Guild Wars 2

^ you already have CI, burst mastery, and the + crit to burst traits. What else would you want?

I’m an NA player but EU team queue is just plain more competitive atm, I don’t think that’s really disputed. More teams playing competitively breeds stronger teams/comps.

TCG claims they can beat Apex comp, and Apex has admitted TCG is the comp they’ve most worried about. I’d love to see the match, but I think it’s a pretty good bet on TCG.

I do think TCG (and other) players underestimate how much damage Apex can put out, and how strong of a team fight potential that gives them. Good players, good coordinated damage. In extended team fights they’ll have the advantage.

However, sizer and rom both have extremely strong 1v1 builds, and could probably take Tarcis at home if he sticks with hambow. If that’s true, it’s a big rotational advantage, and should open up opportunities for TCG to outnumber and burst Apex at other points.

As far as mesmer goes, Apex comp has a couple other problems. No one on their comp is especially good at hunting down a mesmer, you need a thief to do that efficiently. Nnight might be able to get some pressure out. And then again, portal plays, huge advantage against a low mobility comp.

Really enjoyed this, especially the shop talk (classes/counters/strats). Denshee was great also; maybe you should invite him as co-caster or something for tournies they’re too lazy to take part in.

Anyways, gj, thanks.

Stand Your Ground

Nice, do you have brackets up for this yet?

I’m really interested to see how everyone is adjusting team comps now.

^I think the major point is that LB feels like a required weapon for pvp. It’s not that LB is bad, it’s more of a build diversity argument.

I know it’s not popular, but I almost think LB CI should be nerfed. Something like swap LB burst and #3, force #3 to hit something to proc CI. I think CI plays better when you actually need to try and land your burst, adds more of a skill element to the class.

Spvp is certainly a good place to learn.

Hotjoin won’t necessarily get you practice against good people playing good builds (tournies are better for that), but it is a great place to practice your own mechanical ability in pvp and get comfortable facing other classes.

Here’s the #1 thing that helped me though: With spvp you’re free to try any class nearly instantly. When I wanted to improve, I forced myself to spend a day or two with every class (I just found one or two meta builds/guides from the forums. That way I get a feel for cooldowns, strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to learning to fight a class, I don’t think there’s any substitute as good as playing it yourself.

No, it’s probably just a thief.

Mace/GS is still fine, it just takes readjustment after the mace nerf. It only excels in 1s and 2s though imo.

Hammer/GS is legit, but you should really drop tactics and get unsuspecting foe.

dantes, this is similar to an excellent tourny build (slight trait/gear difference).

Biggest difference though: you can easily run this with valkyrie or soldier ammy, and just do swap→evisc sigil crits. Huge damage with a really tanky base. Zerker is acceptable too, but a tanky amulet can give you more bang for your buck.

double FGJ shouts too stronk

I think it’s a reasonable idea. I’d give it a cone and not a circle imo, make it a little bit more skillshotty.

Yeah, the weakness of axe/GS BC has always been that you can’t bait stun breaks yourself. These days considering there’s so many hambows, it could actually work alright since they can bait for you.

It’s a fun build, I’m not completely sold on all your choices, but it can work with the right teamcomp and playstyle.

The thing I’d probably be most worried about is getting trained by thieves. That’s kind of the downfall of most zerk classes these days.

Just some basic tips too: You absolutely need to be dodging killshot. Learn the animation, pay attention if he CCs you (fear or bolas maybe), be ready to use a defensive utility.

Mace also has a nice short cooldown block, and it’s often paired with shield which has another nice long block. Don’t use your best damage specials while he has block ready. Try to wait until after he blocks, or has switched to rifle.

But yeah, if you can give more information about what’s giving you trouble that would help. Big hits? Lots of small damage? Too tanky to kill?

Rym.1469:

Use spacebar in between the paragraphs.

trolling?

Hey guys, I’ve been trying to follow this thread and some of the others (Nike’s gw2guru thread), but had some questions. Actually, I think it comes down to one question:

My previous 2-line understanding of axe vs GS was that axe autoattack > GS auto, but 100b > axe auto. Therefore switching from axe to 100b was optimal.

What about at that statement has changed that’s made GS camping viable? Is it build synergies, GS auto higher than previously thought, or something else?

Also, are there any public spreadsheets from nice warriors available to help calculate weapon/ability DPS? I’ve done some of my own work in the past, but dealing with uncertainty in aftercasts and coefficients is daunting.

This is similar to a hammer/GS build, which is decent, but I think your version needs some refinement.

1. - Consider using unsuspecting foe instead of bleed duration. You can do things like earthshaker stun → axe WW for lots of damage. It also means you could potentially run a tankier amulet like valkyrie, if you wanted.
2. - I would take cleansing ire instead of spiked armor, the build is extremely weak to condi.
3. - I’d drop banner for even more condi defense. Either zerk stance or stamina signet.

Lots of people are you going to tell you axe ww is bad, but the dps is very close to 100b, so this a valid alternative to a GS. The big downside imo is that 100b is much shorter CD.

Sword/WH is a solid base for a defensive or support based war build. Be aware that it’s not really used in the high level tourny scene. That said, there’s a couple decent ways I think you could compliment it:

-hammer offset for a general tanky/cc support war.
-LB offset for a tanky condi war.
-Axe+X for a power build

Just some ideas to get you started.

