Guild Wars 2

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

kKagari.6804:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

@Kayotik.5790

And how do you do that? How do you start tpvp with Life Force?

I hate this forum. I had a nice long post doing the math for 10 stacks of might, and its gone now. At least someone else did it.

kKagari.6804

That’s just it, it is a problem. And until its fixed nerfing our only means of getting around this problem is a big kick in the…

Oh and i never said that condition necro’s don’t use SR. I do to some extent. But if you want to run Wells and conditions good luck getting more than 10 points into it.

Spectral Walk is only useful for spvp and not so much for tpvp. As if your running off the node your letting the other player win. You can fit it in and can kind of use it but it only generates life force when hit. The Problem is getting hit. It does not in anyway generate 20% of your life force in one go, nor any were close to that.

Spectral Grasp is worthless as you want to be range not melee. This was a very nice buff to melee necro’s.

Yes yes, I know you didn’t say condi don’t use SR, it was merely a preface, to the fact that meta is constantly changing blah blah blah. I was just trying to encourage you into seeing the fact that where there has been removals to some aspects of the necromancer, others have been added in. They might not be on par as with what they were before, but they are additions nonetheless.

Doesn’t SW give 3% per hit? For 8 seconds, if you get hit at least once a second that’s an easy 24%. And just because you have swiftness doesn’t mean you need to leave your node. Why would you think that? Use it as a stun breaker, get some free life force.

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

@dibrom: about last grasp, I mentioned it gives protection now, its pretty good.

Compared to the damage incoming 3% is nothing.

ps. you mean Last Gasp.

Yes, getting caught in burst without LF sucks. No, not every single hit on you is burst damage. The effectiveness of SW at gathering LF is completely unrelated to damage you’ll end up taking or what not.

Suppose the old BiP got interrupted. I’d be making the same argument about BiP not being useful at gaining life force. Which would be an argument that falls flat.

The thing is, I’m not even arguing whether the change to BiP is good or not, I’m simply stating other avenues have been opened.

edit: Yeah, I’d hate to HAVE to spec into SR for DS tbh.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

@Kayotik.5790

And how do you do that? How do you start tpvp with Life Force?

I hate this forum. I had a nice long post doing the math for 10 stacks of might, and its gone now. At least someone else did it.

kKagari.6804

That’s just it, it is a problem. And until its fixed nerfing our only means of getting around this problem is a big kick in the…

Oh and i never said that condition necro’s don’t use SR. I do to some extent. But if you want to run Wells and conditions good luck getting more than 10 points into it.

Spectral Walk is only useful for spvp and not so much for tpvp. As if your running off the node your letting the other player win. You can fit it in and can kind of use it but it only generates life force when hit. The Problem is getting hit. It does not in anyway generate 20% of your life force in one go, nor any were close to that.

Spectral Grasp is worthless as you want to be range not melee. This was a very nice buff to melee necro’s.

Yes yes, I know you didn’t say condi don’t use SR, it was merely a preface, to the fact that meta is constantly changing blah blah blah. I was just trying to encourage you into seeing the fact that where there has been removals to some aspects of the necromancer, others have been added in. They might not be on par as with what they were before, but they are additions nonetheless.

Doesn’t SW give 3% per hit? For 8 seconds, if you get hit at least once a second that’s an easy 24%. And just because you have swiftness doesn’t mean you need to leave your node. Why would you think that? Use it as a stun breaker, get some free life force.

Really the only discussion left is which is better currently: a bugged plague signet, or SW. Condition sending vs life force and swiftness.

@dibrom: about last grasp, I mentioned it gives protection now, its pretty good.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

Kayotik.5790:

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

And this does not change the fact that 2 30sec bleeds in pvp is worthless. They will never ever tic for that full amount.

Imagine using this ability as a 350 power/condition damage buff, instead of a bleed, and your utility slot will become justified.

