Guild Wars 2

ProtoGunner.4953:

The whining again. This forum’s community is so predictable, now I am biased and when I start to play Mirage I wonder what the whining was here. Remember the Tempest before HoT release? Same whining etc. and it became one of the most popular classes…

I’m actually one of the few who is on the positive side of the Mirage debate. I would love if it remained as it is and worked on tweaking the traits. From a WvW perspective I had a ton of fun with it and can see so many bright spots and plays that it can make.

In just about every circumstance that I play a Mirage played by me would beat a Core Mesmer played by me. I’ll stay silent and let the community drum up how bad Mirage is so I can enjoy the spec even more than I did.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Hana.8143:

It’s like the mesmer in 2013 (or 2014 ?), when he had that trait, and took fall damages, and did 20k every sec with the aoe that pop under its feet.

I’m sorry, what?

Chaos storm has never done 20k damage a second.

Why would you use an absolute if you don’t know?

I loved Elusive Mind and Self Deception but all 3 major traits felt pretty underwhelming.

Sword: Amazing, simply the best one for WvW. Didn’t notice the bug with interrupt but wasn’t playing with it with those traits.

GS: Doesn’t always seem to fire correctly, or visuals are off. Didn’t check combat logs to see if it was bugged or was just visual problems.

Staff: Doesn’t do enough power damage

Axe: Seemed OK but didn’t play with it enough.

Scepter: Both condi and power damage were good

I think Jaunt is fine as it is because if you increase the range too much it becomes too strong. I love that it is useful to both power and condi specs. I’d rather have 3 uses out of it that are short range than a nerf that makes it only 2 charges for longer range.

I prefer the current design of it because it plays into the strengths of mesmer: positional play with potential for bursts. It’s critical that it have multiple charges with relatively short recharge on the ammo.

I think folks are looking at it as another teleport and are missing out on how useful it is for so many different situations.

Having played with it extensively in WvW this weekend I do agree that most of the traits are better suited for condi, but there’s plenty of room in the traits for synergy in power builds.

I also agree that the GS ambush is strange, as I can’t always tell when it goes off.

I tried both full zerk and full condi Mirage in WvW this past weekend and it’s definitely extremely strong. In large scale fights it far outperforms base Mesmer and of course doesn’t bring any utility that the Chrono does bring.

Having said that, I don’t play Chrono for the utility in zerg fights as I only play it full zerk or full condi. My impression is that my Chrono will do better in some situations and Mirage will do better in others, but the overall fun factor goes to Mirage.

I completely disagree with those saying the class mechanic sucks, as it seems to be a l2p issue. When you dodge with Mirage you can move freely in any direction you want. I think the dodge backwards might be the only situation where regular dodge has an advantage but even then an about face would do almost the same.

In terms of small or solo roaming the Mirage is going to bubble to the top of the food chain as the mobility and cleave is top notch.

Having looked over the Mirage traits and skills I have to say that from a WvW perspective this is going to be my choice going forward. I’ll still have my zerk Chrono builds that I can swap to when facing certain situations but I think Mirage zerk and condi will perform exactly how I’ve wanted mesmer to perform since release.

Pretty excited!

Embolism.8106:

I think Mantra of Distraction had the right idea in terms of channel effects. Why not go bonkers with that: make every Mantra recharge an associated Shatter skill?

.

Mantra of Pain: Reduce Mind Wrack’s CD by 5s when channel finishes.
.

Mantra of Resolve: Reduce Cry of Frustration’s CD by 10s when channel finishes.
.

Mantra of Distraction: Reduce Diversion’s CD by 15s when channel finishes.
.

Mantra of Concentration: Reduce Distortion’s CD by 10s when channel finishes. CD increased from 15s to 20s.

.

But what about Mantra of Recovery? Well…

.

Mantra of Recovery: Grant 5s of Alacrity to yourself when channel finishes. Power Return no longer heals for half health when above 50% HP.

.

Two reasons for this.

First, if other professions are getting Alacrity baseline Mesmer most certainly should get it too.

Second, it’s a throwback to what Mantra of Recovery originally did in GW1. Fitting, no?

I love it! As for Harmonious, I do miss it but I like the new trait that replaced it even more.

Very well said. I’ve completely dropped mantras after the changes because:

1. Mantra of recovery heals too little for the cast time and risk involved.

2. The condition cleanse aspect is also no longer desirable because of how easy it is for conditions to be applied and covered. It is extremely frustrating to burn through 2 mantra charges and still not cleanse the bleeds that are really what I want gone. Before the odds of removal were much better.

