Guild Wars 2

I agree with your thoughts on the hammer especially on 4/5 I do find use for the #4 though knocking someone into a wall effectively stuns them for quite a long duration. But making it AOE definitely fits with the weapon overall and the QoL change to the 5 is long overdue.

As to the shield I actually think this weapon has alot of potential, AOE protection is always strong and the 5 ability does alot for a single ability (AoE Heal, AoE knockback, Projectile Block also it’s a light field). I really don’t think the 4 is in need of a rework but agree that both the 4 and 5 need drastic reductions in their cooldowns. I would say 5 seconds is too little, shaving 10 seconds off of each ability’s cooldown would make the shield a very desirable weapon.

The scepter 2 also needs to be turned into a pulsing AOE or turned into a hard hitting single target ability. Right now it’s essentially a single target ability that can hit for heavily reduced AOE dmg (or simply not hit anything at all).

Bas.7406:

while he did not answer your ridiculous assumption correctly. He did positively point out that axe is a viable weapon choice. Dagger requires you to be within 150 of your opponent. Axe has a nice 600 range, and axe two in pvp on an unsuspecting target in a team match can be lethal. Axe 3 is amazing for wvwvw and in tournaments. I prefer axe in pve because I dont want to sit on top of my target as I would with a dagger.

damage is similar with the main deference being that the dagger is a straight damage weapon and the Axe adds vuln to benefit everyone in the party.

No assumptions are being made here, the dagger 1 chain does more dps than the axe 2. Which means in the scenario you listed of “unsuspecting opponent”, the dagger is better suited.

Again the axe 3 is mentioned, are you running the famous 30/30/30/30/30 build here? Retaliation is not good in burst damage power builds, you don’t have the defensive capabilities to see it come into play. It’s good with a Healing power/Toughness/Power builds that have high protection uptime, alot of sustained healing and 1 or 2 regen mechanics (see: Guardians). This does not fit the description of a Power/Precision/Crit Dmg build in the slightest.

Realistically in regards to this game performance only really matters when fighting other players. So sure you could use axe in pve and complete almost all content. However don’t complain on the forums when people don’t want to take necros in groups while you’re running an axe power build. Contrary to what you seem to think, necros are not the only class that stack vunerability in large amounts. Well of Suffering is often enough to fill in the gaps left by other classes so you sitting there spamming axe 1/2 does not help the group when you could be doing 2x the dps with dagger 1.

kidbs.8920:

tasbury.3674:

Ascii.9726:

tasbury.3674:

For a power build:
In pve the dagger does more damage with better life force generation and there are much better ways to stack vulnerability than sitting there spamming axe 1.

The axe 2 is pretty much a noob trap, it may give you high numbers but dagger 1 has higher dps considering that it takes nearly half the time to execute the entire chain.

If your using Axe in WvW, you dont auto attack. Axe is for the fast burst rotation, high Retaliation stacking and ranged damage in general.

You will do more burst damage with dagger 3 -> WoS -> dagger 1 hell, just spamming dagger 1 is more damage than axe 2. Moreover Retaliation doesn’t even make sense with a burst build.

You shouldn’t use axe, not in WvW, not in PvE and not in PvP.

Blanket statements like this are always a mistake.

Please read the string of quotes you quoted, it’s pretty clear what we are discussing here.

Ascii.9726:

tasbury.3674:

For a power build:
In pve the dagger does more damage with better life force generation and there are much better ways to stack vulnerability than sitting there spamming axe 1.

The axe 2 is pretty much a noob trap, it may give you high numbers but dagger 1 has higher dps considering that it takes nearly half the time to execute the entire chain.

If your using Axe in WvW, you dont auto attack. Axe is for the fast burst rotation, high Retaliation stacking and ranged damage in general.

You will do more burst damage with dagger 3 → WoS → dagger 1 hell, just spamming dagger 1 is more damage than axe 2. Moreover Retaliation doesn’t even make sense with a burst build.

You shouldn’t use axe, not in WvW, not in PvE and not in PvP.

For a power build:

In pvp the dagger does more damage than the axe and has better life force generation, meanwhile the staff brings way more utility with double the range.

