Guild Wars 2

I mean, I’m with Jeknar in that I’m pretty much ok with whatever at this point.

Deleting the bottom servers is one way to go, but so is deleting the top and enforcing hard caps on server pop when it comes to transfers.

I’ve not once heard anyone from the top suggest deleting their servers…

Let’s not forget that resistance has been added after the cap on bleeds, burns, etc. was lifted, since confusion was tuned up to damage even without action, and the introduction of torment (if we’re going to go way back to how the game was first designed).

Maybe they’ve taken the wrong path, but I don’t think condi users can have their cake and eat it too here. There are plenty of ways to rebalance things if resistance was removed or heavily nerfed (some ideas have already been thrown around), but that rebalance would be absolutely necessary.

Bois, I know it’s in a strong state again. I was responding to his claim that it is and always has been strong.

RyuDragnier.9476:

This. It’s been like this for a long time, and Anet will not budge on changing the Warrior’s tankiness (which is why there was a joke of them being the dev’s pet). We shouldn’t punish the other classes because they refuse to do anything about the Warrior’s defense.

You didn’t notice warriors locked in the basement for a long time until recently? Nobody has called warriors “Anet’s pet” for a loooooooong time.

Dawdler.8521:

This age old problem of dps warriors still being tanky has nothing do with durability runes really. It’s the healing signet in combination with passive traits. It’s always been that.

Healing Signet hasn’t been overpowered for a long time now. It’s output is surpassed by healing skills on other classes, it can’t deal with bursts, but it can’t be interrupted, which is its strength. Poison still works well against it.

That said, the recently buffed Adrenal Health adds the sustain that the class was sorely lacking (even with Healing Signet). Whether it’s overtuned or not isn’t clear, but it can be a real issue when combined with a heavy sustain build. For that, you need to deny the warrior from landing bursts as much as possible. If that can be prevented (kite, dodge, blind, interrupt, etc), then it will have a huge impact on the warrior’s sustain.

Durability runes sound like they need a clip, given the cross class experience people have been having with them.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Probably going to get an angry mob after me for saying this but; Combustive Shot grants Adrenal Health regardless of whether a target is hit or not.

Correct me if I’m wrong but with any other burst skill, you are required to hit a target in order to get Adrenal Health’s benefits.

It’s not just AH, but Cleansing Ire and Berserker Power as well. Reflect is the only way I’ve seen that prevented. I’ve kind of assumed at this point that it isn’t easily fixed.

There’s more boon ripping in the game than ever before, and the lethality of conditions is much greater now too. As morrolan said, you’d have to accept some sort of across the board nerf to condis if you want resistance gone or radically nerfed.

Frankly though, you should consider yourself lucky when compared to direct damage, which not only has to invest into three stats to get high damage, it also has to contend with the proliferation of damage reduction boons, traits, and gear, as well as the tendency to load damage into large, dodgeable hits.

I’m not sure what you’re playing, but I run a warrior that packs Berserker Stance, Healing Signet, and occasionally boon duration food. Even with that healthy access to resistance, it can be outplayed a few different ways by skillful players.

You have no idea how many times I’ve come across a condi build (necros are the worst for this, but mesmers and the occasional ranger too) who just sit there, spamming out their rotations without even bothering to dodge, as though they haven’t noticed they’re doing zero damage to me. They’ll sometimes eat 10-25k before they even start to move.

Sarika.3756:

Hm… if I want to defend a camp, I leave a couple of squirrels/roamers in the area. Win win. They are happy – they have a job and can have any solo fight that comes their way. And I have reliable warning if the camp is under attack by a large enough force to make it worth moving the guild there.

I don’t see a point to making them harder to solo… it just takes map awareness and strategy to manage.

I play during na prime, though. Is the OP talking about this being a bigger issue during low pop time zones?

Agree completely. As for low pop times/zones, it’s even easier. If a camp flips, it’s not hard to track down where they’re headed and then punish them until they leave the map out of frustration.

So far, the conversation has only been about which of the two yields greater damage in another wise max damage build. On that measure, furious delivers less damage than furious as far as any conditions a wvw roamer is likely to come across.

The extra toughness from furious might be valuable enough on some (high crit chance and power) builds to outweigh the slight decrease in damage (but that would depend on your goals). Other things, like mussel pasta and dolyak runes don’t really factor into the question because they’re completely independent of which stones you use (i.e. there’s no interaction between them).

