Showing Posts For chainsawsamurai.5067:
My only beef with this build is that the Fury on Immob seems like a wasted trait.
For 40 seconds out of every 60 you’re going to have Fury. During that time period you’ll get 3 “For Great Justice” which will each stack an additional 10.5 seconds.
If you manage everything well, you already have 100% uptime on Fury, so the trait seems like a waste.
Only party members should be able to pick up your banners!
in Warrior
Posted by: chainsawsamurai.5067
I hate it though when warriors put them down right in the middle of a huge group of mobs during an event causing it to interfere with my loot pickup.
I often pick them up and set them off to the side.
I agree.
I understand how frustrating it is for someone else to pick up your banner, but it is no more frustrating than accidentally picking up someone else’s banner.
Sure, they don’t heal as well as I’d like, but, in large group situations Shouts are a great tool to have, and spec’ing 30 into tactics is fine with me anyway due to the buff duration increase and 300 Vitality.
Not sure if it really makes any difference though, but, meh, I keep it on there as an OHSHI- button.
The additional buff duration really is the best consolation prize of the Tactics tree. Makes the Elite Signet prettykittensolid with a 66% uptime.
I disagree with the worthlessness of the heals. They’re gravy on top of already solidly designed shouts. They’re instant and don’t interrupt anything else you would be doing (100 blades, reviving, activating a signet, etc). They’re uninterruptable and can be used while crowd controlled, which makes them the most reliable healing in the game.
5k every 20ish seconds (3 shouts at 1.5k+ per) doubles your healing potential as well as providing an awful lot of AoE healing for teammates.
I think where people start to look down on the healing is because they’re stacking large amounts of Vit, which directly devalues your healing as a percentage of your maximum HP. It is really sort of a bummer that this trait is in the Tactics line when it would have both more perceived and actual value at the end of the Defense tree (both for the bonus healing and the extra toughness).
I think Taugrim’s error is that he has been pushing a Rifle Warrior build. The shouts at rifle range don’t reach the people who need it most (those up front in the scrum), and Rifle is going to be at a damage deficit which is harder to recover from. The Shout heals became more about personal survival at the expense of a large amount of damage when he could easily just kite/knockback and avoid most of the pertinent damage in the first place. If you’re running around with a Rifle, Shout Healing is a pretty mediocre way to go and Taugrim was 100% correct in this assessment.
I’ve narrowed down Greatsword as being perhaps the best way to make a Shout Healer work. As mentioned before, going full Tank with Shout Healing wont do enough to save you from super-boss-strikes, and you’re tough enough with shouts alone for everything else. The Greatsword Trait (or most overpowered weapon trait in the game) does a prettykittenfine job of shoring up lost offense by going that deep into the Tactics tree. You wont do the damage of a 5 Signet 100 blader, but you’ll still pump out more than just about anyone else in the group while being a centerpiece of team support. Greatsword additionally gives the best Evade I’ve personally used in the game (I used to really love Death Blossom, but it feels sluggish as kitten now), which really helps you buy that last couple seconds before another “healing volley.”
There are two big hurdles to making this build work as DPS. The Tactics line sucks, it has good stuff in there but the 5,10,15 traits are mediocre at best. The other hurdle is that gearing for it can be a bit awkward (I’d love to find gear with Heal/Precision as that would give Shouts/Greatsword the most bang for the buck). I’m making it work with a mix of Cleric and Berserker, but it can be pretty frustrating trying to strike the right balance.
(edited by Moderator)
For reference, unless you are running a full dungeon group filled with only rangers and scepter necros, you will be hard-pressed to maintain close to 20 stack bleeding.
I find more bleed competition from Mesmers than anyone else. Sharper Images and a few duelists stack bleed very quickly.
Although I don’t think it particularly matters. Ignoring condition damage entirely for Shortbow in favor of crit and power is likely almost as much damage as longbow anyway. It is also ~13-5 shot ratio, so short bow is objectively better in a game where combos exist.
