Guild Wars 2

well i guess in a way i counter my own argument when i say that i personally don’t use “shrug it off” since that probably would feel like too much condition removal (to me). i can’t agree tho that having warhorn removal is reliable enough to invalidate soldier runes. with no “fast hands” i’d potentially be compromising range advantage in a pvp encounter in order to swap out to sword/horn to remove a condition, when i could just shout it off. i love warhorn removal when i’ve used all my immobilize/cc options but for me lacking fast hands its not consistent enough by itself. with no strength tree investment, mending often only removes movement impair leaving me poison/burn/bleed etc. shake it off removing two conditions doesn’t often feel wasteful to me.

i’m still playing around with ideas for my own setup. considering swapping full arms for full defense traits and gearing full rampager (bow/sword/horn) and getting either melandru or a more offensive rune set, perhaps playing with +stance duration instead of shouts.

@Samurro, i totally disagree with your last comment. imo soldier runes allow you to gear more offensively, especially if you take -20% shout cooldown. i’m not sure that you can ever have too much condition removal. if you’re going to be using a shout based build, why would you not take soldier?

if anything the emphasis on healing is the questionable choice for me, as Badwrong said, healing with no cleric gear is going to be weak. don’t get me wrong, some healing is better than no healing, but such is the nature of a build that tries to be good at everything.

thanks Yojack. i use a very similar setup, main difference being i generally favor longbow over rifle. partly playstyle, partly self-combo, partly aoe vs. single target, partly cos the rifle bang bang boom does my head in after about 5 minutes (yes i know about the mute feature).

i was wondering tho, how your adrenaline generation feels? in my build i use the Arms trait ‘furious’ for extra adrenaline on crits and since our bars are mostly filled with shouts, “inspiring shouts” from Discipline seemed obvious. i’m yet to decide if this feels overkill, but so much of my dmg comes from dropping bow burst as quickly as possible, switching, and controlling my opponent to maximise burns and bleeds. although my build falls short of taking “fast hands” i rarely feel like i have too much adrenaline. in my tests “embrace pain” felt the weakest of the adrenaline boosts.