Guild Wars 2

preferrably NA, due to time differences, looking for a decent roaming/wvw guild. Play mostly tempest nowadays but can quickly adapt and play many other classes, feel free to pm.

Pelto.9364:

killahmayne.9518:

Been playing tempest for about 2 months or so

How did you learn to play? Do you spam keys or do you everytime see enemy’s animations and counter with correct skill?

Are there rotations which gives boons, health, etc that I could rotate hours long? Without enemies. Just to get fingers flexible enough, maybe.

A lot of it is just getting out there and playing the class and getting experience. For the most part, I think attunement switching is rather fluid. In my opinion, it is best to try and get off your own combos rather than worrying what the opponent is doing. Obviously still worry about what your opponent is doing, but always keep in mind what you are trying to do and how you are going to execute it. I say this because your reaction to what the opponent is doing is always going to be different depending on the situation. However, YOUR own general combos and gameplan is never really going to change and it is easier to focus on what will remain static rather than what changes dramatically (which are opponent builds, whether you are outnumbered, etc). Like I said, some of it is reactionary, but a lot of it is executing the high damage combos that will get your opponent down. However, knowing your opponent’s general gameplan goes a long way too (for example, when a Shatter mesmer goes invis, 90% of the time he is going to try and shatter you, or if a Thief goes invis, a few seconds later he will probably backstab you, so react according to these basic manuevers).

For example:

Generally after you use a major CC, you want to attune to fire and use Burning Speed/LF into Fire Grab. This can be after an updraft, Earthquake (dodge backwards first otherwise your burning speed will probably miss), Earth Overload (dodge backwards as well then use the combo). Or if they are stunned by your shocking aura. Ideally you want to repeat this as much as possible.

Also , many people will run away from you or blow a cooldown to get away from your Air Overload. A good way to actually have the lightning field land on your opponent is to teleport just before the lightning field spawns. And if you can use CC’s like Updraft and Earthquake to keep them inside. You can do the same thing with Earth Overload.

Other things as well too are might stacking combos. Ring of Fire then attune to earth and dodge (you can dodge before attuning to earth as evasive arcana procs at the end of a dodge). Then attune to water and use the #3 blast finisher. Also, Ring of Fire into Magnetic grasp gives you a Fire Aura.

If you get CC’ed by an opponent it is generally a good idea to attune to earth as it gives you protection to mitigate damage, or if you get condi-bombed to attune to water for condition cleanse. I generally don’t wait till I get to low health to attune to water, I will attune to water at around 13K-14K-ish HP just to make the most of my healing.

In an ideal world you should be attunement swapping fairly often to make the most use of the boons you get. However, Tempest runs kind of contradictory to that as you have to wait 5 seconds before your overload can be used, and generally you don’t want to stay that long in one attunement, so you kind of have to balance that. There will be times where you use air auto-attacks as filler (it’s great for regenning health with SoR so generally if you are running away or chasing an opponent spam it).

It’s hard to anticipate everything the opponent is going to do or even if you can there will be some error in the execution. You’re not always going to use the correct skill for the situation, I’d say about half the time I mess up but knowing your opponent build and general game plan goes a very, very long way. More often then not, if you know what you are doing generally, unless you kitten up really bad, mistakes aren’t going to cost you very badly.

For example a Berserker; all he wants to do is headbutt you then go berserk on you literally (power build). Once you know that, you can save your mist/armor of earth/LF for if you get CC’ed by headbutt. Or at the very least attune to earth. If he does go in berserker mode, you should probably realize that you can’t outDPS him in melee so it is better to kite a little bit, use CC’s, heal, and take a more defensive-offensive approach. Then once he is out of Berserk mode, start to go more offensive and put the pressure on him, but keep in mind the CD of his headbutt.

Overall, it is all muscle memory man. Elementalists can seem pretty daunting with 20 weapon skills, attunement swapping and what not but once you know the basic combos to deal damage/might stack and get used to it, you’ll be fine. I’m still learning too so yeah

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoIWOBMiJQAYB4OWTrv1io4A8DA-TVyHABAcCA6RZViq/AkSkhUK8teABeAAhv/wcKBDAgAcz2MAG6QH6QH6QbnDdn7cn7sUAZuzC-w

Been playing tempest for about 2 months or so, don’t claim to be the best as I make a few mistakes from time to time.

Have actually been enjoying tempest roaming, not just from an inherent standpoint but in terms of its ability to hold its own against most builds that I’ve encountered and what not.

I’ve been constantly experimenting with different builds and what not, trying to find a happy medium between tankiness and damage and I think I finally found it. My biggest problem in the beginning was just flat out not having the DPS to kill Warriors/DH/Scrappers/Druids or any of those tanky/sustain/DPS builds. I just needed to find a build that did exactly that.

Any questions, feel free to ask, I will do my best to answer. Anything from build, how to handle certain classes, opinions, alternatives, etc.

