Profession Updates

What is the purpose of buffing all these once underpowered proffesions through the roof? Now the professions that were once viable in PvE become underpowered, and the cycle continues. Look at the recent Derv buff for example. Warriors are now pretty much outdone by Dervs in almost every way. Dervs now have the ability to do damage, support, survive, and nuke in one bar. In fact, the update to smiting monks made elementalists pretty much useless, the update to mesmers made rangers useless in pve, and the update to rits made all ranged dps useless.

I appreciate that these professions are getting buffed and am not ungrateful at all, but can they please be toned down a little? As it is now, I almost prefered the previous forms of these professions.

I wasn't aware that the derv update nerfed 100b or dragon slash or earthshaker...

I was shocked then i lol`d - ive never seen a post yet where someone cries a war is outdone by a derv before.Someones upset because for once the warrior has been outdone - probably a first in gw.
You just have to accept after any skill nerfs/buffs the balance of power ( most used profession ) shifts - always been that way and always will be that way.

--Warriors are now pretty much outdone by Dervs in almost every way
Not true. Like Sky said, 100b, Dragon Slash, and Earthshaker are all still viable options for a warrior in PvE.

--the update to smiting monks made elementalists pretty much useless
Again, Not true. Yes, Monks do have RoJ now and it's quite the powerful spell, but many people/groups/what have you will avoid it due to the fact that it causes scatter in HM. After RoJ and SoJ(strictly for farming or 600/smiting it seems) Smite Monks don't seem to common (to me at least). PUGs always want a heal monk.

--the update to mesmers made rangers useless in pve
I'm not sure on this one, but I doubt it. Rangers haven't brought much into PvE since Splinter Barrage if I recall correctly.

stopped reading. This is false

1.) Mesmers did zero damage before their update and needed a PVE buff badly
2.) The Dervish primary attribute was absolute crap in PVE
2.) Both of the aforementioned professions could still be effective before their updates
3.) Communing spirits are still better than channeling spirits, SoS just made it popular to spam (the real imbalanced skill is not SoS but summon spirits)
4.) Rangers are AMAZING (if you argue with me on this you are doing it wrong) just cause ranger heroes stink doesn't mean people playing them do too.
5.) Warriors still get invited everywhere but maybe DoA, relax.
6.) NOTHING does more damage than even a decent human playing an elementalist.
7.) I play all professions in HM and ALL are viable.

Apart Monks, Necs, Mes, Rits and meeles, expecially in HM.

Dervs sucked. Mesmers sucked in PvE.

Stumme said not to expect complete profession overhauls like we've seen, but I think the following attribute lines could use major revamping:

Motivation
Wilderness Survival
Smiting Prayers
Deadly Arts
Marksmanship

Paragon has Command which is awesome and Leadership which has some good skills and is a pretty solid primary. Monks have DF/Heal/Prot which are all excellent, and a few good options in Smiting, but the Smiting elites would be a good place to start. Assassins have Crit Strikes and Dagger Mastery which allow them to do a lot, and Shadow Arts isn't bad, but Deadly Arts is among the worst lines in the game with a few exceptions. Marksmanship lacks all potency and variability with, again, a handful of exceptions.

These ought to be tackled next.

Splinter barrage is still amazing, provided foes are packed (this is why I go with a zerg of minions), and they can still do a better job at interrupting than mesmers from my experience. Yeah, ranger heroes suck (mainly because they don't know how to spam skills like barrage or Needling Shot, or because they love to cast splinter on the monk instead of themselves), but that doesn't mean players do. And actually, interrupt heroes are incredibly good at that, and they can also do some DPS at the same time and spread conditions for example.

Yup relax, they've only crippled my precious WE endurance scythe.

Wut?

100b + MoP says hi.

Because it's less embarrassing to grossly break something than to buff it a little and have it still not see play.

Haven't seen any such build and if there was such a build, I'm sure it would have been greatly discussed by now. Anyone can throw together a bunch of skills that do various things, but that doesn't make it good.

Play in hard mode, elementalist damage is shit.

