Guild Wars 2

purely from a raid perspective:

1) terrific dps if you know how to play condi. Clocking in at 34K, condi engi is a top tier dps alongside condi dps warrs, condi daredevils, and tempests.
2) high value in raid squads cuz of pinpoint distribution. No squad will say no to a competent condi engi.
3) fast paced ‘piano’ play style. I hated this when i first started learning how to play condi engi, but now I just can’t play any other class because they feel boring to play in comparison.
4) high survivability. Adrenal implant trait along with a decent health pool makes it extremely easy to survive raid encounters on an engi.

Without a doubt, the support from Arena Net is absolutely top notch. I have played a lot of mmos throughout my life, and Arena Net sets the bar in terms of support. A few months back, I had a bunch of magnetite shards lying around, so I figured I might as well get a viper light armor set for my necromancer. Mr. Genius here sat there clicking buy, buy, buy, on a full set of heavy armor by accident because apparently reading is hard. Arena Net fixed that for me swiftly.

Well I don’t know. Names like Sage, Scholar, Paladin, Knight, Templar etc are really cliched names that basically every fantasy game has been throwing at us. Firebrand seems like an alright name to me. At least it is something new. Historically, the word meant a piece of wood that you would light on fire to use in a myriad of practical applications, most commonly as a means to lead the way in the dark. Nowadays, the word means a person who fights for a specific cause with a ‘fiery’ intensity. Considering Firebrand is a “booknerd gone mad” wielding an axe on the front lines burning enemies, there are probably worse names that ANet could have come up with.

As others have said, you are far better off finding a guild that offers raid training than wishfully hoping for a lfg fix. I see a LOT of them in the recruitment section of this forum.

As an experienced raider, I can tell you that you don’t want to be lfging anyways. Raid lfg groups are utter sh*tshows a lot of the time. Training lfgs with pugs are sh*tshows; casual lfgs with pugs are sh*tshows; exp lfgs with pugs are sh*tshows (especially on xera and matthias). Even on the super easy bosses like VG or Cairn, there’s a good chance your lfg group is going to fail. There is a reason why people tell you to join a raiding guild. Raids never run smoothly with a group of random people you’ve never raided with before compared to running with a guild group where you have the same people every raid. Team synergy is a deceptively powerful element that decides how successful you are as a raiding group, and a lot of times with lfg pugs, you just don’t have that synergy/team mentality there. And also, as some people have pointed out here, lfg pugs are where you usually encounter trolls and overall toxic people.

Just be patient when looking for a training guild. I started out in a super newbie training group that was barely getting 1-2 kills a week. Then I moved on to a casual raiding guild where I was getting around 5-6 kills a week. Then, I got accepted into a semi-exp guild. I am still with that guild and I am getting full clears on all wings every week with them. If I can do it, you can too. Just gotta be patient and willing to slog through a lot of failed runs and practice as you move up the ladder.

First off, welcome to gw2. While it is nice to have a long term goal in mind, since you are really new to the game, I’d suggest not thinking about legendaries for the time being; or at least play the game for a few months and actually learn it before you go off working on a legendary. Legendaries do not drop period from any sort of content and they are a huge commitment. They cost thousands of gold to craft, require tons of material that you just can’t grind and amass in a short period of time with sheer diligence (like large quantities of obsidian shards and mystic clovers), and generally take a long time to finish. It is not uncommon to hear of people who spend 1 year+ crafting their legendaries simply because of how cost prohibitive they are. And also because how material/loot drop works in this game, it is really hard to say there is a specific boss or area you should be grinding. On the bright side, if you really want a first generation legendary weapon asap, you can always invoke the power of a credit card to buy gems and do the currency exchange to buy one off of trading post. Although, you’ll probably be spending something like $300 for a single weapon since they cost around 3-5K gold depending on what weapon it is. The arguably ‘cooler’ second generation legendary weapons like Chuka and Champawat, HOPE, and Nevermore are account bound on creation and you cannot buy them from other players via the trading post unlike first generation legendaries.

As starlinvf said above, you can get legendary armor from pvp, wvw, and raiding. Pvp and wvw legendary armors require you to… well.. pvp and wvw a craaaap ton. And they don’t have any special fancy effects. They just look like armor. The raiding legendary armors have some really cool transformation effects when you enter combat, which is a huge part of their allure. They require you to raid a lot and complete a variety of raid related collection achievements. I pvp as well as helen keller so I stay away from pvp and wvw, and thus can’t comment on how expensive those legendary armors are. I’m pretty much finished with my raid legendary armor, and it has costed me about 2400 gold so far for the entire set. If I didn’t have some mats saved up, I probably would have spent close to 3000 gold.

CPS primary might generation is from strength sigils (might on crit) that they run on both sword and bow and golden fried dumpling food (more might on crit). CPS also generates might through blasting scorched earth fire fields with longbow #3.

dchsknight.3042:

There is a new stat combo. No one ever talks about it and I dont know why. IT is called Grieving. It is power condi main with precision ferocity secondary.

I am pretty sure it will be the new meta

My guess is nobody talks about grieving gear because while it is inherently ‘interesting’ because it is a new stat type we haven’t seen before, it will most likely not replace viper or berserker in terms of meta. Or at least that’s what my raiding buddies and I think. Builds that are specced for power damage like tempests, power daredevil, dragon hunters, power berserkers etc simply don’t apply enough condition damage for grieving to be effective. You’ll get better mileage with straight up berserker gear. It is true that condi builds like engi, ranger, necro etc are hybrid builds where while most of their dmg is from condi, the raw power dmg also plays a role. In that aspect, grieving won’t be detrimental to condi builds. But since it does not have expertise stats, grieving gear will be nowhere near as good as viper. The amount of condi dmg you get by maxing expertise is far far greater than the amount of power damage you do (or a simple power and condi but no expertise hybrid), even on a condi build like engi that has some unusually high base dmg coefficients.

You probably don’t want to be playing scrapper in raids. The toolkit given to scrappers are mostly defensive in nature and don’t really help in raids. Scrappers are awesome in pvp, and not as awesome in end game pve.

Core engi remains the strongest dps spec. Condi engi has been one of the best dps specs for a while, however not that many people play it due to it being a difficult and carpal tunnel inducing spec to play. There was a balance patch yesterday that neutered most condi food effects. However condi engi has been able to make it through the patch relatively unscathed, unlike FA scepter warhorn tempests who were given the patch equivalent of the good old mafia “sleeping with the fishies” treatment. The balance patch however did make some really good changes that benefit power engi. Considering the buffs, power engi might actually be a perfectly ok pick for raids now, although I have not tested it. While I doubt power engi will be able to outdps condi engi, it is worth asking yourself if 1K or 2K extra dps is worth juggling the awful rotation that condi engi has to deal with. As a power engi, all you do is drop a turret and auto attack with bomb kit till the end of time.

Vindicus.2130:

Daedraz.1650:

As a condi engi main, I am obviously not too happy with these changes. There’s just no reward for playing one of the most difficult classes in the entire game juggling a carpal tunnel inducing rotation once these changes take place.

I really hope there is going to be a substantial nerf to ele as well, otherwise we will see a return of the ye olde “power ele or gtfo” meta. And I really don’t want to return to that meta. I went through all the hassle of getting quip for my engi because i love the class, and I fear that I’ll never get to use it again for my raid premades or any lfgs because all the exp groups are only looking for eles. And as much as I would love to say that is an exaggeration, knowing the exp raiding community, I really can’t.

Lol sad, already pitchfork out for another class because of kitten from a completely unrelated power reduction to yours. The salt intensifies.

Written like a person who clearly has never raided before period. You see, right now powers eles are top DPS. Even after condi nerf, which will obviously knock out condi ele out of the rankings, power eles will remain at the top. What do you think is going to happen if power eles remain the same while the condi classes go down on the benchmarks? I’m not joking about the power ele or gtfo meta. That was a real thing that plagued early raid days when they first came out and it was not a fun meta at all. And yes, while I am personally not happy about these fixes, I am addressing a real concern. If you think the condi meta is bad, clearly you’ve never seen the power ele or gtfo meta. You are really underestimating the nature of the exp raiding community. And I don’t like it, but it is what it is.

As a condi engi main, I am obviously not too happy with these changes. There’s just no reward for playing one of the most difficult classes in the entire game juggling a carpal tunnel inducing rotation once these changes take place.

