Guild Wars 2

Your boons are gonna get turned against you anyway. Health pool is compensated for by virtue of resolve. your dps is sufficient to kill a necro, especially when it can’t load you up with condi as easily. Save the boons for when you are fighting someone who can’t make them hurt you, or when you aren’t solo and there is sufficient group cleanse to make it work.

Themistokles.1238:

Hmm. I disagree and agree with so many points here.

I dont think that Reaper on its own would be so hated if condis would still be working like they did before all the changes. That all the Condis can be stacked is horrible. It gives condi builds the opportunity to burst a opponent down. Its not like condis kill you slowly. If you play against the Meta Mesmer or other non Meta Condi Builds you are melting in seconds. A well timed condi bomb on a Necro is also fast enough.
The truth is that many many many “new” Reaper players are not good at doing this. They dont know when to do it and think that spamming scepter one is a option. I have played Necro for a long time before HoT. It was a great way to deal with the cele Ele Meta and you had your Spot in Teams if you are good at doing your Job. Now most Teams are running a Reaper. Chill is absolutely overtuned. Its on his own a extrem stroong debuff for your opponent but with Necro its also a hard hitting Hammer.
People start to complain about Condis more and more because so many Condis are implemented in the game. They are given like candys.
Its easy to see the poor design on Condi Rev. They got Burning, Torment and Confusion. No need for special Sigils here or even a special rune. Its so kitten easy to stack the most strongest Condis on some builds.
The last days i have played against more and more Condi warriors. Warrior is in a terrible spot at the moment but the Condis they can do in a second are destroying your healthbar.
At the same time they implemented so many condis they reduced some cooldowns for condi and corrupt skills. But they didnt reduced the cooldowns for the condicleans. Not every class can cleans many codis at the same time. Often a Condicleans can only cleans a few condis at once. The problem with this skills are all the cover condis.
I agreed with vulnerability also effects conditions just because many classes that have played condis also gave vulnerability. But with all the Hybrids coming up its just a mess.
Chronophantasma Shatter, Signet Chillomancer and also Condi Mallyx are played with Mercanary Amulet.
The Reaper is doing great power Damage in Reaper and at the same time he gives Chill.

Should Reaper get nerfed? YES….. BUT only if all other too strong classes are getting nerfed at the same time. It wouldnt help if we just nerf one class at the time. Power Rev is outshining every other Power Spec. Scrapper has to much sustain while doing great damage. Tempest is reduced to one viable Build. Give Eles something and reduce the Heal or the Sustain (damage Reduction uptime is to much) to normal.
And the Conditions have to be looked at. These are just some examples.

If everything is tuned down to a healthy state Reaper would no longer be discussed that much.

While I agree with most of what you said, your post is just pushing me more into the camp of them having skills/traits/whatever work differently between pvp/wvw and pve. Because if they do what you suggest, they are going to have to tone down so much pve content (mainly in HoT) to make it even feasible to complete, and forget having any chance in raids. I’m starting to see the impossibility of balancing the classes for pvp, and have them still be functional in pve, and vice versa.

Necros are only amazing because they can corrupt boons that everyone else depends on to get stuff done. Answer? Learn not to depend on boons, and the necros won’t have nearly as much condi to throw at you.

That is seriously the main reason they are doing so well right now. Everyone is depending on boonspam, which they then turn into condi spam.

I did go with celestial for mine, but its exotic not ascended, and I’m not doing high level fractals with it. Its done well for me in pve, largely cuz I like changing my build around a lot. I know it’s not the glass cannon most people go for, but it works for me for now.

My build avoids the heals on cooldown with spirit of nature, which I only use when the other heals aren’t enough for some reason. It buffs damage separate of might by alot, provides vigor, significant might, stability, swiftness, fury, and burning damge. All while still doing decent condi and direct damge, though that’s not its primary goal. I don’t see how it is any less than what a tempest could do.

