Guild Wars 2

HoneyBadger.5691:

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

Surge of the mist is also on a weapon whose only damage is surge of the mist because its autoattack hits for 60% less than thief staff auto.

Surge also is not a reliable aoe skill unlike vault, and it can only be used once every 20 seconds.

Surge is also on a class with only 2 dodged and who only heals if you hit them, their other heal either being a delayed heal with shiro so it’s not a burst heal or Jalis heal.

Surge of the mist isn’t also 1 shotting a thief unless it’s a zerker revenant (aka a free kill, rvenant on zerker dies almost as quickly as thief) and one didn’t stunbreak out of it and dodge.

Aury.1367:

Or just half the damage of Debilitating Slam and remove the chain so you got instant access to it, put the damage so low that its usefull for the CC only.

Clearly what our lowest damage weapon needs is even less damage on it, so it’s just a weapon swap for one or two CC and then wait 10 seconds doing absolutely no pressure so the opponent can easily recover.

ich.7086:

Dash DA Staff (aka no stealth no poledance no PI no accro) thief here,

Zenith.7301:

STAFF AUTO DOES MORE DPS THAN VAULT, THAT IS ABSURD. Thief should have to spend initiative to do DPS, those autoattack buffs are beyond the pale, an initiative free attack should never eclipse initiative spenders.

No, the devs said they don’t want to ini = damage equation but the ini = utility (aka rupt/burst/port/blind/immo/whatever). ini = damage thats promote spam (see p/p) while ini = utility promotes healthier gameplay.

Yeah, clearly spamming headshot promotes healthier gameplay when you don’t have to choose between utility and damage lolololol.

That dev decision was a total bait and switch and one of the worst design decisions in the game as we now see from the way head shot and weakening strike works out. But keep rationalizing your thief however you want.

Revenant chares energy cost on weapons, class mechanic, and utilities and elites, but somehow thief gets to be that special class that pays no resource for damage, no resource for utilities, is immune to the cooldown increase effects of chill or interrupt traits.

Crinn.7864:

Zenith.7301:

If you removed PS from warriors, they’d still be brought because banners are ridiculously OP as well, and instead of 2 PS you’d bring a revenant for 10 might to the group and the chrono would signet of inspiration the might into the group while eles provide a permanent fire field in lava font for any of your group to fill the gap.

If you bring a rev, you either replace your warrior with it and lose banners and EA, or you replace a Ele with it and lose said ele.

Without Phalanx Strength groups have to utilize distributed might generation, and under distributed might generation, self-might becomes a valuable capability rather than a irrelevant one.

lololol and by replacing any class with a necro you lose said DPS from an ele/thief to begin with, or the might/group buffs of other classes.

Behellagh.1468:

Amaimon.7823:

Behellagh.1468:

Yes you can. The item buys you one key and a permanent port into the safe room, which after the first key you will have to leave and do the heart to unlock the vendor again to get another key.

Then I don’t get the problem of OP.. there’s a lifetime supply of those keys

I think he believes there is some super advantage with that item, therefore the notion it’s only available as an uncommon drop from the BLC as a “cash grab”/P2W where in reality it’s barely a convenience item.

I know more people upset over previous “exclusive” glider skin/mini pet from previous seasonal uncommon item in chests.

The post was done the very first day it was released, when it was assumed it’d be like any private room such as the Royal Terrace.

You know, since Anet doesn’t put out public test realms and there are no real previews of the content to provide context for what is in the patch notes.

zealex.9410:

Zenith.7301:

LouWolfskin.3492:

Zenith.7301:

LouWolfskin.3492:

HoT enemies are not hard, you just have to learn mechanics.

Threads like this are the reason we need a better core game -.-

Don’t exaggerate. Some enemies like veteran frogs can wreck some classes.

Making it through the karka infested tunnels during map exploration can be a pain in the kitten as well.

And Balthazar’s HP is pretty much impossible to solo for most people.

Problem isn’t the enemies themselves, but the event and mob density scaling when a map is completely abandoned and a player has to sift through instant respawn times of veteran mobs by himself.

These are ultimately maps designed for groups of people, not solo players like the vanilla maps.

So? We have stuff that you can’t do solo in core tyria as well.
Thing is, HoT was marketed as group content, and people are surprised it’s harder for solo how?
A lot of the stuff, not everything, is still possible to do and for the rest you can ask in mapchat or your guild for help.
The best way to enjoy the content though is: Play with a friend.
Because at the core of it this is an MMO “massive multiplayer online” you see one thing there? Multiplayer, it’s a key word.

Addendum: A lot of it is learning mechanics, mechanics that the core game should teach you but doesn’t.

HoT maps were never marketed as group content any more so than core Tyria was, don’t make crap up. They even nerfed mobs in beta because they were even worse than they are now.

“Play with a friend”. That’s a wonderful way to limit your customer base. That’s what Wildstar did " Hey, you want to raid or do these quetes out in the world? Get 20 or 40 people to do them."

See where that got them.

The problem is when you create content that requires population density, that content breaks apart when there is no longer population density. Look at most of the core Tyria maps, look at Dry Top when there aren’t organized guilds running them. They are ghost towns. The gameplay slows to a crawl.

The whole reason they revamped fractals was precisely because they wanted to make content more accessible, with less investment into long sessions with a group. Even the GW2 raids are super short compared to the ones in WoW, FFXIV, or Wildstar.

doing the whole first raid isnt shorter than doing the emerald nightmare in wow

Yeah, I’d love to see your mythic emerald nightmare clear in 45 minutes within the first 2 weeks of the release.

Emerald Nightmare is widely considered a joke raid with improper difficulty curves by most mythic raiders anyways.