I really hope there is going to be a substantial nerf to ele as well, otherwise we will see a return of the ye olde “power ele or gtfo” meta. And I really don’t want to return to that meta. I went through all the hassle of getting quip for my engi because i love the class, and I fear that I’ll never get to use it again for my raid premades or any lfgs because all the exp groups are only looking for eles. And as much as I would love to say that is an exaggeration, knowing the exp raiding community, I really can’t.

1) To confuse players in pvp/wvw since the easiest way to tell apart the actual mesmer from its clones is dodge rolling.
2) The mirage dodge/blur brings a new mechanic into the game. When you dodge, you gain a short time frame in which you and your summoned clones get a special attack like thieves do when they attack from stealth. These special attacks seem to function like an alpha strike and are designed to inflict heavy damage in a quick burst.

There’s no fast track approach to raiding. You gotta join a training group/guild and slog through a ton of practice/failed runs. I know that doesn’t sound fun at all, but that’s how everyone starts. Even the hardcore exp raiders started from square one, wiping at VG for ages and ages. I would not rely on LFG training runs as they are usually unproductive and never really get anywhere.

I’d suggest looking at the guild recruitment section of this forum, because there’s quite a few guilds that do weekly raids and training. Don’t hope that you’re gonna get lucky and get into an exp group, because that is just not gonna happen. But as Amaimon said, don’t get disheartened. Find a training group/guild, and stick with them for a bit. And once you have enough experience, try moving on to better groups. I started out in a super new training guild last year that was barely getting 3 boss kills a week. Once I felt that I got as much experience as I could from that guild, I moved to a semi-exp guild that was getting around 5-6 kills a week. And then I got into an exp guild a few months ago that was getting 8-11 kills a week. I’m still raiding with that guild and we are now getting full clears on all wings.

Gold isn’t required to do the raids themselves. It is only required if you wanna ‘buy’ successful raid runs from super exp groups that advertise on LFG. The actual crafting of the legendary armor itself WILL cost you a lot of gold, as it is very resource intensive, not to mention you’re gonna have to do it 6 times for all armor pieces.

Necromancer (reaper): Decent condi dmg. Very tanky and survivable. Not particularly outstanding in raids as its single target dps is rather lackluster, but does fractals and open world pve very well because of its epidemic ability. Epidemic makes necro slam into groups of enemies/adds like a freight train.

Engineer (base class): One of the top condi dps specs. Valuable in raids, fractals because not only does it do very high dps/cleaves, it has a class specific buff that boosts your party’s condition damage by 150. The caveat is that condition engineer is a very difficult class to play well. Also because a lot of its dps relies on fire fields, its effectiveness is drastically reduced on targets that move around a lot.

Ranger (base class): Does slightly less dps than condi engineer, but still does terrific dps and has a very easy rotation. Doesn’t really bring anything to the group in terms of buffs because those will be handled by druids. Due to how easy it is to play condi ranger, it is a solid dps choice for all modes of pve.

Elementalist (tempest): Condi ele is also a very high performing dps spec. On large hitbox targets a condi ele absolutely wrecks (highest dps benchmark), but on small hitbox targets or targets that are highly mobile, its effectiveness is drastically reduced.

Thief (daredevil): Condi thief absolutely wrecks. Even higher dps than condi engineer. Also it is very easy to play. Has a ton of dodges and is very mobile. And because condi thief is built around venoms which are shared by default with your teammates in a small aoe, it helps boost your team’s dps a bit. IMO the venom share is not as potent as the flat +150 condition damage buff you get from an engineer, but is still a welcome addition to any dungeon or fractal group as there are so many condi players these days.

Revenant (base class): Clocks in at the lower end of the dps spectrum, but it has some situational uses. Can be potentially good for raid bosses that are highly mobile because condi rev dishes out torment for days. Had a pug Matthias group where a lot of people didn’t seem to understand his aggro mechanic so Matthias was just moving all over the place like a schizophrenic hamster on Powerthirst. We had a condi rev who actually did pretty good because of that.

Welcome to online games where you will encounter all manners of deranged/flat out crazy people. Don’t let those people deter you from joining voice comms. The vast majority of people you will meet are perfectly normal people. Voice comms is very integral for successful raiding in any mmo game, and you shouldn’t let some nutcase deprive you of that. Raids in general, even training raids, require voice comms. There are a LOT of mechanics in raids and it is very time consuming for the raid instructor/commander to manually type everything out. Furthermore, a lot of these mechanics require very precise split second team coordination. That means there just is no time for someone to type “Mechanic X is happening at Location Y.” Failing to meet a lot of these mechanics will kill your entire team.

This is really annoying the 2 days in a week where everyone in my premade has time to convene to raid… Thwarted by the most terrifying thing you can encounter in a mmo game.. 4000 ping

If you have aristocracy runes and strength sigils, you’ll have an easy time maintaining 25 might. Golden fried dumplings are redundant here. Using rare veggie pizza instead of fried dumplings and using toxic focusing crystal will greatly improve your dps.

Also, using sigil of smoldering is hampering your dps. On a condi PS, you are switching weapon sets frequently enough to get great mileage out of geomancy sigils. On a glance, geomancy sigils don’t look like they’ll add much, but they are deceptively powerful.

If you are still lagging behind a wide margin after using rare veggie pizzas, focusing crystals, and geomancy sigils, then that is probably an indicator that your rotation needs work. Even considering that your weapons are not viper, with proper food, utility, and sigils you will have 94.33% bleed and burn. With that kind of condi duration, you shouldn’t be lagging behind too far.

The benchmark for condi PS running aristocracy runes is 27K. The more DPS focused variant that uses berserker runes clocks in around 31K.

There’s no way for us to know what is hampering your dps output since we have no idea what your sigils, runes, gear stats (condi duration) are. But I will say that food accounts for a pretty significant chunk of your dps. If you cut corners and don’t use rare veggie pizza and toxic focusing crystals, your dps will suffer noticeably. Also, making sure you have 100% condi duration is an absolute must if you want to hit optimal dps. If you are running balthazar runes or some other combination of suboptimal runes/sigils to max out burning or bleed, then your dps will suffer as well, because aristocracy or berserker runes are far more superior.

The build you have will most likely suffice for dungeons and low~mid level fractals. However, to be quite honest, there will most likely be a fairly large dmg gap between your build and a proper meta viper build. Condi ele, like most condi classes/specs, are really more hybrid builds than true condi builds- in other words, while condi dmg will be the major source of dps, the physical power dmg will also play a relatively important role in determining your total outgoing dps. You get no precision from carrion gear, so your crit rate will be very low. Furthermore, by using balthazar runes instead of berserker runes, you automatically lose out on +5% condi and power dmg. IMO you are better off not taking signet of earth, as condi tempest is a strictly burn-only build. Use glyph of elemental power instead as it is one of the bread and butter utility skills of condi tempests. Also, while the earth treeline may give you a bit more survivability, it really doesn’t contribute much in terms of boosting your dps. If you’re looking for better dmg, then go with arcane, as the arcane precision trait allows you to inflict burns on crits, which will work very well with the burning precision trait in the fire tree which also lets you inflict burns on crits. With carrion gear, your crit will be so low that you will not be able to get much mileage out of these traits. If you want to do a bit of min maxing and end up taking arcane instead of earth, then definitely go with elemental surge trait and take arcane power instead of feel the burn. Taking flaming greatsword instead of rebound is another option you can consider if you want to boost your damage even more. Flaming greatsword #2 and 5 are pretty good burn based skills. Lastly, you should be using smoldering and bursting sigils on your weapons. You might also want to consider using rare veggie pizzas and toxic focusing crystals to add an additional 30% condi duration and 170 condi dmg (but they are expensive!).

Aldath.1275:

Ok guys, trying to get into the Engi, as I’ve read he’s got one of the few and still reliable Power rotations for Fractals, and they say it’s a very fun and damaging class!

However I can’t seem to get past level 10 with him… Here are my questions.

1.- Which is the best kit to level him up? I find I take a long time to kill anythig with any weapon…

2.- How viable is Scrapper for “casual” PVE, like low level fractals and open world? Is the damage higher or lower than power Reaper?

3.- Is it worth to invest in Rampager gear while I grind to get the condition gear?

