Guild Wars 2

^The main reason due stacking was so easy to remove from Overwatch was because has a huge population, so a restriction over the team composition didn’t hit the queues.

GW2 PvP has a small size, the impact of limiting stacking in nthe queues would be larger.

Emadd.8452:

pvp for instance. every class is overloaded, and the only way to compete is to run what is strong at the time, not to run what you have the most fun with, and have sharpened your skills at. I get that there will always be a meta, but the way they’ve changed the game, everything meta is usually a huge exploit of something cheesy.

[…]

PVE is hands down, too kitten grindy. no joke…i cant stand to level a new character, because i’m stuck with like 2 abilities for like half the game…its infuriatingly boring in comparison to back when GW2 had stuck to their guns about being different, and not your average MMO grind fest.

Taking a look what’s in nthe market youre assertions seems a bit crazy:

• PvP: has normalized stats, you can start to play from level 2 and everyone fights in fair rights. Some classes has more than one viable build (i.e.: medditraper, burn guardian, symbolic; macebow condi warrior, powerzertker withj gsmace, power reaper, corruptionmancer…). On top of that, rewards in PvP are already great and you can fully gear your character in ascended items without touching other game modes.

• PvE is utterly easy. You have buffs to rise a new character from 1 to 80 in literaly 5 minutes, and if instead of tomes you want to level just playing, it takes you no more than a couple of weeks to reach 80. You can fully gear your character in exotics in a couple of weeks more and full ascended trinkets in a coupole of months. Everything gives you xp, and you can obtain gold easily: gather and sell, or do world bosses, or dungeons, fractals and raids; even PvP and WvW will bring you more gold than you spent in foods.

• You don’t have to compete in PvE: all the nodes and ores and stuff are for you; any event you complete or creature you kill gives you rewards without losing them because other player did the killing blow. You can’t be ganked by other playres in PvE. Everything is optional and cooperative and relaxing. Also, due HoT powercreep, most of older content is a faceroll over the keyboard.

• You only have to grind cosmetics, and even then, is easier than in other games.

DrDivine.5378:

choovanski.5462:

DrDivine.5378:

choovanski.5462:

DrDivine.5378:

Kuya.6495:

DrDivine.5378:

If you want to bring ranks into it I’m legendary so knock yourself out lol

Oops youre a 1400 low gold rating. That’s a blatant lie. Ouch public ratings telling it like it is.

Obviously his alt account is in Legendary, duh :P

Oh yeah totally not legendary :o, these back pieces come from bronze

You’re Joking, right?

Actually no, I’m not lol feel free to correct me, these wings must be from bronze but what do I know right?

wings = everything i say is correct

Says person is not legendary and says they’re a liar, person shows item only attainable by legendary rank, gets mad

Yeah, sounds about right.

uh…. you know that you can get those wings w out playing this season at all right?
all you had to to do was grind the last seasons.

Uhh… you know it’s literally the same kitten every season and every season has the same reward and the same grind right?

Answer the question, do you need to be legendary to have the ascension?

You don’t need to achieve legendary rank to get the Ascension; I got The Ascension in the third season and didn’t even reach diamond in any of them. We are now in the 5th season so anyone who grind a couple of tiers (reaching sapphire) at each season can have the wings effortlessly.

DrDivine.5378:

Warrior has 2 physical invulnerabilities and one condition invulnerability in a 60s cooldown, reborns to ~6k HP the first time He reaches 0 life, cleanses conditions so well that is almost inmune and the best of all: 3 stuns in a 25s cooldown (one of them fills entirely its adrenaline bar).

Zintrothen.1056:

Other problems I see is the Longbow AA does way too much damage for a ranged, bouncing/crippling AA, True Shot has way too short of a CD and will eventually hit for insane damage, Deflecting Shot can be an unblockable knockback on a very short CD.

ArenaNet should buff again the True Shot damage a +25% to revert the -20% nerf to prevent people moaning about the autoattack…

Odokuro.5049:

I was wondering what classes seems to be strong right now, that I could tome up and gear up and be a part of WvW, ect. as, without feeling like I am wasting my time on a weak or “Non-meta” class.