If it makes you feel any better, you’re right- a 30 second bleed is hardly useful when so many condition removals are thrown around in pvp. So you now have 2 options:

1) Don’t use it, or
2) Try it for more than 10 seconds before complaining.

lol don’t need to use it. It was a nerf. 17.5 a sec per bleed is not something i care about. Damage was not a problem. It was the fact that you start every fight in tpvp with 0 life force. So if you were jumped at the start of a fight you were kittened. Now we have no options. PVP condition Necro’s were handed a unneeded nerf.

Maybe the whole ‘lack of a lifeforce generation option’ should be looked at in conjunction with other recent changes. i.e. Spectral Walk, Last Gasp, and to an extent spectral grasp.

For starters, lets not use the argument ‘but Condi don’t use Soul Reaping in their builds’ or what not. We need to remember, meta is constantly changing, and this is amongst one of the changes.

Spectral Walk is still a viable stun breaker, and since Plague Signet still isn’t fixed, its a decent ability to use. It even gives life force now.
Last Gasp now offers the proper protection buff and breaks stun, not a bad trait either.
Spectral Grasp is still unreliable, but it too gives life force, moot point I guess.

So OK, we have lost a good lifeforce skill in BiP, but the SR trait line now looks pretty good, maybe even a reason to go into it for Soul Marks, if you are so inclined to get lots of LF.

ANET HAS SPOKEN:

Added catapults and scaling veterans to the bridge repair event in Kessex Hills.

!!!!!!!!! excited!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS THE START OF SOMETHING GOOD.

Hmm, although I still prefer the lifeforce, 10 stacks of might is +350 condition damage. Nothing to sneeze at tbh. +17.5 of damage per tick of bleed.

So my favorite NPC in the game doesn’t sell karma tools and kits anymore. What exactly can I do with my karma now? I have no desire to get a 42k armor set, and suppose I do get it, shouldn’t we have a consumable product worth using karma for?

Turgon.8625:

I find it interesting how Anet said they didn’t want the game to change wants you hit level 80 ‘The endgame starts at level 1’ philosophy’.

The game does change at level 80 – it turns into a reaction game outside outposts to see who can put their aoe down first to catch a kitten of health from the incoming waves of enemies. This is not the endgame I was expecting.

I remember in beta weekend 1 some of the centuar attacks in the first human zone being brutally over-tuned, it was great. I was kind of hoping for a similar or harder kind of difficulty to be in Orr.

Oh yeah, one of the Beta events had suitable difficulty. Forgot which one. I actually died frequently though. I didn’t get downed until 30% of the way through Kessex Hills, after I completely finished Queensdale, and I don’t grind out my levels either.

IMO, an example of a very good DE is the defense of the Vidius Castrum base, after you’ve taken it from the Charr shaman (also a great DE). I did this event with about 10 people. Taking into the account of the spread in population, here are the reasons why this is a very successful DE (in terms of fun):

1) The event objectives are somewhat challenging because they are easy to fail. If two effigies reach the objective, you fail the event. Players not only need to defeat enemies, but they also need to be wary of them reaching a prescribed location. This puts into play the necessity of focus firing and slowing down enemies, two things that are often lacking in the ‘defend X waves’ events.

2) Difficulty is furthered by the effigies’ flame aura. The constant application of burning puts players on edge; the damage is significant and they cannot easily get out of combat status to regenerate health. Moving away from the effigies is potentially harmful to the success of the event.

3) Geographically this event is set out very well. Effigies approach from two opposite ends of the base. In my run of the event, the group of players defending the other side failed to do so, and it took my group a while to realize several effigies were approaching the objective right behind us! This also has a good effect of being slightly anti-zerg, which is always good!

4) It has suitable environmental weapons that were contextually relevant. The cannon turret is very fun to use. The barricades are located in a bit of a useless manner, but the idea was there.

