Guild Wars 2

Valik Shin.9027:

Nope. The highest 1 only applies so quickness at 50%

Does that mean that the Arms and Berserker traits don’t stack either?

Hi there! I know I’m a little late to the party wondering about this part of the Berserker elite spec, but I was wondering how quickness and the flat attack speed bonuses in the Berserker and Arms specializations combine. Do they add together (i.e. 20% from Arms + 15% from Berserk +50% from quickness= +85% attack speed) or does quickness overwrite the buffs from your traits? Is there an Attack speed cap? The wiki seems to be lacking in these areas. Thanks for your help!

1000+ hours on my warrior and I never knew that… sigh.

Hi folks! I have these golden orbs floating up off my body constantly, and I can’t figure out what they’re from. I’ve stripped all gear off of my character including accessories and backpieces (even gathering tools) and the effect is there regardless of what food I have on. Any ideas where this comes from? Its super hard to take a screenshot of but I attached one anyway.

I was just wondering if there’s a way to set my login screen and music to what it was before Heart of Thorns. This theme is pretty cool if you sit and listen to it, but I like how instantly epic the old one was. Just a a request! Thanks

I tried to start playing SAB today with a friend, and the game client crashed. Now whenever I try to load any character I get stuck in an endless loading screen. Additionally, I can only successfully log in about 1 every 3 attempts, otherwise the login client itself crashes. HALP

Yeah I dropped arms and it seems to work very well. Just testing in VB, it seems to work best either on bosses or regular or veteran mobs (I singlehandedly broke the Wivern Matriarch’s break bar and then was getting 17k crits on Hammer 2).

@emkelly, would you mind clarifying what you mean by icebreaker and breakfast? I’m guessing auto correct played some foul tricks on you

I think hammer needs some work especially: maybe not damage-wise, but with the aftercast of all of the abilities and the auto attack. With so many interupts, hammer should really be a reactionary weapon: responding to what you see your opponent doing. Which is difficult when you try to interupt an auto attack chain to use a skill and you’re just stuck standing there because the game can’t understand what you’re doing, and the burst skill sometimes takes forever to activate and sometimes leaves you again standing there mashing F1 waiting for the command to go through.

And the Berserk burst skill… I don’t think I’ve ever had a skill more inconsistent, difficult to hit, and underwhelming at the same time.

Also- for the purposes of Merciless Hammer, does the knockdown on skill 5 happen before or after the damage?

Hi all,
I’m trying to make a zerker hammer build for pve, the idea being that I’ll survive much longer if everything is cc’d (also taking advantage of depleting a break bar causing a long stun). I’m having trouble narrowing it down to just 3 trait lines though. So far I’m choosing between Stength, arms, dicipline and Berserker. They all seem to offer a lot:

Strength: burst mastery and weakness and bleed on cc

Arms: adrenaline generation, +50% crit v stunned and +5%dmg against bleeding foes

Dicipline: +20%hammer damage against ccd foes and fast hands

Zerker: Sundering leap and Head Butt. Two ways to fill the adrenaline bar completely, and head butt is just amazing. Not to mention quickness and fury in zerk mode.

My weapons would be Hammer/axe-shield. Which traitline should I drop?

Go to gw2skills.net and make the same build on 2 different tabs one with sinister and one with viper. It does the damage calculations for you. I did this myself and it looks like vipers is probably the way to go, unless you are crossing over the 100% durration threshold somehow

Why don’t you just finish incinerator, sell it, and buy quip and pocket the extra gold?

Also- if you need more convincing just go to gw2skills.net and open 2 tabs, and make the exact same build side by side but one set with vipers and one with sinister. It does all the calculations for you and the damage difference is quite substantial. Ill link my two just so you can see (I’m keeping the ascended sinister trinkets because I dont want to put the effort into ascended vipers, if that exists).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW7YnMbCN3gtbCmbC0bilfBL+I+EviUZhvwwCKpFA+AA-TByBQBST53yOIAA4CAMPdDDU9Hm9EAegSQDu/goAgJ-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW7YnMbCN3gtbCmbC0bilfBL+IGFviUZhvwwCKpFA+AA-TxxBQBGc/hHoEUaK/W2BB0NAgLAwzU/hZPBARBATA-e

Just go for a fire and Ice combo (on my warrior I use a corrupted axe and titan’s vengeance) and it looks pretty cool.