Thanks!

I would say Thief or Necro. Thief is arguably one of the strongest classes now in roaming, duelling and PvP, with two or three very different builds being meta: power dagger + pistol, condi dagger and power staff. Is also the class with better disengage tyools in the game and one of the highest dps classes in fractals/raids.

Necro can also be played both power or condi, with amazing access to cc, AoE damage and boonstrip/corruption. Lacks mobility/disengage tools but the reason due is so much targeted in PvP is because how destructive is if is not under a extreme pressure. Is one of the best 1 vs X in the game and once is paired with the support of a Ele is almost unstoppable.

jarosujo.5476:

Hello,

What is the the most reliable way to get ascended gear for casual solo player ?

Armor: PvP competitive matches. You can eran 1200 shards, enough to get 5 armor pieces. Even with a 50% w/l ratio you will get the rewards in ~95 matches, which means one month playing three matches a day. Way cheaper in “gold” and time than any other method if you can’t afford playing high level fractals.

Trinkets: laurels for amulet and rings, clan mission tokens for earings. Alternatively the new Living Story Season 3 maps are excellent to get those ones + the backpiece using tokens.

Weapons: I would say that buying the materials and crafting the weapons yourself. If you only have a couple of characters then gather and farm rich iron ore (and platinum) and wood logs. There’s good guides out there of the best maps and gathering tracks to each stuff. Gather, sell, buy the materials and forge your weapons.

If you’re playing power Rev those weapons are the current optimal ones. I’ll say that at the beguining of a fight the staff is the best opener because lest you block + blind and you can move while blocking and combining that with attacks like Elemental Blast.

I usually like (once a target is called) start in Glint holding the staff with Elemental Blast (chills) > Warding Rift (blocks, blinds) > Burst of Strength (vulnerability) > Surge of the Mist (knockback) > Chaotic Release (launch) and then swap to Shiro and sword + shield; if I’m getting too much attention do use Riposting Sahdows or Impossible Odds to disengage, but if I don’t have pressure then I do cast Jade Winds (stun). If I’m able to put all of those attacks over the target then He probably will be forced to spent most of his deffensive resources, so will be forced to either flee or being a soft target from any other cc from my team.

The thing with energy is that legend swapping doesn’t really add energy, but resets to 50, so the swap is often situational: you should save the changed based on a lot of things: is your breakstun in Glint (Gaze of Darkness) or Shiro (Riposting Shadows) on cd? Would you need the tools that your current legend has in the next ten seconds? Are the skills in the legend you will swap in cd? My main advice would be: try to have at least one breakstun and/or condition cleansing at your disposal, because in the current state of the game are the stuns, the roots and dazes the effects behind most of the deaths and the snowballing and team wipes.

Burtnik.5218:

I never thought i would see rev as gathering bot in my life.

Rev is high risk low reward. Its unfinished cause he has tons of bugs, lots of horrible/poor traits and desing choices in general. Due to ridiculous “balance” from Anet one class can be broken in 1 patch and be useless in next one.

If you like playing rev despite mentioned flaws feel free to make one. If i was to return to gw i wouldnt play rev personally, its been a year and anet still havent fixed major bugs and core issues with rev like lack of ranged condi wep or torment being kitten in pve. Dont even get me started on Jalis. Better go for guardian, they always been solid.

I agree with your description of the Rev flaws; the thing is: I have a broad experience with heavy plate armor classes in this game, and I’m more or less bored with both Warrior and Guardian. In PvP I hated to play the old bunker Guardian, or the WvW frontliner, so I didn’t start to truly enjoy Guardian until the mediguard became a thing (a bit before HoT). But if you look at the “meta” for Guard/DH in PvE and WvW, He still runs pretty much the same builds as years ago.

