Guild Wars 2

No, I disagree that we should look at things like that.

I wish I had some solid numbers to back this up, maybe ANet could provide them sometime, but consider the following hypothetical:
GW2 has 2,000,000 subscribers (http://www.shacknews.com/article/75736/guild-wars-2-sales-pass-2-million-copies)
one report said that they had 11000 requests for account hacking (which is probably not how many were actually hacked, a bunch were probably crackpots/morons) in the first month (http://www.geek.com/articles/games/more-than-11000-guild-wars-2-accounts-hacked-20120910/)

Now, let’s say that each account hack consumes 2 man hours of work. that’d be about 22000 hours of work per month dealing with morons who can’t keep their accounts safe.

I would estimate that this password nonsense has probably taken between 5 and 20 minutes per user, what with the reading, logging on, finding a password they’ll actually accept and so on. Let’s call it 10 minutes per person. That’s 333,333 man hours being consumed by users who are forced to change their passwords BECAUSE OF A MISTAKE OTHER USERS MADE.

Based on these (admittedly hypothetical) numbers, the work that ANet is putting on the player base is about 15 times what they would shoulder in a single month. Nevermind the fact that this won’t really change much, because many players (myself included) will just take whatever password works here and apply it to as many other accounts as possible.

A very small time cost aggregated to a very large player base is a very large waste of time. If they want to offset the cost of account recovery then CHARGE THE PEOPLE WHO LET THEMSELVES GET HACKED. Don’t push the cost onto those of us that can navigate the web responsibly.

I don’t care that other people have gotten hacked.

I do care about the fact that I currently have so many passwords to keep track of that I’ve had to write them all down on a post-it note and keep it by my computer. Every site has their own picky requirements about what a password can and can’t be. Some have to be longer than 8, some less than 12, some HAVE to have numbers some CAN’T have special characters, the list goes on and on.

I use a unified password over as many accounts as possible because that lets me change my password regularly and KEEP MY ACCOUNT SECURE.

When I have to have a DIFFERENT PASSWORD for EVERY SINGLE THING I DO then I can’t change them regularly because there’s no possible way I can remember them all.

ArenaNet, this change is stupid and is only serving to tick me off and make my account LESS secure.

And if anyone has a better suggestion on how to keep track of passwords for…let me count them here…27 different systems without writing any of them down or using a password on more than one system, I’m all ears.

SARobb.8365:

Another thing I noticed (sorry I know this is turning into a book) you said swapping is mapped to ‘Q’. I say ouch, that’s a strafe key… the default ‘`’ key would be better for the purpose of getting it out of they way… wouldn’t it?

I believe I moved strafe to A and D because I can’t recall the last time I wanted my character to turn around with a keyboard key press.

I did try having weapon swap on the grave key, and it was a disaster. Would swap while trying to hit the 1 to start an autoattack (I’ve got a wierd shaped keyboard for my wrists and have to move my entire hand to be able to reach the grave key)

The suggestion to use a staff condition Mesmer build isn’t bad; that’s what I’m running at the moment and it’s worked pretty well. I swap to Torch when I want to Blast my Chaos Storm. I just wish I didn’t have to go through an awkward mechanic like weapon swapping to get those other skills. Would much rather have “this button casts the Prestige. If I’m not equipped with a torch then this button does nothing”

I’ve deleted this text like three times cause it just turns into me whining instead of trying to find a constructive solution to my issue. It sounds like the consensus is “if you don’t like weapon swapping your best option is to learn to like it; you’ll be kittened without it”

Thanks for taking time to respond everyone, the other perspectives have confirmed a conclusion I didn’t want to face.

I would generally advise favoring toughness over vitality. Toughness improves your illusions, vitality does not. We can actually hit some very impressive mitigation numbers. We can keep near constant protection up with the trait that gives protection when you get regen and the trait that makes your phantasms cast regen on the party. if you can keep your 3 illusions up that’s another 9% mitigation on top of that. Throw Illusionary Defender into the mix to take half your damage for you, and you can stand up to some tough punches. With the right combo of skills and traits we can have Distortion up continuously for 12 seconds (blurred frenzy, Distortion (with the Illusionary Persona trait), generate three illusions while Distortion is up and use Signet of Illusions, Distortion again, then another blurred frenzy).

We can also have near-constant retaliation. Confusing Cry gives us 5 sec of retaliation for every illusion we shatter with Cry of Frustration, so that’s 15 sec (20 if you have illusionary Persona? Need verification), and we can get Cry of Frustration down to 21 sec cooldown.

But try to keep in mind that at the end of the day you’re wielding your sword in a pretty pretty dress. You won’t get the raw damage reduction of a plate wearer. We’ve got lots of tricks to keep protection up, and the 9% reduction from Illusionary Defense certainly helps, but you’re not going to get the same raw reduction you can get through plate. Careful attention to trait distribution, skill choice and skill use will be critical. We lack a reliable way to apply weakness or blind to our enemies (yes, you can take Dazzling Glamours, but it only affects the enemies in the glamour on the inital cast, not whenever they enter the zone), and while we can generate aegis through Chaos Storm (and you probably should swap between sword and staff during fights for the Storm’s Aegis and chaos armors) we don’t have regular and reliable access to it the way a Guardian does.

All of which is my way of saying “You’re not going to be a tanky tank. You’ll need to stay mobile, kite the enemy when possible, and you’ll rely heavily on boons.”

Be wary of Signet of Illusions. It works by applying a buff to your illusions that increases their health after they’ve been summoned, but it appears to function by ticking once every second or so. That means if you make an illusion right after one of the hidden ticks they’ll be sitting at normal health until the next tick, and that partial second is often when my phantasms die.

Some notes on illusions that not everyone takes the time to look up:
illusions benefit from condition damage, power, precision, crit damage, healing and armor (since armor is a combination of your defense and your toughness, they do benefit from toughness as well). They do not benefit from boon or condition duration and do not benefit from vitality.

