Guild Wars 2

zinkz.7045:

xarallei.4279:

Particularly if you want to go dps in pve.

LOL, and there we have the truth, some people are QQing basically because they want to DPS in PvE which Druid is not going to help, so it doesn’t fit your personal playstyle in your specific bit of the game so it is “kitten”.

So spoke the longbow camping bearbow. You must have been a staff cleric guardian in another life.

Maybe you’ll teach us the settler gear mesmer/necromancer next.

I agree with the point that the ventari legend feels far more druidic visually than most of the Druid spells.

Druids got lots of weird blue/yellow hues on their spell animations, it’s so strange.

We can be useful in damage/control, just like eles and engineers and warriors share a space as kings of damage and control.

I don’t want to be a healbot or a cleric staff guardian clone.

Daharahj.1325:

Let’s be real here, the problem with ranger currently is that everything that they do, other classes can do it better, the class had no identity other than a pet with faulty AI and its long range.

Now Rangers have a purpose, they offer something to the party that no other class does.

And that something, being a healbot, is exactly the kind of thing many people didn’t want to do.

I hate it. I wanted my ranger to bring group utility, not be a healbot in Settler gear.

Virtually all the traits are “heal” and “remove a condition” with the odd daze/immobilize in there.

This is gonna be Cleric staff guardian 2.0

zinkz.7045:

morrolan.9608:

zinkz.7045:

morrolan.9608:

In what universe is Druid ever a healer? This is so disappointing.

Erm lots of “universes” such as in Dungeons and Dragons which is where MMORPGs stem from.

Not solely, druids are nature wizards, a part of that can be healing but they are also offensive nature wizards and shapeshifters.

Yes not solely, they were a sort of hybrid class somewhere between a cleric and magic user, but then playing Druid doesn’t make you solely a healer, you have two other trait lines, another weapon, choice of utils / elite / pets & choice of gear, sure you won’t be full out DPS, but you will certainly be able to play hybrid, much like Druid in D&D.

We all know how well hybrids have done in all games with a team of specialized roles! rolls eyes

Imagine not having to shift ascended accessories with the +10 infusions around characters through the bank each time you switch classes for fractals ;/

Sube Dai.8496:

Aomine.5012:

arnitheking.8427:

I was already maining ranger and i’ll definitely play druid being salty is ok and it can happen but hit a pillow instead of whining pls. The druid is really awesome, let’s hope it isn’t clunky

His post is more than just whining, and way more constructive than yours…

I share the same feeling with him.
I pick ranger because I like to be an offensive range force, not a healbot..
I could potentially pick Druid, but just for survival aspect of Druid and nothing else.
I’m not going to be anyone’s healbot because I hate that play-style.
I’ll stick with zerk and only pick Druid for mobility and condition removal.

But…we are already the one and only ranged damage class – you already have what you want?

The rest of us wanted a legitimate support spec, and now we have it. I fail to see how this is not win/win.

One and only? Speak for yourself, pvp guy.

A staff ele is a far superior ranged damage class in WvW and PvE.

There are ways to support, they don’t need to be the same as a healbot/staff guardian.

And yet immune does not mean it becomes a wall. Look at the grawl shaman, bounce attacks still work off him despite being immune, as do trait procs (which is why phalanx warriors attack the bubble still, it shows immune but the crits still register for the trait so they keep stacking might).

I mean you keep bringing bosses for which the bodyblock already works. Against the grawl shaman all you need is a clone per arrow cast, which has large enough intervals to be trivial to begin with as anyone even without vigor can dodge all arrows 100% of the time, so not even bodyblocking is needed.

Against Old Tom having a clone tank the projectiles is no different than laying down a sanctuary or parking an earth ele. It’s the same end result. And the problem is not with using the clone/ele to bodyblock, but with an encounter design that places the bulk of the danger on a blockable projectile.

I don’t even understand why you think that the grawl shaman using a divebomb on immune clones is a problem, in fact it’s one of the most frustrating things as a mesmer when a dumb guardian triggers the proximity dive bomb and guts all your illusion damage.

In fact your gimmicky solution for dodging solves nothing since you can’t permanently keep dodging boss melee autoattacks so after 2 dodges your illusions will still die to the next autoattack.

It’s the same reason why the ranger suggestion of “the pet dodges with you” is terrible, since pets have different positioning that may require them to dodge when you don’t need to, forcing you to waste a dodge/distortion when you yourself don’t need it.

Same principle applies to ranger heals, the pet not having his won heal and forcing the ranger to waste his own heal to heal a pet. It’s a disadvantage for no reason whatsoever.

Cristobal.8640:

Your PVE whining fuels my joy, Druid is kittening awesome and it is going to make pvp very, very fun with the ranger.

It is not a “Healing spec”, its a traitline which grants a pretty neat form with powerful healing, you still have two other traitlines… Some of the Druid traits look amazing, 5 bleed and immob on a 10sec CD every time you hit someone CCed? Dazes and stuns, extra stealth? Cleaning 13 conditions on entering form? Man, I’m going to have a blast playing this.

It perplexes me how you people still want just bigger numbers so you can kill dumb AI, not even effectively (Every prof already does that) but fast enough so that you get your little boxes with more boxes inside. Seriously, if you want decent PVE. ask for that. Stop asking for classes to be high DPS worthless kitten just so it can be “viable”.

I’m pretty sure you’re that kind of player that for all that mighty talk, if I were to bring you to fractal 50 you’d likely be taking a dirtnap most of the time, slowing the group down.

Or maybe you’d just be one of those people camping autoattack from range and being generally useless for the group.

