While I agree barrier scaling should be higher, I see that more of a need to raise the base value to a point where it will actually absorb an attack fully.
Healing power should be enhancing the amount, not necessary for doing anything at all.
100%
Ageis shouldn’t be worth more than a stat supported mechanic.
Edit: oh and don’t forget in the headbutt example, you still get stunned and the berserker still gets full adrenaline.
Is ~3-4k (total from all the skills) extra of a temporary defense worth 1k or more stat points that could be somewhere else?
With full healing power gear you likely couldn’t absorb the damage of a berserker’s headbutt in wvw without using multiple barrier skills from what I’ve seen.
The chat codes on Reddit for the skills and traits are neat. With them pinged in game you can see the stat scaling by changing gear around.
The scourge heal skill barrier looks to scale 1.2ish with healing power (1k healing power gives 1.2k barrier or so) the f-skill that gives barrier scales around 0.8. So, healing power is likely not worth…just at a quick 2 minute glance anyway.
100% hope I’m wrong, but I really don’t see this being good at anything in wvw. Not enough condi clear to make it roaming and not enough group support with traited stances to take a spot from a guard in groups.
10 condis removed @ 25s cd (Bear Stance + WK + StF)
2 condis removed @ 32s cd (LR) & 40s cd (QZ)
All movement impeding condis removed @ 35s cd (Unflinching Fortitude)
All condis removed @ 40s cd (SoR)
7 condis removed @ 48s cd, 5 converted to boons (Entangle + Lyssa runes)
-33% condi damage with Protection (Second Skin) which you get 2s of each dodge and 30% up time of vigor and +25% endurance regen via Natural Vigor. Then you can pick Eternal Bond for more Protection.
That’s likely enough condi clear.
That’s a neat list, but what build capable of killing someone/fighting outnumbered would ever take most of that? 40s SoR isn’t good to use, ever. It remains to be seen, but I don’t see protection being good enough vs. all the boon hate.
I guess the best hope with bear is that it lets you skip SoS for more clears? But then you’re stuck with a trash pet that can’t utilize quickness (still doesn’t work on old pets afaik) outside of beast mode.
A big downer for me is the GM traits, in wvw at least theres no option but to take Sand Savant to have any reasonable use out of that mechanic. There’s no way you’d ever get 3 little sandies going effectively, so the burn on torment and boon steal are DoA there.
But I guess that’s good in that it keeps reaper relavent in groups for pure dps.
100% hope I’m wrong, but I really don’t see this being good at anything in wvw. Not enough condi clear to make it roaming and not enough group support with traited stances to take a spot from a guard in groups.
Op is MVP. While you’re at it demand membership into what few gvg guilds are left and report them for harassment and bullying when they don’t send you an invite.
Gonna need to test Melandru runes and poultry soup along with the new Empathic Bond. Need to answer whether it will be a 50% condi duration reduction + 45% (runes and food) = 95% duration reduction. Even at 95% i have my doubts as I hardly notice just the 45% from the food/runes. My previous testing clearly showed condi clears > condi duration reduction. Considering we lost the potential for 4 every 10s I am worried.
Not liking Signet of Renewal passive change but the active could be interesting as we now have a source of resistance. However, it seems using your heal as one right after poping SoR is mandatory so you at least get some resistance back.
It could be a rough two weeks in WvW until we can try out bear stance with soulbeast. Hopefully there is some type of condi defense trait in one of the unmentioned soulbeast traits.
Interesting changes to multiple traits regarding fury generation. May make remorseless build more viable?
If condi duration reduction is multiplicative (most gw2 % modifiers are):
1.0 * 0.5 * 0.75 * 0.8 = 0.3 or a 70% reduction to condition duration.
Edit: it also wasn’t -45% with runes and food, it was -40% :p
The reality, despite anet for an inexplicable reason not being forthcoming about it, is that pre-nerf vital persistence had no effect on Scourge or its skills and thus had to go. All scourge skills just cost flat life force like it’s a mana bar. Even desert shroud is a glorified mallyx elite.
Build diversity buff by virtue of Soul Reaping being an open-air debris garden?
