Showing Posts For ShadowBane.5036:
Looking for a new guild to do group content with.
Recently came back and picked up HoT and I’m looking for a mid-smaller guild where people are kinda chummy (just preference since the old guild had good banter between peeps and generally made it enjoyable to log in and play with them).
Open to guilds that don’t exactly fit the above criteria though – just one that regularly does and passes group content like guild missions and raids. I was an influence hound back in the early days of the game and I have no problem repping all the time for the right guild
Regards
25/30/0/5/10
Deadly Arts – I personally grab mug and dagger training in this tree. Though stuff like sundering strikes (though I’ve found the direct damage from mug just so much better) improvisation and combined training are viable alternatives depending on what you’re running.
Critical Strikes – Side strikes or Practiced Tolerance. Signet use, combo critical chance or critical haste. Executioner (it is just flat out better than Hidden killer)
Acrobatics – I trait five into this simply for the swiftness. It’s more of a quality of life thing when you don’t have signet of shadows on your bar, feel free to spend these 5 points elsewhere though I don’t recommend grabbing the grand master traits of deadly arts.
Trickery – As you may have noticed so far there isn’t a lot of ini regen in this build, I’ve learned to manage with only ini from steal and signets (like if I need ini right this second in an emergency or crucial point in the fight, steal [which I usually leave off cooldown] and signet use usually does the job). Uncatchable (more of a pvp trait I would say), Flanking strikes or Thrill of the Crime are all viable. I lean more towards ToC for a party buff
Full Zerkers gear. Divinity Runes.
Sigil of Air/Fire on the Dagger. Sigil of Force on the pistol
Shortbow – Sigil of force, fire, air, Bloodlust are all viable
TL:DR version
Full Zerkers gear. Divinity Runes
D/P or S/P depending on personal preference. Fire/Air coupled with Force
SB. Bloodlust, Fire/Air or Force
HiS
Shadow Refuge, Signet of Agility, 3rd option open
Elite. Thieves Guild/Hounds of Balthazar or Daggerstorm Depending on the situation (bas venom is extremely situational in pve and dungeons)
Traits – you really should read for more options as they are tailored to your weapons, playstyle and utilites so here I’ll just simply give mine
25/30/0/*5/10 (Mug and Dagger training – Grandmaster traits in deadly arts are useless. Practiced Tolerance, Signet Use, Executioner. The 5 in acrobatics is simply for swiftness and is a quality of life decision. Thrill of the Crime in Trickery)
/P is great for PvE and to a lesser extent dungeons simply because of the utility it provides. Perma blinds make anything without unshakable almost like a joke and is still useful for slower attacking bosses (or if you can time it right though most of the time you’re better off just dodging). Defiant stripping? Interrupts with headshot? Remember those sneaky inquest that perma stun you in arah? Headshot – frees your buddy. Same instance Deadeyes completely neutralized with blind or interrupted just as they’re about to shoot.
Mainhand is completely up to you. D/P provides greater mobility and another blind as well as backstabs. S/P has an daze/blind on it’s stealth skill instead, (immobilize) condition clear and of course the infamous pistol whip (combos quite nice with signet of malice, though I am of the opinion that you could simply use lifesteal food instead and keep the utility of the other two heals)
Shortbow for your second set AoE weakness, insane AoE Damage, Evades, Shadow steps. What’s not to love?
Heal skill is HiS – it simply heals for more, stealths you and clears most damaging conditions, I find myself managing conditions just fine with this and signet of agility.
Utility skills are completely up to you. I find myself having refuge and signet of agility always on my bar (unless the situation really demands it) and just switching around the 3rd one depending on current needs
Thieves have a lot of useful utilities that have a large impact on the options your party will have in tackling a fight
Scorpion wire is one of the only true pulling skills in the game, next group of enemies particularly deadly together but aren’t tied to one another? (and even then in some cases you can still pull one off) Wire and take them down one by one.
Shadow Step for greater mobility (useful in stuff like lupicus and certain puzzles – cliffside and swamp come to mind)
Smoke Screen – the ability to completely neutralize some deadly range attacks in the game? Yes please. Think Harpy Knockbacks, Asura’s orb, Ascalonian archers, Deadeyes
Blinding Powder – useful if a long team stealth is required. Coupled with refuge the team stealth lasts quite a long time.
