I wasn’t expecting much from drones. Was hoping hammer might break with tradition and be a viable damage alternative to explosive kits, but it appears to be another niche/utility set.
I do not have that information or an efficient means of collecting it. Please feel free to add it to this thread or to a new one in order to present more accurate information to the community.
Doing a bit of quick napkin math for direct damage comparison using tooltip info from the poi, on an engie using a marauders amulet and hoelbrak runes in SPVP (ignoring vuln, might random procs, traits etc for now):
TL:DR, hammer and toolkit auto appear roughly equivalent.
Hammer autoattack chain base damage:
Positive Strike – 628 (.5 cast)
Negative Bash – 628 (.5 cast)
Equalizing blow – 807 (.5 cast)
Total in 1.5 seconds 2063 damage, or approx 1376 DPS.
For comparison in the same period of time:
Rifle:
Hip Shot: 591 (.75 cast)
Total in 1.5 seconds 1182 damage, or approx 788 DPS
Bombkit:
Bomb: 988 (.5 cast)
Total in 1.5 seconds 2964, or approx 1976 DPS
Toolkit:
Smack: 632 (.5 cast)
Whack: 632.5 cast)
Thwack: 1383 (1.0 cast)
Total in 2 seconds 2647 damage (for comparison sake, 1985 over 1.5 s) or approx 1323 DPS
Grenade Kit:
Grenade: 261 x3 (.5 cast)
Total in 1.5 seconds 2349, or approx 1566 dps
Flamethrower:
Flame jet: 1780 (2.25 cast)
For comparison sake, 1,186 over 1.5 s, or approx 791 dps
Mortar:
Mortar Shot: 632 (.5 cast)
Total in 1.5 seconds 1896, or approx 1264 dps
Quick Summary:
Bombkit:1976 DPS
Grenade Kit:1566 dps
Hammer: 1376 DPS
Toolkit:1323 DPS
Mortar: 1264 dps
Flamethrower:791 dps
Rifle:788 DPS
Just something unique enough that plays along with the legend playstyle while still being usuable by the other professions and still being balanced with the other rune sets.
Well… looking at most of the existing profession runes, and what you need to make use of them:
Rune of the Necromancer – +20% fear duration (fears)
Rune of the Warrior -20% recharge on weapon swap (weapon swap)
Rune of the Guardian – When you block a foe’s attack, burn that foe for 1 second (blocks)
Rune of the Engineer – While wielding a conjured weapon, environmental weapons, kits, banners, and stolen items, gain +7% damage (bundles)
Rune of the Ranger – +7% damage while you have an active companion (pets, minis don’t count anymore)
Rune of the Mesmer – +33% daze duration (daze)
Rune of the Elementalist – +20% Burning Duration, +20% Chill Duration (burning and chill)
So whatever the rune is, it may only be useful to one or two other professions… and it could be pretty sucky, if it’s like some of them :p
I see where you are coming from, but I think it’s a little simplistic to compare ele attunements and legend swapping in the same way.
For starters, an elementalist can still cast their utilities, heal skill and elite regardless of their attunement (although the effects may differ for skills like glyphs). They also have other attunements they can switch to in the meantime while waiting on their original attunement to come off cooldown.
But the larger difference is that most revenant skills lack a lingering effect after changing legends. The best example is in the case of ventari, where the tablet disappears immediately on swap (iirc). An ele can cast swirling winds or magnetic aura, and that effect will persist when swapping to other attunements. In comparison, ventari’s tablet disappears immediately on swap. You can’t start in ventari, put up the field and then swap to do other things.
I dunno. Would it be feasible to instead add a trait that provided some kind of persistence effect to skills, allowing them to last for a while after legend swapping?
Well, it’s probably too late in the development cycle to suggest something of this nature, but I thought I’d write this up for the fun aspect and see what others think of it.
The revenant currently has 1 profession specific button (legend swap) as well as an additional F2 (facet of nature) button which becomes available when the herald legend is equipped.