SkiTz.4590:

Zenith.7301:

Thz.7569:

I’m actually quite happy. They said in the beginnign of the stream that it was done with no additional stats. What this means is, you can STILL do good dps (Rev staff) while having great utility.

This is a big win for the Ranger community; Don’t be babies about this.

Rev staff isn’t good DPS lol.

You PvP people don’t have half a clue about PvE.

This is why we need DPS meters so people like you can be quiet.

Why don’t you go play an MMORPG that actually has good PvE content instead of this spam buttons off cooldown, stack in a corner, run full dps gear and win???

Nobody stacks in corners in PvE. It’s frankly unnecessary and probably only done by bearbows like you.

And since this game has no sub, I’m actually playing another MMO that has raids. It’s called FFXIV and soon Wildstar.

I don’t know what crappy guardians you run with, but mace+focus and communal defenses is so brokenly OP. I feel sorry you haven’t played with a half competent one.

Meteor Shower on Ashrym is not even an issue if you’re familiar with the tick damage intervals, and for some reason you seem to equate HP with sustainability despite the fact that the two most durable classes in the game that also make the best bunkers happen to be the two lowest health professions.

Meanwhile necromancer sits at high health like the warrior yet it has the worst sustainability of all the classes because being a sponge does not equate to recovery options and active mitigation.

P.S. if you put the party behind the illusions, the mob is already inclined to prioritize aggro by proximity, dispelling the illusion… not to mention the deadliest attacks from most bosses are not the projectiles but the melee cleaves.

In the case of Mai Trin or Archdiviner, and especially mossman, their projectiles actually pierce sometimes, and in the case of mossman the projectile bounces and hurts more people the more people stacked up.

I mean, clones can already body block, but it’s so unreliable to begin with and a total waste of time when you can just reflect or let the guardian bodyblock with mace 3 and give everyone aegis in the process thanks to that use of bodyblocking that also protects against melee cleave.

Thz.7569:

I’m actually quite happy. They said in the beginnign of the stream that it was done with no additional stats. What this means is, you can STILL do good dps (Rev staff) while having great utility.

This is a big win for the Ranger community; Don’t be babies about this.

Rev staff isn’t good DPS lol.

You PvP people don’t have half a clue about PvE.

This is why we need DPS meters so people like you can be quiet.

The druid spec and gear synergies don’t mix at all with the rest of the weapons or traits.

The other specializations and weapons shine in berzerker or sinister/rabid setups, which don’t benefit remotely from the cleric/shaman centric focus and all the redundant healing traits and skills on the druid.

It’s going to be a complete clash.

Either spec cleric/shaman and heal well with the druid, while doing GARBAGE damage with the rest of your weapons and utilities, or spec berzerker/rabid/sinister and do well with the other weapons but have little synergy with the staff and celestial form.

Celestial Form in fact is a DPS nerf to the ranger, you enter a form purely centered on healing with no offensive aspect.

I also am not happy how the druid shifted from a natural theme to some celestial theme out of the blue. It’s not related to a wild, natural theme.

I didn’t want to be another cleric staff guardian. This is extremely underwhelming for offensive minded players, the druid is a glorified heal bot.

Basically players who want to be offensive will take the damage boost glyph for the group, frost and fire spirit, and have to waste a traitline on the druid traitline just to be able to use glyphs because the rest is more healing crap that won’t synergize with berzerker or marauder stats.

Yeah, yeah, they love to talk about how berzerker won’t be a thing. I doubt it. And I really don’t like being pigeonholed into being a healer.

One of the very reasons they gave everyone their own healing was so that we wouldn’t have assigned healbots, and now they’ve gone and made the druid specialization a healbot itself with mediocre personal damage.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly Fay, I’d go one step further. Phantasms should just die in a single hit.

But it has to be a targeted, active, hit, with the Phantasm as the target. No random cleave, no bounces, no AE, pet is ok if set to attack this target, that’s it. In return, the effort would be immediately rewarded with a destroyed Phantasm.

In which case the cooldowns would need to be reduced.

The amount of times random trash mobs decide to directly attack my phantasm would completely kitten phantasms in PvE.

Or we could simply have a hit counter. Each hit reduces the phantasm HP by a percentage, make it 33-50% (so dispel in 2-3 direct hits).

Behellagh.1468:

But this isn’t affecting just the Jennifer Hales and Nolan Norths but the lesser known VAs.

As for vocal stress, that’s one of the reasons that it takes a small miracle and a pile of money to get Mark Hamill to do the Joker in games. It destroyed his voice doing it for the animated Batman series for all those years. Peter Cullen doing Optimus is another case. They are looking for the same guarantees and protections they get for VA in shows for VA in games.

And yes, it’s common for the VA to also do the mocap if mocap is required. Asking for a stunt coordinator to oversee a mocap session to look out for the actor isn’t outrageous.

Which is why I would prefer the royalties section only apply up to a salary cap, say $60-70k a year, to cover for the start up and struggling actors who are trying to make it into the industry.

But when you’re earning $100k+ I start questioning the necessity of “MOAR!” and my sympathy drops.

Doug Whisper.2465:

If phantasms could be damaged if not targeted, that means bounce attacks are not effective on phantasms as long as they are not the primary target of the player characters. This change would have impact on not only mesmers’ skills rely on bounce attacks, but also bounce attack skills from other profession such as guardian focus healing skills. If ANet accept this suggested change, does it also means phantasms should be healed or received boons through bounce attacks?

