Guild Wars 2

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Cause nobody in their right mind wants to use staff and hasn’t for nearly 2 years.

I beg to differ. Every non DH guardian runs it in WvW

If scrappers get nerfed I’d take a guess at:
Hammer 5 / thunderclap : damage or range
Hammer 4 / Shock shield : damage on a block skill , or it might be changed to aegis like well of precog…
Hammer 3 / Rocket charge’s triple leap finisher
Hammer 2 / Electro-whirl : recharge /damage maybe
Adaptive armor: armor or condi reduction
Stealth gyro interval and/or uptime
Bunker down cooldown (Core engi)
Recovery matrix’s protection duration
Rapid regen’s superspeed heals
Projection Injection uptime (core engi)
Medic gyro cast time 1/2 or 3/4s

This is a bumped thread from months ago…

morrolan.9608:

Armor needs to be at least 3000 for frontline.

^ still holds true

That said I would take Stealth gyro over mortar kit for a frontline (preference), you can take over warrior duty for ressing as needed & also disrupt enemy veil pushes. I’d also go with Elixir B for the stability on the toolbelt skill.

@ RudyTjhia.7250 , with the amount of CCs flying around, Projection Injection is VERY strong. I’d take that over Invigorating Speed and use Adrenal Implant instead of Gadgeteer

DS 1 Life Blast isn’t close ranged, it’s 1200 range. Projectile finisher , while not necessary, would be nice.

DS 2 Dark Path needs to be reworked a bit. Make the teleport to target optional and do full Life blast damage & apply 1s chill, faster projectile speed? Reduce the chill by 1s & recharge so it can be used more often
—-> optional part could work similar to terrify

DS 3 Doom ought to have fear near you within 360 range or so, similar to mesmer shatter

DS 4 Life Transfer – increase range to 900 and have the damage scale maybe 150% similar to Doom, the damage isn’t ridiculously high : Soul Spiral is about double damage (although 300 rangte) and comes with a large stack of poison

DS 5 Tainted Shackles – needs to double everything , add some short duration 1.5-2s poison, and it still would not be worth 40 cooldown

Another question is: is Reaper’s shroud slightly overtuned?

P.S. Poison and chill do not require condition builds. Poison has -33% heal effectiveness, chill has movement reduction/recharge slow down.

TheBravery.9615:

What are some of the complaints from other professions about the guardian in a PvP / WvW perspective?

I know people are suggesting that traps get nerfed further. Any comments?

Longbow 5 has serious culling issues and it’s pretty broken in WvW.

True shot should be reevaluated in terms of activation or recharge, BUT only after gun flame (mainly the skill) and CoR (mainly this with the Cruel Repercussions+Roiling Mists+Assassin’s Presence traits).

Traps are overstated, the only time they are very strong is when someone has a whole stack of the from being in one place in a certain time. I’m surprised they do not seem to have durations, it seems like a half hour after one is placed someone can walk into one in WvW.

The ingame description has it +24 precision ; all the other jewels are +25 for the main stat

It’s minor.

(0.255 * Condition Damage) + 202
instead of (0.300 * Condition Damage) + 202

For 1050 Condition damage that’s -47 damage, 1200 Condition damage that’s -54 damage ; for 1600 that’s -72 damage

Bleed is (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 22 ; it’s less than 1s of stack of bleed
Torment is (0.045 * Condition Damage) + 15.9 ; it’s less than 1s of torment
Confusion is (0.035 * Condition Damage) + 10 ; also less than passive damage from 1s confusion if it’s a lower condition damage

Ithilwen.1529:

Revenant already pretty much replaces thief. A ranged condi weapon would make rev even more OP than it is now.

Condis don’t make use of fury/crits/Cruel Repercussions to the extent of hammer CoR and hammer bolt : the best you get is a 33% chance for 1 stack of torment from Rampant Vex.

If revenants had some sort of ranged condi weapon akin to Ranger shortbow or engineer pistol+pistol it’d not be over the top. If you took the mace 2 & 3 skills and doubled the range and looked at it, I’d say it is not that high burst damage compared to a revenant power build , mainly since it requires targets to stand in it.

Adrian Guardian.9480:

If revenant didn’t have weapon swapping this wouldn’t have been a problem and they colud just have extended the range on mace#2 to give it a mixed range/melee feeling like spear.
But I guess LucianDK is right and revenant will be turned into long-range condi spammers next expansion

If revenant didn’t have weapon swapping they’d have other issues.

Also I disagree with giving Revenants ranged GS, GS is the most used weapon right now. It should be mainhand axe , scepter, or dagger ; shortbow (900 range).

edit:

@ Burtnik
Rifle, probably not : I don’t see a magical profession wielding a rifle. Longbow maybe. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Revenant_02_concept_art.jpg)

Also scepter for necros/eles/mesmers is 900 range ; engineer pistol is too ; thieves only have 900 range. Unless you want the auto to be like guardian staff or something…

Anything more than 900 range is “ranged” by definition.

