Guild Wars 2

Player Character.9467:

Nergrom.7592:

So what does this mean? Without taking power into consideration, shout warriors benefit the least of the group healers from cleric gear. So unless you’re really lacking heals as a group, go sentinel.

No… it means if a fight lasts over 12 or 5 seconds take clerics because you have had more effective hp in the fight.

In terms of pure long term survival, you’re perfectly right!

However, you need to consider that if healing is already enough for long term sutainability, any extra healers can invest in more defensive or offensive stats to get a bigger bang for buck or tank more burst. I suggest shout warriors for this because their total output is very small compared to the other healers, their main strength being condition removal.

Like I said, if you lack heals as a group, go cleric (enough that you don’t feel too squishy), if not go sentinel or soldier.

I did the math a while back for [FIRE], and even accounting for the buff to shouts:

A shout warrior takes over 12 seconds (averaged out) in full cleric to heal the same amount of effective health they would’ve gotten from going sentinel.

A banner warrior takes 5 seconds in full cleric to… sentinel. This is due to the fact that with the banner out, warrior have the highest uptime healing power (overwriting other regens) as well as can heal up to 20+ people by themselves due to how banner regen works.

A guardian healer takes 4 seconds…

A staff ele takes 5 seconds….

So what does this mean? Without taking power into consideration, shout warriors benefit the least of the group healers from cleric gear. So unless you’re really lacking heals as a group, go sentinel.

Considering power, soldier > sentinel

So if you’re a shout warrior, get out your soldier gear unless your group really does lack heals. Remember, health is 1 person, group heals are usually 5 or 6 (20+ in the case of banners, but banner wars don’t stack unless you have more people)

I’ve been perusing the forums after my departure from the game in the hopes that some new changes would make me want to play again, or get the old guild back together [FIRE]. What I’ve found is an immense amount of uninformed hatred for GvGs.

The argumentation is sloppy, unfounded and often incorrect. I am not going to say that GvGs are perfect, but they are a far cry from what the average idiot thinks.

So let me attempt to show you the impact of GvG:

Time Factor

“We lose to other servers because we spend too much time GvGing while the other server is going full ppt!”

There has never been a GvG guild that has spent their full time, as a whole, playing only GvG.

Assume a full week: 168 hours
Assume your average GvG: 1 hour

So that’s a whopping 0.6% of the entire week spent on GvG.

Assume GvG guild raids every night: 2 hours x 7 days = 14 hours

So out of the 15 hours your average GvG guild is active, you get a whopping 6.7% of their week spent on GvG. The remaining 93.3% is spent in WvW, getting you the points you so desperately want.

Consider that most GvGs happen on thursday when the matches are almost always decided, and you end up with a number so small that it really shouldn’t influence eventual wins or losses unless the matches are dead even otherwise.

Capacity Factor

“These GvGers are taking up valuable space and causing queues!”

This argument is brought up a lot and is completely valid, if they are actually causing queues to pop up. That said, this is, due to planning and guild communication, rarely the case in any but the top tier servers.

How?

First of all, you have to realise that any mid or low tier server will have moments when activity is low, this is due to coverage determining tier. Guilds will usually pick a time when they know their servers are almost empty.

If a server becomes too full, the guilds will switch out to an empty BL and continue there. If all servers are full they picked the wrong time and usually reschedule.

Now I say that most guilds do this because in my experience they do, and I’ve seen and fought a lot of them.

However, there will be the occasional guild that doesn’t do this, and holding the GUILD accountable is justified. Holding the GvG community as a whole accountable is not, most of us go out of our way to not inconvenience you.

Location Factor

“WvW is for WvW, go GvG in SPvP!”

Now let me repeat my point above that most the guilds go out of their way to not inconvenience you. Got that? Good. Off the bat that will tell you that usually you won’t even notice we’re there anyway.

But about SPvP, it is not a suitable platform for the current GvG format. The maps are too small and constrictive, the builds are far less customizable due to amulet stats, and We can only field 10 vs 10.

Now if you’re wondering why we usually do 15v15 or 20v20, it’s because we’re near the sweet spot where individual builds and skills matter as much as team coördination. We aren’t mindlessly spamming 1 and zerging, and strong skirmish builds become less powerfull but still vital.