Signets also have their place, having shadows on makes world explore so soo much faster and the aoe blind on tap is always nice to have around, Agility would just be beyond awesome if anet finally fixed it’s condition clear aoe detect (I have never seen it clear more than one condition even if an ally is next to me) as it is now a full bar of endurance and a condition clear every 20 seconds or so isn’t too bad. Assasin’s is great when you only have to worry about dealing damage, situations like these still come up even in fractals…
Infiltrator’s has a place here if you’re really desperate for ini regen. I grab it when I go underwater and know I’ll be facing tough fights, the constant shadow assaults turns me into a psuedo tank to the point where I usually prefer engaging first and drawing all aggro underwater.
Elite skill up to personal preference. Thieves guild/Hounds of Balthazar (I roll a human thief) if I need the distraction and more bodies to soak up damage, Daggerstorm if you need to a lot of AoE damage fast (in normal dungeons I never found a need for daggerstorm since more bodies to distract was always better – fracs though grawl, harpies, Sons of Svanir [earlier levels because as you go up it’s faster to just stealth light the bonfire] and probably more situations had me switching into it and of course in wvw it’s always nice to have in a large fight)
(edited by ShadowBane.5036)
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IGN Revonz
I went with a tankier build when I made the warrior alt since I already had the thief for high risk/high reward high burst damage gameplay. GS/Rifle upgraded with blood and air (though you could go fire either way works). Knight Armor – full divinity runes. Zerker accessories. 0/20/30/20/0. Taking either vulnerability or swiftness depending on the situation and greatsword trait for reduced cooldown and might. Improved Stance Last Stand and Defy Pain. Empower Allies (or leg specialist when I wvw) Shrug it off.
Mend – Endure Pain – FGJ – Dolyak (or balanced stance works though I don’t really pop stability for every fight so I get great use out of the Dolyak passive). Signet of Rage.
Shouts aren’t the only viable “tanky” build. The fact is most of the shouts themselves are lackluster and people use them for the traited heal/adrenaline/whatever gained. Most of the effects themselves are secondary.
If we’re talking about a balanced tanky build (since dragonmind is indeed slightly correct, you’ll still wanna do damage/boost damage to help your team [in a dungeon for example] though since you rock a hammer anyways great cc [though if you’re not gonna be doing a lot of damage might wanna focus on the cc aspect] and survivability is just fine) I do run a high damage high survivability one that’s viable for melee range in dungeons. Plague does have the right idea as well. Go for the great active traits and use equipment to cover missing stats [I would say the defensive line does have some great traits for example so you could go power on your gear]
The problem that you’re running into here is that Path 1 is not about killing Burrows as quickly as possible. It’s an endurance encounter where you have to split your team, and deal with a constant influx of new enemies while you kill things in the proper order.
And like Sarelm said, downscaling is very strict on higher-leveled characters. Level 80 character have very little statistical advantage over level 35 characters. A level 80 character who isn’t wearing a full set of close-to-max level 80 gear often has worse base stats than a ‘native’ level 35 character.
Except guess what? With a full level 80 exotic geared team you don’t even have to worry about tactics or strategy at all. You just kill things waay to fast, burrows get nuked within seconds. So this misinformation that people keep feeding new players about blah blah level scaling, you can and should be able to do everything that max level characters can has to stop. Level scaling works to an extent but guess what? You’ll still find people around the forums complaining about not being able to hit anything when high level players are in their low level zone (most recent example would be the door hunting zergs in kryta). Everyone dismisses the traits (not the stats) as well. As if such great modifiers to your tactical options are inconsequential, guess what? They’re not.
I’m not saying you cannot do dungeons at their specified levels (I have and I probably will again when I get around to leveling the 3rd and 4th alts). But you will have to play differently and better and squeeze as much advantage as you can get (if you wanna do as well as max level characters).
DR is unfortunately working as intended. You ran CoF 1 too fast and then ran CoF 2 (again too “fast”, faster than the arbitrary estimated time to complete anet set) back-to-back with it. Even though you can legitimately run those paths quick, congratulations you’re still being penalized. Because bots (which is crap or shouldn’t be a reason not to tweak the system) or you must have exploited/skipped your way through it /sarcasm
People have to get off their high horse and blindly quoting the botting issue as a reason things are okay. Also their wide general assumption that fast times can only be had by exploiting or skipping (that somehow it is a fast player’s fault because they must have skipped everything must’ve found an exploit). If a dungeon’s path can be legitimately run (and it is completely possible on a lot of paths) in less than 30 mins [let’s talk about two runs/path of the same dungeon here since DR will only kick in for second back to back fast run] then there is no reason at all to penalize players who are capable of doing such a thing.
