Guild Wars 2

Guardian – Bunker guardian is relatively the same but I think intelligence sigil makes it look pretty fun and interesting. Azshene won’t try it, he’s a goofy goober. He likes the condi removal sigil I guess.

DPS guardian is the same just more damage I guess (everything does more damage)

Elementalist – Dagger/Dagger synergizes perfectly with the new trend of celestial amulet/strength runes/battle sigil and it’s pretty good.

Scepter can attempt to do the same thing with celestial pretty well but the scepter skills don’t really lend themselves to consistent damage without fresh air, the auto attacks outside of fire and air are just too crappy, unlike daggers which has great consistent auto-attack-like damage throughout each attunement. Fresh air is still the best build for scepter imo and is actually pretty good since thieves are nerfed (fresh airs only weakness). Fresh air damage is awesome with air sigil and strength/battle zerker. Scepter may have some kind of clerics far point pushing build but that will be the last thing I test.

Staff – Clerics staff is probably still awesome. I need to test staff more.

Ele build variety has gone up but not because of the grandmaster traits, none of the new ones are used in any of the optimal builds. Water/arcana trait lines still, and will always, reign supreme until the fundamental problem is solved. Or they continue to introduce more insane 30 point majors like they are trying to do. The build variety has gone up because celestial gives us the stats needed to place some trait points in extra places we’d like. But really it’s the same ol’ at minimum 15 water 30 arcana builds we’ve seen since the dawn of time.

Engineer – Balthazar runes condi engineer with grenades I think is probably one of the scariest things on most players minds these days. It plays exactly like it did but it just took advantage of the buffed runes/sigils more than most other classes and was relatively untouched as far as I can tell (didn’t read very many of the patch notes honestly lol)

Celestial builds on engineer are really cool I wanna play one. Rifle engi is like my second favorite thing and I haven’t played a legit damage rifle build since 100 nades. (really old 1 shot build people called “100 nades” that got removed from the game for those that don’t know)

Mesmer – I have seen a ton of variety for this class. Seen regular shatter, seen celestial amulet hybrid shatter, seen lots of different condi builds, seen CI builds, etc etc. They all seem at least okay or really good.

With everyones damage going up mesmer shatter burst is really insane. I’ve been deleted a few times by a greatsword mesmer mirror blade in my face combo.

Warrior – In a good spot, does more damage just like everything else. I like this class a lot now. Fun to play with and against imo. Seems to have pretty good build variety.

Thief – Dagger is as good as ever.

Sword/pistol is nerfed pretty hard as far as I can tell. With no lyssa runes, higher damage from everything in the game, and initiative cost increase, it really can’t stay in a team fight for very long without risking its life in a real way.

Sword/Dagger seems to be the safer sword build. Seems pretty strong I think but have limited experience against it so far. I’ve encountered way fewer thieves overall since the patch.

Ranger – I dunno, it’s the class I have the least interest in. Seems kinda the same.

Necromancer – from what I’ve looked at in the traits, this class has some really cool flavor to it with some of the new stuff. Boon Corruption on DS #2 is awesome. It’s also still pretty much as strong as ever, with or without burning. Nightmare runes can go die in a fire.

Lich form has never been scarier. Got hit for some 6.5k auto attacks.

Now post your thoughts!

I’ve noticed very little difference…Still the same noob Hambows everywhere

i saw your stream yesterday against the double lich team. nice win, my team lost to a double power necro but they were better.
What im asking is, why do you fell lich is scarier? im pretty sure i was hiting 5,5k+on squishys before, and i wasnt wearing scholar. Is it the air+fire sigil combo?

I have noticed that some really strong condi builds seem to be keeping thieves in-check. Specifially, the new balthazar engie lands 1 auto and burns a thief for 7s, taking away a lot of its life.

Because there are fewer thieves, other burst classes can come out an play. Also, these burst classes have the capability to global thieves like thieves can normally do to them. This means, escaping thief burst gives an opportunity to counter-burst.

Condition builds seem to be weaker to burst builds, by a lot, while seeming stronger against bunkers. This is a side-effect of the higher damage.

