Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

For some time, there has been a discussion about how the players should be introduced to the new Break-Bar system, which has been introduced with the release of Heart of Thornes. Since then, some people have already created a Crowd Control (CC) Guide, but was mostly in written form. These guides included data about how much each skill affected the Break-Bar.

The problem with written guides is mostly that people do not really read it, or if they do, they already have in-depth knowledge of how their skills work.
According to my understanding it is necessary, to know the proper Break-Bar rotations for each played class.
We can already see how much of an impact the right rotation has, when we look at the class guides of qT. If we cannot follow the proper rotation, the damage is lacking.

Therefore I present my CC Guide for all classes, which contains most of the common meta builds. If you are running alternative builds like power necromancer, feel free to whisper me ingame in case you have questions considering your build. Please do note that the most CC rotations in most cased do not change drastically when you swap your build.

Click the Video to watch it!

There are some additonal points I’d like to add

• You can find timestamps in the description, with which you can skip to each class.
• Each class contains 3 major parts: CC overview, CC Rota in normal speed and CC rota in slow motion.
• The cc rota in slow motions shows the recommended skills on the right side and optional skills on the left side.
• At the beginning of each class, you may skip it by clicking the “Skip to next” button.

For more information about the breakbar, skills or the system in general I would recommend the Wiki.

If you have any feedback, questions or annotations, feel free to share them here!

Instant +1, just watched the thing whole.

Too bad there’s no convenient way to set up an enemy with a reasonably strong breakbar in game.
Much like many healers wish for a bottomless-hole-golem to train Heal-rotations on.

Not knowing what a break-bar is or does is like having a can but not knowing what a can-opener is. It’s essential and in many cases your survival depends on it.

Thank you for setting up this guide.

That’s a point i’d really like A-net to add to the Test Golem. Without that, the only way to calculate or evaluate the proper CC Rotation/Skill is to look up the break-bar value of each CC in the wiki and then calculating it for the according skill.

Classes like Ranger have so much CC potential, but most people don’t know it.

Go into swamp, play with the champion drake. It has a base 500 bar + the base regeneration(30 I think) that you can find on the wiki. If you need to calculate more you can get a friend or 2 to do swamp up to bloom. At t4 his bar is 1k and he will always go into a breakbar after his first leap.

Do you save Berserker state for CC as warrior? I tend to use it on cooldown for DPS so it’s often either up or on cooldown when it’s time to breakbar. So I’ll just swap mace and use burst skill → Pommel Bash → Shield Bash → Headbutt → Burst again if needed. I save headbutt for the end since it has that small stun before I can hit the next CC. Am I wrong on this?

As a side question, I assume that soft CC’s only drop the bar if it’s on or not, as in if I chill and already chilled enemy I’m not increasing breakbar speed at all, is that correct?

Also on Druid, if I know CC is lacking in the group I like to just keep the Pink Moa out and have Electric Wyvern on swap, dazing screech, swap, headbutt and he’ll then immediately Wing Buffet. Yes that means no Tiger/Lynx, but the Moa’s not bad damage either.

As for a break bar dummy, the new Fractal one has that, but it’s only like 300 or something low like that.

SlyDevil.3952:

Go into swamp, play with the champion drake. It has a base 500 bar + the base regeneration(30 I think) that you can find on the wiki. If you need to calculate more you can get a friend or 2 to do swamp up to bloom. At t4 his bar is 1k and he will always go into a breakbar after his first leap.

Opening a fractal with a few dozen enemies just to train CC-rotation isn’t exactly what I call convenient. Yes it’s a way, but come on: the Training Golem already has a bar!!! It’s as simple as unlocking it to get us started.

Jerus.4350:

Do you save Berserker state for CC as warrior? I tend to use it on cooldown for DPS so it’s often either up or on cooldown when it’s time to breakbar. So I’ll just swap mace and use burst skill -> Pommel Bash -> Shield Bash -> Headbutt -> Burst again if needed. I save headbutt for the end since it has that small stun before I can hit the next CC. Am I wrong on this?

You shouldn’t use Berserker Form for CC Purposes only. Use it off cooldown. But for example, if you fight Vale Guardian and enter the 2nd or 3rd Phase, you can use the Taunt for CC purposes since it’s not that far into the fight.

As a side question, I assume that soft CC’s only drop the bar if it’s on or not, as in if I chill and already chilled enemy I’m not increasing breakbar speed at all, is that correct?

That is correct. Each “soft cc” works like a condition, whereas each new applied condies adds up to the complete duration. So if you have like 2 seconds of chill on your enemy, any additional chill will only increase the duration of the chill, but not the damage itself.

Also on Druid, if I know CC is lacking in the group I like to just keep the Pink Moa out and have Electric Wyvern on swap, dazing screech, swap, headbutt and he’ll then immediately Wing Buffet. Yes that means no Tiger/Lynx, but the Moa’s not bad damage either.

You can do that if you are really lacking CC. But do note, the moa is damage-wise worse than for example a tiger. I would recommended your teammates to practice their CC-rotations and take the typical double moa or tiger + cc moa.

As for a break bar dummy, the new Fractal one has that, but it’s only like 300 or something low like that.

I don’t run a static group so I adjust as needed. As far as Double Moa, what other Moa? If you’re talking black isn’t that actually pretty mediocre to poor CC? Thought I saw a test a while ago where it was about half of Pink, Wyvern right out of swap while delayed is quite good, the headbutt right away for a good chunk then wing buffet a second later for a bit more, then swap back to Moa asap. Is Black Moa better though? if so maybe one of these days I’ll finish the GW1 stuff.

Double Moa consists of the Red Moa which provides fury, and the Pink Moa which provides the CC.

The Black Moa does half the break bar damage as the Pink Moa, although the tooltip is identical. So i would recommend using the Pink Moa for main CC any if you need additional CC, you can use the Electro Wyvern. But in most cases the group will need fury from the ranger, so using the Tiger/Red Moa is superior.

If you and your team is doing the proper rotations, a lack of cc should never be the case. I would recommend using 1 CC pet and for the rest, use either celestial avatar form or if you really need a quick cc, try experimenting with axe offhand or glyph of equality. But in a typical raid scenario, you most likely will never need glyph of equality.

Niigi.1807:

Double Moa consists of the Red Moa which provides fury, and the Pink Moa which provides the CC.

The Black Moa does half the break bar damage as the Pink Moa, although the tooltip is identical. So i would recommend using the Pink Moa for main CC any if you need additional CC, you can use the Electro Wyvern. But in most cases the group will need fury from the ranger, so using the Tiger/Red Moa is superior.

If you and your team is doing the proper rotations, a lack of cc should never be the case. I would recommend using 1 CC pet and for the rest, use either celestial avatar form or if you really need a quick cc, try experimenting with axe offhand or glyph of equality. But in a typical raid scenario, you most likely will never need glyph of equality.

Ok, yeah, for sure, Tiger if I can, but when you play with PUGs a lot like I was/am (haven’t been playing as much) sometimes you have to drop out of the ‘meta’ to cover for gaps.

I feel like you’re not optimizing the warrior CC by using berserk before swapping to mace for skull crack.

Ok, yeah, for sure, Tiger if I can, but when you play with PUGs a lot like I was/am (haven’t been playing as much) sometimes you have to drop out of the ‘meta’ to cover for gaps.

Living the Pug Life

Overall, a pretty good video, but the warrior rotation is not optimized. If you start a max adrenaline you can skull crack > shield bash > pomel bash > headbutt > berserk > skull grinder > blood reckoning > skull grinder. The extra skull crack and skull grinder give about 400 more break damage than what you showed in the video.