3 shortbow attacks, ranger can do 12k with 1 longbow attack that tracks stealth & pierces targets. full power barrage is 1.2k crits on light armor ( ranger equiv of a power well ). and shortbow isn’t as bursty but very high pressure in a power spec.

while line aoe isn’t quite as strong as true aoe, it is still quite strong in teamfights & against bodyblock classes ( thieves guild, mesmer, ranger, necro ).

icing on the cake is that yes, pets are ranged dps. if you really want to compare ranged power dmg, ranger can win easily. but thief has stronger utility.

A glass cannon ranger is a dead on arrival ranger — that’s the difference.

You can build berserker and be babysat by a group, but alone you are a sitting duck.

Thieves are MADE for gearing berseker due to all their innate defensive capabilities, which the ranger doesn’t have. You don’t have target drops, you can’t frontload like a thief, and you sure as hell can’t get swiftness+endurance refund on dodges (giving you 3 dodges in a row easy) while having large access to cc breakers via traits.

By making them susceptible, they made them suffer what makes all minions/pets in the game garbage — cleave/aoe damage from dungeon mobs and WvW.

Please reconsider, or implement WoW’s 90% aoe damage reduction to pets/minions in dungeons/WvW.

;*(, no updated effects for it.

Defiance makes classes with CC and low damage not very good.

There is a reason people are stacking warriors with a mesmer and one guardian. You brute force everything because the finesse of CC is not needed.

Imagina a boss that ignored damage from a specific class like a warrior and mesmer until a number of stacks is removed. Defiance disproprotionately hurts classes that weren’t given warrior/thief damage because supposedly their control/conditions were supposed to compensate for the gap. With bosses, they don’t.

I love how thieves complain that burst is all they have, as if that weren’t the case as well for mesmers, warriors.

Or that necros had any viable builds besides well/staff. Or that rangers had only traps bunker BM roamer. Or that engineers had anything besides CC bunkering.

Your class is hardly broken relative to classes like the necro, engineer, or ranger.

ensoriki.5789:

Damage.7493:

ensoriki.5789:

Damage.7493:

You get downed by a thief, he stealths, stomps you after a stealth and you are boned. You down a thief, you stomp, thief ports, you stomp again thief stealths, finally 3rd stomp goes…

Taking 3 stomps to finish him off vs he can stomp there isnt a kitten thing you can do about it.

Did not read rest of topic.
When I play S/P or D/P heres how it goes.
I stomp you.
I hit Black Powder. press Finish, you miss and die. No stealth needed. It’s generally faster.
When I play /D? I hit Cnd, press finish, you generally die but a Ranger can ocassionally interrupt in stealth real advantage is basically just your teammates ignorance.

When facing another Thief?
I press finish, he warps, I press inf signet, shadow step or steal. If he timed it right I just roll over to him and press finish again. There is a delay between when Smoke bomb is ready that means if you react quickly you finish them anyways. Generally thieves can take next to no time to finish, and because they have low health you can swat them dead in no time as well.

As a Warrior/Ranger vs thief?
I down him, press Finish he warps, I roll 1 time over to him. Press F. He starts the animation to Stealth, but gets finished before it completes.
I win. No stress, whatsoever. Worst case Scenario, he warps, I start unloading shots/slashes at him, he dies in 2s.

Yeah, thieves are quick to stomp lol sure. They take the longest of any class in game because it takes 3 stomps. I am not saying remove downstate, I like it. What I dont like is everytime I down a thief, I need to stomp them 3 times, or dps them down. When all they need to do to stomp me is stealth or blind. What is so hard to grasp.

Thieves are quick to stomp if you play thief which I do. It is what is, im just pointing it out.
As other professions, you generally miss one stomp, and then the second is guaranteed unless they get team support or the terrain disadvantages you (Warping up a ledge for instance). Other then that, it’s pretty simple, and unless traited they do kitten damage.

How cute, you waste your dodge roll trying to land 2nd stomp on a thief, and that is a red flag for the opposing team to burst the crap out of you since you’ve just burned one of your escapes.

I don’t see other classes being given the tool to make others waste their own defensive methods just to land a stomp in a reasonable amount of time.

Vanthian.9267:

People who complain about the ele being ineffective in pve are either blinded by a warriors root skill 100b or doesn’t understand how to play the ele.

A ele is not going to be able to stand in front of dungeon mobs and face tank something like a warrior. Granted the only difference is 2 hits, but still.

