Guild Wars 2

I really like Anti-toxin for Malyx.

The -Condi duration is super helpful for all the self condis you apply as well as what everyone else applies on you. It gives a nice -24% amount which is enough to bring all your self condis below the Demonic Resistance duration. This means you can use the Leap with really no negative side effects.

In addition, you’re constantly applying Torment to yourself with the Elite meaning you’ll always get the net boost of the 5 might stacks on incoming Torment/Poison (10s duration, 20s cool down allowing us to at least tap our Elite for might). This makes the runes effectively 183 Condi damage plus the 5 Might stacks (50% up time) at 258 Condi damage on average.

(second vid)

Here’s a later vid from that same evening during NA Prime time. Fights were erratic this week due to YB coming up and certain groups wanting 2v1s on all servers. By this point in game play I had gotten better with the Facet management, but still wasn’t great at it yet. I also, after this evening’s fights, came to the realization that Mace/Axe with Staff was just impractical given the number of stand off engagements that occur (IE: Unable to push a choke) which lead to my ultimate Hammer/Staff decision.

From what I can tell:

You get 20 from doing daily map bonus if you get 10 event credit. Given that this is once per day, and there’s effectively 3 more days of time, that means you can have a total of +180 from map bonuses if each map is done once per day.

You also get 15 if you go over 20 event credit repeatable. You only get 10 if you are below 20 in the teens. In order to make up the additional 270 blooms you will need at least 18 hours of events @ 15/hr repeatable on top of the daily bonuses. At 10/hr you will need 27 hours of event time. You can shave 4/6 hours off each one depending if you got today’s which is still a crazy 14/21 hours needed.

These times wouldn’t be bad, but that’s 7-11 hours of no xp, loot or karma during the events which is just ridiculous for a single one of the high end rewards.

Just to clarify it’s only 72 events in 96 hours. It’s only 3 events every 4 hours because of the break time.

No matter what the system someone is getting screwed or someone is taking advantage.

If you make it so you have to be there at vine destruction, someone who dies/dcs/etc will lose out. If you make it so long as you tag things and get credit (killing 5 mobs = guaranteed gold) someone will game the system and split farm events.

So the long story short is there was some drama in T1, some guilds tried to push BG to T2, wasn’t working so they moved to T2 to try to push another server up and disrupt everything. Except ANet then locked the server transfers effectively. This basically fully wrecked T2 as the guilds that moved around are fairly renown for using “disreputable” tactics which drove a lot of guilds off all the T2 servers (YB, SOS, and FA). Most of those groups moved down to T3 where they can do more GvG style action. This has left 4 T1 servers effectively bringing back the scenario where T1 is full of action each week and T2 is just a free week for the T1 server that goes down.

Really be surprised if there were 20k single hits with CORuin and not multi-hits such as people running away and getting blapped with 2 hits or that number is based on hitting multiple people. Most I’ve hit for in WvW with all things going for it was around 9k (individual target) at max distance with 223% crit damage.

Well the ideas behind Mace largely were the abundance of Fire Field and the triple blast finisher and not really the damage. The problem with Echoing Eruption however is that it’s a leap followed up by (blast)(blast)(blast) in that order and area where they blast so you often times have to back up super far to land 1-2 blast finishers in the area you want which just isn’t practical.

3 Way battles are the only things that get me. I have a lot of footage I can’t really show because it’s honestly pretty bad with how WvW is setup when all 3 factions are fighting in the same area. I have a lot of fights where I do poorly not because of character or ability but simply because abilities don’t trigger. I watched me spam my heal skills for like 30 seconds one fight and eventually just fell over dead because nothing worked.

All good man. Elementalist is a mess as far as classes go. They already got the lowest armor/HP of any class. The heals they do are all tiny and small. The bulk of their survivability is all boons. If they tug on one thread the whole thing collapses like we saw for a very long time with the Elementalist. I’ve actually been very surprised how little boon hate has been added with the expansion to help counter the class and others like it so focused on boons. That said everyone has interests what they want for each class as PvEers want a Specialization to be good for them, SPvPers good for them and WvWers good for them and Tempest was definitely no exception.

(I also have a second video coming of later this night when I get time to add all the video which will be of NA Prime Time)

I spent most of this weekend on Herald in WvW. My initial build I took was this but over time a few things changed to adapt better to the WvW environment of what was useful and what wasn’t. This was my first time ever on front line (and it shows) and it was pretty early in the morning so my game play wasn’t the best to start out with. By Sunday evening I had most of the game play worked out but unfortunately forgot to record.

Glint
My initial, pleasant, surprise at Glint was that we get +5 energy regen at all times making Facets fairly maintainable. This means the game play largely becomes about energy management. By the end I had come up with little Facet combinations. So for example traveling I would use Nature/Light/Elements. Upon engagement I would drop Elements and replace this with Darnkess, firing off Nature upon engagement (once my allies have done stability) to get the +2 regen back. Facet of Strength and Chaos were mostly for their active effects, both very strong AOE moves. Once in a great while I would keep those active, such as Strength when PvDooring and one time I even stacked a ton of protection before we pushed through a choke.

