Guild Wars 2

I use a 30/30/10 100% condition duration build for WvW with rabid gear and some giver weapons. Works well enough but I run pain inverter which you may not have (100% duration – 10s of 3stack confusion).

Including trinkets? So no crits? Ive toyed around with the idea a 30/0/0/30/0 soldier build based around spirit weapons and symbols (mace/focus + gs), but since Spirit Weapons were nerfed I never bothered beyond testing the build in the mists (seemed to have promise at the time). Soldier gear with Knights trinkets (slotted with ruby orbs) + ruby orbs in the armor works really well in an AH build however.

If they are going to make the progression char based, wxp earned on alts should be doubled/tripled until they reach whatever your max rank is (i.e. your main is a lvl27 scout, hopping on an alt you get boosted exp until that char catches up to 27). I think that would be a fair compromise.

Kraeje.5861:

Well, I soled my Dust by now, hoping the Devs will introduce some mechanic that lets the Dust price drop again. At current price I wouldn’t want to afford 750 Crystalline Dust anyway, as The Bifrost is my far goal.

After running AC recently I noticed that (with a level 80 char), the rewards from chests/bosses would have a bunch of T5 dusts and sometimes a couple T6 (I dont remember this ever being there, but it could have been added with the last patch that changed the AC bosses)

If they have to nerf stealth the best way IMO is to make it a 0-duration (so boon duration wont apply), intensity stacking boon (each stack is 1s, so you’ll get the benefit of seeing a countdown timer). That way stealth can be balanced against other classes abilities to remove boons.

Weren’t they also supposed to nerf AOE? It could turn out to be a lot of nothing.

The only real problem with zerg battles is that they usually come down to Zerg A wiping Zerg B (usually within half a min or less), or AOE ranged standoff at a choke, or Zerg B scattering and running from Zerg A.

Fixing culling will be a huge step in preventing quick wipes. But I would also like to see some anti-AOE abilities, abilities that would simply clear all AOE’s from an area instantly and force more single target on single target action.

I think a good idea of a pet “dodge” wouldn’t necessarily be a dodge. Lets say they combined F1 and F3 and left the F3 open.

New F3: Pet mist form.

When in mist form all targeting is relinquished and the pet cannot be targetted (as if the pet entered cloak). AoE damage is reduced 75% during the duration and new conditions cannot be applied. The downside however is that the pet loses all aggro and cannot attack, it simply holds its position stalking your target.

Mist form for your pet would be a toggle that lasts up to Xs and has an Xs cooldown. The pet immediately resumes attacking afterward unless you returned it with F1.

Distaste.4801:

In WvW it’s actually really good for a D/D condition thief. Doing DB over it(whirl finisher) will put confusion on all nearby foes, get 3 stacks on people and suddenly it’s ~1k damage per skill on top of the 1k+ bleed damage per second. It can certainly ruin peoples days.

People are also forgetting dagger offhand. Dancing dagger is a 100% projectile finisher, and you can spam it through gunk to rack upwards of 6 stacks of confusion on a target depending on how it bounces (gg to any engineer that has turrets out). However, you need to be running a condition build.

So they didnt fix the monumental condition duration bug ._.

It would be nice if we didnt have to wait for the monthly content patches to get fixes out on stuff like this..

The problem with an F3 dodge is there are times in the game where you just lose track of your pet completely. In dungeons, this isn’t an issue, but if you are using the longbow in WvW and you pet runs off into the enemy zerg-sea-of-red-names 1000+ units aways the only thing you can really do is queue up an f2 and keep an eye on its health to return/swap it.

A feature to flesh out pets, IMO, would be to take the Gambit system from FFXII and adapt it to work with pets. Let the the player essentially construct the pets AI priorities, with enough limitations that you would usually run with a separate set of gambits for your pet in dungeons with their own tradeoffs vs other situations. E.G. a behavior that causes the pet to retreat to you when it hits <30% HP, or one that causes it to return to you when it is surrounded by more than 3 enemies. Or queuing up specific skills for certain situations (having a Moa casts its skill 2 whenever its owners health drops bellow 50%)

Another suggestion is to make the pets return command a soft swap so it doesn’t have to wade through tons of AOE/cripple/etc to get back to you.

I did have runes for condition duration (nightmare) but the last patch broke them..

John Smith.4610:

Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.

It’s still a completely arbitrary system. And it’s easy to see why too, when there is a shock to the market it largely favors gem demand and Anet’s bottom line (for example a sale for a popular items screws over anyone that doesn’t pay $ for gems).

