[Scourge might be a bit too strong (49k dps)]

lol

lmao

[Scourge might be a bit too strong (49k dps)]

Absolute clown meta.

Scourge 49k, Spectre 46k and Chaos Virt 43k. None of these builds should do above 35k.

[July 18th Necromancer Changes]

8 hours ago, soul.9651 said:

Amazing, scourge stacking is back :') cant wait to see wingman data in a week or two, gz you kittened the game with all this complaining for those who played any instanced content and enjoyed varianty 🙂

While DPS Scourge will be the main villain of this balance patch (feat. Herald), it's really only the manifestation of ANet failing to apply the necessary ranged DPS tax to ranged builds.

Build's like Scourge, Condi Virt and Rifle Deadeye should be doing roughly one fourth less DPS than their melee counterparts. In a meta with standardized 40-43k DPS builds, builds with ranged DPS uptime should be sitting around 29-31k.

[July 18th Necromancer Changes]

20 minutes ago, culturespy.1324 said:

It seemed to me that @Aktium.9506 and others feel "it had to go" even without the alacrity change. Like there's something intrinsically wrong with the old "training wheels" build existing in the first place. That's what I don't get. Thanks.

The whole training wheels rationalization for Heal Scourge was utterly unhinged nonsense at best. The build was at it's core, the strongest build in the entire game for what it brought. To claim it was only good as training wheels is deranged.

Heal Scourge during it's existence saw plenty of use during new squad content progression and raid races. It became a mainstay in many experienced groups because bruteforcing encounters by invalidating entire mechanics is very enticing for players who just want their weekly raid clear. I know many groups who used a heal scourge so much that they became reliant on it in a degenerative way. I myself having led hundreds of runs often gave in to the temptation of throwing heal scourge at a problem rather than fixing it or making sure an inexperienced player learns.

From ANet's perspective the build invalidated a plethora if not the majority of damage related mechanics that did not result in instant death. From a content design perspective this is incredibly limiting. Damage needs to matter in content designed to be challenging.

[July 18th Necromancer Changes]

On 7/19/2023 at 9:39 AM, Lctl.6198 said:

Screw HScourge's right?

Heal Scourge in its prior form as a downed player vacuum had to go. So kinda yeah. Heal Scourge was a crutch that shouldn't have been allowed to exist for as long as it did.

The new Heal Scourge can comfortable generate party wide 25 Might, 100% Alac uptime, 100% Fury uptime, 100% Prot uptime, 100% Regen uptime, 60% Aegis uptime, has access to a lot of condi cleanse and outheals the Extreme aura on golem by a good margin. It fits into most compositions as a proper Alac Healer now.

On 7/19/2023 at 9:39 AM, Lctl.6198 said:

Even the 3 shades before, it allowed us time to adapt to the fight and perform any rotation or skill use in a clean and proper fashion. So it's kinda disingenuous to say we pressed them off cooldown before - since we didn't had to worry about them for a LONG TIME ( which remains the major complain about shades right now ). 

That's what changed, and it's ridiculous to ignore that change like you did. The time between the "spam" was a lot higher, now we *have* to constantly babysit them. There's no "choice" anymore, or adaptability. We're forced to do it out of necessity, constantly - cutting a LOT of time to do/press/use other skills entirely .

This is not even remotely true. If you weren't pressing shades off cooldown on condi dps scourge prior to the change you were absolutely dropping 100% uptime on 3 shades and by extension 5% condi duration or possibly even 10% if you were really slow on the usage. You're just punished harder for messing it up now by losing the entire 15% if you let shades drop to 0, which I support. Bad play should be punished, especially on an easy build like Scourge.

[July 18th Necromancer Changes]

11 minutes ago, Degs.5148 said:

Oops you stumbled on the point.

Don't act like the majority of complaints are about worse cleave and not a misguided notion that APM increased.

[July 18th Necromancer Changes]

These complaints about "shade spam" are absolutely clueless. Any Necro who has complained about it should feel ashamed. Prior to the patch you dunked out 3 shades at the fight start and pressed it off cooldown when it wouldn't interrupt a higher priority skill until the end. With alac, uptime was 100% on 3 shades. Now you do the exact same thing for less shades with the same bonus.

Rotionally, almost nothing changed for Condi Scourge in PvE. Making sure Nefarious Favor gets pressed off cooldown is way more important now than it was before, but that's it. But you already did press it off cd for the Dhuumfire procc so that's not really a big difference.

The one legitimate complaint is that less shades means less cleave, and this in a world where Epidemic is a shadow of its former self.

[Can Necro finally get a (real) support spec?]

Remove Feed from Corruption and replace it with a trait that gives Alacrity on F-skill use or Barrier application.

Revert Abrasive Grit so that it gives Might again.

 

[Jumping over the wall on Eternal Coliseum as Vindicator]

15 hours ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Wait how did you use nomad's advance after jumping? The game doesn't let me do it.

You can buffer jumps into most leap skills. It's just way harder to do than dodgejumping. But I know it works on Reaper Shroud 2 and Warrior Sword 2 as well.

