LadyKitty.6120

THANK YOU A LOT TO WHOEVER FIGURED OUT THE WAY TO DO THE CHANGE! That untoggleable effect was LITERALLY the only reason why Kitty abandoned her efforts to get Legendary trinkets. Now there's no reason not to farm and...gotta farm. Hard.

This transfer radius nerf would actually be quite helpful at reducing the abusivity of Epidemic. It currently has extremely huge radius for essentially "1-press-kill"-button and nerfing the radius would make it a good AoE cleave that still leaves room for others. Nerfing from 900 to 600 would leave Sorrows in CM100 and Xera's Bloodstones (when at Center) out of Epi's reach but still allows doing stuff like killing Anomaly in CM99 and epi'ing TD at Soulless Horror (though it's still kinda abusive in this regard). Nerfing the radius to 360 would still retain its ability to cleave enemies near the target but prevents many cheeses and thus allowing others to compete for the role Epi did in a healthier way (aka. makes people actually do the mechanics instead of skipping them with one press of a button). To cover for reduced Epidemic radius, Scourge still has scepter, torch and Shades to kill ranged stuffs manually (like everyone else do) and Epi from faraway target to its surroundings and if the targets are pull-able, pull them to Epi range with Spectral Grasp. And considering the incoming elite spec numbers, boost Scourge a tiny bit when EoD arrives pls.

People requiring LI+KP for Strikes and DRMs sounds weird O_o Is that the case on EU-servers? Just wondering considering their ridiculous "anti-fake clickspam" and super-high reqs in raids (while Kitty's witnessed multiple 250+ LI W4 FC groups wipe multiple times and disband at MO) while on NA people mostly require some KP (usually 30+) for harder raid bosses. At least on NA servers, Arcdps has helped the community to give a fair chance in raids and fractal CMs to those who might seemingly not fulfill the requirements but say they know their stuff (though in fractal CMs even Kitty's become less understanding with people lacking DwD but that's due to them wiping squad by failing the mechs, not dps). And as said by more than a few in this and numerous threads about the topic before, back in mid-2017 when only highest-tier players used arcdps, you got insta-kicked for wrong profession and if you were somehow allowed in, you were kicked after first wipe even if you were top dps by good margin and pointed who was the real culprit for low squad dps with numbers. As a major altoholic who's always been playing weird builds and maximizing them for fun in "Flavour of the Week"-fashion, Kitty got to feel commanders' lack of Arcdps in a reaaally hard way during the first year of raiding from April 2017. Thankfully many raid commanders use it now. But yes, Kitty's also sometimes pointed out if someone's doing low dps and even kicked if the squad has been failing the dps check needed for the strat due to being a few % away from phasing as a result of that low dps but even then, Kitty's not someone to kick just for not doing super-high numbers as she also likes to play weaker builds that perform adequately at best but still well enough to somewhat keep up. But a DPS player doing less damage than supports at the first boss of the wing is a worrisome sight if there's dps-intensive bosses further down the lane. Gorseval, Sabetha, Slothasor, Xera (mid-strat) are good examples of bosses that become really painful and even straight-up wipe the squad if the dps is low.

