Guild Wars 2

This is for WvW solo roam, mainly for 1 vs 1 encounters.

I think I’ve stumbled upon the equipoise of attack and defense.
I share a build that is decently effective against most enemy roamers you might encounter.

The traits are pretty standard and the utilities/weapon choices are up to you, but just the stats distribution as below, I think its the golden ratio.

Key points of this build:

• Power = 2500+
• Crit Chance = 50% (100% in shroud)
• Crit Damage = 200%+
• Armor = 2000 (Don’t go below 2000)
• HP = 20000+ (36000+ with shroud)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW3YnMbC12gd2Am3A0biFcBLuK2FDjQXtAQLgqL0GeWA-TVCFABA8EASSJWJ7PUwFBoQ1fQSpxSKDuSJYa6GCAgAczbmNbzgje0je0je0O6NP6Rv5RLFQgDrA-w

Still works in the current post April patch meta. I’ve fought with the same stats distribution and won against decent opponents. No new videos though because it is too much lag…

she’s only sleeping! so don’t shout and wake her!

Squee.7829:

I hate this thread

your character looks like the evil version of Snow White lol.
You could be Snow White.

well, at least the roamers in all 3 servers don’t run around with any ‘double teaming’ mentality. they just fight whoever crosses their path.

Thanks for the posts! I’m really into a hammer + sword/shield build though so I guess I’ll just think of a build that could work. can’t decide on what runes or sigils to use =(

Also very unsure about the traits…but that I could figure out as I go…

I just didn’t want to waste gold on runes/sigils that have to be changed later =/

you know what I find funny, when we are losing, and getting crushed during OCX/SEA hours, it isn’t the Alliance who moved from YB leading us.

It is our old loyal TC guilds who remained who is leading us. HIRE led by Inori Cross and White Lotus led by Kinbear.

They are leading us in our darkest hours.

For:

1) PvE?
2) WvW?
3) PvP?

Since the April patch updates, I’ve been having a terrible time roaming. Lags, disconnections, other classes seemingly becoming stronger (especially thieves), had me on the verge of putting my power Reaper aside and just going with condi.

Your video gave me hope again. 1-hit-KO gravediggers! Enjoyed the video greatly! Love especially your wurm gap closers + GS pull combos. Power is still alive!

Once upon a time, there lived 7 Reapers.
Mirror mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

http://imgur.com/a/L817f

Just wondering.

looks like a pretty solid roaming build!
You’ll probably find fights against block heavy enemies easier since you have unblockable marks and unblockable shout.

You might find it more challenging though to fight condi heavy enemies since you only have two counters, staff 4 and consume conditions.

I’m still seeing so many scouts refreshing siege and scouting in the borderlands but they are not in any squads to earn points while scouting =/

How do we make it easier for these scouts to join up and earn points for the work they are doing?

The lazy roaming around the alphine borderlands, flipping camps, tapping keeps and towers, killing a sentry or a dolyak here and there…and the random encounter with an enemy roamer or scout…

I can feel it again

TheGrimm.5624:

@ABLers, gratz, enjoy.

@ANet, what’s the plan on rotations?

Alpine is here to stay!

I just got message in game. WvW going down for map change.

This week, SEA time, JQ controlled SMC for many hours and are abusing the cloaking waters and airships and chilling mists.

TC got a taste of what it is like to get destroyed.

I think I didn’t write it clearly. What I meant was, since we are having to queue for so long, why not give us the option to log in with another character without getting kicked out of the queue so we can play PvE or PvP with our PvE or PvP characters, then log back in to our WvW character when the queue reaches our turn.

Can we not have server merges? I would love for there to be less crowded times where I can roam with minimal lag.
Crowded maps with lag is the reason why I don’t roam during NA prime. Now all time zones are practically full maps and its too much lag to roam!

Note: I did not get older and slower. It was just one month ago when I was lag free and roaming fine! All those 4 videos in my signature I reviewed and showed that I did react within the first 1-2 hits of Daredevils blinking and striking me. Now I can’t!

I think the usual saying goes like this:

Fear the Reaper

;)

What is the current meta classes/builds now that Condi Reaper is RIP?

Hello, just want to share a base necro well-bomber build for zerg vs zerg large scale fights.
Mainly allows you to:

• deal out massive damage (pure zerk),
• tag as many bodies as you can for more bags, and
• all done safely and out of harm’s way.

Nothing really new, just wanted to point out some strengths:

• Flesh Wurm
  Using a wurm in your build for teleport helps a lot to survive and re-position during zerg vs zerg.

