Guild Wars 2

Ragion.2831:

3 years in and we are still doing damage vs damage comparisons. There is a lot more to combat than that:

What are the requirements for dealing the damage?
How easily can the damage be negated?
What can each class do to recover from damage?
How much damage can you afford to take?

Sure you can do 60k with burn alone but against necro you will do almost all of that damage to yourself.

Sure you might be able to do 5k direct damage with one attack, but was it negated by shroud? (I say negate because shroud can be recovered quicker now)

Thief might be able to do more damage than necro in a shorter space of time but thief cannot stand there and take even 1/2 of a necro’s burst but a necro can and can recover and counter quickly.

At the end of the day it is how each class works. If you want to call out mismatches, look at that instead, you can give a lot more credible feedback that way.

Well lets see:

Vale Guardian…

Immune to weakness
Immune to chill effect
Requires constant movement, thus significantly lower GD spam dps
Requires high mobility for lightning AOE
Requires high DPS to beat enrage timer
Requires good group healing (RS prevents all healing, making heals wasted on us)
Requires good active defenses such as block, invuln, and dodges to deal with hard hits
Requires group wide buffing to keep group dps higher

So necro damage is subpar, we offer no group utility, can’t be healed properly, have no active defenses, no mobility, and the bosses are immune to our best effects.

Our only “saving grace” is supposed to be our high selfish dps… which is not high…

I’m going to have to weigh a bunch of different things. I suspect I will end up doing Halloween for a number of reasons:

1. Less bugs
2. Achievement points. Once they are gone they are gone
3. XP, new legendary weapons require Tyria mastery, not HoT mastery, so I might as well get as much xp during Halloween as I can towards my tyria mastery.

If I get bored of Halloween then i’ll jump right into HoT.

Timberclaw.7496:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They haven’t said yet. There is still supposed to be a blog post about the new legendary weapons before launch, but I doubt that will say either.

They want to prevent a huge shift in the economy before launch so they will likely not say what the new weapons/armor needs.

They did however say that they want it to be more of a journey and less of a grind, so at least some of it will be more activity based.

Alright I see, it would be very nice if they did include fortune and mastery but a different weapon gift. Guess we will have to wait then, its frustrating when you’re saving up for something but barely cant see your progress as there are no middle steps to be done.

I would recommend saving the materials in their base form and not the completed gifts. That way you have the gold invested, and can just sell it off if it ends up not needed the gifts. For example I currently have all the mats for gift of fortune in my bank, but if I end up not needing a gift of fortune I can sell them and use the gold for whatever I do need. If I do need a gift of fortune I can instantly make it at the mystic forge on patch day.

The problem really comes down to the random unexplained nerfs that appeared on the condition changes patch days.

During the preview 3 days before the patch, bleed was 20% stronger and burn was 20% weaker. This was pretty much perfect. It brought low dps condition classes up, and the god tier classes down and everyone would have been on the same level.

Then on patch day the actual patch nerfed bleed into the ground and buffed burn to the current god tier that it is. There was never any explanation or reasoning given. And no dev has commented on it or even considered nerfing burn since then.

They haven’t said yet. There is still supposed to be a blog post about the new legendary weapons before launch, but I doubt that will say either.

They want to prevent a huge shift in the economy before launch so they will likely not say what the new weapons/armor needs.

They did however say that they want it to be more of a journey and less of a grind, so at least some of it will be more activity based.

Ltomato.8649:

What are all these bosses that cleanse or are immune to condis other than Subject Alpha and Mai Trin?

Also, with the downfall of Ice bow burst (totally needed, and a good change), the time between condi build up > physical burst is much earlier now.

It’s also fact that condi builds are more sustained damage. That’s very clear and obvious, even when not using sinister- i.e. using rabid. For example, condi ranger and guard are stronger based purely on conditions.

Pretty much all of them purge conditions at some point in a fight. You probably don’t notice because they are reapplied quickly and usually don’t have an animation on them. It took me nearly a year of playing a condition spec to realize how prevalent it was.

Teq cleanses all conditions at each 25% phase, Husk in SW cleanses all conditions when he jumps, Vale Guardian cleanses all conditions when he splits. All that damage is lost, and most bosses do it. I think it has to do with the devs making things get the immune tag, even for brief instances during attack animations, phase changes, or glitches. As soon as it enters that state all conditions are instantly removed, even if it is so brief that you don’t even see the icon.

I’m not sure where you got the idea that condition do MORE dps, because they currently do LESS DPS. the only reason that sinister engineer is top is because it is a hybrid build.

Additionally conditions have 3 defenses not 1, HP, Cleanses, and resistance. Almost every boss in the game cleanses conditions at some point in the fight rendering large chunks to damage wasted. there are far more bosses that cleanse conditions than have high toughness.

I do however agree with your conclusion. Burning is just stupid OP and bleed/torment/confusion are really weak.

Ironically the devs had it right originally. Burn was weaker and bleed was stronger (by about 20% each) and it would have been great. Then mysteriously on patch day burn became crazy strong and bleed was nerfed to hell, being completely different from the preview they showed us.