So, some thoughts on Power Mechanist gameplay from instanced PVE player's perspective: Optimized Power Mechanist's DPS is about the same or slightly higher than Power Scrapper's and the gameplay is super-simple: spam bomb auto-attack, Throw Mine, F123 and Rifle 3+5. Since Mechanist doesn't have toolbelt skills, its utility is reduced while it gets the pet benefits and disadvantages. The utilities can be covered with Med Kit and relevant offensive kit or whatever other utilities there are. Kitty also kinda found the lack of toolbelt skills even useful in that regard: since A. E. D. only works as minor heal/anti-death heal without CC, Med Kit has more relative value on Mechanist than on other specs and Kitty was able to use it to do cleansing, tiny booning and also healing when bosses were invulnerable. (Big heals in KC orb-catching phase for ex.) One problem Kitty noticed, though, is that mecha has issues surviving in fights with huge %-based hits and with its huge health pool combined with players taking priority heals-wise if they're below 100% health, weaker healers (*points at druids with their "mandatory" spirits*) are unable to keep the mecha alive at all. Pets also suffer from this same problem but since mecha is responsible for about 35% of Power Mechanist's dps, losing it to 100 second repair cooldown is extremely more punishing for Mechanist. Thus Kitty suggests lowering Crash Down's maximum cooldown to 60s which is same as defeated ranger pet's after pet swap. Since minimum cooldown is 10s, 10s would be when sending mecha away at full health and mecha would be fixed 2% per second when away. As per usual, mace is mostly a support weapon on Mechanist so it's main value on Power Mechanist is to be main-hand for shield if shield's utility is needed. To make DPS Alacrity Mechanist a competitive option, Kitty would increase power co-efficients on Mace Strike and Mace Smash from 0.6 to 0.7 or 0.8. (on a side-note, speed up Warrior's mace auto-attack chain by 20%, pwease!) Before entering heal section, Kitty already mentioned this in Specter thread but it's even more relevant here)... Now that we get options for Alacrity Renegade, Mirage and Chronomancer, we're running into a severe issue: Renegade and Mirage provide 10-target Alacrity and Renegade has tons of utility (though so does engineer) so Renegade will be the main choice for most of the PVE squad content population due to role compression. Renegade also has very minor losses for bringing Alacrity compared to other specs. Currently the main composition is Healbrand+Alacrigade+3DPS (Fractal party and raid Subsquad) and Druid (kitten spirits...)+Quickness DPS+Banner Warr+2DPS (Main raid subsquad) in the compositions people are running. Sometimes Quickness DPS+Pure healer is used instead of Healbrand but Alacrigade is the source of Alacrity 95% of time in raids and 99%+ in fractal CMs. Due to aforementioned utility, that is hard to change but to make Alacrity Mechanist (DPS and Heals versions), Alacrity Specter (DPS and Heal) and old-school Chronomancer accepted in the future, Kitty sincerely requests changing Righteous Rebel-trait back to 5-target alacrity (maybe provide Fury on the side?) and change Mirage's Chaos Vortex back to 5-target when EoD arrives. This would give room for Mechanist (and other) Alacrity builds (to make it 5 viable Alacrity specs instead of 2) without disrupting rest of the balance. Compositions with Mechanist as support do require heal+support DPS (Quick+Alac) + 3 others mirror composition, but it's hardly any different from current situation. Then to supports. Kitty didn't get to test in practise due to aforementioned reasons but when testing boon capabilities alone, Heal Mechanist can easily keep up alacrity and other boons (except no quickness ofc). However, currently F2 Crisis Zone seems to grant boons to allies only when it self-cleanses which is probably unintentional and needs to be fixed. But other than that, mecha sometimes being stubborn about starting F3 Barrier Burst, complete lack of Stability share and the alacrity issue, Kitty finds Heal Mechanist a working build with mace for spamming barrier, Med Kit for healing, shield for block and CC and utilities for...utilities. But yeah. Nice to have another tasty heal build for Engineer and very promising one at that! (Once Kitty gets to fully test it) But for example of the aforementioned Power Mechanist gameplay, Kitty haz a video of how it works in real raid situation. 'Cause golemancer is now possible.

Here's Kitty's instanced PVE buildcrafter perspective: For starters, condi build can be kinda nasty to play due to it's rotation keys (3 with scepter, 24 in shroud) but the damage is on par with other specs considering Spectre's lack of utility and super-aggressive playstyle it requires. As support main, tether mechanic seems pretty useless due to being limited to just one ally. If it were "to allies around the tethered/targeted ally" (similar to how might from Deadeye's Fire for Effect trait works with marked enemy), it would be useful. But then to main topic: thanks for finally giving us a heal build. In the past, Kitty's posted a few videos playing heal thief/heal deadeye and with Spectre's Traversing Dusk+Shadow Arts' Shadow Saviour traits Infiltrator's Strike (sword 2)+wells spam can do easily huge amounts of healing to work as competent healer while providing full alacrity for 5. But. There's 3 issues about it. 1. It brings no defensive boons. Therefore classes that can provide them (esp. stab and aegis) stay as peoples' primary choice until healbrand is nerfed again. Healbrand's overshadowing all other heal specs with its ability to bypass 95% of nasty mechs/attacks. 2. It competes against alacrigade (and secondarily alacmirage) which provide 10-target alacrity and various super-useful utilities. That also makes it really difficult to make a squad (or to think of working comp even with Kitty's expertise in the topic) that would get any benefit from what spalactre has to offer as it'd require a quickness dps (chrono, scrapper, quickbrand, harbinger or catalyst) on heal spectre's sub AND either healer + chrono or similar sub as heal spectre's with a quickness+alac support combos. Now that we actually have bunch of options for both alacrity and quickness, it'd probably be a time to bring Renegade's and Mirage's alacrity back to 5-target when EoD arrives. Otherwise both spalactre and mechalanist won't be really be useful for 95%+ of people doing squad content. (Chrono's also living in same limbo atm) And it's not like alacrigade would suffer much as alacrigade still does better dps than other options due to sacrifices they require. 3. Lack of supportive boons and condiclenses for allies. You can provide Fury, Swiftness and Vigor through Trickery traits and alacrity through Traversing Dusk trait but remaining boons come through Well of Bounty. As such, Kitty has few suggestions to boon application order and durations. 1. Stability 2. Aegis 3. Regen 4. Protection (from 5s to 8s) 5. Resolution (from 4s to 6/8s) 6. Vigor 7. Swiftness 8. Quickness 9. Alacrity 10. Fury 11. Resistance 12. Might If having stab and aegis that early sounds bad, gotta remember that if you want to provide aegis to begin with, it's against nasty hits and trying to time some random tick that mightn't happen to mech you know to come in 2 seconds sounds even worse. Also, Chronomancer already has freely targetable ranged Well of Precognition that provides Aegis 3 times, just for comparison. But yeah. Fixing those 3 issues would make support Spectre (and Mechanist who also suffers from 2. as badly) useable in general squad compositions.