We can’t do that if you move us to a 10v10 format.

Contribution Factor

“Silly GvGers, you don’t do anything for the server! GTFO!”

Remember my first point, where I stated that the vast majority of time GvG guild are actually doing WvW? Keep that in mind.

Another thing to consider is that not only do they play often, but they often play better against large groups. Not undermining your skill as a player, but it has to be said that GvG guild groups tend to wipe enemy zergs up to twice or even thrice their numbers. So they play often and they softcounter blobs.

Furthermore is the fact that GvG grew out of guilds that were doing WvW in a more organised fashion. It’s the guilds that host the community TS, PUG raids, and call for people in LA to help out that do GvG on the side. Telling these people to “GTFO” because they GvG once in a while would remove the backbone of many servers.

Simply put, GvGers contribute to WvW, and sometimes more so than others.

Conclusion

GvG is an unofficial game mode that a lot of people like, that usually doesn’t negatively interfere with server rankings. GvG guilds contribute to WvW by providing a counter to blobs, and in some cases forming the entire infrastructure of a server. GvGs are held in WvW because SPvP has insufficient support for it, making many builds unviable.

GvG’s can inconvenience people, but that’s something most guilds try to avoid. It is perfectly acceptable to hold a guild accountable for rude behaviour, but keep it guild specific.

And trolls will be trolls, feed them some thermite or just ignore and let them waste away into pitiful husks.

Where is this talk about GvG elitism coming from, the US?

Here, on the other side of the pond, GvG guilds (with a few exceptions) barely display any elitist attitude. They join a map, rake in the points and, dare I say it, usually contribute more to point totals than the randoms.

And when the time has come for the GvG, they move over to the windmill during offpeak hours and duke it out for about 1 hour of their entire WvW week.

There is no calling for people to leave the map, there is no calling randoms trash, but there’s a small vocal minority of randoms calling GvGers trash.

So why is there so much hate on something that usually doesn’t interfere with anything? Most of the time if these people wouldn’t be able to GvG, they would’ve logged off instead of helping out during that 1 hour so it’s not that lack of resources influences it. GvGs are moved if servers are full, to not hinder WvW, so capacity issues can’t be it…

Maybe it is based on region, but if that’s the case why would these people call out for blood when a large part of the GvG community are team players and generally helpful people?

It sounds more like people enjoy taking away other people’s fun, or not realising that everybody can have different tastes and in an open environment like WvW there is space to cater to that taste. This is true for those elitist GvGers as it is for elitist randoms or WvWers.

I think the biggest reason these bad decisions keep being made is because they are unable to balance for the sake of balance.

What I mean is that they desperately want their e-sport idea to come true, a lofty goal indeed. With that in mind they’ve made changes to pvp modes and balance and it seems to be going in the right direction, though the pace is still in question.

How does this affect balance in WvW? They need more people to spvp for their goal to become a reality. While we may conclude that they are blatantly trying to get more of us into the mists through bogus balance (which could be true), it might not be that black and white.

Consider they all want this e-sport thing to happen. It’s their goal, their mission. Thinking like that may subconciously influence their perception, making their decision seem not as bad and then sticking to it through internal justification. So WvW balance is affected by the fact that the devs are subconsciously thinking about spvp.

So it’s either they’re being intentionally malicious (maybe true), or their company goals are subconsciously affecting their judgement combined with internal justification (more likely to be true).

What they need to do is distance themselves and look at every game type as a seperate entity. Balance wvw with wvw in mind, pve with pve in mind, and pvp with pvp in mind. They also need to stop trying to justify things that aren’t working and turn criticism into ideas.

I also want a headstone in the middle of the ruins titled “R.I.P. GvG”

But it’s also 50-150 extra statpoints to everybody:

Don’t forget that the situation is unfair if you have mjor coverage and population discrepancy.

If team A can field max players and send 30 to cap, while team B only has 50 players and can only afford to send 5 to cap, guess who still has more members on the field with a buff that makes them much more powerful as a group?

Team A.