3. Since I’m no longer using the mantra heal, and as a result dropping Inspiration, the 2s cast time of other mantras aren’t as desirable compared to what else I could take.

And I think that’s a fair request because it as it stands the signet is significantly less desirable due to the lack of synergy it has with most skills and trait lines.

I’d love if the active did something with respect to confusion and torment but then again the cooldown reduction trait (and stun duration increasing trait) is in a line that has very few traits and especially no GM traits that a condi build would ever care about.

The opportunity cost of this signet is simply too high when you consider what you can take instead. Please show this utility some love!

You’re right that the lines have blurred a little because of confusion but I meant domination was not a DoT and condition-damage are mostly damage about DoT. In GW1 domination was never about DoT. Not a single skill acted as a DoT for health in terms of the game mechanics. For my purposes “direct damage” means the type of damage in GW1 that was not a DoT and was instantly applied when the conditions were met.

If you want to keep it condition based then the active should do something with respect to confusion. It should follow the theme of “if some condition is met, do something extra”.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Domination

I’d like to see this signet changed to give a bonus to physical damage stats, like power, precision, or ferocity rather than condition damage.

1. The entire domination line is about power
2. The trait that reduces the cooldown and gives an additional condi cleanse and invlun is in the domination line, so see point #1
3. GW1 domination was about direct damage
4. The active effect prevents someone from taking skill-use confusion damage for a lengthy time

I don’t really understand why this signet is still offering a bonus to condition damage.

apharma.3741:

For WvW chrono still lets you get more healing out of restorative illusions though due to chronophantasma and by extension ether feast so chrono sustain hasn’t really been hit at all. Mantra mesmer has been absolutely gutted though for sustain but I guess we’re just supposed to burst and run now.

Very true. I’m just looking at it from the mantra perspective, and from that perspective Chrono is used more as a setup for back-to-back burst, lowered cooldowns on sustaining skills, and phantasms spikes. It’s not an effective means of sustain or condi removal due to the nature of mantras.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

So what build do you use? What trait lines?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAR8fl0nhy0YJawRNwtGLrGVZEUcBw5RkEPX9yGtTLA-TFCBABbcQAyT3ADHBAs2fU+dmSQAuAAB8AAqU9HSBonyI-w

That was the build prior to yesterdays changes. Now I’m having to find something else that works for me. Also I’m a fan of desperate decoy and it works well for me in both setting up bursts and disengaging.

zomgbuffalo.5276:

Hackuuna.4085:

Power mantra WvW roaming has been hit hard by this. Yes, the burst is incredible now and you can 1-shot anything without auto-invulns, but the cost has been very high.

You mean you can one shot with dueling traited?

Dueling with Mantra of Pain I was consistently able to one-shot with a correctly timed wombo-combo prior to patch and now the damage is even higher (bonus to ALL critical damage, and can preload 8 additional might, and cause 5 to 10 extra vuln stacks). That’s for WvW though with food and bloodlust stacks.

Well, before patch Mantra of Recovery with Harmonious and Inspiration healed:

-2.6k x 3 preloaded (before a fight) = 7.8k, 3 seconds to use the 3 charges
-2.6k x 4 (mid fight cast) = 10.4k, 2.75 cast time + 3 seconds to use the 3 charges + 10s cooldown between

Now it’s:

-1.6k x 2 preloaded = 3.2k, 2 seconds to use 2 charges with 1k extra per charge heal if below 50% health, so at most 5.2k
-1.6k x 3 + 2.6k = 7.4k, 2.25 cast time + 2 seconds to use the 2 charges + 10s cooldown between, with at most 9.4k if heals were below 50%

The big difference is how much heal you can preload and how effective it is when high health, meaning you gain more when low health so you should delay using it, but then that lowers your effective heal rate since you are waiting to use a heal.

That, and you have lost a condi clear each charge, which means mantra now removes 2 condis after 2 charges instead of 6 condis after 3 charges. The condi clear nerf along with 50% requirement to get the most out of the 2 charges and the 1k reduction in mantra channel heal is why sustain has been reduced significantly.

Curunen.8729:

Mantra of Recovery / Mender’s Purity is a noticable nerf.

The whole “heal more while below 50%” thing doesn’t make much sense for mantra as it is the kind of heal you want to keep topping yourself up with when you drop below 75% or so (assuming average health pool of ~18-20k). Mantra isn’t the sort of heal like Ether Feast where you let yourself drop low in order to make the most of the heal. It’s the more “spammable” heal where you want to keep topping yourself up and not let yourself drop too low if possible.