Bunkers can only stand up for a short time to heavy-burst pressure, and can be bursted down themselves with all the dps flying around. However, condi builds are still necessary as there are certain builds that CANNOT be beaten by power classes (PU mesmer or decap engie from one experience in a teamQ, when we had a bunch of burst and no condi builds – we had no answer).

At the moment, there are a bunch of builds running around and many things seem viable, but that could be because everyone is trying different things and haven’t settled into “optimal” builds. Regardless, its been pretty fun so far.

I can live without 30 in arcane, I went 30 in water and 10 in arcane and 30 in air, using the glyph of renewal for the speed buff and for the extra condi removal in water from the regen, plus you get extra toughness and healing which is pretty good.

I don’t miss the on swap atunement buffs and I can switch to water get and not waste a dodge to activate evasive arcana for the heal.

Playing as the suicidal berserker power necro, I can say that 6,5k is fairly low damage versus another glass with lich. If target has plenty of conditions, is full glass and under 50% hp lich is going to hit almost 8k+possible procs.

Things I have noticed so far ele are now good and rangers pets seem to hurt alot more.

Just as Phantaram said there are no real changes to bunkerguard except for the sigil choices. Currently running energy/intelligence sigils in both weapon sets has proven itself pretty usefull. Thanks to the reliable crits from sigil of intelligence it´s possible to put out a decent amount of pressure(up to 4k crits on mace #3) and activating the minor trait that gives vigor on cooldown without loosing any defense as the build has remained the same.

I rtied a ton of ele builds and some were kitten some were ok !
What about fresh air 0 30 0 10 30 with celestial and goep and signet of resto but with precision to healing trait to get around 650 hpower.
I find it a pretty okeyish compromise between damage and sustain so that you can still carry over the celestial trend to scepter without sucking offensively.As long as you have ways to get out of immobs /chain stuns (in theory ) the extra healign produced by more att swapping should even out a bit the loss of water 15.
Btw scepter air 1 procs the heal a little before half the channel has happened so if you run away and you are in air just cast and cancel it the moment you see the heal pops to get around the long cast time and thus lower hps air auto gives.The signet is pretty strong now with the celestial ammy

i modified my bunker guardian a bit. with all the conditions flying around i felt like 15,5k hp were not enough so i picked up the magi amulet, dropped the virtues traitline and switched to altruistic healing. 22k hp 2500 (before 2800) armor and 43% crit chance so i dont need the sigils of intelligence work pretty good.

>Bunker guardian is relatively the same but I think intelligence sigil makes it look pretty fun and interesting. Azshene won’t try it, he’s a goofy goober. He likes the condi removal sigil I guess.

sorry what, inteligence sigil on a bunker? 300 damage autos>500 damage autos #OhNo

is there some synergy I’m missing?

About the elementalist’s new traits…

Fire’s and arcana’s are ineffective because of the way their cooldown works. For a patch that was meant to remove hidden rules, and has so far added some build diversity thanks to that, anet went into the very opposite direction with those traits, and the consequences are revealing: no one’s using them. The new arcana trait would have a hard time competing with evasive arcana IF the cooldown was per attunement, but at least it would have a chance – especially if you desired to replace elemental attunement and renewing stamina for something else (say, for blasting staff and arcane mastery). Blinding Ashes will proc randomly against a pet class due to your minor 5th trait, or to any aoe, making it bad even at its intended purpose.

Lightning Rod almost never triggers. Like, it’s completely unreliable. The flaw with lightning rod, is that it’s a mesmer trait in the elementalist profession. It’s out of context. This traits seriously needs to be fused with Tempest Defense, because each one’s flaws are covered by each other. Tempest defense wants the lightning boltfrom lightning rod, because you can’t take advantage of the damage boost while you’re stunned. Lightning rod wants the damage trigger from tempest defense, because it’s a lot more reliable. In general, both traits feel like flawed attempts at acchieving the same goal.

I’ve seen some people claiming that eles can have an excellent healer role with the water trait. Don’t have much of an opinion because I’ve barely tested it.

But Stone Heart, that one is really good. The only real problem with stone heart is not the trait itself, but where it is placed, as you have to sacrifice some points in arcana or water to get it.

