Guild Wars 2

pretty much yeah… bad teams can’t capitalize on CC, bad teams won’t support a bunker when he needs it/leave him there when he doesn’t need it, bad teams will die with our without boons.

Play something independent that can kill things before your idiot teammates die. Honestly though the lack of player base means that low MMR regularly faces high MMR while high MMR is more likely to be put together, without more people it will not be possible to ‘climb out’ anytime soon.

The issue is rather simple, the game forms teams based on rating and then finds the team with the closest rating and puts them against each other. So you queue as 100 and the matchmaking system puts you with 50, 200, 500, 300 which are reasonably close. Then 5 people queue with the rating of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.

The matchmaking system gets a kitten because they’re all close and they are instantly put together. So your average is 230 theirs is 30, which is still pretty close if you think about it. So you get put against them as there is no team with an average inbetween you that’s queued in the last 2 minutes or so.

The Solution would be rather simple, instead make a pool of 10 people and then distribute the teams according to rank. Given that ANet historically lacks common sense however, I doubt we will see this any time soon… so I will continue to roll my troll minigame of trying to place a banner on ever point when I solo queue.

Arganthium.5638:

The real reason why thief wins against a warrior is not the lack of a CD stun break; using Shadow Return often is costly and wastes a lot of time that you could and should be spending attacking. The reason is that thieves steal some incredibly important boons off of warriors and can evade the major attacks.

A smart warrior won’t pop SoR and will try pretty hard not to use stability against a thief. While the evade spam does make it very difficult, the stunbreak is what sets it over the top if you ask me, it means that even if you do manage to time your CC around the thiefs primary attack being an evade 50% of the time AND basically infinite dodges you still don’t get to capitalize on it.

s.7421:

I still believe spirit rangers come out on top of warriors or i have had just some horrible body blocking luck. Seriously the spirits slow motion jump infront of my attacks.
Jon hammer is good but it is extremely easy to dodge even more so then mace shield.

Mace f1 is impossible to dodge intentionally. People bring hammer for a few reasons, one being higher damage, the second it being infinitely more useful in a teamfight. The difference is that you actually have to time your f1 very well.

Most every high ranking warrior I’ve run into on EU has been running the same weapon set I do, hammer/bow (Rom and Vuh are the two highest I know of, both running this build last time I saw them). Mace/shield is great and all, but it’s really more of a 1v1 spec, and can only really be used if people are out of position or as a far point attacker (and a team with voicecomms will very, very easily pull a HBing warrior off of someone in a teamfight).

Warrior should be about even with spirit ranger, maybe slight advantage spirit ranger if both sides start the fight with ideal CD’s. This is mainly due to a bug however, and once that bug is gone I think it will quickly switch to warrior advantage. A warrior has to make zero mistakes for this to work out though, if he gets blinded in during one stuncast he’s probably screwed.

Against an evade thief a warrior really has no way to win if the thief does not play like an idiot, this primarily being due to the no CD stunbreak.

Warriors will generally crush burst ele’s, while they have a multitude of stunbreaks they are all on fairly long CD’s, worst case scenario for the warrior is the ele getting away.

I think mesmer is highly dependent on if they’re running staff, if they’re running GS and team support utilities this will usually go to the warrior. If running a staff (can still be running team support utilities), mesmer. If running GS and stunbreak utilities it’s close, but probably mesmer.

Warrior will eat the faces of engi’s 9/10 times, and will most of the time be able to kill a necro.

I play mostly warrior, some ranger (rarely now that spirits are meta, worse than the BM of old this one is)… and some other classes, but not often enough anymore to be worth mentioning.

base values aren’t really important… The only class that doesn’t delve into either the toughness tree or gain it through an amulet are thieves and mesmers. Warriors pretty much have to spec into toughness, reducing the effect of the base armor.

I think the glassiest warrior builds sit at about 2.5k armor so what you would really be looking at is the different between 2.25k and 2.5k armor which I think is a 10-11% (don’t feel like breaking out the calculator, but I’m pretty good at doing this stuff in my head) difference at the most from light to heavy, realistically most builds have even more armor than this making it an even smaller difference.