TurtleDragon.3108:

@OP. I am assuming this is for PvE/Raids, if not then disregard this:

Druid:
+ Unique Group Buffs
+ High sustained healing output in Celestial Avatar
+ Ranged heals
- Low Damage output
- Resource dependent and isn’t in “Healer” mode half the fight
- Cast times on Heals
- Loses resource when going into down state, delaying your group heals for a significant amount of time

Tempest:
+ Instant cast heals (can heal through slow or before interrupts happen)
+ Wide variety of boons
+ High damage output if geared that way
- Limited ranged healing
- CD dependant
- Lower base HP (survivability) than druids

Between the 2 I’d rather have a druid, but I can see Tempest being a viable, sometimes even better replacement for Salvation Pass. I personally prefer running 1 druid healer and 1 auramancer for the final boss, since it’s a 2 healer fight.

This assessment, while accurate for the elite spec by itself, isn’t entirely accurate when everything the base professions have to offer is taken into account.

Fiddle Irk.9710:

How about a Torch for a weapon? Skills could be “Flames of Grenth – set yourself alight with the Flames of Grenth, burning conditions off yourself and nearby allies.” and “Funeral Pyre – set the target area alight with underworld flames chilling foes in it and weakening them”

Interesting, though necros tend to use the conditions that are on them more offensively…
Also, probably want to leave out anything that is specific to a particular race in the game.

Prophet.1584:

passive spirit range is pretty huge, it may not suffer as much as you think. I would not recommend investing too heavily in celestial ascended gear as you go up in fractals.

I’m not. I’m actually trying to decide which of my characters I want to use for fractals at higher levels (and subsequently which build for that character), before I worry about crafting ascended. The trinkets are fairly easy to get (laurels for amulets, guild commendations for ascessories, fractal relics for rings), so I make most of my builds with ascended trinkets and exotic everything else. I mainly went celestial to give myself flexibility and resilience (I’m the healer and support after all, it sucks if I drop.)

looks solid to me. I think the main issue isn’t so much “would it work” (it clearly does) so much as “is there something that would be better to have”.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQNBHhZ6keVlKUzqXFbWxsCuqYVBiWEtYhRwYCXfrAA8TtqmVdGdluYQGMdW4N-TxSBAB0ZCiiDIAK6IaWDSrKBDc/B51EAwDCoMlftoF4O1fCAgAwEn4En4EDA-e

This is a build I’ve been running with. It’s both healing, support, and not bad at all on damage. You can adjust the stat sets around if you want to focus more on healing, or damage, or condi, I’m mainly posting this here as an example of how you can both do heavy healing and support with a druid.

Been using it in fractals (low level right now, ascended crafting is prohibitive atm). It’s been very effective. I will freely admit it loses effectiveness when used in places where the fights move around a whole lot, since the spirits don’t move, like in some of the HoT maps.

KingFarout.1092:

Envoy. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Envoy

I think its a good theme for a healer/soul summoner minion hybrid.

Necromancers with the new blood line would extremely benefit from a healing/support spec. It would also open us to a new role in group content, one which many have asked for since launch.

Ooooooo… I like.

Very good theme, and even draws from existing lore. I would love this, as I personally don’t like our current minions (thematically, not mechanically). I would love the idea of using actual souls and spirits of the dead rather than the physical rotting remains. Also, necros having a healing or support spec would be amazing since we are pretty much considered the most “selfish” profession in the game. I think this would be perfect for an elite. Would love to see this more fleshed out (what new weapon? Utility skills? any change to class mechanic?)

That said, any other ideas?

Oddly there is a conversation about this in one of the other profession forums (Necro I think), and I said something there that I will also say here, paraphrased as I’m too lazy to copy paste right now… (don’t think about that too much).

Condition damage got a serious boost last june. To the point that it became viable and much more balanced against direct damage. I think a lot of people are calling it OP because they don’t like change. On the most fundamental level, I think that’s what it is. A lot of complaining about having to even use condi cleansing is going on, because before it was ignorable, so why bother? Now it’s actually effective, but people don’t want to have to change their strategies to account for it or defend against it. So instead of adapting, they’d rather complain about it. But in general, it’s actually very balanced.