Due to the utilities they have (in fractals), healbrand is meta due to its ability to CC, block things with aegis+stab for others so they can just mindlessly DPS, pull mobs in for cleave yadayada. Alacrity renegade has a huge edge over alacrity mirage due to being able to do many skips, pulling, massive stability, CC, projectile block etc. For dps, scourge is currently the only dps many peoples want in CM100 due to, guess it...epi. Unless you have 2 clueless scourges, triple scourge is easily the safest strat. Scourge also has bunch of some other strong utility to offer as well as barrier for days when you stack them. For CMs 99 and 98, condi firebrand is considered meta since bunch of firebrands can just block everything and phase bosses during exposed due to massive burns. Stacking condi firebrands also allows healbrand change to 75% dps configuration. For remaining fractals, one power scrapper as dps can speed things up a lot with superspeed, cleave+CC and stealth but otherwise it's still a feast for scourges and firebrand mostly. And to be clear, Kitty's not an advocate of this meta. She really really really REALLY REALLY hates this current meta since she kinda needs to do fractals for gold and stuffs but being bound to essentially 3 builds is hell for someone who hardly can stand playing one build for longer than 3 days.

Using Nova Launch special action skill during dodge causes the character to get stuck, unable to move or use any skills and requires reloading the map. In Shattered Observatory fractal, simply respawning after dying wasn't enough to fix it so Kitty had to go back to character screen to fix it..

(Note: Kitty's almost exclusive endgame PVE player so these insights are from that standpoint and focuses on DPS) From what Kitty figured out, the jump is kinda interesting part as you need it for the damage bonus if playing DPS. But it requires making it worth using it for DPS and currently it's...quite not. Since Vindicator is seriously lacking in offensive bonuses (15%+240 power vs 20%+7-11% of heral vs 15%+693 precision since rene can't dodge much either+2 BIG damage skills) compared to other e-specs and Alliance skills cost so much energy to use them that you can't really use weapon skills and them and as such, power Vindicator is about as strong as core revenant...but essentially loses dodges in the process and can't even refresh the energy to use more skills. And from what Kitty tested, good ol' Shiro+Jalis seems to still be the better option utility and dps-wise. Also, Kitty needs to emphasize that like Herald, Vindicator is very dependant on Roiling Mists-trait in Invocation or it needs to throw good portion of damage away by taking tons of extra precision so that also limits skill use quite a bit and thus damage. So, Kitty's suggestions (Kitty's spreadsheeted co-efficients and such): -Increased Spear of Archemorus' power co-efficient from ~2.2 to 4.0 due to its high energy cost. You can realistically use it only once per 18 seconds when playing DPS so even 4.5 wouldn't be too much as you need to use F2 to make it useable again and that makes the total energy cost 50 per use which is extremely high. Alternatively reduce the energy cost to 20 and increase to co-efficient to 3.2. -Reduce the energy cost of Reaver's Rage, Scavenger Burst and Nomad's Advance from 15 to 10 and increase their power co-efficients by 50%. Currently they do half of sword/greatsword skills' damage while costing more and you can't even use them for damage if you need them for utility. Doing those changes would make Alliance Stance an alternative to Dwarf Stance in instanced content Greatsword is currently pretty well balanced with revenant's other power damage option dual swords so there's no point in touching those. Then to traits which require quite a bit of boost if this spec wants to see any light in raids and fractals. -Forerunner of Death: Increase the damage bonus to 20% or even 25%. Since it's the main damage boost of the spec and Vindicator essentially trades all survivability for damage when DPSing, that would make Vindicator at least somewhat relevant option and even then you need to follow a specific rotation timing the bursts after dodge to get full advantage of it. Due to Vindicator's dodge taking a long time, it really needs to somehow compensate for that ~6-7 power coefficient lost in DPS uptime to get that boost. -Balance in Discord: Replace Regeneration with "Way of the Luxor: xxxx heal (similar to regen) or +10% Outgoing Healing, +10% Incoming Healing (9s)" and add "Way of the Kurzick: +10% damage (9s)" as 2nd effect and which effect is triggered depends on which heal you swap to in Alliance Stance by using F2 or what is the other stance you swap to. As DPS-specialized stances Assassin and Demon Stances would trigger damage bonus and Dwarf+Centaur Stances would trigger heal boost. Those changes alone would make Vindicator a lot more rewarding to play and that legend/Alliance heal based Balance in Discord would open another interesting gameplay element.

