Guild Wars 2

I would buff ele’s base health, and completely scrap focus’s fire attunement skills to replace them with something else…anything else. Something would be changed about conjure weapons, but I don’t know what could make them feel more fluid without turning them into an engineer kit.
Other than that, I wouldn’t touch ele until other changes are made.

Instead of buffing the ele to put it on par with the other classes, I would nerf all skills that negate damage or give “immune” of some kind across all classes. Then proceed to add proper telegraphs to things like necromancer staff for example. Anything with less than a second casting time, but devastating power would be hit hard if I was ever balancing.

I used to consider warrior to be one of the best classes because it was easy to see what was going on during the fight, and their high health was compensated by low sustain. Warrior then became the leader of powercreep, and so I now consider ele to be one of the better examples of good balance instead, excluding the instant lightning strike cheese. I would much prefer to see ele’s base health bumped up, and then everything else brought back in line rather than buffing the ele a ton and continuing a very real powercreep problem.

Why do you have both sigil of fire, and sigil of geomancy?
Wouldn’t it be more reliable to have just one or the other, so you know if you should be next to them or not before swapping weapons?

Don’t forget, the damage over time part of greatsword’s #5 scales with condition damage very well. Just don’t use the pull if you want the damage.

I would also suggest sigil of geomancy for three nice stacks of aoe bleed.

On my condition guardian, I sometimes get up to 25 seconds of burning on a single target. Duration is not a problem.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Isn’t it 20.20%? 19% + 1.2012 = 20.20(12)%

Nope, 20.20 would be a total damage of 2020%
The 1.2012 is another way of writing 120.12% Meaning, a total damage increase of 20.12% from the traits and equipment.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Maybe I’m overlooking something. I’ll try one on my own again, you can correct me if it’s wrong. 20% (2.2) x 10% (1.1) x 5% (1.05) x 4% (1.04) x 10% (1.1) = 2.90% extra on a total of 49% damage.

The 49% doesn’t exist. You don’t add anything together at all. It is all multiplied.

You messed up the number on the first bonus. 20% extra damage would be 1.2
2.2 would be 120% bonus damage.

1.2*1.1*1.05*1.04*1.1 = 1.585
1.585 is 158.5% damage.
100% is normal damage.
Meaning that all those damage bonuses give a total of 58.5% bonus damage.

Bsgapollo.5364:

Well this is certainly intresting. Honestly never though about it this way, so let me get this straight just to make sure. If I were to have a 10% damage trait and I would combine it with for example a 5% dmg sigel and ogre runs which give an extra 4% damage I wouldn’t end up with 19% extra damage but with 19.9% extra damage, correct ?

My math is telling me that that would be a 20.12% bonus
1.1*1.05*1.04=1.2012

With the 10% bonus damage within 600 range trait, and the 10% damage in fire attunement trait, I dealt 114 damage.
When farther out than 600 range, I dealt 103 damage.
With no damaging traits, 94 damage.

94*1.1*1.1 would be 113.74
It is rounded up to 114
If they had added to become a 20% damage bonus, I would have dealt 112.8 damage, rounded up to 113

I used ice spike twice before the last screenshot to give it 10% vulnerability. I also had both damage traits on.
94 damage, increased by 10% because of the fire attunement trait give me 103.4 damage. 103.4 damage increased by 10% because of the 600 range trait gives 113.74 damage. 113.74 damage increased by 10% because of vulnerability becomes 125.114 damage.
The screenshot shows 125 damage.
If they added up to become one big 30% bonus damage instead of multiplying my damage one bonus at a time, I would have dealt 122 damage instead.

Bsgapollo.5364:

magic fly.2041:

Bsgapollo.5364:

30%. How did you end up with 32% in the first place ?

Lets say that you do 100 damage.
The 10% damage bonus to 100 damage would make 110 damage. 110 damage with a 20% bonus would be 132.

It is multiplied separately to the damage, meaning that multiple weaker bonuses is more powerful than one big bonus.

Are you sure about that ? I just tested some things ingame to see if vulnerability would actually decrease my toughness, then you’re theory about multiplying the damage bonuses would be correct, yet that didn’t happen. Is it just not visible or is this just a wild assumption? If not got any evidence to back it up?

