Guild Wars 2

I don’t know, whether I’d necessarily call it a bug. It can be easily replicated by falling a long distance during the initial sprint.
Think of it this way: The only way to get off a long jump is either to build up momentum by running orto build up tension like a spring. If you fall after the initial sprint, your velocity at impact will mostly be downward. However, if you simply kill that downwards velocity, while keeping the forward momentum, you will inevitably fall over. There is no easy way to spring from that fall into a flat trajectory, unless you have shoes with perfect friction and use perfect timing. Instead, you have to kill all the built up momentum, which includes the forward movement and use it to build up tension for a leap. The whole thing is actually more realistic than most moves in the game.

All the jokes aside, it most likely wasn’t intended to work this way, but it’s funny nontheless that the skill actually reflects perfectly reasonable behavior, if we leave out the wing part.

As for an ingame reason, why it’s happening, there’s a couple possible explanations:

First:
The leap checks periodically, whether it can be executed until it’s executed or interrupted. The conditions for the leap: Sprint completed, standing firmly on the ground. The period of time between checks is the time it takes for the sprint part to complete, so if you aren’t standing on solid ground, the instant the sprint part ends, you will be rooted for the time, it takes swoop to complete a sprint.

Second:
If you aren’t at the ground, when the sprint ends, the entire swoop timer will restart as soon as you hit the ground, meaning, you will always be rooted for exactly the sprint duration before your ranger starts to leap.

The way to work around this is simple: Sprint on flat terrain!

I can think of a couple ways to test swoop behavior: Sprint off a tall ledge and have opponents chain-immobilize you while falling (yay that stupid bug is useful for once). My prediction is, that after the immobilize wears off, you will fall to the ground, be rooted for some time and then leap off into the distance.
The “periodic timer” theory could be proven by randomly equipping a couple +10% condi duration effects on the immobilizes (or by choosing ledges with different height/starting the sprint at different distances to the ledge) and checking whether the time between landing and leap fluctuates.

You guys do realize, this thread is 2 years old, right?

People equip their underwater weapons with sigils? I find underwater combat so dreadfully boring, I usually don’t even bother sticking sigils into the weapons…

Regarding points: Anything less than 30 points at the end of a game is bad. The rest is impossible to tell and may just be down to kitten poor luck.

I just had a game with 3 guards vs 4 guards…
our team had a thief, the opponent a mes, but besides that I don’t even know whether I was on the team with the 3 guards or on the one with 4…

Anyway, the team with a proper bunker guard won the match.

Toxsa.2701:

naphack.9346:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Sigils/Runes do indeed define builds “as in, without these sigils/runes on certain builds, those build wouldn’t even be viable” and this is true but the issue here is not as broad and simple as recent posters are explaining. Here is a more concise explanation of what is happening here:

1. ~ Some Sigils/Runes are plainly better than others and used on MOST builds in the game. This is not an issue of Sigils/Runes defining build structures but more an issue that some Sigils/Runes are just too useful in contrast to the bulk of the Sigils/Runes in the game that are completely useless. Two things to fix this: Either tone down those Sigils/Runes or power creep the useless Sigils/Runes.

1. ~ Some specific build archetypes benefit SO WELL from a specific Sigil/Rune that there is no reason to ever use anything else and thus the main problem I am seeing posted in this thread “Sigils/Runes define builds”. This is half true. It’s not that Sigils/Runes define ALL builds but rather some builds in the game. Some builds benefit so widely from let’s say “Intelligence Sigil” that it does become a staple of the build. That right there “a staple of the build” is what is causing people to see it as “Sigils/Runes defining builds” and again, that is half true but not entirely an entirely accurate statement to define the problem here.

More over I would like to point out to you all that if Sigils/Runes are nerfed too much, it will indeed nerf your options for different viable build structures. I suggest that you all shift your complaining more towards buffing useless Sigils/Runes rather than nerfing what is useful and fun to use in general. Let’s face it, when you proc a double fire/air crit with a backtab, it’s a highlight and it’s fun. Let’s not take the fun out of the game but rather add other fun options to use for Sigil/Rune selections

Fire+Air on Backstab is fine. It at most doubles the expected damage of the skill.
The problem is, when any small scratch has the ability to suddenly deal 20 times the expected damage.
I like to be able to use my hp as a resource. Jump in, trade hits, evade critical attacks, use heals to mitigate small scratches and push through damage.
In the current state of the game, this is not possible. There is no distinct damage sources, as half the damage of many builds is tied to procs, which can not be blocked(unless the attack causing the proc itself was unblockable and triggered the proc while hitting through a block), evaded, blinded or interrupted. You can block full rapid fires, interrupt earth shakers, reflect lich claws, blind pin down, etc. But you can’t stop that small utility skill, which just does a scratch and normally has the main use of applying cripple or weakness from suddenly exploding in your face.
Sigils don’t go on cooldown unless they proc. The only way to blank a passive proc is endure pain/signet of stone. Any other damage source will be gone for a while once you evade the hit. If all the damage is tied to passive procs, it doesn’t matter, what you are hit with.