The ranting about necros is also interesting when you think about it because it is primarily from classes that depend heavily on boons. You don’t rely on boons, have some cleanses, and necros aren’t that big a deal. Most of the complaints are from classes that use boons heavily. Which boon corruption was made as a hard counter to. Boon removal isn’t all that common, so necro looks OP all of a sudden, because people don’t want their boons messed with. They’d have to, I don’t know, adapt or something.

Note: This post is primarily food for thought and generalized to the issue of the perception of condi in the game in general. I mention the necro stuff because I see the conversation happening on mesmer and necro forums primarily. Just my 2 cents. Back to your regular scheduled discussion.

All valid points. So let’s table that idea. What elite specs have you guys thought of?

Any ideas on what people want to see for the next elite spec?

One of the ideas that’s being batted around on the ranger forum that I think fits thief way better is a sniper elite spec using longbow.

(Note: thread is for discussion of new elite specs, not current issues that need rework. Be imaginative, and have fun. If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

Watch the news section, and they will announce when they have their twitchfeeds. That’s when they usually announce stuff. It will probably be soon that they look at the next quarterly update and what they want to do there. At least, it’s my impression that they are doing this stuff on quarterly updates now from the way they talked about the last one.

Levetty.1279:

bearshaman.3421:

Druid is pretty much a part of every build now, just like the others. Raids were the lure for WoW players.

And they needed to shoehorn tanks and healers into the game (directly going against what they sold the game as) to make raids appeal to wow kids. Rangers got shafted by having a completly diferent poorly made class bolted onto them.

All saying ‘druid is a part of every build’ proves is how much rangers got shafted because they can’t even be rangers anymore.

I disagree. Raids was the thing they swore they would never do, and did to appeal to those kids. Druid has nothing to do with that.

While alot of people feel like druid forces you to play a healer, that’s simply not the case. Druid makes berserker builds more powerful (glyph of empowerment and GotL giving a combined 25% increase to damage), and give condi builds another way to quick stack bleeds. Most of the builds for druid don’t even use gear with healing power on it, or bother with the staff. On top of that, nature magic is already one of our traitlines, so druid is a natural outgrowth from that thematically. Just because it’s something that you may not use on your ranger doesn’t mean it’s not ranger.

Yes, I get you don’t like druid, and you (probably, I’m assuming) wanted a longbow elite spec of some kind, but LB does not define the entire profession, and there will be more elites as the game progresses.

So I haven’t seen a thread for this here, so I will start one.

First off, this isn’t a thread about what current stuff needs to be fixed/reworked/whatever. This is a place for ideas about what the next elite spec for necros should/could be.

What would you like to see next, and how would you build it? Based on the last round, that means what new weapon, set of utility skills, and some ideas on traits. (MAYBE a variant on shroud, but I don’t feel like that needs to be necessary. Any change to the class mechanic would be ok here so long as it fits in the necro theme.)

Yannir.4132:

@bearshaman, @darknicrofia and @Ragnar the Rock, please stop this now. While your concerns and points are legit, this is off-topic. This is a topic for musings about future elite specs, which is way way into the future, I’m sure there is going to be major patches and updates before any of this comes to be. There are already plenty of topics about the current guardian issues.

@Ragnar the Rock I’ve been putting together an elite spec that thematically focuses on polearms and tomes. Practically, I’ve given bleeds to the AA chain for now, #2 skill is a gap closer with a short knockdown, #5 skill is 3-5s block which inflicts burns on blocks and it can be released for an AoE burn+dmg. Rather than going with the javelins that paragons had, I feel like a melee polearm is more fitting. (not to mention I always hated that paragons were a ranged class)

I’ll make a more comprehensive post about this later, but my initial design seems to be getting very good synergy out of zeal and virtues. To make things clear, my design IS condi oriented.

Apologies, my intent is the same as your post here. I have a similar thread on the ranger forum where I’m trying to get people to think about new elite specs, and they keep going into what they don’t like about the class. My comments are to try to get people back on topic, I guess that wasn’t very clear.