So yes, despite my general negativity when it comes to issues of lack of challenge in these forums, I’d like to thank the dev team who worked on this dynamic event. In terms of fun, it is definitely up in my top 10.

Lumines.3916:

Events with a massive attendance shouldn’t just spawn more and more mobs that die instantly in AoE. What happened to the advertised “Dynamic Scaling?”

In interviews it was said some mobs when facing great numbers will use different skills or behave differently. I honestly don’t see that.

Even if it isn’t that in-depth, at least spawn more veteran/champions instead of just AoE lemmings.

I thought about the veteran/champion method too. It won’t be a complete fix to the system but its a step in the right direction. The other thing is, now that players are more spread out, the events ARE getting a BIT better, but more still needs to be done to distinguish the content in terms of challenge. I want to be able to tell my friends that the centaur event in Kessex spawned a champion centaur with say, devastating earth magic, able to obliterate those who are unwary. And the Harathi champion centaur does something different altogether.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Clearly this doesn’t apply to level-capped players, but have you considered targeting content at a higher level than your character? I prefer difficult content, so personally I tend to look for content that’s 2 levels higher than my own.

Coming from a content designer I certainly hope you don’t equate difference in level as a method of challenging the player. Look at the dungeons; trash mobs with high HP levels only take longer to kill, they aren’t any more challenging. Most melee champion mobs can be kited to oblivion.

Even if levels were a useful indication of how challenging a task may be, the fact that even YOU admit to having go 2 levels higher to find ‘challenging’ content would in fact mean, all tasks, when done at a prescribed level are trivial.

The lack of difficulty in this game is what upsets me the most. Its not that the game is unplayable; I still play frequently, though it is apparent many in the community find the lack of difficulty not enjoyable.

When I approach a mob, or a Dynamic Event, the question in my head is ‘will I be able to defeat the mobs present’ but ‘how long will I take to down the mob’. This isn’t challenge.

There is nothing wrong with forcing someone to use a CC, or to hold back from using a CC.

rickets.1386:

JonPeters.5630:

Plain and simple this system is a safety net for stopping crazy farming when people find exploits that make each run super fast. We are also addressing those loopholes, but that takes time and new ones might always be discovered. If you and your group do the dungeons without skipping large sections and run different chains this system shoul(bugs aside) never impact you.

Addendum for clarity, super fast means < 30 minutes, and even then you must hit that speed multiple times in a row before you start seeing any impact.

Thanks for the reply Jon, and thanks for giving a time. However, my group just did a legit maggs run and a legit AC path 2 run in 25 minutes each. Of course with the bug we all got different rewards but i will post that in the proper forum with times.

They were not death free runs and we didn’t feel like we did them as fast as we could have, so when we bring our “A” game we will basically be waiting in front of the last boss room for 10 minutes to make sure we get full rewards….not fun. But, I guess if the system starts to work like you hope and it takes multiple sub 30 minute runs in a row we should be fine.

I will also be posting links to the 2 runs we just did(as soon as they are uploaded) to prove we did them legit.

Thanks and i hope a fix is on its way soon.

THIS. Very much this. This is why I am annoyed at the 30 minute throw away number. I am not confident in the development team to have all dungeon explorable paths balanced to this timer. I even recall Arenanet admitting some of the content in the game was too hard for their own development team to complete, during launch.

Galador Dux.6359:

@kKagari (next post): All of which are reactive changes, which could come days after significant harm has come to the economy and the prestige of that armor set, much like the CoF set is now. I don’t want people to see the TA set I’m working towards and think ‘oh, he probably farmed using that exploit to get it’. The DR system can be modified if it needs to be. Peoples’ opinions take a lot longer to change.