I hate to be THAT guy, but if you’re running DH in WvW you really ought to use longbow ; sword+shield isn’t that strong unless you’re running with other people because you can’t make use of the light field from the bubble and most times as a melee you want to pull them in not push them out. It’s a shame really since Shield of Judgement (shield 4) isn’t bad.

You lose out of the Pure of Sight damage bonus if you don’t use longbow ; longbow has piercing. Also longbow 5 is the most broken CC in WvW besides gravity well. With the power you have + Pure of Sight, you could probably get 6K-8K crits (before sigils) with True Shot on light armor classes below 2400 armor.

If your guild runs more than one guardian I suppose you could drop “Stand your ground” (you do have Indomitable courage) but it’s literally the one skill every WvW guardian should consider stapling to their skillbar.

Mesmers have condition removal from Mantra of Resolve, Well of Eternity, Blurred Inscriptions (trait in dominations) with signets, Null Field , torch’s the pledge trait (illusions), arcane thievery, disenchanter (very unreliably).

You can also use physical projectile (Mirror Blade or Magic Bullet)/ whirl ( Phantasmal Warden/ Berserker) in a light field (Temporal Curtain / Veil / Well of Eternity).

edit: I don’t feel that it is the Mender’s Purity that’s very strong, using Mantra of Recovery is the only time it would be removing significantly more often than using Mantra of Resolve and that has a tradeoff of less burst healing. Restorative Illusions on the other hand I feel should have had an internal cooldown since it doesn’t require illusions for the condition removal/heal….

Also if you add untraited condi removal to mesmer weapon it’d better be 15+ recharge such as on staff 4, sword 5, GS 5, or on another skill with little effect other than as a defensive weapon. You’d also have to consider to restrict it to removal of a subset of conditions akin to untraited warrior warhorn.

If they made illusions count towards the 3 slot things and phantasms not, then I’d think that phantasms wouldn’t count toward Signet of Illusions , Signet of the Ether , Empowered Illusions (important one for phantasms’ damage) , Illusionary Reversion , Sharper Images , Seize the Moment, Illusionary Defense or Illusionist’s Celerity (illusion/phantasm recharge).

In that case, Persistence of Memory would need to be buffed.

Right now Gyros & minions act similarly to Phantasms.

HappyHubris.1096:

SlimChance.6593:

(Or do you plan on allowing Mesmer to generate Max 3 clones AND as many phantasm he can spawn?) – which will never happen.

This. Your 3-minion limit would apply to clones only. Phantasms could be timered (or even short-duration invulnerable minions that can be dodged but not destroyed?) to prevent infinite stacking.

They could have a phantasm limit and balance around that. Maybe one per phantasm type (i.e. you can have a berserker + a warden , swordsman , or duelist , plus a defender and disenchanter but not 3+ warlocks).

I feel Shatters aren’t that strong sustained damage unless you’re using scepter. If you’re using scepter you’re likely running conditions or hybrid which means you have a 25 cooldown on Cry of Frustration. (less with Master of Misdirection but still not as low as Mind Wrack’s 12 cooldown) You have a 5 second+ cooldown on clones (Mirror Blade ; Illusionary Leap ; Phase Retreat) if you use any other weapon and not using deceptive evasion (about once every 7 seconds if you have vigor) and/or illusionary reversion to generate more clones. I don’t think Mirror Images is strong enough cooldown wise to warrant over Decoy.

There should be tweaks to make warriors melt to conditions less , at least for WvW:

Priority:

• Dogged March (trait), instead of regeneration it could have been given a heal similar to Adrenal Health / Rousing Resilience (i.e. not dependent on boons) … because regeneration boon corrupts to poison , see rapid regen on scrapper
• “Shrug it off” (trait) should be reworked to trigger on 2 or more conditions or hard CCed (dazed, knocked down, launched, or stunned), remove bleed and/or chill every time on top of the condition removed, or have the recharge lowered heavily. It is a much weaker trait compared to Empower Allies in this condition heavy meta.
  —-> see Plague Sending , Burning Fire
  —-> re: disabled , see Retaliatory Subconscious / Hunter’s Determination / Eye for an Eye / Autodefense Bomb Dispenser / Shared Anguish / Hard to Catch / Tempest Defense / Gale Song / Mirror of Anguish
• Signet of Stamina (cure all conditions , skill) could have reduced base recharge to 35-40 seconds : Signet Mastery is in the Arms line —- see Contemplation of Purity recharge reduction
  —-> it’s also blatantly obvious you have it equipped.
• Balanced stance & Last stand trait (personal stability) could have a recharge decrease to 25-35s —- nobody really takes this just for the swiftness
• Berserker Stance (skill ; condition resistance via resistance) could have a slight recharge decrease (currently 60 seconds), especially since it doesn’t break stun : perhaps also block physical projectiles (might be a bit too strong) or immune to chill (what resistance corrupts to)

Not as Priority:

• “Shake it off” could remove bleed or weakness (or some other spammy condition) every time on top of the 1 condition, at 20 recharge (traited) removing 1 condition unless you use trooper runes is not a make or break utility skill : this can be slightly weaker than Shrug it off , since Shrug it off isn’t player controlled but it still needs to be worthy of a skill slot
• Dolyak Signet (Personal stability in exchange for 180 toughness) could have reduced base recharge to 45 seconds (or less) —- this is ten stacks of stability but so is Armor of Earth for eles ; this has a tradeoff of 180 toughness
  —-> it’s also blatantly obvious you have it equipped. However, due to the passive effect it doesn’t need as much help as Balanced stance

Maybe:

• Determined revival (trait): have it so you don’t take any bleed/poison/burn/torment/confusion condition damage for at least 2 seconds
• Thick skin (trait): instead of > 90% , > 75% , or something like -20% condition damage from 3+ stacks of bleeding while chilled or -10% condition damage while vulnerable/taunted/feared/etc
• Endure Pain (skill) / Defy Pain (trait): ignore bleeding damage (maybe)
• Restorative Strength (trait): cure weakness
• Savage Instinct (trait) could remove chill every time, on top of the 2 conditions , to make Berserk mode thematically more resistant to chills
  —-> However, strengthening Berserker is likely not a good idea because it’s not core warrior
• Eternal Champion (trait) could have fear duration -50% (stability corrupts to fear)
• Fatal Frenzy (trait): 1.5 or 2 seconds superspeed instead of 3 second swiftness so it can’t be boon corrupted ?

TL; DR:

• Make warrior’s personal stability at the very least on par with guardian’s group stability
  —- Balanced Stance with Last Stand should be at least equal uptime to Guardian’s Stand Your Ground + Indomitable Courage (trait)
• Lower recharge on stances , strengthen condi removal that requires utility slots
• Lessen the reliance on boons

They need to give stability to death shroud if you’re reaper then

I and a few other people in my guild have been soloing/ small man roaming since HoT launch so I don’t see the point?

One of them runs a condi build and never kills barricades.

Catas were reduced in supply already

You can treb air keep inner/outer from safe spots

You can cata fire keep outer from safe spots

You can 2 man air keep & fire keep , solo earth keep and all towers

RedBaron.6058:

Nerf thieves before nerfing Gunflame.

Please give well thought out reasons.

Do your server a favor and go to EoTM if all you want are WvW levels IMO…

If you aren’t willing to learn to be beneficial to your server and are going to quit WvW once you get rank 14

If you use Chilling Darkness with the Well of Darkness , it will AoE chill for that duration as well.

Well of Blood is only shoddy because Necros don’t really spec into heal so what you end up with is a skill that is subpar compared to the other heal skills you can use.

Well of Power is strong against conditions and that’s about it. It’s got a stunbreak as well, but for reapers stunbreak isn’t that special.

Just because necro wells aren’t used in PvE doesn’t mean that they need to be heavily buffed.

It’s possible to go zerker trinkets + soldier’s armor, run furious sharpening stone and Butternut Squash soup for the ferocity. Then use Daredevil runes. You’ll still break over 216% critical or 223% on berserk mode (and 33%ish crit chance), have 2800 toughness and 22K HP. If you want to swap to a melee weapon just use Knight’s or Cavalier’s Hammer/GS.

So Berserker + Strength , no might other than signet of might (+180 power)…
(Power * Weapon Strength_Avg * Skill Coefficient * Sigil of Force * Stick and Move * Always Angry * Bloody Roar * Critical Damage Multiplier) / Target Armor (No Protection)

2837 Power * 1096 * 2.75 * 1.05 * 1.10 * 1.07 * 1.10 * 2.23 / Target Armor

= 12.9K on 2000 Armor
= 10.3K on 2500 Armor

You don’t even need to run Berserker’s Strength , which is another 10-20% on top of this…
+20% = 15.4K on 2000 armor
+20% = 12K on 2500 armor

So Berserker+ Discipline , no might other than signet of might…
(Power * Weapon Strength_Avg * Skill Coefficient * Sigil of Force * Burst Mastery * Always Angry * Bloody Roar * Critical Damage Multiplier) / Target Armor (No Protection)

2837 Power * 1096 * 2.75 * 1.05 * 1.07 * 1.07 * 1.10 * 2.23 / Target Armor
= 12.6K on 2000 Armor
= 10K on 2500 Armor

Well of suffering does more damage than Gravity well or well of calamity so I don’t know your complaint?

Wells can’t be stronger than traps due to their being targeted AoE rather than PBAOE. That sort of goes out the window when stacks of traps are pre-placed though.

It’s unlikely unless Honorable Staff is moved. Pretty much every other profession has only one weapon trait per traitline.

It’d probably be better off swapped with Zealous Scepter , seeing how Scepter is rarely used. Thematically however, Hammer is more defensive due to ring of warding , protection , immobilize.

