Jonas.2079

It should be possible to maintain full uptime on Relic of the Scourge on Weaver, dunno if it would be optimal for condi weaver though but 15% condi duration is kinda nice?

Sounds fun! Mind sharing the build? 🙂

Copying my post from the other thread as this topic seems more specialized 🙂 Quick disclaimer; i haven't played in a while so i might have misunderstood certain things, apologies if that is the case! Just find theorycrafting fun 🙂 Anyone tried quick-heal staff/staff untamed yet? Seemed like it could be good during but idk what the healing power scaling is on the staff ambush, wiki only lists it as a flat 660 heal? Doesn't sound right from what I recall being said during the beta but haven't been able to try it out yet myself. It seems like a build like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAIlJwUYJsRGJWqSaxvRcH-zRJYqRBfZkYCUdB47yggAA-e could be good (replacing the hammer for staff), if the healing on staff ambush wasn't gutted. The staff ambush alone gives perma prot, quickness and a strong(?) heal. We also have the regular staff heals for even more healing and some cleanse, and slotted quickdraw so we can use them even more. With nature magic we also get a lot of regen sources, and regen is improved. Stone spirit gives us aegis on demand as we do not need it for protection, and the white tiger gives us aegis as well. Our might generation comes from a double slam sun spirit as well as spirited arrival, the latter of which we also need for fury generation alongside spotter. Requiring a pet swap in the rotation isn't great IMO, but at least it looks like simply starting the fight with the secondary pet, using its skills then swapping leaves you a bit of time and you don't need to be swapping off CD. I chose a hawk as the second pet to provide some swiftness as well, but the second pet would be a pretty free choice, I think. Finally, we have a lot of revive power with search and rescue as well as nature spirit, but both of these are swappable for whatever the situation requires. Other potentially useful utilities could be guard, protect me, flame trap (for an alternative might source), frost spirit, storm spirit, signet of renewal. Nature spirit is also swappable for entangle when extra immob is needed, and even forest's fortification may have some uses (solo mission to deal with mechanic where you need to survive type stuff). On top of all this we have projectile hate, boonrip and boon corrupts from Untamed's kit. Another build option could be switching the double spirit slam for invigorating bond for more healing and vigor, as well as even more protection. This requires you to use your beast skill though, so it would be more difficult to save the White Tiger's Aegis for reactionary use. Then again, because we generate prot from staff ambushes we can save the stone spirit for reactionary aegis, and pet swapping + using beast skills often will make regen, fury, might and vigor uptime better/easier while also providing more healing, so this may be the better option. In that case it is you could run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAIlJwsYJsRGJWuS6xvScfXA-zRJYqRBfZkYCUdB47q0eAA-e Running invigorating bond, with trappers expertise and flame trap for might (we have blast finishers on i.e. rending vines, staff 3, quickdraw staff 3, frost spirit, stone spirit). Jungle stalker can be picked for even more might, and Hawk for swiftness. Overall it seems like it could be a strong build only really lacking access to stability. What do you all think?

Quick disclaimer; i haven't played in a while so i might have misunderstood certain things, apologies if that is the case! Just find theorycrafting fun 🙂 Anyone tried quick-heal staff/staff untamed yet? Seemed like it could be good during but idk what the healing power scaling is on the staff ambush, wiki only lists it as a flat 660 heal? Doesn't sound right from what I recall being said during the beta but haven't been able to try it out yet myself. It seems like a build like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAIlJwUYJsRGJWqSaxvRcH-zRJYqRBfZkYCUdB47yggAA-e could be good (replacing the hammer for staff), if the healing on staff ambush wasn't gutted. The staff ambush alone gives perma prot, quickness and a strong(?) heal. We also have the regular staff heals for even more healing and some cleanse, and slotted quickdraw so we can use them even more. With nature magic we also get a lot of regen sources, and regen is improved. Stone spirit gives us aegis on demand as we do not need it for protection, and the white tiger gives us aegis as well. Our might generation comes from a double slam sun spirit as well as spirited arrival, the latter of which we also need for fury generation alongside spotter. Requiring a pet swap in the rotation isn't great IMO, but at least it looks like simply starting the fight with the secondary pet, using its skills then swapping leaves you a bit of time and you don't need to be swapping off CD. I chose a hawk as the second pet to provide some swiftness as well, but the second pet would be a pretty free choice, I think. Finally, we have a lot of revive power with search and rescue as well as nature spirit, but both of these are swappable for whatever the situation requires. Other potentially useful utilities could be guard, protect me, flame trap (for an alternative might source), frost spirit, storm spirit, signet of renewal. Nature spirit is also swappable for entangle when extra immob is needed, and even forest's fortification may have some uses (solo mission to deal with mechanic where you need to survive type stuff). On top of all this we have projectile hate, boonrip and boon corrupts from Untamed's kit. Another build option could be switching the double spirit slam for invigorating bond for more healing and vigor, as well as even more protection. This requires you to use your beast skill though, so it would be more difficult to save the White Tiger's Aegis for reactionary use. Then again, because we generate prot from staff ambushes we can save the stone spirit for reactionary aegis, and pet swapping + using beast skills often will make regen, fury, might and vigor uptime better/easier while also providing more healing, so this may be the better option. In that case it is you could run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAIlJwsYJsRGJWuS6xvScfXA-zRJYqRBfZkYCUdB47q0eAA-e Running invigorating bond, with trappers expertise and flame trap for might (we have blast finishers on i.e. rending vines, staff 3, quickdraw staff 3, frost spirit, stone spirit). Jungle stalker can be picked for even more might, and Hawk for swiftness. Overall it seems like it could be a strong build only really lacking access to stability. What do you all think?

I totally disagree with this. Hybrid main-hand weapons are great because they allow for a lot of build diversity. Axe works with every single one of ranger's offhand options, and there isn't a good reason why sword couldn't as well. The only real problem with axe atm is that the other weapons are slightly undertuned in comparison, so it has become centralizing, but that isn't a problem of axe but rather just that the options should be brought up to compete. I just feel that running stuff like sword/torch and sword/dagger just makes sense from a class fantasy and fun perspective, and it would be a shame if this was not possible due to some arbitrary "sword must be power only" rule. Sword does have a condi component to its identity through serpent's strike as well so it's not like it is a revolutionary idea that it is meant to be a hybrid weapon. Adding some poison or bleed on the third auto-attack, and/or buffing serpent strike's poison application in PvE only would go a long way while not really buffing power builds much.