I’ve already stated my opinion on the matter in another thread: There is no conceivable reason for there to be two passive proc sigils with massive physical damage, so why not give one of them a new purpose?

How about:
Currently:
Sigil of Air: 50% chance to deal 408(1.2) damage on critical hit. ICD of 3 seconds.
Proposed:
Sigil of Air: 66% chance on critical hit to deal 128(0.4) damage and apply weakness (3 seconds) to the target. ICD of 8 seconds.

Nerf celestial bunkers first before you nerf sigils.
Bring down the healing amount from Signets of Restoration, Signer of healing, Mediations, Shouts, regeneration, those passive healing procs, then we can talk.
Also address the auto-procs from many classes too before you justify the nerf of air-fire.
Stop being hypocritical.

Nice try but I mostly play cleric bunkers.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

If you guys have a valid way to replace the RNG aspect of fire and air sigils with skill-based versions that you’d feel less inclined to complain about, then let’s hear it. I’m all for skillful play.

I am not, however, for thinly veiled “Zerkers do too much DPS, my cele build should survive everything” complaints. I know some of that mind are hiding somewhere.

If there’s a problem, suggest a fix. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know how to improve a sigil that literally says “This skill probably will go off if you crit, lol”. If you want to start guaranteeing flame blasts and lightning strikes in exchange for them proccing at “Random” times, I’m all ears.

There are defensive traits, which proc, when an attack takes more than 10% of your health in a single hit.
If you want to remove some portions of rng, you could start by making some of the sigils proc on that. Deal more than 10% of the targets hp in a single hit —> proc fire. It means, fire sigil can only proc on important hits. However, it also means, fire sigil is useless against the hp sponges in PvE.

I’m still for nerfing the damage on passive procs entirely and making them more utility based. This game was advertised as being based on active defense. We don’t need Proc Wars 2.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Sigils/Runes do indeed define builds “as in, without these sigils/runes on certain builds, those build wouldn’t even be viable” and this is true but the issue here is not as broad and simple as recent posters are explaining. Here is a more concise explanation of what is happening here:

1. ~ Some Sigils/Runes are plainly better than others and used on MOST builds in the game. This is not an issue of Sigils/Runes defining build structures but more an issue that some Sigils/Runes are just too useful in contrast to the bulk of the Sigils/Runes in the game that are completely useless. Two things to fix this: Either tone down those Sigils/Runes or power creep the useless Sigils/Runes.

1. ~ Some specific build archetypes benefit SO WELL from a specific Sigil/Rune that there is no reason to ever use anything else and thus the main problem I am seeing posted in this thread “Sigils/Runes define builds”. This is half true. It’s not that Sigils/Runes define ALL builds but rather some builds in the game. Some builds benefit so widely from let’s say “Intelligence Sigil” that it does become a staple of the build. That right there “a staple of the build” is what is causing people to see it as “Sigils/Runes defining builds” and again, that is half true but not entirely an entirely accurate statement to define the problem here.

More over I would like to point out to you all that if Sigils/Runes are nerfed too much, it will indeed nerf your options for different viable build structures. I suggest that you all shift your complaining more towards buffing useless Sigils/Runes rather than nerfing what is useful and fun to use in general. Let’s face it, when you proc a double fire/air crit with a backtab, it’s a highlight and it’s fun. Let’s not take the fun out of the game but rather add other fun options to use for Sigil/Rune selections

Fire+Air on Backstab is fine. It at most doubles the expected damage of the skill.
The problem is, when any small scratch has the ability to suddenly deal 20 times the expected damage.
I like to be able to use my hp as a resource. Jump in, trade hits, evade critical attacks, use heals to mitigate small scratches and push through damage.
In the current state of the game, this is not possible. There is no distinct damage sources, as half the damage of many builds is tied to procs, which can not be blocked(unless the attack causing the proc itself was unblockable and triggered the proc while hitting through a block), evaded, blinded or interrupted. You can block full rapid fires, interrupt earth shakers, reflect lich claws, blind pin down, etc. But you can’t stop that small utility skill, which just does a scratch and normally has the main use of applying cripple or weakness from suddenly exploding in your face.
Sigils don’t go on cooldown unless they proc. The only way to blank a passive proc is endure pain/signet of stone. Any other damage source will be gone for a while once you evade the hit. If all the damage is tied to passive procs, it doesn’t matter, what you are hit with.

I’ve already stated my opinion on the matter in another thread: There is no conceivable reason for there to be two passive proc sigils with massive physical damage, so why not give one of them a new purpose?