Unfortunately this will be the only practical way to take advantage of the #of scourge effects. How often will you sit in one place for 30+seconds to summon 3?
The way the trait reads you can pop the big scourge every 10s with the cd reduction.
DBL was horrible just like the new PvE maps, if i wanna go from my (enemy spawn) spawn point towards their garri i would like to do that in 1 straight line, i do not wanna be forced to run around cliffs or through cliffs cus thats the only possible way to get there.
the map is forcing you to take certain routes while Alphine maps do not force me to take any route.
This is the typical attitude of unwillingness to learn and adapt that made our Devs cautious about implementing new content in WvW. There are plenty of routes to get everywhere in DBL. Your argument is incorrect and shows that you didn’t even attempt to learn something new. Anyone who remotely knows the map of DBL can show you plenty of routes to get to Garri.
Want to get there from Alpine? Swim here, around this rocky hill. Or run north this way, over this cliff or around these cliffs. Sounds a lot like your own uninformed complaints regarding DBL.
Dbl is a bad experience, has nothing to do with learning the map (I agree that’s a bit of a lazy excuse, but w/e). I play for fights and I can make entire laps of flipping camps and sentries during NA prime and not run into a soul on a consistent basis. Best strategy I have to find people is to flip up to north camp then double back trying to catch back-cappers…
I’ve spent dozens of hours there and it’s almost always like that. Whereas I could go to Abl, port to bay/hills, haunt the lower camps and get rolled to my hearts content. I’ve had fun on dbl, sure, but I get what I want more consistently elsewhere. I only hit up dbl after checking the 2 abls first.
More to the point, anet doesn’t seem to get that giving us stuff like deployable cannons when we ask for population balance will irritate us.
I see the only use to be to turtle up home with the turrets (that’s what the scourges are, don’t kid yourself) and hope a deadeye/ranger/dh doesn’t auto attack you to death from 1200+ range before a teammate can peel them.
The barrier stuff will play more like necro having no shroud at the start of the match, only all the time unless barrier has silly scaling from healing power.
Edit: despite the downsides, it looks like it would be a complete nightmare to fight on point with all the condi and boon rip.
Losing stab and resistance while not being able to get either back during a push and eating 20+ burn stacks?
Thank goodness your party’s necro can give a 4k barrier /s.
Lets see…token map blob running 1 guard 4 spellbreaker boon rip parties has my money for our future meta.
Here’s hoping for a draconian balance patch I guess? I suppose it still isn’t as bad as the CoR double tap though.
Don’t forget that the sand shroud skills have an insultingly small 180 radius. In wvw or spvp your team has to be right on top of you to get cleanses and barriers.
Edit: also torch looks like trash, off hand dagger will still be my go-to.
A little too late in the game for me though. I have multiples of the classes I play most with their own gear for different things already. (1 guardian for roaming, 1 for guild group stuff, etc.)…maybe 10 ascended sets in total.
To a degree the folks saying that thieves and druids can be good in zerg play are right, they can be. But you’ve gotta be operating in the top 5-10% skill zone to pull that off with those classes and pug commanders just don’t see that often (scrapper to a degree as well). A mediocre guardian is wildly more valuable while almost always being the safer, more realistically available option than a top ranger or thief player.
It’s absolutely laughable how many rangers you see in zergs pew pewing away with lb (and I know it’s not everyone).
But they did make a safe space for little butterflies. The Legendary Defenders will protect you.
Just imagine the OP’s tears when the hype dies down, population goes back to what it was and s/he is on a link getting crushed, outmanned 3-1 on a constant basis…but at least the +5 pips will be there.
I know it’s annoying and a crappy thing to do, but what do you want anet to do about it?…What EXACTLY about building a bunch of siege in a keep violates the ToS? How do you know/prove that the person simply didn’t know any better? (I’ve seen pve players doing this kind of stuff just to get the achievements)
We all know what’s going on, we all know it happens, but there really isn’t a practical way to stop it. A way for players to remove friendly siege would be even more open to abuse. Shorter despawn timers would be a huge pain for everyone.
Just pity the person that cares enough about a wvw matchup in 2017 to troll and spy.
