Guild Wars 2

WEXXES.2378:

Now, I’m not saying you are forced to play the best thing, nor is it the only thing you are allowed to play, but people do like improving themselves and doing the best they can because MMOs are, indeed, of competitive nature even in cooperative settings. If they weren’t, no one would care (but obviously, we do).

I would say this is generally the case with humanity as a whole regardless of what they’re doing. We like to compare ourselves against each other. Which often leads to all sorts of problems, but well, that’s humanity for ya…

Power. Most of the condi is from torment, which can be good if you can make the enemy move around a lot. Fractal bosses don’t tend to do that so much, nor do world bosses. It’s pretty good though out in silverwastes and in maguuma jungle, so just depends on what and where you are.

That’s a great combo, but as you said, a lot to do just to make the healing skill worthwhile.

RabbitUp.8294:

bearshaman.3421:

RabbitUp.8294:

bearshaman.3421:

RabbitUp.8294:

Guardian doesn’t get to dual wield.

Umm… what?

I meant wield 2 of the same weapon. Guardians main-hands (scepter, sword, mace and now axe) don’t have an off-hand version.

We don’t have any now, but that doesn’t mean that couldn’t change in the future.

Which is why I said, if it’s going to change, do it right. Like, give as a dual wielding spec like Spellbreaker is dual-wielding dagger.

Just shipping an off-hand sword/mace would be meh. Like, why would guardian need a spec to use these weapons with their other hand?

Personally I think dual wielding maces would be awesome, especially with some new skins (like making them look like escrima sticks).

Yeah there was a thread where people were suggesting similar ideas, and traits were getting moved all over the place lol. It happened right after Venomshare went baseline, if that helps you with the timeframe for finding it.

I wasn’t suggesting that they increase the power of the kits, only that they are trying to make them more appropriate for certain builds. Like if you are doing condi, you would only need these two kits because the other kits are all power based, and vice versa. You could still do all kits, but what would be the point? You’d only be using the kits that give the higher dps for your stat set. Even if that frees up one slot for something else, you wouldn’t suffer a dps loss, because you’d be using more of the skills on the kits you have equipped.

This isn’t a nerf on the kits. This is an adjustment into how they are set up for purposes of streamlining builds and increasing build diversity. They do need to make the weapon skills better, that I do agree with. That would also improve build diversity.

RabbitUp.8294:

bearshaman.3421:

RabbitUp.8294:

Guardian doesn’t get to dual wield.

Umm… what?

I meant wield 2 of the same weapon. Guardians main-hands (scepter, sword, mace and now axe) don’t have an off-hand version.

We don’t have any now, but that doesn’t mean that couldn’t change in the future.

Similar. Both have pets of a sort, both have decent ranged and melee options, both have access to good AoE. LB has more range than anything reaper can offer, and if you tell your pet to run in first, you can stay far back at range and not really ever risk damage. When you want to engage, GS conveniently has a gap closer ability (on 2 or 3 I forget). LB has a knockback (please don’t use that in group content!) and a stealth skill. I recommend Beastmastery and Marksmanship traitlines, your 3rd one you can play around with the others.

Edit: Ranger has a lot more options for group support, in case you do any map meta events in Maguuma.

Random thought though, Staff does have a whirl finisher for vulnerability stacking and a blast finisher if you need to provide swiftness along with that stability.

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

bearshaman.3421:

Euthymias.7984:

It does a very low heal on activation Devs nerfed the base healing and each dagger has to hit to steal some small amount of life. Its more of a DPS increase than a heal tbh. The daggers also still get used up if your attack misses or fails for any other reason, too.

Ok, so it’s not just me. I know Impossible Odds is pretty amazing, but that heal skill is awful…

The heal is really only slightly decent when used with Unrelenting Assault or used in conjunction with Hammer 4 and Impossible Odds at range. Otherwise you’re just open to taking damage while healing which is meh at best.

Hammer 4 is a projectile block.. how does that help? I think you meant Hammer 3, Phase Smash, but let me know if I’m missing something (seriously, I’m still figuring out this class).

Euthymias.7984:

It does a very low heal on activation Devs nerfed the base healing and each dagger has to hit to steal some small amount of life. Its more of a DPS increase than a heal tbh. The daggers also still get used up if your attack misses or fails for any other reason, too.

