Guild Wars 2

NOTE: This thread isn’t for arguing the efficacy of the “God Tier” dungeon groups, aka Guardian/Warrior/Mesmer. That debate has already been settled.

So some leaked, possibly legitimate patch notes are floating around, not sure if we could be infracted for posting them here so I’ll refrain. Mesmer and Guardian are seeming to make it out unscathed, but Heightened Focus and Berserker’s Power are both being made into Grandmaster traits. So our ever popular 20/25 and 30/25 builds will need some retooling. It will depend on which traits replace those in the Adept tier I suppose, but I think the 25 in Arms is too nice to give up.

Thoughts? If you’ve seen all the changes, any plans on trying to roll other classes into your power dungeon groups?

Temporal curtain is being changed. 1 second recharge before you can cast into the void. Will make positioning groups slightly slower. This will effect the first mobs on cof p1, potentially slowing the start of the path down by a tad.

I expect the warrior build will shift to 30/25/0/0/15 but we shall see. Im also going to looking at some new build options for necro in high level fractals.

o.O What are they adding to the adept tier to make it not completely empty if they’re taking those 2 out…

@ Nika, You don’t understand what makes the gs to axe rotation as good as it is. It’s not about pure dps per attack, it’s about the might stacks. You could camp axe/mace but then you’re losing out on around 12 free stacks of might from gs crits.

To people who didn’t notice, the new axe chain actually does higher dps now than before but it’s all dependent on the last chop (it’s now basically a constant 100 blades but no forceful gs trait). Chop and double chop lost 20% damage but both of those had lower numbers than triple chop newais. The full combo probably does 15% more damage now, esp if the last strike crits. Nothing has changed to change the meta.

randomfightfan.4091:

@ Nika, You don’t understand what makes the gs to axe rotation as good as it is. It’s not about pure dps per attack, it’s about the might stacks. You could camp axe/mace but then you’re losing out on around 12 free stacks of might from gs crits.

To people who didn’t notice, the new axe chain actually does higher dps now than before but it’s all dependent on the last chop (it’s now basically a constant 100 blades but no forceful gs trait). Chop and double chop lost 20% damage but both of those had lower numbers than triple chop newais. The full combo probably does 15% more damage now, esp if the last strike crits. Nothing has changed to change the meta.

When i run the pure axe build in dungeons with a 2 war 1 guard 1 mes 1 ele group, i never go bellow 20 might and am often at 25, i dont need to gs to hit the high might numbers. The guardian is highly important for this to work and needs to run a specifc build though, and it doesnt impact the dps of the guard that much and boosts the warrior/ele dps by quite alot.

Weakness duration has been universally nerfed across all professions. Now stacks intensity instead of duration. I’d imagine that this condi will find a new home with confusion/retaliation.

I can’t even keep a straight face; weakness was already useless in pve.

As long as a guardian is in the grp 10 Tactics will always be worth keeping for a warrior build.

Nobody could really say for sure.
But, I think anytime you see solid changes to all classes you should expect a period of evaluation in this sort of a Meta.

It’s competitive, so classes not only have to re-evaluate themselves, but they have to re-evaluate their standing in comparison to other classes that are currently re-evaluating themselves. It’s also a Racing Meta that often measures performance in terms of seconds, if it has any seeming stability it has more to do with the game’s balance direction being cautious to a fault than any actual security. Any Meta that measures resounding success or everlasting failure equal to the space of time roughly similar to a bio break is a delicate delicate thing.

Siv.4351:

I can’t even keep a straight face; weakness was already useless in pve.

Weakness is good in the Dredge fractal because you can’t blind them!

Nikaido.3457:

Puandro.3245:

As long as a guardian is in the grp 10 Tactics will always be worth keeping for a warrior build.

We tested it by spamming ALL the guardian boons (which is an unrealistic situation) and it only managed to be as good as 30/25/0/0/15, not better. In the real world without as many boons it’s worse.

