Guild Wars 2

Just erase retaliation (it has no place on a class like mesmer and is virtually useless in Pve).

Either reduce the boon interval to 5 seconds or make it pulse 2 different boons every 10 seconds.

Necro was only ever strong in closed beta before release, just as Ranger was.

They both got nerfed to hell and never recovered.

Jerus.4350:

Zenith.7301:

Jerus.4350:

Zenith.7301:

Prophet.1584:

GS is perfectly viable and the dps loss is negligible at best since the last patch. it would still be a good idea to learn sword andh ow to play within the bounds of how it works. use gs in situations where the leap could kill you like harpy fractal. dagger oh evades break the leap animation so you could use that until you’re used to it. and turn off auto attack.

The DPS difference is not negligible. Stop this myth.

It’s a convenient weapon to use over 1h sword, but it’s a notable DPS loss.

Is it? Like do you have math to back that up? From what I remember before update it was 17% less damage, much of that attributed to PO and the cripple up time on auto. So I’m curious to see the math as I’d imagine that gap would have shrank with Remorseless.

The 17% figure was BEFORE the advent of PO. Search some of Dojo’s posts and about 2 years ago there was somebody else who also did the math.

2 years is quite a while ago. I was going from right after PO was put in asking those DnT folks with their maths and all that jazz.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/16060384-greatsword

Source, got one for me?

There is no math in that link you provided, by the way. Look up Dojo, I’m not gonna do a search for a 1+year old post of his or the other guy’s older posts on this terrible forum’s search engine.

I just wouldn’t be complaining about Revenants. They’re weak.

They will be no ele or thief or warrior or guardian, that’s for sure.

Lumin Arius.6952:

http://massivelyop.com/2015/08/12/exclusive-guild-wars-2-revenant-elite-spec-is-the-herald/

Maybe it’s just me, but I felt we needed defiance bar for Reaper. I could be wrong.

I don’t know about you, but that breakbar seems more of a liability when being trained.

A mesmer alone with mantra of distraction and diversion might break it, stunning you for 2 seconds ond putting 25% extra damage done to you while stunned.

Jerus.4350:

Zenith.7301:

Prophet.1584:

GS is perfectly viable and the dps loss is negligible at best since the last patch. it would still be a good idea to learn sword andh ow to play within the bounds of how it works. use gs in situations where the leap could kill you like harpy fractal. dagger oh evades break the leap animation so you could use that until you’re used to it. and turn off auto attack.

The DPS difference is not negligible. Stop this myth.

It’s a convenient weapon to use over 1h sword, but it’s a notable DPS loss.

Is it? Like do you have math to back that up? From what I remember before update it was 17% less damage, much of that attributed to PO and the cripple up time on auto. So I’m curious to see the math as I’d imagine that gap would have shrank with Remorseless.

The 17% figure was BEFORE the advent of PO. Search some of Dojo’s posts and about 2 years ago there was somebody else who also did the math.

Jerus.4350:

Zenith.7301:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

deSade.9437:

I don’t give a kitten about “prestige” and about how other people [I don’t know] perceive me in game based on what I’m currently wearing. I think all the legendaries I have don’t mean kitten, I simply grinded for them because I wanted the skins really badly, and I’m embarassed when people express admiration at the “dedication” I put on them – likewise, I feel ashamed when they shoot me down by saying stuff like “you have too much time on your hands” or “ugggh, eternity, it’s so common, EVERYONE has it!”. I am flattered, though, when people compliment me on my dyes choice, my fitting character theme or any skillful use of cheap armors/weapons.
I want to look cool, but I do it for myself (and my friends’ approval, I suppose). I want to wear cool stuff, stuff I deem cool.
Got a problem with that?

Yeah, but you can denounce world problems like China making imitations of Louis Vuitton bags. Some people will always care about the prestige that they worked hard for and paid tons of money on can be bought cheaply by others.

If anything it’s a demonstration of the stupidity of people. A piece of clothing costing thousands of dollars when the materials and labor to make it don’t come close to approaching said value shows what sheep people are.

People who live and die by brand deserve to be scammed.

So you’re saying you never make an initial judgement on someone based on their appearance? You see someone dressed in basketball shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops and a guy dressed in a tailored suit and think they’re likely the same type of person? if so you’re a saint.

There’s a reason you go to a job interview in formal attire. There’s a reason most businesses require their employees (or at least those that deal with clients) to be clean shaven (this being either totally clean or at least well groomed, no big bushy beards).

First impressions mean something. Showing that you have something overly expensive usually gives the impression that you have money and style, or at the very least that you understand the impression it does have on some people. It’s a sign of social awareness.

You must not work in a scientific or computer science environment then. Our scientists interviewed not with a suit but casual attire, they come into work with their little balding head and stray, standing hair bits.

They’re not exactly a pleasant sight, but you don’t hire people to be models or mannequins. You hire them for what’s in their head and because they can get the job done.

No, I don’t make assumptions about people for something as superficial as how they dress.

Most hip hop music moguls who are now millionaires dressed in parachute-sized shirts and extravagant, socially abnormal regalia, as did most musicians. Their dressing habits did little to inform you of their terrific brand management and sales skills.

It’s a total waste to evaluate people through irrelevant parameters to what you are actually looking for.

Just because people have been doing something stupid for a long time does not justify its use. Social conventions can and do change.

D/P #3 has a rather visible animation/projectile trail. There’s no reason he should be hitting you with it unless he does it stealthed to queue a backstab before the shot connects and teleports him to you.

You should also have time to remove the blind with a simple autoattack and if he’s autoattacking you he’s basically shatter fodder.

Outlasting thieves is a bad idea, you have to be aggressive because by the nature of initiative and their resets, their defensive and offensive skills are on shorter cooldowns than yours.

If a thief notices you’re trying to prolong, he’ll just keep resetting till he runs you out of key cooldowns before he does his real burst.

Counterburst the living crap out of them. On your mantra of distraction daze, pack as much damage as you can to force his defensive cd’s.

sword/sword is a particular set that shines against a thief, as does offhand pistol so make sure you have one of those.

Prophet.1584:

GS is perfectly viable and the dps loss is negligible at best since the last patch. it would still be a good idea to learn sword andh ow to play within the bounds of how it works. use gs in situations where the leap could kill you like harpy fractal. dagger oh evades break the leap animation so you could use that until you’re used to it. and turn off auto attack.

The DPS difference is not negligible. Stop this myth.

It’s a convenient weapon to use over 1h sword, but it’s a notable DPS loss.

IrisTheCasual.3742:

deSade.9437:

I don’t give a kitten about “prestige” and about how other people [I don’t know] perceive me in game based on what I’m currently wearing. I think all the legendaries I have don’t mean kitten, I simply grinded for them because I wanted the skins really badly, and I’m embarassed when people express admiration at the “dedication” I put on them – likewise, I feel ashamed when they shoot me down by saying stuff like “you have too much time on your hands” or “ugggh, eternity, it’s so common, EVERYONE has it!”. I am flattered, though, when people compliment me on my dyes choice, my fitting character theme or any skillful use of cheap armors/weapons.
I want to look cool, but I do it for myself (and my friends’ approval, I suppose). I want to wear cool stuff, stuff I deem cool.
Got a problem with that?