I don’t bother too much with PvE, but when I do I enjoy playing the Rev with (almost) the same builds I use in PvP and roaming, either condi or power. At the start I hated the lack of consistency in condi cleansing, stability, or the absence of a ranged condi weapon. That was also a concern in roaming, and the nerfs in Riposting Shadows, Phase Traversal or the Retribution traitline hurt me the most. I hated entering in a PvP skirmish and being toyed by cc as a ragdoll being powerless. But the more I play the less “forced errors” I make and the better I perform. I’m playing my Rev as a “glass cannon” and I found it more enjoyable than the glass canon versions of Warrior and Guardian.

Plus, the class is so neutered and bugged that from here can only improve…

saloja.7920:

The double edgedness here is that you won’t really know what a profession is like till you hit max level, but then you might have a max level char that you don’t enjoy.

You can enter en PvP as soon as your toon is level 2 or so, and try every skill and weapon and trait in the PvP hall and matches to see how any class performs. Then you can delete your level 2 toon and repeat the proccess to get your own conclusions.

Despite that, I’ll warn you that a player doesn’t really apreciates all the nuances from a class until you had time with several builds in various game modes. In example: when I did start to play in the game with Warrior and Guardian my leveling was using gratsword + rifle + signets and greatsword + hammer + spirit weapons respectively; such builds were bad and didn’t reflect how properly play a War or Guard, neither then or now. The same happens with the Revenant: you must play a lot of hours at PvE, PvP and WvW with different builds and weapons to truly apperciate if the class fits you or not.

saloja.7920:

If this helps, I mostly play pve, but I dabble in pvp.

Is this true?

The class has still tons of bugs and feels unfinished, in both lore and skills, and definetively seems rushed and demands more skill than other ones. But in the other hand once you deal with the skill ceiling is one of the most satisfaying classes to play around: is fast at moving (and gathering), does massive mele damage, has a insane access to AoE cc and if your timming and reflexes are good your sustain will be phenomenal. Has clear weak points and is hard to master, but also rewarding.

I hate MMOs in which I must grind (several hours a day) gear for a year just to be even remotely competitive, specially in PvP.

In that sense Archeage was an eye opener and a absolute crap, with the end gear doing like x4 the damage of the exotic gear equivalent in GW2. I leave that boat in the second month.

BDO isn’t half as bad, but still you have to grind for months for even being able to compete; if you like to PvP to have months of grinding before being able to have fun is just disgusting.

Say you want about GW2, but the game at least has a fair, instantly accesible PvP game mode with normalized stats and a WvW in which you can afford to play a decently geared character in a couple of weeks. And now that you can get ascended armor as PvP rewards the landscape is even more friendly.

I have no problems with the grind of cosmetics (I have Eternity, Bolt, The Ascension and I’m now finishing the Flameseeker) as long as don’t interfere with having fun, but all those games in which you win due you spent more time or more money instead of because you’re more skilled or have more experience are terrible.

Ariurotl.3718:

There are only 3 utilities per legend because you have access to twice the number of heals/utilities/elites at any given time, so that also doesn’t have anything to do with Rev being “unfinished”.

A whole bunch of Rev weapon skills have very short cooldowns that would be considered way OP without the energy cost.

Lore wise the class is underdeveloped, and the personal story and Rytlock did nothing to adress the issue; a wasted oportunity.

Now, gameplay wise: let’s assume that you’re playing Glint + Shiro; you have a ~1,900 heal that converts damage in extra healing IF you get hit, and a ~1,600 heal wichs heals for another 4,600 IF you hit targets. That’s a ~8,200 combined heal in 30 seconds, which can be enhanced in PvP if you time Infuse Light as a block (much less useful in PvE due the slow pace of enemy’s attacks). So far, nothing to drool for.

The class lacks flexibility; is arguably the most rigid class in the game in terms of builds, and has notable weak spots: stability access, condition cleansing, condition damage at range… ANet tried to compensate those holes through the massive damage potential but a year of nerfs butchered a lot of that damage while the bugs remain (and Revenant is for sure the most bugged class in the game).

I still like it, but yeah, feels unfinished, mostly because IS.

Mistward Armor (heavy only), Bladed Armor, Leystone Armor. Auric and Chak weapons.