This build makes even less sense for the people who do things like CoF runs.

Let me guess, your tests where based on hitting mobs instead of actually doing the math on how hard abilities themselves will hit for when all the math to do that is available to do so. 10 Tactics > 0 Tactics a long as you have a guard in the group.

We tested it by looking at which can kill faster, with a guard in the group. There was little to no difference. And that was by spamming all boons. Points of tactics are much worse with a lesser amount of boons. And there is no decent guard in the world that would spam every single boon in one go in a real world run. You keep stuff for when you need it, you don’t spam it for mr empowered.

Spent hours on this measuring timed differences to avoid having a too small sample influenced by RNG crits.

Now if you believe your “maths” can kill mob faster than, actually killing them, go ahead.

Puandro.3245:

Nikaido.3457:

Puandro.3245:

As long as a guardian is in the grp 10 Tactics will always be worth keeping for a warrior build.

We tested it by spamming ALL the guardian boons (which is an unrealistic situation) and it only managed to be as good as 30/25/0/0/15, not better. In the real world without as many boons it’s worse.

This build makes even less sense for the people who do things like CoF runs.

Let me guess, your tests where based on hitting mobs instead of actually doing the math on how hard abilities themselves will hit for when all the math to do that is available to do so. 10 Tactics > 0 Tactics a long as you have a guard in the group.

Even if 10 in tactics would be good what are you willing to drop to get it?

You will want 30 strength for berserker’s power, 25 arms for attack of opportunity and 15 discipline for fast hands. Fast hands would be my guess but that would require you to stop using any weapon swap rotations.

You know you can remove RNG crits by just stacking 100% crit chance

-zerker gear
-green banner
-fury
-9% on adrenaline
-consumables
-250 prec from traits
-armor upgrade slots (also infusions w/stat bonuses)

Maths:
100%-29%(fury+adrenaline) = 71% = 2313 precision – 250 on traits = 2063 Precision

Base = 916
Zerker gear = 728
Foods = 100 + 0.06*916 + 0.04*916 = 191
=2005 without runes/orbs or stat infusions
Only leaves 58 precision, 84 from orbs is 26 precision over 100%.
With that margin you can swap some of your consumables ie. you can use a +80 precision food instead of 100 or quality oil for 73 precision instead of 91. 66% life steal/70precision food also gets close, 4 precision short.

Obviously other combinations exist especially with the use of stat infusions. Future stat increases on ascended armor/weapons will probably let you use purely power/critdmg consumables and still achieve the same crit chance.

You can also swap any other minor stat precision gear for berserker ie. knight’s or rabid.

Nikaido.3457:

We tested it by looking at which can kill faster, with a guard in the group. There was little to no difference. And that was by spamming all boons. Points of tactics are much worse with a lesser amount of boons. And there is no decent guard in the world that would spam every single boon in one go in a real world run. You keep stuff for when you need it, you don’t spam it for mr empowered.

Spent hours on this measuring timed differences to avoid having a too small sample influenced by RNG crits.

Now if you believe your “maths” can kill mob faster than, actually killing them, go ahead.

Yah eyeballing stuff is no way to test things, GJ at failing at that. Also Guards don’t need to spam boons, 4 boons is enough to beat 30s build so thats 1 boon a guard has to put up.

Konu.1826:

Puandro.3245:

Nikaido.3457:

Puandro.3245:

As long as a guardian is in the grp 10 Tactics will always be worth keeping for a warrior build.

We tested it by spamming ALL the guardian boons (which is an unrealistic situation) and it only managed to be as good as 30/25/0/0/15, not better. In the real world without as many boons it’s worse.

This build makes even less sense for the people who do things like CoF runs.

Let me guess, your tests where based on hitting mobs instead of actually doing the math on how hard abilities themselves will hit for when all the math to do that is available to do so. 10 Tactics > 0 Tactics a long as you have a guard in the group.

Even if 10 in tactics would be good what are you willing to drop to get it?