How about:
Currently:
Sigil of Air: 50% chance to deal 408(1.2) damage on critical hit. ICD of 3 seconds.
Proposed:
Sigil of Air: 66% chance on critical hit to deal 128(0.4) damage and apply weakness (3 seconds) to the target. ICD of 8 seconds.

glock.6590:

People still don’t understand that this game is balanced around passives. There is passive protection/invul to counter passive damage. ( defy pain vs air/fire)

There is passive stability to counter passive CC. ( last stand vs reaper’s prot)
There is passive condi clear to counter passive condi application. ( IP vs shadows embrace)

Etc… This game will never be 100% about skill . This is not mortal kombat where you dodge attacks and then counterattack.

The only passives that should never be dominating are the AI passives cuz in that case it becomes player vs AI. Every other passive is fine imo. If you don’t like passives then I don’t know why you are even playing this game.

The problem is, that a single damage tick from some random AoE field, which would usually tick for about 300 can suddenly turn into a 14k damage spike, if it procs fire and air, dropping you below 50% and triggering spinal shivers.
The game was built around a lot of active defense with evades, blocks, blinds, interrupts, etc.
You can’t evade or block everything. You can’t keep the opponent permanently locked down or permanently blinded. Somewhere, somehow a little damage instance will slip through, even if you take great care to interrupt or evade all the big hits.
If you want to know, why interrupt builds or control builds have fallen heavily out of favor: You can control the normal attacks, but if more than half of the enemy’s damage output is not tied to any specific attack, but rather happens incidentally from any small scratch, it becomes meaningless.
A similar thing goes for weapon swap sigils: They amount to a lot of a cindition build’s damage output, but there is just no counterplay other than having a lot of short cd cleanse ready. blinding or evading an instant speed condition application doesn’t work.

If I eat an earthshaker, a lich autoattack or a full rapid fire and die to a random damage proc… Fine, I took a high damage attack and rng killed me, no biggie… The sigils caused the attacks to deal about three times the expected damage, I can live with this.
But let’s say, I block the entire rapid fire, jump in to attack, the ranger uses hunter’s shot to stealth and I suddenly lost 8k hp to a double proc? That’s just silly. The sigils increased the damage of that single attack by more than ten times.

The problem with proc sigils is that they cause any little scratch to have the potential to deal lethal damage. And there’s no way to defend against it other than playing cat and mouse in stealth.

I’d say:
Frost Bow:
-Replace ice storm with a new AoE skill, which doesn’t have that insane multihit nature
-Buff Auto attack

Lightning Hammer:
-Replace lightning storm with a new AoE skill, which is more reliable against single targets and not broken against insanely large static objects

While we are at it:
Earth Shield:
-Complete overhaul

Lava Axe:
-give more utility on 2-5

How about we start by cleaning up the on-swap sigils?
Specifically geomancy and hydromancy.

Geomancy can instantly apply sigil of doom. All of that with a single button press, happening at instant speed. Doom procs, geomancy procs, geomancy applies doom, enemy has both poison and bleed without having any chance to dodge anything.
How about removing the physical damage part from hydromancy and geomancy? It removes the synergy with many other on-swap sigils.

About Fire+Air: How about giving one of them a new role?
I’d say, increase the cooldown on sigil of air, lower the damage significantly and make it apply weakness to the target.

One thing about bunkering:
I tried playing a tanky melee ranger for some time.
I stopped, when a powermancer went lich form and put me into down state with a single triple proc hit.
And that hit wasn’t auto attack. I’d respect that, as those are the main damage source of the skill. I was reflecting his auto attack hits fine with the offhand axe, I brought specifically for projectile based opponents. A single chilling wind, which has a laughably small damage coefficient, slammed me down from 13k hp to 0 due to passive procs.

Bunkering with a lot of passive sustain is meaningless, when passive procs blur the line between potentially lethal attacks and attacks, you can take to the face and live to tell the tale. If you want to bunker in this game, you need to be able to deal with large health swings.

Bottom line, you can’t play the game as it’s supposed to work. Use evades and active defense to avoid high damage spikes, either mitigate the rest with passive healing, damage reduction, etc. or dish out enough damage to kill your opponent before you drop perilously low. That’s how it’s supposed to work, that’s, what we were told.

However, there’s a lot of instant cast or almost instant cast abilities with low damage coefficients. In a vacuum, those are there to push some damage through blocks and evades, apply some effects, and generally pressure the opponent. However, with passive procs, those become potentially deadly.
You can evade all the big hits, you want. If any small hit could suddenly explode in your face for more than half of your health pool, saving dodges for big skills becomes meaningless. It just becomes a game of unloading all your skills, chaining evades and hoping to be the one to win the proc wars.

In order:
1) Lightning Hammer
2) Lava Axe
3) D/D or Staff
4) Anything else

The best way to level is to stay in lightning hammer during fights. Nothing can beat the dps of that weapon and during leveling, dps is all you care about.

ronpierce.2760:

Well, considering Regen was supposed to counter conditions and we gained a lot of stacking intensity conditions. Burst seems like it may get out of hand. I see no reason for Regen to not stack, BUT if it did, some durations might need to be adjusted.

Really this wouldn’t make regen OP, as it wouldn’t increase durations, the most that would happen is that the burst healing of it would go up (which offers more skilled timing) and less stream healing forever.