If there was such a concern for people’s opinion then Arenanet should be extremely worried about their’s, with a string of bungled fixes and poor implementations. The solutions I briefly mentioned wouldn’t even need to be ‘reactive’ changes. Perhaps they should’ve thought about it in the first place. See, the funny thing is, IF the DR was implemented in a working state, before release, then their would be praise about Arenanet’s foresight into their game design. NOW however, it feels like a complete cop-out. “We can never be ahead of exploiters, so lets not even try”. Worse still is, why would there even be an urgency to root out these exploits in future. They have the ultimate safe guard in place already. Exploiters are likely not going to exploit anymore, but the people that happen upon an exploit by accident will be the people who suffer most, the honest gamers.

Nemui.6753:

kKagari.6804:

I think what a lot of people are saying, is that these problems have arisen due to an ill conceived system, created as an ill conceived solution.

Lets think back to the facts:
DR was created so people can’t speedrun dungeons.
Dungeons were spedrun via exploits.

Look at the above two statements and tell me, shouldn’t they have just fixed the exploit in the first place? Bugs aside from the DR system, it actually opens a can of worms where some players are running the dungeon just under the 30 minute mark, because they are efficient, and getting penalized for it.

of course they’re fixing the exploits. but they’re also aware that they need a safety net for exploits people haven’t found yet or that could potentially crop up in the future.

though i think it’s also a way of strongly discouraging/combating the MMO-induced farming mentality, treating the game like a job and not a game. if you’re doing speed-runs for rewards and not because they’re inherently fun for you (wasn’t competitive dungeon speed-running a thing in GW1 for a while? never played it myself), you’re playing it not the way it was intended to be played. stop playing the game if all you care about is the reward at the end. or deal with DR.

i still think week-long raid-lockouts are way more restrictive than this.

This goes completely 180 from their design manifesto about playing the game the way you want to play it. But ok, maybe thats ‘subjective’. The 30 minute mark is also the problem. Are they saying they’ve balanced the dungeons to a point they are sure will take more than 30 minutes? Why are some people breaking that time? Shouldn’t they set the time to something clearly out of reach for players who aren’t exploiting? Bit of a numbers problem here on their part I think.

If people aren’t supposed to worry about the rewards, at all, lets just get rid of them, altogether. Lets go back to their first iteration of dungeon rewards, where they thought their dungeons would be SO fun, that anyone would want to run them 40 times to get a set of armor.

Galador Dux.6359:

@DeadlyStormZ:

• Removing the DR system comes with its own return of problems, such as the rampant farming of CoF (which, let’s be honest, the removal of which is a big reason a lot of people arekitten off)

• If you’re going to argue pure efficiency, re-read my aside. You spend somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total time just running each path once per day versus farming one (or more) paths constantly. Last I checked, less time spent is more efficient.

• No QA team in existence can accurately simulate 100,000+ people simultaneously and actively causing ‘hits’ on a program that is also dealing with another 200,000+ people doing seemingly unrelated things on the same program. This is just a misunderstanding of the realities of programming. Understandable, but unrealistic.

• I know this sounds like a cop-out, but there are other things in the game to do besides dungeons, that lead to the same quality rewards in terms of statistics (and aesthetics, depending on your preferences). If they handed every shiny piece of armor to you on a silver platter, would you honestly still be playing? Yes, there’s grind, but it’s of the ‘I feel like doing this because it sounds fun/has a reward I want’ versus the more typical ‘I need to do this so I can do that so I can do this other thing that I actually want to do’. In other words, it’s all perspective.

I have no issue with the grind, because there was a just reward for what is expected when you participate. The 20+40 change is a GREAT change in the right direction, and it doesn’t even come with sacrifice. At which point they can say:

OK, a group of players are gonna run each dungeon path once.
First path will take 30 minutes, second path will take 40 minutes, third path will take 50 minutes. If someone decides to run the first path constantly, they will only have completed it 4 times, which will only get them 120 tokens.

See that? Problem SOLVED. If the first path was being exploited and could be completed way faster than expected, FIX IT. People ignoring mobs? Increase the mob leash. Add a door. Spawn the boss only after a select group of enemies are defeated. Use GAMEPLAY FIXES. Not some in-the-background monitoring mechanism.

