Guild Wars 2

It would be nice to know if it’s going to involve buying an item for an obscene amount of Magnetite Shards or not…

When I first started, I would just join groups saying “100+ LI required” anyways…

Most of the time they didn’t even ask me to link anything, and when they did, I would just link my 20 or so and they would usually just be like, “Hmmm, well, k, if you mess up don’t be surprised if we kick you.”

People are fair enough if you carry yourself with honesty and a little civility.

Malchior.5732:

In reality, good teams don’t need them and bad teams will never admit to needing them.

Truer words have never been typed.

RoidRage.1325:

I see a lot of complaints on the ranger forums too though on how rangers are better off power than condi, is that also true? Is condition damage really not optimal in the game?

Mmmm, I think maybe they only prefer power > condi when using a Druid build for healing… Even then that’s debatable and really comes down to having stat choices with more healing power/the utility on S/A/WH. I dunno tho, I don’t really play ranger too much, but I can tell you that I’ve never seen someone play Power RANGER in a raid nor a group looking specially for one.

saloja.7920:

Truth be told this quite disheartening news. What especially irks me is the “flavor of the month” class mentality in raid roster profession picks.

Oh well, better give it some time then or go with the guardian. The double edgedness here is that you won’t really know what a profession is like till you hit max level, but then you might have a max level char that you don’t enjoy.

The thing is, as far as PvE goes, Guardan is in the same boat as Rev… It’s fine, but if you wanna PUG raids, you’re going to have a tough time except for one or two boss encounters.

Sort of… From a straight DPS rating standpoint necro is lower than any other class except druid builds and power mesmer builds. (In single target fights, in fights where epidemic cheese can happen it’s impossible to rank.)

That said, there’s no fight in the game where the necro’s dps is going to hold a competent group back from getting a kill, but if you’re all about min/max’ing for a condi DPS class you’ll really want to be going ranger. Or I guess condi-PS—your dps won’t be top tier, but you’ll be fulfilling a necessary utility roll while playing with your condi’s.

FrostDraco.8306:

I’ll keep runing my power reaper in fractals ty very much. You are welcome to leave my party if you don’t like it. But i’ll be kitten ed if someone else is telling me what to run over a less than 10% dps difference.

I think you should play whatever you like in fractals… And I’ve actually seen a good amount of people prefer Power Necro for the last boss in 100CM.

That said, the difference in dps is a lot more than ten percent IN FRACTALS… Since there is never really a boss where you can’t use epidemic cheese… The only two that I can think of are the last boss in Nightmare and the last boss in Thermanova (if there’s no Mist Convergence).

Eneldiar.9670:

FrostDraco.8306:

What no spite or blood magic? And Death magic is terrible nowadays since the minion nerf.

My biggest qualm with Spite was that it mainly seemed to be there just to stack Might/Vuln, which always ended up useless because I’d get full Might/Vuln from those around me. Spite does have some other flat damage increases that may make up for it, I just have to look into it more.

Spite goes hand in hand with a dhuumfire build since so much of spite revolves around making yourself stronger by spamming Shroud 1, which I mean, if you’re set on using dhuumfire for PvE, you’re going to be doing a lot of.

AmadeoKristoff.5493:

What happened to the revenant? I came back after a week, and i cant even live 3 hits in the new living story? What have you done, ANet?

It seems like a lot of the stuff in the new story/map is especially rough for revenants… I normally breeze through content on my rev, but everything here has a billion toughness, rotating group aegis, and loads of condi-bombs. It’s like all of the hard counters to rev bundled into a neat little package.

EDIT: They seemed to have toned it down big time in a patch today… Well the enemy toughness at least.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Dunno about other modes but in PvE Shiro became useless when Chronos started being able to have 100% quickness uptime.

Even without a Chrono, Shiro’s still a pretty poor choice outside of solo play since Impossible Odds doesn’t let you keep up Natural Resonance for the group… And that’s like the biggest reason you’re even there in the first place.

“Only the Penitent Man shall pass…”

I think the most they could get away with without starting a riot would be a raid encounter similar to Escort or Trio and just have a portion of it be underwater.

Tomiyou.3790:

You do realize screaming ANET FIX REVENANT won’t make them magically change their schedule and release a fix in the next week. Wait for the schedule and they will surely release a balance patch that will buff revenant and nerf thief, making the two classes that clash equal in strength.

