Guild Wars 2

Stagnancy. The borderlands did have some good bloodlust additions, but the thing is that maps are still largely the same. We need more map rotations.

It’s a miracle this game mode is still alive.

There does seem to be some kind of cap.

Considering uplevels don’t even have traits until 30 thanks to this atrocity of a trait system, that’s perfectly fair. With the new system, all uplevels can do is stay alive. They can’t even hurt people when that low basically.

Because farming lets some people get ahead, especially those that can do it faster, and then the jealous crybabies demand nerfs so they can catch up. Except they won’t, because they’re too entitled to do it anyways and a cycle repeats; if they can’t have it than nobody can.

As I’ve said before, nothing can be done to satiate the nerf demanding crowd. And it’s just continuing to happen.

So it’s much easier for Anet to remove or destroy the content.

Oh, and there’s also a contingent of TP flippers that would love to destroy farming altogether since they can keep their monopoly. The have-nots are just playing into their hands.

Been meaning to reply but forgot.

Scepter is not too good in pve unless you must range as you will be out of boon range. Usually there’s a better weapon you could use instead, but since you can retrait instantly these days, there’s no harm in switching it in as needed. It has problems in wvw because it can be easily dodged so you need to get in closer. The other problem is the thing is single target so I am usually stuck with a sigil of fire or something. There’s nothing wrong with fighting with scepter a bit closer than 1200 range and is usually the better way regardless.

This is for WvW zergs; for less than zergs, I use greatsword instead of staff and for 1-3 people groups it’s just your typical 0/6/6/2/0 3 meditation builds— don’t think i need to post that.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNArdWlsApfnNDxVI8DNh/QldSUhXo1HQBEAYVDA-TVSBABRcCAuS5Xlq/E0+DooPYhDBgGHBAAeAAmpEMAACgjucjucje0azjezjezyAssFA-w

I prefer to be ranged support then try to maximize damage and not giving out any support or survival. It’s trivially easy to survive stuff as well as support others. Save yourselves + Power of the Virtuous gives some decent burst. Can also put in judge’s intervention, Wall of Reflection, or something else if you don’t like SY!

My offhand choice is a focus, it’s good for nailing people that try to hit you (both 4 and 5) and also that usually surprises people since they’re distracted by your hadoukens.

I think it’s still more simpler to go in with a melee weapon but this is a nice change of pace. It’s very easy to play and you can usually just hit random buttons and give out much needed boons and cleanse while pew pewing away. (Then again that applies to any zerg guardian build really…) Your main damage source is going to be smite so land those well. (fast casting ftw).

K.

Now please make the higher zones better.

GuzziHero.2467:

ArchonWing.9480:

Absolute trash. Why am I being gated from every trait?

Because, thanks to Anet, ‘Once you reach the appropriate level, we want you to be able to dive right into the system and start playing around with it’. Locking some away behind level 80 zones, and dungeons where parties insist you are “lvl 80 zerk war or gtfo” allows you to access new traits more easily!

Also, ‘As part of this approach to making traits more approachable, we’ve pushed back the level at which the different trait tiers unlock for new characters’. Apparently traits are more approachable, when you have to wait longer for them!

But remember, ‘Acquiring traits will be a horizontal progression system’. Completing a level 80 zone to acquire a trait you have access to at level 30 sure is horizontal! Just curl the top and tail of the 3 around to the centre and it becomes an 8! See – horizontal!

[/sarcasm]

((All quotes taken from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/ ))

It is indeed shocking how they could use these words to describe this. If they had only kept the system to the new traits, then it would be horizontal progression.

But this is nothing but vertical progression. A bit more polished, but a polished kitten is just a kitten . And vertical progression is like a poison to this game. At least the ascended stuff is just 5-10% at most and can be considered optional. Not having most of your traits is crippling, is an unneeded roadblock to build diversity, and while the gold costs aren’t critical to established players, it sure would be terrible to a new player atm.

It’s not like rolling alts was disadvantageous enough. It’s also not like they’re perceiving that most content is centered around 80s.

