Guild Wars 2

Mistward works best with shoulders hidden IMO.

I figured out a dye combo on Mistwarden armor that fits the Crimson Lion weapons.

Lava and Butter. Abyss matches my hair.

http://imgur.com/a/Z47o4

Slowmelt.8547:

Iohanna.4863:

Seems like a good idea – I mean it’s not like Thief is so weak that two Condi Revenants or two Bunker Chronomancers can 2v4 or 2v5 some equally skilled Thieves, right?

No, of course not. That would be absurd.
Condi Revs or Bunker Chronos can 2v4/2v5 a far MORE skilled group of Thief players.

Yeah, I recently gave in and switched from Power to Condi Revenant. It was like activating Bankai – the field was overcome with cancerous torment! Now if only Crimson Lion Mace skin didn’t cost so much…

Since Condi Revenants and Bunker Chronomancers can 2v5 Thieves, there really isn’t a place for Thieves at all right now.

Sorry Thieves.

Jana.6831:

If I were your opponents I would simply put 1 close, one far and 3 mid – that should solve the problem.

Wouldn’t thieves be able to simply overwhelm close and far then?

deda.8302:

So u plan to have 5 men zerg bouncing around spaming #5?
Why do you think they even need to engage you with full team to whipe you all?
One mes with portal and your strategy is done…
One aoe stun ,be it rev or engi you are all down in few sec
One schocking aura and you can bounce no more….
And then they punish
You can run to other point but doubt you will do much better,theif has dmg and mobility .
They everything else + what you have…

I’m not actually a Thief player, but I’m certain one needs way more than one of these things to down a team of 5 Caeds.

Raizen.7981:

…no good player most players don’t wants to play a class that only auto-attacks any target from 100-0

A simple easy-to-play class does not imply bad players. Maybe lazy players.

Redanox.4589:

Iohanna.4863:

Based on Shiro Tagachi: http://imgur.com/a/ip66G

What armor (skins) are you using here?

Apologies for the delay – this is full Carapace armor with the shoulders hidden.

The blindfold is the Resplendent Curtain from character creation.

Anymoify.8132:

U will never win a mid fight.

Why is that necessary for winning the match?

Since Thief is so ridiculously mobile, a full Thief team may be able to completely outmaneuver the current PVP meta through a combination of backcapping and outnumbering.

If the enemy spreads outs, the Thieves can just overwhelm the enemy at a point and hit the next point before the one Thief who stays behind even manages to finish a point capture.

If the enemy stick together, they will never control more than one point.

Seems like a good idea – I mean it’s not like Thief is so weak that two Condi Revenants or two Bunker Chronomancers can 2v4 or 2v5 some equally skilled Thieves, right?

Leadership Runes give +30% Boon Duration, +36 to all stats, +10% Condition Duration, and convert 2 conditions into boons for all nearby allies when you cast an elite (45 sec cooldown).

Ah yes, I have neglected the Mace fire field blast finisher! You can definitely keep 25 stacks on an entire party that way.

But that aside, I imagine the absolute max is 14-16 stacks (requires Concentration gear) for 1 Revenant passively buffing an entire party because Shared Empowerment has a cool-down and there is a cap on boon duration.

Corruption, Retribution, and Herald.

Mallyx doesn’t really give enough resistance without Corruption.

I know that Unrelenting Assault can fail to follow if the target jumps off a ledge.

But what about a normal jump? Is jumping a counter to Unrelenting Assault?

One Revenant/Herald can get up to 12-14 stacks for entire party (25 for his/herself).

So two can easily keep 25 stacks for everyone.

Hey Shiiroi, don’t worry about the trolls – there is one situation where a Thief/Daredevil could seem untouchable.

If your build largely relies on short bursts to defeat an opponent, the seasoned Daredevil is absolutely your worst enemy. As long as the Daredevil is able to read your animations / habits, they can dodge all your hard-hitting skills and burst you down instead. If you rely on projectiles, keep in mind that the Staff auto-attack on Daredevil reflects projectiles on the 3rd combo; so an auto-attacking Daredevil has about 50% reflect uptime.

How much do you use your auto-attacks? Dealing with a good Daredevil mostly involves disrupting their ability to read you. If you mess up your own rhythm a bit – delaying some moves, include some auto-attack spam in your combos, save your dodges, and so on – the Daredevil will have a hard time reading you. You may need to tweak your build to be less bursty and more constant DPS – there are a lot of ways to completely negate a burst of DPS now.