Yeah, but you can denounce world problems like China making imitations of Louis Vuitton bags. Some people will always care about the prestige that they worked hard for and paid tons of money on can be bought cheaply by others.

If anything it’s a demonstration of the stupidity of people. A piece of clothing costing thousands of dollars when the materials and labor to make it don’t come close to approaching said value shows what sheep people are.

People who live and die by brand deserve to be scammed.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It seems the argument for the current RNG system is that the game is so casual there are no other forms of prestige, so taking this one away leaves the game with nothing (PvE-wise).

IMO this is not too far from the truth. I’ve found that a lot of people enjoy the skins precisely because of the suffering they had to go through to get them. It’ll be interesting to see how people view these skins once they’re easier to get.

In any case, I think something that might’ve worked is to have the RNG ease up as you do more runs — so you’d have more chance to get a skin the more runs you do. This would be secret to the players of course — so they feel like they finally hit the jackpot instead of having had the skin handed to them.

It’s a typical psychological trick. But don’t be fooled, that relief/surge you get from when the RNG favors you is as much a product of being done with bad luck and a game withholding something from you.

I’m a big proponent of not lengthening a game with tedium substituting for actual content.

If you are skilled enough to beat any game in 20 hours instead of 60 hours, for example, there’s nothing wrong. A game should only gate you by giving you a skill check. Busywork grinds on content that has long grown stale for you are not good content. In that case you might ask yourself why you’re playing a game that assigns you activities that resemble chores.

I think in this sense pvp players are rather privileged as unlike pve players, they can generate their own spontaneous content while we PvE players need to wait until Anet realizes it’s been 3 years of no meaningful updates to dungeons. So all the pve players have to keep themselves busy is the skins/aesthetics grinds.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m at 18/19 after an excruciatingly long time of trying to get them all, and I’m happy with whatever cost they put just so I can finish it off. That said, I was hoping for around 30 pristines for each skin, so I think 20 is a bit low, but that’s not a big deal. Don’t delude yourselves into thinking 50+ is a reasonable number, however.

I do want to dispel this notion that “prestige is dumb”, however. Prestige matters a lot, and even if RNG is a factor (or the only factor), it plays hugely into how “cool” a person feels and how “cool” other people think that person is. It doesn’t matter if you can throw 2g worth of rares in the MF and score Dusk, when you see someone with Twilight you make certain assertions about their wealth, their status, their time playing the game, so on. Maybe you, specifically, don’t, but a lot of new players absolutely will. That feeling is what prestige buys you, and maybe Fractal weapons are all RNG and you can get them all in 19 back-to-back runs of L29, but when newer players see them they carry certain weight. The number of times in different game formats people go “Wow those weapons are so cool, you must have played a ton to earn those!” to me over my wielding all Fractal weapon skins is astounding, even after I explain that they’re RNG.

So please, don’t make insane claims like “prestige doesn’t matter”. Malediktus is not necessarily communicating efficiently to make the case, but the case is there regardless that prestige matters. This is why ANet is taking the suggestion to have higher tier Fractal weapons that really will serve as elite skins for people to “Ooh” and “Aah” over, this is why they’re adding the Fractal legendary backpack, and so forth. The Fractal skins we have now will carry some small prestige weight, but will be nothing by comparison to the new stuff. That’s the whole point.

I don’t think prestige is dumb. I think the idea of designing a game around bragging and basing your enjoyment on some perceived superiority is dumb, especially when that superiority is not skill-based.

GWAMM is prestige. A spvp tournament champ with his tournament rankings and finishers is prestige. It’s good to feel proud of your accomplishments, but asking that a game not fix kittenty RNG just so you can feel special is stupid.

For every person obsessed about how others perceive them, there’s someone who could quite frankly not care any less. They play this game to have pretty characters with pretty effects in gameplay they find fun, and others’ positions relative to them has no bearing on their enjoyment/goals for the game. And they don’t appreciate arbitrary barriers to what they play the game for, aesthetics.

Soilder.3607:

Zenith.7301:

Soilder.3607:

Barrage deals significantly more damage than rapid fire, albeit in a longer span of time. The one thing that bothers me most on this forum is when people say barrage is weak, because it absolutely isn’t. Will it be weak against a PVD Guardian with protection and blocks? Sure, but so too will be any AoE. If you use the skill against anyone who isn’t a super tank and they stand in it, they will take heavy damage.

Yes, retaliation will hurt you. But oh well, its not like we’re necessary in zergs anyway.

See, this is why we need DPS meters in this game, some people can’t weigh the value of skills properly.

Barrage is a stationary skill with three times the cooldown of rapid fire, and it’s a non-mobile channeled ability whose damage is tied to a zone.

Barrage has longer effective cd than meteor shower and it’s by all means worse as an aoe skill.

And we’re not just talking zergs, on larger hitbox bosses meteor shower takes a dump on barrage.

Ok, everyone is aware that meteor shower is the better skill. That does not make barrage a bad skill by any means. And everything you said about barrage also applies to meteor shower. However, the question that should be asked is is meteor shower too good? Which it very well may be.

Should we do a cross comparison of Maul and Arcing Slice as well? One deals significantly more damage than the other.

Arcing Slice is a stupid comparison. Arcing Slice has a side effect and is a burst skill, which gives 15 seconds of fury.

Arcing Slice on a 100% health target does 448 tooltip damage with a 1.2 coefficient. It gives 15 seconds of fury.

Maul does 434 with a 1.5 coefficient. Seems better? 7 vulnerability stacks for 8 seconds is less of an upgrade to 15 seconds of fury.

Except you forgot Arcing slice on a target below 50% health does 672 tooltip damage with a whopping coefficient of 1.8, much better than maul at that point.

And we’re talking about maul, an ability that has reaper levels of slow wind up animation and is one of the easiest attacks to dodge in the game.

Now compare Maul to Whirling Wrath, and Maul comes out total garbage, it’s not even a competition.

What’s more, in your comparison you’re missing that maul comes on a weapon with horrendously bad autoattack damage. The warrior and guardian greatswords do significantly more damage on their autoattacks to complement their skills, meaning they do more sustained damage.

Ele with fireball+lava font does much more sustained damage than a long range shot+rapid fire sustained DPS test, and it’s not dependent on the target’s range relative to you. Which means the ele can stack with closer groups to might stack, whereas the ranger gets a decreasing autoattack damage if they join the stack for boons.

Ele is not lacking for anything, and meteor shower isn’t too good. ranger skills and their amount of hybrid weapons with no group utility are TOO BAD. They need buffing, period.

There’s a reason why rangers are the least wanted class in general across the game formats. Necro is worse in PvE, but on a better representation and position in spvp and WvW. A well bombing necro is taking over a ranger without even blinking.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Soilder.3607:

Ok, everyone is aware that meteor shower is the better skill. That does not make barrage a bad skill by any means. And everything you said about barrage also applies to meteor shower. However, the question that should be asked is is meteor shower too good? Which it very well may be.

Should we do a cross comparison of Maul and Arcing Slice as well? One deals significantly more damage than the other.

