Update - 2/17

I was about to post the same thing, but you beat me to it. I never, ever used Asuran Scan in a Jagged-> Fox Fangs -> Death Blossom combo because if the target died too fast, it would be a substantial hit to AoE damage.

As for my two cents on this update, it's invigorating to try out completely new tactics; the Dervish now has a playstyle that's true to his name. I really like the concept of building momentum via flash enchantments and I dig how Anet gave us unique ability strings (such as the flat spell damage reduction on Veil of Thorns). The only part of this update that pisses me off is the change to Aura of Holy Might: the allegiance progression (20-25) is way too miniscule.

Regardless of my initial paragraph, I am a bit sore about the change to Asuran Scan, however. I'm going to have to mess around with my Spirit's Strength builds and hopefully find a suitable alternative, but it's certainly not rage worthy. And as others have mentioned, it's a shame that Rangers lost one of their vital PvE skills.

Last but not least, Intensity needs to be linked to Energy Storage. I never thought I'd ever say this as a primary Rit, but we've got enough powerful options. Let the nukers retain at least a sliver of their former glory.

Still haven't tried them much for PvE, but from what it seemed to me, dervishes single target damage is weaker.

only time i seen it being used in a sin combo was for ATFH. i remember ever sin or /a that ran it during zmiss days had it.

Energy demands are still taxing, you have to either get more energy or use less. Losing a PvE slot, of course, is always a big deal.

I've always said this, why it hasn't happened I don't know. Its not like monsters are complaining about R-spike, eh?

Anet not getting something? Color me surprised.

That's what I'm getting, but multiple target damage and/or party support is definitely up to snuff.

Out of curiosity, how badly damaged would your life be on a scale from 1-10 if the survivor title was made easier for other people to obtain?

1 means: Ah, haha - I see your point, I am a dipshit for thinking I have "worked hard" for a meaningless title and realise now that other people getting the same shitty title doesn't affect me at all. Thanks for leading my way out of darkness.

while
10 represents: People would stop giving me the respect I deserve for my hard earned title and I would definitely quit GW and also kill myself irl. Who wants my stuff?

Having earned Leg. Survivor on multiple characters, I would welcome the theorized change. It would finally be a legit way for a character to have both LDoA and Leg. Survivor!

You're still earning the full 1.3mil xp, you just aren't being penalized for having dying before titles were introduced. its not easier, it just another way to earn the title (if this is what its for of course).

About rangers being underpowered w/o AS:
Want Ranger damage? Take pets. Brutal Strike is a ridiculous skill. Dealing 100+ damage on enemies at only 12 beast mastery in HM doesn't look underpowered to me!

You don't even need AS for Rangers. Pets are utterly ridiculous!
For extra fun, take with a scythe and Radiant Scythe as e-management and then spam away awesome skills.

Damn, Vow of Piety doesn't heal everyone any more.

Avatar of Melandru and Avatar of Dwayna are actually useful now. Combine Avatar of Dwayna with sand shards and Pious Assault and you can heal all allies (not just party members, mind you) for 10-15 hp per second.

Good thing Crippling Sweep doesn't cause knockdowns any more. Otherwise, it would have removed kiting from the game.

Fortunately, Pious Renewal works exactly the way I hoped for. It's a flash enchantment that recharges itself. However, it may not even be necessary, seeing as how they lowered the disable time of flash enchantments to 1 second instead of 3. I haven't checked the recharge times of all the other flash enchantments, so Pious Spam may not be the best.

The Aura of Holy Might buff isn't nearly as much as it used to be.

The Asuran Scan nerf hits all melee really really hard. Dervs, sins, and warriors all took a heavy nerf with that one skill.

Does anyone know yet if Vow of Strength ignores the scythe's ability to hit multiple targets like Whirlwind Attack? If it does, it's useless compared to Hundred Blades. If it doesn't, well, Anet has no idea what they created.

In any case, the old builds are dead. The question is, when the dust settles, will the dervish be the best at this? If the crit multiplier and attack speed are the same as they were in the leaks, then the sin still has a huge advantage over the dervish. And strength still works on the scythe just as well.

Well, if nothing else, the dervish will at least have it's party-healing AoD scythe build. So already the dervish is better off. Time will tell if the overall update has been a success.

Not to steer off topic (don't delete me plz mods! .....). But in the ranger forum there are a couple threads on pets. I totally agree they are underrated. With the right buffs, the pet is fast, unblockable, and nearly indestructible (he can solo Magni the Bison no problem!). The main problem is of course the AI. They are stupid as hell so it does take a little getting used to.

Technically it is not offtopic since it addresses the update with Asuran Scan.

Speaking of which, how does this affect paragon meta who also use AS and scythes?

Holy crap I hope so. I know I'm behind on getting this title, but I personally still need to roll a survivor character for HOM and I don't want to level up a toon that I will never play again after I get the title. It's so pointless.