The WoC that a staff clone casts is not the WoC that the player casts. It does not benefit from Illusionary Elasticity…which has made me question how essential it really is. If I’m a condition heavy build then my clones and I are dealing about the same amount of damage, about 1/4 each (a bit more to me cause my base hit actually deals some damage and theirs doesnt). If I take IE then I’ll be hitting for one more condition every attack, which is only about 25% damage increase. That’s not to say that 25% isn’t significant, but not nearly as critical as it would be if the clones got an extra bounce too.

The confusion applied by illusionary Mage (torch offhand) does NOT benefit from increased confusion duration.

Here’s a fun one that I haven’t been able to verify yet: If you’ve taken Sharper Images (which condition specs really should) using a staff synergizes wonderfully with Phantasmal Fury on the rapid attacking phantasms. The staff will give you a high up-time for fury on yourself; the crit chance bonus from fury will translate to all your illusions, and Phantasms will have their own fury up at the same time from Phantasmal Fury, effectively giving them +40% crit rate.

Phantasms will not be overwritten by clones unless you have 3 phantasms already active. In that case the next clone you create will overwrite the oldest phantasm you have up. This means for boss fights (when you generally want to maximize iWarlocks because other players have already achieved max burning uptime and you’ve already hit the bleed cap) you need to be careful about dodging. If your dodge generates a clone then it’ll overwrite one of your warlocks each time.

Your illusions are not affected by your weapon’s base damage.

Your illusions no longer count against your max illusions from the moment you activate a shatter. Even when the bubbles are still filled in and they’re still running towards the enemy, from the moment you click a shatter you have 0 illusions. You can replace them immediately while they’re running to shatter.

The Trident clone applies confusion when it attacks. Not noted in the description.

I try to use one-handed swords with an offhand focus on my mesmer and guardian (cause I like the idea of only using a single one-hander. I get foci that are small and hard to see so I don’t have to look at them) I also loathe this game’s constant weapon swapping mechanic. It’s clunky and distracting.

Mesmer sword is extremely strong, particularly when you get the hang of using your illusions effectively (the MH sword clone generator is also a Leap finisher that closes the gap with your target AND immobilizes the target at the same time), and all the offhand choices are good ones for the Mesmer (focus for utility, mobility, and fixed AoE damage, sword for better defense and another Leap finisher, pistol for a disabler and massive Projectile finisher, or torch for an single move that’s a blast finisher, escape mechanism, and at-will AOE Burn) and synergize well with a MH sword. However, the hard lesson I learned about Mesmers is that you absolutely can’t choose not to play the illusion minigame, and as a result you’ll be forced to weapon swap constantly during fights to maximize how quickly you can get phantasms on the field.

For guardians sword is also a solid choice…but it’s probably their second most defensive weapon choice (just behind mace), and their offhand weapons are all pretty defensive too. That’s great for survivability and utility, but it will mean that you kill things a bit slower. That said it’s got a fair bit of single-target damage from the #3 ability and even gives you a little leeway on range as well. Personally I like mixing it with a focus for another medium-range attack and #5 is either extra damage agaisnt a single target or extra defense against groups; both of which are nice. The MH sword gets a LOT better if you go deep enough in radiance to get the trait that refreshes your Virtue of Justice every time you kill something. You can start every fight by giving the enemy a 5 sec burn, which really helps improve kill rate.

Medusa.5692:

Okay, I posted this in another forum .. then I found this help forum, so I’m reposting:

I have a question about armor stats and I’m going to try to explain it the best way I can. I’ve only been playing GW2 for a couple weeks (love it), so go easy on me if this is a noob question..
Sometimes I will see armor with the stats in green.
Sometimes I will see the stats in white.
And sometimes I will see the stat number in green with the attribute in white.
Could someone explain why this is?? Much appreciation.

Someone replied with:
“The UI automatically compares the stats of an item to the one you are currently wearing. White means the stats are equal, green means the stats are higher than the ones on you current item and red means they are lower.”

Okay, so I understand what they are saying, but I don’t think it answered my question.
I want to know why sometimes you will see stats AND attributes in green on armor/weapon then sometimes see green stats with a white attribute next to it. Does an attribute written in white with a green stat mean the attribute is new to you?

A screenshot might help, but I think the other person answered your question. When you hover over a new piece of armor each stat on the armor is compared to the stats you currently have. Personally I’m red-green colorblind so this is yet another wonderful example of “I know! Let’s kitten over 8% of male players by putting in ANOTHER color coded mechanic!” but the color of the stat indicates how it compares to the stats on the comparable armor piece you’re wearing.

If your current chest piece has 200 Power, 200 Vitality and 400 armor and hover over a new chest piece with 210 power, 200 Vitality and 390 armor it should show the power on the new armor in green (cause it’s better than what you have equipped), the vitality in white (because it’s the same as what you have equipped) and the armor in red (because it’s worse than what you’re wearing).

tmlo.1586:

It is just kinda truth that swapping is required to maxed out you effectiveness. Idea is to have two different ways to fight and melee/ranged combination is kinda usual. Also elementalist requires to swap between elements to survive.

Try learn it. It doesnt take much effort and u will se that u will love it. I.E you start to from range with thief. Damage enemy and soon dive in with melee weapons and rip enemy as much as u can. If u lose too much health, swap back to ranged and kite enemy.

This is only example how swappinh offers different ways to fight in game. It is required if u want to be good and negative some “oh-kitten” situations

I’ve tried since release to incorporate it into my normal fights and my brain just can’t handle it. I’m perfectly fine with using some skills in one situation and other skills in a different situation, but constantly swapping back and forth during long fights drives me nuts. I really wish they’d set it so you couldn’t swap weapons at all during combat, or at least put all your skills on cooldown so you can’t avoid cooldowns just by swapping. Or have the cooldowns be the default when you swap weapons, but every class has a trait in there somewhere that mitigates the penalties for swapping, so the people who like it can incorporate it into their play if they want. I think it’s that I feel forced to use this mechanic on EVERY character type that’s bothering me. Part of what I like about this game is how all the classes have their own distinct playstyle.