Axe 1 applies vulnerability at range: before all the HoT power creep this was a strong vulnerability stack with a moderate auto attack damage. It could use a life force generation of 1-2%, or slightly faster attack speed, but it’s a decent auto if you aren’t in need of AoE (i.e. PvP). The scaling is similar to the first 2 hits of guardian/Warrior GS, rev sword auto or thief auto , and higher than that of mesmer sword. Keep in mind Unholy Fervor gives a damage boost.

Basically any major buff to Axe 1(Rending Claws) would require it to be a auto chain.

Axe#2 (Ghastly claws) is for life force generation. The damage isn’t as atrocious as you make it out to be , it has a 2.88 multiplier . I mean the channel is a bit long (but still shorter than Life Siphon on dagger) and could be reduced a bit. But do you really want it to have AoE? How big of an AoE? 130 range? 900 range pierce in a line?

Axe 3 (Unholy feast) is a short recharge AoE boon corrupt & cripple. The only problem with it is PBAOE , but you should be able to put up with this given that it is a fast cast.

Scepter was buffed over the top IMO… the sheer amount of condi spam is over the top , the boon corrupt pushed it further.

Why are we buffing everything ranged with AoE / pierce? We should be nerfing all the 1200 ranged AoE/pierce skills with 2.5+ multipliers less than 1 second cast time and short recharges, IMO (CoR/Gun flame/ True shot for starters). If all the ranged skills are buffed , then there is zero reason to melee.

Why would you use dagger instead of scepter though? Even more so when you have 1500+ condi damage and only 1700ish power. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Also Plague Signet is not viable in WvW because if you are in a group of say 15 people you will implode.

Before stealth gyro was nerfed , hammer scrappers pretty much took the place of some hammer warriors. They’re still very strong for roaming.

You see chronos in Tier 1 NA WvW even after alacrity nerfs, because of gravity wells, null field, veils, & portals. Feedback works on inexperienced omega golem users ; timewarp is good although long recharge, moa is good for trolling. The weapon skills are more or less yawn worthy, other than torment spam scepter & focus pull, shield block/stun, sword 2 if running Inspiration traitline.

^ he’s using crits to proc Rampant Vex’s torment & Cruel repercussion’s isn’t as useful when running condi.

I’d change Radiant Revival for Hardening Persistence , when using Impossible odds / Embrace the darkness it gives you a decent sized armor increase. Leave ressing for warriors, even without banner they have +400 armor while ressing if they run tactics.

edit: also I’d consider using Berserker rune for more power & +5% condition damage ; superior rune of undead to be tankier, Superior Rune of Tormenting to max torment duration. The krait rune has a 30s cooldown on the condition spam on elite , you probably don’t want to swap weapons often just to proc bleeding either.

Without the invocation traitline you are highly reliant on shiro for stunbreak.

I feel staff is a better weapon for WvW than sword, having a blast finisher & condi removal is important. Sword+Shield or Sword+Sword is not as strong in WvW compared to PvP because mobility is key.

Viper’s major difference to Sinister is longer condition duration & marginally higher power (14% condition duration , about 60 power for a full armor set). You do know you can make a cheaper set of armor & then mystic forge it to he stats you want, right?

Junkpile.7439:

I would teleport inside tower and build some superior siege.

An arrowcart is overkill for 5 to 10 people when you have close to 15.

The team at the tower had more numbers, if they portal-bombed or just bombed the choke when the attacking team was actually ON the bridge there’d be no issue.

Unfortunately, until ranged damage carries a heavy recharge/activation/mobility penalty again (ala Barrage/Meteor Shower/Rapid Fire/Volley) this is the state of the game.

i.e.
CoR
Gun flame
Trueshot (to an extent)
Hunter’s ward , as far as stability ripping
Gravity Well , as far as stability ripping
Boon corruption overbuffing; Well of corruption being 4 or 5x stronger due to heralds spamming boons every 3 seconds

edit: see CoR post January 26th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLpvG_2lBIM , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6HS5d4Hni8

Blix.8021:

Compare the damage of a glass fire ele in the pvp lobby with a zerker amulet, and a full ascended glass zerker ele with food/keep/world bonus buffs in wvw. Stat creep is a big part of the pirate ship meta.

Food + wrench = +200 power and 2557 from full power ascended = 2757 Power —> 2907 with Fire trait ; PvP max is 2375 power without the +150 Power from Fire minor trait

I have felt as though Ascended weapons and armor should have stats normalized to exotics in WvW for a long time now, but even full exotics are 2463 power ; full exotics with ascended trinkets is 2525 power.