Why are we even talking about this anyways, the only thing that does damage in this game anymore or conditions which bypass basically every defense in the game outside of zerkers stance and automated response. The former making the warrior immune to conditions 13-16% of the fight while the other 87-84% of the time condi builds are at the advantage and the latter triggering when the engi is so close to death jumping off a small ledge will kill him.

against condi heave sustained fighters, stamina (necro/engi/ranger)

against bursty teams dolyak (thief/warrior/mesmer)

Also depends on your trait choice, dolyak does not work well without mastery and stamina does not stack with vigor.

Cogbyrn.7283:

As much as I think mechanics should have interesting counter-play, I don’t think adding 3/4th-1 second animations to everything is the answer.

You can see a mace+shield Warrior running at you, and you have a good idea he’s going to Skull Crack once he gets in range. You can:

1. Dodge the moment he gets in range, because it feels like 90% of people use their abilities the second they are in range (see: Earthshaker. It could have a .1 second cast time and it would still be easy to dodge for the most part, because of people).

2. Soak the stun and use a stun-breaker.

3. Use Stability to delay the CC several seconds (preferably after he uses Shield Block so he can’t delay as well while he can’t CC you).

4. Keep range and force his mobility out, which is either his utility (Bull’s Charge) or Shield Bash (300 range). If he has Bull’s Charge, odds are his condi cleanse is going to be trash unless he prefers Signet of Stam/Berserker’s Stance over Endure Pain (assuming he brings 1 Stability himself. If not, just destroy him and move on). Mobility in this case would probably be the alternate weapon set, at which point you should engage with severe prejudice until he switches back to try to save his life.

The game gets interesting when your opponent knows what his options are, and you know your opponent knows what his options are. Do you just blow Skull Crack once you get in range? Do you try to bait the dodge and hit him with Shield Bakitten the end of the roll?

It becomes an actual fight. Against players who don’t know what they’re doing, it isn’t going to be a fight anyway. If you do know, you just destroy them and move on. You can do this on any class, and if you have a build you’re practiced with and put together intelligently, you don’t need an apex build or any FotM trash.

Skull Crack is designed to be strong, single-target pressure that you can throw out quickly. The drawback, as people have mentioned, is that it’s single-target only, has a 130 range, and can be anticipated fairly easily.

Maybe Skull Crack could use something, but I don’t think the fact that you can just slam it on 90% of the PvPers you see means it could use work. I land Earthshaker much more often than not on people, partly because I build for it, and partly because people aren’t half the reaction-kings they claim they are.

I am not looking for ways to beat it, I run it. I know what the counters are. I am NOT suggesting adding to the cast time. I AM suggesting that it needs a unique animation.

I’ve landed backbreaker on top 100 players without previous CC 1v1, people make mistakes. The difference is that they had the opportunity to dodge it and didn’t.

Velron

What’s funny is at least on Asura the Skull Crack animation is already different from an auto attack. Auto attacks swing wider from the outside sweeping across the body. Skull Crack is a quicker swing of the mace that starts high and sort of centered, then it swings down quickly and slightly toward the outside.
The issue is Asuras and their tiny animations for everything.

Asura are another issue that ANet seemingly just ignores because… well, they’re ANet.

Trying to show restraint here, but your attitudes are toxic. Neither side is capable of seeing reason on this issue, which is ridiculous. I know it’s a lot to expect for you to behave like adults, but please, try.

Powerful abilities should be avoidable for a good player. The sad part is it’s not just skullcrack that’s an issue.

- Thief backstab isn’t avoidable, you can predict it and avoid it based on this, but you cannot react to it.

- Mesmer pistol 5 is incredibly powerful for the animation behind it, the only reason I avoid it is usually because of the sound.

- Necro marks all look the same, despite varying in power, leaving the only response to be spamming dodge and hoping you get lucky.

- Ele updraft is instant cast. Fortunately they all seem to want to cast it directly after RTL, making it pretty easy to avoid.