If some other profession "takes your job", then maybe its time you changed your play style up a bit. Saying a mesmer made rangers useless makes me assume that you think rangers are ONLY good for interrupting things. Dervish took a warriors job? Try using something other than hundred blades or some other form of spread damage. All professions can perform multiple roles (this is especially true for the necromancer, who can pretty much do anything EXCEPT interrupt things) and each one can fit a niche more effectively than some other class. For example, rangers make pretty good interrupters, sure, but have you tried using condition skills? Its hard for an enemy to deal with being burned, poisoned, bleeding, crippled, and if you're into BHA, even dazed, and rangers can deal these conditions faster than anyone else I can think of.
And as a side note, I do wish they'd do something to make elementalists more useful in HM PVE. Since every enemy has a + 32847384728347 ele resistance, air magic is the only thing that seems to do any real damage >: O

Dervs still only have 70AR and no shield.

Yes if you are going from the current end-game meta philosophy that "DPS trumps all defensive considerations (that's what monks are for)", then yes the warrior has been surpassed in mob fighting.

Which given the original concept of dervishes and the high dmg output of scythes, is not a bad thing.

So basically a derv can wade in and pump out more damage to a mob with both VoS and SandShards running, but he's less survivable and needs more monk attention.

Honestly, the only profession update that was overpowered was rits. However they deserved the love since they were left in the dust like their Factions counterpart, but didn't get the nice "god mode" skill update like they did.

When you make PvE too easy, that is what happens ... unique features of each class don't matter any longer, it's only about spammable AoE armour-ignoring damage. Remove/nerf PvE skills and the absurdity of 'infinite' armour/damage spam will be gone. Then, people will start to appreciate 590hp Warrior with a shield & 80AL(+20PD) armour yet again. Actually, it might turn out that Rangers, Paragons and Eles will be in higher demand, for all the great utility & flexibility they bring to the team.

I loled. Not even going to argue this, the dead horse has been revived and beaten again 100s of times these past years after the HM update.

And re: Broadhead Arrow, Concussion shot (daze is the only strong Ranger condition), look at Fevered Dreams. For PVE Poison is boring, bleeding is boring, cripple is generally boring (more so if it's single target). D-shot on the other hand, is still indispensable; Barrage is a great conduit for GDW.

More like 70+15+10 = 95 (Windwalker + 10 Mysticism) vs 100 from hammer warriors with sentinel's...

It's worse when it's a sword warrior. Axe gets by, but sword warriors are completely obsolete, perhaps even for SY! spam.

100B: Vow of Strength with a Scythe
Dragonslash: Only used for SY! spam, but with Scythes + Onslaught/Avatar of Balthazar you get about once every 2-3 seconds if conditions are favorable or once every 6-8 seconds at worst (before FGJ! on D/W). Balthazar's Rage + Pious Fury makes this lean toward the favorable conditions.

For axes/swords you can just spec 12 in that, 8+1+1 Mysticism, 10 in Tactics for +16 shield. You're down +5 armor. Big deal.
Completely off the top of my head, PVE Dervish can get similar results...
D/W: Aura slicer - Gash - Sun and moon/Whirlwind attack -Galrath Slash +32/Silverwing Slash +32/Standing Slash +34/Soldier's Strike +30/Thrill of Victory +33 - [Elite] - Pious Fury- Balthazar's Rage (2*7*2=28 burning damage), SY!.
D/W: Any elite, Dismember, cyclone axe , Executioner's Strike +34/Furious Axe +29 (bit higher + damage than Dervish stuff)/Soldier's Strike +30/Thrill of Victory +33, whirlwind attack, Heart of Fury, Zealous Renewal (22 holy), SY!

To be honest a D/W with Cyclone axe + Triple chop + Soldier's Strike/Furious Axe has better energy than W/ with Warrior's Endurance due to 4 regen + Zealous renewal (2 energy/second). (Triple chop is meh when you get +78 from Heart of Holy Flame on the same recharge.) For any build, Avatar of Grenth's +10 will make the attacks do more than warriors not using conjures.

To use Cyclone axe as adrenaline gain, a warrior must use a zealous weapon, lowering damage by 3 (vamp). Without Zealous or Warrior's Endurance, there is simply no way to afford 5 energy every 4 seconds. Once you put in Soldier's Strike/Furious Axe (5 energy every 4 or 6 seconds) the warrior needs to permanently be on Zealous because it'd be 5 energy every 2 to 2.4.