Any ability we have will stay an inferior version of other classes’ ones. Because we need to be cut down thanks to our pets.
It’s just how this class development works. No one’s satisfied with it. We can only adapt.

But this isn’t even true. The pet penalty only applies to our power based weapons and coefficients for some stupid reason, while our conditions do just as much damage as everyone else’s.

That’s why condi rangers have been more prevalent in general, because they don’t pay the dumb pet tax. Remove the pet tax from our power weapons and give us better utility, and we’ll be in a better spot.

I think the only weapon that’s power based that doesn’t pay so much a tax is the longbow, and that’s why it’s the most popular ranger power based weapon. It’s our power weapon that’s closest to other classes’ power weapons.

Soilder.3607:

Barrage deals significantly more damage than rapid fire, albeit in a longer span of time. The one thing that bothers me most on this forum is when people say barrage is weak, because it absolutely isn’t. Will it be weak against a PVD Guardian with protection and blocks? Sure, but so too will be any AoE. If you use the skill against anyone who isn’t a super tank and they stand in it, they will take heavy damage.

Yes, retaliation will hurt you. But oh well, its not like we’re necessary in zergs anyway.

See, this is why we need DPS meters in this game, some people can’t weigh the value of skills properly.

Barrage is a stationary skill with three times the cooldown of rapid fire, and it’s a non-mobile channeled ability whose damage is tied to a zone.

Barrage has longer effective cd than meteor shower and it’s by all means worse as an aoe skill.

And we’re not just talking zergs, on larger hitbox bosses meteor shower takes a dump on barrage.

Redemer.2601:

Zenith.7301:

I dont know how you use your Barrage but I use it to apply cripple from range and do some dmg to easier pick ppl of since I run pos and while its true that it doesnt do so much dmg U have to take into account that like so mant other Ranger weapons it only has one other attack other then aa that is meant to deal dmg while the rest is for utility

Which is why elementalists and necromancers, and even engineers are so much more beneficial to your group.

But I guess ranger earns the bearbow title for a reason, it attracts those kinds of players who just want to sit at max range and selfishly plinks away at a target or two out of a larger group.

There are classes far better equipped to eliminate single targets reliably anyways. The ranger is just a middle ground between a mesmer/thief and a necro/ele.

Single target ranged damage dealer (which ele does better in pve anyways since lava font+fireball is superior ranged damage on stationary targets, so ranger only shines in pvp) in a game that’s all about AOE and cleave.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

if you die to retaliation , you used the barrage wrong by placing it directly on the zergs head, a mistake most new rangers or less experienced rangers make.

the focus is still peeling targets off the zerg or group by using CC’s , PbS at angles of attack to create a gap , then using barrage to slow Multipul targets from regrouping forcing leaps , if the leaps or escapes are out of sycn with the zerg in hand they will from that point always be slightly behind or lacking the Utility off cooldown to regroup , overall it creates a enviroment of pressure.

and dropping a barrage into a group tanked up with all the boons under the sun before peeling a target or two off just does nothing , its blocked, aegis’d , blinded ect ect

unlike DH LB it is a direct Weapon and its slow is pay off for true shot being a single hit , high power = less retaliation but the down side again .

its slow though the DH LB 5 immobilises which again shouldn’t be used on a zerg head ether , its like a Ranger using Entangle on the flanks without having to be in Range to use it, then single Targeting the mark down .

using the DH leap to repostion ect ect

if ranger was not susceptible or influenced by retaliation combined with quick draw they could pump out consistant Cripple + RF’s and quickness AA’s with lead the wind + piercing attacks ,retaliation is more of a way to deter High pressure Ranged attacks of a quick pace .

those good rangers use bleeds on Barrage to cover up the cripple+Vun and ontop of that use Weakness or Refined poisons to add on a extra junk condition that way they can’t cure the cripple so easly as it is just reapplied.

and im sure by now rangers got enough Hp sustain to survive some or most of a retaliation spike from a feedback of RF/barrage, being killed by retaliation only effects those that still build for Full beserker gear with no extra Hp while using Troll ugent to regen hp with boon regeneration ontop with no means to Spike heal a chunk of Hp which is why most power builds suggest to use timbre+HaO for a chunk heal.

the DH LB and ranger LB are theoretically the same type of skills , CC prevention>spike>escape

though DH does it with immobilise>true shot with minimal traiting
and Ranger does LB , Muddy terrain > barrage > RF > f2(fear) the difference here is still the class mechanics the weapons themselfs at the core function the same.

Who said anyone was dying to retaliation? Do you people even read? I said the damage from barrage to a target does less damage than retaliation does to you.

This is not up for debate. Barrage has horrendous damage coefficients, there’s a reason why meteor shower is a thing in pve being a channeled cast, and barrage being also a channeled cast isn’t.

You can talk about peeling, but if a group is that kittened to spread apart and not pay attention to a ranger barraging a backline or back flank, they’ve got bigger problems than barrage.

But by all means show me all those high ranked GvG matches of organized guilds using rangers and what that ratio of rangers per high ranked team compares to other ranged and melee builds/classes.

Problem being your condi reaper, who pays in a minor for the privilege to equip a greatsword, doesn’t even make use of it. So you’re essentially trading shrouds. It’s a weird choice because the condi necromancer is more of a midliner or sits at elevations instead of wanting to swoop into melee range on reaper shroud to take advantage of the synergies you proposed.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I generally agree with these suggestions. A few points:

— Gravedigger (Greatsword 2) also needs its aftercast animation reduced. 100% reduction is useless if you end up having to hang there for a second anyway.

— Death Spiral (Greatsword 3) is pretty decent in its current state. It’s more as a LF generator and a Vulnerability applier than a nuke. If it needs a buff, it should be to one of those aspects. Leave heavy damage to the autoattack and Gravedigger spam.

— Grasping Darkness (Greatsword 5) needs a faster animation and more range. In its current state, you can dodge it by walking away. If the Reaper is going to be difficult to get away from, our grab needs to much more effective at facilitating that.

— Chill of Death: I actually think the low condition damage scaling is kinda a good thing here. Greatsword is clearly a power weapon and the Reaper in general is more for power builds than for condition damage. As such, it makes sense not to bait Conditionmancers with damaging Chills. Just give it appropriate base numbers as an extra source of damage for power/tanky Reapers and leave the scaling low.

— "You are all Weakling!”: I actually don’t see the point in increasing the number of Might stacks. Reapers already pretty much swim in free Might a few extra stacks seem like overkill. If this shout needs a buff, maybe the Weakness could be longer or you could get an extra stack of Stability or two.

— Chilled to the Bone: This could also use a lower cooldown. 120 seconds is really obscene.

Other than that, a nice list of changes.

I always thought you’re all weaklings should apply slow but given that slow is useless in PvE due to not working against mobs with a breakbar, i’d be ok with quickness instead.

Increase weakness duration and grant the necromancer 6 seconds of quickness+ 1 second per target hit.

I still think cast times on shouts are just dumb and need to go away or the shouts need to do enough damage to override the damage loss of not autoattacking in the meantime.