After playing it for half a day in instanced PVE content (fractals and raids), Kitty would say that Dragon Slash-Force is overperforming by about 15% even with the skill and reliance on teammates it requires to do that damage in real game situations. Even though Dragon Slash-Boost isn't much behind, it would probably be okay to leave it about same level as Force due to Boost being a forward dash that isn't blocked by platform edges which makes it reaaaally dangerous skill to use and also out of range when it finishes so it kinda needs to be worth that disadvantage damage-wise if anyone ever needs to use it. Ofc you could use it to dash to boss to do its "slightly less than Force"-damage but at that point you can just use Flicker Steps to blink to boss for better damage with Force. Currently top-tier players are doing about 52k at golem and Kitty's doing 42k as typically "85% of benchmark" player so something like 15% nerf to Dragon Slash-Force and 10% nerf to Dragon Slash-Boost would be pretty justified, making it still a super-high risk, super-high reward build to play in PVE. Nerfing normal gunsaber skills would be pointless due to already being relatively weak and making up just 15% of total damage to begin with. Dragon Slash-Force currently makes up about 85% of Bladesworn's DPS build's damage so 20% nerf would be a bit too harsh as 20% nerf would reduce the dps potential to about 42,5k Since Bladesworn needs to be the most selfish build in the whole game to not defenestrate big portion of the damage and actually requires knowing the bosses inside out to reap that reward, having Bladesworn around 45k benchmark would be reasonable as the sheer difficulty makes it nigh impossible to get even close to full potential on most bosses (except dps golems like Mursaat Overseer, Gorseval and Deimos), not to mention that when you're loading the Dragon Slash skills, bosses often phase (Samarog and Slothasor as most annoying examples) and mobs are already dead so it's hard to get full benefit from fully loading the slash.. Also, Kitty's noticed that sometimes Dragon Slash-Force fails to hit the target even when in melee range and there's nothing that would cause blind. Unless Kitty's accidentally moved before finishing though she's already somewhat mastered standing still for the cast due to ranger's Whirling Defense and elementalist's Meteor Shower <.> Also, cancelling Dragon Slash doesn't cause F1 weapon swap to go on cooldown BUT successfully using Dragon Slash does. So in other words, cancel/interrupt doesn't count as weapon swap but Dragon Slash does. Is this intended behaviour (sounds weird thing to do) or a bug? If it's a bug, fixing it would make rotations including normal weapons more viable (though only axe+axe works for DPS, SO BOOST THOSE MACES'(+25%) AND HAMMER'S(+40%) DAMAGE DANG IT!) so you can choose between axes for damage or something like hammer or maces for CC (Boost Staggering Blow's Knockback to 240/300 while at it so you can actually do some knocking for mechs). Though with ammo system synergy, rifle is actually the 2nd best normal weapon for Bladesworn due to being ranged and benefitting of those ammo reload stuffs as well.

Correction: Legendary gears do NOT require Transmutation Charges. You can freely swap skins as you please. That's one of the main reasons why Kitty's been farming the armors now.

Armory suggestion: add toggle to also swap mount skins when you swap equipment template. For anyone who's serious about Fashion Wars, having to reskin/dye mounts when you swap templates is a super-big-massive pain and currently leads to just using shared color scheme between armors to fit to the mounts. Having the option to swap the mount skins+dyes when swapping Equipment Template would allow freely using dyes for various gear sets.

Kitty's also getting the Error, she hasn't been able to sell anything for hours. On a side-note, Mail system is messed up as well. It says "Processing previous mail." when trying to send mail.

Willbender really needs a DPS boost in PVE to feel like viable alternative to DH. On other guard builds Kitty's easily pulling over 30k, including core guardian, but on Willbender Kitty can't get over 24k DPS. Obviously Kitty's not the best guard there is but if it's supposed to be any useful in PVE, it requires at least 25% boost to be equal even with core guardian, not to mention DH. Some fixes would be adding "Gain 10% strike damage while you have Swiftness." (goes well with the theme by essentially giving more kinetic energy to their rush strikes) and doubling the damage on Willbender Flames. Power Virtuoso and Condi Harbinger are extremely strong though pretty selfish when playing pure DPS build. On Power Virtuoso, Kitty got 33,5k and on Condi Harbinger she got 34,5k DPS with meta gears and those are highest numbers Kitty's ever done on any spec. (Kitty did 33,4k on Power Weaver before some nerfs which was her old record.) But bringing very little utility besides DPS kinda compensates for the high DPS so Kitty wouldn't consider them too OP. However, now that Kitty tested quickmight harbinger, her fears about heavy dps loss for bringing the usual boons proved to be true. Boon/condi harbinger does about 50% of quickbrand's dps (Kitty did 14,5k on plaguedoctor's harbinger at golem and she had just enough boon duration to keep up quickness with 5% safety margin.) while only bringing essentially same boons (more might) but extremely inferior utility. For a fix, Kitty suggests increasing Elixir of Anguish's base quickness duration to 10s so Harbinger can work as a viable alternative to power quickscrapper and condi quickbrand by using viper's gears with Firebrand runes.