Part of it is practical: I have to keep the weapon swapping button somewhere that I can reach as easily as any skill, which makes it that much more likely I’ll hit it by accident. At the moment it’s using up my Q key..which ticks me off cause if I didn’t have to try to accommodate weapon swapping I could have another ability in easy reach. And whenever I use it I have to keep track of what weapon I’ve currently got. I can’t just hit Q and swap to weapon set 1 and Shift+Q to shift to weapon set 2; it’s ALWAYS a “change what you currently have to something else” button. Not to mention there’s no way to arrange the skills one way for one weapon and another way for another weapon. My personal pet peeve is guardian greatsword vs sword. They both have a gap closer move that blinds the target at the destination…but they’re bound to different keys. I can’t just hit 3 and know that I’ll perform a gap closer move; I have to assess what weapon I currently have out and then figure out which key I need to press in that weapon. I wouldn’t mind the swapping nearly so much if I could rearrange the skills for each weapon so I could keep similar functionality in the same spot between weapon sets.

Part of it is thematic: I like the idea of being a one-handed swordsman (I like foci that are really small and hard to see so I can pretend they don’t exist) and it really screws up my connection to my character to have to put away my sword and pull out a giant club that throws out little balls of magic EVERY fight just to maximize my cooldown effectiveness. I mean how many times did Gimli, in the middle of fighting an orc, put his axe away, pull out a rifle, take a few shots, and then put the rifle away and pull his axe back out? How often did Jaime Lanninster start out a duel by waving a club at his enemies while holding a cowbell only to actually pull out his sword a few seconds later?

::sigh:: I don’t think I can avoid it as a mesmer without kittening myself. It’s obvious that they designed the phantasms around the idea that you can get out two of them in a couple seconds by abusing weapon swapping, and sticking with a single weapon is just shooting myself in the foot.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Emotes

For example: most mesmer builds that focus on illusion damage are built around frequent weapon swapping to get around ability cooldowns. usually something like “clone and phantasm on weapon 1, swap, phantasm on weapon 2” to try to get the high-damage phantasms out ASAP. Or “use */pistol to make a duelist, then swap to staff to cast chaos storm right before the phantasm’s next attack”

Background first; question on bottom

Weapon swapping drives me nuts. I can see how the game has been built to incorporate weapon swapping on a regular basis, but I don’t like it. I hate having my keys remapped in the middle of a fight and I constantly miscast skills as a result. I’ve avoided an Elementalist because I figure they’ve got the same annoyances x4.

I like engineer because constant swapping isn’t manditory. If you avoid a weapon kit your other skills are still stong, and the game doesn’t force you to swap your weapons.

My mains are a Guardian and Mesmer. I would like to choose a weapon(s) that I can stick with on that character and not feel like I’m kittening myself by not constantly swapping weapons in the middle of a fight. I’m happy to swap weapons in between fights or when fundamentally different playstyles are required. (So I don’t mind using one weapon for one fight and then use a different weapon for another fight. It’s the swapping weapons in the middle of a combat rotation that messes me up).

So with all that in mind, what are good weapon sets for a Mesmer or Guardian (or maybe Necro) that can maximize effectiveness without having to swap weapons constantly?

Druitt.7629:

I don’t want to derail the conversation, but several posters have referred to the Staff’s piercing ability. I thought pierce could only hit a second target (which I use all the time), but can it hit a third and a fourth if all are lined up? I thought I read early-on about a two-target limit so haven’t really gone to the trouble to line up more. (Usually, by the time I get two lined up, the third is out of range.) Does it pierce as many targets as you can line up in range?

According to the Wiki it can hit up to three targets:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Grasp

Zedekiel.3021:

I would like to clarify some things first. While I agree for the most part that your calculations are close to correct, your assumptions and information for some are still wrong. We should always assume that our hits hit all the time as well, simply because that would be far too much work discussing the “chances” of hitting someone for full duration of Axe2 or the easily dodgeable Staff1 at long range.

Warhorn
Warhorn5, Locust Swarm, procs life force per hit. Traited, this is 13%LF every 25.5s. Since it is per hit, if you are surrounded by 5 enemies, you can get up to 65%LF in 25s. This comes out to be under 3%LF/s, so is still beat by staff in its best case scenario.
Edit – Im sorry, you will get 65%LF/13s, which does, come out higher than Staff1, but the recast time you will have to wait another 12s of no LF gain to recast.
Focus
Focus4 procs 3% LF per hit, and you the player are also included as a hit. So every cast of Focus4 can proc up to 15%LF every 14s if traited (which does work). This comes well under Staff1, and thus Staff1 still wins.

Disclosure
The only thing that beats Staff1 in terms of pure LF gain (not counting Utils) is Dagger1, and even then, is outshined by Staff1 if a second enemy comes into your Staff1s LoS, since Staff1 will proc per hit as well. Let’s not even discuss the LF generating train wreck that is the Scepter.

Which is utter bullkitten.

Thank you for the corrections. I disagree that we should always assume that all the hits hit. If there were a skill that gave you 20% life force for every target hit, but it was a targeted AOE that took 10 seconds to cast and made a big glowy beacon for the entire 10 seconds it is not at all unreasonable to conclude that you’re going to miss with that ability fairly often. The way that the staff projectile is fired is certainly not optimal for the staff. It is fairly easy to dodge if you’re watching for it. But by and large mobs don’t dodge particularly often, and most players are unlikely to use a dodge solely to avoid a shot from the staff; they don’t hit particularly hard. Even if they do there’ll be another shot comign their way every 3/4 of a second, so they’ll run out of dodge pretty fast.

