Guild Wars 2

Honestly, if someone can’t or refuses to follow simple directions in the LFG, then I question the competency of that person. I don’t care for whole “zerker only”, “heavies only”, “6k+ AP” stuff either, but if I don’t fit the requirements I don’t join.

A engi build for pugs is kind of a misdirection. With the ability to reset traits on the fly, there’s no build you need to stick to. Just use what is needed where it is needed, and you’re good to go.

That said, when I first go into a dungeon, I usually use a 2/6/0/0/6 bomb/static discharge build, with full zerker gear. Utilities are healing turret, bomb kit, rifle turret, then a filler spot that I always change up due to what is needed.

I’d always recommend the bomb kit for pugs, since it has a lot of really useful tools. For one, with forceful explosions the radius is huge, so it is possible to hit enemies scattered far and wide. Secondly, the blind field on smoke bomb is invaluable for keeping yourself alive, since any experienced player will probably be taking all the aggro. Third, the fire field can let you stack precious few might, and also does a lot of condi damage. The glue shot can also let you escape the horde of mobs that will chase you, since in all likelyhood you’ll match the damage of the rest of the group combined.

Healing turret is a must. The AoE heal + condi cleanse + water field gives you a lot of leeway with pugs, giving them a surprising amount of sustain. Though one has to wonder how a full cleric guardian using scepter auto attack at maximum range manages to take so much damage…

Everything else is just preference. For encounters where I can’t melee the boss, I swap to a 6/2/0/0/6 greandier SD build. This build won’t do as much damage, but makes for a nice backup in cases where bomb kit doesn’t cut it.

For side support utilities, there’s a couple that are really worth mentioning:

Elixir U: The projectile stopping toolbelt skill is extremely useful.
Elixir R: The rez and endurance regen is quite useful.
Elixir Gun: Has a great support toolbox
Net turret: good for stacking immobilize on melee bosses
Mine Field: This one is rarely used, but against bosses where boon stripping is a must, this will get the job done.

I don’t even run incendiary powder on my hybrid engi in WvW. Mostly because I get burning from blowtorch, rocket kick, fire bomb, and supply crate. I have near 100% burning uptime from blowtorch alone, no condi increasing runes necessary. Incendiary Powder is just redundant at that point.

And that is why IP isn’t OP. Engineers have the most access to burning out of any class in the game, both in how many ways they can apply it, and how effectively they apply it. Where for necromancers, Dhuumfire was an extremely powerful change that marked the conversion into the condi meta for the next year to come, for engineers it was monday.

I think what people hate are illegitimate sellers. Those guys who, near the end of a dungeon, kick everyone but themselves from the party and then sell the dungeon.

Evalia.7103:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If you run full zerker and have 100% crit chance, the nerf is actually around 15.6%. This is the highest the overall damage can be nerfed, since it is impossible to crit more than 100% of the time.

But higher for the people who were using just the trinkets which used to have insane ferocity so to say.(zerk helm = buffed with ferocity change for example)
Also higher for Celestial, although compensated, still only partly(overall, a very big stat budget loss compared to what it was before)

Nope. Its lower. To get the maximum amount of nerf from the crit change, you need to run as much crit damage as possible with as much precision as possible. So, 15.6% is the highest reduction in overall damage you can receive, no matter what.

I always have to say this, every time this topic comes around: There ARE roles in this game. However, these roles are more subtle, and are not defined by gear. No, gear is largely meant to be about preference in play.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Thief: Defiance stripper, aggro management, defensive utilities, evasion tank.
Guardian: Offensive buffer, Healer, block tank, projectile management.
Elementalist: Offensive and defensive buffer, healer, combo field user/finisher highest PVE DPS, miscellaneous utility
Engineer: Debuffer, high CC and immobilization, Healer, buffer, combo field user/finisher, extremely versatile miscellaneous utility (capable of fulfilling any role to a satisfactory extent)
Mesmer: Mobility, aggro management, high CC, block and evasion tank, projectile management, high miscellaneous utility, and also sometimes healer.
Warrior: unique buffs, self buffer, high durability for sustained DPS.
Necromancer: Debuffer, high durability, miscellaneous utility
Ranger: Rage magnet (seriously though, I don’t know much about rangers)

Running around in dungeons with pugs a lot, I’ll find that we’ll be lacking in the strangest utilities that other classes have. For example, sometimes we’ll fail due to a lack of projectile blocking/reflecting, or a lack of condi cleanses, or a lack of defensive utilities via protection/blinds/heals, or the strangest one which was a lack of range. Different classes have different combo fields, which and different finishers to use in those fields.

At no point in fulfilling any of these roles should a class have to sacrifice independence. This is what the trinity does, though. To have the trinity, you need DPS that is too weak to take hits, heals that are ineffective except with durable targets, and an aggro manager who lacks the durability and DPS to fully survive an encounter.