I feel like a burn guardian was in charge of implementing the patch and he decided to just randomly change the numbers because he was mad or something.

Fixing these back to where they were supposed to be would open up a lot more condition specs, especially for bleed heavy classes like thief, ranger and necro. Which coincidentally are the 3 classes with the lowest condition dps. And the 3 classes that seem to be the least wanted for raids.

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

How much DPS does an Engi/Ranger pump out at range. I mean I know Engi is solid there but only with perfectly aimed skills, doesn’t always happen when something is moving. Necro with DS can pump out around 8k as max potential (so realistically a bit lower) Is that way below what a ranger does? I know it’s not that bad compared to an engi when you take into account the missing grenades or mortar shots

As for balancing pass, absolutely, before or after, either way it needs to happen. Really can’t say enough how much I think burn and bleed needs a bit of balancing between them, burn a little down bleed a bit up. It’s no surprise the best condi professions are the ones with plenty of burns on top of solid set of other condi’s.

I think if they just brought burn down 15% and bleed up 15-20% it would be just about perfect. Which was how it originally was supposed to be in the preview of the condition changes. They changed it on patch day to the current state with no explanation or notice, still have no idea why they did it.

Jerus.4350:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They are pretty much required it seems. They are just so much higher dps than other condition classes that it makes it a lot easier to have them.

I imagine pet management would be an issue but ranger isn’t too far away in my experience.

And I’m still curious to see what people put together for Berserker(so weird saying that name when I’m talking about a condi build) seems like they may have made some decent gains.

Of course condi engi is top dog on sustained fights if they can pull off the rotation.

One of the big problems at least for the first boss is that you need 5 people who can stand in the AOE circles and DPS from range for a significant part of the fight. Ranger and engineer seem like the best classes for this. Not sure what other classes can compete in that department.

dlonie.6547:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

we decided to just have everyone get into the circles except for the person with aggro (me), better safe than sorry philosophy.

[…]

Our biggest mistake was the reapers. They are still bottom tier DPS and DPS is where we suffered most. We just couldn’t do enough damage to get the boss below 50%.

It would seem that a bigger problem there is having 9 players stop DPS while running to/from the lightening AoE, when really only 4 needed to. Seems like a much larger DPS loss than 2 subpar classes.

My group did similarly for the first few pulls — everyone would freak out and run to the orbs, but we kept having trouble getting him past 50%. Then we sorted out who should go to the lightening and who should stay back and DPS and we were getting him to his second transition easily. We ended up putting ranged, high sustain folks in the orb team and it worked out smoothly with nice even burns.

BTW, should I reiterate that for the folks who are claiming that the meta won’t change? We needed tanky ranged players to optimize a PvE encounter

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Blaeys.3102:

the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

If someone is at the bottom then they are the one that needs to improve, so i’m not sure what you are trying to say. They should be the ones that care the most because they are the ones holding back the rest of the raid.

100% agree. I really wish I had a DPS meter so I could get a concrete measure of how well I’m playing and compare sets, builds, etc and really get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. I could know if I am really pulling my weight or not. It would be glorious.

We tried to pull the boss with us, but it was not ideal. I agree that having only 5 people would have been best. The biggest problem is you need 5 dps who can keep up high dps at range, which really limits your class options. Ranger and engineer are the best choices here, with most others falling woefully short.

I tried it with my condition reaper, but I just don’t put out the same level of damage as a sinister engineer does. Either I am doing something horribly wrong or Anet needs to make a PvE balance pass before launch.

They are pretty much required it seems. They are just so much higher dps than other condition classes that it makes it a lot easier to have them.

Blaeys.3102:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The encounter highlighted the lack of DPS meter, and I think one will be required in the future for later encounters. It is hard to tell where your dps is lacking, and thus hard to tell who needs to improve. If an official one is not implemented then people will simply adapt the use of “illegal” ones that are already available.

It most definitely did not highlight the need for dps meters – and hopefully the use of the illegal ones will result in some bans. That garbage doesn’t belong in our game.

As far as who needs to improve, one thing I learned from years of having meters in raids – the people who care the most about everyone else’s performance and the very ones that need to pay closer attention to their own.

Well what did you find in your raiding experience? were you able to get the boss to 50% within the first 4 minutes? was dps not a problem for you?

If someone is at the bottom then they are the one that needs to improve, so i’m not sure what you are trying to say. They should be the ones that care the most because they are the ones holding back the rest of the raid.

HardRider.2980:

lol What was you playing a cel corruption only build? lol Ive been doing insane damage as a reaper and was doing ok-nice dps as a necro before hand

Big Number != big DPS

Sinister engineer does a lot more damage than you do, full stop.

I don’t see how anyone can honestly watch that video and say that Necro/Reaper DPS is fine…

Well I was able to attempt the raid with 3 different groups over about 3 hours.

Two of the groups weren’t worth talking about . Standard low skill pug groups that couldn’t even figure out basic mechanics.

Instituted character checks and put together a better pug which was much better.