Testing Condi Virtuoso with scepter, Kitty noticed that scepter auto-attack's 3rd skill only spawns 1st, 2nd and 3rd blade, similar to clone count on other mesmer specs but apparently doesn't spawn 4th and 5th so guess it doesn't interact properly with the increased clone count. How to recreate the issue for bug testing? Go to golem with 0 blades and auto-attack. It won't spawn blades past 3rd.

Oh, rite...Kitty should check stuffs again and probably gotta correct the maths =.=' E: Fixed and updated the previous post with correct numbers and refined opinions.

E: Kitty had originally forgotten about Vile Vials and Deathly Haste during initial maths and current numbers below are corrected. Other edits in italic, stupidity in strikethrough. As per usual, Kitty already started theorycrafting on new elite specs and whining based on mathing without checking things out fully which was unusual super-stupid mistake from someone like Kitty... one worrisome thing about Harbinger PVE-wise was clear right away: it doesn't have long enough durations to fully keep up boons to allies even at 100% boon duration. The boon uptimes from Elixirs when you have all Elixirs equipped (though in reality you have to leave one out always) with full 100% Boon Duration from support gears with Alacrity and Vile Vials to reduce Elixir cooldowns: 25,9%: full 25 Might, 5 stacks of Stability, Aegis, Alacrity, Protection, Regen 50,4%: Resistance 87,1%: Resolution, Vigor, Quickness without Deathly Haste 148,4%: Swiftness, Fury, 10 stacks of Might 105,7% Quickness from Deathly Haste IF you can keep up shroud for 18,5s at a time and somehow recover 92,5% Life Force in 8 seconds between shrouds. 70-75% Quickness from Deathly Haste with realistic rotation 140-160% Quickness uptime for 5 at 100% boon duration with a proper DPS rotation. Since this is a dps spec, you can (Read: will) use Blood is Power as one of the utilities and that will essentially solve the might issue (BiP provides 10 stack of 100% uptime at 100% Boon Duration). *and thus this build is capable of working as As is, it might work as mightbot that also allows alacrigade and quickness support to have slightly lower boon duration but it doesn't work as independent quickness support. works as full might+fury+quickness support. Considering that we have staff mirage with full might and alacrity in full dps gears doing almost as much dps as normal dps' and quickscrapper and quickbrand have tons of utility and good dps while bringing quickness, Kitty would suggest upping the Quickness and Vigor duration to same as might, fury and swiftness as Harbinger needs to use something like Seraph's/Plaguedoctor's with boon duration stuffs with pure support traits and utilities to work as boonbot at all even then and that likely means that Harbinger might end up behind alacrigade in DPS and condi quickbrand still does the job twice better while bringing superior utility with axe pulls, cleanses, blocks and all the tome stuffs. And here's one build it might be running as condi/boonbot: -uses Harbinger Mid-Mid-Mid -Scepter+Dagger/Pistol+Dagger or some other off-hand as weapons. -Elixirs of Anguish, Ignorance and Ambition in empty utility slots. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSgAsilFwABWqTAraA-zRJYvRDfZUQC0VB490YizKA-e

Earlier today one in Kitty's squad also mentioned they heard a new line when Ensolyss died, something like "You brought this on yourself" or something similar to that. Kitty wasn't focusing enough on listening at that moment but considering that she hadn't heard the cat meow before this week (and Kitty's done Nightmare a LOT since it's her favourite fractal), it kinda leaves Kitty confused on if they've added something audio-wise to the fractal or has Kitty just been too focused on boss music? Kitty hasn't been posting on forums lately since the discussions in instanced content section seem to be the same few topics with just new titles so writing the same thing for 42th time just feels lame. And kinda too busy with farming Legendary armors (sans weapons) and trinkets as they included free character-specific fashion wars to Legendary Armory which was enough to make Kitty start upgrading to legendary from her otherwise equivalent system.

Kitty also heard it yesterday which caused a big "WUT? Sad cat meow in Nightmare O.o". Another run today had some other weird noise that Kitty doesn't remember happening before.

We already have search-function for skins, dyes, inventory, bank etc. BUT. For whatever reason Guild Vault doesn't have it. So, if possible, add Search function to Guild Vault. Trying to find a certain item among similar ones (dyes as good example) in 250-slot bank is kinda frustrating.