Why play Tempest Ele
- Mist stomps/resses (these are so satisfying and clutch)
- The AoE cleaves!!!
- Supporting your fwends!
- Endless Lightning Flash combos!
- More challenging to play than most classes (but rewarding!)
- Exercises your fingers (not sure if that is a reason why)
- They are just too bad kitten not to play

ConnorHD.3842:

@killahmayne: I really like the build in fact, when HoT had just released, I ran something really similar to the stats and gear you have. The marauder and durability armour then zerk and cav trinkets, I think what I got was pretty similar to yours but yours looks a bit better. Having said that though I played it pre-elemental bastion nerf so the healing was a bit better and I could get away with running next to no healing power. Maybe you can still get away with running no healing power on d/d tempest but if I ran it now I’d still probably go for the 300~ points of celestial. I stole this build straight from Elem’s Tempest video but you can see you can achieve pretty similar stats and have the added healing power with cele, and of course if you add the oil you’re using they’re almost exactly the same: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhcMowhVOwzB8RscCYuf1z6blYCEAWAFlgB4HA-TVCEABYq6yWKBZSpV/qR4ueAtUmA/+DA8AAe4EAQGgitA-w

I think the one thing I’d change about the build (excluding cele cos that’s just preference and it’s a pain to get) is swapping Harmonius Conduit for Invigorating Torrents, because a lot of the time people do just run out of overloads, I mean the added damage is great but the extra cleanse you can get from running IT with Cleansing Water is much more useful in my opinion. I mean you’re already pretty tanky with the food, Hardy Conduit and the dura runes so why not run tonnes of cleanse and make yourself an unkillable machine?

Apart from that one thing though the build is really good, what you wrote kind of inspired me to give Tempest another shot.. maybe :p

I will post a video soon when I get time during the holidays + get better footage. But I definitely think you should give tempest another shot again. It does boast better support if you roam with friends and better AoE cleave DPS at the same time though the spike potential of Fire is hard to ignore and overlook. I’ve actually tried your fire variant a little bit, not so much to form an overall opinion but I did like the extra damage I was doing, it caught some guys who were running Warriors/DH’s by surprise thinking they were good at half health :p. But I did miss the auras, the overloads not so much in 1v1 but in bigger fights it served me pretty well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoIWOBMiJQAYBUEFHgfA3xaa9tC-TlyHABDpMBgTAw/KpeXVFBeAAfrHQIlChv/wcKB1TtiAAIA3sNDghO0hO0hO0u5Nv5Nv5NLFQm7sA-w

A little build I’ve been using with the spare parts that I have that’s why things seem mixed/matched a little weird. But basically at the heart of it it is a marauder ele. I’m actually preferring over the half-celestial variant. I think ele makes such huge use of marauder pieces based on the fact we need every stat in the book that we can get.

It packs a pretty big punch while still being tanky and still heals itself very well. I’ve consistently hit 4K burning speeds on semi-tanky targets, probably more towards 5K on squishy targets. And maybe 6K fire grabs on semi-tanky targets as well.

I’ve played ele exclusively for the past 2-3 months testing out different builds and what. The main problem I found with many ele builds is that it simply doesn’t deal enough sustained damage or have enough spike damage to really put pressure on people. Especially hard hitting melees like Warriors, DH, Daredevils, Scrappers, Heralds, etc.

But you would eventually die because the opponent would be just a more damaging, sustain version of you. Unless you roam with people who can fill the DPS void for you it just became pretty frustrating that you didn’t have that extra damage to really have people running or have them downed themselves trying to res an ally.

It’s difficult because Ele starts out with the least amount of stats out of everybody. You still need to have that toughness/vitality to be able to hang in there. It’s super important, but as a roamer, damage is also super important too because in outnumbered fights you are going to eventually die if you can’t put the pressure.

This is a tempest variant of pretty much what the OP posted. IMO I still prefer the tempest variant over vanilla because of the auras, AoE cleaving DPS, boons. However the fire variant is definitely better at spiking single targets down, to each their own I guess.

If I were to run vanilla I would probably run either Fire/Water/Arcane or Earth/Water/Arcane. Wasn’t a huge fan of Air/Water/Arcane TBH, the ability to deal with condis IMO was lacking.

To me though the best roaming set up for tempest is Water/Arcane/Tempest. Earth/Water/Tempest was really, really meh for me. Earth just seemed only slightly better in some situations and infinitely worse in others, depending on the traits you picked. I never realized how great Evasive Arcana was until I removed it. The Fire/Earth variants are nice DPS boosts + CC + blast finisher while the Water is a clutch heal/condi clear.

The main difference I noticed with Arcane was my ability to heal. When attuning to water I gain a 1.5k heal, another 1.5K heal + condi clear on dagger, another 1.5K heal + condi clear with Evasive Arcana + Leeching sigil which is another 1K heal. So literally a 5500 heal every time I attune to water. Not to mention the shorter CD on attunement swap is so clutch and so good for combos. Boon duration is good too and I can actually keep might stacks for extra damage. I think another major thing too is Fury. With earth you have no access to Fury at all which severely cuts your DPS and your main damage spikes (burning speed+lightning flash combo) just falls extremely flat. So IMO Arcana is better than Earth. Earth’s traits look good on paper but depending on what traits you pick they are only marginally more effective in certain situations and represent a huge DPS loss over Arcana.