Won’t talk about trash, nothing much to say there, good teaching fights.

We didn’t have TS or a set group comp so we decided to just have everyone get into the circles except for the person with aggro (me), better safe than sorry philosophy. This worked well, we never wiped due to the AOE.

Our team comp was 3 reapers, 2 heralds, 2 druids, 2 chrono’s, one guard.

Our biggest mistake was the reapers. They are still bottom tier DPS and DPS is where we suffered most. We just couldn’t do enough damage to get the boss below 50%.

We made it to phase 2 every attempt, even almost cleared phase 2 once, but our dps was not enough to burst down the individual bosses fast enough. I think in future runs if we make sure we don’t have any necros we should have enough dps to get further. If we swapped out the necros/reapers for sinister engineers I think we probably would have had enough time.

I thought the encounter was sufficiently challenging, with a good mix of mechanics, hp, and situational awareness required. Random PUGS’s won’t clear it, and organized pugs may clear it once the best class comp is known.

The encounter highlighted the lack of DPS meter, and I think one will be required in the future for later encounters. It is hard to tell where your dps is lacking, and thus hard to tell who needs to improve. If an official one is not implemented then people will simply adapt the use of “illegal” ones that are already available.

Just watched the kill of vale guard from 3 of the condition engineers perspective:

4k burn ticks
4k bleed ticks
1k poison ticks
5k direct dps

I thought our dps was getting better… it is not even close… How are we supposed to compete at the raid level when you have classes like sinister engineer that do almost double the damage we can do?

PvE or PvP?

I run SR/Curses/Reaper for PvE. Trait choices are pretty obvious, anything condition or chill related take it.

Here are the specifics:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYGjc0QzNWdDe3YpYwi7hDxkIVTYKcriCADgEAA-TRyCABAcIAU4EA4syvjfAAXq+zEHBgZ2fQP9BjpEMAwBwu1tu7GY8xHf8xHvd3d3d3d3SBsoyK-e

You can swap between sinister and rabid gear depending on your needs. I pretty much never die when i’m wearing full rapid.

If they don’t fix deathly chill before launch then I think it will be better to take reapers onslaught instead of deathly chill.

RS 4 can be used to get crazy poison when combined with CPC, like 40 stacks, doesn’t last long though.

My team 4v1’d a druid today and eventually just left the point. 4 of us couldn’t kill him.

I’m not super high level PvP, but I have kitten win ratio at ~700 games played, so it isn’t like i’m new to PvP.

Our team ended up winning since we were much better than the rest of their team, but druid was just stupid OP.

spoj.9672:

They are not trash. Trash mobs are just filler with very little threat,easy to kill and usually in large groups. The guardians are far too tanky, have actual mechanics and are 3 single entities. So they cant be trash. Just because they arent the main boss doesnt make them trash. And its precisely because they have mechanics and take some time to kill that they should be made a little more engaging and difficult.

I’m not sure where you got this definition of trash, but that is not at all what trash is.

Trash are difficult encounters leading up to a boss that teach you the mechanics of the area. They generally take or modify one of the upcoming or previous bosses mechanics and are in groups to help you learn to do/handle multiple things at once.

At least in Wildstar, SWTOR and GW2 this is what trash is.

In wildstar the “trash” encounters were frequently just as hard as the boss encounters until you figured out the mechanics.

Emapudapus.1307:

Wut did i just read here o.O? What is the point of this thread? Most of the statements from you ppl are completely wrong, at least spvp part. It feels like 1 person with multiple accounts trying to prove some unknown point.

Pretty much this ^^

There are currently 2 condition builds on necro, terrormancer, and full conditionmancer.

There are something like 10 different power builds…

There is 1 condition weapon on necro, scepter. There are 5 power weapons and 1 utility weapon (Dagger, Axe, Greatsword, focus, warhorn, utility staff)

With the introduction of reaper you can also do 1 or 2 interesting hybrid builds.

There is 1 condition trait line (curses), two utility traitlines (SR, Reaper) and 3 power traitlines (BM,SP, DM)

Conditions are much harder to play than direct damage. They require much tighter rotations, you have to fight against all the normal counterplay (dodge, block, invuln, heals), plus the addition of resistance, and cleanses.

Pretty much everything in your OP is just plain incorrect.

This is the classic MPS symptoms. Miracle Patch Syndrome, or MPS affects nearly all MMO gamers. They are sure that it is “just beta” and we are “actually testing”, when in actuality, real beta testing hasn’t happened in 10+ years. What you are doing is previewing the game. What you see is what you get once you are within a month of launch. The closest approximation to an actual beta test we got was BWE 1.

There is no miracle patch just around the corner that will fix all the issues and make everything better. If you liked what you saw this beta weekend then you will be fine. There will be no magic fix to everything between now and launch. Remember we only have seen 10% of the HoT content, that means they still have 90% of the content to work on. The 10% that they show us is considered “final” with the ideas and feedback they learned from this 10% going to help them finish the other 90%

The lack of cast bars is significantly more annoying in HoT than it was in the base game.