If we’re considering a dagger/focus combo then it’s reasonable to assume that all four bounces will land on someone; to use the dagger you’ll have to be in melee range anyhow. Though if you have one enemy at range it’s very possible that throwing a scythe at it will only hit once. I wasn’t aware that you got the life force when it hits an allied target. That being the case I agree that it’s reasonable to assume 5 total hits with that skill every 15 seconds. I’ll defer to you if you have proof that the talent affects the actual recharge time of the skill, but according to the bug list on the forums and the official wiki, it doesn’t. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper%27s_Touch

That would put the dagger/focus combo at around 4.5% lifeforce per second against 1 or more mobs. Staff would only be at 3% (maybe a little more with the staff cooldown trait), so would fall behind. If you ahd the staff trait for marks generating 3% life force I don’t think it would really increase that rate of generation against a single target; you can throw down the marks about as quickly as you can throw down staff#1 attacks. But every additional enemy that can be hit will add another 3%/second to the staff. My experience in WvW and PvE has shown that it’s very common to get more than one enemy in a fight at a time.

Also consider that we generate life force per kill. The staff is a good way to tag enemies to get kill credit. You can hit things close up or far away fairly easily. By contrast a dagger would make it a lot more difficult to successfully tag ranged targets (not impossible, but certainly more difficult) which means that the staff would generally lead to higher life force generation through kills.

From a game play perspective though I still generally prefer the staff. The staff basic attack is functionally very similar to the staff #1 attack: both ranged projectiles of similar speed. I personally dislike fundamentally switching combat styles in the middle of a fight; my brain just doesn’t adapt quick enough. So having staff with DS means a less jarring play experience for me. That said, I can see how other players might prefer the flexibility offered by having quick access to two different playstyles.

Overall it sounds like if your goal is maximixing DS effectiveness (including optimal LF generation) it would be best to stick with a Staff & Dagger/Focus as your weapon sets.

alcopaul.2156:

Slaughterfreak.2678:

I’ve done some testing and these are my results
Guardian5: 1230 healing power
with trait: tooltip says 317, actually heals self for 207 and party members for 166
without trait: tooltip says 158, actually heals self and party members for 166

WAT?

My healing power is 1417 and my virtue of resolve tooltip healing is only 169.

How do you “trait” virtues?

Our bottom trait line is for improving Virtues. It’s called “Virtues”. The master-level trait Absolute Resolution directly boosts the passive heal to the Guardian from Virtue of Resolve.

Also….I think duration increases from traits and items are totalled up separately, and applied multiplicatively. I can’t find a reference to it on the wiki, but vaguely recall testing it and seeing that’s the way it worked.

ie: if you have 10%, 20%, 20% from items, and traits that give you 30%, 20% the math for a 2 second duration would go:
2 * (1 + 0.1 +0.2 + 0.2) * (1 + 0.3 + 0.2)
2 * (1.5) * (1.5) = 4.5

(i think)

Sairenkao.6485:

In PvE, your server probably has some points from WvW that increased healing effectiveness.

Power of the Mists

This sounds very likely to me. However, it makes me wonder if Power of the Mists is not working during PvP. Can you clarify what sort of PvP you were referring to? If it didn’t increase the healing in the Mists that sounds like it might be a bug.

I think this idea might need some balancing rework. Not sure if the worm would need to be on an icd, or if it should degenerate or whatever, but that’s something the number crunchers can decide.

But overall I think it’s a very nice idea. The idea of a worm exploding out of a freshly killed corpse pleases my sense of necromancer aesthetics, and being inherently immobile could limit a lot of balance issues around getting free minions for kills.

Well done

Merkenary.9860:

Warhorn generates life force on the number 5 ability 1% per hit short range aoe. Focus also generates life force using the number 4 ability.

Regardless staff is very good at generating life force and it seems to be per hit not projectile so you can generate a lot when fighting multiple enemies that are grouped together.

Thank you for the correction; I don’t like the focus or warhorn personally, so I don’t use them. Was going by the short skill descriptions. Lets factor that into the math…

A warhorn, if you’re in range of an enemy for the full 10sec, can give you 10% life force over 10 seconds once every thirty seconds. The mastery trait gives 15% cooldown reduction, and an unspecified amount of duration increase (let’s assume it’s also 15%). So that would be 11.5(we’ll round up to 12)% life force every 25.5 seconds. That averages out to…around 0.47%/second (doing the math in my head).

A focus gives 3% and has a cooldown of 18 seconds. The mastery trait should reduce that cooldown by 20%…but according to the site and the forums that cooldown reduction isn’t happening. For the moment, lets assume it does actually work; that would give a cooldown of 14.4 seconds. It doesn’t specify whether it’s 3% per hit, or 3% for the single cast. Let’s make the same assumption here that we did with the staff: it’s only 3% per cast, not per target hit. That’d be about 1% every 4.8 seconds…or about .2%/second. To be generous let’s assume that this one actually gives the life force per bounce, and we’ll assume an average of 2 hits per casting (there’s a very high chance that there’ll be only one target or one target and the caster in range). That would double the LF/sec to 0.4%/sec.

Going back to our original totals:
Staff is 3%/sec (assuming no traits for cooldown reduction, no traits to make marks generate life force, and assuming that you only get 3% per cast, not per target)
Axe is 1.2%/sec (assuming that the current version of axe#2 which generates twice the life force listed in the tooltip is working as intended)
Warhorn could grant 0.47%/sec (assuming that you can stay close enough to your target for the full duration every time)
Focus would give 0.4%/sec (assuming that the trait for cooldown works, which it currently doesn’t, and assuming that it’s per bounce and an average number of hits/casting of 2. If we assume the max potential it could go up to .8%/sec)

That’d put the staff at 3%/sec while the next best combination is (at best) only 2%. If we reverse some of the assumptions we made against the staff it’s LF/sec could easily double.

Staff is still hands-down the winner.

Druitt.7629:

technosatyr.3784:

Druitt: both. The base damage from a staff will generally be higher than other weapon loadouts, which will give your DS damage a slight boost. In addition the staff is a good weapon for quickly generating life force to get you into DS faster. It’s an added bonus that the staff itself is a very solid weapon choice for a build that’s trying to maximize the effectiveness of DS.