My initial reaction, like others, is that wow Facets are OP cause most of them give +Duration stacking on boons which can lead to certain boons being on forever or stacked so high they are effectively on forever (because if someone else adds Fury on top of infinite Fury it just increases). However honestly the energy management can be pretty horrible at times and trying to fight on 1 energy regen can be really difficult the longer you go until you have to swap out. While the Fury duration will often times carry between a swap and back to Glint, any kind of boon strip in that period will make you start over from scratch.

Biggest frustration with Glint was mostly actives being cancelled due to CC’s and cast times. Re-watching video footage I see countless times where I go to activate Chaos only to be left with Facet of Chaos on because Chaotic Release got interrupted. One point in the video above I run out of energy because of it, so it can be frustrating.

Jalis
I originally thought Jalis wouldn’t be very good but after putting my hands on it, it isn’t too bad. Forced Engagement is useless in this setting. It’s an Elite cost skill without an Elite effect. Inspiring Reinforcements has a second life not only as a damage field (you can see I drop it on a few downs) but also with Enhanced Bulwark it gains a second life as a source of Stability again that isn’t completely useless for WvW. I use Vengeful Hammers a few times as well for some additional Cleave as well as reducing the amount of damage taken which was pretty noticeable. The new cast times on Rite is also good enough and you can see I cast it a few times even under pressure which is perfect.

Weapons
Staff I felt is the natural front line weapon. With a Whirl Finisher Auto attack, a 2 second block, a heal/cleanse/blast for refreshes, and of course a evade charge allowing us to leap into combat with the Commander it’s just the obvious choice. With Burst of Strength and Chaotic Release supplanting it’s AOE strength I felt my damage was “ok” but not the best with Staff.

I initially tried Mace with Shield. While the Mace is fairly solid with both a Fire Field and a Blast Finisher (both useful) the Shield is just non-functional. Envoy of Exub heal, while stronger than the Staff heal, lacks a Blast Finisher and 2 seconds of Protection just isn’t useful in this setting (as it’s usually designed to protect against the next hit only with something that low duration). Crystal Hibernation is just a non-starter. In WvW mobility is life and rooting yourself in place for any duration of time just won’t work out.

After Shield I tried Axe, and it worked great when we were roaming about. Axe let me catch up to people very quickly when running them down and even had a second disruption with Temporal Rift. The problem that continued however was a lack of Range in this setup. Searing and Echoing on the Mace only go so far and many cases in WvW you are forced to stop and ranged. Guardians tend to use their staff during this and we have no real answer to that with Mace/Axe + Staff.

Finally I said screw it and went Hammer + Staff and honestly it was pretty fantastic. You can use most of the Hammer abilities with great effectiveness on the front line. CORuin is like a Shot Gun blast. You also have Phase Smash for clearing Necro Marks. Field of the Mists works amazingly well for absorbing incoming projectiles in a ranged stand off and Drop the Hammer catches so many people on the run. It also gives you 2 blast finishers for blasting Water on a refresh.

Traits
I did switch a few by the end. I had spec’d out of Fierce Infusion for Cleansing Channel but honestly I am going to be doing Cruel Repercussion. The number of times I see CORuin blocked when used on a Zerg means that next time I cast it the thing is going to do +50% damage which will be insane (detarget people so you don’t auto attack).

Swift Gale seemed nice, but honestly playing with Radiant Revival really saved the Commander’s bacon a few times later this last weekend from pick teams trying to focus them down. I haven’t noticed the Super Speed on stun break yet so hard to justify it.

Summary
Over all, by far my favorite build on the Revenant so far. Not much more to say, had a blast.

Eggshells.1748:

Kodiak.3281:

Working on sorting through my footage of Jalis/Glint herald front line WvW.

Looking forward to seeing it!

There ya go. Pretty raw. That was my first day ever on front line on Saturday was pretty hectic. Most of the video is on my first version of the build and by Sunday evening I had the build and play style (energy management especially) improved and in a pretty good spot.

Probably throw out my summary sometime tomorrow.

Keeps will now mark enemy players within their perimeter, for the first 5 minutes, after being flipped.

RIP Mesmers/Thieves.

I pretty much see it only introduced for raid healing content. In any other setting it’s simply too slow.

Working on sorting through my footage of Jalis/Glint herald front line WvW.

This is really an issue with Legend and trait choices. Shiro/Glint is going to be bad at tackling conditions. In a large setting your only real hope is other condi removal of nearby allies (warrior shouts, guardians, elementalists, etc) and rely on -Condi duration (very easy to get -60%).

I mean you took pretty much full Dire gear and are calling the Revenant OP because you sat there in full Toughness/Vitality gear and were able to tank damage against a bunch of WvW randoms?