A fair(er) system would place a % of gem’s spent in the shop back into the exchange (I assume it doesn’t do this, correct me if Im wrong), or just throw the exchange concept out the window and fix the the gold cost of gems to an average trade post value of a basket of commodities (T6 mats, ectos, etc).

Why should anyone have sentimental value for rare (yellow) equipment? All a rare amounts to is an ecto lottery ticket..

Wish they would fix this ASAP. Do we really have to wait till the next month’s big update?

The good:
Easy to tag enemies for loot. Best part of the update.
Better chest drops.

The bad:
Nerfing on-crit foods like Omnomberry Ghosts, some ruining some food-based builds.

Completely disabling every niche consumable in WvW, the game mode has lost quite a bit of spice/flavour as a result (though items like gears/spikefruit definitely needed it, but seriously, every one?)

Nerfing ranger (guard was an awesome utility in WvW, now you cant even send your pet outside a keep, I dont think anyone will ever use that skill again). Again, causing WvW to lose its wild-west flavour.

Undecided:
Guild missions. Looks good on paper other than how expensive they are for a small guild, wait and see on these.

Ralathar.7236:

My defensively spec’d Engineer has been dropped in under 3 seconds by a thief before. All vitality and toughness. I literally got to see the final heartseeker and that is it. No other classes has ever taken down that engineer even close to that fast. Heck I’ve eaten damage from groups of people and survived before on that build.

The general design of the game seems to be that every build has a hard counter, even ones stacking vit/tough. If vit/toughness couldnt be countered by extreme single target burst then the game would just gravitate towards becoming Bunker Wars 2. I think more players should accept that fact (and I dont even run burst thief btw, though I love defensive builds).

Rennoko.5731:

Necro isn’t bad in WvW, it is just doesn’t have enough misdirection to win a bad odds fight, or enough safe stomping options to prevent intelligent opponents from just picking each other back up in those bad odds fights.

I would love it if they made Flesh Wurm a straight up teleport without needing any line of sight. I think it would address the disengage issues without breaking the Necro design since you’d still need to plan ahead.

Softspoken.2410:

Modimor.4319:

I think this could be fixed really easily if they just made the highest DOT tick first, that way you would always wanna aply conditions if you are in a cond dmg spec. It would also fix the issue with guardians stealing all the burning ticks from the condition dmg specced players.

My concern there is that someone with 1000 condition damage can apply a 2 second bleed and replace a 7 second bleed applied by someone with 700 condition damage. It’s more damage up front, but it can be significantly less damage over time, especially in PvE where condition removal is pretty rare.

You can get similar problems if you just switch it so it’s based on duration remaining. I wish I had a good answer for this but I really don’t right now. :S

What Anet should do is to figure out what the average direct damage dps is(for a direct damage player), against champs and bosses. Then allow condition damage players to maintain their own individual condition stacks against enemies, modified by boss/champ stats like Defiant (i.e., a champ with Defiant limits each players bleed stacks to 12), to achieve something similar to the avg direct damage dps . As for Epidemic, just cap the stacks of the conditions it can spread to match whatever ceiling is set by the enemy.

Make sure you have the weapons with the sigils out when the targets die. Easy way to charge the sigils though is to have a set of weapons with 2 sigils stacked so you get 2 per kill, and corral and kill the easy mobs (like wolves, the pack of minotaurs, etc)

Currently combo fields in zergy environments just become noise. You can’t really teamwork in combos in that environment unless it’s really basic (spam water fields for healing, etc). Either through items/runes/settings you should be able to tune your character to a specific field. These fields become highlighted through all the visual noise and you can combo into them even if they aren’t the last placed combo field (you’d still be able to combo under regular rules however when your attuned fields aren’t present).

oZii.2864:

roamzero.9486:

Right now Im using undead runes and the 10% bleed duration sigils + rare veggie pizzas. Would it be better to use the bleed duration runes? 100% bleed duration isn’t possible with a 0/0/30/20/20 p/d build so Id only be buying a single extra tick on the pistol with bleed duration runes (would go from 6s stacks to 7, but Id lose about 210 condition damage).

??

It is possible

2x krait 2x centaur 2x afflicted + pizza+ sigil of agony x 2 = 105% bleed duration duration.

210 condition damage is 53 damage on a bleed. have to know what your condition damage is really to tell you which is better for you.

