Guild Wars 2

I’ll keep a closer eye on this myself, because I’m also in the “I swear I’ve seen this happen” camp.

I was pugging some fractals the other day on my all-zerk Chronomancer, alongside a dual-pistol condi Engi. I fired off Mind Wrack, incidentally inflicting some Confusion due to traits. I saw damage from that for a tick, and then the Engineer fired his bouncing lightning shot – confuse stacks went from 3 up to 6, but I was no longer seeing damage ticks.

So, maybe I’m smoking salt, here, or there’s something else going on, or maybe it really does work the way the wiki suggests.

Incidentally, if anyone confirms it one way or the other, it might make sense to update the wiki accordingly.

Regarding builds that have Ferocity with no Precision – look at the Revenant (perma-fury and double fury effectiveness) and the Necromancer/Reaper (2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability and +50% crit chance in shroud). Both of these can benefit from Valkyrie gear, and the Reaper can make a decent tank in Cavalier’s.

As for what I’d like to see? Yep, I’ll second Condition Damage (main), Power, Toughness. Also useful would be Condition Damage, Healing Power (co-main), Toughness, Precision.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Shopping for Ambers

In addition to the changes above, we’ll also be adjusting the way that parties are scored in our matchmaking algorithm based on the overall division spread of a team’s makeup. It is important to us that anyone can play with their friends regardless of league standing, but in doing so, we also want to ensure that teams aren’t gaining an unfair advantage in match difficulty based on their rosters. An example of this would be two friends: one is in Diamond and the other is in Amber. For Season 2, these two players will still be able to team up and play together, but they’ll be placed into Diamond level matches based on the highest division player in the party. This means that forming a party with players in a higher division than you will always bring you up to their level for matchmaking and prediction, rather than adjust to compensate for party members at lower divisions. This specific change will go into effect in our next scheduled release (prior to the end of season 1).

This is all good and well, but what’s stopping a diamond tier group of friends from having one dude make an amber account? I’ll assume that you’re also changing the pip rewards then, making it so that it doesn’t matter if there’s a tier 1 amber with a clean MMR on the winning team.

Someone please clarify.

The way I read that, if that diamond-tier group has one amber guy, they still get put into diamond-tier matches. Based on the comments about MMR still being used for within-tier placement, you’re somewhat more likely to end up in an easy match, but you’ll still be matched against other diamonds.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the pips bit, hopefully someone will clarify that, but my best guess is that the one amber-tier, low-MMR guy will probably just make it so that the other side, if they lose, doesn’t lose a pip, or loses fewer. Probably does nothing if they win, but I could very easily be wrong about that.

Here’s the Reaper build – There’s a few things you could tune if you really wanted to. Bone Minions could be replaced with Well of Suffering – whirl in that for a ton of lifesteal. (Well of Suffering -> Shroud -> Soul Spiral) Transfusion is a bit dubious – try replacing that with Vampiric Rituals if you want to use wells (but of course, VR isn’t helpful if you don’t). Runes of the Scrapper might be better than Runes of Vampirism, but I haven’t tested that rigorously. If you’re having trouble staying alive, try Crusader’s gear instead of Cavalier; if you’re having no issues try replacing some of it with Sinister, or possibly zerk.

Tactically, try to keep both your life force and HP as full as possible – shroud up every chance you get and vampire your health back to full, then drop out and fill up your life force.

Here’s the setup I rather like – Reaper, with Decimate Defenses, using Blood Magic, Death Magic and Reaper, greatsword switching dagger/warhorn, in Cavalier’s gear. For food, use Omnomberry Pie, and for utility, the good old Superior Sharpening Stone, Runes should be Vampirism or Scrapper, Sigils should be Blood and Strength (though you could use Nullification or Frailty if you need it).

Why? You get tons of toughness, enough to tank even if you’ve got a healer in Cleric’s or Apothecary’s, as much Ferocity as zerk, almost as much Power as zerk (thanks to the Toughness to Power trait and the stones), and 70% crit with no Precision under raid conditions. You’ll need 25 stacks of vuln on the enemy and fury on yourself to hit that, but in a raid, you’ll usually have both of those things.

