Guild Wars 2

Ironvos.9014:

-“What’s Rampart?”

“Rampart, this is Rescue 51…”

There ARE nodes for all kinds of resources in the new map, contained within the keeps/towers/camps. I think they were called Synthesizers. An ore Synthesizer could give you all different kinds of ore.

They were removed sometime yesterday because apparently they were bugged/exploitable.

Barracudas can be scary when half your bar is empty and your only weapon is condi-based and you’re specced for power.

Fish are mean.

What I’ve seen so far:

• Upgrades: Free, automatic & tiered. I can save money.
• Yakslapping: Less necessary, harder to kill a yak.
• Yak Escorting: Less necessary, easier to defend a yak.
• Sentries: More useful (shows enemy on map, cripples yaks).
• Objectives: More likely to self-upgrade, harder to take.
• Doors: Can fortify now, rams can be hit by 2 oils and 2 cannons in some places.
• Scouting: You can mine resource synthesizers while sitting inside someplace (disabled due to bug/exploit.) New ways to see enemies on the minimap.
• Small Objectives: 9 new shrines added.
• Champion Scaling: It took a zerg a LONG time to take down a fully fortified earth keep lord. I had time to run back from citadel before the lord went down.
• Swiftness: More important than ever
• Fall Damage Traits: More popular than before
• Loot: I solo’d a shrine and got a charged lodestone (score!)
• Guild Catas: Finally nerfed, hooray.
• Wyverns: Wyverns are nasty!
• Lazer Event: A few defenders can spend a LONG time trying to do this themselves and then a giant zerg can arrive, kill them and finish it quickly. I think I predicted this a long, long time ago.
• Progress: Instead of meaningless ranks and loot, you can now earn meaningless ranks, loot, and elite specializations (eventually.)

I’m running a healing based hammer/staff build in Wvw.

I can stand in the back shooting hammers while I send the healing tablet out to the front of the zerg and then pull it back 2 seconds later. People in the path are getting healed for about 1650 (I could push it higher with more healing power and outgoing healing traits.) There’s also a burst heal, cleanse, or knockback every few seconds, passive regeneration, and the basic passive tablet healing. It is a lot of healing. Or I can turn on the shield and block projectiles and create a light field. All around very useful.

Sometimes circling around people with the staff while repositioning the tablet is a bit awkward, but if the enemy isn’t moving much, you can create a lot of healing in a small area around your target.

Centaur runes give mobilitythat helps to pick up tablet fragments and staff healing orbs, while also giving perma swiftness when getting around.

I’m enjoying it.

Good to know I actually saw them and it wasn’t something I dreamed.

Got all the achievements except the one farmed one they didn’t change.

I never wear titles, but Immovable Object sounds kinda nifty.

While WvW has been down, I got a bunch of hero points on a couple of my characters and solo’d Sorrow’s Embrace story mode with a full Magi Ranger. Now I have TWO dungeon reward tracks unlocked, hooray.

The herald really helps out Ventari (longer regen from tablet, spammable AoE protection when moving tablet). The herald really helps out Jalis (TONS of extra stability from the brick road). The herald also really helped out with Mallyx (17s of Resistance).

Herald just seems to have stuff in it that makes any other legendary work much better. In the short time I had, I wasn’t able to get non-herald versions to work as well as herald versions, even when I never took Glint.

So, is everyone excited to log into HoT and see how many achievements they’ve suddenly completed overnight?

From a month ago:
For Heart of Thorns, we are rebalancing the WvW Lifetime achievement requirements to much more reasonable numbers. At the same time we’ll also be updating many of their associated titles.

• We are not changing the Realm Avenger (“Ultimate Dominator”) achievement requirements or title, as some players have actually obtained it and it’s a bit of a status symbol.
• The “Yakslapper” title will remain, but the requirement is being reduced to 2500 yaks.
• As an example title change: “Ultimate Liberator” will become “Kingmaker”
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Suggestion-WvW-achievements-1/5452203