Vulnerability increases the damage a target takes by a %
It doesn’t touch toughness.

I should actually be doing homework right now, so I will get some screenshots for you to prove how the damage bonuses stack in about 3-4 hours once I finish here.

If you don’t want to wait, just go to the pvp lobby, equip a steady weapon, and two damage bonus traits, and record the damage without the traits, with the traits, and with each individual trait. You will see that two 10% damage traits doesn’t lead to 20% bonus damage.

Bsgapollo.5364:

30%. How did you end up with 32% in the first place ?

Lets say that you do 100 damage.
The 10% damage bonus to 100 damage would make 110 damage. 110 damage with a 20% bonus would be 132.

It is multiplied separately to the damage, meaning that multiple weaker bonuses is more powerful than one big bonus.

I tested something similar with my guardian with the bonus damage to burning targets, and bonus damage to targets with conditions traits.
They are entirely separate. Two 5% damage bonus skills is worth a little more than one 10% damage bonus. It is also the reason why I’ve changed my mind and I now think vulnerability is actually useful.

It is not much by itself, but it certainly adds up fast the more damage bonuses you get.

You will do 32% more.

Although…both of those traits active at the same time is extremely unlikely, so i don’t think an extra 2% is going to make a difference here.

I always thought warrior’s longbow was very powerful, but then it got the huge buff to pin down, giving it bleeds.

Ranger’s longbow isn’t really powerful at all, and is awkward to use, but when you can get it to work well, it is kind of fun. Just don’t use the weapon for too long at once.

I like both bows because you can hit past the max range, especially if you have a height advantage. That situation rarely happens, and isn’t all that great, but I like it.

I looked at those builds, and there is something important that was forgotten.
Binding blade’s dot scales with condition damage. It does half the damage that burn does, but scales with condition damage almost as well as burn does.
It would also be good to get sigil of geomancy for some aoe bleed.

That means that you get two extra aoe condition damage sources.

Mordecai.6318:

‘Cheese’ is a term used most commonly by scrubs

TL;DR
Shut up.

and with those two statements, you have shown yourself incapable of thoughtful, reasonable argument or conversation regarding this subject. I didn’t even need to bother reading the rest.

The lowest health on a guardian might be a decent idea because of all the blocking, heavy armor, and healing.
The lowest health on a thief might be a decent idea because of all the stealth,blind, and evade span, and large unforeseeable damage, along with medium armor.
The lowest health on an ele, along with the lowest armor, might be a good idea because their buffs don’t help against conditions, their healing got nerfed, their mobility got nerfed, and because they have no choice but to invest everything into defense…oh wait…

Rather than trying to buff everything else which will lead to pidgenholing eles into specific OP builds, just to get nerfed again, simply bump the base health up. It will allow an ele to be able to use all sorts of builds instead of focusing 90% of the build on defense.

Necromancers can do some good power aoe. Deathshroud #4, #5, and pierce, wells, the exploding minions, axe#3, warhorn and focus. By the way, warhorn and focus do no condition damage.
Just combine the wells with deathshround’s 50% bonus crit, and the fury when you use deathshroud trait, and you will be doing some very good aoe damage even without investing in precision.

I don’t see a problem, I see an imaginary problem.

Wells aren’t as bad as you are making them out to be.
Just combine the damaging ones with the 50% bonus crit in death shroud trait, or follow them up with lich form.

You compared WoD to glyph of storms and smoke screen.
Glyph of storm’s blinding is only when in earth attunement. It has a longer cooldown than WoD. Well of darkness’s casting time is 1/4 seconds while the glyph has a 1+1/4 seconds casting time, allowing WoD to be used in an emergency while the glyph cannot. WoD is a dark field, glyph is not a combo field. WoD is the clear winner.

Smoke screen has a shorter cooldown. Smoke screen is only a line, while WoD is a circle and so covers vastly more area. Smoke screen has a 1/2 second cast time, and WoD has a 1/4 second cast time. They are both combo fields. Smoke screen blocks projectiles and lasts 2 seconds longer. Reducing recharge is the only trait smoke field can get, WoD can get ground targeting, cooldown, protection, siphon health, reducing recharge, and the chill on blind trait.
Have you seen any thieves use smoke screen? I would say WoD is the winner.