You will want 30 strength for berserker’s power, 25 arms for attack of opportunity and 15 discipline for fast hands. Fast hands would be my guess but that would require you to stop using any weapon swap rotations.

I will wait until the patch hits before i look into it TBH. 25 Arms and 15 Disc is pretty much a must though ATM due to Axe/GS Combo but i will see.

Puandro.3245:

Yah eyeballing stuff is no way to test things, GJ at failing at that. Also Guards don’t need to spam boons, 4 boons is enough to beat 30s build so thats 1 boon a guard has to put up.

We didn’t eyeball stuff we timed it.

Well anyway people who can’t think for themselves and actually try stuff are not worth arguing with.

The fact that it didn’t beat 30/25 despite having all boons is enough for me. If just one extra boon should’ve made that build better, having ALL boons should have done overkill, but overkill it did NOT.

Full Zerk Gear, Power Potion, Butternut Crit Damage Food, Disc/Str Banners. Force/Bloodlust Sigil.
30/25/0/0/15 http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;9;9;9;0TO;0E48949;54M
3787 Power, 96% Crit Chance, 117 Crit Damage for GS, 127 for Axe/Mace, 65% Bonus Damage for GS and 55% for Axe/Mace.

HB will crit for 36,974 Damage, Average Damage will be 36,148.

Axe #1 Chain will crit for 29,191 Damage, Average Damage will be 28,525

Full Zerk Gear, Power Potion, Butternut Crit Damage Food, Disc/Str Banners. Force/Bloodlust Sigil.
20/25/0/10/15 http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-s;9;9;9;0JO-9E48-49;25;04m
3,691 Power, 96% Crit Chance, 117 Crit Damage, 68% Bonus Damage w/ 3 Buffs to GS, 58% to Axe/Mace.

HB 36,692 Crit, 35,872 Average.
Axe #1 27,955 Crit, 27,331 Average.

w/ 4 Buffs

HB 37,129 Crit, 36,300 Average.
Axe #1 28,309 Crit, 27,677 Average.

At 4 buffs Basically you break even due to GS doing slightly more and Axe doing slightly less, 5+ Buffs it takes over.

I calculated the whole rotation obviously but its too much to type.

Damage formula is pretty simple too.

Power*Weapon Damage*Skill Modifier*Bonus Damage/Armor= Damage
This is basically what shows up on your tooltip, it uses 2,600 armor btw.

Then you can add the crit damage you have to your Damage to see how hard it would crit, or use your crit chance and Crit damage to see your average damage.

Nikaido.3457:

Puandro.3245:

Yah eyeballing stuff is no way to test things, GJ at failing at that. Also Guards don’t need to spam boons, 4 boons is enough to beat 30s build so thats 1 boon a guard has to put up.

We didn’t eyeball stuff we timed it.

Well anyway people who can’t think for themselves and actually try stuff are not worth arguing with.

The fact that it didn’t beat 30/25 despite having all boons is enough for me. If just one extra boon should’ve made that build better, having ALL boons should have done overkill, but overkill it did NOT.

9 Boons will give you 5% more Overall damage to your GS/Axe rotation, which isn’t a whole lot but its still there. You can stick to your 30s build and ill stick with my 20s build since i always run with a guardian.

Kinda sucks that they are supposedly moving Heightened Focus to Grandmaster… I wanted to mess around with a 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/Mace + Axe/sword Eviscerate spam build and see if it pumped some decent damage, but if I can’t take both Heightened focus and Burst Mastery, I don’t think the build would be that viable…

Not that it will matter much, I’ll be leaving until August 2 days after the patch comes out, so it’s gonna be up to Nikaido and the rest of the guild to see whatever else we can come up with.

Personally I think this upcoming change is being over-hyped, it’s pretty rare for a ‘promising’ update to ever meet expectations, this one probably won’t be much different.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Personally I think this upcoming change is being over-hyped, it’s pretty rare for a ‘promising’ update to ever meet expectations, this one probably won’t be much different.