OK. I’ve heard that the axe is the fastest choice for building Life Force, though I really dislike the axe. (I run staff and scepter/dagger myself.)

Well, let’s crunch some numbers….
There’s no offhand weapons that generate life force…
The description of axe#2 says that it generates 4% life force over 8 hits with an 8 sec cooldown, but last time I tested it it was actually coming out to 8% life force over 8 hits with an 8 sec cooldown. So we’ll be generous to the axe and say that it can generate 1% life force per second. If you have the reduced axe cooldown trait you can get that to 1.2% per second

The staff’s #1 ability generates 3% life force per hit. I don’t know off hand if that’s 3% per enemy hit, or just 3% for the attack. We’ll continue to be generous to the axe and assume that it’s 3% per attack. Attacks can happen every 3/4 of a second, which we’ll round up to 1 sec. The staff can therefore generate 3%/sec…and probably more if you have the staff cooldown trait. It’d generate a lot more than that if every mark detonation gave 3%….and if it’s 3% per target affected by a mark you could generate a LOT of lifeforce that way.

So, making all assumptions in the axe’s favor it generates only 1.2% per second while the staff generates lifeforce more than twice as fast at 3%/second. The axe does give the potential for faster burst generation of life force; gaining 8% in just a second or two, but then is on a cooldown.

I think part of the reason that DS necros like axes is that they’re typically used in power/crit heavy builds, which also work well for DS. By contrast the staff is a mediocre weapon for a power/crit build if you’re not going into DS a lot.

Druitt.7629:

DrXer.2918:

I would think your staff would have condition on it which would make it weak for DS. Can someone explain?

Could you clarify: Do you mean is a staff a good weapon to have equipped when you enter DS — because it might enhance you during DS — or do you mean is a staff a good weapon to use a lot if you like to DS — for example because it might fill Life Force faster, or might leave marks which can trigger while you’re in DS, allowing you to “cast” spells other than the DS spells in some sense.

Druitt: both. The base damage from a staff will generally be higher than other weapon loadouts, which will give your DS damage a slight boost. In addition the staff is a good weapon for quickly generating life force to get you into DS faster. It’s an added bonus that the staff itself is a very solid weapon choice for a build that’s trying to maximize the effectiveness of DS.

DrXer.2918:

I would think your staff would have condition on it which would make it weak for DS. Can someone explain?

It’s a mixed bag and depends a lot on how you gear and trait. Personally I favor a condition build and use the staff to capitalize on the conditions dealt by the marks. However if you were to build for power overall, the staff might end up being an excellent DS weapon. Naturally it’d be optimal for a staff in that situation to have Power and Precision, but if you’re specced for the bleeds from crits then cond/Precision could work well too.

The staff’s base damage, regardless of the other stats, tends to make it a strong weapon for using Life Blast (DS#1) when compared to the necro’s other options (mostly because it’s a two-hander and one two-hander usually has higher base damage than an equivalent one-hander). On top of that the staff’s #1 attack is good for generating life force at long ranges, and as mentioned above if you trait to get life force from Marks then all the abilities on the staff generate life force. Even if you’re not built for condition damage, the marks themselves can deal moderate damage from the direct damage component, all of it AOE if timed well. It also has a field creator and a blast finisher which give the staff utility both by itself and when paired with allies, not to mention that all of the marks have an effect that its completely unaffected by condition damage and can be very useful in a fight (regen, chill & poison (for the heal reduction, not the damage), condition transfer, and fear).

The question to ask yourself is not “why is the staff good for DS?” Instead ask yourself, “is there any weapon that’s better?” Personally, I can’t think of one.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Munrock

Just cast it at the beginning of the fight far from you. I don’t think I ever lost a Worm in a fight in WvW. People don’t attack the worm, they will only attack it if they touch it with AoE. But you have to stay away from your worm, to be effective. So AoE won’t touch it.

Don’t underestimate worm’s damage.Most of the time you don’t see him attack, but he does it. He will hit for around 800-1.2k non crit if I remember. That’s like having 5 permanent bleed on the target. That’s a really good DPS add, since you primary use it to escape.

Venom, I don’t mind if you want to create 2 separate abilities. But Why change worm? Just create your new minion, and let Flesh worm in peace.

When I was a MM, I was happy to have Flesh Worm. Since I had to use minion utilities for my traits to be at full potential, it was a blessing that I had a minion being something else then a DPS add. It’s our only minion that provide an escape mecanism AND CC breaker.

Kard, I feel like you’re focusing on the PvP value of an ability and you’re ignoring the PvE utility of the skill. I also feel the teleport is useful in PvP, but it’s incredibly lackluster when you’re in a dungeon or doing DEs.

I’d be happy if the worm would follow in some way; maybe burrowing towards me once every 10 seconds when I’m further than 1000 away from him or something. Would allow most of the PvP functionality for longer range teleports to remain intact, and would make it a bit more viable in PvE. While PvP would lose the ability to summon him off somewhere safe and get a really long teleport out of him, they would also gain the advantage of having him be in the area at all times, so he’d always be available for a teleport.

I think this is an ability that us non-PvPers are going to have to realize just isn’t an optimal choice outside of PvP. Much like how that one signet that soaks up conditions from allies and sends them to the enemy can be OMGWTFAWESOME in PvP, but doesn’t feel like a good slot usage in PvP.

rajule.8054:

what he said, also I don’t believe similar sigils stack. so if you have a 10% burn duration sigil on your mainhand and offhand you’re only going to get the benefit of one or the other.

That’s correct. You can stack an effect from multiple different armor runes that generate the same effect, but it doesn’t work that way for weapons.

Makes me think that two handed weapons deserve to have two slots.

