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Legacy of GW2 Professions


Rym.1469

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So I thought it'd be fun to go back in time, to the era before expansions and remind ourselves some of the silly, interesting, broken or unique stuff different professions could do and how they looked like.

Over the years the classes and combat system in general have changed so much, for worse or for better, that a lot of this stuff was likely forgotten and newer players might not be aware of it's existence.

If any veteran players have their memories of such things to share, go for it. Even if they have holes, I'm sure some of mine do.

My share, off the top of my head:

  • AoE skills had no player cap on them early on. Imagine Meteor Shower and Epidemic affecting everyone. Caused major lag in WvW, too.

  • Quickness didn't exist before HoT. Instead, few classes (Thief, Warrior and Mesmer) had access to their unique versions of it, often coupled with high side effects (like double damage taken). However, Quickness was +100% not only to attack or cast speed, but any action speed, including Reviving which was one of the reasons Chronomancer broke early HoT apart and buried Pro League by itself.

  • Warrior used to be the laughing stock in PvP shortly after launch. Provided you avoided the one cheese bull's rush combo they were more or less a free kill, with their best condition removal being Signet of Stamina. They were originally intended to be weak to conditions. Healing Signet used to heal for about a half if not less than it does now, have higher cooldown and grant no Resistance (because Resistance didn't exist). It took about a year for Warriors to receive major buffs, in Healing Signet hps, Cleansing Ire added and Berserker Stance turning you into Big Bad Wolf with enemy necromancers being Red Riding Hoods for the duration. Originally both Adrenal Helath and Berserker's Power were just based on your stored adrenaline and not actually using it, so in "vanilla" warriors in pve weren't even using their burst skills.

  • Shortly after launch Elementalists were widely considered as the mushrooms of PvP, similar to Warrior, except even worse. Most were rocking variants of Scepter or Kamikadze Staff. That is, untill some wise souls have decided not to try to make Ele your regular fantasy mage, but go with the most defensive amulet with healing power coupled with D/D and so the most dominant Ele build in the history was born, only strengthened later with introduction of Celestial stats which were perfect for Ele.

  • Ranger's Longbow used to be the ultimate meme weapon, with Rapid Fire being about twice as slow as it is now, Hunter's Shot having no stealth and so on. It may be a surprise to some, but because of that the most dominant Ranger build at launch was a Trap Ranger, camping sidenodes. It was effective because the condition cleanse was scarce apart from Necromancer, later Ele and Guardian. There was time when the black panther pet had permanent F2, essentially being a permastealthed crit machine that followed any poor fucker. Oh, pets also ignored stealth and were following players in it.

  • In 2013 a new Ranger cancer was born, regarded as one of the least skillful builds ever existed - after tweaks to Ranger spirits, allowing them to follow Ranger among other buffs, Spirit Ranger was born, with 3 AIs at least following each. Through the immense skill in pressing buttons off cd, autoattacking with sun spirit procs and not dying to either power damage or conditions (through OP at time Empathic Bond, transferring whooping 3 conditions every 10s to pet only Epidemic Necro could really counter). ROM became famous with this and later with Shoutbow Warrior.

  • Moment of Clarity was a +100% duration to any hard CC. If you don't know, CC in PvP is usually capped at 4.5s for a single instance. However, items Boar forages are PvE items bound by no restrictions and have high base durations already. Among the items Boars can forage is a Skull you can use for a lenghty fear. Fear scales both with MoC and condition duration (and Fear duration Necromancer's runes had/have?(?)). Introducing, the most one-trick-pony RNG memebuild ever to exist. Rocking up to 12+ second Fear that could be Epidemic'd by Necromancer to make his own and proc Terror.

  • Necromancer, oh my. So to start things off, there existed a meta before HoT when teamfights were dictated by Necromancers using their Lich Forms. May be a shocker to newer players as Lich hasn't seen any light in good few years now, despite cool rework. Lich Form, as well as Ele Tornado (and the old Plague) , used to boost caster's stats by a lot which is why the common tactic for both classes in WvW was dropping your lasting AoEs and then going into Elite for massive power/crit stat boosts. While it was used on PvP Necro, there was also another trait, proccing Spinal Shivers which scaled crazy good with powerboost from Lich. The ending result was, Necromancer could go into Lich Form, use autoattack once on an enemy and that autoattack could proc two damage sigils as well as Spinal Shivers, deleting poor squishy on the spot.

  • Originally, Corrupt Boon used to be a heavier cooldown, but corrupted all boons on the target. What it meant was that while a bad Necromancer would whiff CB, a good one would wait till enemy Guardian/Ele applies boons, including Stability and CB afterwards, almost guaranteeing a kill early on, because of how much less common stunbreaks and condition cleanse were.