@writetyper: y u are, intelligence gives u 3 crits after weapon switch which has a 9 sec cooldown, these crits (as i mentioned in my post above) can be used to put up some presssure and to activate the minor trait in “Virgorous Precision” which does give 5 seconds of vigor on a 10sec internal cooldown. So u have a safe 50% uptime of vigor just from ur crits and on the other hand some skills of the guardian can hit for quite some decent dmg (staff 2, mace 3 just to name some).
U can basically kill every glassy spec like thiefs and mesmer easily.

(All experiences on a standart 0/1/6/6/1 bunkerbuild with cleric)

Jiyu.8310:

@writetyper: y u are, intelligence gives u 3 crits after weapon switch which has a 9 sec cooldown, these crits (as i mentioned in my post above) can be used to put up some presssure and to activate the minor trait in “Virgorous Precision” which does give 5 seconds of vigor on a 10sec internal cooldown. So u have a safe 50% uptime of vigor just from ur crits and on the other hand some skills of the guardian can hit for quite some decent dmg (staff 2, mace 3 just to name some).
U can basically kill every glassy spec like thiefs and mesmer easily.

(All experiences on a standart 0/1/6/6/1 bunkerbuild with cleric)

Oh kitten. I forgot about that, thansk for the heads up I’ll give it a go right away. could easily be really good.

haven’t noticed any bunker guardians overachieving in the ~50 matches I’ve played since patch so it can’t be too bad, either that or it hasn’t spread yet.

I’m not impressed with the new ranger. The only time I was wow’d by a ranger was right after the Apr 15 patch when pets were doing 10k auto attacks and 15k crits. Sadly, but thankfully too, it was hotfixed.

Balance feels incredibly good right now, but not because of the addition of new traits and things. The majority of the balancing was weighted on the small tweaks on every class. Not impressed by the new grandmaster traits on most classes; most are completely useless (warrior’s removal of 1 stack of blind on weapon swap….? What…the… Remove and give immunity to blind for 5 seconds on swap, please). Hambow was appropriately shaved. It no longer does WTF burst damage on top of unparalleled control. It now does meh to okay damage, with very good control; this is exactly what you’d expect from a high CC and AoE weapon set.

I actually really like balance right now. I haven’t had much issue with condition spam since the Dhuumfire/Terrormancer/Condi Duration nerf, hambows are tanky as ever but deal squat for damage, and pistol whip thieves aren’t teleporting around team fights spamming 3. I’ve had some awesome TeamQ fights, and I hope this more balanced meta does the game justice. I hope, however, that it’s not just post-patch shock keeping the balance, otherwise new, OP builds will start popping up.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I hope, however, that it’s not just post-patch shock keeping the balance, otherwise new, OP builds will start popping up.

That is also my fear.

Mitch.4781:

I’ve noticed very little difference…Still the same noob Hambows everywhere

Ive noticed very little difference…. Still the same little girls complaining about one build that they cant deal with.

Legionnaire.1586:

Mitch.4781:

I’ve noticed very little difference…Still the same noob Hambows everywhere

Ive noticed very little difference…. Still the same little girls complaining about one build that they cant deal with.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/whats-the-current-hambow-build/first#post3911857

You said yourself you’re a new to warrior, so why do you even post? Yes hambow is annoying.

As an engineer who´s not impressed by runes of balthazar (they are for the weak!) I can say that I fell in love with the new celestial amulett. There´s so many possibilities to build around this amulett that are extremely strong… it´s simply amazing.

What I noticed most is that a lot of people got back on their eles… and guess what? They are finally no freekill anymore! Yayz!
Balance-wise I liked the patch so far… but i guess it´s too eraly to call the new meta settled… but overall I dare be optimistic

I am going to keep this simple because I don’t feel like going into detail right now.

- Condi Engi is out of control. The amount of damage and sustainability is unreal. Balthazar runes need to be fixed. Too much buuuuuuuuurning.

- Hambow is incredibly strong now. I have been playing it today and the damage is insane. It still feels very ‘bunkery’ as well.

- Condi Necro aren’t overpowered but still dominate. Nightmare runes are a joke.

