Guild Wars 2

I’m on jq our blob fights can be pretty hectic and conditions are re applied so easily. To me melandru seems to be the better rune set because it’s constantly on, while shouts go on cooldown. I understand the group condi removal is nice but with the way wvw is currently I would imagine most have their own condi removal plus all the water blasts going off. I don’t see the point in clearing the condition for it to be applied a half a second later.

I personally prefer Melandru over Soldier since Melandru can stack with dogged march in the defense tree. Melandru with dogged march gives about 50-58% reduced condition duration (not sure on the exact percentage). However if you take Soldier’s you’ll be forced to run with Shouts over other useful utilities.

t1 NA: melandru

lets be honest here (i used to play on BG by the way) typically you have 70 people around you in tier 1 NA, and the only difficult fight youll face is vs 70 enemies… i dont think i have to tell you what happens when 140 people decide to go to the same spot but ill say it anyhow for everyone else’s benefit (who might not be playing in Tier 1 NA): SKILL LAG!

in otherwords soldier runes are useless here cause your shouts dont go off! nothing but your 1 attack does in fact!

therefore the passive melandru are better in the skill lag situation

Disclaimers:

If they’ve actually managed to fix the skill lag in t1 NA since i left then that would be a different story.

Also note that my advice does not apply to any other teir or matchup nessicarily (it is based on the assumption that skill lag and blobbing are predominating the matchup).

I still prefer hoelbrak to melandru, but the latter would be better if you want to have a more defensive build (i.e. one of those s/wh + hammer builds). I don’t really think soldier’s will be worth it unless you want to go for the frequent shouting.

Hoelbrak is way out there for the kinda play I’m talkin about…we buff before collision, don’t need no might runes.

I guess melandru is king just as I thought.

Tammuz.7361:

t1 NA: melandru

lets be honest here (i used to play on BG by the way) typically you have 70 people around you in tier 1 NA, and the only difficult fight youll face is vs 70 enemies… i dont think i have to tell you what happens when 140 people decide to go to the same spot but ill say it anyhow for everyone else’s benefit (who might not be playing in Tier 1 NA): SKILL LAG!

in otherwords soldier runes are useless here cause your shouts dont go off! nothing but your 1 attack does in fact!

therefore the passive melandru are better in the skill lag situation

Disclaimers:

If they’ve actually managed to fix the skill lag in t1 NA since i left then that would be a different story.

Also note that my advice does not apply to any other teir or matchup nessicarily (it is based on the assumption that skill lag and blobbing are predominating the matchup).

I was going to say soldier runes because they help the group as well as yourself, so multiple wars/guards running them can remove swaths of conditions, but that’s a good point about skill lag

Melandru is just stupid OP because of how dumb ANet is with their duration mechanics.

Both. Get two identical PVT armor sets, one with Soldiers and one with Melandru. There are some situations where Soldier is superior, and some where Melandru is, and it helps to be able to swap out on the fly:

1. Soldiers when running with an organized guild comp with 5-10 Warriors and Guardians in the frontline, all running Shout/Soldier Rune builds. The cross-healing and cross-condition cleanse is stronger than anything you can do with Melandru.

2. Melandru when running with a disorganized pug/militia zerg, or when solo roaming or small group havoc’ing, or any other time you can’t rely on frontline teammates to help with the condition cleansing. Melandru + Dogged March + Lemongrass Poultry Soup is much stronger vs a mere two or three shouts each removing a single condition.

3. In T1 or any other environment with megazergs and blobs (every player on a full queued map), Melandru. As Tammuz points out, you can’t rely on anything other than #1 spam in those cases, and Melandru is automatic. However that mainly happens in 3-way SMC/Garrison battles, which isn’t all the time.

Tammuz.7361:

Disclaimers:

If they’ve actually managed to fix the skill lag in t1 NA since i left then that would be a different story.

Also note that my advice does not apply to any other teir or matchup nessicarily (it is based on the assumption that skill lag and blobbing are predominating the matchup).

Having just played in T1 the first time this week, yes it’s still there, not fixed yet.

Soldiers gives me way more vit than I really need. The toughness is what I care about stat wise, and, with the condi duration reduction, you also get a nice cc reduction, which can make or break a fight.