Well if you’re “bunker” you’re going to want to:

• Bring earth traitline (Elemental shielding/Earth’s Embrace, Geomancer’s training, Stone heart is likely a good idea if your team has condi clear especially with the Diamond Skin nerf) , or run Fresh air and overload air more or less all the time for protection
• Carry Elemental Bastion from the Tempest traitline ( a must if you use tempest) , Unstable Conduit (aura on overload , in conjunction with Powerful aura from water traitline)/ Gale Song (stun break) , Harmonious Conduit (Stability)/ Invigorating Torrents IF you decide to use Water traitline and Cleansing Water , for condi clear
• Water traits to consider: Soothing Ice (pretty standard for all tempests , it’s an extra aura and -10% damage to you), Cleansing Wave (condition removal when attuning to water), Powerful aura if you decide to use unstable conduit / Cleansing Water if running invigorating torrents (remove condition on regen application) if you don’t use trooper rune
• Fire traits , on the odd chance you decide to bring it: Sunspot (minor) for heal on attunement swap + protection from elemental shielding, burning fire for 3 stack condi clear
• Arcane (evasive arcana , minor boon duration for more protection , protection when you switch to earth attunement , final shielding for stun break) : utilities would be triple cantrip (mist form, armor of earth, lightning flash) … if you don’t use tempest
• 16K+ HP (for an ele in WvW that’s a MUST), go D/F instead of staff for the invuln, and at the very least 2600 armor in non-earth attunements.
• bring a stunbreak (either Armor of earth,Mist form, eye of the storm)
• use energy sigils for more dodges , even more so if you bring Evasive arcana
• use saffron bread (-20% conditions on you) as food so that conditions don’t destroy you

Berserker /Marauder isn’t going to cut it since if you get hit with one Gunflame or CoR you’re toast. If you have around 2000-2400 armor that’s considered glass; a high power attack will do upwards of 10K critical on you.

I don’t know as far as specific builds but several things come to mind.

Damage-wise:

• Herald CoR with roiling mists + assassin’s presence + swift termination
• Berserker Gun flame … the damage is over the top
• DH true shot (to an extent , I haven’t seen any instagibs) … this could use a slight increase in activation time (apparently “charging up energy” only take 3/4 seconds , the same time as an auto), or make it require Heavy Light for piercing?

CC-wise:

• DH longbow 5 Hunter’s Ward … the amount of stability removed is over the top , to the point that this makes Ring of Warding / Line of Warding look like child’s play
• DH Dragon’s Maw trap stacks (in chokes) … it’s not just a culling issue but also the fact that it strips an insane amount of stability
• Chrono Gravity well … the number of times I’ve seen frontline with “stand your ground” melt to this (it’s even stronger with Power Block)… I’ve been on the chrono casting end but also on the receiving end

There’s quite a few annoying to fight setups (i.e. scrapper with stealth gyros + rapid regen + adaptive armor & protection injection, druids in general, condi reapers, daredevils with unhindered combatant, tanky tempest D/D builds with auras, clone spam scepter condi mesmers/chronos), but instagibs on light armor & CCs that rip more stacks of stability than can be applied by “stand your ground” are highlights for fights involving more than 10 people.

It seems with HoT the activation-recharge-mobility-defense balance was thrown out the window when you have 1200 range skills on heavy armor classes that cast in less than a second that do upwards of 10K damage on light armor, with low recharges <10 seconds. Before HoT, a higher damage skill like Rapid fire (single target unless traited) /Volley (changed to pierce…), barrage, or meteor shower required thinking "will it hit, should I cast this seeing how I will die if I cast a 2 activation time skill while 15 enemies are closing in, or will I need to wait for recharge because it’s interrupted?

@Tragic Positive , Ascended weapons & armor were also a terrible idea.

The minor stat boost outside of fractals (I.e. infusion slots) has made more player discrimination against those that are new to the game and do not have the resources or time to make a set. It is far worse now for the armor due to the change to damask patches.

It would have been better in general for ascended and legendary items to have infusion slots and no extra stats over exotics (weapons give a ~ 5% boost in damage). This way, the weapons/armor wouldn’t give the equivalent of a sigil of force.

The availability of ascended from raids is a nice change but it only helps PvEers & reinforced the idea that people need ascended. Until ascended is equalized to exotic in WvW , it remains an issue.

LucianDK.8615:

Seems Staff may almost be replacing sword now.

Staff is a better weapon IMO, even more so when sword + Shield both got nerfed

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Refund-for-WvW-Badges

old news

No, having pets gain a stat boost after you finish an exp bar is a terrible idea.

1. Time spent leveling pets
2. Time spent finding pets
3. Need for time to level pet for WvW
4. Balancing stat boosted pets

The change to have yaks be required again for upgrading structures was a good change. People actually defend camps more now.

The issue at hand is the distance required to travel to the camp to defend it.

Pretty much the major camp fights in desert BL are for north camp on the odd occasion a team decides to attack a garrison (earth keep) by trebbing it from north camp.

Remember in alpine borderlands, taking northwest/northeast camp actually meant more than it does now ; enemies taking northern towers put your garrison in danger.

Your CoR change doesn’t address the fact that CoR doesn’t reward skilled play if it’s spammable & max damage at 1200 range. 10 energy is what, 2 seconds without upkeep? If all you do is upkeep the nerfed version of facet of darkness you propose, it’s 5 recharge effectively. It also doesn’t take into account other players bringing Fury.