If a person chooses to go for LDoA, now and in the past, they choose to die deliberately, so a LDoA should be excluded from being able to obtain the survivor too. The same should also be true for those that death level a pet/companion. Any characters with deliberate deaths should be excluded.

Another case, which can be difficult to prove, deaths while packing "By Ural's Hammer!", the boost in damage upon res. Did they die "on purpose" for the boost, or was the death accidental?

These things should be considered with any possible "survivor" resets.

My main, Teofa Tsavo, is a ranger. Haven't done as much as many, but H/H Elona Guardian and vanquished that continent and much of EoTN. I have never had Asuran Scan equipped.

Without the sophisticated parsing tools developed for games like EQ2 you don't have a clue what your DPS really is. Setting up a build for a single physical spike may or may not be optimal dps, optimal sustained dps or optimal zonewide dps.

I have heard condition use laughed at here, yet to me, HM is exactly the place where condition use applies the most and its contribution to overall dps not measurable at all. Conditional DPS with burning, bleeds, poison, disease applied to multiple targets adds a considerable amount of overall DPS that doesnt float up in pretty yellow numbers.

A Ranger does far more than just physical damage spiking, or should. Loss of a single target physical damage buffer is laughable compared to other things a ranger could be adding to sustained, group and zone wide DPS.

No, what is sad is how bad at the game are some people.
Thank heavens they decided to leave gw, average skill level will rise :)

The value of any title or achievement is solely intrinsic. In all games it really comes down to, how did I earn it and how do I care. Games and gamers always figure out ways to cheapen the path to accomplishments..so it remains to the individual to ultimately set the standards of HOW they accomplish anything.

Well that would seem kind of hard to prove in a lot of cases. And, besides, when people have known they weren't going to be getting a title for not dying there was no reason not to. I'm not talking about death leveling or whatever, I'm talking about just goofing around. Who hasn't in all of their gaming just ran into a giant mob for the fun of it knowing full well that you were gonna get smoked? While I'm at it, to backtrack, in a case such as we're discussing, excluding death levelers and such isn't such a great idea either. I mean, there wasn't a choice for them that a change may give...

Truth be told though, if they changed the title so it was available to only the characters that were made prior to the title being added I would be perfectly fine with that. I have LS on a character I made specifically for the purpose, but it doesn't mean very much compared to what it would on my main, or even my "second main," made well in advance of the titles.

Agreed, this is how it should've been from the beginning. Especially since it any character created before titles were introduced never had a chance of achieving the survivor title.

The easiest one to prove, would be a LDoA. I am not even sure one could "prove" that one did death level a pet. I am very aware that any other death can not be absolute one way or the other. I have neither a LS nor a LDoA, but I have DL'd a pet on my 5+ yr old main. In essence, I am excluding myself, because I decided to speed up the process of leveling a pet for HoM. Should I be forgiven, because I did not know of possible "survivor reset"? Only ANet can/will decide that.

Salvaging my old Derv Hero build, this is how I fixed it for the time being:

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Earth and Mysticism are +1 and Scythe Mastery +2 +1

One can choose to replace one of the 2 healing enchants for more damage.
Improvements or other (decent/good) Derv Hero builds r welcome.

(P.S. PvX wikia doesnt seem updated with the new Derv skills yet, at time of this post)

Well, since from the implementation the two titles have been mutually exclusive.
Simplest solution is.. if you have LDOA, survivor is locked. That way overall achievable title count remains the same for all players with all games regardless of starting area.

There is no "Do Over" for LDoA on an existing char outside pre. Giving LDoA holders a do over on survivor gives them a title count unattainable by any means for chars in post, or from Factions or NF.

Wait I'm confused the /deaths displays ur xp since last death but is it working? Mine doesn't update or does it only update every so often? I can't seem to find anything in the dev notes with the update.

Also even though it's not updating does it still work? I'm guessing if you get the 140,600 xp needed to reach lvl 20 the title will show up as Survivor 1?

well, theres definetley an emphasis on using secondary professions, only had a bit of a gander at making builds. you can definetley see potential for fun builds, but the dervs seem to lack the skills to finish them off? or maybe it's just me. whats all this about the sruvivor title anywho>..

Uh, no, not to me. She was expressing her opinion, as well as I hope you were just yours. Having said that, title discrimination is very common in GW, and the value of titles very extrinsic. Ask anyone who has been denied joining a party in HA/PvE

Wow, are you for real?

You're using words like "exclude," "forgiven," "prove" to discuss a game mechanic that has no tangible in game benefit. I would hope that most people do not associate these words with GAMES. That people play for diversion. You know, FUN.

