Guild Wars 2

Yeah, make sure you are looking at Orbs, not Exquisite Jewels.

It depends on the type of Champ mob. Some are possible, some aren’t, some are just tedious as hell.

Edit: Most are probably possible if you have practice against its attacks.

Mesmers are the god class. Although, the nerffix to iB’s LoS means that Mesmers are only “great” in WvW instead of OMGBBQIWIN.

Brb testing confusion damage thresholds with full Carrion gear. I thank all the farmers for the lower current ecto prices.

Edit: Although I may have to l2rapid dungeon to get the kitten Nightmare runes. Sigh. Maybe I’ll just Carrion orb it. Although, the cduration is nice … and Confusion has no breakpoints.

Mesmer Portal is OP in wvw simply because no other classes have remotely similar ability to move massive amount of troops. To stop it being OP, other classes need such “overwhelmingly” useful skills in organized groups.

Guardians have lolWall and lolBubble that can completely block chokepoints, nevermind Aegis that can enable a large force to walk through ballistas. Warrs have 1-shot Kill Shots and AOE Fear, invulnerability cooldown to soak enemy fire. Elite Banner insta-rezzes on downed players.

Eles have infinite AOE pew pew pew pew.

Only classes that don’t have any really potent/stackable effect are Rangers, Necros, and Engis. 1 spirit Ranger is good enough. Not aware of any highly effective things that Necros or Engis can pull off.

Umm, just CC the thief?

Daze, stun, Bull’s Rush, anything?

Lol, took them long enough.

I guess mass siege will be that much more potent. Especially siege in previously “invulnerable-to-all-attacks-except-iBerserker” locations.

As for Runes of the Scholar, if you have the gold, that 6pc bonus is very nice but if gold is an issue then think about running 6x Ruby Orbs instead.
120 power + 12% crit damage + 84 precision vs 165 power + 8% crit damage + 10% damage when health is above 90%

I bought the materials for Scholar back when they were basically ~65s to make.

Yes, the 10% total damage is rather nice. I’m running a Mantra build currently, which has basically the highest sustained heal throughput of Mesmers builds by a large margin, so the 10% buff isn’t too difficult to maintain during many/most/depends WvW encounters.

Stacking orbs are generally a good low-price/discount option for almost every setup. Rune sets are stronger though across the board.

Hammer Warriors are generally more dangerous than the average Warr, but I’ve never had a problem to the extent of losing to one in a solo fight.

It’s a significant step up from 5x Signet.

Just saying.

Runes of the Scholar.

Teknobug.3782:

The Warlock was already slow to begin with (6 second delay between attacks?).

When I tested it a week ago or so it seemed shorter than that — around 5 seconds.

I like the direction change if that is correct. I always found it annoying / not effective to use Phase Retreat to run away from an enemy in WvW.

If the current duration of swiftness is less than the curtain duration, the curtain should overwrite it.

How hard is this.

That’s good. In my testing last week, the iWarlock was firing slightly faster than I expected compared to what it did back at release. I was pretty surprised (it was firing just a little slower than iS, rather than at the original iD rate).

Rampager is overrated by a significant amount by the public community.

You can do some casual damage tests in the sPvP lobby. Note that the sPvP has slightly different stats than the PvE gear.

No; heal proc effects only work then you press “6” (although for some things like the Mesmer Mantra of Recovery, you can press it multiple times).

All servers share the trading post.

Have it shred boons IMO.

No. It was 0.1 seconds. It was literally over before I could move my finger from the S key to the X key to dodge. It was faster than that 1 inch finger movement. I couldn’t respond, dodge, do anything. I just got 1 hit. Respawned in 15 seconds, tried to attack. Got 1 hit again. I couldn’t even touch him. So apparently that ability to just 1-shot people doesn’t rely on those cooldowns you mentioned and it doesn’t take 1 second otherwise I could’ve dodged.

99% of Thieves on these threads don’t actually comprehend how to execute the Backstab combo. To be fair, to execute it perfectly you actually want to use a macro since the timing is slightly sensitive (or you just practice it a lot).

The Thief uses Cloak and Dagger which is a ~1s cast ability, and right before the end of the cast, they use Steal. Steal is instant and teleports them to your position and you eat Mug damage. As that happens, the damage and stealth of CnD take effect. Ideally, the CnD hit is 0.1 seconds after the Stealth. Then, the Thief uses Signet and Backstab. Both are instant, but the Signet needs to be used after the CnD hit (so the CnD doesn’t use the Signet effect). This is where the macro helps.

Anyways, the “precasting” of CnD is the reason why the damage ends up all being within 0.25 seconds.

Ironically, the quickness utility is not required to execute this damage, even though it’s the “fastest” burst a Thief can achieve.

Edit:

The most obvious indicator that random Thief posters don’t know what they’re talking about is that they discuss the concept of “using CnD again”. Using full Berserker gear, the combo exceeds 30k damage on a glass level 80 target in full exotics. Even against tougher targets with missed crits, the degree of damage puts them near death and/or leaves the rest of the encounter as trivial.