  • For a long time after launch Condition Necromancer struggled a bit in PvP, but it's changed suddenly in 2013 when ArenaNet in surge of genious decided to add the first version of Dhuumfire to the Necro. It broke the class, as it was a simple proc with ridiculous effect and resulted in many nerfs, including Corrupt Boon change. Later, it was finally changed into Dhuumfire we know now (fun fact - Dhuumfire has unique animation effect on Core Necromancer's Life Blast, but none on either Reaper or Scourge. Check it out).

  • Necromancer was the ultimate Dora the Explora or WvW suicide jump baiter, being able to negate falling damage with either Spectral Walk mid-air or just staying in Shroud. Yes, damage you took in Shroud used to not carry over to your health pool, acting as sort of Aegis against big crits. If Warrior hit you for 10'000 with 500 life force left in Shroud, you would be kicked out of Shroud but take no damage to your health pool at all. Was a neat thing in all the gamemodes.

  • Flesh Golem had the same funny and broken bug as the famous Fiery Greatsword. When charging at an enemy against a wall, it would deal a massive burst of damage, killing any player victim on the spot or doing some serious damage in PvE.

  • Necromancer used to heal with Shroud autos! Yes, there existed a trait called Renewing Blast which caused Life Blast to heal allies it travelled through. It even had pretty alright scaling for the time, but wasn't used much because lining up Life Blasts involved either tricky positioning or aiming at allies with camera.

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@"Rym.1469" said:So I thought it'd be fun to go back in time, to the era before expansions and remind ourselves some of the silly, interesting, broken or unique stuff different professions could do and how they looked like.

Over the years the classes and combat system in general have changed so much, for worse or for better, that a lot of this stuff was likely forgotten and newer players might not be aware of it's existence.

If any veteran players have their memories of such things to share, go for it. Even if they have holes, I'm sure some of mine do.

My share, off the top of my head:

  • AoE skills had no player cap on them early on. Imagine Meteor Shower and Epidemic affecting everyone. Caused major lag in WvW, too.

That was changed in early 2013 if I recall properly.

  • Quickness didn't exist before HoT. Instead, few classes (Thief, Warrior and Mesmer) had access to their unique versions of it, often coupled with high side effects (like double damage taken). However, Quickness was +100% not only to attack or cast speed, but any action speed, including Reviving which was one of the reasons Chronomancer broke early HoT apart and buried Pro League by itself.

That's inacurate, quickness existed before HoT, it used to not be treated as a "boon" and thus you couldn't rip or corrupt it thought. Alacrity was introduced with HoT thought. Quickness was change to 50% during the LS1.

  • Warrior used to be the laughing stock in PvP shortly after launch. Provided you avoided the one cheese bull's rush combo they were more or less a free kill, with their best condition removal being Signet of Stamina. They were originally intended to be weak to conditions. Healing Signet used to heal for about a half if not less than it does now, have higher cooldown and grant no Resistance (because Resistance didn't exist). It took about a year for Warriors to receive major buffs, in Healing Signet hps, Cleansing Ire added and Berserker Stance turning you into Big Bad Wolf with enemy necromancers being Red Riding Hoods for the duration. Originally both Adrenal Helath and Berserker's Power were just based on your stored adrenaline and not actually using it, so in "vanilla" warriors in pve weren't even using their burst skills.

You forgot that initially phallanx strength didn't exist and that warrior became very popular in PvE just after they introduced it.

  • Shortly after launch Elementalists were widely considered as the mushrooms of PvP, similar to Warrior, except even worse. Most were rocking variants of Scepter or Kamikadze Staff. That is, untill some wise souls have decided not to try to make Ele your regular fantasy mage, but go with the most defensive amulet with healing power coupled with D/D and so the most dominant Ele build in the history was born, only strengthened later with introduction of Celestial stats which were perfect for Ele.

True, ele still mourn the way Ride the ligthning used to work at that time.

  • Ranger's Longbow used to be the ultimate meme weapon, with Rapid Fire being about twice as slow as it is now, Hunter's Shot having no stealth and so on. It may be a surprise to some, but because of that the most dominant Ranger build at launch was a Trap Ranger, camping sidenodes. It was effective because the condition cleanse was scarce apart from Necromancer, later Ele and Guardian. There was time when the black panther pet had permanent F2, essentially being a permastealthed crit machine that followed any poor kitten. Oh, pets also ignored stealth and were following players in it.

Pet leash was also significantly higher and "guard!" allowed you to send your pet on areas out of los. Pets had lower health but higher damage and took the full brunt of damage from aoe in all gamemode. You could one shot low health player on top of wall using birds/cats when attacking an ennemy castle/tower. You could destroy a treb seemingly out of range by just sending your pet attacking it.