So during primetime it might be fair, but outside that this buff really just makes population and coverage matter even more as opposed to skill and tactics.

This buff is a real slap to the face of any low coverage server, and essentially unfair overall.

It baffles me how they could even consider these buffs when they will only make the strong stronger and the weak weaker. So what if you’re stronger in primetime, they’ll have the orbs most of the time outside that timeslot anyway, so good luck!

Not to mention the effect on GvGers who:

- contribute quite a bit to WvW in terms of points, as they raid far more than they gvg.
- are also keeping equal enemy numbers occupied during gvgs.
- really only want a simple change to bandaid the situation.

They say that they want to keep WvW healthy but hurting GvG will hurt WvW on the whole.

Most servers do not have the pug coverage to sustain themselves when the GvGers decide to leave WvW. The pugs can be skilled for sure, but the fact is that almost all GvGers are also WvWers, and losing that will mean a large overall loss in manpower… in a game-mode based on coverage. Vizunah would survive, but the others?

But surely they wouldn’t leave, right? Well, it depends. Not everybody would, but I can say that for a large portion GvG is what keeps them invested in the game, invested enough to WvW on the side.

Anecdotal: My own guild sticks around because we’re friends and we like GvGs, and almost all our friends are in the guild. If we lose the ability to GvG, the guild would drain out slowly and eventually disband. Many friendly and rival guilds I know think the same.

Zephyrus.9680:

Xsorus.2507:

mistsim.2748:

Xsorus.2507:

Describe the current GvG meta and how it has evolved

i doubt i can convey all the details, but it basically started with warrior hammer trains exerting tremendous aoe CC. then Red Guard discovered how to beat the game by stacking mostly PVT guards for perma stability and better sustain, a couple of hammer warriors, and a few very talented casters. this change in meta in turn encouraged everyone to bring out more power wellmancers and glassy backliners to melt the guardian powerline. and finally, we have now seen a very FUN meta evolution of backline pressure and periphery play, which involves other specs with sole purpose of eliminating the backliners.

where it’s gonna go next is very interesting, but as i said, it keeps evolving. now you humour me, and describe how the spvp and WvW duel metas havent DEvolved.

Xsorus.2507:

Because none of the videos are distinguishable from pugs zerging one another.

watch some of ogre’s GvG reports. top GvG’ers are probably some of the best pvpers in the game, and they have to know their profs inside and out. some of the best ones spend most of their time dueling and small ganging in WvW. the jousts place more emphasis on cohesion and altruism, instead of just lookin’ out for #1 (yourself). there are many maneuvers to master and when kitten hits the fan as it often does, if youre not a good pvper, you will get melted. lots of guilds try to emulate this organization and sometimes even fall apart attempting. you should know how hard this can be just from your roams with AoN (which i believe u did a while back?). in all honesty, i think a lot of new guilds fall apart when they try to emulate this when people arent ready, because the atmosphere can seem so rigid and elitist unless everyone is on the exact same page.

but only few are very good at this. perhaps youve only watched the lower tier guilds in action? i didnt enjoy watching GvG’s until i took part in some myself, and then i started seeing techniques and maneuvers i didnt see before.

GvG is just another way of playing the game. it’s the next level of GvZ, just like tournaments were the next level of hotjoin a while back.

So the meta hasn’t changed.

The meta has always been Hammer Warriors/Guardians/Necro’s with a few Elementalist.

Did you even read the text you quoted?

He did, he’s just disregarding it in an offhand manner in an attempt to trivialize otherwise valid information.

The fact he even asked for the information in the first place, only to disregard it right off the bat pretty much means he’s either an opinionated “dolores umbridge” type or a troll.

In both cases, just ignore it and it will go away.

Thieves are far better than warriors at roaming, but warriors are no slouches.

Thieves and warriors can both be annoying if specced right (CC train warrior, stealth/blind spam thief), so none of them are really more annoying than the other.

Warrior damage is high in pve, but a thief’s can be even higher. Sadly, trying to deal that much damage as a thief is usually suicide.

Warriors are better in zergs in general, but a thief can thrive with a blast and blind heavy build (mass might, mass stealth, mass healing) while hunting down solo ranged targets.