Remember the Mesmer update back in GW1? That one overdid a lot of the expectations.

Anet has been known to either be super underwhelming or over-the-top “let’s break the META”. Honestly, I’ve rarely seen balance updates that were pretty decent over the board.

Either they completely destroyed (be it by nerfs or buffs to other things) the current META and forced a lot of people back to the drawing boards, or they caused little tweaks like some more attribute spreads or swapping some minor skills.

Siv.4351:

Weakness duration has been universally nerfed across all professions. Now stacks intensity instead of duration. I’d imagine that this condi will find a new home with confusion/retaliation.

I can’t even keep a straight face; weakness was already useless in pve.

technically; weakness is now a 12.5% damage reduction by inlficted mob
… that seems like it could now be useful in pve… though only in certain areas (most of the time its about not getting hit)…

… im curious as to how it stacks intensity though… does 4 stacks mean 100% chance at glancing blow (50% damage)?

It’s gonna be 30/25/0/0/15 now.

Dub.1273:

It’s gonna be 30/25/0/0/15 now.

Thanks for the build diversity Anet. You made us swap 5 traitpoints! It feels like a totally different build now!

I’m still gonna try my 30/10/0/0/30 build though…

Pinch.4273:

Weakness is good in the Dredge fractal because you can’t blind them!

Hardly. They do insane damage either way.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Pinch.4273:

Weakness is good in the Dredge fractal because you can’t blind them!

Hardly. They do insane damage either way.

but they never seem to crit so it’s basically a flat -50% damage.

Bright.9160:

Kinda sucks that they are supposedly moving Heightened Focus to Grandmaster… I wanted to mess around with a 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/Mace + Axe/sword Eviscerate spam build and see if it pumped some decent damage, but if I can’t take both Heightened focus and Burst Mastery, I don’t think the build would be that viable…

Not that it will matter much, I’ll be leaving until August 2 days after the patch comes out, so it’s gonna be up to Nikaido and the rest of the guild to see whatever else we can come up with.

If this patch note is stating the truth, and nothing changes from it, the builds we already made before learning about this patch will not need a single change. Sad thing about the loss of heightened focus, but whatever. There is no way to get it back without losing a ton of deeps.

Nikaido.3457:

Bright.9160:

Kinda sucks that they are supposedly moving Heightened Focus to Grandmaster… I wanted to mess around with a 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/Mace + Axe/sword Eviscerate spam build and see if it pumped some decent damage, but if I can’t take both Heightened focus and Burst Mastery, I don’t think the build would be that viable…

Not that it will matter much, I’ll be leaving until August 2 days after the patch comes out, so it’s gonna be up to Nikaido and the rest of the guild to see whatever else we can come up with.

If this patch note is stating the truth, and nothing changes from it, the builds we already made before learning about this patch will not need a single change.

Yours won’t, mine will… Not that I’m saying mine will most definitely do more damage, I just wanted to test it out, it’s always worth the shot. And seeing how we usually stick to killing bosses anyway, the single target DPS the offhand sword brings combined with Eviscerate spam might actually be pretty viable, while you still have Axe/Mace for trash mobs.

Yeah we have been discussing it and 30/25 seems like it will be the best. However, it is entirely possible that axe/mace+axe/axe will be better than GS on swap depending on how awkward the new axe chain is if you’re swapping to and from GS.

Oddly enough, Mesmer and Guardian will change a lot. Mesmers who already brought 25 in inspiration will just go to 30 for Shatter removes party condition. This frees up the Guardian to drop Pure of Voice and trait into more DPS.

Lightning Ele caught a nerf to their % damage for each boon trait so it remains to be seen how competitive they are with nerfed warriors.

Thief is clearly the best single target damage now, so not having a Thief in CoF or CoE seems suboptimal.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Lightning Ele caught a nerf to their % damage for each boon trait so it remains to be seen how competitive they are with nerfed warriors.