As I said, I like the tomes idea with a similar implimentation as engi kits. I think that would work well for a “monk” elite spec (not necessarily like GW1 since I’m not sure what that games monk was like), with a definite focus on the tome “weapon” skills providing different group buffs, each tome centered around some monk-like theme. For instance, Way of Purity could do damage that scales the more conditions the enemy has (punish them for their impurity!), and has a #5 skill that provides a pulsing resistance boon to allies, with some condi cleanse or condi “purification” (convert to boons) for the group.

Edit: I’ll flesh this out more and post something later today.

Nilkemia.8507:

PvE-wise, Reaper doesn’t offer much in group situations for support/healing.

Doesn’t the blood magic traitline help others with all the life steal? I don’t have a good gauge for how much that helps everyone else (all the vampiric stuff). I’ve used it (and it was helpful to me) but no idea how well it helps others.

jokobet.6081:

Mordrem Sniper abilities could be easily integrated into ranger, in addition with new bursty pets. After all, a big part about hunting is approaching your prey without being noticed and then – bam – bursting it down (with a rifle )

Camo Ranger (using nature for concealment), e.g.

- u and ur pet blend into the background for a few secs, giving the next attack a damage modifier
- getting some hard-hitting DH-like shot with the rifle or alternatively a juicy burst sequence with the Dagger main
- some stun/daze/knock-down + evade/invisibility
- new pets with burst or knock downs similar to bristleback to match the playstyle
etc.

This could synergize well with Quickdraw and similar traits, would offer us a damage orientated skirmishing/evade playstyle and be an evolution of current Ranger playstyle while pleasing those of us who hoped for a non-support spec. It could even synergize with druid because bursts in between of healing sequences are a nice flavour.

Edit: All I am saying is that while it would work with thief equally well, there is no problem at all to match nature & concealment.

I agree and did include an option for that in my original post, I just expect that concept (of a sniper) to go to thief, not ranger, since we already have longbow and the MM traitline.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Darknicrofia.2604:

bearshaman.3421:

Darknicrofia.2604:

Imo instead of a new mechanic or type of skills, I’d much rather Anet takes the opportunity of the next elite spec to FIX or give us upgraded/better versions of spirit weapons or shouts.

That’s not something they would do with an elite spec, that’s something they would do in a major patch like the one in January. I hope they do more of those and address some of the issues that have been raised, but an elite spec will never fix core professions!

what i mean is new shouts and new spirit weapons

Shouts could easily be fixed with some tweaks on Cool downs, durations and what order effects happen in. (making pure of voice & soldier rune trigger before save yourselves takes conditions would be a big help)

Spirit weapons sadly need a complete redesign. (would love to seem them made akin to old dervish weapon enchants)

Signets need some tweaks and changes to their trait.

Consecrations need some tweaks to traits while sanctuary and hollowed ground need a redesign.

This. A rework yes. elite specs won’t do what he just listed. That’s all I’m saying.

Darknicrofia.2604:

bearshaman.3421:

Darknicrofia.2604:

Imo instead of a new mechanic or type of skills, I’d much rather Anet takes the opportunity of the next elite spec to FIX or give us upgraded/better versions of spirit weapons or shouts.

That’s not something they would do with an elite spec, that’s something they would do in a major patch like the one in January. I hope they do more of those and address some of the issues that have been raised, but an elite spec will never fix core professions!

what i mean is new shouts and new spirit weapons

I think they just need to rework the ones we have, or replace them (which might be what you mean, i’m not sure).

Druid is pretty much a part of every build now, just like the others. Raids were the lure for WoW players.

Frank.3791:

I dont believe that reapers are op, i think its just condis being overtuned atm that makes reapers look op. Any profession that rolls a condi build tends to do a lot of damage, warriors, revs, mesmers, thieves. They all do a lot of damage with condis tho they dont apply them as well as reapers can. In the current state of the game anything without condi cleaners just gets destroyed….

That’s because people were used to condi being crap. After last year’s june update, and even more so with HoT, condi has become a feasible way to build characters, and people don’t like change. So now that they have to figure out how to deal with condi, instead of revising strategies, they just start complaining about it. Which is what everyone does as soon as they can’t do whatever it is they feel like they should be able to do.