4.- Outside of Raids, is it needed to have a “pianist” rotation to be good?

Most of my questions surround zerk Engi/Scrapper btw.

Thanks!

1: Grenade or bomb kit should do the job well. They are integral kits for both power and condi builds, so it is probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with them while you are leveling.

2: Scrapper can get the job done in casual pve. Honestly, it doesn’t really have superb damage, but it does enough to get the job done without having you break a sweat. Although I haven’t done/seen any benchmarks from the hardcore pve community, I think there is a general understanding that scrapper does less dps than a condi reaper. Scrapper is sort of designed to perform better at pvp than pve, since it has good bunkering capabilities, CC, sustain, and gyros (although gyros have been getting nerfed to oblivion lately). IMO condi reaper also has a better edge when it comes to open world because of epidemic (despite the recent changes, it is still powerful as heck in open world).

3: IMO it would be better to get sinister gear instead of rampager. You’ll get much better mileage out of sinister compared to rampager. The problem however, is that sinister armor and weapons are obtainable through crafting only, much like viper gear. If you already have 400 crafting, then sinister should be really cheap to craft now since they have fallen out of the meta. I think it will be a worthwhile endeavor to roll sinister gear while you work towards viper. If your end game goal is to do condi engi at end game content such as raids and t4 fractals, you’ll need some time to master what I believe is the most complex and frustrating rotation in the entire game. A lot of condi engi rotation boils down to playing it long enough to the point where you just develop an internal clock since you will be juggling 4 kits and you can’t see which skills from which kits are about to go off cooldown.

4: That is a sort of yes and no answer. Power engi builds don’t need that at all. Power engi is more of a ‘spam 1 skill till the end of time’ sort of build. That is not the case for a condi engi. To achieve the max possible dps, a pianist rotation will be necessary. None of condi engi’s skills are particularly bursty in terms of condi dmg. A condi engi’s dps comes from spamming a ton of skills, that individually do little condi dmg, in rapid succession so you end up stacking a lot of conditions. This requires really good manual dexterity as you have to move through your kits/rotation really quickly to ramp up/maintain the stacks of bleeds, burns, and poison. The ‘pianist’ way is unfortunately the only good way to play a condi engi. Otherwise, you’ll be doing more dps on a power engi. Condi engie is a sort of a weird one, in that either you got the rotation down and do terrific damage that melts down mobs, or you don’t have the rotation down and you struggle to do decent damage even in open world standards. Good news is, there are much less complicated condi engi rotations that you can find on youtube. Some of these rotations allow you to get really close to the benchmark dps of 35K without having to give yourself carpal tunnel and aneurysms every time.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

I can tell your snowflake feelings are hurt, because you:

1) entered this topic in the first place
2) still here despite saying you were done because you can’t handle being proven wrong.

You’ll login, and run raids/fractals with the same group of people because you can’t do anything otherwise. If you ran a non-meta group, they’d boot you because they’d get tired of ressing you. They’d get tired of hearing the same old meta-crap about how what you do is right and everything else is wrong.

You don’t main Rev because you failed at it. You weren’t good enough to build or master it, so you went to an easy cookie cutter class. We get it spreadsheet sheep, you just aren’t good enough.

It’s the final nail in the coffin that:

a) you can’t stand my posts
b) I’m right

You know why and how? You have to try and insist on fail personal attacks because you have nothing – literally nothing, against my points. Hell you can’t stop responding so soon after my posts (obviously following it so you can furiously begin typing)
By all means continue to whine, rage and cry because you’ve been called out on your made-up personal vendetta BS against Rev. You failed at the class, go back to your own cookie cutter class and wait for the next update on somebody elses spreadsheet boy

Not sure why you keep on hammering away this nonsense at me. I’m not the one you have to convince that rev is a good class. As far as I’m concerned you are just a salty player who can’t tolerate people saying there are better picks than your main class. You’re approaching this whole thing like you’re trying to defend the honor of your family name or some crap haha. Protip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcqQC02YbY And I just hear the same old nonsense every single time about how metas are irrelevant, revs are good classes, and people who say they have problems just don’t know how to play it. Same thing every single time. Starting to sound like Marco Rubio during a debate.

@OP Rev is great for OW and it is no better or worse than any other class. Rev is great for low tier fractals but so is any other class because of how easy low tier fractals are. If you just want to do OW and low tier fractals, then a Rev is a terrific choice. It does enough dmg, it is durable enough, has a good amount of i-frames, reliable CC on low cooldowns, and it can pulse a lot of boons that will help unorganized parties that won’t always have PS warriors. But if you ever want to do high tier fractals, a rev’s usefulness diminishes because the harder content gets, parties start becoming more tailored and engineered to fit a specific comp. You can certainly make it work, but as per your question, a guard is obviously the superior choice because it is considered a really strong class in the current meta and there is a higher demand for it than revs. People like Nerfing are just out of touch with how things are if they think that metas are irrelevant in games. There are metas in every online game. There are metas in LoL, WoW, Tera, DoTA 2, HoTS, FF14, Overwatch, and even fps games like battlefield and CSGO have metas based on what guns perform the best. And a lot of people like following metas because that’s what metas are- a general consensus that a particular game strategy/way to play is the most effective way. As other people have mentioned here, anything a rev can do in a fractal environment, another class can do better. Some of the best pve players in the entire game have tested every class/possible build against testing golems and have concluded that revs in their current state leave a bit to be desired. They back up everything with recorded footage that is accessible on youtube. On the other side of the debate, you have people like Nerfing who are in denial because they main rev and are just ranting “I am right you are wrong end of debate” without any shred of empirical proof that a rev performs on a competitive level compared to other classes.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

No boy, spreadsheet warriors are not the best in the game. You are all cookie cutters, following what one person is doing all the way down the line. The people bothering to think, test and try out things, those are the ones who can be called the best.
The meta does not matter, the sooner you realise this the better. It does not matter if you kill things 5 minutes faster – why? Why does it actually matter should be the question. As long as people are enjoying the content, trying to do things different ways to not be cookie cutter, getting the job done, time does not matter.

The only people who made early dungeon runs cancerous were your type exactly. Insisting on zerk meta only, insisting on a meta period. You were the dead weight and still are. You insisted on something you didn’t even understand, that’s why you were the dead weight dropping in 5 seconds. You spreadsheet warriors always will be.

The only one whining here, and has been from the start, is you and those like you. Your special snowflake feelings have been hurt because you have been proven wrong repeatedly. You can’t handle this – not my problem and I don’t care.
You are so delusional it’s almost hilarious – why? Because you can’t handle Rev being good, you can’t handle somebody showing it has 0 issues doing content and that toxic cancer players like you, are the issue.

It’s time to grow up boy, and get over yourself. Learn to stop being a sheep following a spreadsheet and actually put some work into a character.

“People who bother to think and test” things… So you mean qt right? The guys who sink a lot of hours trying to find the most optimal build/skill rotation for a given class while bashing their heads against training golems for days and weeks? And also the people who take these qt guidelines and take the time to learn the rotations and test them to see how they compare against what they were doing before? Right-o lad, they sure do sound like the best!

Again with the “time doesn’t matter” drivel. That is the epitome of lazy talk. Unlike you, a lot of people want to finish their fractals quickly because they just want to get the dailies out of the way. They don’t want to waste 20 minutes on 1 fractals because there are scrubs like you in the party who insist on doing everything inefficiently.

People who adhered to the zerk meta during dungeon days were honestly godsends because they helped balance out the clueless inept players like you who would insist on joining dungeons with absolutely horrible gear. Not sure where you are getting the"meta players all drop in 5 seconds" rhetoric from. The ones who drop in 5 seconds are always the clueless noob players like you who don’t know how to play the game properly.

Absolutely hilarious that you think your drivel has hurt my feelings. I don’t care at all. The way I see it, it is you always rushing back desperately defending the honor of your precious main class because you aren’t capable of adapting to changing metas/learning how to play better classes. At the end of the day, I’ll be logging in on the game and I’ll be running fractals and raids on a good class that people seek for raids. No one will ever say anything negative since I’ll be on a class that can actually do dps and has demand- all will be absolutely dandy. I’ll log in tomorrow to forums and no one will say a single negative thing about my main class on the forums. I’ll teeter over to the revenant subforum, and I’ll just see a plethora of threads saying revs need a rework and you just having a salty meltdown like you’ve been doing on every thread that is negative/critical towards rev.

