Guild Wars 2

Most zerker warrs in WvW roll around killing people very quickly as a good percentage of solo/pair roamers are PvEers trying to get their map completion done or do the jumping puzzle to get their badges. Zerker x/S+GS warriors are hilariously ineffective against any halfway decent player, if you want that type of playstyle you’re better off rolling a thief and 4 button winning, it’s faster and you can run away if it doesn’t work out.

Also in my personal opinion winning a 1v2+ is less to be said about the quality of the winning player and more to be said about the other two. I’ve taken down as many as 5 (with one rally in the middle mind you) but it wasn’t because I’m that great of a player, it was that the other players weren’t very good.

I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately as a WvW build (partly because people say it can’t be done) which I’ve kindof dubbed the samurai in my head at least.

The longbow, from what I understand actually benefits a little more from direct damage than it does from condi damage (there is also a direct damage tick to the firefield, and then there’s longbow 2 and 3 which can do some pretty decent damage). Offhand sword is purely condition damage and MH sword is kindof stuck in the middle.

Where I’ve gotten so far is you’ll probably need 30 points in arms. 30 Points in discipline may be necessary as well as you’ll be fairly highly dependent on your burst skills. A mix of carrion, rampagers and rabid gear if going the condition route… and probably the poison weapon swap sigil on one of the weapons (perhaps even both, as I don’t think it has a cooldown).

EDIT: Started playing a bit in buildcraft and what I’m currently looking at is something like this. Might not look as pretty on a sheet as some others but what you sacrifice in stats you gain in other ways (I also used exotic instead of ascended as one would assume you’d be running that for a while until you could pick up the gear). You will dish out more types of conditions, making them harder to remove for one (poison and vulnerability as opposed to Cook’s). You will also lose out in some effectiveness with your conditions with the food, but given that signet of stamina is your only source of removal something needs to be done to soften the blow from other folks conditions.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|c.1o.h16.c.1o.h1i|3.1o.h1i|1b.717.1b.717.1b.717.1b.717.1b.7i.1b.7i|1b.63.1b.63.1b.63.1b.63.1b.63.1b.63|a5.u35b.0.0.u6ac|30.d|5y.6a.6g.6f.6m|e

Notes: the first utility is kindof up in the air, it could easily be substituted with endure pain, bulls charge or for great justice

Semantics was not meant to have a negative connotation, I was more pointing out that I myself was beginning to go around in circles. I very much enjoy the number crunching even if it only forms the rough ideas from which I build off of.

I personally am mostly a WvW player… I used to enjoy the sPvP aspect as well, but it’s grown rather stale to me. WvW involves a lot of AoE and incidental damage (and healing for that matter), so even a small % change makes quite a difference.

It is of course a matter of prices to be paid, and I suppose my point through all my longwinded statements is that there is no real ‘magic number’ to be had. Power much like toughness will also experience diminishing returns here if I’m not mistaken. Then there’s precision/crit damage which are flat increases but start behind power in effectiveness and generally require an investment in both stats.

It apparently fits given the amount this community seems to cry.

I’ve been guilty of it myself at times, but do we really need threads with no other purpose?

carabidus.6214:

Please mathematically define “survivability” and the term “life span”? I and several others in this thread have spoken in terms of quantifiable parameters (damage, health, etc.). I am unaware of any GW2 formulae for “survivability” or “life span”.
The essence of my thesis is this: once the value for armor gets above a certain point, the investment in toughness becomes too great for it to be worthwhile insofar as damage reduction. I believe I have clearly shown this by example.

Apologies, I have a tendency to assume people already know what’s going on in my head. Survivability wasn’t meant to be mathematical. Life span referring to how many ‘small hits’ you can take before you die, or more realistically how many seconds you can last before having to do something. This is where the term survivability comes in for me as taking more of these small hits means you’re alive for longer, in essence giving you more time for CD’s/Endurance regeneration/your own reaction time.

Short version: Life span = Amount of time you can take a steady amount of damage.