Note that none of this combo includes the additional 1111 spam or Heartseekers that follow (the combo leaves the Thief with ~8 Initiative remaining).

But thieves don’t “melt” them, they instagib them automatically.

Why exactly should one class out of all classes be able to instakill automatically using the same gear?

If you have a decent crit rate, try Air sigil over Force. 2k Air procs every 5-8 seconds will usually be better than 5% of overall damage.

The reason the point differential is large is because points accrue linearly and losing teams give up part-way through. That is the crux; the ancillary problems are the same as everyone knows: free xfers causing a domino and off-hours population shifts with no matching shifts in point accrual (point accrual should be scaled to the total WvW population that is present).

Tbh most of WvW is working fine. The current main problems are things on the fringe or outside of the WvW maps themselves.

The only class that’s a “problem” per se is Thieves, because you can’t tell what spec they are by glancing at them, and if they are in the maximum Backstab spec, they can burst >30k damage from range within a half second. So, it’s silly.

Daecollo.9578:

You expect to live against someone in full berserkers whilst being full berserker yourself and having no defensive gear or vitality, against a class designed to hit hard and fast with multiple strikes?

Genius Bro.

Why do you expect Thieves to auto-win every 1v1 within 1.0 seconds from range using equal gear?

Genius.

You mean Pistol Whip will have to be re-designed.

That aside, Mug is also a problem because of its combined direct damage and ability to be used while using something else (in this case, a CND).

So the signet and quickness are the two largest culprits, but there are a few other things that need tuning as well.

Poomz.5920:

My character is completely decked out and i’ve never been able to one shot even with all signets going.

What do you consider “decked out”?

Assuming you are taking sustained damage for the whole fight. The concept of ablative buffer HP is to withstand transient bursts so you can disengage. It’s always going to be weaker than mitigation for any sustained scenario.

^

This.

DX

Brb xferring elsewhere.

You may or may not be able to F1-F4 while in Moa; I don’t recall since I don’t get Moa’d enough. Thieves could steal from a target (shadowstep) if that were the case.

Iron is dark grey with a slight greenish tint.

Midnight Gold/Fire/Ice/Blue.

I need to check out Abyss and Black …

I use Runes of the Earth, I never die to one-hit wonders like 100b and backstab builds.

You know, a Protection boon won’t stop >30k damage from instagibbing, or nearly instagibbing you. Eating >20k damage is still all, or almost all of the HP pool of any class in the game.

You’re making absurd arguments to try to avoid a nerf to an obviously broken combo. Waste of time.

And what if it only lasts 5 seconds instead of 15 to be balanced?

This build is definitely not an attack 1 spam.

I wasn’t saying the build was 1111 spam. I was saying that the current combat mechanics and itemization are dubious for sustaining a build actually focused on Warrior condition damage, when a weapon+attack that is tuned for condition damage performs better with power gear.

Flurry would obviously lean way further to Carrion or Rabid stat spreads than 1111. However, it’s pretty questionable to build around 1 ability (nevermind 1 condition).

Lmao, good job!

A guildie of mine was curious and tested several sPvP amulets with Sword1 spam. In his tests (killing all 3 sPvP golems twice), Berserker performed about 15% better than Rampager (which performed about as well as Carrion).

These were tests with fully spec’d sword traits. Don’t think he had any Sigils though.

Pretty sure it’s well beyond that 0.1 second you gave but let me see if I can get closer…. Steal + Mug + Hidden Thief + Assassin’s Signet + backstab. Pretty sure it still takes longer than 0.1 seconds but we’ll just say it’s 1 second.

Precasted CND removes almost all the time from the combo. So you CND->Mug->SigBackstab.

I recommend using a G15/G19 or other tool to automate the sequence of SigBackstab. Or just rebind your utilities appropriately.

The damage lands starting with Mug into the end of CND into the Backstab. Effective execution results in all damage landing with 0.5 seconds.

Being top at 1v1 is fine. Dealing 30k+ damage from 900 range within 0.5 seconds is not.

Well, IIRC in sPvP each kill is worth 5 stacks.

In WvW you can pick up kills from PvE mobs along the way, as well as guards / NPCs, and you don’t need to inflict the killing blow or anything — down a random player and you’ll get creadit for their death.

Samurro.1463:

AoE Condition Bon-convert/removal + Swiftness + Fury + Might + marginal Heals Buffbot? Hello? Your banner kitten can stay home if somebody uses Yojackbuild he would be 100x more useful.

Woohoo, AOE condition removal like it matters, and when it matters you can just use a Light field from your neighborhood Guardian or Mesmer! Not to mention everyone should have condition removal anyways. Even the scrubbier players in WvW.

It’s certainly useful, but not really critical. Fury, Might? Really? I didn’t realize this was the only Warrior build that managed to piece those boons together. Sustained perma Fury? Why the hell do you need more than 10 seconds of Fury in WvW? Relevant TTK should be in the 2-6 seconds. SOR alone provides more Fury than you’ll ever need in WvW.

