ZephidelGRS.9520

It’s been always proven that as long as the reward is worth it, then people will do the content no matter how dull or mundane the content is. I don’t think anyone ever thinks Dragonstorm is fun or engaging, but people still do it daily anyway. Same with Rift hunting or Convergence, they both are incredibly dull content and as shown right here no one thinks of them as fun, but heaps of people still do them for the armor. And if anyone talks about repetitiveness then running daily Fractals is the king of repetitiveness, and yet it’s still popular for the past 10+ years simply for the absurd gold it generates. Likewise with Dungeon and DRM. The problem is simply that these 2 have nothing to offer. So let’s add something to them. For Dungeons then I’ve been saying it for a while, but make Dungeons another sure way to get Mystic Clovers. That’s it. Yes I’m aware you’ll swim in Clovers if you play WvW, but that’s a dead game mode and we don’t like to talk about it. For pure PvE players then Clovers are really difficult to get, unless you resort to gambling in the toilet and flush all your gold and dignity away. Why Clovers specifically? Because it’s the one thing consistently used in every Legendary from gen 1 til now, and some gen 1 Legendaries are tied to Dungeons. It makes perfect sense. But it can easily be another source of Mystic Coins……for you to gamble with the toilet. Or maybe you can buy the crafting Gifts with Dungeon currencies instead of gold. I know people would kill for Gift of Exploration and Gift of Battle to become buyable. For DRMs then honestly I don’t know what to put. You already get so many Defense Seals from Dragonstorm that having better prizes for the Seals doesn’t directly translate to interest for DRMs yet, and it only inflates the currency. Maybe a repeatable achievement where doing 500 DRMs will guarantee for you a Dragonstorm Infusion? Or maybe Ascended items for the Seals? So that we’re less reliant on Fractals for the Matrixes and the Cubes for crafting. Having the ability to trade the Seals for Provisioner Tokens would also be nice, considering that currently the Seals are largely worthless.

Pain Cliffs (World 2 Zone 2) is a royal pain in the ***. There, I said it. You take 1 wrong checkpoint and the "Become the Master" achievement "becomes 3 hours wasted". Fix this Anet. Why can't I backtrack the fcking teleporters? Especially when it is you who placed the random new Assassins in your new cloud area and messed up the original flow? This really leaves a sour taste in my mouth tbh.

It's not a boon I intend to provide and I went with Flock for better burst heal potential. But if you wish you can use Febe and see how it works for you.

I've been saying for a while but Catalyst should have been that "master of a single element" spec. We're now allowed to weapon swap, but we're limited to 1 element. Or 2 elements, to ensure the same amount of available skills as any other Ele specs. So F1 is channeling the 1st element, F2 is channeling the 2nd element. And since that already sounds so much like core Revenant, the energy mechanics could easily work exactly the same way as Rev's energy bar; or we could have another way to fill it (just not being reliant on multi-hit skills please). And the Sphere could be F3, or we could incorporate that energy mechanics to something more interesting than just placing circles. The current Catalyst is just...........eh. It used to be somewhat amusing to me being Avatar with a big Hammer. Now I don't even know what it is.