Yeah, it took the thief community months of screaming to finally get Enchanted Daggers nerfed.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Levijeh.9643:

Terror and Fear of Death umm I don’t think so, but if it’s working for you good, I mean above platinum division. Oh and i forgot, dagger off-hand gives you 25% speed due to quickening thirst.

without fear you might not have enough damage to pull you thru. plus there are some tasty auto proc stab traits out there
if you really want +25% speed grab a rune don’t sacrifice an entire traitline to get it :P

Yeah, I’m not sure why a signet’s build would even need it considering you have Locus when you’re out of combat, and WH when yer in combat.

Famine.7915:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Famine.7915:

Never liked the Dhuumfire as it is now. Necro has no traits to support burning and you get very little burning from what is a “Grandmaster” trait. Never worth it IMO.

In PvP/WvW, it’s a good cover condition. That’s about all it has use for. Less conditions = easier to cleanse.

Yeah, it can cover fine, but the cost to access it is too high. A grandmaster trait should not be a “cover condition”. I’d rather invest into reapplication than covering.

It’s a lot less underwhelming in a condition spite build than it is in a curses build since you’re stacking might with every swing too.

Unless you don’t have tailoring leveled at all, it’d be equally as cheap to just make exotic viper’s armor… The recipes cost Aurillium (by far the easiest/most horded currency) and use Black Diamonds, which are also super cheap on the tp.

But if you don’t have Heart of Thorns or something, I’d go with a Rampager/Carrion mix.

Caeledh.5437:

2) Underwater is a joke. Only 2 out of 5 specs available.

Ventari should be do-able with two adjustments. Disable being able to shift the tablet. Have the tablet stick to you instead.

Glint shouldn’t require adjustment. Or maybe minor ones like a boiling water animation instead of fire.

Jalis only has one problematic ability, inspiring reinforcement. Even if they can’t think of an alternative, just disable that one ability rather than the whole legend underwater.

I always thought that we couldn’t use these stances underwater more from a lore standpoint than one of skill mechanics… Because, like, they adjusted Unyielding Anguish just fine. I think they just had some fact checker being like, “Ummm, noooo, Dwarves are made of stone, they’d sink.”

Doesn’t even hafta be the pillar… If it hits the invisible wall around the arena it’ll cancel as well.

Just use Mallyx for that fight; it’s only a little less dps and you can help with the boon removal as well.

I disagree with what people said about using the shield for PvE content… If you really want to use a shield, for I dunno aesthetic reasons for running a sword and shield(?), then of course do what makes you happy, but it’s sort of a useless choice for raids/fractals.

The axe is meta, not because of the teleport, but because of its contribution to break bar damage and ability to collect small adds for cleaving (temporal rift.) I can’t stress how useful this is… As revenant, you’re always going to be on “team breakbar” because it’s one of the few things we do better than most of the other professions and in a lot of fights axe-5+sword-2+Chaotic Release is enough to break the bar. That means that you don’t have to swap to staff and be stuck without your sword auto attack spam for 10 seconds. And grouping adds can be put to great use in several of the encounters.

That utility aside, if you really want a defensive option, you’re still better off going with sword/sword… The healing from shield 4 or 5 is pretty inconsequential if you’re wearing full zerker’s gear, and if you need protection you can just pulse facet of chaos and then swap stances or let your energy deplete to turn it off w/o putting it on 30 second cooldown. And as for the shield block, it blocks for 3 seconds with a 25 second cooldown… The sword on the other hand blocks for 2 seconds every 15 seconds and offers some contribution to breakbar damage with immobilize on 4 and the pull on 5 (although it moves you horribly out of position.) So, I mean, in conclusion, if you want a defensive option in PvE, it’s much better to have a shorter block on a shorter cooldown as there’s never a situation where you need to just face block something for 3 seconds. Plus, you can move while blocking with the sword, which is invaluable.

Eponet.4829:

Since current support teams no longer need the boon duration and fury. Does anyone have any figures from a herald that didn’t use those and instead used the energy on using more sword 2s, or potentially even dropped glint entirely in favour of a Jalis/Malyx set?

The thing is, if a team is going to take you as a rev, they’re still going to want you running facet of nature and darkness…

If it’s a pug group, you’re doing it to safety the chronos/druids’ boon up time when you don’t know who you’re playing with/how tight their rotation is.

And if it’s a planned group, you get more dps gearing your raid around having that extra 33% duration than having the rev save 2 points of upkeep for another sword 2… At the very least, the PS’s/Chrono’s can run seaweed instead of dumplings.

It can work as your X in Glint/X (Zerker/Scholar) for PvE content… The stat increase from channeling Demon Form is only slightly less dps than Jalis’ Hammers and it brings boon removal and group condi protection to the table.

Unfortunately, it’s sort of impossible to make a competative condi build for rev in PvE right now, so no matter what you do, Mallyx would just be for utility… Although the same could sort of be said for all our stances.