If you equip Mallyx and Corruption traits, you basically become a Necromancer’s worst nightmare: conditions do nothing to you, heal more per condition, and do 3% more damage per condition.

Be wary of boon stripping – while you have tons of access to Resistance, blowing all your Resistance sources at once risks getting all that Resistance duration stripped at once.

Equipping Mallyx and Corruption also kind of necessitates switching out Invocation for Retribution for Stability – because Mallyx has no stun breaks.

The cap exists in PVP at least – Facet of nature hardly does anything if I have Leadership Runes + Herald + Vigilant amulet.

Hi Caed,

I have no doubts about your Thief’s PVP capabilities, however I am concerned about PVE. Many believe that a Thief is redundant in Raids, and I personally also can’t see why anyone would pick a Thief over other classes for any of the roles in a Raid.

Do you have a different opinion?

My Canthan-themed Human Female Revenant: http://imgur.com/a/ip66G

I sort of regret that my Sylvari isn’t a Revenant – the story modes make a lot more sense with a Sylvari player. However, fashion wars is insanely difficult and expensive on Sylvari.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recipe:_Superior_Rune_of_the_Herald

Based on Shiro Tagachi: http://imgur.com/a/ip66G

Wow, ok – a deviation from the meta was exactly what I needed:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXin3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrklTlRNjPGJNgCawe93vH-TJxHABD8IAA4MAI++DFVGAA

Corruption, Retribution, and Herald | Glint/Mallyx | Celestial | Leadership Runes | Energy and Battle Sigils

The build fights a bit like the old Dual Dagger Elementalist – well rounded in all aspects. Corruption-enhanced Mallyx abilities give you immunity to conditions, Stability on dodge via Herald and Retribution gives you resistance to CC, and Protection + Upkeep + Mallyx Elite gives you resistance to burst damage. With Maniacal Persistence and Bolstered Anguish alongside Might and Fury stacking, the damage is pretty decent.

Could perhaps be a great Bunker build if one takes Sword/Shield + Staff. Right now I prefer a more point-assault style, so Sword/Axe + Hammer is what I use (they’re also my PVE weapons of choice).

@DrawingGuy

With the build I linked, I also take the Grandmaster Herald trait which gives a 7 second stack of Stability whenever you gain a stack of Stability. With Facet of Nature active, I reckon this is sufficient defense against CCs – if not, I can take the Vigilant amulet to boost my boon duration even more.

In retrospect, you probably weren’t replying to my build – because Corruption + Mallyx might be a complete counter to any condition builds. Resistance will stack crazy long, and I gain damage from having more conditions on me.

So with CCs and conditions dealt with, the problem I foresee with this build is damage output – because you do have to sacrifice that extra 20% crit chance and all those damage multipliers in Devastation and Invocation. I’m counting on better condition damage + Retaliation + Maniacal Persistence to mitigate the burst DPS loss; add in the gains in sustain and I reckon this could be a great build for SPVP.

I’ll find out in a few hours, when I get off work.

Guess I’ll start. The meta Glint/Shiro full burst PVE build absolutely wasn’t working for me. The only thing I could do well was throw hammers and Hammer #2 at people from far away and flee at the slightest sign of trouble. I thought it was working well, but after getting repeatedly destroyed last night – I almost quit Revenant completely.

Thankfully my Elementalist’s experiences in Raids made me go back to Revenant – and I realized that I forgot to theorycraft. Why the hell am I using a small modification of my PVE build in PVP? Revenant may not have much build diversity, but it’s not that bad.

I’ve had a lot more success/enjoyment from switching to Celestial stats and using Mallyx instead of Shiro – 1v2 is no longer a hopeless situation. However this was still using the same Invocation/Devastation/Herald traits – and I noticed that Mallyx’s resistance is too short without Corruption. The lack of solutions to CC was also concerning.

So when I get a chance to play again, I’d like to test out this “well-rounded” build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXin3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrklTlRNjPGJNgCawe93vH-TJxHABD8IAA4MAI++DFVGAA

Well-rounded as in I have an answer to almost every situation – but I worry that I’m losing too much damage from switching out Invocation and Devastation. I’ll see how it goes.