The revenant currently has some mechanical issues when it comes to skill utility. In particular, it is currently impossible for a revenant to provide certain key party support skills to their group except when channeling a specific legend. Even if the legend is equipped, if they have to swap to another legend, they are no longer able to provide much needed utility to their group until they can swap back.
I believe there is an exciting opportunity for this issue to be addressed, while at the same time adding some additional personality to the class.
Examining the utilities available for each legend, we discover that what are arguably the core group support skills for each legend are currently slotted in the first utility slot for each legend:
Ventari: Protective Solace (projectile absorbtion)
Jallis: Inspiring Reinforcement (AoE stability)
Mallyx: Pain Absorbtion (party condition draw, resistance per condition to self)
Shiro: Shiro’s only current group support skill presently is jade winds, so he is something of a break from the norm in that regard
Glint: Facet of Darkness, AoE fury. But Glint is somewhat special because all of her skills are group support based, and as above a special skill mechanic button is already added for this specialization
My suggestion is to create a new profession mechanic button in addition to the legend swap button, called “Manifestation”. The idea behind this skill, is that it allows one of your equipped legends (the legend currently not in use) to take over a part of your body temporarily which provides access in some fashion to the key utility provided by the other legend temporarily to the player.
I envisage this skill working as something similar for each legend, depending which legend you have in your offslot. As examples:
Embrace of Ventari: The vines of ventari’s tablet embrace you, absorbing projectiles in an area around you
Dwarven Spirit Greaves: Jallis empowers your leg armor, pulsing AoE stability
Woe of Mallyx: Mallyx curses you, summoning demonic arms from your backpiece. Draws conditions to you for a period and transferring these conditions to the nearest enemy when the skill ends or is deactivated.
Jade Transformation: Shiro possesses the weapons of allies in the area, turning them into Jade. Temporarily provides evasion to your allies and breaks stun.
Of course, the duration, energy cost (and or upkeep, depending on how the skill is designed) and cooldown of these skills would have to be carefully considered to ensure they are not out of line.
Thoughts?
Medblaster has base values and co-efficients so low that it’s hard to believe it was intended for use across any of the gameplay modes or situations that I could think of.
You seem to be arguing that the pistol and elixir gun are “primary weapons”. You should use grenades instead.
mortar #1 exists to proc combo fields, and provide staple dps at range
Staples do more damage than the nerfed mortar kit.
Looks like elixir S still works properly?
Needs to be about 50 more skimpy male armours/outfits before you can make that post.
I agree, we need at least 50 more skimpy male armors.
Why make the armor now? You can get everything ready minus the insignia’s and then craft them when you are certain which one you want.
Just use exotics until then.
What if they used only a single grenade for the model/animation to make it easier/more visually appealing, but it split apart into three grenades close to it’s impact point? Might be too similar to thief cluster-bomb I guess. Though they could probably make it one model and have multiple detonation areas anyway due to shrapnel. Grenade barrage could just be an overpacked/double shrapnel/high explsosive grenade.
On another note, do you think the bomb kit animation ought to be rethought? The constant squatting motion has always looked somewhat awkward. Would something like a mini hand held mine laying machine, or a dynamite stick dispenser work better?
Or maybe a dispenser that emits a stream of gunpowder, and drips out a chemical agent periodically to make the piled up gunpowder explode? The gunpowder stream could switch off when using skills 3 and 5 (instead a different chemical would be dispensed), and spread out when using skill 4, and change color for skill 2.
Eh, I can’t really think of any ways to make these kinds of things look good though.
Hrm, what about an explosive jackhammer? You could probably do some interesting things with that. It sounds very engineer too, although a bit more civil then combat haha.
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Incendiary ammo would probably be the best grandmaster for an SD build based on the info we have unless your expecting the enemy to have conditions piled on them by someone else. You could probably take adrenal implant to cover for loss of invigorating speed as your master in tools and then just forget about speedy kits. Who knows about the grandmaster, maybe the gadget one will be worth taking? Have to wait and see.
Bunker down is being been moved to inventions and drops medpacks instead of mines so might not be suitable for your SD build anymore.