I’m not sure if it is a bug insomuch as it is just the way the cookie crumbled. Though I wouldn’t mind seeing it fixed, I’m not in a hurry to do anything about it.

If you run full zerker and have 100% crit chance, the nerf is actually around 15.6%. This is the highest the overall damage can be nerfed, since it is impossible to crit more than 100% of the time.

I call myself captain aggro, since it seems like no matter what class I play or how I play it, I’m always the one the boss gets mad at. It is scary at times, since the boss will often run half way across the room, ignoring everyone else just to attack me while I"m downed. This is kind of strange, since this will happen in zergs, too. Modnir Ulgoth has got it bad for me…

Though I think I have an explanation: I often run with n00b groups, so in these groups I am often the first person in combat, the only person in melee range, and the only person in high DPS gear. Because of this, the boss will chase me around and ignore the full cleric guardian sniping with scepter at max range.

Yeah, the way dungeons are handled in this game is awkward.

On the plus side, they’re more versatile and interactive than what you see in a lot of MMOs. Most defense is active, so you have to constantly be aware of positioning, telegraphs, and AoEs. Several bosses have gimmicks, with some being more interesting and unique than others. Many bosses are just a difficult fight. You get rewarded riskier and braver actions, and the lack of roles means that the outcome of any fight is chaotic and unpredictable.

On the minus side, the best way to run them is counterintuitive to what one would normally expect. Corner pulling isn’t anything new, but all stacking on bosses to avoid mechanics, pushing skills into walls for maximum damage, wildly disproportionate damage between ranks of enemies and kinds of enemies, disproportionate reward distribution between enemies… it makes the whole thing very random and off-putting. I can easily see how someone wouldn’t find dungeons that entertaining to them.

I wonder how long you’ve been doing these samples. I see non zerk groups and groups full of non war/guard all the time. I think you might have a memory bias here, wherein the groups you take notice of the most are the groups that have restrictions. Heck, I join pure zerk groups with my engineer and necromancer all the time, and the vast majority of the time these guys are fine with it.

That whole war/guards only thing is an extremely antiquated meta, perpetuated by players who don’t care enough to learn otherwise. The warrior can be outdamaged by Ele (highest damage overall), thief (highest non-FGS single target damage), necromancer (high single target damage), mesmer (reflects and long lived phantasms rack up damage on enemies), and probably Guardian as well. I don’t know much about rangers, but I see lupi speed clears using them all the time, so they have to be doing something. So, the only blacksheep left is the Engi, which generally hits for 5 in an AoE, is excellent at stacking vulnerability and buffs, and also has the most versatility in the game.

The only class that could use a buff in PVE is the necromancer, and that is because it lacks good cleave, and also has extremely fragmented support skills that focus on debuffs.

Turrets are actually quite useful, if you know what to do with them. If you just throw a bunch of turrets for utilities, you aren’t doing it right.

In particular, turrets are blast finishers. When pulling a group, laying down a fire field then detonating the turret stacks might and does quite a bit of damage. This can also give additional bursts of heals, weakness, stealth, and retaliation from engi fields alone. This is an added utility that goes with nearly any turret, but this is only useful if your build has combo fields.

Healing turret: Condi cleanse, water field, AoE heal, blast finisher, short recharge. It is an awesome in-game heal.

Rifle turret: This turret is useful with static discharge, since it is a useful projectile with a short cooldown and a no activation time. This also has the shortest cooldown on turrets itself, making it an excellent blast finisher.

Flame turret: This turret does 3 things: #1: it is a fire field on tooltip with a very solid burn duration. #2: It is a smoke field on activation, and also works as a secondary blind field for engis. #3: the turret itself inflicts a near permanent cone burn, making it an excellent source of condition damage.

Net Turret: This turret is great against bosses that are deadly in melee (such as the Mossman). It has arguably the best immobilization stacking in the game, and also stuns in a pinch.

Rocket Turret: This turret is best for PVP, since it lacks the specialization that all of the other turrets have. Regardless, it is the second highest damaging turret outside of flame turret, and also has excellent range to do so, so if you have an empty utility (not sure how that can happen with an engi), and want to do more damage, you can throw this 1200 units back and let it snipe enemies.

Thumper Turret: This turret is deceptively strong, in that it is the only turret that is actually 3 blast finishers in one. Though it is probably wiser to keep rumble for its stun break than to use it for a third blast, but that option is always available. The high health of the turret makes it less likely to be destroyed before firing off its effects, which can actually be a problem for other turrets on occasion.

Phantasms only live as long as the target. Turrets persist for 5 minutes until death. Because of this, some well placed turrets can be extremely potent.

Last I had heard, berserker has both higher initial DPS, and higher post-buff DPS. With the right buffs, berserker gear can hit 90% crit chance, making the bonus precision from assassin moot. But, since power scales quite linearly, it is always beneficial to have more power.