Darknicrofia.2604:

you’re basically praying your opponent 1/4/0 splits or else you’re giving up a free home cap every single time.

Most of times I defend a point vs a Thief using a Meditrapper, a Burn Guard or a Revenant I have success, but I found some Thieves well able to curbstomp me.

If the Thief at close is very skilled and is running a 1 vs 1 build (not the +1 meta) can be able to succesfully contest and defend the hoime point at the start. The problem is that the kind of build which makes Thief viable in 1 vs 1 usually loses mobility, which makes Mesmer or Warrior a better choice.

Phantaram is very good at PvP, albeit his pace uploading things to Youtube is slow and his streams a bit inconsistent:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Phantaram/videos

Aka Cryptic is one of the best WvW roamers and also mains Revenant:

https://www.youtube.com/user/akaCryptic/videos

Karma trains in Border of the Mist, completing events (specially in HoT maps and the new ones).

Vague Memory.2817:

fishball.7204:

Where are you pulling 95% from and what type of mes doesn’t run portal wat

I play a lot of matches, and my main is a mes so I know what builds are being run, and I rarely see mes run portal on my team or the opposing team. That would mean out of about 100 matches I’d likely see 5 being used, and I’m being generous with the 5. I understand why, because it is a boring build to play portal bot.

You were correctly answered several times in this thread: Mesmer go close at the start because is assumed that they are tanky enough to keep the point and then left a portal and ride to middle, so if an enemy tries to decap the Mes (and maybe other team mates from middle) can hurry to defend close.

This could not happen in most of your matches due reasons, but doesn’t change the logic behind the choice.

Rev is hard to play, accept it, enhance your skill and become one of the monocle players which succesfully ride the class or just quit, stay peasant and reroll to something more facerolling. As simple as that.

Happens the same in some fighting games; one doesn’t main Setsuka or Yoshimitsu if doesn’t have the will to deal of the insane timmings of their just frames. There are other classes more mainstream which can score decent with much less effort.

OriOri.8724:

I just want to see every elite spec nerfed.

That would be a problem due some classes (Revenant) lacks core class. I mean, you can literaly do 0 things without Glint in PvP. Nada. Jalis and Ventari are useless and Shiro and Mallyx paired is just weak.

FrostDraco.8306:

Also when you say rev does ‘wet towel damage’. Just no. Hell no. Every single necro build does 30% less than rev does. THAT is wet towel damage.

Was a prediction about that even if future changes nerf further the damage the Rev would be still viable in the right hands, not a claiming about Rev currently hitting like a “wet towel” -which isn’t true-.

Would love Eir or Talon Silverwing, albeit I would like more a 1 handed pistol instead a longbow, which would restrict build diversity.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Rev is badly designed. It shouldnt be any surprise that hacking its damage away has taken it out of play. Essentialy all the buttons people were using are still there, and they can still mash them away with little effort for maximum “reward”, but since they’re no longer getting an in excess of reasonable amount of damage, they’ve moved on. Nothing’s really changed with rev except for the free DPS carry, so reverting said damage isnt going to change the reason why Rev needed that nerf to begin with.

Man, is not only damage what Rev lost. In the October patch the Retribution traitline (which was a sustain line) was butchered: goodbye stability, goodbye Versed in Stone. In the December patch Warding Rift cd (which is a defensive tool in a defensive weapon which damage was also nerfed) was rised from 12 to 15 seconds.

So you’re playing Mesmer and still have problems to beat a class without stability, almost no condition cleansing who can’t tank and which has Mesmers as one of the worst hard counter. And still struggling and wanting more nerfs? I will tell you one thing: Revs are currently so inelastic in terms of room for error that if one is beating you the chances are that He’s a better player and probably still will able to win even if ANet nerfs all his damage to a wet towell level. And every Rev at Plat+ you find out there will be in similar terms because the class is no longer mainstream so the players remaining are either very good or masochist.

The game has no PvP population to team queue.

