I looked into bursting, malice, earth, and geomancy. Earth + geomancy was best. Geomancy is amazing if you are swapping regularly which you are due to the legend swapping proc. Earth was slightly higher than bursting and a fraction of the price as well.
You need it to keep up perma prot. If your in a split with a ps warrior they can run scholar and power food. If you make a third split of just mesmer + rev to give quickness to multiple splits it will help keep up fury on everyone. Swap legends off cooldown also.
I put a rotation with glint → shiro → glint without equilibrium and chopped off the shiro part and it went down by like 2k for the 10s you would be in shiro.
Hey obal, with the nerf to hammer 2, how does the damage compare to hammer AA?
Assuming you get the far hit its basically the same dps as doing 3 autos given the coefficient/time. Did they change something other than the cooldown? Hammer wasn’t that great before when I looked at it on the previous page.
Yeah the axe is just there for a little utility. It can be swapped out if you want without much of an impact or you can just have it in your other swap. I like the offhand sword more than the shield personally. I was hoping they would buff the axe skills to make an offhand more useful as a dps option on rev but it didn’t happen this patch. Give axe a precision strike too :P
Hey Obal, now that the changes are live. How is the rev weapons faring now?
I asume Sword is still on top despite the nerfs. Hammer having taken a significant hit due to the double cd on CoR. And that staff still is at rock bottom.
Sword is about the same as it was before. Staff was better than hammer and still is by more now.
From what I saw of the range group we could have just dropped the healer in that split. I wanted to play it a bit safer since I didn’t know how it would go and adjust it as needed but we got it our first attempt so I was happy with that.
Yeah I agree they aren’t balanced. They don’t excel at much or anything given the content and other classes. They really need a buff. The goal here was to show that they aren’t terrible enough to insta kick like necro/ranger back in the day
We got it our first attempt so it wasn’t perfect, our gear wasn’t perfect, and we could have gone a bit more offensive with the setup. We probably could have killed it with over a minute left at least if we put more time and gold into it. You also have to factor in that it’s 10 of a class so your missing out on a lot of buffs and have to take suboptimal setups to fill in blanks like running hammer guards, zealous scepter, and dumplings to get might and such.
Staff was a fair amount worse and the change to sword 2 getting off 3 guaranteed projectiles all the time will help make up for the sword 1 nerf somewhat. So basically you just press 2 more along with 1 and nothing has really changed except the rotation a little. I haven’t looked into it but that’s probably what will be best.
That would be a little over 10% loss so its not so bad with the marauders + strength runes. Undead runes would tank your dps and aren’t a good choice. You would probably still want 1 toughness trinket or something in case you have short periods of no upkeep if you are trying to grab aggro.
Yeah there is that food but it is a little more expensive. It’s probably worth it to not have the annoyance of continually using the remnants though. You can get a spare weapon and put a strength sigil on it instead for not as much of a loss or investment. It’s a good alternative when pugging and your without a ps war or any one stacking much might. Roxtar did a break down of it all in the second tab of this thread if you want to check that out.
You would never want to switch legends while still above 50 energy; always burn your energy off before switching, regardless of the legend.
That isn’t true. Proccing Equilibrium is worth more DPS when you go Glint -> xxxx than creating some useless might or regen stacks your party is capped on already anyway. The only time it’s worth ignoring Equilibrium in Glint is when you have a higher DPS play available, like using Sword #2 inside a boss hitbox when there are adds around for a huge damage attack.
Thats why Im asking how it works (how to manage it) and if its dmg boost for the party or not considering the boon uptimes. Still dont know any of those 2 things :P
It’s mostly just used for a group that has all the boons you would need covered except for fury. You wouldn’t need facet of nature unless you have a mesmer in your group. You would mostly just keep fury activated and use the swiftness one for just elemental blast. I use unrelenting assault if there are no adds and I don’t have quickness or I spam precision strike if there are adds around which takes priority. Precision strike around adds is more important in general than equilibrium. It only really applies to glint since if you have jalis you will have f2 and hammers going and for shiro you would use impossible odds and enchanted daggers so you will be below 50 from that.
It’s kind of a niche rotation since if you are providing boons that others won’t give your group will most likely benefit more in support and dps given damage on # of boon traits. Looking at DPS over 1 minute, if you could have provided 2 boons to the party that otherwise would not be maintained then equilibrium would be a trivial personal dps loss and others with damage on # of boon traits in your group will lose damage as well. If you lose 1 boon it will be a very small gain and again it’s a loss for others with that kind of trait. It’s useful in some cases so I added it to the guide but if boons are more beneficial to your group then it’s not worth it. If it means your losing out on precision strikes since you would dip under 50 then it’s not worth it in that case either. I mostly go for the boons and precision strikes myself. I probably explained it better in the video so I’ll elaborate that more in this text guide.
