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Bladezephyr.5714

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Everything posted by Bladezephyr.5714

  1. You know you don't need to keep the portal tomes in your inventory, right? You can keep them in the bank... Just go to the bank, take the tome out temporarily to use it, and put it back in the bank while the menu is still up. Then click on your destination map. No shared slot needed.
  2. Am I the only one annoyed by the asura gate changes? I can't seem to find anyone talking about this. What was the point of this? Every time I use a gate it's to go to a capital city or Lion's Arch, and now I have to click through to the next page to get to the destination I want to go to. I have teleporters for every single item on the first page other than the two LA destinations, but that was already on the first page in the old menu, and the Aerodome is a free WP away once you're there. Why would I ever NOT want to go to a capital city from an asura gate? That's annoying enough--admittedly it's a minor annoyance but it's still an annoyance, and one that I hit very frequently--but now when you get where you're going, you're nowhere near a gate. So if you screw up, which I do about 5% of the time--probably more now--you can't just jump back through the gate... you have to walk to it. Or maybe use a WP and walk from there. Whereas before, rather sensibly, you were standing in front of the gate at the other end. This change takes you someplace you weren't expecting based on past experience, makes no sense, breaks immersion and makes screwing up cost you significantly more time. This is a dumb change that should be reverted.
  3. Unless you're talking about situational garbage like boon thief, it got one: specter. Its DPS spec is pretty far off the top even when you consider rottweiler venom (😂) and while it's nice to have a support option on thief finally, it gives less and trades off more than other specs. While ranged, it really requires being in melee to give support due to nearly all its support being provided by its short-radius wells, and has very little to mitigate the damage that subjects it to. Plus the wells are clunky and can often fail due to terrain... You could run it as a heal spec (and I sometimes do) but your team will usually prefer basically anything else. At least it's better than heal chrono (which isn't really a thing but it should be--it does kinda work, but that's another discussion). Power deadeye is near the top of the DPS chart, but it's clunky and annoying, and both weaver specs beat it, and also have more (i.e. some) AoE. 😆 Same with willbender, condi firebrand, scourge, and most of the other meta specs are only just behind, while offering much more utility. Pretty much same deal for condi daredevil. None of the thief specs are particularly resilient without trading substantial DPS for say celestial gear or invigorating precision or whatnot, at which point why not choose another DPS spec that's tougher? What you say is arguably technically true, but in practice it's not really that interesting. Its DPS specs should be say 5-10% higher than the next to justify all the tradeoffs, and/or give us a proper support spec. [Which they've said they plan to do... but we shall see if their planned changes pass muster--often enough they don't.] Don't get me wrong--I'm a thief main and love the class... I'm just tired of other classes being better at every single thing it does.
  4. Anet, hi! Remember when the game launched? Thief was supposed to be the highest single-target damage in the game, and in recompense for that it had lower base HP and survivability, and virtually no (group) utility. Well, it is no longer the highest single-target DPS spec in the game, but it still has those other problems. Good spot? What are you talking about?!
  5. It did depend on who you're with and how they play... I find pugs almost always have the offensive boons covered, since most players are playing selfish DPS specs in pugs, and more of those have might now--so I would provide the defensive boons, usually including up to stab. The placement isn't great but it was fairly long lasting so if it was going to be relevant at all, it was fine. When I play with my regulars it's either the same story, or we have all the boons covered so it did nothing useful anyway (aside from maintaining alac uptime). Depends on what people feel like playing. But there's almost always a firebrand covering stab, and it's just generally more available lately so it's not been a consideration. Playing solo, the might is fine but TBH I don't really notice it--the quickness and the survivability boons were much more impactful. If it takes me 8s instead of 9s to kill something it just doesn't matter. Having ~60% quickness uptime (with haste) made things a lot smoother.