So what’s your build? Not much to talk about if we don’t know.

Narcasis, do you forsee a similar Staff + Shortbow build working out in Raids and Fractals?

The entire story mode is simply my ex-Thief meditating upon how her newly developed abilities could have been applied to past adventures.

Or, as a descendant of Shiro Tagachi – my Revenant always thought her Warrior/Mage powers were a result of her bloodline, and everyone else assumed so as well. The realization that Rytlock is drawing upon the same power sinks in very slowly, and she hesitates to share her realization with others.

What you have described as dull is what I enjoy the most!

- Lack of build and weapon diversity = minimal time wasted theorycrafting
- Spam 1 for DPS = brain cells freed for general awareness and chatting

What you said about the history of Elementalists is true – not much has changed, and we are in fact better than our overpowered past. But the other classes …they got a lot better.

I used to swear by the Auramancer build. I charged onto points, shooing off the Thief, captured it, and defended it like a boss against 3 enemies. I felt unstoppable…two or three of us together could take on the entire enemy team!

But then I realized…

…pure damage stacks.

Damage stacks a lot harder than heals, natural damage reduction, and boons. I didn’t quite believe my realization for a while, until I encountered a match where my fellow Auramancer and I got wrecked repeatedly by two Reapers + a Herald. Even though we were outnumbered – we were supposed to be Bunkers! We were supposed to be unstoppable!

So now I play a Herald. Auramancer has insane damage reduction, but one needs complete damage negation to Bunker properly.

I think this is fair. Thieves need all the buffs they can get.

Sword/Sword + Staff will maximize the amount of Blocks + Evades you have, though it sacrifices your ranged capabilities – which are kind of important.

Revenant doesn’t really have a lot of build diversity, so if you can’t find a build that works out for your purposes – it probably doesn’t exist.

I can no longer defend the Tempest after playing Revenant.

The Tempest really is kind of meh. For all the reasons you guys have stated. DPS build too squishy, Bunker build lacks stun breaks + stability + damage, etc.

In order to join the ranks of Reaper, Scrapper, Dragonhunter, and Chronomancer, (and maybe Druid and Berserker – can’t tell if they’re good right now), I must play Revenant.

I must embrace the deeps…

Runes of Rage are perhaps the cheapest near-optimal choice right now for Shiro/Glint.

I know you don’t like Runes of Scholar because staying above 90% can be difficult. But they’re relatively cheap right now, you still benefit from the +100 Ferocity when below the health threshold, and you might find yourself surprised with how much of your time is spent at 100% health.

If you’re only worried about ‘wasting’ Runes of Strength on Exotic gear, don’t worry. Barring sheer luck, you will not be getting Ascended Armor anytime soon – plus you can always extract the Runes with a Black Lion Salvage Kit. If you can’t do that because you’re using Karma armor, Draconic armor with Berserker stats is going pretty cheap on the TP last time I checked.

As for Sigils…

Fire Sigil only does a bit more than 30% of the damage of Air Sigil against a single target over a long period of time. However it also affects 5 targets.

Purity Sigil solves one of Revenant’s biggest weakness – condition removal. Very cheap too. Just rather unreliable.

You’ll have to craft Cleansing Sigil, but getting condition removal upon Legend or Weapon Swap is far more reliable than Purity.

Bloodlust Sigil is the best if you can maintain its stacks. Not difficult to do most of the time, but occasionally not possible when you really need those stacks.

Ok, offhand Axe is incredible! It has a much better interrupt, and the gap closer + nuke on Axe #4 is what I didn’t know I needed!

Unrelenting Assault will be cancelled if there is no valid path to the target.

Was the Portal distance short? Because if I recall correctly, the only teleports that ignore “no valid path to target” are Portal and Thief’s Ambush trap.

I completely forgot about Axe! I am very familiar with Axe #4, but how does Axe #5 do in PVE and PVP? I remember not liking it because the range and intensity of the pull isn’t particularly strong.

sunnypsyop.3025:

In PvE there’s no reason to use OH sword at all, ever.

To be fair, you can use Sword #5 to pull the bomb in South lane of Tarir. I imagine there are other places where a controlled pull is quite useful. So not quite ‘ever’.

fluidmonolith.3584:

I mostly do WvW with some PvP. I like offhand sword because the block allows movement and has a shorter cooldown than the shield block. Clever opponents will wait out your immobile shield block and prepare to hit you hard right as it finishes. And of course, when zerging, using shield #5 at the wrong time can cause the whole enemy zerg to surround you and wait for it to end, so it doesn’t really save you.