- Lastly skullcrack, has a cast time but has no difference in animation from skullcrack meaning you can’t go melee against a warrior unless you’re using other broken mechanics such as thief/ranger evade spam or blind spam.

Abilities to which the only response is to spam other broken abilities are just as bad as the other broken abilities.

At the moment there’s no dodging skullcrack unless you’re guessing. I’m also not whining about it, I run it in my build.

I wanted to bring up some constructive ideas on the skill, not just moan about it or defend it like an ele or ranger before they got nerfed.

I also didn’t say a more obvious animation, I said it needs an animation that isn’t identical to auto attack. At the moment this is cheesy, I don’t feel like I outplayed anyone by landing skull crack which I do probably 90% of the time I use the skill, and I don’t feel like anyone outplayed me when I don’t land it because their dodge/evade/whatever was just random.

skullcrack isn’t the only offender in a long list of skills that need an actual animation, but it’s the only warrior skill that does.

Most people are suggesting a nerf, which I think is the wrong approach as the ability is not overpowered and more than that adds something unique that the warrior can do that other classes can’t. All I’m suggesting is to give people the opportunity for fair counterplay.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAsY3fjAV11xVWWs2BiVBB1ekJzjJ2DD5oHdwqEO-jUyAItBRTLAJBwUlAlDLiGbpFt+SENqnJiqV3YCBoYOA-w

How I’d change your build. It seems like you’re more offensively minded than I am when I play my ranger, so I tried to keep that in mind when putting it together. With this combo he’ll only be getting -15% duration on anything but your movement impairing condi’s and only -5% on your burning.

You could also run melandru runes to cut down on his stun duration, personally prefer regen runes on my own ranger.

Basically your sword/dagger set should be used very defensively, meaning you shouldnt be in melee with it unless you’re using an evade. Your axe/torch set should be your offensive set, apply burning with 4, and try to use 5 before swapping to sword/dagger so you can punish him for going into melee (spam evades inside of the circle so he eats burning while you remain unscathed, 2 your way out when out of evades and then swap back to axe torch. Shotgun him with splitblade when you can, but understand that going into melee range of a warrior is risky.

Also most warriors will not use skullcrack right off the bat (this is the thing that catches most people, and a good warrior will not use it when you expect it). A common combination is shield bash→2 autos→skullcrack→HB or more stunlock depending on what he’s running. You’ll likely to have a very very small window after the two autos to dodge, if not if the third strike isn’t an auto attack looking thing now wouldn’t be a bad time to use your stunbreak as he’ll likely be going to a practiced rotation at this point, and then you can lol at him as he flails around with his greatsword.

You can also swap raven for a moa so that you can interrupt him with either pet if you get caught, personally prefer the shorter CD blind though to prevent the skullcrack in the first place.

Been playing a bit with mace/shield+hammer lately, given our survivability/mobility buffs I find gap closers slightly less important as we can actually take some damage on our way there. I don’t think mainhand mace is necessarily overpowered in as far as what it does… I do think it is a little too strong in its current state however.

The reason being is not the cast time, or the duration of the stun, but the fact that it looks like an auto attack. I can very easily stunlock people who try to melee me not because they couldn’t dodge a 1/2s skill, but because… well, there’s no way to tell that that’s what I’m casting.

The Point
Skullcrack should have a unique animation. No, I’m not talking about a five minute final thrust type animation, but something that signifies it as different from just a regular auto attack, but with the same cast time (I would suggest an overhand strike borrowed from axe or sword). That is all.

Bit drunk atm, but gave it a go. Technically a second try as I moved my mouse off the thing because I thought I was supposed to actually click the sheep the first go around :P

Ended up with 0.1766

http://i1131.photobucket.com/albums/m549/John80sk1/Untitled.png

With latency though, reacting (properly) in under .25s seems… unlikely. If we assume even a 100ms latency we’re already over the top, not to mention it’s a complex not a simple reaction like this game is. Fun test regardless, couldn’t give it a third go as the sheep noises were about as irritating as it could get.

