Guild Wars 2

nekretaal.6485:

Reaper is worse than Necromancer in Pvp.

(EDIT: and Necromancer was considered bad, almost never considered meta)

You have near zero ranged pressure, so you are hard countered by everybody who can move.

The things that anet can do t fix this is fix Axe (and Scepter and focus) or increase Chill Durations, but they punted rather than fix axe and released insulting chill runes of the Reaper.

The Official word is they are scared of axe because it doesn’t have a visible projectile tell and just hits… So they are being conservative. (which means in real talk that axe will always suck because it’s skills were released broken).

The few High level Pvp Necromancers aren’t going Reaper because Reaper Sucks.

Did you even watch NA ESL on Sunday? (there were a few reapers, not as much as say dragonhunter, but they were well represented enough) Yeah most of the reaper’s went celestial, which is iffy imo, but Noscoc’s soldier’s build is very strong and similar to what I had been running all along in the betas since cele sucks with reaper since you can’t have mightstacking, weakness spam, and vital persitance all in one build. And yeah he used Axe/horn on his build since RS is enough melee cleave on a point, though I’d still use the heal shout over the heal signet on his build for even better sustain. Right now reaper is extremely strong at pointholding and teamfighting since reveneants/tempests can literally feed you boons.

Also in general the meta has shifted towards teamfighting and AoE spam on a point, so you should think in that sense where reaper is very strong instead of whining about being countered in 1v1 from 1500 range when you still hold the point, which is what wins conquest.

Sunshine.5014:

Yeah, the only viable Tempest build in PvP is a bunker build with no damage. You know what that means? It means after a while people will scream “Ele sustain is too high” just like D/D Ele and request it to be nerfed. We will then end up with no build.

I’d rather have the healing scale gets a nerf, the base sustain on weapon gets a buff, and Tempest damage gets a buff so we’re not pigeon holed into bunker.

Fresh air diamond skin tempest is a really strong teamfighter that’s loads of fun to play. I can confirm that it works well, it’s just that Druid may possibly fulfill its role better, with more heals but less boons and AoE cleave.

I did something similar last September when I quit the game for like 8 months. I think it’s perfectly fine. At that time I just got so busy with real life and was disappointed by the underwhelming necro buffs at the time, so I felt like the post really helped me to express frustration in a healthy way.

Tried this build out real quick before I get caught up with real life. I can already tell that it has much greater potential than most of the other WS oriented Druid builds I’ve seen so far.

Also why did you put damage oriented sigils on staff? I feel like transference would be invaluable on staff.

I saw you wailing on a golem in the mists yesterday. I’ll give it a go. My current mission is to see whether druid or tempest fulfills a cele bruiser/healer/teamfighter better, and this build might be stronger than the more heal oriented cele builds I’ve tried that melt to focus fire.

Awww, its true what they say, the good necromancers always quit the game young. You will be missed for sure, but we’ll be able to raise you from the dead as a jagged horror (or shambling horror if you’re lucky) when and if you come back

Ludwig.4138:

Thank you. That kinda sucks making one GM dependent on another…

Overall, still enjoying Tempest.

yeah, personally I beleive that powerful auras should be merged with bastion, but a lot of people are getting away by running full shouts to proc the aura heals on themselves as well as allies, as shouts don’t get any extra mileage from powerful auras (another wonky dis-synergy imo).

Hmmm as far as chronomancer (and thief to an extent) the meta has shifted towards teamfight builds to an extent where most builds do some combination of AoE burst damage on a point (tempest/trogdorhunter) and cross-healing (tempest/Druid/support guard) while the roaming dps role has been usurped by revenant due to overall higher damage, support (especially this through boons) and survivability with shield and glint heal and whatnot and in some situations, (phase traversal) better mobility.