If we assume your bleed is doing lets say 125 damage per tick at 6 seconds thats 750 damage from 1 bleed.

125-53=72 at 7 secs thats 504 damage

Sigil of Agony stacks? I thought it only stacked with d/d which has been reported to be a bug. (Also I believe my condition damage would drop from ~1300 to ~1100 if I switched runes, the numbers include food/consumable buffs)

Right now Im using undead runes and the 10% bleed duration sigils + rare veggie pizzas. Would it be better to use the bleed duration runes? 100% bleed duration isn’t possible with a 0/0/30/20/20 p/d build so Id only be buying a single extra tick on the pistol with bleed duration runes (would go from 6s stacks to 7, but Id lose about 210 condition damage).

An easy buff that would solve a lot of issues would be to make flesh wurm not use ground targeting, and removing all the weird line of sight requirements to make its teleport an actual teleport.

Looks-wise Id go with Sylvari, but Asura Necromancers get pain inverter, which in WvW is a great 1 button anti-thief/ele/allround defense mechanism.

I think mini pets should be able to hold onto an item for a small stat boost. (I.E., give a minipet an exquisite jewel or crest to hold, and stat boost is applied when the minipet is active).

Another utility they can provide is in giving them the ability to carry food and consumables, which they would use on you whenever existing food/consumables arent applied.

So I imagine the UI would be somewhere to the side, and there would be 4 boxes (minipet portrait for your equiped minipet that you can drag from your inv or equip by right clicking a mini pet in your inv, a food slot, a consumable slot (both of which can be ctrl + right mouse clicked to auto-use when there isnt one applied, and a stow button which simply has the minipet count as out but invisible), and finally a slot to hold a crest/jewel or other holdable for a stat boost.

Calling your pet to return should soft swap (teleport) it instantly to your side IMO.

Looks like the nerfed the ability to cancel our dodge rolls to gain heals and keep our endurance uncapped for the damage bonus trait. Unless I’m wrong, did anyone else do this? I did it a lot with the hammer, dodge cancelling after the second autoattack.

I see them more as a long term investment. At some point expansions will come out and people will stop rushing to Orr for endgame content, around then I expect additional recipes/uses/sinks for the essences added to raise demand.

Knowing Anet they’ll probably give SW’s a +50% HP boost in the next patch, but they’ll still suck and die easily regardless. I was thinking about gearing a SW build too, at least I wont be wasting 20g now.

The command having the pet return to you should be a soft swap (they instantly teleport to your side as if they had been swapped in, without triggering swap effects of course, etc)

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Maybe because underwater is the one place we don’t fail at compared to other classes? Idk. Few people have ever complained about underwater necros for a reason, we pretty much rock it. I’m not saying we’re perfect, but I’ve never once said to myself: I wish this underwater skill worked better (aside from the LF gain on certain ones, one of which was fixed recently). Is there some downside you are experiencing in particular that makes you feel we’re not working well underwater (thats a serious question, not a troll. I really am curious)

I find that the Trident autottack sometimes flat out doesn’t work in wvw. I see the animation going off on the player but nothing is happening.

Epidemic and staff marks make Necro pretty viable in WvW. Lack of mobility makes you an easy target to get ganged up on though if you overextend.

There needs to be more ranged pets. 1200 range DPS/glassy ones would be pretty good. Also more pets that lay down combo fields and AOEs.

Kind of dumb with the current situation when the difference between Bird A and Bird B usually comes down to the F2 dealing chill or bleed (or worse, no difference at all like the Eagle/Hawk)

Does the tooltip error apply outside of PvP/Mists? The wiki seems to specify it as a bug that affects PvP.

Balanced damage/tank gear usually pairs Knights armor and weapons and Beryl accessories (with 1 emerald earring). Soldiers Armor/Weps + Knights accessories slotted with Ruby jewels is also an alternative that achieves largely the same thing.

Full tank is viable with a P/D condition build though (I have mine geared with Shamans armor/weps and Apothecary trinkets).

Anybody ever play FFXII? Anet should just steal the gambit system and apply it to pets. Just copy it wholesale, in addition to some much needed basic AI improvements.

I expect something along these lines:

• Revealed debuff now applied every time when exiting stealth
• Taking damage while revealed extends the debuff a further 2s, but can only be extended one time per damage source.
• While in stealth 10 stacks of vulnerability are applied (removed upon unstealthing, only applies to self stealths, not when stealthing others).