However, this does not imply that investing in toughness beyond 1800 is not worthwhile. It becomes a judgement call based on the question “at what point does diminishing returns exact too high a cost when adding toughness?”. To me, the “sweet spot” is an armor of 2700. Using the aforementioned assumptions (skill coefficient of 1, 2k power and 1k weapon damage, 18387 base health):
% of health taken per hit with an armor value of 2700 = ~4.0%
% of health taken per hit with an armor value of 3000 = ~3.6%

or you could look at it as taking ~10% less damage per hit by adding 300 toughness.

Semantics, is it still semantics with numbers? Oh well. I don’t think we really reach a “brick wall” at any point. I think we reach a point where armor begins to interfere with what we want to do. I personally ended up with something like 2880/3070 (different weapon set stats) armor on my own WvW build (not including that silly extra armor when health is above 90% trait which I believe adds 100). Works for me, and I do feel the difference between when I switch to my ‘defensive’ set and my offensive one.

Old problem, you’re just late in noticing. Path finding in general in this game has issues, it’s just more noticeable on slower longer range movement skills.

I don’t know if it’s lag or just that position isn’t updated enough for movement skills, but yes it is annoying.

I agree with you to a degree Cook, and that’s pretty much how I decided how many stats I assigned where, through trial and error. The question at hand is less about min/maxing and more about whether or not armor becomes a waste of time after a certain point. It is good, I think, to understand how stuff works to prevent the spread of misinformation (as you talked about in your own thread I believe).

Plus nobodies really getting upset here, and theory crafting is fun while I’m at work :P.

Let’s investigate your example further. Assumptions: a skill coefficient of 1, 2k power and 1k weapon damage, 18387 base health.
Please see the attached graph.
x-axis: armor
y-axis: proportion of health taken as a result of the hit
You are correct in that the number of hits you can sustain increases in a linear fashion as you increase armor. But, there exists diminishing returns when you consider the proportion of health taken per hit (not a linear relationship). A small investment in toughness when your armor is low is profitable. However, even a very large investment in toughness to go from an armor of 2700 to 3000 shows negligible improvement.

I don’t need a picture, I understand what you’re trying to get across, and this is all pretty simple math. Yes, the amount of health you save per armor point is less as you go up. This doesn’t really pertain to survivability though, the bottom line is you are increasing you life span by a fairly linear amount by adding more armor. The problem is you’re only taking the first part of the equation into consideration.

The difference between 2700 and the max armor (which is not 4000 btw) is something like 20% I believe. At least that’s what I remember from punching stuff into buildcraft some time ago.

If you would like to make a long story short unless the wiki’s wrong, damage is:
power * weapon damage * skill coefficient / armor

Lets break this kitten down barney style, just for fun.

Lets just assume for a second we’re using a skill coefficient of one, 2k power and 1k weapon damage as it just makes this easier to follow (and prevents me from having to break out the calculator)

2,000 * 1,000 / 2400 = ~833
2,000 * 1,000 / 2,700 = ~741
2,000 * 1,000 / 3,000 = ~667
2,000 * 1,000 / 3,300 = ~606
2,000 * 1,000 / 4,000 = 500 (Last time I checked 4k armor isn’t even possible)

A warriors base HP is 18,387 (I’m just looking on buildcraft now). So we go HP/Damage to find out how many hits we can take and…

2.1k: 20
2.4k: 23
2.7k: 25
3k: 28
3.3k: 31
4k: 37

Unless I’m mistaken about the damage formula, it seems like the returns aren’t so diminishing. Didn’t intend to do all this, but well, procrastination has a funny way of making me do stuff…

Yes. Hammer is borderline mandatory in most organized WvW groups. It’s also quite nice 1v1 despite what people seem to think (mind you it’s a very different playstyle from GS).

If we’re talking PvP here defektive’s hammer build.

There’s nothing bad about running both shield and warhorn, the problem is from having the same mainhand which deprives you of 3 skills. Throw in an axe or a mace with the shield (probably axe) and you should be solid.

