Guild Wars 2

cranos.5913:

It’s ridiculous rly, had they not called this armor “legendary” but just raid armor instead, no one would be threatening to quit and in general there would be so much less whining about it.

The difference being that this armor will have built in stat swaps and will presumably have some answer to runes down the line.

Not that I disagree with raids having this, but the difference isn’t simply a title.

ArthurDent.9538:

So now that retri is dead what do we do against thieves. Right now they are just kiting me around just out of range of ps and ua range spamming head shot for 3-4 k pulm impact procs. Can’t close the gap since they will immediately reopen it with a single dodge, can’t heal since you can’t actually land damage, and staff 4 will just get interrupted by head shot spam, can’t just do nothing since head shot and escence sapps will eventually kill you even with out pulm procs, so what can I do?

Nothing. They gave them 3 dodges, a stunbreak that teleports and stunbreaks a second time in a single skill, a heal that restores those 3 dodges, and virtual immunity to snares/roots on top of permanent swiftness uptime and a bunch of leap skills on their weaponskills.

On top of the highest single target dps in the game.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Mitch.4781:

Zenith.7301:

What you people don’t understand is that these are PvP changes.

They don’t give a kitten about PvE collateral.

Well actually, they were apparently because of issues caused in W vW

So? It’s not like he said sPvP, he said just PvP. Last time I checked, there was PvP in WvW.

@Zenith: Just for the record, everyone realizes they make these changes purely based on PvP and don’t give a **** about PvE. It doesn’t make it okay though, we still got plenty of reasons to be mad.

Welcome to 4+ years of this same crap with a negligent development team that shows no signs of changing their esports obsession at the expense of PvE.

The only changes and inclusions that get put out quick are lockboxes and outfits on the cash shop.

zedapoc.1493:

Everyone seems to be forgetting Anet’s thinking, which they have reiterated several times:
WvW = PvE

Anet won’t split balance between them because as far as they are concerned it’s the same thing.

Oh, please, get lost.

WvW is a pvp format, stop the bullkitten.

Virtually all pvp aimed changes are due to whiners losing duels to a class.

messiah.1908:

They didn’t buff sword cause anet don’t want it to be melee weapon as the axe will be our power weapon

Until pvp whine about losing duels to mesmer comes to the rescue and axe ends up just as crap.

Mitch.4781:

Zenith.7301:

What you people don’t understand is that these are PvP changes.

They don’t give a kitten about PvE collateral.

Well actually, they were apparently because of issues caused in W vW

And WvW for all intents and purposes is a pvp format, as much as spvp people love to thumb their noses up at WvW.

Same mesmer/revenant/druid whine happens in both wvw and spvp. Whine about losing duels to X roamer spec.

What you people don’t understand is that these are PvP changes.

They don’t give a kitten about PvE collateral.

Absurdo.8309:

Amaimon.7823:

this topic has zero information.

If this is a complain topic, the necro’s are doing fine. people are overreacting. The necro’s are fine. Take a deep breath. Repeat after me
The necros are fine.

Now, people are overreacting, its what people love to do. If there are people barring a necro from groups, let them. If you’re a necro, you’re too good for them.

Necromancer
We feel that necromancers have been faring quite well gamewide, providing play and counterplay in many spots over the last few months. In addition to a couple of minor bug fixes, we wanted to improve the viability of necromancer power builds, which have been somewhat lacking in presence.
Rending Claws: The damage of this ability has been increased by 15%.
Ghastly Claws: The damage of this ability has been increased by 13%.
Unholy Feast: The number of boons converted to conditions has been increased from 1 to 2.
Fading Twilight: The aftercast of this ability has been reduced by 0.11 seconds.
Chilling Scythe: The aftercast of this ability has been reduced by 0.06 seconds.
Death Spiral: The damage of this ability has been increased by 66%.
Blood Is Power: The recharge time of this ability has been reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP only.
Signet of Vampirism: When the Signets of Suffering trait is equipped, this skill will no longer corrupt boons on players who evade it.
Lich Form—Jagged Horrors: These minions will no longer lose health over time and will instead die 30 seconds after they’re summoned.

See, there’s hardly anything I would consider a nerf in here. if anything, this is a list of buffs

The lich form nerf is a huge nerf to the meta condi build.

And I seriously doubt the power buffs make it on par with other power builds.

Axe is garbage, and the anemic buffs to its already abysmal damage won’t change the fact that necromancer power weapons are trash.

Trash just like this class balance patch.

The mainhand sword buffs are laughable, mainhand sword autoattack DPS is below thief sword (which isn’t even their meta PvE weapon) by more than 30%.

And this is what we got.

Laughable seems fitting, considering the laughable development team this game is stuck with.

6 months for these anemic changes, nothing has really gotten different despite Mike O Brien’s promises of change.

Nike.2631:

Substance E.4852:

So we nerf the crap out of heals? That’s supposed to make things better?

This game has at least 4 -very- powerful healers. That people THINK druid is the only one is a pretty definite sign the class needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with the nerf bat until you’re look for “a healer” from any of the 4-5 strong choices and not OMGBBQNEEDDRUID.

Yeah, let’s embrace the alternative where nobody brings a ranger at all because the only thin g rangers excel at is healing.

Great idea.

Substance E.4852:

Zoberraz.2694:

Zenith.7301:

This is so ignorant,

It’s still my opinion. If I invested in gear, I like to see it pay off, especially in contrast to other players whom don’t/barely bother to make that investment. On a ranger to ranger comparison, I feel this is appropriate.

In a world where your Magi ascended gear costs more to obtain than zerk ascended gear you would be correct.

RIP if you wasted money on zealots though as it sounds like that set is going to be the worst of both worlds.

Zealot cost me in the vicinity of 700 gold to craft =/

Kam.4092:

Core Ranger Condition Builds are near top, or top for Condition Damage Builds.

That’s only on large enough stationary targets that sit neatly in your bonfire. There’s a reason why axe/torch variants are neither used to much effect on open world let alone pvp where with the amount of mobility and condi removal people have, your bonfire might as well not exist.