Weirdly, I think if they removed weapon energy costs it would make Mallyx pretty beastly in PvP. All that confusion spam while still being able to use your weapon skills.

Zenith.7301:

Sublimatio.6981:

i agree with this, power necro needs a huge buff especially when it lacks in every other area such as blocks/evades/invulns/buffs/utility

Remove the ridiculous aftercast on Gravedigger and buff its damage, buff Reaper Shroud so it’s actually a DPS form you build up life form for.

Change Shivers of dread garbage minor to +10% extra damage to chilled/crippled targets.

^^^ This. They just need to give Reaper Shroud a straight PvE only increase to it’s auto attack’s damage. Right now, as far as power builds are concerned, you have to take the entire trait line just to use GS and everything else is a dps loss/wasted elite spec. (From a raid standpoint I mean… Decimate defenses/chilling victory are both pretty solid in 5 man groups depending on your access to crit buffs or might.)

Demoria.6745:

Add for PvE only: 33% Bleed damage increase. (For all abilities, not just scepter skills)

^^^ This… Also increasing Barbed Precision’s proc chance from 33% to 66% or increasing the number of bleed stacks applied by Deathy Chill would help a lot. Although, until Necro’s gain access to burn damage, they’re never gonna be anywhere near a condi ranger in dps without a lot of help from clutch epidemics.

Fatalyz.7168:

\
I realize that necro’s aren’t good at dps, or really anything that is desired in raids. But is that a profession design issue or an encounter issue? I believe it to be an encounter issue, as the profession existed long before the encounters did. I believe that the current design of Necros/Reapers needs encounters to be designed around what they are good at.

The thing is, you can’t really blame it on the encounters, as up until the October 18th patch, necro’s dps was—for the most part—fine in a raids… Sure, a little slow building and kinda super-cheesey, but they did respectable enough damage to justify taking them as a safer dps option. The problem is, the devs wanted to get rid of jagged horror abuse as it was clearly not intended, but in their zeal to erase their mistake, they didn’t compensate the necro’s dps options in any other way aside from buffing axe (but not enough to make it a competitive choice even when compared to the other weapons in the already lackluster power kit.)

They could have easily done some tuning, like say increasing the chance of Barbed Precision procs (in PvE only) to help make up for the insane loss of bleed stacks. Or something… I dunno. But instead, you’re right, they’re most likely going to be perfectly content leaving necros on the bench as the lowest dps profession, with the worst group support, until they come out with a new expansion.

Fatalyz.7168:

Necros are taken to t4s for more than epi bouncing, but also because it’s easy because of the amount of sustain it has.

Good is a relative term, good at what? They are good at a lot of things you just don’t agree with what they are good at, or you want them to be good at something else. Nothing wrong with wanting them to be good at something else, but that is what an(other) elite spec is for. Perhaps if reaper doesn’t have your playstyle, you can find something that does, or can suggest ideas for an elite spec to give you what you want.

Being good/desired in fractals is completely different than being good in a raid… In a raid any strength of sustain you have is much less valuable because you have support heals and, in general, you shouldn’t be taking the kind of damage you do in t4’s unless you’re just standing right in front of the boss the entire time. Probably most importantly though, there’s no enrage timer in fractals, so outside of efficiency/wasting people’s time, DPS doesn’t ultimately matter there.

In raids though, DPS absolutely matters and since the jagged horror nerf, necro’s dps is on par/a little lower than most of the support classes. And this is the root of why nobody wants necros in raids—they’re a dps class with a support class’ dps numbers. The other three classes that offer little to no support outside of pewpew (Eles, Thiefs, and Condi Rangers) all do 15k+ more dps than a necro… Even DH’s and Rev’s out dps necros by around 7k, and they bring a lot more useful support to the table.

It makes you wonder what the dev’s want the necro’s role to be in raids? It’s clearly not dps, and it’s clearly not support… Are we supposed to be the tanks? Because that’s silly too since we would do nothing for the group outside of taking the hits. The only REAL value a necro brings to the group outside of epidemic cleave would be transfusion and plague signet to help save people who make mistakes in a few select fights. Or I guess Vampric Aura to help people maintain their scholar’s bonus? So our role is, like, the guy who doesn’t need to be there, but is just incase the other people you brought with are super bad?

I like the guy who used F3 and then immediately turned his back to you to run away.

Gwaihir.1745:

Mallyx is destructive if played right in a teamfight.

Few things make me happier in PvP than landing a really good axe 5 and then using banish enchantment on the furthest target in the line. One of the many reasons Mallyxrev is so much more fun.