I wish I could joke about this, but this along with the megaserver has been a disaster. I did not pay for this game to become a beta tester for whatever gimmicks they’ve come up with. Requiring high level zone completion for adept traits? What kind of organic progression is this? I’m more inclined that they were throwing darts to figure out unlocks, because thinking that a sentient life form would have come up with this is insulting to all life forms that exist. Though at least the new patch notes have shown some progress….

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Tentonhammr.7849:

What’s the point of this system if so many (not all, but a lot) of the trait unlock requirements make people go, “kitten it, I’ll just buy it from the vendor.”?

To make us pay for stuff that we used to get for free.

If they would roll back the entire trait update and redo it all using skills instead I believe it would go a lot better. Using SP and gold or special event unlock for skills while leaving the old trait system alone and adding all new traits to the list for free is the way to go. Traits are to important to the leveling process it doesn’t make sense what they have done. Its like a dev that knew what he was talking about mentioned it to his boss that didn’t know jackkitten and his boss mixed up traits and skills and then pushed the wrong thing through. I believe that if they had used skills instead of traits, even with attaching such a huge cost for purchasing the skills this thread would not exist.

And that just nails it. Making us pay for crap that we should have already.

Absolute trash. Why am I being gated from every trait?

I have to complete zones (and not even low level ones?) just to get some adept traits?

I’d almost understand if they made adept traits really cheap and easy, master traits somewhat harder, or something. But that’s just ridiculous. I’m just going to purchase exactly the traits I need and forget the rest.

No more alts for now… This new change is nothing more than a gold/time sink, and that’s just disgusting.

Would it be ok to buy exotic assassin’s armor instead of zerker? I know assassin is a bit weaker but I want to save some gold— my engie’s on a shoestring budget being my tertiary character and currently only has condition gear for wvw. Obviously I’m not bringing that stuff in dungeons. I’m somewhat hesitant on going too far out with min-maxing exotic gear that will be obsolete eventually.

Also, is there something in between ruby orbs and scholar runes?

Map rotations to force players to adapt new strategies. You can have 3 identical copies for the borderlands and another for EB, so even introducing 2 sets of maps will be a lot more varied.

Rangers are more than capable of keeping up incredible pressure on a single target, and I’ve met some rangers that were literally impossible to kill so the answer is yes especially since pets actually work sometimes now. It does seem like anecdotes don’t work because rangers seem to be either really good or really bad. Some Rangers I can just keep pressing pistol 1 on my engineer to kill. On the other hand, other rangers can kill me just by pressing 1.

Also, I can’t wait til they lay the hammer down on perplexity.

That’s not a bad idea. I like scepter/gs myself.

Although I noted you didn’t bother with Judge’s Intervention. Is it difficult catching people/getting away with only your GS leap as mobility skill?

Also, a key reason why people take shelter isn’t just because it’s unblockable but also helps guard against spikes. Since you are fairly tanky, do you think it’s enough to withstand the worst spikes you’d usually encounter? I do get that SoR is good against necros who make a mockery out of shelter. :S

Engineers can toss Elixir B to give group stability. It’s annoying to use but that is another issue. And barring all of that, there’s regenerating mist which is basically just a throwaway skill. Also, elixir gun offers 2 low cooldown group condi removal skills which I think is competitive with guardian condition removal unless the guardian goes all out via 6 honor/4+ virtues. And note guardians usually have to burn out a lot of cooldowns to get those condition removals going.

Obviously, so called GWEN meta exists for a reason though I somewhat scoff at the idea of optimizing for zergs. Still, let’s not deny that these 4 are better at zerging. I just don’t share the notion they are useless just because some “zerg experts” think they are. Remember, that meta used to be called GW….

Engineers and rangers share the same problem and that is their stability uptime is awful, they need to invest a lot of trait points just to get certain things working, and thus need to be carried by guardians granting them stability if they want to hang with the front. Engineers have bomb heals… Rangers have umm, well they can be there. Sword if you actually now how to use it gets you out of trouble of mostly anything. This includes being bonked by a dozen hammers.