Thief isn’t great in PvE? It is neck on neck with ele in DPS and all you have to do for that DPS is press your autoattack on staff and dodge every 5 seconds for the bounding dodge buff, while the ele actually has to perform some semblance of rotation that isn’t an autoattack.

Thief staff autoattack does more DPS than 100b and Gravedigger, how is that not busted, that a godkitten autoattack does more DPS than spamming either of those two skills?

STAFF AUTO DOES MORE DPS THAN VAULT, THAT IS ABSURD. Thief should have to spend initiative to do DPS, those autoattack buffs are beyond the pale, an initiative free attack should never eclipse initiative spenders.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Apolo.5942:

Thief on demand damage and on demand engage and disengage are just stupid, they can have 1 not both.

Tell that to Warrior, Druid,Mesmer, and a lesser extent Revenant.

Druid requires a resource build up, which is also ruined by reveal as CA has a cooldown unlike black powder>hs. Druid’s only gap creator is either staff 3 or greatsword 3 (and they rarely run both), so you get a 800 leap with travel time that also doesn’t break stuns.

More importantly, druid has garbage damage compared to thief, the burst damage isn’t even comparable outside a rapid fire which is not only a channeled ability that’s easily dodged or interrupted or reflected, but forces them into a weapon with no mobility or good defenses (knockback shot is easy to dodge as ever with the indicator and cast time).

Revenant can’t disengage from fights at all, don’t know what fantasy you’re trying to concoct here. It is one of the worst classes for roaming because it has no tools whatsoever to run away short of having a mob nearby they can phase traversal to.

Mesmer is not even comparable to thief because all you need to do to a condi mesmer is kite the clones and him. Mesmer has no chasing potential. It’s got a 30 sec cf blink with shorter range than shadow step and that’s as far as they can chase. Staff and scepter clones cannot hit fleeing targets as they interrupt their animations to chase and shatters need melee proximity.

Thief and warriors are the only classes that have ridiculous burst on top of immense disengage and chase potential.

You can run away from mesmers, engineers, guardians, necromancers, and druids; you cannot run away from thieves or warriors because they’re the classes with the best mobility in the game on top of the best spike damage power builds

Kovu.7560:

I think we can all agree that Thief is the easiest profession to kill if they stand in one spot and don’t press any buttons. =)
I respect the fact that most of thieves defenses require some sort of action on the player, even if I disagree with the sheer amount of mobility they have.

I took a tower the other day and ran into a warrior that was at about 10% health due to fall damage. I am, of course, on my power build. The guy took 0 damage, blocked & evaded for like 15 seconds while passively regenerating health then whispered me telling me how bad I was for taking 15~ seconds to down a 10% health warrior.

I almost broke the palm of my hand over my face.

~ Kovu

No, that honor goes to ele, who has the same health pool AND light armor, on top of the fight it has 4-6 less evades, and their defensive utilities have triple the cooldown of most thief utilities while doing less as well.

And less CC to boot.

Which is why all meta pvp ele builds have been BUNKER because if you so much as go marauders or berk you die in one mug+backstab hit or a 3 clone shatter or arc divider.

It also makes any sort of soft CC spec like necromancer with all their access to chills but lack of access to stuns pointless, since the thief can just cleanse it off.

The only thing that can reliably kill a thief right now is another thief.

It’s funny because Anet said necromancer was the class that would win attrition wars and you couldn’t get away from once engaged, but neither are true. Necromancers are the worst attrition class, and the worst chasers due to all the means to make chill/cripple/immob useless.

And thieves are bar none not only the best escapists but the best chasers as well. THERE IS NO DISENGAGING A THIEF.

Revenants before getting murdered by nerfs were the thief counter with old UA and phase traversal along with stronger autos that could pressure the thief.

And then they nerfed the living hell out of Revenants under the excuse that a revenant should never be able to chase a thief.

Who knew, giving classes with high, quick spike damage, mobility, stealth, immunity frames and blocks (in case of warriors) on top of the best heals in the game (daredevil and warrior heals are stupid strong on top of their already large kitten nal of damage avoidance tools) would break them.

Defensive tools should never be designed so that they can allow you to go full offense because they make you immune to retaliation.

Thief resets and autoattack damage need the nerf bat and headshot and black powder need an initiative increase.

Steal should have a 1/2-1/3 cast time for how powerful it is, and quite honestly being able to use it without revealing you immediately is pretty dumb. Thief can guarantee a lot of atatcks by just stealthing and pulling the attack off from stealth port from either signet or steal, or in a pinch shadowshot as well.

Defy Pain needs to be deleted, and the damage on arc slice and headbutt reduced while the heal on adrenal health reduced as well. Headbutt could also use an increased cd.

Way too many short cd stuns on warrior which allow him to land a 100b which is basically GG on anything that is not full on toughness.

Whirlwind, high auto and might generation, paired with arc slice and 100b on cc targets is way too oppressive damage for how frequently the combo can be used and how high the warrior’s sustained damage is.

Meanwhile a power shatter mesmer lands a shatter and it better kill the target because mesmer autoattacks hit for 40% less than thief mainhand sword pre-buff and around 30% less than warrior greatsword auto. Some classes have no sustained damage whatsoever while others have amazing burst and sustained damage in one.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

“Thief can’t be killed”. . . . . . . riiiigggghhht. . . . . . .

To be fair, I agree, dealing with a fast stealth based power thief can be really irritating, but that’s the nature of the high risk/ high reward playstyle. Do it right, thief deals a massive burst and target goes down. Do it wrong, thief misses, catches a burst, gets condi loaded, get stunlocked, etc, thief dies. Point being, that’s the trade being a thief. High offensive capability paired with little defense beyond mobility and stealth. It’s not overpowered, it’s not really unfair, it’s the nature of the class.