DiogoSilva.7089:

[snip]

Increase ele’s base health.
They have the least health coupled with the least armor.
Healing and buffing as a defense was annoying when effective, so it was nerfed.
Since those two things don’t work, just increase ele’ base health. Then there will be no need for extra convoluted evades on skills that won’t help you to not get two shotted.

Doesn’t matter if you think anet won’t change that. It is, from my point of view, the only way to prevent this constant cycle of too-much-healing/free-loot-bag/too-much-healing-again/killed-in-one-hit-again.

Another split skill?
I hated when elementalist’s magnetic grasp was turned from a fun fast skill into a boring skill whose second attack has no use because the immoblize is gone by the time the leap is done because of the short time it takes for the skill button to change+ lag, and how slow a leap is compared to the old sliding animation.

I do not want this style of change to happen to pistol whip as well. Pistol whip is a nice skill, but by splitting it, because of the skill button having to change, it will be impossible to use the flurry soon enough to get good use out of the stun without making the stun overpowered. It will be many times worse with even a tiny bit of lag.
I would consider this to be a nerf to the weaponset. Not a power nerf, but a usability nerf.
After it becomes clunky to use and prone to lag, someone will find some way to abuse only the best parts of the skill, and then it will take several power nerfs.

I used to love flanking strike. It was fun trying to move in the right way so the second hit would land for large damage, and using another skill or dodging would interrupt it. It required skill, and was fun to use, but then it got split. The best damage from the skill was separated from the main move, so timing was no longer needed to do more than dodge. It became a skilless move.

I think of it like I would a warrior’s killshot. Would it be fun to fight against if the skill was split with the long charge up as the first skill, then the shot itself as the second skill to be used at any time with little warning? It would not feel like a fun fluid skill to use, and would feel unfair to fight against.

I have not yet seen any skill split that was a good change. All I’ve seen is magnetic grasp becoming boring and clunky to use, and flanking strike becoming boring and overpowered without requiring any timing anymore. Please do not give this horrible treatment to my last favorite thief weapon set as well. I’ve already lost two of some of my favorite skills because of splits.

Obvious animations are a good thing, not a thing to complain about.
Slow animations are a thing to complain about only if the risk is not worth the reward.
Pin down looked like a very fast auto attack.
No risk, only dodged by random dodges, blinds, and blocks, but is very devastating.
It badly needs that change.

Although…this will never become a real game improver until something is done about asura. All I ever see in pvp are female humans, and tiny asurans. Sometimes I see a charr or norn, but they are usually too busy respawning for me to see much of them.

Honestly, immunity and invulnerability of any type needs to scaled back a ton.
Not just engineers and their automatic shrinking and the condition immunity, but everything.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Thief is not really all that overpowered.
However it is not a L2P issue either. Please people, stop saying that. It is not true.

It is a frustration issue.
Fighting against someone whose blinds destroy any of the slower weaponsets, is constantly disappearing, deals damage quickly, teleports around, and can just disappear if the fight goes bad is downright annoying.
It doesn’t matter if the thief lives or dies, wins or loses, it is not fun in any way to be on the receiving end. All the nerfs in the world won’t stop people from saying thieves are OP, because how powerful the thief is, is simply not the problem at all. The fight needs to be fun for both players, not just one.

I’m glad ele is getting a buff, but…
I really really really do not like the idea of adding an evade to an already decently powerful skill.
It will make eles more powerful, but less fun to fight against. Those two things do not have to be mutually exclusive. Dodges, blinds, and blocks are already overabundant enough as it is.

Things like focus’s fire spells are in much greater need of attention than one of the ele’s better skills.

The engineer’s Leg Mods does the same thing as geomancer’s freedom, and is also a master trait as well.

Just wanted to put that out there.

I saw the attunement recharge change, and arcane’s 60% down to 30% coming a looong time ago. It took awhile, but it was sure to happen.
I am now very happy about this coming update.
This is definitely a step in the right direction.

Except for one thing, Diamond skin.
It might not be powerful, but it is yet another thing that causes “immune” to pop up.
I don’t like anything that grants immune, or invulnerable. Doesn’t matter how powerful or useless it is, I detest anything immune.