But in most situations, that leaves many of them stuck pew pewing at 1500 range which is actually useful from towers or terrain or something. Still, the engineer remains better off since grenades do aoe damage while poor rangers are stuck with lol barrage. Rangers also only have 2 uses of stability, both are very expensive… one is an elite and the other requires 30 points to invest in signets. Engineer stability is nonexistent I suppose. This all boils down to mass CC being too absurd.

Still, open field fights while often good to use to stroke one’s ego is hardly all of wvw’s big fights. When dealing with elevation, this changes greatly.

Now none of what I said doesn’t stop some skilled rangers and engies sniping out stragglers and bursting down priority targets. It’s just arguable that they would be able to do more on another class with less effort. But that’s difficult to prove. I’ve used stuff like Muddy Terrain and Elixir Gun to good effect and I feel I must have accomplished something as opposed to me not being there or dead on the ground but I certainly would be better on my guardian. But since guardian is my main, this remains all just an anecdote.

Back to rangers, I think that shortbow could use a bit longer range and either bow needs to pierce by default.

For ways of thinking the change, we can look at the necro. The necro is terrible at support, is completely weak to CC, and conditions can easily be negated or changed, but the necro is able to flash certain things (plague forms, corruption) that can instantly turn the tide of battle and making minimal sacrifices so they can still do lots of damage.

While you’re at it, give me a choice to not take the Engie 5 point Explosives trait. God, I hate that thing.

Back on topic, it’s pretty silly to have a last ditch trait that puts you in combat eh?

The only thing good about shelter is that it’s instant. Adding a cast time for the block defeats the purpose as it is a counter to burst damage since the heal isn’t that big. It also allows for it to be used preemptively.

Guardians are reliant on active defense, and thus as it turns out, they live on fast casting skills. We can’t telegraph anything because our base health is so low and would be a splat in 0.5 seconds.

As for the healing turret, one of the reasons I take it is the condi clear, and there’s a brief delay to overcharge the turret. It’s fine the way it is because it’s hard enough to use in a difficult fight.

Not really a big fan of the trait as it competes with too many good ones. I sorta want it to replace gluttony; is that a valid compromise? You’d have to invest a trait point to get it.

Although, I guess it’s good with a life blast/death perception/reaper might/strength rune build.

Axe #2 isn’t bad but it’s also not that great because of what you need to sacrifice to get there. . Anet should have really not displayed cumulative numbers for channeled stuff.

I think the failing of axe is that it is all single target except for 3. Now if it had the same crappy damage but if it cleaved with say, vulnerability (and maybe only a small portion of damage to cleaved targets) that would be interesting.

Zefrost.3425:

If you think axe is bad it’s because you don’t know how to use it properly. Axe is superior to dagger because going toe-to-toe with real melee classes? I wouldn’t recommend it…

And to a real melee class (warrior, guardian, thief, and yes, even ranger), 600 range is nothing. Quite literally. In fact, it’s the perfect range for them to slap you in the face with a leap. For at least two of the above, going toe to toe with you is their choice, not yours.

It may be ok to chase someone that’s running away from your dagger. And get yourself some extra vul/retaliation. That’s about it.

Ok, axe is also good as a minionmancer. But that’s because it’s not about the axe’s damage. In retrospect, having skills that don’t depend on weapon damage was a good thing.

It really needs to break stun. I only take it because there’s no other choice and I don’t like to be a ping pong ball. Also, it’s only useful on power builds because condi builds have little reason to go that deep into soul reaping— a power build can at least make good use of the 2 other majors/3 minors well.

Condi build + zerg = you need epidemic and most likely plague. You are basically spreading 5 times the conditions around making them a lot harder to clear off. Also, what the heck are you doing with axe in a condi build? Scepter is THE condition weapon because it inflicts condis with it’s auto, making it great with epidemic. Axe doesn’t even give any damaging condis.