Also heroes cannot use Flail so all you have is warrior's endurance bars.

These builds are just using minimal Dervish skills (so you can use a shield). If instead of a +30 attack skill (or +20 whirlwind attack) you use a +22 damage AOE flash enchantment.... or even sub in Heart of Holy Flame for 22 + 4 burn = +78 there's very little reason to run energy based attack skills (more so with Avatar of Lyssa).

Also even if you only run 1 enchantment, if you have orders+ anything like SoH you have enough for 3 enchantments.

More like 70+10+10, tbh. There is a certain benefit to having just a single or no enchantments on you permanently, unless the focus is on maintaining many enchantments, which I wouldn't call optimal for most Dervish builds. Don't forget the raw +16 defense from shield against physical attacks and generally superior HP to Dervish, as well as thin reliance on energy in order to be effective. In many ways Dervish is more vulnerable than Warrior, when it comes to shutting him down or limiting his overall effectiveness.

That is why they should bring back the old Disarm: 12s r or even 8 or 10s recharge, add 90% fail with str <3

the warrior is in GW2, the dervish is not. let the dervish have its time in the spotlight.

Go Air Ele, the armor pen+cracked armor lets you keep your damage up.

while other professions just ignore the armor

Invoke + Chain are 3 targets. 36.42DPS x3 targets if you have a 40/40 set and 16 air magic , casting on 60 armor or 80 armor w/ cracked armor. In reality most mobs run 100-120 armor so it drops to 22-28DPS (100 or 120 cracked). I'd rather run Spiteful Spirit or an Illusion Mesmer. Neither are capped at 3 targets and have auxiliary functions, plus you don't need air attunement + Aura of restoration to foot the insane energy cost (1.440e/sec after attunement + AoR).

A SoS Rit will put that damage out on a single target (~120DPS) and have 5 slots and 100 attribute pts to work with (SoS+Bloodsong+Painful Bond=5 slots remain).

Lets compare some warrior and dervish skills:

Onslaught and Primal Rage
Definitly Onslaught. Trading 8% less ATSP for extra adrenaline and half damage

Wounding Strike with Eviscerate/Any Deep wound Skill
AOE Deep Wound any with a quick CD any day. All you need is a spammy enchantment

Reapers Sweep and Earthshaker
This one goes to the warriors. The aoe is better and the kd isnt conditional

Heart of Fury with Any Warrior IAS
Lol this one isnt even a contest. Heart of Fury all the way

Zelous Vow and Warriors Endurance
Endurance Lasts longer and isnt removable, but vow gives alot more energy return and only nets dervishes -1 less energy regeneration

I can't tell if this thread is supposed to be about PvP or PvE.

I'm sorry but I laughed pretty hard at this. I can't take anything else you say seriously after you compare a Mesmer to a Ranger. You do know that Ranger interrupts are a small piece of the Ranger cake and that Rangers can do a hell of a lot more than interrupt?

Not in PvE they cant. Damage wise rangers are pretty useless, and were generally only useful in areas with enemies that needed to be shut down, which a mesmer now does 10 times better. The only viable build i can see now is like maybe a barrage sy spammer with a rit hero spamming splinter or something like that, but even then, the rit is doing most the damage, especially in hard mode. it would be better to just use the splinter on a dervish and get the same sy spam with alot more damage.

Rangers weren't really wanted for shut down long before the mesmer update. Generally speaking rangers carry an interrupt or two on a bar that isn't anything shut down based.

I occasionally see a BHA ranger with some "old school" build, but then I also see people with Ursan.

I disagree. Post-Nightfall, Pre-EotN, rangers with BHA were highly sought after in PUGs.

The Domain of Whatever-It-Is with the elementalist boss dryders who Lightning Bolt everyone to death in one shot comes to mind. BHA was priceless for shutdown back in the day. Your BHA hero wasn't too shabby either, for those times when you couldn't find a human to tag along.

except for a hero Rit,Necro,Mes, or Monk. Or any melee with splinter and maybe Mop.

But this i agree 100% with. Dervs were fine before the update. They were never disadvantaged the way people whined about them. And i hardly see whats so great about new update. Now that vanq that took 55min on my old derv now takes 50min on my new derv. Yipee.