Just swap Deathly Chill with Relentless pursuit and retool Relentless pursuit for a GM. PVE necromancers have no viable adept trait with the nerf to chilling nova.

Make deathly Chill scale with power. Reaper uses power centric weapons and is a power centric spec, condition damage scaling traits have no place in the line.

Change Cold shoulder so it also gives 10% bonus damage against targets afflicted with a condition. we need damage modifier traits.

Scrap Shivers of Dread, it’s a terrible minor and completely useless in PvE. If you really want to keep it, make it so fear stuns the target in place and chills them after it wears off. That way fear can be used in PvE.

An alternative is that you can bake in relentless pursuit into a minor and move soul eater there in its place. Quite frankly you can make it so shroud knight grants relentless pursuit, which in addition gives the necromancer 25% movement speed built in. Or merge it with shivers of dread or cold shoulder and put the 10% damage modifier against foes afflicted with a condition on the minor trait that isn’t merged with relentless pursuit.

Relentless Pursuit, Shivers of Dread, Chilling Nova, Soul Eater, and Deathly Chill are just really underbudget in PvE.

Can’t you replace Relentless Pursuit with a group utility aura granting 10% attack speed? Necromancers need group utility badly.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Khristophoros.7194:

Knighthonor.4061:

Only the cast time on Dagger 2&3.
Dagger is our Life Force generator.

GS "supposed"to be our AoE dps weapon.

GS has a blind+cripple pulse, a 5 target pull+poison, chill on autoattack chain, and a burst 12 vulnerability.

Of course most of those need buffs to various properties like cast time, area, duration, etc… but the mechanics of the GS are much more than just an AoE weapon.

I think for AoE damage we’re supposed to use Reaper’s Shroud tbh.

Of course the GS still needs to do more damage than it currently does but I think dagger should still do more than the GS auto chain. Gravedigger spam on a target below 50% should do more DPS than the dagger chain though.

Honestly disagree on that statement. The dagger auto chain is nice for the damage, but it’s primary goal is generating reliable life force on a single target. And you can match it with warhorn for added LF generation and swiftness.

The GS AA and gravedigger should be able to beat out the damage of dagger. And it’s life force generation should work well against multiple foes, which it does, it’s just getting them in range to hit them. I think it’d be nice to have a cripple on AA chain 2, and I would honestly love it if the GS 3 had a longer range and functioned more as a long range poke/LF generator. And it’d be nice if nightfall was ground targetable, but then it’d just be straight up better than Well of darkness…which right now it already beats it by a wide margin. Ohhhh poor well of darkness.

Well of darkness as well as all wells really need to go down to 25-30 second cd baseline. Dark fields also need buffing, or change them to more useful smoke fields for stealth blast.

Comboed with an ele’s meteor shower or a melee train, though, and keeping targets corralled in lethal aoe makes it an incredibly powerful skill. Which also goes with their group vigor symbol and projectile deflection shot behind their melee train to protect them as they go in.

And of course the guardian virtues, shouts, and traps make them have much better utility for a team.

People are only evaluating the bow, but the guardian gets to combo that bow with a hammer or greatsword that’s far more useful than the ranger’s side weapons (greatsword does crap damage relative to other greatswords, has laughably long and obvious telegraphs).

A longbow/hammer or longbow/greatsword DH just brings much more to his team than a ranger.

Then there’s the issue of traps. 25 stacks of vulnerability, 10 seconds of reveal. Those are real traps. If a ranger wants to go traps, he must go condi, which means he loses effectiveness with the longbow. the dragonhunter keeps his effectiveness with traps on a power build.

Condi ranger is absolutely horrendous for team/group combat, it has virtually no cleave outside traps, and no range. going for traps also involves sacrificing defensive tools since unlike a guardian a ranger does not come with built in blind and aegis/blocks throghout all his weapons.

Blighter’s Boon is basically niche crap, only gets good on a zerg fight where ironically you are at your weakest with no teleports/stealth/invulnerability/self healing.

It’s the same with greatsword, they basically repeated the same mistake they did with axe and scepter. Tying life force generation to a single attack source is just bad, if you get cc’d/enemy dodges that attack, you generate no life force.

Staff with marks trait should have been the baseline for other weapons. Your autoattack generates a bulk of your life force, but your other skills also generate some. Signet of Vampirism also wouldn’t be so terrible if they reduced the ICD to 0.5 seconds and let it generate 0.5-1% LF per proc.

The strength of life transfer as well is that it required no conal facing, it hit everything around you, it hit stealthed targets so thieves couldn’t just stealth without punishment until your DS ran out, etc.

Knighthonor.4061:

Only the cast time on Dagger 2&3.
Dagger is our Life Force generator.

GS "supposed"to be our AoE dps weapon.

A weapon that’s only for aoe dps is a worthless weapon in a game where other classes’ single target weapons (staff ele, warrior greatsword, guardian greatsword, engineer grenades) also do their AoE for them.

GS needs to do competitive DPS with staff ele/GS warrior/thief.

And guess what, not even dagger necro competes with those. So if GS is less DPS than dagger, few people will use it.

Especially since reaper shroud already is our aoe option.

Justine.6351:

And factcheck, longbow has barrage which is indeed large aoe…this is ofcoarse not counting piercing arrows.

Large AOE that does more damage to the ranger via retaliation tics than the tickling damage barrage actually does to people.

The whole reason people are praising Ranger Bow is for rapid fire on the move. In terms of aoe and group utility the DH is better.

dodgerrule.8739:

Rangers are and will always remain as the main strength of ranged combat for bows. The range on longbows goes beyond 1500.

Wow, 1500 range, so “good”. If only it could AoE worth a kitten in the very format where meteor shower and lava font is king instead of a 8-12k rapid fire on a single target out of 6/10/20+ people.

It’s almost like people don’t realize a 1500 camping ranger makes his shots easier to dodge/react to than a 1200 range ranger. It must be lovely to plink brainlessly at upscales and call it the best ranged class when GvG events stack staff elementalists over a ranger any time of the day.

Foefaller.1082:

The balance between Reaper GS and Necro Dagger I want to see is something kinda like Warrior GS and Axe- 1h weapon technically has the better dps with it’s AA chain, but the GS’s larger range and burst skills keep it competitive, especially for trash mobs or taking advantage of weapon swapping. Right now it’s not there, the GS doesn’t have enough good abilities (3 and 4 are pretty, but 2 is weak for it’s cast time and 5 is just unwieldy) to justify having a weaker AA chain that dagger. I’d like to see a shorter cast time on the final strike of the AA chain as well, the importance of chill for Reaper is just too great to have to depend on such a slow attack the majority of the time.

As for shouts, YAAW is actually pretty good, with it’s might stacking and AoE weakness, as well as having a shorter base cooldown than any other Necro stunbreak. In fact, the only stunbreak that I think I would prefer over YAAW is Plague Signet, and that’s only for pvp (and this is a PvE feedback thread) “Chilled to the Bone!” is a pretty good elite too, but could use a shorter cast time and cooldown. Other than that, the biggest change should be making the rest of the Reaper shouts more like “Nothing Can Save You!”, having a larger chunk of their effects become baseline, and less emphasis in having to hit 3+ targets to make the skill worthwhile. YAAW should always give might, “Your Soul is Mine!” should generate Life force on it’s own (or at least more life force with the first target) and “Rise!” and “Suffer!” should always spawn at least one minon and remove at least one conditon, respectively.