2 banner warriors with runes of dwayna(for 30% more regeneration duration) and cleric amulet camp a point. Both employ 3 banners. That’s 2145 hp/second from the banners alone. Factor in blocks, evades and healing signet and nothing will be able to punch through that healing.
There’s probably a smarter way to build it, with only 2 banners per player and some condi remove.

xDudisx.5914:

ronpierce.2760:

xDudisx.5914:

top well designed: ele and guard
ok: war, ranger and engi
bad designed: mesmer and thief

This is a set up, I can tell. But I’ll bite.

Necro?

Was going to put necro on the ok classes, but forgot to add them.

Leave it out, it makes it funnier

New meta: 4 banner warriors, 1 mesmer(null field, phantasm regen)

vorpal.1497:

It’s a bit of a myth that there aren’t many players. When I finally broke into this season’s leaderboard a week or two back, it was saying I was in the top 95%. Therefore the leaderboards represent about 5% of the pvp population, meaning there have been on the order of 20,000 unique accounts that have participated in pvp this season.

Ok, it’s not breaking any records for player activity, but a significant portion of that 20,000 are VERY active. Most people on the leaderboards have 200-300 matches, which is on the order of 50-75 hours to achieve!

20.000 unique accounts?
Not all of them play each day. For the sake of the argument, let’s just assume they are playing an average of 1 hour a day. 1 Hour a day is already pretty generous, considering, a lot of the players might only play on weekends. Distribute that over the day and we have 833 players playing the game each hour. Queue times range on average between 2 and 8 minutes, Let’s say 5 minutes for the sake of the argument. That means for every 15 minutes spent voting for a map, loading the game, waiting for players, playing the match and deciding whether to play another one, we have 5 minutes of waiting. That means, we have to take 25% of that number. That makes a pool of 208 players to pull from on average.
Let’s narrow it down more. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume 10-15% of the players search in full 5-stacks, which are preferrably matched against other stacks of 5 before considering other options. This makes the pool to pull from for matchmaking a mere 180 players.

Now we have to consider that of those 180 players, not every combination is possible due to groups of 3-4 players.
You are now stuck with the problem of making groups of 10 players from a pool of 180 with the following restrictions:
-two groups of five
-there shouldn’t be a lot of skill difference between the players of each group
-the overall skill of both group should be about equal
-preferrably you should avoid profession stacking

180 players is sufficient to create matches, which have some semblance of balance, but it’s just not enough. Especially when you consider that that number isn’t constant. The number of available players fluctuates heavily and sometimes, the matchmaker will have to make a match from a pool of 30 players.

When discussing design, you have to distinguish between concept and execution.

While the concept behind the necromancer is really great, the execution is just bad.
Death shroud as a way to stay in battle, attrition, soft cc, etc… All of this sounds great on paper. Then you realize, that the necro doesn’t have a lot of attrition and also not enough staying power. This comes as a shock, when all the skills literally provide staying power, but the problem is, that necros just don’t have sustainable staying power. They can pop some reserves, throw everything, they got into the fight. If they outmatch the opponent, they will stay ahead, if they are outmatched, they will slowly run out of resources and options.
The nature of their defense makes them incredibly tanky against weak bursts, but vulnerable to concentrated fire. Unkillable to weak pressure and victims to strong pressure. There is no counterplay and no room for skilled play at all. It’s all pure mathematics: Do the incoming attacks outmatch the necro’s defenses or not? Nothing to it.

Which classes have good design in concept and execution? It’s hard to say. Conceptual flaws:
-The Elementalist being unable to “favor” single attunements. Maybe some day we will get an elite specialization, which gives the ele a weapon swap but removes attunement swapping during combat. Until then, they will lack that little bit of extra freedom towards build construction.
-Rangers are a mashup of a couple of leftover concepts, which were shoehorned into a single class. We have the druidic/shamanistic side with nature magic, we have archery and beastmastery. To make it work thematically, we have the survivalist/explorer theme to tie the three together. We are left with a class, which fails to make either of those roles/archetypes truly work.

Flawed executions:
-Warrior. They had a great concept, but they just missed it totally. Instead of fast-paced brawling with random burst skills as game changers, at some point of the development process, it shifted to turning the warrior into this juggernaut and burst skills into center pieces of entire play styles…
-Necro, as mentioned above.
-Thief. Too many ways to pop in and out of the action. There should be more risk involved but also a higher reward. You should be forced to commit to fights, you open.

Unfortunate accidents:
Mesmer. Great concept, great execution, insanely good design overall, but no matter where you look, the mesmer just can’t find a good place. It almost feels like the mesmer was designed for a different game.

This leaves:
Engineer and Guardian: These classes have solid design through and through.

Don’t know if it has been brought up already, but the proposed change has a flaw: If the proposed PoS with the knockback hits an opponent on the way outwards, just on the edge of its range, he will be pushed out of the range and won’t be pulled back to the player.