[Bring back the Pve Reaper]

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I do think you're forgetting about many combo finisher. Even if reaper only have 1 ice field, it doesn't mean that what you're suggesting isn't way to dangerous to implement in the game. GS2 and GS3 are finishers, Staff1 and staff4 are finishers, putrid explosion (despite how bad it is) is a combo finisher.

First of all. You're still thinking too much of PvP. And keep in mind that modifiers can be adjusted, focus on the suggested functionality alone. If you imagine the flow of a Reaper rotation in instanced PvE based on these changes. You could fit in Shroud 4 and GS3 + GS2 into the Ice Field from Shroud 5 only once every other cycle while upkeeping Soul Barbs. You could possibly set it up so you always come out of Shroud into Staff and use Staff 4 + Staff 5 before GS3 + GS2. So we're looking at 6-7 triggers of the reworked Chilling Nova above 50%. Probably around the same under 50% as well when you'd just do Shroud 5 > Shroud 4 > GS2 spam before the Ice Field disappears.

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

If what you suggest for chilling nova come along with what you suggest for deathly chill, you're making shroud 4 into a PvP murder machine. On another hand, the impact in PvE would be, at best, minimal. You're not helping reaper with those kind of change, you're shooting him in the knee.

I think the current DPS traits you take in instanced PvE should stay as they are but be replaced by DPS traits that are less valuable in PvP and in solo PvE play but overall stronger in a proper squad composition. Disassociate this from PvP, please. Assume CMC just sets these modifiers to 0.069 in PvP. The impact in instanced PvE would be bigger than you think especially when they're compounding with the other changes.

3 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Fact is that condi reaper curretnly deal as much damage than power reaper in PvE, maybe even a bit more. And that is thanks to deathly chill. It is a good trait in it's current iteration and doesn't need to be changed. Reaper doesn't not need to be pigeonholed into strike damage just like harbinger isn't pidgeonholed into condi damage. I mean, what's your next step? Begging ANet to change harbinger strike damage traits into condi traits because "reaper is the strike damage e-spec"? Will you ask ANet to pigeonhole scourge into supprot because it threaten harbinger's hegemony in term of condition damage then realize that scourge have decent strike damage potential and ask for yet another nerf in order to keep reaper as the only strike damage option?

E-spec are meant to be versatile, they are not meant to be pigeonholed into a single damage type. They are not meant to fill the single role that players want them to fill, they are meant to cover an array of roles. If reaper have an advantage over the other necromancer's specs it's in damage reduction not in strike damage.

Have you been reading my post history? Because yes, I'm opposed to this line of thinking. I think Elite Specializations should be specialized heavily towards a certain role. This has been my consistent opinion for years. Every specialization having the option of Condi DPS/Power DPS/Support should not be a thing because it's lazy and causes problems and wastes traits that are going to end up being useless.

If we take Scourge as an example it should have always been a support specialization through and through. The traitline options should just have been a selection from Offensive Semi-Support/Healing & Barrier Support/Boon Support. The fact that Scourge benches 35k DPS disgusts me. It should be brought back to 26k and the barrier values restored to what they were.

In the same way I do actually think Harbinger should not have a power DPS option. I was opposed to the upper three traits in Harbinger from the start. They should be deleted and changed to something else. I said they were either going to be garbage or overtuned to the point of being overpowered before EoD. And that's how they turned out to be. Harbinger is a mess as a whole to be honest. Elixirs and Blight are terribly designed. But that is a whole other discussion.

So yeah I think Reaper should be a Power specialization. One set of traits for raw DPS that needs group support to function properly. One set of traits for self-reliance. And one set of traits for sustain and mobility.

[Bring back the Pve Reaper]

Let me preface this by saying I'm not thinking of PvP at all for these changes. The thread was about PvE Reaper. Think of instanced PvE in a vacuum for this.

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Objectively you can't allow it to trigger on all kind of combo finisher. Which would leave us with trigger on leap finisher only. Which is basically: "trigger on shroud#2"

Nah, if it triggers on just the main combo trigger it means four triggers on Shroud 4 and one on Shroud 2. Let me rephrase it though, I worded it wrongly: Triggers on Ice Field Combo finishers with no ICD instead of its current effect. Can crit again.

 

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Basically a 12.5% damage mod on top of 50% crit chance? The crit chance would have to be reduced. But, yeah that's a good way to make the trait competitive.

Yeah I think the current traits you take for Power Reaper like Soul Eater and Reaper's Onslaught should stay more open world PvE and PvP focused. Having Decimate Defenses be the go-to Instanced PvE trait would be better. It also solves the absolutely cursed crit capping issue since they changed Death Perception. Thief Runes can straight up go kitten themselves.

 

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Nope! Just no! DC is a good condition damage option and shouldn't be given up for yet another strike damage option that would end up not dealing critical damage for the good sake of PvP. Do you even realize how much damage soul spiral would end up doing with such suggestion? You'd have the whole PvP forum brandishing pitches and forks to burn reaper at the stake while PvE players wouldn't even glance at the trait because it's not worth losing 300 ferocity from reaper onslaught.