Thieves are usually more survivable than warriors due to stealth, at least in small scale combat.

Overall, I think the warrrior is better. However, thieves are really good at small scale combat and roaming, so if that’s your thing pick a thief instead.

Got this gem from a guildmember, note that it’s just a joke :P

http://oi48.tinypic.com/30jk0on.jpg

HAIL BONKUZ

HAIL BONKUZ

HAIL BONKUZ!!!

Off topic, yet still of note:

Strafing like a crazy person on the spot (going left and right really fast) confuses the shaman’s aiming, making the arrow go to the right or left of you if you are not in melee range.

Back on topic:

Longbow + Axe/Axe

The whirl will rip a large amount of stacks off and maim a lot of worms too, while keeping you mobile so you don’t catch fire. Longbow both supplements this and deals comparable damage over time to the rifle.

same problem

EU SFR

mace/shield + greatsword

Bait out stunbreaks, stun and burn. Get the reflect trait and you can usually survive the trip back to your group/zerg.

“But Nergrom, what about when you don’t have frenzy?”

Simple, you channel a normal HB if you’re in a small fight, or you WA through your stunned target to your group/zerg. Getting all hits in (hard but doable) with all of them being crits due to the unsuspecting foe trait will deal like 60% of HB damage in a much shorter amount of time while dodging and retreating.

And yes, glass warriors have a hard time approaching from the front, that’s what flanking is for. I can’t count the amount of times a few of us flanked an enemy zerg that was fighting ours, and got off full HB casts with no frenzy on 3 targets.

To the hammer warrior I dueled in sfr borderlands, great fun. Too bad the ranger interrupted us.

- That annoying GS/longbow warrior

Warrior tankiness is pretty weak, due to a lack of protection and get out of jail free cards.

That said, a support warrior who is a bit tanky is a great frontliner in a zerg due to the fact that you live long enough to CC things and support others. WvW only though.

In dungeons, the best sustainability you can get is going full glass, traiting defensively and eating an omnomberry pie.

The problem with the hammer being slow is twofold, even though the hammer needs to be slow by design.

1. Swings and animations are very predictable.
2. Extremely hardcountered by blind and aegis.

So, to keep the hammer slow we would need to adjust one of these things to make it more viable in high level PvP. I opted for making the animations a bit more unpredictable and less over the top. (example: backbreaker has the same cast time, but the swing down animation is sped up and backloaded so that dodging the swing is much harder.)

I’ve found that some of our weapons are weak or lackluster, for instance the sword. I’d like to hear how you, yes you, would alter the weapons to make them more viable.

I’ll start:

Mainhand Sword
I would like to see the bleed durations halved but the stacks doubled. I would also like to see confusion on every final thrust. Hamstring also applies a bleed.

Offhand Sword
Redesign of Impale, the sword is thrown with a chain attached. If you activate Rip while not in melee range, you do a pull instead of dealing damage.

Mainhand Mace
I would love for the 1 attack to be a bit faster.

Mainhand Axe
Eviscerate needs a bigger leap.

Offhand Axe
Dual Strike also grants 2 might. Whirling Axe deals more damage and has a slightly reduced cooldown.

Greatsword
Tone down HB a bit, and increase the 1 damage to compensate. The burst ability is reworked to inflict increasingly larger stacks of vulnerability.

Hammer
Aoe knockback needs a little more oomph. Animations could use a bit more unpredictability, think of either less obvious or harder to predict the timing.

Shield
The reduced cooldowns should be baseline, and the reflect and toughness merged into one trait.

Warhorn
Change the priority on this thing to remove the conditions that it can remove baseline, before converting an additional condition into a boon.

Rifle
Tone down the damage of killshot and volley, but speed up their animations a bit. Give the 1 bleed the sword treatment and increase the physical damage a bit to even out total dps lost from volley and killshot. Make brutal shot apply a short daze as well as the vulnerability.

Tanky hammer warriors are very useful in dispersing enemy zergs when backed by their own.
Warriors specced for ultra mobility make great dolyak hunters.
Rifle warriors are zerg assassins, take out the enemy commander or important targets.
Longbow warriors with the death from above trait are probably the best tower defense against small zergs.