In pve the dagger does more damage with better life force generation and there are much better ways to stack vulnerability than sitting there spamming axe 1.

The axe 2 is pretty much a noob trap, it may give you high numbers but dagger 1 has higher dps considering that it takes nearly half the time to execute the entire chain.

haviz.1340:

‘Much higher’ being how much exactly?

In tooltip damage alone the axe auto attack chain is 3950 total damage, in the mists while the Guardian GS chain is 2350 total damage.

The execution time for the axe auto attack is 3.6 seconds, which is ~1096 dps, the execution time for the Guardian GS chain is 2.5s which is ~940 dps. That’s 15%, not including crit, but even here the warrior will come out ahead because they have much more access to fury that a guardian does.

The guy who’s trying to compare Warrior Auto-Attack Damage with Guardian Auto-Attack Damage is making the fatal flaw of comparing Guardian Greatsword with Warrior Greatsword.

This could be for a number of reasons:

1. He has never played a warrior
2. He has never used an axe
3. He is unable to admit he is wrong on the internet

If you know what you are doing on a warrior you won’t use GS to auto attack, you use hundred blades to build might/do dps then you swap. You may use whirlwind attack as an extra dodge but that’s it. Once hundred blades is finished you swap to axe and auto attack or you don’t use greatsword at all, since axe auto-attack is the highest DPS a warrior can achieve (and is much higher than guardian GS I assure you).

In beta, the scepter auto attack bleeds/poison had double the base duration they currently have.

Necros were very strong in beta come to think of it, but they received some heavy nerfs. Not all of them were warranted imo.

I love the people saying that people who don’t like the game should leave. People have already done this and now there are maybe 300 players logged into sPvP in NA at any given time. So keep telling people to leave whenever they say something you don’t like, I wonder how this game will be in a year or so.

This guy makes some good points and the people opposing him address irrelevant nuances rather than the main issue at hand here. Arena net has backed themselves into a corner by not having a dedicated healer class in GW2. While I think this has hurt the game in other ways, his point is that you can’t have Arena type PvP because damage is extremely high and there is no healer class to counteract this.

I bought this game under the assumption that sPvP would be developed and keep me interested for a long time. What I got at release was something that could be described as an alpha client. Perhaps we’re in open beta now but none of that matters because people lost interest within the first few weeks.

I’ve realized that this is a PvE game and that sPvP is just an afterthought that was used to generate interest but never really implemented.

Solandri.9640:

The dual wield mechanism in this game isn’t like in other RPGs. When you dual wield weapons in this game, your damage doesn’t go up. Autoattacking with just 1h sword equipped will do the same damage as autoattacking with sword + dagger equipped (aside from stat bonuses). All the second weapon gets you is your choice of the #4 and #5 skills. It’s not like you’re attacking with both weapons at the same time. All you’re doing is splitting up the same number of attack opportunities between the two weapons.

So it’s not a case where the GS needs to do more damage than the 1h sword like in other games. From a balance perspective, they should do about the same damage. GS maybe a little bit more because it locks you into 5 skills (with 1h sword, you have three choices for your #4 and #5 skills). i.e. What you lose in flexibility, you gain in damage.

Except 1h weapons spend less time in animations, resulting in more hits per second and therefore more dps. So yes the GS does need to do more damage than the 1h sword because it attacks slower. Having them at equal damage results in less DPS for the GS because of it’s attack speed. That’s not even considering the fact that you have multiple offhand options with the 1h sword.

What really gets me is that the shortbow, a 1200 range weapon has more dps than a melee weapon. Obviously the melee weapon has cleave but for every other class that has melee cleave their melee is still considerably higher than their ranged option. Reason of course being that ranged is so much safer than melee, so there needs to be a trade off.

I hope it’s pretty clear to everyone that what happened with the Ranger GS was a knee-jerk reactionary nerf and it needs to be looked at. The auto-attack is the problem here, it’s where the damage needs to come from. Every other ability has utility attached to it except maul and unless they remove the bleed, it won’t get buffed. I would much prefer high sustained damage anyways.