Would be nice if the toolbelt skill had some synergy with the main skill. Not much point transforming someone into a skritt and then tornado-ing them to safety.
Would the skill be AoE like all other elixir toolbelt skills, or targeted?
Should the toolbelt skill have a random factor, much like the main skill? If they stick to transforms, they could pick from a pool of random animals if they wanted.
Some kind of cage skill could be cool… what about a potion that caused a ring of trees to grow around an enemy temporarily, trapping them inside and blocking line of sight? That way you could drop it on someone and bounce them against the walls a few times with one of your transforms before it wore off.
Or something unique – how about a potion that causes any stealthed enemies in a radius to be revealed temporarily by dying them with a chemical agent? Call it phosphorus glowpaint or something.
I guess they can do what they want with it, will have to see whether they decide to make it something worth using or not.
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Looks like a lot of my current builds will be doa of hot :/
-massive nerf to grenades range, unless mortar is dramatically improved this is going to be a big deal in a lot of situations
-healing bombs apparently removed? (I’m assuming medkits dropped by bunker down are single target only?), replaced by heal finishers… not much help if you pre might stack fights – energized armor and performance enhancement gone, power shoes also gone. All hits to the build I run with my celestial setup.
-modified ammo and juggernaut now both grandmaster, juggernaut no longer stacks might
-incendiary ammo now moved to grandmaster in firearms, mainly an SPVP flexibility thing so not so bad for me at least
-stabilized armor gone, if stabilized does come back I imagine it will be in a higher tier mastery slot but again more a flexibility thing
-Also not gonna enjoy taking the entire tools line now as mandatory for speedy kits in basically every single build, might be forced to sacrifice current upgrades for centaur, speed or traveler runes for some builds otherwise I guess
They seem to be improving med kit for team support which is cool, but is it gonna be worth losing our only water field, additional blast finisher and perm regen? Have to wait and see.
Looks like a lot of stuff is still being sorted out so no idea how new builds are gonna work but it certainly looks like a bunch of my old ones are out the window.
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Kit refinement has been basically useless since it was changed – I’d prefer it was just removed if they are getting rid of bad ones.
Uh huh, any channels started when you begin using the mortar continue until completion, even if you use a mortar skill at the same time.
That includes the flamethrower autoattack, and player finishers (probably best examples).
I haven’t tested, but I assume other classes could use it the same way too (warrior could start hundred blades, then use mortar for example).
Can’t really do anything useful with it of course, for a bunch of reasons.
What if once burning reached a certain duration cap (perhaps different vs champs than normal monsters) it started spawning small AoE damage over time fields underneath the target?
The idea being that the extreme heat ignites the surrounding area causing sparks or the like which then adds damage to the target unless they move.
Eh, might be too much like random symbols.
There’s a couple of hammers that fit the engineer theme pretty well, though it’ll likely depend on your race/armor as to how well it fits your character. To summarize this thread and add a few of my own, the ones that come to mind are:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/2/2d/Adamant_Guard_Hammer.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/6/6c/Aetherized_Hammer_Skin.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/3/36/Glyphic_Maul.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/ac/Dark_Asuran_Hammer.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/c/cb/Dredge_Pulverizer.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/6/62/King_Toad%27s_Hammer_Skin.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/46/Mecha_Anchor.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/3/35/Pact_Crusher.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/f/f8/Pact_Fleet_Hammer_Skin.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/f/f5/Peacemaker%27s_Hammer.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/6/6f/Whisper%27s_Secret_Hammer.jpg
But personally I really need to see what new skills the hammer has before I worry about the skins I use with it. No point paying loads of gold for a weapon skin if you never equip it anywhere.
I must admit that from time to time I’ll just randomly add people who were helpful or friendly in a dungeon or fractal, who I had an interesting conversation with, or who I particularly liked the armor/weapon/color combination of to my friends list.
Sometimes people invite me to do stuff out of the blue and don’t even remember who I am, I just happen to be someone online and on their friend or followers list.
Usually when they ask I’ll come along for whatever it is though so I guess it’s beneficial anyway.