Butter.3024:

If you look at League, they got a balance patches that pretty much completely shift the meta every 3 weeks, and it keeps people on their toes, keep the matches fresh and not repetitive.

You mean, they nerf currently played heroes(sorry, champions) and buff underplayed ones, so they can sell more heroes champions.
That’s just switching around what narrow selection of heroes champions the players are supposed to play.
Doesn’t sound like balance to me. More like a business model.

TooBz.3065:

Isarii.2804:

There’s a huge flaw in the OP’s reasoning – none of these abilities take up a utility slot, and they aren’t balanced against the skill that do. As a result, all of those comparisons are total garbage.

Lol. Skills are skills. I don’t care if its a virtue with a cooldown or a utility slot. Only difference I see is that you have to take the virtues.

My point was that if you wanted that functionality you could already have that functionality (and also, for the most part people don’t want that functionality). Nothing really new except, possibly, the shield wall.

And this is where your reasoning is flawed.
It’s not like anything stops you from using the new profession mechanic ON TOP OF the “alternatives”.
There’s 2 ways to do it:
1) Consider how the whole package will play.
2) Compare the individual slots to their virtue counterpart.

Anything else is no valid comparison and will lead to a grossly distorted image.
Already looking forward to the confirmation bias, when all the players go to watch the livestream just to check out, how kittenty the new elite specialization will be and thus find plenty isolated points, they disagree with or don’t like.

I can only stress this: Look at how the whole package will play, not at isolated skills.

1. metabattle
2. people copying builds from metabattle without reading what the build does or how to play/change it.
3. the tendency among gw2 players to want rewards without putting in any effort.

stability on WD would actually make it a great skill.
Right now, it’s “merely” a good skill. Flinging 4k damage projectiles back at a lich is so much fun.
WD has one problem and that problem isn’t the inability to move or the low damage. It’s part of a tool kit, no damage machine. I love ranger for not having those damage rotations of other classes and I’d like to keep it that way. The problem of WD is that it’s one of the few long lasting, static anti-projectile skills, that can be broken up by a stun.
Pulling out whirling axes is a great way to defend your team from an enemy lich. However, all the lich needs to do to break your defense is use chilling wind, then he can happily start slapping around deathly claws again.
Rangers are already heavily taxed in the stability department and using signet of the wild to pull off a full whirling defense isn’t the way to go.
Giving the skill itself stability is interesting. Not only could you keep the reflect up through heavy attacks, you could also cancel the skill early to make use of the stability. I’d happily trade the vulnerability on hit for stability on cast.

About PoS, which is not a PoS at all: It’s a great, yet unreliable skill. In a hasty melee engagement, it’s not that good, unless chained with cc, but as soon as the opponent tries to break contact, you can nail them.
I’ve pulled so many escaping opponents back into melee range, I lost count.
It’s an interrupt, a spike skill, great AoE and a pull all rolled into a single package. Seriously, if it was any stronger or any more reliable on its own, I’d be the first one to demand a nerf.

Why distortion? What kind of magic is this? Are we mesmers now?

Medi guard blows up glass builds. That’s all the build’s good for but it does a really good job at it.
The thing is, against any slightly more durable build, the medi guard just runs out of breath. It got tons of blocks and invulnerabilities and a lot of instant burst, which is hard to predict, but as soon, as he runs out of procs and bursts, it’s down to swinging a hammer around, hoping to connect with something.
When I played thief, I was afraid of medi guards. When I played turreteer, they were a joke. Not even two of them posed a threat.
Nowadays, I run a tanky melee ranger build. Again, medi guards are a joke. Not to the degree as when I ran turreteer and had a big hp pool to make up for mistakes(sentinel amulet really only helped the turreteers… So why did ANet add the amulet to pvp only to nerf the hell out of turreteers a mere two months later?) but I’d still rather face a meditation guard than a cele rifle.

To sum it up: Medi guards are strong against glass canons but against tanky builds, they need someone to pin down their target, or their attacks will hardly connect after the initial burst.

I often times just forget to press the button. Moving it to the middle of the screen with a size similar to the current “match ready” notification might help.

Alfcam.6497:

You are all forgetting, you don’t need absolutely every single trait and skill unlocked to start doing HoT content, or continue doing WvW, you can only have 3 lines active at a time, and only 5 skills on your hotbar.

Also, EB has 4 Skill/Hero Challenges, the Borderlands have 3 each, so you already have 13 of them done if you are a pure WvW player, the new Borderlands will probably have 3 each as well, bringing you up to 22, so you only need 43 more.

Doing all the Skill/Hero Challenges in the starting zones will net you 36 points, so you will need 6 more, which you can get in for example Gendarren Fields or Brisban Wildlands, all very low level areas, and close to the major cities if you have no Waypoints unlocked.

Waypoints are no concern. You start at queensdale and just march on… Queensdale —> kessex hills --> gendarran fields —> lornar’s pass --> etc.
No need to teleport around. You start at one place and walk until you have 65 skill challenges. That’s probably way faster than teleporting to each capital and doing the low level stuff.