Just kill Condi Reaper off at this point. We have Scourge and Harbinger for Condi. Let Reaper be the Power spec. And yes, I do. 1.5x is probably way, way too high. I'm godawful at math but by my estimation these changes would propel Reaper to 45k-ish, which is obviously too high. But you get the idea. The state of Reaper in instanced PvE is abysmal. And Reaper's Onslaught would still be the better trait for PvP and solo play. But it would also make Dread in Spite more attractive by proxy of having a burstier less reliable trait combo option.

 

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Again, the PvP forum would burn in anger if this happened. Best thing that could happen to executioner's scythe would be for it's damage to come back while the stun is replaced by a daze. The ideal solution would be to give a stomp effect to the skill to justify it's name.

I mean like I said. This could all be adjusted for PvP. I think it should be a Freeze though. It always felt like it should have been. Maybe it would fit better on Chilled to the Bone though. I also think skills like Overload Earth and Infusing Terror should return to being Breakbars instead of Stability like they were in the HoT beta.

[Bring back the Pve Reaper]

Rework the Reaper traitline.

• Chilling Nova: Triggers on Combo finishers with no ICD instead of its current effect. Can crit again.
• Decimate Defenses: Now also increases the effectiveness of Vulnerability by 50% for yourself
• Deahtly Chill: No longer inflicts Bleeding, instead triggers a Strike damage hit every time you inflict Chill. No ICD, 1.5x modifier.

Additionally

• Executioner's Scythe: Changed the Stun to Freeze instead.

[Lets make minion master amazing!(PvE focus)]

Give me back Jagged Horrors that can live indefinitely like they used to.

I want my horde of 30 rats back

[Change Conjure Earth Shield]

Buff the all of other Conjures and add a Heal skill Conjure.

Ele meta build in all game modes should be 5 conjures.

 

[How do you feel about Staff daredevil?]

I have some very bad memories from HoT of the double Staff Daredevil build that could spam Vault and Bound and I could barely tell them apart. Those 20k Vaults were nasty.

[Off-Season is near, Suggestions for Game modes]

Stronghold

[What was your longest Queue from back in the day?]

I think I had a couple of +50m queues during primetime when I've been up at leggy rank back before they changed the algorithm

Although it was relatively rare for me. It was way worse for the players who were good enough to be permanently at leggy. I think a lot of people these days forget that when they end up matched with golds due to deviation and rage about it. But the top 1% deserved to not be punished just for being good.

[possible solutions for hard cc rebuff]

Only Warrior deserves to have damage back on CC skills. Minus Full Counter. Full Counter and Spellbreaker can stay gone.

[What I Wish Someone Told Me When I Started PvP]

1 hour ago, gmmg.9210 said:

This is overall btw in the game's history, not just recently.

I know good Mesmers have always been more rare on NA, but Mesmer and specifically Portal was a long time fixture on EU for high tier ranked and tournament play. Portal plays decided entire matches.

[Easy to bring Willbender and Harb inline.]

11 hours ago, Crab Fear.8623 said:

Harbinger

The float needs slower cast and a clear obvious tell.

A slower cast would feel bad. Would be better if it had a delayed arming time of 0.5s to 1s after the circle appears before the float happens. Currently the first float pulse happens instantly before the animation even appears. The animation itself for it is already pushing it a bit with the visual noise. Like, it's already big green glowing magic circle with impaled corpses spinning around on spikes. I guess we could add a 2nd circle in the air above so it's not obscured by other aoes on the ground

[Ranked PvP Character swap]

15 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

Has anet said anywhere that swapping characters before a spvp match begins is a bug/exploit? Anyone have links?

Well, it's not really either. But it's worth remembering that SSDs weren't readily available for the majority of players when GW2 launched. Relogging to a new character could easily take 1-2+ minutes per loading screen on old HDs back in the day.

There was a brief "SSD meta" when they did become popular though. If anyone remembers it. People relogged when they got downed because it was faster than getting stomped and waiting for the respawn timer until they changed how that stuff worked because of this.

[Ranked PvP Character swap]

Lock character upon queueing up. Only nerds reroll and counter pick.

It's also mildly abusable since the matchmaker tries to create mirror matchups when possible.

[Making new specs stronger is not variety, it is PTW]

Did you see the forums and reddit during the betas and post-launch, OP?

Everyone was giving CMC and ANet absolute hell for making the EoD classes "too weak". Endless complaints, whining and nagging about releasing weak specs and threats from people to not buy the xpac because the especs weren't strong enough.

[Instead of nerfing willbender, buff spellbreaker]

Full Counter is lame and so is Spellbreaker.

I'd rather see Berserker get unblockable and boonrip added to all primal bursts. Maybe some barrier gen to Eternal Champion to top off the sustain a bit.

 

[Can we go back to the 1st season system?]

Nah. The first seasons were garbage. I got Legendary rank in all of them and it sure as hell wasn't through merit. You could just grind it out, I think it was like 400~ games in a season for guaranteed Leggy.