It’s not like people can do anything by having you on a list or knowing your location because of that list. They can’t steal your kills or nodes, break your events or otherwise grief you and anything they can do via PM they could do via map or local chat to the same effect. So I gotta say I don’t really understand the logic of this complaint. If people are messaging you and you are busy and don’t want to talk, then just say so.
First thing I would do is go back to basics, probably.
For starters, what is a trait? A trait is a means of providing character customization, a method by which a player can change the way that his character interacts with the game world.
Traits allow an element of freedom to players in addition to armor, weapon(s), healing and utility skills, rune, sigil, and consumable choices. Traits are mostly focused around combat, but some (mainly movement related) also provide additional utility outside it.
What I say below may not be technically feasible, but keeping in mind that traits are key choices in both PVE and PVP settings, let’s think about what characteristics an ideal trait might have:
-Visual customization is a large component of guild wars 2. I would propose that ideally, chosen traits should add a subtle visual or aural cue to affected player actions so that the traits chosen by a player affect their in combat appearance slightly for the sake of both individuality and counter-play in PVP. Many existing traits already do this (for example, traited warrior stances which show the skill effect, or traits which automatically apply boons) but I would argue that this should apply universally for all traits in some way.
-Traits on one class should never be an inferior or more investment expensive version of a trait of another class. There must be a huge effort to create true variety in traits.
-Trait choices should offer significant changes to the gameplay experience of players where possible to make these choices meaningful. Trait changes should tie in with, make use of or align with any unique class mechanics to provide variety between classes as often as feasible.
-In line with the above, I would argue that traits which reduce skill cool-downs, increase damage, and randomly proc damage or debuff effects should be re-evaluated. These traits are an efficient way to improve your character, but don’t offer value in terms of character customization or individuality, nor do they significantly change a players game-play experience. Flat +%Damage increase modifiers for example are effectively just a stat increase represented slightly differently from a straight increase in the power stat. Utility and weapon skills should be balanced without requiring cooldown reduction, and traits should instead grant more bonus effects – for example, traits could unlock skill new chains (much like weapon autoattacks) which grant those skills true additional utility and promote more active gameplay. Imagine for example if there was a necromancer trait which allowed spectral wall to be cast, and then chained into a reflect wall, or that added the option to perform a dashing uppercut after a warriors kick attack.
-Traits now need to be designed with the mindset that players can retrait and re-equip at any time in the majority of the game environment when out of combat. Traits should therefore be more about choice rather than necessity. While it may be difficult to balance this with the above point, this still needs to be considered as almost all current traits were designed at a base point with players being locked into specific trait lines except when talking to a vendor or using an item to reset them in the past.
-Essentially I personally would be looking at entirely overhauling the traits system, maybe even removing the ties to stat points in favour of some other allocation system. Objectively I doubt such a rework would ever happen – it would require a huge amount of work. In fact I would suggest that any ideas we might have would probably already have been evaluated and rejected, probably pre beta. The game has been built around a certain set of rules and I think it’s probably far too big and well established to make these kinds of big changes.
But the thread was an interesting distraction, I’m looking forward to reading the communities ideas and points of debate.
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You could use parts of your set, mix them in with some of that new zealots stuff to make a support/damage hybrid. Something like this?
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You’ve got a fair few stat points invested in healing power – if you are looking to make best use of them for your group you’d probably want to change your traits a bit and pick up healing breeze for your 6.
You’re also a bit short on precision so I’d take perception over force for sigil. You could also take more damage orientated runes if you wanted – you’ll be in a dungeon so everyone can help to keep swiftness up most of the time.
That aside I’d be looking at something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQRArf5dl8ApVo1CxXI8DNxDBl5JmP2TIEZ4yFEAA-TRCBAByqEUw9Ha4IJwqyPU1PAwJNwBTQgq+zpaYCAcAkwFuwBGe4hHe4kCgixAA-e
if I was putting this together.
Keep in mind you’ll be losing something like 40% of your DPS from running this kind of hybrid build.