Pets are not a reason for the damage to be wimpy, they are a class mechanic as such they should not have a bearing on Auto-Attack Damage.

As I mentioned before the damage is below the warrior’s auto-attack, this should not be the case because they have other abilities that do damage besides their auto-attack. In many cases this is THEIR class mechanic (kill shot, eviscerate).

The thread has been quite de-railed let me repeat, pets are not an excuse for GS damage being so low. They are a class mechanic, and they have their own issues associated with them. Do pets excuse the fact that GS damage is the same as 1h Sword damage? Should SB be nerfed because our pets can do damage? Additionally, consider that the sword has a leap associated with its auto-attack, AND allows for an offhand to be equipped making it much more flexible than the GS.

I’m not asking for Rangers to become god-mode here, I just want them to have a competitive melee-dps option. Wouldn’t you guys like to see more people asking for Rangers as a melee dps in their groups?

To see that this weapon needs help one needs to look no further than the fact that the base tooltip damage for the greatsword Auto-Attack is a whole 1 damage higher than the base sword damage. Which means the GS has less dps than the sword as it swings slower.

Here’s another problem, in power builds every warrior melee weapon Auto-Attack deals more damage than the Ranger GS. Warrior weapons also have other options to deal damage besides the Auto-Attack, while as the ranger GS has only utility abilities and a useless bleed. The damage needs to come from the AA, but it just isn’t there. Rangers have less base armour and less health than a warrior, so there is no reason for the damage difference. If you build glass cannon you should be able to do damage, but with the greatsword you can’t.

Buffing the damage back to what it was in Beta is not a problem. I’ve already listed why it was nerfed and why it was a problem. The 25 might stacks from RaO made it overpowered, and the fact that RaO gave 30s of stability that was unable to be stripped plus the fact that you could obtain similar levels of crit damage to pve land.

All of that has been nerfed now, so the nerfing of the base damage/power scaling was uncalled for.

Honestly if you are a ranger player there is no reason to be against this. It gives a power, melee dps option with good AOE damage. All things that the Ranger is lacking and if you build for damage you should be able to do damage. Because of the nerf to RaO you won’t see the 5k crits anymore unless you have a friendly to buff you, but the current 2k of damage on a crit with a DPS build is not how it should be.

I am glad that there is support for this, but if you support this and haven’t voiced it make sure you do! Anet says they read these forums and the more people that voice their support the more attention this will be given, tell your friends!

Perhaps people don’t remember what that means.

GS doesn’t have any damage, in Beta it was much the same except for the Auto-Attack. In Beta the GS 1 had exceptional scaling and base damage, this allowed it to crit for 5k or more making it an excellent melee dps weapon. The melee power-crit ranger was exceptional and allowed the class to stand up against other melee classes both pve dps wise and pvp wise.

The problem was that people were getting 3 shotted in sPvP, and there were a number of reasons for this. First off Crit Damage had not yet been nerfed in sPvP, second QZ like all other quickness abilities did not have a debuff associated with it, and finally the might stacks from Rampage as one had a duration that allowed you to gain an ungodly amount of might just by using the ability and letting your pet attack.

Needless to say a nerf came, however RaO was nerfed, along with sPvP crit damage. RaO has stability which used to NOT be a boon making it so you couldn’t boonstrip/corrupt/steal obviously this was nerfed along with the duration of the might stacks. For the GS they hit both the base damage of the ability AND the base damage changing the GS into the pool noodle that it is today. Had they only nerfed RaO and crit damage the GS would have been toned down enough in sPvP to no longer be a problem. However they completely gutted the weapon so that it can no longer be used in a power build.

I think that the base damage and scaling should be returned to the weapon giving rangers the option of being melee damage dealers once again.

Bring back the Melee Power Ranger!

I think the fact that this weapon is so underutilized is a tell-tale sign that it was very much overnerfed.

Sylosi.6503:

Clunge.9164:

Well for one thing you’re comparing E-sports to T.V. Your saying “even the majority” of League players don’t watch League streams. How many people on this earth DONT watch football games? Football is a sport, alot of people watch it and even more don’t. Using the arguement that most players dont watch league streams, and using it in a negative way is possibly the most stupid arguement i have ever heard.