The recent changes to ferocity have hit assassin gear harder than zerker gear.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Right now, the only ways to make other builds “remotely viable”(as in, why not zerker) in PVE are:

• nerf dodging
• Add special conditions to mobs (silences, unavoidable X attack, etc)

etc. where “punch it in the face” is not the sole objective required to win.

(of course, this probably wont be received well. Any content that veers from “punch it in the face” is outright ignored in many cases. i.e. Ghost Eater Path)

This… sort of. I’ve been saying since before the zerker nerf that the zerker meta is a symptom of a problem: unintuitive mob design. The way enemies are designed in this game is the same way you’d design them in a non-action MMO. Throw in active defenses, and that whole system goes out the window.

But… there is something that this post kind of brings up, and that is something a lot of players really hate: cheap effects. The way unblockable attacks are done in the game is really horrible. Currently, the only way to know if an attack is unblockable is to try to block it, then get smashed in the face anyway (Troll in HotW P1, for example). No one likes this, because it means you have to develop special tactics just for that one segment of the game, and this creates severe class segregation due to how that class handles particular situations.

Anet can make a diversified PVE meta using gimmicks and cheese, but these dance around the problem, and aren’t fun to play against at all. The correct way to do things is to build around a mechanic, not in spite of it.

Its actually really hard, because there is no way to distinguish “random player you don’t know” from someone you do know, or you want to know. Could this person be a friend from IRL? A friend of a friend? Someone who wants to get to know you, either through in game chat or forums or youtube? Another account of someone from any of the above? Someone who just likes your outfit and wants to know how to make it?

haviz.1340:

Once again you chose to ignore the entire type of the content and form an opinion based on that. The bolded part only emphasis that. Unless you think that >2 minutes long fights in high scales fractals are not long enough to show that glass cannons are risky to play and despite popular belief they don’t kill before being killed in that kind of the content.

This is so far off the ball I don’t even know where to begin. First, you are omitting things about fractals: bosses don’t have higher attack rates in high levels, so everyone kites the bosses around shamelessly while dodging their slowly paced big telegraphs. For the regular enemies, they only take a two minutes… “if you’re by yourself or duoing”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBEU72AeQzg maybe. Otherwise, berserker gear does exactly what I say it does: kills enemies before they can stack up too much damage. I guess you are assuming that people mean zerker accomplishes this by facetanking enemies with raw DPS. No, they kill quicker because the few attacks an enemy makes, the few active defenses it takes to fend them off.

Second, you’re being hypocritical about ignoring content by cherry picking the only portion of the game that suits your argument, and then completely ignoring anything inconvenient to that argument.. When you have a bunch of players hiding behind a wall of reflection, do you honestly think that the time limit on that wall doesn’t make faster kills a better option?

Third, this argument doesn’t even make sense. Are you saying high level fractals means that no one anywhere else should have more rapid attacks? How does one jump to that conclusion?

Why in the living kitten would you ever make that more defensive set has higher damage potential when it is already easier to perform while wearing those sets? Another thing, passive defenses should never be encouraged in an action game because they don’t require any effort whatsoever by the definition.

Again, I don’t even know where to begin here. First, giving enemies more rapid attacks will make things harder on defensive sets. It will make things harder on everyone. Passive defenses just happen to hit not as hard with such a change IF and only IF they learn to dodge/block. If they don’t, the defensive gear won’t have enough HP to survive the big hits they used to facetank from bosses.

Second, performance in those sets is limited only to those who can’t dodge/block yet. Once someone knows how to use active defenses, it becomes easier to run high damage gear than tanky gear. Third, the whole “there should be no passive defenses” is a meaningless notion pulled out of thin air, is completely wrong since passive defenses don’t mean passive play, and completely ignores the whole point of stat selection as a whole: preferences in play.

Dalanor.5387:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The goal isn’t to “require” anything. The goal is to make PVE a bit harder in such a way that the strengths of passive defenses will finally show in PVE.

Get protection and weakness, hell go nuts and try to maintain frost aura too, get the appropriate slaying potion and you got 53% or 103% damage reduction without any stat spent on tougness or vitality …

The thing is, currently you don’t need to do that, since you can avoid most of the attacks. Though I imagine that pure zerker groups would utilize weakness and protection more. Heck, even cleanses, since many faster-attacking mobs will have condis. Of course, there would also be more use for heal to remove damage, and more trait/utility allocation to damage if you have some defensive stats. It would almost be as if things were balanced…

Markus.9084:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Engineer: AKA the “ranged guardian”. Grenades can rain destruction and hellfire against zergs, doing both direct damage and condi damage. The engineer’s toolbox means that, no matter what you do, you’ll always have the tools for the job. Stealth? They got it. Blocks/invulnerability? They got it. Fire fields? They got it. Reflects, water fields, movement skills, permanent swiftness, richochet attacks, long range, AoEs, blast finishers, light fields, blind fields, stability, soft CC, hard CC? They have got it. Combine this with potent self buffing abilities, and the engi is a dangerous enemy. You have to worry about retaliation damage, though.