Hawken.7932:

DeadlyStormZ.2370:

People are complaining because it can be fixed by simply removing the DR system, a rediculous system to punish every players.

People are complaining because people don’t think running dungeon efficiently (even you run it in a normal way) should be punished. However, the devs choose to refuse listening to the community and insist what they are doing.

People are complaining because Anet don’t have a decent QA team to test stuff before it is released again, again and in the future.

People are complaining because the devs said they didn’t want us to grind anything but they designed something you must grind it to get it.

So you’s prefer a 24 hour lockout so that you can run an explorable dungeon once, like most mmo’s do? I mean I’m not terribly in love with the whole DR system, as I feel it’s not a very elegant solution to the problem, but it’s quite obviously more rewarding than a lockout.

Not having a lockout has nothing to do with eventuating in having a DR. If you don’t want people to speedrun your dungeons, balance the game thoroughly so that they can’t. If you don’t want mobs to be ignored by players running by them, make the mobs chase the player endlessly. Jon Peter’s ‘safety net’ is nothing other than the development team saying ‘oh, there is NO way we can ever be ahead of exploiters, might as well quit while we can’.

Well, its all the little things added together that makes things count. I can think of worse minor traits, like Reanimator. That trait is seriously there for the purpose of screwing us over.

If they wanted to punish people repeatedly running the fastest dungeon they already took half a step in the right direction.

the 20+40 reward makes it more lucrative to complete all the dungeons once instead of the same dungeon 9 times. In the event someone can STILL find a way to run a dungeon 9 times before others can do all 3 dungeons once, they should look for actualy GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS to be fixed, such that the dungeon’s difficulty is balanced.

DR is NOT THE RIGHT SOLUTION.

I think what a lot of people are saying, is that these problems have arisen due to an ill conceived system, created as an ill conceived solution.

Lets think back to the facts:
DR was created so people can’t speedrun dungeons.
Dungeons were spedrun via exploits.

Look at the above two statements and tell me, shouldn’t they have just fixed the exploit in the first place? Bugs aside from the DR system, it actually opens a can of worms where some players are running the dungeon just under the 30 minute mark, because they are efficient, and getting penalized for it.

Well, the problem with your ideal scenario is that you can’t have two primary stats in the one trait line, as with secondaries.

That said, I would love for toughness to be with DS too.

Oxe.6142:

JonPeters.5630:

Plain and simple this system is a safety net for stopping crazy farming when people find exploits that make each run super fast. We are also addressing those loopholes, but that takes time and new ones might always be discovered. If you and your group do the dungeons without skipping large sections and run different chains this system shoul(bugs aside) never impact you.

Addendum for clarity, super fast means < 30 minutes, and even then you must hit that speed multiple times in a row before you start seeing any impact.

I’m pretty annoyed after all the press you guys put out pre-launch like the MMO Manifesto that this is how this game ends up. You’re not putting restrictions on botters and exploiters, you’re putting restrictions on players. It’s shocking to me to think that this game that was all about fun turns out to be more about wondering if you’re doing it right. Did I run that dungeon too fast? Did I kill too many of those? What to the developers want me to do here?

Do you honestly think that’s fun for people? Checking a clock while they are running dungeons to make sure they’re going slow enough? You make explore modes hard, purposely difficult to pug, then if a group is actually able to pull it off you punish them. What are you people thinking? You punish the average player that has no interest in practicing to become an expert MMO player by making 3/4 of your dungeon content unpuggable and you also punish the guy that did take the time to become an expert and got through your little challenge. Who do you think wants to play in a game where you can’t win? If the mobs don’t kill you, Arena Net will by withholding the reward you are due.

I wish you would have said in your manifesto that this is how it would be, because I wouldn’t have bought your game.

Oh and don’t forget, buying what you aren’t supposed to buy from vendors.