However, offhand sword #5 is generally useless in my opinion. I rarely use it. It can be useful for pulling an enemy off of a stomp or res….but usually I’ll just use jade winds or heavy dps pressure instead.

Would you say Sword #5 is more useful than Shield #4?

In both PVP and PVE?

I got into trying it out because I don’t like having a Shield on my back. First time I attempted Offhand Sword, I gave up using it for a week – losing the Shield’s heals felt very debilitating!

During that week, I gradually became less reliant on the Shield’s heals after getting more familiar with Revenant. I found myself wishing I was more free to use Shield 5’s blocking effect, and some form of interrupt outside of Jade Wind.

So I switched back to Offhand Sword and so far, it seems like it’s working well. Being able to block more frequently (and on the move) feels quite liberating, and Sword 5 is a decent damage nuke combined with an interrupt and blink retreat that allows a comfortable switch to Hammer.

How does everyone else feel?

When I PVP with my Revenant, I feel very vulnerable. I feel the need to stand back and pick people off with my Hammer, rather than rushing into battle and tanking everything the enemy throws at me.

If my opponent eats all the hits from my Sword 3 and shrugs it off, I get scared. Especially if they have a condition build – the only choice that has worked out for me in that situation is to flee towards my allies and hope they can keep my opponent busy while I switch back to Hammer and take pot shots.

I feel fragile, yet the forums sing praises/curses about DPS Revenant’s tankiness. The score may look good due to all my assists in kills, but I feel like the credit belongs mostly to my allies.

My Tempest felt unstoppable – charging head first into outnumbered situations, tanking a ridiculous amount of damage from 4 enemies before my teammates ambush them from out of nowhere. I know it’s not fair to compare a DPS build with a Bunker build, but I expected to feel …strong.

Is this just me being unused to a new play-style? Is it natural to be so cautious with picking my fights as a DPS role? Or is there a way to play recklessly yet effectively? Because I would really like it if I could just give no kittens like my Tempest.

Ventari is excellent for reflect duty on Tequatl and Triple Trouble. The role usually requires some co-ordination between Mesmers, Guardians, Elementalists, and so on. One or two Ventari tablets completely replaces all of that. You don’t even need to stand near the boss! Just press one button to negate all projectiles!

Ventari is otherwise a rather niche Legend.

Not sure I understand Point 1, but yes – Revenant Legends stay the same regardless of whether you are underwater or not.

It is quite ridiculous and I am sure AreaNet is aware of the issue – this is most definitely a case of unfinished work.

However I think most people aren’t too bothered by the issue right now. Shiro is an incredibly powerful and popular Legend for Revenants in all game modes, so it’s quite convenient that Shiro is pretty much all you need underwater: activate Impossible Odds and auto-attack will deal with most underwater content.

One thing people may not realize is that the Revenant’s spear has two auto-attacks: Spear 1 and Spear 2. Spear 1 is a ranged condition damage auto attack, Spear 2 is a melee burst damage auto attack. If you are not a condition focused Revenant, Ctrl + Right Click on Spear 2 to designate it as your auto-attack.

If you are running anything close to a Berserker build, Impossible Odds combined with Spear 2 auto-attack is absolutely ridiculous and makes Revenant pretty OP underwater (high damage + multi-hit + haste + toughness per upkeep from Herald + apply vulnerability on hit from Devastation + heal when attacking vulnerable foes from Devastation).

Snowball.3497:

/F because flamewall gives the most burns —> most damage.
Evasive arcana is not for might, it’s for the flame burst skill to maintain 4 additional burns.

I see. Ring of Fire only applies once if the target is not moving, while Flamewall applies about 10 times to anything standing in the flames.

Would Flame Burst from Evasive Arcana really add more damage than Bountiful Power? I would think the ability makes up a rather minor portion of your overall damage.

Doesn’t have to beat, just needs to be somewhat close. Elementalist has other ways to compensate for the difference in DPS if it is close – like within 20% difference.

Why offhand Focus? Offhand Dagger would give you Ring of Fire and Fire Grab. Fire Grab may not be condi, but Sinister gives you pretty good Burst as well.