I went in my original post and mentioned specifically power builds for ranger, because condition builds have no aoe/cleave whatsoever outside bonfire.

Zoberraz.2694:

Personally, I thought it was wierd that people thought they could get away with strongly offensive build and still consider their healing capabilities to me ‘okay’.

Personally, i’m not too bothered by this: I already run Magi/Cleric for PvE and the Mender Druid bunker for PvP and I was actually wishing I could squeeze out more from my heals – not unhappy that’s actually going to happen.

This is so ignorant, a druid is not remotely close to the damage output of a warrior, daredevil, revenant, or the burst of a mesmer/daredevil.

You people really stretch it when you say autoattacking with staff while a pet chips away at a target as “offensively strong”.

In fact, those of you whining about bunker rangers will only make it worse, by nerfing baseline survival, any offensive ranger build will be erased and all of them will simply run bunker stats for pvp.

Ranger offensive builds are terrible, that’s why throughout the history of the class it’s always been BM bunker, or spirit bunker, and now druid bunker.

If druids had zerker/valkyrie stat options with reliable burst and strong baseline defenses to run glass cannon builds like warrior/daredevil/mesmer/revenant can, then they would do so.

But they don’t.

By nerfing baseline heals you are further limiting the DPS capabilities of a druid as they will always be expected to heal since they don’t have any competitive DPS builds, especially power builds.

You are going to force them into healing power gear that makes them not be remotely self-sufficient in any solo scenario, so in open world most will be dropping druid for other ranger specs which are still horribly mediocre.

You want build variety for the druid? Maybe you shouldn’t have built the specialization entirely around healing (celestial avatar) and most traits being tied to healing.

Maybe you should make ranger DPS specs, especially power specs not be absolutely garbage.

Maybe you should have made staff better than just a weapon to build astral power with and heal necro minions with a leap.

Maybe pets should benefit from rune bonuses, food, potions, boons (baseline, without having to nerf your DPS via nature magic just so your class mechanic can benefit from the combat system of boons).

Maybe pets should scale with ascended stat upgrades and should achieve the same crit damage bonus (ferocity) thresholds players themselves reach.

But I doubt you’ve thought much about this additional PvE nerf you always cause as collateral damage for PvP balancing.

I hope you realize how self-defeating this stupid change is for druids.

You’re effectively going to pigeonhole them into healing power by decreasing baseline healing without giving the druid specialization any additions to make it viable in an offensive stat build as a DPS role.

What are these developers doing? They haven’t fixed what makes core ranger and druid dreadfully weak DPS builds, so they have to play a dps/healer hybrid, and with this change now rangers will be forced into healing power gear so they can’t even contribute much DPS at all.

You’re also going to effectively delete druids from open world as they can no longer solo or be self sufficient due to not being able to run dps gear without gutting their celestial avatar survivability/utility.

Our damage is not low because of PvE, that’s just a BS excuse.

What always holds back classes in PvE like mesmer is, as usual, PvP burst concerns.

It’s why shatters like Mindwrack and Cry of Frustration have been undiluted excrement for the entire game’s existence, and why our autoattack damage sucks, and why blurred frenzy does 1/3 the damage of a pistol whip or unrelenting assault.

And as long as we’re stuck with negligent, disinterested/lazy developers with no interest in real PvE class and build balance, things will stay this way.

Which is a good thing because GW2 sales and revenue is plummeting, and they deserve every bit of this downhill slide. The 6 month long waits for marginal balance patches with laughably small class changes, and inane revisions to skills no one uses in similarly absurd increments that leaves said skills still unusable (Shatterstone, fire scepter auto) while other skills in need of help get completely ignored.

They simply operate under the assumption that they got your money from box sales and gem store purchases upfront, and since they don’t have to keep your loyalty for a subscription fee, they are under no obligation to respect their playerbase.

Sarrs.4831:

Brigg.3961:

Corrupter’s fervor is something power necros need now more than ever with this condition meta and it should have easier access than having to take an obscure trait line just to get it.

this argument ultimately ends with “death magic should just be deleted”

we have bunkery lines for a reason, death magic is one of those bunkery lines, it should actually be a suitable bunkery line rather than an automatic passover for soul reaping because you’ve taken one of its strongest traits

like really, just replace soul comprehension with something that isn’t absolute trash and it’ll be a good line. if you swapped the positions of last gasp and soul comprehension everyone running soul reaping would switch to death magic overnight

DeceiverX.8361:

Playing D/D hybrid is about the worst you can play it.

the most successful DD builds i see in pvp/wvw are the condi/hybrid permadodge builds. playing it as a power build just means you’re underpar compared to staff and dp, imo, because you don’t bring either the utility and extra stickiness of dp or the extra defense and burst of staff

prior to daredevil if you were playing DD in any capacity in pvp/wvw you were plainly doing it wrong, core thief didn’t have the support for DD at the time then

idk about pve

That’s for the purpose of dueling/roaming.

I know plenty of thieves pre-HoT who went D/D in glass zerker just to gib backline casters or stragglers, since the burst of a CnD landing with backstab is higher and more instant from following up with a steal than the potential burst of D/P.

People run D/P because it’s simply a better 1v1 and roaming build.

Different weapons fill different niches. D/D is used in PvE because the offhand pistol is of little use there and its method to gain stealth is damage inefficient.

Using traits to fix baseline weapon deficiencies is just dumb. It reeks of the same crap they pulled with chronomancer where shatters are garbage because they kill phantasms, so they put in chronophantasma as a fix for it.

scerevisiae.1972:

Zenith.7301:

You cannot outrun a half decent warrior, thief, or ranger.

You totally can, it just depends on how much of a headstart they have.

Shiro teleport + cripple and chill on hammer and you’ll catch anything more times than not.

The telegraphs after the 2 shiro teleports you can do are so blatant, you won’t hit anyone with sword 2 and the means for a ranger and thief to kite you out means you’ll be doing no meaningful damage to pose a threat while trying to chase them.

Most warriors are using bolas/sword+shield to guarantee burst skills landing so all it takes is immobilizing you and just running away, I mean your only clear for snares/immob is a shiro skill that creates distance between you both instead of closing it.