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Mace/torch+scepter/focus is a fun combo for PVE. As stated it’s not the most efficient but that’s not really relevant – provided you are geared/specced properly everything will die fast enough that neither you or your group will care.
The typical build I use when I’m having fun with this set is similar to this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJApfl0ApQo9CxVI8DNR8gY9nXbqMwEMnuF-ThRBABXt/o8DP9ML8gCA4EKQp6PmpEEA-e
It’s better to run these types of builds when you’ve got a group composition that accommodates it but otherwise it’ll work well enough for most pve encounters.
As Harbinger already mentioned, symbol of faith is what allows you to use zealot’s fire more or less on cooldown without losing too much damage.
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It means that if you are running around carrying a warrior summoned banner and then change your slot7 from grenade kit to elixir S the banner won’t be destroyed (which is what sometimes happened before – bug).
Lol very clever… my 4yo nvr got pass lvl 3 until after patch tht forced her to lvl her char pass lvl 6 just so she can use dyes again loool.. her interest in game is only to mixmatch armour n make pretty..
Sounds like she’s well ahead of the curve.
The flamethrower still does significantly less direct damage than the bombkit over time.
However I suspect it may be more viable now in certain PVP or other builds which are built around a heavy investment in the alchemy traitline (at least once the bug with deadly mixture is fixed). I’m considering swapping bombs for flames on my exp turrets pve build, after some testing in orr.
It seems that the blast finisher on #2 is a bit unreliable though – still playing with it, might be a targeting thing due to how I use flamejet.
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anyone else decide this was a conspiracy?
Terribad patch gets released same day as Destiny?I think they may have a saboteur onboard.
I know right? The Xbox and PS versions of GW2 didn’t even sell well to start with!
I can see FT becoming an alternate (with gren kit) or additional to bombkit. Longer fire field, extra blast finisher. And no knock back on the finisher, which is kind of a big deal.
Well, something had to go in those first five slots and other weapons didn’t seem to fit, so… you know…
A couple of weeks ago I joined an SE EXP group listing that didn’t have a path specified.
Which paths do you want to do? I asked in group chat. They responded that they weren’t sure, since it was their first time doing SE.
Oh! I said. Let’s all do path 2 then!
An hour or so later when we finished, I told them that they’d just finished the hardest path. Fun times.
Maybe they’ll add retaliation stripping to one of the flamethrower traits!
(muted snickering)
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Last I tried it bunker down was kinda useless for stacking since the mines don’t activate when summoned next to an enemy but only when an enemy enters from outside proximity range. Only works if you are kiting something.
Yeah it’s far from the best individual damage setup, maybe it’s not worth the trade-off. I put it together as an alt-build because I run far too many pug groups where there is no one generating any fury at all (which is irritating) and I don’t feel like swapping character.
If you’re interested anyway, build I’ve been running is 2/0/0/6/6. Running assassins armor and weapons, berserker trinkets, sigils of perception and accuracy, altruism runes. Traits I’ve been running are forceful explosives, then 2 optionals +exp turrets from alchemy (I’ve been running self-reg defenses to protect my stacks, hah), then speedy kits, deployable turrets and adrenal implant from tools.
I’ve been running p/s but rifle might be more useful with so many finishers already at your disposal, might stacks bounce between 9 and 15 with shield, so 9 and 12 without. Take healing turret, bomb kit, flame turret and rifle turret. I tend to replace flame turret before the other utilities but the AoE blind and finisher has it’s uses along with the passive might stacks. Deployable turrets is important, it lets you throw your turrets to locations where they are relatively safe from enemy attacks but still within buff range.
For enemies like subject alpha, you can swap healing turret for medkit and pick up your rifle turret instead of leaving it out and still keep up permafury but it’s a bit more fiddly.
As an added bonus your healing turret grants party wide vigor (though only like 45% uptime) and you’ve got regeneration up most of the time since the turret is usually safe up on the wall or ceiling. It would be possible to get permanent protection uptime if you had a couple of people running exp thumper turrets but again not worth it I imagine.