• Wells and unblockable staff marks
  Standard weapons for you to tag large number of bodies for more bags.

• Dagger and Focus on swap
  Allows you to slow down escaping enemies for your zerg to catch up and pile on the misery. Who doesn’t like to see 50 vs 1?

• Plague Elite
  Even more survivability and tagging ability.

• Unholy Sanctuary trait is a life saver.

• Base Necro shroud skills
  Unlike Reaper shroud where you have to enter in melee mode to do your damage, which will kill you in a zerg vs zerg fight when you are full zerker armor, Base Necro shroud allows range damage for more tagging and more damage all done safely!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNAW4djc0QfN2SD20A/NOgGqZF0BlANH6hPV2ABwyC-TFCEgADm/AeAAo7PAdQA60Nor8z4KAKBZV/BA-w

I think it will be great if we can implement a QOL improvement due to the queue.
I think many people, like me, don’t do PvE or PvP with their WvW toon.

The current situation now is, if we want to play WvW with our WvW toon, we have to log in and queue with the WvW toon. If we log out and choose another toon to do something else, we get forced out of the queue.

But given the queues, sometimes we have to queue 1-2 hours to get in!

Why not implement such that once we start queuing, we will not get forced out of the queue even if we log out to the character screen to choose a PvE toon to play while waiting. And then when we do finally get into the WvW map, we have a freedom to go out to the character screen again to choose our preferred WvW toon to login and play without getting forced out of the map.

Something like what PvP has now, when they log in to PvP match, they can logout and re-choose their toon depending on their team composition and the enemy’s composition.

WvW needs a QOL improvement like this. It allows us to do other things like PvE or PvP on other toons while waiting for the long queue to reach our turn!

As things stand now, if we want to WvW, we have to log in with our WvW toon and queue and stand in Lion’s Arch doing nothing for 1-2 hours until it is our turn.

I main a Pure Power Reaper and love to solo roam.
I tried roaming a couple of times and gave up.

Pure Power means Full Zerker means I need to see and react fast.

I feel like I’m seeing things a few seconds after it happens.
I used to see and react to a daredevil blinking and striking me within the first 1 to 2 hits. Now I see and react to daredevils blinking and striking me when they have landed their 3rd or 4th hit.
I’m already half dead or 3/4 dead by then.

Can we not have server merges? I would love for there to be less crowded times where I can roam with minimal lag.
Crowded maps with lag is the reason why I don’t roam during NA prime. Now all time zones are practically full maps and its too much lag to roam!

Note: I did not get older and slower. It was just one month ago when I was lag free and roaming fine! All those 4 videos in my signature I reviewed and showed that I did react within the first 1-2 hits of Daredevils blinking and striking me. Now I can’t!

If you’re a new necro/reaper player, go with Anchoku’s advise. Dire still works wonders after the patch and is a steady set against most other roaming opponents.
Helps to ease you into the class since you’re allowed a bigger margin of error.

However, precisely because Dire is very tanky and allows you to take more enemy bursts, many necros/reapers who play Dire don’t learn what to dodge and how to rotate their shroud defensively.

Pre-April patch, I once roamed with my Dire set with a Chill build and fought a Dragonhunter roamer. She fought a perfect match, dodging most of my ‘heavy’ blows and landing almost all her bursts. I ate every single one of her burst and missed almost all of mine and I still won in the end =/
Partly because my Chill build didn’t have a ‘heavy’ burst. It was just constant application of chill through many skills. But mostly because I was so tanky and with full shroud and she didn’t manage to kill me before my Chill got her despite her playing a ‘perfect’ game.

If you’re looking for thrills though and are sufficiently experienced roaming with a reaper, I suggest Power reaper. Not just any power reaper, but Pure Power Reaper. Full Zerker set up. You will really need to learn what to dodge and how to rotate your shroud defensively. Little margin for error. Though if you run with Holl’s build (I’m running a modification of it), it does give you some sustain and some room for error.

The most obvious example of the power sustain build you can see in my video below. At the 6min 35sec mark. A Chronomancer burst me from stealth and took out my HP from 20K to 4K. The build’s sustain brought my HP up from 4K to 9K by the time I left shroud.

Planet earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.

I recommend roaming with a pure power Reaper. Full glass.
We have the least variety of defensive mechanism. Basically just Shroud.
When you meet the enemy, you have to fight or die. No escape.
It’s fun. It’s exhilarating. It’s thrilling.
It pushes your skills to the max because its kill or be killed.
You don’t have the option to run and avoid.
Power Reaper > every other class/build in terms of fun, exhilaration, thrill.