If the defense achievements aren’t set super low, they might be some of the rarest completed. I’m proud of my defense record: 86k supply spent on repairs, 2800 keep defenses, 2300 tower defenses, 1300 camp defenses (enemies killed outside the camp didn’t count grrrrrr…). I don’t remember walking 8k yaks, but I have 8k yaks escorted.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• 1. Spending liquid WxP now gets you ranks, badges, and loot guaranteed… but it does not help you earn proofs faster for hero points.
• 2. +50% boosts can be much better than liquid WxP… when you are being really successful (taking Smc, taking a keep, rapidly flipping stuff, repeatedly defending a keep).
• 3. +50% boosts can be worse than liquid WxP… if you are spending all your time running back and forth for supply, getting wiped, failing to take a keep, crafting, leaving WvW, or going afk.
• 4. The relative values seem to be changing. Right now a keg is worth 25,000 and a drop is 250. The keg is 100x better than the drop. We know that the smallest booster will be 15 minutes and it looks like the longest 10 hours. If a keg is only 10 hours, then it will only be 40x better than a drop in the future, so you may want to use it now.
  “These WXP boosters vary in duration (15 minutes to 10 hours) depending on the type of liquid world experience item replaced.”
• 5. Ranking up helps you rank up. If you use all your liquid wxp now, you are going to get thimbles and drops of liquid wxp just from ranking up, and those need to be used or they will convert to boosters. If you wait and use boosters in the future to rank up faster, you may earn instant wxp rewards when ranking up:
  “In all other locations, liquid world experience consumables have been replaced with new, automatically consumed instant world experience consumables of equivalent value. While it’s still possible that on a rare occasion you’ll earn a keg of world experience, it’ll just be consumed instantly.”
• 6. It may take a very long time, but by carefully managing 15 minute boosters, you can get tons of extra WxP in the future which means more ranks, more badges/loot, more instant wxp rewards from ranking up, and faster proofs for hero points.

Just remember to pop a booster when the inner gate is almost down.

I’m hoping that rewards for all kinds of WvW events are getting a look at. It was always annoying that you needed badges to get the Supply Traps, Siege Disablers, (and even Stealth Traps) for defense… but defense events don’t give the badges you need…

Note to self: Shoulda just been karma-training and let all those keeps flip.

“Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.” -Colin

That makes things much better. Spending badges on the jungle challenges will be a much better investment.

Did I ever tell you the story about how I invented Superior Runes of the Trapper?

“Once Upon a Time, there was a Ranger Collaborative Development thread, and I suggested Superior Runes of the Trapper, with Condition Damage, Condition Duration, and Stealth.”

“The End.”

I use them more on my thief than on my ranger, but I don’t do this perma-ghost business. I pop right back out with the pistol’s bleeding stealth attack.

I’m actually more worried about the badges cost now.

• If you k-train EoTM, you have tons of badges.
• If you use supply traps, siege disablers, and actually scout/defend/upgrade stuff on maps that actually matter, and if you needed to use badges to buy gear because you were too poor from not k-training… you don’t have tons of badges.

Badges are just a terrible k-train currency. Defend all you want, you won’t get badges. Can I convert my thousands of Yaks Escorted into Badges please?

Right now a Keg is 100x better than a drop (25,000wxp vs 250). With the patch, a Keg will only be 40x better than a drop (10hrs = 600 minutes vs 15 minutes).

I’m leaning towards this strategy:

• Consume large wxp consumables now.
• Open all WvW daily chests (so there’s no chance they suddenly turn into automatically used buffs.)
• Save all 250wxp drops.
• Pop drops for +50% when things are going well (if you’re going to take a keep, castle, tower and camp, two camps and sentry, Bagfest fight, secret stuff, etc.)

Hexalot.8194:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/earning-hero-points-in-world-vs-world/

“we didn’t want to allow any WvW players who may have been stockpiling liquid world experience to instantly rank up a bunch of times and immediately begin unlocking the new expansion hero challenges the moment the expansion released.”

CURSES, FOILED AGAIN!!!

Awhile back, John Corpening said…

“Another area we want to improve is how players are recognized and rewarded for their contributions to their team. Whether you defend, scout, run havoc, zerg bust, roam, conquer or win team fights you should be fairly compensated from the game and not rely on the hope that your team may kick you back some gold at the end of the night for you to feel rewarded for the valuable effort you put into the success of your world.”