Try something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW7Yjc00bb3NG3wfbigBRyWriORgFU+9KA-TlyCABAcBAO+BAAoOBo3f4S1fm4gAkoSQ90EklyPKOCABAQAm5MDZGYmzcozcozsUALKNC-w

As for power, I think Ascii’s wellmancer is a good standard: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/page/2

We’re still having this discussion….

Don’t join speedruns/zerker only groups without zerker gear. It’s not even L2P, it’s L2R.

And if it’s not specified and people just kicked you because they were jerks, then it has nothing to do with zerker gear.

Yes I know this has been repeated before, but lol, apparently it doesn’t sink in, which probably results in even more kicks.

It’s pretty dumb to change the game just because the cool kids don’t accept you. And because of this stupid whining, Anet nerfed crit damage into ferocity which impacts an unrelated game mode (WvW) making conditions more dominant there and still useless in PvE. I don’t even like dungeoning much, but since this whining effects me elsewhere, hmmph.

How I usually imagine them:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATVnUqQDLWwC2CCVLGIQQWfIQBmu8sc4UW1VWbF-TVSAABpq+jAHCgxfCAOp8DgLAQEm/aRXwFKBxa/BhAYD-w

Nerf plz.

And since you brought up guardians too:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJAWWl0ApSodCxRIEENBBRZVAgdAmdvw1PQFEBA-TFCGABJcBAMa/hWU/h3DBQTK/+TJIAPBAP0FIEAbA-w

I sacrificed survivability for some extra deeps with Magi and Apothecary. Hopefully I’ll be able to find the dodge button before I die but I think my retaliation should kill them first. Even if I do down, I have that downed trait to help me out so my allies can res me.

You may think it’s a joke and nobody has ever run these but reality is cruel. In all seriousness, Bearbows seem to have an obsession with piercing arrows (because tag) and more quick draw so they can annoy you with PBS even more. One constant is that they avoid anything that may help other people like the plague because they are “supporting” from afar. Despite my attempts to convince them that spotter is a good trait, they just tell me crit chance sucks and I am a nub since “it may not crit”. In fact you should probably give the ones that found the trait screen a cookie.

Nike.2631:

I don’t understand the fascination with power builds for Rangers. The ranger weapons that interest me are all blatantly hybrid damage weapons. Trying to force a power build is just swimming against the riptide on a class that already has very little slack in it’s performance curve.

The only ranger weapons that interest me are power dominant. Funny how that works.

Although is it even worth going for hybrids in general? You’d have to spec for 4 stats (if condition duration isn’t counted) which leaves little space for defense. And of course condition damage is bad in pve, so not referring to that.

Ah, I use something similar, though much more on the defensive side. although I take ground targeted well for Well of Corruption. The boon corruption is impeccable in wvw.

Life force generation is not an issue with dagger, as the auto generates LF and Locust Swarm is strong too. I still haven’t really decided if Unholy Sanctuary really helps that much though I think it’s one of the few builds where it isn’t terrible (since you took 25 death for deathly strength). It may be ok for long wvw zerg fights where it can amount to an extra 1/3-1/4 heal every 30 seconds.

It should have the same stats as ascended but allow stat changing and of course, a legendary looking skin.

1.) Because the great heroes of Tyria shouldn’t be homeless
2.) Make stuff in the personal story actually matter.
3.) Polish

I’d rather they focus on guild halls.

This megaserver system, at least in the context of cities really shows how the direction in the game seems to be bent on sucking out all the flavor out of the game.

It seems to me how they want to equalize everything, (some call it carebear), by destroying anything that may make someone stand out. This includes nerfs to certain builds simply others complain that it’s OP (in pve?) while ignoring its impact elsewhere, crippling people’s abilities to farm gold, and now making it so that server community doesn’t really matter in pve, and wvw is such a big mess while luring people to stack on the biggest servers, it’s not easy to avoid the fear that they’re going to megaserver wvw someday especially with the experiments of EOTM, and what a freaking joke that is. Meanwhile, the only ways of ensuring the game’s longevity is to put in more grinds (gear progression, removal of some daily choices, and leveling). They turned town clothes into tonics which skewered the potential of their own wardrobe system without a single thought.