462=1048*916*y/2600
462*2600=959968*y
1201200/959968=y
~1.25=y

1048*916*1.25/2600=461.52

Do they not teach this stuff in school anymore?

it’s a strong 1v1 build, not overpowered in the slightest though.

Thief: anything with mainhand sword can torch this build. Just don’t spam all your initiative away. Blind also cripples this build if you use it right and play defensively until opportunity presents itself.

Mesmer: Phase retreat, enough said.

Necro: Survive 8s, win.

Ranger: Infinite evades. Not necessarily easy an easy win, but if you can avoid the guy for 8s you’re golden.

Guardian: If you’re dying to this build it’s because you’re bad, and you should feel bad.

Engi: Evades and condi spam, this build is generally also fairly vulnerable to CC with a max of two stunbreaks usually on fairly long CD’s.

General advice: Create distance while he has mace/shield up, he has no gap closers here. Greatsword is a good time to press as he only has one defensive tool and very little damage against non-stunned opponents.

I pretty regularly beat this build with hammer/longbow (pvp) and hammer/sword+shield (WvW) with only one stunbreak on my bar and no vigor. As a matter of fact I don’t remember ever losing to this build.

Mace/Shield+GS is probably the easiest to understand/use. First utility slot can be swapped around a bit and the only real mandatory sigil is paralyzation on one of the mace/shield set.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNApeRjkOBvxQqQMxBEkCNsKOKUCmQ9wO2w4A-TsAA1CnICSFkLITQygsBNsYZxEBA

Other than that Defektive and Tarcis have a few threads floating around. Defektive’s current build I would’t recommend unless you’re part of a pretty organized team that can take full advantage of it. Tarcis’ hammer/bow build is pretty awesome (though I’ve changed some things around on it since the recent buffs).

Healing signet is now pretty much the best heal in the game now in terms of health per second. Lacking a burst heal leaves you very vulnerable if you drop down low though. All three heals are pretty good now tbh, personally running with healing signet. Gets nuts how much hp/s I get with it plus adrenal health and regen (generally gotten from someone else).

Tier S
=Guard
-Necro
-Thief (S/D)

Tier A
+Engineer
+Ranger
=Other thief builds
=Ele
=Mesmer
-Warrior

I don’t think we really have a B tier anymore, most every class can run a build that contributes. Warriors are still at a bit of a mechanical disadvantage, but this has more to do with warrior attacks being properly telegraphed and other classes not.

Necro and guardian are top tier because these two classes are pretty much irreplaceable in a team. You have to have a guardian pretty much if you hope to hold points. You can’t really match a necro AoE wise, so while you can get away with not having one you’re gimping yourself if you don’t bring one. Necro may be a tier lower now that they got nerfed (again), and I was tempted to move them down posting… maybe the A list was too crowded.

s/d thief is just flat out broken.

The mesmer crying is mostly unwarranted if you ask me, they still bring the best teamfight utility and high AoE burst. Running a zerker amulet and full offensive traits they still have excellent burst mitigation in the game… and now they want to do all this and on top of it be good against condi pressure.

no more pets… please, no more pets.

Hambow warrior… Can’t believe I doubted its efficacy now that I’ve been playing it a few days. Thanks Tarcis. 12 stacks of might+backbreaker on a stunned target is… just… awesome…

Ah, right, misread. Yes, MH will work on stunned, knockdowned and I believe dazed (though I haven’t tested this) enemies.

Honestly… I don’t think necros were/are really that overpowered. I think that people running certain overpowered builds that have been as such since the start of the game got their little meta upset and didn’t like it. I felt they were overpowered when they first got buffed sure, but I learned and adapted.

I don’t play a necro by the way, I main a warrior and have a ranger, guard, thief and mesmer. Within the 7 guys I primarily play with (outside of drunken solo queue) double necro teams are actually generally the easiest for us to deal with, while teams running high mobility mesmer/ele combos are usually what we struggle with the most.