With the excellent news that Anet are taking a look at ranger’s sword in the upcoming patch, I’d like to bring up some concerns and wishes I have for the weapon, as someone who’s actually been playing around quite a bit with sword mainhand Untamed recently - even in the sorry state sword is in right now. Anet said in the latest Studio update that they are “looking at further defining ranger sword as a mobile, power damage weapon ». While that is great, I really hope that this is not just a numbers change, and that they don’t forget the condition side of this weapon. Warning! Wall of text incoming. Pure Power vs Hybrid Ranger’s offhand options are quite limited – we have access to the axe for power damage, warhorn for support/boons, torch for burning, and dagger for bleed and poison (with a greater emphasis on the latter). Notice that there is only really one offhand weapon for power damage (although the warhorn could also be used on non-condi builds). Now, ranger’s other mainhand weapons are axe and dagger. The axe MH is currently great for both power damage and bleeding, is ranged and is just very strong in the current meta. The dagger main hand is a great all-rounder, with good power damage, bleeding&poision, some mobility and even self quickness. To me, it would be natural that the mainhand sword should “fill out the blank” and be a weapon that had good power damage and poison damage, foregoing bleeding, as well as keeping its identity as a highly mobile, evasive weapon. I really think that the poison aspect of the weapon should be highlighted, for a multitude of reasons. First of all, the “signature skill” of the weapon is serpent’s strike, with the evasive snake animation. The other skills on the weapon are “monarch’s leap” and “hornet’s sting” also somewhat relate to poison. By maintaining a viable condition option on the weapon, it opens up for much greater build variety as we can use the sword alongside the offhand dagger and torch, two weapons that very much “fit” the fantasy of a mainhand sword ranger – think a Aragorn-at-Weathertop strider-type character. Finally, I advocate for sword to be poison focused as opposed to bleed focused. Dagger offhand and torch offhand are (primarily) poison and burn focused, respectively. In the Skirmishing traitline there is a very clear “trait path” for i.e. a sword torch build that is not as concerned with bleeding and rather focuses on poison and burn; trappers expertise (with vipers nest and flame trap) over sharpened edges (bleed on crit), striders defense (the sword trait) over hidden barbs (more dangerous bleeding) and quickdraw (more bonfires/stalker strikes) over vicious quarry (crit chance). This is just one example, and I’m sure there are a lot of other things we could do as well; how about shortbow + sword/x? Overall, it just sounds like a lot of fun to have these build options and it would be a shame to leave them in the dust. Mobility & Control Currently, the “natural rotation” (not necessarily dps optimal) of the sword is a bit strange, requiring us to use “monarch’s leap” prior to gaining access to serpent’s strike, then using hornet’s sting to reset monarch’s leap and subsequently serpent’s strike. Serpent’s strike “roll-behind” coupled with hornet’s sting dashback reset mechanic makes it so that one can often feel like we are jumping around all over the place, even when you don’t really want to. Sometimes this even leads to inadvertently yeeting yourself of cliffs etc. While mobility and evasion are great and part of the sword’s identity, it should IMO be a more controlled thing. Personally, I believe that Serpent’s strike should be the “bread and butter” damage skill of the rangers sword – it’s the most recognizable and coolest skill of the sword kit. It’s also an evade. As such, it should be readily available as skill 2 without being locked behind another skill. Instead of using reset mechanic requiring excessive jumping, it could just have a set, relatively short cooldown. An ammo system to kind of match the frequency we currently get could work as well – more on this later. Skill 3 would then be monarch’s leap as our engage tool, available at a simple button press – this was the good consequence of the last change to ranger sword and should stay. A question is if it should be a dps increase to use this skill or not vs a static target. I would advocate that similarly to greatsword’s leap, it should not be a dps boost to use off cd, so that it can be saved for mobility. Now, hornet’s sting is then a bit tricky to fit the into kit in a satisfying way. As an “emergency evade” you would ideally want it to be readily available as well, but the sword only has three skill slots. One is reserved for the autoattack, so one of the abilities needs to be a flipover. For the reasons above I think the other two abilities take precedence, but then the question is; should it be a flipover on serpent’s strike or monarch’s leap? I think that the best option is most likely to have it as a flip-over for Serpent’s Strike, but that it has its own internal CD of 15 seconds (same as it has now). This allows Monarch’s leap to be saved for mobility and still lets us have the Hornet’s sting evade available readily. With serpent’s strike being the “bread and butter” skill, we will be using it often, so it will be on CD a lot, making hornet’s sting available often as well. Hornet’s sting would still reset Monarch’s leap to let you get back into the fray quickly, but it’s not a dps increase to do this so you don’t have to jump around all over the unless you want to. Alternatively, hornet’s sting could be a Flipover skill for monarch’s leap, but in that case Monarch’s leap should be a dps increase to use so that HS can be used on reaction when in a pinch. This would diminish the chase potential of Monarch’s leap though, so I’m not a huge a fan of this solution. Potentially convoluted but interesting ammo system? One consequence of all this is that Serpent’s strike will probably be used off cooldown and therefore not quite as much as a reactionary dodge. I still think it’s worth it as I would like the coolest skill of the kit to be one that I want to use frequently. One way to remedy the issue could be that a special ammo system is introduced, which there is precedent for (see firebrand changes). Let’s say that there is two ammo on serpent’s strike, with a ~3-4 second recharge between when you can use the skill (this would be the “recharge” time present on ammo skills, which is the time you need to wait until you can use another ammo that you have stocked up). But the special part of this ammo system is that the second ammo charge would have a much lower “count recharge” than the first ammo. This incentivizes us to keep one charge available as a defensive measure. So, this idea would see play as as follows, starting from two ammo charges: Use serpent strike. 3-4 second recharge time for SS, during this time Hornet Sting is available. Wait until Serpent strike second ammo is back. During this time, the first ammo of SS is available. SS second ammo back, use it for dmg, Hornet sting available again during recharge Keep repeating the above as long as you can for big DPS… until… Gotta dodge attack! First ammo of SS is available. Use it. Hornet sting is available, and we now have a longer ammo/count recharge to wait for Need to dodge again! Use Hornet’s sting, followed up by Monarch’s leap to get back in the fray Keep waiting for 2 ammo on SS again Well, I’m not sure exactly if this ammo system is the best way, but it’s an option, at least. There could also be some sort of option where if you actually dodge an attack with the first ammo serpent strike, the count recharge is reduced. However, it might just be simpler to just introduce a consistent, relatively short CD on serpent’s strike and accept that in PvE it will be used off CD for damage and not be that much of a reactionary dodge. Janky rolling – mirage cosplay? As a final point; while SS is a favorite ability of mine, I have to admit what I really like is the “serpent strike” part of the attack, and not really the roll itself. The roll, while unique, can be janky, resulting in you ending up in the wrong place and missing the enemy. One option could be to make SS behave more like a mirage ambush; when you use it you briefly enter a distortion state where you can move freely, and when that ends you dash towards the targeted enemy with the serpent strike. This change is perhaps more to ask for as it potentially requires some new animations etc, and could be implemented after the other main changes. TLDR: I might’ve gotten carried away a bit here, but hopefully you made it this far! These were some of my ideas for the weapon and how they could go about making it better, without requiring a full rework with new skills & animations. My first concern is that they seem to not be considering the condition damage aspect of the weapon. I believe that to be a mistake as having it as an option would match the philosophy of the other mainhand weapons and facilitate for a lot of fun build options that use the currently underutilized parts of ranger’s kit – sword/torch/dagger, for example. Furthermore, I think this is a good chance to have a look at the interactions and purpose of the sword skills in general, and how to adjust the weapon for a smoother, more intentful gameplay experience. I’m not sure if my suggestions are the optimal solution, but at least I hope to start some discussion on what you all think about my suggestions and/or what you would like to see for ranger’s sword. (reposted from reddit)