Confirmed hacking going on in the SFR borderland by a few people in Kodash. They are being reported as we speak.

To Kodash, I know they do not represent you, but it falls to you to discourage this behaviour further.

Other than that, let the games begin

To the guys at vizu border, a few parting words:

It was hilarious kiting you guys around.

- that one very annoying warrior that ran away

Our heals are really too low. Other classes seem to need to heal once and their back to almost full. Yes, we have a higher base health, but in pvp that doesn’t do much, seeing as it’s a buffer and not a sustainable defense (A buffer easily burned through, mind you).

Mobility needs some love. The gapclosers we have are okay, if a bit buggy at times. What I mean here is the slowing conditions. They need to be easier to remove for a warrior, or they shouldn’t affect our mobility skills in the first place.

Minor traits need a rework. The toughness while reviving and the revive speed trait could be worked into 1, thickness is useless because we’re only ever at above 90% health in a serious fight once.

Make the maps bigger.

Make camps more difficult. I can solo them as a GC warrior…

Make sentries more potent, make them 3 man squads. They need to be able to kill unguarded dolyaks.

Remove the JP in the borderlands.

Rework the OS JP to have multiple ways to get to the top, and give the server that holds the top a small periodic supply increase in their structures (keep the loot chest for personal interest). Siege weapons would be reinstated in the JP and the spawn areas would be closed off from the other servers.

The more people you commit to the JP, the less you have in the field. But, you will get the buff to supplies. It will be a tactical decision whether to go for the buff, or take over when the enemy goes for it.

So after reading the underwhelming patch notes, I decided to test out the banner damage.

I run a knight/berserker full exotic set.

I used the banner of discipline.

The 1 skill crit for about 2.5k, and the tiny rush attack crit for almost 5k. That’s quite a bit of damage for something that’s primarily meant to buff. At least, in damage gear.

I was wondering if anybody else could feel any substantial damage change to their banners, or if it’s limited to damage builds.

Greatsword + mace / shield

The CC I can pump out is silly (and so is the damage too, HB will hit more consistently). As much as I like the axe, which is imo more fun than the gs as a weapon, it lacks the mobility needed for escapes and chasing.

Mace mainhand is actually very good for pvp, you bait out the enemy stunbreaks in a flash. The strikes are also far harder to dodge seeing as the animations are fast and compact.

Get a greatsword, use your mace to poke and prod for stunbreaks. Whenever you use your mace burst, switch to hb without frenzy. Most twitch players will break out of a normal hb and most newbs will eat most of it anyway.

When the target is out of stunbreaks, do the same but with frenzy. Profit…

On topic:

In WvW the sword will fair decently in the damage role, although it does have conditions it is more of a hybrid weapon than a condition one. It’s actually far better as a utility/movement weapon. Best to pick it If you consider a hybrid damage build or yur other weapon set is slow as all hell (anything that isn’t gs or warhorn)

The axe is king of melee damage though.

If you want to live long enough to react to thief burst while roaming, you’ll need some vit to complement toughness. Other than that though, toughness > vit.

In a zerg… doesn’t matter tbh

D/D Ele

Imagine a jack of all trades. Now make it the queen of all trades after multiple regicides…

Their “Jack” mobility is better than anything except maybe thieves.
Their “Jack” defensive cooldowns are superior to most.
Their downstate is the “Ace” of all downstates

In terms of true burst damage they’re decent, and in terms of aoe damage they’re very good.

So they are, on average, far higher on the scale of cards than the lowly jack, but still get defended as if they are jacks. The only true downside is that they require more effort than most others…

I’ve had trouble with the following:

WvW:

1. Glass backstab thieves

Culling, and my choice of running a beserker set mean that if the thief is in full exotics/ascended I will die outright before he renders. If I see him approaching and use a block or endure pain, they run and reset.

2. Mesmers

Ever fought 5 mesmers with the legion build….. oh god the nightmares.

PvP:

1. Necromancers

Depends on spec, obviously, but It really ticks me off that they have about 4 lifebars of health to go through while I have limited condition removal (warrior ftw).