KhainPride.3987:

Choppy.4183:

minion.1987:

could make the axe 3 a chain pull that immobilized instead of cripple.

Yeah, I remember that being discussed about a year ago or so. It’s an interesting alternative that would provide warriors with a tool they don’t already have.

That said, I’d personally prefer to leap into a cluster of targets or leap out when needed, than pull one or more targets to me (especially with all the stability around).

actually we used to be able to do that in old days

with 2 points in tactics for immobilize on cripple

Nah, he means a chain attached to the axe that pulls people toward you when hit (either one or several targets), rather than immob on cripple (that trait still exists, btw). It’d work like Pull on the Guardian’s Binding Blade skill.

minion.1987:

could make the axe 3 a chain pull that immobilized instead of cripple.

Yeah, I remember that being discussed about a year ago or so. It’s an interesting alternative that would provide warriors with a tool they don’t already have.

That said, I’d personally prefer to leap into a cluster of targets or leap out when needed, than pull one or more targets to me (especially with all the stability around).

Don’t forget I added a leap to the second axe, so closing would be about on par with the sword main hand.

In retrospect, I also think the +10% per axe is fine given you’d be foregoing Berserker Power. Factoring in the ferocity gain that’s already there, that’s a pretty solid dps trait.

Why not leave the trait where it is, but add a boost to axe attack speed of 10% per axe? Then put a medium leap on axe 4 and call it a day.

EDIT: 10% per axe may be too high…

Warlord.9074:

Because Perplexity was OP. That rune literally carried. They can break the stun and evade back wards while they got 12 stacks of confusion on them and like 5 other condis from skull grider + poisen. and melt. Didin’t matter. Perplexity was sooooooo Strong. You have no idea how broken it was.

The thing with my build is that you could kill someone fast. Before they new it they were dead. And if they didn’t die they would go into full panic mode and blow all Cool downs to try and live. That means blow every shout and stun break bro before the fight even starts.

Now I have to find a new rune or figure out a way to abuse the changes with what I got.

perplexity with Skull grider and the 4 interupts my build had made it broken as f.

That’s the thing though, even assuming you manage to get close enough to hit them with Skull Grinder/Perplex, they can break stun and purge all of your conditions by going celestial avatar. I don’t even know if going avatar counts as a skill activation in regards to confusion.

But I totally get how the element of surprise would do them in. It’d be impossible for someone to know what they were up against if they suddenly got hit with that… one wrong move, and they’d be dead fast. But, otherwise, I think you’d be boned.

It’s true though, you took a real hit with that perplexity change, and it’s good to see you recognized it was OP. I run power warrior most of the time and, I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad to see it go. I’m also glad that Guard! took a nerf for the rangers because that was also cramping my style.

The build I posted had celestial avatar in addition to the Trooper Runes and a cleansing sigil (couldn’t think of a better sigil for it, but whatevs).

But the chief advantage I see of the build I posted over the one you posted is that you’ll rarely be able to deliver any of your damage. It has four stun breaks, can remove immob, it has plenty of stealth (lb 3, celestial shadow, and blasting the smokefield), and plenty of movement (perma swiftness, access to superspeed, ancestral grace). So it should keep you forever trying to keep up, it can slip away whenever you do catch up, and it can easily purge any condis+heal up anytime you do manage to land something.

But you won’t be able to mitigate the druid’s damage for long, and you won’t be able to get away if you try to run.

So what am I missing? How is the druid build not stronger than the warrior build you posted (both in a fight, and as a roamer generally)? Again, a good warrior running your build should win against a bad druid running the build I posted, but that’s not really the point.

Warlord.9074:

I was intentionally very vague on what builds I was talking about. You can speculate on which build I am talking about and draw up the worst case scenario, combine it with the worst possible player all you want in order to draw your predefined opinionated conclusions.

I’ll just say one thing. Choppy If you can’t beat a ranger then you are a bad warrior. Oh and I didn’t talk about A build I referred to 2 builds.

Eh, I made some assumptions based on what’s current for high sustain warrior condi builds, and that you mentioned a mace build earlier.

I also didn’t say I can’t beat a druid. The open question is whether or not the druids we’re beating are bad as others have mentioned. You’ve claimed a warrior should beat a druid every time, otherwise the warrior is bad.