I strongly think the conditional under 50% normal healing and over 50% reduced healing should be reverted to a flat heal amount. Nevermind the nerf to Restorative Mantras which while it is good to be reliant on healing power, does reduce the effectiveness of heal on charge. And also nevermind the loss of extra toughness on charging mantras…

I am certainly feeling the reduced sustain in wvw.

Completely agree that the 50% requirement for the heal needs to be removed. Sustain is now gone and in it’s place is huge damage. Oddly enough Chrono is less appealing now since it has no real sustain/condi removal traits. It’s burst or die.

Power mantra WvW roaming has been hit hard by this. Yes, the burst is incredible now and you can 1-shot anything without auto-invulns, but the cost has been very high.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Instead it’s killing players who are completely reluctant for no reward. It’s like doing open world pvp in wow and being lvl 60 and fighting against a lvl 30, and the gloating about it, there is no honor.

A zerg isn’t going to pass up the chance to kill the exact same person the roamer would kill.

Turk.5460:

By calling solo roamers “bullies” you’re making this out to be way more simplistic than it really is, effectively labeling something you don’t understand in a negative light because of your own individually biased morals you created.

Exactly, it’s far too simplistic. It’s taking the definition of bullying to the point where it loses meaning and can pretty much include all competitive activities where there are situations to repeatedly draw opponents into an unfavorable position.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I dunno, If u like chasing people who clearly don’t want to 1v1 and aren’t geared or speced for it, then maybe? I always feel like roamers can’t handle the minimal amount of fairness that is put into spvp, so they go to wvw instead to have a huge advantage.

Every build and class has terrain or situations that play to their advantage. I guess you would consider the folks who run builds that are great at sniping players near tower doors as bullies towards those who cross paths with the tower?

Or, you know, maybe those who choose to fight someone who has such a huge advantage are legitimately the ones at fault? Why would you even try to engage at that point?

It would be like whining about condi roamers and having absolutely no cleanses when you eventually fight one. Are the condi roamers bullies too?

You can’t dodge the hands, your only worry for this fight is having enough sustain to outlast your clones attacks while you dps.

For Mesmer I used zerk chrono and managed to kill it fairly easily. First CC burst I take it down to 69%, and each burst after that reduces how many percent I can take it down by 4% or 5%, so the encounter totally takes about 4 cc bar breaks, which is about 8 or 10 minutes I think.

finkle.9513:

So instead of building new skills, it just seems they over complicate thing by having so much going on, and it being a dexterity Challenger over a skilled knowledge one.

Change your keybinds so that it takes less dexterity to play.

Are there plans to address consumables that provide negative condi duration?

Exciton.8942:

Zintrothen.1056:

“2. Elusive Mind
Dodging breaks stun and removes conditions.
• Conditions removed: 1
• Breaks Stun”

Holy kitten that’s OP. That’s honestly more powerful than Daredevil’s Bounding Dodger.

Incoming Inspiration, Illusion, Mirages. High regen uptime, constant stunbreaks, incredible mobility, powerful against conditions, applies massive amounts confusion and torment on top of plenty of bleeding and other conditions. GG anet. You manage to make the next elite spec more powerful than the current specs.

In a vacuum, the trait looks OP.

However, you compare to chronomancer. You lose out chronophantasm and illusionary reversion. Mesmer shatter, especially shatter for conditions rely heavily on illusion generation rather than shatter CD. You will lose out a lot of condition pressure by not picking chronomancer.

Also not being able to shatter as often will make shatter on cleanse, shatter for phantasm recharge(also the loss of double phantasm by shield) less powerful as well.

Just by looking at everything mirage offers. I don’t see inspiration/illusion/mirage stronger than inspiration/illusion/chrono.

However, I do see potential in dueling/illusion/mirage as it will offer crazy damage potential. Dueling offers dodge for clones which has great synergy with mirage which heavily emphasizes on dodging. That way, you will lose the crazy good condition cleansing from inspiration. So it remains to be seen if the trade off is worth it.

Good points. The nature of clone bursts with Mirage almost demands bleed on crits (many rapid attacks from many sources), so you are sacrificing a lot of potential damage by not going dueling.

On top of that, when you lose chrono you are losing the double down on critical skills at critical times. I have a few ideas to test once I get my hands on it but I can see chrono outperforming in some ways, and Mirage outperforming in other ways.

I’m particularly interested in trying out the new dodge mechanic as it sounds on paper to be far superior to any other dodge.