Tman.6349:

tboneking.2531:

My idea for corruptions: make them upkeep skills that sacrifice portions of your health while they are active (lets say 500 hp per second). Then have the trait reduce their cooldown, maybe up the damage we self inflict, but add a POSITIVE aspect to the trait where our condition damage increases by a percentage the lower our HP is. (example: +10% under 75% hp, 15 at 50 and 20 at 25). This might be a problem with party healing, but the funny thing is we can just use our greatest weakness as our strength: hide in DS to avoid your party healing! XD

I can somewhat agree with this and I LOVE the mildly coy last sentence. The condi aspect I have a problem with though. Skills like this (highly (somewhat really) aimed at active defense SHOULD NOT be relegated to a certain build type. The utility should be equally effective for a power/condi/hybrid spec. That’s WHY it’s called ‘utility’. How many other active defense skills in the game just flat out prefer ONE spec over ANY others. None, and that is why those skills are very useful on their respective professions. I still am adamantly convinced that the proj destroy should have gone to WoD. Power specs could benefit from the psuedo-invuln. Cele/condi specs are already taking Curses and that would have them make a bit of decision on their utility bar as well as giving a bit of an alternative to their Curses minor-major slot. Even MMs might consider it (with “Rise!”?) for increased sustain w/o popping Plague.

It would be similar to Smoke Screen. AND with Necro’s ZERO mobility and very little ACTIVE sustain it would be balanced (not to mention the much higher CD without going into an unorthodox trait line (which would buff the skill and make more valuable). That would actually be the ONE skill/change that could have given Necro a MUCH bigger influence on team fights.

*sorry for all the caps, but I can’t be more emphatic about how much better the proj destroy would have been on (the entirely neglected) Well of Darkness.

Edit: I know this thread is about changing CPC. Condensing the effects is a great first step. Adding stacks of Vuln could be good (CORROSIVE PC!). Adding a NEW effect could have been good (CORROSIVE PC!) ie. a ‘status effect’(can’t be cleared) debuff: Corrode your enemies weapon. They deal 10-20% (just spitballing numbers) less damage. 3 secs. per pulse. (Pulses with the poison effect).

Omg! Now we have TWO great utilities that are still thematic. And BOTH would be useful in a variety of specs (traitlines considered), but neither OP.

Thanks for replying! Here’s my thing though: adding my changes wouldn’t turn corruptions into more condi based skills. If anything, by removing the self weakness and adding a self dot effect you increase its viability got direct damage builds. Also: I DO actually use well of darkness in pvp. It saves me extremely frequently, especially as its ground targeted, you can put it on a ranged foe to give you some time to close the gap/ get your heal off. And it WRECKS melee fighters. In a way it serves a similar function to cpc but in melee range (I am aware that cpc also gives foes weakness which helps melee too I’m just saying)

My idea for corruptions: make them upkeep skills that sacrifice portions of your health while they are active (lets say 500 hp per second). Then have the trait reduce their cooldown, maybe up the damage we self inflict, but add a POSITIVE aspect to the trait where our condition damage increases by a percentage the lower our HP is. (example: +10% under 75% hp, 15 at 50 and 20 at 25). This might be a problem with party healing, but the funny thing is we can just use our greatest weakness as our strength: hide in DS to avoid your party healing! XD

What about a large radius well (size of T3 longbow burst) that pulses 5 stacks of might might and gives allies condition duration? Probably should also do some sort of debuffing effect on enemies, but I could go for an offensive support minded elite that gets a shorter cooldown because it doesnt have direct offensive properties (damage, condis, ect.). the only problem is that it would cover up fire fields, which we all know how people feel about that.

I’m not saying all events should be like this, but I think some more could be. I like having a world that actually fights back, rather than just being flattened by mindless zergs.

Serval.6458:

They could just make burning arrows the standard form of longbow autoattack, I’m pretty sure that both combustive shot and fan of fire lost burning damage when they changed it.