2. D/D elementalists

Can I put pressure on one? Yes. Can I survive one? Usually. Can I kill one? No…
They run away, or they run to their team when you finally down them. Ridiculously frustrating to deal with.

3. Mesmers

Because mesmers kitten me off.

^this

Ever managed to reflect 2 killshots, the ranger longbow knockback, headshot and a bola in one go? Ridiculously funny, especially the killshots because they make the warriors panic like hell XD

Get mace / shield > find enemy zerg in a chokepoint (like lords room) > run into los > reflect > giggle uncontrollably > run and wait for cooldowns.

If you switch out the people in range of the banner, considering how high the duration can stack, you can give regen to more than 5 players.

Shouts:
- mobility
- burst healing
- condtion removal
- shout effects
- still effective with low healing power
- 5 target cap for heals
- usable while CCed
- instant cast

Banners.
- group utility and mobility
- banner effects (some are superior to shouts effects)
- effects affect all allies in range
- massive regen when in healing gear
- mediocre/poor regen in no healing gear
- regen has a 5 target cap, but ticks so often it can spread to double that amount.
- blast finishers
- clunky

What we can infer from the above is that shouts work the best in small/medium sized strike teams or parties, or in zergs where superior regen is already provided. This doesn’t require much healing power to be effective, but more healing is still good.

Banners work better in larger groups, or small teams holding a point where regen is inferior or absent (especially when combined with high survival stats and traits). This does require a high amount of healing power though.

PvP:

1. get a greatsword
2. get a mace/x or a hammer
3. trait for unsuspecting foe (and leg specialist if you pick hammer)
4. bait out stunbreaks
5. go nuts

There are a lot of viable alternatives to greatsword + x / x, but they will not be superior to greatsword + x / x. That said, there is not much a warrior can do that another class can’t do better, besides maybe baiting those stunbreaks.

There will be things that can beat you, either being op or a counter to your spec. But it’s nowhere near as bad as in…

WvW

1. get a hammer
2. get a longbow
3. get something for mobility
4. join the zerg
5. stun to win

Keep the longbow in your bag for sieges, but otherwise just stun to win. Stay with a zerg though, you’ll be pretty easy to take out by op damage specs even in full survivability gear.

Why?

Because their op-ness gets magnified by such a large amount due to gear and the way damage scales v.s. defense. Also, culling makes thieves and mesmers that much more annoying…

To be fair though, I once ran a sword + axe bleed build. The whirl can really stack up bleeds on big groups quite quickly when your crit is high enough (traits and sigil, ofc).

Other than that though, pretty useless.

There are builds out there that make using hb even easier. Mace + Shield / Hammer, Unsuspecting foe, and switch into HB. Reliable damage every 10-ish seconds and great burst every 60. Also very easy to bait out stunbreaks.

In terms of pve, Greatsword wins again in general, but suffers when you have to damage on the move.

Axe + Mace is a very nice combo, the extra vuln is nice and the ability to ranged stun stunnable creatures is a nice touch. It outshines Axe + Axe unless you can hit 4+ targets with the whirl every time you use it. The whirl not only does minimal damage, but replaces your autoattack for the duration. Mace offhand on the other hand is pretty much fire and forget, giving more time to abuse the autoattack.

I’d argue that protection as it is is too strong. 33% is just too much mitigation.

Even its counterpart condition, vulnerability, only goes to 25% (with a need to stack it too). And of the 2 which one can almost everybody remove frequently?

Protection makes it so that those who have it are too hard to kill, and those who don’t are too squishy. Raise baseline survivability (armor values) and nerf protection. Or just nerf protection if that makes everybody too tanky.

Me: Warrior
Most: Mesmers
Least: Warrior

Yeah, mesmer clones and phantasms are a kitten if you don’t run gs, and still very annoying if you do.

Tried to get my gear to match the ebon vanguard weapons.

So, while on vacation (Philippines), I checked my email and found a few login authorization requests for Chinese IPs.

I first checked my account but found no signs of hacking. Next I attempted to click on the deny access, but it kept telling me there was an error.