The problem with the warrior comparison is that mainhand axe does more damage than necro mainhand dagger, and it cleaves 3 targets instead of dagger’s puny 2 targte cleave.

The mainhand axe also has eviscerate.

People use Warrior greatsword for trait reasons: it might stacks, which is a central focus of phalanx Strength.

Necro dagger cannot be a baseline for comparison because necro dagger is BAD even relative to other classes.

Dagger skills 2-3 just need buffing, period. Dagger 1 could also afford to have secondary effects besides just life generation, like stealing endurance on last hit, giving Dark Pact a 1/2 sec cast time and making it inflict 10 stacks of vulnerability or provide the necro with super speed when dark pact lands.

Dagger should hit 3 targets. 2 targets is stupid when the weapon doesn’t even provide single target damage output comparable to a thief D/D or elementalist staff or warrior GS.

Make life siphon work like Death shroud #4, reduce its cast time to condense the damage in a shorter cast just like rapid Fire got its fix, and make it a 600 range aoe sustain skill.

A lot of necromancer weapons need serious buffing.

If we allow necro dagger to be the baseline by which our class is balanced, we’re screwed because PvE necro has been terrible for 3 years with dagger, and an addition of a greatsword that’s just as mediocre or only better at aoe is going to keep the necromancer in the place it has.

The reaper traitline needs revamps as well to support pve with damage modifier increase traits and group utility. All this chill/fear centric pvp crap traits won’t do. Shouts are dead in the water for pve, wells do anything they do better and provide group support.

Xstein.2187:

Sounds good to me. I suppose it could be useful if you don’t take signet of inspiration with enough shatter uptime. I haven’t tried it yet with a dps style build over chronophantasma. I’ll agree to leave the trait as it is. Added edit above.

p.s. wow I actually never even thought about using it with illusionary inspiration. This is cool. Your definitely right. Please leave the trait the same lol, my bad. Trait synergy for the win. Dueling/Inspiration/Chron oooo so excited, why didn’t I think of this.

For pvp yeah.

For pve, it’s sort of a waste to go into dueling with the worthless grandmaster traits. Mantras are out thanks to the horrendous pvp centric change and the bad Harmonious mantras.

I’d stick to domination for the 12.5% damage modifier to vulnerable targets+ 15% increased illusion damage.

Yeah, the domination minors still suck in pve thanks to interrupts having longish cooldowns relative to trait effect durations and most champion/boss mobs having definace/break bar making the traits useless as interrupts don’t drigger the traits if they are consumed by break bar/defiance stacks.

But 15% increased illusion damage+12.5% extra damage against vuln stacked targets beats fury on phantasms, fencer finesse.
.
Dueling seems overrated unless you really want vigor on crits.

Curunen.8729:

Personally I don’t believe such distinction exists anymore.

Illusions (both clones and phantasms), shatters, weapons and utility skills are all used in conjunction with one another for the purpose of dealing damage, supporting allies and controlling enemies. I believe every build should make use of all of these features in order to be most efficient – with each build emphasising different features, but not at the expense of ignoring the primary Mesmer class skill of shatters.

I believe Anet has done the right thing in encouraging everyone to use Shatter skills – with varying frequency and purpose, rather than being able to ignore them with past builds.

If shatters were not meant to be the primary class skills of mesmers, then all illusion generating skills (phantasms especially) should have been put on the F1 to F4 buttons, with shatters being tied to weapon sets or utilities. But they’re not.

It’s a shame it conflicts with PvE bullet sponge design at the moment, but I hope that’s something they can work out in the future, starting with HoT.

There is NO problem with shatters in PvE intrinsically, it’s that their output in PvE needs to be high to the point it would break for PvP.

Until they don’t split skill balancing between pvp/pve or make phantasms count for but not be consumed by shatters, shatters will remain underused in PvE.

If Mind Wrack’s damage with 3 illusions did more damage than 3-4 attacks from 3 phantasms in PvE, people wouldn’t mind Mindwrack.

That doesn’t fix diversion or cry of frustration or distortion, however. The DPS cost of using utility shatters is too high for pve relative to the rate you can summon phantasms prior to the chronophantasm+persistence of memory combo.

They just really messed up with making phantasms damage sources instead of utility sources. they need to grab the damage from phantasms and transfer it to mesmer autoattack and blurred frenzy/scepter3 and staff auto/staff 5 and greatsword 1-3 to fix the issue.

Make all phantasms all about utility, like iduelist could be up and counter the next 3-4 attacks made against the group/etc.

Then mesmers could have their buffed autoattack damage/blurred frenzy and shatters for damage and not be so crushed whenever a phantasm dies immediately to PVE AOE because you have both phantasms and clones as sources for shatter and shattering them doesn’t cost you DPS.

Illusions should be about utility, shattering them and using our other weaponskills for damage.

It would also solve pvp issues by toning the burst of 2 phantasm spikes+mindwrack while raising the mediocre sustained damage of a mesmer.

Justine.6351:

Zenith.7301:

Dueling/roaming is a virtually useless activity, it contributes nothing to your realm compared to larger skirmishes and objectives.

Pretty hard to have upgraded keeps/towers without camps/yaks. Even harder if your scouts can’t get between objectives without being killed.

Which are pretty much covered by zergs/larger skirmish groups.

That you think 1v1/roaming duelists are doing any meaningful contribution to objectives other than yak killing is hilarious.

1v1 people are in it for the ego boost. There’s good reason for the overflow of mesmer/thief/ele in WvW roaming, they’re the top 1v1 specs.

Making shouts functional and good on a single target and making the aoe component just a bonus should be a primary goal in their subsequent balance passes.

No skill should be weak/useless if there are less people around, because this is exactly the scenario with PvE bosses.

Also, the minors are garbage for PvE. Cold Shoulder is not good in PvE since it does not provide offense or group utility, the whole idea of tanking hits in PvE is flawed.

Shivers of dread is horrendously bad for PvE. Nobody fears mobs in PvE, and for good reason since it displaces the mobs away from the clumped AoE/Cleave of your group.

The Adept and Grandmaster are…..bad. Chilling Nova was the only PvE relevant trait, it was already mediocre and is now nerfed into obsolescence in that format. The other two adepts are worthless in a PvE dungeon setting.

Of the grandmasters, only the 15% attack speed in reaper shroud is of PvE relevance, and it relies on reaper shroud being a damage increase above all other sources in PvE if it is to have any value, making reapers want to stay in reaper shroud. Blighter’s Boon is simply bad for PvE, minuscule heals/life force gains amount to little of worth. Won’t even mention the other one as it’s the worst of them all.

I can only hope they’ll take surgical measures with necromancer. They keep trying to make it a chill based class when it in fact has low chill uptimes on PvE relevant, non gimmick builds, chill is useless in PvE for the most part, and Necromancer weapons are still weak across the board as is their damage and group utility.

And for a class that was in such dire need for group utility, they give wimpy selfish shouts instead while the elementalist gets the more powerful, target count independent shouts that boost their allies….

