Guild Wars 2

The Dervishes in GW1 channeled the power of the gods and transformed into avatars of the gods. Because the gods fled the world after GW1, it makes sense that the Dervishes lost their powers and became defunct.

Transfusion can be clutch in WvW if you use it properly. Well of Power/Well of Blood can be useful as well.

Agree with OP. “Often” implies that something occurs more frequently than not. But it’s nonsense to declare that “beauty often conceals wickedness” when the ugly can just as easily be wicked as frequently or more frequently than the beautiful.

I’m sensing a politically correct/SJW agenda here from the writers.

cyberzombie.7348:

I’ll admit it was underwhelming, however I normally found them useful during seige defense and backline in wvw. The arc made it possible to attack out of the line-of-sight and the consistent stability so I wouldn’t get cc’ed. Plus the 5th skill could scramble blobs.

I guess I wasn’t creative enough to use it like that. The new mortar is boring but useful.

cyberzombie.7348:

I miss the old motar. Back when it was an actual motar.

You mean back when nobody used it, because it was a pain in the kitten and not worth wasting time on?

I like your suggestion, maybe a leap at the enemy to extend the range of Rip (for enemies that kite) would help. Maybe make it unblockable?

Too bad offhand sword is so totally weak and worthless it doesn’t make sense to take it in any scenario. Everything it does is outclassed by the other offhands. I think even offhand axe gets more action in sPvP, which is next to nothing. At least offhand axe is good for a laugh/gimmick build, offhand sword is just garbage.

Soggy Biscuit.9372:

I wouldn’t mind that if that means 1) we can have more interesting replacements and 2) we will be seeing less of in-your-face PDA (nothing against lesbians, but the writer/s seem to have some lingering fetish over them, or is it to cater some fan demographics?).

I missed the first LW story so there’s that, but honestly, to me, none of the major characters has been interesting enough to care one bit.

Agreed, the story/characters have been pretty weak overall, especially compared to GW1. The writers seem more interested in playing out high school dramas/writing fanfiction than developing a plot with actually compelling and consequential conflict.

I wouldn’t mind if they killed off all these NPCs and just started fresh, with hero/henchmen style sidekicks like GW1. And actually interesting villains!

BrotherBelial.3094:

Man I could kill everyone who’s ever bad mouthed me the world would be one empty place.

But really. Kill them off just because they disagree with you? Seems like a foolish thing to do. If story killed of everyone who disagreed with the protagonist they would all be the same.

The sidekicks/henchmen can disagree with each other, fine. That’s interesting and amusing. But the moment they disobey, insult, or disrespect the player, they need to go. If they express disagreement, fine, but if they do what Braham and Marjory did (defy orders from the player that has killed two giant dragons in a row), they need to experience retribution.

Rogue.4756:

Wow, Really? Not sure who is being more childish here, OP or Braham. The characters don’t do as you say or share your opinion so they should be killed off? Who is the PC to be barking orders anyway? The “Commander” is commander of nobody other than maybe trying to be the self proclaimed leader of a 3 person guild that nobody cares about. I like seeing the characters personalities coming through, it’s a nice change to the yes sir yes ma’am garbage we’ve been getting. Yes Braham is throwing a bit of a tantrum and Jormag will give him what for, but That is hardly a reason to kill him off. Give him time and he will kill himself off. As for Marjory….. you go girl!!

I disagree. We have to deal with obnoxious and annoying people frequently enough in real life, there is no need to have them as our sidekicks/henchmen in a video game.

If the writers want to make obnoxious/irritating/whiny characters, they should make them villains, so we can get enjoyment from smashing them.

These current “allies” we have to deal with act more like whiny emo-teens than characters that should be acting like heroes fighting to save the world from giant dragons.

After everything we’ve done for them (e.g. saving the world from horrifying dragons), the worthless ingrates decide to turn against us. Braham and Majory need to suffer the consequences of their disloyalty.