Except that if we all go by that patch note the ele will give out group fury like there’s no tomorrow in addition of the might stacking just from hammer chain. The ele looks like an actual warrior replacement in that manner.

Thief is probably going to be attractive for CoF (it already is with a good thief right now) but I don’t think I’d want a group that has more than one thief for CoE considering the first trash fight, and the mass of golem fights. Sword dps is really bad.

And I don’t think it’s even possible for a thief to do what the Fiery Greatsword does against anything that’s pushed against a wall. Thief best single target dps ? That’s true of something you can’t push against a wall.

Do you guys see more space for condi thieves with Bloodseeker ulti Torment?

randomfightfan.4091:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Pinch.4273:

Weakness is good in the Dredge fractal because you can’t blind them!

Hardly. They do insane damage either way.

but they never seem to crit so it’s basically a flat -50% damage.

technically; it wouldve been -25% damage… because 50% of the hits theyd be doing (if they never crit) would be doing 50% damage

Nikaido.3457:

Except that if we all go by that patch note the ele will give out group fury like there’s no tomorrow in addition of the might stacking just from hammer chain.

its written ambiguously…
but i read the patch notes as; blast finishers in fire fields grant fury
… though even that would leave doubt as to whether it applid to:
- your blast finishers in your fire fields
- your blast finishers in other players fire fields
- other players blast finishers in your fire fields

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Nikaido.3457:

Except that if we all go by that patch note the ele will give out group fury like there’s no tomorrow in addition of the might stacking just from hammer chain.

its written ambiguously…
but i read the patch notes as; blast finishers in fire fields grant fury
… though even that would leave doubt as to whether it applid to:
- your blast finishers in your fire fields
- your blast finishers in other players fire fields
- other players blast finishers in your fire fields

Up until now whoever was the origin of said field never mattered in this game so unless they dramatically changed field mechanics the only reasonable way to interpret this is that it would grant fury on any fire field blasted by the elementalist himself.

For the record, when a water field is cast, it’s the healing power stats of whoever blasts said water field that will determine the amount of healing, for example. Or the boon duration of whoever blasts a fire field as to how long the might stack will last. Etc.

What actually happens when you blast a field depends solely on WHO blasted it, not who cast the field.

The more I think about it warrior GS is dead. Pure axe will be the optimal plan by far. Also, if Fire fields grant fury that would be very strong, but I imagine it would be at most 3 seconds of fury (or less) and probably remove the Might component. I don’t know if it would replace 2 warriors, but a LH ele would definitely replace one.

Having condition removal moved to the mesmer allows the Guardian to dedicate utility to fire fields, which will help this synergy quite a bit.

The biggest drawback of condition removal on mesmer is that you will have to bring a mesmer with you on high level fractals which is not very appealing for the most part.

Why would warrior GS die? 100b will still offer better dps than axe autoattacks, WA is still a great evade + damage increase and it doesn’t loose its great might stacking ability to keep you on 25 Stacks of Might without relying too much on your party. Basically the only thing that changed is loosing heightened focus which isn’t as dramatic as you might think.

Dub.1273:

Why would warrior GS die? 100b will still offer better dps than axe autoattacks.

This is only true if you never interrupt it. Otherwise it’s actually worse dps. And god knows how many times warrior do interrupt their 100b for a much needed evade.

and it doesn’t loose its great might stacking ability to keep you on 25 Stacks of Might without relying too much on your party.

Which isn’t really a bonus in a group that already has permanent 25 stacks of might which is what we’ve been working on with ele + guardian. And we do get faster kills in CoE so far.

Having condition removal moved to the mesmer allows the Guardian to dedicate utility to fire fields, which will help this synergy quite a bit.

I already dropped pure of voice and soldier runes from my guard. Instead using 25 in virtue with virtue of resolve cleaning cond + purging flame slotted in my utility bar.
Haven’t had any trouble with cond so far, ran fotm, CoE, TA, AC with that build.