As far as necro being easy to play… well, the basics of most classes are easy to grasp. S/D thief and spirit ranger are rediculously easy to get to the point where it takes a much more skilled player to beat you. Mesmer burst is probably the most simplistic in the game. Even mace/shield+gs warrior is now pretty easy to play relatively effectively. When I fight a necro 1v1 I can definitely tell the difference between a good and a bad one, I honestly can’t say the same about spirit ranger or s/d thieves.

No UF will not apply after the knockdown, or during any knockdown. Stuns and knockdowns are different. Sigil of paralyzation also does not work with knockdowns.

Mace and Hammer f1’s and shield 4 work with UF, nothing else does.

Earthshaker applies stun then damage, backbreaker applies damage then knockdown.

Unsuspecting foe works with stun, not knockdowns.

mesmer/thief kills warr kills necro/engi kills mesmer/thief… while ranger/guard sit on a point. Ele does alright against everything, but doesn’t really hard counter anybody and isn’t really hard countered by much.

Way I see it anyways… best balance we’ve probably had, but I’m sure somebody will find a new truly OP build in a few days. For now, bask in success ANet before we find something else to kitten about.

Throwing HB into the burst slot would be more of a nerf than a buff to greatsword, which most people seem to be moving away from anyways. On top of that destroys most of the ways to currently set up the skill.

How about changing it to ‘inspiring strike’, and making the fury AoE (still has to connect). Could also be ‘demoralizing strike’ and apply AoE weakness.

Gave this a whirl in hotjoin and was pleasantly surprised in all honesty. I miss the mobility and defence of sword/shield+bow, but man does everything hit hard with those extra might stacks.

The loss of mobility hurts a little less being half ranged, and bulls charge is there for when you absolutely need a gap closer (don’t remember that being there when you initially posted, probably just didn’t notice).

Running hoelbrak instead of melandru for a bit of extra umph (scholar/divinity on the rare occasion the other team is condi-light). Also not sure if I like march or stance duration better in defense. Also threw fire on the bow, might change it to energy but I feel like I’ve got to make up for some lost damage from my old build.

Anyways, gonna try it in tourny tomorrow. Less terrain to abuse with savage leap on foefire, so a good place for a transition I think.

I haven’t run it in quite a while, viability wise I think warriors are hard pressed to find a build that does not use a longbow at this point.

That being said, I’ve developed the opinion that viability is heavily dependent on team composition and strategy. I’m running longbow because it fits my team very well. Longbow is also significantly easier to use, which is somewhat important with the AoE/Clone spam and making you still useful while you’re getting on target.

This build I think would be good for side point control with the current meta, and would work well with either a burst ele, thief, mesmer, or even another warrior.

vengeance in general is a great clutch downed state ability despite what people say. I think it’s becoming a tradition to ceremoniously rez me after I vengeance stomp someone to get my team up.

By mobility I’m not really talking movement speed, swiftness is an easy buff to keep up really. I’m more on about gap closers, which can be used to traverse the map a lot faster. This is, in my humble opinion, what makes warriors an asset instead of a liability. We might not be the best help, but seconds count, and a fight is a whole lot more even if you get there fast as opposed to after your buddy has blown half his CD’s.

A lot of this I suppose changes according to team composition. The people I play with are generally on fairly low mobility classes so I’m kindof stuck, which may put the blinders on me to other options (the only exception is one guy who’ll play ele if I bother him enough about it).

All this being said, I’d really say give mainhand sword a chance. With this build final thrust would hit for pretty epic damage, and you have an immobilize as a way to set up burst when the target has stability up. It’s a different type of control, but control none the less. You can still very easily 100→0 necros provided they don’t plague while keeping them pretty helpless with interrupts.

The poster you called a troll, afaik, is correct. This is due to the sigil rounding (para sigil will aways round up). So you 4s stun is a 4s stun with 1 sigil or 2 sigils. With hammer your 2s stun is a 3s stun.

I feel like the meta on NA must be significantly different from that on EU… so many build there completely lacking mobility. It seems like it would struggle a lot against teams that quickly shift their strategy instead of running with the law of insanity and banging their heads on mid one at a time until they lost the match.

sword shield isn’t really single target… all of the attacks on sword minus the leap cleave last time I checked (which was earlier today). Granted it’s no greatsword, but if the guy rezzing is close to 50% he’s probably about to be a sad panda.