To keep phantasms alive through aoe, it might be easier for us to ask ANet to enable phantasms actively walk away from aoe circles. I read that in the early design bosses can walk away from aoe. But this behavior is disable because of the complained from beta testers. So the technology for AI to walk away from aoe is existed in the engine. Given that all pets AI have improved since june feature pack while not benefiting Mesmer’s illusions, asking ANet to enable phantasms’ ability to actively avoid aoe damage should be to much work for them to do.

lol pets will die immediately, walking out of aoe that ticks for 10k+ damage a tick is not in the realm of possibility, plus it actively crowd controls your phantasm and keeps him from attacking while it runs away from the aoe.

And no, I don’t want bouncing attacks wasted on phantasms, especially since your phantasms scale from YOUR stats, and players benefit far more from the boons.

Necro condi builds will be improved when they restore bleeding to its rightful place as the most damaging condition when ramped up.

Burning is just way strong, while bleeding/torment/confusion are pathetic, and poison is decent.

Burning was meant to be the high base damage condition with short uptime while bleeding would do more damage but would need ramp up. That is not even the case anymore, where burning just outranks every other condition at any number of stacks. And guardian/engineers/rangers can pretty much have near permanent burning uptime on high stacks.

And, well, torment and confusion are plain terrible in PvE. For what it’s worth, torment and confusion should do the same damage as bleeding and remain with their active bonuses as a perk for being less accessible conditions.

Once they fix condition balancing, and buffing necro condi application (especially bleeding/poison/torment), necromancers might stop being totally eclipsed by engineers, guardians, warriors and even rangers.

Necromancer and mesmer are currently the weakest condi specs by far in terms of DPS. They have high ramp up time, in the case of mesmer poor cleaving of conditions, and for both despite their ramp up time they maintain mediocre condition coverage compared to an engineer who can not only spike but maintain a wider variety of conditions that comes with useful blast fields and with the perk that it’s all cleave.

Behellagh.1468:

Did anybody bother to read what they want?

http://www.sagaftra.org/interactive/what-we-stand-for

Can we clarify whether the $3300 bonus is for the 8 million copies milestone, or for each 2 million milestone?

Either way, it’s not terrible to be paid an extra $3300 if 8 million units are sold. Although I do wonder, $3300 sounds like the monthly wage of some employees in the studio. Are they getting bonuses as well?

I think the demands are being blown out of proportion.

With that said, I am bothered by the idea that people like Jennifer Hale and Nolan North, which are already raking in the money, would be getting some more money on top of what they already demand.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Make it so that you need to get an ascended piece of gear in order to unlock the agony infusion slot for that exact piece, make this an additional, account-wide slot and leave the original slot for the non-AR infusions. Also add stronger infusions.

That would be a way to lessen the annoyance of getting enough AR on multiple chars while still having a reason to get ascended gear on multiple characters. Though I feel like this idea is not going to be much liked.

Basically anyone who’s dumped bucketloads of money on ascended.

Then again they’ll get over it just like the people camping their 1k+ dreamthistle weapons got over the fact that the skins were reintroduced.

Or how people got over the fact they had bought multiple abyss dyes back before dyes were account bound.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

@Zenith, I don’t really care for open world zergy combat and when I do it, I’ll just spam MoP/shatters if I’m on my mesmer.

Furthermore, persistent lethal AoE doesn’t only punish mesmers. It’s a mechanism of zone control that punishes most melee builds to move away from a stack or force ranged characters to stop channeling powerful spells. So it doesn’t bother me that a phantasm would die to that because it doesn’t only punish the dps of AI builds.

Also, if it really is pulsing aoe then they are going to die no matter what even with 50% or whatever resistance. Permanent immunity is just… no. I play all parts of the game and I agree with Anet on parity between them, especially on something like this.

That’s just false. For one, leveling your masteries demands grinding DE open world. It;s not like you’re gonna avoid it. And I’m not gonna go and be dead weight by just using MoP spam; I hate these kind of people as much as the leeching staff guardians and the rangers and necromancer who fear/knock back everything from melee.

On the front of persistent AoE punishing melee, not even close. My reaper and guardian were both able to stay for prolonged amounts of time, and unlike mesmer their DPS was not immediately kitten.

I mean, you’re gonna be meleeing anyways on your mesmer, so if you’re gonna argue that it punishes melee, it punishes mesmer doubly so as the mesmer loses DPS effectiveness far earlier than the other melee.

But if you want parity, and by parity meaning be a totally worthless DPS class in PvE and just an alacrity/quickness buffbot, knock yourself out.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Zenith.7301:

I don’t understand what’s so important about repeating “progression” on alts. It’s like saying getting the 170 hero points on 8 toons (having one lv80 class of each) just to unlock their elite spec stuff is OK. Or doing world completion on multiple toons. It’s just pure tedium.

People don’t roll alts to repeat progression. They do it to experience different personal story steps and starting racial experiences, or even more so experiencing the different combat experience of another class.

I do, and I know countless people who do as well. You don’t speak for everyone. I love having things to do on my alts. It’s the reason I repeat my personal story, it’s the reason I repeat map completion, it’s the reason I repeat ascended gear crafting, and it’s the reason I play them in fractals to get and then build infusions. I also, of course, roll alts for different combat experiences, but being able to build something up from zero to something meaningful has value to me.

It cuts both ways. When you say separating ascended from AR devalues the item, you only speak for your feelings.

And it simply comes down to why should they cater to only your feelings on the matter?

Thankfully, nobody proposed removing an achievement requirement from earning items, only removing the tedious repetition of grinds.