Nemui.6753:

WoW has (or had, when i still played it) one week raid-lockouts and no one complained about those.

The difference is that WoW’s lockout isn’t hampering the player for being good at the game. Nor were they not addressing an exploit, and instead, punishing other players that aren’t exploiting.

You see, with a lockout, it applies to everyone. You do the raid once, you’re done, just like any other person. But here, if you are simply better at the game than someone else, or you devote more time to the game than someone else, you are not rewarded for it.

For me, IMO:

Spite: Power, Crit damage.
Curses: Precision, Condition Damage
Death: Toughness, Condition Duration
Blood: Vitality, Healing
Soul Reaping: Hunger, Boon Duration

Hmm, N.B. seems like if no one has posted yet for the second page of a topic, you can’t see the first page at all. So this post is to alleviate this problem.

This 30 minute ‘benchmark’ is another factor to the ill-conceived design of the DR. I’d like to invite anyone out there to make a video of a ‘legit’ dungeon run in less than 30 minutes. Clearly if a group of people can do a ‘legit’ run in under 30 minutes, then the benchmark for this ‘safety net’ should be lower, because at that point, you are penalizing people who are just ‘good at the game’.

The other thing is, if you didn’t want people to run through a dungeon, maybe you should’ve increased the mob leash distance? Add doors? Don’t let people do things which you’ve allowed them to do and call it an exploit.

Dude, I’m not angry. Definitely not at you either, you’ve been a great help. Gaile’s replies are ambiguous to say the least; they also indicate they have put no thought into the releasing the names at all, which concerns me. These ‘hints’ you refer to are not helping anyone, if anything, they add greater confusion to the community, this whole topic is testament to that.

Call me pedantic, paranoid, or whatever, but if Arenanet doesn’t have a definitive stance on releasing the names, then I will continue to see it as an issue. Assumptions deriving from their ‘hints’ are just troublesome.

ref.8196:

Skyrant Kangaroomouse.7458:

ref.8196:

Kromica.2831 because it takes time to fix a bug and make sure it’s working when hundreds of thousands of people are playing it. I’m sure it will be fixed very soon. Then we can have this conversation again when it is working properly.

Like the time they should have taken fixing dungeons instead of making a DR system that they also not took the time to test?

I’ll repeat for the 100th time, I think they know that their DR system works, but currently there is a bug that is forcing harsh DRs on everyone. Wait until it is fixed, and THEN you can complain more effectively. At the moment this is all speculation.

Having a DR is exactly what ’doesn’t work’. Lets look back at a GW1 situation. Cobalt Mokele’s were being solo farmed too easily. What did they do? They added Cobalt Scabaras – mesmers with the relevant abilities to defeat solo farmers. That was a just response to solving an issue they had a problem with.

They could have provided a bandaid solution then too – remove the drops from the Cobalt Mokele’s completely, which is not different to what the DR is doing now.

Overall Score: A bloody joke?

Instead of actually revisiting the designs of dungeons that allowed speed runs to actually happen, Arenanet chose to make band-aid solutions (and faulty ones at that) that are harming the legitimate players of the game. Get your act together.

A good start on the Necromancer repairs though, but you probably should aim to fix the most heinous of the bugs first; cough plague signet, bloodthirst, greater marks cough

Hmm, I wonder how this works in relation to poison. I think poison is more of the ‘pressure’ DoT, given its secondary effect and all.

Doesn’t anyone think the Engineer’s downed state is the best, with the right timing and all? You can even ‘pull’ people in stealth stomp.

@Slurry
Look, either way, the names should have been released already, or soon to be, as said in the blog post. If they are changing their tune now in saying that reserved names will never be released, I’d be very upset, more so than ANY OTHER CHANGES they have made so far.

Arisboch.6518:

kKagari.6804:

GaileGray.9587:

Oh no, that’s not what I’m saying. They need to make a GW2 account before the name reservations are cancelled.