Alga.6498:

I agree, Braham and Marjory needs to be killed off the Group, it’s time we get some more interesting ‘heroes’ instead of these two boring numbnuts!

We need more drama, not rage-anger insults towards us (the commander) from Marjory and Braham.
I wish Braham was killed instead of Eir. Atleast she was alot more interesting character…

In fact, I would love to replace all of the ’Dragon’s Watch’ team. Specially Taimi, so kittening annoying! >_<’

I want Zojja, Logan, Caithe and Rytlock back in action.

Agreed, most of the new sidekicks/henchmen for the Living Story are obnoxious. The only decent one is Rox, because even if she is milquetoast and bland, at least she is loyal and acts like a hero.

I don’t like the original Destiny’s Edge fools, but at least they were more interesting than the worthless whiners we have now. At least Destiny’s Edge sadsacks had some redeeming moments.

As soon as the sidekicks/henchmen start to get sassy and disrespect/insult the player, the writers need to kill them off. The fools need to learn a harsh lesson for their insolence.

These Living Story henchmen were only marginally less irritating than the “Destiny’s Edge” fools from the main story, and now they’re becoming just as whiny and melodramatic.

Braham and Marjory need to go. These two worthless little punks have gotten too big for their britches.

At least (you know who) was loyal to the end, even if he was bland and milquetoast.

Quaggan are so irritating; weak and obnoxious sea slugs. Even if the writers sacrificed them all as dragon-chow in the plot, I don’t think many tears would be shed.

I don’t think anyone “likes” a reflection/bubble meta, but it was a natural reaction to the ranged zergfight/“pirate-ship” meta that came about around expansion time. It doesn’t actually fix the problem, and actually reinforces it by discouraging melee contact because you can’t rush the enemy bubble when you know friendly covering fire won’t work.

It’s not fun, but it’s just a symptom and reaction to the real problem: the power creep of ranged attacks/condi meta that developed with the expansion, where the best bet is to just blast down or bleed out the enemy from afar.

The boon convert nerf to the Warhorn trait really crippled its appeal. It was a situational offhand at best before the nerf, but almost totally worthless compared to Shield now. Better off rolling Dragonhunter as a commander in WvW these days.

1. Make all attacks pierce again (or put piercing back on the trait). Yes, including Gunflame.
2. Make auto-attack bleed again.
3. Reduce cast-time or speed up animation of Rifle 3.
4. Reduce cast-time or speed up animation of Rifle 4.
4. Reduce base cooldown on Rifle 5 by four (4) seconds.
5. Increase projectile velocity of regular Killshot by 50%. (For reference, Gunflame is 100%)
6. Make the Killshot/Gunflame projectile for the legendary Rifle (Predator) bigger, bolder and louder. Add more flame special effects coming from the muzzle of the gun when you shoot Killshot/Gunflame.
7. (Optional) Return Gunflame to original damage (before the 10% nerf).
8. (Optional) Make Rifle 5 unblockable.

#MRGA

PvE: don’t bother.
PvP: slow, low DPS, long cooldowns, heavily telegraphed attacks easily blocked/blinded/dodged. Really don’t bother.
WvW: decent in very limited scenarios (big zerg fights) for AoE CC potential. Still a questionable choice and other professions’ elite specs arguably do it better anyways.

If you’re using Arms as a traitline, you might as well use Burst Precision. Sure you’ve got a high crit chance anyway, but if you want the alpha strike, you might as well guarantee a crit Gunflame right at the start. Plus guaranteed crit Arc Dividers are great for cleaving downed in zerg fights.

Rifle for power builds, bow for condi builds. Pretty straightforward choices for PvE.

I gripe about a lot of things about Warrior, but shield isn’t one of them. Especially since the cooldowns got reduced a few months ago. The other classes’ shield skills all have gimmicks that make them situational; Warrior shield is effective no matter what happens. It’s the best offhand Warrior has, and probably one of the best offhands in the game.

The GW2 wiki is excellent, so good compared to the atrocious wikis of other games. Thanks for making a great experience even better.