Facet of Darkness: the fury applied ought to be longer if the upkeep is higher, with a longer pulse time (i.e. 5s fury, 5s pulse or 10s fury, 5s pulse). This makes boon removal actually do something & weakens boon corruption / Shared Empowerment. Just having perma-fury (without having to ball up in fire fields, or use skills with < 100% uptime) along with Assassin’s presence to make use of fury makes a Herald worth bringing already.

What about Roiling Mists? There needs to be a differentiation of facet applied spam fury and other sources, but if you have it “if not upkeeping energy skills” it might just encourage rev stacking. Perhaps +20% critical chance if you hit a blinded or weakened enemy (forcing you to pop the facets), +150 condition damage under fury, gain fury when using legend skill (i.e. shiro/jalis/mallyx), or double fury duration.

Also the existence of Malicious reprisal means it would still be unblockable to an extent.

I don’t think warriors are trash per say. I think the elite specs are just overpowered in comparison to core specs for the most part and it hasn’t kept up the pace. Since Berserker isn’t a massive upgrade over core warrior (other than Gun flame gimmick), that is probably why you feel it is trash.

As far as Post-HoT : Boon corrupt is rampant now when necros were overbuffed. Warriors shouldn’t have been given even more boons for reapers to corrupt. A warrior should be able to engage a similar skilled necro without melting to stacks of boon-corrupted conditions. Also since there’s no stance recharge reduction (only a duration increase), they could lower the stance recharge a bit (15-30%).

For example , to increase warrior sustain with conditions flying everywhere as well as boon corrupts/removals:

• Dogged March (trait), instead of regeneration it could have been given a heal similar to Adrenal Health / Rousing Resilience (i.e. not dependent on boons) … because regeneration boon corrupts to poison , see rapid regen on scrapper
• Eternal Champion (trait) could have fear duration -50% (stability corrupts to fear)
• “Shrug it off” (trait) should be reworked to trigger on 2 or more conditions, remove bleed and/or chill every time, or have the recharge lowered. It is a much weaker trait compared to Empower Allies in this condition heavy meta.

• “Shake it off” could remove bleed or weakness every time , at 20 recharge (traited) removing 1 condition unless you use trooper runes is not a make or break utility skill : this can be slightly weaker than Shrug it off , since Shrug it off isn’t player controlled but it still needs to be worthy of a skill slot
• Savage Instinct (trait) could remove chill every time, on top of the 1 condition , to make Berserk mode thematically more resistant to chills
• Signet of Stamina (cure all conditions , skill) could have reduced base recharge to 35-40 seconds : Signet Mastery is in the Arms line
• Berserker Stance (condition resistance via resistance) could have a slight recharge decrease , especially since it doesn’t break stun : perhaps also block projectiles or immune to chill
• Balanced stance & Last stand (personal stability) could have a recharge decrease to 25-35s
• Mending could have common spammy damage conditions removed (burning/bleeding/poison) on top of the 3 conditions removed
• Dolyak Signet (Personal stability in exchange for 180 toughness) could have reduced base recharge to 45 seconds
• Determined revival: have it so you don’t take any bleed/poison/burn/torment/confusion condition damage for at least 2 seconds
• Thick skin: instead of > 90% , > 75% , or something like -20% damage from 3+ stacks of bleeding while chilled
• Endure Pain: ignore bleeding (maybe)
• Fatal Frenzy : 1.5 or 2 seconds superspeed instead of 3 second swiftness so it can’t be boon corrupted
• Restorative Strength: cure weakness
• Powerful synergy… it’s just wow…what were they thinking…

edit: @ Yashuoa , Empower allies / Phalanx strength are core traits for many warriors. So they do have a power buff for other players. Also they have banner.

Sword auto 3 could use some bleeding : leg specialist is on 5 cooldown

I don’t think strengthening any ranged auto attacks on heavy classes is a good idea, however (see DH longbow , Rev hammer). If traited with burning arrows it’s going to apply burning. It’s a shame burning arrows is in tactics instead of arms.

“The Elite needs to be significantly stronger than the core.”?

Really now? They aren’t strong enough compared to core?

Herald (everything about it: Glint, Hardening Persistence, Shared Empowerment, Facets, etc … Herald traitline is just so much better)
Scrapper (hammer, adaptive armor/rapid regen)
Reaper (chill spam, Cold Shoulder along with GS or Chilling Darkness, shouts)
DH (longbow 5 Hunter’s ward / true shot , Wings of Resolve, trap stacks and Dragon’s Maw)

Druid (Seed of life: Verdant Etching, Ancient Seed, Druidic Clarity)
Berserker (Gun flame , King of Fires pre-nerf, Bloody Roar)
Tempest (survivability wise ; Hardy Conduit , wash the pain away ,elemental bastion , overload air in conjunction with fresh air , pVE-wise: Heat sync and Sand Squall on warhorn)
DD ( Unhindered Combatant , bigger endurance bar)
Chrono (Continuum split ,Chronophantasma & Illusionary Reversion compared to regular mesmer, gravity well, alacrity ….not so much now)