Enemies attacks are very random, with seemingly no pattern.

For example, one of those large frog bosses swings a giant hammer which can easily one shot you.

I can see him raise his hammer (sometimes, particles make this difficult too) so I instinctively dodge to avoid the hammer. But instead it just sort of hangs there for a second. I think ok, well he didn’t swing it yet but i’m well out of range.

BAM dead. apparently this was a ranged attack with no tell of when it would actually land, and no indicator of what it’s range was.

Is the goal here to have us memorize every attack of every enemy in the game?

We need cast bars, and either every AOE attack needs a ground indicator or none of them do. Half the attacks have an indicator and the other half don’t. I have no way of telling which attacks are AOE, which ones are ranged, which ones will just instantly kill me. HoT is a mess of abilities right now.

It doesn’t matter a whole lot in these beta tests with large zergs, but it will certainly be important for raids, achievement runs, story, and when the population thins out.

Rabid. Toughness is much more beneficial/pt than HP. Since we are a light armor class we get much better gains for toughness.

You can also run sinister, though your survivability will suffer, and probably will not be initially viable for raids. Once the content is familiar and/or nerfed then sinister will obviously do better dps.

Sulwyn.4362:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

When providing feedback, please keep in mind that all the mobs in VB have been significantly nerfed since last BWE. Everything dies in about half the time, regardless of build/class. So even if it feels you are much stronger, it is more likely you are just plowing through the stupidly easy mobs now.

I played a condition reaper this weekend in PvE and honestly it felt pretty close to perfect. Deathly chill was fixed, which was great, as was the added chill damage icon.

The only issue I still have is the chill stack limit of 5. My chills were constantly not sticking to the target because some non-condi reaper, or ele put a bunch of chill stacks on the target, meaning I was completely losing out on my GM trait a large percentage of the time.

To those of you who have tested condition reaper in PvE: what has been your preferred stat combination? Has full glass (Sinister) been effective or do you prefer a slightly tankier (Rabid or Carrion) setup? Thanks!

I run full rabid. Sinister really does nothing for Scepter/dagger or staff. I lose out on a good bit of dps in RS, but the extra toughness is worth it, especially in upcoming raids.

Further testing and i’ve decided that Deathly Chill still isn’t working correctly. Due to the 5 cap limit on Chill I only get MY chill on the target about 25% of the time, even less on boss mobs. The rest of the time my chill is overwritten by other reapers, or other classes applying chill. Additionally the 5 limit means I am constantly losing chill applications due to 5 1/2s chills taking up all the chill “slots”. Having your GM trait rendered useless 75% of the time is just a poor design. Either change the trait to apply torment on chill, or remove the 5 chill limit.

Any update? hoping to get at least one raid test in before this ends.

Sorry you wasted all your time posting this, but bosses drop tokens that you use to buy the skins you want. And the vendors only unlock skins after you beat the corresponding boss, so you can’t just farm the first boss for tokens. This is in addition to direct drops.

Rich Fuel.7253:

less then 10 min he died im telling you

If it took you 10 minutes to kill a trash mob then he didn’t “melt”, you beat your heads against it for a stupid amount of time because he was too hard for you to determine the mechanics.

Remember you only have 8 minutes to kill the actual boss which has 10x the hp as the red boss.

rogerwilko.6895:

why Reaper? it still does not offer much in terms of party support, or?
I understand that it has really strong damage dealing skills but what about everything else the necro was missing until now?

It is still missing all those things. People are easily drawn in by flashy animations and cool effects. The dps is still below that of warriors and thieves and eles, and it still offers no group utility. It is a ton of fun to play though, and is quite good in PvP because of its sustain. It is also a very well polished elite spec which makes it stand out above some of the others.

The most promising elites imo are:

1. Herald- great all around, can’t go wrong here.

2. Chronomancer- fun play style, unique buffs, good all around again.

3. Reaper/Druid- Both are fun to play, and both are very good but each lack one important thing. Reaper has good damage but no group support. Druid has amazing group support but lacks damage.

I haven’t seen enough of scrapper or daredevil yet, but scapper looks promising at least.

DH and Tempest are getting better with each weekend, but I don’t think they’ll make it on the list by launch.

You can access the canopy part of the map in 2 ways.

1. Updraft use. Once you unlock updrafts you can fly your way to the top of the map.

2. Night Choppers. At night, about 10 minutes in, all controlled rally points gain a chopper. These chopper’s can be interacted with to take you to the canopy. There are a number of fun bosses in the canopy at night.

Good luck!

When providing feedback, please keep in mind that all the mobs in VB have been significantly nerfed since last BWE. Everything dies in about half the time, regardless of build/class. So even if it feels you are much stronger, it is more likely you are just plowing through the stupidly easy mobs now.

I played a condition reaper this weekend in PvE and honestly it felt pretty close to perfect. Deathly chill was fixed, which was great, as was the added chill damage icon.

The only issue I still have is the chill stack limit of 5. My chills were constantly not sticking to the target because some non-condi reaper, or ele put a bunch of chill stacks on the target, meaning I was completely losing out on my GM trait a large percentage of the time.