(Not that I would want the above however)

F2 functions should be revamped to work like this:

Pressing F2 should cause a runic orb to fade in above the pet (irrespective of what the pet is doing, so it would appear immediately) , which would gain intensity (essentially a cast time, some abilities would have a slow cast time, others fast) and explode with an effect, which could be an AoE effect or something that only affects the current pet’s target.

This kind of change would address ALL of the F2 issues, and since the attack is both telegraphed to you and the enemy, room to buff F2 abilities is available as well. The only loss would be the F2 attack animations tied to the pets.

The trade off for taking pure Apothecary compared to pure Carrion stats is about 25% direct damage, 12% condition damage, and 15% EHP. You gain, however about a 25-30% more HP per heal on most of the healing traits (Shadow Rejuvenation in particular), which translates to almost 100% more effective healing when factoring in EHP. A mix of Carrion armor + Apothecary trinkets might be the best option IMO.

Should be fixed, and not some tooltip fix that makes the bug official.

Danicco.3568:

The best Runes for maximizing points is Divinity, by far, since it gives 240 Main Attribute Points (if you count only Power/Precision/Toughness/Vitality) and 12% Critical Damage (168 Points), plus 60 for Condition Damage/Healing Power.
That’s a 408 / 468 Gear Points worth in Runes.
The second best is Rune of the Pack, it gives 265 Gear Points plus some effects

What about runes that provide a flat % damage bonus, like the Ogre/Strength/Scholar/Thief?

For PVE/WvW Im gonna try a bunker/condition thief with a full Apothecary set (typical p/d 0/0/30/20/20)

• All pet F2 functions have been revamped, they now operate in a similar fashion to Warrior/Guardian shouts with instant AoE effects (ranged pets use a targeted AoE)
• Pets now have a third state between Attack/Passive where they prioritize staying near you and defending your proximity
• Pet states can now be bound to keys and you can set the default state for your equipped pets.
• F2 functions no longer automatically put your Pet into Attack state.
• Pets can be stowed at any time and are not automatically brought out in combat. Stowing in combat has a cooldown cost however, and you cannot swap stowed pets in combat.

Camulos.7869:

I did it and I do not regret it. The Ravens in combination with thieves guild is a bloody mess. As far as the other traits, my damage and survivability are great.

How much damage and how many targets do the ravens hit for?

Xarog.3172:

I’ve heard this from several sources now. I haven’t tested it myself but it sounds like there’s DR on salvaging kits. Which would be extremely lame if true. Salvage kits at an advertised effeciency rate (50% for black lion kits for example), and players should be informed of any change to that.

If players can’t trust one statistic on an item, why should we trust any of them?

Anet really needs to step up and explain wtf is going on here.

I would say any DR in the game should presented up front to the player. This goes for Karma/Loot/Dungeons, and anything else in the game that has DR. Slipping in DR under a players nose is just bad game design and unfun.

Something that had me thinking.. would a huge nerf in backstab damage be justified if that damage was simply replaced by enough stacks of bleed over x seconds to cover the damage that was nerfed off? Maybe throw in some cripple and weakness for a few seconds as well.

Some feedback since playing around with them:

Hammer: Hammer is probably at the best place of all the weapons. Its utility is good, works as expected and I cant think of an improvement that isn’t a blanket improvement on all the weapons.

Sword: Sword is also in a pretty good spot. I think the tooltip for its damage is not accurate however, and should be changed. Also, it would be nice if when traiting for eternal spirit, that the sword would come out and start attacking again sooner after using command.

Bow: This is one of the weapons that needs a huge change, but luckily IMO the change is pretty simple. The bow needs to be glued to your rear end at all times, instead of seemingly wandering aimlessly between your teammates. This would give you some needed control over its command ability, since you can just move yourself to the most optimum spot for its effect instead of relying on shoddy AI.

Shield: Same as the bow, it needs to be glued to you at all times. Another possible improvement maybe to swap the command and its default actions, letting you control when popping the shield of absorption would be most optimum, while it attacks, weakening foes, and quickly returns on its own AI (which may requiring some counterbalance tweaking, but IMO might be better overall).

General changes: The Wrathful Spirit trait, as a grandmaster one, needs some spicing up. A great way to do that would be to, in addition to the damage bonus, to decrease the cast time on the weapons significantly.

Another change that would greatly improve spirit weapons IMO would be if they teleport with you on a teleport ability that takes you to a target (when they are near you) (Judges Intervention, Merciful Intervention, Flashing Blade).