I don’t understand what’s so important about repeating “progression” on alts. It’s like saying getting the 170 hero points on 8 toons (having one lv80 class of each) just to unlock their elite spec stuff is OK. Or doing world completion on multiple toons. It’s just pure tedium.

People don’t roll alts to repeat progression. They do it to experience different personal story steps and starting racial experiences, or even more so experiencing the different combat experience of another class.

More importantly, I detest this idea that games involve “work”. I play games for leisure. I’m OK with challenges gating rewards. I’m not OK with repeated chores I have to put up with that basically test my resistance and will to overcome boredom.

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

If it’s a long lasting aoe that kills illusions, I’m kind of ok with that. I would say the problem for ranger pets is more that protection doesn’t keep a glass pet alive vs a 1 hit ko. Distortion would be fine for Mesmers that time their dodes wells and although not perfect would be a major improvement for pve.

Thinking about the mistrust remake I recommended, zerker and swordsman do have built in evades that can further proc it. Would master of fragmentation cause reflect on illusion distortion? It wouldn’t have to be confusion for the aoe dmg.

I’m ok with traiting in for stuff. DE problem is more so that there are no good alternatives but chronomancer is somewhat fixing that. I think illusion aoe resistance in that sense should be traited for because most pvp builds are viable without it already.

Why are you OK with that?

Virtually every single dynamic event in Verdant brink has persistent lethal AoE, as do several fractal bosses.

How is it ok for our mechanic to be unfairly punished because of encounter design that doesn’t specifically penalize classes that don’t rely on AI?

deSade.9437:

Bears don’t have a 96s-120 cooldown! And they’re fluffier. Cuter.

E, if chill exc is still applied it’s something. I’m surprised they considered it.

Bear autoattacks also do less damage than a single burning tick from an ele BEFORE the condi changes (when burning didn’t stack).

Using the bear is nice and all, but it comes at the price of utterly gutting the ranger’s already mediocre damage.

Meanwhile ele loses very little with the rock ele, and even then you have to question the necessity of either with how disgustingly OP a guardian with communal defenses and mace+focus is.

Communal Defenses, Phalanx Strength, and Persisting Flames are surefire traits to be on the chopping block of nerfs.

Wouldn’t be a problem if illusions were immune to aoe unless directly targeted, which is what many of us are asking for.

Just like with silverwastes, try illusions inh WvW teamfights or dungeons.

You shouldn’t need to go into a specific traitline just so your illusions can function as advertised.

And really, clones themselves don’t even do anything for the mesmer besides being shatter fodder after the removal of on clone death traits, so there’s no reason whatsoever to keep them so weak and trivial.

Muchacho.2390:

Zenith.7301:

Oh, ok, so you’re comparing a base feature like stunbreak on legend swap to a traited feature which involves oh, I don’t know, not using another traitline in order to use SR. Cool, you do really great comparisons.

Ehh? I am sure that empty vessel is not a base feature. Its a minor trait in invocation.

Which does not compete against another grandmaster, and is on a traitline that is a generalist traitline, as Ventari/Mallyx/Jalis are far more specialized. So Invocation will always be part of every Revenant build, whereas Soul Reaping may not (it’s mainly attractive in PvP, for Vital Persistence and Deathly Perception/Dhuumfire).

For example, Soul Reaping won’t b e a part of the reaper raid builds.

More importantly, Foot in The Grace costs you either Deathly Perception or Dhuumfire, incredibly powerful grandmasters that are far more used than Foot in the Grave.

More importantly, it’s a stunbreak tied to the cooldown of death shroud which you may have used to absorb damage or used a fear to interrupt a skill.

Meanwhile revenant has a built in stunbreak not only from swapping legends, but on every legend utility bar there’s one skill which stunbreaks and is on a far lesser cooldown than necromancer stunbreak utilities. Anf, oh, the stunbreaks have also much better effects than the necromancer stunbreaks as well.

You people keep talking as if the reaper is OP with a stunbreak, but I’m pretty sure that on tournaments the reaper will still be the go to train target on team fights.

And as a bruiser with low mobility and chasing potential and little access to defensive boons like vigor and protection, it should be a pretty stalwart profession able to endure trains and constant CC.

I mean, an extra stunbreak on a 20 sec cd isn’t going to change the fact that anyone who wants to can disengage at will from you and there’s little you can do to keep from getting kited. At the very least you should be a sturdy and lasting presence in melee.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

The number of people who oppose QoL features that don’t harm them in any way will never cease to be amazing.

It’s pretty common.

Part of these people’s investment is “I suffered to get this ascended item, so other people should suffer too. My only justification for doing that tedious ascended grind was the necessary benefit to do fractals, so I need to feel like my suffering has given me an advantage over those who don’t suffer through the grind like me.”

It’s everywhere, even in real life. “Oh, these entitled people, in my time we had to do suffer through x to obtain y. They should, too!”

In fact, since most of these people would find making ascended a turn off if it didn’t give them these benefits, it speaks more to the poor design of it that makes the process not enjoyable and stupidly expensive (for armors; weapons don’t suffer nearly as much since you can farm components unlike cloth, especially lower tier cloths).

There should be more involving ways to earn the gear, and I must say I liked the approach of handing out ascended gear on achievements, like the living story, maybe even world exploration should do so as well.

Tie achievements to dungeons and reward ascended items for doing a boss in a more difficult manner. Give the option to turn on an instability specific to bosses.

It would be pretty similar to Wildstar’s optional objectives during a raid boss fight that gives extra rewards upon achieving them.

I doubt they’re gonna let them stack. It would be ripe for exploit in PvE against a boss attack that’s meant to wipe you if you don’t meet the mechanic check, but somehow is nullified by clever use of stacking defenses.