Malediktus.9250:

Prestige sells in capitalism. Why do you think a lot of people trade 100s of currency to gems to trade for gold to buy legendaries with it? Or some super expensive Apple Watch in real life. The whole luxury good industry just works on the principle that people want things other people cannot have.

It is a psycholigical thing.

In GW2’s case everyone can grind or try to beat the RNG, but not everyone can be the most skilled person ever. And since Anet wants GW2 to be casual friendly we have to live with this kind of prestige.

I spent 200 bucks on gem store to get the remaining dreamthistle weapons I was missing BECAUSE I LIKE THEM, I LIKE HOW THEY LOOK. I LIKE WHEN MY CHARACTER LOOKS GOOD.

How hard is it for you to understand that not everyone is as petty as you, deriving enjoyment just from seeing things denied to others.

Capitalism isn’t about what others can’t have. You have a really twisted idea of human motivation and hierarchy.

It is only false if you evaluate reflection uptime by sources instead of the practical translations of it into content that matters, i.e. fractal 50. Harder dungeons. Your entire point hinges on iwarden functioning as advertised, except that just like with mesmer DPS in general you don’t get those lala land golden scenarios of high phantasm uptime, be it because phantasms in melee range are usually killed immediately or the target they’re cast on dies in a trash pull, ending the phantasm early while other targets are up.

Mesmers are only brought for portal, otherwise people bring a guardian. It’s that simple.

Esplen.3940:

So… your point is that Mesmers have less reflect than Guardians, but suddenly because it’s stationary (just like WoR), it’s worse?

Oh, and then you talk about projectile absorb and bring up summons, but Wardens both absorb and reflect (depending on how you want to play it) with 100% uptime.

So Mesmers have more Reflect than Guardian and they have the same Absorb as Guardian (albeit the 100% Reflect/Absorb uptime requires ~20s of setup, during which you can maintain 100% Reflect via Curtain or double Feedback). If you maintain 100% Reflect/Absorb uptime, you’re also bringing significant DPS through both higher Reflect damage, constant DPS through Wardens, and then you can use any ability you desire on top of that.

So while Guardians may be more “mobile” due to lower skill cooldowns (although I’m not sure how a 40s WoR is shorter than a 32s Feedback) and able to position it anywhere (because, TC doesn’t exist, right?), but they can also Absorb projectiles, something Mesmers don’t have any access to, right?

Tl;dr: Now that Mimic is actually useful, can we stop saying that Mesmer is worse at Reflecting than Guardians when actually they aren’t?

PS: If you say: “Well Mes has to take 2 utilities”, you do realize FB is on a shorter CD than WoR without Mimic. And running Mimic in PvE is absolutely fine in regards to being (non speedrun) meta.

PPS: If you are talking about speedrun meta, Mesmer > Guard because Portal double Blink.

I don’t know how to respond to someone who says iwarden has 100% reflect uptime on anything other than Alpha, let alone fractal 50 bosses like archdiviner or mossman.

Temporal Curtain is a stupid retort, hardly anyone stacks against a wall nowadays,

Wall is stationary, but is placed relative to where the guardian chooses it, meaning he can place it on the group and waves of ranged mobs won’t be able to harm you, unlike feedback where you need an enemy in melee range to spawn the feedback bubble on the group.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wall_of_Reflection

Most Guardians take Master of Consecrations, which gives them a 12 sec duration wall on a 32 sec cd….

12 sec WoR vs. the 6-8 second (8 with temporal enchanter grandmaster) duration of feedback.

Without Temporal Enchanter, Mimic (90 sec cd)+ feedback is virtually the duration of of a traited WoR. With GM trait it is only 2 seconds longer every 90 second interval….

4 seconds longer every three feedback casts. Guardian is 4-6 seconds longer for every 2 our of 3 casts a mesmer does his feedback. Or 8-12 more seconds of reflection per mimic cycle.

Mesmer virtually relies on iwardens not being decimated by dungeon content to compete with guardian, so good luck with keeping wardens alive on any nonfaceroll gimmick boss or fractals.

And a guardian does not pay the heavy damage loss of using an inferior DPS phantasm to have access to competitive reflects.

Esplen.3940:

Guardians do not have better Reflect uptime than Mesmers anymore.

Before, they only beat out Mesmers due to the unreliability of Wardens and the low reflect (literally, it doesn’t have a very high y axis reflect) on Curtain.

Now, even without counting Focus, Mesmers beat out Guardians on Reflect, although they have to slot 2 Utilities, not 1.

GROUP reflect uptime. A guardian brings a low cd wall of reflection that is not enemy based so you can place it anywhere and enemy movement won’t affect its effectiveness.

Warden still dies immediately in fractal 50. Curtain still has elevation issues.

Are you counting mimic feedback? Because then you’re wasting another utility slot for similar uptime that a guardian gets with 1 skill.

Moreover, the guardian does not need to choose DPS lines that nerf his damage output or equip damage deficient weapons (like the mesmer focus) to bring his reflects.

And if we expand to not only reflection, but ABSORPTION, guardian has 100% uptime on projectile protection with wall and shield of the avenger. Mesmer does not.

And guardian does all this while doing warrior level DPS, while mesmer dps is even worse than necromancer.

Zelulose.8695:

Pets are viable they have taunt to force in their F2 attacks. They shouldn’t be unavoidable.

When the ranger has lower personal damage coefficients on every weapon that isn’t a longbow or conditions set (since unlike power weapons conditions don’t have lower coefficients to account for the pet)…..

You bet your kitten they should be unavoidable when greatsword and 1h sword do so much less autoattack/ability damage than other classes.

OlliX.1705:

punahou.3986:

Bhawb.7408:

About half of Reaper is solid or very easily adjustable as is. Reaper Shroud is great, almost all around, half the traits are solid, about 4/6 shouts are good. Its just Greatsword is really trash and so are some traits. Its all fixable though, very much so.

yes the gs concept is fixable, but do we feel that ANET will give it love? Im highly skeptical that they will.

Of course they will. What do you think a beta is for?

If you had any semblance of memory you would remember that it was from closed beta before release that ranger and necromancer were nerfed so viciously that they have remained the garbage classes of the game for 3 years that nobody wants in PvE at least.

Gav.1425:

I caught the first few min of MMO INKS on one of Teapot’s long-kitten videos and he said you could buy skins with 20 pristine in HOT. I don’t know if anyone can verify his or any source on this, but it brings up the discussion on how many pristines should a skin be worth?

Honestly, if it’s anything less than 100 pristine, I will flip my kitten and I know many players who feel the same way. If you disagree, think about how cool your weapon will be when every one has them all across Tyria. If you don’t get your desired weapon in the time you can farm 100 or 250 pristine, sure, buy it off the NPC, but don’t devalue the achievement of having our skins like this.

So, how many pristines should a skin be worth?

Personally, I say anything less than 100 is spitting in the face of all those who busted kitten to complete the set. just because content has been out for a while doesn’t mean you should give it out for free to anyone who runs a few dailies.