All the elites feel required right now tbh.

Levetty.1279:

Personally I think this says everything you need to know about Ranger vs Dragonhunter and Anets attitude to them

Rangers: Traps are a bit weak and could use some more utility
Anet: Ok we have added a knockdown to spike trap and greatly increased its cd

Dragonhunters in beta: Traps are a bit weak and could use some more utility
Anet: Ok we have given fragments of faith a stun break, increased the damage of some of them, each trap now gives boons when activated and the cd reduction trait now makes every trap daze the enemy.

And again, this is a false comparison. You can’t compare elite specs to core professions. They were not meant to be on the same power scale.

Well the 5 skill lets you cripple a whole group of things, and our longbow is one of only 2 1500 range weapons in the game, which is great for kiting. In fact you could technically kite a DH and never get hit but be able to hit them.

Traps imo need to be bigger. Larger radius.

But as far as their traps being better, that’s gonna happen. It’s an elite spec. Chrono has better wells than Necro. Tempest and Reaper shouts are amazing. That’s more to do with it being an elite than anything else.

The same thing gets said of mesmers, and the only thing they have going for them now is Moa and Portal. If you do one thing people don’t like, whether it makes you more powerful or not, you’re “OP”.

Furajir.3815:

bearshaman.3421:

So your argument isn’t that they are better rangers, just that you think their longbow skills are better. That’s a totally different argument.

Negative. Pretty clear I think they do almost everything better when it comes to pure archery and trapping. I don’t have one, I have zero issues killing them in places like wvw, but that’s only bc I know how to play and keep them at 14-1500 range and shut down their traps. Places like spvp they are ridic.

That’s still not the entirety of what a ranger is. In fact you can easily play a very good ranger and never touch longbow or traps.

I agree that our traps could use some rework. I don’t know that I would agree that their longbow is better, only different. I have a guardian and have tried out the longbow. Tbh, not a fan. (but then I honestly like DH the least of all the elite specs I’ve tried, which is all except for berserker and herald).

I understand what you are getting at. There are quite a few people who feel like rangers should have gotten the DH traitline, not guardians. I get that. They want to be the masters of the longbow. Most of the people who say that also don’t like druid, so it makes them even more upset that another class got the elite they wanted for ranger.

All I am saying is longbow and traps is not the entirety of ranger. Guardians//DH do not make better rangers. Better trappers? Yes, but then traps were never that good a mechanic in the game until DH regardless of profession. Better longbowman? Depends on how you measure things. If you want, I can try to go into specifics, but I will say generally that our longbow synergies with the rest of the class (skills, traits, etc) better than the DH longbow does. Is theirs good? Sure. Is it the best for us with everything else we have? I don’t think so.

Edit: stupid kitten filter getting mixed up. Fixed now.

…. so much for evil priory theory, we’ve moved on to evil inquest and evil caithe it seems lol…

ScarecrowHD.4120:

bearshaman.3421:

I’ll reread the articles, but I guess I just want to understand how some of these came about. Like a charr mesmer? or an asuran warrior (when they seem to rely on golems primarily)? Or a norn engineer?

Even separate from the weird race/profession combinations, just general background on how they came about and the roles they play in their respective societies would be nice, at least for the more esoteric ones.

I belive i saw somewhere the engineers was a charr only proffesion when it began and the other races saw it on the battlefield vs the charr and picked it up i cant remmber where i got it from so dont hang me up on it

Haha, i see what you did there… XD

Doughnuthole.2403:

Why everyone says the stealthy sniper elite “fit more for thief”? Isn’t the elite spec aim for providing different play style?
Anyway, I think the Magic Archer that StickerHappy mentioned would be a great idea. Scepter/Focus with conjured bow maybe?

A different playstyle within the general realm of the core profession. Part of the reason why I hate DH, it doesn’t make sense with guardian at all. All the rest of them fit the theme of their core profession.

Edit: I have a guardian too, with most of DH unlocked, and it just feels unnatural.

So your argument isn’t that they are better rangers, just that you think their longbow skills are better. That’s a totally different argument.