Reaper on the other hand is in a strange spot. It’s essentially the ultimate point holder when it has revenants and tempests to feed it boons and overall well balanced otherwise. It has a lot of cleave on a point in shroud though and can hold that point extremely well.. The only caveat of blighters boon though is that it’s only conditionally strong based on teamfight based team composition. If the trait had a 1 second ICD but twice the heal value in shroud, it’s probably feel a bit more fair to fight against.

There were 4 tempests in the NA ESL stream yesterday, 2 of which made it to the finals. I doubt you can call it nonviable when top tier players have made it work against teams consisting of revenants and dragonhunters, which are probably the dominant marauder. Builds in the meta right now.

For pvp, I believe the best runes are soldier runes for cleanse or monk runes for the heals.

Azure.8670:

nearlight.3064:

Say what you want about tempest, but you can’t deny how hawt that shoulder skin is. It’s easily the best armor skin of all the new elite specs.

actually I think its beyond awful I prefer chrono shoulders and reaper mask

Ki like the chrono shoulders but the reaper hood is an ugly dementor hood ripoff.

I just want a way to unlock elite spec armor/weapon skins from pvp.

As a pvper who fails at PvE and wants this skin so so so so so bad, tell me roughly what build you used to solo all the crazy kitten to unlock it. Thx.

In pvp it’s being used a lot on NA, most builds using some combination of cele fresh air, aura share or diamond skin with all the bottom line tempest traits and D/F.

Rocknull.2986:

what tempest shoulder? Pic please

I wish I could get it from PvP, but yeah, I’m in love with the color and shape and effects and assymetry and I MUST HAVE IT.

Well its being used by a top tier team in EU so yeah hahaha, Dragonhunter is officially strong.

Powerful aura needs to be merged with elemental bastion so tempest builds with invigorating torrents can actually work with all the synergies they need.

dulfy should make a guide to show all the hero points and the cheapest ways in terms of masteries to get them.

WvW will take way too long. As a PvPer I just really want the tempest should skin.. but I’d be willing to put in 6 hours of work to get it.

Glenstorm.4059:

On that note, does anyone know if the Tempest final warhorn (North Wind) has any particle effects at all? The in-game preview window does not seem to have any effects, which is super lame, especially since IIRC the Herald Glint shield does have shiny effects.

All I know is that a PvP player, the amount of hero point grinding through WvW zerging or somehow completing hero point challenges is completely insane.. but I must have that should piece!

Say what you want about tempest, but you can’t deny how hawt that shoulder skin is. It’s easily the best armor skin of all the new elite specs.

Chokolata.1870:

Relax, they will probably nerf them by 50% or something.

I think you are clairvoyant.

Signet of inspiration is actually very good on the right type of build.

Arcane/water/tempest is probably best for purely being a point holding healing bunkerbot that makes your team immune to condis with shouts and cleaning water and rarely overloads.

The traps are conceptually meant to discourage those from getting to close to you so you can pee pee at them safely and I dragon them with traps if they get to close.

Josh Davis.6015:

Passed this along to the team.

Also the wanderers stats in pvp are different from the ones in PvE.

Good thing I have my gemstone phantoms hood

Yeah but they’re pretty niche. The quickness on swap sigil seems potentially useful though, sigil of speed I think it’s called, but all of the others didnt stand out to me so o can’t remember what they are,

Well on the bright side of things, at least anet seems to be better at needing OP things without totally gutting them into uselessness.

Yup I agree. The PvE wanderer stats would be more useful, as would zealot stats. The new condi amulets are tear inducingly useless.

My friend tried basically you water build with staff and it worked pretty well. The only problem is the lack of stability.

Eh not a big deal.

The extra shambling horror won’t make as much of a difference as you think, and in general if a ranger or mesmer is allowed to bring extra entities into the fight by their design in order to gain an advantage on you, shouldn’t personal counterplay be just as fair?

Its also probably a more important balance issue regarding locust signet’s active heal, but if you have a necro going up against a mesmer, thats needed to help even the matchup when most good mesmer players will counter most non condi/hybrid necro builds conditional on the amount of life force the necro has at the start of the 1v1.