If you’re using hammer instead of sword+staff those classes would trounce you in a 1v1 anyways.

You cannot outrun a half decent warrior, thief, or ranger.

Lazze.9870:

Whilte at it, it should give might for each foe you hit. Because giving might to you our pet is weaker than other autoattacks that give might to the user. Or something, the current skills are just a shadow of the former functionality of the sword. The second attack not cleaving is a joke.

It was such a kitten change.

They kept the damage the same while increasing aftercasts, decreasing the already low DPS of the previous sword.

And then we have greatsword in the laughable state it is, 4 years into the game.

You just have to outlast his endure pains, bring plenty of stunbreaks and kite, kite kite.

If you’re in melee range of a warrior, you’re doing it wrong.

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m aware that the thief has damage modifiers. Though quite frankly nobody runs staff master in the PvP formats because EA is too good to pass up, seeing as it’s pretty much the best cleanse in the game.

You’re also assuming the thief is running DA/CS/DrD for the PvP formats which is a horrible build.

You’re also neglecting the 25 vuln and/or 25 might the reaper can very easily obtain (+750 power or almost 30% increased damage from might alone, vuln is extra). I understand in roughly three seconds my reaper reaches 25 might.

We’re not talking about balancing the kit for PvE DPS, though. A slow weapon probably shouldn’t have such crazy DPS because then the DPH would need to be tremendously crazy. And I still think the thief AA chain due to the buffs to make it usable in raids is conceptually stupid and unwarranted, despite maining thief.

Gravedigger hits like a truck and should be hitting just as hard as vault even on such a build. My reaper frequently GD’s above 20k in WvW – much higher than most thieves pull off on vault or even the harder-hitting backstab. Vault just goes crazy in PvE because it can get 25 might/vuln from other players and the scaling bonuses obviously go to town. The only difference is really the animation speed

I almost exclusively play GS on my reaper (now turning into my main with the mileage I’ve put on it lately). Skills 4 and 5 are some of the best weapon abilities on necro imho. There are some terrain issues in a few spots, but I’ve found them to be few and far between, and much better than thief’s pathing issues with its weapon abilities. Knowing what is good and bad terrain from past experience helps a lot, and knowing how and when to use GS5 makes it amazing or horrible. Do know you can use it without a target to have it go strictly in the direction of the camera. This lets you predict where people might be moving and set up big plays.

It’s a really strong weapon for skills 4/5, but the cooldowns are too long to warrant enough re-use. Gravedigger is imho the weakest ability in the kit overall.

I’m obviously talking PvE, who would in their right mind use greatsword in PvP, the slow animations and your lack of ability to block attacks or CC outside reaper shroud 3 make that weapon useless in PvP.

The context of why GS needs a buff is entirely based on PvP. It’s the best weapon reaper/necro has for PvE, and works perfectly there.

I run GS in the PvP formats with no issues. Like I said, skills Nightfall and Grasping Darkness carry the weapon and make it very usable if you play it well. Spamming gravedigger trying to one-shot someone isn’t going to work, though; that’s the supposed PvE meat-grinder.

In respects to Soul Eater and how to fix it, I don’t think it’s really possible to. It’s competing with CV and DD, which are some of the best traits on the reaper in general. It’s way out of its league. Imho, the trait should just be removed, put the cooldown reduction on GS baseline to make 3/4/5 more usable in the PvP formats (let’s face it, nobody’s taking GS or the trait because of some crap healing or 20% CDR), and a new trait that’s got a bit more heal-focus to it, such as heal on kill (it’s a reaper, after all) while in shroud. Kill multiple birds with one stone.

In what world do you live where greatsword is the best PvE weapon we have?

Power necro is trash in PvE, behind condi necro by about 6k+ DPS and even worse aoe.

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Because said druid usually carries lightning reflexes (your shiro stunreak equivalent with vigor on top) and signet of stone and glyph of equality on top of rampage as one on top of their already high baseline mobility on meta weapons.

Said druid also has an evade that’s also a teleport to gloss over any static fields or lines of warding to reposition away from any bomb.

And most importantly, the other downsides of that druid are more than made up by hist burst healing tied to a decently long, large aoe daze and a grandmaster trait that gives said healed allies a massive 15% increased damage output.

Since you seem to be enjoying druid a lot a believe you should go over there .
BTW might not be common in WvW but in SPvP if you reeaaaly feel the need for a more escape and mobility you can always slot shiro as your secondary legend.
might be just my impression but you seem to have difficulties looking beyond metabattle.

I’m already there, but I enjoy rev well enough to main it despite its obvious disadvantages.

Sometimes fun takes precedence over what’s optimal, I just wish I could have my cake and eat it too

Because said druid usually carries lightning reflexes (your shiro stunreak equivalent with vigor on top) and signet of stone and glyph of equality on top of rampage as one on top of their already high baseline mobility on meta weapons.

Said druid also has an evade that’s also a teleport to gloss over any static fields or lines of warding to reposition away from any bomb.

And most importantly, the other downsides of that druid are more than made up by hist burst healing tied to a decently long, large aoe daze and a grandmaster trait that gives said healed allies a massive 15% increased damage output.

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

@Varezenem
I had no ideea Templar was a thing or that those amulets are op for spvp (except for zealots’)….and no 2, I’ve already admited that I know it’s op and that I can’t think of a decent for Ventari to cover it’s weakness in a way that doesn’t ruin it’s flavor.

For no4 that’s just personal taste, I think Ventari has the potential to become a better condi healer than Malyx,provided the devs agree with us having 2 upkeep skills with a cost over 6 …also the water field would be a nice touch to keep us competitive in terms of utility with a druid.

@Zenith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUmfazDy6A

Based on the video for WvW I would say Ventari tops druids in terms of utility….I mean to able to heal whilist blocking projectiles…for me at least Ventari is the 2nd best class for dealing with projectiles (mesmer is 1st and guardian is 3rd).

I saw that video and that’s not what I’d call a zerg let alone a group that knows how to bomb well.