  6. But it objectively is not, for the reasons I already stated, and most importantly that the reliability of when it applies comes at the cost of (typically) 3 additional boons. It's a very poor trade given several other specs can apply stab way more easily and more frequently with way less tradeoff (any guardian, any mesmer, any revenant, etc.), and you most likely already have one of them in your group. Same deal for might... so many specs give might now you just don't need to. If you're in even a half-competent group you're probably already getting 25 stacks of might from somewhere without anyone giving up much to make it happen. Whereas regen, prot, and resolution are all a bit harder to come by, especially if you're taking the healer role. The nature of the skill means that sure, in some limited scenarios, it's possible to get more out of the new version; but in far more cases the old version provides much more value. Pack runes? You're sacrificing condi damage & duration, and vitality to feed your heal/barrier/survivability--everything the build is good at, for something it's not and is easily replaceable. And again the fury and swiftness are wasted because you're already providing them permanently. 10 stacks from stealing? Not sure how you're doing that... I can see getting 8 if you take Critical Strikes for Assassin's fury, but at the cost of either deadly arts for damage (typically), or shadow arts for healing/barrier. Again, giving up what you're good at for something you're not. With a normal build it's 5 stacks. I'd need to see the build, but this seems like a whole lot of bad trades. It's all moot though because as you say, with the shroud nerf there's no way the average player can make use of this as a heal spec, and exceptional players generally wouldn't try.
  7. BTW it's a really small point, but the snowcrows build does actually indicate concentration food and utility buffs, bringing you to 57%. One reason why that's at least somewhat interesting is that enables you to substitute Well of Silence for Well of Bounty, which at this point probably gives you a lot more utility (CC and breakbar), and still maintain 100% uptime. It's a lot less comfortable of a buffer though (104% for WoS vs. 117% for WoB).
  8. It's a fair point, but with the current set of boons WoB gives it doesn't really matter... none of them are worth sacrificing DPS for boon uptime anyway. FWIW I posted a build in a different thread that actually does exactly that--it's meant to be a full-on heal/boon support spec. In fact, here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaBBsitjlhyYZpsVWLeqWnxfA-zRRYjRPXAcQ+nSOChqVApLB6QE4xp5AfaAA-e AFAICT, pre-patch, the only real reason heal specter wasn't a thing is because it didn't give 25 stacks of might--the healing it provides is more than adequate. But with buffs to other classes, that's much less relevant. Of course with the latest changes, it's much worse, so...
  9. Oh and yeah... I do play scourge, fairly often. I occasionally even play blood scourge, and that can be fun. But it's not a substitute for heal specter, which can give you as much if not more barrier and heal the sense out of you. Its rez ability isn't really that great--it's just a nice-to-have on top of all the rest.
  10. I don't particularly care. It was serviceable, and fun. And AFAICT, the one and only reason it's never been considered good is because it doesn't provide 25 stacks of might. There are a bunch of builds that can do that now, you don't need your healer to do it. It still wasn't used though because it makes thinking about group comp harder. And of course, because now it genuinely is trash. I just gave you one: It's fun. Here's another: I already have a properly-geared specter. I don't have a mech or a druid, and in fact I don't play ranger or engie. Never liked them. I do have a level 80 engie but I don't want to play it even long enough to unlock mech. I never even managed to level a ranger--I have one that's level 20, deleted 3 other attempts to level one cuz I just don't like it. I do have a temptest, but basically same drill. And I don't have legendary armor, so even if I did want to, gearing a new spec for, say, fractals, is a pain in the kitten.
  11. Well, again, it's basically garbage now due to the changes to WoB.
  12. Yeah it is, but all boons from WoB are 240. It's pretty inconsistent across the skills & traits, TBH. CS is 600, which is quite good. TotC is 360, BT is 240, Shielding Restoration is 360, Shadow Savior is 360, Shadestep is 240... The overall effect is you want to be within 240 otherwise things will be missed. So it doesn't matter... effectively the range is 240.