If a team queue is implemented (I’m not opposed to) will take half an hour to fill, because the number of teams is so small, and the differences in skill so big, that the whole experience would remain unpleasant.

The current solo/duo queue grants small time to engage in a match and a good matchmaking system, and the current rewards are appealing. This could lead to a gradual rise in population that, eventually, could hit a landscape in which team queue could work.

Ross Biddle.2367:

• Revs have been appropriately nerfed (still need more nerfs/redesign but whatever)

Could you care to elaborate more in this point, please? I mean: power Rev is now probably outside the meta (I wouldn’t cover any of the 5 slots of a team with them), is arguably one of the hardest classes to master, the condition builds are subpar and is losing appeal in other departments of the game. Also, the class is mostly absent in ranked matches at gold or below. Which further nerfs would you like to see in Revenants? Should be enough once dissapears from PvP or should must also fade from PvE and WvW?

^ Every Necro’s staff skill has up to 5 targets at 1200 range in the same 240 radius with a 3/4s cast, and chances are that most of players won’t see the small animation from the arm every time they attack. So no, that hugely telegraphed attack with a 1.3/4s cast doesn’t seems to me the cream in zerg fishing.

Hammer is mediocre at PvE, PvP and roaming. Works in zergs vs sleeping players, but that doesn’t make Drop the Hammer “one of te best ranged spike setup in the game”.

Well, due is a race to 80 the specs would be initially out of consideration, some of my thoughts:

• Guardian would provide stability and condition cleansing, plus some nice buffs to might and swiftness. On the other hand, is not too fast.

• Elementalist has tons of AoE damage plus great healings through water fields.

• Thief delivers stealth, which is great for map completion and farming.

• Necromancer has also powerfull AoE damage & cc, plus minions to tank, another safe bet.

The fastest way to level -aside from using scrolls/tomes of leveling of crafting if you have the resources- is to complete dungeon runs: each one fills the 70% of a level bar. Another ultra fast way to level up is to join a WvW train and fulfill objectives.

zealex.9410:

lastly future elite spec (if all goes well will fill other niches and will not overshadow the other weapons unless they are another powercreep like the first elite specs).

Future specs will for sure get power creeping and overshadow both the core classes and the current specs.

I known that in Fractals/PvE raids after a year of nerfs isn’t exactly the case, but in PvP and WvW roaming current specs are in the 90% of the classes well ahead of the core builds.

If you ship an expansion in which the new specilizations only provides a side way to play a class without enhancing their value in the game you probably will lose a sale for the people which main that class.

And that provides an interesting feature: currently PvE raids demands a relevant degree in team coordination, build selection and roles to fit if one want to success, because raids were designed with the current specializations in the background. But in the future is most likely that the power creep will trivialize both PvE raids and high level fractals, and for sure the current PvP meta will change and become obsolete.

Ok, I was using mostly 3, 3, 3 in the thought that:

1) Malicious Reprisal is good in a environment with so many blocks and o good reinforce of Phase Traversal, whereas Vicious Lacerations only supports you while using the sword.

2) Assassin’s Pressence bonus to ferocity buffs everyone always instead of Nefarius Momentum buffs you only while using Shiro skills and…

3) Assassin’s Annihilation gives you both enhanced damage and life drain, whereas Swift Termination only buffs damage.

…But I’m wondering if some of those choices are wrong: is better Vicious Lacerations, even taking in account that I probably use the staff the 55% of the time? Do Nefarious Momentum provide better punch? Do Assassin’s Annihilation provide relevant heals? Would I lack enough pressure if I replace Malicious Reprisal?

What are your choices and why, guys?

Apolo.5942:

Thanks for agreeing that they need to be faster.

Forget it; it took you 3 days to post that crapy response? Man, you’re slow.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

P.S. Rev or power thief counters this?. . . lol, no.

90% of Revs can be trashed with this build, but the other 10% will curbstomp this crap. Is just that Rev has 0 tolerance to mistakes, but once the skill is there is much better to fight against a team with a Thief with lowered mobility.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Thoughts?