Surely the stupidest argument you have ever heard is the one you’ve just made? According to Sport England the number of people who regularly play football is a bit over 2 million, when England played Italy in Euro 2012 the viewing figures peaked at about 23 million.

That most of the people who regularly play LoL are not even interested in watching it, speaks volumes.

Clunge.9164:

Perhaps for you, but 32 million other people think otherwise. I’m not even sure those figures are correct, but if they are just look at what you’re typing.

32 million people don’t think otherwise, 32 million people regularly play LoL, most of them don’t watch it (the finals got a worldwide viewing figure of about 8 million, some watched on TV)

Nice Strawman.

According to wikipedia Football is played by 250million people worldwide, using your figure of 23million viewers just over 9% of the population that play it also watch it (obviously this isn’t entirely true, many people watch but don’t play).

Comparatively 25% of the LoL population is interested in the World finals. Let’s not forget that LoL has been through only two seasons of play while Football has been around for over 100 years.

I could say that “most people who play football aren’t interested in watching it” my statement would be correct but ultimately meaningless.

As for GW2 becoming an esport, it will probably never happen. Arenanet has made it quite clear that sPvP is a sideshow, PVE and WvWvW are what the game is about and consequently these areas have received the most attention.

There are so many other classes that do crit/power builds better than a necro I just don’t understand why people do it.

The problem of condi-removals is an extremely simple fix, pretty much every game with dispels has it (I don’t know why GW2 doesn’t). Simply have a trait that pushes a % of the damage that would have occurred up front when the condition is cleared. That way the condi dmg is still mitigated for the dispeller, but we don’t lose 100% of our damage output.

For example if the trait made it so 10% of bleed damage was applied when cleared and you had bleeds that if left to tick would do 10 000 dmg, they would apply 1000 of that damage when cleared.

I do think that we need at least one more damaging condition (burning or confusion) and a more reliable way to apply poison (buffing the base value of the sceptre auto attack to 4s would probably do it).

Daays.4317:

@demonstrative

I don’t know who you are. So going to go with you’re not important. Let me know when you’re done with the “you’re not on the competitve edge”. This game has no competitive edge. Just good players. And those “top teams on the competitive edge”, I’ve been playing against them for years in other games.

So keep this on necro. Plague signet is broken. Until it’s fixed to not copy and actually transfer conditions, it’s a conditon dump for the necro. It’s not that great. It doesn’t nullify anything.

Corrupt Boon is single target and really only useful vs guardians when trying to quickly take him out 2v1.

Dagger offhand is mediocre. Not as useful as Focus (as focus gives you a free corrupt boon and good lifeforce generation). You don’t actually remove 3 conditions. You remove 1 at at time per person it bounces to. So if no one else is in range, you’re only going to get one removal. Weakness is really only good vs low crit classes, which are typically Solider Amulet tank classes.

And I’m basing this on the replacement of the guardian because every single high end team that has been running with a necro HAS been replacing them with a guardian. You can stop theory crafting. What I’m saying isn’t theory. It’s tested. I have over tourny 120 games on my necro. The class falls short in every area compared to others and is not worth bringing.

The people who bring it just want to be different. Like the kids who always say “What’s the most underpowered class? I want to play that one”.

I’ve played with “the top teams on the competitive edge” too for years. You know… the top teams…

I won’t list any because then someone who has actually played with those teams may call me out on my bullkitten. So I’ll just continue talking out of my kitten because I’m angry, incompetent player.

In any case I’ll just keep making things up to try and salvage my position because on the internet their is zero accountability.

Backpedaling. Bad Build. Dodges without thought (or not at all).

Your poor play is what they are taking advantage of, not any broken mechanics.

You don’t need to play a well class to admit that it is strong.

The fact remains that necros have strong team fighting ability especially when paired with another class that can apply conditions really fast.

Before LoL even had ranked games there were tournaments held in custom games, so this is absolutely needed.

I’m guessing you are fishing for a response from one or more of the “pro” teams though.