And Durability runes hands down for D/D I found to be the best. 4.5 seconds of protection every 20 seconds, a regen which amounts to 1 condi clear every 20 seconds The resistance is just icing on the cake. Not to mention Boon Duration is amazing and flat out the amount of stats it gives you just makes it unrivaled.

As for foods, I found the gnashblade to be great, but I think a decent, viable alternative are also the omnomberry pies, they add a nice bit of DPS and healing to your build. So if you can’t afford it it isn’t a big deal.

Or if you are an Ele on a budget something like this could work.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoIWOBM3xaa9tSMBCALgio4A8DA-TlyDABApU7HlEqoHAiTAwLq/0qSwdUGAg5v43fQiHAApAMXkF-w

Let me know your thoughts OP

D/D ele technically isn’t "bad" per se it is just the insane power creep with the elite specializations that have caused an upward spiral leaving D/D out of the mix.

The main problem I find with D/D eles is that against most melee classes they can’t out DPS them. You have to string together good combinations in order to deal damage however that isn’t always possible, moreso with the HoT patch. The saving grace of D/D eles used to be that they can sustain to depth in order to mitigate some of that. But now classes like Druids, Scrappers, DH, Herald and even Warriors have got sustain equal if not more then an ele and definitely more DPS.

I’ve tried D/F ele and honestly it makes your DPS even more pathetic although you do become a heck of a bit more survivable. Right now outside of S/F they are more of a support build with some damage built in.

I would say vanilla ele is better for 1v1s because tempest honestly is to bring support and AoE DPS. Nothing in that kit really helps for 1v1s over say running water/earth/arcane or air/water/arcane.

my bad the 2nd build is actually wrong, updated

Wanting to make a roaming dagger ele build, which one of these do you guys prefer or think is the better one for roaming. I roam solo sometimes but also duo and trio roam as well. Mostly trying to look for a blend of damage/tankiness but can also support allies as well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhMMoyhdOwwB8RssBYDPgAwF0dvGYPsErgUwIA-TVCEABIcABYSZQO7P0neCMV/RKlCCqEEgDEgWK5CAgAsz6MYzbmhO0hO0hO0a0duzduzSBk5OL-w

Pros: Probably the tankiest of the three, good damage
Cons: Lacks boon duration/generation from arcane, limited fury access

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJBIhFyxgKH25ADHwHxiIgR0B2AVA32acNvOEAGA3PA-T1CEQBJStiooUABHQgOoFoP6IEkSQAcgAg3+DaRZHAfAA+TVlAAIA3MgNvZG6QH6QH6Q7mD9mD9m3sUAZuzC-w

Pros: Best support out of the three, heavy boon duration/generation
Cons: Probably least damage output/CC, lower mobility (no RtL)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYhcMoyhdOwwB8RswCYuZ1uaZtYDkBqAEJgDQAA-TFCEABJqWhgKB7TPBAHIA/VVB+9H0S5HCHQgAAIA7sOD28mZoDdoDdoDtbe0buzbezSBk5OL-w

Pros: Probably best dmg (due to fury access), decent boon duration/generation
Cons: Least tanky? (not by much though)

Also, I’m debating on whether Earth or Arcane would be the better traitline. Obviously each have their own advantages but what do you guys think?

I’m not sure how you struggle as a condi mesmer versus a DH

I was thinking something like gain 3 seconds of resistance when attuning to earth and then perhaps an additional bonus like condi damage is reduced by 10-20% while in earth.

Auto-attacks need to be improved, especially air and fire. Earth does its job as it being condi and water I don’t think is supposed to really do dmg so that is fine.

Reduce the time to when you cast dragons tooth to when it actually drops slightly. Reduce CD on Phoenix by 5 seconds. Increase chill duration on water #4 slightly. Have air #3 also apply weakness for 2-3 seconds. Or some type of weakness application somewhere built into scepter.

Slightly increase damage on air #2 and the air trait that causes a lightning bolt.

not a big fan of the trait IMO. As been mentioned it won’t save you at all vs condi bombs and once those condis tick you down below 75% that’s all she wrote.

I think it is the 75% health threshold mainly that turns me off from the trait.

Decided that I wanted to try out scepter ele in WvW. No I am not the most skilled player and this build is one of the harder builds to use but man it is pretty rough.

I’ve tried out many builds Air/Water/Earth, Air/Water/Arcane, Air/Water/Tempest, Air/Earth/Arcane, etc.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Air/Water is pretty much a must, the cantrip CD, sustain and condi removal is just too much to give up. I think Air/Water/Arcane is probably the best out of all options.

Earth IMO just isn’t very versatile, it can give you a lot of toughness but that is pretty much it. Diamond Skin doesn’t seem to help much, probably the reduction on CC trait is the best trait in there.

Tempest is really meh and doesn’t offer much to help the kit of an ele. On paper you can recharge your air overload every 5-10 seconds but it is counter-intuitive to the playstyle which involves frequent use of the air burst combo.

I found that you are very reliant on crit chance (at least 50% baseline with no buffs) and that you have to play it almost glassy. I have 2400-2500 armor and around 15-16K HP which honestly isn’t that much compared to how hard elite specs hit nowadays.