Condition duration modifiers are additive with few exceptions. Although your modifier is -97%, an opponent with +100% will entirely negate your modifier, resulting in their condi having a duration bonus of +3%.

So take your opponents +duration and subtract your -duration and you get their final duration bonus/penalty.

Looks like CS negating fall damage was fixed in this last update.

I could see an argument for granting greater decay time on dolyak escorts or killing dolyaks as that requires being active and vulnerable to complete but I wouldn’t give a full 10mins for that.

I guess they could include a new category “in combat with enemy server player or lord” which will prevent participation loss while in combat with player/lord and grant 5 to 10mins decay if you are killed and/or you break combat. That will bring up a few more problems but should at least encourage more pvp encounters to keep up participation.

I don’t really want to see them give additional time for easily exploitable mechanics like killing guards and rather they encourage pvp.

Killing a guard in a camp set the decay to about 2mins, trebs I’m guessing are 1min. Small tasks buy you a small amount of time, larger seem to reset it to larger times.

I captured a camp and it got set to 10mins. Got 5mins for a sentry. The decay doesn’t seem to be additive as I captured 2 sentries within 1min of each other and the decay was set to 5mins.

Repairing Stonemist set to 5mins. Stonemist defend event 10mins. Didn’t test everything but some of the information in this thread is extremely misleading.

The potential of Continuum Split with so many different plays is pretty hard to ignore in WvW. It provides so much flexibility and unpredictable behavior that you’re hard to read and counter.

SaltAndLight.4652:

Thanks for the replies!

I distinctly remember seeing two mind wracks for a little over 5K damage each, which hit nearly simultaneously. My mind wracks never hit for that much =)

Scholar runes 10%
Sigil of Savagery 3% (assuming Power Lock daze or stun on you)
Mirror blade gives you 6 might and target 9 stacks of Vuln (Domination line)
Daze applies 5 stacks Vuln (Domination line)
Interrupt applies 3 stacks Vuln (Domination line)
If running Mental Anguish 30% damage (while you are inactive/dazed/stunned)
17 stacks vuln adds 8.5% damage (Domination) and 17% from vuln itself

In total the Mind Wrack would have a potential damage multiplier of 1.815 from those. Ferocity multiplier means total multiplier of about 3.5211. You would need a 1420 damage on Mind Wrack before multiplier to achieve a 5k crit.

Damage formula is

Weapon Strength * Power * DamageCoeff / Armor

Assume Berserker and Scholar on Mesmer, you with similar armor (i.e. base armor):

Avg Greatsword weapon strength = 1047
Berserker amulet + scholar + 6 stacks might, power = 2555
Mind Wrack Coeff = 1.15
Medium armor (no toughness) = 2064

1047*2555*1.15/2064 = 1490.479
1490.479 * 3.5211 = 5249.6

Some numbers may be off but that seems to be over 5k each from the mesmer traits and skills alone.

SaltAndLight.4652:

So I got my boots bursted off of me the other day in unranked sPvP, and it was probably somebody on here that did it. I wish I had taken a screen shot, but I didn’t.

I was at nearly full health and playing a D/P thief at the time.

They were using GS and hit me with the following, everything critically hit, dmg is approximate from memory.

Power Lock – 1K
Mirror Blade – 3K
Mind Wrack – 5K
Mind Wrack – 5K
Mirror Blade – 3K
Mind Stab – 3K
Spatial Surge – 2K

I’ve tried replicating the damage in the PvP Lobby using the power shatter build on Metabattle, but I’ve come nowhere near these numbers. What am I missing?

What you get hit by is probably:

Mirror Blade
Mirror Blade
Mirror Blade
Mind Wrack
Mind Wrack
Power Spike
Mind Stab
(if you survived that, then maybe a followup of Power Spike, Spatial Surge)

I can’t speak for the damage numbers in sPvP but the best spike is to hit with Mirror Blade at point blank range (the closer you are, the closer to instant all 3 Mirror Blade hits will be) followed by Mind Wrack (which will be yourself and your GS clone, so 2 Mind Wracks) and Power Spike as soon as the the Mirror Blade first hit is applied followed by Mind Stab.

If it’s timed and aimed correctly all the hits should land “instant”. A poorly executed one will result in a slow Mind Stab followup or Mirror Blade bouncing thus delaying the burst. Some may run Power Lock combined with Power Block trait to achieve a similar burst if the Power Lock lands an interrupt at the time of the burst, but I don’t know how common it is in sPvP since I don’t play that game mode.