Low risk, high reward, you mean. The ability to have 6 dodges, built in evasion to weapon skills you can use to evade opening burst to buy you time, and the mobility is what makes the thief class so popular.

Things go south as a necro because you screwed up your faceroll, you pay for that mistake with your life.

Shadowstep is just kittened.

50 sec cd that’s a DOUBLE stunbreak, a DOUBLE port, and clears a condition on the 2nd part is about as overloaded a utility skills get.

Then you have the absurdity that is a 6 second slow on a revenant from a steal or the even more ridiculous steal item on mesmers, on a low cd that not only does damage, but closes distance and dazes the target to trigger pulmonary impact, and the steal skill has no cast time whatsoever unlike warrior burst, mesmer clone shatter walk time, or any other class mechanic with a cast time or that takes time to build up the resource.

Dash also makes you completely immune to what a thief is supposed to be pinned down with, snares/CC, so you just dash a safe distance and BP>HS without much counterplay barring another thief or a mesmer with mantra of distraction.

The only thing that can kill a thief is a better thief or a mesmer that catches them by surprise.

It doesn’t help that staff auto does more DPS than a kittening GRAVEDIGGER from a reaper greatsword, and dagger auto is not far behind.

Buffing thief autos was so dumb. They should pay initiative to do damage, not spam their CC/evade initiative skills and auto you to death in between pulmonary impact procs.

babazhook.6805:

Zenith.7301:

Most of the thieves are power spec anyways and they can kill a revenant within the duration of basilisk and a knockdown.

Assuming they don’t headshot you to death because somebody at anet thought that making headshot spammable while shifting most of the damage to autoattacks and said interrupts doing 3k+ damage is anywhere close to balanced.

At least a mesmer you can catch and finish.

Thief just resets all day every day. It’s impossible for a thief to die if he doesn’t want to.

But somehow Phase Traversal and Ride the Lightning needed nerfs.

The entirety of WvW roaming is swarmed with thieves because the class can’t be punished for mistakes. Those teleports and 6+ dodges on top of stealth make sure of that.

Hyperbole does not an argument make. WvW is not “swarmed with thieves”. I see as many if not more warriors and rangers dragonhunters and mesmers. The most underepresented class is likely the Engineer. The rest are there with the numbers.

This is not an argument, as your anecdote is worth as little as anyone else’s.

There’s a reason why the forums are rife with thief/mesmer threads and not druid/engineer/DH ones.

Revenant used to be a thief counter when it first came out before they clobbered it with nerfs…

Most of the thieves are power spec anyways and they can kill a revenant within the duration of basilisk and a knockdown.

Assuming they don’t headshot you to death because somebody at anet thought that making headshot spammable while shifting most of the damage to autoattacks and said interrupts doing 3k+ damage is anywhere close to balanced.

At least a mesmer you can catch and finish.

Thief just resets all day every day. It’s impossible for a thief to die if he doesn’t want to.

But somehow Phase Traversal and Ride the Lightning needed nerfs.

The entirety of WvW roaming is swarmed with thieves because the class can’t be punished for mistakes. Those teleports and 6+ dodges on top of stealth make sure of that.

We don’t have norn legend yet, so don’t rule Jora out.

The more I think about it, the most fitting it seems to have Jora as the next legend with either greasword or mainhand axe as the corresponding weapon.

I’d rather not have a charr legend anytime soon given the absurdity that it was Rytlock who was chosen as the first revenant despite the fact that the Charr are the least attuned with the mists; the first revenant should have been a norn or human. But Rytlock has always been the writers’ favorite.

Crinn.7864:

Zenith.7301:

Because said classes that don’t self generate might also have benefits like shadow step, stealth, reflection, hard CC, and burst. Things a necro doesn’t have.

Necro brings transfusion, CPC, and amazing self-survivability. (for pve anyways)

If necro was DPS competitive while retaining it’s might stacking capabilities there would be no reason not to run quintuple necros for fractals and dungeons, since necro would be blowing everything else out of the water.

If you remove necro might gen to compensate now you’ve gutted every Blighter’s Boon build in sPvP and WvW because Anet isn’t going to skill split something as fundamental as boon generation.

If you want to make necro raid competitive you should petition to get Phalanx Strength removed, since that trait is what is enforcing the entire raid meta.

You would never run 5 necros in a fractal for the simple fact that if they did same damage as ele or thief, they would still not bring the group enhancements of most of the classes.

You will never run 5 necros because no banners, no gift of the land or spirits, and most importantly not fields to blast, and the fields you generate as a necro are worthless.

You bring no reflects, cpc is projectile destruction it doesn’t add damage and weakness doesn’t work on bosses.

You don’t bring 5 necros for the reason nobody brings 5 eles or thieves to any group despite them being the best DPS class.

And it’s not because they can’t survive. You keep peddling this BS that there’s issues with survivability in PvE, but thieves and eles are already soloing Ensolyss on challenge mote Nightmare 100 fractal.

That extra HP is absolutely worthless in PvE when most damage is easily avoided. It’s actually much harder to solo Ensolyss 100 challenge mote as a reaper than it is as a thief or ele, because dodges and proactive defensive boons and heals are supremely better for recovery and survival than soaking with death shroud with weak heals and limited dodges.

If you removed PS from warriors, they’d still be brought because banners are ridiculously OP as well, and instead of 2 PS you’d bring a revenant for 10 might to the group and the chrono would signet of inspiration the might into the group while eles provide a permanent fire field in lava font for any of your group to fill the gap.

Stacking 25 might isn’t special, and it’s not only warriors who do it. They just do it with the least effort.

And yes, split balance needs to happen for everything. Split balance worked for GW1, and GW2 abandoned it out of sheer laziness.

Exedore.6320:

Poelala.2830:

Exedore.6320:

S/F fresh air ele is mostly fine. A few of the weapon skills (I’m looking at you, Shatterstone) could use improvements.