I don’t know about self-hatred. I’ve seen alot of people in this forum (at least back when I first started playing, it may have gotten diluted since the core game went F2P) who actually wanted everything to be balanced, and if we had something that was grossly OP, they’d point it out in the interest of game balance, but not out of self-hatred.

Silv.9207:

Reaper is really really strong, one of the best spvp classes of the moment. But is still not OP.
But Why is so strong? Why ANet made it so strong? Why a lot of people say it’s OP?

-Shroud? No. The Shroud grant new powerfull skills (of you use the reaper) and grant you estra survavibility, but is both the only defence and the best damage a necro have, a thing that make it too risky to be wasted and frequently is better die than waste all the LF to survive 5 seconds more under a focus. And if you have it full you’re a god among mere mortals, but if you start a fight with no LF you’re a mere mortal among gods. It’s not a thing that you can “fix” and is the main reason why ANet was never able to balance the Necromancer, expecially in spvp.

-Condition Damage? No. Is strong, condition damage is really good on a Reaper, but what’s the difference between a necro and a reaper? Why before the Trait Rework system there was no one using condi necro (unless for Dhuum Fire glory moment) and now is the only way to play it? Why the trait rework made conditions be in stack, making burn really strong and the ability of the necro to send back the conditions a really good way to burst an enemy with his damage. The necro was unable to inflict good condition damage, but all the other classes was. Then redirect conditions against them was a really good way to inflict good damage and be “immune” to they’re high damage. But now there’s no more all that condition builds and the condition damage is no more strongher than direct damage.
Is hard to belive, but the actual meta is a DIRECT DAMAGE META. Just look at the builds in the metabattle: Power shiro herald, power scrapper, Shatter chrono. Then there’s a bunker ele and only one condition class: the Reaper. Then there’s direct damage thief, trapper guardian, a direct damage bunker or dps druid, eventually a direct damage warrior (I really love that funny oneshot build), and again teh Reaper.
Seriously: where the hell did you see all that condition damage? There’s Only the Reaper that play as a condition build! (sometimes the mallyx reve, but the shiro is better).
Then the Reaper isn’t OP why use conditions, also why the only reason he can play condition damage is why can Also use Direct Damage (Mercenary have the same amount of direct damage as of condi, is more a Hybrid than a condition build) and why Chill can inflict a good damage, reducing the problem of the necro to inflict damage (if you strip away chill damage from a necro you’ll see his damage reduced by 25-33%). Then he can convert boons, that frequently don’t give to the necro damage but soft CC (cripple), weakness and vulnerability, with sometimes bleed, a stack of burn or a stack of poison, that frequently don’t mean a big increment of the damage output.

-Survavibility? No. A reaper can be easy bursted down, expecially at the start of a match, when he have no LF. Just focus him and stomp. The reaper to survive is forced to CC the enemy and to kill him before be killed. Basicly in a common build the reaper have only a single escape button (the wurm) and then is totally without defence. If active the RS lose all his defence and is more easy to burst down and lose also his damage to survive a little longer (expecially in a a team fight situation).
In 1vs1 a good reaper can survive longer accumulating LF, starting with a full LF bar and using marks and eventually the spectral armor, but is still easy to burst down in a team fight why can’t protect himself.
Just Focus and Stomp.

Then why is so “OP”?

The answer is: Why Counter the Boon Spam with Boon Corruption.
That’s the only reason why the reaper is so strong in that meta. The only one.

Before the HoT the necro was the only classe able to kill eles and engis why countered they’re boon spam, making them weaker and focusing in direct damage, bursting them down, or reflecting the absurd Burn damage of the old cele ele build back to him.
Actually there’s elementalists, scrappers and revenants that spam boons all they time (expecially scrappers), and that make them a easy prey for a class that focus on the boon corruption.

Th only reason why the reaper is “OP” is why finally is a good class, with a good condi and direct damage (without both direct or condi his damage is heavly reduced, why play at his best with both the damage at the same time, with a mercenary “hybrid” build). But is still weak if you talk about the survavibility, don’t have any. Have not mobility. Have not AoE damage out of RS (and in RS have only skill 4 and 5, to spam poison or chill). Can’t hold a point in solo as other classes can do. Can’t be sent to steal a point. The Reaper is “bad” as always, is only more focused on boon corruption, taking under control other classes like engi, ele and reve.