Show a video of this same build in SPvP dominating 1/2vX and then we’ll talk about whether or not something is “OP” rather than simply functional.

Jski.6180:

Ele has 2 aoe both are 10 stack stabs the strongest stab effect in the game.
All of gurd’s stab are very low stack they may go off more often but what makes gurd as a class stay in the front line is becuse there stab is aoe. For tempest to stay in front line you simply put them with gurds or other front line.

If auras had stab on them no one would ever get hard cc.

Actually it’s the exact opposite problem. It’s lots of Stability stacks, but super long cool down making it effectively worthless after being used. The best stab in the game is 3-5 stacks for 3-5 seconds with around a 30 second cool down. Also it’s entirely self, not AOE.

You say invite them to a Guardian party without justifying why you would put a Tempest in a party with limited slots with Guardians as I already said above. What unique thing does the Tempest bring to the party that’s actually useful?

Jski.6180:

The base ele class has a lot of stab if you add much more tempest will have the most stab in the game. I have a feeling that why they went with stun braking and not stab. Now adding in more brake bars maybe the trick.

What are you even talking about?

The only Stability move the Elementalist has wide access to is Armor of Earth which is 6 seconds of stability every 75 (60) seconds. The only other options for Stability are in Earth, a line that has largely gone defunct now because the other options are far more compelling in Fire/Air/Water/Arcana, and again it’s more Armor of Earth on proc and a single stack of Stability on attunement to Earth.

If you want Elementalists to be able to function on the front line this means they’re entirely reliant on Guardians who get multiple stacks of Stability on lower cool downs (Indomitable Courage, Stand your Ground). Except you have 5 slots in a front line party. You’re going to have to take 2 Guardians because that’s the minimum amount of stability to stay functional in WvW front line. You’re also going to throw in Warriors as well. This leaves 1 or 2 slots for other classes and quite honestly Necros have been getting them and Heralds are likely to be very competitive for these slots as well actually having proper stats and better boon additions for a front line group.

Tempest by comparison brings nothing short of a focus on Auras. Except Auras are very short duration and their effects are largely useless in the grand scheme of things. The only good part is they bring boons with Auras, such as Zephyr’s Boon, however the benefits of this are largely replaced now by Heralds which have near permanent Fury up time for a group in addition to Swiftness.

The only solution here is to allow Auras to carry Stability to your allies. This would allow a Tempest to take the place of a Guardian in a front line party as a secondary source of stability. Without it, they really have no place and continue to be non-functional on the front line as there’s simply better choices.

The CD never changed just a heads up, but after the intial beta all Hammer skills got increased in terms of damage because they were meant to be slow but powerful. The damage is good, but that’s really where the bulk of the weapons’ damage comes from as Phase Smash and the other skills are quite low. If they were going to decrease CORuin they would want to increase the others to compensate.

I would agree with you out of combat if we were up to 100 energy that +5 would be too much out of combat but by limiting us to 50 that ultimately hard caps how much regen we have in combat once combat is engaged. If you’re running Nature/Light/Darkness and engage you basically got 50 energy before you are either forced to disengage or run out of energy and are sitting there wondering why your skills won’t work (it happened to me last night once haha).

I hate typing coalescence haha! The CORuin question actually can be broken down because the amount of time you add to Boons ultimately should add to performance. For example the -2 regen on Fury giving permanent Fury has a net effect of increasing X DPS. If that DPS number is vastly lower than the damage of CORuin you’re better spamming CORuin than keeping Fury up for your team. The thing is almost no one is going to bother calculating what that DPS increase (certainly not me!) is but it does exist.

That said, we should bring up the cast time! The cast time is important because you regen for the 3/4 of a second it ticks which means the real energy/second of CORuin is 1.81 which means you would have to have -4 Energy to notice energy go down because the cast time allows for that extra smidge of time to regen. The point here really, however, was to show that skills do have an effect energy cost to keep spamming no different than Facets (just generally lower). While it won’t be impossible to conservatively use weapon skills with Facets going, the impact will be felt when you don’t have a full pool of energy due to a lack of energy regen.

CORuin also doesn’t hit as many times over a large area and doesn’t do the 24 impacts of AOE that Ice Storm (Ice Bow 4) does which is what makes it so broken. In fact your average target will get hit once with it. That said the “wave” skills that pulse multiple AOE hits appear to be all the rage in HOT and many classes are getting them as well.

The argument regarding the limitations of the skill was not meant to invalidate how strong it is but simply to show there are times, as you say with most skills, it is incredibly situational. There are many Z axis bumps in WvW. Even a clear ramp can be enough to block how far CORuin goes depending on where you’re at with the ramp. The point here was to show that it isn’t all powerful and does have limitations, especially in WvW. Is catching the dream CORuin 15 hits amazing? Sure, got a few myself. But it’s hardly an every use scenario due to these limiting factors.

nearlight.3064:

Also, I think that giving chaotic release super speed to yourself would help tremendously with disengage.