Survivability comes from lifesteals, high Toughness, a fast-cycling heal skill (“Your Soul Is Mine” stands out as the right choice here), Shroud and Spectral Armor. True, you won’t do quite as much damage as a pure zerk or valk Reaper might, but you’ll be within striking distance, while able to hold aggro just fine.

That makes a lot of sense, and roughly comports with what I see on my various condi builds (though you’ve seen that already!)

There are probably cases where it’s not worth, say, letting three stacks of burn fall off to put four bleeds on, but when the trade is more favorable than that – and it usually is – it makes sense to work bleeding in.

In PvP, it’s practically essential, too – even if most of your damage really is from burns, you need everything else to protect those burns against condition cleanses. (Hence my preference for a Sigil of Torment for my engi, rather than the Sigil of Earth I use in PvE).

Not so much if the enemy only hits you once in a while (rare AoEs or unblockable attacks) or if you only get hit when you miss a tell and goon up your cooldowns, say (and those tells can be hard to see in a stack, or if there’s lag).

That concept doesn’t apply if you’re being continuously pounded, of course – as you say, that would require a ton of healing. Although, the less you’re being hit for, the less healing you need, but that’s not the dynamic anybody really wants outside of a few rare instances.

Actually, the ability to survive one more attack can be a big deal, if you can get enough HP back (regen, heals, lifesteals, self-heal skill) between hits that you actually survive four or five more over the course of a fight. It also can give you more room to screw up in fights that are all about avoiding the big hits, which could be the difference between a wipe or not.

And if the fight is more about pressure from repeated, unavoidable or hard to avoid small hits (maybe combined with conditions), the time it buys could be big. This is particularly true if you have some way to make up for the damage stat you gave up to get extra survivability, like rangers and their Opening Strikes, or necros and their massive crit boosts in Death Shroud.

I have an 80 in all three, and of them, I think my favorite is probably the elementalist. That said, it takes a little doing to learn to survive, but once you do, the paper-flyswatter feeling goes away.

As for necro, yes, the minions are buggy, but you don’t have to use them. Indeed, most necro builds – in PvE or PvP – don’t.

What I’d really like to see is a diverse array of mob AI strategies, so that no one trick (be that one trick stacking, kiting, chillspam or something else) will be the perfect way to beat them all.

This might result in content sufficiently hard that a random PUG will have real trouble with it. As long as clearing that content isn’t effectively mandatory for progression, that’s mostly OK. People will learn, or those sorts of fights will become major skill gates, and I’d be OK with that. WoW and EverQuest had raids that random pick-up raid groups would have major issues with, and that wasn’t the end of the world. Wouldn’t be here either.

Now, if that’s all there were, obviously, that’s a problem, but that’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that, in keeping with the “something for everyone” theme of GW2, you have some dungeons that can be easily stack-and-whack speedcleared, some that require tons of rabbiting around due to anti-stack mechanics, still others that need something else (use your imagination here). Then, if one encounter turns out to be so hard that none but the elite succeed, make that same reward available in another way: sPvP, WvW, etc.

(PvP, by the way, is a great example of “actually challenging, but not ‘only the ultimate need apply’”)

That’s what I mean: that was an uncommonly awful group! He didn’t even leave the stack (at all, not even a short distance), but “well, the model moved, so you did it wrong”. Yeah.

Doesn’t help that it was pretty much my first run-in with “stack and whack”. Bad first impressions, and all that.

I get that you’ll stop getting buffs if you roll across the room and stay there. If you dodge-roll a short distance (probably still in melee range, or not far from), then run right back, you miss what? One, two stacks of might? Obviously it’s better if nobody has to dodge and nobody goes down.

Also, the furiously mashing bit? That’s not what I do, that’s what the particular bad group that spawned that aversion ordered me (and everyone else in the group) to do: “No skills other than auto-attack and hundred blades”. And then proceeded to kick the guardian for using GS#3. Yep, that was an abnormally awful group.

So yes, possibly I’m such an awful player that I should be banned. Or possibly you misinterpreted what I wrote. I’m not talking about the guy who runs out to 1500 and shoots. Obviously that doesn’t work especially well. I’m talking about the specific brand of jerk that says “if you touch WSAD or dodge, YOU ARE WRONG, BIRDBRAIN.” These guys are really rare, but they’re also pretty nasty to run into.