Next I tried to change my password, but every time I try to the page refreshes and nothing changes.

Thimill.9162:

3) “I haven’t seen a group of them with less than 10 members” If you don’t see our roaming groups… That’s perfect ! It means they are sneaky and capping without being catch !

Or we couldn’t see them because they weren’t being rendered :P

Fun tidbit, earlier today, near the zerg, my group (4 people) turned around and suddenly saw about 7 vizunah where we were just running. They were running away as if they hadn’t spotted us…

We ran through eachother without knowing we were there XD Gotta love culling.

I think the real culprit with thief damage is quickness. Or rather the combination of quickness with high damage attacks and stealth.

There was this one thief that started camping me (axe/mace + sword/shield warrior, 3.1k toughness but only 19k health). When he opened up normally, I could block, stun or stunbreak. The fight would then proceed to a reset, or a good fight slightly in my favor (mashing axe 1 in shadow refuge ftw). Same would happen if I saw him actually coming.

When he opened up with quickness, I was dead by the time I could get the stunbreak off (in wvw there can be quite some lag, less of an issue in spvp). Getting 9k backstab crits and 5k C&D crits on 3.1k armor makes me cry, and also makes me wonder how anybody could survive that if they don’t see him coming, let alone if he can pull it off in the blink of an eye.

Yes I know that haste kittens their endurance, but considering the fact that they don’t need to dodge a dead person and they can run like hell if there are others, the drawback seems very limited.

Unless you have very good reflexes and the server is not lagging, backstab thief burst during quickness is unavoidable unless you see it coming (with the exception of some passive traits).

Faunus.3647:

Nergrom.7592:

I like BT.

Their groups are usually tiny which makes for very nice skirmishes.

Vizunah…

I haven’t seen a group of them with less than 10 members (they do have a few upscaled solo players though), and they’re usually far bigger than that. There’s no fighting whatsoever, just spamming and hoping a thief doesn’t murder you through the culling. On the other hand my reflect trait becomes hilarious when focused fired.

… Nah, BT is still more fun

- SFR roamer

Cause for now we are kitten off by pve as lika on each pve patch … what a kittening good idea to put patch pve with release of WvW , each time the samething for us , they go on pve.

We have inferiority buff on prime . btw , we’ll see what happenned , but for now ,even if you say we have a big nightcap you will see as for you wrong , cause our nightcap are never more than 20.

Don’t take it the wrong way, all I did was comment on the fact that BT runs in smaller groups and Vizunah runs in zergs. Regardless of poulation during whatever time, it’s about the combat style.

BT tends to run smaller groups, or they at least have more small groups than Vizunah. Seeing as that I run solo or with a small group, those fights are the best.

As I stated, Vizunah tend to zerg, which from my point of view is less fun to fight against (culling is the main culprit, also the fact that melee becomes suicide).

Also know that this is from my point of view, what I’ve seen. The small Vizunah groups could’ve been on the other side of the map, and maybe the BT groups are a splintered zerg that’s trying to regroup. I wouldn’t know, I’m not on those servers.

I like BT.

Their groups are usually tiny which makes for very nice skirmishes.

Vizunah…

I haven’t seen a group of them with less than 10 members (they do have a few upscaled solo players though), and they’re usually far bigger than that. There’s no fighting whatsoever, just spamming and hoping a thief doesn’t murder you through the culling. On the other hand my reflect trait becomes hilarious when focused fired.

… Nah, BT is still more fun

- SFR roamer

Use a block skill, use endure pain, mash 1 on your axe while spinning around, use any stun/kd/kb (earthshaker on your own location almost always gets them, proceed to combo), run away with gs or sword and go back when he’s no longer in stealth.

Here’s a few wvw tips:

1. Always keep a longbow and rifle in your bag, if not using them as a main weapon. Never know when you might need them.

2. If you don’t build for good mobility, staying with a group is better. The best way not to get killed when alone is to run like hell. If they give chase, you effectively stopped a few people from completing their objectives.

3. Know the limitations of your build and work around them. If the enemy group has a d/d glass elementalist, make him a priority. If you have a sword or greatsword he’s probably the only one that can catch you if you run.