I don't really mind the changes, although I am a bit worried about scepter losing its healing i guess dagger and staff will be able to fill that role. However, the bigger issue is that they haven't adressed the actual playability issues facing ele. DPS boosts are nice, but far more important than that is improving how fun the class feels to play. While I realize its a monster task to fix elementalist as a whole and that this is probably not the place for such a discussion, there are some low-hanging fruit that they should have looked at waay before reworking scepter, such as; 1. Tempest alac should pulse on overload - such a simple change but would be very nice for the spec's reliability. 2. Reworking catalyst's energy system, it currently feels bad. Either remove energy completely or at least change it to a system where you can gain energy while a sphere is active. 3. Changing catalyst's EE stacking. The GM should always apply to not punish you so hard for having anything but 10 stacks, and we shouldn't have to rely on wasting our CC to build the stacks either. 4. Hammer air 4 needs to have the dashback optional on a flipover or something. 5. Look into elementalist utility skills, and start working towards a world where the damage ones arent so central for dps (but still a little boost for the min/maxers), and the supportive ones have some more group benefits. Group aegis on arcane shield in PvE, perhaps? Cantrip cooldowns and a conjure rework are also things to look at. 6. Speaking of Aegis, the proposed change to put aegis on earth sphere doesn't quite work imo. Aegis is great, but should be something you use reactively to counter a specific attack. Catalyst does not have the freedom to access earth attunement, much less earth sphere, at any given time because the rotation is very strict in order to upkeep quickness and energy. You basically rapid-fire your way through the attunements and there will be many times where you go; "i need to give my group aegis but just left earth attunement" or "i need to give my group aegis but i don't have enough energy". A long-duration stack of stability would be better honestly, similar to mech. While stab also should be a reactive thing i think it's more appropriate to have passive stab than passive aegis. Of course it wouldn't be much of a problem if attunement swapping didn't have a CD, someting i think would fix A LOT of issues with ele's playability. Of course for that to happen some sort of balancing mechanic would also need to be in place.

I mean don't you still need to do this in the current setup? Your spirits need to stay with the group to provide buffs, and alac requires yourself to stay with the group. I preferred the "follow by default but can be placed where you want if needed" version because at least most of the time you don't have to even think about them and you could save the actives for when they are needed rather than spamming them off CD to maintain alac. Your suggestion to make them simple ground-targeted abilities that give you everything at once is not only boring and arbitrarily removes a unique ability tyoe, but it also does not change the basic gameplay loop that currently feels bad; Sure, you won't have to precast which is nice, but you will be forced to spam your spirit actives off cooldown to maintain boons. No-thought, clunky cast time, wasted potential of the active ability. Utility skill actives should by and large be reactive abilities that you use for utility. I want to use CC for breakbars, not randomly to upkeep alac. A diffrent idea I had was that instead of spirits following you, you could make a sort of "move em when you want" version that is kind of a mix of our suggestions. The spirits dont need to be summoned, they are just always available if you have spirits slotted. They are now flipover skills. The first skill summons/repositions the spirit to a ground target where it stays and pulses all its boons until otherwise commanded. This skill would have a very short or instant cast time. The flipover skill is the active part, like CC on storm spirit. It stays available for ~3 seconds, at which point the repositioning skill takes over again. The actives have their own internal ICD similar to what we have today. This would let you reposition spirits so frequently that you shouldn't have big problems, while not requiring you to recast them if you don't neeed to. We don't waste the actives either. The repositioning being instant means that you can still quickly use your active heal or CC when needed, even if it is a flipover skill. Spirits could have health or they could not; like i said, the minigame of healing them is kind of cool but honestly it probably would not be OP if spirits were just invulnerable and the health mechanic is removed. If need be you could just get rid of their damage if getting killed by invulnarable spirits really is a thing people fear, but really the actives are just like any other utility skill.

A solution could be to make it a flipover skill; first use is CC, flipover is the dashback. Although i do fear that it would be janky - when you want the evade youre forced to cc first, or doubletapping when you don't want the evade. Perhaps a better solution would be to remove the dashback entirely and instead refresh a dodge or give you superspeed?