All the cheaper food has precision unfortunately. I’d just go with this since it’s really cheap and good. It is annoying to have to reapply it so often but should be enough to last a dungeon/fractal/raid boss attempt at least so you will know to reapply it right after.
Any chances of a small section devoted for those who enjoy leveling their characters from Level-1? Advice like which skill lines to use and avoid during the journey to 80?
I have a starter build section. Shiro, Dwarf, Devastation, and Invocation are important. The rest don’t matter that much. Centaur could be useful at times and Corruption would be the last line you would pick up until you have Herald and adds very little. I don’t think anything else stance or trait wise will matter much while you level so you can pick whatever else you don’t have to get to herald. Drop corruption as soon as you get access to facet of nature.
It’s a bug where if you cast vengeful hammers as you are swapping legends you will have one spinning around you in the legend you swap to. When you swap back to dwarf and use vengeful hammers it will add the normal 2 hammers to the one that is up already that shouldn’t be. Mallyx worked the same way in that you can use the stance as you swap legends and get it but they fixed that recently. I’m not sure why they didn’t fix dwarf though.
So you are saying for max dps, i should use a bug?
Great job
No. If I was it would be noted in my text guide, shown it while I was going over rotation notes, shown it in the sample rotations, or shown it in the charts. I put it at the end when I was wrapping up the video as a joke. I try to add some humor since people find my voice and videos boring. I don’t bother doing it myself and was hoping they fixed it along with mallyx but didn’t.
Seems to me if you have the Shared Empowerment trait and use Facet of Strenght, you stack might twice as fast?
For the most part yes while your in glint though it depends. The might from the trait only lasts half as long and the facets give you boons every 3s and the trait is 1s cooldown which is why unrelenting assault is pretty good to throw in the rotation if possible to proc it more and if your not alone others should help fill in the gap as well.
Jalis is higher dps. I didn’t take into account bugs. It’s a fair amount better without quickness but is more in line with Mallyx with it since the hammers aren’t impacted by quickness. Jalis is still a little better dps with permenant quickness, gives you damage reduction, and has some aoe to it. I have some dps charts in the beginning of the video to show what it looks like over a minute in a group.
It’s a bug where if you cast vengeful hammers as you are swapping legends you will have one spinning around you in the legend you swap to. When you swap back to dwarf and use vengeful hammers it will add the normal 2 hammers to the one that is up already that shouldn’t be. Mallyx worked the same way in that you can use the stance as you swap legends and get it but they fixed that recently. I’m not sure why they didn’t fix dwarf though.
Revenant is best for raids if there is a mesmer in your split. Run glint/dwarf if there is. Keep F2 always active which means swap legends immediately and don’t use up your energy before that. Use the facets that would be best for you group setup. Use elemental blast in Glint. Use vengeful hammmers in Jalis. Use precision strike in boss hitbox if adds are around it. Aside from that press 1. If you don’t have a memser in the group then run glint/shiro. The run out of energy rotation is fine. If boons are covered then f2 and running out of energy wouldn’t be needed and you can proc equilibrium instead. Use axe 5 and glint elite facet for break bars. Staff 5 and shiro elite are a last resort since they will lead to a fair amount of dps loss.
It would do fine. You would lose a little if the bosses are moving a bit too much when you use smite. You would gain a decent buff from boon spill over to your spirit weapons which the graphs don’t account for. The thing it lacks is cc for break bars which comes from just the hammer auto/command but hammer is only up about half the time and binding blade pull which will make you lose out on some dps.
DH doesn’t do much for condi. You get traps but they won’t be as good as spirit weapons. You get 2 damage multipliers but your condi. I have condi guard in the build guide sticky for the build and gear you would want. It doesn’t have much support though and does little for break bars.
I considered that when I plugged it in. The hammer one required a little bit extra time camping glint for the 4th hammer #2 to drain it all. For staff you can use staff 2 to help drain it but I didn’t bother plugging it in since it made little difference.
It looks like a bunch of people questioned staff and hammer.
For hammer I put in hammer 2 -> elemental blast -> enchanted daggers -> impossible odds -> auto -> 4x hammer 2, autos, elemental blast in glint -> repeat shiro and glint. Hammer auto is pretty bad.