It’s a great build for bursting squishies like thieves as they usually don’t see the burst coming. However I feel like it does no damage to some of the sustain/bruiser types.

I have a difficult time versus some DH’s’/Berserkers, one mistake can really lose it for you because of the burst. Literally impossible to kill a Scrapper/Druid. Really difficult time versus Herald/Chrono. Reapers aren’t too difficult cuz you can just kite, Daredevils haven’t fought too many of.

I just feel like against the tanky/sustain/high-dmg type I just can’t win. What are anybody’s thoughts on scepter ele? I’m talking mostly wvw haven’t really done PvP with it, I’m pretty sure the state of it is probably better in that game mode but with all the foods and stuff along with gear in WvW IMO you have to seriously outplay some of the stronger builds to win fights.

Jeknar.6184:

killahmayne.9518:

Mag is a bit disorganized in terms of roaming, alot of solo roaming instead of banding together in groups of 3,

Mag not running in groups.

lul

being serious, a lot of the times I just see a bunch of pugs rolling in groups of two and by themselves. even if they were it really isn’t much different in any other server. Maybe I just play sporadically at different times and tend to avoid places that Mag zergs heavily at.

Meh, I think it is most of the elite specs in general

DH is tanky/lots of heals/cleave/damage/blocks/buffs
Rev is tanky/crazy damage/buffs/evades/blocks/unblockable
Engi is tanky/lots of heal/great damage/blocks/evades/stealth
Druids are tanky/mad healing/mobility/pet+own dmg
Daredevils dmg tied to evade spam/mobility/stealth
Reapers cleave/CC/tankiness/condi spam, etc
Tempest heals/damage/boon spam/support/bunkering

and etc.

I think it is just in general and all across the board the amount of power creep and how much easier the classes have become to play. I wouldn’t necessarily say that any class in general is difficult to play, although some are easier than others. Most classes are pretty much unplayable without their elite spec they just might as well make it baseline.

I just find it kinda contradictory that the same people (not saying you) that accuse others of cheese play what others would consider cheese. For example I would play a DH and people would accuse me of cheese (although I don’t play the typical DH build and spam 4 traps on my utility bar) when they would play a druid. It is just lolz.

I’ve been on mag for a month now, I am mostly a solo roamer but I do run with 1-2 other people sometimes.

I can honestly say BG is overrated when it comes to roaming. Maybe I haven’t had enough experience on Mag but seriously in my 40+ hours of roaming I’ve met maybe 2-3 decent roamers. Maybe I haven’t met the better roamers and maybe they usually run in slightly bigger groups. Mag is a bit disorganized in terms of roaming, alot of solo roaming instead of banding together in groups of 3, there are some really bad players on Mag. IDK maybe it is because I’ve played a lot of PvP back in the day, even got to legendary solo so IDK.

My experience has been a lot of Druids/Thieves/Mesmers. A lot of them just run healing/gank + stealth away/condi so I don’t really take them that seriously. I seriously barely see any Revs/Engis and IMO they are the best 1vX classes. A few warriors/necros/guardians/eles.

On the other hand, I would love to join a guild or other people who share my love of roaming although it is pretty much dead. Solo roaming just becomes so meh after awhile. So hit me up I guess lol.

Hammer for roaming is pretty much obsolete with the HoT patch. Not that it was in a good place before the expansion anyhow, even then it was slowly falling out of favour and more towards axe.

A lot of this is due to the power creep of the elite specializations and almost no corresponding buffs to hammer gameplay.

vs DH - If you aren’t walking into traps to CC a guardian good luck navigating through a sea of blocks and blinds

vs Ranger/Druid - 1500 range vs full melee, yeah. Be prepared to be kited to death, or have your damage outhealed versus a druid. Not to mention the lots of stability they can skill or trait for.

vs Scrapper - Nearly full uptime on stability with one trait, blocks. Not to mention their hammer still hits like a truck while being very tanky with decent healing ability

vs Herald - brb instant stunbreaker no CD, brb blocks, brb stability on dodge

vs Mesmer - Hammer was a joke vs Mesmer pre-HoT

vs Thief - Mayb if the thief fks up and you catch them

vs Reaper - Still somewhat viable vs Reaper, but Foot in the Grave will make it very difficult if traited

vs Ele - Maybe if you can catch them out of their water rotation

Not sure if the guardian subsection is the best place to ask this question but I would like some nonbiased, objective opinions on the matter. I’ve gotten a few whispers from people from the angry QQ “so you play a DH hahaha no skill” to “play an overpowered class more plz”.

I just came back from the game after 6 monthkittenus. DH back then I remember wasn’t getting the most play in ruby/diamond/legendary ranked games. I remember them being very good at the lower levels but would slowly become slightly underpowered at the higher levels. What has changed for people to consider DH overpowered? I noticed some of the skills turned into symbols, and the knockback trait only affects deflecting shot. So IDK. Seems kind of the same as when I last left it.

How is it in wvw roaming? Are they overpowered in small group fights or 1vX? Are they really deserving of the title of cancer? Honestly, I’ve seen more cancer than DH like condi mesmers, condi/DP thieves, condi necro, condi trap ranger so what is the deal here. Why am I receiving so much hate for playing a DH?

having played a DH significantly during sPvP, I can can conclude that DH pubstomps noobs that don’t know how to play the game or have a lack of knowledge on it.