Daays.4317:

tasbury.3674:

People who think that defensive (Bunker) build should be countered by glass cannon burst builds need to get a clue. Bunker builds are countered by sustained condition builds with poison and bleed stacking. You would think that this is intuitive as poison reduces incoming healing but to the masses of foaming-at-the-mouth burst players I suppose not.

Condition Damage counters Defensive Builds
Burst Damage counters Condition Builds
Defensive Builds counter Burst Damage

By and large this rock, paper scissors model is working pretty well.

Caltrop Thieves, Condition Necro, Pistol Engineer, and Short-bow Condition rangers can kill “Bunker” specs with ease.

Probably the most ignorant statement out there.

The goal of a “bunker” class is to not kill anyone. It is to delay them for your team to come in and fight. To hold the point 1v2 long enough for support.

If you’re having to use sustained damage over time, then the bunker has done his job. He will last long enough for his team to come in. Especially since you will have condition removal, which will delay their efforts even further.

The only condition class that could kill a bunker in decent time was a Ranger. But after the Shortbow nerf, they’re back to being useless.

So your so called “counter” isn’t countering them at all. They still perform their role.

Implying a 40 milisecond nerf bringing attack speed to 2.04 per second instead of 2.2 (~8% nerf) makes a class useless.

No, THAT is the most ignorant statement out there.

The only nerf to rangers that has ever been significant was the greatsword nerf in beta.

People who think that defensive (Bunker) build should be countered by glass cannon burst builds need to get a clue. Bunker builds are countered by sustained condition builds with poison and bleed stacking. You would think that this is intuitive as poison reduces incoming healing but to the masses of foaming-at-the-mouth burst players I suppose not.

Condition Damage counters Defensive Builds
Burst Damage counters Condition Builds
Defensive Builds counter Burst Damage

By and large this rock, paper scissors model is working pretty well.

Caltrop Thieves, Condition Necro, Pistol Engineer, and Short-bow Condition rangers can kill “Bunker” specs with ease.

So I was pulling some of the old flamjackery, enjoying myself of course when all of a sudden I happen across a wufflemucker.

I decide to have myself a bit of fun and 1, 2 dippity do over to pull off a 1-2-3 slam-jam.

After finishing the wub-wub on the scrub nub, all he could say was gup gup gup gup.

NONE ARE SAFE.

If you have the reaction time of a fence post and actually get hit with kill shot in a 1v1 you deserve to die.

CC is already extremely short in this game, moreover you have stability to counter hard CC and for everything else you can use a condition clear.

destrozi.3067:

A lot of players don’t like the “Arathi Basin” style point control games. My 50 man guild would muuuuch prefer a simple 5v5, or 5v5v5v5, style matchups where last team standing wins. This was in the original guild wars and was the most fun we had in pvp in that game.

Going even further than the above, putting 10 5 man teams in a large enough arena and having them duke it out would be amazing. Defending arbitrary capture points and killing npcs is NOT what I call fun in pvp, sorry.

Except a match like this would be over incredibly fast with the lack of any sustained healing classes. Games could literally be over in a matter of seconds especially in a 10 man zerg setting.

Unless they nerf damage or buff support abilities across the board these games would get old really fast.

The only complaint I have about this skill is the long cooldown.

The Hammer is excellent for controlling points in sPvP, and the low cooldown blast finisher makes it an exceptional support weapon. Giving it a gap closer doesn’t make much sense.

Esorono.1039:

The heal from ToC heals far more than any of the three heals from guardians, so I feel I can safely call it a heal as well. Also you have to time it so that you aren’t already dead by the time you cast it. As for the knockdown problem, guardians can apply stability before ToC, and ToC comes with a free passive protection. If timed correctly, ToC can restart your entire fight which is a lot more powerful than a 3 second block and restoring virtues.

ToC actually used to give stability throughout the entire duration, but has been nerfed and no longer does this. Even so it’s the most powerful elite skill no matter how you are set up.

I think that Renewed focus would actually be worth using if you had the ability to move and use abilities during it’s duration. Since other classes have non-elite skills that grant invulnerability that still allow them to perform actions on shorter cool-downs and longer durations the skill really needs to be looked at.