Guild Wars 2

This is just a hypothetical question which I am curious about but how would the raid meta change if phalanx strength was changed to no longer be viable for raids? Might is one of the most important factors in increasing a group’s dps and since the start of raids, people have covered the requirements by adding a phalanx strength warrior or 2 to every raid group. So if phalanx strength was essentially removed from the game, how would the raid meta change?

For dungeons before ps was a thing, people would use fire fields to stack might at the beginning of the fight and burst the boss down before those stacks wore off. However raid bosses are much more durable than dungeon bosses, and using fire fields for might in the middle of a fight is currently unreliable since there are so many other combo fields such as mesmer wells, air overloads, guardian symbols, necro poison fields, etc. Would groups be willing to have everyone stop using all non fire combo fields every 30 seconds or so to restack might? Would they instead start stacking heralds with strength runes? Would classes start investing more having their own sources of might such as hgh for engineer with elixers? Would groups accept that they may not have good might access a lot of the time?
Then there is the question about which classes would gain or lose popularity. Would warrior still be used regularly, and would they keep using tactics for empower allies, or go arms for more personal dps? Would classes that spam tons of non fire combo fields such as hammer guardians become less used?

Lastly do you think the meta would be more fun without phalanx strength? On one hand it would likely take a bit more teamwork coordination to keep everyone in the raid with might capped and bring more value to the many alternative sources of might in the game. On the other hand it could make classes and builds that are non conductive to might stacking non viable. This is just something that I think would be interesting to think about and discuss, would love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

probably (freshair) eles would have to do a stack rotation in between their dps rota and also share those boons with heat sync.
that would leave the rev free not to run their fury skill, instead might would come in and mesmer copy’s stuff then anyway.

heat sync snowballs might pretty hard, if 2 eles blast just 9 stack of might each, one copys to the other, the other one has 18, he copys again, boom even more.
i don’t think too much would change regarding the teamcomp…rather that you have to play better in terms of when to stack and maybe some minor adjustments to food / armor (maybe strengh runes / boon dura food / traits…like imbued melodies instead elemental bastion)….but nothing too much.

skarpak.8594:

probably (freshair) eles would have to do a stack rotation in between their dps rota and also share those boons with heat sync.
that would leave the rev free not to run their fury skill, instead might would come in and mesmer copy’s stuff then anyway.

heat sync snowballs might pretty hard, if 2 eles blast just 9 stack of might each, one copys to the other, the other one has 18, he copys again, boom even more.
i don’t think too much would change regarding the teamcomp…rather that you have to play better in terms of when to stack and maybe some minor adjustments to food / armor (maybe strengh runes / boon dura food / traits…like imbued melodies instead elemental bastion)….but nothing too much.

I think the big problem with freshair eles stacking might is that they need to wait for the lightning field from air overload to go away before they can use any blast finishers not even considering that they still need to work around every other classes combo fields. Fresh air without air overload is very mediocre dps. Heat sync would definitely be used more though.

you’d just see rev’s / more ele’s.

passive boon and easy blast for stacking.

little old but more or less relevant to your question.

revs possibly with strength runes, d/w eles to heat sync it. mesmers already spread boons also.

I think blast fire are too difficult to set up in a raid context.
But two tempests using heat sync and overload fire every two rotation should be able to provide enough might with a revenant.

I actually wish they’d kill off PS and many other of the passive boon-generations, but the game went down that line for way too long and too far for this to happen. Also, they’d have to reduce the amount of combo-fields (why are things such as overload air even fields…) and increase the amount of finishers, maybe making it so that your own fields always have the highest priority when using a combo finisher (so that only you can kitten it up for yourself and not someone else)

But yeah if it was just PS that’d be gone, revs and eles would stack and share along with chronos. Maybe throw a wild blast into a fire field from other classes into the mix here and there, should be option arise.

1. I do not see the meta being “more fun” without a PS warrior. I also don’t understand how metas are supposed to be “fun or unfun” in PvE.
2. Even with banners I presume warrior would be dropped for another Ele or something.
3.Why would this even happen?

the oldest field is used for the blast finisher. If you have enough eles, the oldest field will always be a fire field

1 chrono, 1 rev, 8 eles
druid optional

Revenants and/or heat sync, maybe arcane wave. Mesmer might have to pay more attention to signet of inspiration and illusionary inspiration, but probably not. Might is achieved.