Jeknar.6184:

Hexalot.8194:

Your calculation for damage reduction is false, just saying. Damage reduction is not additive, but compounded. I.e… 33% protection plus 10% damage reduction from rune does not equal 43% overall damage reduction. I think it comes to something like 35% or something like that.

Protection given by tempest is 40% not 33%. That’s why it’s 43 and not 35.

Technically incorrect. Protection on Tempest is 40%, protection on everyone else is 33%. Protection ON a tempest is modified to be higher, not the protection given out.

Necro is your best bet, but it’s going to be far from your best roaming spec unless you like “roaming” around cliffs, your keeps/towers, and spawn point because you will not have the ability to disengage from just about everything.

That’s assuming you are talking about solo roaming.

Wartna.8671:

Found it;
You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars 2 and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars 2.

Then they should start banning the people who even started to whine about this on the main forums, because many of them have been explaining how the exploit is done. Let’s not even forget the plethora of bugs in the past that were exploited and never resulted in bans.

Totally agree! They should also retroactively ban people who used: mesmer golem clone exploit, necro signet on gates exploit, mesmer fall trait exploit, recent guardian and engineer exploits, immobilization using AC’s with warrior’s trait exploit, mesmer recursive stun interrupt/damage exploit, going through tower gates exploit, pve items that stun, knockdown, and other random stuff exploit, double proc sigil exploit, tonic sigil exploit, tonic rune exploit. Sigil stacks kept while weapon swapped out exploit. Perma 50% damage reduction using flame ram buff exploit.

I’m sure I missed a few.

Straegen.2938:

I think this system would be confusing and difficult to implement. It would probably make for better fights but there are several other suggestions which would do as well and be more straight forward.

I think his idea of merging for teams isn’t a good idea because nothing guarantees that those “teams” would end up just as unbalanced as now. Might as well keep it the way it is with servers and use glicko balancing across slices to keep things even.

I think the only way slices could work is if they are independent and retain state (so as to still allow for upgrades). How to transition from one slice to another so that it’s not confusing would be another topic, but in the end it would create for tremendous matchup variance and would prevent servers from being locked into the same matchups all the time and thus keep things fresh.

Wouldn’t it be more fun to have different opponents that have relatively even matching at different times of the day? Nothing stops people from playing in any time slice with friends, or staying up late to help your other slice do better. A guild could stay up later and fight a guild from another timezone that they would have never faced before, and each week would bring a plethora of different fight opportunities.

Time slicing and having independent matches with glicko for each slice would be one way to get great matchup variance. I’d imagine a lot of NA servers can get high participation during NA prime, which would result in close glicko ratings across all the NA prime time slices.

You might get a good system going by just leaving it as server based and dividing into time slices (say 4 or 8 hour slices) along with independent match states (i.e. a T3 garrison during one slice doesn’t carry over to another slice, but is preserved for the next day of the slice). In that way, people who want to play in multiple slices can while still preserving server identity.

About 20 silver per rank up chest so you got 2000g from rank ups.

I know items exist that you consume and it puts a bundle into your hands, but I was wondering if there was items more like siege blueprints from WvW. Basically you can put them into your hands during combat but also have the option of returning it to your inventory should you choose not to actually use it.

Anyone know if something like that exists for dungeons/fractals?

Cancel action is part of gw2 though, both in a keybind to cancel and using stow weapon to cancel. It doesn’t work with every skill directly, but even skills that can’t be canceled via those key binds can be canceled by weapon swaps.

In addition, there already is faking out where viable. It’s not necessary until you meet good opponents but it’s also a good habit to be ready to cancel a skill if you think it won’t connect.

+1 for cast bars. Either give me the option to standardize all enemy models in game like the proposed solution (except extended to include all sPvP modes and WvW) or give me the option to see cast bars.

What do you mean sigil procs? How often are you triggering energy in a typical fight? I don’t thief anymore but I don’t see s/d thieves leaving s/d so often as to maximize energy sigil, but that might just be me.

Not saying you are wrong, just curious what you mean.

I feel like the long cooldowns on the interrupt skills hurts this trait. I wish they tied it to blinds instead, something like every time you cause blind you cause X (maybe weakness? or some small damage?) because that would have good synergy with a lot of the elementalist traits, utilities, and weapon skills.

As pointed out and shown in a nice video sf ele is a perfect counter. 3 condi cleanse + reflect when they steal, blind and invuln when they get into melee to cnd, swirling to mitigate range, water attune cleanse for minor things, strong burst and ranged pressure to punch through tanky stats.