I use an almost exact build, except for a few differences. It's also a really lazy build and I don't really use Continuum Split anywhere. Reasoning for my choices: - Full Giver's instead of Minstrel's, mainly because I can switch 1:1 to Harrier's whenever needed. Also higher concentration, because higher healing is overkill. - Sigil of Water instead of Sigil of Concentration. With Giver and Water Rune I'm already at 89% boon duration, and the other 11% I can get from Regen uptime and Chaotic Persistence. Sigil of Concentration here would be a waste, and Sigil of Water is a better replacement since I want to camp Rifle anyway. - I have found Scepter/Shield to be inferior to Rifle. Scepter's heal-per-second is inferior to Rifle while not providing anything support-wise, so it's a waste. Shield gives some Might and Swiftness, and some tiny Protection, but Rifle gives more Might, Protection uptime is already high through Illusionary Defense, and there are other ways to Swiftness. That's why I use Rifle/Staff. I have found that the best approach is to use Staff as the opener: Staff 4 for 100% boon duration then cast Staff 3, then swap and cast Rifle 2, you'll now have 3 clones up for your 1st Shatter. - Illusionary Reversion instead of Improved Alacrity: Mostly a personal choice, I did state this is a lazy build and I don't want to manage the difference when I switch between Alac/Quick. But Reversion has the advantage of retaining 1 Clone whenever you do a full Shatter, allowing you to do a full Shatter more frequently (and the retained Clone counts as a new Summon, so it triggers Illusionary Inspiration for even more healing). - Signet of Illusions: It's a lazy build so bringing this means I have 1 less button to press. Mostly helps with fuel for full Shatters, but in the extreme cases I can even reset the Shatters immediately and use them again. This is very useful when comboing with F4, because your F4 gives a lot of Stability and Aegis thanks to traits. This is why I find bringing both Well of Precog and Mantra of Concentration a bit overkill when you already have F4.

I like Focus, it has more synergy with Tempest camping Fire than Warhorn.

I’ve run T4 fracs for more than a year, almost everyday. Never have I seen this, not even once. It’s very possible that you’re dealing with lower tiers, because T4 people usually already know the drill and won’t change the console randomly. It’s also possible that you ran into trolls and honestly there isn’t anything we can do about it (although that would be a weird way to troll). You can also check beforehand what Fracs are on the menu for the day and troubleshoot immediately before accepting the Transit check, if the name of the current Frac on your top right doesn’t match any of the daily Fracs. There less than a dozen Fracs, it isn’t that hard to remember.

The previous version was even worse. It’s just a self-Regen and some measly Protection when you gain Chaos Aura, hard cooldown. I’m just going to say that Anet, if you have decided that we aren’t allowed to share Chaos Aura, then can we get the previous Illusionary Membrane back? Please? The one where the damage bonus is tied to Regen, and not Chaos Aura uptime? It’s freaking clunky to manage something so tight and lasting so short, and we don’t have enough Aura sources to allow for wiggle room and maintain it 100% in encounters. The current Membrane was bearable when Chaos Aura could be shared, but now that it couldn’t anymore there’s also 0 reason for the current Membrane.

It’s another piece to add to the pile of Mesmer inconsistencies. It looks like a Mantra, it even works like a Mantra……………but it’s not a Mantra. It’s a Shatter skill, it even works like a Shatter skill……..…….but Continuum Split doesn’t work with Signet of Illusions. It’s a normal Mesmer utility skill, it even works like a normal Mesmer utility skill…………….but Mimic doesn’t work with Continuum Split. It looks like a Blade, it even slashes hard like a Blade………….but Sword skills are not “Blade”. But Greatsword skills are! They’re pink like illusions, they’re even called imaginary constructs by NPC…..……but Virtuoso’s Blades are not “illusions” for the purpose of any illusion-related skills.

Running dungeon was a daily before and people had no problem (unless it was an Arah day lol). A group of 5 level 80 players had problem blasting through Story Mode in less than 5 minutes, cutscenes skipped. Competent players could even carry the whole run with 3-4 newbies in the group without any significant delays, still just around 7-8 mins per path. I see no problem with bringing dungeons back as a daily. Adding more weekly incentives would attract more dungeon demands too, it doesn't have to be anything grand but maybe weekly currency rewards? Which we can use to buy end game crafting materials? After all, Dungeon Rush showed how easily they could add new achievements and rewards, but chose not to for some reason.