Ok, so it’s not just me. I know Impossible Odds is pretty amazing, but that heal skill is awful…

Krispera.5087:

Normaly, 80.

DS’s tigers can only be tamed after winning Meta.

Do the last LS, which you are supposed to have it unlocked, and you should be able to tame one out of the submarine. (Ring of Fire, Draconis Mons, Mariner Landing)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Tiger

I think the only pet locked behind winning the meta is actually the electric wyvern. I didn’t have to do the meta to get the tiger.

RabbitUp.8294:

Guardian doesn’t get to dual wield.

Umm… what?

Vagrant.7206:

Kain Francois.4328:

Why would you even want to play GW2 using nothing but a single weapon set ever for over 1,000 hours? I’ll never understand players who hate kits.

I want to point out that when the balance “team” feels like doing something, they only seem to balance weapons people can equip. Our kits have been barely touched, despite being our most important source of DPS.

I’d also love to be able to free up some of my utility slots for something else too. I haven’t played with some of the gadgets in years.

Last balance patch they touched flamethrower considerably, and said that they were looking at giving the kits more “purity of purpose” I believe was the phrase, so more changes are likely forthcoming. Which may mean we won’t need all the kits just to do damage, but can focus on the kits that let us do damage inside of whatever build we are doing (power, condi, etc).

Offhand mace would be my vote. A guardian using guns doesn’t work in my head. shrug

I’d sooner see D/D than that tbh…

If you want something magical though, I’d love to see a mainhand focus.

LucianTheAngelic.7054:

Honestly hammer rev does fine in all levels of fractals. It might not be optimal but personally I don’t think you really need optimal anywhere in this game. I’d rather have a hammer/staff rev who knows how to survive in any of the high level Fractals (including CM 100) over someone who tries to melee constantly but fails at it. For a hammer/staff build I recommend Glint/Shiro. Impossible Odds on Shiro adds quite a bit of dps to your hammer and gives some nice mobility to regain distance while wielding it so you can do max damage with your CoR.

I ran Sword/Shield/Hammer Glint/Shiro Dev/Invo/Herald in most content besides raids since rev release and it works quite well. Sword/axe is fun too.

Thanks for the input. I’ll look at the stuff you mentioned and try to get a better understanding of them.

Random question on Shiro: the healing skill never seemed to do very much healing, and I was wailing away on enemies to try to get the most use out of it. Is it something I’m doing wrong or is it not that good?

The reason for doing as these people have said is because a lot has changed. I think the biggest change is the specialization system and how traits are managed. Since you also bought HoT, you also may have noticed the mastery system, kind of a end game use for experience and leveling, mostly relevant to the new maps of HoT and living story season 3.

The actual game play hasn’t changed. Active defense (dodge, evade, block, blind, etc) is still better than just taking it to the face, and most of the stats are the same, though we have two new ones, expertise and concentration, which boost condition duration and boon duration respectively.

Skills and traits have changed so much in that time, it might be worth it if you want to stick with warrior to just level another one, so you can slowly get used to the new skills and traits. I’m assuming that was your one character from way back when because you really liked that class, so just an idea, but I personally like variety.

Euthymias.7984:

>Also, not worried about raids or high level fractals, just everything else.

You can run whatever you want and get by just fine in Open World.

If you’re not keen on using Sword+Axe/Sword+Shield/Sword+Sword and Shiro for whatever reason, just use Jalis and Glint I guess.

Staff works fine and still has its function as a great CC weapon with some defensive capabilities while hammer provides a ranged option, but that’s about it without the extra DPS/Evasion Sword/Shiro would add.

I still want to do low level fractals, map events, and dungeons. It’s not just OW.

Edit: I may try one or the other (swords or shiro) again and figure out which contributed more to my dislike of the gameplay at some point. I just didn’t like the feel of it. I have my thief for that, kinda want something different with this class, ya know?

Between using traited turrets, elixirs, and having a wide range of combo fields and finishers, engineers can provide a wide range of boons. They also have a unique trait that boosts condition damage for their allies. Healing Turret is also an excellent group heal. But I will warn you, because every 6-10 skill is essentially two skills in one (toolbelt class mechanic essentially doubles all of them), it can be a lot to keep up with.