Id take +endgame content update or complete SF/obby/bonder rape over a profession update any day

My ele uses a spear and procs splinter weapon when I miss AP on sin spam. That's the state of ele damage in HM.

Yes I remember there being times and with missions like Boreas Seabed, but they fell out of being amazing long before the mesmer update.

whats hard mode?

OP is wrong.

Dervs seem to be where they should have been the entire time. They are pretty reasonable in terms of their capability.

What's dumb is the overcentralization of armor ignoring spells and damage sources from Mesmers, Rits, and Necros overshadowing Eles because they are limited to elemental damage against HM foes with stupidly high armor.

HM monsters should have roughly triple the health of a NM monster counterpart and the same amount of armor as the NM monster does. It deemphasizes armor ignoring damage and buffs physicals and elemental damage.

With quotes like:

I am not surprised people are confused about the thread's scope. (I think it is PvE btw)

Oh and since everyone is doing it.


Yup.

Yup.

Yup. Also you have two 2).

I think its a combination of things that led to Rits being amazing at spirit wrangling. Both SoS and Summon Spirits were part of the combo.

If Rangers are amazing, Dervishes, Warriors, Assassins, Monks, Mesmers, Ritualists, Necromancers and even Paragons are AMAZING +100......


.....and Eles are most definitely AMAZING -2.

This is true, even with the imbalances and the nerfs and buffs and the percieved inferiority, its all still viable in PvE.

There are a lot of posts in this thread that sport a lot of inaccurate information, but the worst offender in my humble opinion was:

Simply because A=!=B, in other words stop comparing Apples to Oranges, especially in PvE where it doesn't really matter because they are both circular fruit in the end.

PvP on the other hand...

They should had consider this long time ago. Probably now it's to late.

If you ask me:
- paragons needs a change (a major one if you ask me for both pve and pvp)
- ele need a minor change something to actually improve their damage in hm, i have in my head several ideas: the easiest one to implement is to change one of their skill to make 0..3 spells do armour ignoring damage only when you use ele skills and this skills chosed from/moved to skills in energy storage line, as a drawback this skills ends if you use non ele skills , goep is a good candidate for split and i bet no ele will be upset if this skill is moved to energy storage and changed like this for pve " Your next 0..2..3 spells do armour ignoring damage. No effect if you use non elementalist skills. Ends if you use non elementalist skills." and for pvp "For 25 seconds, your elemental attributes are boosted by 0..2 for your next 10 spells.", the hardest idea to implement is to make most of the mobs in an particular hm area (when i refer to area this means an vanq zone or a mission) to one of the 4 elemental damage types (when i say vulnerable i'm thinking that ~80% of the monsters in that area have 60 al vs one single elemental damage and all of those ~80% have 60 al against that elemental damage)(hopefully this last one will make ele play water in pve...).
Also reduce activation time to attunements to 1s in pve. The is absolutly no reason to keep them this at 2, if a mob what to rupt it, it will rupt it even if the 40% hct took place.
- rebalance the melee classes (pve and pvp) (a change to shadow form pve version so only the sin is able to maintain it is one of the things i'm thing ( this was wrong from the start if you ask me; shadow form compare to obsy or vow of silence is the only skill that can be maintaned by any class without using cons, not to mention the drawback and activation times compare with obsi or the fact that you can be healed and that you can cast spells compared to vow of silence were shadow form is clearly the best option...), but the list is kinda long)

It'll still suck compared to physical and spirits.

Do people use water eles vs Destroyers w/119 armor to cold and 139-159 to other stuff (83 for casters to water, 103 to nonfire, 123 to fire)? No. They just use necros or mesmers and say "forget it" to all the calculations involved for figuring out elemental damage (cracked armor, armor penetration, mob level, armor buff skills like armor of earth or Stand your ground, armor level, etc). Even if Searing Flames did armor ignoring damage it still wouldn't match Keystone signet (57*6 every 10 seconds + 57x2 from sig of clumsiness + 47*2 from unnatural sig) or Ineptitude mesmers. Savannah's heat 300 [email protected] (+75 from ebon standard) causes scatter (with 25 cooldown) or Firestorm's [email protected] over 10s are much harder to pulloff. Elemental damage is relegated to AP bars with Eruption/Churning Earth + optional EBSOH (if you drop YMLAD/sin/FH) unless you want to spam stone daggers/magnetic surge/ebon hawk/stoning for 20-30 seconds like Herta & Kai Ying. You could get away with Glyph of Renewal but there's a 20 downtime on arcane echo. There's no other options for AOE, seeing how water does about 80 (Ice spikes, Rust , Maelstrom, and Deep Freeze are the only AOEs) and air is 3 targets.