I don’t understand why people complain about the ele dmg and health so much. Mine has 16k health with 2.7k power and I destroy things in dungeons. I don’t even have all p/v/t toughness gear either. I use p/pre/crit dmg rings, etc. I have 2k armor, yes that is low, but that is not the end all be all of the survival of the ele.

The survival of the ele comes from all the boons they are blessed with. Not only can I keep up swiftness 100%, but also, Fury, and vigor. I can keep up protection, regen, might (around 3-5 stacks if I don’t combo) around 75% of the time. The protection alone makes it like I have at least 2.5k armor (if not more). The biggest thing is the vigor boon. I can dodge more than I know what to do with. Not to mention, even time I dodge I get either more dmg, condtions, or get healed and remove a condition depending on which element I choose to dodge in.

So I say, my ele is far greater compared to my warrior in both pve and pvp. The only way a warrior could win a battle is if both targets stood still and traded hit for hit.

edit to add screenshot of health perma fury/swiftness (can’t do vigor unless in battle) along with stats. Please note that is after switching elemental 3 times and using one skill.

Hah! 2.7k attack only and you “destroy” things? Don’t wonder then why people don’t take you seriously when you consider such a mediocre attack stats (berk warriors easily boast over 3k) to be “destroying”.

Human Guardian, Durmand Priory PS

After we succeed containing the sanguinary blade with Gixx’s help, he starts berating Sieran, and then informs us arcanists have located something important.

However, arcanists is read by the actor as “anarchists”.

This class has such poor recovery options and ordinary sustained damage (while lacking burst), that I don’t understand how it can be called an attrition class or a hard class to put down.

There is a reason why the necro is usually a priority target, and it isn’t just because he can strip boons and interrupt with fear. It’s because the class has such little escape options, and thus must facetank damage. But, the class has poor sustained tanking options.

Want to look at attrition classes? They are called bunkers. D/D or s/d ele, guardian, and BM specced evasion tank rangers are attrition classes — BECAUSE THEY CAN RECOVER after absorbing damage. The necro has the capacity to absorb a good amount of initial damage with death shroud and a large health pool, but once life force is gone, your HP is not going back up. Your damage is mediocre relative to other classes, and you will be worn down.

Life steals for the necromancer need to be substantially higher, and so does life force gain need to be outside traited staff. Life force should regenerate outside combat — a necro without life force is a sitting duck because of no Blurred Frenzy, no Diversion, no vigor, no shadowstep, no plate armor, no blocks, no aegis and no endure pain, and no teleports/gap creation tools. Starting matches or skirmishes at 0 life force is an unnecessary disadvantage that should be removed.

Another issue is the class mechanic, Death Shroud. By entering death shroud, your already poor damage drops substantially. You don’t apply nearly as much conditions — you block yourself out of mainhand dagger damage (which is infinitely better than life blast), your bleeds expire without being renewed.

Classes like the ele and mesmer, guardian and thief and warrior can remain offensive with their defensive tools, which means they can continue to pressure while playing defensively. The necromancer drops his offense the moment he resorts to survival tools. His stun breakers are on ridiculously long cooldowns as well.

Then we have the issue of mobility/gap closers. You simply cannot play without a staff, because otherwise you will be kited to death. Death Pact has clear, significant cast time and animation that requires you to be close to even land assuming they don’t dodge. Deathly Swarm, like most of the necro’s projectiles are so ridiculously slow with the amount of dodges many classes have at their disposal. Because dagger has no cleave, you NEED the staff as it is the only aoe weapon. You cannot play the power based weapons of axe and dagger because the axe’s range is too limited to deal with savvy players who will dodge the aoe cripple and outrange the axe’s meager 600 range. The axe itself only does notable damage during Ghastly claws, and the autoattack damage is dreadful.

If you play a condition build, the ele and thief and axe/torch trap ranger and engi are so much better at pressuring with condition spikes. The necro has a really unenjoyable ramp up to his damage relative to the damage intake he sees. The class is slow at dealing damage, slow at moving, and yet it is also slow in recovery so it cannot weather prolonged fights against high damage classes in the way good bunkers can, especially a good roamer ranger.

The class simply needs better recovery options, better damage (if you refuse to give it spike, its sustained should be significantly better/more reliable than other classes to compensate), and better mobility tools on the dagger/axe weapons.

It was said that this the class that once you lock horns with, you commit, but it’s not true. It’s such an easy class to get away from. This is not a chaser class, and a couple of 3-4 second chills is not going to make it a better chaser than a heartseeker/infiltrator’s arrow thief or charging warrior or leaping ranger or RTL/burning speed ele.