In PvE, hammer is the inferior option on all but scrapper with warrior's hammer being one of the very weakest weapons in the game. Considering that hammers are slow weapons with backloaded damage making them high-risk weapons to use, one would expect them to be rewarded with good damage for taking the risk instead of hitting like a dry wool cloth. Guard's hammer's only saving grace is the longest launch in the game with Banish. Otherwise it has short immob, short low-damage leap (just auto-attacking is more dps) and an area denial bubble which can have creative uses in some extremely niche cases. And in comparison, other weapons have same utilities but better depending on combo with superior damage. Solution: Buff power co-efficients on Mighty Blow from 2.1 to 2.5, Zealot's Embrace from 0.8 to 1.6 and Banish from 1.0 to 2.0 to promote skill use in PvE. Banish with decent damage forces a choice of using it off-CD for damage or saving it for CC. Rev's hammer is just longer-ranged shortbow with greatly inferior damage (renegade's shortbow does 50% more with same build) and a miniscule hard-to-time evade that has some niche uses. And a projectile block but that's also pretty niche to use and being front-only makes it worse. Solution: Buff Coalescence of Ruin, Phase Smash and Drop the Hammer in PvE. And warrior's hammer...oh dear. Auto-attack chain does roughly same damage as thief's sword BUT takes about 50% longer (1.88s vs 2.75s) and due to that slow attack rate loses to most weapons by good margin in auto-attack dps and ofc the bigger damage is on the super-slow last hit that you're unlikely to kand if anything is happening or you're sticky like a velcro fly. Solution? Boost last attack's (Hammer Smash) power co-efficient from 1.2 to 1.8 and maybe the other attacks from 0.9 to 1.0. As a side-note, mace's auto-attack chain is even slower(2.9s) so that could also use some 15-20% speed-up or damage boost from 0.8 to 0.9 on first 2 attacks to make mace a bit less insufferable defensive option. Fierce Blow has seemingly big damage against controlled foes but...in PvE you can't really control anything with a breakbar reliably if at all. That means the damage bonus is essentially useless against any champion mobs and bosses while those are what people usually base their choice of weapon on. Hammer Shock does have a big range...but hits like that aforementioned cloth, essentially as much as first auto-attack hit. Staggering Blow has the same issue with the added bonus of not even knocking most enemies out of the melee attack range and thus being an interrupt at best. Solution? Buff the radius to 240 so that knockback can actually work at knocking stuff away. Backbreaker also has really weak damage for 5th weapon skill though it compensates with strong single-target CC and reloading Fierce Blow if enemy is CC'd by Backbreaker. Thus, Backbreaker->Fierce Blow should be good damage, right? Not against champs and bosses since you can't control them for more than 5% uptime at the very best if they have normal, fastly recovering breakbar. Solution? Make that reset and controlled foe damage bonus trigger against enemies with breakbar by making them count interrupts too, like with some similar traits on other classes. Earthshaker (Hammer Burst) is essentially Mace's burst Skull Crack in AoE leap format with inferior Stun duration and damage of a dry cloth. Solution? Boost Skull Crack's power efficient from 1.5 to 1.8 and Earthshaker's from 1.0 to 1.5-1.6. These suggestions would make hammer a considerable option for better utility vs damage option as currently competing weapons have lots of utility, some even better like guardian's greatsword, while also having 25% (guardian's greatsword)/ 50% (revenant's shortbow)/ 100%+ (warrior's axes) higher dps.

Meanwhile in core elementalist...29k DPS on condi elementalist simply by spamming Fire skills. And Kitty didn't even use infusions. ಥ_ಥ Starts at 19:52.

Power Scrapper is kinda such build. Best survivability, insane utility and "Spam 2-5 Toolbelts Gyros off-CD" essentially. Though it does do somewhat lower damage than holo but the utility+massive cleave+ridiculous tankiness (in totally another world than almost every other build in game) more than makes up for it. Though lots of people still have that "all dps, no utility"-mindset that causes so many unnecessary wipes. It can also swap to kitless sword+shield holo for more dps if needed, that is also pretty simple.

Well, Kitty did address that in her looong list of suggestions in the original thread's last page. However, on top of lacking boons to share (though it can provide might for 10. Kitty's mathed and tested.), raid community itself has been one of main enemies of heal/boon scourge. On top of recommending the pure heal stats (full Magi's or Marshal/Shaman's with a dagger, which by itself is bad option with condi stats, instead of Harrier's pretty much all other healers use to get the boon duration), they keep on saying "scourge can't boon boohoo :'(" while heal scourge can actually bring that 10-target might and plenty of regen with proper stats, build and some basic lifeforce management skills. What it sorely needs is a source of fury that literally every other healer has as an option (well, excluding chrono...) as well as some protective boons maybe? And shades' normal target cap returned to 5 if they've actually dropped it to 3 after Kitty last played the build. This is the proper mightbot/heal scourge build that Kitty's using: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAg+ZlNwSYgMI2IWsS1vKA-zRJYqRHfZkaFUdK47s8/mF-e And tbh, Kitty usually simply refuses to play that build. While it brings all the might needed for whole squad while quickbrands have dealt with fury, it's already been capable of ridiculous hardcarrying the squad almost anywhere. Since Kitty often leads training raids, using that build would teach nothing about the bosses. Carries too hard. 😡