I’d like to see Parasitic Contagion moved to a spot where you can actually consider taking it. Or just merged into Vampric Presence—although that’d prolly end up being OP and getting things over-nerfed and leaving us in a worse state.

Xyonon.3987:

You take every profession for damage.

If I blame a Tempest for dealing 20k instead of 25k dps, everyone agrees.
If I blame the full commander gear Chrono dealing 5k instead of 10k dps, everyone loses their minds.

I agree with that 5k, is 5k, is 5k… Doesn’t matter where it’s coming from. This is why I never understood the Minstrel Chrono pseudo-meta that you see. I get that they bring their own heals/insane toughness, but like, in the pug world it’s not like your druid is going to adjust for that and go Zealots or something.

The last boss in Nightmare Tower is a big slimy Krait Mesmer—right down to his gravity well/shatter combo.

Oh man, and you thought thiefs just bee-line towards the necro now…

Like a thief that doesn’t quite thief as hard as a thief… Although a lot more useful than a thief when joining the big team fights in mid with boonshare and insane cleaving on downed people.

I too have been messing around with sigil of tormenting… I’ve found it to be very underwhelming, but I dunno what I’d use instead—hydromancy maybe? Blood?

OP didn’t mention it, but they do need to look at how Portal absolutely breaks about 1/2 of the maps in Ranked.

“Every attack should have a chance to be dodged.” – The Thief spamming Impacting Disruption.

I’ve been dueling around with this, and I gotta say, the cast time on pain suppression makes the stun break a joke. You use it, but then you’re left channeling PS, and any good warrior or thief just instantly restuns you before the cast finishes—conversely any bad warrior or thief keyboard spammashing their stuns/interrupts also just interrupts it and locks out your casting. You can stow weapon to try and get a block up before that second stun comes, but it’s still not really fast enough—best cast scenario you get stunned but avoid the casttime lock.

With the high energy cost of pain supression, would it really be too OP to just let it be instacast…?

In regards to PvE…

Revs are fine for raids really. The nerf everyone talks about was Natural Resonance being reduced to 33% from 50%, which made the top raiding guilds rearrange their comps to the current dual class meta (2 mes, 2 ps, 2 druid, 4dps). And once the top guilds change, the rest of the community copies and the new meta is formed.

The thing is, nothing about a rev’s dps actually changed and the benchmark for rev is around 30k—about the same as a DH, but probably a little higher in practice as the rev dps rotation is super basic and impossible to mess up on. And while the new meta makes it hard to pug dps as a non, ele/thief/condi ranger, rev certainly isn’t terrible and can actually provide a lot of “secret utility” in the pug world as there’s a LOT of mesmers pugging without 100% boon duration, ps’s too cheap to buy dumplings, druids who fail at keeping up 100% fury, etc… Clever guilds can maybe even get more dps by building their group with a rev, letting their ps’s and mes’ use scholars.

All that said, if you’re gearing up now, and want to pug a lot… it’s probably just better to gear an ele or thief. I have a lot of trouble convincing pugs to let me use my rev unless it’s Trio and I can go solo mortars.

At least You can always just play your rev in tier 4’s where their utility makes them one of the best classes.

Per WvW…
While it is lame to be so limited underwater, all you really need is to double tap natural resonance for full buffs, spear 4 or phase traversal to close the gap, and then pop impossible odds and watch the ridiculous spear 2 AA demolish pretty much any other class.

There really aren’t that many DH’s once you get to gold… And the ones that are there pretty much stay in team fights, not 1v1’ing on the sides. It’ll be a lot of ele’s and dr00ds that you’ll be more dealing with in this build, and I wonder if Nothing Can Save You!/Axe 3 is enough boon removal to deal with them. Maybe spiteful spirit or the focus instead of warhorn could help?

I dunno tho, I don’t really play power ever—but I want to cuz I’m so kitten sick of playing condi for yet another season.

Speaking strictly to fractals, I would do ascended Viper’s…

Since the Jagged Horror nerf, if you look at the numbers from a theorywars’ing standpoint, GS/X certainly seems like it’d be better… But in actual gameplay, condition is still going to massively out perform in t4’s for a couple of reasons.