Some of those “OP skills” are really weak. You have a weird concept of what’s “overpowered”.

Daldmori.2453:

Rn using shield/sword/staff. Any help on speccing/ knowing if I should continue playing him would be much appreciated

Pretty much the most competitive build in the class:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_Power_Shiro

Revenant is hard to play due was made to lack stability, flexibility and almost any form of condition cleansing and therefore is very vulnerable to conditions and cc. But the good part is that the skill ceiling is very, very high.

Malchior.5732:

Rev? Why Rev? I thought it started to be dropped from the raid meta? On top of that, I’ve already said why I’m moving away from Rev. The class barely gets anything other than nerfs, which many times were justified, but then like 60% of the class is still unusable or flavorless with very little build diversity.

Is true that lacks build diversity (condition Mallyx is arguably weaker than the power build, so you are almost forced to use Herald with Glint + Shiro) en even flexibility (no utilities to rearrange), and that currently is a high risk – low reward class, but what I’m starting to appreciate from Rev is how high the skill ceiling is.

Sure, doesn’t allow a single mistake, and playing without stability, almost no condition cleanses and barely a few breakstuns turns Rev into a very hard class to master… But learning Him makes you a better player, and in the right hands is a beast, specially in duels/roaming/pvp. Plus, since the HoT release Rev had so many nerfs and still retains so many bugs that I think that probably can only go better…

I would pick to stay with Rev from those, but between Guardian and Thief I would go Thief.

Thief is in a good place in terms of PvE damage and you can go either staff or dagger for fractals and raids; at the same time for WvW roaming is the class with better mobility and disengage tools, and you can chose to go either physical damage or conditions being equally succesfull.

I main a Guardian and the class pretty much demands a different set of gear in each department of the game, which makes it very expensive. From the heavy guys the Warrior is more easy to equip and more versatile in builds, imo.

OriOri.8724:

Ocosh.5843:

I’ll say here as everywhere: Rev was obviously designed around having one weapon set. The addition of the swap was based on uninformed feedback. You could undo a lot of the nerfs and create some real choice and balance if rev only had one weapon set.

I said the same thing close to the release of HoT and people hated that I pointed it out. But its true. Rev was designed around no weapon swapping, so its weapons are able to do too much. They weren’t brought back in line when Anet decided to allow weapon swapping on Rev.

Based on that logic you must think that Rev was designed to not to be able to figth underwater, because Herald (Glint) has no underwater skills and neither Shiro or Mallyx have them (underwater Shiro and Mallyx skills are the same as on ground, so we must asume that the developers didn’t mean the Rev to be able to swim… they added them in the last second when they figured out that some slots were empty… ).

Rev was rushed, but no problem: only took 4 years to ANet to fix the Guardian sword.

Jacion.6302:

It will take time to get full trinkets, low on laurels atm and I’d like to not convert my weapons off of marauders (hammer/GS/staff) becuase they work well with 2 of my other character.

I assume a another full set of durability runes is wise?

You can buy all the ascendand trinkets (including back pieces) from the three new maps: Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay and Bitterfrost Frontier:

Use Unbound Magic to buy a permanent Blood Ruby ore in your city; will provide you 3 Blood Ruby a day. Do the 10 UM collect and use the air attack from gliding in that map; in 5 minutes you will get 5 Blood Ruby; also use this track in WvW rewards and PvP rewards to gain another 50 BR each time you complete the track. You will need 425 BR + a lot of unbound magic to get one amulet, one ring and one backpiece. You can set the stats end even reset them for a small cost. Farm the unbound magic just in this map.

Farm Petrified Wood in Ember Bay to get one earing. You only need to do this one time. Still get the UM from Bloodstone Fen.

Farm Fresh Winterberries in Bitterfrost Frontier; the whole path could cost you ~15 minutes and you can get 50+ berries in that time. Use them + UM to get the second ring and the second earing.

This is by far the easier and fastest way to get full ascended trinkets in the game. You can even buy the ascended underwater respirator in this way. Not a single laurel, gold coin or guild ticket is needed for this.