Nobody tried to pull you either, you were left to freecast most of the fight, if you had gotten pulled by guardians/mesmers or a static field landed on you with a melee train following you would have been pinballed to death in ventari.

Nobody here is disputing sustained heals in ventari. But sustained heals are pretty worthless in both game formats under the circumstances most people compete in.

I’ve heard that slotting the retribution line works wonders on that.

A single stability stack on dodge or a 45 sec cd stunbreak proc isn’t exactly saving you in a T1 zerg fight.

Although retribution DOES happen to do wonders for dueling at least.

Jack Skywalker.5674:

People make mistakes – capitalize on that kitten . Also Ventari the way I see it is a compresion role, you get the sustained healing of a druid but in place of burst healing you get projectile block.

Personaly I believe that Condi Cleansing should have been Ventari’s job and not Malyx’s. The act of martyrizing myself by drowning in my team mate’s condition feels very odd. With PE as a water field which pulses resistance things would have been so much better,we would have a combo field to blast for burst healing at condi cleansing wouldn’t feel like a cheap knock off of what necro’s do.

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

@Varezenem
I had no ideea Templar was a thing or that those amulets are op for spvp (except for zealots’)….and no 2, I’ve already admited that I know it’s op and that I can’t think of a decent for Ventari to cover it’s weakness in a way that doesn’t ruin it’s flavor.

For no4 that’s just personal taste, I think Ventari has the potential to become a better condi healer than Malyx,provided the devs agree with us having 2 upkeep skills with a cost over 6 …also the water field would be a nice touch to keep us competitive in terms of utility with a druid.

@Zenith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUmfazDy6A

Based on the video for WvW I would say Ventari tops druids in terms of utility….I mean to able to heal whilist blocking projectiles…for me at least Ventari is the 2nd best class for dealing with projectiles (mesmer is 1st and guardian is 3rd).

I saw that video and that’s not what I’d call a zerg let alone a group that knows how to bomb well.

Nobody tried to pull you either, you were left to freecast most of the fight, if you had gotten pulled by guardians/mesmers or a static field landed on you with a melee train following you would have been pinballed to death in ventari.

Nobody here is disputing sustained heals in ventari. But sustained heals are pretty worthless in both game formats under the circumstances most people compete in.

I’ve heard that slotting the retribution line works wonders on that.

Yeah it does, my first spec for sPvP was Retri,Invo and Salvation…it did wonders, I could 1v5 under tablet with cleric…but without a decent range weapon I have struggled….

But you don’t martyrize yourself. In a zerg fight the amount of conditions you pulled give you such a ridiculous duration of Resistance that you’ll never feel the punishment of the conditions.

That’s why groups bring you to begin with, for the resistance. If revenant didn’t have resistance for the frontline, they’d replace you with another guardian or elementalist.

Jack Skywalker.5674:

@Varezenem
I had no ideea Templar was a thing or that those amulets are op for spvp (except for zealots’)….and no 2, I’ve already admited that I know it’s op and that I can’t think of a decent for Ventari to cover it’s weakness in a way that doesn’t ruin it’s flavor.

For no4 that’s just personal taste, I think Ventari has the potential to become a better condi healer than Malyx,provided the devs agree with us having 2 upkeep skills with a cost over 6 …also the water field would be a nice touch to keep us competitive in terms of utility with a druid.

@Zenith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUmfazDy6A

Based on the video for WvW I would say Ventari tops druids in terms of utility….I mean to able to heal whilist blocking projectiles…for me at least Ventari is the 2nd best class for dealing with projectiles (mesmer is 1st and guardian is 3rd).

I saw that video and that’s not what I’d call a zerg let alone a group that knows how to bomb well.

Nobody tried to pull you either, you were left to freecast most of the fight, if you had gotten pulled by guardians/mesmers or a static field landed on you with a melee train following you would have been pinballed to death in ventari.

Nobody here is disputing sustained heals in ventari. But sustained heals are pretty worthless in both game formats under the circumstances most people compete in.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m aware that the thief has damage modifiers. Though quite frankly nobody runs staff master in the PvP formats because EA is too good to pass up, seeing as it’s pretty much the best cleanse in the game.

You’re also assuming the thief is running DA/CS/DrD for the PvP formats which is a horrible build.

You’re also neglecting the 25 vuln and/or 25 might the reaper can very easily obtain (+750 power or almost 30% increased damage from might alone, vuln is extra). I understand in roughly three seconds my reaper reaches 25 might.

We’re not talking about balancing the kit for PvE DPS, though. A slow weapon probably shouldn’t have such crazy DPS because then the DPH would need to be tremendously crazy. And I still think the thief AA chain due to the buffs to make it usable in raids is conceptually stupid and unwarranted, despite maining thief.

Gravedigger hits like a truck and should be hitting just as hard as vault even on such a build. My reaper frequently GD’s above 20k in WvW – much higher than most thieves pull off on vault or even the harder-hitting backstab. Vault just goes crazy in PvE because it can get 25 might/vuln from other players and the scaling bonuses obviously go to town. The only difference is really the animation speed

I almost exclusively play GS on my reaper (now turning into my main with the mileage I’ve put on it lately). Skills 4 and 5 are some of the best weapon abilities on necro imho. There are some terrain issues in a few spots, but I’ve found them to be few and far between, and much better than thief’s pathing issues with its weapon abilities. Knowing what is good and bad terrain from past experience helps a lot, and knowing how and when to use GS5 makes it amazing or horrible. Do know you can use it without a target to have it go strictly in the direction of the camera. This lets you predict where people might be moving and set up big plays.

It’s a really strong weapon for skills 4/5, but the cooldowns are too long to warrant enough re-use. Gravedigger is imho the weakest ability in the kit overall.

Guardian hammer begs to differ, slow weapon and the top PvE DPS weapon for guardian.

I’m obviously talking PvE, who would in their right mind use greatsword in PvP, the slow animations and your lack of ability to block attacks or CC outside reaper shroud 3 make that weapon useless in PvP.

Unfortunately Anet refuses to do pvp/pve skill splits, so the weapon remains garbage in both formats.