Now, if they could just implement these fair rewards and also make them retroactive… "hey, it looks like you spent 2,000+ hours in WvW and you are poor and legendaryless with no transmutation stones… and no hero points, let’s fix at least one of those… " Clearly I spent too much time waiting in a keep, popping upgrades, refreshing siege, and being ready to cannon down the ram-sites or disable the catapults. Though sometimes when I’m really poor, I scout from inside the skritt cave and just call out swords for other people to deal with…

There are only 3 times in WvW:

• 1. The times you have nothing you can do and get discouraged… either completely outmanned on the field or so far behind that there is no point (or reward) for even trying.
• 2. The times you have nothing to do and get disappointed… either getting no resistance/fights or so far ahead that there is no point other than mindless karma training.
• 3. The times where your involvement seems to matter, and you might actually have fun… This happens most AT reset and during primetime because the scores are low and the participation is pretty even on all sides.

By moving karma-train Friday to Saturday, you give people with lots of freetime no reason to play WvW… the outcome is already decided, the enthusiasm is low, and you’ve been fighting the same people all week (or 12 weeks). If you hurt attendance on Saturday, you hurt WvW. I’ve seen commanders boast about commanding 10, 12, 15+ hours straight… because it was the weekend, and because it mattered. If Saturday is turned into a day that doesn’t matter, why would anyone do that anymore?

If you don’t have to move, you can just keep moving the tablet under yourself for significant self-healing while getting aoe protection (herald trait) and aoe regeneration (salvation trait) and dropping an extra heal thingy nearby (salvation trait). And those boons can be kept up permanently if you are also running the herald’s +50% boon duration.

Actually manipulating it to heal allies that need healing is awkward and it can be counterproductive… you send the tablet someplace to heal someone, and they miss the tablet heal because they moved out of the way to go pick up one of the glowing fragments it just made from the move before.

Does the energy have to drop down to 50% when swapping? There are so many reasons to swap Legends, it hurts to lose energy that took 10 seconds or more to build up.

Herald seems to be the glue required to make most of the legends work well

• Mallyx seems to benefit greatly from the massive boon duration(17+ seconds of Resistance from using Absorb Pain). You actually have a chance to survive the massive conditions you have.
• Ventari seems to benefit greatly from Herald (trait gives perma AoE protection from simply moving tablet around)
• Jalis seems to benefit greatly from Herald (tons of bonus long-lasting stability from the brick road).

Overall: Feels extremely complex and extremely limited at the same time. You are swapping to manage your role, while also swapping to manage energy, while also swapping to manage your 2 healing skill cooldowns… you are skimping on weapon skills so that you have energy to use utility skills or an elite. Your choices are 2 weapons and 2 legends… no mixing or matching of custom skillbars like other professions makes it feel extremely limited. Unlike other professions that can button mash, it looks like the hard part of playing Revenant will be the skills you don’t use, which in turn give you the energy required for the skills you need, when you need them.

I enjoyed playing around with Mallyx/Jalis, Jalis/Glint, Ventari/Jalis. And much of the time I was running Herald without running the Herald legend.

I used to run the Conjured Earth shield on a rabid build with strong bleeding and with burn on crit… now that build is dead because you have to choose conjurer or burn on crits…

When I would summon it, someone picking it up would inevitably say, “what is this thing? Is this new?” That’s how popular conjured shield is.

To strike a fair balance, there is only one sensible, logical solution:

Temporarily Disable all golems until this issue is resolved.

• Technicaly the golem event would still be ongoing (just without golems)
• It would be some semblance of communication with the players that this exploit is not ok, and not intended.

Most people expect you to run glamours and want you to run glamours because they offer certain tactical advantages unique to mesmers.

I avoid glamours… and I can do this every 6 seconds:

Healing Power seems balanced entirely around using Regeneration, so all other healing effects scale terribly with a couple exceptions like the Guardian’s heal on dodge trait. All professions have some way to grant Regeneration to allies, but some are harder to use than others.

A Mesmer could run 1500 healing power (1800 traited) with monks, benevolence, and rice balls and tell people to hang out near the Phantasmal Duelist to get 470 health per second Regen… but no one does. People have been doing it on Banner warriors for awhile because it is very easy to keep the Regen up on people even when they are spread out.