And you have proven absolutely nothing but how inept of a player you are. You can wrap that sweat rag over your head and furiously type “I’m right you’re wrong” all you want, but delusional/wishful thinking isn’t going to change reality. Maybe it is you that needs to grow up after all. Still stuck in that adolescent rebellious attitude where all the grownups are telling you there’s a better way to do things and you are just refusing to follow their advice because “Boo hoo what does mom and dad know. I’m 15 and I know everything!”

Obtena.7952:

No, that’s not a blanket statement … there is a clear ranking of class performance in OW PVE, just like there is for raids, etc… you can not build every class to be equally effective in OW PVE. That’s just as ignorant as someone saying every class can be built to be effective in high end fractals or raids …. I’m pretty sure we can agree on at least that much.

THIS is why I’m hammering on you … you are offering untrue information to the OP based on something you already admit you don’t care (and likely don’t know) enough about.

I’ve been playing the game since it came out so rest assured, I know every inch of OW. I just don’t do it/care because OW does not provide any engaging end game content to me. And not sure what kind of OW you’ve been playing if you think there’s a ranking of class performance in OW. At this point I’m also expecting you to tell me that there’s class rankings in dungeons as well. Because OW is such trivial content nobody cares about class rankings at all. The majority of OW is either solo play or zerg fests. Nobody cares about class rankings or performance in solo play because well, it’s solo play. Run whatever you want and do whatever the hell you want however the hell you want. In zerg fests, all people care about is having bodies. They don’t care whether you’re a necro, warrior, or druid or whatever.

Obtena.7952:

Daedraz.1650:

I have not mentioned how revs do in OW because I just don’t care about OW.

So basically, you are just pushing answers you want. I mean, I never once saw you say “Oh, but I don’t know OW PVE, so you will have to take these other guys word for it”. You simply dismissed it as irrelevant with “You can do what you want” which had nothing to do with how Rev’s perform in PVE to make it sound like Revs are just bad, period.

Well I got news for you. IF you decide to try Revs in OW PVE, you will find them very effective in that role. So perhaps the next time someone asks about it and clearly you don’t care, you can answer with “I heard they are pretty good, but I don’t have any experience with it”, instead of broadly painting the whole class as poor because “meta”.

Once again that is such a blanket statement because every class can be built to be effective in OW based on a person’s needs. Every class, if running the right traits and gear, WILL be good. You are really making it sound like OW is harder/more complicated than it really is to the point where a particular class is better at some aspect of OW that another class isn’t. Whatever one class can do well at in OW, every other class can do just as well. You just need to be able to get from point A to point B quickly; you need enough dmg to kill OW mobs; you need enough sustain to survive OW mobs. Rev can do all of that really well. So can a warrior. So can an elementalist, albeit being more fragile. An engineer, a normally slow and cumbersome class can take streamlined kit traits and become a superb class to do OW on. A guardian, while slower than revs for sure, is also good at OW because its insane burst damage shreds through any OW enemy in seconds. Etc etc.

@Nerfing Once again. Spreadsheet warriors go down every 5 seconds because you said so? Starting to sound like a broken record. Son, these spreadsheet warriors are the best pvers in the game. People spouting your “meta doesn’t matter” nonsense are the ones who try to drag a rampager necro into t4 fractals expecting to be carried. I’ve heard your drivel so many times during dungeon eras. “Boo hoo zerk meta doesn’t matter. My rabid necro is better because all zerk players do is die.” Players like you are what made early dungeon days absolutely cancerous since you guys were nothing but dead weight.

Wow that is a whole lot of whining. We get it. We hurt your little snowflake feelings by pointing out that there is a problem with your main class. You are making a joke out of yourself because you can’t handle the reality that there are better picks than rev. It’s okay though. Most of us who are disagreeing with you are used to this. We see delusional salty players wallowing in denial desperately trying to defend their classes in mmo games when they get nerfed or the proper balance hasn’t been given. Doesn’t matter to us one bit because we just laugh at players like you. We’re not the ones playing revs. We’re playing classes that are actually good and have demand. It just cracks me up when you say metas are irrelevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

Stay woke my redpilled fedora tipping friend.

Suntzukid.5602:

Burtnik.5218:

This guy is still trolling? Oh boy, he must be really bored.

If the guy genuinely believes Revs are good, he genuinely believes that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I don’t know why you’re accusing him of trolling. It’s like you’re purposely coming back to this thread just for that simple fact.

Does it really bother you that much that you just keep coming back? We get it, Revs aren’t great in Raids and the Meta kitten aren’t going to bring them with. We kittenING GET IT.

Nobody gives a flying crap about whether the guy likes revs or not. If he really likes it and it works for him? All the power to him. The problem is when he’s trying to convince OP that rev is a good class that is perfectly welcome in the meta on all levels of pve, because that is a flat out lie. OP is asking whether he should build a rev or a guard. If OP only wants to do open world and low tier fractals only, then sure a rev is a great choice. It does enough damage and since low tier fractal comps are unorganized, they won’t always have a PS warrior. But if he ever wants to join the big boy club and do high tier fractals, then a guard will be a superior choice simply because it is in higher demand than rev. People in high tier fractals are obviously more experienced and have a better idea of what they are doing to make fights go quicker/smoother. This results in a high probability that a party you join will have a PS warrior, druid, and a chrono. Which means a lot of groups will look for elementalists, condi rangers, engineers, guardians, or any other solid dps class/spec that can easily surpass 32K dps compared to a rev’s 26K. And you can really thank raids for this. Ever since people figured out that it is amazing to have perma 25 might, str and disc banners, empower allies, spotter, frost and sun spirits, grace of the land, perma quickness and alacrity, they brought that straight into fractals.

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

The only lies made here have been yours. Fractal parties as a whole do not care if you have a Rev or not. The only ones who do are spreadsheet warriors, the ones who go down every 5 seconds because they can’t adapt or learn their failures. They are the parties not worth the time for anyone other than spreadsheet warriors.

And now to further prove my point, you said and I quote directly here:

“people don’t want because qt said so”.

Blind, spreadsheet, sheep.

You then say you’ve seen vids of Rev’s soloing 100 Fractal, thereby proving they are not only capable, but good. This goes against everything you’ve said thus far.
Congratulations on tearing apart your own argument in two sentences boy.

Oh and the reason why he sees all the negativity is from people like you. From PVP’ers and spreadsheet warriors who hate Rev because they were not good enough to master it, and because PVP has it’s own issues. That’s why I began posting in the Rev forum, so new players can see it’s just a load of BS coming from incapable salty players and the Rev is actually worth it.

Ah good for you to chime in my redpilled fedora tipping friend. Spreadsheet warriors go down every 5 seconds? Not sure where you’re getting that from. Is that so just because you say so? That is just a load of crap coming out of your wazoo because you are desperate to defend revs. I can just as easily say people like you who are anti-meta are inept players who go down every 5 seconds because you people don’t know how to play the game competently. And since I said it, it must be true right? The smoothest t4 runs are always the ones with these so called ‘spreadsheet warriors’ because they actually know how to do end game pve efficiently.

I have said several times that revs are not as bad as people make them out to be. And I have never mentioned that they are so bad that they cannot get things done. The fact that rev can solo fractal 100 cm is not an indicator that revs are good in any way, seeing how chronomancers with absolute potato dps can also solo it as well. It just means revs can get things done in the right hands.

Regarding qt metas, sure some people follow them simply because the best pve players in the entire game said that is the best way to play classes/specs. But a lot of people also follow them because after extensive testing, they’ve found that qt metas are an improvement over their prior builds. You can call that “blindly following a trend” but whether you like it or not, meta followers are everywhere because surprise! It turns out a lot of people like doing good damage! Mind blowing right? I mean, isn’t it so mind boggling that a lot of players prefer a class like elementalist that can outdps a rev by 2 times or a condi ranger that can do 10K more dps than it with a sloppy rotation?