DH’s get wrecked by condi necros big time, or any condi build, not to mention alot of the necros kitten is unblockable. If you put pressure on them they are going to blow every cooldown in the book. So you have to be patient, force them to use significant skills then attack when the time is right.

DH isn’t that hard to play but you can definitely tell the difference between a good and a bad one.

Justine.6351:

overwrite them.

Some time ago anet made it super easy to get the hot rune sets by doing a map from start to finish once or twice. Also if you wvw and have the provisioner you can get them for 75 hero currency each.

sweet man thanks buddy! The heroics notary does indeed sell the Runes of Durability for an affordable price of 12 silver + 75 tokens. This makes the decision fairly easy because I only play WvW and PvP and only play GW2 on the weekends so I’d rather not waste it doing things that I don’t enjoy.

I was thinking of just dumping real money on the extractors but looks like I don’t have to which is great!

Is there a way to extract runes from ascended gear without overwriting them? I want to extract my runes of durability but I don’t want to overwrite them because I spent all of two days doing the events in the jungle just to get them and it would be a waste to simply overwrite them.

have you tried the superior sigil of draining on mace, it’s actually really strong with this build. You deal 1000 dmg on interrupt plus gain 1000 life.

Fivedawgs.4267:

killahmayne.9518:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Remember that the enemy has condition duration increases as well.

Svanir + Dogged March reduces condis by about 83%. Most of the extra condi duration is going to be mitigated regardless. Of course though with Hoelbrak it only makes it 53%, which, in that case you kind of have to consider condi duration.

Nope, svarinir + dogged march only reduced chill by 83% while other condi are kept at a 33% red. With hoelbrak + dogged march, everything is reduced to 53%.

Thats what I meant, just forgot to mention chill. But Warrior also has other options for condi removal like Cleansing Ire, Brawler’s Recovery, Mending, etc not to mention some options for resistance. I think we can agree though that chill is probably the strongest condi and that reducing it by 83% is huge, despite a necro having condi duration. Chill just makes it uber difficult to gap close plus it reduces skill recharges, so mitigating that is pretty vital.

350k is kind of on the low end for me. I average around 450-550K damage and I run more or less that metabattle build with the paladin amulet. The main difference is, sometimes I run invocation, I run air and force on my sword for the cleave.

Damage isn’t always the best indicator because every game is different. For example you are going to get a lot of damage if you do the lord/svanir, sometimes you are holding points to prevent decaps, or some games the whole time you are pretty much fighting, some games you are just rotating more then usual.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Remember that the enemy has condition duration increases as well.

Svanir + Dogged March reduces condis by about 83%. Most of the extra condi duration is going to be mitigated regardless. Of course though with Hoelbrak it only makes it 53%, which, in that case you kind of have to consider condi duration.

Anomaly.7612:

Would you recommend power over condi, then?

In soloQ, I would recommend running power all the way.

I’ve tried Berserker Ammy, Marauder, Paladin, etc.

The biggest problem I run into with Berserker, and to a lesser degree Marauder is in situations where you are 1v1ing a Druid/Scrapper and to a lesser degree DH is that you are too squishy to sustain their damage while they can heal up spike damage as well.

You kinda have to play them like a thief sort of, and basically just decap, gank and spike 1 target then get out of there. At least with Berserker. With marauder it is a little bit more managable as you have more of a health pool plus you can augment it with runes of the scrapper/leadership. The main problem isn’t the direct damage that people do to you (sure a thief, a power mesmer or a DH may be able to 2 shot you) but you have alot of uptime on protection, evades and shield but it’s mostly the vit pool you lose. Not only are you more prone to bursts but condis will eat away at you faster. Running around with 16K hp as a Rev isn’t very fun with alot of reapers around.

But with a good team comp it can do very well, especially with a cleric tempest, the ability to cleave and the awesome spikes in damage is certainly welcome. As long as you don’t feed the other team kills.

People don’t typically use it though. Me personally I use a Paladin’s ammy, run Ret/Dev/Her but augment some damage by running either Strength/Hoelbrak, and putting a Force/Air sigil in my sword. It does decent damage.

PadreNike.1803:

lighter.2708:

….55 dragons beat abjured and won pro league with mercenary mallyx rev

Yes, but the thing is there was only 1 necro with the Abjured, ATM ranked is infested with necros all over the place.

This … having more than 1 necro on a team kind of keeps a Rev in check. Having an ele and a scrapper also benefits a Rev greatly with all the heals and condi removal that comes flying out of them.

I’m at sapphire right now and the average amount of reapers seem to be around 2. I’m seeing them more then any other class by far. 3 reapers on a team isn’t entirely uncommon and I have seen 4-5 reapers but that is much more rare.

You can say that about revenants in general, Revenants don’t handle condis all too well unfortunately. Of course this problem is doubled when you are a condi rev and have your condis sent back at you and then some.

Revenants are still in a decent place TBH and I wouldn’t say they are necessarily underperforming. Revs do well with an ele with healing/condi clear. It just depends on the your comp and the team comp. I personally don’t run condi rev when there are more than 1 necro on the opposing team, which is quite often TBH.

