Guild Wars 2

Is it worth it to bring a boon strip focused character into the fractals where foes get boons on crit? Or do we just ignore the mechanic all together?

I was playing around with necro and mesmer, but I couldn’t really say whether it made fights faster or not.

I tried boon stripping on a chrono, the amount utility you need to keep boons relatively low means no wells. Even with 3 disenchanters active, null field and arcane thievery the boons went up to 3+ all too often so I really doubt it’s worth it. Better just ignore boons, get the lvls once for the achievements and then do other lvls imo.

the best counter to that instability is as follows:

ignore it.

even an entire party of “boon stripping” cannot keep them off in any sort of reasonable fashion. ( i have done it)

short of getting a bunch of WvW hammer train no crit tanks to slog your way through for a few hours. its just not worth it.

It does however increase a condition/corruption Necromancers damage output if you happen to have one that has the AR to be there in the first place.

If you go with a pug party you could take it if doesnt lessen your DPS. But, it is not needed, but people survive longer if the bosses dont have 25 might.

It helps if you have a mesmer with a main hand sword or a thief with sword/dagger however I wouldn’t go out of your way to get them.

Chrono with null field, shatter boon strip, sword auto and GS 3 is your best bet.
You won’t keep the boons off 100% of the time. It works well for bosses tho especially if you are boon striping while time warping you can not expect 100% boon removal tho and to dedicate a build to complete boon removal is probably not worth it and it would be better to just do as I outlined in the first sentence.

ok everyone, ty for the advice. I was debating whether to get ascended for a necro/mesmer. Still not sure, I guess a lot of that depends on whether ascended is made reasonably obtainable through fractals again or not.

As is, even the anoying 41-50 fractal instability (enemys gain boons on crit) just gets ignored. This is essentially the only one where boonstrip might be interesting.

It’s a lot easier to:

A.) just work through the boons
B.) bring condi builds with less crit and just not have them build up in the first place

Getting ascended for necro or mesmer should not be dependant on boonstrip. Both of those classes (especially mesmer/chronomancer) get taken along for other things besides boonstrip. You should instead consider if you enjoy playing the class.

Cyninja.2954:

Getting ascended for necro or mesmer should not be dependant on boonstrip. Both of those classes (especially mesmer/chronomancer) get taken along for other things besides boonstrip. You should instead consider if you enjoy playing the class.

I respectfully disagree. I already have 3 characters fully geared up for high level fractals which I pug usually. I use whichever one I think is going to be most beneficial, and right now I consider my account weakest against the boon instabilities. So I am looking to improve that one specific aspect of my account.

Well, based on how tomorrow goes, maybe I will instead invest in a condi class. I’m thinking either engie or necro. I’ve heard burnzerker is good too, but I don’t want two wars.

thrag.9740:

Cyninja.2954:

Getting ascended for necro or mesmer should not be dependant on boonstrip. Both of those classes (especially mesmer/chronomancer) get taken along for other things besides boonstrip. You should instead consider if you enjoy playing the class.

I respectfully disagree. I already have 3 characters fully geared up for high level fractals which I pug usually. I use whichever one I think is going to be most beneficial, and right now I consider my account weakest against the boon instabilities. So I am looking to improve that one specific aspect of my account.

Well, based on how tomorrow goes, maybe I will instead invest in a condi class. I’m thinking either engie or necro. I’ve heard burnzerker is good too, but I don’t want two wars.

Make sure you’re alright with the super complex and rapid button pushing for condi engi. I kind of like it as its definilty the most challenging class to pull off for rotations. But the button spam can get a bit old. And it’s easy to get caught up in your rotation and miss something like a dodge you need to time right for raids.

Yeah I am aware of that aspect. I enjoy times on my ele when that happens. Obviously the 1 sec cd of engie speeds it up a lot, but I’m excited to possibly try it.

I’m not thinking too much about raids right now. For fractals I pug, but for raids I stick with some guilds I’ve joined, and I am filling the spot of ps war there. But hey, you never know. After all, being versatile is my goal.