Suggestions like these distinguish the “old school” MMO players from the current. I would welcome these, like a slew of other UO/EQ features. Being able to read people’s custom biographies adds flavor to the game, because on rare occasions, you ran into someone with a good, well-written bio.

JTGuevara.9018:

I don’t blame you, I’m done with pvp leagues, maybe pvp for good if this next balance patch doesn’t rein in this powercreep.

This isn’t just meta anymore. This is MUST-HAVE. If you don’t run HoT meta, def, disc, bersk you will not survive. The HoT powercreep is absurd. I mean who even runs arms/tactics anymore?

JTGuevara, you summed up my thoughts perfectly. This has gone just beyond meta, it is true “must have.” If you don’t run the perfect build, you get torn to pieces in the higher divisions.

emkelly.2371:

I never said 99% of build relied on on defense and berserk er. I DID say that there are at least 10 effective builds out there, and i listed the vanilla ones just the vanilla ones to illustrate that my point.

Also, i never said anything abut you being garbage, because honestly i don’t care how good a player you are. What I said was that you may only have success with two builds, that’s not the same thing. One can be great at one build set up, and not very good at another. For example, i actually suck at power warrior, compared to my ability a hybrid, or condi warrior. (mainly because i never practice it)

What I did say, was “good riddance.” And that’s what I needed to apologize for. you did not deserve that, regardless of how much I disagreed with you.

Just to clarify something however. When you say there are only two “viable” builds. What you mean is that there are two best builds. and what ticks me off is that you can’t differentiate between the two. there will always be a “best” build, that’s what the meta is after all. It’s very obvious you are not willing to step away from the meta to try something new long enough to realize how diverse the warrior really is.

In conclusion, I don’t agree with your initial post. I really don’t see the point in continuing to waste energy arguing the point if your actually leaving the game, And i honestly don’t see how the forum benefited from your callous posts. (or mine for that matter) to me, this entire thread is pointless, because it did not give any real information. this has been a waste of everyone’s time.

I guess we’ll have to disagree on the definitions of “very effective” or “viable.” Fine by me.

No waste of time when the users on the forum have taken interest. God only knows if ANet will actually do anything about it. My complaints about sPvP and the league season go way beyond just Warrior and profession balance issues, but that’s for another topic. I just wanted to discuss my opinion that the current Warrior build diversity situation sucks monster balls.

I think my fellow Warrior enthusiasts get my point that certain weapon sets are clearly good and others are clearly garbage in sPvP, and that some trait lines are clearly good and others are clearly garbage in sPvP. Kind of a crap situation for the “weapon master” profession of the game, in which the point is that you should be able to pick up any weapon set and be able to compete.

I still WvW (to some extent) and PvE, but I’ll sit out Season 4 of sPvP.

emkelly.2371:

Lets get something strait right now, Thug. I don’t give a flying frag what your opinions about me are. Heck, after that last post i don’t care what you think about warrior. you have not made a logical argument to support your opinion, all you do is throw insults. and yeah, i was a little harsh on my initial post, but honestly, you make it pretty hard to admit that when you just continue the argument…and you don’t even have an argument. You just answer with a sarcastic dig at my character or my ability without any.

My character can stand a little tarnishing Thug, your little insults wont hurt my pride, and months from now i’ll still be here. And your jibes at my ability are unfounded, not only have you never seen me play, I’ve never claimed to be anything but an average skill warrior. but there is a difference between skill and knowledge. I have plenty of knowledge.

So go ahead and continue your little games, I’ll just keep doing what I’ve always done. enjoying the game, helping players who want it, and hanging out.

Hey, you made it personal. I just posted my opinion about the lack of build diversity, and you’re the one that insinuated that I’m a garbage PvPer.

My “argument” (opinion) is in the original post. Build diversity is in the toilet and Warriors are only competitive because of stances and gimmick traits. You said it yourself, every build revolves around Defense/Berserker, and 99% of the rest use Discipline. I’m not here claiming that there are 10 or more “very effective” PvP builds around, when I know kitten well there are only two: one condi and one power, and that condi is usually better.