But the worst part about all this, like it or not, is that they go forward with these actions and not a single response has been given, and not a single concern was even addressed. It is plainly irresponsible to make sweeping changes like these without a care for any consequences over such a rapid pace of time.

There was a lot of good instituted in the feature patch such as the wardrobe, account bound stuff, and unlockable traits. But it seems like all the good changes were made for established players in mind and not newer players. A new player will be beset by the increased time and cost of leveling.

None of the ideas are imposed are necessarily bad by themselves. Megaservers are a good idea, but some extra care had to be put in. Nowadays, you’re actually worse off for events such as teq unless you can have some groupies let you in.

Please just remember about “Play the way you want, not play the way Anet wants”. If anything, ascended gear seems like pennies compared to what’s going on.

Why aren’t the NPCs invincible anyways?

They can kill golems too…

It’s true. Leveling was annoying but tolerable but the new system is trash. To make matters worse uplevels are now even weaker while they could at least stay alive with some traits. They can’t do that anymore.

It would be best if I were able to bind “1” to loot as well as the 1 skill on my weapon. I mean that’s what the game is turning into anyways.

Actually that would be totally awesome. You’d still have to stay alive to reap your awards but it wouldn’t be intrusive.

Before I remapped Autoloot to “Q” I would berate (jokingly so) people for dying and not respawning because they got in the way of my loot. =p

I like the loot token concept brought up in this thread. I just came up with a random idea:

— When you kill a player in any manner, you get loot tokens. These can be exchanged for loot bags at a vendor that drop the usual random crap they do. You can earn more tokens for kills depending on the % of damage you did to a player, and stomping gives an additional bonus.
— If you are stomped by a player, he/she gets a certain portion of your tokens (20%?). This encourages people to not hoard these things. If you fall to your death when in combat vs other players, you also lose a portion of your tokens and the player(s) that did the most damage to you will split them. In addition if you are just run over and not stomped, you will not lose tokens.

— If you have a lot of tokens on hand (not spent), your token earn rate is increased based on how many tokens you have hoarded. Thus, you could decide to gamble and keep your tokens to earn even more, but risk dying and losing some.
— If a player acquires a certain threshold of tokens + they have acquired a certain number of player kills without dying themselves within a certain time period, they are able to place a title of “notoriety” on themselves, which increases token gain by an even larger %. However, this player will now also appear as a bounty to enemy players and a successful stomp will yield special rewards. Getting enough player kills with a bounty on your head will also yield special rewards and killing someone with a bounty on their head for a extended period of time should allow for things like a small chance for ascended/precursors/w.e

— Loot dropped by guards and npc animals remains the same. By making this special system specific to player kills, it may encourage players to fight each other more instead of pvdooring all day.

And this is why context is important.

Signet of Resolve is fine in PvE— they’re not going to be smart enough to interrupt you properly and the bigger bulk heal is a good thing.

In WvW, shelter I feel is far better because it can negate a lot of incoming damage, particularly in zerg play. In smaller scale, it’s easy for them to interrupt the heal and is also why I don’t bother with any other heal. In fact, i never even spent points to get healing breeze.

The other problem is the signet of resolve is pretty poor without the cooldown trait and many builds aren’t able to fit it in.

Of course, SoR has a certain niche because shelter block doesn’t stop everything. It gets completely destroyed by necro fears which are hard to avoid and causes shelter to go on full cooldown which makes it even worse than signet of resolve. Of course, to take advantage of this you’d need to swap skills just in case a necro appeared. So, I suppose the general consensus that shelter is better for an unpredictable scenario is most likely correct. Of course they may see a bunch of marks/wells and try to block through it anyways… ;p

I still think Shelter is superior if we were talking about commonly used builds and haven’t used the heal signet outside of 1 fractal I did a few months ago. I would definitely advise any guardian to use shelter. I think it’s sound to say that the blocking has saved many a guardian. I think in theory it may be a bit closer than it seems at first glance because there’s actually quite a few unblockable interrupts. (Hey, line of warding!) But it’s certainly possible xFireize has enough spare stability for it to not really matter with that sort of build.