That being said I think you’d be better team support wise with either a hammer or longbow as one of your sets but that’s another debate for another thread.

I should clarify. Soldiers runes with full shout is effective at removing conditions. What you give up however is your entire utility bar and runes set to deal with a single problem.

Add to this that a guardian can do the same thing with a trait (doubly so if they take the runes as well) while still dropping useful boons with each shout and dodge healing almost as much as your shout heals far more often.

I’ve tried hoelbrak and melandru runes. They help with conditions. Haven’t done the food before.

I ultimately went to lyssa runes though. That with signet trait and the Sig of stamina, two full cleanses, but you’re forced to prioritize conditions.

The warhorn trait is worth trying out as well.

Soldier runes are a pretty weak option in my humble opinion even with healing shouts as you are forced to pick utilities that other than FgJ do next to nothing for you or your group.

Long story short though, conditions are going to be a weakness regardless of how you go about it. Unless we’re talking solo roaming here your best option is having supports friends.

EDIT: also note, the reasoning behind lyssa runes was not really as a method to deal with conditions, the additional cleanse is just kind of a bonus.

Banners are not mobile and are therefore useless in just about all forms of PvP. I’ve heard making them like engi kits but honestly that is a problem in itself as it’s too similar.

So, here’s a suggestion. Add a pull banner ability that would be activated by hitting the same utility key used to place it. This would have a max range of course. So you can still pull the banner to yourself if you want to move it or you can drop a banner at a point and leave it to indirectly support a point defender or something of the sort. You could also pull the banner to yourself during a fight in order to use it’s active effects quickly and then drop it.

I would also suggest making banner regen grant it’s own passive effect as opposed to the regen boon, as so many classes already have easy access to it.

Would this make banners viable in sPvP? Probably not but I think something along these lines is necessary to make it possible for them to become viable.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Defektive-s-PvP-Hammer-Build-SkillCap-Edition-1/first

Still viable, completely non-frenzy dependent. Give it a try, it’s fairly mobile and really shines in group fights.

His longbow build (already posted) was also not very frenzy dependent. I personally have a hard time with it as I’ve always got the urge to be in the middle of the fight smashing, and my definition of running away is getting far enough to heal and getting right back into it.

Yeah, warriors could never go from the worst pvp class to unstoppable beasts…

One word. Ele.

Quickness was gamebreaking. It’s not that abilities with it we’re unavoidable, in fact they were mostly just a good way to kill new players and farm glory. This alienated most new players from the pvp aspect of the game along with anybody without an ideal internet connection or reflexes. This is also a nerf to thieves, rangers and mesmers possibly bringing warriors up a bit in the overall scheme of things. While the game might not necessarily be best to be balanced around casual players opinions, they are equally (if not more) important as they make up the majority of the player base.

On the other hand… banners and kick? Seriously? Oh, I forgot rampage. I ran into a warrior running rampage the other day in WvW, I had to stop for a second because I’d forgotten what the skill looked like and was confused… then I proceeded to kill him.

Hopefully, and I say hopefully they were focusing on the engi this patch (it certainly seems they were) and the warrior will be gotten to next patch… I’ve said this how many times now?

At least the CoF farmers will be happy.

“We’re looking into giving Warrior access to ‘boon hate’ (what they described as being a flat % damage boost scaling with the number of boons on the target)”

I think this would actually be an excellent replacement for brawn. 0.1% damage per point and enemy boon could be incredibly punishing to ele’s and guards (the two classes kindof in this indestructible realm that is somehow ok) while not boosting warriors above classes that don’t have 4-9 boons up all the time which coincidentally are the other classes lower on the PvP totem pole.

I generally find I can land 2 attacks under ES stuns, one being 2 the other being 5. ES also applies the stun before damage, so that has 100% crit from my understanding as well. “If it lands/isn’t broken” I’ll definitely give you, and I can see how it’s a lot tougher tPvP wise.

I also wasn’t talking about dropping bloodlust, I was talking about dropping battle which to me is kind of weak on its 20 second CD.