Watch the videos of folks doing speedclears, they can and do use leaps, whirls, etc, against targets at close range. That’s fine. Enforcing “stand there and autoattack or kick” is what is a fun-sucker. If you don’t do that, then awesome: I’m not complaining about you! As I’ve said before, not many folks do that.

What bugs me is “stack and whack”, specifically: the case where you stand exactly on top of each other and furiously mash whatever skills don’t make you move, and get chewed out if you break away even for a second (even if you immediately come right back).

I can only think of a few places where that happens anymore, but it’s thoroughly infuriating. I get staying close for boon sharing, AoE cleanses/heals/etc, that part makes sense, but it seems to me that “stay close enough to benefit from PBAoE buffs” is not quite the same thing as “stack and don’t even think about moving”. Maybe my bad experiences are just with rare jerks, I’m not sure.

I like the idea of camp-splitter mobs, though: yes, exactly like some of the Mordrem do. Note the Mordrem also have some mobs that resist direct damage (but aren’t immune) and take normal damage from conditions, while others heal and cleanse conditions but are rather vulnerable to being spiked down by zerk-thieves and the like. I think ANet might actually be testing out some ideas for how to keep combat more interesting, and I’ll be quite interested to see how that turns out.

Sure, staying close is efficient – so, how does a good group handle it when the mobs launch folks or drop AoEs that it’s suicide to stack in? Well, they move around, enough to avoid death, while still staying close. Doing that well actually does take some skill. So far, so good!

I wonder about that, actually. The problem is that for direct damage builds, zerk gear is so good that there’s almost no other rational choice. A few builds might favor Assassin’s, sometimes, and apparently the new favored hybrid direct/condi Engineer likes Rampager and Sinister, but otherwise, primary power with both precision and ferocity is a hard deal to beat.

I wonder what would happen if zerk gear became ferocity primary, with power/precision secondary? Interesting diverse tradeoffs, or pointless nerf that wouldn’t change anything?

From my perspective, I don’t mind speedrunners as such. What I do mind is a group of people with no clue kicking me because I have a pair of Assassin’s swords on a mesmer (pardon me for actually using an almost-but-not-quite-perfect random drop!). That, or an entire group of sir-dies-a-lot that keeps on wiping, but yells at me for daring to summon an ice elemental or switch into water to try to save them, claiming that I’m not doing max DPS.

Basically, if you’re actually elite, you rock right on and have fun your way, because it clearly works for you and far be it from me to interfere. But if you’re Louie the Clueless who’s still figuring out how this high-level-content stuff works, please stop stinking up the joint by trying to enforce the meta. It’s based on observations of how things work with high skill; it’s not the law. It’s not the only way that works.

If you’re trying to do things the meta way, failing at it, then yelling at me for competently playing a non-meta build, you’re part of the problem. If you’re a competent metazerker, then go right ahead, if this group was advertized as a speedrun. As previous posters have said, respect is a two-way street.

As fluffy as that is, it mostly serves to make condition users less useful than they are currently, which is somewhat sticky considering that condi builds are already looked askance at for PvE content. (Wrongly, IMHO, but that’s another debate for another thread.)

Definitely, though it wouldn’t be the best choice for trying to set speedrun records or anything.

Aye, that’s what I’d like too. Having a bunch of options that are so obviously garbage that nobody would even think about using them isn’t my idea of good, even if there are a few that I really like too.

(Full disclosure: most of my toons are actually mostly-zerk, so this is not about wanting to buff my pet build or just pointless contrarianism.)

I purchased the exotic Sinister insignia recipe from Silverwastes and all the exotic Sinister medium armor recipes, then learned them on my 500-skill Leatherworker, but the options to actually craft them do not appear in my crafting menu.

I bought another copy of each, and when I click them, it tells me I already know the recipe. Has anyone else seen this bug before?

As long as not every fight has enough pressure applied to need that kind of thing, that’s still OK: you get a case where, say, Dungeon A is best done by five zerk/sini/assassin glass cannons, and it’s all about dodging or mitigating the spikes; but Dungeon B is best done by a group with either a dedicated defender or a group with plenty of pressure-survival mixed in because the enemies pressure more and spike less.

Also note that due to level scaling, you can hit level 15 then move to another race’s newbie zone and keep on leveling, albeit slightly slower than you would if not level-scaled down. You won’t really need to do this, but if you want to, it’s straightforward.