The massive power creep from elite specs is what needs nerfed. They’re holding back not only s/f ele, but many other specs which used to be viable before HoT.

Wrong. Every meta build counters it, most war builds counter it, most scrapper builds, mesmer builds, revenant… Tell me this. Do you expect to EVER see an s/f ele in legendary? No, you don’t, because they suck.

Every meta build is an elite spec. Nerf elite specs back to core levels, and s/f is fine. How is that hard to understand?

Because s/f ele was already mediocre before elite specs.

It has extremely long cd’s outside fresh air attunement, with fire grab having a horrendous cooldown that doesn’t even hit harder than an eviscerate and has three times the cd .

On the squishiest class that will die to a steal+backstab combo, or 3 autoattack chains.Or a single shatter.

11k base HP, lowest armor, defensive cd’s are all 50+ seconds cd

S/F has no sustained damage whatsoever because scepter autoattacks suck, so once they block/mitigate part of your burst you’re useless for the next 20+ seconds

Good luck dealing with a 8 seconds damage immune warrior whose HP pool can absorb the entirety of your burst including fire grab and then heal it back up via healing signet+adrenal health and just needs to autoattack you to death while your cd’s refresh, or can just end it by landing arcing slice+whirlwind and a couple of autos.

There’s a reason only warrior, thief, and mesmer can run berzerker stats in pvp. They’re the only classes with easy to land burst and accompanying strong cc/immunities; they’re also the only classes with remotely decent disengage, as dragonhunters are super immobile and cannot escape, and so are necromancers and eles whose ridiculous nerf to ride the lightning killed them

Daddicus.6128:

The key question to ask is what will I be fighting. Zerk is undoubtedly the best against single creatures, because the Zerk buries the enemy before it buries you.

But, against mobs or elites and champions, time is no longer your friend.

I’ll never build another set of zerk armor, because I don’t like having to WP after rough situations. I don’t play PvP, WvW, or raids, so I don’t think I will ever need it again.

Except you can take on multiple veterans elites as zerk. People already do it.

Crinn.7864:

If two classes do the same damage with might, but one can’t generate might and the other can, which is better? The one that generates might.

The fact of the matter is that the entire rest of the game exists, and in the entire rest of the game being able to self generate might is of massive benefit.

No.

Because said classes that don’t self generate might also have benefits like shadow step, stealth, reflection, hard CC, and burst. Things a necro doesn’t have.

The entire rest of the game that exists functions regardless of balance because it’s tuned to be so trivial that balance doesn’t matter.

Instanced PvE is not tuned the same. That’s where balance matters.

Again, balance doesn’t matter for your open world PvE, you’re not bound to be optimal by inflicting a burden on other players you have to group with. Nobody can deny your Giver’s stats necro in open world PvE or roaming; everyone can and may deny a power greatsword necro in raids, spvp teams, and organized WvW raids.

This is not a solo game. Group games have to be balanced around group performance.

Sigfodr.9576:

Zenith.7301:

Don’t worry, the moa pets are useless pets. Garbage damage, their CC is completely unreliable too and their heal screech is not something you can control and has a small radius.

PvE pets: cats & drakes.

Not quite true, For raids/fractals either black moa or lightning wyvern is the best when it comes to breakbars, it depends abit on if its a big or small hitbox.

Who cares, the raid has plenty of tools for breakbars. With quick draw you can solo a raid bar with 2x lunar impact and other people’s debuffs without gimping your DPS by using a worthless pet.

Substance E.4852:

OGDeadHead.8326:

It’s too late now. They won’t ever really improve the core issues at this stage. Some band-aid fixes slapped on is what we can hope for at most, but I doubt even that will happen.

Literally the best we can hope for is another 1-2 good pets in the next expansion that will then be nerfed down to barely passable after enough pleb tears flood the pvp forum.

Or we get the pretty cool but completely useless wyverns whose stats are so horrendous and attack animations so slow that they miss any moving target while also doing absolutely dreadful DPS.

Should you use training wheels when learning to ride a bicycle? Plenty of people can learn without. Same goes for swimming.

How are you going to become competent if you don’t practice under the conditions you’re expected to perform in?

Revenant is viable but not optimal due to the string of PvP-based nerfs to the class that also affected it in PvE.

Plus greatsword also hits more than 2 targets, which is pretty kitten relevant in many encounters.

Crinn.7864:

Zenith.7301:

Stupid argument. This is not a solo game, and ele self generates might and vulnerability, as does PS greatsword warrior.

Sword revenant generates 10+ might, permafury, and stacks vulnerability with sword auto and deals 30k DPS easy.

Necro self generates 25 stacks of both without needing special foods/runes and sigils, compared to inconsistent might & vuln gen on other classes. Necro also provides vamp aura, and last rites.

Necro in PvE is the most self-sufficient class in the game. That’s why the dps is low. Is it too low even considering that? Probably. But to expect necro to be anywhere near the top dps is unrealistic.

Vampiric aura is garbage and last rites is hardly of any impact, it only pays off if your raid members play badly.

Again, who cares if they can self generate 25 might. 25 might is already freely available in 5 mans and raids, and is easily generated by any comp containing an ele, mesmer, revenant, warrior, or even guardian. With a single ele fire field groups can generate and maintain might easily given the abundance of blast skills even if they nerfed PS warrior.

Who the hell cares that you can solo some trash mobs while doing a braindead dynamic event?

Game balance is not for solo content. Class potential needs to be determined in group content.

I don’t care that you can self generate 25 might in content where you can autoattack mobs to death by spamming staff 1. That’s not content where balance matters.

Absolutely no one can prevent you from participating or being desirable in open world PvE, even on your crappy minstrels axe/warhorn build. That is not the case for 5 mans or raids, and it is where balance needs to happen.