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

Gravedigger is a joke when you Realize daredevil’s Vault does around the same damage

Wot?

2.25 vs 3.0… GD baseline hits more than Vault + an OP staff AA.

I think people put too much emphasis on gravedigger. It’s a crap skill for the majority of the fight only really good for executes or when the enemy’s burned out and you can reliably make them take the hit. A lot of people also fail to recognize that most professions run permanent swiftness or 25% speed bonuses, so it’s pretty important to run Signet of the Locust, and that alone makes reliability in landing it go through the roof, since you can cast GD while moving towards your target, keep up with them, and land the hit without just being out-run.

It’s definitely a PvE-designed weapon due to its sluggish speed and the reset on Gravedigger, but I think the kit has great use in PvP environments if played well. The real strength in reaper GS is its 4/5 skills. These are absolutely amazing, and I think making them more accessible would enable the GS to be used more competitively.

You forgot about the damage modifiers thief has. Necro has…5% against mobs with no boon and 20% on mobs below 50% health.

Thief has 10% on mobs with condi on them (vulnerability 100% uptime), 10% bounding dodger, 7% havoc mastery, 10% staff master, and then 20% on targets below 50% health. Plus around 27% crit damage bonus from the increases to ferocity and crit damage on critical strikes.

So a thief has 27% more crit damage than a necro, and 37% damage bonus modifier (not counting execution for either thief or necro). The necro has a 5% damage bonus modifier, that’s it.

So, yeah, Vault does more damage than Gravedigger.

Gravedigger also happens to have a 0.5 sec longer cast time, massively longer aftercasts, and it has no evade frames and it doesn’t leap.

Let’s not even talk about all the greatsword skill that are low, and how the greatsword’s autoattack despite being far slower than thief staff autoattacks also does a fraction of the DPS of staff auto thief does.

You must also not play GS necro much because GS 5 is dreadful, it fails any time there’s a slight terrain variation and it won’t even hit moving targets. It’s the worst pull in the game by a mile.

SB is a weapon to soften up a target before you go in for your burst. It’s a wonderful weapon against mesmers since it destroys their illusions while damaging the mesmer before you engage them in melee, and you can use the shortbow to force some melee classes like warrior to burn their cooldowns to close the distance and then you can burst them while their mobility is down.

You basically harass them to get them under like 80% health and then go in for your burst to make it hard for them to recover as Executioner kicks in.

I doubt you can help me make Ventari competitive in raids or desirable over a staff ele or druid in WvW.

You only really bring raw healing, none of the utility (or damage/CC of a staff ele)

Varezenem.2813:

It seems that quite a few players want to turn Ventari into cheese. The problem with that is that it would get nerfed beyond uselessness soon thereafter. That’s do to the high skill ceiling on using it.
So I would suggest to those offering suggestions to evaluate if Ventari is the problem or their experience using it. After all Ventari is by its very nature a high skill floor play style.

edit: correcting auto-correct

ponders

Yeah, Ventari’s still the problem.

I’d like frigid blitz a lot more if the cast time/animation was a tad shorter and the projectile speed was also quicker.

Against anyone with a brain, axe offhand simply will miss most of its skills, especially the daredevils which you most need that axe for, they just laugh at both axe skills because they’re pretty slow, with hefty energy costs and moderate cooldowns.

Thief dodge also needs to lose the chill removal. Chill has been made all but useless with all the warriors and thieves roaming around being pretty much immune to chill when chill is such a low uptime condition and it should not be so easily gotten rid of.

Ventari needs two things above all:

1- The heal skill needs to give a larger heal to the revenant himself when summoned and moved. Give it the Wash the Pain Away treatment where it heals you more and allies less.

Part of the reason why people don’t run ventari is because it’s suicide, you’re way to vulnerable to burst which is the damage that matters.

2- Both Ventari and Mallyx need stunbreaks built into one of their utilities. Shiro and Glint dominate because they’re the only legends that prevent you from being pinballed to death.

3- The cost of the ventari utilities are even more outrageous than the other legends.

To top it off, the weapon supposed to go with ventari, staff, also has outrageous energy costs, and the only two good skills, 3 and 5, mostly benefit the revenant and no one else (only skill 4 does a group benefit, and it costs an arm and a leg in energy).

What’s worse, not only is the autoattack damage on the staff pathetic, but the healing orbs at the end of the chain don’t even justify it. Each orb baseline is like 150 hp heal, for 3 total. It’s stupidly bad considering you don’t even control who steps on the orbs.

This is what happens when you make a game format around holding points the size of most AoE spells. AoE bomb classes dominate them.

Change the game format to something not related to sitting on a point and suddenly DH is back to trash tier.

Gaile Gray.6029:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m pretty sure Gaile was the Team Lead for the CS Team, just as Michael is now.

According to Michael, she used to ‘handle tickets’, just as he does now.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/339870-a-little-movement-here-in-cs-world/

My bad then. I stand corrected.

No, Rose, you were correct.

I was never CS Lead. I was Support Liaison, and the thread I created and maintained was in place to allow me to review CS decisions and see if we could come up with a better outcome for players. It also allowed me to ask CS of they could handle tickets that may have lingered too long in the system, or have fallen through the cracks. I didn’t make CS decisions; I aided players in getting the most positive outcome possible. So as you can see, I wasn’t making decisions — I was helping players.

And whether I was CS Lead or not, saying “You deserved it” is inappropriate and cruel.

Saying I failed at that job — which incidentally I have not held in two years — is unfair and inaccurate. If an agent erred in handling someone’s issue, or if there were security issues that were not handled to the satisfaction of a player or group of players, whyever would it be seen as “karma” for me, personally, to suffer loss?

And saying “We/I did this to get your (company’s) attention” is reprehensible. Hurting a person to send a message is inhumane and wrong.

I really don’t get people who go through so much trouble to cause such malice. I hope you got your stuff recovered ;(

I’d be really sad if I got on my GW1 account and my gorgeous skimpy mummy and his glorious shiny armor was gone.

andrew.5607:

Is GS still viable post-Chronomancer in sPvP and WvW? Why or why not?