Phantaram.4816:

nearlight.3064:

Thats how I feel about dragonhunter too phanta, and ironically the power build I ended up with after hours of testing was very similar to yours. I took the same traits, and the same utilities except for the elite trap instead of renewed focus (risky I know). I did have a hard time deciding which weapon to use as an offset to longbow, since hammer, GS, and sw/f all offer nice and useful things and damage, so I was wondering why you picked sword/focus, when its damage is strictly lower than the other two melee weapon choices that are associated with DPS guardian, did you feel like the mobility/survivability woould be more useful since you had longbow and test of faith to make up for the loss in cleave damage?

And yeah, test of faith got made into the perfect trap for a burst build since it was changed to be instant. Its so much fun pulling people into it with F1!

You are exactly right I like the sword focus for mobility/kiting/utility etc all that jazz. I use the longbow like 80% of the time in combat likely. If I knew for some reason both teams would be dedicated to team fighting I likely would not take sword focus and instead take hammer, greatsword, or even mace/focus perhaps. However in the meta nowadays, and almost always in solo queue, having that map utility really helps.

Okay thanks for the response, I can see that being very important, I took traveler runes today out of laziness, when sword probably would have done me more good, especailly since there were many fights where I had to use GS or hammer very sparringly in a teamfight considering how much cleave some teams can put out.

Do you think this type of dragonhunter build would be viable at higher tier play compared to say, burn-guard pre-HoT?

Thats how I feel about dragonhunter too phanta, and ironically the power build I ended up with after hours of testing was very similar to yours. I took the same traits, and the same utilities except for the elite trap instead of renewed focus (risky I know). I did have a hard time deciding which weapon to use as an offset to longbow, since hammer, GS, and sw/f all offer nice and useful things and damage, so I was wondering why you picked sword/focus, when its damage is strictly lower than the other two melee weapon choices that are associated with DPS guardian, did you feel like the mobility/survivability woould be more useful since you had longbow and test of faith to make up for the loss in cleave damage?

And yeah, test of faith got made into the perfect trap for a burst build since it was changed to be instant. Its so much fun pulling people into it with F1!

Ryld.1340:

nearlight.3064:

This build would probably work better with soldier runes and cleansing water for the ally cleanse. Powerful auras really needs to be merged with elemental bastion, the synergies are all stepping over eachother so that support guard will still be much better support.

I use Radiance for the extra light aura and aura duration increase.

Let me explain my reasoning. You play this build because of the extra cool effects you can apply utilizing auras through trait synergies, not because the auras in themselves are all that great (except for shocking aura), making the increased duration not as useful as you’d think.

This build would probably work better with soldier runes and cleansing water for the ally cleanse. Powerful auras really needs to be merged with elemental bastion, the synergies are all stepping over eachother so that support guard will still be much better support.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

nearlight.3064:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Wait they really didn’t change a single thing about the horrible tempest minor traits? Not even making stability on overloads the major minor? Ridiculous Karl!

Edit: Also WTH no change to latent stamina? Is this some kind of joke?

Eh, while I think it’s still weak, invigorating torrents was a big indirect buff to latent stamina, by actually making it capable of doing something.

There’s no way to take invigorating torrents though because you need stability on overloads for the spec to even try to function.

Well there’s that critical flaw, and there’s also the critical flaw of having powerful auras compete with cleansing water (needed for invigorating torrents to be worth it) so yeah the synergies are better, but still limited by wasted minor traits.

You can run shout tempest with IT and pretend to be a support guardian with trooper runes, but why bother when that guardian can do everything you can for support, with better stability across and better Rez capability? Yeah you can do more damage with celestial and the rare overload and heal better than receive the light with wash the pain away and EB , but I still don’t think it’d be on the same level when looking at support in a pvp match.