Radiant Retaliation

• Allows pure Condi Guardians (Rabid/Dire/Settler/Shaman) to have good Retaliation Damage instead of pitiful 180 damage.
• Allows the highest Retaliation damage in the game.
• Can hit for over 430 damage in WvW with a full condi build.
• Rewards every single point of Condition Damage you have. The more you have, the better it works.

If you are running Hybrid, you will not see a huge improvement: Going from 239 to 261 isn’t a big deal. 10%+
If you are running full Condi: this trait can take you from 180 to 360 or more. 100%+

IndigoSundown.5419:

I would expect that the disable is temporary…

Radiant Retaliation was completely non-functional for 8 months, but when a really popular trait gets broken it gets fixed really fast.

Cool kids are broken.

One Activation in a group (4s x 5 allies) does the same damage as 10 passive triggers (2s x 10 triggers). If you are not built to land lots of fast hits, the Active is often a good choice in a group… it just doesn’t look very strong because the majority of the damage is on the burning attacks that you are giving to your allies.

This is what active Justice does now:

• Your next attack does a 4s burn (within 20 seconds).
• 4 Allies also do a 4s burn on their next attack (within 20 seconds).
• 25s cooldown

This is what you can do with active Justice now:

• It can be refreshed on every kill if traited.
• It can blind nearby foes if traited.
• It can grant 3 stacks of might to you and 4 allies if traited.
• It can heal you for over 1k if traited.
• It can grant you retaliation if traited.
• Each active burn can be extended by 1 second with Supreme Justice (2s with +100% duration).
• 21.75s cooldown

Torch Trait = 20% burn duration
Balthazar Runes = 45% burn duration
Giver’s Weapon = 20% condi duration
Smoldering Sigil = 20% burn duration
Retaliation Minor Trait = 25% retal duration
Candy Cactus Cornbread = 20% boon duration

Highest Radiant Retal Damage I’ve Seen: 441

That was going full Condi, with about 16 stacks of Might, with WvW Guard stacks, 25 stacks of Corruption, etc. (armor was exotic, trinkets ascended). Without any might, I had 2612 Condition Damage. So with full Might, it may have done around 475.

Taking a more balanced approach between Retaliation, Burning, and Survivability, you can still achieve Retaliation numbers over 350 while having 100% burn duration and 45% Retal duration.

441… 350… 290… these numbers may not be a huge improvement over your Power retal damage, but if you are running full condi, all of these numbers are an enormous improvement over the 180 you’d be doing if you didn’t take this trait and only had 1000 Power.

A blanket nerf could push the weaker damage sets even lower… Magi, Nomad, Shaman, Settler, etc. They can’t handle that.

My magi ranger beastmaster is already weaker than before (I think part of it was the bleeding formula changes and the fact that cats by default have 0 condition damage.)

JonPeters.5630:

Gotejjeken.1267:

Please, for a love of whatever of the GW God’s you choose…get a test server. It is just unacceptable to me personally to see an entire game get unbalanced and the community have to play the waiting game until things are corrected.

This happens, because as bright as the people balancing things are, they simply cannot predict what is going to happen in a mass environment with live players. Can run all the algorithms in the world and that won’t stop a few players from devising a way to totally ruin the game.

Also, I don’t think we should pin this on conditions being too strong. I think everything is too strong.

I understand that this would be helpful but in the absence of a test server, which is our current situation, we will do as much as we can as fast as we can. We made some changes today and more will be coming as the week goes on. After that our intention is to make balance and bug fix changes to this stuff every couple of weeks leading up to the release of HoT.

Also, not everything is too strong, just all forms of damage.

Jon

All forms of damage?

1. Why is Retaliation singled out as the one source of damage that doesn’t benefit from Vulnerability?
2. Confusion was changed so that fast/slow attackers were less of an issue… will anything similar be done to make Retaliation more reliably useful?

Kageseigi.2150:

misterdevious.6482:

Dagger Training lets you Weaken multiple enemies easily. The Lotus Poison minor trait has a 10 second cooldown per target. Spread the poison, spread the weakness.

That’s quite interesting. Did you learn that through testing, or is it mentioned in release notes anywhere?

It has worked this way for a long time and was mentioned on the wiki. I checked again in the game to be sure, and yes it still has a 10s cooldown per target.