Duration bonuses are always additive, not multiplicative. Take all the percent time increases, add them together and then multiply that by the base duration. So increases of 30%, 20%, 10%, 10% on a 1 second ability would look like this:
1 * (1 + .3 + .2 + .1 + .1)
1 * (1.7) = 1.7

Every full second that burning is on an enemy they’ll take the damage. If you only have a partial second then it won’t deal any damage. Assuming there’s no other factors involved, 1 sec of burning damage will do exactly the same damage as 1.9 seconds’ worth.

Please note this only applies to the actual doling out of the damage, not the total time the effect is on the monster. Two players applying a 1.6 second burning on a monster will give the monster 3.2 seconds of burning effect. It would take damage three times (once for each full second) and though the burning effect would still be present as a condition (so you’d get any bonuses for hitting a monster with a condition), it would take no burning damage during the fourth second.

Also I have a vague memory that there may be a cap to increasing condition duration, but I’m not sure about that. And I could swear I remember reading that bleeds (but not Burning or Poison) would take advantage of partial seconds of duration, but I can’t find it at the moment. Check the wiki section on conditions for more info.

Eileithia: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mark_of_Evasion

Savan.8495:

@technosatyr

The reason I put 10 points soul reaping is for the synergy with reaper’s might in the spite tree. DS will provide reasonable dps with the power from spite + the power on trinkets , I use DS(1x aoe, 3xlife blast) to fill the void in my rotation and stack might to buff my condition damage, with the trait I provided you are also stacking (piercing) vulnerability on trash

Why do you care about vunerability? It doesn’t increase condition damage. I’d have to crunch the numbers, but I’m very skeptical that a focused condition build would see meaningful DPS from the life blasts any better than she could get from a scepter or staff autoattack. Also, if you’re trinketing power then you’re talking more about a hybrid build approach (which personally I think is probably a good way to go with a necro), and the OP was asking for advice on making a condition build, so I’m not sure how much of your advice would apply to her.

Dear Alfred,

If you weren’t getting crippled, and you have a warhorn that’d give you at least 50% swiftness uptime, what specifically was keeping you from closing the distance with the mesmer? Mesmers don’t have too many options for generating swiftness (aside from things like runes which everyone has access to) and our only passive move speed increase only works when we’ve got illusions out (and caps at 9% instead of the 10% rogues and necros can get through their signets).

Again, I won’t claim to be a warrior expert and I have no experience playing as one, but I would think that the fight would go something like this:
1. He attacks you from range, probably catches you a little surprised, and can deal some damage while you react.
2. You move to attack him. If you use your leap here he’ll just knock you back and flee, so you shouldn’t use your leap. Instead use your swiftness to close the gap. Once you get out of the max range of the greatsword it’ll be doing a LOT less damage.
3. When you close fully he’ll sweep you to knock you back, that’s when you can use your leap to close the distance again.
4. You attack him. You’ve got an advantage with keeping swiftness up that he doesn’t have, and his knockback it out of comission. You don’t mention any teleporting so it doesn’t seem like he has that ready to go.
5. He uses an immunity skill. If it’s his 1H sword #2 ability, make sure to dodge out of the way and wait a second or two. He can’t move while doing it. If it’s his Distortion shatter just know that he’s used it up (it’s not like warriors don’t have their own invincible buttons). But during this time he shouldn’t be able to be harming you much. Point blank damage for GS is pathetic, and if he just blew his illusions for an escape then they’re not hitting you.
6. Since you’re keeping close to him his damage should still be low and you should be knocking the snot out of him; he’ll need to use another escape to try to create some distance. Watch to see if he blows a signet and uses Distortion again. It sounds like that may be causing some of your frustration. Keep in mind that Distortion burns all his illusions every time, and it takes time to get them back up. Those seconds that he’s resummoning are seconds you should be using to incapacitate him.
7. If he’s not teleporting, and you have better abilities for keeping swiftness on you and a cripple on him, and you counter his sweeps with your leaps, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to, as the young people put it, “stick to him like white on rice.”

Obviously, that description of the fight isn’t happening. Where does the fight deviate from what I described?

Glancing at the wiki I noted the following warrior skills that should help you to prevent him from kiting you. How many of these are you taking along?:
GS#3 and #4
Hammer Special, #3 and #5
LB #5
Rifle #2
Axe Special, #3
Mace Special, #3, #5
1HSword Special, #2, #3
Shield #4
Warhorn #4
Bull’s Charge
Stomp
Throw Bolas
Fear Me
Dolyak Signet (stability would block his sweep)
Balanced Stance (stability again)
Frenzy
Signet of Rage

You need to stop focusing on the strengths of a kiter, and instead focus on the weaknesses. First off this guy has pretty much nothing to support his allies. Just about all his skills help him and no one else. As you’re so fond of pointing out, all he has to do is keep you at bay and hit his #1GS attack and he’ll win. That’s because it’s pretty much all he’s GOT. He’s got his #1 attack and a set of utility skills all focused on keeping you at bay. He’s devoted all his characters strengths towards holding you at range and killing you there. That means he doesn’t have AoE that’s worthwhile. He doesn’t have support. He’s likely weak on self-healing. Once his defensive cooldowns are gone his bag of tricks is pretty much empty. His only real choices in a fight are “keep one enemy at range and hit him hard” or “run.” This character will add little to large group fights, and will probably be trying to flank the main battle to pick people off individually. If faced with any real pressure, and without defensive cooldown abilities, he’ll crumple like a paper towel in a few hits.