I don’t see how this would stop things like the tournament server stacking or old T1 match manipulating. Players have shown repeatedly that they will screw over anyone to get what they want. Showing populations would just make all this easier..
You also have to keep in mind the powerful motivation rewards can be. Something would have to be put in place so that new players just don’t see “more numbers=more rewards”. Why work your butt off doing small scale/more skill based stuff on a low population map when you can LOLstaff1 in a huge zerg for the same results? Past pvp seasons showed how this works out.
Defending doesn’t give the phat lewts that backcapping does. There are more lewts to be had by backcapping and losing the match than defending and winning.
I dunno about pvp, but I dunked on kids all weekend with warrior in wvw. 100 range increase to headbutt is a noticeable buff and I hardly pay attention to the cast time increases. I really don’t recall an instance of missing a hit due to a cast time.
Quality players dodged headbutt before, bads still eat it. Arc Divider still hits almost everyone.
But that being said, I probably wouldn’t touch warrior or guardian in spvp now. Not that I intend to spvp anyway.
And keep in mind this past season you gained pips even if you lost, so someone could lose ~200 games straight and still get the ascended wings.
…
…
…
…I got my ascended wings this season.
If I hadn’t of gotten bored with conquest 3 years ago I would have done more than get my wings and leave.
rifle thief will get just one dodge instead the 3 from DD. Probably most skills will have a long casting.
That spec it is meant to static long range massive damage type they say. Which i think is fine as long as they are not like rifle warrior: 3k damage every second + bursts + insane immunities and regen.
Every class has access to TWO dodges why do you say non daredevil thief will have only ONE?
Even if they do only get 1 dodge, it won’t matter. Everyone will run full zerk/scholar runes with w/e else, cast shadow refuge and roflburst kids 100-0. If that doesn’t work it’s just shortbow 5 spam and a shadow step to safety or try number 2.
Thief is in a spot that if the spec isn’t that strong it’ll never see the light of day unless it brings some serious toe-to-toe brawler ability, which wouldn’t make much sense.
WvW roaming is very much the epitome of “the school of hard knocks”.
Best thing you can do is join an experienced group and learn the ropes before going it alone like you have…vets in wvw can smell noobie blood like sharks.
Also, keep in mind that enemies can see your wvw rank and buffs/debuffs. Weak links can easily be identified and focused down. My friends and I regularly go into fights saying things like “silver invader Druid is terrible, blow him up first.”
If this existed there would be no place for a backline left in zerg fights because they could just get bursted by 2 thiefs.
I would definitely like to try it in roaming but it just doesn’t work for zerg fights.
Also imagine the increased power of siege if your people would straight up die from it.
Back line/ frontline is 2014 breh. Ball meta is life now.
I would like to at least give this idea a try. It couldn’t possibly do any more damage than golem week so what’s there to lose?
The one issue I see if it is based on the general outmanned buff…
say that you are roaming and start to take a camp or something and wind up on the wrong side of a 5v3, but the 5 guys have the outmanned buff because your server’s blob showed up and started hitting hills.
DH in zerg busting groups…with bow and elite trap, smh. There are a handful of groups on NA that are actual zerg busting groups, but 95% that tout themselves as such don’t know zerg busting from holes in the ground.
The best I’ve found was a “serious/busting” group on TC a few months back. The driver would put down a squad marker for everyone to go to, then put down another one on/near the enemy group and just say “ok dps there” and just sit still on the first marker. Any push by the other group was met with a full retreat and then the markers would be redone. Rinse and repeat. I left their TS just to get on my old guild’s TS just to tell everyone what I was seeing. Truly marvelous.
Scepter = more constant condi pressure
Sword = immobilize to make folks eat a full burst
I’ve hardly ever run mesmer, but I took mine out for a few hours roaming last night with condi staff/sword+shield and it was comically effective with that weapon spread. The best was against the trash thieves running bound or the condi dodge instead of unhindered combatant, they were just free kills. If nothing else I was able to effectively bait out cooldowns with the immobilize since folks tend to just panic and assume a burst is coming.
I’m far from a pro-anything, much less a mesmer, but either option is fine and just a preference thing. I wouldn’t run torch unless I was running PU though.