Dagger Training: “Chance to Poison Foes (which by the way will also put 4 seconds of Weakness on them from the minor trait, which I forgot to mention has a 10 second cooldown per target.)”

Dagger Training lets you Weaken multiple enemies easily. The Lotus Poison minor trait has a 10 second cooldown per target. Spread the poison, spread the weakness.

Radiant Retaliation is getting fixed but has not been changed.

I saw the section of video where he tested Radiant Retaliation. The damage returned was in line with the known pvp radiant retal damage formula, off by only a couple points.

He did not have nice things to say even though it was a 30% improvement in Retal Damage over regular retal. If he had been wearing Rabid or Dire, it would have been more than a 60% improvement over his regular retal.

From what I heard, one of the preview streamers tried Radiant Retal against Svanir while wearing Carrion. He hit for 298 and declared it worthless. Then he went back to showing off 5-7k damage condi tics.

298 with the old formula would mean he had ~1663 condition damage which is plausible.

Sustainability was never an issue in zergs in the past with my half-cleric, half-magi zerg support build.

• On every zerg kill, Endurance refreshed to full = 2 dodge rolls that AoE heal 1500+ each
• On every zerg kill F1 is refreshed so I can grant 3 stacks of AoE might to allies and heal myself for up to 1245
• On every zerg kill F1 is refreshed so I can blind nearby foes.
• Every second I have a good chance to crit, grant might to allies and heal for up to 415.
• Superior Rune of the Defender gives significant self healing especially combined with heal on Aegis.

Sadly 0/3/6/4/1 is going away tomorrow. Time to come up with something new.

Talonblaze.3175:

misterdevious.6482:

But back to the topic… shouldn’t Healing Power affect rezzing?

To be perfectly honest, i’d like to see the stat get a buff like this and actually make it a valuable stat in and outside of combat for those who are dedicated to the medic role.

• Revenants can get +1.5% outgoing healing for every 100 healing power .
• Guardians can get +1% outgoing healing for every 100 vitality.
• Elementalists can get +15% outgoing healing with Aquatic Benevolence.
• Engineers can get +15% outgoing healing while medkit is equipped.

Other professions don’t appear to be getting large outgoing healing bonuses but they are getting new unique ways to support allies… by granting them distortion, preventing them from bleeding out, etc. To make Healing Power really count, you need lots of ways to apply healing and you need some outgoing healing percentage. All professions could wear monk runes, eat rice balls, and use benevolence sigils for 32.5% outgoing healing. The above professions can go higher with 47.5 or higher outgoing healing.

Force of Will: Your vitality is increased by up to 300 points, based on effective level. Healing effectiveness to other allies is increased on a percentage of your vitality. You gain 1% per 100 points of vitality (including base vitality).

~20% from Force of Will + 10% Monk Runes + 12.5% Benevolence Sigil + 10% Rice Balls = +52.5% outgoing healing possible?

Guardians can heal allies:

• With a healing slot shout.
• With passive profession mechanic (that can be traited to be 25% stronger)
• With passive signet elite (which can be traited to be 20% stronger)
• With Dodge rolls (that can be refreshed on every kill)
• With water blasts
• With mace auto-attack
• With staff 2
• With Regeneration
• With Aegis
• With an AoE healing rain from spirit bow (and healing/condi-cleansing arrows)
• With Water/Rejuvenation sigils
• With Runes like water
• With Shield 5 (24s cooldown)
• With Revive trait that casts Shield 5 (24s cooldown)

Magi offers both High healing power and Vitality, and precision useful for proccing empowering might. Worst damage set, best support set?

They actually improved 90% of the traits I use. Some of them very considerably.

I’m a freak. And I’m happy.

• Some weapons are more about damage, some more about support, some more about defense.
• Scepter is a damage option for consistent hitting and rapid hitting to apply burning.
• Putting a light field on it would make it more supportive.
• Putting a symbol on it would make it pulse a boon, which would make it more supportive.
• If it was a symbol, it would be inconsistent to have it pulse faster than once per second. Once per second would defeat the purpose of the skill.