I’ve already seen enough of the buff/condition on a wall skills.
I don’t think adding boons to the skill would make it any more fun at all.

Just buffing the skill wouldn’t make me want to use it, regardless of how powerful it becomes.
I think that changing the functionality of the skill to something a bit more fluid would make it much nicer.

Warhorn is in a very good place right now.
There are only two issues that I see, and a lack of aoe swiftness isn’t a part of them.
Tagging mobs putting you into combat mode. This won’t be changed because combat slowdown appears to be here to stay.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve interrupted #5 by accident because there is a strange delay after you blow the horn, and the skill’s effect, and I keep thinking the skill is done before the delay is over.

Adding aoe swiftness would be just strange imo. It would take away from the rest of the skill to keep it balanced in that case, and that would decrease the part that keeps it unique.
Just like how adding a torch throw to the mesmer’s torch to make it similar to ranger’s and guardian’s torch wouldn’t actually make anything better or more fun. It would just make things similar, and that’s not always a good thing at all.

The risk of failure, and just jumping instead is almost non-existant after you do it for awhile.
It makes it much easier to move around during combat.

Maybe the benefit isn’t large enough for some people to bother, but it is still a benefit with little risk of failure if you are experienced at dodge jumping.
Whenever I fail at it, I usually don’t jump, but just do a normal dodge instead so the risk isn’t there for me for some reason. Maybe it’s the order in which I press the buttons?
There is no downside to it for me. Only an upside.

Currently, MM necros can require a lot of skill to play at a high level, and can deal some huge burst damage, but they can also require no skill to play to medium effectiveness.
I really love the two bombers whose sole purpose is the active skill, the shade that can do a well timed blind during a stomp, and so on.

However, once my MM has used all his minion’s active skills, what does he have left? long cooldowns, but still almost as powerful as before. The minions still deal massive damage without the active skills. I’ve autoattacked people to death faster than I could stomp them from time to time. This is with pvt gear.

I really think that, before mm necro replaces spirit ranger as the low skill, high reward build, the normal attacks on the minions needs to be lowered by a ton, and the active skills need to have their usefulness or damage increased by a lot or their cooldowns lowered drastically.
The more active it is, the more skilled play is rewarded for managing the minions well.

One other thing, the shade’s blind attack, for example, is near impossible to see during combat. Some sort of brighter effect during the wind up to make it easier to notice amidst the noise would be a great addition. If active skills do become more useful, it absolutely needs to be easier to notice considering all the targets a player has to keep track of, not specifically just the shade’s special attack.

This is just what I think the direction of the mm necro would be best off moving towards. I honestly think it is in danger of getting a buff, becoming the next fotm, and then getting nerfed into the hard, cold, ground.

I’ve noticed a lot of social loafing when I play an 8 vs 8 game. I just go along with the flow, smashing things at random and getting practice at surviving while outnumbered.

When I enter a 5 vs 5 game, I’m winning 1 vs 2s from time to time, and keeping control of much more than what the rest of my team can do. It’s so much easier to see what effect my actions have. Generally I do better in smaller groups.

I don’t play any tpvp anymore. Waiting 5+ minutes to enter a game is pointless.

I don’t think that they “make up for their lack of skill/intelligence” by grouping, but rather, I think that they are causing it by grouping up. It’s just easy to go with the flow.
Even the most skillful players are suspectable to social loafing and group mentality.
It just happens.

Although, I’d also argue that the downed state is a major contribution to higher numbers of players winning all the time as well.

Rewards are one thing, but I’d think that more game modes would be much more effective.
Regardless, as far as rewards go, here is what I think:

Cosmetics don’t go outside of the mists currently. I’d really love to take some of them back with me to pve.

If you don’t grind, it’s impossible to get higher ranked skins for years on end. This is my biggest issue as far as rewards are concerned. I stopped trying once I got to rank 40 for the free 18 slot bags for all my characters. Many many months later, and I am now rank 42…

I am likely not the majority on this, but I do the stupidest things for infinite tonics. I’ve even got the cat mini, the dog mini, and the cat tonic from laurels. If there was some way to acquire infinite tonics, and be able to mystic forge them if i have duplicates, that would suck me right in. Although…I never really use them….