Doesn’t work on yourself. Super speed only is given to allies not yourself.

As to the question, Shiro is the answer which is why Shiro/Malyx was so popular for smaller time engagements.

I’ve also spent majority of BWE fighting in 50v50 blob setting in WvW as well as some smaller scale WvW as well.

Facets are definitely strong, but there’s already a heft cost. The biggest cost is the energy regen which can be devastating if not managed properly. Even sitting with Nature and Darkness on you’re left with 1 energy regen. Some of the more costly moves, such as Surge of the Mists take huge chunks of that 50 energy you got and it’s very slow to replenish at 1 regen.

Every bit of Energy has to be viewed as potential DPS output. For example you brought up the damage of CORuin. Yea it’s great, but it’s also 2.5 energy a second to keep chain casting it. Is the 2.5 energy a second on CORuin greater than the net benefit of +50% boon duration for your party? Even if the answer is “No” then you’ve had to make a choice between the ability to use your weapon skills and energy upkeep.

Now as for CORuin…it does do a lot of damage, and even more if you were on a more offensive build. The main reason it does so much damage is because it’s a triple hit “wave” skill where it does 3 AOE’s of damage each capable of hitting 5 people. This is similar to current effects like Ice Bow 4 (where each bolt can hit 5), Meteor Shower and otherwise. I actually nearly one shot a guy with it myself this weekend cause he was on the line and running away and ate 2 hits of a single Ruin.

That said, there’s a number of disadvantages. As it travels along the ground, it is very broken with Z axis shifts in the terrain. It also suffers from a mis-sized hit box which it can visibly look like it hits but it won’t actually hit (which happens at the end of the effect). Both of these can make it very difficult to land outside of “shot gun” style scenarios where you’re riding on the front and using it right into an enemy as you engage them.

I never really thought the damage was out of line before they buffed it but it has been abundantly clear that most of the changes they’ve been making have been with SPvP and PvE in mind and not WvW. Things like the Inspiring Reinforcements (which Enhanced Bulwark saved for us, but made useless for everyone else) being so ineffective was clearly done for those areas where standing in the field was 100% viable.

Sylent.3165:

I have attached 2 images, the first one is where i’m targeted, the 2nd one shows I am not landing where I am supposed to be landing causing me to miss my targets often. Anyone else having this issue?

No this is a carry over bug as mentioned before in my thread last BWE.

Phase Smash and targeting work like this:

Phase Smash targeting will go out to 1200m range measured from you to the target. This doesn’t take into account travel distance or otherwise but rather a straight and hard 1200m distance. So if you were going to do Drop the Hammer there, it would hit the Deer.

Phase Smash mechanically speaking actually leaps you there, and after you travel X distance it pulls you back. You are actually, physically traveling with Phase Smash. This means you can use it to proc fields, for example Necromancer Marks, which will activate as you pass over them. But once you travel a total of 1200m you snap back.

So if the Z axis is weird, and you can see in your screen shots there’s a lot of slants and hills there, you won’t actually reach your destination. You can replicate this anywhere by standing on a bridge/ledge (such as in southern LA) and attempting to phase smash anywhere below you. You will travel forward, then snap back no where coming close to where you targeted because you physical don’t travel down there.

This works both directions. For example standing on the eastern side of LA Bridge you can target halfway to the middle at 1200m. However because you’re traveling “up” the Z axis you actually smash somewhere before the bridge. I believe this is what is happening to you based on the screen shot.

In Solo/Roam and PvP play it’s pretty clear that Malyx is going to take the front stage as our go-to build because it’s the only one that can deal with Conditions. Couple that with Shiro having the most reliable methods for stun break and in combat mobility pretty much means that you’re going to see Shiro/Malyx on a Corruption/Retribution/??? build as standard for that level of play.

In other game modes, large scale WvW and PvE, conditions don’t play as much of a part or are dealt with a large amount of AOE condition removal.

Until you can move with Crystal Hibernation and Soft CC doesn’t affect break bar then Shield is pretty much garbage. The only good use I’ve even heard for it was the post above talking about it being passive armor for your offhand. Even then I’d still rather have Axe for the on demand CC (to overload break bars on encounters) and the ability to dodge out/in as needed on fights with any kind of mobility.

Rest of Herald is pretty great though. Shield is a huge disappointment not worth using in just about every setting.

You are not the only one. Herald has it’s place and it’s role, but we’ll have to see in about 4-10 mins how the mechanics actually work to determine it’s usefuless.

I will say that the “Ooo shiny amazing auras we’re super amazing!” reaction is way off base. The energy cost on upkeep is very rough in terms of what it does to your DPS. Each energy has to be seen as potential DPS per energy band the auras from that perspective are just awful. There’s no way AOE Might, even 10 stacks across 5 people, is going to be worth doing a Coalescence of Ruin that has a potential of 25000+ damage in a single move for same energy.