  13. The build that you were talking about, maybe. I actually mean heal specter... something like this (though there are a number of possible variations): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaBBsitjlhyYZpsVWLeqWnxfA-zRRYVRP7N4CJnQorEojKw3Z54PNA-e This takes all the wells for 5x1,826 group heals (more for yourself) per cooldown cycle, with well of gloom getting an additional 5 ticks at 1,442 for a total of 9,036 from that one skill alone, every 16s. Twilight combo heals its ally target for 880 a pop plus providing massive barrier application, and we haven't even considered Consume Shadows yet. Pre-nerf (on the 4th) you'd also get regen from WoB for another 239/s. This of course is heal-centric--if you want to maximize boon uptime from WoB etc., you'd probably want to swap to a mostly minstrel's with some diviner's pieces and runes of leadership. This is probably not a terrible trade since specter's heals scale very poorly with healing power. Regen from WoB became permanent at 234/s. [Note: I'm honestly not sure if these numbers take into account the 20% bonus from Dark Sentry.] That build would look something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaBBsitjlhyYZpsVWLeqWnxfA-zRRYjRPXAcQ+nSOChqVApLB6QE4xp5AfaAA-e Both of these builds are quite serviceable. Or, were... Under the current regime the minstrel's version is probably dead, because CS is unreliable, due to limited vitality. The first version might actually still work, though again its boon delivery is on the weak side. Clearly that's not what I'm talking about at all. I will admit that alac specter still does an OK job at filling this role, but it is much worse, with less and less reliable healing from CS, defensive boons from WoB completely gone, and the heal traits not really worth taking, under the circumstances. Even still, I find your argument regarding playing support disingenuous... alac specter is, and is intended to be, a hybrid spec, not a pure DPS spec, and it just so happens that you have to give up very little to get good DPS out of it, very much like a certain other hybrid (firebrand) that everyone loves to hate on. I frankly do consider that to be a design flaw, but that flaw in no measure takes away from the very obvious hybrid nature of the spec.
  14. Well, one reason is because they're still quite hard / annoying to get, compared to others... Viper's also makes sense on a build that has great durability through mechanics like shroud, and defensive boons, like it had with WoB, until this patch. As for why scepter didn't get more power scaling... it really should. In fact this might be a good way to fix this problem--replace one of the other two adept traits with one that gives specter more power scaling. It's still a predominantly single-target DPS spec, so allowing it to bench at, say, 41-45K isn't horrible... I'd agree it shouldn't also have crazy healing at the same time, though. Says heal specter isn't a thing, then explains exactly why it was a thing... 😆 Seriously... Heal specter is (well, was) better than most people give it credit for... With consume shadows, traversing dusk, shadow savior, and permanent regen, group healing is not bad at all, and then add to that all the barrier application. Using twilight combo on allies provides additional barrier and healing to burst as needed. WoB typically would provide perma regen, some prot, resistance, resolution (and yes, quite frequently, stability) reducing damage even more. It's really not bad at all. I mean was... the WoB changes and the shroud changes definitely killed it. I have a separate thread on the WoB changes:
  15. And by the way, the only real, viable solution to this problem is more difficulty levels / better scaling. HTCM proves that the game can be difficult enough to pose a challenge to the best players, but only a small fraction of the player base will ever complete it. There really needs to be at least two additional difficulty levels: One to give above average (but not top tier) players a challenge, and another to give everyone else a challenge. I dare say there should really be at least four difficulty levels total, but I know that's a total pipe dream...