P.S. I don’t want your WvW videos; save them. Show me sPvP/dungeons or don’t bother at all.

Yup, there’s no better utility than raw damage anyways. The faster you can kill something, the lesser chance there is that you will die.

Oh, please; the guardian could be utter garbage in every aspect and people would still bring him for the aoe stability.

Stick to a group.

The bunker ranger is likely the best 1v1 class, but what does it matter when this is a team game and they bring nothing besides good 1v1 ability. Play with people and get over your vanity that you need to beat everything 1v1.

I never slot anything that is not Null Field, Feedback, Decoy, Mirror Images, and Veil.

In WvW sPvP you can add portal to the list. For PvE, not so much and remove veil since 4 sec stealth is useless in an environment where bosses spam lethal aoe on downed players you’re trying to stealth rez anyways.

Mimick, Phantasm utilities, mantras, and signets are complete garbage.

I don’t understand why on many of the deserted lower level areas and the less popular medium/high areas, you see group events popping up with champion mobs when there are no real groups of players nearby to make the event doable.

I can’t count the amount of times during my journey to 100% map completion where I came across a heart that suddenly turned into an event with champion mobs involved. Sure, I was 80 and with exotics, and could have attempted it by kiting for 30 minutes. But it’s such an unreasonable hassle to put on lone players exploring through a map. Why tease a player with an event for which clearly there will not be enough players around to complete.

Moreover, where are the revamped loot tables for champions and veterans and legendary mobs? Because I for one can’t notice a difference in any of these updates. I’m still getting 4 blues and 2 green crests on a lv80 toon in exotic and ascended gear from the very Claw of JORMAG.

Mainhand axe still does tons of damage, as does Whirlwind Attack.

Just nerf 100b damage hard and allow the warrior to move while channeling it.

You can never balance an attack that easily hits for 30k in berserker gear in PvE. Never.

If my 2.1k toughness ranger eats a full frenzy 100b attack, he loses 85-90% of his HP pool. You cannot make the attack easier to land without nerfing the absurd damage of warrior skills.

And while we are in the topic of nerfing damage, nerf thief/mesmer spike as well and remove prot/stability boon stacking from bunkers.

Voila, a game in which you can have more builds than just spike and bunker.

I can’t believe someone can be that bad at D/D ele. The Dredge boss is easily doable with d/d, all you need to dodge are the bombs and when he clearly stops ready to one-two punch you. You can also dodge the ground pound if you got no agony resist.

And no, I don’t know what level of fractal you are doing, but even past lv30 fractal the grawl shaman’s arrow does not one-shot a glass cannon. Jesus, what’s wrong with people? Obviously in fractals like the ascalonian one you are disadvantaged, but so is every melee there because the fact is ascalonian warriors and mages will two-shot anyone.

Waraxx.4286:

@parsee komeiji (2nd latest post)
they have the same amount of auras for themself, yes, but for the team staffs have 1 more. you can combo three times in the frost field. and yes those auras which you create in that combo field are considered “shared” thus giving staffs more fury than a d/d or at least as much because the lightning have a 25sec cd with 10sec of fury once applied. and even if staff had somewhat less the trade of for a few seconds of fury for a megnetic shield is worth it imo.

@zenith
you might be accurate on the heals. they are harder to hit. but if u use it on a guardian he can combo finish in it. not to mention that you can combo in it. but in a pug group yeah, a d/d heal for more.

burst is not needed in dugeons. at all. completely useless. unless you are speed running it.

and how do you deal dmg as a d/d vs the dredge bosses? yeah u heal better on those bosses but you must deal dmg, right?

ok, so healing is worse. but i can take that downside because the upsides of a staff is basically everything else. unless you have a argument for those as well. i can make a point list of what they do better:

d/d
+easy to land heal, (better in pugs but aoe have greater potential in a premade group)
+maybe a few seconds of extra fury.
+burst. ( this is the reason its good in pvp)
+mobility ( this is the other reason its good for pvp)

-no dmg beyond 600 = less dps and the need of more defense, meaning even less dps)
-less dps (see above reason)
-less combo fields.
-less useful combo fields. (lets face it water combo field is more useful)
-less usefull aoe fields ( frost fields is one of the best out there)

so all in all d/d is great in pvp, but staff is just superior in dungeons. unless you are in a premade group to fulfill a specific role witch the staff can’t fulfill.

in pugs ppl usually look at. can you deal dmg?, can you survive? can you do something special that another class can’t. we can deal dmg, and we can survive, and we bring fury to the entire team. thus both d/d nd staffs are viable. it’s a preference of play style. all i’m saying is that in a dungeon the ele is to the maximum effect with a staff in general.

