Guild Wars 2

Topic .

Well i’m not glass but i play D/F soo maybe we are some sort of
cousins??? XD

Full zerker D/F 10/30/0/20/10 here, you rare not alone my friend!

I tried berserker D/F in PvP once. Fire was junk, water was nice, air was disappointing and earth was good. The gap closers are kinda unreliable and there isn’t a lot of hard CC on focus.

Wryog.5073:

I tried berserker D/F in PvP once. Fire was junk, water was nice, air was disappointing and earth was good. The gap closers are kinda unreliable and there isn’t a lot of hard CC on focus.

gap closers unreliable = lack of your only overnerfed gap closer (RtL)?
not a lot of hard cc = 1 knockdown instead of 2? I admit they’re not AoE but you also get 1 extra chill / cripple and an aoe daze.

tumble weed rolls on by

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

floppypuppy.5789:

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

This ^

Also, I have tried d/f and s/f in spvp, It just doesn’t compare to offhand dagger, I wish it did, but it doesnt. I hope they overhaul focus soon, but keep earth the same.

Rhoto.8791:

floppypuppy.5789:

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

This ^

Also, I have tried d/f and s/f in spvp, It just doesn’t compare to offhand dagger, I wish it did, but it doesnt. I hope they overhaul focus soon, but keep earth the same.

Why not? what does it lack? Is it damage? I do plenty of damage lol, and my added survivability and pretty much projectile immunity makes up for the lack of RoF / fire grab.

I prefer trading away some damage to get in return a ton of utility and survivability.

Lack of burst damage, lack of sustain, and mobility.

Focus isn’t that strong enough to warrent a change from dagger OH and this is coming from someone that plays a lot of d/f and s/f in the past. Focus has defensive powers like the dagger OH they are just different in how they handle defensive situations. However, Dagger OH gives you more options.

Not D/F but S/F in spvp and pve.

I have a S/F setup for WvW, one of my favorites. Full glass cannon can be fun but not very viable unless you just want to thief hunt or try to wipe stacks on enemies before you die.

VIDEOS.

We need to see this in action. You could end up doing for Dagger/Focus what that one guy did for Dagger/Dagger last year. It was awesome. With almost no action on ANet’s part, I watched as the community went from “OMG fix eles they suck!” to “OMG nerf eles they’re broken!”

I love this class.

I play it once in a while. It’s pretty fun, the 1v1 control is nice, and the survivability and anti condition is very strong on it, which is very useful these days. Still, it feels a little lacking in damage and overall, but maybe I just need more practice on it.

Razor.6392:

Rhoto.8791:

floppypuppy.5789:

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

This ^

Also, I have tried d/f and s/f in spvp, It just doesn’t compare to offhand dagger, I wish it did, but it doesnt. I hope they overhaul focus soon, but keep earth the same.

Why not? what does it lack? Is it damage? I do plenty of damage lol, and my added survivability and pretty much projectile immunity makes up for the lack of RoF / fire grab.

I prefer trading away some damage to get in return a ton of utility and survivability.

Somehow RTL is still a better gap closer than magnetic grasp(stupid buggy projectile). Burning speed’s range is kinda short.

Razor.6392:

Why not? what does it lack?

The focus lacks properly balanced skills. 3 skills are very strong, but most of the focus skills are pretty much objectively underpowered.

Flamewall is objectively the worst fire skill in the game. A line is harder to combo with than a circle. The cast time and cooldown are longer than lava font and ring of fire. enemies have to stand in the wall for it to deal any damage. Ring of fire is pretty much instant damage and punishes enemies for moving out of it. The only advantage the wall has over ring is range.

Fire shield is the weakest aura. Burning is especially redundant with drake’s breath, the best burning skill in the game. Eles have much better options to stack might. 40 second cooldown means it isn’t even good for activating aura traits. The skill could be good if they just gave it a cooldown of about 15 seconds to make it the best aura for activating traits.

Freezing gust is objectively the weakest chill skill in the game. The 25 second cooldown makes it a low upkeep single target chill with no additional effects besides rather low damage.

Comet is alright. It doesn’t have any huge flaws, but it could maybe use a small buff in terms of aoe radius, cast time or something like that.

Swirling winds can be awesome, but only in certain situations. This gives it more of a neutral standing. Though it loses a few points because the light armor classes have quite a few ranged attacks that aren’t projectiles.

Everybody knows gale’s cooldown is simply way too long for what it does.

Magnetic wave and obsidian flesh are the real reasons to use a focus. If obsidian flesh isn’t OP, it comes very close to it. Magnetic wave just does a lot; it has 5 different effects.

Focus really only shines to me in situations where I know I won’t need much mobility, other players will deal enough damage for me, there will definitely be enemies using projectiles and I’m doing something that is guaranteed to get me focused. Basically, I need to be in a situation where anything other than straight put tanking style defense is inconsequential for what I want to do. I only seriously use focus when I want to finish enemies in the middle of their zergs in wvw.