  16. This is a totally garbage argument. Can the best players bring bad builds and complete the content? Using the best builds available for those worst classes, sure. But... will they? And by definition, the vast majority of players can't be the best players. Most players' skill is a mere fraction of what the best players can achieve... and no matter how long they play that won't change much. There are a variety of reasons for that, ranging from physical limitations, all the way down to laziness or lack of interest in improving, and everything in between. But an MMO doesn't get to call itself that unless it is actually Massively Multi-player, which means it can not cater to only the best players--it needs to be accessible to average players, or else it won't have the numbers it needs to survive. The top-10 players, and noobs alike all know one thing: If one spec provides more utility and is easier / more satisfying to play than another, that's the build you'll pick, nearly all of the time. All of the thief specs are played substantially less than the top 5 specs, because of that. These changes do not literally make specter unplayable (and I hate when people say that, TBH), but what they do is make it effectively unplayable by dropping its utility and satisfaction level way down, making the choice to play it kind of a dumb one. If you were playing DPS or hybrid specter in PvE before this patch, odds are pretty good you've dropped it to go back to FB or HAM or druid because they're just plain better. A lot. For some of those builds/roles, the only reason to keep playing specter is out of love... but eventually almost everyone realizes when they're in a bad relationship, and leaves it. 😔
  17. Oh and by the way, specter is already weaker as a support than most of the other support builds, in part because the radius of wells is a mere 240, whereas most other supports give boons in at least 300, and usually 360 or even more. Some offer boons or heals in a 600 radius... If you truly want to enable build diversity, you have to actually provide parity. Please consider increasing the radius of wells to 360. And by the way, even that isn't enough to enable actual ranged play. Why do we even have ranged classes? 😄
  18. You already have heard from many sources that the changes to shadowforce scaling have ruined specter. But no one has really focused on why the WoB changes also make the class worse. This isn't a popular take, most people seem to think this skill wasn't very good to begin with, so first I have to explain why it actually was. When are you going to use WoB? In a group, on a support build... or possibly solo, for your own durability. It was quite good in both cases. You won't use it on pure DPS in a well-organized group, because it just doesn't provide that much utility. Group Support When you take WoB on a group support, you're almost certainly taking Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft along with it, which together provide permanent fury, swiftness, vigor, and 5 stacks of might. This means, in practice, if your specter has +100% boon duration, that WoB would give, in this order: alacrity - 100% uptime (due to traits, automatically) regeneration - 100% uptime protection - 62.5% Resistance - 50% quickness - 50% resolution - 50% If you already had one of these covered by another group member (extremely likely), it would also provide stability already, with (potentially) 62.5% uptime (same as it currently does). If you had an additional boon covered by any other group member, it also would provide aegis, 100% uptime. After that, any additional boons that were already covered will grant extra stacks of might. The power of this is that in the typical group scenario, it provides exactly the boons that a defensive support should. One could argue that it still needed more uptime on a few of those key boons, but it gave them. Solo PvE For solo PvE, one of the biggest weaknesses of specter (IMO) is that the scepter rate of attack feels sluggish. WoB, when used after siphon (again with TotC and Bountiful Theft) easily provides you with some quickness, which you can then augment with Haste, making the spec feel much more pleasant to use. In the short fights typical in open world, for example, this gives you a nice boost to burst damage that makes fights faster. The Current Version is Objectively Worse Now, WoB provides the same static list of 5 boons, instead of being capable of filling in the gaps left by other supports. This is considerably worse because: NO regen NO prot NO quickness NO resolution NO flexibility to fill in gaps 3 of the 5 boons it gives, you are already providing 100% uptime on via siphon In the typical scenario, it was already giving stability, so that's not an improvement So in summary, it's a drastic reduction to durability for both you and your group, and does nothing to enable quickened solo play (you can still take Haste, but quickness uptime is substantially less). Not only that, but the change to apply stability first isn't really that useful to begin with. It's nice as an extra, but since you're going to spam this skill off cooldown to maintain your quickness uptime, you can't really apply it on demand--you get it when you get it, which is fairly unlikely to be when you actually need it The only way to be able to use it that way, while still maintaining alacrity uptime, would be to drop a venom and replace it with Well of Silence, which would be a substantial DPS loss for the group. In a group where you already have all of the boons covered, the old version would apply 5 stacks of might, which would be a single stack less than the new one does. In one where you're the only might provider it does give you an extra 6 stacks, but come on, that's not very likely. In that one way the new version is objectively "better" but the difference is not very interesting, in practice. This change should be completely reverted. If you're dead set that stability should be applied first, at the very least you need to increase the stacks so that it's actually useful. Stand Your Ground gives 5 stacks. Then you should change the order from the original to provide regeneration, protection, resolution, quickness, and resistance. That still enables solo play to get some quickness uptime from it, and let's be honest, resistance is probably the least useful boon out of the entire set.
