Guild Wars 2

I’m sure I can’t be the only one who doesn’t understand these two terribly well. Is there a good guide to them out there somewhere?

I’m playing a warrior, and fairly recently hit level 80. I don’t really remember break bars or CC coming up in any of the in-game tooltips much, and it certainly wasn’t anything that gave me a problem going through levelling, but now I’m finding the mobs in HoT almost all have break bars, are really difficult to beat, and I can’t really work out what to do, or find a good guide on how to deal with it. The Shatterer also has these break bars, and I’ve been in large groups that have failed to kill it because of them.

How are you supposed to deal with break bars? All I know is that CC moves are supposed to lower it, but how do I know what abilities are CC ones? What are the ones a Warrior should be using? I mostly spend my time wielding a Greatsword or dual-axes.

I’ve seen some mention of breakbars having timers or different states, too. How do you know when these are? What visual clues are there?

Sorry if it seems like I’m just unloading a ton of questions, but I really am clueless on this, and searching for answers doesn’t seem to have revealed much.

TL;DR – please explain breakbars and how to deal with them to me like I’m a simpleton.

I too am interested in a good answer!

While playing my ranger I do notice that some of my CC skills reduce the breakbars more than others. However I still just smash buttons until it breaks, not the right style for sure but hey.

Spike trap & GS 5, Do the most damage I’ve found.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

Ayrilana.1396:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

That’s what I find confusing. The article on the defiance bar says that on two of the three stages, the character is immune to CC abilities. In the third one, the CC abilities don’t actually do their intended effect, and just lower the bar. Eventually stunning them and temporarily increasing damage received. So what’s the point in using CC at all? Why is it so important? Why can’t I just ignore CC and focus on DPS instead?

I’ve seen people say how important it is that people have CC abilities and damage break bars, but I can’t see why. Also, if you’re just running around solo, and break bars require constant CCs to decrease, how many abilities do you need to be able to keep chaining it whilst others cooldown? Each one has to replace an ability that could be used to deal damage, so it seems like an odd trade off.

Breaking the bar stuns them, prevents certain skills from being used, and/or initiates a burn phase.

but you have other weapon skills usualy 1 or 2 are cc max, so you got 3 other skills to use nr1 skill on weapons you can always use for dps anyway.

Edit.
And if breaking the bar is making the mob take more damage you do more dps aswell

Crowd Control

CC’s are divided into 2 categories:

• Hard CC -> things like Daze, Knockbacks, Pulls, Launches, Stuns etc. (These take the most off the break bar in a single burst) http://guildwarshub.com/hard-cc-skill-reference-guide/
• Soft CC -> things like Taunt, Immobilize, Blind, Chill, Slow, Cripple, Fear (They tend to do DoT to the bar and take out smaller and slower chunks of the break bar)

What is, and how do you deal with Break Bars?
Breakbars have three states that are designated by the colors blue, grey and orange. Blue means the Breakbar is active, and grey means that it is inactive/can’t be CC’d. Sometimes the bar is active for short periods and requires players to break it fast with hard CC to put the boss in a stun phase (orange bar color). Other times the Breakbar will act like the health bar and you can slowly drain it down using soft Ckittenil it breaks. The behavior of the Breakbar depends on the type of enemy you are fighting, and is generally present for high-level targets like bosses, vets, legendries.

http://guildwarshub.com/breakbar-combat-tips/

Why Bother with CC Anyway?
Some bosses are immune to dps, or have extremely damaging attacks that will kill you or parties/squads if not dealt with properly.

Mordremoth is a prime example: If you fail to CC him in his third CC phase during the DS event he will eat a platform and gain ley energy and progress the fight towards its fail state. Lords in WvW are much slower to kill and do crazy damage if you don’t take out the bar. In the HoT story you can’t kill Mordy in the last phase if you can’t break his bar. In raids, you can’t move Vale Guardian until the break bar is broken, Gors does massive damage if you don’t break, and in Sabetha, Knuckles does a launch attack that can raid wipe a group if the bar is broken fast enough. So it’s best to get in the habit of breaking that bar as fast as you can.

Hope this helps!

Knoyleo.2349:

Ayrilana.1396:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar

That’s what I find confusing. The article on the defiance bar says that on two of the three stages, the character is immune to CC abilities. In the third one, the CC abilities don’t actually do their intended effect, and just lower the bar. Eventually stunning them and temporarily increasing damage received. So what’s the point in using CC at all? Why is it so important? Why can’t I just ignore CC and focus on DPS instead?

I’ve seen people say how important it is that people have CC abilities and damage break bars, but I can’t see why. Also, if you’re just running around solo, and break bars require constant CCs to decrease, how many abilities do you need to be able to keep chaining it whilst others cooldown? Each one has to replace an ability that could be used to deal damage, so it seems like an odd trade off.

The bar can only be broken when it is blue. Not all mobs have it up all the time. This is also why you shouldn’t be randomly spamming your skills.

Breaking the bar results in the mob taking 50% more damage in most cases. It is very unlikely you can achieve the equivalent damage just focusing on DPS. Breaking the bar is also important for various mobs. For example to prevent the wyvern matriarch from flying off. Allowing it to fly off allows it to do a lot more damage to players while at the same time greatly reducing the amount of time you have to attack it AND you are losing out on the 50% more damage. Breaking the bar on certain chak will remove their retaliation/projectile deflect bubble.