You don’t have to finish the skill. If you don’t want to shadowstep away, or don’t have time to finish the casting, you can activate it, then cancel it immediately. It will still break stuns. It’s saved my bacon a lot of times, but has also killed me if I use it too late and/or don’t cancel.

It just has to be used preemptively if you want to escape using it.

I like it because it gives a lot of options for a single skill. A stunbreak and an escape, or just a stunbreak and cancel if you don’t have time, or a stunbreak,stealth,and some boons if you put it in the battlefield instead of putting it to the side.

It’s a bit more powerful than you might think.

Someone is inevitably going to say l2p despite losing or winning not being the actual issue here.
The problem is similar to the reason it isn’t fun to fight thieves or anyone playing an asura really.

What can be done though? Thieves and mesmers were practically built around denial of information, teleports, and simply irritating the other player. It’s too late to change now.

I love skyhammer the most because I can use altitude to my advantage to avoid all those overdone gapclosers that everybody has.
I hate skyhammer because certain classes have a humungous advantage, and you can’t dodge the skyhammer.
The others are just mediocre. Not really interesting enough for me to like or hate them because positioning isn’t as key in them because they are all too flat. More dull than anything when the battle is on an open ground.

Some jumps, like in skyhammer are impossible to do with the needless, obnoxious, combat slowdown, so I tend to dodge jump at those times.

Other than that, I usually don’t use it.

Relentliss.2170:

If every class had the Medium health they would be easier to balance. The current state of some classes being extremely low and others extrememly high makes numerically balalncing all their skills mathematically over complicated.

I agree very much.

Honestly, this has bugged me for a long time.
Before it was changed to be a two part skill, magnetic grasp was unreliable, but it was also very fun when it worked.
Surfing along the ground to an opponent and following it up with an earthquake was simply outright satisfying.
After the change a long time ago when it became a long range immobilize, and a leap, I stopped using it very much. It isn’t fun. It is slow. By the time you get to your target using the leap, the immobilize has probably worn most of the way off. It doesn’t feel responsive as a two part skill, and it doesn’t feel as fun without the sliding effect.

I know that it will probably never go back to where it was before the major change because it was very buggy, but please at least consider combining the leap and the immobilize into the same attack so it actually feels like a magnet. It would feel many times more fun than a flimsy long range attack and jump that are practically disconnected except for the order in which you are forced do them.

Currently, magnetic grasp is boring and functional while it used to be fun but buggy.
I would prefer the latter any day of the year.

Armor? Thats what you like?
Your skill at detecting true style is lacking.
No norn should go without the most important thing of all, a wondrous mustache!

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not that easy …

1. Creat a new Character – Necro (or any light Class ;D) with the Mask you desire.
2. Do the intro level
3. Buy a white light mask at the AH
4. Put light mask (from AH) and the Necro Mask into your bank
5. Use a transmutation stone while the items are both at the bank. Stats of the AH mask, appearance of the Necro Mask
6. Delete Char again.
7. Log in with your main, take the Mask wich is now account bound instead of soul bound because you transmutated at the bank.

You’re welcome

Transmutation onto a white item to make the skin account bound doesn’t require doing it in a bank.

emikochan.8504:

@magic fly, If they changed the graphic to an actual wall of rock, I’d be ok with that :p

It’s not the graphic. It’s the behavior.
Even if it was changed to look like a wall, why would it knock you back?
Other walls in the game don’t.
That’s why it doesn’t feel like a barrier to me, just a very strange knockback that can stunlock you if it was placed on top of you.

Magnetron.5823:

Yea what the hell man, this is the worst I have ever seen in an MMORPG.

Apparently you’ve been very lucky. Except for turn based games, this is present in any game with pvp.
It’s best to put the name callers on ignore.

On critical hit, and on weapon swap sigils share the same cooldown.
Try unequipping your offhand weapons and see if that makes a difference.

With glyph of elemental power activated in fire, and autoattack in earth scepter, you can deal a great amount of damage over time.
You have to stay in earth to deal damage, and if you need to switch to defend yourself, you are locked away from your main damage for 10 seconds or more.