Warriors on the other hand, have unique buffs in the form of banners, which can boost almost any stat for a group within range, and have a few shouts that grant some boons. Their elite banner even can help revive fallen allies. They have a trait that heals allies on shouts, but it competes with Phalanx Strength, so no go there, but the same trait line (Tactics, learn it well) does have a trait that boosts allies’ healing power when you grant might, which you will be doing alot. Aside from the shout trait and the healing power boost I don’t know that you will have much ability to heal your allies, and protecting allies is more the guardian’s bag of tricks.

kash.9213:

bearshaman.3421:

Ok, thanks. I was avoiding daredevil because I was looking at building up a thief for the next elite, hopefully rifle will have some AoEs. I was going for a pistol rifle using asura thief, thinking of getting it to 80 and grabbing a bunch of hero points so I can just unlock all of the new elite when it drops. I’ll think on it.

Play all of thief at least a little. There will be synergy with older traits and you want to know a little about what you’re doing.

This would be my second thief lol. My first one is a power build with staff and SB (needed a ranged and aoe option), and uses daredevil.

Ok, I’m gonna try this again. Last time I tried using swords and shiro, which i know is more meta than the others, but I really didn’t enjoy the play style of the legend or weapon set. I wasn’t enthused with how the mace axe worked for condi, largely cuz its a lot of torment and kiting to get the damage out of it. So I think I’m gonna go with staff and hammer. I feel like the skills for those fit my playstyle a lot more, and would be a lot more fun. (side note: using an asura for this.)

Any suggestions on how to make an enjoyable and viable build with this? Note: I’m not look for optimal or max dps, just so long as I’m not dead weight, I’ll be fine with that. Also, not worried about raids or high level fractals, just everything else.

In the interest of providing the possibility of not using kits at all, I will say that hammer does pretty good damage across its several skills, and has a lot of synergy within itself, providing a lightning field, a whirl and a leap finisher, a block, projectile reflection (and on the #2 skill no less), etc. I don’t feel the need to switch to kit with this weapon, and it’s fun to have my engi wade into melee with reckless abandon. XD

Note: I am talking about PVE, not PVP or WvW, though I imagine it would work well in WvW too. I don’t pvp so can’t help you there.

Also, another thought on the high use of kits:

If you look on sites like metabattle and enjin, you will notice that while kits fill almost all the slots, they mention a lot of other utility skills to swap in for specific use cases. I honestly feel like engi is one of those classes that has a lot of highly specialized utility skills that don’t make sense to keep on the bar, but work great to swap in when you need them, possibly more true for us than any other class. This might also add to the high use of kits in the 7-10 skills.

… I have never felt so validated… <3

Lahmia.2193:

Narrrz.7532:

Crinn.7864:

why would you want to use Death Shroud? It’s literally bad in every situation.

umm… life blast is a pretty strong ranged skill, and both Life transfer & Tainted shackles are very powerful when used right. Of course, so are Soul spiral/Executioner’s scythe but both those abilities affect a much smaller area.

So really, anytime i want to deal high single target damage at range or burst/control a large area, death shroud is the way to go. Staff can also do both those things, but not to the same extent, and axe is a no-go since it lacks aoe capability almost entirely, not to mention how much less range it has compared to both life blast & Necrotic grasp.

The hit radius on reapers auto seems terribly small too. If you could choose each shroud skill, I’d take Life Blast every time.

It’s all situational. While life blast pierces, it’s not likely to hit multiple targets, where as RS AA does have a 3 person cleave. If you are up against single targets DS AA works better, but against anything with adds or mobs, RS AA is better. The thing I don’t understand about DS is why have a ranged AA followed by a skill that pulls you into melee range? Who thought that was a good idea?

Ok, thanks. I was avoiding daredevil because I was looking at building up a thief for the next elite, hopefully rifle will have some AoEs. I was going for a pistol rifle using asura thief, thinking of getting it to 80 and grabbing a bunch of hero points so I can just unlock all of the new elite when it drops. I’ll think on it.

The problem is unlike most other classes, most of our dps is in the weapon kits. So to achieve our top dps, you have to use at least 3 kits (grenade definitely, flamethrower, elixir gun, and bomb depending on circumstances, and mortar is usually the elite pick).