I lol’ed. This is true, but you need at least 9 utility skills to do what you’ve listed…. Ele is far better than Engi in zerg.

You would. Thankfully, utilities are really easy to switch in and out as needed. Whenever I use engi in WvW, I never sit in one utility loadout for long. Whether I’m in zerg vs. zerg. attacking a keep, defending a keep, roaming, havoc build, jumping puzzle, I’m always moving things around.

Besides, kits are actually really versatile. Half the stuff I listed can be found in the bomb kit alone.

haviz.1340:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Having rapid attacks doesn’t mean that mobs will no longer have big, dangerous attacks that you need to dodge.

Having rapid attacks means your party requires now better sustain which means you are now forced to run certain builds because you won’t survive without them. How’s that going to increase build diversity? I can only see it would actually decrease it.

…

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised so many people think that enemies having more sustained damage would make zerker gear obsolete. That wouldn’t be the case at all. GC gear would still be viable, because it will still kill enemies before they can generate a large amount of damage. The difference would be that now, zerkers will actually be risky to play, and more defensive gear would have to use active defenses to stay alive as well.

I should also add that, more durable sets would have longer in-combat time, which would make them more damaging in the long run.

The goal isn’t to “require” anything. The goal is to make PVE a bit harder in such a way that the strengths of passive defenses will finally show in PVE.

hendo.1940:

Please tell us about all those times where area of effect damage is relevant in dungeons which can’t just be achieved by main hand sword cleave.

Wow is this a bad deflection. Who said dungeons? Who said not to use sword? Why are we comparing whole weapons now instead of just the phantasms? Is there now suddenly a threshold of damage that counts as “good enough”? Seriously dude, stay on topic.

Having rapid attacks doesn’t mean that mobs will no longer have big, dangerous attacks that you need to dodge.

Pyroathiest.4168:

This is false. The swordsman leaps back out of range during the course of its attack. It attempts to maintain that ranged distance while idle. The zerker will also attempt to do this, but to a lesser extent.

The swordsman does a short hop backward after its initial attack, but always tries to stay within range of the enemy. Because of this, the swordsman is more likely to die than the zerker. Unless this was changed very recently, the zerker will stay put after the whirling attack, only pursuing the enemy when they are doing the attack again.

Pyroathiest.4168:

What? The only phantasms that this actually applies to are the iWarden and iDuelist, and hardly even to the iDuelist. You don’t use the iWarden primarily for dps anyway, you use it for the protective bubble. The zerker’s damage is easily stoppable because it’s a melee phantasm. It can even be killed during its spin. The iSwordsman actually evades during the attack animation.

Not quite. For other phantasms to outdamage the zerker, they have to stay alive long enough for their increased attack rates to matter. In many circumstances, the phantasms end up dying anyway, causing the zerker to be the superior damage option due to its quick AoE burst.

Pyroathiest.4168:

On most mobs, the warlock and the berserker actually do incredibly similar damage…assuming no conditions whatsoever. However, once conditions start getting applied, the iWarlock rapidly outdamages the berserker. Consider a normal party. You’ll have vuln, bleed, burn, cripple, and weakness. Many parties will also apply poison, and with mesmer staff you’ll also get confusion from the ethereal field. That’s 7 conditions, so in a normal party your iWarlock will be doing 70% increased damage, blowing the iZerker out of the water.

Following the damage tooltips, the zerker does 4 × 196 damage per swing, with the warlock doing 438 damager per bolt. You can dice these numbers up how you like, but the interesting thing is when they collide:

3 hits from zerker is 588 damage, which is roughly equivalent to warlock’s damage with 3 conditions or so. 4 hits is 784 damage, which is equivalent to warlock with 8 conditions on the target.

The tooltips could be wrong, though. But, like I said: Good phantasm, bad weapon. The biggest drawback with the berserker is that you have to use GS to have it.

hendo.1940:

GS does not fall in to this category. The DPS of the phantasm is about 33% worse than swordsman, and completely out of the league of the warlock.

Well, it is good to know you don’t know much about mesmer phantasms.

The berserker does damage in an AoE, hitting multiple enemies. The swordsman and warlock do not.
The berserker maintains distance after attacking, keeping it out of danger and letting it live longer. The swordsman stays in close range, and dies quickly. The warlock does stay at range.
The berserker’s damage is front loaded and quick to activate. The damage of other phantasms is more likely to be interrupted, or needs to stay alive longer to build up.
The berserker and warlock have the same attack rate. The warlock will only outdamage the berserker if you use phantasmal haste with plenty of conditions, or if the enemy is small and can’t take all hits of the berserkers spin.