When I think about it, Pure of voice and soldier runes were a guardian build trap. In one of the areas of the game where condition gets constantly reapplied, the crusher in arah path 3, the shout build was virtually useless because guardians used wall and shield to protect against the hunter immobilize instead. My build can do that and remove more conditions than the shout build did during fights like these since all the shout guard had was a single poor shout removing one measly cond. With purging flames then null field then virtue of resolve being used you breath a bit more than with the supposedly cond-removal friendly shout build.

Dub.1273:

Basically the only thing that changed is loosing heightened focus which isn’t as dramatic as you might think.

And Empowered.

Nikaido.3457:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Nikaido.3457:

Except that if we all go by that patch note the ele will give out group fury like there’s no tomorrow in addition of the might stacking just from hammer chain.

its written ambiguously…
but i read the patch notes as; blast finishers in fire fields grant fury
… though even that would leave doubt as to whether it applid to:
- your blast finishers in your fire fields
- your blast finishers in other players fire fields
- other players blast finishers in your fire fields

Up until now whoever was the origin of said field never mattered in this game so unless they dramatically changed field mechanics the only reasonable way to interpret this is that it would grant fury on any fire field blasted by the elementalist himself.

For the record, when a water field is cast, it’s the healing power stats of whoever blasts said water field that will determine the amount of healing, for example. Or the boon duration of whoever blasts a fire field as to how long the might stack will last. Etc.

What actually happens when you blast a field depends solely on WHO blasted it, not who cast the field.

blast finisher owner is what i assumed too; as (afaik) its what happens with ice+blast and aurafury

For the warriors thinking that Pure axe will be the way to go, keep in mind that if you interrupt the chain and don’t land the last hit of Triple Chop at the end of the chain you will be doing less damage then GS #1, actually you will be doing like 5% more damage then Mace #1, it will destroy your DPS harder then canceling HB.

In theory you will never interrupt the axe chain in a pure axe build since even if you weapon swap your chain will remain interrupted. If you have to dodge your chain isnt interrupted. The only time it would be is if you one of the other attack skills, which in theory you would only use if the utility you gained (like the Tremor kd) was worth more than some DPS.

That said, it’s entirely possible that pure GS or GS/Axe is better. We probably won’t settle that until the patch goes live. I’ve heard compelling arguments for pure GS, so I dont think anything is settled at all.

HELLruler.4820:

Do you guys see more space for condi thieves with Bloodseeker ulti Torment?

Torment is only 50% effective on stationary enemies, pve mobs are typically stacked and kept perfectly still…

I still noticed a lot of complaining in the Warr forum anyway. They had a good point too… No DPS changes at all to Guardians? Guardians got some more DPS in certain trait changes?

What??

So why all the nerfing to our Ranger pets then if Guardian… the most BUNKERY of bunkerers was untouched?? (and yes my main IS guardian so this this isn’t guardian hate)

What noone ever seems to think about is WA. GS will still be the better alternative as second set than another axe. Especially when it comes to solo’ing. Though, i tried out 30/25/0/0/15 now and have to say i’m like not impressed at all. 20/30/0/0/20 wins by far.

Edit: When solo’ing high-health encounters.

Siv.4351:

Weakness duration has been universally nerfed across all professions. Now stacks intensity instead of duration. I’d imagine that this condi will find a new home with confusion/retaliation.

I can’t even keep a straight face; weakness was already useless in pve.

Where are you getting the idea that it stacks intensity? If we are reading the same leaked notes it just means there is a cap on the weakness duration. Intensity stacking doesn’t make any sense for weakness. 5 stacks would be … 125% chance to fumble? 250% less damage? Do you start healing enemies with every hit?

Khisanth.2948:

Where are you getting the idea that it stacks intensity? If we are reading the same leaked notes it just means there is a cap on the weakness duration.