There was a time when PvP ranks weren’t worthless and seeing a shark or phoenix finisher would gather a crowd. It felt awesome to stomp a bunch of people in WvW and have pages of tells asking me how I got a shark or phoenix finisher. No one even had a dragon at the time. Now dragon finishers are trash and anyone who PvPs for over a month has it. That small change had many turn their backs on GW2 achievements and even the game all together. Don’t Obama all your good content.

I say 250.

In closing, don’t give me some crap about how normal frac skins could be for the casual fractal majority and how we should go chase the ghetto rap star golden re-skinned ones if we want to be extreme. If they add at least primary color options on the new skins, then we’ll talk (ie. New gold skin + blue token = Blue fractal skin in MF).

People like you puzzle me. If you can’t enjoy something because somebody else has it, you strike me as the kind of human being that should never be catered to.

As in, you base your enjoyment around what people don’t have relative to you as opposed to just worrying about what you have.

There’s a word for that kind of person but it would probably merit an infraction.

The value of fractal skins is the same as legendaries. One tells you someone grinded or bought gold, and the other is the result of RNG favor. Neither is really an expression of achievement via skill check.

Black Perception.1639:

Temp is a waste of a character slot. 10/10 would rather play OP mesmer since they are the flavor of the month. A-net doesnt even care that they are OP AF.
Temp just failed me completely.

lolololololol

staff ele is #1 in PvE

d/d and staff ele are #1 in WvW.

d/d ele is used in every spvp team, sometimes two of them.

But mesmer is “OP”.

Is nobody going to comment the total lack of support for DPS PvE traits? The greatsword as well as dagger gain very little from the adept and grandmaster traitlines.

The minors are all terrible for PvE. You don’t want to tank hits in PvE so could shoulder is bad….

Shivers of Dread is terrible. ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE FOR PVE. You don’t want to fear in PvE ever, as it spreads the mob stack and lessens your group’s cleave/aoe damage.

And quite honestly, a chill centric kit is of little use to PvE, where chill is useless because bosses pose the most dangers with their autoattacks, whose recharges is little, ad there are very few skills to be affected by chill.

Iavra.8510:

F5 -> F4 -> F3 -> F2 -> F1 -> F5 (or any other order, really, as long there’s F5 at both ends) while creating a new clone after every shatter is hardly counterable and puts the mesmer on 1 cd.

Hardly counterable? What is your opponent doing, waiting for every single shatter effect to go through and not using defensives/spamming aoe on you?

You’re in for a rude awakening when you go fight a half competent engineer…

It’s a 90 second cooldown, it’s already only useful for only Tie Warp x2 in PvE and you people want it nerfed….

Substance E.4852:

Zenith.7301:

To think I got my HoM points only to find out my black moa, white raven, and even black widow would never be used in PvE….

Wut?

There are many, many situations where a pet will evaporate in melee range. The only option then is either jungle/widow or the cave spider.

Birds may not have a higher dps over a long duration than a cat but they can front load a huge amount of damage when using the ravens’ to F2 immediately after they attack normally. I’ve seen mine easily pump out 7k+ damage to enemies that will be dead less than 3 seconds later anyway.

Drakes are the obvious choice for anything that emphasizes cleaves.

As far as the black moa goes, it’s ugly as sin and isn’t even rigged correctly. No big loss there.

There’s not a singe encounter where you can’t use a drake if your jaguar will get murdered, and that’s already a DPS loss.

Standard MM/Skirmish/BM build allows you to sub in drakes where jaguars die reliably. That already puts you behind other classes’ DPS in PvE.

If you’re using ranged pets in PvE, you’re gimping yourself and the group, period. I don’t think you people understand how much lower damage output any pet that isn’t a jaguar does.

Birds are crap. Burst=/= DPS. The birds’ attack speeds are much lower than a jaguar, they are putting out less DPS, proccing lesser bleeds (they crit less often due to less attacks per second, so your adept is worse).

In PvE, nothing competes with DPS. You bring in enough utility, but there’s a reason why eles are stacked. And it’s not glyph of sandstorm (thief can blind spam better). It’s not might stacking (warrior covers that by himself).

It’s the raw DPS output of meteor shower/ice bow and fireball+lava font. In PvE there is no greater utility than killing a boss faster to reduce the time of risk to the group.

In GW2 it’s so obvious, but even in WoW and MMO’s with the trinity you see competitive guilds trying to bring as few healers as they can so they can bring in more DPS.

Jackalrat.5493:

Dagger should not out melee DPS reaper IMO.

Here’s why: Dagger hits fast, procs more, and builds life force. Greatsword auto attack and Gravedigger need to be huge, slow burst with comparable DPS. It would really be stupid if Reaper didn’t at least do comparable melee DPS to current Necro.

Also, you kind of lost me at, “Dagger isn’t a good weapon.”

That’s because you’re a pvp player, as are most of the ignorant commenters in this thread.

PvP people never bother with DPS calculators or meters so they go off anecdote and believe their crappy autoattacks on a 12k hp target is any good.

Dagger DPS necro in PvE is only above mesmer and behind every other class. It’s that simple.

But that’s what we get for not having official DPS meters, dumb comments from ignorant PvP people who don’t understand burst=/= DPS and that life blast nor dagger auto are good DPS in PvE relative to what other classes can put out.

Balance in this game is dictated by the ignorance of WvW/PvP people running their celestials/pvt setups.

This is why I hated the mesmer trait revamp. Bunch of traits we got were “on interrupt”, which don’t work on defiance/breakbar.

And NOW the traits we have with slow, and Time Warp by extension are rendered weak/useless in PvE dungeon settings.

Always without fail, just like the shield phantasm, mesmer is designed with pvp gimmicks in mind and no thought is spared for how it translates to PvE.

You just watch, they’re gonna keep nerfing this class for PvP reasons without giving us the buffs we’ve been needing for years in PvE, much like necro and ranger.

By making bosses with a breakbar unaffected by slow, you’ve completely ruined Time Warp in PvE.

It’s a 180 sec cd 10 second quickness without the slow component affecting bosses. 10 seconds of quickness on a 180 sec cd is a 6% quickness uptime base.

Feel My Wrath from the Guardian is 5 seconds of quickness every 30 seconds, or a 17% uptime of quickness. It’s three times as good as time warp in terms of quickness uptime.

What’s more, Feel My Wrath is a mobile skill, it’s not restricted by ground placement so position is irrelevant as you can move and get it.

We all know they nerfed slow because of other sources giving it high uptime, but this ruins a key feature for why a mesmer can compete with a guardian. Now we have….portal. Guardians do reflects better, with higher uptime and convenience. They do stability better. Their DPS is way better due to our illusion death rate in PvE and our terribly low value autoattack damage.

So reduce slow uptime from traits and make it mean something in PvE. It’s entirely useless otherwise if it won’t work on bosses.

That would fix nothing.

Fact is, bears and moas do less damage on an autoattack than a 1-stack burning condition’s tick from a condi spec.

Using anything but cats in pve is an absolutely large dps loss. Drakes are used because they’re the only pet that can cleave and the only pet that doesn’t die to 2-3 boss autoattacks that can still do some damage.

They need to normalize the health pools and damage of all the pets and simply give them their identity by F2 skills and other CC/utility. All melee pets should cleave, and ranged pets should have bouncing/piercing projectiles.

