Curennos.9307

It seems like anet is trying to reduce barrier in Wvw, which...okay? That would be great, just wish they'd do it all at once. Engi's mace2 barrier was abysmal (something like 500 barrier? Awful). Essence of Animated Sand is still a 2k barrier though in full minstrel, which is nice. This is what I hoped mace2 would stay at. Mace/shield had two cleanses on shield4 and 5 for a total of 10 groupwide, so living shadows being reduced to 1 initial and then 2 condis removed on chaining is actually fine, since it also heals initially and pulses healing - the cooldown is also lower.

Excellent idea. I propose we remove sword/x 3 and replace it with an evade of some kind. There's also room for an evade on shortbow 3, staff 3 and 5, and axe 3 is in dire need of buffs and could use an evade on the 3 skill. d/d 3 could also use an evade. I think if we added evades to all these weapons and then nerfed thief damage to compensate and removed all stealth access, the balance would be much better.

Why not ask for reveal to be added to the least used weapon sets? It sounds like you just want to do whatever while also getting reveal for zero opportunity cost. Kinda sus.

Shadow Arts is fine. Anet just needs to make using attack skills immediately break stealth.For thief, possibly make steal break it as well but let stealth attacks remain usable for a second or two after.

Not really. Fighting DH comes down to figuring out where their traps are (not hard, they tend to either stand right in them, or place them between themselves and an enemy), dealing with the heavy hitters (which are actually nicely telegraphed, IMO, compared to other hit impact skills in the game), and dealing with the f1 because it's unblockable and you just need to save a dodge or something that isn't a block for it. The f1 spear is what lets them pull you into traps, or pull you out of a block if you're in a trap and blocking. It does feel overwhelming when first running into it though because it feels like there's no way to deal with it, but with a bit of practice it becomes much easier.

I teleported through a wall yesterday to kill a thief on my team's home node and help a teammate. It was funny, but I probably shouldn't be able to do that on an untamed ranger. That said, a 900 range teleport is very strong and part of untamed's kit, and even if it's converted to a 900 range leap there might still need to be compensation elsewhere for those kinds of changes.

I don't really mind DH overall - you can just proc their traps and wait a bit once you know the DH exists, they no longer have stealth, and even their skills have good tells compared to everyone else even if they try to teleport. My beef is that they can block and pewpew you while you aren't allowed to use a block because their f1 is unblockable and can be used to yoink you into a trap, so if you're a spec that has a block you can't use it to wait out their block/pewpew. Or, well, you can but you'll end up using a block + a dodge or some other mitigation when they see you blocking and go for the spear, which feels like a lose/lose. That said, getting both the block and spear from a DH basically leaves only the traps to deal with, otherwise they're just a squishy blue warrior with a healing leap that's easy to deal with. So maybe it just feels unfun to deal with, but getting the main offensive and mitigation skills in exchange for a block + dodge isn't really a bad trade.

To clarify, the boons would come from the skills that are currently insta-rez - not 'you're downed and suddenly have a bunch of boons', but serve to make the rez skills still valued. Cause prot/resolution/resistance/stab would make the utility still worth taking if you want to go for the rez, IMO. Unless the rez-pulse power is just super high (but not instant) instead, which would be fine.

Unfortunately, downstate is probably too ingrained in the game to remove in a PVP setting. But equalizing it - everyone gets the same skills, reduced health, remove the total cleanse and second or so of invuln on downstate, and change all insta-rez skills to apply prot/resolution/resistance/stab (so they're harder to cleave/knockback/poison) and be percentage rezzes so you still actually gotta rub the person back to life too, and I think things will be in a better spot. Was in wvw yesterday and the comm kept leaping face first into the enemy zerg without telling anyone or giving supports (aka me and the only other support specter in there, and I firmly believe they survived only because we pressed our buttons extra hard) time to catch up. They went down multiple times per battle and were inta-rezzed. Which, to be fair, was really funny and we had some good fights, but they probably should not be able to do that. Yes, I know this is the spvp forum, but was relevant >.>

Giving up two elements is too much IMO, but I'd like to be able to slot a conjured weapon in place of any element. If I'm not using water attune much, then let me give up a utility slot to put the conjured flame axe skills on water instead or something.