Possibility is high I read it wrong/read different notes. The thread I was following that was discussing them has since expired. Either outcome, the change is still a sPvP focused one, like most everything else. I’d be very surprised if any dungeon groups that for some reason still play will bother to incorporate weakness into their meta. I mean, I can think of dozens of places where it might be useful, but I doubt it would be effective.

shimmerless.4560:

Eles have always been able to give out consistent group Fury.

but (if they arent fake) this would give the player an option to go 30 into fire to give out fury; as opposed to 10 in air and 30 in water

It won’t change the meta because what imbalances the warriors against everybody else’s damage is the base numbers — the traits are just gravy.

You can play a warrior and any other class, at any level from 20-80 and notice a vast difference in damage output straight away, with only thief being remotely close.

It’s the numbers and modifiers on the skills themselves — no change to traits will change that. If you want to see a change to the meta, base warrior damage numbers will have to go down. Guardian utility like spirit shield and wall and boon sharing will need to take a hit.

But that won’t happen, because a )warriors are not good in spvp— the OP damage is all they bring, and b) Guardians rely on that boon sharing and utility for wvw and spvp.

They say they will make split changes, but they won’t obviously if you saw the recent patch where they gave pets universal increases in health and now say because of it they gotta nerf pets because of BM rangers. So it will affect even pve ranger who were already bad.

Nikaido.3457:

Dub.1273:

Why would warrior GS die? 100b will still offer better dps than axe autoattacks.

This is only true if you never interrupt it. Otherwise it’s actually worse dps. And god knows how many times warrior do interrupt their 100b for a much needed evade.
—

I’m getting bit confused. Are you talking about dps of Greatsword or dps of Hundred Blades?
Because Hundred Blades has same dps whether you hit last hit or not (last hit takes about as twice as long to hit). Obviously it makes Greatsword dps lower if you then have to use one auto-attack instead.

Zenith.7301:

It won’t change the meta because what imbalances the warriors against everybody else’s damage is the base numbers — the traits are just gravy.

You can play a warrior and any other class, at any level from 20-80 and notice a vast difference in damage output straight away, with only thief being remotely close.

It’s the numbers and modifiers on the skills themselves — no change to traits will change that. If you want to see a change to the meta, base warrior damage numbers will have to go down. Guardian utility like spirit shield and wall and boon sharing will need to take a hit.

But that won’t happen, because a )warriors are not good in spvp— the OP damage is all they bring, and b) Guardians rely on that boon sharing and utility for wvw and spvp.

They say they will make split changes, but they won’t obviously if you saw the recent patch where they gave pets universal increases in health and now say because of it they gotta nerf pets because of BM rangers. So it will affect even pve ranger who were already bad.

Except, it will change the meta. At least it will change our meta. We’re already incorporating eles in most runs right now. When the update launches and indeed, eles can pump fury, we’ll probably start running something like 1 Guard – 2 ele – 1 mes – 1 warrior. And the only reason we’d be taking warrior would be to be banner b*tch pretty much..

You guys will bring 2x ele into fotm 48? Not saying it can’t be done, obviously, just saying it seems like it would be harder.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

You guys will bring 2x ele into fotm 48? Not saying it can’t be done, obviously, just saying it seems like it would be harder.

We did a 36 yesterday with 2 guardians, 2 LH eles (one of which had suboptimal AR) and a warrior. One of the guardians was absolutely not used to melee’ing everything, so to put it lightly, he had trouble…

Nikaido (the ele with the suboptimal AR) was running the bar for the first time as well. He had just leveled his ele through crafting. He still had to unlock all his underwater skills (which he did mostly during the Underwater Fractal).

The run didn’t go significantly worse than with warriors. You have the eles stacking might, blind, DPS etc. Not to mention, Fiery Greatsword is pretty sick when you LoS stuff in Ascalon, and it has a very short cooldown as well.

I think that if you run with people that can handle it, it won’t be that much different from running with warriors, although I do think that the optimal setup for 48 would be 2 guard 2 warr, 1 ele or 2 guard 1 warr 1 ele 1 mes.