The problem here isn’t that it’s hard, the problem is that you HAVE to do it.

Shaogin.2679:

After seeing the Chronomancer and Dragonhunter, I’m excited to see what we get. But I have the sneaky suspicion that we are going to be the last to know about our specialization.

From the state of the traits, we’ve seen, it’s either engineer or ranger.
Both had rather unfinished trait lines.

Ok, call me crazy, but:

What about glyphs?
The thing is, it’s hard to find a place for glyphs, as they depend on the elementalist’s class mechanic. The whole trick about glyphs is, that they have a different effect depending on the current attunement of the elementalist.

So how to make glyphs work?
Glad, you asked: Glyphs do their thing and grant an extra effect, which depends on the currently selected pet. For example, a selected dog causes the glyph to apply large scale cripple, a selected moa will daze and a selected bird causes blindness, etc.

That was probably the worst possible example, but I think, it explains enough.

Thematically, the guardian is well-suited for hunting dragons.
“More suited for defense” is a joke because when it comes to taking out hulkingly big lizards with bad breath, defense is literally the most important thing.
Whether the traps are up for the task, I will decide, once I see them in detail.

Agreed, they should lower the base duration on a lot of boons.

However, we also lose the boon duration trait line.

That dragon hunter can use shouts!
FUS RO DAH!

Belzebu.3912:

Plot twist: Druid’s staff will work like guardian’s and will have meditation utilities so you can play as guardian with your ranger while guardians can play as a ranger.

But I want consecrations…

People are trying to play a team game. It’s rude towards your allies, not to +1.

About practice matches: If the server was empty and those two guys were the only guys, yeah, attacking in that situation is not nice… But in a full team match, you are supposed to 2v1.

imagine the toolbelt skills are signets, too.
So you have a pair of passives tied to individual cooldowns for each slot.

You know, most of the time, last refuge isn’t all that bad. It’s just that it procced too often just as my character was swinging a cloak and dagger at the opponent.
It’s just frustrating, when you expect to be stealthed and instead get revealed.
Now people say be more skilled, expect it to proc, play around it. Maybe I could, if it didn’t have that icd. It procs once, you disengage, the rest of the roaming group is still in the fight, so you pop the heal skill and jump in again.
Now when is it up again? If you get pressed hard in a prolonged fight, you have no means to know, whether it will pop and save you or whether you have to use CnD.

It also reveals your position, when it pops while you already are in stealth.
As a ranger trait, it sounds amazing, but the thief is too reliant on timing his stealth and revealed, so some random factors from his own traits will really screw him over.

Rin.1046:

Valmir.4590:

I actually like the Dragon Hunter (even if, for once, his name is cooler in French than in English). It is actually what an Elite specialisation is about : a whole new way to play a class. If you want to play a melee guardian, you’ll get the new “normal” attributes, and it seems to be better (with more synergies between the branches) so its fine, but the DH basically bring support to a whole new level (there is a reason for why one of his skills destroys enemies arrows, I’m certain).

I agree with those who think that the DH isn’t as flashy as the Chronomancer, but it was a given : the magical classes will have flashier and more impressive looking specializations, but what I care is less the flash and more the bang. And the DH is definitely the equal of the Chronomancer here. Both seems to require a lot of hard work to reach their full potential and their peak is achieved through a timely work with other characters.

I agree. Especially when you start thinking of the possibilities. Runes of the Trapper anyone?

Sneaky guard. New meta.

Toxsa.2701:

naphack.9346:

Toxsa.2701:

naphack.9346:

At least, it isn’t last refuge.
/thread.

Last refuge is 10 times better than instinctual bond.
At least it saves you 10 times more than it kills you.
Can’t tell you how many times thief escape from my burst because of this trait, even though they’re bad and didn’t use their active defense to avoid the damage at all.

Last refuge can kill you. Already that is bad design for a minor trait.
Instinctual Bond is just kinda useless, but it’s never detrimental. It just doesn’t have any significant effect on the game.
I’d take instinctual bond any day over a trait, which can stop you from utilizing the trait line’s main mechanic.

I’d rather fight thieves with no Last Refuge too, so I’m actually supporting you. Many thieves think they survived from my burst with their own skills, but in fact many times it’s Last Refuge that saved them and they don’t recognized it. Especially when they got CCed and immob, then last refuge kicks in and instantly remove their immob so they can dodge from my RF right after I CCed them and get away with SR afterword.

Hope there’s no passive “oh-kitten” bottom for you guys. Yes, as ranger I’d switch instinctual bond over Last refuge any days.

Please Anet! Consider this change!

the ranger last refuge equivalent would either make you invulnerable to damage for 3 seconds or kill your pet, when your health drops below 25%, depending on some wonky timing issues with your attacks and projectiles in the air.
Can’t have last refuge on a class, which actually isn’t affected negatively by it, can we?
Ironically, Last Refuge is only crap on thief.