While your condi cleanse may not keep up with the conditions someone can apply to you in a 1v1, I guarantee that in a proper comp, they won’t be able to apply conditions to you faster than you AND all of your allies can cleanse eachother due to how much passive AoE cleanse is in this game.

You people won’t be happy until you take no damage at all from conditions.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Wait they really didn’t change a single thing about the horrible tempest minor traits? Not even making stability on overloads the major minor? Ridiculous Karl!

Edit: Also WTH no change to latent stamina? Is this some kind of joke?

Eh, while I think it’s still weak, invigorating torrents was a big indirect buff to latent stamina, by actually making it capable of doing something.

andrew.4309:

nearlight.3064:

Other idea, run a mightstacking hammer using full trap bruiser build with the DH runes and soldiers. Less condi cleanse on allies but better damage, CC, and 1v1 potential, think of it as similar to a soldiers engi.

I just messed around with this. With Runes of the dragonhunter you can get 25 stacks of might fast. Using Cele does decent dmg with the hammer. Spceter and focus to kite.
the only problem I had was needing more condi cleanse.

Hunters fortification can help with the cleanse since you have so much aegis from doubl fragment traps. I’ve been in mapped since getting up super early to play but I’ll test it later, basically though I’d imagine that soldiers would work best with honor/virtues and celestial would work best with radiance/virtues (burn). In general though to PCI of extra boon duration holds it back slightly, but the bust of traps and ApE damage on a point with high might stacks makes up for it. Also honorable staff isn’t helpful here since the build wouldn’t really want staff and you’d need more like 40% might duration rather than 20%.

Based on trying it out briefly with a hambow soldiers build, it can maintain very high might stacks for a short amount of time if you blow most your traps at once, but falls into a lull afterwards. Battle sigils help. If we had the PvE stats for the wanderer’s amulet it’d be viable, if not meta for sure. Until then though I’ll keep guaging it with soldiers (you need tanky stats to make up from not having sustain from shouts or meditations that other builds would have) and comparing it to burn/trapper rune DH and various support cleric builds, and marauder DPS builds (which this soldier’s build competes with the most for).

Per Reddit, the PvE stat combination of this new stat combination is 1050 Power/Toughness 560 Vitality/Concentration (which seems to be roughly 40% boon duration).

In sPvP the Wanderer’s amulet gives 1050 Condition Damage/Precision 560 Toughness/Expertise (roughly 40% condition duration).

So my question to the devs who balance pvp is, why is there this disparity between the PvE stat set and the PvP stat set? I thought since the June 23rd update, your goal was to unify the names of stat combos between PvE and PvP so the stats would be consistent between the two, yet you introduce wanderer’s stats that have blatantly different stats between the two game modes. Why is this?

Also on a related note, the PvE wander’s stat combination would be much more useful for PvP than the current sPvP amulet implementation. It’d be very similar to soldiers for sure, but I’d gladly trade a bit of vitality for boon duration with some of the new might stacking build ideas I’ve come up with since HoT launch (ie dragonhunter runes mightstacking could be a very strong build with this amulet, but fairly average without it).

Curunen.8729:

nearlight.3064:

Curunen.8729:

Tough choice between Wanderer’s and Viper’s though.

I think Viper is better than Sinister for us, but they’re both full glass.

I just wish Wanderer had 1050 toughness and 560 precision instead of the other way around, but I think I will stick with it.

Wanderer’s is power/toughness/vitality/concentration on PvE.. But a condi amulet in pvp… Why is this? I have the perfect mightstacking dragonhunter build that needs this amulet with power stats to function :/

Yeah I don’t get that – weird naming choice tbh.

Anyway it’s better than the poor variety of condi amulets we had before.

I’ve tried Viper with tormenting runes and that can output a pretty crazy amount of hybrid damage in pvp, but I don’t like being glass anymore.