You can see some of my roaming videos in my signature.
I recommend the first link. Still my favorite.

Jayne.9251:

If you see 10 people gleefully running towards your blob of 25, it’s a clue.

Anyone in the blob drops a mesmer veil and half the blob gets revealed, lol.

Heck, we used to play this way daily in the culling era. It’s not unbeatable.

Uphill, both ways.

/nod

While I understand where you are coming from, most large zergs in ebg are pug zergs made up of random people. they are not as organized as a guild group.

Guild groups generally can survive a burst from stealth. Pug groups don’t.

And we usually mass invis at the same time so we don’t often get any stragglers who run around not invis when we engage the enemy.

honestly the free bags are good while the enemy zerg is still willing to hang around for our mass invis zerg to jump on them…but it quickly degenerates into no bags because the enemy zerg leaves.

As a Reaper main WvW roamer, I find it hardest to fight a staff Tempest roamer.

Dagger or Scepter Tempests are comparatively easier.

Staff Tempest Roamer is insane sustain though they don’t have a strong burst. So if you don’t mind slowly grinding your opponents down, Staff Tempest is a very decent choice.

I fought a very good staff tempest roamer in the last fight in this video. I almost lost. Could have lost. Thought I was going to lose in fact.

My favorite fight against a Tempest was still against a D/D tempest though at the 8min and 35sec in this video below. Was fast and brutal and could have gone either way.

As a reaper main solo roamer, I roam with a build that gives me an easy time against most condi opponents.

My advise for my opponents is:

Do a condi burst and spam all your evades, blocks, invulnerabilities to prevent the reaper from transferring your condis back to you.

Reapers eat most condi opponents because they transfer your condis back to you so it becomes Reaper damage + your condi damage = you die fast.
So preemptive actions against them transferring your condi back to you is necessary.

Of course, watch out for the Reaper if he is using Consume conditions which has a long cast time and is easily interruptible. So save one interrupt for this.

Do this right and you have a good chance of winning.

As a Reaper main WvW roamer, I don’t think Trueshot should have been nerfed.
It has a visible animation, doesn’t allow for movement and decent cast time that allows for counter-play.
It’s damage wasn’t that overwhelming either.
It was something like the old warrior’s killshot.

Compared to a berserker’s gunflame burst that can be cast while moving and can easily be built for quickness without compromising much in other areas, Trueshot felt like a really balanced skill.

While I can understand the nerf to gunflame, I was surprised at the nerf to Trueshot.

I’m not saying this because my 2nd favorite roaming class is the Guardian/Dragonhunter…in fact, I don’t like roaming with a longbow on my DH…I very much prefer the old weapon combination of GS + Scepter/Focus.

I’m not sure why cloaking waters was added, but MASS INVIS to an entire zerg is extremely destructive to the enemy.

Imagine an entire enemy zerg standing right on top of your zerg and bombing you to shreds before you can react.

I’m from TC and we control SMC with cloaking waters for large periods. We get almost zero fights because enemy zergs do not even want to fight us when our entire zerg is cloaked.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Solo, rev kinda sucks. Stealth is like mandatory for solo roaming these days.

Group play, PvP meta Invocation rev is great IMO, been using it for weeks. Many viable runes, Strength, Hoelbrak, Scrapper, Leadership, Durability etc.

Thanks for the reply!
That is sad to hear. I’ve always been more of a solo player =(
Guess I’ll just pack him away till he becomes more viable.

I feel like they didn’t put so much importance on WvW previously because perhaps they wanted to promote PvP and PvE more.
But I guess most of the hardcore GW2 players are actually WvW players? Just a gues.

can anyone test this? someone in PvP forum says he tested it and its not updated.

FrownyClown.8402:

can confirm. spinal shivers was not changed to reflect the changes to focus.

thanks for testing!

Hello Revenants!
I’m a newly minted Revenant, just created him and got him to 80 two days ago.

I’ve geared him in almost full zerker gear.
Wielding a hammer and sword/shield.

Can anyone help me with a decent build using those weapons for WvW solo roaming?
So far I’m getting killed by just about anyone =/

that was actually pretty good music to use for pvp videos!

Welcome to the dark side!

Master the Power Reaper!

Does anyone know if the recent buff to spinal shivers in the 19 Apr patch was meant only for the Focus 5 skill?