Maybe earrings? I’d care more about fractals. I mean rings just aren’t that special anymore.

The main thing is that many people, due to the popularity of conditions, will have anti-condition setups. This means Melandru+ poultry soup for 65% duration reduce.

Fortunately, you probably are putting some points in explosives so it’s not as bad as feared.

On the other hand, if you have 20% from explosives and 40 from pizza, you’d get 60%. 160-65= 95, which still sucks but at least it’s a lot more effective.

The results are pretty dramatic, I must say; using the food makes it much easier to defeat warriors and the like. It doesn’t seem like I can get enough duration to counter their Dogged March trait though.

You could pick a non-condi food in zergs (maybe poultry soup itself?) since your stuff will get cleaned off mostly anyways and maybe you don’t want to be condi bursted yourself to holy heaven, especially with necros running around. In those scenarios, you’re just going for sudden bursts on people. In those cases, I could see my mere 30% from traits to be enough, but usually I use the pizza/koi cake unless feeling exceptionally lazy.

Basically if you have conditions that last 3 seconds or longer as a base, it’s probably a good idea. If you have bleeds that last 2 seconds normally, you’d obviously need 65% duration at least; any less and it gets rounded down to 1s if they have 65% reduce.

It’s gonna take more than a little.

+ condition duration food duh!

If you can’t beat the condi meta, join it!

The actual food I use varies, but I do use everything posted above, of course the food prices are rising too much so I don’t want to endorse anything. :p Man those poultry leek soup prices sure went up.

I thought it was okay until salad boy showed up. And then one of the missions bugged out on me, and I never bothered again.

Tamuraki.3851:

Thank you for your input.
You all almost have the same toughness, vitality as me, less healing power, yet still the same healing as mine.

So I tried taking your advice and I got this.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVMQNApdGlsApVo1ChfoJSIoM9fs/gScZAaAA-T1SDABO8AAOSZgPK9KTLAOq/c8hAoAzfMt/gCKBB4MAkiuAA-w

I am hoping I did a little better than my previous.
I ditched the Monk’s runes for the Trooper.
I got ‘Stand Your Ground’.
For the third utility I’m considering; Signet of Judgement, Purging Flames. Save Yourselves! or Retreat. This is what kept me from selecting more traits.
I know you’ll probably tell me to get Pure of Voice, although I feel I’ll be doing better with Battle Presence since I can remove conditions with the runes.

Ok, let me now how wrong I am.

A little of topic although I’m seeing this a lot. I’m still a newb but what is ‘pvt’? Or what does it stand for?
Thanks again guys.

Any of those choices are good really. Save yourselves is a stunbreak and your build is more than capable of taking away any conditions you draw, while purging flames has a low cooldown. I like the later a bit more for this kind of build because it gives me something to put in the 1st virtues slot, of which I don’t like the other traits very much. (retaliation duration is the least bad but meh)

Signet of Judgement is good because normally we frown on signets due to them being selfish, but judgement is different due to it giving aoe weakness on a good cooldown, and also serves as a stunbreak + retaliation.

Retreat is probably the weakest choice outside of small scale since aegis doesn’t last long in big fights and the way symbol of swiftness can be stacked.

Counter Conditions = niche
Meta is filled with conditions
/head explodes

Also, melandru has – stun duration too!

I recently posted this build that may suit your needs as it’s similar enough to the one you posted. You absolutely need group stability in big fights or you are a liability to you and your group:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVMQNApdWlsApWotCxZI8DNxDBl5JqP2TY4d4yFEAA-TxSAwATVGQ5BAoUpHR1fAY6LiZAW6Dwu/wjDBgFlgeODAkBoYCA-e

I don’t like investing too much in healing at the expense of other stats, but there should be a decent amount of outgoing healing with this. I wish there was a power primary, healing power secondary stat set.