Also, don’t forget about the crafting system: it’s a good way to stay geared as you level, and to boot, you level up from doing it (quite a bit, in fact). Another thing that helps is that unlike WoW and EQ, helping out a player who’s in trouble will not deny them XP or loot from the mobs. Yes, that’s right, helping is not killstealing! In fact, killstealing is darn near impossible.

It’s so inconsistent, ne? I’ve probably gotten a grand total of maybe 35-40 exotic drops since launch, but the other day I got two, off a champ in Frostgorge and then off Claw of Jormag: a pair of zerker gauntlets and a zerker sword that, together, fetched me almost 30g.

Some days you’re the windshield, some days you’re the bug.

Edit: frelling curseword filter?

imsoenthused.1634:

Router may be compromised, but it sounds like you probably need to find someone to help you make sure that has the proper security features and a strong password. Beyond that all I can recommend is running an anti-virus scan and a malware scan, and then changing passwords on accounts you care about, starting with your email accounts.

I would second that advice. It does sound to me like something’s been hacked here.

Passwords are a horrible pain in the neck: I recommend something like LastPass or KeePassX for password management. That way you can have good passwords, and not have to reuse them everywhere, and not have to memorize strings of garble.

Yeah, I also noticed that the ciphersuite I’m seeing is AES128-CBC, even with new versions of Firefox and Chrome; AES128-GCM would be preferable. Also, yes, as the OP mentioned, ECDHE key-exchange.

Ideally I’d like to see ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 or ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384.

Considering how long WoW has hung around, and that EverQuest has been alive even longer than that, I expect GW2 to hang around quite some time, even if a new Next Big Thing does come around.

Rauderi.8706:

<snippityopteryx>

Removing healing power is also a change to healing power. :P
I’m not claiming to have the ultimate solution, but something needs to happen to the Healing Power, and probably Vitality.

One of the big problems we run into is how do we perform the conversion?

If Healing Power stays, is it because the scaling was tweaked? It would have unintended consequences in PvP, I think. The meta would adjust, obviously, but it’d be a kitten-storm of kittening for months on end. And bunkers were an issue apparently, indicated by the ‘tweak’ they put on turrets. (I’m.. actually pretty mad about that, but whatevs.)
I’m actually not a fan of re-scaling Healing Power. It’s a lazy solution.

So, thought goes, perhaps Healing Power in all of its weakness should pull double duty. That’s where the Boon Duration wish comes from. Lots of classes got their boon durations shredded, and Giver’s gear is garbage, so it seemed like a great way to add utility to a stat while enhancing support and restoring our busted boons.
Not to say it would shatter a meta, but it would give more incentive to filter in HealPow in a gear piece or two. The max-efficiency crowd would still gun for Berserker, since a few second seconds on a might stack wouldn’t mean anything for dungeons. The spot I’d be a smidge fuzzy on is the effect a possible +10% duration would be for PvP. 0.3 extra seconds of Protection doesn’t seem like a huge benefit. :P

Or, we obliterate Healing Power altogether. (And, quite frankly, we probably should. Good game design demands it.) But what does it get replaced with on gear? What happens to Nomad/Cleric/Zealot, except maybe a double-click choice? (It worked very well after the Magic Find removal.) Does Healing Power get rolled into Vitality, making defense even more viable in PvP? Does HealPow just stop mattering and all the healing skills base out at static values?
Even as someone who plays lots of heal/protection-oriented roles, I could get behind dumping Healing Power, I’m just not sure what the right approach is to compensate for the change and what would be best for the game.

That’s a lot of good pondering about all this, and raises a few good issues.

So it sounds to me like extra Boon Duration would be mostly useless in both PvP and PvE, unless you piled it to the sky, at which point it’s either OP (possibly in PvP) or doubly useless because you have to give up so much offense for it in exchange for so little (in PvE). You might be able to fix some of that by reworking some boons, but that’s another kettle of fish.

Rolling HP into Vit is probably OP for PvP unless the scaling is changed a lot; what about PvE? My understanding is that both Vit and Toughness are marginal in PvE anyway, and when you do mix some in (to survive bad pugs, etc), you usually want Toughness over Vit. So it seems to me that maybe this just tips the scales the other way, which might not be all bad.