Going to go off topic right away and say thanks for doing all this Blu. Seems like a huge amount of work for someone to volunteer to take on. <3

SJStriker.4976:

But thats where you learn and grow. As a hardcore pvper I will still group with most people and will help them to learn that green gear for pvp is not a good idea. Theres so many players that the hc pvpers wouldnt be too op, but would be rewarded for having better gear/skills. If pvp isnt about trying to outplay/be stronger then your opponent then it is just button mashing

Ok first off “help them to learn that green gear for pvp is not a good idea” is a hilarious quote. I think not using gear with small numbers is pretty self-evident to anyone that’s played an rpg.

2nd I’d argue the fun parts of gearing already exists (although I wouldn’t mind more stat customization). It takes a lot of work to learn what gear synergizes best with which builds. Learning proper gear/build/playstyle combinations is a huge part of GW2 pvp. Sure you can look up the fotm builds and do ok, but you’re still going to get wrecked by experienced players, or players that understand the situations where the build is effective.

I love the new traits in pvp (some of them at least), but after unlocking multiple ones across multiple characters, I’m out of scrolls of knowledge, out of skill points on chars. Wat do.

2 weeks in and this seems like a very alt-unfriendly-in-pvp patch.

There’s WvW, which is like this, but you have to pve/craft for you gear.

But as far as competitive pvp, no, I think gear progression is awful. GW2 has a huge early learning curve. If you put a gear advantage to vets/hardcore players it would be impossible for new players to get into imo.

yeah, we need power meta back with <1s kills. Oh wait, people complained about that too.

Normalized sizes in pvp, like SAB.

Some people have mentioned this already, but a specific request for warlord: Can you do the same experiment but measure time to kill, not damage/10 sec? TTK will still have variation to it, so you would need repeated measurements to get an accurate picture.

Both TTK and damage/time are valid ways to measure DPS, but Warlord is correct that Damage/time suffers from the exact number of hits that occur within a given time. For that reason, if you choose to measure as damage/time you should only use a very long time window to remove this effect.

TTK more closely emulates real conditions since it’s exactly what fights are like. You kill a boss with X amount of damage, not do damage within X amount of time. I know it sounds nitpicky, but that’s the heart of what’s being debated here.

wrong thread post =/

^It looks like every cluster has a top 8 team in it now. Maybe it already got fixed?

I see GF is still on top for team queue, so probably them. Have they been losing to Apex though?

Agreed that kick isn’t the best option. Bolas is ok, but it can be annoyingly difficult to land.

Also consider bull’s charge; you can’t get a full duration 100b with it, but it can still apply some pressure, and it’s nice having the mobility and interrupt option.

I havekittenFighters taking out 55 HP Monks in round 1. Who’s with me?

this sounds like a post from a year ago

Honestly you can probably just sit back with greatsword and wear them down if they stay on point. Don’t try and trade blows with a bomb engi on point as mesmer. You can go in for blurred frenzy hits, but get off the point after it.

If they’re throwing grenades, the best thing you can do is play evasively while doing dps. Grenades aren’t easy to hit moving targets with from range, if you do a lot of movement you can juke a lot of the nade hits.

backpack best pack

While it’s got its faults, it’s the best pvp mmorpg I’ve played. I don’t really care if it’s not getitng 50k twitch views.

Fruits and veggies are so low skill floor it’s stupid. High carbs were OP, but at least they took skill to make. Now you can just auto-eat fruit raw and still win. No skill BS.

Interesting. Ken, how were condis feeling against you?

^ yeah, I know it doesn’t make sense, but that was the dev response when this was brought up months ago. Sorry I don’t have the link, it was awhile ago.

I think this is a similar reason to why they removed explicit bank access from wvw…despite the fact you can just go to the crafting stations.

yeah, I can see that. Maybe they could put the bank at a new WP in the mists, and make that the only WP with a cost.

It was a bummer last night when I needed to get skill up tokens from the bank.

FYI, no bank/BL is by design. Devs didn’t want the mists to become a free hub for bank/BL access in pve. I’m not sure I agree, but I see where they’re coming from.

I agree with you, but I’ve seen a similar thread (don’t have the link). There was dev response basically saying yes, they had feedback that new players had choice overload, and they wanted to slim down choices; also that gem choice made only a small % difference in build.

Skullcrack builds are great for dueling and 2v2s, I’ve never liked running it in tournies because I think hammer is too far superior in team fights.

engi and necro condi meta is back

Why is this such a problem in soloqueue but not tournaments?

Zerk GS or Axe should work. Or something like sw/sw+LB condi.

I’d also add the frenzy, leg specialist, bladetrail, and upcomming building momentum nerfs.

I agree with your points, but I think there’s two rational for the change that you didn’t address:
1- Dodge spam is bad for gameplay, and devs have said they want to reduce it across the board.
2- This minor adds a huge amount of dodge to warrior, it’s very strong for a minor.

But, I think your points stand. This is generally an underused trait line, and if you’re going to nerf it you should at the very least compensate it some other way. I’m really worried hambow, even nerfed hambow, will be the only decent spec after patch. Power specs, especially GS/LB, are getting destroyed this patch. It’s sad. Zerk pvp warrior in general has pretty much been continually nerfed since launch.

I’m pretty sad actually; GS/LB power build is just getting wrecked this patch in so many ways.

Probably so fights actually end.

RIP in peace 2nd best warrior minor

aww, such short notice. I’m gone this weekend.

Nice idea though, I wonder how it will turn out.