PS I realize these are two very different gameplay styles…

Thanks

For WvW zerg it’s very likely the weapon you’ll be using the most.

GS is the only weapon with a phantasm that does reliable aoe damage (and cripples to boot, unlike other phantasms besides shield who do nothing but damage).

It’s also your only weapon besides mainhand sword that cleaves, so since mesmer can’t frontline worth a kitten , you’ll be using greatsword a lot.

I think the obvious answer would be to buff autoattack DPS and blurred frenzy damage in general, and then to a PvE split that buffs shatter damage enough so it’s worth even shattering phantasms.

That’s a bandaid fix, though.

As I said, phantasms should be a 1 hit summon that despawns after the hit, with lower cd as compensation while raising our autoattack damage and blurred frenzy damage.

Lower the spike of 2-3 phantasm+ mindwrack by only leaving in 1 phantasm hit and mindwrack, while buffing the mesmer’s sustained damage so it isn’t a feast or famine scenario of “land your shatter 100% or do no damage whatsoever for the following 12 seconds”.

They also need to make Cry of Frutration not utter trash. Cry of Frustration should inflict 6 confusion (total) at 3 clones, 3 seconds of weakness and 3 seconds of cripple per clone. Diversion needs to be aoe baseline and each clone should stack the duration so you’re not just using it with only 1 clone up as any beyond that is a waste of illusions.

That isn’t Ross’s fault. They just keep nerfing mesmer and buffing warrior.

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’ve said it many a time.

Mesmer DPS is low because it has such innately high burst on shatters. Is it fair? Sort of, but that’s why chrono had to give support: high personal DPS would allow it to replace pretty much everything else considering the amount of support it provides (which is enough to mandate taking one).

If the mesmer wants a DPS option, it needs a specialization that removes its shatters. That’s up to the mesmer community to decide and deliberate on if they want it, but that’s what needs to happen to enable such high damage.

What the hell are you talking about, arcing slice and eviscerate outscale any shatter damage you can do. kittening Vault on a staff thief hits harder than a shatter on a power build.

Eviscerate: 3.0; Berserker Decapitate 2.5+2.5 (if both hit, secondary damage not affected by anything)
Arcing Slice: 1.2/1.8 below 50%; Berserker Arc Divider 1.32/2.31
Vault: 2.25
Mind Wrack: 3.105

You’re not hitting as hard because you’re not playing offensive traits and boons, while the people who hit so hard with those abilities are.

Hlord.5940:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’ve said it many a time.

Mesmer DPS is low because it has such innately high burst on shatters. Is it fair? Sort of, but that’s why chrono had to give support: high personal DPS would allow it to replace pretty much everything else considering the amount of support it provides (which is enough to mandate taking one).

If the mesmer wants a DPS option, it needs a specialization that removes its shatters. That’s up to the mesmer community to decide and deliberate on if they want it, but that’s what needs to happen to enable such high damage.

wtf?
Is this another thief expert telling mesmer what to do again?
look here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mind_Wrack
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backstab

I take it you didn’t look at the wiki notes because you probably aren’t aware of what the coefficients actually are.

Or that for backstab (same coefficient as Blurred Frenzy) to hit harder than shatter, a thief needs to run at least two damage trait lines to match baseline no-might no-bonus MR, since it’d need external modifiers of about 30%.

I mean c’mon. I’m no expert mesmer, and I’ve never bothered to look at the exact math as to what damage numbers should be to account for trade-offs, but I know the coefficients better than the so-called experts insulting me for not knowing the class?

If you’re gonna be super arrogant and dismissive of the fact that having huge burst baseline on top of high DPS and the best offensive support in the game is a bad idea in the making, at least be somewhat correct about what you’re saying when accusing other people of having no authority when discussing facts to tell you what’s good and bad conceptual design.

You conveniently forgot the damage modifier traits in those classes. Thief for example has 7% from melee range, 10% from conditions on target, 7% from staff mastery, 20% on targets below 50% health, and 27% crit damage bonus from traits.

Necro, guardian, and revenant are TERRIBLE roaming choices for WvW. They got no good disengages, thus they’re easy to train down and zergs will pretty much farm you.

Necro also has terrible match ups against competent daredevils and warriors, by far the most popular WvW roaming classes.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’ve said it many a time.

Mesmer DPS is low because it has such innately high burst on shatters. Is it fair? Sort of, but that’s why chrono had to give support: high personal DPS would allow it to replace pretty much everything else considering the amount of support it provides (which is enough to mandate taking one).

If the mesmer wants a DPS option, it needs a specialization that removes its shatters. That’s up to the mesmer community to decide and deliberate on if they want it, but that’s what needs to happen to enable such high damage.

What the hell are you talking about, arcing slice and eviscerate outscale any shatter damage you can do. kittening Vault on a staff thief hits harder than a shatter on a power build.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Magira.6390:

Zenith.7301:

People only play druids for roaming/duels, which do nothing of significant value for the mist war score.

A good Roamer makes at least double the points like a Blobber. Blobbing is just one way that unskilled PVE Peeps also can do something. The alone are not capable of surviving.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that fantasy if ignoring towers/keeps to kill 3-5 stragglers every few minutes is your idea of usefulness.

Before I went to bed last night I wanted to hop on my alt account and knock out my daily real quick. I figured I’d hop in the zerg to get it done as quick as possible. After about 45 min of watching them get 1 pushed while repeatedly slamming their face into SM, and having of the entire zerg (about 80% of EB population) WP back and forth to defend keeps, I gave up on them, swapped to my ranger and went and flipped a camp and tower (where I killed 2 people trying to defend) in under 10 min.

The entire time I was with the zerg we capped nothing, not even a camp. In less than a quarter of the time by myself I capped a tower and camp.

Stop following kitten commanders, or your server has some issues with WvW guilds that don’t raid.

But if the commander is kitten and roaming is useless what should I do? Stand afk at spawn? EotM? Log out?

I’m pretty sure your server can’t be so terrible as to not have a single competent commander at any time of the day. Maybe it’s time to transfer.