Eliminating HP, and making outgoing heals mostly static (plus things like Sigil of Benevolence, and maybe an added Benevolence boon), plus maybe making incoming heals scale with Vit (or with max hit points) could work. Both that and the “roll it into Vit” proposal have issues with existing gear sets. What about eliminating it, but replacing Healing Power on all gear that currently has it with some amount of Boon Duration?

Out of all of these, I think maybe “dump it, possibly to be replaced with some other tricks” sounds like the most attractive option.

Narrrz.7532:

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

Would adding Boon Duration into Healing Power make it even a little useful, even a little of the time? For the sake of debate, ignore the “nerf base boon duration” concept.

It’d throw out pvp balance without making it attractive enough to itemize for pve.

i’m sure that fits some definition of ‘useful’.

Fair enough, that’s a sufficiently large problem to count as a major strike against the idea.

Ardid.7203:

On using Healing Power to determine Condition Removal

@Ardid: That’s an interesting idea, but how would that work? Condi cleanses are kinda binary: they remove the condition or they don’t, mostly. This also risks making healing power mandatory, which I wouldn’t want, but it has potential depending on implementation.

Too binary, IMO. In fact, I think that is one of the real problems with condi game: if you have cleanses condi doesn’t matter, if you haven’t cleanses condi is all that matters.

Maybe if cleanses remove stacks instead of whole condis? And the game calculate the number of stacks removed based on healing & fixed number per skill?

PS: sorry for answering so late, I had an internet problem yesterday.

Ok, I could see that, yeah. Another possibility (but maybe OP?) would be for cleanses to remove fewer conditions (usually just one) but to also add a short duration of resistance with the resistance duration scaling with Healing Power (independent of Boon Duration, which of course would also extend the resistance, since it’s a boon).

Ranael.6423:

I made a rapid calculations based on tooltip.
Setup : Mesmer staff auto attack, regen, self heal and mantra heal to others (inspiration line with 2-2-2 traits) plus regen applied by phantasm. I compared Berserker gear and Zealot gear, basically, exchange of ferocity towards healing power. For this I presumed a 12 sec time for healing mantra (1 sec between cast and 10 sec recharge).

If everything is correct for berserker:
-AA 612 dps // Regen 130 HPS // Self heal 433 HPS // Heal to others 216 HPS
In zealot it becomes :
-AA 495 DPS // Regen 209 HPS // Self Heal 499 HPS // Heal to others 231 HPS

So changing ferocity to healing power leads to a loss of 20 % DPS on auto attack, and an increase of 38% HPS on regen, 13 % on self healing and 6 % on healing to others. Of course the biggest difference is that auto dps is always required and healing is on demand so you won’t spam your heal on recharge (though it is possible if you want to maximize your output in team heal).

Basically it seems to work as intended, you trade dps to hps in a comparable amount. Maybe one could imagine a boost of healing power in the form of healing to other except regeneration ( like every 100 points in healing power you have 1% of heal to other instead of those given by traits) but for now it doesn’t seem necessary.

Yeah, that’s my beef with the healing power stat as it stands – you give up quite a bit of DPS (which, as we’ve established, matters a lot) to gain a fairly small amount of HPS. Now the real question is, how much longer do you last, and how much more room to goof up does your group have? From my experience, not enough more to really matter, doubly so since the gain in survivability is offset by a loss in damage, usually making the fight take longer. I’d actually argue that given the ratios you posted above, that it’s not quite working as intended: Healing Power doesn’t scale as well as Ferocity does, it seems.

My point is not “healers aren’t viable”, it’s “the Healing Power stat is pretty much never worth stacking, no matter what build you want”. Heck, even for most pure-support, pug-saver builds, you’re better off with Knight’s or Soldier’s than most any of the combos that have Healing Power.

Would adding Boon Duration into Healing Power make it even a little useful, even a little of the time? For the sake of debate, ignore the “nerf base boon duration” concept.

Ashen.2907:

wolfgang.3471:

http://gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm

http://gw2armorgallery.com/human-medium.htm

http://gw2armorgallery.com/human-heavy.htm

I mean come on Anet look at these armors, in particular light and medium. This is a fantasy game yet why does some of the gear look like i can get it in a charity store?