All in all I think your build is just better geared towards tPvP, which as I said I haven’t used a hammer in since pretty early on.

I suppose there’s really only two other things I disagree with… well, I said disagree earlier, but it’s more that I’m curious about them.

1) No mobile strikes. I understand you’ve got a warhorn, but generally I find many opponents can dish out more immobilizes than just a WH can handle.

2) 30 points in discipline for adrenal reserves. Just the way I’ve found it, but generally I build up enough adrenaline to realistically be able to use both my burst skills in a timely manner. Is it just to try to get the passive adrenal trait uptime? If I remember right it doesn’t even leave you with 1 adrenal strike after bursting.

Wow, meant for this to be a short post. To close, I like the stuff you and schwar have been trying to bring here (regardless of how abrasive the latter is). Despite the fact that the warrior is broken in a lot of ways, you two keep finding ways that seem to work around it. As someone who wants to play a warrior in tPvP and not be laughed at for my class choice I appreciate it.

All I can say is I will be trying this. I’ve always found the hammer to be awesome in WvW, and I’m in love with the look, feel and concept of the weapon.

I always found it to be very difficult to use in tPvP though as I wasn’t aware of the sheath weapon cancelling and most of hammer’s abilities are pretty easy to dodge/block/etc. Guess I’m gonna have to figure out something to bind it to…

I disagree with things here and there on your build, I like the shield over the warhorn for example. I’m also a big fan of unsuspecting foe, as the ~100% crit chance allows for a pretty big burst immediately following ES. Utility wise that’s exactly what I use in WvW anyways. Other minor differences from my WvW build, but of course they’re different animals.

I do wonder though, have you considered hydromancy over battle? I find it incredibly handy for both sticking to an opponent and disengaging when needed.

I for one am not really bothered that much by Asura but I do notice a lot more of my attacks land when using one. It is an advantage, I don’t think it’s possible to argue otherwise.

My suggestion for this is more or less a compromise between the stated reasoning
of either side of the argument.

Make an option to display all enemies as human. This could be a single model, also reducing the amount of objects loaded (more of a WwW issue but might as well touch on it). You still get you aesthetics, so even if you want to play an Asura but don’t want to deal with others hard to read animations you don’t have to deal with it. I would like to hear an argument against this.

Tell your squishies to not to try to facetank hundred blades… or warriors in general for that matter. Take a stunbreak, press your dodge button. If you’re getting instagibbed by warriors woe unto you should you encounter thieves…

tPvP wise? Yeah, playing a warrior is a good way to handicap yourself. That being said, I generally do just fine at my level which is generally just frees.

WwW wise? I feel like I contribute on the front lines as the ‘other half’ of a guard. My favorite thing to do as of late is ES groups trying to portal, also dishng out damage as ele’s AOE their unfortunate disabled kitten I can solo defend camps within reason without siege, escort yak’s with perma swiftness solo (not even specced into boon duration, provide a great deal of delay in keep defence… All in all a very good class here.

In PvE? Warriors are totally op here.

I think the big difference for warriors in WwW vs PvP is the ability to distribute stats. Warriors don’t really fit any of the roles in PvP either, but this is more of a problem with the current game mode than with warriors.

Some faster animations, bug fixes and some nonsensical skills replaced and we’d be on par with the unbroken classes of the game if you ask me.

It depends on what you want to do. I personally run a very similar build to lt Google with p/t/v armor and berserkers trinkets. Sword/shield with p/v/t and berserkers hammer. 3k tough with one set, and maintaining some pretty serious damage. I go with 10 points in arms for unsuspecting foe, but have often mentally debated picking up leg specialist instead. I also run spiked armor over EP as I don’t like anything on a 90 second cooldown. Oh, and embrace the pain in defence as well, Earthquake every 10 seconds in any group fight just about.

Utilities I go balanced stance, signet of stamina, signet of rage… Third one depends on what I’m doing and the size of my group. Frenzy/bulls charge/tactics banner/FGJ are solid choices, bulls charge and FGJ are good for almost every situation though.