This wouldn't be great. While skill 3 should indeed be Monarch's leap, I don't want to use hornet's sting in order to use Serpent's strike. At least put hornet's sting as the flipover on skill 2. You'd still need to use Hornet's sting as a part of the dps rotation though, which i don't like as it's too much uncontrolled jumping around. I'd much rather that HS was something you used only when you needed it. I do concede that the whole "special ammo skill" was a bit convoluted though -the idea was to provide the same number of uses as we have today without requiring jumping around for dps. A simpler and better solution may be to get rid of resetting Serpent's strike alltogether and just reduce the base CD to compensate. Hornet's sting would still reset Monarch's leap though. As far as hybrid weapons go i think that on ranger, it is a must for the mainhand weapons. It would be a sad state of build diversity if this wasn't the case. Axe is already there, being the best condition and the best power weapon for ranger currently, and compatible with every offhand weapon. It's probably a bit too strong, but its not really that OP either with the possible exception of Axe/axe fervent force untamed (although it has a very high apm rotation so it's not actually that bad). Dagger MH isn't the greatest for power (personally i never tried it so idk really), but has both bleeding and poison as well as quickness&some mobility - it strikes me as good allrounder. Sword should be power+poison to fill out the trio, but it's poison application is too weak as it currently is. Again, there is a very clear design space in the skirmishing (with wilderness survival ofc) for a poison based condition ranger using something like sword/torch, Sword/dagger. Trapper's expertise, Strider's defense and quickdraw, avoiding the typical crit+bleed we see on many ranger condi builds. Instead we have picked traits that synergize well with sword/poison (and burning, to a lesser extent). The problem is not really poison as a condition, it does more damage than bleed, the problem is that it is more difficult to apply as many stacks. I suggested to significantly buff the poison application on sword to help alleviate this. Or were you saying that that poison could have an issue in PvP because of it's effect on healing making it difficult to for Anet allow any build to have tons of it? If that's what you meant, maybe a solution could be to split poison into "poison" and "sickness". One is the damage component, the other is the anti healing. The anti healing would be applied a split second after the damage so that cleanses prioritize it. I'm not sure of the severity of this issue, though.

I'm not sure if you read my suggestion thorougly; I've suggested that the spirits follow you and pulse all the boons including alacrity, but using the active ability would place them in a location to pulse their boons there instead, in addition to using the active portion of the skill. The active then flips over to a "return to me" skill that you can activate if you want them to follow you again. This solves the issues of requiring us to spam our utilities to provide alacrity, which your solution doesn't as you would need to use the active off CD to give alac. What I suggested lets you use your heal, cc, etc. when you need to but still provide alac without requiring animations. It also lets you provide boons from a distance when needed. I also suggested that the spirits would be completely invulnerable to all damage, cc, everything except the health they naturally lose per interval, which can still be healed in order to maintain the spirits indefinetely. Since they also follow you they wouldn't die easily. Summoning a couple of spirits at the start of the fight isn't a big deal to me, especially now that they move with you.

I disagree that this would fix the issue; youre still forced to waste the active part of the skill (heal, daze, etc.) in order to provide alacrity. As you say it would also be boring and remove spirits' uniqueness. I do agree that the health is an issue though. One way to fix it would be to say that spirits should not take damage from any other source than the health they lose per interval. After all, how can a spirit be struck? But it does make sense that a spirit has a limited time in the physical world. Healing your spirits should be able to keep them around though, and it makes sense that Druid has the best synergy with spirits from a flavor standpoint. Anyone can heal them so they can be made to stay alive forever even if you arent a healer yourself. You could also just say that spirits cant die at all but just follow you forever, but i kind of like the flavor of needing to heal them and think it adds to the uniqueness of the spirit skill type.

Resposting my suggestion from another thread; Spirits follow you by default, with all boons (including alac) pulsing from the spirit at the 3s interval we currently have. This lends itself more to the style of running around with your army of pets and spirits and would feel much less clunky as you won't constantly have to use the actives for the spirits to "keep up". I'd say that the base alac duration should be 1 second, meaning that with 50% BD you just barely make it with 2 spirits. Spirit active abilities are now ground targeted and warp the spirit to the selected location, applying their active effect (heal for water spirit, daze for storm spirit, etc.). The spirits remain in this location and no longer follow you. However, the utility skill flips over to a skill that functions just like "return to me" does for pets, and upon usage the spirit will follow you again. This flipover skill is available for as long as the spirit active is on CD, so you always have the option to return the pet to follow mode. This system would give Druid back the ability to deal with mechanics while still providing its core effects to the group. It would give you the ultimate control of the spirits, while also having the ultimate convenience of them autofollowing you if you want. You wouldn't have to waste the spirit active abilities to provide alac, and as such you won't have to deal with the long and clunky cast animations (which should probably be quickened even with this solution) .

Sword needs to be reworked a bit in general. I think that the mobility skills should not be needed for DPS but should be used when mobility is needed. Serpent's strike should be the bread and butter dps skill, with good power damage and powerful poison damage. Sword should be a foil to Axe as a mainhand weapon, with the latter being ranged, bleed and power focused, Sword should be melee+mobility, Poison and power focused. There is a clear design space on ranger for a Poison-focused ranger that uses traps, sword, and potentially quickdraw in the Skirmishing traitline that is held back by sword's poor condi damage. Furthermore, because Serpent's strike is an evade, it should be possible to use it reactively to an attack. As it stands it's locked behind an engage. My solution would be as follows; Sword 1: Add some poison to the third autoattack Sword 2 would be Serpent's strike, and could be a a "special Ammo" skill with 2 charges with some ICD between ammo usage, so you'll only be able to use it about as quickly as you do now with the whole Monarch's leap - Serpent's strike - Hornet sting - Monarch leap - Serpent strike combo we have today. The ammo ICD should probably reflect the autoattack chain, so that its available after 1 or 2 full chains with quickness. It is a "special" ammo skill, because both ammo charges should recharge simultaenously. This is to make it so that the number of uses remains the same in a rotation as it does today, as we get to use Serpent's strike twice between each cooldown cycle. Poison damage should be buffed, as mentioned earlier. It would also be nice that if instead of the weird rolling animation, it functioned similarly to a mirage ambush, allowing you to move freely in the evade frames to position yourself, followed by a short dash to target with the serpent's strike animation. This way, you could also move your back away from cliffs that Hornet's string would normally yeet you off. Hornet's sting (current sword 3) is an evade as well, and therefore I suggest that it is placed as a flipover skill for Serpent's strike, instead of for Monarch's leap. Whenever Serpent's strike is not available (both between ammo uses or when ammo is recharging), Hornet's sting is available. If used, it will have it's own ICD. Hornet's sting resets Skill 3, monarch's leap, if it hits. Hornet's sting should be a low damage skill that you'd only use for evasion/mobility when you need it. Sword 3 is Monarch's leap. Doesn't have to change, should stay as a low dps, but nice mobiliy skill that you use when you need it, NOT to access your damage skill. Unlike previous sword incarnations, we do have it available as an engage at any time, so that functionality is not lost. With these changes sword would feel less clunky to play, and it would open up for interesting build options that, with the right numbers, could be a viable, flexible option to the axe that is dominating ranger builds atm.

