Zenith.7301

Easiest way to balance in PvE is to just tune the stack to do the same DPS as a bleed and the extra proc is just that, free conditional damage. It will be good on active bosses, but balanced for most. It's really dumb they keep nerfing confusion when the top condition specs all use burning or torment instead.

I'll probably try cele once I finish my plate legendary, but for now I don't want to be bothered with crafting a cele set just for OW PVE when I mostly do strikes/raids/fractals and the OW is for collections/unlocks. Already got my cloth legendary and plate is 2/3 of the way done.

Thanks!

Went ona break and came back after they retouched Ventari. I'm not understanding the GW2wiki stub about it. Exactly how do you get the empowered effects on Ventari spells? Is it just worse now to camp it for sustain/healing and it just encourages you to legend swap for self sustain? Wanting to swap out of Shiro on my Vindicator for open world since Shiro is lacking on self sustain, especially condi cleanse and projectile deflect, and I was finding myself between Jalis and Ventari as my second Vindicator legend for open world.

All they need to make the portal skill good is make it teleport downed people to you and partial revive.

They don't provide high protection uptime, no resolution, no aegis, no reliable stability, and burst healing is virtually nonexistant; barriers are preventive, but they don't immediately recover your party when they facetank stupid. Scourge is generally always brought as a second support, not the main healer for a squad. The whole point is to give them a primary healer role with staff and a changed mh dagger+warhorn while transitioning reaper and harbinger into the respective dps elite specs, ideally power for reaper and condi for harbinger while scourge functions as an effective support spec (and yes, harbinger can flex to quickness support dps). Mainhand dagger is interchangeable with staff in power reaper specs, and for any fight with downtime or ranged requirements like the EoD CM's you're better off swapping out dagger for staff. Under my suggestion, mainhand dagger would be solidified in a support niche alongside staff, and open up the bad mainhand swords and mainhand axe to be shifted toward the power DPS spec, giving a choice of mobility and single target for swords vs. the greatsword's cleave and superior CC/defense while hopefully they fix mainhand axe to not be a steaming pile of garbage just because it has a tracking attack that they worry about in PvP balance when it has no relevance in PvE. This is about eliminating redundancies so no spec or weapon feels eclipsed and useless by the alternatives, each will have its place to shine and function in. The only weapons that face difficulty here are offhand focus and offhand dagger, but if mainhand axe is made good, offhand focus can be improved while offhand torch can be shifted to condi dps (it is currently used even for power spec) and offhand dagger can serve as a condi dps side weapon where you choose between it and torch or combine pistol/torch with scepter/dagger for utility preferences.

While you work on making necromancer swords not hot trash, consider making mainhand dagger+warhorn for necro their secondary support boon healer weaponset alongside changes to staff and Scourge traits to be able to build a boon healer. Necromancer already has a saturation of melee power weapons with greatsword and swords anyways, so transition the dagger to a support weapon to round out support necromancer's kit. Giving necro staff a support slant also allows the mainhand axe to shift into the dedicated ranged power DPS weapon once you decide to allow it to be a good weapon instead of garbage just because it has a tracking attack (which split pve/pvp balancing would fix).

They just need to make staff have actual support and give Scourge real supportive traits alongside changing punishment skills to provide boons, cleanse, and healing. The staff auto should heal targets it passes through and provide might. The marks could further provide might, fury, protection, and resolution. The scourge shroud can then provide the missing boons alongside the punishment skills. The marks are already begging to have healing and support built into them, and they can make a Scourge trait where barrier consumed turns into healing on the target. More importantly, a source of aegis and stability. For a second supportive set to staff they can change mainhand dagger to a melee support weapon, with the lifedrain from dagger 2 healing your allies, and making necro warhorn a condition cleanse+stability weapon. Dagger 3 can serve as a boon corrupt plus ally boons/healing. Nobody uses mainhand dagger as a power weapon, it's already crowded out by greatsword and mainhand swords anyways. They should also buff vampiric aura so the blood and death traitlines can serve as supportive traitlines.

That crap is gonna flop. The western market is mroe or less done with crappy Korean grindfests who are all flash and no substance.

Regardless of class uniqueness, creating this weapon creep without trying them to elite specs is just making a bunch of weapons obsolete. Everyone knew mainhand sword for mesmer was going to be a dead weapon in PvE the moment they opened up virtuoso dagger for power builds. Not only does dagger have massively more clone generation, but it has range and does more damage anyways on top of reliable cleave. Same applies to necro greatsword and revenant greatsword for power builds. The other weapons like necro dagger and axe, which were already deficient, now don't stand a prayer at being relevant power weapons for any other spec permutation after they opened the weapons up. Choosing to skip on elite specs because they're clearly shortstaffed, as seen by the sheer amount of recycled animations or lack of any besides a reused color blob from another skill for the recent batch of weapons and some EOD elite specs like Vindicator will have consequences. We need this game back to HoT shape.

The autoattacks are so slow for how little they hit...

If you want to see sub par clone generation, just go with mainhand sword. There's a reason it was deleted off the face of the earth the moment they allowed mesmers of any spec to use virtuoso dagger.

I want a power DPS hammer elite spec for mesmer.

The rule of thumb is that if guardians are being given a bad time by a mesmer or necro, they will hammer said classes over and over. Like somebody else said, don't be surprised when boonstrip becomes necessary in wvw again, that they'll give willbender or firebrand or some whiny warrior or ele a boonstrip instead. God forbid they give necro or mesmer something unique that isn't a useless hindrance or gimmick. Their whole point in GW1 was denial and CC with hexes, and in GW2 there are so many more classes with better CC and denial than both. All they had in GW2 was boon corrupt and before that group barriers and alacrity/quickness, and they nuked those and gave better versions to other class elite specs eventually.

I never complained about Chrono having both quickness and alacrity, don't project crap onto me. I'm actually bitter they made chrono shield totally irrelevant and now all PvE chrono meta builds don't even run shield unless you are tanking a few raid bosses. Chrono was a high skill floor and high skill ceiling support, and then they went and broke its ankles and introduced braindead, more effective alternatives in firebrand and renegade, and then even more.