With such a reductionist view then the game can easily be summarized as picking your favorite color out of 9 for smashing buttons. Why Alac/Quick builds are such a crime, when at the end of the day all 9 colors want to do exactly the same things? Or are we just biased about Alac/Quick builds simply because we can’t handle being told to get good? Of course that’s not the case, classes do want to achieve the same goals but the “how” and by extension the “limitations” are what differentiate them. In the same competition for Quickness, Herald can spread boons passively in a larger-than-normal radius but has 0 ranged capabilities; Chrono is fully ranged and brings a lot of flexibility, but needs an active hitting target for the boons; Firebrand also brings a lot of utilities but the damage is unreliable from the clunky management of an archaic trait; Harbinger brings the most reliable damage, but doesn’t bring any other boons or support; likewise I presume the forced movement is a downside to quick Scrapper. All with different strengths and weaknesses; artificial as it may be but it’s still a very healthy diversity. I can easily write something similar for Alac based on what I’ve played. The point still is, there are quite a lot of varieties to be appreciated that generalizing them as the same is quite wild. For the actual topic itself, yes forced movements are annoying, but there are enough movement-assisted options that proposing for movement skills to be deleted is absurd. From my end I do get annoyed with Phase Retreat keep porting me away from the group stack, but I’m not stupid enough to use it to yank myself off a cliff or into a death puddle. If you keep yanking yourself into a death puddle, that’s really a skill issue and maybe learn the mechanics better to time it more correctly.

As much as I love the interaction, Elementalist's elemental auras are garbage compared to Chaos Aura. That's the only reason why they're allowed to be shared en masse. Meanwhile, Chaos Aura effectively cuts the enemy's damage by 83% in PvP interactions (Protection + Weakness), even more damage if we consider Weakness's side effect to nullify critical chance. This is extremely powerful in tipping the scale of the fight, I have witnessed it myself in WvW where a small group of us managed to slaughter an enemy zerg via Chaos Aura spam. This is a good reminder to those saying that Mesmers don't have support capabilities; it's not that Mesmers don't have such capabilties, but every time Mesmers do support the game just breaks. I mean, sharing Distortion? Copying boons? And now Chaos Aura spam. What could go wrong with allowing a class that actively breaks game mechanics to share the peasants that same ability to break game mechanics? (/sarcasm). Personally, I'm not upset with this change. Yes it'll kill the identity of support Mesmers during the past 6 months, but it preserves the power of Chaos Aura for our selfish use. If we're going to share it again I fear they'll nerf the aura to uselessness like the Ele's auras.

For what purpose? Assuming this is a typical group content build that you read, you don't want Strength Sigil because your support teammates will fart so much Might that the Sigil is useless. Earth Sigil will be far cheaper and more effective. Earth + Bursting are my choices. If this is an open world solo build, using Psychic Force will yield similar result since you can only upkeep ~8 stacks of Might with the Sigil anyway. Plus if you have EoD, the Protocol buffs help a lot too and you don't really need self-boon options that much. Also try to use Relic of Aristocracy for the missing 15% duration.

They should have had 3 categories with the current Jade Bot chips: + Movement: for Glider Boost, Mount Energy, Skiff speed and Turtle’s control. Could add 1 new: Permanent Swiftness/that speed buff in cities. + Service: Rescue, Recycler (Jade, Karma), Mount Skill Damage. Could add 1 new: Allow other chip changes without the bench. + Sensory: Treasure Hunter, Trophies (Magic, Might, Cloth, Wood, Metal). Having the Movement chips compete functionality with the Service chips is just weird.

People, being to able to view your fashion does NOT mean any of these things: 1. That that person can immediately tell where to get said skins, especially if it is a rare piece that needs to be unlocked via achievements. 2. That that person can immediately cash out a ton to get the dyes, especially if the fashion in question uses exclusive dyes and those are expensive asf. 3. That that person will immediately spend their gems to get the BL-exclusive items like you did. 4. That that person can even tell how you stacked the infusions, since this feature does not show infusions. 5. That that person will spend/have enough Transmutation charges to copy you down to 1:1. Since not everyone has legendary gear. 6. Perhaps the most interesting, that that person has the means to change their toon’s gender, hairstyle and skin tone to match exactly yours. And if none of those above applies to you then I’m sorry, your “look” isn’t as unique as you think it is.

My problem is why Confusion being good at what it does is even a problem at all. From what I can see, even before nerf it was only extra effective in a very few specific Raid encounters while still being a subpar condition everywhere else. So why was that situation unacceptable to warrant the change in the first place?