I want to like longbow, but I dislike the distance mechanics on auto attacks (Ranger longbow, engineer rifle, mesmer GS, etc). It seems like you take such a huge penalty for being out of your “preferred” range and gain virtually no increase for being at the “ideal” distance. Not to mention that your sweet spot of max damage usually only gives you as much play as melee swing distance. Trying to maintain “max damage” is very obnoxious in a game with so much movement.
Just seems like way too much of a hassle compared to Shortbow’s current mechanic of “If I attack from the front I do it super fast, combo often, and do great damage. If I attack from the rear I get all of that AND an awesome stack of bleeds!”
Positional mechanics > Distance mechanics.
(edited by chainsawsamurai.5067)
The turn off to me isn’t that the skills are boring, really a lot of them are quite fun.
The cooldowns bug the crap out of me. 40 seconds for bull rush? 60 for stomp? Blech.
I think a lot of the utility skills in this game, not just Warrior skills, have ridiculously long cooldowns for the otherwise fast-paced gameplay.
Hammer is incredible, the crowd control abilities it has are amazing,
It doesn’t matter whether I’m playing a Warrior or a Guardian, I’m always jealous of the other class’ hammer skills.
I wish I could smush them together.
It seems like all classes have terrible underwater skills. If you get “half the damage as a single warrior skill” underwater then you must be doing negative damage, the numbers are pathetic compared to what a warrior does on land.
None of the classes underwater skills seem to compare to their terrestrial counterparts (with the sole exception of underwater grenades from Engineer).
Also, isn’t the Snow Leopard the only one that can attack while moving?
Between that and the stealth, it is worth 30 points. Infact, I’d say they’re “punishing” anyone who doesn’t go Snow Leopard. The others are mediocre at best.
I hate thiskittenknockdown. It is bad enough on the rifle, but I think it is completely unacceptable on the rocket boots.
It seems alright in practice as you get up before your foe, but against enemies that can’t be CC’d it just screws you.
Pretty lame design for one of our only two weapon choices (if we had more choices it wouldn’t be nearly as upsetting).
Absolutely terrible design for a utility skill.
Not a good solution, but I find it works well enough for me:
Get in the habit of always returning your mouse to the center of the screen before mouse turning. Your cursor remains there even when you can’t see it. It isn’t an exact science, but it makes it much easier to ballpark things like grenade tosses while on the move.
It also makes it easier to find your cursor when you release mouse turn to do more precise ground targeting, especially in an effects rich environment (which, lets face it, only takes one Guardian or Elementalist to make finding your cursor a total PITA during a fight).
Like I said, not really a solution, but good enough if you get used to it.
I really don’t mind certain one shot mechanics, though some could use some better choreographing.
My problem is that the death effect is so jarring, the second your HP hits zero your screen flashes red, the camera SNAPS down to ankle height and zooms way the hell in. Often times when I’m learning an encounter I have to die a lot more than necessary because the death effect doesn’t allow me to accurately see what actually killed me.
Well that and the ridiculous spell effects, but I think spell effects have been harped on enough.
The only complaint I have for GSs is the last swing in the normal attack chain.
She swings upwards as if she’s letting go of the blade, there’s no technique nor ferocity, it shouldn’t even damage, and should cripple you for being so reckless.
They should have something more fierce, a downward slice to the ground. The rest is perfect, to me.
That specific swing and the basics of how she holds it when running are what get me.
Looks so weak.
This irks me to no end.
Norn are supposed to be hearty and powerful people. A lot of that really comes through.
But equip a Norn woman with a great sword and everything goes down hill. She swings it and carries it so daintily and weak. I could be wrong but these animations look way too much like the regular Human female GS animations. Where is the power and confidence?
I’d really appreciate some GS animations that are more Valkyrie or Xena and less inept and feeble. It is really killing the whole Norn image for me.
Edit: To be clear I suppose I’m referring to the general carry animation (shared by all classes) and the swing animations used by the Guardian class. Not sure how different everything is between classes.