Guild Wars 2

First of all, thank you all for the answers. You have given me a lot to think about. For some of you I got questions/answers:

@DresdenAllblack.1249
That is why I choose 1401. If everyone runs pure damage stats they have 1000 toughness, but a warrior with the tactics line gains 400 while rezzing. A necro with the death magic line only gains 180 in shroud, so unless the necro has 12 pets (each giving him another 20) the boss should still prefer me.

@Jade Nekotenshi.8702
I did not consider necro so far, might finally give me a use for mine. Could you create the build in an editor and link it please.

@Dahkeus.8243
I actually did go over the commander stats and was thinking about crafting an armor with it, probably gotta do some farming for mats but I also got some gold if I want to get done faster.
The video you linked is not so much a guide but simply a VG kill video from a chronotank perspective, one I had not seen before so it did give me some new ideas. As you wrote guide I just wanted to ask if you posted the wrong link? If a good guide exists I’m always interested in it even if I prefer a written one (with short video samples) over a full video one (because in most videos the explanations are not that good). I’ll go through the other classes some time later.

@SlyDevil.3952
Thanks for the list, it gives a nice overview of the strengths of each class tank spec. Do you know of any specific weaknesses for certain classes?
Regarding chronotank: So I should go for 50% bonus boon duration, expected as much.

The newly forming condition meta seems only to value burning, and they seem not to value the other 3 damaging conditions like they should, least of all bleeds.

For reference on this, I invite you to check the wiki like I did, and break out your calculator app and look at the difference in damage. I asked the question: “How many bleed stacks does it take to equal one burn stack, for one second, with no condition damage?”

The answer? 5

This seems disheartening, because we all know that most bleeds are only applied one at a time sarcasm*

I then asked the question: “How many stacks of bleed does it take to equal burn damage at 1700 condition damage?” (1700 was chosen as it’s an easily reachable number with condition damage primary star gear.)

The answer? 2.

Not what I expected to see at all.

Conclusion? Bleeds get more benefit from stacking condition damage than burns do, relatively speaking.

I can hear you now… “but if I stop using my ‘burn rotation’ to apply bleeds, the burns fall off!”

And yes, this is true. But I invite to to look at the base durations of bleeds on any class capable of doing them.

Bleeds, even high stack bleeding moves, have longer durations than burns by a huge ammount.

This means that, yes, your burns will fall of while refilling bleeds, but you can make a long and persistent stack of bleed that stays up during your ‘burn, torment, or poison rotation’ thus increasing dps during your burn stack phase.

I’ve seen 10k bleeds ticking along side 17k burns on my condition tempest. (Which I’m getting ready to do a build video for, which, once completed will be posted here, as it will be my first foray into the YouTube world.) This was, for the record, done on the twins fractal level 40. This leads me to want to knee jerk out a click bate phrase like “27k dps!”… but the fact is that both bleeds and burns hover at 7k each, spiking higher on each side, and all the extra power from vipers gear, and damage traits means that my white damage is respectable too…(5% against bleeding foes, 10% against bring foes, and 10% after overload) so while I haven’t truly calculated the damage, it’s at least as effective at the meta sinister engineer. (Tested time spent racing to kill various mobs against the sinister meta build. We timed the kill speed of various mobs… When dpsing at the same time, I had higher bleed and burn numbers… but that has to do with damaging condition interactions. And not the per person dps.)

I digress. The main point here, is that in a phrase, bleeds are powerful, and have long durrations, and can be used to supplement any condition build worth it’s salt.

The failure to use bleeding to its fullest potential, is a failure to understand the condition damage system.

(I plan to put up a post here about condition damage, and what the “dream team” of 4 condition players would look like for raids, and why. Keep your eyes peeled for that.)

What are the thoughts of the community on this? Or do I need my video proof before anyone will believe my claims?

Bishop.7140:

Under “Roll Check” section, I found this……

“…and some encounters may even require a member of your group to dust off that toughness gear to bulk up and tank some heavy hits to protect the condition-build players in the back…”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/designing-challenging-content/

So… … yeah,

Please stick to your original game design with no trinity.

That is false. You are incorrect and making a lot of very false assumptions. Your biggest mistake is that you think the game was originally not supposed to have a trinity.

The original game design was supposed to have a “soft trinity” which was different from other games in 2 ways. 1st, instead of tank/heal/dps it was supposed to be Control / Support / DPS. 2nd while in other games the trinity was supposed to be necessary to complete content, in GW2 the trinity was supposed to be necessary to complete content in an optimal manner (fastest and easiest), but you could still complete the content without it by it being more difficult to do so and taking longer.

One of the recent dev posts by A-Net stated that currently there is basically a game wide design flaw, which makes it so that only DPS + DPS support matters and they are working to correct that in the future content so that more builds and professions become included rather then excluded. This was maybe a month or so ago or around there, I’m sure you or anyone can dig it up if they really want to.

Personally I would welcome these changes very much as the the whole zerker thing has gone stale for me more then a year ago.

Support can take many forms: tankish, healy, general utility and control can take many forms as well, CC, inturrapts, slow / haste, and many more. It will be nice to see if they can actually pull off what they originally intended.

Golly, that call for respect sure didn’t last long.

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

1) How does Sigil of Blood interact with Omnomberry pie? Are they independently triggered and on independent cooldowns, or do they share a cooldown? If they share a cooldown then obviously using both is pointless.

They have separated cooldowns and triggers, so you can use both at same time w/o worries.

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

2) Do all proc sigils (fire, air, blood, etc) share a cooldown, or are they independent? My reading of the patch notes says they should be independent now, but I see a lot of people on various forums insisting otherwise.

They are independent, you just can’t use sigils of the same name, like 2 fire sigils will share the cooldown.

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

3) Is Sigil of Rage actually worth a darn? It doesn’t seem like it’s that awesome for sustained DPS because of its long cooldown, but for rapidly bursting down trash, it seems fairly handy. I’m using it now, but am kind of divided. Obviously, Sigil of Force is better in the general case, but it’s also boring. Related, how does Sigil of Air stack up now that it’s been buffed with a shorter cooldown on Superior versions?

Sigil of Rage is cheap for a good reason, Sigil of Air for 1v1 is great, high damage and low CD, Sigil of Force is great against world bosses and some occasions where you can’t crit.

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

4) Mango Pie + Sigil of Blood vs. Omnomberry pie. Tied to the first question, since if omnoms and blood sigils have independent cooldowns, that combo is obviously better for both damage and survivability – but if they share a cooldown, how well does the sigil work with health regen food?

Blood and Omnom are independent, so yeah …
The good thing of mango is that you don’t need to be attacking to gain health so it is a more reliable regen, also it stacks with any other source of regen (the boon regen, blood sigil, siphon from necros, troll unguent from rangers and so on )