Your problem can be solved by turning on "Promote Skill Target" and "Melee Attack Assist" in the game's control panel (the General Options tab). It will automatically direct your skill to the nearest target and adjust your movement skill so that it stops right at the target's hitbox. Of course it won't work if you're already inside the hitbox. In the same vein I've also discovered fast and auto ground-targeted AoE skills this way. By turning on "Snap Ground Target to Current Target" and changing the option of AoE placement to "Fast with Range Indicator", I can just press the skill once like a normal skill and the the game will automatically place the AoE on whatever I'm current targeting as long as it's within the valid range. It's literally just a control setting problem.

The balance lost my respect the moment they said they were giving buffs to “underutilized skills” and the top of the list was Guardian’s Feel My Wrath. In what world is this skill even “underutilized”? It should have been Receive The Light, that’s a real underutilized skill.

Heal Scourge is among the best healing builds in PvE content for the godly barrier and rez power it brings. Of course it’s very viable. Barrier is technically how you “heal” with Scourge: There’s not a lot to heal if you let the barrier absorb all the damage. Between the barrier, Regen and Life from Death/Vampiric Presence traits, your allies will likely to survive most encounters without much problem. Now if sheet does go haywire, you still have the ability to save the situation with your powerful F4 (traited with Transfusion of course). What it does is that whenever you see a downed ally (the blue arrow icon) within 600 radius, you can press F4 to transport all of them to your feet. Then when you begin to rez one of them, you’ll cast Lesser Well of Blood thanks to Ritual of Life and save all the people you have just transported to you. Even if you don’t need the rez power, the F4 still pulses quite a lot of healing. All of this interaction are within the Blood Magic line. How often you should use F4 depends on your group’s performance. If it’s an experienced group then you can afford to blow the rez and use it as a normal healing skill, maybe a burst heal. But if it’s a particularly struggling group, or a training group, then maybe you want to hold back on the F4 a bit. Heal Scourge's weakness is that it doesn't bring any Stability, so do expect that you'll be tossed around like a rag doll in CC-heavy boss fights. For that reason it's best to pair a Heal Scourge with Chrono, Firebrand or Herald as the qDPS for the most optimal effectiveness.

A condi Chrono build is very possible after the Staff Phantasm change not long ago (changing from Vulnerability to Torment), by combo'ing it with Chronophantasma. And with Continuum Split then that's 8 times the Torment stacks. Even as boon DPS support it's still quite good when combo'ing with Bountiful Disillusionment. The build is quite APM intensive however, possibly even more than the power variant, since you have to care about when to Shatter to maximize the Clone auto-condis, and managing Chaos Aura uptime is a pain. Oh haha I'm using an almost exact build XD

Context matters here, because Healbrand is still the most demanded healer in an average Fractal group. It’s always been the case since release even if Healbrand’s heal output isn’t the strongest since Healbrand monopolizes the Aegis and Stability spam, the 2 things that make a Frac run extremely smooth. Compared to Healbrand, Heal Warrior (let’s take Heal Berserker since they’re both quick Heal builds) has only 1 access to Aegis share on Staff, and only 1 Stability share access on Banner. Naturally a Frac group that takes Heal Berserker over Healbrand will be tossed around like a ping pong ball due to lack of Stability, and cannot cheese mechanics due to lack of Aegis. This group will need another member to cover those 2 boons. So despite Staff carrying the entire Warrior support build, it’s still nowhere near the level to overshadow Firebrand as a whole in any way. I don’t play Thief so I don’t know about it, but the rumor is that Thief Scepter support builds are objectively bad due to single ally-targeting. And I’ve not seen a heal Thief anywhere in ages, where does it even put Guardian to shame?