Combine all this together, and you get a really good phantasm.

Invigorating precision is a mixed bag. One one hand, it is redundant and has strong competition from executioner and hidden killer. On the other hand… it does what it needs to quite well.

I run dungeons with pugs… a lot… and I only make “all welcome” parties. So, I essentially get undergeared and inexperienced players, because someone has to teach them. Now, in these groups, I often find myself having to face tank these bosses, since the players don’t know what to do or how to do it. Face tanking a boss in either pure zerk gear or zerk/valkyrie hybrid gear is really hard, but I’ve found invigorating precision to be quite useful for this circumstance. The trait essentially doubles the healing potency from signet of malice, and also provides passive healing when using withdraw. Combine the large amount of skill evades, and this trait has saved me a time or two. Especially against Legendary Svanigandr.

So, unless you are in my position, Invigorating Precision will be nearly useless. But for me, it isn’t. Also, it increases the up time of scholar runes 6th bonus, so it isn’t completely useless offensively.

I used the staff for my condi hybrid build, but other than being fun to play, it isn’t actually that good.

The staff is one of those weapons that falls into the “good phantasm, bad weapon” category, much like the GS.

I’m not sure there is a “best class” for zerg roles. Nearly every class has something they can bring to the table.

Necromancer: Marks can put quite the pressure on enemy groups, as well as epidemic bombing the downed. Life blast pierces and hits quite hard in power gear, and also necros can give the entire zerg protection with their area denial skill. Necros aren’t too bad at roaming, either. With a full Life Force bar, a necro can overcome most 1 vs 1 fights by sheer statistical advantage alone. Necros are great at getting loot bags and world experience, but you gotta have/be a good leader, because Necros aren’t too good with escapes.

Engineer: AKA the “ranged guardian”. Grenades can rain destruction and hellfire against zergs, doing both direct damage and condi damage. The engineer’s toolbox means that, no matter what you do, you’ll always have the tools for the job. Stealth? They got it. Blocks/invulnerability? They got it. Fire fields? They got it. Reflects, water fields, movement skills, permanent swiftness, richochet attacks, long range, AoEs, blast finishers, light fields, blind fields, stability, soft CC, hard CC? They have got it. Combine this with potent self buffing abilities, and the engi is a dangerous enemy. You have to worry about retaliation damage, though.

Elementalist: The ele has what is arguably the deadliest attack at range: meteor storm. When in staff, the ele has a variety of very useful skills, many of them the best in their category. For area denial and CC they have static field, unsteady ground and frozen ground. For damage they have all of fire attunement, along with chain lightning. For heals they have geyser and healing rain. For whatever they’re missing, the ele can use utilities to fill the gaps. Other weapon sets are better for small scale fights and skirmishing.

Warrior and Guardian: These are the infamous hammer duo, who usually run around in hammer chains. The guardian has more utilities, whereas the warrior as a frightening amount of bulk.

So, as far as zergs are concerned… the only classes I can’t really recommend are thief, mesmer, and ranger. They are far from useless, though. The thief and mesmer both have great pulls, stealth, and projectile management. The mesmer can summon phantoms to harass players on the walls, whereas the thief is great for targeted kills and burst. I don’t know much about rangers, other than in zergs they’ll send in their pet to harass players while they run away.

I’m surprised so many people think that enemies having more sustained damage would make zerker gear obsolete. That wouldn’t be the case at all. GC gear would still be viable, because it will still kill enemies before they can generate a large amount of damage. The difference would be that now, zerkers will actually be risky to play, and more defensive gear would have to use active defenses to stay alive as well.

People keep mentioning dredge, but dredge don’t fit the bill. Endless boon spamming and immunity to blind, coupled with unblockable projectiles just makes the dredge cheap, not tactical. Even then, the dredge aren’t so bad. People hate the dredge because the fractal they are in is poorly designed.

Anyway, balancing the auto attack is something that is really hard to do, since sustainable DPS has to be balanced against versatility and utility, and also with burst DPS. Anet doesn’t want to give one class everything, because otherwise you get Guardians, but with good ranged attacks.

Um… zerker, zerker, and zerker? If you are asking about runes and sigils, then this questions gets a bit more complicated.

I’ve been playing around a bit on a theoretical thief spec (all zerk, exotic armor, ascended trinkets, exotic weapons) 6/6/x/x/x build), and I’ve find some interesting conclusions:

#1: Plate of Truffle Steak is now the strongest buffing food you can eat, barely beating out sweet and sour pumpkin soup, and by a larger margin the curry butternut squash soup.

#2: Scholar runes are now more effective than ruby orbs so long as you maintain the 6th rune bonus more than 6% of the time.