What? So if John Doe from GW1 never makes a GW2 account, John Doe will be reserved indefinitely? This is not what was promised via Arenanet’s blog post about freeing up names that have not been taken.

no , what he said was that Jhon Doe needs to make a character in GW2 with that name before AN releases those names for all GW2 players or lose the chance to use that reserved name.

Which means, if John Doe NEVER PLAYS GW2. NO-ONE can ever use John Doe for a name? It will NEVER be released? Which is NOT what was promised.

tonics are pretty fun for wvw lol

Nero.3978:

It may not be the best way to stack it but it frees up all my utility spots for minions, so to me its a fair trade off. With minions I am doing around 3-4k dps a second if all my pets are attacking the same target. Not including bone minions explosions of course. That and I don’t even have good gear yet.

Flesh Golem – 770
Blood Fiend – 239
Shadow Fiend – 350
Bone Fiend – 572
Total – 1935
1935 * 1.4 (vulnerability damage 10 stacks + training of the master) = 2709
Axe – 300-400
Grand total = 3009 DPS

That’s assuming I don’t use any of the minion skills which then increase damage as well. If I pop a bone minion I do another 2235.8 (1597 * 1.4) damage. Mostly single target of course but still it is decent considering I can be 300 feet away if im not stacking vulnerability with the axe. I also run with the focus anyways too.

Yes but the problem is build up of vulnerability. Put it this way. You are doing in a regular mob, it’ll probably die to your attack and the minions before reaching 9 stacks of vulnerability. If you are fighting a champion, its more likely everyone else will put on a bit of vulnerability anyways.

IMO, I think Axe1 just sucks. Not vulnerability; vulnerability is awesome. Axe1 is just so useless. Low damage, slow vulnerability build up. Axe3 to me is the shining star of the axe, followed by Axe2.

The problem IMO is Axe is the least efficent way of giving vulnerability. Axe1 is slow, despite allowing you to get to 9 stacks. Focus4 gives 9 stacks in one go if you are alone with that enemy, and Well of Suffering is great for its damage potential. Spectral Wall? 10 stacks.

In a perfect world where Necromancers were somewhat decent you could go 30 into Spite for the power and Spiteful Spirit. And then 30 into Soul Reaping for Near to Death, so you’d have Retaliation pretty much 60% of the time.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. Just making those 2 traits synergize will leave you with close to no toughness or vitality, which you need to make the retaliation practical.

You can thank our ludicrously stat spread trait lines for that. WHY DOES SOUL REAPING HAVE CRIT DAMAGE??

I don’t appreciate feeling like a beta tester, after a game has launched. Tweaking the rewards may be fine, but at least do it properly. Nothing looks as bad as inconsistency. Look at the obsidian shard stacking issues after the patch. Such simple mistakes.

GaileGray.9587:

Oh no, that’s not what I’m saying. They need to make a GW2 account before the name reservations are cancelled.

What? So if John Doe from GW1 never makes a GW2 account, John Doe will be reserved indefinitely? This is not what was promised via Arenanet’s blog post about freeing up names that have not been taken.

It’s healing skill as far as I know. Siphoning life is never considered a heal.

Arenanet relies on player participation for dungeons to iron out bugs. Players get angry because of DR related bugs. Players stop running dungeons altogether, bugs will never get fixed.

GaileGray.9587:

I just want to point out something. If the name isn’t available, it’s because someone used it in Guild Wars within the last 8 months, maybe it using it still. So I’m sort of not seeing why you’d be so eager to nab someone else’s name. Why not come up with something else? I mean, after all, as we say, “This is my story.”

There are many ’someone’s who aren’t even playing Guild Wars 2. And that blog post did say after launch day. The blog post implied Arenanet is expecting there to be untaken reserved names. And that they will be freed up.

An estimate time would really be appreciated.

thanks for the quick replies!