That was just Snowcrow's Cerus squad; 1 Druid, 1 Scourge, 2 Herald and 6 Virtuoso. It's not a default composition to anything, it's just a very safe composition to try out unknown content, and Virtuoso was chosen specifically for SC team's portal strategy. Players can bring most classes to any encounters nowadays, but of course they still must respect the optimal way to deal damage in said encounter (i.e. power damage over condi in Harvest Temple, ranged damage over melee in Surf/Dagda, etc.). This. All of Mirage's strengths are not what instanced PvE group content needs. There's no need to be evasive and mobile when you have to stack with the squad 99% of the time and the support members take care of your survivability; if anything the random teleports make you more likely to fall into the wrong AoEs and die miserably (Axe 3, Illusionary Ambush). Although that's only a problem with condi variants. The new approach with power Mirage is very interesting and seems to be a lot more reliable (no Clone dependence, no random teleports). It's already very promising, with a few more tweaks to flesh it out then power Mirage might definitely see more play in instanced content.

I guess only if you like the Mirage theme and gameplay. But practicality-wise then yeah there’s really no reason. With Staxe now practically gone due to trait split, I wish they’d allow a fraction of the original Alac Mirage back, and also get rid of the dependence on Clone for Alac uptime (and increase the Alac duration up a bit for easier buffer room). That’d make Alac Mirage a lot more reliable, and a choice against Chrono as a condi vs power choice in fights that favor condi more. I don’t really understand why they had to destroy Alac Mirage like what they did. At least outside of Strikes/Raids/Fractals then Mirage is still a beast. For example, I’ve just begun the Raid armor journey and yesterday I’ve just used Mirage to solo a few HoT champs required for the Envoy collection. So to me Mirage still shines at the 1 niche it’s really good at.

These choices are purely aesthetic first for Fashion Wars, but I try to add some unique functionality to them compared to existing options. Ele: - Off hand Sword: Hybrid DPS skills + more mobility skills to compliment main hand Sword. - Off hand Pistol: Standard ranged condi DPS. High damage. - Shield: Utilities, tanky survivability skills (block/invul/projectile reflect/destroy/condi cleanse) + group buffs. Mesmer: - Off hand Dagger: Stealth-focused, power counterpart to Torch. - Main hand Pistol: Confusion + heavy CC ranged Stun weapon to compliment off hand Pistol. Blasting their mind away, literally. Necro: - Off hand Pistol: Poison and Weakness focused weapon. Tbh Harbinger not being a poison specialist is such a missed opportunity. - Main hand Mace: healing/support weapon to compliment Warhorn. Warhorn needs rework to become a proper support weapon. Revenant: - Longbow: Rev lacks a proper power ranged DPS option. And a bow would keep the mystic theme better than Rifle.

Weapon Master seems like a really poorly thought out idea by someone playing 1-2 classes, probably a Guardian player, spending 5 seconds thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if your Firebrand starts raining arrows or zipping around on dual swords?” while not considering in a vacuum how the balance of other classes work. The Pistol Scourge fiasco was hilarious for the short time it lasted. Scourge was absolutely not designed with a Torment weapon in mind, but it was gutted anyway due to a stupid idea and I’m pretty sure condi Scourge now can’t live without Pistol. Something similar happened to Ele but on a grander scale. Ele spec weapons are absolutely not designed with each other in mind. That’s why Warhorn, an overpowered weapon balanced only by its limited access, now renders every other off-hand choices obsolete. Also Tempest destroyed Hanmer and now Catalyst can’t even use its own weapon. Other similar cases could be Herald ruining Greatsword for Vindicator. Yet after much balance shuffling the numbers around, most especs went back to still using their own weapon/ old build anyway and nothing new really happened, unless their old weapon was nerfed like cases above and there’s nothing for them to go back to. Overall on average Weapon Master did a lot more damage to the game’s balance than the good it brought, if there was anything good at all. So in terms of “impact”, it was a flat negative. New weapons on the other hand is a fresh welcome due to them each offering something new to each profession, well except Ele Pistol. And probably Engi Shortbow, but I don’t play Engi. But I’d like to emphasize that their success is largely attributed to them offering a new niche for each profession. Ele Pistol shows exactly what would happen if they start adding new weapons that overlap a niche with an existing choice: Instead of balancing the overpowered Pistol, they nerfed Ele along with everything else to keep the shiny new toy. What a wise decision. So even though new weapons are overall a “success”, I’d be wary of the next batch of new weapons that they inevitably will release for potential cases like that.