Can confirm that squads still do not work.

Few notes on things:

-Choppers need a map icon. I spent half the night trying to show people where the choppers were and how to use them.

-People think there is nothing to do at night so they log out or leave the map, meaning I have yet to be able to get enough people into the canopy to kill the bosses up there.

-No map wide boss/reward makes the event chain fun once, but then just more and more boring.

Hope you guys get this fixed soon… looking forward to raiding this weekend!

Lome.8239:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Few more things:

6. Masteries are completely locked in an linear now, no choice, terrible change
7. Gliding takes much more xp to unlock now. Pointless change that makes the map less fun to navigate for no reason.

Shoulda stopped at the original post.

Pretty sure it’s just gliding that you have to get first (which makes perfect sense for game and map design) before you can start choosing.

Well you can “choose” more gliding or bouncing mushrooms. Have to unlock mushrooms to get the others.

Few more things:

6. Masteries are completely locked in an linear now, no choice, terrible change
7. Gliding takes much more xp to unlock now. Pointless change that makes the map less fun to navigate for no reason.

Pretty dissapointed with this BWE after the last two.

Just some quick notes:

1. Most mastery points were removed making it tedious to get enough points
2. Mastery points you left in are bugged and can’t be earned
3. Break bars are significantly overtuned. Most enemies die before the break bar has moved more than 2%
3b. Wyvern boss break bar needs to be broken in 5 seconds before he takes off. Currently takes 3000s of CC to break the bar… a little absurd.
4. Bosses that were previously well tuned are now a joke, do no damage and take <5s to kill (super slyvari on top half of the map)
5. Story instance nerfed to be quite boring now.

Basically please undo all the changes you made between this BWE and the last one. Game was a ton of fun and was really excited last week, very disappointed this weekend.

Iris Ng.9845:

My point is, there should be a mix of both types of damage in a well designed encounter. That’s why I listed “Boss with evades” in one of the assumptions

This would be the ideal solution, where you need both types of damage succeed. A great encounter would be to have ht boss constantly spawning adds, but periodically go into a high toughness mode. The direct damage users would take care of the adds during this phase while the condition players burned the boss. Then it could switch to a squishy mode and the roles would reverse. Only way to beat the timer would be to have a good mix of both.

All the BWE’s have had a posted start time of 12:00 PDT.

All the BWE’s have actually started at ~9:00 PDT

Title pretty much covers it. My guild is trying to set raid times, but we kind of need to know if we need to have our members grind out gliding before we put them into a raid group.

Any chance we can get an answer on this?

Kronos.2560:

The only thing I need/want is ascended for higher fractal tests and runes that aren’t included. The rest they give you and doesn’t save anyways.

you can get full ascended armor in the raid entrance this BWE. No need to bank it. There is a post in the raid forums that lists the available sets.

Iris Ng.9845:

• Evade doesn’t avoid condi damage…

This is a fairly common misconception. Evades avoid condition damage exactly how they avoid direct damage. direct damage is applied immediately, condition damage is applied over time, but dodging a direct attack is the same as dodging a condition application, they both stop the same amount of damage from being applied.

Unfortunately, in addition to all the normal counterplay, conditions can also be cleansed before they deal their damage, leading to overall lower dps for condition specs in almost all cases.

Hopefully in raids bosses have higher base toughness so that condition specs can at least be competitive.

Iris Ng.9845:

My opinions

Your setup assumes:

• 100% group melee up time during burn and close to 100% during the whole encounter.
• Breaking defiance bar is minimally necessary.
• All attacks are blockable or semi-blockable or reflect-able (unlike burning dart, poison dart, oil, tar puddles, etc.)
• No second mechanisms that discourage immobile stacking (broken floor, canon spread, etc).
• Rez-ing is easy.
• Boss has low HP, medium toughness, no reflect or likewise doesn’t cleanse conditions.
• Boss is stationary most of the time (unlike a certain jumpy Mordrem Tegariff).
• Boss can be kited with chill, crippled, immobilization, slow, etc.
• Boss doesn’t have evade built-in skill sets (unlike a certain Revenant-mimicking pet).
• Boss has no invuln phases (unlike a certain ugly tree).
• Boss has limited numbers of CC (unlike perma daze, stun, meat-grinding lockdown)
• Boss has no quickness (holy guacamole!)

Umm… I’m probably gonna wait until farm status :>

OK lets look at some of these:

If boss moves or has invuln phases then we will need to do even more dps during burn phases to beat it before enrage timer. Comp stays the same, locks out lower dps classes even more than before

Listed comp can break a break bar exactly the same as any comp including the other classes can. Break bar even easier with listed comp due to 4 IB’s giving almost 20s of break bar reduction.

If I can’t block attacks then prot uptime and healing becomes even more important. This may let me swap out a single guard for a druid, but that is just trading prot uptime for healing, no net gain unless for specific gimmicks.

Can stack boons on the move, none of these builds require everyone to stay in a single spot for more than a few seconds.

