Guild Wars 2

As a Warrior who has been trying to incorporate banners into my build, I find it strange that the elite banner is so different than the normal ones.

Lately, I’ve been running with Banner of Defense (traited for radius/recharge and regen), which provides 170 vitality, 170 toughness, and Regeneration with almost 100% uptime.

There are a lot of benefits to this banner; since it’s always up, it’s not a big deal to move it from one point to another; it helps downed allies (I think), and it generally makes me difficult to take down.

Compare this to the Elite Banner:

• Its uptime is 30%
• It offers no passive stat bonuses
• It offers a few stacks of might, which is OK, but basically half as good as a utility banner
• It offers fury, which is nice but doesn’t stack with other sources of fury
• It offers swiftness, which is useless for a banner
• It offers 3 seconds of stability (heh)

Obviously, the AE group rez is the reason to bring that elite skill; it’s an amazing ability. However, because you need to save the banner for that specific situation, you are basically denied all the other benefits (fury, might, etc.) because you cannot possibly risk wasting the banner just for those trivial qualities.

tl;dr: Battle Standard is basically an AE rez that happens to look like a banner; in all other aspects, it doesn’t play like a banner. There is no tension about whether I should drop it now or later; you can only drop it when there are teammates down.

Back when it provided Stability, there was at least a little bit of tension as to when to use it; was that a good thing, or a bad thing?

Kordos.3629:

Obviously, the AE group rez is the reason to bring that elite skill; it’s an amazing ability. However, because you need to save the banner for that specific situation, you are basically denied all the other benefits (fury, might, etc.) because you cannot possibly risk wasting the banner just for those trivial qualities.

I’d like to understand more about this as well. I’m fairly new to the Warrior profession, and understanding the mechanics is something I’d like to do. The Elite banner doesn’t seem to be all that awesome, mostly because of either a) it’s cooldown or b) lack of services (depending on point of view).

I think the Elite Banner is worthless. There is no reason to take it over SoR. The skill is almost always on cool down and you do not want to use it because if can saved a downed teammate. Unfortunately it does not rez defeated teammates. For Great Justice grants fury for longer and 2 less stack of might but is basically always up.

The Elite Banner is up for less time than normal banners and has a longer cooldown.

The rezzing downed members is basically useless because people rarely go into the downed state at the same time. If you choose to wait until more people are downed they will either die or get back up.