It still has it’s place in the game and it’s a good variation on the base Revenant but it’s not like Chronomancer where it’s just a straight upgrade to the base class.

I also agree to restrict them entirely to EOTM and only 60+.

The problem is very simple: Elementalist is an all or nothing class.

We start out with some of the lowest armor and health in the game. We also lack mobility and escape mechanics like a Thief or Mesmer. This is because we’re reliant on Boons and very small heals (stacked on top of each other are a lot of sustain) to sustain through damage. The same thing that gives us access to Boons also becomes a capable platform for boosting our damage through Might and Fury as well.

If they dismantle the Boons (like they tried with Elemental Attunement) then basically you’re left with a low/medium damage class with not enough survivability to be viable. At most they can really do here is keep shorter duration, longer cool down style effects where for X seconds you’re really strong then Y seconds you’re really weak.

They’ve attempted to dismantle the healing over the years (since the start of the game), but in the end how far can you really nerf a few heals that only heal for 1000 when HP pools are 10-20k. The net result is the same, the boons aren’t enough to survive and elementalist goes down again.

The most logical route of action is to work on ways that allow classes to counter the Elementalist. Necromancers are a great example often brought up for boon strip, but unfortunately that’s about all they’re good for and against most other match ups they entirely suffer. My prediction is it’s going to be on the new Revenant Class to help out with the Elementalist situation. Malyx, in addition to being Condition focused, also is very boon strip heavy with passive traits that strip boons as well as fairly spammable active (35 energy, or every 7s) boon strip as well. The class still (so far) has the werewithal to do fairly good against other classes as well so should be interesting to see.

The new mechanic, in addition to having 150 total Endurance (meaning you getting “3 dodges before” is now 4) you also can change the mechanics of your dodge to be even more offensive or defensive making your Dodge move flat out superior to any other class’ in the game.

Now if you wanna really split hairs on what “mechanic” means that’s fine but that’s there’s plenty of other classes’ that got what was tantamount to improvements to existing things (Facet of Nature is basically just AOE +Boon duration and boons on use, Virtues are the same concept just doing different things, etc).

Also I think the stuff datamined is pretty cool. Might play a thief more with it.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

I don’t understand everyones admiration for the pact commander line, it seems nice if you plan to help other players, but i really do not understand where the fandom for the auto loot is coming from, is pushing F every now and then (if you haven’t rebound it) really that hard? I imagine if i had Auto loot, i’d still be smacking F out of habit.

But for me, it’s boosting to 80, getting any excess hero points if needed, then going straight for the new HoT content.

There’s also the karma vendor with potentially some great stuff on there (presumably some things that aren’t available anymore, like they mention the Human God backpacks). But yes the auto loot is very valuable to me for many reasons, specifically the one where it loots even if you go down. Really hate that and there’s times in WvW it’s just not possible to collect your bags you got on the floor and you got other things to worry about than mashing F. More importantly these things help everywhere, where a lot of the HOT stuff seems to be focused entirely only in HOT.

The whole guidance thing, whatever.

Gonna insta level to 30, then 50 tome it. Have full bags, ascended gear and otherwise ready to go currently.

First priority when HOT comes out is to unlock Pact Commander. I know HOT is the big deal, but auto loot? Get the !@#$ out. This is priority #1 and I’ll spend my time working on XP in Tyria working up mastery XP there any way I can (world completion, events, whatever) with +50% boosters and +100% boosters all saved up and ready to go.

After that, whatever. WvW, HOT, etc all good.

I’m sad there’s no bank reset, have a bunch more things now stocked up for my Revenant to try :x

Pretty much just gonna go play my Revenant for a while.

They really have no idea what front line actually means in their game. From their perspective they pretty much balance PvP > PvE > WvW. PvP there’s really no front line and you just aren’t going to beat D/D’s defenses and damage potential baked into that bruiser style play. PvE the meta is as much damage as humanly possible for speed runs and for anything else it literally doesn’t matter. WvW it has a lot of potential but it’s squandered by the fact they don’t balance for WvW so ultimately it’s left in a lackluster “almost” state. Hell they don’t even address the lack of base stats on the class (armor/toughness and HP) which means trying to gear for front line is pretty much impossible compared to other front line classes.

So why bother? There’s very few conceivable scenarios where they manage to pull off the specialization. It’s doomed from concept because it’s just a bad concept for this particular class. I’d love to just blame Karl for this but who knows who or why they decided to go this route but it’s not one that anyone is going to easily recover from. Just kinda the way it is. If you still enjoy the game, there’s plenty of other great classes and plenty of amazing specializations coming out so not sure why you’d want to quit either.

A lot of it depends on what tier you are in (determines what kinda fights you see and what tactics are used) as well as a guild build if you are in a guild. Guild builds are important because often times commanders will rely on you running a particular build. If you’re just part of the regular ol’ blob your build should work fine.