Pitman.9210:

You guys need to calm down, read this: http://theludite.com/2015/04/04/beyond-game-balance-when-to-hang-up-the-nerf-bat/#more-152

You can’t compare turrets to riki.
You see, riki is overpowered and lame.
Turrets are an infernal spawn of evil. The devil. A witch. kitten on the game. A big black hole sucking all the fun out of the game.

Did I miss any heresy accusations brought forth by the mob?

great, so we now know, where to send all the pet haters.

Jasher.6580:

Dirame.8521:

So as we are all well aware, Celestial currently rules the day in GW2, from Eles to Guardians, down to Engies.

Guardians either wear zerker or Cleric. So that’s Elementalist, Engineer and Warrior.

3/8 classes.
-
37.5% of the classes use Cele amulet in their meta specs.
-
Of the 37 viable specs on metabattle, 5 of them use celestial amulets: 2 Ele specs, 2 Engineer specs and 1 Warrior spec.

That’s 13.51% of all viable specs on metabattle.
-
How exactly does Celestial “rule the day”?

Of the 5 classes, which are curently considered meta, 3 use celestial.
But the name “celestial meta” is not about the amulet. It’s about the playstyle. Meditation guards adopted that very playstyle and build template, even without running celestial stats.

The only specialist class/build in the current meta is thief and that’s because no matter what you do to the meta or to the game, thief will always find a place to shine.

Don’t think of rotations. Rangers are about constant damage.
Think of your weapon skills 2-5 as a tool kit. You have a bunch of skills for specific situations, which don’t synergize much with one another. Just use the skills, when you need them.
The auto attack is where the money’s at.

Toxsa.2701:

naphack.9346:

At least, it isn’t last refuge.
/thread.

Last refuge is 10 times better than instinctual bond.
At least it saves you 10 times more than it kills you.
Can’t tell you how many times thief escape from my burst because of this trait, even though they’re bad and didn’t use their active defense to avoid the damage at all.

Last refuge can kill you. Already that is bad design for a minor trait.
Instinctual Bond is just kinda useless, but it’s never detrimental. It just doesn’t have any significant effect on the game.
I’d take instinctual bond any day over a trait, which can stop you from utilizing the trait line’s main mechanic.

Arantheal.7396:

Wait wait wait.
This is not elitism, since i actually like to help out new players who want to become better. But I despise turreteers, especially those kind of turreteers who rather cry after a nerfed, exploitive build to be brought back instead of moving on and looking for better builds to run. You know, while your fellow newbies currently train on cele rifle, s/d builds, condi 2kit or less popular but more fun builds, you sit here, together with this manuhel and lewis B guy and try to convince people that apples == bananas.
You are a echo of the past in your current mindset, and a rather hilarious one at that.

heh… It’s not like many players cry because “their” build was destroyed.
Many players, who complain didn’t even play turrets themselves. The catch here is: Turrets were a unique build and got scrapped without replacement, depriving the game, which is stuck in an extremely narrow meta already of yet another unique build.

It doesn’t matter, how complex, engaging or fun the build was. It was a unique build, and a build, which chewed up meta builds, while being weak against a lot of non-meta builds. But instead of giving a place to the build, they encouraged themselved by adding sentinel amulet to the game in february this year, Arena.Net decided to simply erase the build, so people go back to talking about how great the expansion will be rather than complaining about needing a brain to beat turrets.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Gern.2978:

The only class/builds that can instantly kill turrets are classes that go full zerker. And as has been pointed out by people in numerous threads on numerous sub-forums: those builds sacrifice a lot of defensive capabilities to be able to hit that hard, so it balances out.

I’m not entirely sure Medi Guardians sacrifice anything Amazing damage, condition clear, immunities and healing. Oh and they can teleport while trapping people inside inescapable bubbles. Awesome!

They DO sacrifice something: The ability to win fights 1v1.
They are guardians. That’s sacrifice enough. They bring only a handful of attacks, which are hard to evade or zip in and out of. They are incredibly strong at popping glass canons, but they just can’t chew through sturdier builds, because a lot of their constant dps is tied to slow, easily evaded attacks. If the initial burst doesn’t put them at an advantage, they will start slowly swinging their hammer around.
Their burst is amazing and hard to evade. But a d/d ele or cele rifle still has the edge when it comes to constantly putting out small chunks of reliable damage.

RabbitUp.8294:

segman.3560:

No it doesn’t because you do not exclude bad rolls so your chance gets a “reset” for every try.

Lascax.2163:

That’s a false misconception. The chance of the single try is not related to the other ones, so the sense of having a greater chance by time is not real. Prove of that is that even if unlikely, there are people out there who farmed since the announcement and still didn’t get anything.

That’s not how it works. What you are describing is the gambler’s fallacy, that with each subsequent roll, the chance of the following roll giving the desired result increases, which is false. Each roll is independent and the chance of getting a 6 is 1/6. That doesn’t change.