- Average Thieves are pretty horrible at the moment. Thieves really need more condition removal.

- Ele seems pretty balanced at the moment. I can definitely see their use in the current meta.

I don’t really have an opinion on Rangers, Mesmers & Guardians.

Overall – I think the balance patch was a failure BUT I do think things are more interesting at the moment but how long will that last?

Well I’ve noticed the new decap engi is completely crap and useless. Sure power builds can’t do much but condition builds wreck them, as it should be engineers main weakness.

PW seems much more high risk reward ratio. No not perfect far from it but better than before. They hit higher, but no lyssa means no free escape.

warrior in general god a nice nerf from lyssa, the other nerfs seem to balance with the double on swap. My m/s gs warrior got a nice nerf… I get ALOT of 12-16k hundred blade combos off while maintaining 3700 armor. (Condition engis/necros can kite the crap out of me, but I can still outplay them.)

Mesmer: well I’ve seen some interesting things from mesmers so far but I have noticed the mesmer bug posts, probabl related. I still 100-0 some good mesmers as p/w which is depressing

ele: I havent really tried the d/d builds but staff support + guardian on mid fight is amazing. Kinda redunkulous!

necro: 12 chain fear ( see forsakers vid) is just dumb. Shouldn’t exist. Ever. Personally fears could overwrite the previous? Not my call and thats a big change so we shall c.

Engi: I main engi always have hate toolkit, love bomb kit. Bath runes are very strong, I liked back when they were power based and not condition but that won’t fix the problem as I always run half power half condi.

Runes: the 45 percent duration anything rune sets are a lil over the top. BAth and srrength are great examples. I like how they give build diversity but seem far too strong.

Cele ammy was a good change thanks! ( dont complain healing power scales like crap)

Haven’t seen anything ranger wise.

The newest version of knights ammy… Whew…. we shall see what happens. Seems like a hambow ammy. Have been away for 4/20 so will test more later.

Thanks for the constructive thread phantaram!

Jindavikk, Elephtantitas (retired as decap sucks now), Thelonious Twig, Bowser Jr. (wil change name soon~)

After the power lock “fix,” mesmers have been free kills lately.

Eles seems great! I love fighting them, because I actually have to think.

Thieves actually seem a little weaker. Can’t quite pin down why.

I can’t say much about Ele, coz pvp flooded with PvErs and i did not fought against good PvPer yet.
I don’t think ele are viable in meta, but we are a bit stronger due to change of runes/sigils.
in other way I must admit that there is a slight possibility that ele got a build diversity.
ok ok. not slight.

strenth/battle/air + fresh air is stronger, not enough tested but seems better than scholar.

still some kitten by devs like sigil of int vs arcane power
and useless signets/conjurer
and still incredibly high cd’s
and 4 sigils vs 2 sigils

well. in conclusion I can say that ele is in a pretty good place. hm…is this called balance?

“Ranger – I dunno, it’s the class I have the least interest in. Seems kinda the same.”

yes… that’s exactly the same problem anet have itself…!

Power rangers can put out some serious pain from long range while roaming due to lb AA being reliable with new gm train. Pets have more applied dps and cc meaning condi bunkers and poison masters will be quite formidable.

People haven’t figured it out yet but rangers are in a good spot.

conditions op and everywhere

everywhere condi engi condi warrior condi mesmer …….. horrible

Hambow is even stronger than it was. Constant 25 might stacks with strength runes.

Engi with balthazar runes is very strong too.

Same as posts above. Hambow is annoying( but hand-able), but grenade engineer is way too complicated to deal with in my opinion.

I usually get teamed with less experienced players that don’t know yet how to handle these builds, and it’s simply not fun at all

I will only point out the things that may be a little over the top:

Hambows are hitting stronger than ever, they didn’t lose that much mitigation either. Strengh runes + Sigil of Battle make this possible. Damage scaling on hammer skills need to be flat out nerfed, the scaling on those is way over the top.
Eles can attain 25 might stacks but are much more manageable.

Necromancer’s fear uptime with Nightmare runes.

Engineer’s burning uptime with Balthazar runes.