Obtena.7952:

That argument isn’t stupid at all … the fact that necro can self generate buffs that increase their DPS is a fundamentally important consideration when looking at how much DPS they get and from where it comes from. While I think Necro DPS is low, it is an important consideration to see how you self-buff on DPS enhancement if you’re going to realistically petition Anet for class changes because of low DPS.

No, it’s a stupid argument because the game formats are designed with team play in mind, and in teams boons are easily provided.

Balancing around 1v1 or 2v2 is beyond kittened. Especially considering necro in 1v1 isn’t even good to begin with.

But then again you’re the forum contrarian who failed to address why that is a standard that can apply to necro, but not ele/warrior/rev who can also self buff and apply vulnerability easily while doing vastly more DPS.

Kumouta.4985:

This isnt a problem with GS or reaper. The title is misleading. Anyways, we have lower dps because we have 32k hp without vitality, and the dude working on this class thinks that makes it OK to give us near-garbage dps in PvE.

That’s not true, considering warrior has the same HP pool and their DPS is not garbage (and they bring the strongest group buffs in the game to boot).

Crinn.7864:

Lahmia.2193:

The lowest should be the ones that provide the most party support. As stated many times, Necros have very low party support. And yes we have benchmark dps. Necro power isn’t even listed as it is that bad.

Power necro self generates might, and self generates vuln. That’s why the DPS is lower.

Stupid argument. This is not a solo game, and ele self generates might and vulnerability, as does PS greatsword warrior.

Sword revenant generates 10+ might, permafury, and stacks vulnerability with sword auto and deals 30k DPS easy.

Don’t worry, the moa pets are useless pets. Garbage damage, their CC is completely unreliable too and their heal screech is not something you can control and has a small radius.

PvE pets: cats & drakes.

PvP pets: dogs, spiders, smokescale/bristleback

Anet hasn’t bothered to balance ranger pets so devourers, moas, pigs, birds, wyverns are worth using, ever.

Ranger pets are garbage that don’t scale with ascended gear upgrades, potions, food, runes, or sigils anyways. The whole pet system in this game is a disaster.

OriOri.8724:

The only problem with cast bars for important skills on trash mobs in fractals is that its not necessarily “important” skills that are dealing 10k+ damage on higher tiers due to how the scaling works. If they got a cast bar for any attack that could hit for that much, then all of their attacks would have one and it wouldn’t make a difference, but it would come with a lot of visual clutter

Yeah, which is why I think the nightmare fractal veterans and bosses are the gold standard of how visual communication should function in GW2.

Autoattacks should never be the main threat of a mob because scaling is dumb.

Shift the damage onto important skills that either need a breakbar broken like last boss of chaos fractal or simply create telegraphs like the Hierophant in cliffside where the hits that hit hard are properly telegraphed with an obvious overhead hammer smash.

Hell, the majority of HoT mobs in the HoT maps have PROPER tells that are clearly visible to the player character. Stick to those.

It’s especially bad if you’re playing a tall male norn and the target whose attack animations you’re supposed to see is covered by your character model.

The Jade construct is the only problem in the fight.

The jade constructs should be removed entirely but that’s about it.

Boss is manageable and the other adds as well.

It’s when the boss is attacking you at the same time the jade construct is that it becomes a problem.

Behellagh.1468:

They never said precursors were going to be cheaper. Just that we didn’t have to rely on RNG drops/MF to get one if we didn’t want to pay someone who was lucky in getting one.

The revision for new precursors from journey to recipe simply reduces the time to get the precursor and legendary since it’s simply a material sink now. Like I said I saw the HMS Divinity live within an hour of the patch drop as some people just have the mats and gold to crank one out.

I rather see a new legendary/precursor set every LW episode that takes virtually zero time to get than not.

No, it isn’t. Seriously, man.

The COST of a legendary went up. Material sinks ARE COST. They require time to farm that competes with time making gold.

The most expensive precursor at the time could sell for 1.2k gold, and all you needed besides that were the gift mats. Amount rounded to around 2-2.2k gold total.

The cost of making the new HoT legendaries is around 2.6k gold.

https://www.gw2bltc.com/

Nevermore goes as high as 2.7k gold.

Astralaria even has a 12 day time gating via Zinn books, and if you didn’t make charged quartz earlier there’s also that time gate to boot.

HoT legendary crafting is hardly an improvement.

You’re still left with farming unholy amounts of gold unless you want to take EVEN LONGER to farm the wood/metal yourself, since it’s way more inefficient to farm wood/metal than it is to farm gold.

The RNG was no problem at all with precursors. The problem as usual was the cost of precursors because the RNG was so low.

If drop rates had been increased and driven down the cost, people would have hardly complained about RNG.

What Anet does is it makes legendaries the greatest goldsink because the entire game is about the Gem>Gold conversion economy. They have large gold sinks and limited gold rewards from the game itself to make the gold grind intentionally slow to incentivize people to open their wallets to make the process significantly faster.

daros.3407:

Amineo.8951:

Vinceman.4572:

Have a look at the patch notes and you will recognize that there have been several nerfs which leads to easier fracs:

- Aetherblade
- Chaos Isles
- Snowblind
- Underground Facility
- Thaumanova

They were terrible before, Aetherblade and Thaumanova bosses that is, it wasn’t fun at all getting bombed/pulled out of no where and had to wait forever till the golems shields ran out in Aetherblade, while it was big hp sponge and invisible projectiles + bombs 5 times in a row (on top of the chaos anomaly one sometimes) in Thaumanova.

Well my guild never had a problem at Aetherblade with golems. Even with pug it can be fast on T4.

Relative to amount of necro/condi because conditions would still tick through the shield and not daze you.