Might has never been particularly difficult to get, warriors just happen to have it in spades along with their class specific buffs. If warrior gave 0 might people would still take at least one to raids with a more offensive build just for banners and Empower Allies.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I actually wish they’d kill off PS and many other of the passive boon-generations, but the game went down that line for way too long and too far for this to happen. Also, they’d have to reduce the amount of combo-fields (why are things such as overload air even fields…) and increase the amount of finishers, maybe making it so that your own fields always have the highest priority when using a combo finisher (so that only you can kitten it up for yourself and not someone else)

But yeah if it was just PS that’d be gone, revs and eles would stack and share along with chronos. Maybe throw a wild blast into a fire field from other classes into the mix here and there, should be option arise.

IMO they should re-balance a lot of things. But the main problem would be PvP and WvW getting unbalanced by it (just split it already!).

Now what I mean is I would like to see more ups and downs for taking certain traits and builds.

For example as a warrior you sould be able to 1. go full on might or 2. full on personal DPS (with DECENT dps compared to the others) while negleting might COMPLETELY or 3. a mix of both.

The same with Guardian “healing”, “pure dps” or “hybrid” and mesmer “support(alacrity,quickness)” or “pure dps”, or “hybrid” and let others professions fulfill the same “role” in a similiar scale. All while (MOST IMPORTANT) keeping everything balanced.

And yeah there we have it “roles”. Roles are NOT a bad thing, you just have to make them diversive, accessible and (I repeat!!) balanced. We have roles right now and we had them all the time. They just weren’t required most of the time and were never really balanced. Also the content was simply so easy that you could be 20% effective in a role and still complete the content.

GW2 has more roles than just DPS, tank and healer. Some can be done as a group (e.g.: dps, might, reflects), a few can be done just by one profession (e.g.: alacrity/quickness) and a lot are just unbalanced (e.g.: healing, dps, might).

In conclusion: I just hope anet is going to split PvE, PvP and WvW balance at some point so they are able to balance the professions and their “roles” much better.

A Revenant using either dumplings or sigil of strength procs Shared Empowerment much more frequently, specially on Jalis. Couple it with a Chrono using also dumplings and both active and passive Signets of Inspiration, and the might generation, while requiring some ramp up time at the start of the fight, becomes quite high and stable.

Not sure why you would want to get rid of PS. But the easy thing to do is take 2 revs and have them providing might instead of fury. Then u need a druid taking fury pets (tiger and red moa). The druid can provide fury for the whole raid with the help of the chrono and the Revs can take of the might for raid.

Dinosaurs.8674:

for banners and Empower Allies.

This right here is mostly it

The warrior banners provide an additional 170 to three offensive stats as well as 320 to power with EA

In long duration encounters such as raids, these stat increases are huge

Giving the might allows other professions such as ele to not worry about stacking/blasting/sharing might

I think a more interesting question would be what we buff on other classes to make might more preferable than from a ps war with the understanding that these “stronger mights” would take priority over base might. For example to shoot out random ideas, traiting a thief’s might to also grant ferocity, a nec’s might to grant expertise, or an engi’s to grant a small amount of all stats. It may put more of a preference on the appropriate might instead of just pumping out 25 stacks from everywhere.

DrEckers.2039:

I think a more interesting question would be what we buff on other classes to make might more preferable than from a ps war with the understanding that these “stronger mights” would take priority over base might. For example to shoot out random ideas, traiting a thief’s might to also grant ferocity, a nec’s might to grant expertise, or an engi’s to grant a small amount of all stats. It may put more of a preference on the appropriate might instead of just pumping out 25 stacks from everywhere.

It’s ideas like this that create rampant power creep.

Not really relevant to the topic at hand but I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to say it.

Not much would change if you removed PS, nor do I think they should remove it while we’re discussing it. PS is ideally situated and is a great and active trait that makes for a fun Warrior build. Maintaining your rotation is critical because if you screw it up then might will drop to 18 or even lower, causing a huge teamwide DPS loss.

TBH, might and fury are both really boring buffs that just pad numbers. If we’re going to reinvent the wheel, we should look at the whole wheel, not just PS. The boon/condition system as a whole has some interesting effects, and some effects that just pad stats. Stat padding is always going to be preferred because it doesn’t take any additional work to get the value out of, so straight up stat padding buffs are always going to be the most desirable.

Taking PS out of the equation just shifts the meta to the next, most reliable source of flat stat buffs. That is to say “how do I get the most +damage with the lowest fail chance due to user error”