ZacHank.1358:

Lofty.6278:

If you’re looking for a PVP guide there’s a Dragonhunter main named Zodin on youtube who has some amazing clips that you can breakdown.

Thanks! I’m more into PvE and WvW than PvP atm but that’s definitely something I’ll be looking more into later.

Zodin is mostly a WvW roamer/duellist specialist so you should take a look.

Apolo.5942:

Pvp is unplayable, everything is telegraphed.

Spam Precission Strike or auto attacks and use hydromancy as swap sigil; chilled enemies slant to waste evades and defensive skills. Once they waste a couple of evades or big defensive skills start to press with things like Jade Winds, Chaotic Release, Surge of the Mist, Unrelenting Assault and Elemental Blast in no order. Also, Malicious Reprisal and Phase Traversal combined with AA are key to force the enemy to waste resources. Make them nervous: Impossible Odds and a few AA and they will start to deplete their skills to evade, block, blind, cc or tank your hits and is THEN when you must start to land your heavy hitters. Also, don’t use Infuse Light or Crystal Hibernation to heal yourself: use them to block attacks.

Rev lacks stability, lacks in condition cleansing and has some awkward stun breaks; must be played with patience: a slow attack is effective if your target lacks endurance or defensive tools, and you known how is the status of those skills in the target if you known His build and look carefully what’s doing in nthe match.

1) Are you asking for a build for roaming/small skirmishhes (no more than 4-6 members) or for a guild WvW raid (12+)? Because the demand are way different.

Your GS+Rifle Warrior is mostly a “cloth hunter” which is basically a roaming build, and in scrins or small to mid skirmishes He specializes in taking down enemy casters, as necros, eles, hammer Revs, etc. He has the durability and mobility to endure damage, disengage, and wreak havoc in both long range and mele thanks to His damage.

2) In the Guardian class, if you want to deal damage at range you can use either longbow or scepter; staff doesn’t do damage. Staff is for buffing team mates (Swiftness, Empower…) or to farm bags checking downed enemies with autoattcaks that barely do damage. The longbow or scepter builds are essentially meditation builds, with little in common with the frontliner build from meta battle.

3) In guilds, Guardians provide stability and boons, and sometimes cc (hammer); they are the backbone of the guilds due they are the best source of team stability, but their damage is mediocre (most of them use very defensive stats, from soldier or knight in the bold ones to cleric, commander, mender or even nomad in the most conservative). This means low damage and few “personal” kills. You kill when your mele train tramples a mob.

If you want to save resources, I would advice you to get an armor with marauder stats; marauder armnor can be used for roaming with zerker trinkets, or be enough for WvW raids with defensive trikets (which are very affordable to farm in the new maps). And for the weapons I would recomend valkyrie stats: Guardians lacks HP.

4) In roaming Guardian/DH has a fair amount of sustain, PvP is the best location to learn how to survive as a duelling/skirmishing Guardian/DH. In large groups in WvW the survability of Guardian/DH oftenly depends on how well the damage dealers of yuour team do their job. In other words: as a “cloth hunter” your Warrior works wonders as a freelancer by itself; as a support frontliner the Guardian/DH can’t freely disengage: he must stay with the main group, be in the shadow of the raid leader and survive or die with their fellows. In this role Warrior isn’t only easier to play but also funnier.

I did play Guardian the first month of S5 due condi Rev was destroyed in October.

After finishing the ascendant chest rewards, I did start to play with power Rev and soon my rating began to fall: not having stability, lacking condition cleanses and any kind of flexibility in the utilities took a toll.

But after a time of adaptation, I’m now having fun and some degree of success playing Rev: the class demands skill and punishes heavily every mistake you have, so makes you play tense and aware instead of bored and apathic. Was a pleasure seing Jonasdon crushing every class (including Mes) with his Rev in the 1 vs 1 ESL casted by Jebro a week ago…

What ANet should fix in Rev are the the bugs, the lack of underwater skills, and to revert the Phase Traversal cost. Also, the class is in a very poor stance in the WvW raid role.