That said, there are some good scrapper builds that don’t use kits as much because hammer is a kitten good weapon…

I know SB has some AoE with #4 and #2, but are some other good options for thieves to do AoE? Is this a serious issue with thieves in general, or are there good options that I’m not very aware of?

Mesmer in high end fractals and raids tends to be desired for its quickness and alacrity uptime over its dps. (Our dps is pretty awful in comparison to other classes tbh). You will want to look into chronomancer, and getting commander gear (I think that was the meta set for raids).

I get kitten for this but I am still using celestial with traveler runes for most pve. Let’s me change my build on the fly to be decent at whatever I need to do, without hauling around 3 different sets (power, condi, healing). Not optimal or meta, but very enjoyable, and I haven’t had any problems handling any content so far. Note that I am not doing high end fractals or raids right now, if I did, I’d make a more focused set of gear.

Edit: Also means I don’t have to make a new set when I go to try out wvw.

I ran Valk armor with rage runes for more fury up time and crits, along with the mixed berserker/valkyrie trinkets. Worked great, but did switch to Marauder armor and weapons (kept the trinkets, its basically the same thing), just so I could have more build diversity and not rely on either decimate defenses or death perception for the additional crit chance.

Edit: Also switched to strength runes I think.

As Lahmia pointed out, the change to the class mechanic isn’t unique to us, guardian also saw a change in its virtues and how they work. I’m was not entirely happy with the changes either, but then they made axe into a good ranged option (see below).

Also I’ll point out that you are comparing a core profession to an elite spec. Not remotely fair to the core profession. Warrior’s elite spec is condi based, and your warrior is power-based, so you have no need for berserker in a sense. If you switched to condi, I think you would see a major uptick in your dps.

Also as Lahmia pointed out, Warrior has Phalanx Strength. This alone makes you invaluable to any group content, as it give you unparalleled might stacking capabilities that EVERYONE benefits from, regardless of build (unless they are a fulltime healing druid). Necro has some group stuff, but nothing really of note, unless you are dealing with some heavy condi pressure.

Reaper Shroud is pretty good at melee range, and does have some good utility as well. DS lacks any real utility, and the AA is slow. Dhuumfire actually saw an increase in its usefulness just because RS AA is so much faster, even more so with Reapers Onslaught.

Axe, with the recent changes, has amazing synergy with Decimate Defenses, and really carries its weight now as a great ranged option for Reapers.

I don’t know anything about pvp, but both classes will do well in all of those contents, so the question becomes more an issue of gameplay than anything else to me.

Warrior will be the easier of the two imo to use. Its condi weapons are longbow and Sword/torch. You will want to get the elite spec maxed out from HoT. Warrior offers incredible might stacking abilities for an entire group, and can offer some other forms of boon support, but might is the big thing warriors bring to the party. Phalanx Strength is your party’s friend.

Engineer will be the more engaging, and does have a higher learning curve, just because to do the most you will be using kits and switching between them a lot. However, you won’t need the elite spec, it offers nothing for a condi build over any of the core traitlines. You may want the Viper gear set however that does require HoT, if not that then Sinister. Engineer can bring healing, a wide range of buffs and debuffs, it truly is a very versatile class, in addition to good dps.

Which one sounds more appealing?

Edit: Also it offers the utility shout Rise! which synergies very well with Flesh of the Master and Necromantic Corruption. You gain a lot of toughness, they absorb damage from you and pull conditions from you really fast, depending on how many you get. And for some reason I thought they did bleed damage but I might be getting them confused with a different minion.

AnariiUK.7409:

bearshaman.3421:

Tested this out with Storm spirit (easier to see the vuln stacking). I was definitely applying multiple 3 stacks of vuln on enemies, and the storm spirit effect icon didn’t actually go away. It appeared to be refreshing every 3 seconds, not 10.

So what’s actually going on?

The buff icon which you see on your bar is refreshed every 3 seconds, and lasts for a maximum of 6 seconds. For storm spirit, you can only proc the passive vulnerability effect once for every 10 seconds that you have the buff on your bar, due to the effect recharge ICD.