So, specific advice for you:
#1: don’t play his game. If you can’t close the distance on him and KEEP him in melee then don’t engage him at all. Otherwise you’re fighting a fight where he has the advantage AND you have a disadvantage. I’m not overly familiar with warriors, but from what I’ve seen of the players around me I believe you’ve got a short cooldown cripple on your rifle, and at least one “jump at the enemy” kinda skill. Use both to close that gap and force the mesmer to burn cooldowns. Your cripple is on a 10 sec cooldown; his cripple remover is on a 45sec cooldown. If you’ve got other options to root/slow/chill/cripple, take advantage of them to keep him from being able to run.
#2: try killing a clone to see what happens. If the clone cripples you then it’s probably a bad idea. If it doesn’t then you know he just wants to keep them around as a distraction and to shatter later. If he’s saving them for shatter, you can benefit by killing them.
#3: bring a friend. Some classes can do well against more than one character at once (guardians and engineers come to mind). This mesmer does not; he doesn’t have a reliable set of tools for handling more than one player at a time. A friend will let you close the gap, burn through his cooldowns and smack him down.
#4: for heaven’s sake, just run. Did you notice the one critical part of a successful kiting build that this guy lacks? He’s got no way to keep you from leaving whenever you want. He can only actually kill you if you let him keep you in his sweet spot. If you can’t close the gap and get to him (where he’s powerless) then just leave his range (which again leaves him powerless).

TL;DR-This is a character that is focused on a very specific activity: taking one person, keeping them at range and killing them quickly. It sucks agaisnt groups, can’t support his own group, dies quickly when caught, has no way to keep you IN range if you want to leave and will run away when defensive cooldowns are on cooldown. Whining about a kiter beating you while you let him kite you is kinda like an archer whining because the he couldn’t beat the fighter in melee. He’s a one-trick pony, and this is his one trick. He’ll suck at pretty much everything else, so use something else.

If you’re getting beat down by clones it’s time for you to re-evaluate how much condition removal you have. Clones can’t hurt things on their own, only through a trait that gives them Bleed on crits. (Staff clones can apply conditions but you were talking specifically about greatsword users). The bleeds take awhile to stack and a single condition removal can wipe an entire stack.

Moreover, if the mesmser is built for condition damage, then the damage from the sword itself will be limited. If the sword hurts then the bleeds don’t matter as much. Since you’re already in heavy armor and since (based on the information you present) you’re good at dodging, I doubt the thing that’s hurting you is the direct damage.

You’re complaining that as long as the mesmer keeps you at range you’re going to lose, which is very probably true. In a ranged-heavy build they’ll probably win if you can’t close the gap. So quit focusing on the strengths and focus on the weaknesses. If you can get into melee range the effectiveness of the mesmser is going to drop sharply. They’ll be unable to do much of anything besides run for their lives (as opposed to other classes that can fight while applying CC or buffing nearby allies). Most mesmer defenses are selfish; they’re something that helps the mesmer and doesn’t help any of their allies.

Someone like you describe above is probably decked out with decoy (that’s how they leave a clone that you waste time attacking and appear a few seconds later), and signet of illusions (when they click it it refreshes the cooldown on shatters). I’ve noticed the mesmers I play with tend to always take Null Field and/or Feedback as one of their utilities. Unless they’re going for a mantra build it’s unlikely that they took Mantra of Restoration, so unless they’re Sylvari and really keen on the seed heal, they’ve taken Ether Feast as their heal. The elite is a bit of a wild card; invis gives them another escape, as does Morph, but both are on pretty long cooldowns. Time Warp is in high demand in group PvP stuff, but wouldn’t have too much impact on a 1 on 1 fight.

Assuming they’re not getting their distortion from a signet trait (1 sec of distortion when they use a signet) the only way they could get 3 distortions in 30 seconds would be using Distortion (the shatter) with three illusions up, then signet of illusions and another Distortion (need to have the illusions back to be useful though), and the onehanded sword #2 attack. So we know they’re using a sword/something as one weapon, and greatsword for their main set. Their offhand is a complete tossup; pistol would give them a high damage phantasm and a nice disabler, focus is the goto weapon for sieges and getting around, and a second sword could capitalize on the sword mastery trait and add another defensive option.

For this mesmer they’d be highly dependent on keeping their illusions available on short notice. They’ll spend time keeping you at a distance (greatsword’s attack deals higher damage the further away they are) and whenever you get close they’ll swap to running away as fast as possible. They’ll probably save their null field for cripple/frost effects so they can stay mobile. They’ll save clone till you get within a threatening distance. They’ll be relying on signet of illusions to add to the life of the clones so they can’t be burned right away, so it’s probably one of the last defenses they’ll use. They’ll save signet of illusions for when the other defenses aren’t available.

So, when the fight starts you’ll be at max range. This is because this sort of mesmer, when played well, will probably not bother to engage you UNLESS you’re already at max range. The clones will be an annoyance, but won’t really hurt you much. If the mesmer is wise he’s traited them so that when you kill them you’ll get crippled. If you get crippled he can keep you at range; if you don’t kill them he has them available to shatter for Distortion. The Phantasms can hurt you, but they’ll go down faster than a cheerleader on prom night if you get them as soon as they come out. Any time you run to close the distance the mesmer will run away; as long as he keeps you in his happy kill zone you’re going to lose.

This is called kiting. It’s extremely effective against classes that focus on melee.

When we finished our CM run last night we couldn’t finish the final fight. It has a counter for killing the baddies (3 needed) as well as a boss. There two adds with the boss. When they were all dead the quest tracker said 2/3 killed.

I’m not sure if the boss was supposed to count, or if there was supposed to be another minion to kill, but either way we couldn’t finish it. Very frustrating as it was the absolute last fight in the story mode.

I’m going to post this in the bug area, but I wanted people to be warned about it as well.

When we finished our CM run last night we couldn’t finish the final fight. It has a counter for killing the baddies (3 needed) as well as a boss. There were only two adds with the boss. When they were all dead we only had 2/3 killed.

I’m not sure if the boss was supposed to count, or if there was supposed to be another minion to kill, but either way we couldn’t finish it. Very frustrating as it was the absolute last fight in the story mode.

Mackster: I know of no internal cooldown to the on-crit bleeds. They can only come from your character (not minions), but i’ve reapplied them when I get crits in a row. If there’s an internal cooldown it’s a short one.