You can’t hard rez in raids so you will only be soft rezzing. Reinforces the need for 2 warriors and sticking close for buffs/healing.

High toughness boss is the one thing that could change team comp significantly here. I would swap out an ele for a sinister engineer, and a guard for a reaper maybe if this was the case. Might be able to take a venom share condition thief as well.

Moving or stationary doesn’t change much comp wise.

Bosses can’t be kited with those things in any game mode now or ever so not sure what you are implying here

If a boss can evade it can evade all classes, no effect on team comp, favors high dps comp due to enrage timer

This team comp has high condition cleanse and high stability, making it ideal for high CC bosses. Other classes like reaper have very little stability making them even worse for these encounters

If boss has quickness we have 2 chronos who can quickly strip it off. Good thing I took this team comp and not a bad one.

So yes, thank you for reinforcing why we need to exclude those other classes.

RSLongK.8961:

How u came up with this composition without knowing the boss mechanics?

Are you saying bosses won’t need blocks, heals, quickness, might, prot, vuln, dodges, and faster skill recharges?

Unless the bosses turn us all into turtles with a pre-set skill bar then this is how you get maximum buff uptime, skill recharge, defense, healing, and damage.

I’ve been working on assembling a raid team, but we are having problems due to the buff limit…

In order to optimize our group we are ending up with:

2 PS warriors
2 Staff ele’s
2 Chrono’s
2 Herald’s
2 Guardian’s

Just to give us maximum DPS… this leaves us… 0 raid spots for any other classes. I can’t find any way to justify bringing a thief, a reaper, a ranger, or an engineer into the raid.

Is there a way around the buff limit? Will it be raised to 10 in squad groups? I hate to tell all the other classes they need to just flat out reroll or wait until farm status, but I’m not seeing a way around it right now.

Awesome news, thanks for the heads up.

Don’t suppose there will be infusions available? I know it doesn’t make a ton of difference, but I’d like to have my extra 60 stats, never know what you might need.

Is this a joke thread mocking necros? That’s the only reasonable explanation I could come up with…

1. Best DPS in the game
2. Second best healing in the game
3. Super tanky
4. best boon sharing in the game (second best for might)
5. Aura sharing

Ele is literally the best or second best at every single role in the game…

Sigmoid.7082:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Sigmoid.7082:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Sigmoid.7082:

So:
Sceptar #1 does the same if not a pointlessly small higher amount of DPS but ramps up faster so buffed.
Scpeter #2 does more damage over all and has longer bleeds.
Scpeter #3 for condi builds is just a pure fpDPSs increase.

Over all the whole thing has been buffed.

Scepter 1 is a slight nerf not a slight buff, scepter 2 is a slight buff, these 2 cancel each other out almost perfectly.

Scepter 3 is a buff to DPS but an average nerf to LF gain.

I think slightly longer duration on scepter 3, and a LF gain skill on dagger 4/5 would be good.

I think the overall bigger problem is that bleeds suck. they need to make bleeds to the damage they were supposed to be before the unexplained patch day fake out nerf. If they fix that then I think condi necro could actually be really good.

Mathematically its an improvement no way to say otherwise. Before the changes at best you would get 2 stacks of 20s of bleed and 16s of poison per full auto chain. So 40 bleed ticks and 16 poison ticks. After the change at best you can get 3 stacks of bleed for 13.5s and 18s of poison per full chain. So that is 40.5 ticks of bleed and 18 ticks of poison per auto chain. The dps is roughly the same but because it ramps up faster its a buff. The only way its a dps loss is if you miss the last auto.

Scepter two, before the change at best you would get 28s of 3 stacks of bleed. Now you can get 30s of 3 stacks of bleed. Straight buff.

Scepter 3 is now a pure condition skill. Doesnt really need a duration increase its fine as is. Just because the up-time is between 96 and 100%+ doesnt make it bad.

So thats 3/3 on buffs for condi builds.

Sorry i’m not going to settle for sup-par bottom tier dps with no utility even if it is a buff over the old sub-par dps.

Scepter 3 duration definetly needs to be increased, bleed needs to be buffed, OH dagger needs to get a LF gain, and lingering curse needs a rework to become a group wide duration buff. Once we get that or the equivalent of that then I will be satisfied.

That wasnt my point. My point was pointing out you were wrong about all three skills not being stronger than before. Im not denying certain other things may or may not need adjustment.

Yeah I was wrong there, I got mixed up with the calculations from Monday when there was no info on the scepter 2 changes. That would have been a wash, but since they buffed scepter 2 it does work out to be a miniscule buff.

It’s such a small change though I have to wonder why they even bothered? I guess it removes the dependence on lingering curse. But lingering curse is still going to be taken by every PvE condition build and no PvP condition build.

The only way I could see it making sense is if they planned on buffing bleeds, but they didn’t do that.

Sigmoid.7082:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Sigmoid.7082:

So:
Sceptar #1 does the same if not a pointlessly small higher amount of DPS but ramps up faster so buffed.
Scpeter #2 does more damage over all and has longer bleeds.
Scpeter #3 for condi builds is just a pure fpDPSs increase.