Personally I don’t like to give up triple cantrip as even Armor of Earth is very useful in my tier (tier 1) because large groups really know how to use CC very effectively.

As for surviving people, a lot of it is situational awareness (where are you at, where is the commander at, where is the enemy at, what’s your surroundings, and where is everyone going). For example in Tier 1 I know certain groups are just going to be rushing the back line and will play far more conservatively (I stand even further back) against those groups than another group we’ll end up rolling over. Learning rotations and knowing active abilities to use and when is also key as abilities like Burning Retreat and Magnetic Aura can be clutch. Yet even then sometimes, no matter how prepared, you just gonna go down. A few weeks ago I had 4 Thieves shadow step in stealth and then basically instagib me. These things happen and it’s best not to over-react.

As you get the hang of things, you’ll find yourself swapping in more offensive gear as you can handle it. Pretty much the sum of things with the Elementalist. Slot as much offensive gear as you are comfortable at. If you want an easier time, stack more defense. You feel too comfortable, swap in some offense.

After around 40% crit you start seeing diminishing returns on Crit so it’s often times better to stack Ferocity. Also roughly 17% crit damage is more than “a bit” and is 255 stats that you have spread elsewhere which explains the rest.

Also I tend to keep the armor/weapons the same because they tend to be vastly more difficult to acquire than alternative jewelry sets. It’s far easier to get numerous rings/amulets and guild missions easily take care of any earrings as well than craft a whole extra set of Ascended Armor.

This is pretty much the build I use most nights. Lots of damage and pretty decent survivability. Gotta use active defenses (triple cantrip, magnetic shield, burning retreat, etc) to survive but it’s not kittence you know how.

If we get hard backline pressure I run with this. Basically swaps in for more toughness at the cost of a minor amount of offense. Also adds in boons on cantrips making them even more powerful and the auto condi cleanse (in case of rat wells).

Both sets give around (with server HP bonus) around 17k total with stacks. Without stacks it’s around 14-15k. If HP is a real issue I swap in Plate of Steak and Orrian Fries for more Power/Vitality but honestly after playing staff Ele for so long in WvW it’s pretty easy to avoid death with triple Cantrip and staff abilities. There are exceptions, such as being super picked (once had 4 thieves teleport to me stealthed and insta gib me) but generally speaking it’s good enough for most scenarios on a large scale.

If you really wanna be a stickler for HP you can swap out into a Valk chest but that can play havoc with your Crit rating and you’ll likely have to go into Zephyr’s Boon to make up for it for Fury up time. This might seem like a bad idea, but consider the fact that you’ll likely start in Air (for Static) then swap to Earth (for Unsteady) which you can Magnetic (Fury) then swap to Fire (which gives you Fire Aura for more Fury) which should let you get a decent bomb off at around 50-70% crit rating. This of course comes at the cost of around 8-9% Crit Damage though from Ferocious Winds.

I made one of each class, 3 additional eles, and 1 additional necro. Running them through personal story line to scoop up their free Boosters and such that I’m saving for Mastery unlocks.

Otherwise building up Pristine Fractal Relics and Fractal Relics, WvW and otherwise.

Always more to build up and get.

Best I understand it as a T1 player basically a bunch of T1 guilds moved off BlackGate and saved JQ from going down. That caused a lot of the stagnation rather than letting JQ drop. Over time that kinda cross competition got the better of people and there was a lot of drama about how those guilds “made” BlackGate. Other groups moved off BlackGate as well onto other servers like TC. Tempers flared, and a lot moved down to YB to prove that they could dislodge BlackGate because they weren’t able to do so from T1 which they’d have to blow out BlackGate each week (and it wasn’t working despite them staying up crazy hours) cause T2 just wasn’t able to push up past the gap.

So they got the bright idea to go overload YB and push it up increasing the chances of a server dropping and since they assumed with them leaving that BlackGate would be hopelessly crushed BG would fall and their point (without them BG is hopeless) would sink in. Unfortunately none of this has worked out the way they wanted. BG has pulled together more than ever and again all the servers in T1 are pretty closely matched up leaving T2 basically a dead tier. Basically their only hope is that random chance roll at a move. The lack of results as well as the lack of fights will likely end up frustrating the transfers as well as the fact as more guilds leave YB it undermines their support base putting even greater pressure on the few guilds that did transfer to perform 24/7 if they ever do go up.

All of this is compounded by the fact that most of the people have alt accounts that are in other various tiers as well

I also completely disagree with the sentiment of disabling Instant-20 items and Tomes of knowledge for the Revenant.

These kinds of items being widely available (I’ve made over 100+ odd Tomes since they announced HOT and we’re still months off from release) how people level or how fast they level is irrelevant and player to player.

In addition this there is already a number of ways to speed level a character. For example early on at the release of the game people power leveled each other to cap by using crafting. You gain roughly 10 levels per profession at 400. It is still very much possible to throw money at this problem and level up entirely via professions as well by simply stock piling resources as well. There is also dungeons and swapping in lower level alts after clearing with an 80 as well as others.