However, if you roll 2 dice, the chance of getting 6 at least one time after rolling 2 dice is not 1/6, but 1/3 since there are 12 combinations that contain at least one 6, and 36 possible outcomes.

Pretty sure, there aren’t 12 combinations.

D1:({6},{1,2,3,4,5,6})={(6,1),(6,2),(6,3),(6,4),(6,5),(6,6)}
D2:({1,2,3,4,5,6},{6})={(1,6),(2,6),(3,6),(4,6),(5,6),(6,6)}
D1 ? D2 = {(6,1),(6,2),(6,3),(6,4),(6,5),(1,6),(2,6),(3,6),(4,6),(5,6),(6,6)}
|D1 ? D2|=11

Makes 11 in my book.

And if you want to talk about probability: Having grinded for 50 hours won’t increase your chance to get the drop within the next hour.
But there’s a tremendous difference between grinding for 50 hours and grinding for a single hour only. The one grinding for 50 hours is far more likely to get the drop than the one grinding for an hour, just the same as the one with 50 lots has a higher chance of winning than the one with a single lot only.
The chance of being drawn is the same for each individual lot, but having more increases the chances of winning.

At least, it isn’t last refuge.
/thread.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

First when I saw the info about the beta portal drop, I liked the idea cos it’s more active participation than subscribing to email and I can actually increase my chances if I’d decide to grind SW.

What I don’t like about it, why SW/Dry Top only. Some people prefer other parts of the game, some detest SW/Dry Top completely. I personally find these 2 maps really boring after quite short time and I hardly ever stay there longer than 1 hour.

In my opinion, this adds to the frustration some have over the rng grind, they feel forced to play content they don’t enjoy.

Also adding the portal as a rare reward from world boss chests couldda been an interesting concept. It’s still open world, which is the thing, they want to test in their next beta. It would give players another way to get into the beta without grinding silverwastes(and instead running world boss trains)

But the problem at hand here is: People, who don’t like running open world content and run dungeons, pvp or wvw to no end complain about having to run open world PvE to participate in an open world pve only beta?
Makes no sense. Yes, they should have added the reward to other forms of open world pve, but I’m actually strictly against what some other players suggested, like adding the reward to wvw, dungeons or pvp.
It’s obvious, Arena.net wants to test large scale pve events in the upcoming beta. All the people, who complain about “being forced” to run silverwastes to participate in the beta would then complain about the beta “forcing” them into running large scale events?
At some point, it becomes ridiculous.

Yesterday, I was farming the Silverwastes and my mate was like “I farmed for quite a bit but had no luck. Lemme party with you. I’m sure, if I farm with you, the game will give me a portal to mess with you.”
20 minutes later, he got his portal
Well, that’s that. He has a portal and I don’t even care. He was the guy who brought me into GW2 in the first place and he spent way more time farming SW than me anyway. I don’t even know, whether I’d have the time to participate in the beta.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Turrets are now brought into line with other summons.

Nope.
I can boost my pet with might, fury, protection and regeneration, I can’t do that with turrets.
My pet benefits from a thief popping venom share or a guardian using the active of VoJ. Turrets? Nope.
My pet can be healed by blast finishers in water fields during heavy engagements, Turrets just go poof and blast the water field themselves after they are gone.
Fact is, turrets don’t benefit from a lot of the goodies, other minions can benefit from. Conditions and critical damage, all the combat elements, are balanced towards the receiving side having burst heals and boons to mitigate the effects. So how does making turrets vulnerable to all the bad things, while not giving them access to the goodies, all the other summons take for granted, bring them back in line with all the other summons?
Turret used to be an entirely different thing from normal minions. While all the minions had their capitalist economy, where outstanding individuals receive boons, while not so well-doing minions had problems with all kinds of conditions, the turrets lived happily in their socialist country, where every turret was equal and nobody received any boons or had to take any conditions.
Now, as their country collapsed, they are second-class minions, rotting in the slums, plagued by conditions with no chance of being promoted or getting a job, while the rich minions drive by with their expensive boon cars and look away in disgust.

Do you call that bringing them in line? Is that a fair system? They used to be equal in their own little country, which used to be a zero-sum game. Now, they are put into the ghetto, with a metal cog reading “TURRET” on their chest and people are forbidden from giving work to turrets, trading with turrets or giving boons to turrets.
Is that fair treatment for a skill class, just because they are “different”? Does text color determine the worth of a virtual being?

I can see mainhand axe being relevant on a kittenty map like Niflhel, where there’s almost no difference between moderate mobility and high mobility due to the map simply being too compact.
In fact, I did just that. After being completely useless and a wasted slot on niflhel twice, I just dropped the greatsword for axe/dagger, when Niflhel came around and it was glorious.
The sample size is still too small, but it makes sense to drop the greatsword, when you are on Niflhel.

I still kinda like the mobility of the double melee setup, though. Gonna keep an eye on the greatsword. If the high mobility ends up not paying off, I will ditch it.