Over all the whole thing has been buffed.

Scepter 1 is a slight nerf not a slight buff, scepter 2 is a slight buff, these 2 cancel each other out almost perfectly.

Scepter 3 is a buff to DPS but an average nerf to LF gain.

I think slightly longer duration on scepter 3, and a LF gain skill on dagger 4/5 would be good.

I think the overall bigger problem is that bleeds suck. they need to make bleeds to the damage they were supposed to be before the unexplained patch day fake out nerf. If they fix that then I think condi necro could actually be really good.

Mathematically its an improvement no way to say otherwise. Before the changes at best you would get 2 stacks of 20s of bleed and 16s of poison per full auto chain. So 40 bleed ticks and 16 poison ticks. After the change at best you can get 3 stacks of bleed for 13.5s and 18s of poison per full chain. So that is 40.5 ticks of bleed and 18 ticks of poison per auto chain. The dps is roughly the same but because it ramps up faster its a buff. The only way its a dps loss is if you miss the last auto.

Scepter two, before the change at best you would get 28s of 3 stacks of bleed. Now you can get 30s of 3 stacks of bleed. Straight buff.

Scepter 3 is now a pure condition skill. Doesnt really need a duration increase its fine as is. Just because the up-time is between 96 and 100%+ doesnt make it bad.

So thats 3/3 on buffs for condi builds.

Sorry i’m not going to settle for sup-par bottom tier dps with no utility even if it is a buff over the old sub-par dps.

Scepter 3 duration definetly needs to be increased, bleed needs to be buffed, OH dagger needs to get a LF gain, and lingering curse needs a rework to become a group wide duration buff. Once we get that or the equivalent of that then I will be satisfied.

Sigmoid.7082:

So:
Sceptar #1 does the same if not a pointlessly small higher amount of DPS but ramps up faster so buffed.
Scpeter #2 does more damage over all and has longer bleeds.
Scpeter #3 for condi builds is just a pure fpDPSs increase.

Over all the whole thing has been buffed.

Scepter 1 is a slight nerf not a slight buff, scepter 2 is a slight buff, these 2 cancel each other out almost perfectly.

Scepter 3 is a buff to DPS but an average nerf to LF gain.

I think slightly longer duration on scepter 3, and a LF gain skill on dagger 4/5 would be good.

I think the overall bigger problem is that bleeds suck. they need to make bleeds to the damage they were supposed to be before the unexplained patch day fake out nerf. If they fix that then I think condi necro could actually be really good.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

SkiTz.4590:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

lordkrall.7241:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think too many people forget this. Probably because many play the game 40+ hours a week like it is a job.

sigh

So, why not give everyone everything for just simply logging in then?
It is not a job after all, thus everyone should just get everything from the start, right?

Yes Krall, lets give everyone everything and completely negate the entire reason to play what so ever. /sarcasm

Seriously, no one asked for, or even implied, that. Quit shoving words in other people’s mouths because you can’t comprehend the basic point being made.

This is exactly what people are asking for/ They want raids to be doable immediately upon hitting level 80 and getting exotic gear. This takes less than 30 hours of playing the game to get to this point.

Do you honestly think someone who just bought the game 2 weeks ago should be able to complete raids? Because the only thing that separates someone who bought the game 2 weeks ago from someone who bought the game 3 years ago is ascended gear, a solid guild, and experience.

It has already been established that the people in this thread think casual players should be able to beat raids, so there goes the experience part. It has already been said they should be able to pug them, so there goes the solid guild, and now people want it to be done in exotic gear.

So yes that is exactly what they are asking for, and it is absurd.

No one is asking to make it easier which is what both you and Krall are implying. Content can be done in a challenging way without requiring an additional tier of gear.

If they have the skill set, why the kitten does it matter when they started playing? Why does it bother you that joe schmoe picked up the game 2 weeks ago can raid because he’s just “good.” This kitten should have nothing to do with whether or not you have GEAR, rather whether or not you have SKILL.

SKILL > TIME!!!!

Ugh talk about lack of creativity.

“How do we make it harder George?”
“Uh… give the boss some one shot hits, up his HP, up his defense, and give them a new tier of gear to chase to compensate a tiny bit”

Please people. This kitten is WoW (and every clone since) all over again.

Lemme know when they add another tier above Ascended, than I can believe the bolded statement.

Until than, you are ridiculously overreacting.

Anet CLEARLY stated raids were going to be the endgame ppl were asking about. They said it a while ago in the HoT reveal that this was content made specifically for ENDGAME CHARACTERs.

Not for anyone to create a character and a week later, poof, they can now accomplish everything.

Its an MMORPG. There is grind in every MMORPG.

Deal with it or leave.

The only ppl whining about this are the ones that are hellbent on making sure they don’t have to do ANYTHING to get access to 100% of the content anet decides to create.

News flash, 90% of the things anet has added in this game for the past 3 years required little to no effort to do, to progress, etc etc.