They could also just switch the banner trait in discipline with the longbow one.

To piggyback on this thread: does parasitic contagion work in DS as well?

Ill keep it short: I think that these conditions should still be applied to enemies that have a break bar or defiant or stability, even if their normal CC effects dont apply. The reason being is that currently in pve you cant feasibly take Terror or Deathly chill because the conditions are normally not applied at all. Just make it so we can use these conditions as damage increasers in PvE and not shackle these traits to a PvP environment only.

spoj.9672:

Im hoping that when the next wave of elite specs comes around they will just make the weapons available on the core professions. And scrap the idea of exclusive weapons so we can actually mix new weapons together. You can have an elite spec tied to a weapon (for example having traits which improve it). But it shouldnt be the weapon is only usable with the elite spec. Obviously they will keep it as it is for now because it will help them sell the game.

Pretty much my exact viewpoint. They’re tying all these pve class fixes for our profession into a weapon and traitline you can only access by buying the xpac. Doesn’t affect me, I love this game and I bought it, but it does seem a little much. And havin GS limited to reaper only doesn’t really make sense imo

I think that decision depends entirely upon how hard content will be (raids in particular). If it’s not so bad I’ll run Valk armor and ascended zerker trinkets. If it’s difficult I’ll run all cavalier, and substitute out spite for death magic, and still have 2300 base power and 100% crit chance in shroud, but also have 3900 armor

Well to put it bluntly you’re right (I personally think all classes should have access to their new weapons without traiting into the elite spec). But doubling up on good things is never a bad thing. My only complaint about GS is actually gravedigger. I just feel like there had to be a better answer to fix our mechanical problems than giving us a weapon where we spam 2 instead of 1. But perhaps in HoT and raids dps will not be the total king and utility based skills will have more importance.

Not to be that guy, but the Howler is awesome imo. It’s my favorite legendary, and the mist effect plays into the vampire theme so well

So help me god if so much as a single lamppost breaks in LA…

I personally am going to never use flesh golem again and will just have an army if jagged horrors forever.

Delete this post, I embarrassingly found it in a remote slot in my bank!

Hi! I just claimed my account bound molten dye for my 3rd anniversary and I did not unlock the dye across my account. I DID however receive the charred dye I unlocked on a different character. I just tried this 20 minutes ago. Is there anything you can do to help? thank you.

For the record, I did some testing in HotM and knights did roughly the same DOT as soldiers (in my incredibly unofficial timed tests against golems). So unless you need the precision for forceful greatsword and PS I would just go soldiers and pick up some hp while you’re at it

GS is only boring for me because right now in GW2 the only thing that matters is dps, which effectively reduces GS to spamming 2. If possitioning, hard and soft cc, debuffs, and combo fields that aren’t fire and water ever become important I think GS will be incredibly interesting to play.

Edit: I’m talking from exclusively a pve perspective

I think there are two major things standing in the way of underwater combat- traits and positioning. So few traits apply to underwater combat, and enough skills are unusable underwater, that the transition there is near impossible. If anything, there should be a separate trait and skill panel for water play that is automatically switched to upon submerging.

Positioning ruins underwater combat for me because it’s very hard to be spacialy aware. As it functions now it’s basically the same as land combat except you can move up and down. However it’s very difficult to see/ target enemies that attack you from below or above you. The cameras FoV just isn’t large enough for you to be in control of the situation around you

Hey guys! So Ive been without internet for a couple weeks (getting it back today hopefully) and Ive been doing some theory crafting while Im on college campus. I was trying to figure out how Reaper could potentially benefit our current condi state (which is pretty kitten poor), and I noticed that RS 4 applies 12 stacks of poison? So has anyone looked into a condi build that does poison bursts and sustains damage in between these bursts with Dhuumfire? I would have tried it out myself, but like I said, no internet= no BWE. This is the build I made for it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW7Yjc0QzNWdD22A/NWMGs4eYQMJS1EiC1qofWAYAA-TByBABSr8bZdDA8AAY+KA8gSQu2f4Z1fw4gAIKAYC-e

Since its sinister, the direct damage should actually be pretty good as well. I was even considering ditching scepter/dagger for GS just for that sweet 12 stacks of vuln. Anyone try something like this?