The only salty person here is you. I frankly don’t care at all. Jesus I don’t play rev. I could care absolutely less about revs. You play rev. It’s your class that’s getting crapped on by people who share my sentiments towards the class. You can wrap a sweat rag on your forehead and prattle on like you’re winning some online debate about a game all you want. Crowning achievement of the year! Looks like mommy will be giving you lots of good boi points and chicken tendies. I am absolutely content because OP will be able to look at this thread, and any other similar thread in this subforum and realize that “Oh gee… 2 people are saying revs are good and everyone else is saying there are better picks when it comes to pve. Let me check some other threads on this subforum… Oh boy here are more people who are saying rev needs a serious rework.”

I have not mentioned how revs do in OW because I just don’t care about OW. I haven’t said they’re bad at OW either. I am focusing on the part of OP’s question where he asks how revs are for fractals. I keep on saying “anything works” because saying rev, for that matter any class, is good at OW is such a blanket statement. Everyone has different standards for what is good or not when it comes to OW because the nature of OW content is not as one dimensional as fractals or for that matter raids. In fractals, people just want dps because your group has a singular objective- kill things. The same cannot be said for OW. Some people want mobility to get from point A to B quicker; some people want survivability; some people just want raw damage to kill things faster; some people want lots of condi cleanses to get rid of mobility impeding conditions. This is why there are no meta builds for OW. There are a lot of ways to spec any class to fit your OW world needs. I honestly don’t see why you are so hung up on this.

If you want to be pedantic, sure. I do agree there are things that rev can do well when it comes to open world. Mobility is sure one of them. I imagine guardian players would kill to get perma swiftness. They’re definitely not super squishy like elementalists and won’t get 3 shotted by pocket raptors. When you run into a group of people doing OW events, you can buff them. Aside OW, revs are amazing in wvw. There are few things scarier than a bunch of revs running after you and having a bunch of revs in a zerg amplies its strength so much. But OP is also asking how good revs are in fractals. And it is a flat out lie to tell him that he’ll always be welcome in all high tier fractal parties. A lot of times people won’t mind. But a lot of times, OP will run into people who will tell him to switch classes because they already have a PS warrior in the group and need a class like elementalist that can outdps a rev by 2 times. I personally don’t mind at all. I’ve seen videos of revs soloing fractal 100 CM so I know for a fact that they can get stuff done just as well as any other class. But a lot of other people don’t want revs in their parties simply because qt said they’re bad. If you don’t think this ever happens then you are disconnected with reality. I’m not trying to antagonize you, but that is the plainest way I can describe it as. OP will never ever have a problem like that if he decides to roll a guardian. Everyone loves guards in pve. The same can’t be said for revs.

Obtena.7952:

So you’re making the decision to lie to him about how good REv is in OW PVE and non-engineered fractal teams to shelter him from the negative opinions he will experience in the future from meta pushers in high end fractals … that’s awesome. Pretty sure people don’t want to be lied to just because other people think they are delicate snowflakes. Personally, I don’t believe that’s your motive but whatever.

I mean, the OP didn’t ask you what classes were better than Rev for content he didn’t ask about. He was pretty specific. I get you have an axe to grind because you felt you wasted your time with Rev … but I think that’s dirty play to to answer someone falsely because of it. I would like to think at a minimum, being honest when answering people’s questions is simply a given.

Revenant is very good for OW PVE; the only element they really suffer from is easy fight closure so they aren’t saddled with longterm conditions slowing them down. Otherwise, they have great damage, the RS buff and the good opening moves needed for OW goodness.

OP asked how are revs, because he noticed people saying a lot of negative things about it on forums. He’s clearly read these threads and has a general idea of what state rev is in, but wants some more clarity.

And don’t think I’m lying at all. Not sure how else I can rephrase that anything works/is good in OW. He can play whatever he wants to in OW. Nobody cares since OW is largely solo or a massive zergfest. If rev works for OP, then go ahead by all means. But the problem is when he dips into t3 and higher fractals. The casual atmosphere of t1 and 2 disappears since now you’re dealing with multiple instabilities and things generally hit harder. When things get serious/harder, people like to bring in metas. Even in non-engineered teams there will always be 1 PS warrior because of might and banners. And since revs are generally perceived as being buff bots, groups will rather prefer a hard hitting dps instead of having both a PS and rev in the group. And this is the part where I DO agree with Nerfing. I follow metas because I’ve done extensive testing against golems and concluded that the qt metas are indeed a way more efficient way of playing a class/spec. I personally don’t mind doing t4s or raids with revs. But a lot of people follow these metas very blindly/zealously and WILL give rev players crap because surprise, people you meet on the internet are not always nice people. I have never said revs are such a horrible class where you can’t get anything done. Multiple times, I have said that they aren’t as bad as people make them out to be, but they definitely aren’t as good as some of the top pve class/spec choices that are generally in much higher demand. And that is what I want OP to know 100% before he decides to go off and invest time and gold on building up a rev. It would be a blatant lie to tell him that all in the world is good and dandy with revs. Just take a look at the subforum for revs. Do you ever see that kind of grumbling in any other class subforum?

Obtena.7952:

Daedraz.1650:

Obtena.7952:

Daedraz.1650:

Metas are facts when they are backed up by extensive testing, numbers, and hard evidence such as recorded footage.

… that aren’t relevant to Solo PVE or fractals outside of engineered team compositions; the things the OP was asking about.

I can’t stand to watch people abuse others with meta for elements of the game where it’s completely irrelevant. If the OP was asking if Rev’s were any good for Raids or optimized teams for fractals, then SURE … spouting meta rhetoric to say Rev isn’t that good there would be met with no problem. That’s not the case here.

No one is denying rev can be used for solo pve. You can use anything for solo pve.

Again, that’s not what the OP is asking for … I can also use anything for dungeons, fractals, raids, etc…. but I don’t see anyone providing that advice to players either. I get that many people have contempt for anyone that wants to talk about OW because it’s trivial, but make no mistake, I can STILL optimize a build for it, just like anything else. That’s valuable information. If you are of the opinion that Revenant isn’t good for OW content, I doubt you have put any thought into to beyond someone handing you the meta build … See how that works?

Why is it a problem to simply provide a knowledgeable information related to the ask? I mean, meta should have never even come up based on what the OP wanted to know. If you don’t know if Rev is good in OW content … why are you posting other than to garner more “Rev hate cred” in the hopes devs tune in? Not happening.

Because sooner or later, one way or other, when OP has sunk enough hours into the game, he will move on from low and mid tier fractals into high tier fractals. He can play a rev if he wants, but he will have a lot of snarky players giving him crap. And I am also assuming he will have to pug at some point- if he has a static premade with guildies or friends all the time, then great. But if OP is ever going to pug t4 fractals, it is inevitable that he will come across people who will give him flak. Elitism is not only prevalent in raids, but also in t4 fractals. That has gotten worse since the devs greenlit the usage of dps meters. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t ‘hate’ revs. When I get revs in my t4s or raids, I don’t say anything to them, because I know 26K dps is good enough for t4. But that’s not what the meta obsessed wider pve population thinks. This is undeniable because you NEVER see this kind of grumbling towards any other class in any of the sub-forums or in game. I think its unfair that revs are considered mediocre classes and I want to see them reworked so they are genuinely desirable in every form of pve. I had a lot of fun with mine when i used to main it, but that fun quickly goes away if every 3rd fractal group you join asks you to switch to a “more useful class.” That crap led to me deleting my rev. The fact of the matter is, in their current state, sure they may not be as god awful as a lot of people make them out to be, but there is a general consensus that there are better class picks than rev at the moment. It is genuinely bad advice to tell OP that everything is perfectly fine with rev and all is dandy. He NEEDS to know what is up with the class.

@Nerfing This right here is the quintessential anthology of every scrub quote ever. Yea no wonder your t4 parties need lots of thinking or adapting when things go wrong- very inept players. That much has been evident from the moment you said it makes no difference if a fight lasts 5 minutes longer, seeing how competent groups complete most t4 fractals in under the 10 minute mark with some of them only taking 5 minutes. Competent groups melt bosses so fast even in t4 that fights never last long enough/go wrong to the point where you need to adapt or change strategies.

And my argument has been debunked because…. You said so? Are we regressing into elementary school logic now? I mean I get you’re salty, but come on man. I haven’t seen a single shred of evidence from you backing your claims- all I’ve seen is salty rants and tears. I don’t need to be able to ‘handle’ anything you say, because I don’t care at all. After having played rev, and witnessed first hand how mediocre it is, my mind is made, along with those of the majority of people telling OP rev is bad. Anything you say is coming through one ear, and straight out the other. Good luck convincing OP.