You gonna seriously think they are gonna start making it where everything they add is going to require a grind now??? get kittening real.

You open world pve lovers are getting plenty in HoT.. anet is at least trying to give EVERY type of player what they want…. whether they be casual, hardcore, PvPers , WvWs, etc etc

Stop your bs whining and demanding anet create 100% content that you can access immediately.

They have, to a limited extent, told us that there won’t be a tier above ascended. So long as they hold to that stance and don’t change it, as they have their other views over the past 3 years.

However, the point is that the top tier of gear was exotic. Ascended came after, and we were told time and again that it wasn’t necessary for anything except fractals. Now, lo and behold, it looks like it might be required for raiding as well. So much for those assurances that it wasn’t necessary for anything except fractals.

Yes raids are one end game, but they could be that without the ascended requirement. Because now that supposedly optional gear is again being forced in our faces. So much for being optional right? How long before they simply balance the expansions as a whole around ascended armor? Still optional right?

I don’t mind grind. I’m well aware that it’s a necessary component of any MMO. That’s not the point here.

Oh, and just so you know. I HAVE ASCENDED GEAR. Technically speaking, I could be right there in line with the rest of you when the wings open. So assume some more.

Since when did raids becoming REQUIRED or FORCED onto every single player?

The entire kittening content known as RAIDS ARE OPTIONAL, THUS ASCENDED IS OPTIONAL.

Its not designed FOR 100% of the players to have IMMEDIATE ACCESS to.
There’s nothing WRONG with making content for players who have grinded and played a long time.

Anet took the stance of “if you wanna play and complete raids, you have to wear this tier of gear” Anet is allowed to make restrictions if they are waranted… which they perfectly as seeing how this is THEIR VISION OF ENDGAME….

They are only actually optional depending on how much story is actually tied to them, and how much that story matters to the greater scheme of things.

I did not state that raids are required. I did state that by them requiring ascended gear, the supposedly “optional” gear is again being forced into our faces. There is a difference.

As for ‘thier vision of endgame’ puhleeeeez. They are giving us raids because the traditional mmo base whined incessantly. They have given us a bit of their own spin on it, but even that is quite close to the standard raid set up (gear requirement, weekly lock outs, grindy prepare to play).

no way!??! anet is making a business decision to create content to attract NEW TYPES OF CUSTOMERS to the game?!!? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT!?!?!?

Except that’s not what the game was billed as. There are numerous games out there for those types of players. Anet billed GW2 as something new, something different. Instead, they are simply turning it into another clone. One component at a time.

Unfortunately, GW2 will likely run into the same issue as all those other games. Those people that whined that wanted these things still won’t be happy because GW2 is not whatever ‘x’ other game they desire, and they’ll end up leaving anyway. We’ve seen it time and again with the other clones out there. I’m not sure if that just kittenes me off or makes me depressed, because I do love this game.

Please show me where they removed the ever evolving story, the open world event system and the tons of open world bosses/content…

or wait… did they keep adding their original ideas and then added MORE stuff on top of that… It’s amazing how selfish some people are.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

lordkrall.7241:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think too many people forget this. Probably because many play the game 40+ hours a week like it is a job.

sigh

So, why not give everyone everything for just simply logging in then?
It is not a job after all, thus everyone should just get everything from the start, right?

Yes Krall, lets give everyone everything and completely negate the entire reason to play what so ever. /sarcasm

Seriously, no one asked for, or even implied, that. Quit shoving words in other people’s mouths because you can’t comprehend the basic point being made.

This is exactly what people are asking for/ They want raids to be doable immediately upon hitting level 80 and getting exotic gear. This takes less than 30 hours of playing the game to get to this point.

Do you honestly think someone who just bought the game 2 weeks ago should be able to complete raids? Because the only thing that separates someone who bought the game 2 weeks ago from someone who bought the game 3 years ago is ascended gear, a solid guild, and experience.

It has already been established that the people in this thread think casual players should be able to beat raids, so there goes the experience part. It has already been said they should be able to pug them, so there goes the solid guild, and now people want it to be done in exotic gear.

So yes that is exactly what they are asking for, and it is absurd.

No one is asking to make it easier which is what both you and Krall are implying. Content can be done in a challenging way without requiring an additional tier of gear.

If they have the skill set, why the kitten does it matter when they started playing? Why does it bother you that joe schmoe picked up the game 2 weeks ago can raid because he’s just “good.” This kitten should have nothing to do with whether or not you have GEAR, rather whether or not you have SKILL.

SKILL > TIME!!!!

Ugh talk about lack of creativity.

“How do we make it harder George?”
“Uh… give the boss some one shot hits, up his HP, up his defense, and give them a new tier of gear to chase to compensate a tiny bit”

Please people. This kitten is WoW (and every clone since) all over again.

Skill > time in a FPS

time >> skill in an MMORPG

You seem to be confused about the genre you are playing. You are playing a character. This character gains power by playing longer. The longer you play the more your character progresses and the stronger he/she becomes. You the person behind the keyboard matters much less than the experience your character has.

This is the basis of all RPG’s.