  19. Yup I second this... tried a dozen times to get it to trigger while on Virtuoso... does not. Boo.
  20. This is a total garbage take. Not all new players are without skill, not all new players are casuals, not all new players are morons. Stop being so condescending. The player base is diverse, both in terms of skill and in terms of what they want to get out of the game, and therefore also when they are ready to tackle end game content. I myself am fairly average, probably on the high side of average, but I have geared my toons in exotic zerker since the moment I hit 80 9 years ago, and avoided condi gear for exactly this reason, for the first 7 years I played the game. I still tend to favor power builds, again exactly for this reason, because I don't enjoy farming any content repetitively, and I just want to play the game. There's tons to do in the game, and virtually all of it will get you closer to getting a full set of zerker, way faster than it will get you to a full set of viper's. The performance is about the same, so there's no sensible reason for that. As I said a couple posts ago, this doesn't only impact new players. It affects anyone who, for whatever reason, wants to gear a condi toon when they have no resources to start with. Even if you can do content in rampagers, why would you want to? Particularly for experienced players, who are accustomed to doing content in zerker on glassy DPS builds, if for whatever reason you have no resources at the time you're ready to gear your condi spec, you're gonna want viper's, and you're gonna take 3x as long to get it as you would to get your zerker off the TP. Rampagers is a step down from viper's, and it's a step down from zerker. Downgrading because you can't afford the same tier you could afford if you were playing power is frustrating. It considerably increases Time-To-Kill and makes everything way less efficient. That's not fun.
  21. It's precisely because of that the shewd buyer will end up with ascended gear before OP. No. I've never bought a full set of viper's exotic, because it's very obviously dumb to do that. I do have multiple full sets of viper's ascended. But this is exactly the problem--if the game makes it totally insane for you not to skip a tier of gear because the cost is too high, something is wrong with the game. For condi that's true, for power it's not. And this only makes it harder, not easier, for people trying to gear a condi spec to get adequate gear, particularly in comparison to power (zerker).
  22. That's not even remotely what I'm complaining about, which you would know if you actually bothered to read literally anything I said. The issue is, and has always been, that the cost is VASTLY DIFFERENT for condi vs. power, for the same tier of gear (in terms of DPS output). It is not now, nor ever has been, what the cost is. It's the vast difference between the two for approximately the same level of performance. Not any other thing. There simply is no good reason why it should be this way. Let me spell this out for you: Start with a brand new account level your first toon to 80 Level the elite spec of your choice Gear your toon in a meta-appropriate exotic set, so that you can start doing raids. If you are an experienced MMO player and did not waste what you earned along the way, chances are you can buy a full set (not 6 armor pieces, all 16 on-land gear slots) with what you have earned already by that point, or with only a minimum of farming. If you're trying to gear the equivalent condi spec (which is vipers), there is zero chance of that, unless you spent a whole bunch of extra time just farming gold. The barrier to enter is far greater. Yes, you can settle for a sub-par set to get going, but there's no need for you to do that if you play power instead. So why should you have to do it for the same performance from a condi spec? And as I've said about 6 times in this thread, when I say cost I don't mean gold. I mean the total effort it takes you to get whatever currency you're going to use for your chosen method of gearing your toon. And, as I've also said twice in this thread, yes, the same applies for support specs. This scenario does not only apply to new players. It basically applies to any player who is starting out with end-game content, or who is trying to gear a toon from broke. It also applies to experienced players who have exhausted their resources by, for example, spending them to craft their first legendary weapon. It applies to any player who, for whatever reason, has no liquid resources at the moment they want to gear a new toon. Any such player will need 3x as much farming to gear a condi toon, however