We don’t need more of that in PvE. Communal Defenses in Guardians and Ice bow freeze need the nerfhammer if anything.

Shiki.7148:

Zenith.7301:

Captain Unusual.9163:

ClawofBeta.8015:

What are your thoughts of making RS 3 a stun breaker?

It would definitely be too strong as a stun breaker. As it is now, it’s basically 11 seconds of CC immunity, like a souped-up defiance bar with no downside, on a 20 second cooldown, with an aoe fear. Reapers need to be not completely immune to CC, and since we already have 33/66% reduction to snares, and 11 seconds of immunity to CC, making it a stunbreak would push it over the top. The counterplay to a Reaper is to run away, and if caught, to quickly smack us with a stun before we’re ready and then run away. Making it a stunbreak that doesn’t use up a utility slot would be insanely powerful, which is something that only Guardians have, and only if traited, and on a very long cooldown.

Revenant stunbreaks on legend swap, which is low cooldown as well, in fact lower than Infusing Terror.

And that’s on top of their utility skills which all also legend swap.

And it just so happens revenant has generous access to stability as well.

We might also look at the berserker and daredevil stunbreaks, 10 sec cd with a knockdown upon block for the daredevil, and a 15 sec cd stunbreak for the berserker.

Bpth of these classes supremely more mobile than the reaper.

And in the case of a warrior they’re just as if not more durable than a necromancer in team fights.

Look at the psot literally one above yours. We have Foot in the grave, which gives us a stunbreak + 1 stack stab on DS/RS entry, which is the same CD as Revenant’s stunbreak, so having ANOTHER stunbreak on In fusing Terror is not needed. At all. This would lead to “NERF NECRO” all over again, and we still are suffering from the overnerfs from beta compared to release, aswell as from overnerfing because of Dhuumfire.

Oh, ok, so you’re comparing a base feature like stunbreak on legend swap to a traited feature which involves oh, I don’t know, not using another traitline in order to use SR. Cool, you do really great comparisons.

Captain Unusual.9163:

ClawofBeta.8015:

What are your thoughts of making RS 3 a stun breaker?

It would definitely be too strong as a stun breaker. As it is now, it’s basically 11 seconds of CC immunity, like a souped-up defiance bar with no downside, on a 20 second cooldown, with an aoe fear. Reapers need to be not completely immune to CC, and since we already have 33/66% reduction to snares, and 11 seconds of immunity to CC, making it a stunbreak would push it over the top. The counterplay to a Reaper is to run away, and if caught, to quickly smack us with a stun before we’re ready and then run away. Making it a stunbreak that doesn’t use up a utility slot would be insanely powerful, which is something that only Guardians have, and only if traited, and on a very long cooldown.

Revenant stunbreaks on legend swap, which is low cooldown as well, in fact lower than Infusing Terror.

And that’s on top of their utility skills which all also legend swap.

And it just so happens revenant has generous access to stability as well.

We might also look at the berserker and daredevil stunbreaks, 10 sec cd with a knockdown upon block for the daredevil, and a 15 sec cd stunbreak for the berserker.

Bpth of these classes supremely more mobile than the reaper.

And in the case of a warrior they’re just as if not more durable than a necromancer in team fights.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Gating higher fractal levels behind gold gates is idiotic. +10 infusions are around 86 gold a piece.

So that’s 258 gold to slot your backpiece and 2 rings.

Now imagine fractals thet require not only a power set, but a sinister set because it’s got high toughness mobs.

You’re now looking at 516 gold.

And this is looking at the 70 AR for fractal 50. If the AR requirements increase above fractal 50, it’s going to get even more dumb.

The whole point of grinding fractal levels is to build up your skill with them. If some kitten can come join a fractal 50 because he’s a Trading Post baron or farms Silverwastes, but has done very little of fractals, that annoys me to no end.

Especially when fractals are not the most profitable to begin with, so the very people who aren’t making much gold leveling in them are the very people gated out by a gold grind.

Agony is a dumb gear check hid behind a stupid gold grind.

Ascended weapons are fine. The material costs are not outrageous.

Ascended armor, with its steep Bolt of Damask consumption, is stupid.

I don’t even understand what was wrong with exotic. Exotic was great. It was simple to switch around stats and experiment with builds. Now with ascended the time investment to switch builds is immense.

Umm… you don’t need +10 infusions at all LOL

You do if we’re talking about not using ascended armor and only 1 weapon. Which is what a post just above us said…

Infused rings and backpack with +5 = 30 AR
Ascended trinkets and amulet = 15 AR
Ascended weapon = 10 AR

That’s 55 AR and guess what? Level 50 fractals have the same daily reward chest as 41 through 49 so if you can clear those, you’re not missing out on anything. People do level 50 since if you have enough AR then you don’t need to worry about an instability.

For the love of god, we are talking 70 AR because that’s where you’ll start when they introduce the new fractal scales. Don’t be so dense.

If you would read you would notice it’s been stated multiple times that once you have enough AR for 4x fractals you can farm them to get ascended armor chests.

lol, farm RNG low droprate chests, that sounds like a brilliant plan instead of crafting them yourself in a fraction of the time. Maybe you’ll tell me to go farm Charged Lodestones from CoE/Orr sparks next.

I don’t need you telling me what I can do to get the things, I’m sitting at full ascended sets for all the classes which I have at 80.

I hated the process. I’m a GW1 player. I know many of you are new to this franchise and bring with it your crappy treadmill cravings, but some of us do remember what Guild Wars 1 used to be. Much better than this carrot on a stick RNG grindfest.