There’s a Guardian build I run in WvW…

A sigil refreshes my dodge roll on every kill, and my dodge roll heals allies in an area for 1500ish. I’m wearing a hybrid of Cleric and Magi for healing power. I have enough precision to proc Empowering Might which grants Might to my allies (and it heals me through altruistic healing). I went 0/3/6/4/1 so that Justice is also refreshed on every kill and does an AoE blind and grants 3 stacks of might to allies (which also heals me through altruistic healing.) Between the altruistic healing and the dodge rolling, I rarely have to use my self-heal for myself.

After every kill I’m dodge rolling towards allies to heal them, and I can hit F1 to blind enemies frequently. I use 2 shouts and the summoned spirit bow. Before a big fight, I will pull out the bow and call down a healing rain where I think the biggest part of the fight will be or the obvious chokepoint where people could get stuck… and it heals for 135 x tons and tons of hits.

Soon I will only have 3 traitlines and will have to give something up, but will get 2 more grandmasters to compensate.

The opposite could also happen. When Magic Find armor was removed, it was replaced with gear that you could change the stats once. Giver’s gear could be removed and the same thing could happen.

Healing Power isn’t bad, but it needs outgoing heal food/traits/runes to be really effective.

Healing Power just seems to be based on having high Regeneration upkeep and beyond that all other healing effects are secondary. If you can keep regen up on allies, healing power can be superior to vitality and competitive with toughness. The problem is that only one person can do that per group because Regeneration doesn’t stack in intensity.

Stealth thief, mark necro, shout ranger, banner warrior, mace guardian, turret engi… all are capable of granting high uptime of group regeneration, but for some it is much easier than others. How many mesmers ever say “stand near the phantasmal duelist for 450 health per second regen?”

Be prepared.
Business first.
THEN try out the new masteries system.

I’ve spent more gold this week than ever before… because I want to be able to cope with rapidly changing prices in the future, and possibly eek out a small profit in the future. Once upon a time they removed magic find gear, and I decided to buy some just to see what would happen to it… and I ended up with full Dire Wayfarer trinkets (very nice at the time).

They have not announced any specific changes to runes/sigils yet or to racial skills. I expect there will be many changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added a couple new runes/sigils also.

So… what you’re saying is… You want a no ICD way to deal significant Condition Damage to enemies that hit you really fast?

Radiant Retaliation says hi.

Khisanth.2948:

As for pet’s healing power affecting Invigorating Bond, what is so unusual about that?

“The healing caused by this trait scales with your Healing Power rather than your pet’s.” – Wiki

If Invigorating Bond does now scale from your pet’s healing power, that is a nerf to healing power rangers and to pets (unless they majorly increased the Invigorating Bond scaling from your pet.)

The pet healing power trait was hardly worth taking because it only helped a tiny amount on:

• Moa AoE heal
• Fern Hound AoE regen howl
• Bear self-regen
• Leaps through water
• Blasts in water
• Regen granted by projectiles through water
• The amount healed on crit by Carnivorous Appetite

We lost Carnivorous Appetite which was a great trait. So now, this 450 healing power may be 99% useless on some pets and squishy pets will have much less self-healing potential overall.

But back to the topic… shouldn’t Healing Power affect rezzing?

Perhaps he misspoke, but Kui Calmon-Huang said in Ready Up Episode 35 that bonus Healing Power would help the rate that your ranger pet rezzed allies. He was explaining the Beastmaster Natural Regeneration trait 2 hours, 12 minutes, and 14 seconds in. He specifically said it would affect Allies Aid (your pet uses Search and Rescue when you revive an ally).

Is this a new change for everyone? Or is it something specific to ranger pets perhaps? He might be confused, he also stated that your pet’s healing power would affect Invigorating Bond.

The Quote I’m referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbdl5WoAI90&t=2h12m14s

Birdbomb

• Mad King Runes (Birds hit 3 enemies 16 times each)… 45 second cooldown.
• That’s 48 hits… so 9 passive triggers of justice or 16 passive triggers of justice (traited)
• Each passive hit of justice can trigger a 5 target AoE burn (traited)
• Each passive hit of justice can grant you 10 seconds of Might if you’re wielding a Scepter with the new scepter trait.
• Combine with Dragonhunter traps that hit really fast and also apply bleeding.
• Remember this is all happening extremely fast due to Quickness.

I’m not playing like that… and I’m afraid of the people who will.