I started playing WvW approximately two months ago (give or take) and I am currently 581 tickets away from conflux. I'm not sure if there's a way to accurately tell how many hours I've spent, but I currently have 11 gifts of battle (I had a birthday booster running for the majority of the time, I forgot to use it at first cause I forgot I had 'em >_>) and am rank 143. On average, I spend maybe 1 hour a day (sometimes zero on weekdays, definitely more on weekends). I also have never gone out of my way to do the weeklies, I just meander around and set people on fire and die. I have never maxed out my claim ticket gains in a week. Per GW2 efficiency, I strated gain around the start of October, and had 5 for some reason I can't recall. Anyway, I currently have 1269 tickets. Gonna say I started oct 1st to make this easy. I'd say I average one hour a day, or 7 hours a week. 74 days, approx 10.5 weeks or so, 120 tickets per week, 17 ish per day. I've been VERY lazy and I'm almost done, and already have enough gifts of battle for two. There may be a point to be made for ensuring there's diminishing returns on ticket gain instead of compounding returns for time played, but overall it has felt like a very fast process to me. If I'd bothered to pay attention during my playtime instead of just wandering around doing whatever and maxed out my tickets per week, I think I'd have built conflux twice by now and been done. For additional context, I have never gone out of my way to do a weekly. I don't think I've even ever completed the dolyak one where you gotta kill. I forget, 8? I think I'm an excellent data point cause I'm almost entirely new to wvw, though I've done enough spvp to have two sets of legendary armor from it and a back piece. Overall, the time required to get conflux feels appropriate- I could've done it much, muuuuuch faster if I wanted, but as it is with my limited playtime and extremely limited attention span for doing a specific task instead of chasing the nearest red dot, this is where I am currently and it even feels rather quick.

There are plenty of training discords available and an entire experienced vs unexperienced tabs in the in-game LFG. While I think locking basic group functionality behind a 300g comm tag is stupid, you can put up a group in the in-game group finder without one and have it full in minutes. I've had normal mode strike runs where the group didn't even sort itself- it was just 10 people in a single sub-group. It took a bit but we did it. After gearing, 5 minutes a day on a DPS golem will put you so far above the average player you'll have no problem doing enough DPS to make your groups happy.

Attaching more negatives to an already negative thing (losing, and in this case losing badly) is a great way to make people just not want to play. Don't try to punish people for anet's kitten matchmaking and decisions that led to low population and resultant issues.

Don't mind me, just here to complain about anet fixing things with a sledgehammer, such as their idea of slapping huge power damage onto staff, a traditionally support/utility weapon. Why they did this instead of making it a better support weapon, I shall never understand, but giving necro 1200 ranged power damage was probably not a good idea.

I like that anet is trying to add sub-mechanics to weapons. Their results definitely vary but it's something you don't really see in other games with this kind of combat system. If staff does get a rework, I'd like to see it have one of those, though off the top of my head it'd be hard to think of something that would 1) Fit and 2) Not break anything someone currently likes about the weapon. But imma try anyway. Why not turn the auto attack into some sort of field placement skill, similar to Centaur Rev's tablet, but a larger AoE, and depending on what attunement you're in that field will constantly pulse some effect? Fire is power damage and burning, water is healing and (less) power damage, air is power damage and vuln, etc. Then use the AA button to move it around, and then all the skills change how that field works. Meteor Shower fire5 makes the field bigger and does...y'know. Meteor shower. Lava font adds a smaller aoe in the center that moves with the field, and so on. Cause currently, by and large I can't think of a single AA attack on staff I actually like, and it's an interesting weapon-specific sub mechanic that, IMO, would fit both the fantasy vibe of staff (people want staff to be a ranged nuker). It'd need to be differentiated from rev tablet, of course- bigger aoe, slower (tablet zips around very easily, whereas placement of the field might have a longer cooldown or something). It'd also make staff unique by letting it have it's AA 'out' or 'casting' even while skills are casting, as skills would only layer on top of the AA-field pulses. maybe even provide a constant combo field? Who knows. Then trim the delays on water 2 and earth 2 cause it's p much impossible to hit anyone but a slower moving zerg with them. Other folks have already provided excellent suggestions for the issues with individual skills - I think this + tweaks to the 2-5 skills would put the weapon in a good spot.