long it takes them. Because there is no comparable option to just buying zerker off the TP. I also think your farming numbers are completely unrealistic. Achievable for very good farmers, but not even close to what a typical player will pull down, unless they're already basically expert at end-game content... and clearly those players are not concerned with this, like pretty much everyone dumping on this thread. This thread isn't about you. Can you do raids in rampagers? Of course you can. But if you were running a power build, would you settle for soldier's? You can do raids in that too. Can you do raids in yellows, or even blues? Sure you can... if you're good enough. But why would you, unless it was to show off. Between the difficulty jump and the addition of mechanics generally not seen in open world (until recently, anyway) most players starting raids need every advantage they can get, and the player base in general considers exotic the entry level gear for doing raids, or pretty much any end-game content (save fractals). So getting that, for whatever spec you want to play, should not be painful. At the very least, gearing one spec well should not be vastly more expensive than gearing any other well. Doesn't mean they have to cost exactly the same, but there's no reason any viable end-game spec should cost 3x (or 5x) as much as any other. Farm the daylights out of whatever content you want to get ascended or legendary... that's what is actual end-game gear, and what should be expensive, and it is, and that's totally fine. But BTW, ascended zerker and ascended viper's cost almost the same... as they basically should. https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/ascended?filter.type=0&filter.subtype=Coat&filter.weight_class=medium Zojja's chest: ~47g 87s Yassith's chest: ~47g 91s So to whomever said you should craft zojja's and stat-swap it to viper, sorry, that's wrong. You'll pay a lot more if you do that. Try zintl (shaman's) instead, or something like that. Lastly, for whomever said it, I type pretty fast and I know what I want to say, so the amount of time I spent on this thread is nowhere near what I would've spent to gear a toon in viper's. 😏 But regardless, they're two different kinds of activities that have an entirely different appeal. And this is something else that you all don't get: time spent doing one activity is not equivalent to time spent doing another activity. If doing EoD strikes is fun, and farming VB for hours to get some gear that you need to do strikes in EoD is not, for the person doing it, then the cost of the latter is way higher than the cost of the former. Good news for power players--doesn't matter what you do in the game, it will still be very easy for you to gear your power toon, because everything in the game gives you gold, and gold is the cheapest way to get zerker gear. Whereas if you're playing condi DPS, your options for getting similarly-performing gear (vipers) are far, far more limited. Don't happen to like doing VB metas? You're SoL. Grind m0ar, n00b.
  23. No, I was complaining about the relative cost of very good end-game condi gear compared to the same tier of power gear. The cost is always your time. I've said this half a dozen times throughout the thread, if you cared to actually read it.
  24. I don't even know what you're trying to say, but I'm not walking anything back. The point is you can't get them now. You have to wait 6+ months. So yeah, that's pretty time consuming, and the having to wait that long would be pretty tedious. And even if you could get them now, it still doesn't compare to buying zerker with gold--the recipes alone cost about 4x more than zerker armor (plus as has been said, you can also get the zerker armor for karma, another ubiquitous currency that you likely have lying around). And it doesn't help at all with the trinkets. The selling price of a zerker amulet is just over 2g (if you buy the ruby separately), and a viper's is 7g 55s (buying the amulet and diamond separately is not an option). Rings and accessories are slightly closer, but similar. I didn't look at buy prices but it's a reasonable guess that the gap is larger due to the ready availability of zerker. So even going this route--which is not currently available to I'm guessing the majority of the player base--the viper's is still ~3x more expensive (and again, expensive doesn't mean specifically gold, it means total player effort--though in this case it is indeed gold). And then there's the matter of whether players trying to gear a condi toon even know about this option. I bet most don't.
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