1) The enemy toughness vs vitality scaling. Although they addressed this a few patches ago, it’s still not spot on and favors a condition build.
2) Conditions do damage when you’re not. Whether it’s evading enemy attacks, re-positioning yourself, avoiding AoE fields, or rezz’ing downed opponents, there’s a lot of time in t4’s where you’re not just blindly attacking the boss. Conditions continue to do damage while you’re off doing other things.
3) Afflicted. About 1/2 of the fractals at t4 sport the Afflicted Instability. Being able to transfer these conditions back to the enemy rescaled with your Viper stats greatly boosts the DPS of your basic rotation.
4) Social Awkwardness. A power necro means another player up in the melee range adding to the social awkwardness damage/healing reduction.
5) Epidemic. You can’t always use this, but when you can, it’s super OP.
6) Elitist LFG. A lot of times in the LFG, you’ll see groups that say “condi only,” not saying these guys are right… But it gives you an option of joining more groups.

That said, I do prefer power necro for the Nightmare Challenge Mote.

I saw about five different enemy necros running both Blood and Death magic today in PvP (Gold Tier).

What is this new witchcraft?

I had 3 different necros on my teams today pop lich form, run around in a circle, and then die…

I’d take a GS necro over whatever this was supposed to be any day.

(This was at t2 Gold)

Crowley.8761:

You really don’t wanna go rev only is my view. Gotta have at least 3 classes to swap between.

^^^^This. It’s still nice to have my Rev to switch to if my team is like all DH/Ele/Necro/Slow Teamfight Guys. But that’s probably because I’ve only logged 7 games as a thief and am too ascuurrdd to play it in ranked.

With the growing number of ele’s and druids coming out of the woodwork to counter all the dragonhunters, I find having a necro on my team to be a huge necessity for the first time in a while.

You’re using warhorn for the additional source of breakbar damage and a weapon swap to proc Geomancy. (I suppose to a lesser degree Locus Swarm as an “oh crap” swiftness for things like making it to a green circle in time on VG—but ideally you should never have to use this.) Arguably, it’s not as important of a choice now that a lot of necros are running Flesh Golem for break bars since the Jagger Horror nerf made Lich subpar, but the only other realistic choice would be focus, as having your scepter out at all times is pretty mandatory for your max DPS.

The problem with staff is that when you swap to it, you’re only getting 5 stacks of bleed and 3 stacks of poison across the ten seconds you’re stuck there… Ten seconds on the scepter nets ~12 stacks of bleed, 3 stacks of poison, and 7 stacks of torment. So there’s really no comparison.

That said, I sometimes use staff for solo’ing the back worg during escort as it gives me an extra chill and I can have a full set of staff marks down on their spawn point for extra condi’s without actually having to switch to the staff and be shackled to it for 10 seconds.

As for groups kicking you for it…? I mean, I dunno… It SOUNDS elitist, but look at it this way: Wouldn’t it be super disappointing if your PS Warrior was using dual axes instead of mace/shield for breakbar control? Raids are all about maximizing your output and usefulness to the group, so every little bit helps.

I think with all viper you’d still need to use Thorns/Agony for 100% bleed and poison duration, so I guess it’d only be worth it if you wanted to cheap out on food costs?

Or I guess use different food, like endurance regen for Nightmare Challenge Mote or something…

So the new PvP scoring system doesn’t count damage done to downed targets anymore… Anyone else on team Tin-Foil Hat think this is a secret-dev-conspiracy to obscure any quotable and numeric evidence about how super-nerfed the Rev’s damage is after the changes?

Cuz like, post patch I’m averaging about 500k damage less per game than before, but then again, I’m a cleaving machine…

Eval.2371:

I feel with the damage changes and then new deadshot amulet, condi build is in a really solid place with a generosity sigil. I have found that with the heavier condi focus this season that the vit and precision have help a lot with being able to either trade the conditions back or sustain through them.

Can you even put out enough damaging conditions with Corruption/Mallyx to totally justify taking zero points in power? Chill, Burn, Torment, Poison, and Blind on a longish CD leaves your only damage very counterable to even minor cleansing. I feel like the couple of times I’ve tried the Condi Rev in PvP I end up doing pretty even direct/condi damage… And without the power of Carrion or Sage’s, I cringe at the low about on DPS it would have been. 0.o

The thing with rev’s in PvE is mostly a community problem. In raids, my rev sits at around 28-30k, which obviously isn’t anywhere near a staff ele… but the rev dps rotation is so brain dead easy that you can keep up your max dps in any fight, all the time, while giving everyone permanent fury/protection.

I feel like he probably out dps’s or at least stays close to the vast majority of the ele’s you see in the LFG scene that are messing up their rotations, going down, or losing dps in other creative ways.

It’s just that the meta follows the top guilds, and the top guilds do not have subpar eles, so meh…

As for t4 fractals (especially 100 challenge), I don’t use my rev cuz my 150 agony setup is rooted in Malign infusions—but I love having one in my group for fury/swiftness/situational protection spam.