I only mentioned pre-raid era fractals. Never made any mention about the suitability of a rev in a raid or whatever. Did I trigger you so hard that you’re starting to see things that aren’t there? It is true about the toughness ignore, but because condi specs couldn’t really stack enough conditions to the point where they’d be dealing competitive amounts of dmg, most players ran zerk builds. But then again I am not surprised since efficiency is clearly not a priority for you. As that Arthur Dent guy mentioned, this is an indicator of how inept the people you’ve been playing with are.

Ah the good old “unthinking sheeple” argument. Stay redpilled m’friend and may your fedora tip on forever. The majority of us don’t want OP wasting his time on a lackluster class simply because you just happen to really like it. You can prattle on about how good rev is, but at the end of the day OP will see that the majority of people are saying revs are lackluster and you desperately trying to defend revs because you main it. I’m sure OP won’t have trouble making the right decision.

Contrary to your statement, I am not bothered nor irritated by what you are saying at all. As is the case with most people here, I stopped taking you seriously the moment you said metas are irrelevant. At this point I am only replying to you because I don’t want to see OP invest time and money on a class that frankly needs a huge fix/fundamental rework. You’re the one who is giving OP inaccurate information because you have severe tunnel vision.

@Nerfing OP clearly says solo pve AND fractals. Jesus you can’t even read son. Pre-raid fractal meta was zerk because viper gear, or for that matter any gear with expertise traits, did not exist back then. Even with the condition system revamp, zerk builds were pulling ahead. It was only after the introduction of heart of thorns where condition builds started becoming more prevalent. This is a telltale sign that you really have no idea what you are talking about.

I honestly do not see the problem with following qt metas. If someone wants to dump a whole lot of hours into finding a much more efficient way of doing things, I have absolutely no qualms about following their advice. It makes runs go quicker. Refusing that and insisting on doing things in an inefficient way does nothing but make runs go slower. I mean, if you like inefficiency, then that’s a you thing. Do what you want on your own time. But don’t go around trying to convince people that there is no point in doing things more efficiently. “Guys.. Guys… I know there’s this thing called the chainsaw, but that is irrelevant and just too mainstream. A real independent thinking man chops down wood with his trusty hatchet.”

At this point I’m convinced that you were that one guy who always kept on trying to join dungeon parties on a rampager staff necro and got angry with metas because you kept on getting kicked from groups.

Unfortunately for you son, whether you like it or not, metas are everywhere. And they’re here to say. You have metas on EVERY mmo game. You just can’t avoid them. Gw2 in particular is VERY meta heavy. And most of us people here who actually know what they are talking about don’t want to see OP investing time into a character that is considered ineffective in the current meta. Times change and metas come and go. Deal with it.

Obtena.7952:

Daedraz.1650:

Metas are facts when they are backed up by extensive testing, numbers, and hard evidence such as recorded footage.

… that aren’t relevant to Solo PVE or fractals outside of engineered team compositions; the things the OP was asking about.

I can’t stand to watch people abuse others with meta for elements of the game where it’s completely irrelevant. If the OP was asking if Rev’s were any good for Raids or optimized teams for fractals, then SURE … spouting meta rhetoric to say Rev isn’t that good there would be met with no problem. That’s not the case here.

No one is denying rev can be used for solo pve. You can use anything for solo pve. And as mentioned, if he just wants to do tier 1 and 2 fractals until the end of time then sure he can roll with a rev. No one cares at that level of fractals. You could probably run a rev in t3 as well. Once you get to t4 is when pug groups really start adhering to metas. Of course, not ALL t4 parties are gonna follow a meta party comp, but a LOT of them will. Most t4 parties you see on lfg aren’t running for fun. Fractals has been out for years and at this point, people just run it for dailies. This means that people gravitate towards meta builds and party comps so they can breeze through dailies and get their rewards. Really getting confused where you people are getting the “metas don’t matter for t4 fractals” rhetoric from. Most pugs I run with are not only using meta builds and party comps, but are also running dps meters. I’m simply disputing anyone who says revenant is a good class, because that is just flat out wrong. You guys are giving OP bad advice based on personal bias. My sentiment is clearly shared by the majority, as evident in this thread and numerous other threads in the revenant section of the forums. Protip: when you think something and the majority tells you otherwise, there usually is merit to what the majority is saying.

Metas are facts when they are backed up by extensive testing, numbers, and hard evidence such as recorded footage. Not sure what part of that you’re having a tough time understanding. I don’t think I can explain that in any plainer way. If you think that quantitative analytics based on extensive testing against training golems = biased opinions… Boy, that is some climate change denial level of reasoning right there. You should go work for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. I’m sure he’d be glad to have someone like you on his staff.

Whether killing something 5 minutes quicker or slower is a problem or not is not up to you. The meta dictates that efficiency is the name of the game. “B-b-but most people don’t care about metas!” Surely this must be some kind of joke. Ever since the game came out, the meta has always been kill things asap. Even during dungeon eras there was the full zerk meta- if you didn’t ping full zerk on join then you were kicked from a lot of groups. During the pre-raid fractals era the meta was full zerk. I thought you were just really misinformed, but clearly you have no idea what you are talking about at all.

And no you’re not giving OP good info at all. “No no no just ignore everyone. You are perfect the way you are. Everyone is wrong.” What is this, some kind of fat acceptance club?

Its Nerfing Time.1495:

Whether you like it or not, their opinions don’t matter anymore than yours does. Why? Simple – it doesn’t matter how fast you run something. Can you kill a boss? Yes? Then it’s irrelevant if a different group does it differently or faster.

Contrary to your statements, their ‘opinions’ actually do matter. And at this point due to the amount of testing and proof they have qt metas are basically facts. Your lackadaisical approach to pve is why so many people are giving you flak. Why do something less efficiently when there is a more efficient way to do it? It’s like a manufacturing company refusing to implement and adopt state of the art technology that all of its competitors are using to make stuff faster- “Can I make stuff? Yes? Then it’s irrelevant if my competitors make things faster and I make things slower.”

To the vast majority of pve players, qt metas are basically the bible. Go stand in any zone and ask in map chat what the best build for a class is. Everyone is going to tell you to go check out qt’s website. It doesn’t matter if YOU think revs are good. Your wishful thinking isn’t going to break the meta. You are giving OP bad information just based on your personal bias, because once OP hits end game pve content such as t4 fractals, he WILL get flak a lot for being on a class that a lot of people deem as not good.

Not sure what kind of pve you’ve been doing, but most people do care about metas. If you’re content doing tier 1, 2 fractals and dungeons then sure meta doesn’t matter as much. But if you think people doing t4 fractals aren’t going to care about metas, then either you haven’t run it before or you just run with a group that is super relaxed and has low standards.

Had a good laugh at “What QT says is irrelevant” part. Sounds exactly like something a guy who runs rampager gear on his condi necro because he doesn’t want to spend money on viper gear would say. Qtfy tests everything against combat golems to come up with their benchmarks. They never go off of spreadsheet analytics. They upload footage for each class/spec benchmark on their website. If you don’t even know that then clearly you have never even seen their website, which is all I need to know that you are a low or mid level pver who hasn’t dabbled in end game pve. These are the absolute crème de la crème of the pve community so I’ll take their word (and hard evidence) over anything you claim.

Honestly you just seem to be a in a state of denial because you currently main a rev. And this is coming from a guy who used to main rev when it came out, stopped playing once t4 and raid metas started forming, and eventually deleted it because t4 and raid pugs would constantly ask me to change to a more useful class.

Boon bot rev will definitely work for solo pve, but that’s not saying much because practically anything will work in solo pve. You could roll a cleric necro or minstrel ranger and still do solo pve.

In a fractals setting though, groups will always prefer a PS warrior over a rev because warriors can drop strength and discipline banners. And because revs have good boon sharing but relatively poor dps, they are viewed primarily as boon bots rather than viable dps by the wider pve community, which means they are perceived as being redundant when your fractal group is pretty much always going to have a PS warrior because that is the meta party comp. As far as the wider pve community is concerned, a rev’s ability to pulse fury and protection is not enough to warrant it a spot in fractals.