Edit: forgot to mention this is PvE, although seeing as its Sinister gear that should be self explanatory

The short answer to your question is yes: you have summarized the situation correctly. However there are other ways of looking at it.

You paid for the deluxe version. They are not including deluxe version, only the base game. So really it’s only 50 dollars of original content.

The price of gw2 has been falling for years. Last December it was around 10 bucks. At that time did you feel like you were being cheated out of 70 bucks? And given the 10 dollar current price tag for gw2, a free character slot IS actually fair compensation.

You should really be glad they’re giving the base game away free with the expansion. This removes hoops new players have to jump through and should in theory keep the game alive and vibrant over the years to come.

Oh and fyi, they have also stated that for future xpacs they plan on giving all PAST xpacs AND the core game to new players free of charge along with the NEW xpac. So you can really either jump on the bandwagon now, or wait 5 years and get a hundred dollars in savings with a bunch of xpacs but miss out on 5 years of play.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

depends on the class. I think currently ele and thief make the best use of assassin gear, and possibly one or two other specs for certain classes. Warrior, which it looks like you are using has zerker being slightly better in every current spec I believe.

Some classes never use high crit gear like necro since they have traits that up their crit chance. Some necro builds can drop precision entirely, and take a defensive stat and still do just as much damage as a zerker build.

I am curious as to why certain classes make better use of assassins than others. Is it because of on-crit traits (especially ones that cause vulnerability with no icd)? Because I have also heard that assassins is quite good on engineer (which with grenades and vuln on crit can be very effective). However because Warrior mainly has damage modifiers and not on-crit traits, could that also be why zerker is superior?

Edit: I suppose it is also worth mentioning that the Intelligence sigil can give you the crits where it counts- on those massive Primal Bursts. So the increased crit chance isnt as necessary?

Firstly, thank you Molch that makes sense, I was ALMOST there on my own.

Secondly, whenever I do a google search of “GW2 Hovis” I get company that sells tires. Seriously people help me out here.

Molch.2078:

tboneking.2531:

Sorry, I excluded that information on purpose because if the traits, utilities, weapons, runes, and sigils are present in both variants, then the damage they contribute should remain constant should it not?

No. If you have for example +100000000 power (somehow), than precision is better, because those extra 200 power are almost not noticable. If you have only 100 Power (again, somehow), then 200 power will triple your damage.

Good point. Here you go then
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJMQNAneUnckC1kilkC2eAElilfATJN09KDGLgAQD495Wd/uA-TBSBwAXOCAmVCeV53N1f6cCAmt/AK9BAeEAAA-e
Zerker numbers are 2463 power, 48.5% crit and 221.33% crit damage (without banner)
Assassins numbers are 2274 power, 57.5% crit chance and 221.33% crit damage

I noticed a negligible increase in crit damage from Zerker to Assassins when coupled with Blood Reaction (precision to ferocity conversion trait)

^numbers taken before I added runes of the Eagle

Pretty straight forward question. In a solo pve or pug group setting, where critical hit chance will not reach 100%, is it better to have zerker or assassins gear? By gear I am referring to only armor and weapons, both sets would use ascended zerker accessories because there is no ascended assassins variant. What I’ve come up with so far:

Berserker gear has roughly 200 more power than Assassins.
Assassins gear has a roughly 10% higher crit chance than Berserker.

So which set has the higher theoretical dps? Its been too long since my high school math classes for my to figure this out

This is purely in terms of SPvP: I just dont see why staff is useful. Perhaps on condition builds it makes a nice swap weapon, but I just dont see it being useful for power builds. Yet I see MANY people saying how they can’t give up staff. I personally run Axe/Wh Dagger/Focus (a reverse pairing from what is typical I know but it works for me). It feels like this weird hybrid/support weapon that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Just an explanation of why I should take staff is all I need. I just dont see it!

Oh c’mon the necro / ranger hole is nice and cozy join us and we can complain together (Im a necro main)!

I think it’s important to remember that RS can also spike damage with its 4 and 5 skills, the dagger auto attack is all its got for damage. So even if the 1 is slightly subpar to the dagger auto I think it will all even out. And seeing as you’re using RS you’ll probably be using dagger anyway for LF generation, not to mention that while you’re in it you can face tank a little more.