Recent changes have made it less awful, but it’s still such a hassle compared to ABL.
My friend showed me the eagle jumpy thing the other day and it was neat, we hopped/flew around a bit, found no enemies after about 10 minutes, went to ABL and found a fight 30 seconds after leaving Bay…0/10 would eagle again.
At this point it’s a kind of negative feedback loop with no one wanting to play it causing people to not want to play it.
So, I made a new ranger on 4/21 and leveled it up to 80. I picked the Blue Moa pet on character creation and proceeded to collect the Bristleback and Smokescale pets for my wvw build.
Now, on any map change or log in, in all game areas, my pet in the top/1st position in the pet management window defaults to the Blue Moa, meaning I have to change my pet frequently. It doesn’t seem to matter which pet I have in which slot, the top/1st will change to the Blue Moa on loading a map.
The odd thing is that my 2-ish year old ranger does not have this issue…no matter what my smokescale/bristleback combo is saved on it.
I have 1k+ hours on necro (wvw mostly) and it was about 70/30 for me on winning vs a warrior (high silver/low gold tier opponents) with my own spin on a corruption build.
I played a bit as warrior as well and corruption was my bane as well as doom sigil/poison spam. Contrary to popular belief I did run short of cleanses against intelligent opposition. I will admit I never had muh issue vs power specs.
It seems like this is the same as people crying about op DHs from seasons past, in that it’s more of a hard check of fighting competence than most other things in the game, and it’s jarring in its force of impact.
I understand both sides, really I do, but not having private/invisible tags just creates more toxicity than having them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been part of or saw fight guilds do things like fake push to intentionally try and kill off the pugs around, ping WP’s then tp someplace else, etc. Then the arguments start and the salt starts flowing and everyone just hates everyone else.
There’s a lack of respect on all sides and let’s face it, it’s the internet and it isn’t going to change, and a simple thing from Anet will cut out the inevitable BS.
The toxicity of ranked is off putting. The reward nerfs provide no additional incentive to play. The self fulfilling cycle of less and less players means match making is extremely volatile. The amulet/build restrictions finally got to me so im sticking to wvw for now where the flexible armor/runes/food choices can help cover weaknesses in classes.
This is why I have hardly pvp’d since leagues started, and I’m a wvw roamer…that’s god kitten saying something. I’m playing pvp now just because I want the ascended back piece…80ish% win rate with thief I think, and after I get the back piece I’m not setting foot in pvp again. The constant nonsense just isn’t worth it and I don’t see anything close in other games.
I play thief and I expect the token rage whispers after a gank telling me I’m kitten and to catch cancer and whatnot, but the salt mines are producing at 150%. Such fragile wee little egos.
To be fair, its only after they rage at me that I mail them a humiliation dye for their trouble.
Wow, folks are actually sad stronghold is no longer ranked?
My guildies and I played a total of 3 stronghold matches since its been released, it was about a month ago. We were all on ts and entered our fist match with our standard pvp builds. We were rolling the other team in fights, it was an absolute curb party kind of thing. Then we realized we were losing horribly in the score, were completely confused that kills didn’t matter, and lost the match by about 350 points.
So we reset our buillds, ignored the enemy players 90% of the time the next two matches and won by about 400 points each time. We had a good laugh about the whole thing and decided never to bother with that mess again.
If the best strategy in a pvp game mode is to largely avoid pvp, something is seriously wrong. Most pve folks won’t like t because it’s still sort of pvp, most pvp folks wont like it because there’s hardly any pvp. Home run, Anet.
It’s reasonable to assume virtually all devs are working on either new LS episodes or the next expansion. There is no way they’re gonna put in the time for something like the OP is suggesting.
It will continue along the lines of
“Hey, you four stop what you’re doing for two days and work on whatever was voted for in the last wvw poll. Oh, and give no thought to polish, just get it done and get back to something that matters.”
Problem: power necro is not viable due in large part to trash-tier sustain
Solution: buff axe damage
I feel like this disparity can only be adequately articulated by the peerless eloquence of John Madden...his voice was in my head as I read the necro notes, bams and booms included.