I don’t run a druid, but here’s something I’ve put together based on what I’ve seen some roamers running lately. I could be wrong on some of the selections, but it looks pretty solid to me. It should also have the build advantage on every version of a condi or power RR warrior I can think of. Feel free to show otherwise….

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWnUqA9Ci1CCusActgl9AD+tWX/rL3uAwZ7JOUuWel8s0A-TVyHABepLY5HAgyHBAd2foHlf6p+DTKBl+CAAwhAgUABOGA-w

EDIT: I’m also more than happy to try to arrange a duel with some competent druids I know, if they’re up for it, or to recruit via the ranger forums to test this out. We can record the results and post here.

Which server are you on?

I’m pretty sure the build I was talking about would wreck the build you’re talking about. You’d largely be forced to waste your burst on the pet to maintain AH because you’d be out-kited, and that means your damage output would be low too.

On the druid’s side, they have plenty of healing and condi removal, and the damage is good too. Honestly, I’m pretty sure you’d be a sitting duck in wvw because the ranger would have lots of room to keep you at bay.

Pvp is different because there the druid is compelled to fight you in a relatively confined space. That isn’t the case in wvw.

Link.1049:

Fortified Garrison in Sorrow’s Furnace looks like there’s some freaky giant mole underneath throwing wood everywhere. Particularly over the outer doors.

Oh, that’s just Dig Dug… he’s harmless.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4pxr51/superior_sharpening_stone_vs_furious_sharpening/

It’s important to look at the assumptions there. As I mentioned above, the furious stones marginally exceed the damage of superior stones on the OP’s build when he has 100% uptime of Fury and max might stacks.

The author of the post you linked is more or less saying the same thing, with max might and 100% crit chance being needed to attain the 3.09% higher damage on a full zerk-geared toon.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t even guarantee the perma-Fury and full might stacks to get the 0.2%, nevermind what would be needed for the 3.09%. Anything short of that, superior provides more damage that furious.

Warlord.9074:

Unless you are on a incredibly bad build, not good at warrior, that Warrior should

A. Beat a druid.
B. Get a druid low in which case he runs away.
C. Have a 5-10 minute long duel in which case you can beat the druid.

Which build would you use against a zerk or zealots gear lb/s druid in wvw?

For those saying furious is better, do you have math to support that? Or, put another way, where has my math gone wrong? Seems pretty clear to me that superior is better for him.

As for might, here’s how it comes out with 25 stacks:

Superior Stones
(0.48*3303) + (0.52*3303*2.15) = 5278.194

Furious Stones
(0.48*3184) + (0.52*3184*2.25) = 5253.6

Bottom Line
Even when you maintain 100% uptime of 25 stacks of might, it looks to me that superior comes out on top. But, if you’re also able to maintain 100% uptime of Fury, the furious stones barely squeak ahead to give a mere 0.2% advantage.

So why the love for furious stones?

Tien.3865:

My current build (with superior stones) has:
2553 power
52% crit chance
215% crit damage

With furious stones, this becomes:
2434 power
52% crit chance
225% crit damage

Damage=(Skill damage * Positive multipliers) / (Armor * Negative multipliers)
Skill Damage=(Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient)/ Armor

For our purposes, we only need to calculate:
Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient * Positive Multiplier

The only things that will change are power and the multiplier, so we’re going to fix weapon strength and skill coefficient at 1. When factoring crit chance, our calculation is:

((1-Crit Chance) * (Power)) + ((Crit Chance) * (Power) * (Crit Damage))

Superior Stones
(0.48*2553) + (0.52*2553*2.15) = 4079.694

Furious Stones
(0.48*2434) + (0.52*2434*2.25) = 4016.10

Bottom Line
Superior stones appear to be better for your build in every way. The higher damage you get with them (though it’s not much) will also scale further with your other multipliers, it will perform better against things you can’t crit, and (iirc) they’re cheaper than furious stones.

Even with Fury, the superior stones still come out on top. It seems 10% more crit damage just isn’t worth as much as 119 power, even with a high crit chance.

It should go without saying, and I know KhainPride has endorsed this view, but Adrenal Health would have to be cut down a bit if the support skills got the kind of boosts you’re talking about.

I say this knowing full well that my own builds would be weaker for it because I never run support. But leaving it where it is while also boosting our other heals would make nigh unkillable builds, and that would suck.