There is little variation in level 80 armors and even then there is nothing that makes my jaw drop. Don’t get me wrong i love the whole wardrobe thing and personalizing a character but there isn’t enough good looking gear to create an overall good looking outfit with. The dyes are great however there just needs to be more armors/skins in the game that really stand out, like huge shoulder pads with massive green flames i don’t something that looks fantasy not real.
I hope a Dev sees this.

Nothing personal, but if a Dev sees this I hope he discards the idea out of hand.

I wouldn’t use the giant, gaudy green-flaming shoulder pads, but I’d also have no problem with them existing so that people who like such things could use them.

Ok, I’ll make a counter-proposal: the concept behind this thread was to find a way to make the Healing Power stat relevant, and the proposed way to do that was to tie it to Boon Duration. I hear folks saying “that’s useless”, from two different directions. One, that the Healing Power stat does nothing helpful and even if it did, nobody would use it because there are better ways to achieve the same thing; and two, that more Boon Duration is either unnecessary or would be overpowered. So, given that, what would you do to make Healing Power a useful stat?

Now, I think there’s a few questions to consider here: Vitality and Toughness are only particularly useful for a few builds, and the usefulness of Condition Damage is – if I understand correctly – still in limbo right now. Thus, the stats we care about are Power, Precision and Ferocity, generally in that order – with the interesting side effect of rendering Berserker gear the ideal choice for almost everyone, almost all the time. Is there ever a case where Healing Power matters to anyone? If it were also tied to Boon Duration, would that change? What would it take to make stats other than the Zerker Three broadly useful? Not OP, not “the only thing you should ever use”, but “also a reasonable alternative”?

As an aside, it strikes me that if zerk gear were F/pw/pr instead of Pw/pr/f, there would be some harder tradeoffs to make. This might be good, it might be bad, but it would have far-reaching consequences.

I’ll thoroughly second this. Heck, we’re still mostly stuck with limited stat selections for breathers. Nuke ’em, make ’em skins, and just use my standard hat stats and runes.

This idea was truly touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen, OP, RAmen.

@Ardid: That’s an interesting idea, but how would that work? Condi cleanses are kinda binary: they remove the condition or they don’t, mostly. This also risks making healing power mandatory, which I wouldn’t want, but it has potential depending on implementation.

I think my problem is that “something useful” is very nearly the same something for each class. The reasons why “pure support” builds are seldom a good idea are well taken, but I’d still like a little more variety. I think that fixing the condition stack limits and making poison and burning stack intensity was a big step in this direction – condition builds are no longer worthless outside of PVP. But yes, healing power is still the wasted stat.

If I’m understanding most peoples’ points here correctly, it’s that even if healing power weren’t a crappy, pointless stat, people still wouldn’t take healing power gear, and outside of Celestial, I broadly agree. I’ve seen some effective Zealot builds – I call these pug-savers because they can help paper over problems with pugs – but they’re niche and rare.

This would be one change among many that could help improve variety a bit. I think in practice you’d still see mostly zerk, but variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

I know, I know, there’s some variety in WvW and sPvP, which I’m quite happy about, but while we’re wishlisting, I’d like some more in PvE too.

Right on, thanks!

Looks to me like I need to do some experimenting to figure out whether I’m more successful with fire/blood or fire/air on my GS, but that blood with omnoms works exactly like I’d expect it to, and should provide both more damage and more sustain. Either way, time to defenestrate that blasted Rage sigil.

I’ve been trying to sort out a few things regarding sigils and their interaction with food-based proc effects (like omnomberry ghosts/pies), and there’s an awful lot of old data floating around. My major questions are these (assume Superior sigils unless stated otherwise):

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.

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.

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?

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?

I’m not trying to find the mathematically optimum build for DPS – that’s obviously been done to death. I’m after something that’s a bit unconventional, effective, but also able to hold its own after things go sideways. Variety is also good.

This is mainly for my Warrior, but most of the same questions apply, mutatis mutandis, to my Guardian, Ranger and Elementalist too.

Pretty good, I think, 8/10, even if “Bloodstrike” does vaguely sound charr-ish. But then, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the charr and norn borrowing bits of each others’ cultures.

My norn warrior: Kati Kainulainen
Ranger: Maja Sigurdsdottir
Mesmer: Angelin Ostergaard