Obviously the mechanic is not to allow golems to be touched by lasers but that requires way more coordination than most pugs will muster.

Do it with no necro/condi builds and the encounter gets a lot worse in a pug.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Other than dredge, cultists and ascalonians having insane ferocity and dealing 15-25K critical hits they never dealt before I’ve noticed no differences in the past weeks.

They’ve always dealt that damage, which is why they’re unenjoyable and you likely just benefited from well spammed blinds/block/CC to keep the ridiculous autoattacks in control.

At high scales cultists/ascalonian warriors/dredge could easily melee you for 10k+ crits. Always has been the case. Dumb because it’s hard to see the tell in between 5 trash mobs who haphazardly determine aggro (assuming group with no toughness).

I think the GW1 model was much better, GW2 is too fixated on telegraphs but the thing about telegraphs is that they need to be visible and not mired in effects clutters that exists in the game.

GW1 had cast bars visible for important skills.

Nate.8146:

I don’t mind the HMS Divinity. It has its own niche that I think fits well within the GW2 universe. The cannon sounds more exciting compared to the Predator’s loud futuristic zap noise. The fire and smoke trails from the regular shot as well as the grenade barrage blow the Predator out of the water (ba-dum tshh). The fog effect might also work well with ghostly potions.

The model is a bit bulky, but Shooshadoo demonstrated that legendaries can get pretty wild in size. After all, what good is a legendary if you can’t.. show boat it Nevertheless, crafting one legendary is more than enough for me, so I’ll stick with my Predator. Though I’m surprised several people managed to craft this rifle only, like what, the same day of its release? That’s some hardcore dedicated players right there.

They know the basic components of every HoT legendary being the exploration, the gifts that don’t involve the precursor (T5 & 6 mats), gift of fortune, and gift of battle.

They also know to stockpile crafting mats usually used for precursors so essentially all they need to do is wait for launch day to get the recipes and just craft.

These legendaries are nothing more than a huge goldsink.

They even with precursor crafting shifted the gold away from the precursors to make precursors irrelevant and placed the majority of the goldsink onto the material sinks instead.

Legendaries didn’t get any cheaper, they actually got more expensive and time consuming.

draxynnic.3719:

Eh, the ‘white damage’ of revenant mace is on par with other condition weapons (necromancer scepter, engineer pistol, mesmer staff and scepter, ranger shortbow) so I don’t think being a hybrid weapon is a problem. It’s very clearly designed to be on the condi side, noting that very few attacks have no direct damage at all.

Axe is more of a hybrid, yes. Offhands usually are, since they’re intended to work regardless of what they’re paired with.

The theme generally seems to be one of forcing the enemy to choose between standing in the fire, and moving and being stung by torment. This is a viable theme, as long as it’s balanced so that both are bad options for the opponent, rather than needing the opponent to simultaneously remain in the fire fields for their full duration and be taking full damage from the Torment.

Whether it’s balanced numbers-wise is another question.

The problem is condition coverage in PvP. 2 condis are easily cleansed on top of their application revolving on a fire field.

ElvisMcRanft.8569:

So, basically – best DPS for that spec would be using Dagger + Warhorn and switch to a Greatsword at 50% and spam gravedigger?
Thanks for your research btw!

And Yannir: is it the Black Ice Band / Earring or Bloodruby Band / Pendant I want to go for?
Yeah, Pendant & 2 Earrings, but do those 2 bands differ in any way?
Does it take long, to get those?

And still, the question still has time tho, Valkyrie’s or Berserker’s?

Thanks everyone, that’s so much good input here, highly appreciate it all!

Think I will stick to my PS Warrior for Raids and use my Reaper then for everything else

Greatsword is superior even above 50%, because you can use gravedigger every 8 seconds.

Dagger doesn’t break 23k DPS. Axe sits somewhere around 20-21k. Greatsword does around 24-25k and can be pushed to 28k optimized.

Yannir.4132:

Zenith.7301:

Muchacho.2390:

Zenith.7301:

Muchacho.2390:

Zenith.7301:

DeceiverX.8361:

Zenith.7301:

PvE balance in this game is a joke.

Better than PvP and WvW balance lol.

At least PvE has some semblance of the profession devs’ attention.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Every single nerf in this game, from the nerf to the already useless ranger pets, to the nerf to the already useless ranger shortbow, to the nerf on all revenant skills and energy costs, to the buffs to thieves and lack of nerfs to ele damage output, to the lack of nerf to PS warriors because nobody uses them in PvP.

Every single balance change in this game has been ruled by spvp and WvW whine.

Thief was doing 30% more autoattack damage with their non-meta sword weapon autoattack than mesmer’s sword autoattack, BEFORE THEY BUFFED THIEF AUTOATTACKS.

They only buffed necro axe and mesmer sword auto by 10% despite the fact they’re 40%+ behind other autoattack DPS in this game.

Because pvp.

Robert Gee: " We can’t buff necro axe to be competitive with ele staff or ranger longbow because axe has no projectiles to be reflected".

What about the horror nerf? That was clearly because of pve.

Maybe just maybe, they actually balance around all game modes but arent, lets say, the best at balancing?

You mean fear going through the defiance bar? Perhaps because warriors could do so as well and fear locking a boss was breaking fights completely.

Then again, so did Icebow and Thief headshot interrupts, but of course they took much longer to fix those.

No i mean the jagged horrors.

Oh, yeah, the stupid nerf that had no reason to occur as even then necro DPS was still far lower than ele or thief DPS.

Though at the time there was also some grumbling about minion master necros in spvp as well.

Btw, the nerfs to revenants Facet of Nature, and mesmers Signet of Inspiration were all about PvE, raids specifically. They had some niche use in WvW but that wasn’t the main reason.