It can be rough out there with condis flying everywhere but you can make it still.

imo the build would be better if you used the wanderer ammy

You need to do a combination of kiting but at moments keep alot of pressure on the necro. It isn’t easy though, you will probably have the most success using hammer.

In reaper form you need to either CC the necro, evade/block his attacks, or just open the gap and range/CC with hammer. Easier said then done though. And dodge the marks lol.

I feel like one of the worst changes ANet made was to the axe auto awhile back. They backloaded the damage of it alot. Like, who is going to sit there and take 6 axe autos in a row?

All very interesting.

@Choppy, I saw that thread, and as lame as it seems I ideally want to finalize a build that doesn’t have that rune basically "carrying" the build if you know what I’m saying. Tempest is an interesting choice though might have to try it out.

@others, I notice you guys like to run the Strength/Discipline/Defense variant. I’m just interested in knowing what your rationale is behind that over say Berserker.

This can pertain to WvW or structured PvP. I’ve been running axe/gs alot recently and trying many new and different builds, mostly in WvW but I’ve been experimenting a little bit in structured as well.

I’ve been running Defense/Discipline/Zerker the most. I understand people also run Strength/Discipline/Defense, or Strength/Zerker/Discipline as common alternatives.

I’ve been really digging Rousing Resilience in the Defense traitline as of late. It has really good synergy with Outrage which can potentially give you almost 100% uptime on the trait as well as a 2.5k heal every 10 seconds. But I find myself having to run Eternal Champion in order to get some stability. It’s a shame because I want the 10% damage from Bloody Roar.

Blood Reaction in the master tier is a no brainer for me. Dead or Alive is just very hit or miss, mostly miss though. It is either you are not in zerk mode and you die, you go into zerk mode activate the trait and you die anyway, or in a less common case it will save your life. It was mostly the former than the latter for me.

I’m rather torn between Smash Brawler and Savage Instinct. On one hand, Smash Brawler is awesome because you can spam primal skills like crazy and it is only on a 10 second cooldown. But I do like the stunbreak on Savage Instinct, which allows me to combo, go berzerk and allow me to immediately hundred blade rather than having to pop outrage.

Berserker is a decent traitline for this build. Gives you fury, quickness, a couple damage bonuses, faster attacks, and alot of stability/stunbreaks not to mention CC like headbutt. But I feel like I’m missing the damage that I really want to see overall. I use Force sigil and Air sigil in the axe to kind of make up for it but I kind of what more out of it. And also not having a lot of fury outside of zerker mode is kind of annoying.

I’ve tried Strength instead of Berzerker it was kind of weird. I felt stronger yes but I feel like non-specializations don’t really make the cut. My attacks were definitely hitting harder, I like the dodge dmg and the greatsword cooldowns. Because you don’t have outrage, I don’t feel like Rousing Resilience is worth taking as you don’t have significant upkeep on it. With Balanced Stance its about a 20% upkeep and with endure pain you don’t always use it as a stunbreaker. But Last Stand isn’t bad as a trait, lengthier stances + vigor + auto-stability. You can probably even forgo Balanced Stance for something more offensive like Frenzy. It felt a bit slowish to me.

I’ve tried Strength instead of Defense and I was like kitten I really like this damage alot. It was more my kind of thing, Reduced greatsword CD’s, damage modifiers up the kitten , etc. However I felt so much more squishier and it would kind of hurt me a lot to the point where it wasn’t worth sacrificing that much sustainability. At that point I went YOLO with the damage and ran Bloody Roar instead of Eternal Champion so I ran balanced stance for my stability. No shield cooldowns which is pretty big, no auto-endure pain which is also big.

I’m also debating which runes to run. I have durability runes on my ascended gear for my Warrior and I run that in WvW. Durability gives you probably the best bang for your buck, toughness/vit/boon duration and also protection on a 20% uptime. Resistance also isn’t bad even though it is only for a second. But anything to deal with condis. Been running that with some boon duration food and it was okay. In PvP I run with Runes of the Pack mostly because of the fury I miss out alot on outside of Zerker mode. Also runes of the scrapper too are decent. I’m tempted to switch back to it on my regular gear but I feel like the survivability loss might be high if I get rid of the Durability Runes.

Was just wondering what kind of builds you guys run with an axe/GS build.

Malchior.5732:

Burtnik.5218:

Daggers doesnt siphol heal. That would be definitely too much. I just left them for damage, thats about it. Atm this skill heal for 6,5k if all daggers are procced but keep in mind that we are affected by poison with basically no way to remove it.

Demonic defiance could definitely add self conditions but tbh.. i was never feeling that they are any good outside of the blind ofc. With the amount of reapers in pvp tho i wouldnt worry too much about conditions or reliance on allies in general..

As for the Jalis himself.. im thinking what to do with vengeful hmmers. I dont think they want to have 2 upkeep skills on one legend and i know i want rite to become an upkeep skill with increased “a bit” reduction to power damage (it also balance the elite skills itself – 2 upkeep, 2 on use). Overall i changed him to selfish legend for balance purposes. I feel that Glint and Ventari are enough of a support and spreading stability to allies is stepping on a guardian job.