Some seem to agree with me, and some don’t. I haven’t seen a lot of highlight reels lately showing “very effective” vanilla Killshot or Rampage builds lately, but whatever, maybe they’re out there. I just didn’t see very many in Season 3.

emkelly.2371:

you don’t become useless just because your elite skill is on cooldown. The elite is just a nasty suprise meant to turn the tide of one particular fight. the isituations where you would actually need to use Rampage are actually fairly limited, but used correctly it is devastating.

Yeah, Rampage is still a good tide-turner, especially in Amber division. Almost as good a tide-turner as lobbing vanilla Killshots at a Daredevil or Dragonhunter.

So many “very effective” builds out there, especially when you get to Ruby division and beyond. Such diversity.

emkelly.2371:

Have you not been watching the forums? We have posted MANY Effective builds in the last week alone. But sure I’ll spell it out for you.

In bothe Berserker and Vanilla Warrior there are at least three builds wich which are Effective. Power, Condi, Hybrid. So that’s 6 right there. Then with each of those types there are at least two different builds setups that work effectively. That’s 12. Dont believe me?

Vanailla power options
Killshot
Greatsword, Axe/sheild

Vanilla Condi Options
CC, Condi with mace/sheild, hammer and stances
Or CC Condi with Physicals

Vanilla hybrid options
First, just take the condi options and change the amulet. or!
GS, Mace/sheild
GS Axe/sheild, with physicals

Pretty much as long as you have Defense and Discipline you can pretty much make anything work effectively.

You lost the last scrap of credibility when you claimed a vanilla Killshot build or any hammer build is effective in PvP. Plus, I didn’t face a single build this season that used mainhand axe.

In addition to proving my point that Defense and Discipline are mandatory traitlines.

emkelly.2371:

Dude. there are at least 10 very effective builds out there for warrior. you are not pigeon-holed into any set build. YOU may have only had success with one build, but other warriors have found success with many. Hybrid, Power, Condi. the only thing a warrior cannot do is strait up Full Bunker. (and even that might be debatable. I’ve never had success with it.

But regardless i guess me explaining this too you is pointless if you are leaving. So i guess all i can say is.

“Good riddance.”

It’s been a pleasure for sure, especially listening to such upstanding paragons of the community as yourself espouse their skill and stature. What a loss I’m in for. Such a shame.

Yeah, Warrior has been in a decent spot this season; a “good” spot, dare I invoke the tired ANet dev cliché. Certainly far better than the godawful Seasons 1 and 2.

But really, the only reasons that we’ve done better are cheese gimmicks: double Endure Pains, low-cooldown blocks, and every stunbreak known to man.

The Adrenal Health buff and general condi supremacy have made Warriors into a useful one-trick pony, but as soon as you start to get into the higher divisions, the old Warrior weaknesses start to become painfully obvious. Highly telegraphed attacks, susceptibility to blinds, and lack of boons make for an easy target for immortal Scrappers, Tempests, and Mesmers. Power builds can catch your opponents off-guard, but if they have one stunbreak ready, they can pretty easily work around Skull Crack and Headbutt. Plus stability gets handed out like candy.

So the end result is that you have to run one build and take advantage of all the possible gimmicks in order to get into a “good place.” I guess everyone complains about being pigeonholed into a single viable/meta build (see the other profession/pvp forums), but with Warrior, it’s glaringly obvious, has been for a long time, and is pretty simple for a skilled opponent to dissect.

Is this it? After two solid years of being forced to rotate passive stances to remain playable in PvP, this is our “good spot?” Maybe it took me too long to see the light of day, but count me out. Another season of this kitten-show appeals to me about as much as getting my nuts trapped in my fly and gouged repeatedly.