I think the most important part of any offensive hammer build is 20 points in defence for the hammer trait and 20 points in discipline for mobile strikes with a mobility heavy secondary weapon set.

my proposal that will probably be ignored:
Increases adrenaline stores (A full 30 points will grant you 2-3 additional bars). I think this would add a lot more variation and choice for warriors and make a lot of currently useless skills a lot more interesting.

Mind you the additional bars wouldn’t mean additional benefits for holding on to your adrenaline.

I think the primary problem is simply that protection is too strong of a buff. A 33% reduction in damage is about the same as adding 1,000 armor in most cases.

Not having it, and being a class that’s only really at maximum effectiveness in melee, is crippling. I would personally suggest bringing protection down to 15-20% and nerfing base crit damage as a whole down to 125% to deal with the overkill burstyness of some classes (including warrs).

Gotta love Golrdaer’s builds, any build of my own is at least partially based on his… and the spartan build is the only thing I generally bring to a tourny.

1) Yes, warriors are loads of fun in WvW… valuable? Well, I feel like I contribute to “breaking” the opposing line and also providing quite a bit of delay in siege defence.
2) I’m not huge on main hand mace… but that may just be me. Personally I think if you want to dish out a lot of CC the hammer is really where it’s at WvW wise just because of the AoE of earthshaker (buggy as it is).
3) Lyssa are great, but yeah, they’re freakin’ expensive. I personally am currently running Hoelbrak, Melandru however sound equally attractive. Vampirism and ogre also seem like viable options (or something like 4 Vamp, 2 Hoelbrak/Ogre?). Runes are as a whole highly debatable IMO.
4) At the moment I’m running soldiers armor with berserker jewlery… then soldiers for my sword/shield and berserker’s for the hammer. For those who would argue knight’s: while I agree that vit is less important than precision, it’s more usefull in WvW due to the amount of healing you’ll receive from team mates and power>precision in my mind
5) Mesmers are currently perhaps the most powerful class WvW wise (looking at both their team contribution inside and outside of combat and 1v1 ability). Fortunately their shatter exploit is apparently fixed now so we’ll see how the chips fall following this.

Honestly I just don’t see shouts as viable in sPvP, WvW perhaps on very tanky builds but even then I find myself unwilling to drop any trait points into them and even less willing to equip more than maybe one. This is partly due to the fact that every minor trait in tactics is entirely useless and I generally find vitality to be the least useful stat for warriors to grab.

If it’s just cripples that are a problem however, keep in mind that you have your own cripples so you can slow them down to your pace, and WW is remarkably effective while crippled. Signet of Stamina is also a nice little way to get rid of overwhelming conditions, and if you drop Inspiring Shouts you can pick up signet mastery and have it and swiftness available far more often.

Didn’t sound very jerky to me, so no need to apologize. It sounded like you had an idea for a hammer build, or perhaps knew of one that worked so I thought you may have one of your own to share.

I’m always open to theorycrafting, and will test just about anything that I come across if it can be justified by some line of thought. So far I’ve been quite happy with my hammer build’s performance in sPvP, but I still haven’t found the ‘sweet spot’ for the WvW version.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-ss-FwFCVKFQ0e4ZL-60N4oLVP0d4kG;5TJ-J;143B49;259-I;046;1sV2DsV2D5BB <-for the original poster if interested, for the rifle version you’d drop rending strikes for crack shot and mobile strikes for… something else, dunno, been giving thought to placing 10 points from discipline somewhere else, but it’s hard to give up fast hands. Mobile strikes loses a lot of usefulness with only one movement skill (unless you opt out of frenzy, which I’d recommend for larger fights and go to bulls charge).

@Veritas: I’ve found in WvW I’m using the rifle the majority of the time, I realize the 300 condition damage may not be all that useful for the hammer, but I find the traits for the arms tree to be significantly better than anything you can find elsewhere.