There is just no self defense without locking yourself out of your main damage for a huge amount of time, and the low base health also makes things worse.

I actually have a much easier time with guardian condition builds. No kidding.

Line of warding feels klunky.
Even if this would be a buff to staff eles, I still wouldn’t want it.
It just doesn’t feel polished.

I just wanted to point out to a couple people that when comparing heals, do keep in mind that most are equally affected by poison. Poison isn’t just healing signet’s weakness, it’s the weakness of all healing skills.
Also, because of all the condition removal/immunity that warriors have, poison is more a weakness to other classes than to warrior.

Saying poison is healing signet’s weakness is like saying [insert overpowered attack here] can be dodged, therefore there is no problem.

You can test it out in the pvp lobby.
From what I’ve tested, no. They do not stack.

Honestly, the required number of players for this event is far too large. If you have less, then the event becomes simply impossible. I have no problems with an event made for lots of people, but adding lots of health and a time limit just to keep smaller groups from winning is a poor choice.

The population requirements should be recommendations instead.

In the proxemics lab guild puzzle for example, you only need 4 players to get through. It might be tough, but is still possible if you know what to do. It can go much smoother and with a smaller chance of failure if you have more players. It was made for whole guilds, but can be done with a small party despite much increased difficulty for doing so.

Tequatl’s minimum requirement of players is too large. It isn’t harder with less players, it is impossible with less players. Lots of health and a time limit on bosses does not make them better, it makes them abandoned except on the more populated servers.

Some other failure mechanic would probably be better. Defending some base from attack during the fight, or if the turrets get destroyed for example. Time limits and huge health bars is a number check, not a skill check.

Other than that, the changes to the fight were great, but I cannot experience it as designed unless I guest onto a higher population server.
Just my thoughts on the matter.

The world does not revolve around your server.

There is nothing difficult about this fight. Its all about the number of people you have.
After a couple tries to learn the ropes, you win if you have a populated server, or disband and never try again if you have a low population server.
Don’t pretend that this requires some large amount of skill.

Requiring either a populated server, or having no chance at all, is what I would consider fake difficulty.

Solid Gold.9310:

Mystic.5934:

how often you see this error is probably proportional to how fast your computer is and/or your internet. for me, I see it almost more often than items I sell.
as an anti-bot system, it’s less than worthless. the reason is that it inhibits people but bots deal with it just fine, allowing bots to greatly outpace people.
as alternatives, I’ve suggested a few in the past: can’t post more than 1 thing every 2 seconds. can’t post more than 500 things per day. ban the bots and no limits.

Nobody from ArenaNet has said it’s an anti bot measure.

Why would they put in an anti bot measure that looks like shoddy programming and/or low end servers and connections.

Doesn’t do ArenaNet any favours does it.

If it was shoddy programming, it probably wouldn’t be quite as consistently appearing, but sporadic instead.
It has been here for a year, and is obvious to almost every single player that it exists.

A bug as huge as that wouldn’t have stayed an entire year. The chances that anyone at anet would admit putting in a nuisance on purpose is zero. If it was a bug, they would have said so after an entire year. The fact that nothing has been said or done means that it was intentional.

Nature magic seems to be focused on boons a lot. Not just about healing and regeneration. I don’t think this kind of switch would really fit the traitline’s style.
Looking at fortifying bond and bountiful hunter, they aren’t focused on regeneration and healing in particular, but any boon at all.

Healing power instead of boon duration, from my point of view, would probably be a bit of a nerf to nature magic because of that traitline’s focus and it’s style. Beastmastery does not give boons. It would be a bit of a mismatch. Not that healing fits beastmastery anyway, but it fits in a little better than boon duration would.

That’s my 2 cents.

I don’t think changing unsteady ground to be more like line of warding is a good thing.
Line of warding was always a pain, run into it, and i get cc’d. Run away from it,cc’d again.
Set it on top of someone, and they can’t move for the entire duration.
Really felt like a kluge fix to make line of warding work. I’d rather not have any more skills made to be like that even if it is a buff to staff eles.

How about giving every ranger skill reveal.
The counterplay options it would provide would be endless and healthy for the game.