#3: At 66% crit rate, sigil of strength maintains about 4 stacks of might while doing the standard CnD → backstab → auto attack chain combo. This means that, unless you are sitting at 2800 power or more, Sigil of Strength is better than Sigil of Force. But, if you can maintain bloodlust, then force beats it out.

tl;dr:

Best gear: zerker
Best runes: scholar
best food: plate of truffle steak
best sigils: bloodlust on off-hand/UW, force, then an appropriate sigil for the content (undead slaying, night, etc).

fadeaway.2807:

People forget that you gain far more effective health and survivability from pvt gear than you gain Dps from zerker gear.
From a statistical point of view, defensive stats already offer a far better bang for your buck.

This originally wasn’t true. The thing with DPS is that, the quicker an enemy dies, the quicker it stops doing damage. So, if you take two players, one who kills twice as fast as the other and one who takes half the damage as the other, they preform the same in the end.

I say “originally” because last time I did a comparison between soldier and zerker gear, there was only a miniscule difference between the two regarding overall performance in damage and durability. With the more recent nerf, soldier gear might have climbed higher up in that comparison.

The OP nails one of the reasons why I’m probably never going back to sPVP: the frontiersman days are over.

When GW2 first came out, everyone was experimenting with builds, so pretty much anything was possible. Teams and strategies didn’t fully form, and so there was a lot of forgiveness and leeway in the game. At this point, I could have random, stupid, n00by fun, and there wasn’t a single person who hated this fact.

But now that everything is so solidified, sPVP sounds like a horrible game mode to play. You are stuck using specific meta builds and specific strategies against players who are 10 times better than you with 10 times better hardware and experience. These builds only work when other team members do their meta-based things, so experimentation is discriminated against. This means that, unless you happen to like a meta-build’s particular playstyle or role, then sPVP isn’t going to be fun to play.

To top it off, no one wants you to be there. The vets don’t want to put up with you, or teach you. Any sane person who walks someplace new and faces immediate hostility wouldn’t ever go there again. Despite how much QQing the sPVP community does about a lack of playerbase, this is at constant odds with their desire to only play with seasoned vets.

I run a rampager/carrion hybrid in WvW and sometimes in fractals. Rampager trinkets and weapon, carrion armor. I use full Aristocracy runes, and a 6/2/4/2/0 might stacking grenadier build with P/P, Healing Turret, Grenade Kit, Tool Kit, Rocket Boots.

It works alright. I’m not that stellar in PVP, but this build can lay on a surprising amount of hurt. With all of the might it grants, both the conditions and the direct attacks have a surprising amount of lethality.

I use D/D in PVE myself. On that, I have two builds. Both are full zerker with runes of strength:

6/2/2/0/4
0/6/2/0/6

The first build takes advantage of Persisting Flames to stack a boat load of might and fury on the team, and uses the other traits to gain damage bonuses (bolt to the heart, Stone Splinters). The arcane tree usually has windborne dagger and Renewing Stamina, the latter of which is necessary to stay alive. The additional boon duration helps, too.

The second build is more defensive. It is essentially a fresh air build, but instead of using Windborne dagger, it uses Elemental Attunement. By constantly switching attunements, you can get high protection uptime, high regen uptime, permanent group swiftness (AKA why windborne dagger is useless there), and even some might. Combined with Evasive Arcana, you can burst heals in water attunement, making this quite a support heavy build.

Another option for the defensive build is to use 0/6/0/4/4. Evasive Arcana is really only used for the blast finisher and cleansing wave, and putting 4 points into water can make attuning to water automatically a cleansing wave. This makes the healing burst faster, and makes endurance conservation easier, but on a point-by-point basis it is less efficient will do less damage in the long run.

EDIT: though if you want pure DPS, I’d recommend 6/6/0/0/2. Though a lot of people will use something like 6/2/2/2/2 for staff DPS, with dagger main-hand, the Air Attunement is going to be your auto attack whenever you’re not using a conjure. Fresh Air ensures that air attunement is always available, meaning that no matter what, you’ll have access to your strongest auto attack.

The funny thing is, I transferred from SoR to dragonband to do WvW, and the first reaction I got was hostility there.

Luck of the draw I guess.

Punishing discourages people from playing, though. The advantage of having gameplay that isn’t punishing is that you can crank the difficulty up much higher than normal. When death is cheap, you can make death more abundant.

My hope is that, by adding faster attack rates, creatures with better behaviors I.E. kiting mobs and faster melee mobs, skill rotations that are cohesive and dangerous, groups of enemies with collaborative effects, and enemies with diversified defenses, the game becomes a harder environment that will take advantage of players with passive defenses and healing abilities.

You can run nearly anything and be viable. But, to be at your strongest, you gotta run full berserker.

For PVE, thieves are about the same as they were before, in that they fulfill the exact same roles: stealth, defiance stripping, high single target damage, blind spam, etc.