I may or may not have been lead to believe there are armor/weapon sets exclusive to WvW (sans sPvP of course). Is this true?

Lux.9135:

The dungeons were fine before this patch. Now, they aren’t even worth the time of day. How in the world do you expect level 40’s to run a dungeon like CM when the enemies are busy being near invincible and all. It shouldn’t take me 40 minutes to run a dungeon like that. You want to talk about how much funner that this patch has made things, we’ll in my opinion you deserve a JOB WELL DONE on sucking the fun right out of dungeons. GG.

Well, Arenanet considers sub30 minute runs to be fast, so 40 isn’t exactly slow. CM story isn’t any much harder than what it was before, maybe the tunnel area, but still easily doable.

Not sure if you still need reserved posts for more text (will delete this post if you need them) but what do you think of putting 20 points into Spite for the condition duration, in a condition build. Maybe something like 20/20/30/0/0, with a focus on staves. I used a build not different to your conditionmancer build in your guide, but recently wanted to explore other methods of playing it.

I feel that in a tPvP situation, where your role in a team isn’t to quickly evaporate the enemy, keeping chill, poison and weakness on the enemy feels more useful than high damage counts of bleed.

Opinions?

I got up to the lovers in a group of 3 on my second run. I’m actually quite amazed how much easier the dungeon is on a second run, once you know how to do certain things. We did end up finishing the dungeon but we only managed to defeat the lovers after LOTS of deaths because the female boss got stuck in a wall or something, and her attacks were obstructed indefinitely; and we killed her after we defeated the guy.

I don’t entirely agree with TC; DS can be useful for minion and conditions builds.

Unyielding Blast and Reaper’s Might is particularly good for minions. Dark Path has a good synergy for a conditions build, whether you are just trying to bleed people out, or just adding chill to your scepter/dagger rotations.

But the problem I think, and here is where I do agree with TC, is that the above mentioned traits and skills aren’t very EFFECTIVE. They have a good concept to them but they are just not efficient enough. Life Blast is snoringly slow, and makes you wonder if the might stack and vulnerability is worth it at all. Dark Path is a bit too slow as well.

I feel like we already have in place, two systems (mystic forge and crafting) that can make getting dungeon gear a boat load of fun. Yet 1 thing is holding it back; Tokens.

We’re at the eve of the 24/9 patch which will apparently tweak some dungeon token related stuff but I’m not convinced this will alleviate the whole problem. The problem with tokens is that, its a linear system which will always have people opting to run the explorable path with the greatest efficiency for obtaining tokens. Dungeons are fun, but not to the point where I’ll spend 1 hr more doing it just for the same amount of tokens.

Now Arenanet purposely have moved away from randomized loot dropping so that everyone can be guaranteed loot. Which is great! But this has caused the problem mentioned above.

Here is what I propose:

All dungeon gear will now be created via the Mystic Forge. Items required can ONLY be obtained from dungeons. Different dungeon paths will reward up to 3 different materials.

e.g.
AC EX path 1 will give different quantities of material A B and C
AC EX path 2 will give different quantities of material C D and E
CM EX path 1 will give different quantities of material A D and F
and etc and so forth.

The same material might exist in several different dungeon paths, giving players a flexible choice of which path to go on. The quantities given will be randomized, such that you will always get one in a high amount compared to the 2 others. Perhaps make the materials rewarded at the end of the dungeon so people don’t just farm the first boss for materials.

People will obviously want different things. You might want a sword from AC whilst I would like to get a Bow. The spare materials will help guide players towards what item they may want to craft next, and seek out different groups in search of getting different items, and doing different dungeon paths.

Geez, so misleading, and it was pasted on FB as well.

Tony.2150:

@kKagari.6804

Enfeebling Blood does nothing to stop burst….

Weakness? Yes ok, crit ignores that, but not everyone has 100% crit. Actually according to wiki even crits can glance

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glancing not too sure about this though