The reaper is strong why the other best classes/builds focu on Boon Spamming, making him strong just by a Counter ability and not why is so much strong by himself.

Then, another time, there’s NOT a Condi Damage Meta. There’s a CC Condi spam Meta, is totally Another thing!
There’s only a class in the game that can really play as condi and is the Necro. Then all the other conditions you suffer was immobilize, weakness, vulnerability, cripple, slow, some collateral bleed and eventually confision, but there’s really a low amount of Damaging Conditions in the game.

If you look on you death screen during a match and see that a single condition inflicted you a insane amount of damage, then you’ll know that that condition is well balanced and not op why if it was OP it just needed to deal you the amount of your HP to kill you, not tree times more, just like a direct damage burst do.
Back in time, when Burn killed people with 80k of damage and everyone asked for a nerf, I was spamming on the form the same thing: Why a dps need only 20-25k of damage to kill you when a burn guardian need to spam 80k of burn (with also the direct damage to add) to kill you?
For the conditions on the reaper is the same think. more big is the numer, more time he needed to kill you.

The only reason the Reaper is strong at the moment is why keep under control the condi spam, there’s no other reasons to have a reaper in team out of make him remove boons from the focused enemy, no other reasons. Not why have a good dps, not why inflict conditions, not why have survavility or movement (that don’t have), not why can hold a point all alone (why other classes can do it better, in a high level spvp match).

reaper is OP? NO. Totally NO.
Is the right class in the right situation to counter the meta? (boon spamming and direct damage) Yes, it is. But still keep his weakness and can be defeated by a good player and different classes (daredevil, dragonhunter, a good herald or scrapper that know when Block/Evade and when CC and attack)

The reaper is balanced with the other classes, and even better, mantain a balance between the other classes, that is his main role in the ANet balance theory.

Generally I will agree with this. There are a few minor points I would contend, but they aren’t the main thrust of your argument, so no reason to bother with.

It’s less that it’s a condi meta with necros, and more that it’s a condi/boon corruption meta for necros. They have so much of it since the january update, that it doesn’t make sense to play necro and not play condi boon corrupt.

That said I have a reaper that’s a power build because 100% crit with 25 stacks vuln and many might stacks is a cake walk to do.

But that aside, I don’t think there is a condi meta right now, so much as alot of necro/reapers and (I will disagree partially on this one) condi alongside power scrappers are being played. and the top three professions seem to be reaper, scrapper, and herald.

Darknicrofia.2604:

Imo instead of a new mechanic or type of skills, I’d much rather Anet takes the opportunity of the next elite spec to FIX or give us upgraded/better versions of spirit weapons or shouts.

That’s not something they would do with an elite spec, that’s something they would do in a major patch like the one in January. I hope they do more of those and address some of the issues that have been raised, but an elite spec will never fix core professions!

Certain classes benefit from certain sigils more than others. The ones that proc on hit obviously benefit crit builds more than other builds. In the same way, because we have effectively 4 weapons in one, the weapon swap sigils favor us more, and others less. It’s not that we have less sigils, we just have different sigils that our class allows us to use very effectively.

I personally like the shapechange as kits idea. I think this would open up alot of options for any number of builds, with each shape being good for a particular type of build. Like Wolf could have a lot of bleeds and cripples (which would work well with Predators Onslaught, Hidden Barbs, and Sharpened Edges), or bear having protection and other tankiness (working well with the WS traitline), and there would be one for underwater, cuz I want an elite that isn’t completely useless underwater. But the forms could be designed to work with existing builds, so it not some hacked on spec, but actually fits into everything we already have. Probably Focus offhand.