Though personally I would say they were buffed on two fronts. Revealed training works really well for D/D single target rotations, giving thieves a good reason to finally go 30 into Deadly Arts. Though in full zerker, it is only an 8% or so increase in damage, it is still better than having to go with Sundering Strikes or Combined Training.

On the more defensive side, I’m finding invigorating precision to be useful. It essentially doubles the potency of Signet of Malice, and in more unorganized and chaotic settings, Invigorating precision often pays for its own damage loss by maintaining the scholar rune bonus perpetually. For the defensive-minded zerker thief, it is definitely worth a look if you find yourself constantly under 90% health, or constantly dying.

It is still hard to justify going more than 15 points into any other line. You hit shadow arts for infusion of shadow and not much else. You hit acrobatics for feline grace and not much else. You hit trickery for flanking strikes or thrill of the crime, and that is it.

I can’t speak much personally for the other categories. But, as far as I can tell, Bewildering Ambush on condi thieves is lethal in roaming/small scale WvW, and roaming/sPVP thieves are still great at bursting down non-bunker classes.

I always wondered why downed players didn’t receive heals. It never made sense to me.

I don’t think this patch touched the meta at all. Zerker is still the highest damage and best option, because players still don’t need any additional defense to survive game content. Until the latter changes, zerker will be king.

I don’t think this enforced the meta via slack room, though. You can complete all of the game’s content in full cleric gear, even without using heals, and you can still solo the hardest bosses in the game in full zerker gear (effectively cutting group DPS by 80%). DPS is done more out of practicality than necessity.

Using my thief zerker as a base(225% crit rate)…

At 20% crit rate, fury increases DPS by 20%

At 40% crit rate, fury increases DPS by 16.7%

At 60% crit rate, fury increases DPS by 14.2%

At 80% crit rate, fury increases DPS by 12.5%

I suspect it is a bug, but this is still pretty boss.

I eventually dropped runes of tormenting for krait.

Now that Dhuumfire isn’t as useful, I won’t always be putting 30 into spite. But, since the condi build still relies on bleeds first and foremost, I need the extra duration. Hemophilia + rare pizza + krait runes puts me at 105% bleeding duration, so long as I have 10 in curses I can run with nearly any condi spec. The loss of torment on heal and always maxed torment duration is a bit of a hit, but overall I think the krait runes perform better.

There’s a couple of reasons why I play necro.

#1: I like debuffing. One of my favorite roles to play is red mage, and necro is a class with a lot of debuffs. Cripple, chill, weakness, vulnerability, blind, poison, immobilize, all spread en mass with epidemic. The boon corrupting is nice to have, too.

#2: Necro is a low maintenance class. On my engi or ele I am constantly swapping attunements or kits, trying to maximize damage while also maximizing might stacking from combo fields. But the necro is a simple class, that works with less effort. I can just sit back and life blast a bunch of enemies, no muss no fuss.

#3: Necros are tanky. On my other classes (particularly ele and thief), I have to constantly time invulnerabilities and dodges to avoid being killed, and even then a few errant blades can down me. But the necro can take quite the abuse and keep on going. The high amount of passive health means that there is plenty of room for error, which I can use due to how clumsy I am. Normally the passive defenses class is warrior, but from what I’ve seen with warriors I’m not interested in playing one at all.

#4: Necros are the underdog. I’m a fan of the underdog. Necros are underestimated because a lot of people don’t play them, so it is empowering to perform amazing feats as a necro.

In PVE, there are several problems with weakness.

#1: Champions have weakness duration reduced by 50%. Since weakness already has short durations, this means that most weakness falls off champs before they fire off an attack.

#2: Weakness is RNG based. Since many champs will kill players in 1 to 2 hits, there is little reason to invest and weakness and maybe survive than to invest in something else and definitely survive.

#3: It is the weakest form of mitigation. At an average of 25% reduction of damage, it is beaten out by protection (33%), blocks (100%), blinds (100% on non-champs), dodges and evades (100%), and also by CC on occasion (100%)

#4: Weakness is enemy dependent, instead of player dependent. This means that application ceases being useful the moment an enemy is dead, and in many circumstances this happens really fast.

Put all of these together, and you’ll see why weakness has issues. IMO, if champs didn’t have their weakness duration reduced, then weakness would be much more useful. Until then, weakness isn’t something a player should invest any points in.

I run pistol off-hand on occasion in WvW. This is mostly for three reasons:

#1: I can’t hit anything with bombs in WvW, since most players are smart enough to get out of the way.
#2: I run tool kit, and it provides most of the utilities I need.
#3: It is a might stacking grenadier condi hybrid, so I enhance performance to get additional might instead of incendiary powder.