For staff I did staff 5 -> elemental blast -> enchanted daggers -> impossible odds -> auto -> glint -> auto -> staff 5 -> elemental blast -> repeat shiro and glint. Staff is somewhat generous since you will have downtime running back after staff 5 and I didn’t bother using staff 2 since it could be a small loss or gain depending on if you get the second part in.
Skip to 11:25 in this video to see a comparison of target dummy kill times between various classes. DH is by far the worst…
You do realize that is using PvP stats with no group buffs, some of them are using food and others aren’t, and that different classes scale differently when you add in those extra PVE stats… right?
Using that video to come to the conclusion that “DH dps is bottom tier” is naiveté.
The guardian and revenant parts are taken from my guide with no permission given. I use the test dummy to show rotations and go for the highest precision possible since there have been things that proc off crits like radiant fire. For both guardian and revenant I am using ranger runes, rabid trinket, and a sigil of accuracy. I don’t use food. I use the golem to show how to do rotations and plug them into a spreadsheet to find the optimal one after trying many different things and ignore the dummy. I don’t get the point of pvp golem tests for pve. It would be nice if they added some in pve land.
We have been using the regular dps hammer build with mace shield on swap for break bars taking the heal trap, bane signet, retreat, procession of blades, and feel my wrath. The prot and symbol heals help the groups with squishier people or the ones that take the most hate. Ring of warding helps keep seekers off the melee team for the first boss. The traps help for the adds for the other two bosses. Stability is important for the third boss so you don’t get kicked into the 1 shot flame thrower attack. I see guardians role to be there to make it easier for the group. Running that you help with break bars, pressure, heals, adds, and give some group might and quickness that make it less of a loss. It does 14-15k dps depending on how much time you have bane signet passive when just pressing 1 with hammer and f1 + trap which isn’t bad. If you were to bring a guardian with a gs + longbow or condi to maximize dps then you mine as well just bring something else instead.
You won’t get to 100 with fury + banner so yes you want berserker gear. You would need a ranger with spotter to put you over. At that point some precision will be wasted for the most part. Some defensive gear would be fine. Something like valkyrie or the one like it with toughness instead of vitality would be better for dps than soldiers though. It wouldn’t hurt you as much as other classes.
Both are glass. Zerker is better in general. With zerker you can use mace and focus for blocks for a loss that isn’t abysmal. That’s not really an option with condi so there is less potential for defense.
Facet of nature is pretty important too. You can keep up perma prot with facet of nature. You just have to give up the fury or might one. If you have multiple revenants in a group or fury is covered by others then it shouldn’t be a problem. It could be useful for raids.
@obal: Do you have any thoughts on using Plate of Roasted Cactus instead of Fried Golden Dumplings in PuGs or for solo play? The extra boon duration from the dumplings feels a bit wasted to me sometimes, the +100 ferocity from the cactus however would offer additional ~6.6% crit damage if I’m not mistaken.
That’s a good choice too. It will help keep up group might for when you are in glint since it will proc more boons too.
For Devastation adept traits, how much better DPS is Vicious Lacerations over Ferocious Strikes?
It’s a little over 900 dps better.
Hey Obal, is this assuming 100% uptime for Vicious Lacerations. I’ve been testing this, in boss fights/ static fights I can manage 80%+ uptime of 5 stacks. When hitting mobs in events/ solo play, I have only around 60% 5 stacks uptime. At what point does the lack of stacks uptime become relevant?
Edit: Also, against trash which dies in <8s, the build uptime 2-3s from my testing seems to be less dps than perma 150 ferocity. So unless there are huge trains of them, I find myself using the +150 ferocity. Thoughts?
It assumes 100% uptime. Hitting a dummy i kept up 5 the whole time with glint + shiro. Whatever downtime you have would still be a gain over the ferocity trait given how much of a difference it is.
I’m not understanding how running down energy affects the cooldown of One with Nature, can you explain further?
You want to turn on facet of nature while in glint. You will want to run out of energy before swapping back to shiro so facet of nature turns off instead of you having to use one with nature making it so that you can’t use facet of nature for 25s. If you swap to Shiro before running out of glint energy facet of nature will still be on and you won’t be able to use impossible odds unless you use one with nature.
To run out of glint energy close to when shiro comes back up you activate all but the prot facet, sword3, axe4, and elemental blast (when you have around 4 energy left). You can use sword2 to help run out of energy if need be.