As for why you’re seeing multiple procs within 10 seconds, I can think of two reasons:

1) Is your pet also attacking the target? The pet will also get the spirit buff, and that carries its own internal cooldown.

2) Is your condition duration higher that 100%? If so then your vuln will last longer than 10 seconds and it might look like you’re getting multiple procs.

>_<

Forgot about the pet. Yeah that’s probably where the additional stacks were coming from. And my duration is higher too. Not much, but enough to bump it to 12 seconds.

Tested this out with Storm spirit (easier to see the vuln stacking). I was definitely applying multiple 3 stacks of vuln on enemies, and the storm spirit effect icon didn’t actually go away. It appeared to be refreshing every 3 seconds, not 10.

So what’s actually going on?

Blood does offer a potential group dps boost in the vampiric traits, with a minor heal. Don’t know if the increase for the whole group warrants using it over another traitline or not.

Silvatar.5379:

CAA.9653:

Make all three and share gear between them. Ascended stuff is account bound.

^This,

If you like “soldier” professions, there is no harm in trying all three, especially as they can all share their “end-game” gear. Just make 1 ascended set of armor/weapons and have them share it based on whatever you feel like playing at the time.

True, I didn’t think about that. This is a good idea.

On a slightly more lore-based thing, I find it odd that the legend I saw in one of the vids has a statue depicting her holding a greatsword in Black Citadel, not a bow of any kind.

Condition management. If the enemies use a lot of conditions on you, necros have unparalleled ability to pull those conditions from your allies and send them back to the enemies.

We can do a few other things, but Silv is right, most of those things can be done better by other classes.

Wondrouswall.7169:

What I forgot to mention and that you also left out was before the 25s -> 20s cooldown adjustment, it was planned to increase Spirit cooldowns from 25s -> 40s before Rangers flipped out about it on the livestream and everywhere else.

Our boy, Irenio, had our back and made sure that didn’t happen and gave us additional minor buffs after it was all said and done.

And as I said suggested before: If Spirits Unbound can return and replace Instinctive Reaction, that would be swell. Doesn’t have to remain in adept. I’d prefer it to be in a Master tier competing with Windborne Notes and the now sweet Evasive Purity instead.

Vigorous Training and be dropped in Adept as a second boon on-pet swap trait along with Clarion Bond. Instinctive Reaction is not a trait many will miss and is statistically inferior to Bountiful Hunter, anyway.

No reason to lose Nature’s Vengeance, though, it could use a rename to “Nature’s Bounty” for thematic purposes – which was also a former trait Rangers had that increased regeneration by +33%.

I could get behind this. Also, didn’t know about the cooldown drama, I had just started playing a month or two before the specialization massive change.

generally mobile is more a playstyle than a particular character in this game. Thief, in particular daredevil, does a lot with dodges and evades. Most classes have mobility skills of varying kinds (mesmer blink and portal, ele lightning flash, ranger swoop on GS, mesmer sword 2 or 3, warrior sword charge, etc etc etc).

For DPS, ele, thief, warrior, condi ranger are probably your best bets.

Cerby.1069:

You can solo every pve thing in the open world with trailblazers and still do a kitten ton of damage.

Vipers gives a little more dps, but at the expense of a tonnnnnnnnn of tank/survivability. You won’t be amazed by the damage difference you gain by going vipers…..just cause the damage is already so high with trailblazers.
That said, you will likely get pretty bored/lazy using trailbalzers since it makes everything a meaningless grind lol. But….you won’t die in the story or anywhere you might otherwise have a problem.
YOu will need vipers for many of the raid instances though. Although technically you could use trailbalzers if you do the tanks jobs for the instances. Just stuff to think about.

Cleave weapons are: bow, sword/torch
pvp/wvsw weapons: Mace/sword, Mace/shield, Sword/shield,

I will point out that crafting trailblazers is stupid expensive… I thought about making some exotic trailblazer gear for a condi trap ranger and saw how much maguuma lilies are on the TP… 0_o

Viper with some Dire stuff would be cheaper by far with only a slight loss of dps that will only be noticeable on bosses and such.

Wondrouswall.7169:

It varies (slightly), spirit effects linger 14s when sacrificed, 16s when killed or expired.