Justifying roaming because you’ve got no competent active WvW guild raids or commanders is a kitten poor excuse for saying “ranger is great because its only good build shines when you have to do subpar activities because I can’t find a good commander or guild raid.”

So just to be clear, your argument is that if a person logs on and there isn’t a competent commander on, instead of taking the initiative to go get things done on their own they should transfer……
k.

No, my argument, if you bothered to read at the beginning of the thread, is that ranger is deficient in WvW because the optimal goals of the format, to take keeps and other objectives and wipe out the opposing teams in large scale combat.

Then you come in and say ranger is not bad because they can settle for roaming in a kittenty build that’s inferior to daredevil/scrapper/warrior for gank squads and just happens to shine in duels.

So grab your bags, take your crappy build back to a dueling server in spvp and be done with it. Don’t go encouraging more people to take crappy gimmick builds into a format they’re not good at only to find out groups don’t want them and want eles/revs/guardians/necros/warriors instead.

thankitten.6307:

Funny enough rangers aren’t completely useless in WvW atm. They are in a MUCH better position than rangers were Pre-HoT. Thing is, the meta for large scale battles has changed but 90% of the people in WvW haven’t figured that out yet. They think its still necro well bomb pirate ship meta. During this meta, rangers were completely useless. So the style that most Pug Commanders are commanding in, yes ranger is useless. The only people that have really figured out the meta are the GvG guilds. I wouldn’t say druid is top tier but it definitely isn’t useless. But if all you are doing is following random commanders, chances are they arent running the new meta and it will probably be a while before the majority of the wvw population figures it out.

Pirate ship doesn’t exist in TC. It’s all the new and improved melee 10+ guardian+5 rev+1-2 frontline ele train backed by some epi bombs on necro for immob and a couple backline ele.

It just so happens this new meta doesn’t suit ranger any better because melee trains are tickled by your longbow, and the retal those guardian trains are putting out crap on ranger.

The best you can do as a ranger is try to harass their backline eles with longbow, but if any of them have a brain and guardians/backline revs bought their projectile reflects/deflects on top of ele magnetic aura, you won’t do much of use.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Magira.6390:

Zenith.7301:

People only play druids for roaming/duels, which do nothing of significant value for the mist war score.

A good Roamer makes at least double the points like a Blobber. Blobbing is just one way that unskilled PVE Peeps also can do something. The alone are not capable of surviving.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that fantasy if ignoring towers/keeps to kill 3-5 stragglers every few minutes is your idea of usefulness.

Before I went to bed last night I wanted to hop on my alt account and knock out my daily real quick. I figured I’d hop in the zerg to get it done as quick as possible. After about 45 min of watching them get 1 pushed while repeatedly slamming their face into SM, and having of the entire zerg (about 80% of EB population) WP back and forth to defend keeps, I gave up on them, swapped to my ranger and went and flipped a camp and tower (where I killed 2 people trying to defend) in under 10 min.

The entire time I was with the zerg we capped nothing, not even a camp. In less than a quarter of the time by myself I capped a tower and camp.

Stop following kitten commanders, or your server has some issues with WvW guilds that don’t raid.

But if the commander is kitten and roaming is useless what should I do? Stand afk at spawn? EotM? Log out?

I’m pretty sure your server can’t be so terrible as to not have a single competent commander at any time of the day. Maybe it’s time to transfer.

Justifying roaming because you’ve got no competent active WvW guild raids or commanders is a kitten poor excuse for saying “ranger is great because its only good build shines when you have to do subpar activities because I can’t find a good commander or guild raid.”

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenith.7301:

Magira.6390:

Zenith.7301:

People only play druids for roaming/duels, which do nothing of significant value for the mist war score.

A good Roamer makes at least double the points like a Blobber. Blobbing is just one way that unskilled PVE Peeps also can do something. The alone are not capable of surviving.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that fantasy if ignoring towers/keeps to kill 3-5 stragglers every few minutes is your idea of usefulness.

Before I went to bed last night I wanted to hop on my alt account and knock out my daily real quick. I figured I’d hop in the zerg to get it done as quick as possible. After about 45 min of watching them get 1 pushed while repeatedly slamming their face into SM, and having of the entire zerg (about 80% of EB population) WP back and forth to defend keeps, I gave up on them, swapped to my ranger and went and flipped a camp and tower (where I killed 2 people trying to defend) in under 10 min.

The entire time I was with the zerg we capped nothing, not even a camp. In less than a quarter of the time by myself I capped a tower and camp.

Stop following kitten commanders, or your server has some issues with WvW guilds that don’t raid.

Fade to Black.7042:

Biklen.5490:

So since the patch dropped on July 26th, I can definitely feel the nerf on most classes when it comes to staying alive for a long time. With the small nerfs our class got I feel like we are very much a power house when it comes to damage and mobility. I would really love for this REV hate to stop and the miss information of our class to be said correctly. Rev’s are a heavy class that deals massive damage and has mobility of a thief. That being said if you are new to this game and are being told otherwise please close your ears and “YELL LEROY!” until they stop talking. It is a fun class and very rewarding once learned and played right. Win or lose Revs are fun and very different from any class in any game you have played. ANET has done a good job with it, they just need to finish it and make these bug fixes go away. By any means it is not the perfect class, but if you’re looking for a heavy that has mobility and damage this is what I recommend. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEJCYdcO048

~BalougaPod

Your enemies suck period.

Any competent necro or mesmer could turn this 1M dmg and your match into a nightmare.

Well, that’s PvP. If you win, it’s probably because you were better than your opponent or one of you sucked less.

There’s no such thing as even footing in competition. That’s a fantasy. PvP is about capitalizing on disadvantages.

Magira.6390:

Zenith.7301:

People only play druids for roaming/duels, which do nothing of significant value for the mist war score.

A good Roamer makes at least double the points like a Blobber. Blobbing is just one way that unskilled PVE Peeps also can do something. The alone are not capable of surviving.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that fantasy of ignoring towers/keeps to kill 3-5 stragglers every few minutes is your idea of usefulness.