How about a portable, magical Wheel of Fortune into which you can toss any unwanted account and soul bound stuff for random prizes and surprises?

SilkyPantaloons.3617:

We’ve had the outnumbered buff on CD 24/7 for 12 months or more,you have it a few hours a day for a few weeks and suddenly it’s an issue for you??

Lol, nonsense. CD’s actually fought EB a few times in the twelve months prior to the current matchup, and iirc you had higher pop almost every time.

You’re the highest pop server in the current matchup and you’ve got three others linked with you. You’ve also gained guilds since this match started while others (like EB and DH) have actually lost guilds (more than the two Sinbold mentioned, which were lost prior to the current matchup but apparently wasn’t factored into this one).

All Sinbold has said is the current approach to matchups and scoring keeps servers in a bad way. He used EB as an example. but this applies almost as much to CD itself, which some CD people have already complained about. You’ve dominated every round of this matchup, and that’s almost as boring as getting dominated.

Balian.5314:

Example:
Warr shield bash and goes for the evis. Mesmer decides to use f3 to counter. Last stand procs, evis hits anyway, Mesmer gets downed with shatter f4 unused.

People generally time their CCs to kite, counter enemy burst or to set up a burst. Ain’t fun when you use your CC to fulfil 1 of the purpose mentioned only to have a passive trait proc stability. If there was an icon, enemies can better prioritise and time their CCs.

I’m not particularly moved by this, tbh. The mesmer in your example needs to worry about this only every 40s, and the warrior could just as easily choose to actively use Balanced Stance or Dolyak Sig (if they have it) mid-Eviscerate to foil the interrupt anyway (I often do this when executing a clutch move).

Seems to me the smart player will actively manage the warrior’s Last Stand, and a number of people I regularly duel do just that. They use a small cc at the start of a fight to see if I’ve got it, which also gives them 30s of not having to worry about it (following the 10s of stability). If a major attack is coming in and they’re not sure if those 40s are up, they’ll dodge, blind, or do something else. Then proc Last Stand again, rinse and repeat.

Given that warriors with Last Stand will often not run with non-zerker stability, a smart player can manage a warrior pretty effectively this way. Honestly, the warrior is obvious enough… making it even more obvious for something that can be discovered fairly easily seems unnecessary.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

aaaaaaah i may have ran into such druid as described.

how to deal with them effectively ah ?

Use terrain or turn it into a group fight. He’ll have fewer tools against multiple opponents.

Loading.4503:

This is just from my experience running into the tankier ones all day that run on staff, it’s usually a stalemate, they don’t have enough dmg to kill me even though I’m full zerk and I can’t kill them because they reset too much. The only small window I usually have, and this depends on the situation on what CDs they have and if I get lucky, when they pop that smoke field with they’re pet, I pop berserker Stance and go for a nontargeted head butt and go all out on my gs axe burst combo. But like i said, depends how the fight goes, sometimes when I risk that it’s a gamble for me to mess up and they kill me or I just don’t land it, or they still can manage to get away.

That’s where a well played druid in berserker gear is really deadly. A smart one blasts the smoke field to gain the stealth, repositions, taunts (trouble only if you don’t have stab or a stun break), then does the standard lb burst.

A smart lb/staff druid will try to keep distance on you, especially if you’re melee. If you’re running range (e.g. gunflame), then he just needs to keep his pet between you and him as much as possible, and then use stealth, blind, lb4, etc. to shut down volley, etc.

I dunno, if the druid is skilled, I think they’re a real threat when they run zerk lb/staff, and they should be able to handle a gunflame berserker too. The blinds, stealth, movement, sustain, and damage are pretty great, and they should be able to deny most of the opportunities to gunflame too.

A standard tanky druid that lets his pet do all the work is another story. With those, they don’t need to be especially competent, but they have the ability to escape and reset if they need to. Our bursts aren’t strong enough to prevent them from escaping when they’re being outplayed, so the only way you’ll reliably kill them is if they’re too bad to know when to bail or how to maintain their sustain.

To the OP, I’d say use terrain as much as you can. It’ll hugely negate the berserker-geared druid, and may lure them into close range. You can and should do the same with a tankier druid, but the problem there is the pet is doing most of the work so terrain is more for gimping the pet AI because they can’t jump.