Dadnir.5038:

The reason why they removed the spirit’s ability to move is different and directly inherent to the spirit’s survivability. Simply put spirits live longer if they do not follow you. The removal of this ability also came with an enhancement of the effective radius of the spirit’s passive which basically allow you to cover most of the battlefield in PvE.

As for this, Spirits never received a radius boost on their passives and Spirit Unbound’s removal had nothing to due with survivability. It has always been 1000 radius and the developers (specifically Roy) stated it was to make Spirits like Turrets in the sense of an on-point boon rather than mobile.

The only changes that happened during 9/15 was the 100% health bonus and 35% increased proc chance traits were made baseline, then an additional 5% proc chance increase from 70% to 75%, and replacing active on-death with boons on Nature’s Vengeance.

If anything, removal of Spirit Unbound had Rangers lose the ability to cover the battlefield in all modes without any increase to the radius. Doesn’t matter now though, as a player can just role a Herald if they feel like playing the old Spirit Ranger.

You forgot to mention that they also reduced the cooldown from 25 to 20 seconds at that time.

Edit: I do think there should be a trait that allows the spirits to be unbound, but I hope they don’t take away Nature’s Vengeance to do it. While moving spirits can be useful in WvW and maybe some other instances, I have found the stationary spirits to work great in fractals, raids (the few times I did them lol), dungeons, and anywhere else where you aren’t engaged in running battles. Most fights I’ve been in I was able to drop them in the middle of the area, complete the fight, and have them ready again by the time we got to the next big fight. I can see how having them follow me around would be bad, even with the AoE damage reduction, as currently they only die if I kill them or the duration is up.

While the trait would be pretty cool, I’m used to things changing often and frequently. Nothing is forever, and learning to adapt is a part of life. Evolve or die, as they say…

Aeolus.3615:

bearshaman.3421:

I’m just sayin’, if you want a game that is purely designed around pvp, that’s your option. Don’t play a game that is designed to have multiple game types, and then complain about stuff that exists for that very reason.

i wasnt quite clear, the issue is the pve design confilcting with pvp, while Anet keeps enforcing their pve skill design spamway across pvp, they wanted the game to have a moba feeling, they failed since they dont know how to balance nor design classes that fit in both pve and pvp with good gameplay, all resumes to play certain gimmicks per class due how easy is to be carried in this game against players that dont follow the “metas”.
The gap between metas and effort needed is wrongly done.

Ok I get pve/pvp conflict in general, part of the reason I’ve advocated for, and been happy that they are finally doing more skill splits between the two, so balance issues for either one doesn’t negatively impact the other, and hopefully we’ll see more of this done over time.

I don’t think they wanted the game to feel like a moba in the first place, but that’s my impression. I’m not an Anet person, so my opinion isn’t worth much. I only brought up moba because that is the purest form of pvp I can think of in terms of a game being focused around that one gametype, not because I thought that’s what Anet was going for. Also, I’m glad they didn’t because I would hate this game and never play it. (I don’t play mobas. Ever. I don’t like competitive gaming, so I look for games that don’t revolve around it.)

As far as balancing classes for both pve and pvp, I’m not sure if that’s possible without skill splits. And I couldn’t make sense of what you were talking about with “meta”.

I often hear Ranger/Druid, Mesmer/Chrono, Ele/Tempest are shoe-ins for Raids, but other classes are taken as well, it depends mostly on your build then your profession there.

WvW, it depends on what role you want to play. Solo roaming, front line, mid line or back line, it changes how you play there.

Soloing story can be done with any, but the best solo classes are Ranger and Necro, cuz pets/minions.

Warrior, then guardian, then revenant.

Cool thanks. Just working on a build and weighing the pros/cons of some of the spirits against other utilities.

When you use the boost, it will put you in Silverwastes with whatever character you pick. At this point you have not used it up. If I remember correctly you have to intentionally talk to a guy in the camp who will make the boost permanent. Until you do that you can run around in SW with that character, or leave and boost something else and run around with that to try it out. You can’t leave SW, and I forget how loot is handled, but either way, the game should make it very clear when you are about to use the boost up.

theodor.3480:

To continue with the necroing

kitten … didn’t even notice…

Ok thanks. I thought that’s what it was, but I wanted confirmation. Is that cooldown separate for each ally, or total?