What's troublesome is Snow storm does as much elemental damage (200) as 15 spec Eruption/Churning Earth/Searing Heat/Teinai's Heat/Breath of Fire and is on 10 cooldown and 1 cast yet nobody uses it because it's a PVE skill. Optimally you'd have 2 copies, with EBSOH = 275*2=550.

If Eles were melee range...
If you go the PBAOE route and run Armor of Earth + Shockwave + Aftershock + teinai's Crystals/Crystal Wave it's still sad since you're pumping out 100 or so armor ignoring at the cost of removing all conditions, and have 20 cooldown on each armor ignoring damage and Shockwave which while on paper does 180, does more like 90 (Aftershock will do ~50). That's why people farm with Wastrel spam E/Me.

If somehow you go nuts and decide to run earth + fire PBAOE, Bed of coals puts out 290 over 10seconds (more like 145 in practice). You'd probably end up spamming lava font (50 per second *5=250 every 4s) and Flame burst (120 every 5s) and Phoenix ~200 every 10s /inferno 135 every 10s (or Flame djinn's 120 every 10). Star Burst is atrocious, doing ~112 every 10s or so at the cost of an elite. The recharges on Liquid Flame/Double Dragon leave a lot to be desired (15s) and those put out 112 or so listed akin to Fireball.

The reason why Eles are superb farmers of low level mobs like in Ascalon or Kryta is because with mob levels <20 you get a free damage multiplier on all of your damage, whereas other classes get none (mesmers, necros) or very low amounts (assassins). It won't matter that your sustained damage is terrible if you can wipe a mob of 15+ with one or two spells chained in succession. In fact, that's probably the only time you'll ever see Lava Font being used. Paragons don't have AoE, Dervishes are limited to ~30-40 ele damage from their skills more or less except for Mystic Twister and Mystic Sandstorm along with a 3 target cap on autoattacks, and Rangers have Barrage which is capped in targets unless you run traps or whirling defense. That's why back before hard mode someone made a fan movie (The Kryta Bomber of http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fozzy_Yeoryios fame) with an ele. Now even that's pointless: see Raptor farms with MoP + 100B, although it's on 20 cooldown.

I wouldn't say rangers are amazing, but definitely good with the right build. Most people just think that they have to either be interrupt, barrage, or BA but that's not the case. I like my Ranger's Expert's Dexterity build and I have a similar Glass Arrows build. Both of those skills are overlooked in PvE, Glass Arrows really only sees action in PvP (although not as much as it used to due to nerf) and Expert's Dexterity most people just look over. Prepared Shot is pretty good also. Admittedly, pets aren't too useful and Wilderness Survival elites could use some work. With the right build, Rangers are NOT as bad as people think. And you don't need to run a scythe build to be a good ranger either.

Same applies for ele. With the right build they are great. However, they do have a lot of useless skills. Water and Earth magic aren't very useful in PvE. Water sees hardly any action unless you're doing an SC somewhere and trying to ball and nuke a mob. Earth doesn't see any use other than tanking in farming and SCs. In general PvE, neither one of these attributes are that good. Air is a little better, it's more useful. Fire is of course where the big damage is as always. It's all about the build, the problem is that the most effective builds for ele in general pve don't even rely on ele skills. AP+YMLaD+PI+EVAS anyone? That build rocks, but those are the 4 main skills of that bar and none of them are ele skills, the other 4 slots are completely optional. There are a few nuking builds that are good though, people just have to think outside the meta. All that eles need are more useful skills as many of them are just bad *coughSecondWindcough* *coughSwirlingAuracough.*

Basically Rangers can be good and Eles need a buff because their own skills are rather useless in HM as far as damage goes.