What about the rest of the conditions?
Immobilized
Taunt
Fear
Confusion
Torment
Poison
Slow

Shala.8352:

It’s a L2P issue.
Try ask your thieves teammates to open their eyes. They wont be able to “oneshot” the gunflame warrior, but still to 100-0 him in less than a second. Cuz in fact maybe certain class dont have a one skill kill, but they’re combo are so quick that they can 100-0 you in the same time.
Also for people who are comparing gunflame to COR, they are kinda ignorant, gunflame need a set up, it’s not spammable (means that after 1-2 shots if you have signet of fury, you are a sitting duck), can be reflected, plus warrior dont have 999999 evades and double heals like revenant has, and has to run a NO support build with NO defenses, so gunflame warrior is not a win button, is an all in button. Meaning if you dont like all in gameplay, just dont play full zerker!
Really ele running full zerker was good 3 years ago, to counter gunflame you just have… to survive the gunflame!! After that the warrior wont be able to put any more pressure on you and ele could easily outheal his dmg if they stop going full glasses.
To be fair, i’ve never hit 17k in the server where i’m playing (Aurora Glade), so the problem is not the Gunflame build, but build people are using.

Except warrior has invulns and 20K health even with zerker gear. Even something as simple as dolyak signet or endure pain could be slotted. If you ditch discipline fior arms you can also use Burst precision for 100% crit chance (or simply use sigil of intelligence on the rifle), meaning you don’t need to run as high precision (so you can run pieces of valkyrie / crusader gear.)

CoR is no longer as spammable as before: it’s on 4 cooldown. Despite this, defending gun flame by stating CoR is also broken is rather petty. Roiling Mists , Ferocious Aggression (to an extent) & Cruel Repercussions should still get looked at. True shot in conjunction with DH damage modifiers , could also be looked at a bit but guardian has a rather low health pool (so using berserker is risky; marauder would give less crit damage %) & I’ve never seen it hit over 15K.

RedBaron.6058:

LoL at the OP….a thief complaining about Gunflame…thieves want to run around in zerk gear killing everyone but ask for a nerfing of other classes so they dont die…

Just learn to play OP.

Except he had 2.5k armor and 19K health , which isn’t full glass.

Thieves require much more tactics to kill things than firing a 1200 range gun flame.

In general, thieves and eles (not tempests, since they can overload / use auras for protection) need to be doing the highest damage when they have glassy gear. Otherwise there’s a disconnect between health/armor/mobility risk-reward.

For example, Meteor Shower has a 2 second channel and so does Barrage. DeceiverX’s screenshot sort of proves my point ; his Backstab (and whatever vulnerability he was applying) was absorbed before he could land the 19K hit. Both dagger-dagger and staff daredevil are melee range.

Killshot doesn’t have the burst / berserk mode damage modifiers and has a channel time

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gun_Flame
“Despite the description text, this skill does pierce up to 5 targets, triggering the AoE explosion on each foe struck by the projectile. The 3 target cap applies to this AoE.

It is possible, although rare, for an enemy to be struck multiple times by this skill."

I think this anomaly may be the root cause?

(Berserker) Blood Reaction: 14% precision to ferocity (about 230% – 240% crit with zerker +scholar rune)

(Berserker) Always Angry : +7% damage in berserk mode for 15s

(Berserker) Bloody Roar : +10% in Berserk mode

(Discipline) Destruction of the Empowered: +3% damage per boon on target

(Discipline) Burst Mastery: +7% damage on burst

(Strength) Stick and Move: +10% damage when endurance isn’t full

(Strength) Berserker’s Power : +10-20% damage depending on adrenaline for 10s

Gun flame is between 3200 to 4200 tooltip depending on might stacks , if you have Signet of might

In theory, a zerker with Signet of might would be hitting for at max 8-10K crits on 2600 armor , provided they have 240% crit chance (not counting 10% from Scholar rune); a Sigil of Force (5%) +Scholar runes (10%) plus Always Angry (7%), Stick & Move (10%), Berserker’s Power (20%) would be 15K. I have to test it with guildies in the guild arena and get back to you on the specifics of this.

You have to multiply by 1.18 if you are wearing 2200 armor instead of 2600 armor , multiply by 1.08 if you are wearing 2400 armor , 1.04 if using 2500 armor.

Except that the tactivators in SMC make this idea not that great because whoever owns SMC will likely drop a ton of tactics into it even more so than now.

Cloaking Waters is rather broken and Airship defense is still rather broken (was around 10k damage before).

Attacking a borderland gives the enemy team multiple choices: defend their borderland, counter-attack your borderland, or stay in EBG.

How much armor are you running , I’m guessing you were on thief?

I normally run 2400-2600 these days on backliners because of CoR and Gunflame…

On my necro I tried going 2200 armor , with the 22Kish HP and I believe I ate some 8K+ trueshots and 10K+ CoRs

@ WindWalker

^ Paladin is probably better than Mender’s ; bleeding isn’t the greatest choice when you have no condi damage spec (staff auto has bleed so it doesn’t give an extra 10% damage from warlock). I’d probably run a toughness rune (Herald maybe) as well.