Whether you have LS3 or not, LDoA or not, both at the same time or neither, there is no change in gameplay. Your heroes don't become more powerful, henchmen don't bow and scrape to you, you don't do more damage or attack faster. The only difference is perception of the player by others, as well as the player's self-perception if its bound up in meaningless bits of code that signify wasting a bunch of time on absolutely no tangible benefit.

Were the Survivor and LDoA titles to be removed tomorrow, absolutely none of the gameplay would change, barring the XP farming required for said titles. Which you can do anyway, without the titles.

In short, they mean nothing tangible, and only have benefit for e-peen stroking. Of course, one or both can contribute to the HoM, but again, there won't be any gameplay mechanic in GW2 that these titles will alter, they simply will unlock apply-able skins or pets that all have the same gameplay stats as normal skinned weapons.

So in answer to your question? Terrible, an absolutely terrible attempt.

It is my opinion, and it remains.. I only care about my own goals and titles and how I did them. Other peoples titles have no value to me, as I do not know how they were done and cannot possibly judge their skills/lack of by their titles.

Given that nearly any title in this game can be bought or cheesed, having a title of any sort is never an indication of skill... and pugs judging from that aspect are fools.

In PvE with the exception of a the occasional HM PUG who max Lightbringer for DOA, I've never even seen people check titles in PvE let alone discriminate based on it. I will give you the hero title for HA though.

Agreed! I have two characters that are each about half way to LS3. I already have a character of each profession and do not really need another. After I get LS3 on which ever one survives I won't play that character again in all likelihood.

I would love to have LS3 on my main character but he has been around since the very beginning so that (at the moment) is impossible. Being able to achieve LS3 because you accumulated 1,337,000 experience without dying is essentially the same mechanic as the current LS3 title without the punishment of having an old character that was around before titles.

Us hardcore RA people are not happy. The new Avatar or Grenth + Grenths Aura+ Heart of Fury = instant win. I hate RA now, like 2 Dervs in every party now.

probaly in few weeks will be balances for Dervish maybe, cause alot of spells are very OP for pvp, Reaper's Sweep just became Casters worse nightmare not being to get away from physical class now that it causes Knockdown and cripple. Using that cripple in AoE by using Grenth finger's for some serious crowd control.

Im still trying to think a skill that removes players enchantments for spike.

Rending Aura works very well with Reaper's Sweep to do just that.

from wiki: The Survivor title track is mutually exclusive (their word, not mine) with the Defender of Ascalon title, as the only way to reach level 20 in pre-Searing is through death leveling.

The use of death leveling, for the purpose of obtaining a title, made me ask myself "If death leveling a pet can be used as an excuse, by the powers that be, would/should preclude me?" Or will ANet overlook this (forgive) this use of death leveling? If they choose not to, how can they or I prove I did/didn't death level a pet.


So it wouldn't matter to you, that a character started in Prophecies, could obtain one title more than characters started in Factions or Nightfall? You or the rest of the GW population, whose mains were started in those chapters, won't be in here later, hissing about the issue, even though it really adds nothing to the game play? Why not prevent issues before they arise?

They could remove all the titles, should they choose to do so. They give me something to do in game. Odds are, I won't be buying GW2, so HoM just means "busy play" to me, till I find something better to play.

That's all I have to say about that.