4. Never overextend. No point chasing that thief if he’s running away, you got points to cap and doors to murder. Also don’t chase too far into the enemy zerg, when you become the only red name in a large group of green, you blow up.

5. If you run with a good crit rate, eat omnomberry pies. You will be that much harder to kill, it’s just silly.

As a warrior, you don’t have many combos, and the ones you do have are very easy to counter.

The class is a very simple one, but simple doesn’t mean easy. It’s the simplicity that actually makes playing a warrior very difficult once you go beyond the basics.

Warrior meta-play revolves around the use of timing, baiting and disengaging to apply your simple mechanics despite being easily countered. This is true in pve and pvp, although pve is easier because npcs are predictable. It’s a far more active role than most expect from the class.

You can’t really sit and passively tank, that’s what guardians do. Even the most tanky of warrior specs are active, you mitigate most damage through lockdown (mace and hammer come to mind) or evasion (dodge, mobility) instead of face tanking. It shows in pve where warriors are arguably the best at “tanking” dungeon trash, but guardians are better at bosses because our lockdown is disabled due to defiance. It’s also why we can’t really bunker in pvp, half of the tools we have for it move you out of the place you’re bunkering.

do note that the conditions I mentioned are the ones that deal damage, warriors can easily apply vulnerability through crits, cripple, and immobilise through cripple. The only conditions we can’t spam are immobilise and poison, but they’re there to cover your confusion and bleeding anyway.

And besides… that’s 4 long term, easily reapplicable conditions (bleeding, confusion, vulnerability, cripple), 2 short term conditions (poison, immobilise) and 1 panic button condition (fear).

The only ones you lack are blind, chill and burning, but getting the longbow fixes most of that (although you pump out less confusion). Add that chill sigil on your longbow and tadaa, full coverage.

It’s not perfect, but getting them to blow their condition removal on your rare conditions means that your common conditions get more time to deal damage. If they don’t blow them, they eat the heal reduction on poison.

We have access to all these conditions, it’s just harder to pull off than other classes. I do not presume to know what top-end level play is like, but for your average user in 5v5, 8v8 or wvwvw this thing does well against bunkers if you can keep the pressure going (you have maces and a sword, I think that mobility and CC are set).

Actually, stacking conditions makes taking down bunkers (guardians and eles at least) much easier.

Don’t limit yourself to only bleeds though, you can get a confusion on interrupt trait (watch for stability) and use kick, maybe use mace/mace in your offset. Put a sigil of doom on your weapon sets and add poison to the mix.

It’s decent against balanced builds, good against bunkers, poor against competent glass. More of a counter-pick.

I think that using your burst skill is supposed to be a choice.

Furthermore, the synergy is actually decent, the 12% damage and 9% crit apply to your burst skill itself. You just sacrifice them temporarily to use a buffed burst skill.

You could also trait for pumping out as many burst skills as possible, to make the burst damage and utility available more often or to regen your endurance with the 15pt strength trait.

But at the end of the day, you have to make the choice. Do I use Eviscerate now so I can dodge? Do I use it now so I can burst? Do I hold on to my adrenaline for the buffs to axe 1? Do I hold my adrenaline so I can use the skills at a different time?

The only major flaw to this is that some burst skills are very poorly designed or simply underpowered, making their use a far more unattractive option.

Improving upon the burst skills that are lacking, reducing the damage increases through adrenaline from traits, and increasing the base damage. These are the things that would probably make the choice more meaningfull

@Oglaf

With the way you’ve been responding to every point in the warrior’s favor, I think your solution is obvious..

ROLL A GUARDIAN

Warriors perform far better than guardians at certain roles, and vice versa, if you’re only willing to listen to warrior cons and dismiss the pros, then just play a bloody guardian.

Back on topic, the warrior cannot eat hits like a guardian. The warrior can outdamage the guardian by far though.

The warrior can lock down single targets or entire groups, effectively saving everybody on their own instead of relying on shaky aggro tables. Less effective on bosses, true, but on trash a warrior is godlike.

The warrior, even when glass, won’t die if hit a few times. The thief… well a fart in his general direction will screw him over.