My only issue with this build is the lack of mobility. What a warrior can do that most others can’t is bring highly mobile AoE dps. This depends a lot on team composition though I suppose. The guild group I’ve been rolling with (I don’t really have a stable team, but there’s 4 of us who are fairly permanent and 2-3 from the guild who get in when they fit in) generally does not have a mesmer, meaning my ability to get from point a to b is very important. This pretty much locks me in with either GS or mainhand sword.

Mainhand sword is awesome for the most part now, could use some animation cleanup and a reduced cast time on 3. Shield isn’t bad, the block is good apart from its fairly long CD (the move of the trait to adept helped a lot with this though) and the stun is good for setting up sword 3 or an attack from another set.

Sword/shield is probably the most ‘complete’ weapon set we have, it brings CC, mobility, defense and now damage. I see it as our jack of all trades option, and versatility is very important in a world without build templates.

8s immunity to conditions vs being able to spam every condition constantly… I’ll write him off as a troll.

Endure pain is neither good or bad at the moment, used as a crutch by a lot of warriors though I think. Basically as a warrior you’re locked in to either dolyak signet or balanced stance. You probably want signet of stamina or berserker’s stance. This leaves one slot open, which can generally be filled by a CC, EP, stamina/berserker’s or another stunbreak.

Endure pain is basically a good way to beat bad players mostly, the ones too dumb to come off the offensive for 4s and kite for a bit. It can also be useful to mitigate some burst damage and as a second stunbreak. Like I said, not really good not really bad in my eyes.

On the original topic:

I agree with most of the original post, unfortunately it seems to have gotten derailed into “omg don’t nerf me’s” but I’ll try to get it back on the tracks just the same. I agree with most of the things stated in the original topic, so I’ll just expand and add a little bit as I see it.

Mesmer Utility
No, I don’t think it needs a nerf, I think it’s great that a single player can have such a major impact on a game with a well timed skill. I think however that other classes should be brought up with their own ‘game changers’.

A good example would be warrior battle standard. At the moment it’s on a 240s CD with a 2s cast time. That’s a 4 minute cooldown, comparatively iLife is 130s (yes I understand battlestandard has other effects). An idea would be to reduce battle standards cooldown to 180s (allowing it to be traited for 144s) while cutting the duration down to 30-40s and perhaps reducing the cast by a half second or so. I realize this would be in every way superior to iLife, but for one it’s an elite, two mesmers would still have portal (and maybe would get to free up a utility slot if a warrior was in the team).

I use warrior as an example as that’s primarily what I play, so I don’t know as much about the lesser used skills on other classes. I’m sure there’s plenty of similar things that could be done with other classes utility to bring them on par.

Animations
In my eyes nothing offensive should be instant-cast. You covered this a bit with ele’s, but you should have a chance to react to any ability that can CC or do damage. This also goes for necro staff animations which are all identical. I would suggest different colored bolts that fired to the marks location or something of the sort during cast.

This also rolls into stealth, nobody would complain if you were revealed at the start of an attack from stealth instead of after (and only if) it hit. I would also suggest (for thieves sake) that if you missed and were taken out of stealth it would not apply the revealed debuff. I doubt thieves would have needed half of the damage nerfs they’ve been given if this was how it worked in the first place.

In short, you should be able to react to things. Guardians and warriors are designed really well in this respect.

There’s definitely some sort of teleport hack out there, most of the people I’ve seen using it play mesmer or thief as it’s less obvious I think (took me a bit to figure out what was going on anyways). Only seen it in WvW though, never in PvP… don’t run much hotjoin though, mostly just tournies, so might be a thing there as well.

25 in defense is generally outweighed by DoTE damage wise. 150 power (from 3k toughness) is a pretty low addition with all the might flying around in a large group, maybe 5-7% or so… while you can pretty much guarantee the other guys will have 6-8 boons (+18-24%).