Yeah, the Augment sharing (and whole section on augments) are possibly a bit too strong but could maybe work if relentless fire and shattering ice's effects to allies were substantially nerfed. The idea was primarily to share defensive utilities like the cleanses of steam sphere, aegis of fortified earth and healing from growth sphere. Still might be a bit overloaded though, but would be fun 🙂 I kind of viewed the staunch auras trait as a more selfish option that gives you permanent selfstab, while Spectacular sphere GM version would give some group stab but not nearly as much. I suppose it could work... So you're thinking that Staunch auras would give group stability, and spectacular sphere goes back to the master tier, replacing the Augment trait. Any ideas on what you'd but on the last grandmaster (where sphere specialist is today)? I fear that it would be extremely powerful in PvE and WvW to have permanent, rapidly refreshing group stability and perma quickness - does even firebrand have that much stab?

I'd prefer it to be something like this; Spirits follow you by default, with all boons (including alac) pulsing from the spirit at the 3s interval we currently have. This lends itself more to the style of running around with your army of pets and spirits and would feel much less clunky as you won't constantly have to use the actives for the spirits to "keep up". I'd say that the base alac duration should be 1 second, meaning that with 50% BD you just barely make it with 2 spirits. Spirit active abilities are now ground targeted and warp the spirit to the selected location, applying their active effect (heal for water spirit, daze for storm spirit, etc.). The spirits remain in this location and no longer follow you. However, the utility skill flips over to a skill that functions just like "return to me" does for pets, and upon usage the spirit will follow you again. This flipover skill is available for as long as the spirit active is on CD, so you always have the option to return the pet to follow mode. This system would give Druid back the ability to deal with mechanics while still providing its core effects to the group. It would give you the ultimate control of the spirits, while also having the ultimate convenience of them autofollowing you if you want. You wouldn't have to waste the spirit active abilities to provide alac, and as such you won't have to deal with the long and clunky cast animations (which should probably be quickened even with this solution) .

Nice feedback 🙂 Fire sphere giving "more might" when traited, i just figured a copy of what is already there today with no changes, not that the sphere alone would provide 25 might. For stability; At this point its becoming an expectation for supports to have some stability access and as long as some quickness/alacrity provides do, the ones that don't will fall behind. I don't think it neccessarily would be OP for ele to have some access. Perhaps a better solution would be to make Armor of Earth affect 5 targets (with reduced stab stacks and reduced CD), so it's a more reactive & accessible stab application rather than the non-reactive, passive uptime of the sphere solution. As far as the healing build goes; i don't see why it's a problem that we can have multiple healing options? I think there is a space for catalyst to fill a quickness/barrier+some heals/aurashare role as opposed to tempests alacarity+big heals. I agree I'm not a fan of flip skills on ele - just figured if the loss of mobility would be a problem this could be a solution. But sure, getting rid of the mobility alltogether could work as well for me.