Mesmer is the way to go when u want to be versatile and dont have one yet

The best way to counter the boons is either a sword mesmer or a mallyx Herald. When I was doing the 41-50 fractals, I just took Mallyx and spammed the Boon rip on the bosses. It helps a lot honestly.

Boon stripping helps a lot in these fractals. Mesmers, revenants and necros are particularly good at it.

Also – if youre running a mesmer and not using arcane thievery in many of these levels, you’re missing one of the greatest pleasures of fractal life

yeah, even 1 mesmer doing disenchanters strips boons well enough to make a huge difference.

Remember, MOST OF THE BOONS YOU STRIP YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT

Stripping keeps enemy protection to a minimum, which is almost always a net party dps gain.

Windsagio.1340:

yeah, even 1 mesmer doing disenchanters strips boons well enough to make a huge difference.

Remember, MOST OF THE BOONS YOU STRIP YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT

Stripping keeps enemy protection to a minimum, which is almost always a net party dps gain.

An engineer can generate 3 or more boons a second, let alone the other 4 party members, this was already discussed in another topic, a player specced to remove the most boons possible can’t keep up with boons created by a party that isn’t sacrificing significant dps to generate less. Condi classes just become even stronger and the mechanic is easier to ignore.

SlyDevil.3952:

Windsagio.1340:

yeah, even 1 mesmer doing disenchanters strips boons well enough to make a huge difference.

Remember, MOST OF THE BOONS YOU STRIP YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT

Stripping keeps enemy protection to a minimum, which is almost always a net party dps gain.

An engineer can generate 3 or more boons a second, let alone the other 4 party members, this was already discussed in another topic, a player specced to remove the most boons possible can’t keep up with boons created by a party that isn’t sacrificing significant dps to generate less. Condi classes just become even stronger and the mechanic is easier to ignore.

Yeah I was a principle in one of the discussions on the subject, and at risk of being rude, you just don’t understand the way it works.

The essence is simple:

1) You are correct that no strip can keep up with everything.
2) On the other hand, most boons that are generated by the crits simply don’t matter. When you get right down to it, 1 crit in 11 generates the boon that you actually care about stripping (that being protection).