*Reserving for last part including elementalist, guardian and engineer* Ranger Ancient Seeds: Additionally striking a feared foe roots them (this way it'd work on bosses. Currently the trait is useless against anything that has a breakbar and it'd be great to get those bleeds on condi druid. Engineer Experimental Turrets: Increase the target cap of boons provided by turrets from 5 to 10. (This would finally make heal engineer builds capable of providing not-so-important boons for the squad in Herald-like fashion though not as well and with way greater opportunity cost (Either taking Inventions as DPS or losing 100% quickness output or Elixir Gun to provide one boon (probably Fury) for the squad. Kitty's been asking for this for 3 years and this would be a very serious QoL for heal engi and make it a lot more viable option as it still won't be able to provide proper might after this BP). Fragmentation Shot: Increase the Bleeding duration inflicted by this skill from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. (to be equal with next suggestion...) Tranquilizer Dart: Increase the Bleeding duration inflicted by this skill from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. (If you fail to swap out of Elixir Gun right away, tiny bit lesser DPS loss...if you use Elixir Gun to begin with.) Fumigate (Elixir Gun 3): Increase the duration of Poison inflicted by this skill from 2 seconds to 5 seconds. (This might make Elixir Gun worth taking on condi build for memes.) Acid Bomb (Elixir Gun 4): Make this trait inflict 5 stacks of Torment over the duration of the field left by this skill (5 seconds). (Another skill towards making Elixir Gun a condi weapon option if you have statted general condi duration.) Flame Jet (Flamethrower 1): Reduce the duration of Burning inflicted by this skill from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds while making each hit inflict burning on the enemies. (This would allow creating Flamethrower-based Grieving power/condi hybrid Flamethrower build that would hit about 25k dps.) Smack and Whack (Tool Kit Auto-Chain 1st and 2nd attack): Increase the power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0 . (This is the slowest auto-attack chain in the game, surpassing even other hammers and finishing the whole chain is often a damage loss and thus this and next suggestion would at least compensate a tiny bit.) Thwack (Tool Kit Auto-Chain 3rd attack): Increase the power coefficient from 1.75 to 2.25 . (Probably the slowest backloaded single-hit skill in the whole game and only hits one target. If someone somehow lands a hit on target with it, they deserve the damage.) Rocket Boots: In addition to previous effects, add 3/4 second evade to this skill. (It would compensate for engineer's lack of Blink/Shadowstep which has made filling certain roles quite impossible and Kitty doesn't think it'd be gamebreaking.) Scrapper Positive Strike: Increase power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.9 . (Lines up the auto-attack chain's power with other professions that use hammer.) Kinetic Accelerators (VERY IMPORTANT FOR THIS PATCH): When you grant superspeed to a target, also grant quickness (3 seconds). (If it was 2 seconds like initially planned, Heal Scrapper couldn't keep up full Quickness reliably without dropping Elixir Gun which is a decent portion of its heal output so it should be 3 seconds of quickness instead. Kitty already mathed most of the support builds.) Guardian Can't really say anything yet as Guardian's going through major revamp with Zeal and Mantra revamps.