Hi guys! I had some time on my hands and started to write down some issues with Catalyst and how I would go about changing the spec to feel better. These are just my personal thoughts and it may be a bit much to ask for in certain aspects. With that being said I hope to start a discussion - do you disagree with me on the issues, would you do someting differently to solve the issues, or have anything else to contribute? I'd love to hear it! Finally, I'll give a warning that this is a bit of a long read. And CMC, if you're watching....please buff ele 🙂 Without further ado, let's look into some of Catalyst's issues; 1. Energy mechanic is clunky, breaks up the flow of the spec in real fights, and feels like a unnecessary limitation on sphere usage considering there is already a cooldown. Its current effect is to effectively limit you to using 3 spheres in a standard rotation where you try to use the spheres off CD. Personally I don’t think Cata would magically become overpowered if using all 4 was allowed – the current energy trait that allows you to do it is never picked anyway because the empowerement trait is superior. The energy mechanic is the cause of issues such as using your first sphere at 29 energy rather than 30 being highly punishing. It’s not uncommon having to pause you rotation to wait for a sphere to disappear so that you can regain energy, and it doesn’t feel very good. Furthermore, the energy mechanic makes weapons other than hammer reaaally need to work to upkeep energy, limiting our viable choices. Energy generation relies on having an enemy to strike, which can be tricky when bosses phase, etc. This in turn can i.e. cause delays to when your quickness is available when the boss returns. Basically, other specs do not have their profession mechanic and core boons gated in such a convoluted way and I don’t think it’s fun that Catalyst does. Get rid of energy and just allow us to use the sphere in every attunement – make the spec fun to play before worrying about balance. Playability should not come at the cost of balance either – numbers should do the brunt of the work there. 2. Stacking buffs. Another aspect of the spec which isn’t great – you have a lot of stacking buffs to keep track of; aura buffs as well as elemental empowerment. The latter is the biggest offender though, as auras are generally quite trivial to upkeep with the combot trait. Ele empowerment, on the other hand, suffers in large part because of the grandmaster – only when you have max stacks is the effectiveness doubled. This creates a massive gap between skilled players who can upkeep this and regular players – and also makes the spec bad in terms of adjusting to boss phases and such. My solution would simply be to let the grandmaster trait always apply; “elemental empowerment stacks are doubled in effectiveness”. This way, maxing them out is still the goal that top players will strive for, but it is still effective even if you do drop down to 7 or 8 stacks. As we get to the traits, I’m also changing how stacks are generated to interact more with the profession mechanic, which should be a net gain in ease of upkeep. As a side note, it would be great if a “celestial avatar”-style bar could be added to show how many stacks you have. 3. “Catalyst without hammer is just core ele with a well”: A common criticism of the spec is that without hammer, the jade sphere does not do enough to make the catalyst feel like unique. While the wording is a bit dramatic imo, the point stands. My proposition to change this, without requiring too much additional work for ANet, is to make the Hammer 3 orbs part of the profession mechanic of the spec. To do this, we first add the spheres to F1-F4, just like Tempest’s overloads. Then, we simply say that “when you deploy the jade sphere, you also get a corresponding spinning orb” – in the current design you are basically just spamming both the sphere (-1 because energy) and orbs in every attunement every time anyway, and they share a 15 second cooldown. So, I don’t think combining the two into one skill really diminishes the gameplay, and it would free up your apm a bit. F5 is now a skill that changes the radius that the spheres rotate at; I’m thinking three stages corresponding to melee, hammer’s ranged range, and staff range. This would let the orbs work well with any weapon, as a profession mechanic should. To maintain the orb cycling (rather than 100% uptime) you could add some clause saying “switching attunements when you have 4 orbs removes the orbs” in addition to their internal duration. Depending on how the new Hammer 3 skills are handled, this could be a simple autocast of grand finale as well. I’d love for them to make new, full-flegded skills for Hammer 3, but it’s probably a stretch to ask for this. One idea is to have mobility skills to match the dual-range of the hammer; fire 3 is a gapcloser to target (start at range, gapclose to use skill 5), water 3 is a retreat (water already has an engage, so this could prepare for a ranged attunement), earth 3 is a gapcloser (to match it’s melee range), air 4 is a retreat. Might be too much mobility though, especially when considering PvP, and would require a lot of animation work etc. that is probably to much to ask for. It could be nice that Hammer 3 still interacts with the orbs to keep that part of its identity. One very easy option for Anet to implement would be to have hammer 3 be Grand finale and have this exclusive to hammer. An attack that shoots out the orbs and returns them to you, a “mini grand finale” could be an option as well. I’m not exactly sure what would be the best option, but these were some ideas at least. 4. Augments – they don’t really live up to their name in the current setup. They should be skills that augment your sphere or at least interacts with the spheres in a meaningful way – which would also help make the Jade sphere profession mechanic feel more fleshed out. Instead, they give some (not bad) effects, but the interaction with the spheres is reduced to increased duration or decreased cooldown – not very exciting. The interaction is also limited to the same-element sphere. My proposition is to make the augments better and to have them interact with the spheres to a larger extent with cool elemental combos, but keeping the baseline effects. As a bonus, the spheres could change color to show that they have been “augmented”. Baseline effects: Relentless fire: Grants unblockable attacks and 10% strike damage boost. Shattering Ice: grants additional strikes that apply chill Invigorating Air: Stunbreak + superspeed & endurance regen Fortified earth: Block + some barrier if you block something Elemental bonuses: Almost unchanged for the same-element bonuses; Fire-fire: increase duration Water-water: increased duration Earth-earth: guaranteed bonus barrier, reduced CD. Air-Air: reduced recharge, instant max endurance Fire-water: Steam sphere. Sphere pulses cleanse your conditions. Sphere color change: “white smoke” Fire-Earth: Sphere eruption. Sphere pulses apply additional bleeding and burning. Sphere color change: magma color. Fire-Air: Sphere supernova. Sphere pulses do additional strike damage attacks emanating from the center of the sphere. First pulse has radius equal to 20% radius of the sphere, second 40%, third 60%, fourth 80%, final 100%. Bright light yellow/redish color Water-Earth: Growth sphere. Sphere heals you with increased healing for each pulse. Green color. Water Air: Cyclone sphere. Launch/Knockback/CC. Darker blue-grey color. Air-Earth: Sandstorm sphere. Sphere pulses blind foes. Sand color (brighter than current earth sphere) The Ultimate Augment, Elemental Celerity, is in its current state is…not great. Don’t really know what I’d have there instead though. Maybe using it could turn your sphere into a multielement uber-sphere with all effects and boons? This might be bonkers actually, considering the new augments – imagine Elemental celerity > relentless fire and getting damage increase, unblockable, condition cleanse, burn/bleed pulse AND supernova damage pulse? And then you could get it all over again with another augment? Now that’s an ultimate skill! But its probably too OP. You could perhaps say that each augment effect can only be used once in the supersphere (so you won’t get two supernovas for using fire and air augment) but it still seems very strong. Might even have to limit it to “only 1 additional augment can grant bonus effects in the ultimate sphere”. Or come up with something else entirely for the Ultimate, this was just my idea and I think it would be fun and feel impactful, at least. Now, the augment changes I’ve suggested here might be a liiiittle excessive, but Ele should have a lot of flexibility in return for its frailty and complexity. The augments don’t really have to be that strong either – the bonus effects I described could be nerfed substantially and I wouldn’t mind that much, as long as we get some flavor and uniqueness to the augments. I will also make a mention that I will be suggesting a trait that grants the relevant Augment effects to allies, potentially with lessened effectiveness if needed for balance. Fortified earth grants aegis to allies as I don’t believe AoE channeled blocks are in this game. Could be a fun mechanic if it can be pulled off though. I know % damage increasing is usually not a good thing, so relentless fire might be an issue to share to allies. That being said, it isn’t permanent like frost spirit used to be, and the percentage to allies can be tuned down to the point where it shouldn’t be problematic anymore. Same goes for shattering ice, to a lesser extent. 