The main beneficiaries of healing power are selfless daring (dodge roll heals) so finding a way to replenish your stamina is vital and your mace’s last attack in the chain but it is slow, so it can be a problem.

Also, DO NOT randomly throw symbol of faith down because the light field will interfere with water fields, instead put it off to the side a little. The only real advantage of mace is that it has more control over where the light fields go, so make sure it gets used wisely.

You can of course take absolute resolution instead of indomitable courage, but I feel the build can survive with this level of condi removal. It’s up to you.

Hello gear checks!

Nope.

The only reason why zerker reigns is that no stats are mandatory. You can do pve content with non-dps builds; it just takes longer. Therefore if you are good and all stats are not needed, then the best stat is naturally the damage one.

To me there is no problem. This so called “zerker meta” only affects speedrun groups, and you shouldn’t be joining speedrun groups if you don’t want to dps.

Until they fix pve conditions, nothing will change.

That was really good advice! I need to note some of these.

I can only from a roaming wvw perspective where it’s easy to disengage. Unfortunately, in pvp where it’s needed to hold points, I have no idea. I have played a lot more necro than engineer, so I can see why this is a problem.

Not only are necros capable of extreme condition pressure, including poison with their autoattack screwing up your heal, but they are also extremely adept at dealing with conditions thrown their way. If you try to just toss a bunch of conditions on them, they will:

1.) Send some back your way
2.) Use them for a bigger heal
3.) At worse, use Death Shroud to ’eat" the damage.

Add in their ability to corrupt boons, and it becomes a very hard fight.

In other words, they are very strong where engis are very weak, and also able to counter the engi’s strong points as well. To pile on the list, fear is one of the most lethal things they can do, as well as that nasty plague form which you should never engage at all costs,.

The necro’s weakness is a lack of gap closers and some weakness to CC— they can never really stop you from disengaging unless you choose to do so, which is why there’s so many sarcastic comments about running away. It would be recommended to kite them and also CC them when they use death shroud, since they can only have one source of stability in DS which lasts for 3-4 seconds and no stunbreaks or cleanse. Somehow getting immobolize, blind or cripple on them when they DS would be nice.

Still, I must say that it is quite a struggle if even possible.

Well, a lot of people feel that way. Though I brought up wvw specifically because that’s where it actually can work well. Zerker meta is really just a pve thing and that makes it hard to balance. It’s just like how the ferocity nerf made many wvw’ers quite annoyed. I understand that wvw isn’t everyone’s thing though.

Strength in Numbers is a pretty good trait too, though you’ll need to get crit from elsewhere to get empowering might going.

Oh we do have it. It just sucks.

Glacial Heart’s cooldown needs to be 1/10 of what it already is.

Also, there needs to be a trait that grants chill on burn. That would be awesome which is why it won’t happen.

You can never have enough guardians in wvw, I’d say! But I’m very biased.

What content do you typically do?

I would roll a guardian anyways though be aware the new leveling system is much more tedious than before. Also, there may be a chance that your friends would want to roll other characters, and so it may be good to switch roles once in a while.

Unfortunately, this kind of build will never really make it in pve content due to the nature of how pve works. You don’t need any sustain against open world enemies since they do so little damage, and when they do lots of damage (champions), the burst is too high to deal with, and you’re better off with active damage mitigations. In higher end content, it is even better to use active defense to fend off enemy spikes and to use dps to shorten the encounter— trying to make it a battle of attrition like support builds do only makes the fight more dangerous for everyone. Instead, most use dps builds that also have high support with skills like reflects which will change the outcome of the fight. To put it bluntly, mace doesn’t fit at all. And this comes from someone who would love any excuse to use a mace.

I know you’ll hate to hear this, although…

This kind of build does have a place outside pve though. I don’t play pvp much so can’t really comment on that, but large wvw fights can be a battle of attrition and players don’t spike as much as npcs can typically.