The new Paralization Sigil on Warrior’s Hammer, Warrior’s Mace, Confounding Suggestions Mesmer and Moment of Clarity Rangers makes for some effective builds with dangerously high daze and stun durations. Please, keep a close eye on this one.

Guardians remained the same, bunkers and meditations alike.

I’m seeing way less theives as of late, I can’t talk much about them just yet.

Still early days since patch, I have only unlocked 2 of the new Grandmaster traits, 38 to go on my 8×80′s(I hate Orr…)…

Still my impressions so far:-

No. 1 Engineer.

2. Guardian.
3. Necro.
4. Warrior.
5. Ranger.
6. Thief.
7. Ele.

No. 8 and most useless class in spvp award now goes to Mesmers…

Balance is a bit better but if you ask me that is irrelevant to the issues Gw2 faces. The class design across the board is just no good.

“I believe in fights taking multiple executions to resolve, being the accumulation of advantages through good reaction and planning. There should still be room for extreme outputs but they should have many ways to be interacted with.”

Gw2 is a long way off from accomplishing this. The role planning has is minimal as very few skills have much of an opportunity cost.

I’ll just go over how Gw2 uses setup skills poorly though there are many other areas that play into the low opportunity cost of Gw2. There are a number of good ways to make them work. A couple things to keep in mind:

Ideally one of these skills should be positional/a skill shot so that both the burst and setup skill do not 100% require a resource commitment to prevent so that simply using a skill doesn’t always progress the fight.

Setup skills that are easy to land should not singularly lead to a burst for maximum effect.
For example – setup skill stuns for 1s and reduces endurance by 50%, the burst that follows takes 1.5s to execute however the radius is set that with a small movement speed boost they are able to walk out of the radius within that 0.5s.

They should be based on a gradient in terms of reliability versus level of defensive resource required to still respond to the burst. If an easy setup skill lands it should require a dodge to stop the burst whereas a harder setup skill might require a block or condition removal + dodge.

Really I don’t believe Gw2 will ever be up to the standard I am looking for. There are so many other factors that need work that I simply don’t have the time to go over them. Sure there is potential but short of someone taking the core and basically releasing a new game I can’t see it getting far.

mistsim.2748:

Power rangers can put out some serious pain from long range while roaming due to lb AA being reliable with new gm train. Pets have more applied dps and cc meaning condi bunkers and poison masters will be quite formidable.

People haven’t figured it out yet but rangers are in a good spot.

Rangers are in a terrible spot. Power rangers still melt to any competent player. BM is still not viable because of how the pet can be kited. Traps are non viable due to power creep. Spirits have been nerfed (again). Other builds just don’t put out dmg and don’t have any form of sustain.

It is honestly pretty stupid and really disheartening to see the class voted in need of the most changes (CDI) having the least.

The “buff” to traps is a poison field that doesn’t even last two seconds (serious). It is such a joke how now we have engineers running around doing 7s/10s burn from random hits with their incendiary powder, yet rangers equivalent options for burn is an easy to dodge torch, weak spirit, or trap. Literally every single thing rangers can do any other class can do better with less risk. There is no longer anything redeeming about the class which is a real disappointment.

I’m noticing a trend in teamQ’s of a lot of PU Mesmers and almost 1 power ranger per team. PU mesmer’s are virtually unkillable with power damage, and hold at least 1-person on a point indefinitely. Worse, if they aren’t given reinforcement, the PU will eventually wear down their opponent. You need at least 1 condi-build to deal with such things (or I diamond skin ele I guess, to just stand there and /dance). Also, PU is the least fun build in the game to fight. Its worse than perma-stealth thief in terms of enjoyment fighting. Its just constant spamming of clones, defensive skills, and stealth to drop targets (probably the most frustrating part is how annoying it is to retarget them every 2s).

I think ranger’s are being taken because they can cover 2 points with dps without actually going all the way there. With their new trait “read the wind” they can deal damage from a good 1200-1500 range reliably, which quickly wears down the people fighting on-point if they can’t hop on the ranger fast enough. Their instant-knockback (1/4s is instant) helps them peel too, while pets provide additional added damage in the fight too.

Just a couple of observations from recent matches.