For tanky druids, try to pay attention to what the pet is doing. You can usually avoid their attacks if you’re doing that, and that will help cut their damage down. Also be sure to keep Adrenal Health up, even if that means dumping a burst on the pet and not the druid.

Fortunately, most of the people running druids in wvw aren’t especially good. So your chance of beating them is pretty good if you can keep close, reflect their lb2, and otherwise keep them pressured.

emkelly.2371:

Choppy, do i have to remind you that you get fury in berserk anyway? So arc divider’s lack of it is rather mute.

True. I guess that makes the case for pack runes somewhat weaker then.

Shift your runes (scholar, pack, or whatever you want), go zerk over strength, and remember that primal state is where the money is for you. Squander that, and you’d have been better off with the strength line.

Arc Divider is better than Arcing Slice in every way except fury (it gives none). What Decapitate gives you (along with all the primals) is spamability. Meaning, you can get out twice the bursts for the same amount of adren.

Zerk shouldn’t feel wimpy to you compared to vanilla, of you’re playing it right. It’s burst potential is somewhat higher.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Oh and to add, I think he did use berserker stance. Towards the end of the fight at the 1min 31 sec mark he popped it.

You’re right, but that actually tips him toward the “playing really badly” camp. Before this, I’d just assumed he didn’t have it equipped for some reason (which would be weird for a warrior, especially when fighting a reaper).

First, if he’d used that at the beginning, he could have ignored everything you did while forcing you to blow every defense you had, if not killing you outright. Second, he started running from you after he finally did use it, which is weird. That should have been the moment he unloaded everything he had into you, but he spent most of the time running and even used a shield block while it was up.

Even the best players will make bad decisions from time to time, and you caught his on a video. But it was a total rookie mistake, for sure.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Thanks for the thoughts! I thought perhaps he didnt have an optimum build to fight me too. But thats what i like about roaming. Trying to find one build to handle most fights!

Happy to help. As to best tools a Reaper has against most Berserkers, I’d say chill. Provided you can kite/dodge when he uses Berserker Stance (gives pulsing resistance), then your chills will do awful things to him (keep him from landing bursts (sustain) and generally doing damage to you)

He’ll still have some clears, but on a condi Reaper you’ll have lots of reapplication and cover conditions to drown out those clears. It won’t be an easy fight if the Berserker is competent, but I personally wouldn’t call you an easy bag if you deny his close.

Steelo.4597:

yeah the new adrenal health only activates on landing a burst which isnt blocked or evaded or something..

sincerely, a warrior main

The exception being the bow (not used in the vid). The bow burst doesn’t need to hit anything, but can be foiled if reflected.

Every other warrior weapon has to hit something to get any benefit, and the warrior losses all adrenaline regardless.

You effectively used your fear to keep him from landing a burst for the entire fight, and not landing those bursts really hurt his sustain due to AH (as you noted). His damage output is also especially concentrated in his Primal State, so your fearing had the benefit of limiting his damage pressure too.

But just one skill would have completely turned the tables: Berserker Stance

If he’d used it, none of your fears would have touched him, he’d have had more opportunities to land bursts to gain sustain, his damage output would have been much higher, and your damage would have been cut right down.

So the general theory is right, but the person you were up against had so many tools he could have used to foil you, but didn’t use them. Beyond Berserker Stance, warriors have huge access to stability and stunbreaks (to mitigate your fear), and he could have used his Healing Signet active for a clutch burst.

Yeah, Jeknar has it right, and do note they’re only on the borderlands. If you ever forget, you can just click on the daily and it’ll show you the list.

OriOri.8724:

I don’t understand why people aren’t understanding this. A lot of people who were/still are upset over this change don’t mind having to play WvW to earn it now. They are more upset by the complete lack of adequate notice on ANet’s part. That is not ok, and the company would be ill advised to implement such a major change to the game in a similar way in the future. Its a great way to drive off loyal players.

Because it’s an extraordinary amount of tears for such a minor inconvenience, and one that did carry some advanced notice, even if some people missed it.

An enormous thread has already been shut down over this because there was nothing more to discuss, and this thread is just another loop of the same complaint from a tiny number of players.

To be clear, everybody understands what the people upset by this change are saying, it’s just such a non issue (for the vast majority of players, and in the sense of the “extra burden” put on the affected few for such a trivial thing), that there’s little room for sympathy.