This video accurately shows what it’s like to get hit by Dragonhunter’s longbow 5 skill.

emkelly.2371:

That would not promote skilled gameplay, regardless of how you slice it the new mechanic not only works, but also is rather interesting. I’d actually like to see more mechanics along the same lines as this. Give me a trait that activates when i manage to pull off a skilled maneuver.

I would argue that the old mechanic promoted skilled gameplay far more than the new HoT-era adrenaline mechanics.

Under the old rules, it took a long amount of time to build a full wad of adrenaline (unless you used Signet of Fury, which brings tradeoffs itself). Missing a burst was a big deal, so carrying the adrenaline to another use or another fight was a matter of judgment. Before adrenaline decayed instantly, you could actually choose when to use it and when to save it. Missing a burst due to a block, blind, evade, etc. was a big deal, so being able to try again or open then next fight with a burst was a big decision.

Now, the Berserker specialization and the changes to Adrenal Health/old Berserker’s Power/other adrenaline traits only reinforce spam behavior. Adrenaline is easy-come, easy-go, and Rage skills only promote the use of adrenaline as soon as it fills. Because it decays so rapidly and completely fails if you miss, you might as well use it as frequently as possible.

Warrior has been reduced to the F1-mashing gameplay style that characterizes the most simplistic of fighting games: as soon as a bar fills up, press a button. If you miss, who cares; you’ll get another chance soon enough.

I find it difficult to believe so-called “Warriors” are actually arguing in favor of the old adrenaline nerf.

How the game worked from launch, until the September 9, 2014 nerf: miss a burst = keep adrenaline, land a burst = lose adrenaline.

Now, you lose adrenaline either way, hit or miss. And we all know how easy it is to dodge most burst attacks.

If you’re a “main” Warrior and you actually support the nerf that crippled the profession, you make me sick.

These days, I would say not. Most zergs pack a ton of guardians using Wall of Reflection, not to mention druids with the staff 5 skill that destroys projectiles. Unless you’re using Signet of Might for the unblockable effect, tossing Killshots into a zerg these days usually doesn’t do much.

If you’re just playing around solo for laughs, I find Necro more fun. But Warrior is going to with in straight DPS and in group settings because of the Tactics traits (Empower Allies/Phalanx Strength).

If you’re using GS/Axe+Mace, you should have plenty of movement skills to keep up with the mobs. Just save your GS3/GS5 when you need close gaps.

Keep your rotations on stationary targets basic (GS2 + Burst), so that you can save your other weapon skills’ cooldowns for movement. When someone moves, use GS4 for extra ranged damage, then GS3/GS5 as necessary, or swap to Axe and Burst if you need a leap and you have the adrenaline.

Headbutt is another great skill for many reasons, including the movement feature. Use it liberally. The stun can stop mobs dead in their tracks. You should be able to keep up very high dps even with mobs that move around. GS burst on in Berserk mode (Arc Divider) has such a long range and high damage that you should be able to cut through open world mobs like butter.

Zsymon.8457:

This is my build concept:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNBkYDbknDq7w+OwwD4ExgSQdZRA876bf8PRWE1wPA-TZBBwAF3fAyDAAwFAocZgNHEAA

It’s centered around having Kill Shot available on cooldown by using “To The Limit!” and Signet of Fury, and around making sure your Kill Shot and Volley combination will always be unblockable and unreflectable through the Signet Mastery trait combined with the Signet of Might, as each offers 6 seconds of the unblockable boon. The Burst Precision trait will make sure your Kill Shot will always crit all opponents it pierces.

I use Signet of Rage for the 25 seconds of Fury and 100 precision, and Signet of Stamina to have an emergency full-condition wipe. The Warhorn offers permanent group swiftness as well as five additional condition cleanses, plus a full movement-impairment cleanse.

“To The Limit!” heals for 10K health every 24 seconds, so you should have some survivability despite the lack of stun breakers, but obviously a big weakness is direct damage and hard CC. So the best use for this setup I think is similar to the now relatively useless Gun Flame build. Gun Flame does pitiful damage now and does not pierce anymore, and since this build allows very frequent use of Kill Shot, which really hurts if you line up some enemies, it could be a good alternative.