Warrior Greatsword: Warrior's greatsword is excellent weapon for mobility but some aspects of its gameplay make it a very difficult weapon to master and even more difficult to utilize in difficult areas. It is also weaker than popular super-easy dual axes at the moment and thus could use a minor boost to make it an option for those who like challenge. Here's Kitty's suggestions. Greatsword Swing: Increase the power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.9. (The attack sequence is extremely slow and 0.7 is weaker than basic attacks of some weapons with 25% faster auto-attack sequence. Longer attack sequence also means a lot higher risk of interrupts.) Greatsword Slice: Increase power coefficient from 0.95 to 1.0. (Same reason as above.) Brutal Strike: Increase the power coefficient from 1.25 to 1.4. (Same reason as above.) Hundred Blades: Increase the power coefficient of final strike from 1.21 to 1.5. (It's an incredible risky skill to use due to long cast and being immobilized through it so using it requires lots of skill which should be rewarded appropriately if finished.) Hammer: In PVE, hammer warrior builds are currently some of the weakest due to many enemies being invulnerable to control effects that some of hammer's damage skills rely on. It is made even worse by hammer bursts being extremely awkward to use. For numbers, Kitty benched it around 15-16k not long ago and she benches 30-33k on metabuilds. Hammer Swing and Hammer Bash: Increase power coefficient from 0.9 to 1.0. (2.75s long attack sequence with unusually short range and targets limited to 3 instead of usual 5 and doesn't even have anything extra to compensate. Warrior's hammer is also one of the very weakest weapons in the game currently, doing less than 50% of the damage of builds like power Dragonhunter and such.) Hammer Smash: Increase power coefficient from 1.2 to 1.5 . (Still weaker than other hammers due to lack of any extra effects but at least some compensation and now it'd at least match autoattack chain of Elementalist's Lightning Hammer without its stat boosts.) Fierce Blow: In addition to controlled foes, also deals damage to enemies with Defiance Bars. (A HUGE upgrade) Hammer Shock: Increase power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.5. (Currently hardly above auto-attack.) Backbreaker: Increase power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.6. (Tiny help for hammer warrior.) Earthshaker-burst: Increase power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.4 . (Currently hits like wet cloth with long cooldown but has good CC power.) Rupturing Smash-Primal Burst: Increase power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.0. (Shorter cooldown than normal burst but a lot weaker CC as well.) Mace: Mace's Primal Burst interestingly applies Confusion and Bleed so it has potential as secondary condi damage weapon. If it got a bit more confusion, it might be a very viable option at high APS scenarios. Off-Hand Mace has very long cooldowns and lacking damage so it's only used for CC atm. Mace-related trait is also in Defense-spec so it typically isn't used in most scenarios outside very niche tanking builds (like Deimos handkiter). Dual maces currently bench about 19k and axe+mace about 21,5k. Pommel Bash: In addition to Vulnerability and Daze, inflict 4 stacks of confusion for 4 seconds. (Getting dazed kinda leaves you confused, doesn't it? Also kinda allows Grieving Power/Confusion build). Skull Grinder-Primal Burst: Decrease the amount of Bleeding inflicted from 4 stacks to 3 stacks. Increase the amount of Confusion inflicted from 4 stacks to 5 stacks. (Merges with WvW version and helps with that Confusion build.) Crushing Blow: Increase power coefficient from 1.5 to 2.2. (Helps a bit at making mace a viable 2nd off-hand for damage.) Tremor: Increase power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.25 in PVE. Reduce cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PVE. (Though it hits twice on large enemies, long cooldown still keeps it rather weak compared to many other similar skills and double hit only works on large hitboxes.) Impale: Increase the duration of Torment inflicted by this skill from 8 seconds to 10 seconds. (Helps at making the sword a viable option for condi off-hand.) Riposte: Increase the Bleeding inflicted by this skill from 8 stacks to 10 stacks. (Riposte requires getting hit to trigger and thus can't be used exactly off-cooldown. Requires skill to be used effectively.) Mesmer Illusionary Inspiration: Increase the healing coefficient of this trait from 0.3 to 0.5 (Big step towards making Heal Chronomancer a viable alternative to Heal Firebrand as mesmer currently lacks acceptable heal build). All's Well That Ends Well: Increase healing coefficient from 0.8 to 1.0. (Combined with Illusionary Inspiration makes Heal Chronomancer real. But Chrono would still needs to make decisions on utilities as chronomancer needs to make a lot more sacrifices to provide same things as other healers so it would have slight handicap against competition. Also, mutually exclusive with incoming boon mirage which can't heal adequately.) Illusionary Counter: Increase the amount of Torment inflicted by this skill from 5 stacks to 6 stacks. (Tiny help for scepter against currently superior axe.) Mirage Split Surge: Increase power coefficient from 1.35 to 1.9. (Currently condi-focused axe ambush has 1.0 while taking only 1/3 as long to cast so power mirage's Ambushes need a HUGE boost to make power mirages even into meme builds.) Mirage Thrust: Increase power efficient from 1.0 to 1.5. (Again, to help at making power mirage a thing. Currently Sword Power Mirage benches about 20k and Core Power Mesmer about 26,5k for comparison.) Elementalist Lightning Whip: Increase power damage coefficient from 1.26 to 1.4. (If you somehow play power dagger elementalist that uses Air spec, you anyway do lower damage than scepter and Lightning Whip looks EPIC!) Lightning Leap(Lightning Hammer 2): Increase power coefficient from 1.0 to 1.4. (This would make Lightning Hammer more useful as general weapon unstead of jyst 2 skills). Magnetic Shield (Earth Shield 4): Reduce cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds. (Coupled with Conjurer-trait would open some PVE boss tanking roles that elementalist hasn't been able to do safely with current cooldowns, like Deimos tank). Powerful Aura: Increase the target cap to 10. (Allows using certain tactics with less worries about random people getting the auras, like using Magnetic Aura for backup reflecting at some bosses, for ex. Matthiass Gabrel.) To be continuad...