The only change that would be right for the survivor title would be to finally do away with the Kath hammer BS. The fact that they haven't done this before now shows me that the new team doesn't give a shit about thier (our, my) game. If they did, they would fix that.
I will hate seeing the change I think is coming to survivor. I'm not raging and youre not getting my stuff, and I'm not even QQing (not all complaining is QQ, kids), but I have an opinion and its as valid as any of yours are.
Survivor: If you died, youre not one. If you died before it existed...you're still not one. No matter if you died once at 1.25million XP due to lag and never ever died again....your'e still not one. No matter if you died on purpose, or accidentally (aka failed, btw)
If you bought Kath hammers, I would love to see you banned, but thats my own personal opinion...you're damn sure not a survivor, though, any more than you're a flamingo or the King of Siam.
As for a negative impact on my gameplay...maybe there's not a huge one, but it is offensive to my sense of whats right and whats not, and maybe that should count for something. I'm sick of seeing this live team dumb-down a game I love for the sake of spoiled QQ-ers going 'I died before the title! WAAAH!" - that changes nothing. Its supposed to be a very black-and-white issue: you died, you're not a survivor. You dont die, you are. The purchasing XP exploits just show who's weak and lazy, and by that, I mean the devs who won't bother to fix it along with the players who use it. There's no reason it shouldn't be bannable, and less reason that item should be trade-able.
Does the proposed survivor title negatively affect my gaming experience? Of course it does. I don't want to see a ton of psuedo-survivors wearing around a title they didn't earn, because whether you like it or not, it does detract from the people who actually earned the title. Boxing is lame, but at least they do have to hit something. I don't like it either but there is at least a justification to it.
There are titles you buy, but we also know those and this wasn't supposed to be one of them.
There are a lot of problems with this game, but it's still the all-around best video game that exists, and I feel like every time this live team decides to simplify, dumb-down, buff-up, or hand over all the rewards to the people who didn't do the things that those rewards called for, then it goes down a notch or few, and I hate seeing it, and I wonder why more people don't hate seeing it too.
I hope someday to see the "secret things" that Linsey is working on, because she worked to make this game a challenge, and her succesors go against that in every move they've made so far. I look forward to her new project, whatever it is, and I feel the exact opposite with this live team. I see it as a bright side that these are NOT the people working on the next game I look forward to, which is GW2, I hope they never touch it.
I want them to stop dumbing this game down, not everyone deserves (yep I said and meant that word) to have every reward in the game. As it is, people feel like the rewards dont mean anything, and why should they, when theyre so easily exploited? But if the rewards worked the way they were supposed to, and seeing a character with a title meant that they earned it, then that would be respectable again.
Whats funny is the people who say that the titles don't mean anything work harder at cheating to get them than they would have to earn them the real way.
If this live team cared about the game, they would set things back right in that regard. But even if they won't, saying "its bad already" isnt an excuse to make it worse - which is exactly what this Survivor idea would do.
Ive played mine through with no runs, no farms, no cheats, and no dishonor. I played quests and storyline, I filled the books and did it the real way. Does that make my title better than the people who did it via lameway 1, 2, or 3? hell yes it does. I'm not saying I worked so hard, its not work - it's play, (and I enjoyed playing it more than anything else I've done in GW, btw). But I did it, and the reward was intended to be given for that, and not handed out to people who bought a quest reward a bunch of times.
Now, with all that being said, I'm glad they made the Derv changes, and I even like most of them, and it does at least give me hope and make me happy that keeping the game freshened up matters to them - but I really hope for a change of heart regarding Survivor though.

"Mutually exclusive" is a statement of the obvious. If you die, you can't get Survivor, but you can't get LDoA without death leveling. Hence the mutual exclusion.

That doesn't mean that they can't change the title acquisition. Should the title also be mutually exclusive for characters created before the title was available?

Who cares? Guild Wars is not a legal proceeding, ANet are not lawyers and we are not defendants. You should probably get your head around the fact that GW is a game.

Nope. The reason being that LDoA is a Prophecies exclusive title, so no matter what Canthan and Elonian characters cannot acquire it. Also, its a 700 hour grind of basically standing around doing nothing. Try justifying your electric bill for that.

So what you're saying is that you're bored with the game and that the only iota of fun you can eke out of it is acquiring titles which won't help you since you won't be getting the sequel in which it makes even the slightest bit of difference...

And you're trying to say its NOT about e-peen stroking? Ridiculous.

This is just on paper. Warrior can be pretty functional with just 4-5 skills on his bar (speed, ias, attack123) and will be pretty decent thanks to his raw damage output and armour, the Derv doesn't even come close even when you buff him in 1v1 actions. Then, obviously, no smart team will ever allow a Derv to just run in the middle and spam conditions on everyone, as that quickly drains away energy to heal it.

Derv to be effective needs a whole build based around a single tactic, produce a counter for that tactic (remove 1-2 Derv skills from play, eat his energy ... well, virtually anything will shut down the effectiveness of his pressure) or abuse particular build's weakness and Derv is done for (best builds around are strictly offensive with a fair bit of movement, you aren't going to last when things go wrong for obvious reasons ...).

He still comes pretty much secondary to Warrior and requires support in order to stay alive ... he isn't exactly the right character to go after enemy players and collect heads either, Warrior is much better at that. So no, really, all that Derv is good at is melee support and a little bit of control.

Dervs are going to meet even more resistance as the meta evolves in a week or two ... they still have many weaknesses and require skill to play, and it's going to get much worse with time. Nerfing them now will just remove them from pvp for good, even in niche formats. There is simply no use to that ... if any nerf is coming, it's because profession XYZ uses Derv skills to unintended effect, and it's going to happen sooner than later.

People say he is OP just because it's a new fad right now, like said earlier give it 1-2 weeks.

An update after months of nothing but grind festivals and lolcostumes... Only to find that AScan and AoHM are nerfed. Oh well no point returning to the game. Just a few new Dervish FoTMs that will get nerfed to dust in a few weeks (secret code for half a year)

Other than death, how do you remove eternal aura? If it's perfoming as intended then there is no fear of failing a mission instant all res.

Does this mean you could get LDoA and Leg Survivor on the same character?

I think there's a technical formality that prevents both from occurring though.

Poor you, sins and wars are finally toned down a bit instead of dealing insane damage using PvE skills and skills from their secondary. Poor you.

Rangers say flash traps please.