And regarding revenant dps, lets phrase it this way. According to qtfy’s benchmarks, a power dps rev only does 26K against a training golem. There are 21 classes/specs that do higher dps than it. And keep in mind this 26K is achieved by NOT toggling facets on passive for boon sharing because you will need energy for vengeful hammers. So if you want to run your rev as a boon bot, dps will be much lower. Qtfy won’t even bother wasting time doing a benchmark for condi rev. Considering that they actually bothered to measure benchmarks for chronos, that sort of tells you all you need to know about condi rev dps.

26K dps is certainly not THAT horrible. But as mentioned, the game’s pve community, especially when it comes to end game content, is obsessed with metas and trends. I’m just giving OP my honest 2 cents. If he really likes playing a rev he can play it all he wants. He bought the game with his money, and she should be free to play it however he wants. But until the next expansion is revealed, he’ll just have to get used to getting that ‘second class citizen’ treatment because he’s on a class that most people perceive to be a bad class.

@OP Revenant definitely is a class that needs some rework from a pve/raid perspective. It certainly isn’t as horrible as a lot of people make it out to be, but then again it definitely is not in a particularly good spot right now.

The primary problem is that a) Rev dps is rather low (rev condi builds are absolutely abysmal to the point where i doubt they’d even be able to outdps a chronomancer). b) The boons it grants are redundant because having 2 PS wars and druids running fury pets is meta. Assuming your PS wars and druids have at least some semblance of an idea of what they are doing, each subgroup will always have 25 might and close to perma fury, which renders a revenant’s boon sharing abilities redundant and useless. c) Because gw2 is so meta heavy, there is a ton of stigma associated with revs, which means people will automatically think you suck because you’re on a ‘sucky’ class that isn’t meta. This means people won’t want you in their raid squads. This is very unfortunate because to be quite honest, sure rev is not stellar, but it isn’t exactly THAT bad as well. Funnily enough, most of the worst raiders/pugs I’ve ever seen have been eles or engis who think they’re mlg top dps, but end up doing horrible dps because they can’t handle the complex rotations in an actual raid fight.

Thief is definitely a competitive dps class in pve. Sure it brings next to zero group utility, but then again all of your significant group utility is already brought by chronos, druids, and PS warriors. Most of the utility that other dps classes bring to the group when you have quickness, alacrity, 25 might, banners, empower allies, grace of the land, spotter, spirits, is pretty immaterial. The only utility that is so important that it can determine player death/wipe is breakbars, and thief brings one of the most powerful breakbar skills in the game.

AkumaKazama.8426:

Thanks Daedraz, but everyone is telling me what i already knew. I can’t play how I would like because its not….viable. This illusion of making your own build is frustrating when everything always ends up with sites like MettaBattle. To do awesome dps…do exactly this. (even if your skill level isn’t to the level of the poster.) Just thought I’d ask. I guess ill have to spend what i have to buy and make condi gear again.

I understand your frustration. And frankly this is a design flaw on behalf of Arena Net. If power rangers can only do like 18K dps and condis can do 33K, then of course everyone is going to choose the latter.

But you also have to understand why everyone cares about metas so much. In raids, dps is a huge deal simply because bosses all have enrage timers and have a crap ton of HP. Fighting raid bosses is definitely not the same as fighting a training golem. There will be mechanics that will force players to move, there will be phases that will render the boss invulnerable until the phase is over, players will make mistakes and go down or even die, etc all while the enrage clock is ticking. The raiding community places heavy emphasis on dps to account for all possibilities of Murphy’s law. It also boils down to the matter of efficiency. Raiders want their tanks to tank well; they want their healers to heal well; they want their dps to dps well. Why take a power ranger that can only do 18K dps when they can take a condi ranger that can do 33K, a guardian that can do 34K, a engi that can do 33K, an ele that can do 34-36K, a thief that can do 32K, etc etc.

Fluffball.8307:

I don’t think of rangers or hunters as being ranged. It’s just a misconception of this particular archetype on your end.

Seconded. Its a ranger, not an archer. Whenever I think of rangers, I think of a sort of ‘rogue-ish/warden-ish’ archetype that uses a bow to some extent but also has proficiency with finesse based melee weapons, traps, tracking, handling animals, etc.

But to answer your question, if you are hell-bent on sticking with a range only build, power longbow is your option. But as mentioned by others, longbow and frankly power ranger builds are total jokes. There is a reason why every end game ranger runs condi. You can easily outdps a power build by close to 2 times with a condi build. In open world, dungeons, and low tier fractals, a power ranger will get the job done just fine. But if you ever want to join the ‘big boys club’ and do high tier fractals and raids, you’ll need to get condi gear. Trying to join a T3+ fractals or raid pug group as a power ranger will most likely result in an insta-kick.

However, you could circumvent this problem somewhat by playing as a druid. Most of the times druids run magi gear for max healing, but it is not uncommon to see druids running with berserker gear + longbow/staff depending on whether the group needs a lot of healing or not. Since a druid’s job is primarily healing and buffing group with grace of the land, spotter, and spirits, not many people will expect good dps from them.

First off, welcome back.

1 & 2) Traditional WoW style raids were implemented, which has been a driving factor of the new meta builds for classes. The most simplest way I can break down the class roles in a pve environment are:
a) Warrior: primary role is party buffing with phalanx strength trait, empower allies, and banners. Contributes a decent amount of dps. Either power or condi is viable. Warrior has access to some of the most powerful crowdcontrol skills in the game. Berserker spec is mandatory for all iterations of warrior meta builds.
b) Guardian: power dps. Recently received some buffs and contributes a very good level of dps. Dragon hunter spec is mandatory.
c) Ranger: can be played as magi healer druid which also contributes significant party buffs such as grace of the land, spotter, and spirits. For healer druid, obviously druid spec is mandatory. Also can be specced to be a terrific condi dps with viper’s gear. For dps spec you don’t take druid spec. Nobody runs power ranger dps because it is so subpar compared to condi ranger.
d) Engineer: primarily played as condi dps. Power engineers are a thing but condi engis do better dps. Minor party support with healing turret, and pinpoint distribution trait. Nobody takes scrapper spec because vanilla condi engi can contribute terrific dps.
e) Necromancer: Primarily played as condi with viper with reaper spec being mandatory. BUT, as of late not many people are playing necros because their dps is subpar and they don’t really contribute a whole lot to a group.
f) Mesmer: primarily played as a support class (sometimes as tank in certain raids). Mesmer does really low dps, but makes up for it by buffing the party with alacrity and quickness which really cranks up the entire group’s dps. Chronomancer spec is mandatory.
g) Elementalist: primarily played a power dps class. Undeniable top dog in terms of dps rankings but also has one of the highest learning curves. Can also be specced to be a healer, but healer eles are rather uncommon. Tempest spec is mandatory for both dps and healer.
h) Revenant: nobody plays this class in pve because it is terrible in its current iteration.
i) Thief: primarily played as power dps. Doesn’t hit as hard as guardian, elementalist, condi engi, condi ranger, but has the advantage of being very easy to play. Daredevil spec is more or less mandatory.

3) Leveling by crafting is still a thing, but it’ll be hard for someone like you who is just returning back. The game economy has experienced serious inflation and crafting just costs so much more gold now. This is obviously negated by invoking the power of a Mastercard/Visa.

4) There’s not a whole lot to it. Once you obtain a item, the moment you soul/account bind it the skin becomes available for your entire account. Obviously, armor class restrictions still exist, meaning that you can’t try and use a heavy armor skin on a light armor class. You can change skins whenever you want by using transmutation charges which can be purchased from the gemstore.

5) Living world is sort of a continuation of the game’s lore/story. The vanilla game story/lore ends with the demise of the elder dragon Zhaitan. Living world is basically a continuation of what happens to the world of Tyria after that. Each season of living world comes with multiple episodes. Living world also introduces new enemies, new allies, and new areas. In trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum, all I can say is that the first two living world seasons eventually culminate into the invasion of Maguuma (Heart of Thorns expansion).

6) All I can say is since you’re just returning back, take things slowly. A whole lot has changed and there is a lot of new content. And also, brace yourself for Heart of thorns because everything in maguuma hurts a lot. The difficulty of Heart of Thorns content is on a whooooole new level in comparison to base content. I would also like to suggest maining an easy class such as power PS warrior, guardian, or thief. Simply because they don’t have complex rotations or high learning curves. Also, power oriented gear such as berserker is easier/cheaper to obtain than condition or support oriented gear such as commander, minstrel, or viper, which are absolutely mandatory for condition and support classes.