And, no, this wasn’t a “major change”… a vendor was removed. This change is in line with removing the crafting stations from Wvw.

Sure, it’ll work. You’ve taken the standard build and added some vitality and some tankier runes to it. Imo, the only reason to do this is if you find you’re dying too often with straight zerk.

If you’re spending too much time downed, dead, or playing defensively while in zerk gear, but not with these runes and armor set, then stick with this. But it’s not without trade off… if you don’t have any trouble while glass, then it seems to me that you’re unnecessarily sacrificing offensive stats.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Lol, I can’t believe there are still people who refuse to understand or admit there’s a problem.(PvE only players were not given proper notice to redeem their saved Badges of Honor for Gifts of Battle)

The effort that’s been spent coming in here and bashing PvE players,(who just want to redeem what they’ve already earned) could be much better spent appealing to Anet to make more/better WvW reward tracks. So that WvW players don’t have to spend so much time in PvE.(Which evidently makes them quite bitter and resentful – As a PvE only player, I can sympathize.)

<edit, typo, clarity>

You completely missed the point, which was that nothing has been said in this thread that wasn’t already said repeatedly in the other monster thread that was already shut down. And why was it shut down, because Anet already said nothing was going to change and nothing new has been said since.

You’re practically yelling at the sky demanding to know why it’s blue.

But let’s be real… it’s not a real “problem”. A small percentage of the player base (a) saved up enough to buy a Gift of Battle in the old system, but (b) didn’t bother to actually buy one, and © missed the patch notes that said the vendor was going, but (d) want to make a legendary right now, without (e) spending any more time in wvw.

You’re looking at a relatively tiny time investment that you hadn’t counted on. Yeah, sure, I’m sure everyone can understand how that slight inconvenience might be annoying. But try to keep some perspective… it’s not a problem worthy of this much salt.

Lol, I can’t believe there’s another thread on something that’s been asked about, debated ad nauseum, and received a final comment from Anet already.

The effort that’s gone into these threads exceeds the effort needed to finish the reward track.

Warlord.9074:

Do you take issue on giving Biased opinions too? Since thats what you gave and biased opinions are non helpful too? get real. What I said still stands. If people want a healer for WVW Ele>Druid… If people want Ranged Damage… ELE, Rev, Necro, Gunflame Warrior>Druid If people want support Guard ElE, Rev >Druid …Condis Warrior, Guard Necro > Druid Its pretty simple Rangers are not great.

You mentioned Roaming If I am roaming and I want somone to roam with me I would pick anything but a ranger becasue I know no matter what I need I can have somone run a class, spec or a build that will out perform what a ranger does.

Its a trash noob class its simple. And it will never be a great class as long as their pet is counted as half or more than half of their damage. If pets are too strong they get nerfed into the ground and they are already mostly useless due to bad pathing and easy to avoid attacks. That makes the character themself weaker than every other class. Rangers are 2 things. Either easy to kill or can’t kill anyone one by themselfs and only run. That means all you can do is Pew pew from saftey and hope somone does’t gap close you and wreck you. Or run some condis and hope whoever you are fighting isn’t a noob and runs no cleanses.

You’re making a critical mistake in reasoning here though. Your argument makes sense if we’re talking about an spvp team or a dungeon run, but we’re talking about roaming and blobs in wvw and we’re talking about the (potential) ranger’s perspective.

What is better for a particular role will have no bearing on whether or not he’s able to do either thing because he’ll always be able to roam and he’ll always be able to fight in a large group. The only question is whether he’ll have more fun playing warrior or ranger.

The OP asked which of the two classes he should use in wvw. The correct answer is whichever he enjoys most because both will do fine in wvw.

Lalainnia.3598:

F1 mace is about the only thing overtunned on warrior imo and honestly I think a nice quick fix or change for it would be to place the confusion stacks first or second instead currently I’m pretty sure it takes like 4-5 condi cleanses to reach the confusion or burning while you get rid of weaker things most likely to be low stacks of vul bleeding cripple etc. Would actually be pretty cool if Anet were to address condis in general possibly by making condi cleanse remove damaging ones before non damaging ones. At the same time that would be an indirect buff to support eles and druids who have amazing condi cleanse output if built for it same for mesmers if they choose to go that route.