I guess an alternative to the above might be having 2 people with a full pack rune set? Assuming the fight lasts long enough for the effect to proc.
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I’d be interested but play with high latency (and probably a diff timezone) so may not be that helpful to you. I’m running a party permafury build atm (reliability depends on situation since it depends on exp turrets) which might be simpler than messing with medkit.
It was neat being able to customise the colour of particle effects and glows and stuff in champions online, not sure how well such a system would fit in gw2 though.
Other games that have let you pick the animations to use for skills have tended to use sets of rather generic looking skill animations rather than the more tailored ones used in most games.
I dunno how you would fairly monetize such a system either, in CO it was bundled as part of the subscription fee along with the other benefits which obviously doesn’t fit for GW2.
Or just buy the skins with your credit card via gems, which is the other mega exclusive way to get them.
Finally, a melee cleave. Now they just need to increase it to 3 targets over two and then add in some proper team utility and necro will be on it’s way to almost usable in group pve.
Zenith – neither guardians nor warriors have 5 target autoattacks excepting hammers which do hit 5 targets on the last part of the attack chain iirc.
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I’d recommend finding yourself an active guild (preferably one that uses voice chat) and run through them with them.
Ascended gear is mainly for fractals. I’d suggest rolling a guardian and gearing that instead if you plan to upgrade for progressing through those, but you’ve mentioned you aren’t interested in doing that. For your preferred choices thief or engie can both be useful depending what you do with them and how you trait, rangers less so in comparison.
If you weren’t planning to do fractals, I’d only recommend weapons and trinkets because you get nothing useful from the armour other than infusion slots.
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It’s pretty funny though. Start a group with a necro, engie or ranger and put up a lfg message and you could wait 20 minutes or even longer before anyone will join a dungeon run. Mesmers and thieves don’t seem quite as bad for it.
Start one as a guardian, warrior or ele and you tend to get folks joining almost immediately.
I start the odd “rangers, engies and necros only” group just for variety now and again.
If I ran each tier of fractals once a day, I’d guess I’d probably earn at least one of those soulbound exotics in a week of play. Though fractal rewards seem to keep getting worse so I haven’t done them much in a while.
Hrm, it seems like the replies to your original post have gone off at a tangent, and might not have been addressing your actual question.
The reason you don’t get any rewards from healing players (in terms of bags and stuff in wvw) is that you only get loot for enemies which you have dealt a certain amount of damage to.
To put it another way, the trigger for loot spawning is that you’ve done a certain percentage of it’s health in damage before it dies. It seems that this percentage is shared among party members, but you still have to mark the target (do at least 1 damage to it, or something anyway) even then otherwise you don’t get credit.
In a similar way you don’t get EXP for monsters dying nearby unless you hit them with an attack. These types of reward prerequisites have been used in a number of other games. I remember playing various iterations of PSO and being forced to run around marking targets as quickly as possible to ensure I got EXP when they were murdered by my higher level group members, for example.
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Hey, maybe they could put fireflies on it for a change. Like the flower backpiece.
I actually use the Zenith Kris, just because it’s probably the least dangerous looking one I’ve come across. Would welcome some better options.
Most abilities used by enemies (or players) require line of sight. If you stand behind a wall and attempt to use a targeted attack on an enemy on the other side, the attack fails (a message such as “obstructed” will usually appear to inform you this has occured).
A simple check is performed by most AI controlled enemies when they attempt to use an ability. If an AI controlled enemy is trying to attack you and is unable to target you with it’s abilities, it will attempt to calculate and travel to the closest location it can reach where it can hit you with it’s attacks.
Stacking takes advantage of this. Done properly, you can make an entire room of monsters move to a bottleneck in the terrain where your group can use AoE skills to kill all of them at once quickly, instead of killing them one at a time.
This is particularly advantageous when fighting ranged enemies, since unlike melee attackers they generally don’t clump together on their own.
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I think your complaint is misdirected. Better information is a good thing.
Skills not being fixed (especially for a very long time!) is a bad thing but they have no real relation to each other.