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

Stratos.9375:

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 -> 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) -> 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s -> 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

Yeah, totally not broken for a skill to be bumped to 4-5k damage up to 6-7k when connecting such a skill usually follows with a backstab and mug damage.

Offhand dagger is fine.

This is like ele complaining that their fire overload doesn’t do as much damage as air overload so it needs a buff. Just because pistol offhand is overtuned relative to the other offhands doesn’t make the other offhands bad.

Everything will always look bad next to the optimal weapon.

Thief does not need more damage.

This would put dagger/dagger, which is already ahead of staff in PvE even further ahead as collateral damage, erasing staff builds from pve.

OH dagger isn’t fine. The problem is that the kit isn’t cohesive for power builds despite that being the original intent/function, and thus cannot compete with D/P to even a reasonable degree (only applicable due to current state of power D/D with the decimation from 7/26, it was passable before, although still needed skill reworks). Otherwise I agree with you; buffing its numbers will not affect anything; Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger need a redesign, and the damage from 7/26 needs to be undone.

I agree the theme is mixed, but then again that’s not unique about a thief weapon. Ranger shortbow, ranger mainhand axe, necro staff (power based auto with condi based marks), mesmer staff phantasm.

The list goes on. They don’t seem to realize hybrid weapons suck. They’ll always be less optimal than pure weapons because the stat you’re invested in won’t benefit all the skills.

But people use offhand pistol not for this thematic discord.

People use offhand pistol because it’s OP. I mean, why bother with a skillshot like cloak and dagger, when you can just plop a black powder and heartseek through it without needing to hit anything to gain free and frequent access to stealth.

Then there’s the fact that black powder is super cheap for how strong it is, it’s virtually a blind field with nearly permanent uptime if you want it to. Blackpowder gives you stealth, black powder guarantees stomps, black powder punishes people who try to melee you, black powder foils downed skills. List goes on.

Then you got headshot, a spammable interrupt to make you the best interrupt class in the game, since you don’t need a cast time to recharge your interrupt like a mesmer mantra, and you don’t need to sacrifice utility slots saved for precious stunbreaks/condi clear for it.

Pair that with shadowshot, cheap Phase Traversal that does 4-5k damage and blinds your target.

I mean, how can any other offhand compete with offhand pistol when so much strong utility and offense is packed into that single weapon.

You’d be asking for power creep if we made another weapon optimal over offhand pistol.

Stratos.9375:

Cloak and Dagger
Damage increase: 20%
Range: 130 -> 170
Vulnerability: 3 stacks(5s) -> 5 stacks(4s)
Stealth (on hit): 3s -> 4s
Blind (only when CnD misses): 4s to nearby foes on 240 radius. (Is not a smoke field).

There you go, fixed and not broken.

Yeah, totally not broken for a skill to be bumped to 4-5k damage up to 6-7k when connecting such a skill usually follows with a backstab and mug damage.

Offhand dagger is fine.

This is like ele complaining that their fire overload doesn’t do as much damage as air overload so it needs a buff. Just because pistol offhand is overtuned relative to the other offhands doesn’t make the other offhands bad.

Everything will always look bad next to the optimal weapon.

Thief does not need more damage.

This would put dagger/dagger, which is already ahead of staff in PvE even further ahead as collateral damage, erasing staff builds from pve.

Burtnik.5218:

Zenith.7301:

Burtnik.5218:

Zenith.7301:

I just wish CoR could hit anything without bugging on terrain, same for UA.

And it bothers me to no end that the animation for UA si so slow that people with swiftness can walk out while you’re frozen mid air and the ability cancels. UA’s range either needs to be increased or we should be allowed to be mobile while it’s starting to cast instead of rooted in place as it begins to cast.

Dude.. you can move during UA cast animation. WTF?
Ah i completely forgot.. i am in the forum.

You move slower while the animation is activating. Try it out, someone with swiftness can walk in the middle of the jump and cancel your animation.

You can move while the jump into mists animation is winding up, but when you reach the point you’re about to start porting you get stuck in place.

I never had an issue with landing UA unless i used it at the same time as thief who used dash, someone teleported etc. I dont think someone outrun me even once..lol
If you use it from max range then you do something wrong tbh.

For me it’s the constantly being chilled/crippled while in larger skirmishes, UA stops abruptly on me all the time.

I need to virtually be hugging people’s faces for it to go off.

Straegen.2938:

Zenith.7301:

lol how pathetic, thief counters power shatter mesmer. Stop cluttering advice threats with your whiny pity parties.

Daredevils are among the most popular classes for roaming in WvW. Good luck disengaging from zerglings as a mesmer while trying to roam. Hope your blink and decoy take you far because that’s all you got.

Thief damage also doesn’t vanish into thin air the moment some aoe starts being used since illusions are made of wet toilet paper.

Condi Shatter Chronos nuke most thief builds in duels. It isn’t even close outside of a substantially more skilled player on a thief and even then it is usually a draw. They are nearly impossible to burst or chip down and their condi clear as well as their constant AoE heals are fantastic. They also have fantastic stealth up time… I constantly see players standing around for 10s or more trying to figure out which way I went.

Dare Devils… yeah players like them because they run and kill weak or injured players. There are so few scary thieves left… so very very few. Even in sPvP, we hardly ever see any thieves in upper sPvP or ranked play.

I have played 3k hours in WvW on a thief (over 6k total)… call it QQ if you want but right now the thief is at best a marginal class good for +1, running and killing newbs. The days of utter destruction from the class are well behind us.

Condi chrono is trash, it’s only good for duels. It can’t chase people let alone kill them in the time you can kill with a thief.

All you virtually have to do to a condi chrono is walk away and there’s nothing they can do to keep up with you, sorta like getting ganked by a condi necro, or some other slow class with limited mobility and condi ramp up.

Thiefs are far superior gankers than condi chrono, they can escape outnumbered situations far more easily, and the power of a thief goes up the more thieves are around in gank squads to share stealth and basilisk venoms to reduce enemy response times.

Thieves and scrappers and mongoloid zerker warriors are far better gankers for roaming.