  • In 2013 a new Ranger cancer was born, regarded as one of the least skillful builds ever existed - after tweaks to Ranger spirits, allowing them to follow Ranger among other buffs, Spirit Ranger was born, with 3 AIs at least following each. Through the immense skill in pressing buttons off cd, autoattacking with sun spirit procs and not dying to either power damage or conditions (through OP at time Empathic Bond, transferring whooping 3 conditions every 10s to pet only Epidemic Necro could really counter). ROM became famous with this and later with Shoutbow Warrior.

Bearbow was more of a cancer than spirit ranger in my opinion.

  • Moment of Clarity was a +100% duration to any hard CC. If you don't know, CC in PvP is usually capped at 4.5s for a single instance. However, items Boar forages are PvE items bound by no restrictions and have high base durations already. Among the items Boars can forage is a Skull you can use for a lenghty fear. Fear scales both with MoC and condition duration (and Fear duration Necromancer's runes had/have?(?)). Introducing, the most one-trick-pony RNG memebuild ever to exist. Rocking up to 12+ second Fear that could be Epidemic'd by Necromancer to make his own and proc Terror.

Oh I don't remember this.

  • Necromancer, oh my. So to start things off, there existed a meta before HoT when teamfights were dictated by Necromancers using their Lich Forms. May be a shocker to newer players as Lich hasn't seen any light in good few years now, despite cool rework. Lich Form, as well as Ele Tornado (and the old Plague) , used to boost caster's stats by a lot which is why the common tactic for both classes in WvW was dropping your lasting AoEs and then going into Elite for massive power/crit stat boosts. While it was used on PvP Necro, there was also another trait, proccing Spinal Shivers which scaled crazy good with powerboost from Lich. The ending result was, Necromancer could go into Lich Form, use autoattack once on an enemy and that autoattack could proc two damage sigils as well as Spinal Shivers, deleting poor squishy on the spot.

  • Originally, Corrupt Boon used to be a heavier cooldown, but corrupted all boons on the target. What it meant was that while a bad Necromancer would whiff CB, a good one would wait till enemy Guardian/Ele applies boons, including Stability and CB afterwards, almost guaranteeing a kill early on, because of how much less common stunbreaks and condition cleanse were.

Well necromancer had only 2 skills (and a single trait) that could corrupt boons at that time thought which is an important thing to point out to put things in perspective. Now boon corruption is super cheap you can even find it on weapon skills.

  • For a long time after launch Condition Necromancer struggled a bit in PvP, but it's changed suddenly in 2013 when ArenaNet in surge of genious decided to add the first version of Dhuumfire to the Necro. It broke the class, as it was a simple proc with ridiculous effect and resulted in many nerfs, including Corrupt Boon change. Later, it was finally changed into Dhuumfire we know now (fun fact - Dhuumfire has unique animation effect on Core Necromancer's Life Blast, but none on either Reaper or Scourge. Check it out).

Dhuumfire was and is still the dumbest thing they introduced on the necromancer after release. And the funny point is that it survived the trait system rework.

  • Necromancer was the ultimate Dora the Explora or WvW suicide jump baiter, being able to negate falling damage with either Spectral Walk mid-air or just staying in Shroud. Yes, damage you took in Shroud used to not carry over to your health pool, acting as sort of Aegis against big crits. If Warrior hit you for 10'000 with 500 life force left in Shroud, you would be kicked out of Shroud but take no damage to your health pool at all. Was a neat thing in all the gamemodes.

Ah I miss this time...

  • Flesh Golem had the same funny and broken bug as the famous Fiery Greatsword. When charging at an enemy against a wall, it would deal a massive burst of damage, killing any player victim on the spot or doing some serious damage in PvE.

That was mostly used on WvW doors ;)

  • Necromancer used to heal with Shroud autos! Yes, there existed a trait called Renewing Blast which caused Life Blast to heal allies it travelled through. It even had pretty alright scaling for the time, but wasn't used much because lining up Life Blasts involved either tricky positioning or aiming at allies with camera.

It was seldom used thought.

I'll add that mesmer had a combination of trait in illusion without ICD that was especially fun to use, a blindind effect when stricking a foe with a certain kind of skill and then putting stack of confusion whenever you blind a foe. All I remember is that at a point this combo proced on chaos armor and thieves were litterally killing themselve when trying to attack you while you had chaos armor.

Engineer slick shoes also didn't have a limited number of hit per target.

Stability prevented all CC for it's duration not just one before disappearing.

Guardian's spirit weapons were summon minion that were immun to damage at some point. Shield of the avenger was one of the most OP thing for PvE dungeons.

While we are at it, reflect effects used to return all the power damage you should have taken and this applied to every single mob/boss, not the little part you reflect now.