Empower allies on the other hand gives more power to others, seeing as you’ll hit like a wet noodle at best with this build it’s probably better to pick this up. If you were going the damage route I’d take empowered over desperate power in large groups, pretty much guaranteed 6 boons in an organized group… +12% all the time, +20% half the time.

Fire provided you do not have an important on swap sigil on the same weapon set.

how could they tell that the thread wasn’t being maintained… none of the bugs have really been fixed aside from a few tooltip corrections.

Personally think this map is a step in the right direction, just a little rough around the edges. It promotes a different style of play than the typical “2 dudes sit on a point and take a nap until somebody shows up and they kite them forever while other people spam AoE around them”.

More importantly, it’s actually kind of fun. Win or lose, the group of friends I was playing with today spent most of the games laughing.

Competitive? The first rule of a game being successful is it has to be fun. Balance is secondary to fun, and mind you, I play a warrior… I know all about poor balance.

I believe he’s speaking specifically of the warrior falling trait… perhaps I’ve already said too much…

Realistic or viable isn’t what I was going for here if you didn’t catch that. Was just trying to make a point.

hmmm… somebody should update that tooltip, I thought that was how it worked but read the tooltip on the build editor and figured I was wrong.

Still, I maintain that a mesmer can remove a fair amount of conditions (as well as a warrior anyways) if they really want to spec for it.

cymerdown.4103:

Jonwar.9205:

Send two ele’s? More likely one thief, one ele, or… well, just about anything really. If there’s one thing I can say about rifle warriors with absolute certainty it’s that I’ve yet to lose to one 1v1.

Pack a longbow, it does as much damage as a rifle in AoE fashion and with more built in utility.

First of all, I did say this isn’t a dueling build. Secondly, that’s not true, LB doesn’t do as much single-target damage as a Rifle. Volley in this build crits nearly all the time for quite a lot of damage. And being able to spike someone down with a single shot in a teamfight (before they get a chance to heal) is a very valuable thing in tourney.

As much single target burst damage? No. As much realistic damage over time? I would say yes.

My point was that as soon as somebody notices you you’re gone, I’m aware it’s not a 1v1 build, but other non-duel builds will wreck you just as easily. Also, the greatswords mobility suffers greatly from movement impairing conditions and you have nothing to really deal with that… so, it’s unlikely you’ll be successfully running away from anything other than guardians and mesmers.

Personally if I were to run a rifle, and wished to stay completely out of melee, I’d pick sword/horn. Not just for the 4 skill on the horn, but also for the ability to abuse the hell out of terrain with leaps.

Demon.5082:

Jonwar.9205:

Erm, probably because mesmers are doing just fine in tPvP to the point where just about every good team is running one? Secondly, mesmers have a lot of condi removal options, they just generally choose not to run them because the things that make them viable take precedence which is much the same as warriors. All of our condi removal options cut into our damage or control abilities, making it still a stretch to incorporate them into builds.

On the original topic, this skill is awesome if you know how to use it. An 8s break from a thief’s blinds or necro’s fears/condi’s is a godsend, if you can’t burst down a thief in 8s or get a necro CC’d in that period of time I think it’s a player issue.

Honestly a few bug fixes and I think warriors will be in the mediocre category, which is far better than the bottom of the heap as we were before.

Mesmers are picked in tpvp only due to their portal and Illusion of Life skills. The moment those 2 are reworked (they will be), say bye to Mesmers from tpvp. Also, you are mistaken. Mesmers have horrid condition removal. A fully specced mesmer can at the most remove 4-6 conditions every 35-40 sec which is equal to signet of stamina alone. The reason why warriors are lower placed in the pvp ladder is because of the mesmers active defenses (blurred frenzy/distortion/decoy/blink).

I like this change. It is a skill based change and not a faceroll one. A good warrior CAN kill a necro with this (provided the necro is not at max life force) but a good necro CAN survive it with dodges/spectral walk.

Challenge accepted.