Like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVMQNApdWlsApWotCxZI8DNxDBl5JqP2TY4d4yFEAA-TxSAwATVGQ5BAoUpHR1fAY6LiZAW6Dwu/wjDBgFlgeODAkBoYCA-e

Which offers ok condition removal with quite a bit of stability and healing while still doing some damage.

Focus offhand tends to be the most useful to me, because of the blocks which serve as a blast finisher, and ray of judgement (blind enemies, regen allies) is a nice skill. Shield’s cooldowns are too high for me these days.

Healing power can work will with traits such as selfless daring, which heals 1k+ health per roll with 700 healing power + the mace trait. If you dodged in staff, it’ll still be 850 recovered. so let’s say the average is about 1k. With the abuse of sigil of energy (recharge endurance per weapon swap) you can get more rolls out. Healing power often scales badly with other sources of healing, so I don’t think it’s too great to go overkill on it, and many people don’t bother at all. (Altruistic Healing, for example, scales very badly with it)

Staff is the defacto swap support weapon, and since conditions are deadly, purging flames is usually a good idea. It’s also a fire field.

The damage is honestly low, but you can use sigil of bloodlust to build up some extra power. Absolute Resolution is a great trait, but considering the condi removal already had in this build, I think Indomitable courage for more stability is useful for this particular build. Oil is chosen because the goal isn’t to max out damage but increase survivability by procing vigorous precision more, as well as procs such as fire and empowering might. For these kinds of builds, finding an excuse to bump out power (instead of crit or crit damage) is your best bet. Just find enough crit to let your procs go off regularly, enough toughness/vitality/healing to survive, and the rest should go in power. Crit damage (ferocity) is merely a luxury that IMO only dps builds should really chase.

Not too big of a fan of SyS if you’re using it for a pure shout build due to the possibility of killing yourself and PoV is insufficient. I prefer this skill when it’s used with melandru runes, saffron bread/poultry soup, and/or purging flames to greatly reduce the duration of taken conditions. On my melandru set up, I can take like 4-5 kinds of conditions and mostly shrug them off.

As for solo roaming, meditations are superior since you have nobody to support with your shouts anyways. I don’t roam, but when I do: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQRArd5flsApcodDxaI8DRh/Qkj1HFB4cdZ4HA-T1RBwAXV+tT9HU6HOu/gmHCAgzAgZlgBAQAoNP6NP6NLDwyWA-w

(I don’t want to spend money on traveler runes or new sigils; I think I actually have fire sigils because I don’t have dedicated roam weapons and I can’t be bothered to care. ). Also, I sacrificed meditation-fury burst for purity to deal with conditions for ; sue me— I already have 68% crit anyways and fury is even less appealing with the ferocity nerf these days in addition to everyone using conditions.

It’s also useful for making it to a zerg and not getting picked off since you can retrait freely these days.

Runes of Strength would be strong since you get a % damage boost when under might, which is easy to maintain.

The feathers are too expensive for me personally as it is twice as expensive as what I normally use in both slots. I don’t roam enough to make it worthwhile.

Trooper is best in support builds, like the 0/0/2/6/6 build.

Personally, I take melandru as the – stun duration is nice to have.

It really depends on what this build is being used for.

In PvE, the points in valor don’t do anything, so move them up to zeal for Fiery Wrath for way more damage. In a dungeon, you’ll need to replace a shout with reflect wall. Ditch the staff for a sword/focus.This is pretty much the entry level dps build, and zerker all is highly recommended.

If you are wvwing, move the points down to honor for dodge rolls and two handed mastery. Dodge rolls are good for group heals and keeping yourself alive. You can also split the 10 points for 3 honor/6 virtues and take indomitable courage for that oh so amazing stability.

Removed repair costs yet increase waypoint costs. What was the point of the change anyways besides in wvw? At least you could mitigate your costs by not being bad and dying but with this you have to pay anyways.

I recommend WP costs be reduced by the following formula

Base WP cost (as it is right now)- .25(world completion%) – .25(map completion%)