I’ve been running a Gunflame build in WvW since the expansion dropped, and I know you have this formatted as a PvP build, but I think this advice will help:

(1) Drop “To the Limit!” as a heal and just go Healing Signet. The cast time on the shout heal will get you killed more times than not, so the passive heal on the signet is far superior. It’s not that good of a heal anyway because of the recharge, and you can pop Healing Signet for resistance if you need to survive a condi bomb. You don’t need the adrenaline boost because you’re already running Signet of Fury.

(2) Drop Tactics and swap in Berserker. Gunflame still does respectable damage even though it doesn’t pierce anymore. It’s still a lot more reliable than Killshot because the projectile velocity is actually decent. Anybody that has played the game for a length of time can dodge a vanilla Killshot laughably easily.

(3) If this is really a PvP build and not a WvW build, I would go with everyone else’s advice and drop warhorn for shield. But if you want to use the build in WvW for zerging, warhorn is an acceptable choice.

(4) Dropping Discipline for Defense, if you do decide to go for the shield.

(5) Swap Berserker’s Stance to replace Signet of Stamina. I guess this is a matter of taste, but sometimes you can survive a condi bomb better by tanking the condis for 10 seconds instead of cleansing them and getting re-conditioned.

(6) Swap in Headbutt if you go Berserker instead of Signet of Rage. Headbutt is just too good for so many reasons; (1) Adrenaline Gain, (2) Stun, (3) good damage, (4) low cooldown.

EvilSardine.9635:

Axe offhand is so kitten bad. If they gave it a reflect and buffed damage just a tiny bit, then it would actually be usable even in PvP/WvW/

Thieves steal from warrirors and they get a reflecting axe whirl. Why don’t we have it?

I made that exact suggestion a few months before HoT launched and got flamed to an absurd degree by Thieves and Rangers frothing at the mouth that reflection on Axe 5 stepped on their toes.

It’s OP if Warriors have it, but it’s A-OK for Thieves and Rangers. That’s the verdict that ANet seems to be sticking with.

This build is very similar to Cygnus’ Indestructible Hulk build, without the Runes of the Defender (unavailable in sPvP).

I think it’s only a straight upgrade from the old Skullcracker build if you run into a lot of hard CC to proc Rousing Resilience frequently. It’s always hard to drop Strength and surrender Forceful Greatsword and Berserker’s Power. But because CC is flying around so much now (Scrappers especially), it’s a pretty safe and solid choice over vanilla Skullcracker.

dominik.9721:

No it is not wrong, it is my decision to consider sth. passive. And a trait that provides passive 7,5k heal over 15 seconds for a minimal action is in my eyes passive not active.
This isn’t science where I say 1+1 is not 2.

You’re wrong. You have to do two things to trigger the buff: (1) Trigger a burst, and (2) actually land the burst. Both actions require observation, judgment, and timing to successfully accomplish.

The new Adrenal Health is an active trait, period.

I watched the entire video. Good footage. I offer the following feedback:

PRO:
1. Good fights. I enjoyed the 2v1s that you prevailed in.
2. Refreshing to hear music other dubstep/EDM/other fad genres.

CON:
1. Camera angle: because you use such a high angle so far zoomed out, the action is difficult to see. Over-the-shoulder and close-up views give a more exciting perspective for your audience.
2. Mixing sPvP footage with WvW roaming: I prefer one or the other. I don’t think you should mix the two in the same montage. It confuses your audience as to a theme/build. I think you should make either a roaming video, or a pvp video, but not both at the same time.
3. The intro: your logo flashed by too quickly; I couldn’t tell if it was your personal logo or a guild emblem or anything.

NEUTRAL:
1. Metalcore soundtrack: this is just a matter of taste of course, but I enjoyed the first track much more than the second one. But I dislike most anything by Disturbed and System of a Down, so combining both vocalists in one song was a recipe for disaster for me. I would choose tracks by more similar bands in the future, rather than two very different-sounding bands.