I like Wanderer’s more than Rabid, but the precision is a bit excessive in my opinion just for the sake of SI and on crit sigils – would rather have 1050 toughness and 560 precision.

In anycase either Wanderer or Viper with tormenting runes is finally something good for condi shatter.

In general I think they should have added vitality instead of useless kitten on more amulets. The reason why in the previous meta, marauder, cele, and soldiers were overall the most used was because they had vitality.

These new amulets mostly just make you too glassy for what little damage you do or because some of the stats will be invariably wasted.

Karl McLain.5604:

There were zero damage reductions to true shot…

Also just want to say that I really like dragonhunter’s finished state. Kudos man.

But, is there a reason why the PvE wanderer stay combo and the PvP Wanderer amulet are completely different from one another?

Curunen.8729:

Tough choice between Wanderer’s and Viper’s though.

I think Viper is better than Sinister for us, but they’re both full glass.

I just wish Wanderer had 1050 toughness and 560 precision instead of the other way around, but I think I will stick with it.

Wanderer’s is power/toughness/vitality/concentration on PvE.. But a condi amulet in pvp… Why is this? I have the perfect mightstacking dragonhunter build that needs this amulet with power stats to function :/

Gabriell.4856:

nearlight.3064:

I’m just baffled as to why he went ahead and made major improvements to his other elite specs, dragonhunter and daredevil (and they’re pretty strong right now) but for tempest we received no follow up information and we only received gutting nerfs to heat sync and a trait that turns tempest into a boring aura bunker.. While kitten like minor traits and lucid singularity weren’t even touched.

All I want is some justification from Karl about why he didn’t make more drastic changes to the spec like he did for the other two he worked on.. I mean for DH, they even got a whole new skill on one of the virtues and a major buff to all traps.

Just so we are both clear. Daredevil sucks just as much as tempest. Maybe even worst than.

You’d know better than me, but Karl did get dragonhunter right, in part because guardian is such a strong and diverse platform to build on, whereas their and ele may be strong platforms, but they’re limited by horrible diversity.

Other idea, run a mightstacking hammer using full trap bruiser build with the DH runes and soldiers. Less condi cleanse on allies but better damage, CC, and 1v1 potential, think of it as similar to a soldiers engi.

Yeah that rune looks like it could be incredibly useful for dps power builds.

I’ve tried trapper runes and they work really well for burn builds. You get revealed all over the place, but the super speed is nice and the AoE burn pressure is greater than it has been on any other setup I’ve tried imo. It’s a bit squishy.. But hunter’s fortification makes up for taking supreme justice/permeating wrath.

Embolism.8106:

Quadox.7834:

Glov.5342:

As a necromancer, I am nearly crying.

BRB rolling a mesmer

Why? I’d go so far as to say well necro benefits much more

I’d say so too if Necro Wells didn’t have such long CDs. But yeah, Quickness doesn’t benefit Mesmers that much as too much of our DPS is dependent on sources other than ourselves, and our burst isn’t really improved by Quickness either.

Might be good for some on-demand Quickness for stomps and resses, but that’s as far as I see it being good for (in PvP).

It’d work very well with blood magic builds that take the Rez procs blood well trait

I’m just baffled as to why he went ahead and made major improvements to his other elite specs, dragonhunter and daredevil (and they’re pretty strong right now) but for tempest we received no follow up information and we only received gutting nerfs to heat sync and a trait that turns tempest into a boring aura bunker.. While kitten like minor traits and lucid singularity weren’t even touched.

All I want is some justification from Karl about why he didn’t make more drastic changes to the spec like he did for the other two he worked on.. I mean for DH, they even got a whole new skill on one of the virtues and a major buff to all traps.

instead of clerics or sentinels, is anyone considering using the new minstrel’s amule(1050 toughness, 1050 healing power, 560 vitality, 560 concentration=about40%boon duration)?

The loss in power is probably negligable but you gain more well rounded defensive/supportive stats, but I’m interested in hearing what you guys think.