If you make pets with inferior damage, PEOPLE WILL NOT USE THEM.

Cats are also the only pet that puts a melee ranger in competitive damage output range with any other class. Change the pet, and the ranger drops at or below mesmer/necro levels of terrible damage output in PvE.

To think I got my HoM points only to find out my black moa, white raven, and even black widow would never be used in PvE….

You should disable autoattacks from the 1h sword. It still won’t change the fact that you delaying your autoattack chain by not attacking so you can dodge reliably is still a DPS loss.

1h just needs fixing. Dodge should override the animation and Monarch Leap needs to be instant.

Isn’t it lovely when the elemental’s autoattacks are a ranged ice spike that hits for over half your health?

That fractal is just painful when you’re with incompetent people that overaggro, can’t pull together and DPS the elementals fast enough, and where nobody but you tries to renew the flame.

Khristophoros.7194:

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

You clearly haven’t played warrior mainhand axe, which cleaves 3 targets instead of 2 as well. It’s significantly greater damage output than necro dagger, just try it.

You clearly haven’t used ele lightning whip or fireball+lava font autoattacks.

This comment is pretty ignorant.

Necromancer dagger AA is only seen as strong because of PvP idiocy, dagger is one of the most mediocre weapons.

When a thief in PvE is getting 20k backstabs every 4 seconds in between his autoattacls, which do similar damage to necro dagger, it makes you reconsider.

Making GS a niche AoE weapon also makes it useless against most bosses in PvE, and dagger is already pretty mediocre.

I have used warrior axe.

The warrior axe coefficients are all 0.7 except the final hit of the chain which is 1.5. The “double chop” skill says it’s 1.4 but it’s pretty misleading since it doesn’t come out very fast for a “double hit” type of skill.

Necro dagger is 0.9, 0.7, 1.4.

Thief dagger is 0.56, 0.85, 0.85. lol “similar”

Thief dagger is only good once a boss gets to low health and you spam heartseeker. If you want a strong autoattack chain try the thief sword. 0.8, 0.8, 1.3.

I’ll go test the attack speeds when I feel less lazy.

….. You forgot the coefficients.

Warrior gets 20% from berserker power+ 10% against bleeding targets. 30% damage bonus all the time.

Thief gets 10% against a foe with conditions, 20% against someone on low health, 6-12% damage bonus on backstab from tricks build of 1% bonus per initiative point, 200 power when revealed (which is close to 90% uptime since the thief rotation is auto chaain>CnD>Backstab>auto chain while 4 sec revealed wears off> Repeat). 10% ferocity from precision, 7% crit damage bonus while above health threshold. 10% increased critical damage on foes above 50% health. 250 ferocity from gaining fury.

Necro gets….20% damage against targets below 50% health.

Thief sword auto is a single target DPS loss. Their single target weapon in PvE is dagger.

Yeah necro literally only has one trait.

One % damage increase coefficient, yes, and the single one he has is a conditional to boot.

And it makes a world of a difference. Just play a thief, warrior, or ele. It’s not even close.

FunSeeker.4815:

slingblade.1437:

Dodges are too valuable to have blow them to save your pet from damage, IMO, and one dodge won’t save your pet from a WvW zerg. Others have proposed damage reductions based on a percentage, as well as Resistance or reduced condition duration/stacks, which I would be in favor of.

This way of thinking is what needs to change. Pets should be a valuable asset for your damage and build where there are no seconds thought of whether spend a dodge roll to save my pet or just let them die. I dream for a day when you get your pet killed you’ll feel the lost, that way pet management will be a skill needed for ranger players.

No, the problem is you think in terms of gimmicks instead of practical applications.

If other classes don’t need to babysit 20% of their damage which dies and goes on a 50 sec cd 10 seconds into a fight consisting of 10+ people, that puts the ranger at a disadvantage.

There’s no avoiding the pet dying on Liadri, and your Jaguars most certainly are gonna die to Archdiviner melee and Molten Bros aoe. It’s that simple.

No, using a lesser DPS pet is not an option considering jaguar is the only pet which puts melee ranger on a competitive level of DPS.

If there is more risk and cost to playing a ranger, at the very least ranger coefficients should be adjusted so they have a higher potential ceiling on damage output to reward the extra effort/inconvenience, but that’s not a thing in the game right now, where berserker rangers are only ahead of necromancer and mesmer in damage and behind everyone else.

Khristophoros.7194:

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

You clearly haven’t played warrior mainhand axe, which cleaves 3 targets instead of 2 as well. It’s significantly greater damage output than necro dagger, just try it.

You clearly haven’t used ele lightning whip or fireball+lava font autoattacks.

This comment is pretty ignorant.

Necromancer dagger AA is only seen as strong because of PvP idiocy, dagger is one of the most mediocre weapons.

When a thief in PvE is getting 20k backstabs every 4 seconds in between his autoattacls, which do similar damage to necro dagger, it makes you reconsider.

Making GS a niche AoE weapon also makes it useless against most bosses in PvE, and dagger is already pretty mediocre.

I have used warrior axe.

The warrior axe coefficients are all 0.7 except the final hit of the chain which is 1.5. The “double chop” skill says it’s 1.4 but it’s pretty misleading since it doesn’t come out very fast for a “double hit” type of skill.

Necro dagger is 0.9, 0.7, 1.4.

Thief dagger is 0.56, 0.85, 0.85. lol “similar”

Thief dagger is only good once a boss gets to low health and you spam heartseeker. If you want a strong autoattack chain try the thief sword. 0.8, 0.8, 1.3.

I’ll go test the attack speeds when I feel less lazy.

….. You forgot the coefficients.

Warrior gets 20% from berserker power+ 10% against bleeding targets. 30% damage bonus all the time.

Thief gets 10% against a foe with conditions, 20% against someone <50% health, 6-12% damage bonus on backstab from tricks build of 1% bonus per initiative point, 200 power when revealed (which is close to 90% uptime since the thief rotation is auto chaain>CnD>Backstab>auto chain while 4 sec revealed wears off> Repeat). 10% ferocity from precision, 7% crit damage bonus while above health threshold. 10% increased critical damage on foes above 50% health. 250 ferocity from gaining fury.

Necro gets….20% damage against targets below 50% health.

Thief sword auto is a single target DPS loss. Their single target weapon in PvE is dagger.

Funny though how you forgot to mention ele in that response, though. There is nothing stronger than fireball+lava font in terms of auto damage.

Khristophoros.7194:

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

You clearly haven’t played warrior mainhand axe, which cleaves 3 targets instead of 2 as well. It’s significantly greater damage output than necro dagger, just try it.

You clearly haven’t used ele lightning whip or fireball+lava font autoattacks.

This comment is pretty ignorant.

Necromancer dagger AA is only seen as strong because of PvP idiocy, dagger is one of the most mediocre weapons.

When a thief in PvE is getting 20k backstabs every 4 seconds in between his autoattacls, which do similar damage to necro dagger, it makes you reconsider.

Making GS a niche AoE weapon also makes it useless against most bosses in PvE, and dagger is already pretty mediocre.