And yet nothing of this has to do with the fact that you’re grinding a completely different objective (ascended gear, infusions) just to advance in fractal content.

It’s pathetic. If you have the skill to clear the content, no crappy agony aura tied to a gear check should be stopping you. It’s garbage design.

Agony used to be a thing when it was tied to certain attacks you could dodge, so you could stand out as a player in dodging attacks that would come close or outright down you. But then they implement Maw/Trin/Molten Duo pulsing agony checks, unavoidable, and apply that same concept to every 10th level of the fractal tiers. It then becomes a gear gate.

Even in GW1 without infusions you had the means to skillfully overcome the Mursaat. Not the case here.

Just make the phantasms immune to aoe. Make them vulnerable when directly targeted. It’s that simple.

It’s a hex you need to directly beat on to dispel. That was the whole point of illusions, to force to to choose attacking the mesmer or the illusions.

Unfortunately in this game you can attack both rather casually and profit.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Gating higher fractal levels behind gold gates is idiotic. +10 infusions are around 86 gold a piece.

So that’s 258 gold to slot your backpiece and 2 rings.

Now imagine fractals thet require not only a power set, but a sinister set because it’s got high toughness mobs.

You’re now looking at 516 gold.

And this is looking at the 70 AR for fractal 50. If the AR requirements increase above fractal 50, it’s going to get even more dumb.

The whole point of grinding fractal levels is to build up your skill with them. If some kitten can come join a fractal 50 because he’s a Trading Post baron or farms Silverwastes, but has done very little of fractals, that annoys me to no end.

Especially when fractals are not the most profitable to begin with, so the very people who aren’t making much gold leveling in them are the very people gated out by a gold grind.

Agony is a dumb gear check hid behind a stupid gold grind.

Ascended weapons are fine. The material costs are not outrageous.

Ascended armor, with its steep Bolt of Damask consumption, is stupid.

I don’t even understand what was wrong with exotic. Exotic was great. It was simple to switch around stats and experiment with builds. Now with ascended the time investment to switch builds is immense.

Umm… you don’t need +10 infusions at all LOL

You do if we’re talking about not using ascended armor and only 1 weapon. Which is what a post just above us said…

Infused rings and backpack with +5 = 30 AR
Ascended trinkets and amulet = 15 AR
Ascended weapon = 10 AR

That’s 55 AR and guess what? Level 50 fractals have the same daily reward chest as 41 through 49 so if you can clear those, you’re not missing out on anything. People do level 50 since if you have enough AR then you don’t need to worry about an instability.

For the love of god, we are talking 70 AR because that’s where you’ll start when they introduce the new fractal scales. Don’t be so dense.

They can make the marks work like wells do underwater. It’s not like developers can pretend we use lich for anything other than the #1.

Axe/dagger+sword torch is much better synergy imo.

Shortbow is a garbage tier weapon unfortunately after they kept nerfing it to make longbow more appealing (and surprising no one, nobody took longbow still until they actually buffed longbow).

There’s no reason whatsoever for utilities and heals to not work in death shroud.

A warrior can heal in endure pain or berserker stance. A mesmer can heal with distortion up. A ranger can heal with signet of stone, and so can an elementalist with arcane shield (and at one point with mist form).

There is no excuse whatsoever to deny necromancers access to utilities while in death shroud. It’s not like death shroud skills are more powerful than actual weapon skills.

On the same vein, I find it pretty kitten stupid that transformations kill our minions. Please fixt it. Minions are kitten, if anything they need buffs not more limitations

A lot of our class limitations are vestigial, when they nerfed us from closed beta.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Zenith.7301:

Gating higher fractal levels behind gold gates is idiotic. +10 infusions are around 86 gold a piece.

So that’s 258 gold to slot your backpiece and 2 rings.

Now imagine fractals thet require not only a power set, but a sinister set because it’s got high toughness mobs.

You’re now looking at 516 gold.

And this is looking at the 70 AR for fractal 50. If the AR requirements increase above fractal 50, it’s going to get even more dumb.

The whole point of grinding fractal levels is to build up your skill with them. If some kitten can come join a fractal 50 because he’s a Trading Post baron or farms Silverwastes, but has done very little of fractals, that annoys me to no end.

Especially when fractals are not the most profitable to begin with, so the very people who aren’t making much gold leveling in them are the very people gated out by a gold grind.

Agony is a dumb gear check hid behind a stupid gold grind.

Ascended weapons are fine. The material costs are not outrageous.

Ascended armor, with its steep Bolt of Damask consumption, is stupid.

I don’t even understand what was wrong with exotic. Exotic was great. It was simple to switch around stats and experiment with builds. Now with ascended the time investment to switch builds is immense.

Umm… you don’t need +10 infusions at all LOL

You do if we’re talking about not using ascended armor and only 1 weapon. Which is what a post just above us said…

Gating higher fractal levels behind gold gates is idiotic. +10 infusions are around 86 gold a piece.

So that’s 258 gold to slot your backpiece and 2 rings.

Now imagine fractals thet require not only a power set, but a sinister set because it’s got high toughness mobs.

You’re now looking at 516 gold.

And this is looking at the 70 AR for fractal 50. If the AR requirements increase above fractal 50, it’s going to get even more dumb.

The whole point of grinding fractal levels is to build up your skill with them. If some kitten can come join a fractal 50 because he’s a Trading Post baron or farms Silverwastes, but has done very little of fractals, that annoys me to no end.

Especially when fractals are not the most profitable to begin with, so the very people who aren’t making much gold leveling in them are the very people gated out by a gold grind.