Oh, no siphon? That’d be fine then. I thought you were making them heal for 6.5k + siphoning. That’d be crazy.

The reason I feel we need self-conditions is because the current Reapers and condition builds will cycle out at some point. It’s kinda reliant on what’s popular and also much less potentially useful in other areas. For example, assuming you can give yourself Blind, you now have an amazing skill at clearing out trash mobs or applying other conditions. Doesn’t have to be just the old Soft CC we used to have; they can be different.

I think it’d be good to have Jalis apply AoE Stability; it’s a job that kinda forces Guardians and this way you could have more classes that can do that job while also bringing different tools. Core Revenant in-general lacks team support, although that’s mostly because Ventari is just kinda lacking.

Speaking of which, Druid does the healer role so much better, but also buffs the team’s damage with multiple different effects. Ventari should do something more than just healing, otherwise I don’t think anyone will ever pick it in PvE.

EDIT @ killahmayne:

I think most of the Invocation line is kinda lacking actually. Sure, it has some decent ways to maintain Fury, but a lot of the traits force you to swap constantly instead of managing energy to have that Fury. The GMs, aside from Roiling Mists, are also really bad and difficult to manage.

I agree that many of the traits are lacking in Invocation, Master doesn’t give you a whole lot of options to work with and Roiling Mists is the clear victor over the other choices. But a 7% damage increase, 40% crit chance from fury, access to a lot of fury and stunbreaks from switching legends (where revenants don’t have a lot of stunbreaks) make the trait line worth taking in many instances.

6.5K heal on the daggers is a bit too much. I wouldn’t mind at all if they shaved the damage and the siphon a little bit in favour of more healing. I still like that element of the siphon and is fitting for the shiro stance. Maybe make it a 4k heal with 500 health per siphon

I feel like many of the suggestions you just made, such as Phase Traversal, Precision Strikes would be just fine if ANet ironed out the bugs. I agree with making Unrelenting Assault a single target burst.

With thing such as pets, turrets, minions and other AI it drastically reduces the Revenant’s effectiveness and makes it almost unusable in some fights. Not to mention that sometimes you end up in places you don’t want to because you hit another person you didn’t want to hit. It is just too random and spontaneous of a skill, you never know what you are going to get out of it.

If they would iron out the bugs it would be great too. 15% might be a little too strong. I’d say around a 5-10% damage increase. That more then offsets not having might but not by too much.

I disagree with your assessment on fury with Nefarious Momentum. If you want to take Invocation for Roiling Mists the whole traitline is pretty much fury based. You already get 5 seconds of fury when switching legends. So that is pretty much 50% upkeep on fury. Fierce Infusion, Incensed Response. Fine, I know what you are going to say they aren’t the greatest traits but you still have a 50% uptime on fury when you switch legends. But its not like Equilbrium and Invigorating Flow are exactly the best traits either. Not to mention you can always use runes of the pack which are a perfectly viable option for a Revenant. You can also get boon duration if you desire to make the fury last longer. Core Revenant outside of Unrelenting Assault doesn’t stack a lot of might. There are a lot of options

Not to mention improvements that should be made to Jalis/Ventari.

Varezenem.2813:

Malchior.5732:

I always hate traits like this, but I REALLY hate Soothing Bastion and any other traits that interrupt skills. I don’t care how powerful the auto-proc is, I HATE it.

So I feel like Soothing Bastion should do something different. I feel like Life Siphon is a Shiro thing and Resistance is kinda Mallyx’s territory. Instead, it could increase the strength of Regen or give people a small Regen when you apply Protection or something.

Or make the boon duration increase actually work you can even increase it to 3 sec.

That’s actually a good point, forgot to mention that. But the crappy auto-affect would almost negate that.

Revenants are still one of the best classes in PvP, so you are wrong there. Can’t speak for WvW because WvW is a joke right now. But they still make great roamers and the people that stopped playing Rev in WvW are probably the QQers that complained that they get hit 10K CoR’s every 2 seconds and have it double hit as well. You would have to be in denial if you didn’t think that was ridiculous.

I never thought this was really a great trait to begin with, the amount of healing it gave made it somewhat manageable but with the nerf it quickly becomes one of the most underwhelming grandmaster’s we have.

My issue isn’t necessarily the amount of healing it gives, but the amount of healing it gives and the block doesn’t warrant taking it IMO due to the inherent risks.

Actually more often then not it ends up screwing me over. I could be in the middle of casting Unrelenting Assault, Phase Traversal or the stunbreak evade (skills that could have very well saved my life) but when I get below the threshold it automatically forces me to be a sitting duck for like 2 second, allowing me to be focused. Not to mention if there is a Staff necro in the vicinity this automatically becomes a death sentence.

It isn’t like the engi trait which basically makes you immune to all incoming damage and allows you to move around. This one literally interrupts the skill you were about to do, forces you to be a sitting duck for two seconds and 80% of the time you are going to die anyway because you are a sitting duck and the amount of unblockable skills in the game.

I don’t have a problem with the Shield OH variant, that one I can pop whenever I want but the fact that this automatically triggers and at often times when I don’t want it to quite frankly, sucks.