So, the off-hand pistol works quite well for me. It provides 10 seconds of burning on a 12 second recharge, and it does this really fast, so after I bait out the first cleanse this skill can hit really hard. Also, the glue shot is much easier to use and land than the glue bomb, so when chasing/escaping it works more effectively for me.

That said, pistol off-hand doesn’t have nearly the utility of the shield. It has more offensive power, but depending on the build it might not be necessary.

Shufflepants.9785:

Are there really people out there who believe that berzerker gear is no longer the best for pure DPS? All these people asking for a refund on their gear, if they got one, what would they replace it with given a total refund?

This. The thing about berserker gear is that, even with the 10% reduction to damage overall, it is still the best PVE gear in the game because zerker is still the fastest and highest damaging gear in the game. What people also underestimate is how small this change is. When builds are losing 20-30% off of their crit damage, they are actually losing very little overall damage, since this is on top of already having 220% or 230% crit damage.

I have a pure zerker set on every one of my toons, and I don’t even see the difference. Bombs on engi still hit for 6-8k. Thief pistol whip still hits for 20k. Lava font, fire ball, and meteors still hit for 4k each on ele. Though I disagree with the reduction caused by the ferocity change, I can’t lie to myself and say that it is significant or really impacted anything. Enemies in PVE still die before they can launch a fourth attack.

My experience has been that Anet listens. The players are just impatient and demand immediate action.

To be fair, Anet does take way too long to do things.

Julie Yann.5379:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I keep saying this: the ferocity change isn’t as big as many people are making it out to be.

Pre-ferocity WvW build (zerker trinkets, soldiers everything else) has a 20% crit chance and 186% crit damage, before traits. Post ferocity builds will have 173% crit damage running the same stats. So, the overall drop in power comes to

(1.73 × 0.2 + 0.8) / (1.86 × 0.2 + 0.8) = 1.146 / 1.172 = 0.9778, or a 2.2% reduction in damage.

Excuse me if I am unsympathetic. Now, lets throw on 300 crit damage and 300 ferocity/crit damage from traits, just for kicks.

(1.93 × 0.35 + 0.65) / (2.16 × 0.35 + 0.65) = 1.326 / 1.406 = 0.9431, or a 5.7% reduction in damage.

Which amounts to barely anything at all.

My hammer build relied on a perfectly timed high crit damage burst to get my enemy down after baiting out their blocks and evades. Now that burst hits for 30% less, it’s not barely anything at all.

Math 93 lesson here: proportions are relative. When comparing the changes between builds, you have to do it relative to another build. The absolute distance actually means very little in this case.

For example, in the numbers I posted, there is a 23% loss in crit damage as an absolute stat. But, this is already on top of 150% damage, meaning that the relative loss in damage is only 10.6%. That is, you are only hitting 89.4% as hard as you used to be on crits.

I’ve done the math a few times, and the maximum amount of “nerf” you can get is a 15.5% decrease in damage. This decrease is assuming full zerker, 6 points in precision and ferocity, ferocity related food and banners, and 100% crit chance. Essentially, the worst it can get. Anyone that tells you otherwise either doesn’t understand math, or doesn’t care that they’re lying.

Carighan.6758:

lazycalm.5186:

Conditions were already OP, and what do they do? Nerf power builds instead.
I do understand the change from a PvE point of view, but me and a lot of players are concerned about WvW.
[…]

Am I missing something here? Please give some feedback regarding this.

The part missing is that this was neither about PvE nor WvW. This was about a relative stat-imbalance in that crit damage had two distinct issues compared to other stats:

• It scaled better, per-point.
• It had really weird itemization costs, sometimes items with very low budgets had 5%-7% of crit damage while items with higher budgets had 2%-3%.

And that’s what the fix fixes. Has nothing to do with class balance, even though – of course – it will affect it down the line. But you work from larger to smaller issues, and something as underlying as crit damage’s issues takes priority. Needs to be removed before further balancing happens, or all that balancing would be for naught later on.

This isn’t completely true. In the ready-up, the devs said that the ferocity change was, indeed, a direct nerf aimed at kill times in PVE, and was the first step in reducing the PVE zerker meta.

I keep saying this: the ferocity change isn’t as big as many people are making it out to be.

Pre-ferocity WvW build (zerker trinkets, soldiers everything else) has a 20% crit chance and 186% crit damage, before traits. Post ferocity builds will have 173% crit damage running the same stats. So, the overall drop in power comes to

(1.73 × 0.2 + 0.8) / (1.86 × 0.2 + 0.8) = 1.146 / 1.172 = 0.9778, or a 2.2% reduction in damage.

Excuse me if I am unsympathetic. Now, lets throw on 300 crit damage and 300 ferocity/crit damage from traits, just for kicks.

(1.93 × 0.35 + 0.65) / (2.16 × 0.35 + 0.65) = 1.326 / 1.406 = 0.9431, or a 5.7% reduction in damage.

Which amounts to barely anything at all.