ElvisMcRanft.8569:

Btw, when will “Rise!” and “Chilled to the Bone” be a better pick than Flesh Golem?
(I’m not sure, was “Rise!” an Elite?)

Last but not least, what’s the easiest way to get my hands on Viper’s trinkets? Is it correct, you can only get them in Raids, or is it just the ascended Version?
+ where does the Staff belong? Mostly WvW & PvP? On Condi or Power?
I think it is better used on a Condi, am I right?

“Rise!” is just a utility skill. “CttB!” is better against groups of enemies, Golem for single targets such as bosses.

Easiest way to Viper trinkets would be Unbound Magic vendors in the LW maps. Used to be that they were only available from raids but this is no longer true, as the trinkets from LWS are stat selectable into any stat set. The 5th PvP season league vendor would be another option but I suspect you don’t PvP.

Bullcrap.

PS warrior already provided a larger group DPS boost than druid, mesmer, and revenant by far.

PS Warrior virtually boosts the group’s damage output by around 24%+, while having higher personal DPS than emsmer and druid.

And PS warrior was the one support class not nerfed.

What a coincidence that PS warrior was the only spec not used in spvp that people were rampantly complaining about (as opposed to mesmer quickness share and alacrity uptimes; spvp had a hate campaign for chronomancers and revenants early on).

The nerf to facet of nature was directly tied to the high resistance uptimes they could afford to WvW groups as well as the whine about revenant damage due to their boon uptimes (which is how revenant got hammered into irrelevance with nerf upon nerf to its offensive capabilities).

Guardian virtually bring perma prot to the group via hammer and Anet has not moved to place any limitations on that, since perma prot specs with hammer are not a stable of pvp.

Nor have they made serious efforts at reducing the effectiveness of staff on elementalist, the only ranged weapon in the game that outperforms melee weapons. Again, because staff is not a meta spvp weapon.

draxynnic.3719:

Soon.5240:

I enjoy my Rev as a PvE Alt, but….

…. the fact that Anet has Torment on the mace – a weapon where you stand face to face against your enemy- pretty much says everything.

As a design principle, this is essentially forcing a dilemma on your opponent. Do they stand and take it in order to reduce Torment damage? Or do they kite, and suffer more Torment as a result?

Personally, I think the bigger problem is that the revenant really needs an additional ranged weapon, and it needs to be core. Having just one ranged weapon means that the revenant is far too sensitive to the balance state of that weapon, and that weapon being power-based (the slow attacks means it isn’t even good at triggering condis off traits) means that condi-based revs don’t have a ranged option at all.

There is a trait that buffs torment to essentially be on par with bleeding for revenants.

The problem is that this should be core, not a trait, if torment is going to be the main revenant condition (the same should be true for mesmer confusion in PvE).

In fact, I think torment and confusion should have the same baseline damage as bleeds, and their bonus conditionals are just extra damage, BECAUSE CONFUSION AND TORMENT ARE MUCH HARDER TO STACK THAN BLEEDING. Confusion and Torment are more rare than bleeding, they should do more damage.

And on top of that, Revenant needs to be the king of torment application, which it isn’t.

The problem as well is that axe and mainhand mace are really hybrid weapons, and hybrid weapons are trash. They always are half effective based on the revenant’s stat investment because the skill has its power split between different damage sources that scale off power/crit/critdmg, OR condi/condiduration.

Mainhand mace has really impractical condi application as well outside the autoattack to boot.

Lahmia.2193:

Zenith.7301:

AmadeoKristoff.5493:

What happened to the revenant? I came back after a week, and i cant even live 3 hits in the new living story? What have you done, ANet?

They nerfed Glint heal. They nerfed shiro heal skill. They nerfed rev damage in general, so you kill slower and heal for less.

Glint heal nerf (cast time on facet) was fair enough as people were double tapping it, when cc’d, for an easy anti spike heal. Now you actually have to invest in the regen part if you want the instant heal.

A regen which heals for nothing without healing power gear, and a heal that relies on the opponent being stupid enough to hit you, on a whopping 30 sec cd.

On top of a shiro heal that also not only heals for nothing, but is fragmented across attacks so effectively revenant has no reliable strong burst heal, despite being a class with no answers to conditions and extremely limited access to stability.

Remind me again why in hell I would play a revenant over zerker or dragonhunter.

You do less burst than both, you have no melee aoe cleave since all sword attacks split damage across targets unlike warrior and guardian greatsword/hammer melee weapons, and if you want reliable aoe you have to use a ranged weapon that makes you a sitting duck defensively.

You have worse survival, and you have worse utility in PvE as well.

I mean let’s just look how obscene Crystal Hibernation is. It’s virtually an inferior version of Shield Stance that makes you immobile for a pitiful 1.5k heal max, and the otehr skill is not a stun but a projectile heal who has delayed, short protection delivery and a 2k heal and both skills cost an enormours amount of energy like all our weapons currently do.

Where’s the revenant CC, an incredibly telegraphed, slow cast Glint elite? Sword has no good CC, hammer has a single one that takes centuries to go off and couldn’t be more obvious (the Dragon’s Tooth of revenants).

Staff had a single one that got gutted in cooldown and damage, on a weapon that does virtually no damage whatsoever besides the one CC skill whose damage was halved.

Meanwhile warrior hammer still crits people for 5-7k, the autoattack is vastly superior damage output, and several other skills also CC and do higher damage than staff skills, without competing for the same resource (energy) that you need to use for utilities to boot.

No hybrid weapons.

Hybrid weapons are trash in PvE.

Randulf.7614:

They’re being rounded up into one place for a greater purpose.

I wonder who the mastermind behind such a scheme could be…

Because cats are The Brain and dogs are Pinky.

Cynz.9437:

Zenith.7301:

Cynz.9437:

LI requirement crap wasn’t causing enough toxicity, let’s officially support another toxic tool!!!