5. Too many bad/uninspired traits. Lets suggest some more interesting options: Minor traits are actually pretty good and can stay as-is. Adept majors Hardened Auras: A fine trait but not that exciting. Change to: “Auras you grant, also grant barrier”. The barrier amount would not be that huge, but enough to make a aurashare catalyst healer viable when geared for healing. Vicious Empowerment: Again, the trait isn’t that bad, but it isn’t very exciting and has some negative effects, namely that it makes you waste your cc skills to upkeep elemental empowerment. I’d change this trait to something like; gain a stack of elemental empowerment when your orbs strike an enemy X times, rewarding you for managing the range of the spheres. Basically, a trait that interacts with the orbs to grant you elemental empowerment. Energized elements: with energy gone, this trait only gives fury on attunement swap – which doesn’t seem that impressive on its own though. Going with the name of the trait, perhaps add some self vigor or might? Basically, this should be a good but selfish boon trait. Master majors: Empowering Auras: Fine as it is. Simple damage trait that can be tuned for balance alongside Empowered empowerment GM. Could perhaps make add a condi damage component to it, so that condi builds also can be balanced around this trait. Evasive empowerment: Not a bad idea to have a more selfish, defensive trait in this tier. Not to be relied upon in a dps rotation but could be useful in some PvP or solo play scenarios. However, a bit weak in comparison to the other traits imo. I’d add a couple of seconds of superspeed to this trait, and perhaps buff the number of EE stacks you get. Sphere specialist: Wait what? I thought this was a grandmaster! Well, not anymore. It also doesn’t do the same thing anymore as I think it’s dumb that a GM trait is there for boon duration and nothing else, it’s not fun and should have been balanced from durations and gear. Spectacular sphere, which -spoiler- is now the GM, will be the trait to opt into boon support. The new sphere specialist does not give you 100% boon duration, but instead now makes your augments affect 5 allies, as described previously. The boon durations of the sphere are now instead simply reliant on having enough boon duration as it should be. I think ~40% BD (basically full exotic celestial), for of fury, quickness and might is a good place to start. Then perhaps 50% (full cele+arcane) is needed for full uptime for the defensive boons. Durations can be tuned as needed though. GMs: Staunch auras: The final aura trait is a selfish one, but very nice. Basically permanent self stability, don’t feel like this needs messing with as its strong in solo play and PvP. Perhaps add a slight amount of self quickness/might to compensate for the fact that quickness from spheres now competes with this trait. Empowered empowerment: As mentioned previously, this now increases the effectiveness of EE stacks by 100% always. The percentage can of course be tuned for balance. The percentage stat increase from EE stacks themselves can also be tuned if needed. Spectacular sphere: Your sphere gets increased radius, and additional boons when placed: Fire: more might (enough to make 25 stacks possible) Water: vigor Earth: stability (changed from resistance) just please give us a little bit of group stab. In principle I prefer stability to be an on-demand, reactive boon rather than a passive thing, but in the case of elementalist its difficult to rely on this because your earth attunement may be on cooldown at any given moment and its not feasible to predict in most scenarios exactly when the stability requirement will come. An alternative would be to add group stability to a core ele utility. IMO attunement swap having a cooldown is stealthily one of the reasons elementalist in general struggles to utilize the utility of having 4x weapon skills, and a huge part of its issues-but at this point I’m not sure if it can be changed. Perhaps a future espec? Anyway, for these reasons I think we have to go with the mechanist approach, where the stability is only 1-2 stacks that lasts for ~15 seconds for a boon support build. This means that you can have perma stab but only if you invest into boon duration. With a more moderate investment you have good but not perma uptime. Air: Quickness. Nuff said. Basically, the goal of this setup was to make opting in to a boon support role be possible with 1 trait, instead of arbitrarily requiring another trait as well. Balance-wise, this does mean that empowering auras can be chosen as a dps boon support which might become problematic, if the boon support version is doing too much damage. Of course, the boon support would have to give up augments affecting allies for this, but it still may pose an issue. However, in the new set-up it should be possible to tune Catalyst as follows: · DPS doing good damage, but boon support doing too much? Nerf aura trait, buff empowered empowerment to compensate. · DPS doing too much damage, boon support fine? Nerf empowered empowerment · Both doing too much/too little damage? Nerf/buff aura trait · Nerf/buff the %stats elemental empowerment stacks give can also serve as a nerf/buff to both builds if needed, but nerfs dps build more. · Aura trait should give more (at the very least comparable) damage than Augments for a quick dps build – nerf allied effectiveness of shattering ice and relentless fire if needed. I think that with this setup, there should be a way to find a sweet spot where things are relatively balanced. To finish it off, Here's some minor issues/annoyances i've had; 1. It's very odd that Hurricane of pain and whirling stones are not whirl finishers 2. It would be nice if water Hammer 4 healed regardless if you hit an enemy. 3. Air Hammer 4 should be a flipover skill or something; let us use the CC without yeeting ourselves into the death pools of the world Anyway, thanks for making it through this long read! What do you think? Are my suggestions bad, is there something crucial I've missed, or anything else you want to add? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Not sure which build you are reading off of, but he's using scholar runes, Force/impact sigils and mostly Zerker gear and a few diviners pieces as well as an assasin accessory to reach 30% Boon duration while staying crit capped. Personally I've adapted the build to use full Zerker, except a Diviner's amulet (i have the Prismatic Champion's Regalia so much easier for me to stat swap the amulet) and the Soul Pastry food: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POQAIlJwQYbsDGJW6Tdx7JcC-zRZYBRBn3WQgwBFUG1mAVUA2eQCjNwbZ3zIA-e This way i get about the same boon duration as Mystic but being a lot more "switchable" from a DPS build. One downside of this build is that you only get to 99% crit chance but it can be fixed with an assasin backpiece. Personally i just use a Marauder's hammer instead, though, as I already had an ascended Berserker hammer from the Catalyst and wanted something differen't for the Untamed's hammer. As far as might generation goes you have: Frost spirit, which should slowly ramp up and upkeep 5-6 stacks. Your Jungle Stalker pet, which upkeeps 5 stacks You could run Axe + warhorn in the off set for another 6 stacks, but the stacks won't last quite long enough for Warhorn 5 to be off CD. For your DPS, it seems like the gear difference might be partially to blame - strength sigil is great for self sufficiency though so I wouldn't call it a bad choice neccessarily. I also think that the Ambush skill is a dps loss (but fun and useful in practice I'd say), Mystic only uses hammer 1,2 and 4 in his build. He also mentions that finishing the auto attack chain is important, so that may be something to work on as well.