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Necro elite plaguelands used to be a transform skill called plague that essentially made the necro extremely tanky with pulsing stability.

It was the perfect tool for spiking downed foes and surviving hard focus.

Our best tool to mitigate scaling damage is now gone.

It is shown in this video though if any new folks want to see how plague transform looks like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1z0WytS4tQ

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I wish that damage taken in shroud didn’t carry over! :s I knew it didn’t used to and then found out the hard way...

Necro is still super fun to play at least! I do wish meteor shower did more damage again (esp. given the long cast time) and that Chrono and Druid would be de-nerfed!

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Ranger thief and war had quickness.When usedThief lost all endurance,Warrior took double damageAnd ranger couldn't be healedDuring the durations.

Quickness was reduced to 50% and made a boon way before HoT.

Chrono was busted not because of rez ability but just sheer numbers of everything it could do. It was unkillable by anything except revenant.

With fiery greatsword if you had no one targeted, used fiery path skill 4 then targeted and stole with thief, it would drop all of the path instances at the targets feat and instantly kill them

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At release, the shroud didn't have damage reduction so it could only soak half of the damage it soak nowadays. Fun thing, the necromancer in down state had as much health as it's shroud which mean that the necromancer had the lowest downstate health pool while other professions had a standardized downstate heath pool which was 2 to 3 time greater than the necromancer's.

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never had isse with warrior on laucnh tho

the bulls charge combo was just so lethal because everyone was a new player at that point. stunbreak, stability, correct dodging? like 95% of the players didn't do any of those 3 yet

frenzy +endure pain + bulls charge and 100blades was enough to kill everyone.you see 3 guys trying to rez the firth? go in and kill all 3, those were the days haha

quickness and alacrity should never been a boon imo, they should be unique effects that can be shared but not extended. would have created a far more healthier game both pvp and pve wise

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  • 4 weeks later...

A couple things I remember is ranger pets on release had to be revived like normal players / NPC's. I remember confusion being ridiculously over powered at one stage, where 6+ stacks from a traited mesmer and using a skill would almost down you but I dunno if it was a bug. There was also a time when mesmer fall damage trait was bugged, and when landing onto players insta downed them (i think)

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Bleed only stacked to 25 even on world bosses, so incidental bleed from power classes would cap it out, meaning condi characters couldn't do anything at all. Poison/burning didn't stack and torment didn't exist. There was no such thing as expertise. Tons and tons of destroyable objectives were present in all content that conditions could not be applied to. Condis were extremely trash.

Ride the Lightning went way, way farther than its tooltip range and was the most fun skill in the game. It was nerfed forever in all gametypes thanks to WvW balance.

You had to get map completion in all WvW maps for full world completion. Depending on how successful your realm was this could take weeks.

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@Vargs.6234 said:Bleed only stacked to 25 even on world bosses, so incidental bleed from power classes would cap it out, meaning condi characters couldn't do anything at all. Poison/burning didn't stack and torment didn't exist. There was no such thing as expertise. Tons and tons of destroyable objectives were present in all content that conditions could not be applied to. Condis were extremely trash.

Ride the Lightning went way, way farther than its tooltip range and was the most fun skill in the game. It was nerfed forever in all gametypes thanks to WvW balance.

You had to get map completion in all WvW maps for full world completion. Depending on how successful your realm was this could take weeks.

All conditions were capped at 25.Some didnt even have stacks, their time was just prolonged when it was applied again.

Waterfields used to be the only real healing tool, so they were very important and especially in wvw ppl were getting flamed when somebody droppen some other aoe in the waterfield, which was then blasted instead of the heal.

A team of 5 celestial eles won a pvp tournament, which led to the rule that restricts how many of the same class can be played in one team.

Warriors elite banner rezzed wvw camp lords instantly, which led to warriors suiciding into lordrooms to drop a banner, to give their team more time to come and save the objective.

There existed a completely opposite playstyle to the pirateshipping, were the zerg consisted mostly of heavy armor and the caster also ran in the frontlines, that was widely known as paintrain (atleast on EU server)

Guards staff was called lootstick, because of its range and dmg spread

Not rly in the game, but on teamspeak many warriors called it out loudly when they used hammerstun in the enemy wvw zerg (was fun and sometimes helped the other players who were scared of pushing with their commander into the enemy blob)Hammerstun cc actually mattered in wvw

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Engineer double grenade barrage build potentially killing everyone in one-combo thanks to the Speedy Kits trait.Confusion damage (immense at this time) affecting kit-switching. Perplexity runes.Engineer Slick Shoes potentially causing mayhem on a full zerg that pursued said engi.Rocket Boots launching you backwards and knocking you down.The Coated Bullets giving the piercing feature to pistols while still causing explosions.

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