I don’t think the build is fully requiring conditions to work, since sword / staff 3 are power based. Mantra of Pain (sort of) fills in for the auto damage.

A 3K-4K heal on 5 cooldown is still a decent chunk of sustain against condi given that the heal skill and shatters will remove conditions as well.

It’s not really a bunker , more of a team support build IMO, since an elementalist using overload air (protection+stability) with fresh air trait has more mitigation on tap

ArchonWing , thank you for your time in the WvW forum.

It must be difficult to reconcile getting feedback on Desert BLs for the devs and not really seeing fruits of your labor. I think the yak structure upgrade change was a good one, even if the number of yaks is a bit high.

If you’re responsible for the WvW armor salvage I’d like to thank you for that too since I had maybe three to four sets of those.

Where is zhonnika from Jade Quarry, by the way? I saw them post a few times but never anything consequential?

Hardening persistence +Invigorating flow (~300 heal every time you use an energy skill), combined with dwarf legend for the elite +staff . If using glint you have protection from Facet of Chaos and/or One with Nature.

Switching to dwarf legend , Rite of the great dwarf is -50% damage and isn’t a boon, while Vengeful hammers is -20% condition damage , -20% regular damage and +280 armor as an alternative. It’s an alternative to relying on boons that can be corrupted.

Staff provides blind/weakness/daze to mitigate damage, as well as condi clear and a knockback.

Ranger isn’t as strong a backliner as Herald with a hammer. Druid provides more healing though.

Make a herald, use Zojja’s /Berserker’s (Power precision ferocity) gear with a few pieces of Valkyrie or Soldiers’ (power+vitality+toughness), and Devastation traitline (swift termination) + Invocation with Roiling Mists (double fury effectiveness).

Keep up fury. Use CoR (hammer 2) on enemies lined up. Use hammer bolt to auto things and pierce 5 targets.

Chinchilla.1785:

As is common in current NA T1:

YB has about 3 guilds of so called “EU” (11am est – 6pm est ). FoW, Exa, ROLL. This can make up 20, 15, 15 regularly. Then 15-20 mixed guild pugs.
BG has none most of the week (aSc? For the weekend I think). This can make up 15-20 people irregularly throughout the week. 10 mixed guild pugs (only if commander tag is present)
JQ has 1 guild for so called “EU” (usually 3pmest – 7pm est). Kazo. This can make up 20-30 irregularly. 15ish pugs (only if commander tag is present)

Because of this, YB’s better EU coverage…tends to win win the current way of scoring (PPT).

If Kazo with its 20-30 hop maps in hopes of capping things…they run into the “outnumbered” buffed NPCs that gives enough time for YB to hop over, and “voltron” (assuming YB has not already capped everything). At the very least, the “outnumbered” could in theory shift to Kazo, and YB would gain no PPK if that is implemented.

Either way, the “outnumbered” server is hampered by map wide statistical boosts.

Exa is the only EU guild listed there

FoW is a PUG militia force for YB founded before megaservers, with close to 500 in guild. At any given hour we may have 10-20 on but that’s a small subset and many don’t even WvW anymore after Desert BLs. We don’t have a website, we don’t run comps, we don’t force people to rep or WvW, we don’t GvG or force gear sets or builds, we don’t have meetings (t1 people love those it seems), we don’t run in specific timeslots. It’s laissez faire and people like it that way. Many of the old-time keep guards/scouts are in FoW and it’s more of for a guildchat “keep is in trouble” rather than teamchat. It’s a guild made for WvW , not GvG.

ROLL is a NA-time guild and I know this because I run with them often. They don’t run every day and during EU time you might find a few of them total (maybe one or two) depending on how early it is.

You might be thinking of Yaks Bend Inquisition / PAIN which sometimes extends into early EU after running OCX/SEA time. But you’re wrong to think they are EU.

P.S. I used to be on Desolation (EU) before YB.

Watch Mantra of Pain get hit with a cooldown or something , instead of Restorative Mantras.

Restorative Illusions probably should have been hit with a minor cooldown before (or a lower base heal with 0 illusions), but Mantra of Pain is probably going to get it.

ArchonWing.9480:

They should really consider some of the HoT runes and inscriptions to be achieved in this manner. Although I think there should be more ways in general (pvp tracks, wvw vendor, etc) as I don’t really think it’s okay to have powerful stats and runes while proceeding to shut out non-HoT or anyone else that doesn’t want to pve in HoT. It’s unfair to have power creep and then shut off parts of the general population if you ask me.

Of course, the primary form of acquisition should always be the quickest/best route, but honestly the means of distribution are incredibly narrow atm.

I think the most straightforward way atm is to have the WvW armor vendor sell some new stats and runes , for heroics and badges, or memories of battle or whathaveyou.

If they just added HoT stat combinations to the WvW vendor it’d probably be a start. At least you’d have a way to get the exotic version of things.

So you want MORE PvE?