Aside from Necros and Mesmers no other class can burst you with condis (well, maybe burn Guard, but they are a one trick pony).

The only condition that seems wrong is confussion, due is a low risk-high reward form of damage that makes prevents you from playing, like that decks from Magic TG that removed cards from your hand.

^ The cooldown of Warding Rift was also rised in PvP from 12 to 15 seconds (was previously nerfed from 10s to 12 half a year after HoT release), so is not exactly true that “they nerfed staff damage due must be a defensive weapon”. And isn’t just about the block, because WR is also the only second source of Herald blinds after Gaze of Darkness.

ANet said that they will be alert about those changes making the meta game “too tanky”, as happened in some seasons (celestial ele meta), but I’m looking every stuff Sindrener ups to His Youtube channel with His Thief and He’s struggling to kill half of the classes even being +1 (some matchups in 1 vs 1 are just impossible).

So, Rev does less damage and is less tanky than before; what prevents next Pro League from being a tank/holder fest? Teams wouldn’t risk to roster Thief + Rev for the kills (would reduce the team sustain).

I disagree with Master Ketsu:

1) The only skills you can spam are auto attacks, and albeit you can win through them most of the builds rely on cooldown skills to both kill and survive.

2) Some of the strongest and more impactful skills in the game (especially in PvP) have huge cooldowns, of 60+ seconds.

3) You can gain access to a evade every 5 seconds, so for people which can read the enemie’s animations evading the dangerous (again: not spammable) skills is critical.

4) You blame the game to have “too much stun breaks” als also to have “too much” stunlocks". So you want a game with long coodowns and fewer stun breaks to make the enemy harder to escape from combos but you don’t want being locked by “too many stuns and locks” from the enemy. Tsk Tsk.

DH is relatively easy to play and, -if you use more traps than the heal and Test of Faith, which is a bad choice, anyway- can stack big AoE burst damage easily and use things like F1 to fish unwary players, specially when several DH stack their traps together. The same can happen when Necros stack their wells and marks.

But DH can be countered: there’s a lot of piercing attacks in HoT which ignore their blocks, there’s a lot of anti-projectile hate to negate their longbows, also, and due most of DH don’t use traveller runes usually they can be outrotated.

A couple of days ago I faced a team with 3 necros + DH; before the match we chose to go close + far due they will probably would be stronger than us at center but would lack mobilty. Was the right tactic and besides being a close match -and myself being mediocre with power Herald, which I’m still learning- we finally prevail:

To me the best team composition would be in the lines of Chrono, Tempest, Druid, Scrapper and Daredevil, so even if the Warrior/Berserker is very hard to fight in 1 vs 1 (at least to me) is difficult to argue about a nerf.

serj.8214:

No stability on Rev? lolwhat? XD how about some Retro traits? Or mallyx resistance and legend swap condi transfer?) If you cant make 100% of ur Rev its ur problem not Revs) atm there are 2 types of Rev 1st who dies as fast as blink of the eye) and 2nd who kill ur team as paper shreder)

Retribution traitline was destroyed in the October patch: you don’t longer have evade on demand (you must to await an attack and evade to get it) and Versed in Stone was nerfed to uselessness (a random proc with a 60s cd, uh); the other source of stability is Inspiring Reinforcement, which forces you to use a very weak legend for a stupid skill: please enemy team put your AoE damage and cc just right here…

Face it: lack of reliably stability + weakness to conditions and cc + so so damage + complex gameplay = Revs doing poorly at gold and below (which includes myself). At platinum and legend, if you have good reflexes and you evade/block everything can work, but is still worse than Thief to do the role because the lesser mobility and disengage tools.

…Mostly the armor, because in terms of jewelry I have a lot of full sets: for a power Thief which would be the best choice, Valkyrie or Marauder? And in a condition build, Viper or something tankier like Dire or Trailblazer?

Thanx in advance.

Yes, we all noticed that makes us fall one piece short in terms of armor; seems intended, like a cliffhanger in a tv series. We all must return, Kate!