I was looking at the ingame tooltips for the spinal shivers trait and it still shows a lower damage compared to the weapon Focus 5 skill.

Could someone who knows how to test such things help to test?

Thanks!

does anyone know?

oh oops i guess I’m testing wrongly lol. the buff was to remove 2 and 3 boons…

could someone test the numbers? thanks =D

The tooltip in game for the spinal shivers trait still reflects the old value.
The focus 5 spinal shivers skill has been updated to reflect the new buffed value though.

I tried in game and the spinal shivers trait seems to be hitting lower than the focus 5 spinal shivers skill.

Is this 19 Apr buff to spinal shivers suppose to affect only focus 5 skill and not the trait?

Was the recent buff to spinal shivers supposed to affect only the focus 5 skill?

I did some testing and
the focus 5 skill was hitting for around 450-480 damage on a npc that has no boons.
the trait spinal shivers was hitting for around 390-410 damage on a npc with no boons.

Can someone else who knows how to test such skills/traits do the testing and see if spinal shivers trait was buffed too?

Dead.5829:

For the trait, Is the actual hit higher than the tooltip? The latter is certainly lower than the weapon’s version of the skill.

I just did some testing again…i had some other buff traits earlier so the damage on the trait seemed the same as the focus 5…

but I removed the damage buff trait and it seems like the spinal shivers on the trait has not been updated…
it hits lower than the focus 5 spinal shivers…=(

KrHome.1920:

EremiteAngel.9765:

I’m just relieved that power reapers aren’t too badly affected by the changes…shroud changes were a slight nerf…but we also got a slight buff through the spinal shivers…

The Infusing Terror nerf hits hard. I don’t know if that was necessary.

Btw.: The Spinal Shivers buff is only listed in the Focus skill tooltip. The Chill of Death tooltip shows the old unbuffed numbers! I hope they did not forget to buff Chill of Death as well and this is just a wrong tooltip but correct workingg skill!

I did some testing and I think the trait has been updated damage-wise too =D

From a WvW roamer perspective, I main power axe and I find it good enough in its current form.

Axe auto hits in quick succession and is good to clear blind/aegis on top of its vulnerability stacking.

Axe 2 tracks through invis and is a decent lifeforce generator and decent trigger for on hit/crit sigils…if it hits…so you have to create chances for it to hit =p

Axe 3 hits aoe even on invis if they are in range, cripples, converts 1 boon, grant retaliation.

Good enough for me. Of course, I won’t be against any buffs =D Like…

Auto attack Range increase to 1200?
More vulnerability stacking on auto like OP mentioned?

I was looking in game at the tooltip and it shows that the off-hand focus spinal shiver does 1500 damage but the damage in the Spite traitline for spinal shivers shows only 1100 damage…
Has anyone tried the trait to see if it is changed for higher damage too but just not updated for the tooltip?

i think the reduction in damage is a move in the right direction. you now need more skills to play a gunflame and not just a one-trick-though-effective-pony that combos stun/immobilize with gunflame which usually kills the opponent outright in one hit when used at around 60-70% HP. You now need to land at least 2 gunflames usually for a kill or use gunflame to burst your opponent at a more appropriate timing. Instead of just spamming gunflames and hoping one lands to KO your opponent.

KrHome.1920:

Shroud management (entering/leaving/refilling) and a good positioning is way more demanding than having blocks on every weaponset and perma evades in shiro stance.

If a thief attacks me on Power Reaper and I enter shroud the thief will start to kite me. Now I have to predict if I will survive the next 10 seconds when leaving shroud or if it would be better to stay in it for a while. I have to analyse the situation (Which skills did he use till that point? How deadly is he for the next few seconds? What could I do? What about my utility cooldowns? And so on…).

On Rev I simply switch weapons and use my other block. If this is not enough I switch to shiro and use my 1723432 evades and stun breakers.

So does Rev stand for more skillful play? Nope… not really! Rev stands for power creep. And Scrapper, Mercenary Reaper and Mercenary Cronomancer are the kings of power creep.

---

.

I think I can agree with the above. Reapers just have different defensive mechanisms compared to most of the other classes.

Other classes have mainly blocks, blinds, evades, dodges, immunity.
Reapers have mainly Shroud.

That means what KrHome said above. Shroud management.

Also on the changes…I’m just relieved that power reapers aren’t too badly affected by the changes…shroud changes were a slight nerf…but we also got a slight buff through the spinal shivers…