@parsee komeiji (latest post)
the point with fire aura notation was probably because others can leap through it. usually you don’t want to get hit by anything so having fire, frost, ligthning aura doesn’t really mean anything to you as a elementalist. but can mae a huge diffrent on a condition dmg necro or thief ( idk if they have any leap)

and note that it is not the person shooting the projectiles that receive the regeneration but it’s the person standing next to the target. correct me if i’m wrong.

and yeah ele combo field are greatly underrated. even i don’t use the lightning sometimes because i think it won’t matter. but it really does. ( also make sure not to put it over a water field so someone combo blast in the lightning area. as it will only generate swiftness).

I deal damage on d/d because there’s this thing called vigor when I crit. Dredge bosses are doable.

And burst is extremely useful when you also have warriors in the party, because the best utility you can bring to tough encounters outside bosses is to eliminate targets quickly.

In Arah, for example, it doesn’t pay to have protracted fights. Neither does it pay for the Ascalonian fractals, because the mobs themselves hit like trucks and the longer you take to kill them, the more likely something will go wrong. Pairing a frenzy 100b with ele burst aoe is pretty crazy and can take down most dangerous trash.

Same for bosses where you quickly need to dispatch, like the Nightmare Vine in TA; the longer it takes you to kill the small vines, the worse it gets.

Hopefully, the sylvari player gets his voice made more Caithe and less 12 year old child “OMG, that’s bad, I’m gonna tell Mommy Pale Tree! You can’t do that, because it’s bad!”

There’s a difference in being righteous and a gallant, and a completely cheesy do-gooder fool. I’d like for my sylvari to sound a bit more intelligent and savvy/jaded than the current voice he has.

Not an anti-hero, but crudely put more capable of being a ba-d-@-zz (this word is filtered -_-)

P.S. My favorite story moments were lv 1-30. Could give it up to 40. Then the game completely loses racial identity and order identity and shovels you into the same old “kill hordes of tricky undead and listen to Trehearne ramble in monotone”.

I guess the Order of Whispers and Durmand Priory were wrong about dragons, because we only took Zhaitan down one way, and it was the Vigil way. No puttting him back to sleep, and no gathering knowledge of why he rose and how to properly combat a dragon.

My lv80 light acolyte berserker chest I got from fractals (karma equivalent) does not allow me to slot a Ruby Orb in it, so I’m stuck with the rest of my gear with ruby orbs and a subpar single gear piece with a rune.

On staff you get a single aura to activate at will. On d/d you get 2. The heals might seem like more on staff, but that’s because you’re not looking at cooldowns. And the burst aoe from dagger is supremely better than staff aoe, especially if opponents are being moved out of the aoe you place on the ground.

Good luck getting people to stay on your small geyser while trying to move out of dangerous aoe; ditto for Healing Rain. I don’t care about Healing Rain if the Hillside boss just put red circles there or the Dredge Warsuit is about to spit bombs there; d/d water skills are mobile.

Ele’s are not unwanted in high level fractals; you’re just seeing saturation of low armor/hp classes and so guardians and warriors and classes with better innate tanking abilities are in high demand.

They don’t reject you as an ele because eles are not good; next to the guardian and warrior they are the best PvE classes for support (warrior for damage, guardian also for support).

They reject you because there are already too many eles, and if you’re serious most PuGs that don’t have at least someone or two people who can take hits and soak damage means lots of wiping with disorganized people.

I can’t believe people are seriously saying eles are unwanted/ You d/d auramancer with high toughness and healing can deal still fair aoe damage, have 2 aoe CC, 3 aoe heals and condi removal for the group, aoe chill to control enemies, fire fields for buffing your group, and on top of it all the auras shared (aoe stun and chill on hit).

You are insane if you think eles are not useful in a group. Just don’t try to beat warriors in damage, because you won’t. Build for your currents strength, which are support and some decent aoe damage.

P.S. With aura sharing and Elemental Attunement trait I can give my allies high fury uptimes (basically everyone in the group will be critting a bunch, greatly increased damage output for the group), swiftness, close to permanent regen, and easily 6 seconds of protection every 10 seconds. With group condi removal every 10 seconds plus the aoe heal. Only a guardian can get close to supporting like I do, and not even because I give more fields and the difference is that the guardian’s boon sharing is far more limited and his tanky build more selfish than a bunker ele with much lesser damage output.