The common complaint against allowing level 80 Revenants on day 1 is that the players will be inexperienced with the class and bring down events/groups/etc. However I also find the logic in this shakey as there will also be a large number of other people playing specializations they aren’t fully experienced with and also potentially just as clunky with.

In the end what does it matter to you or anyone else how fast I decide to level?

Two big factors are the current PvE Meta and current Revenant design. Both of these have a chance of dramatically changing as time goes on with HOT and it’s development. They could just as easily make PvE more like Living Story season 2 where there’s a lot of short windows for DPS, then large windows of requiring survivability and in fact they’ve stated numerous times they used Living Story Season 2 as a test for many new mechanics. We’ll find out next week what “challenging group content” actually means. Revenant is on an upswing currently, but who knows if Roy decides to get all wrathful and takes it all away.

That said, based on current pve speed clear meta and revenant design I see:

PvP – Shiro/Malyx. Malyx is great 1v1 and has potential even to “deal with” D/D Cele eles due to strong boon strip and more condi than they can clear. Shiro is a must because it’s the only stance with quick enough reaction skills for PvP with utilities like Riposting Shadows.

WvW Backline – Shiro/Malyx again. Malyx provides strong area denial for backline defense with Unyielding Anguish and support with pain absorption. Shiro provides strong self defense and in combat mobility with super speed on demand. I want to throw Glint in here, but honestly Glint’s buffs aren’t worth their energy cost in this scenario for what they give. Granting Fury for half your energy regen is a null gain. You’ll eventually be left with no energy for defensive or even weapon moves which is pretty much death in WvW. All the actives are limited range often at a 360 radius around you or up to 600 range (most backline hovers in the 900-1200 range).

WvW Frontline – With the IR nerf don’t see the obvious Glint/Jalis combo happening which is sad. IR and the Heal were the main two reasons to go Jalis. If they fix Jalis (make Hammers stay on regardless of collision, give more stacks of Stab with IR and reduce up time or add (self?) stab to Rite) then I see a really strong Jalis/Glint build happening for front line groups.

PvE – Shiro/??? here spec’d into Herald. Adding +50% boon duration during the initial boon stacking part in PvE would be a huge plus and can be done without being in Glint.

Kidel.2057:

Also this:
(I mean, who cares when you can pop a rifle F1 and do 6k damage on 5 targets + 3.5k damage on 25 targets + aoe burning on 25+ targets, and if they already had burning you also spread it with explosion trait up to 125 targets, and ONLY if they add the 5 targets limit, currently it’s not even limited. How to 1hit kill a zerk group: the class)

I’m really going to enjoy when Line of Reflection or Feedback makes that wipe their own zerg with the hugely obvious drop a knee tell.

NapTooN.6283:

As far as I remember, Upkeeps end as soon as you leave their Stance. So basically, Glint will lock us out of being able to use non-Glint upkeeps.

Yes but all the activated abilities all have a 20+ second cool down so it’s faster to swap out of Glint, wait 10 seconds (10s now between legends no matter what) and then swap back than it is to blow the cool down to cancel an effect.

So for the trivial amount of time that other classes can give other players Quickness (as most sources are self only) you keep IO off toggle and regen Energy and then flip it back on? Seems pretty obvious how to use this stuff and have it be superior to the Herald boons.

As Drarnor stated, only real use for Herald is pretty much +Boon duration.

Kidel.2057:

I’d agree with you Kodiak if Facet were only on yourself, but they’re AOE. Having a Herald in the group basically means permanent Fury/Might/Regen/Protection for the whole group.

Actually this is irrelevant.

Lets say with a group of 5 you deal, collectively, 30k DPS, each member capable of dishing out 6k DPS a person. Now lets say with the Herald you’re only able to deal 1k DPS because all you’re left with is auto attacks and the ocassional skill while giving boons. That means the total net boost of your Boons needs to be 5k DPS to the rest of your party to be on par with you doing pure damage at 6k. Simply adding Fury and Might alone aren’t enough to accomplish this in most cases.

Also it doesn’t mean anything of the sort. At 5 Energy regen a second, you are looking at -5 Energy generation to permanently maintain those auras. Anyone with experience with Shiro and Impossible Odds will tell you that -5 Energy drains rather fast and is far from Permanent. Even if you drain yourself from 100 to 0, then swap to another Legend, you are no longer maintaining these Boons which means at least 20 seconds down time to get back to Glint and to regen back up to 100 energy to repeat for another 20 seconds of Boons so at best you’re looking at a 50% up time due to energy management alone.

Again the numbers tell a different tale from how you’d like them to and realistically the loss of weapon damage shows that, ultimately, you’d ultimately bring more DPS for the group by focusing on damage with your energy than increasing their DPS.

I think ultimately people are going to do the math and see that the upkeep benefits on the Herald aren’t as good as they appear.