Running out the energy is no loss in dps and you get to have 50% boon uptime every time your in glint which is goal.
Does that also count for soloing or is there another approach when you only buff yourself?
Great guide, thanks for that and sticky please!
I do the same rotations regardless if I’m in a group or solo.
They are about the same over the course of a minute. You can look at the chart in the video to see how they compare over time. The charts are from before the trap cd nerf though but I don’t think it would change much. The mace numbers also assume you always break the auto chain after the 2nd attack since auto 3 is terrible so your dps will be less than that shown if you don’t normally do that.
That would be fine. You can just use sword 2 twice to run out the energy in glint instead of axe 4 and take shield if you don’t use anything from shield during that glint swap or you can just have axe in your secondary swap.
Obal, I know condition is bad compared to pure DPS, but can you elaborate on its viability for high scale fractals? I read a comment from Nike saying that at high scale fractals all pure DPS builds plummet in terms of damage, so I’m curious as to how condi rev holds up in that sense.
When I looked at it it was like half the dps of zerker assuming targets don’t move at all for torment. I had 4 trait lines chosen since I didn’t bother to see which would be best to take out. I used shiro + mallyx to focus on dps. Glint is much more useful but your dps would probably go down even more. For the few bosses that move around a lot it would be ok but not really anything else. A lot of them stand still a lot. Your better off taking a different condi class.
That’s a good point. I updated the guide to mention it. Others in the group giving boons and unrelenting assault should help fill in the gaps to some extent though. Having to use centaur will tank might output and this would really help it too.
That sounds about right. I suggest in the guide to run strength runes solo or in low might groups. I usually swap sets if I’m not too lazy to grab the gear off my warrior.
Any recommendations on staff stats? Just go for the standard Berserker, or would something incorporating Healing Power be better considering the nature of the weapon? Pretty much comes down to Berserker or Cleric for this particular staff.
For a dps rev it should be used just for the cc. You do it off the start or for things that phase so you don’t get stuck in it for long. If you get stuck in it you will want to do the most damage possible so pick berserker.
Your probably better off going condi from the little I’ve seen instead. I haven’t done much past 60 except for swamp though. It’s a struggle for me to find 5 guildies or friends to go let alone do something other than farm swamp for the daily. Given the rewards and a chore they made them into I can’t say I blame people for not wanting to bother.
Glint + Shiro – Activate all facets except elite -> Elemental Blast -> Assassin Stance -> Enchanted Daggers -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> Dragon Stance -> Activate all facets except elite -> Sword Auto until Quickness runs out -> Unrelenting Assault -> Frigid Blitz -> Sword Auto -> Elemental Blast -> Assassin Stance -> Impossible Odds -> Sword Auto -> repeat Glint and Shiro off cooldown
I’ve spent a couple days puzzling over this, and trying to work out the rotation. I’m a bit slow, so let’s pretend that I don’t fully understand all the mechanics, or how they necessarily work. Actually, we don’t even have to pretend.
At the moment, I’m using the Glint/Shiro combo, with hammer and sword/axe. I’ve been trying really hard to follow the above rotation in order to understand what’s going on, and why. One thing that isn’t specified and I had issues with trying to work around is, you don’t specifically mention the F2 facet.. am I correct in assuming that when you say “activate all facets”, that includes the F2 one? And if so, do I ever blast it, or just leave it alone? I’ve been having troubles with it when swapping to Shiro and attempting to use Impossible Odds.. because Impossible Odds is unavailable with the F2 still active. So I’ve just been ignoring F2 altogether and don’t even activate it in the rotation. Again, let me know what I’m doing wrong, there.
So what I’ve been able to gather, and you allude to it in your rotation notes but not clearly enough for me, is the only reason we are in Shiro is to use the heal, Impossible Odds, and autoattack.. and that’s it. Right? What isn’t clear is what is the trigger that makes me swap back to Dragon Stance.. is it when Impossible Odds runs out?
Then, when you say “activate all facets except elite”, again, does that include the F2 facet? If so, I’m not sure I understand what you mean in your notes by letting it run out for some sort of cooldown avoidance. What exact mechanic are we striving for there?
Can you provide a bit more description about what exactly is going on during this rotation?
Thank you.
F2 is included in all the facets. The goal is to have that up whenever in glint. You want to run out of energy for a legend and swap to the next. You can see how I do it in my video since I have a rotation included https://youtu.be/kGidGKUF6hY?t=16m1s