Akkeros.1675:

Are most of the posters here upset because of the loss of pierce in choke points or on walls? Damage is still decent and you can still melee and kite with a aoe burst…so really doesn’t seem all that changed tbh other than killing clusters in zergs.

Yeah, mostly upset about the loss of piercing. The damage nerf was pretty substantial, but the removal of piercing totally destroyed the skill. With correct positioning you could line up double or triple kills in WvW.

This latest update just reinforced the current Discipline/Defense/Berserker meta even harder. Sure, you could drop Discipline for Strength if you feel frisky and have an experimental YOLO build of some type. I think Defense has become even more mandatory than Discipline (Fast Hands) now.

The Adrenal Health change was a long time coming though. Just strange that nothing happened to make Strength and Arms more desirable and competitive choices. You could fix a lot just by swapping the position of poorly placed traits, which have been in terrible spots since the June update (Axe Mastery still competing with Berserker’s Power? Really?).

RIP indeed. Especially to those of us that finished the leggie rifle just for Gunflame. It was a fun few months for sure.

Gunflame is officially weaker than Rev hammer 2 skill, “Coalescence of Ruin” now. The damage nerf was bad enough, but now that it doesn’t even pierce, it’s like an emasculated Killshot. The only advantage now is the projectile velocity. The AOE doesn’t even trigger when the main shot gets blocked, evaded, blinded, etc.

Yeah, it might be worth taking if they brought back the cooldown reduction. The regen is almost totally worthless. They could all use the recharge reduction, but especially the elite banner.

emkelly.2371:

I have already dropped Discipline with my Berserker. I win Arms, Defense, Berserker and enjoy myself.

Same, I dropped Discipline as well after they nerfed Crack Shot in the January patch. Strength/Arms/Berserker in WvW (yolo Gunflame).

Still using Discipline in sPvP though.

It’s pretty revealing that the original post in the topic earned an infraction for criticizing e-sports.

ANet wants this, no matter how expensive, futile, and ham-handed these efforts at artificially propping up an “e-sport” prove to be.

Yeah, that was pretty tasteless. Also low-effort for April Fool’s Day. The ingame jokes and gimmicks always seemed funnier.

Thunder King.2936:

So yeah…it is just a joke/prank BRO, but they really should watch how many jokes they tell…they’re well on their way to becoming one themselves.

Agreed. The real joke is how popular the SAB (recycled 2-3 year old content) is compared to the actual paid expansion pack that just launched six months ago.

LionChain.7694:

Please nerf Gunflame damage…it’s getting pretty ridiculous now…I think wars need to be reworked and improved…but giving them a spammable skill with a very short CD that just one-shots everyone is just…just plain silly and feels like a cheap, lazy way to ‘improve’ wars.

Cheap and lazy pretty much describes every ANet balance decision for the past couple of years.

It would be equally cheap and lazy to nerf Gunflame damage without actually fixing the core issues of the Warrior profession.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

You have to consider that the shining blade probably villanised the White Mantle, and that is how things were remembered in history

Or this cinematic just contained a bad retcon that slipped through the writing cracks.

Yeah, if you actually wanted to use the racial utilities/elites, the human ones are pretty bad. I could agree that they are probably the worst out of all the playable races.

The reason nobody uses any of them, though, is because of the opportunity cost. Some of the racials might be “good,” but almost any profession skill you can slot is a superior choice in some way. Especially the elite spec utilities/elites.

Unless you really want to create some kind of gimmick build that relies on a racial skill.

You can really crank up the Gunflame damage by dropping Discipline and substituting in Strength for Berserker’s Power. I usually hit 12-14k Gunflame crits in WvW, and I’ve even hit glassy targets for 18-19k. Lowest it goes is typically 9-10k for targets with a lot of protection uptime (Tempests).

Although I do use Scholar Runes and Bloody Roar as well.