Nice insights! I half expected Vicious Quarry to be superior on the condi build, I'm just dissapointed that it is as i feel quickdraw should be the go-to for a MH/OH condition ranger. The whole skirmishing traitline kind of sets up for a sword/poison/burning-based ranger that isn't as concerned with bleeding (trapper's expertise vs sharpened edges, Strider's defense vs 33% bleed dmg, dagger 4 and torch offhand being prime candidates for quickdraw), but it does seem like we can't quiiite get it to be strong. As far as pets go, why run Tiger over something like Lynx? To be honest I initially thought the Hawk would be the best damaging pet and i couldn't understand why it never was included on any builds. Poison master should give a sizeable poison on Beast skill usage and Lacerating slash is on a 6 second cooldown while doing pretty ok damage itself. But in my testing it doesn't seem like Poison master procs very consistently, so I'm not sure exactly how this works. As far as the power build goes, i suppose you could make it work but as you say, Axe/axe is the carry and it's probably better to just camp axes than actually use the sword set as far as DPS is concerned. Could be a nice to have Sword/torch of the off set purely for the roleplay and mobility though, and if you do use it the sword autos shouldn't do that bad dps.

You'd probably be interested in Mr. Mystic's version of this build, you can bump the damage up quite a bit it seems 🙂

Thanks for the feedback 🙂 But one thing I didn't get; why do you think ferocious symbiosis could work on a condi build? Other than that, I did have the idea to use dagger MH as my "sword" as well, and even though it works quite nicely it just isn't quite the same. I'll keep experimenting though, and having fun so far! I do hope they rework and buff sword though. Maybe i should make a post about the ideas i have for it and hope someone sees it 🙂

You could try out a condi shortbow soulbeast. Viper/trailblazer/celestial should be pretty good. You're ranged, have some lifesteal with Predator's cunning, evade on SB3, some CC too. You could sacrifice some damage compared to the meta build and pick Eternal Bond + Shared Anguish for even more healing, more beast skills, and stability. Dolyak stance for even more stab and damage reduction. It's also pretty nice to have a Torch in the off set for open world, for a bit of burst/Aoe damage. I've been messing around with sword/torch lately, and while the damage it bad on sword , the "dash in, bonfire, dash out, swap to shortbow" works pretty well in open world. Sword also gives you a lot of evades and mobility to get out of danger. With that being said, I've been getting by fine in Open World mostly running full berzerker gear with some combination of LB/GS/AxeAxe. If you are struggling to stay alive, i would reccomend you to work on your positioning and try to burst down mobs even harder than you have been - berzerker is very much "kill them before they kill you". Also, don't be afraid to unmerge in a pinch! If you are looking to solo champs etc. you might want something more sustainy than full Zerker though.

I've been trying to mess around with a condi quickdraw untamed build for PvE: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POABcix/llyUZTML2JW+O3xrS2VcA-zRJYmRPfhUQCkQIUZFYwygjAA-e Using sword/torch was the starting point of the build, as I wanted to play a Strider-type (think Aragorn at weathertop) build. Originally it was Sw/T + Sw/D as I wanted something different from the axes that have taken over every meta build, but because sword mainhand is really bad for condi (power too these days?), i felt like I had to resort to axe MH in the dagger set. It's a shame that sword's poison isn't better but heres hoping they fix it - honestly they should give sword another mini rework so serpent's strike is no longer a flipover skill, and the damage should reflect the animation time better. I've got a lot of thoughts on how to fix sword but this isn't the place for that, i suppose. The build itself is quite fun though! Basically, the idea is as follows: Starting on the axe set, you spam all your skills, then you weapon swap and quickdraw Bonfire, followed by exploding spores and another bonfire, then unleash pet and use its skills, followed by the sword unleashed ambush to reduce bonfires CD before your weapon swap. I normally quickdraw dagger 4 as this made the most sense when using sword/dagger, but winters bite may be better now that we're using axe. The last CD reduction from the ambush attack should make it so that you can weapon swap off CD back to the torch set and bonfire will be up, so we won't have to wait for the timer on Bonfire's CD like on other torch quickdraw builds. Apart from that, you use your traps whenever available and try to avoid using sword 2/3 for anything but mobility/evasion as the damage just isn't there unfortunately. Overall it's fun to play and offers something very different from the current meta. Unfortunately i don't think it is that strong in terms of damage - in my early testing I've only been able to bench about 20k dps (exotic armor). I'm sure a more skilled player than me could improve on it, though. The gear/food is not optimized either, its just something I threw together pretty cheap although it shouldn't be that bad. It seems that the main gear choices are Rune of Thorns vs Krait vs Afflicted, and choosing between sigils of Agony/Venom/Smoldering/Malice/Geomancy/Earth. Food would be between kimchi pancakes, kimchi tofu, or regular expertise/condi foods. It may also be possible that sharpened edges is better than trappers expertise. Sharpening stone and Storm spirit could also be intersting options in the utility slots over the traps. It's tough to say what the best combination is though. Unfortunately i don't have leggy gear so it's not that easy for me to test out everything. I'm not a very skilled player either so if anyone is interested in giving it a shot i would LOVE to hear your results and what adjustments you made! As a bonus, if someone can make any ranger condi build work with Sword/Torch I would love to hear how! "Make it work" doesn't mean it has to be a good build btw, just something that can function in strikes without totally griefing.

Water/Earth/Tempest with scepter/warhorn seems like it could be juicy. It kind of hurts to give up Arcane for earth, but it gives us another source of stability so we can keep the uptime high. Here's a build I quickly threw together http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGgEsEWGBjh1wsYk4ZL52eB-zRRYVRDXuaQGlR1JQ6FgvLzBCA-e . Didnt put much thought into gear, but the idea is there as a heal+alac+stability support. The CD on water trident is so low now, I'm hoping this will allow this build to heal well enough while still using powerful auras over soothing mist. Attuning to earth with rock solid, Sand squall and Eye of the storm should with 100% BD give 17 seconds of stability if spaced well, letting us provide stability with pretty high uptime. We also provide a lot of prot, so much that the elemental shielding trait might not be neccessary. Fire attunement should provide large amounts of might. As an added bonus we are constantly sharing auras which is also nice. We also have the glyph of renewal for rez power. Seems like it could be pretty good?