Heals? Water field? Heals? 3k heals? Lol. Shout spam is good for Claw of Jormag, not really significant in WvW.

Swiftness? I didn’t know this build was the only one that could use a Warhorn, but I might be mistaken.

All that said, the point is that you can build to “feel-good”, or you can build to win in WvW. AOE Immobilize on a short cooldown makes you win. Endure Pain + CC makes you win. 20k burst damage wins. Buffing dozens of people with tons of stats is lame, but will help win. “FEAR ME!” wins. The Warhorn trait is actually up there in terms of things that are really potent. The rest of the build … shrug.

There are capabilities that help you win, and then there are capabilities that help you run around in circles while the enemy runs around in circles. Most of the Yojack build focuses on the latter with regards to WvW, although it does it well.

Ianervan.3415:

You were hit for 5,743 damage by Unknown using Steal.
You were hit for 13,782 damage by X using Backstab.

You should double-check your combat log for the 6-7k Cloak and Dagger that also hit you.

Also, find a Thief that actually has all his gear so you’ll get hit for 18k by the Backstab and 7k by Steal. And, don’t forget the 2k Air Sigil proc.

Zzzz.

I’m curious if 2krait, 2 centaur, 2 afflicted with give you +45% condition dmg + possible 30% from traits and +10%x2 from weapons. That’s potential 95% condition duration… Anyone know if there is a cap?

Pretty sure there’s no cap, but you should do the math to compare:

- 2/2/2
- Nightmare x5 or 6
- 4/2

Even though the condition duration is significant, there is still a non-trivial opportunity cost to using a 2/2/2 set of runes.

I’ve killed glass players in sPvP with BR+HB+WW. Pretty sure I clipped the HB for WW, too.

That aside … lol@ this thread.

Also:

Eviscerates hit for max 5-6k now at best. Sometimes it hits for 2k on guardians.

Probably referring to WvW. Pretty sure you can clear 15k on an Evisc in WvW without a problem. PvE Berserker gear / orbs / food buffs too stronk.

Then for the rest of the week everyone can just be friendly to eachother and we can all just run around hand in hand

What the hell am I reading someone put me out of my misery.

Personally I find it too tedious to swap in that manner. I just use the sigil on my dual wield weapon swap.

Example:

GS: Air
Sword: Air
Focus: Bloodlust

If I were filthy rich and had nothing better to spend my $ on, I might get another set, but those things are pretty expensive for someone that doesn’t rice farm :P.

Apologize in advance for not being able to give you the true “T1 experience” of two weeks ago, when JQ was at its peak power.

But it should still be entertaining.

I am sorry, but if you cannot spot a person that needs to cover at very LEAST 2000 feet to come in range in an empty area

You must not play on a populated server where the scary thief is not the only player on the battlefield.

Not to mention the culling … 2000 feet? Lol.

I also think that a wellplayed Yojack build is far more usefull in a organized WvWvW group compared to your humping dumping cripple machine.

The only useful thing that build does in WvW is to immobilize targets with the sword burst.

The damage output is poor, the shout heals are minor — useful, to be sure, but in a very passive and uninteresting fashion (it’s not as useful as any class dropping a water field). The highlight of the build is its cyclical condition removal, although a light field or two is basically as good as the entire build.

The good part of the Yojack build is its coherent and well-employed mechanics for PvE. E.g. it’s the type of build I would actually make.

For WvW you want builds that:

1. Instantly kill someone. Glass cannon Berserker GS, Rifle.
2. Abuse mechanics to deal a lot of trollish sustain damage to a lot of players. Axe 5 + dodge + combo fields / Longbow + teammates. E.g. not a kill build or a #4 build, but sustains a lot of AOE damage while living. I probably wouldn’t run this build though … ever.
3. One banner kitten per zerg.
4. Initiate and walk into the crossfire of 30 players with CC and burst mitigation to soak attacks and move the line of scrimmage, and ideally break it. The dumbest part about pug WvW is that players will not choose to run or dive. They sit there and sit there, uselessly. Players that have push builds will break a standoff.

updated … we are right up against the 5001 character limit … be nice if some of these got fixed so I could take them off.

Still not including the Mirror Blade LOS bug?

I like it. Elite with 45 sec recharge like one of thief’s.

45s recharge if it lasts less than 2.0 seconds. For better usability, I would say a 3-4s duration with a 180s recharge.

No, it’ll redirect any motion, not just fast motion. But it’d make less sense to use it on regular motion because it’ll be easy to counter while the fast motion leaves less time to react.

So it’s almost just like a Guardian wall, except it ignores Stability.

My choices for WvW would be Melandru’s, Soldier’s, or Divinity.

Probably Divinity. The raw stat pad would be useful for diving over something more glassy, like Scholar/Ogre/Strength or Ruby x6. Hoelbrak may be a decent pick too — similar to Strength but with the reduction on conditions IIRC.

I should go get a Berserker Staff crafted just to screenshot lolWarlock numbers.

^

It works, but Temporal Curtain has a low-ish height, so many projectiles can fly over it, and thus is appears to be inconsistent.