With a focus you don’t win with burst damage, but by interupting the heal of your opponent with “5” water or “5” air.

I tried D/F, with the idea of using more damaging utilities and relying on earth for utility (it has a psuedo-cleansing flame and mistform built in), but I just felt the loss of DPS and mobility way too much. In WvW, I was so easy to chase down by anyone, and didn’t burst nearly as well as D/D does. Ring of fire, firegrab, ride the lightning, earthquake, and occasionally churning earth do too much damage compared to the utility gained by focus. Off-hand dagger has better damage, aoe-cc’s, better mobility, and better heals (water 5). Off-hand focus has better ranged defense (situational), and slightly better cleanse (earth 4, with the benefit of being in another attunement).

The lack of speed makes me think this might work ok win PvE or even pvp with the condition meta (if you went S/F you would have a cleanse in fire, water on attunement, and earth) going for a brawler build. Fire-5 really does need a significant cooldown reduction, and comet needs a shorter cast time.

I know you used to be a fellow glass d/d Razor, how does the d/f compare? I’ve messed around with focus a little bit but never seriously tried it.

Nope.

dreztina.4820:

I know you used to be a fellow glass d/d Razor, how does the d/f compare? I’ve messed around with focus a little bit but never seriously tried it.

I feel more durable and useful without losing so much damage.

Mobility is another subject. Current D/F would be inferior to pre-nerf RtL, but now that it doesn’t exist anymore…

Razor.6392:

Rhoto.8791:

floppypuppy.5789:

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

This ^

Also, I have tried d/f and s/f in spvp, It just doesn’t compare to offhand dagger, I wish it did, but it doesnt. I hope they overhaul focus soon, but keep earth the same.

Why not? what does it lack? Is it damage? I do plenty of damage lol, and my added survivability and pretty much projectile immunity makes up for the lack of RoF / fire grab.

I prefer trading away some damage to get in return a ton of utility and survivability.

losing RoF, Fire grab, RTL, Updraft, Frost aura, Cleansing wave, earthquake, and churning earth isnt worth it for Swirling winds, Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh.

The defensive CD’s are just too long and you lose way too much for them. Currently, it’s better to keep off hand dagger and use your utilities for defense, which is what most d/d players still do.

If they tweaked some CDs, gave us useful fire skills, and made comet instant, then I believe it would be a good option.

Rhoto.8791:

Razor.6392:

Rhoto.8791:

floppypuppy.5789:

you people are freaks (please post vids!)

This ^

Also, I have tried d/f and s/f in spvp, It just doesn’t compare to offhand dagger, I wish it did, but it doesnt. I hope they overhaul focus soon, but keep earth the same.

Why not? what does it lack? Is it damage? I do plenty of damage lol, and my added survivability and pretty much projectile immunity makes up for the lack of RoF / fire grab.

I prefer trading away some damage to get in return a ton of utility and survivability.

losing RoF, Fire grab, RTL, Updraft, Frost aura, Cleansing wave, earthquake, and churning earth isnt worth it for Swirling winds, Magnetic Wave and Obsidian Flesh.

The defensive CD’s are just too long and you lose way too much for them. Currently, it’s better to keep off hand dagger and use your utilities for defense, which is what most d/d players still do.

If they tweaked some CDs, gave us useful fire skills, and made comet instant, then I believe it would be a good option.

The best skills obtained by the focus are: Obsidian Flesh, Magnetic Wave and Gale. The KD of gale is very nice, it is a reasonable duration (enough to land DT off if you don’t lag) and it is a channel (so you can hit thieves when you think they are about to stealth) and its animation is not as obvious as some others.

Other then that, the other skills could use a boost as the dagger brings a lot more to the table. I like using the focus in pvp because the enemies don’t know what it is or does and usually try to call you out for cheating (going invulnerable and healing).

Glass? Not really. I run near-full zerker with some soldier, but I trait rather defensive 0/10/10/30/20 and have supporty runes (4 altruism, 2 water). I use a rather generic build because I switch weapons quite often.

D/F? Sometimes. I use it in dungeons when the bosses are melee-able, but have some nasty projectiles: Bloomhunger in jungle fractal and the wurm in twilight’s arbor (swirling winds = ignore all the red circles.)

There are zero skills on offhand dagger that require a target (i.e. can’t be cast on stealthed opponents). All of focus’s control skills require a target (Comet, Gale, Freezing Gust). Roaming in WvW feels a lot worse when you can’t actually land hard CC on permastealth thieves. Earthquake and Updraft beat Gale and Comet any day. Swirling Winds and Obsidian Flesh are very nice skills but they don’t make up for the underwhelming rest of the weapon IMO. That said, focus is viable in lots of PvE situations, especially if your party doesn’t have much projectile reflection.