Bountiful Power over Evasive Arcana might be better in a group – Might is the responsibility of Warriors and Revenants.

Snowball.3497:

Hey guys,

I’ve heard a lot of people ask or talk about a condition build for elementalist. This build is a competetive build to the tempest staff build with a maintained DPS close to 22k and performs even better in fights against high-armored enemies (high level fractals).

Condi Tempest Build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqKc1_CyFH4

For comparison, here is tempest staff DPS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA6py7jiV88&t=1m55s

Got a gw2skills editor build? Not everyone is able/willing to access YouTube.

Also, how much DPS does an Engineer do based on your calculation method?

+1 to people who disapprove of Facet visuals and the humming sound (on the other hand, the Facet activation sound is very well done). I would like something more subtle.

MadRabbit.3179:

Iohanna.4863:

Nothing protects a point better than a Staff Bunker Celestial Auramancer.

Playing one is not very difficult – at the bare minimum, where you are completely unfamiliar with the build, and you are just spamming everything while staying in Earth attunement – you shoud be able to hold the point indefinitely against any single player.

At a higher level you are more than just a Bunker – you provide insane defensive support for your team mates, and point denial with your vast array of AOEs. If the enemy has a troublesome Bunker as well, swap out a utility for Lightning Hammer to kick them off.

It’s just too easy to be a learn2play issue. Naysayers need to learn2build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XC9XiVYCOYCcYilNAzdv+XPsErgUwIY4BEAugA-TJRJwAAeAA02fg7FA4XZAA

Yeah, except I play that build and you are overselling it.

There is some pretty crucial weaknesses to it, particularly to the variant you posted and told everyone to learn2build.

One, you have no stability at all except for overloading on Earth element which means you can only really hold points indefinitely against incompetant players or builds that have no way to decap you. Anyone who can decap you will just constantly knock you off point and slowly take the point from you via attrition. You don’t have the damage to stop them from doing that one on one and you only have one decap in staff which will be negated by anyone with decent stability uptime. If you see a flamethrower engineer contending or holding a point, you might as well just run the kitten away, because you aren’t going to do kitten.

Hell, you don’t even take Rock Solid or Gale Song. You have no stun breakers. You will get thrown around like a rag doll.

Two, you have no reliable condi cleanse to deal with a heavy condi stack. Your condi cleanse is tied directly into your shouts which is also your source of AoE boons. This puts you in an awkward position of having to pop all your shouts at once, blowing all your auras and boons to remove a condi stack. Your only other options are your big water field with a very long cooldown or water overload which isn’t strong enough to keep up with all the damage being thrown around. The sigils procs are unreliable. This setup is great for removing a small amount of conditions that are applied constantly over time, but anyone who can dump an entire condi stack on you is going to force you to make some really hard decisions to get it off.

Any condi heavy composition will bypass stoneheart and totally wreck you with the posted build.

Many knockbacks in PVP can be reflected by Magnetic Aura. I actually find Engineers to be particularly easy for this reason. Otherwise yes, knockbacks are one of the sole weaknesses of the build – you’d have to save your evades for them. The perma-Vigor gives you plenty of evades, and thankfully knockbacks aren’t all that common, and usually you’re still on the point after a knockback.

Overloads are stun-breakers. Also nothing wrong with blowing all your shouts at once – the cool-downs are pretty fast, and the boons stack. Healing Rain’s cool-down is dramatically reduced by the Water trait. And Overload Water is fine if you have protection boon and you’re kiting your opponent – it’s pretty much like an Ether Renewal with less healing (because it’s AOE). If conditions are still a problem, just take Ether Renewal instead of Wash the Pain Away. The sigil procs are also a nice bonus.

You do enough damage to force pure damage builds (condi and burst) to retreat, or go down – Celestial stats are pretty strong.

Cantrips aren’t worth taking over Shouts because Shouts have incredible burst healing.

Persisting Flames increases damage output of Lava Font by 33%. Lava Font is your bread and butter as a DPS Staff Elementalist.

You also get a Lava Font upon getting downed. This allows you to easily Rally off any mobs that were standing next to you.

Jekkt.6045:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Cele / sentinels auramancer tempest, is by far the most insane bunker atm.

lolwat..

He is not wrong.

Bump. I would like to see this fixed too.