Point 2 is the thing that people never parse – the attitude seems to be that if you don’t strip all the boons, then there’s no point. That’s absurd of course, but even if it did, in a zerk group a mesmer using only phantasms can keep a single target down to 2~3 rotating boon stacks, which would matter if all of them counted.

~~~

Ultimately though, it comes down to this. If you either don’t have access to a mesmer for efficient stripping or want to take longer to power through the protection you can do that – but you’ll win the fights faster if you keep the continuous stripping up so the enemy usually isn’t under the effects of protection.

Except the mesmer could have just put up 100% quickness and nearly permanent alacrity on their group, and condi classes would burn through everything faster than trying to strip.

I’m still unsure if the boons have a priority to removal or if its considered random, there is the possibility that you’ll completely end up missing protection stripping and have lost the group support for little to no gain in damage(and survival is no problem currently).

Can resistance also be applied by random crits? If so, that seems even worse than protection.

Retal, aegis, might(3stacks), fury, stab(3 stacks), prot and regen can be applied. 7 boons total, 6 since aegis is gone as it appears.

corrupt boon………..

On a 40 sec(32 traited) cd, when many high damage classes will be putting out anywhere from 1-4 boons a second*5 players, giving you anywhere from 5 to ~16 boons a second and upwards of 20 boons/sec during bursting intervals. And this doesn’t include quickness or alacrity.

How about that well that strips 6 boons over 6 seconds. Oh wait, 32sec traited cd. This is like trying to boon strip a power rev in pvp the boons are back moments later.

Windsagio is correct in that the only way to determine if its worth stripping is by comparing prot up-time.

If I assume I’m a Mesmer only running dis-enchanters to boon strip, I can still use wells to keep alacrity up. Quickness up-time should be largely unaffected too.

Lets assume I contribute 20% of the dps to a party (I don’t) (alacrity and quickness is negligible as my up-time should be similar for both setups).

Phantasms only count for roughly 40% of that number. So 8% of the party dps is from my phantasms.

If replacing them with disenchanters results in at least 8% more damage from the party, then its worth it correct? 8% more damage would equate to 75% up-time of protection compared to 100%.

I can’t do the actual math, but having run 3 disenchanters several times I can attest that prot uptime was much less than 75% in those particular groups.

Do take all of this with a grain of salt, but wanted to chime in my thoughts.

Myrias.8732:

Windsagio is correct in that the only way to determine if its worth stripping is by comparing prot up-time.

If I assume I’m a Mesmer only running dis-enchanters to boon strip, I can still use wells to keep alacrity up. Quickness up-time should be largely unaffected too.

Lets assume I contribute 20% of the dps to a party (I don’t) (alacrity and quickness is negligible as my up-time should be similar for both setups).

Phantasms only count for roughly 40% of that number. So 8% of the party dps is from my phantasms.

If replacing them with disenchanters results in at least 8% more damage from the party, then its worth it correct? 8% more damage would equate to 75% up-time of protection compared to 100%.

I can’t do the actual math, but having run 3 disenchanters several times I can attest that prot uptime was much less than 75% in those particular groups.

Do take all of this with a grain of salt, but wanted to chime in my thoughts.

This is true, but it also gets way more complicated since by keeping 3 disenchanters up all the time you are denying yourself shatters which in turn means you are getting less alacrity to get those support skills ready sooner.

Also having 1 setup which even if it’s barely better than a standard setup seems like a waste. Especially when the obvious solution (bring condition damage with low crit for example) is way more efficient.

It’s like comparing two lackluster setups which get outclassed by something else and argue about which of the 2 turds is better.

cranos.5913:

I tried boon stripping on a chrono, the amount utility you need to keep boons relatively low means no wells. Even with 3 disenchanters active, null field and arcane thievery the boons went up to 3+ all too often so I really doubt it’s worth it. Better just ignore boons, get the lvls once for the achievements and then do other lvls imo.

I ran Disenchanters and Null Field and had no issues when spamming sword auto.

Does anyone know if there is any boon removal priority? There is some really old data available but hard to say how reliable it is.

With this information I could run a simulation to determine the actual effect.

I made a quick simulation.

• 0.001 s ticks.
• 1000000 second test.
• 6 boons.
• Random boon added every 0.1 s (10 per sec).
• 1/7 chance to add nothing (Aegis)
• Boon removed every 1 s.

1) Random boon removed:

• Protection up 89% of time.
• Retaliation up 89% of time.
• Both up 78% of time.

2) Last boon removed:

• Protection up 88% of time.
• Retaliation up 88% of time.
• Both up 77% of time.

3) Stability always removed first, then protection, then retaliation:

• Protection up 86% of time.
• Retaliation up 99% of time.
• Both up 85% of time.

4) Protection always removed first, then retaliation:

• Protection up 45% of time.
• Retaliation up 86% of time.
• Both up 40% of time.

• Boon removed every 0.5 s (2 per sec).

1) Random boon removed:

• Protection up 80% of time.
• Retaliation up 80% of time.
• Both up 62% of time.

2) Last boon removed:

• Protection up 77% of time.
• Retaliation up 77% of time.
• Both up 57% of time.

3) Stability always removed first, then protection, then retaliation:

• Protection up 52% of time.
• Retaliation up 85% of time.
• Both up 46% of time.

4) Protection always removed first, then retaliation:

• Protection up 25% of time.
• Retaliation up 52% of time.
• Both up 13% of time.

My question is, what about Retaliation? How fast does it re-apply or get removed? What is Retaliation up time – assuming 90% crit chance for every party members? That one is the only reason my tempest has serious problems with.

5 party members, ~93% crit chance on most classes without ranger, almost every class gets at least 2 hits/sec, definitely more with quickness. You’d be looking at almost identical numbers to Weth’s simulation of prot.

I don’t know if Weth wants to add it in, but 1/7th of crits will apply an aegis to negate the next attack(crit), so the hits/sec are slightly lower.

Good point. Added 1/7 chance to add nothing (Aegis).

Also added a second boon to the test (retaliation).

So that means the tempest is either dead or forced to camp water.

Rip. Tempest?