IMO something cool would be like increase life siphoning by 25% under 25% HP or gain 5 seconds of resistance. I actually like the idea of something to do with resistance. Revenants lack viable methods of condi removal, which I don’t mind really but any other ways of dealing with condis really isn’t viable at the moment.

Burtnik.5218:

killahmayne.9518:

In team fights they are excellent because they can single target burst people down

You wot m8? Thats not true anymore with recent changes which made sword, hammer (not like it was any good) and shield unviable. Condi is the way to go for rev as mace/axe are our only reliable option now and tbh.. shiro/mallyx sustain is better than shiro/glint.

lol @ sword/shield being unviable. Hammer you can definitely make work.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

XxsdgxX.8109:

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Had some valid points but then I noticed you are very hateful towards Revs. " The strongest class currently in the game" Nice joke

Same thing with OP, after reading all his “p2w” complaints I can see that it is pretty much mindless hating since it’s the new class from a paid expansion.

No hate there. Revs is the only class which can easily survive 1v5 fight long enough for help to arrive: crazy healing via legend dance, infinite blocks, CC and much more. Usually scrappers are way worse, but very skillful revenant can do much more than any other class. I tried revenant, i din’t like it. Revs very too unfocused and random for me, but nevertheless they are strongest class right now (if played by skillful person).
Where have you found hate in that?

Revenants don’t have “infinite” blocks. Revenants go down like a wet noodle if you place any sort of conditions on them once infused light is off cooldown. And besides reapers have marks which are unblockable and the amount of unblockable attacks in the game, yeah. Good luck surviving a 1v5 that is the biggest load of BS if I’ve ever ready any.

Can Revanants disengage very well? Yes. Can they survive 1v5’s, even for a remotely long period of time? No. A Power Revenant can’t even fight on point vs a Reaper and will struggle with some of the more sustain 1v1 specs like Druid and Scrapper. In team fights they are excellent because they can single target burst people down and avoid focus fire and can get from one point to another very quickly. They are almost thief like in that aspect except more versatile. But IMO to really have that burst pressure running Marauder’s over Paladin’s is their best option, which makes them quite a bit squishier.

And that is running Shiro/Glint. You can’t even run anything else besides that. If you run Mallyx/Glint you don’t nearly have enough mobility, literally have zero stunbreakers, and can’t avoid focus fire and lack quickness. If you run Mallyx/Shiro you have zero sustain. If you run Shiro/Glint as a condi build you lack a lot of condition pressure and boon stripping.

Revenant’s are in a good position even though they got nerfed. I would say they are in that line between top tier and mid-tier.

A skillful Revenant would know which match-ups aren’t favourable for them and where and what situations they would have the biggest advantage at. Revenants aren’t exactly the best “on point” fighters.

Lol, thief got buffed so everybody is playing them right now. Doesn’t mean they’ll play a large role once the meta settles or when the ranked season begins.

Kalarchis.8635:

XxsdgxX.8109:

And hammer is not even viable in PvP, barely in PvE.

Malchior.5732:

Hammer 3-5 are pretty mediocre, so yea, I think it should get buffed somewhat because all hammer had was CoR spam.

Are we playing the same game?

3 is not only a blast finisher with AoE chill but also an evade. And it’s ground targeted at 1200 range, with good damage besides.

4 is one of the best skills in the game. A mobile dark field that destroys projectiles and turns all my AAs into lifesteal? And makes some of the more obnoxious areas and enemies a joke, esp. when timed properly with skills 3 and 5? Yes please!

5 is another blast finisher, also ground targeted at 1200 range, and also an AoE knockdown with good damage.

This weapon is amazing, and it’s amazing in PvE. It needs zero buff. Everyone was used to the overpowered damage on CoR and just needs time to adjust to the change. It’s like when you come off the highway and going 45mph feels really slow for a few miles b/c you got used to going 80.

I need not say anything else, he explained it perfectly.

How is a power rev top tier when they got nerfed and wasn’t even top tier before the nerf?

Varezenem.2813:

killahmayne.9518:

The only complaint revenants should be making is that Jalis and Ventari were never buffed.

I would argue that mallyx needs buffs too now, considering the fact that their counters were buffed immensely and they got nerfed quite a bit too. For example for the previous output of boon removal/corrupt demonic defiance at a 5 sec cooldown was OK now it clearly isn’t.

That, I will admit as well. But revenants are far from destroyed.

the nerfed CoR and sword autos, boohoo revanants are dead.

A few nerfs and everybody runs for the hills and cries revenants are useless. Great GW2 community.

The only complaint revenants should be making is that Jalis and Ventari were never buffed.

no. I don’t think you get the concept of a NERF, CoR was too strong for its cooldown, so the cooldown was upped. What would be the point of the nerf if you are to buff everything else, which quite frankly doesn’t need any.

raven.9870:

valid but not the strongest,and why train shield with reflect with no shield,mace will reflect just one shot,so it’s pretty useless,maybe dodged march will be better.

yeah thats true i overlooked that, i was going to originally post it with the shield build but it forgot to switch that trait. But agreed though Dogged March is most certainly better if you aren’t using shield.