Leggings appear to be Braham’s Heavy Armor skin from gemstore (The red part appears to be the fur ornament that wraps around the leggings). Leggings appears to be dyed with celestial dye.

Not sure about the chest since it is heavily obscured. But I think its probably Braham’s Heavy Armor chest skin because the shoulders are left exposed and a noticeable fur trim. Sort of hard to tell what dye is used- some kind of white dye for the fur trim and maybe midnight blue or abyss for the rest.

Can’t see the boots at all so can’t help with that.

As mentioned by others, gauntlets definitely appear to be draconic. Gauntlets appear to be either gold, redemption, pyre, illumination or some other bright ‘golden’ colored dye. Shoulders are definitely norn t3 cultural. I’m fairly sure it is dyed with the Charred dye.

Sinister stat is condition damage, power, precision. And unfortunately you can’t use sinister for condi rangers. In order to maximize a condi build’s dps, you need to max out condition duration, which gets increased by gear that give you expertise stats. Certain classes like engineers and warriors get traits that increase the duration of their conditions (engineer’s chemical rounds trait increases all condition duration by 50%. Warriors get bloodlust and king of fires which increases bleed and burn duration by 33%). Unfortunately rangers don’t get such traits so in order to hit 100% condition duration, viper gear is absolutely mandatory.

I’m sorry OP had a negative experience with raids so far, but it’s nothing personal. Raids are designed to be the ultimate/most challenging pve content in the game and every single raid member absolutely needs to be on top of their stuff. A lot of boss encounters are mechanic heavy and not properly understanding those mechanics can result in a wipe. Most raid groups just want a smooth/fast run with people who know what they’re doing, and you can’t really fault them for that.

One thing I can tell you is that when you try joining a PUG raid group via the LFG list, unless it says “training run” explicitly, just assume the raid group will expect you to know your mechanics and be on top of everything. And I know it can be frustrating trying to find a training run on LFG- they don’t really pop up that often. So as aforementioned by some people, just look at the Looking For section on this forum and look for a raiding guild that will accept newbies.

Prahasta.1748:

Elementalists are much better healers, condis… are you even comparing them to a proper condi class? Yeah they do enough different things to be used in a party and agree about PvP but they aren’t the best choice for any role in Raids, Fractals or WvW. And I’m not even going to compare their boons to mesmers or revenants

Clearly you have never done a single raid in your life. Druids are ‘absolute must haves’ in the current mirror comp meta along with chronos and PS warriors. I think you severely underestimate how significant spotter, frost spirit, glyph of empowerment, and gotl are, particularly when certain raid bosses require massive dps checks. The aforementioned buffs are why healing eles are very rarely used because they sacrifice all their personal dps to be able to heal on a competent level and they don’t give a single useful dps buff to the group.

And really, what the heck man? Are you seriously going to sit there and tell us that druid buffs are worse than revenant boons? Not sure what rock you’ve been living under but revenants have been obsolete for a while. Why bring a rev when a PS warrior (which is most certainly gonna be in a raid) can generate more might and do more dps; why bring a rev when your hammer guard can generate perma prot and still do more dps; etc etc. Comparing druid buffs to mesmer buffs is completely irrelevant because both classes are raid meta and there will always be at least 1 of each in every raid group. You will also find both classes in t4 fractals frequently as well.

Clearly you also don’t know the ranger class very well if you think that an ele can do condi better than a ranger. Son, condi rangers are like literal top dogs along with engis in the condi dps department right now.

From a pve perspective:

Guardian: At lvl 80 and when you unlock the dragon hunter elite spec, guardian is amazing. Generally at end game content such as raids or high level fractals, guardians run max dps builds, which means the amount of party support they put out is very minimal. This is because the party support that guardians bring is defensive (protection, aegis, etc) in nature, and most experienced groups can do end game content without them. Although, sometimes you’ll see guardians run hammer builds in raids, where they will lose a bit of dps but will be able to support frontline fighters and the group’s tank with perma-protection. Hammer builds are usually used for beginner raid groups that have inexperienced tanks or healers. Guardians are not really sought out after specifically, but they will always be welcome in end game groups because they can dps really well.

Warriors: Warriors is a jack of all trades sort of class. It does decent dps, has great survivability, and has unparalleled offensive party support. At end game content warriors will be expected to run phalanx strength (PS) builds, which will allow them to generate a crap ton of might (1 PS warrior can maintain 25 stacks of might for his/herself and 4 other people on basically a perma basis) for the party on top of dropping strength and discipline banners. Having a good PS warrior can increase the entire group’s dps by a ton. PS warriors are always in high demand for end game groups.

Revenant: Due to the nerfs revenant took a while ago, they’ve lost their niche in a pve setting. They do lackluster dps, and a lot of other classes can do dps way better; they can generate might for the party, but a PS warrior can do that job so much better and do more dps; they can generate perma fury, but that is sort of redundant since most classes in end game content are running meta builds and have very high crit rate anyways; they can generate perma protection, but a guardian running hammer build can do that too and still do more dps; they have decent breakbar skills, but classes like mesmer, warrior, or guardian can break bars even better; etc etc. Due to this, the demand for revenant is non-existent. If you try to join a raid group on a rev, there’s a good chance you’ll be asked to change classes.

Mesmer and elementalist are the two hardest classes in the game imo that have the steepest learning curves.

Elementalist is hard simply because in end game content you’ll be running full berserker stat gear (power, precision, ferocity) which means you will be extremely squishy and basically everything will 1 shot you. Unless you have an absolute mastery of your class and understanding of the pve content you are doing, you will be going down/dying a lot. But when played well, elementalist is the undeniable top dog in terms of dps in the entire game.

Mesmers are hard because due to their lackluster dps, they are taken as tanks most of the time. Also it is worth noting that mesmers should never be using ranged weapons because their ranged options are god awful. All mesmers at end game content run sword. And like WoW, there’s a whole lot of responsibility riding on the tank. Mesmer tanks are the meta for raids right now because mesmers can provide the party with a lot of quickness (a boon that makes everyone affected attack and use skills 50% faster). However, the quickness upkeep rotations are very complex and perplexing to learn, especially if you are new to mesmer. On top of a confusing and complex rotation, you will have to pay attention to tanking raid bosses, raid mechanics, etc.

For ranged options, there are scepter dps guardian(stay at range and just go ham with scepter range attacks. Great dps and offers a modicum of party support); condition necro (stay at mid range and spam scepter. However, condi necros were nerfed last halloween and they perform at a bit sub-par level now.); power longbow ranger (stay at range and pew pew with a long bow. Generally not favored because power rangers have pretty bad dps).

Revenant is a very under-performing class that imo just doesn’t do much and has an incredibly boring play style (from a pve perspective). It was deemed too strong when it first got released and it got nerfed into oblivion and hasn’t been given the appropriate balancing to make it viable or relevant for end game content.

Warrior on the other hand, is a sort of jack-of-all trade class. It can dish out some respectable DPS, has superb survivability, and can boost the party’s dps significantly by dropping banners and generating a crap ton of might.

Since you’ve been an avid WoW player, you’ll be pleased to learn that there is holy trinity in gw2 as well. ‘Traditional’ style raids got implemented with Heart of Thorns for 10 man parties. There are actual tanking (aggro works off of the toughness stat of your dedicated tank), healing (rangers get the druid elite spec which turns them into healing /buffing powerhouses), and dpsing roles now. Although the limitations on what classes can perform what roles aren’t as restrictive as WoW. If you have the right gear, any class can perform any duty. For example, with the right gear a thief can be a tank; an elementalist can be a tank/healer hybrid; a necromancer can be a tank; etc.

The raids imo are really well designed. Raid content is really challenging; raid bosses go into multiple phases and different raid mechanics are present; etc etc.

11/10 would join again. Got my first VG and Gorseval kills with these guys- a serious breath of fresh air after going through a lot of unsuccessful pug training runs. Great guild environment for inexperienced/new raiders who are dealing with unsuccessful pug training runs that never seem to progress or can’t find a static raid group.