You dare to rez someone -> lose dps – get kicked.
You dare to run off with aoe/out of aoe so you don’t take dmg -> lose dps -> get kicked!
Welcome to WoW raiding guize, where mods are allowed and dps meters forced absolutely selfish and suicidal gameplay.

WoW has Warcraftlogs, which allows for detailed analysis via logs so they’d know that you had rezzed someone at a certain time stamp to identify a downward spike in DPS.

WoW raiding is the gold standard, don’t pretend otherwise.

yeah… maybe in ideal case with reasonable raid leader….. which is like 1 out of 10

i have seen people getting kicked from raids for doing 3% less dps than they supposed, nobody cared that they guy maybe had to deal with some mechanics

Stupid people are stupid and will kick regardless of whether DPS meters and logs exist or not.

I don’t understand why you think this game should be designed with the stupid or inept in mind.

If you have an ignorant raid leader, you should jump to another raid.

In WoW during Cataclysm I had a raid leader berate me as an affliction warlock (dot class with no burst) over why my damage on Al’Akir’s adds was low. I proceeded to tell him he has no idea about how warlocks function and I won’t suffer a raid leader who doesn’t bother to research on class capabilities.

I switched raid groups and everything was better after.

BTW Jon Peters hasn’t been with Anet for a good while, he went to Amazon game studios.

Jon Chapman is also no longer with anet. He was the necro designer. Now Robert Gee is the one doing necro & mesmer.

Robert Hrouda was the main ranger and dungeon team designer. He no longer with Anet, it’s why dungeons were discontinued.

Kristen Perry invented the Sylvari we see today in-game, alongside helping design racial clothing. She is no longer working with Anet and is currently a freelance artist.

Cynz.9437:

LI requirement crap wasn’t causing enough toxicity, let’s officially support another toxic tool!!!

You dare to rez someone -> lose dps – get kicked.
You dare to run off with aoe/out of aoe so you don’t take dmg -> lose dps -> get kicked!
Welcome to WoW raiding guize, where mods are allowed and dps meters forced absolutely selfish and suicidal gameplay.

WoW has Warcraftlogs, which allows for detailed analysis via logs so they’d know that you had rezzed someone at a certain time stamp to identify a downward spike in DPS.

WoW raiding is the gold standard, don’t pretend otherwise.

Removing the Jade Bow helps a lot, hopefully they did the same to Jade Wall. It’s the Jade constructs that are the problem.

The rest of the mobs are fine.

I’s rather they fix the garbage weapons we have before they go adding more weapons into the mix.

Look at necromancers, they gave them a greatsword and it is trash.

choovanski.5462:

Zenith.7301:

choovanski.5462:

Zenith.7301:

Or they could make a queue solely for full premade group 5v5 matches.

Problems is then people would start squabbling about how come solo Q people get to have the same rewards as team queue.

If they follow on that and make team queue more rewarding, then everyone feels compelled to play team queue instead of solo queue.

better rewards for team queue is the way to do it. if they end up being as good as a pve group run, it even becomes compelling for people to do PvP instead of dungeons etc.

I doubt PvE people will ever want to do PvP and vice versa.

Competitive environments are not for everyone, and a large reason for playing PvE is story and RP immersion which pvp players don’t care for remotely.

There’s a reason PvP players came up with the “RP kitten ” term.

i don’t know. i know a ton of people who only run dungeons and fractals for the rewards. if PvP team queue had really good rewards I’m sure a lot of people would do it.

i mean, we already have people doing ranked who just want the rewards. its not hard to imagine a regarding group queue becoming popular.

regardless, I’m all for anet trying team queue.aybe it will fail, maybe it will breathe new life into the game. I’d like to know.

I remember when they added rank rewards and pvp dailies and that backpack glider, it brought a lot of PvE players that PvP players hated having around because it meant carrying unskilled people in their games.

choovanski.5462:

Zenith.7301:

Or they could make a queue solely for full premade group 5v5 matches.

Problems is then people would start squabbling about how come solo Q people get to have the same rewards as team queue.

If they follow on that and make team queue more rewarding, then everyone feels compelled to play team queue instead of solo queue.

better rewards for team queue is the way to do it. if they end up being as good as a pve group run, it even becomes compelling for people to do PvP instead of dungeons etc.

I doubt PvE people will ever want to do PvP and vice versa.

Competitive environments are not for everyone, and a large reason for playing PvE is story and RP immersion which pvp players don’t care for remotely.

There’s a reason competitive players came up with the “RP F3 (insert letter stupid censor)G” term.

The problem with forcing group content is it increases time commitments and makes the game less about getting a quick play session as you then have to worry about team management to get rewards.

And I don’t think the modern pvp or even pve scene is moving in a direction where people don’t want easy access to games.

Look at how controversial the raids have been in this game.

PvE content autonerfs itself as players become more familiar with how the encounters function.

Kraljevo.2801:

Zenith.7301:

Try Astralaria and NEEDING THE TEMPLE OF DWAYNA EVENT TO FAIL. Like, you need the DE chain where you kill the priestess, not the one where you defend it.

And yet nobody will let the event fail because they want the temple to stay accessible. Took 2 days and countless map swapping to get that done.

Wait, that’s still a thing? Didn’t they fix this kitten a while ago?

I crafted Astralaria like 3 months ago. It was horrible. Begging people on map to let the event fail to no avail.

And that was after the horrible grind that is mining the orichalcum nodes hoping for the RNG item drop from them.

I’ve made Astralaria, Nevermore, and HOPE (on top of all the 1.0 legendaries).

Nothing has been as bad as Astralaria.

Astralaria even had the charged quartz crystal time gate ON TOP of the daily 12 Zinn’s student books.

Nevermore was by far the easies to craft.