10% increase to bleeding foes, +50% crit chance against stunned foes, quickness at 25% health. I’m not a hardcore number cruncher but I’d say 10% increase in damage is equal to quite a bit of power.

As for the crit proced sigils this is simply untrue thanks to frenzy and the fact that you’ll be between 70-100% crit chance depending on the state of your opponenet. That being said you of course wouldn’t be using frenzy as part of a zerg if that’s your thing in WvW, but the point stands on the fact that once you’ve entered melee you’ll likely be able to stun/strike multiple opponents, which gives you a 30% chance per opponent of greatly increasing your damage.

No build is perfect of course, and I’d gladly hear your ideas on a hammer build, I’m always looking to improve mine… I may be better off against skilled players with axe/mace, but the hammers just effin cool in my book.

hammers don’t benefit that much from the strength tree imo, you’re better off investing in arms/defence/discipline imo. I run 0/30/20/0/20 for both my WvW (hammer/rifle) and PvP (hammer/sword+shield) and I’m quite bursty… don’t expect me to burst down a guard, but just about everything else is fair game.

If you’re looking to be more supportish the tactics tree is where you want to go, though I’ve found there’s an overabundance of these sorts in WvW.

Oh, right, and I’d recommend a sigil of fire or lightning on the hammer if you go the crit route.

QSpec.4298:

It seems to me that Warriors are now facing the same issue thieves were facing at launch.

They are borderline unbuffable. 100Bs is a damn good skill. It is arguably too good given its CD, damage, etc. Any buffs to a Warriors survivability or damage elsewhere will just make the Warrior OP. What will likely have to happen is the Warrior will need to take some small nerfs to the 100B build and in compensation receive some buffs to other builds.

The thieves had the same problem with HSS and later BS. They are now receiving some small benefits for those nerfs with an attempt to make pistol more viable.

I would gladly eat a HB nerf for viability. HB requires far too much set up to be worth it, making it a situational at best. I could honestly count the times HB has registered as the highest damaging skill when I’ve been killed on one hand if you chopped some fingers off it.

I was really excited about this patch when I heard about the fast hands fix… then I read the rest of it.

Seems like thieves and mesmers got a buff of all things, warriors got some bug fixes… everything else seemed kind of inconsequential. Seems like the classes that were dominating before will continue to dominate.

Honestly though, will somebody buff rangers? I might play a warrior, but it’s bad enough to where I feel sorry for them :P

Dual.8953:

Stealth already has a 3 second cooldown called revealed which makes them immune to stealth for 3 seconds when they end stealth early.

I’m aware of this bit, but to me at least it’s a bit off since if they don’t end it early they can just restealth, and restealth until they’ve got an opportunity no? And 3 seconds is kindof weak considering all the skills I can use to 1) close the gap to where ever they’re at and 2) prevent them from stealthing again have much longer cooldowns. So effectively I’ve got 2 shots maximum to end the fight (more likely 1) while the thief has many.

Not to mention all the ways to stop the thief from stealthing again have hard counters. Maybe dagger 5 is the issue here? I might have less of a problem if all the skills had a cooldown, but one that’s initiative based seems off.

so being able to basically permanently stealth (for far longer than it takes for a thief to take down an opponent) isn’t overpowered? My main annoyance with it really is the fact that in the end they’ll simply stealth and run away if losing, otherwise it’s not as bad as people make it out to be… if I have to fight a thief once I usually win, if I have to fight them ten times one of those times I’m going to make a mistake.

now I don’t think thieves are indestructible like some, but one must admit that the stealth mechanic is a little ridiculous… the basic problem is simply it’s far to easy to play a thief, where as the counters all rely heavily on luck, and the thief being of low skill level. Honestly, you’re invisible and have one of the best bursts in the game, if you can’t win there’s something wrong with you… I don’t think thieves need a heavy nerf, but more a slight adjustment to the stealth mechanic… perhaps a cooldown equal to 1.5-2x the length of stealth? Or a reveal on hit perhaps?