Agony is a dumb gear check hid behind a stupid gold grind.

Ascended weapons are fine. The material costs are not outrageous.

Ascended armor, with its steep Bolt of Damask consumption, is stupid.

I don’t even understand what was wrong with exotic. Exotic was great. It was simple to switch around stats and experiment with builds. Now with ascended the time investment to switch builds is immense.

I’d like to have an underwater elite in PvE which is actually useful. So either give me my golem, or make Lich usable underwater.

I don’t understand how plague, a transformation, can work underwater but Lich won’t work because it’s a “transformation”.

Silverkey.2078:

Zenith.7301:

How about making phantasms one shot attacks. You press the skill, the phantasms summons and does the attack, is invulnerable, and when it finishes the attack it despawns. We can then account for the loss of 3 phantasms by reducing the cooldown of phantasms.

While it is a complete overhaul of the illusion mechanics, I must say that would make a lot of sense. I would somewhat be against having DE baseline though or maybe shatter damage should be reduced a bit. I think a better think would be that without “theoretically persisting” phantasms, the other weapon skills could be boosted by a decent amount, and this would not blow out of proportion because of the nerf to shatters.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Now I doubt the devs would go for such a massive change, but I like it.

The only reason I made that suggestion coupled with my change to phantasms is so that PvP people go “Without phantasms counting for illusions, it will make me shatter less!” complaints.

Which is a fair complaint, because if you remove phantasms from the illusion count, you need to replace them with more clones, which deceptive evasion would do.

I know a knee jerk of making deceptive evasion baseline would make people think there are more shatters, but it’s not. You’re losing phantasms since you summon one to do its attack and vanish on a 8-10 sec cd, so with deceptive evasion baseline you end up replacing just those phantasms, not shattering more.

And by making phantasms a one time summon attack, the entirety of the damage in PvE can be dodged or interrupted once without worrying about constantly dodging 1-3 phantasms constantly attacking you.

And more importantly it reduces our potential spike but significantly increases our very bad sustained DPS we have in PvE, along with removing some of the survivability issues with illusions and our DPS in PvE.
———

I also forgot to mention:

Can the Continuum Split rift receive aoe/cleave immunity in PvE, please?

With the amount of aoe/cleave I often found myself in situations where I couldn’t even benefit from it on a single skill as it immediately died as I activated my shatter to all the aoe/cleave mobs in dynamic events and bosses were doing.

skcamow.3527:

One potential glaring issue I see is that if this is done for phantasms, how about minions, pets, spirits, on and on and on … I know there are innate differences depending on the comparison, but I think this would have to be addressed.

Minions/pets/spirits apply the same principle. AoE immunity.

AI is dumb and can’t dodge/block/invuln aoe or cleave, so it should be immune to it. If you wanna get rid of the pet/minion/spirit, target it directly.

I’d rather the person needs to target the phantasm directly to need to damage it.

Engineers can already target a mesmer and spam aoe, and teams will simply adjust in GvG to target call a mesmer and cleave off him, which makes little change. So melee mesmers not camping greatsword would not be served too well.

The whole point of phantasms is that they were supposed to be hexes, that you needed to attack directly instead of the mesmer to dispel.

Problem is in GW2 single target attacks are few and far in between, and people get so much aoe/cleave freebies to hit both the mesmer and phantasm with.

So just make pets/minions/illusions/spirit weapons/ranger spirits AOE IMMUNE unless directly targeted for attack.

ronpierce.2760:

Zenith.7301:

Now, if they can flip Soul Eater with Deathly Chill, it’d be great.

While I personally would be happy with that, they won’t due that because they don’t want the weapon and utility traits to be exclusive, and it’d be too limiting on the adepts, which is understandable. Just not real likely to happen.

PvE has no good adept whatsoever (Chilling Nova is the least gimmicky useless trait, but still an abysmal PvE trait nevertheless), Decimate Defenses is a must, and all the grandmasters suck.

Something needs to be done. We would have Reaper’s Onslaught if reaper shroud wasn’t a DPS loss to camping gratsword, but that’s not the case so on to the discard bin goes Reaper’s Onslaught.

So, yeah, the only positive thing a PvE necromancer player has to say about the reaper line is Decimate Defenses.

If PvE necromancers could use the greatsword without investing in the garbage reaper traitline, they would drop the reaper traitline in a heartbeat. The terrible adepts, shivers of dread, cold shoulder, mediocre grandmasters. Useless in PvE.

I would kill to have access to greatsword and still take Spite/Blood Magic/Soul Reaping (because soul reaping has a damage modifier trait, not because of vital persistence).

And the standard PvE reaper build will be Well of Suffering/Well of Corruption/Signet of Spite. Maybe switch out the Signet for Well of Power/Darkness if the situation calls for it. It will be wells all day all night until they make the other utilities, including the selfish and mediocre shouts worthwhile in PvE (and quite frankly even in WvW, I don’t see a single reaper in a Guild vs. Guild 15-20 man match taking the shouts over wells).

Shouts are for players who want to roam/duel, mostly. They don’t offer your team anything that a well doesn’t do better.

25% extra to endurance is junk. You do realize a lot of these bonuses will be wasted, right? And that before AWtEW, we only had personal alacrity and little group alacrity. Same goes for the heal, it’s easy to overcap. You don’t overcap on the alacrity, and well of calamity damage is crappy in PvE anyways (barely does around a single phantasm hit).

Moreover, all these builds around well and even Fay’s build seem great, because they’re done in dungeons. All these well centric builds require that your group be sitting stacked on a mob for the entire continuum split sequence and in your wells to benefit from the alacrity and the pass of Tides of Time.