Last I heard, condis clear randomly (it’s been maybe a year since they did that). Unless they reverted back to the old “last on, first off” approach and I didn’t notice.

Kharneth.7931:

There are a couple red flags I’ve found about the Warrior. One of them is the Greatsword moveset. I’ve read that the greatsword is the warrior’s best weapon, and it is the weapon I prefer, but the Hundred Blades seems like the best ability (plus Rush), but it cannot be used while moving, which feels nearly useless in PvP, or situational at best.

Outside of pve, Whirlwind is probably its best move, followed by Arc Divider/Arcing Slice. Hundred Blades is good if you can get someone pinned down or for down pressure, but the root otherwise makes it fairly poor. Rush… good for getting away, sometimes good for closing a cap, pretty poor as a damage dealer (often misses, great when it connects though).

But, if I’m not mistaken, guardian’s generally seen as pretty poor for pvp, especially if you don’t have HoT. If you do have HoT, the build I believe is the strongest there doesn’t actually use the greatsword (m+sh/lb). I don’t really play pvp (I’m mostly wvw), so I could be wrong about that.

Who needs to suddenly craft in wvw?

Furajir.3815:

Choppy.4183:

I run the same (vanilla version), but with Berserker gear. I don’t know what my FT record on a real person is, but against a tower lord I think it’s about 29k (54k for a 100b).

I mostly run that because escaping the horde is pretty important when roaming, and that gives me my best shot. Axe is undeniably better in most fights, but I mostly just use it for (some) duels.

Sometimes I roam with a power GreatBow build too, which can be surprisingly effective and good for the lulz. Can duel with it too, but it’s useless for escaping zergs.

Do you run CI, RR or LS with that?

Normally LS for roaming. I find the stability and vigor are really important when going it alone, and I’ve even started packing Dolyaks as one of my utilities just in case I need more (like when I’m by myself surrounded by red guys). Balanced Stance would trigger LS and give me pulsing stab, but since I’m using it rarely as an “oh kitten” button, the Dolyak’s passive just seems to come out on top.

I’ll run CI when running the GreatBow build though, since I’m usually not going to escape a blob with it anyway, and spamming both bursts as often as possible (plus the condi clear) is the way to go.

I’ve never run RR, though I have looked at it. It makes sense to me on some Berserker builds due to all of the low cd stun breaks, but I think both LS and CI are better on a vanilla warrior.

Invictorum.7643:

I run a full marauder Swordmaster build. GS+Sw/Sh.

Works hilariously well if I can time the max might with sub 50% final thrust. My current record is a 15k crit.

I run the same (vanilla version), but with Berserker gear. I don’t know what my FT record on a real person is, but against a tower lord I think it’s about 29k (54k for a 100b).

I mostly run that because escaping the horde is pretty important when roaming, and that gives me my best shot. Axe is undeniably better in most fights, but I mostly just use it for (some) duels.

Sometimes I roam with a power GreatBow build too, which can be surprisingly effective and good for the lulz. Can duel with it too, but it’s useless for escaping zergs.

Sinmir.6504:

Every time I’ve duelled in WvW the person added me to party and asked before we started. I haven’t seen one using a bow a the only form of communication before fighting.
If that was his only form of communication, a bow that you might not even notice maybe it’s just a mark of respect before the fight.

I’ve had many dozens of duels in which the bow was the only form of communication used until one of us was done and shot the other a pm.

I don’t think there’s ever been confusion when the other person bowed back, at least in my experience. When the other person didn’t bow back, I always took it to mean normal fight with spike.

As for bowing over a corpse, I’ve often thought it could be taken as either a sign of respect or the victor posturing as though they gave a great performance. Having no interest in doing the latter, I’ve always used the less ambiguous salute.

^^ This. Just get your duelling friends (on both servers that aren’t his) to give him some extra love on the field.

This is why I like that attributes were moved from traits to gear. The traits and skills used here can (and do) work with zerk gear as well, but with different results.

As for the build itself, I know Durability runes are all the rage at the moment, but Defender might be a better choice since your armor is already so high and the extra healing would go a long way. Pack might be a good alternative if you still want to provide group support.

Again, I’ve never done it, but wouldn’t a pew pew ranger be valuable in the mid-line of a zerg? In fact, wouldn’t a sub-squad of them be amazing for picking off an enemy’s driver and back line?