I don’t entirely understand what’s a bug with stealth and what’s intended myself, I don’t play a thief in pvp so my understanding of it pretty much ends with how I deal with it…

pretty much you need a good amount of CC and a good burst (enough to take them down in however long you can stun/knockdown them for). If not you need a way to mitigate the damage until they’ve used up their stealth and their initiative is low. Either that or a mixture of the two (which is probably what you’re going to need to do since stun→burst is only going to work if they suck). Expect to do much swinging at the air and such as well.

Only build I’ve had success against them with is my sword+shield/hammer (I play a warrior btw), everything else has pretty much failed miserably.

but yeah, thieves are overpowered, maybe someday it’ll get fixed but I’m not exactly holding my breath. It’s pretty much gone thief→mesmer→wars/guards→everybody else 1vs1 wise as long as I’ve been playing.

Edelweiss.9815:

Yeah, too bad nobody in tPvP or sPvP really uses any of those as a primary weapon… but I’m sure they’re just all wrong.

I actually see a lot of people using these weapons, axe/mace seems to be a very popular (and quite effective) combination, eviscerate paired with a 2 second stun? I myself love the hammer with a sword/shield or mace. Being able to stun multiple opponents for as much as 6 seconds? That’s an eternity in any type of PvP.

I’m hardly a competitive tournament player or anything of the sort, mostly sticking to quick join games with at most 1 or 2 friends and WvW.

I don’t believe all GS warriors are inexperienced, but I do believe that the vast majority of inexperienced players rock a GS because it’s easy to use and be marginally effective (and can be very effective in the hands of a skilled player). This seems to me to be a fairly logical explanation as to why the majority of warriors you see are GS users.

Is it just me or do warrior players complain a lot? Quite frankly I find few classes that I have much trouble with. Hell, me and a guard took a group of 5 in WvW a few days ago, not unskilled ones either as there were multiple dead friendlies around them when we got there.

Thieves and mesmers are tough, but they’re hardly unbeatable. Generally in these fights I find the winner to be whoever got the jump on the other. As long as you have gap closing, condition removal, stun breaks and CC you’ve got a fighting chance against any class imo. Maybe things are different in competitive tourny play, which I wonder how many players constantly complaining participate in. If anything I want to see classes like ele’s get buffed up a bit so I can constantly have fights that challenge me the way thieves/mesmers do.

On the original topic I think HB most definitely should be a burst skill, with appropriate damage scaling of other abilities of course (hell, if it was a burst skill it probably wouldn’t have to root you for the sake of balance either).

Well, I can’t really comment on the axe or longbow, as I don’t use either weapon in any of my builds.

Arcing slice is definitely completely useless.

I agree on earthshaker, easily the best burst skill… it’s absolutely essential to my sPvP build, nothing bad to say about it. I don’t find the hammer to have that many shortcomings… especially against glass cannons, which seems to be 90% of what you find in PvP as most of the time they’re stun/knocked down until they’re dead.

skullcrack I find moderately useful, good if you can ever find a 1vs1 fight in any type of PvP but I find these situations few and far between, and just as good as earthshaker when dealing with boss type enemies PvE wise if it’s just one boss in the fight (a little more useful with the shorter cooldowns of mace skills I think actually, and you can use it while having a shield)

killshot does what rifles do, does damage to one thing.

Flurry I guess is useful for GS warriors in PvP to set up HB? I don’t really know, I find that any competent player can usually wreck a GS warrior, so while I use it in PvE I haven’t used it much in PvP.

All in all I don’t find burst abilities useless, I do however find most of them dreadfully boring.

Alright, from what I can tell there’s no way to test the ping on a server unless you’re on that server. I work overseas for months at a time and bought this game the last time I was home. Now I’m back where I work, which is much closer to Europe than it is to North America and experience pretty serious latency.

So my question is is there any way to test whether or not switching to a European server will help at all? From what I understand switching servers costs gems, or put more simply, money and I would prefer not to pay and find out that it was no help at all/didn’t help enough.