How about instead of this rather complicated change, they add a “condition damage increases the lower your hp” part to the corruption trait. Say +10% while under 50% hp? We could even hide from team heals by going into DS. Totally fits with the corruption theme imo

I’m just shocked at the attitude some of you seem to have. Ele currently has 1st or 2nd highest dps in the game for pve, and a rediculously good bruser build for pvp, as well as other fairly competent ones. Why would you need a specialization that buffs the class further and does these rediculously amazing and op things? What is this “wound” a net is putting salt on? They gave you a spec that focuses on aoe group support in the face of what they call “challenging content”. I just don’t see what the problem is. Tempest is just a name, be glad you didn’t get one as bad as “Dragon Hunter”.

Keep it as a direct damage weapon:

1. Add 3rd attack chain that deals higher damage and has a secondary effect (chill/cripple).
2.Shorten cast time OR increase damage.
3. Add blast finisher.

Make it a HYBRID damage weapon, like a ranged warrior sword:

1. Add 3rd auto attack chain that inflicts torment
2. Leave as is
3. Swap 1 condition with 1 boon for each target hit.
Trait: change trait to have a 33% chance of inflicting either torment, poison, or bleeding for 5 sec on hit with no icd.

I’ll be interested to see if they give us a smoke and/or light field. A growing fire field that applies burning would be cool but kind of eclipsed by lb.

It should really give a stack of stab with each pulse. That would make it an actual good skill…

TheLastNobody.8319:

Rym.1469:

1. It’s not a life siphon.

2. Ask Arena Net. Nobody here can give you a solid reason why it should not work in Shroud.

Arena Net has long history of balancing some professions, including Necromancers aroud BPS – “Best Possible Scenario”. In best possible scenario this trait can outheal pretty much any damage on it’s own. In any other scenario, it’s crap, rarely healing you for more than regular Regeneration when you need it.

Pretty much this and what sagat said. Honestly since we don’t have access to projectile destruction, blocks etc. etc. I dorm see why giving us insane sustain is such a problem. I really feel this trait would better benefit blood magic, attached to the second minor in that line. The only thing is I’m not sure what we’d put in to replace it in curses.

It could be replaced by ANYTHING that would help a direct damage build even remotely.

I am moving to an apartment in rural NY where there is no cable access. What kind of satellite package should I be getting? I just have no concept of the data usage of gw2. I play roughly 3 hours a day, mixed between pvp and pve. Everything above 20gb seems to get quite expensive. Also- what kind of upload/download speed should I get so my ping doesn’t go over 500 (if that’s possible)? Thanks!

Not here to offer an opinion, just wondering if there’s somewhere I can watch the replays of the tournament (I’m a learn by example learner)

I’ll try to keep it brief, I have some suggestions for buffs for the class that I haven’t seen on here so I’ll post them for discussion. Some of them are for reaper some are for the base class.

Secondary forms of self healing should work in death shroud. Basically leeching bolts from dark fields (for reaper shroud) and life steal from sigils and runes. Definitely no heal skill in DS, but not having sigils and runes work in DS basically rules them out as a viable option.

Pulse Stability on DS 4. I don’t think Reaper should be the only one who has easy access to stability, and this skill gets interrupted 9 times out of 10 because it takes so long. If this was implemented…

Replace Foot in the Grave with the old Life Blast. With access to stability in both RS and DS this trait would be underwhelming. Plus Soul Reaping would have a viable GM trait for direct damage, condition, and support builds, all of which modify the auto attack. Life blast would also have to be changed to heal in an area around the target. Would give us an AWESOME support option not tied to Blood Magic.

Make chilling nova a Blast Finisher. I’m unsure what the icd would have to be to not be op, but it’s a good way to give us blast finishers on a variety of skills that could be used in interesting ways. Would also give more access to a frost aura through Executioners Scythe, which I know some people have wanted. The plus is that it’s a trait in content that’s being worked on anyway so effort wouldn’t have to be diverted from the current development process.

That’s all I got I think. Thoughts?