Any time your group is forced to spread or move out of aoe, they move and lose all the benefits of the wells, cutting drastically into the alacrity/quickness uptime.

You’re seeing the build at the same potential we see an ele being able to channel meteor shower, ice bow, and glyph of lightning storm because the current content doesn’t make much of an effort in interrupting your group’s turreting and stacking.

Throw in mobs that CC and interrupt, that place deadly AoE’s that need to be moved out of, and suddenly things change.

Imagine necromancer type mobs with unblockable wells that damage through aegis/distortion. Your guardian can’t just spam aegis with communal defenses to let your group faceroll burst anymore.

So let’s calm down.

On another topic:

What will happen to Power Block in PvE?

With the advent of the Defiant bar, this trait loses its appeal entirely. The 15 sec cd addition won’t work on many mobs, including champions and bosses, and the added weakness that was there for consolation to PvE players won’t even work anymore since it’s a soft CC and it’s only effect is to degen the break bar.

Seems like PvE mesmers will only have a choice of Mental Anguish in PvE.

Robert Gee.9246:

There has been a lot of discussion on this point so I’d like to explain a bit about the decision to change the Illusionary Avenger’s attack type and how we ended up with the attack that we’re showing in BWE3.

The main feedback we got from BWE2 was that the effects applied by this phantasm were unreliable and hard to control. We wanted to make a more reliable way to apply alacrity and slow that players could respond to which is why we ended up with the AoE attack.

We had tried other ideas but the important aspect of the one we chose is that it keeps the delivery method consistent. We considered many of the versions suggested in the feedback threads such as the one where he throws the shield but applies alacrity around himself, but realized that this basically amounted to two different delivery methods in one skill. While this kind of behavior is okay for player skills we felt that it was too complex for a phantasm attack. This attack already has different effects based on if it hits an ally or an enemy so it was important to us to keep the attack on the Avenger easy to understand for both allies and enemies. This is why the PBAoE version was selected.

I appreciate the goal of making attacks consistent, which will hopefully also bleed over to iMage.

But that consistency won’t be achieved at all if illusions/phantasms keep getting cleaved/aoe’d down before they even start their animation upon spawn in PvE.

How about at least making Protected Phantasms baseline while we look at the issue of AI and AoE/cleave spam in the game?

Alternatively, phantasms and shatter are such a conflicting issue. You don’t want to shatter phantasms because they provide the same shatter benefit as a clone, and they make up a large part of your sustained damage. On the PvP side, opponents hate being beat on by 3 phantasms.

How about making phantasms one shot attacks. You press the skill, the phantasms summons and does the attack, is invulnerable, and when it finishes the attack it despawns. We can then account for the loss of 3 phantasms by reducing the cooldown of phantasms.

Phantasms can then become like the mesmer version of 100b/pistol whip, they have a cast time of 1 second, they are not fire and forget. So tune down the phantasm cooldowns to 10 sec cd for a one time attack.

To compensate for the loss of illusion count for shatters, make deceptive evasion baseline and maybe touch a bit on the cooldown of clone generating skills.

Voila, no longer dependent on 3 phantasms for DPS, pvp players don’t have to deal with 2-3 phantasm spike, and we can shift the mesmer onto a focus of shattering illusions while buffing his sustained damage by increasing autoattack and blurred frenzy damage and making ONE phantasm attack more often, and reducing the fire and forget spike of phantasms in PvP paired with shatters which has held PvE mesmers back.

As a glorified alacrity/quickness buffbot with no damage whatsoever and whose main mechanic, illusions, are already more flimsy versions of minions that are dying upon spawn on something as simple as dynamic events. I don’t want to imagine raids.

Continuum Split’s rift often just dies the moment is spawns due to cleave and aoe, as do your illusions, so there goes all the effective use of shatters in any envionment where cleave/aoe is present.

It says something when the expected mesmer chrono build uses CHAOS, a condition traitline, on a power spec just for the boon duration increase while sitting on two deficient traits just to have a master trait.

Chrono and Reaper are two sides of a coin. One will shine for damage only with little group utility, and the other might as well not do any damage because you’re only there for the quickness/alacrity as even a warrior in knight’s gear can outdamage a mesmer in berzerker gear. Mesmer currently already does even less damage than a necromancer.

So if you like being a WoW vanilla totem/blessing bot ala shaman/paladin, you’ll enjoy Chrono as its mechanics currently stand.

I have a feeling many necromancers will stay reaper despite their complaints because at least your reaper has some modicum of self sufficiency and a mechanic that doesn’t evaporate in the presence of aoe/cleave.

Now, if they can flip Soul Eater with Deathly Chill, it’d be great.

Robert Gee.9246:

Zenith.7301:

Stop=/= degen.

If the rate at which the degen happens does not overcome the rate at which the bar recovers, it is not stopping.

And the degen is pathetic to be honest. Did you even play the last beta weekend event? This solution was already in it, and my chills hardly contributed to a broken bar.

I want to correct a few misconceptions here:

1. Not all defiant bars have regen, in these cases soft CC will degen the bar as long as they are up until broken.
2. This new system was not present in BWE2, it is new as of BWE3.

Hm, strange, doing the personal story on my necromancer I did not use Infusing Terror against the champion, so I mostly camped greatsword auto and grave digger.

Maybe the ranged NPC’s applied some CC of their own I did not notice.

Question, did blind work on defiance bars in BWE2? Because I did use Nightfall and I recall you guys doing the announcement on blinds way before the other soft CC’s.