I know this suggestion has come up a lot before but there really should be an approximate rated time to complete a dungeon path instead of the arbitrary 30 mins for all dungeons.
Do traits that trigger an ability when certain thing happens, set the same ability you have on a skillbar on CD?
in Warrior
Posted by: ShadowBane.5036
Trait abilities and utility slot abilities are separate. You can fire off Endure Pain and still have defy pain fire off at 25% hp (this trait endure [defy] pain still has a cooldown though)
What I think he’s asking is if it’s possible to range and use shouts to support his team. I would say that playstyle is definitely possible but depends on the team makeup. IF people you run with are mostly range then you can support them by staying at range and near them to support them with shouts. There is a stigma with a squishy (though you might just be asking whether you can stay at range and support but you’re gonna build a tanky and support by using shouts – I’m just addressing the second post) range warrior (and though I personally don’t run this kind of thing – I can see that it would have situational uses and can do well and support a team under the right circumstances and team makeup)
This is indeed true that there isn’t much synergy between how you would build a greatsword and how you would build a longbow. If you lean more towards a power build then you’ll mostly be using your longbow for the utilities it provides (aoe might, aoe blind, immobilize) and the times where you’d want to stay at range. Blast does good damage but it’s not something you can launch every second and the auto attack does suck.
I disagree though with the blanket statement “hurr durr if you run dungeons with greatsword you’ll die a lot or just range the entire time at the back because you can’t survive”
I haven’t min maxxed the build yet (mostly because it would involve transmuting dungeon exotics) but I do currently run a gs/rifle build (rifle for when those times you’d want to stay at range – most of the time for me it’ll just be against a single target so rifle definitely wins out against longbow, which I did use before, not to mention it scales pretty well with damage instead of conditions).
When I finally do get around to it I’d probably turn all my armor into knight traits but as it is now when I run dungeons am:
HotW Helm Mind of Koda (Pow/Tough/Vit)
Inquest Pauldrons (Probably transmuted to knight not on guild wars 2 now)
CoF BP (Transmuted Knight)
Orr Hands Legs and Boots (Knight – though I did make a mistake and buy the zerker’s boots even then I do just fine which means there is some lee way for damage and still get survivability)
AC Greatsword (Power/Tough/Vit) though since I rarely die even though I’m usually first one in engaging dungeon mobs and stay in melee range I might transmute this to zerker’s
Berzerker Rifle (Pow/Prec/Critdmg)
Exotic Accessories. Beryl Amulet and Ruby earrings and rings (though again with me not having that many survivability issues I kinda wish I went Ruby instead but anyways I’m fine with this)
Traits (now these are really what give professions an edge, my play experience drastically improved when I finally took a good look at this [since I built this warrior as an alt] and decided how I was gonna build items and what I wanted from traits to complement those items)
Went 0/20/30/20/0.
Might on crit for greatsword is just a great way to pick up damage even if you’re not built for it and reduced cooldowns for greatsword skills (more hundredblades, more evade and mobility whirling strikes, more cripples, faster disengaging and reengaging with 5 you get the picture). Tier one of this you can go Furious speed or Rending strikes (though I prefer rending).
Defense (man I love this tree). The passives are all great but what I love most is adrenal health (since I rarely use the greatsword burst skill [crappy fury] since I have fury up for most of the fight anyways). Pick up sure-footed, last stand and defy pain (you’ll be in melee range with tons of damage and cc’s flying around I don’t have to tell you why).
Tactics these are my team oriented traits. The passives are just a bonus (I run with great groups but I’m just built in such a way that it takes a lot to bring me down so I do get use out of faster revives and increased armor from reviving [since I’ll pull off revives even in right front of mobs – under lupicus dome is one epic revive I can remember]). I personally don’t use banners (they’re great just not my style – but if you do pick up the banner trait) so I pick up empower allies. Shrug it off, just like auto stability an auto-dispell is just too good to pass up (I only use FGJ as a shout, you can pick up appropriate traits if shouts are your style).
Heal and Utilities, Mending, Endure pain (traited this gives almost 6 seconds of invulnerability add that to it firing off at 25% hp as well it opens up a lot of tactical and survivability options), FGJ (great as a bare minimum to support your team and support yourself as well, there’s a reason this is spammed a lot it’s a great skill), Balanced stance (though personally I use the dolyak signet, since if you’re good you won’t need stability for every fight and thus you can benefit a lot from the passive of this signet). Signet of rage is arguably the best elite we have.