FYI, my recommendation is geared for HoT zones. It’s what I’m using now and it works great.
Power Reaper
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR4Ynk0Y2kWaM2YNN2NxcT5mQvpeTL4C2URoJUFividxxI0VLA0CA-TxSBABZfAEwS5XEKBRR3BAPJgcU/BBTQ1rBhiLKQR7P48BIIAACATciTciTMA-e

or

more focused on being in Reaper Shroud as much as possible, and ranged when not
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRMQNBmQD7kZTzm0YjxG7sxZDm2ItBOc0baJXwgCANgEQ8UsLOGpKDrhmFA-TRSBAB5o+DFXEgsU+piuni2fIBTQ3qEEgnEABHQgAAIAMxJOxJOxAA-e

and if you don’t have HoT
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRMQNAW4dn0ICN2gd2Am2Ac4gjchSeDb9XDDgGIBonxa0sA-TBSBwA5U/hyFFo4+Do0dA4JBgwEUElgZV+FAABgJOxJOxJGA-e

Justine.6351:

The norn forms do not reset it.
Nor does my flute.

oh oops norn forms do if you are in CAF.
and flute too if in CAF ;-(

flute?

I doubt that would happen, as it seems they are making each new elite spec open up a new weapon for the class. At this point I could see offhand sword or mainhand dagger as the most likely new weapons for us. As someone pointed out, we already have ranged for days (LB, SB, axe, staff)

Edit: That is more likely something that would fall under a rework thread, as in what existing mechanics do we have that are in need of a rework/redefinition/redesign? A valid thought, just misplaced.

Curunen.8729:

Good because personally I’m fed up with the entire “raison d’etre” of Mesmer in pvp revolving around these two skills.

It’ll expose how weak the rest of the class is for the balance team.

Sadly I must agree with this.

I enjoy guardian. I’ve been toying around with it, still haven’t found my niche yet.

Personally not a fan of either weapon. Not a helpful post, I know, just didn’t want you to think you were being ignored. Also a bump so someone else will see it and maybe help ya out.

Yannir.4132:

bearshaman.3421:

Just looked through the GW1 professions. I know someone mentioned a Ritualist type elite spec, but I feel like the revenant is already the gw2 ritualist. Now a monk spec I could see. Utility skills that mimic martial arts, not sure what weapon they would go with since we already have staff (maybe dagger?), something like that perhaps?

I have to point out that monks in gw1 had nothing to do with martial arts but I do see a good point here. I mean, guardians are basically a heavily armored melee class(or atleast it’s one aspect of the class), so “physical skills” wouldn’t be out of place even if there isn’t anything to back that up currently, since all of the utility-skills are spellcaster flavored.

On a totally separate note, I think Anet has to start bringing out new weapon types for the next expansion. Guardians specifically may have room to expand within the current weaponry but many classes have hit a wall in that respect. I would like to see polearms, crossbows, or even 2-handed axes introduced into the game, for example. There’s plenty to choose from.

Lack of crossbows in the current game is a crime btw, they are one of the two links that eventually led to the development of guns. It’s like inventing a car without inventing the wheel first.

I mainly thought of this because I know they introduced physical skills with the daredevil spec for thief, and I thought that would go well with a monk spec, but I think tomes would work well with that spec as well.

I’m really all about this tomes idea now. I like my guardian, wasn’t a huge fan of DH (didn’t fit my roleplay for the character), but tomes would be amazing!

Rodzynald.5897:

I hope for tomes as kits that would be mostly about support and damage (both power and condi mixed in). That would greatly increase guardian’s capabilities in combat.
For now we are darn too easy to figure out due to “straight line” abilities and rotations.
Now if we had kits then we could have a greater build diversity and huge choice of combos to perform.

@Demented Sheep, thank you for the links, those are really cool and I could definitely see that being brought back in the manner Rodzynald suggests. I think this would be an amazing new skill for the class and would really open up a lot of possible builds with the current traitlines.

Where is this “tomes” idea coming from? Too many of you keep bringing it up for this not to be in the game somewhere…

It would look like a ripoff of WoW.

roamzero.9486:

I would like to see Ranger get some thiefy stuff. Dagger mainhand. and change the pet to a shadow version of your char, with mechanics that allow you to insta swap your char with your shadow.

That feels more like a assassin spec for a thief. No nature theme in that at all.