That’s assuming the pd commits to the fight and no critters or tower walls around to cnd off of. Remember, all walls and critters are on the side of the pd thief. Also, in a completely open situation where there is no walls or critters PU condi might be better than pd condi, but critters and walls give pd condi my stamp as the “easiest to play and feel like you are good” build in WvW.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Grevender.9235:

LightningBlaze.4913:

What makes you think a fresh air nuker needs to be zerker to burst? Everyone should know at this stage of the game that the Ele doesn’t need to be zerker in order to burst like one.

it’s like asking “how much horsepower do you need to get 600 horsepower?”. We are of course talking about peak, and everyone should know at this stage of the game that only full zerk is full zerk….

Since this is not associated towards the bias bunker/non Bunker topic. I’ll reply to it. The horsepower metaphor does not correspond to this game mechanic at all. My Ele only has 3 zerker trinket and the rest is mixed of soldier, assassin, knight and sentinel gears. Yet I still get asked all the time by many players how am I bursting more than their full zerk geared Ele using a full zerk build like 6/6/0/0/10. The answer is simple and you will learn in time if you follow other paths after mastering bunker specs. The reason why ele can burst high is primarily due to damage modifiers traits, follow by stats and then multiple instant skill cast in one sec. This is something very few knew during the stage Daphonix made popular the bunker dd god mode build. After fresh air release many found out the info because they started to experiment with other playstyles. This is why at this stage of the game you should already know that the Ele can burst without being full zerk geared or using a glass build.

Funny enough I got whispered by an enemy ele in WvW the other day because he was shocked at how tanky I was while at the same time hitting extremely hard. I told him I’m full zerk fresh air and he didn’t believe me at first until we did some duels. He realized that what makes me “tanky” is having good positioning, kiting, using blinds for specific reasons, not wasting dodges, and knowing when it’s best to line of sight.

So it sort of goes both ways. Know how to time damage (whether you count out enemy dodges or watch for their attack animations) and know how to time defense. In either way you increase your “tankiness” or “burst”.

Ario.8964:

I think it really comes down to what do you want to be able to do. Mine is more defensive but still packs a punch. Hacks will just melt people like crazy but will be less forgiving so it will come down to how you want to play.

Yeah exactly. I used to run a more defensive option but I always found myself wanting a bigger punch to really cut through all the condi bunkers. I’ve been much happier ever since, but the cost is I’ve lost some sustain and walk around in fear of zerker longbow rangers, as sad as that sounds.

Get full zerker gear, 65003 warrior with greatsword sword/warhorn and equip bull’s charge, zerker stance, balanced stance. Find spot in camp where you line of sight everything but aggro everything and pull them into that spot. 100b + whirl and most will be dead though might need to bull charge the supervisor.

This is the fastest traveling combined with highest damage for camp clearing. Ignore sentries and dolyaks so that people won’t be able to read where you are and you will be able to flip most things without much warning.

For absolute fastest clearing do the same technique above except roll ele, equip fiery greatsword, proceed to clear camp in 2-3s.

In truth, I stopped caring about solo roaming and roamers because the vast majority of players in this game are built for group fights. Beating those kinds of players solo says as much about my own abilities as outnumbering to win – the odds are heavily stacked in one direction.

I care more about group roaming because as much as we like to think that playing with others is “relying on others” to help you out and hence less skillful, it’s actually equally skilled since your decisions on how to help allies impacts the fight just as much.

The difference is, in group roaming you can build for a far greater array of encounters and create far more interesting dynamics than in solo roaming. Unfortunately solo roaming suffers a lot from the lack of versatility in dealing with different situations so you end up with too many hard counters. Group roaming can overcome those with teamplay choices.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhcMKbW9wzBf0AEAGpkQ4AQEYAIuEUBihA-TlBFABCcCAQa/R5Xa6BA4BAUo6PXpEkUADsMC-w

That’s what I run in PvE (especially high level fractals). You support by giving perma fury and might stacks while doing massive damage. It’s not an optimal dungeon build since lightning hammer is better but still works well and let’s you train yourself for using fresh air optimally in WvW.

For WvW I run this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJArYhcM6ZWywzBf0AOAGxaQMQcEIA0BLeFWCA-TlBFABCcCAQa/R5Xa6BA4BAUo6PXpEkUADsMC-w

Same gear with same sigils and runes but has a bit more group support through boons, heals, and condi removal while still focusing on massive damage. Fair warning though, this build requires a lot of skill to play well in WvW.