One full cleanse on a kitten CD, the same as signet of stamina (untraited). Arcane thievery, 3 conditions every 36 seconds. Torch skills, 2 every 24s. Removes one on shatter, varying cooldowns and instantly recharged with signet, situational much like cleansing ire. 1 on heal every 15s. 1 from rune every 30s, but requires you to get hit a few times. I didn’t say it was viable, but neither is a warrior specced for full condition removal.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQJAsPl0ziqXTzhmkwUBif6B0Bw0RVAAkU46XD

Yes though, all in all that’s basically what I was trying to say. It’s something that levels the playing field, not tips it one way or another (I actually think it should stay as immune to conditions).

To continue, I don’t think it’s really survivability that brings a warrior down anymore in comparison to the mesmer, I see the main issue being utility. Now, if warrior rez banner was brought down in cooldown to something reasonable (with nerfs to its duration) we might see this level out. Bringing a warrior at the moment is like bringing half a mesmer.

EDIT: seriously, forty five second shorthand is filtered?

Send two ele’s? More likely one thief, one ele, or… well, just about anything really. If there’s one thing I can say about rifle warriors with absolute certainty it’s that I’ve yet to lose to one 1v1.

Pack a longbow, it does as much damage as a rifle in AoE fashion and with more built in utility.

jportell.2197:

So now that warriors have a very reliable way to become immune to conditions…. maybe mesmers can get some condition hate as well? We are straight out bottom of the condition removal barrel… What gives Anet?

Erm, probably because mesmers are doing just fine in tPvP to the point where just about every good team is running one? Secondly, mesmers have a lot of condi removal options, they just generally choose not to run them because the things that make them viable take precedence which is much the same as warriors. All of our condi removal options cut into our damage or control abilities, making it still a stretch to incorporate them into builds.

On the original topic, this skill is awesome if you know how to use it. An 8s break from a thief’s blinds or necro’s fears/condi’s is a godsend, if you can’t burst down a thief in 8s or get a necro CC’d in that period of time I think it’s a player issue.

Honestly a few bug fixes and I think warriors will be in the mediocre category, which is far better than the bottom of the heap as we were before.

nicknamenick.2437:

not sure if its better than signet of stamina (i use signet traits also)

Its every 36 sec full condition remove..

Berserkers stance is on 60sec cooldown for 8 sec.. necro will see you activate it and just wait for 8 sec and bam spam you after..

Also gain adrenaline issnt needed anymore (you get more adrenaline than you can use your burst normally)

The necro can “wait” 8s, but how is he going to wait while your closing on him (completely immune to any movement impairing conditions he can put up, and fear as it counts as a condition) and start bashing his face in?

This is a big buff IMO, if it’s off CD I see this as a realistic way to stomp d/p thieves and necros alike. Not to mention the ability to actually get on a point and cleave for a while instead of waiting on the sidelines for someone to step out of the mess of AoE.

For starters, I don’t think the main issue is with things like ele scepter as these are all fairly telegraphed animations and require a half decent player to land. These also aren’t really ‘spammable’ abilities last time I checked. Warrior longbow is another example of how AoE should work.

The issue more comes from things like engie grenades and necros in general. The other issue is in a 4v4, 3v4, 3v3 or whatever this just becomes a mess of particle effects to the point where you don’t really know what’s happening on the point anymore. The result is generally since people don’t know what’s going on they just spam AoE themselves and hope that the other guys die faster. It’s not really fun to watch, and it’s not really fun to play.

The biggest problem to me is that these AoE effects are generally as strong or stronger than single target effects. To me a thief that lined up that perfect backstab or that warrior who landed a good CC on a target should receive more benefit than someone mashing buttons over a point. At the moment there’s no point in bringing single target damage when someone can do just as much damage to multiple targets.

I loled.
15 characters and such

I still find myself running gs/longbow, maybe it’s just an old dog thing.

mace/mace+hammer, haven’t tried it but seems like it’d work better than mace/shield as mace 5 acts as a gap closer of sorts. Might give it a try later though the lack of damage mitigation/escapes seems like a rough direction to go.