Necro’s share the highest base health pool in the game with warriors. Proportionally we get more out of toughness than we do out of vitality (because increasing armor on a high health pool has a stronger effect than increasing it on a small health pool). We are also encouraged to use the death magic trait line as condition necros (for the staff cooldown if nothing else) which can give us the 5% conversion talent and already gives us a nice chunk of toughness.

We’re also generally less concerned about taking condition damage than other classes, as we have a number of mechanics to (heck, we’re built around the idea of) throwing our conditions onto somoene else.

RE: Power/Precision: A condition necro is going to be getting most of his damage from conditions, and will be choosing powers to maximize the application of conditions. Those abilities often get very very little benefit from having extra power. Power helps to make up a little for our puny up-front damage, but not by much. By contrast Precision helps our upfront damage (cause crits hit harder) AND causes bleeds that directly synergize with our high condition damage.

Side note: a bleed is a bleed is a bleed. Whether you get it from the crit talent or BiP or the Scepter#1 attack they’ll all tick for the same damage per stack. Only difference is the duration that the bleed effect will be in place (which I think is a base 1sec for the on-crit bleed).

How odd. Engineer turrets and mesmer illusions all scale based on gear, but ours don’t. I use minions mostly because I’m still learning to incorporate ultility skills into my fighting style. Trying to find some way to remap the keyboard that makes sense.

Has anyone checked to see if the clicky skills scale with gear? (like maybe the bone fiend autoattack doesn’t scale, but if I click the one to make him root an enemy that would deal extra damage?)

Savan.8495:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAW7YjQaV6pbub87JCoHvXXOL6BxGWyoKsOA
is generally accepted to be the top aoe pve dps spec, some people move those 10 points from soul reaping into blood, but I fail to see the benefit of 15% quicker cd over DS piercing

I feel like I’m missing something here. In PvE I’ve found DS to be pretty useless when I’m playing condition damage. Every second I’m in that form is a second I’m not putting conditions on my enemies. In particular I find it odd that you’d use those 10 points there, improving a class mechanic that’s not powerful for a condition necro) instead of putting them in death magic to get the improved staff recharge (which is a very nice boost for condition necros)

Is there some aspect of DS that I’m not seeing that really benefits a condition spec? I mean it’s handy to have around for when you’re taking too much damage, and the AoE it gives isn’t bad it’s just not all that hard hitting when you don’t have the power to back it up.

Quex Fehftir.7619:

For simple leveling, take Staff + Decoy/Mirror Images/Signet of Illusions and you get it easy, as staff clone’s Winds of Chaos does = condition damage to your own, even though it doesn’t have any viable base damage on the clones.

Do not take signet of illusions. It works by applying a max health buff to your minions after they’re summoned. So you summon, then wait a second or two, and then they get a health boost. In a situation where they need extra health they’ll usually die in that second or two. In situations where they don’t need the health then the signet is wasted.

I’m currently (and have been for awhile) leveling with staff in a condition build, and like the advice above I also took decoy and mirror image. It’s not “bad” exactly, but it’s not very quick either. If you’ve got limited playtime and want to get in, get things done, and get out, I’d reccomend going with a power build. Grab a Greatsword as your main weapon. I’m not sure about your alternative weapon set, but I’d probably say to go with staff. Staff won’t deal much damage in a power build, but it will help when you need to play a bit more defensively. (disclaimer: I’ve never really gotten the hang of the mesmer one handed weapons. I loathe the scepter thematically)

One mental hurdle I had was realizing that illusions are not minions. Clones are just distractions and fodder for shatter, they help reduce monster attention on you. Phantasms are just damage over time effects that are cast on a single enemy. They just have an avatar in game instead of a debuff icon. When I started seeing illusions like that I had a much better grasp of how to use them effectively.

Illusions should only shatter the target you summon them on; I’ve never had mine attack anything but the mob I summon them on. If you guys have the auto-softtargeting enabled you may want to consider turning it off. Because if you’re accidentally mousing over another mob (even one far away or a critter) when you summon the illusion, it’ll be bound to that target. When you hit a shatter skill they’ll run to whatever they’kittengeting (whatever you wekittengeting when you summoned them). They will not shatter on what you’re currently targeting if it’s not the mob they were summoned on.

For the illusions just standing there and not shattering: I remember there being lots of wierd terrain issues in AC. Is it possible that the mob they needed to get to was ever so slightly out of reach? like it’s nearly impossible to shatter on the ranger boss when he’s on his central pillar unless the illusions have a very clear and direct path to him.

I’ve done some testing on my own, and I haven’t seen any evidence that my gear has any effect on my minions’ stats. I would summon a minion, have it attack a dummy for awhile, then I’d dismiss it, strip naked and have it attack again. Seemed to do the same damage both times.

Can anyone confirm this? Is there any gear stat that’ll make my minions stronger?

If they don’t scale with gear it feels like they’d become increasingly irrelevant at max level (just a guess, I’m not quite 40 yet).

the wiki says that if you have more than one defender out, no damage will be split…

but what if the situation is multiple mesmers, each with a defender out? They stand up top, summon a defender and the defender can’t reach the baddies so it stays put. Each one buffs the ‘invincible’ mesmer and all the other phantasms.

If the main mesmer is hit would the damage be split evenly across all the defenders from the other mesmers? And would the damage those phantasms suffer be split among each other (so they effectively have one giant health pool)?

Also: did they have the BG buff that gives you huge bonuses because your side is severely outnumbered?

I felt like this encounter was a perfect example of a sticking point people have with GW2 when coming from other games. Unlike so many fights before you can’t just stand still and autoattack things until they’re dead. If you don’t dodge the fireball, you’re toast. I’m not sure if it’s the intent of the design, but the lesson you need to take away is “watch for attack animations and dodge when needed”

Until you get more used to watching what the enemies are doing (as opposed to watching for cast bars or watching your own cooldowns) dodge and block effects will feel useless and encounters will feel impossible. When I adjusted my thinking I found the game’s difficulty snapped into perspective.