Now on the surface this might seem like you’re prioritizing your self (personal survivability and damage over your team) but it all comes down to playstyle. Dying a lot will not help your team so focusing a bit on your own survivability is already helping your team. Being the first one in and taking and shrugging off a lot of the damage mobs throw before they get a chance to launch those abilities at your team – is helping your team. Being able to pull epic revives helps your team. Doing respectable damage helps your team. You don’t really have to go full on support to help your team.
It’s probably about the skins, and honestly if you’ve been 80 for a while you probably have full exotics already. I know you’d like one more but think of it this way – if the vendor was around before and it gave out exotics you’d be like “man I wish they had that earlier then I wouldn’t have had to do this or that as a fresh 80 to get mah exotic weaponzzzzz” (exaggerating of course a little there, but there you go a different point of view).
The group you were in probably wanted to run the dungeon really fast. Though level scaling works to a degree it doesn’t completely eliminate the advantages of being max level fully traited with exotic gear. I had a regular AC run a few days ago with a 36 and a 54. They could not stay in melee range of the spider queen or even take hits from the poison barrage (whereas I and a couple friends who were 80 could). The aetheric collectors where you have to kill burrows really fast (where [low] people only want to run it with high dps characters because otherwise they can’t finish that path {3 I think?} ). Full 80 team (we were not all high dps characters btw) we were ahead of all the spawns and it was a walk in the park (helped that a friend in the party knew the spawn locations and order). Compare that to all the tactics you had to use when you were just a fresh 35 trying to do AC path 3.
I think what was happening is that you were running dungeons too fast and DR kicked in thereby reducing all rewards you get by half. Same principle as with subsequent runs – reduces it by half, then half of that. Ex (Say DR doesn’t kick in yet for the first two runs of the same path on the same character) 60 > 20 > 10. In your case 60 (which was what you were supposed to get on the alt) became 30. Wait a bit when you notice this till DR goes away and you should get 60 total again (the 40 bonus first run for that alt).
I guess I wasn’t too clear on the last part about elite skills. I was actually arguing that signet of rage is indeed the “best” out of all of them. Warbanner as you’ve said and I’ve mentioned – the biggest draw is the rez, which in a competent team you won’t really need.
On topic again, I personally do use the GS (I also use the signet of rage and dolyak in lieu of balanced stance) and stay in melee in range. I was just saying that when you’re there you might want to have more than just signets in your bar and that you are traited accordingly to survive and do well in melee range. The traits signets subtly push you towards, are just not amazing.
Singed in and decided to post because I was a little shocked by the claim that you can run full signets in dungeons and expect to do well at all (you’ll end up on the floor or ranging for the whole run).
You have to think about working with your team in explorable. How can you expect to survive the ridiculous damage, and to a lesser extent control, mobs throw around in dungeons without stances. How would you support your team with signets (oh but bane I can help them by doing leet damage and kill mobs really fast! whoops I’m on the floor again because I couldn’t survive white – trash mobs).
One of the largest draws of signets were and still are I guess the passive 40 precision you gain per unused signet. Not only is it that you have to keep them unused if you want to gain from this, that 40 precision starts to lose effectiveness as you level up it won’t always be increasing your crit chance by huge amounts.
As others have stated already mend is just superior to healing signet (if you want the regen ticks so bad trait into it, or you can also consume lifesteal food, grab blood sigils) burst heal plus condition removal is arguably too good to pass up.
In most cases you’ll also want a (for lack of a better word) “panic button” for when kitten hits the fan. A skill that allows you to turn bad fights around and grant you more tactical options. Who wouldn’t want almost 6 (traited) seconds of invulnerability with endure pain. Who doesn’t want stability (in this case, a case could be made for balanced stance vs the active of dolyak, since if you’re decent you shouldn’t need to pop stability for every encounter – and thus can make full use of the passive of dolyak, activating it only when you really need stability).
FGJ is just amazing as a bare minimum for supporting your team, other shouts have their own specific uses and you don’t need to run full shouts if it’s not your play style, but there is a reason FGJ is spammed a lot. Banners are great if you’re in dungeons where you don’t have to move a lot otherwise they become somewhat of a liability (you don’t wanna slow down to pick them up in the middle of a fight, allies might move out of it’s radius, etc). Control utilities are also great for supporting your team and keeping the damage you all receive down.
Elite skills:
Banner is great for rezzes and the constant buffs it gives, useful primarily because of the rez though not always necessary if in a competent team. Juggernaut is a bit underwhelming for an elite, but if you’re a control type player, great for when you’ve used all of your control utilities and just want to do some stomping. Signet of Rage the buffs it gives are all solid.