For example we regen, at base, 5 energy a second. This energy regen will compete with every ability we have that takes up energy to do DPS. So Coalescence of Ruin takes 5 energy every 2 seconds, or around 2.5 energy per second. So lets assume that even at perfect maximum range this deals roughly 6k damage on average (crit, non crit) that’s 3k damage a second for 2.5 energy on a single target up to a maximum of 15k damage for a full AOE.

Now when you look at something like a Glint Aura, that means something like Facet of Strength has to add 2.4k – 12k DPS (2 energy a second is only 80% of 2.5) depending on the scenario to be on par with simply spamming Coalescence of Ruin with the same energy. When you start to look at more complex scenarios like Mace Fire+Blast combos also giving stacks of Area Might for what amounts to 1.67 Energy a second (Searing Fissure) and 0.62 Energy a second (Echoing Eruption) plus whatever damage they generate it really becomes suspect very quickly.

The ultimate result of having a limited resource pool is there will always be a best way to spend it and with Herald the upkeep skills have to compete with Weapon Skills for energy (and truth is they’ll likely lose).

Well as I mentioned a “good” source of stability in WvW pretty much follows the pattern:

Medium stacks of stability (3-5), Medium duration (3-5s), Medium cool down (20-30s).

The reason for this, as mentioned in the original post, is because when you are in WvW there is a lot of follow up CC after the initial stun. So I can eat that Static Field instantly cast on my head and now I’m stunned and immune to Static Field for a few seconds but skills like Unsteady Earth, Line of Warding, Spectral Wall as ground targeted abilities can remove an unlimited amount of stacks let alone AOE targeted abilities as well (Hammer Warriors, our own Hammer 5 ability, etc). The point is when you scale up the number of players, the amount of CC that occurs is quite a bit and a single stun break or single stack of Stability is insufficient. The only thing that works is giving you multiple stacks to power through multiple CC.

So while Bulwark will help out with this, it’s ultimately not a solution as 2 stacks per second for 5 seconds still requires that you stay in the field for the full 5 seconds to get the benefit of it which, again, just isn’t feasible in WvW. Also by rewarding multiple stacks in fewer pulses you minimize the net benefit from Bulwark as well as to not be overpowered.

As for Glint back line…personally I don’t see it working out. The net benefit just isn’t there. Sure giving Fury and Might seems like a no brainer but when you start calculating energy costs that leaves you with 1 energy while you maintain it or -1 if you increase boon duration as well let alone having to run your heal. With all the actives being 600 range or 360 aoe around you those will be completely useless back line. As you begin to calculate the DPS per energy consider that with Ruin you could do 25k damage total as an AOE across multiple targets for 5 energy every 2s. You could look at that as a 2.5 energy a second upkeep in terms of damage. So by reducing your energy to 1 per second you’re halving that damage and you’ll have to calculate if the might or fury you’re giving to the group is worth a 25k DPS loss (I really doubt it will be). I understand those are “from the hip” numbers but I’m sure someone will work it out to show that it’s better to not waste energy like that and instead just do damage with your energy instead.

Recursivision.2367:

Again, Well of Power does not pulse stability. It’s one second to the caster.

That’s 1 stack, for 1 second total, for one person.

There is nothing in the game currently comparable to Inspiring Reinforcements.

And, again, when you run through Inspiring Reinforcements you only get 1 stack of Stability making it the same net effect. Go out into WvW in a 30 man blob and show us all how 1 stack of Stability works for you or how standing in place in a well bomb inside IR works out for you as well. I’d love to see it!

Also everything else that is comparable to IR is flat out better. Stand your Ground, Virtue of Courage+Indominable Courage, and hell even Toss Elixir B are all functionally superior instantly granting multiple stacks AOE on the move.

IR worked when it was a 6s duration because you could stack up (such as during an empower) build a few stacks then move out and still keep a few stacks as they wore off. However with a 1s duration it’s functionally worthless in real WvW game play.

Ventari:

Dunno what to say here. Probably the only thing that’d get me to consider using it is if the effects mirrored onto me as well as the tablet. No stun breaker is a deal breaker.

Jalis:

I like your ideas, especially Inspiring Reinforcement. I’d be happy with this IR effectiveness even if they increase the recast to 20-30 seconds because ultimately the multiple stacks are more important than total up time.

Taunt just isn’t useful at 2 seconds let alone for 50 energy.

Rite of the Great Dwarf we’ll have to see how it does with lower cast time. I would also be okay if this had 3 stacks of stability for 5 seconds instead of Inspiring Reinforcements and keeping the cost at 50.

For sure. It’s crucial to understand that stun breaks alone don’t get you out of control in an environment where there’s 30 people and at least 10 of them can drop CC on your head, instantly, with almost no time to react upon engagement. The only way out is through and the only way through is multiple stacks of Stability post Stability change.

I realize for PvE and PvP multiple stacks might seem really powerful. You’re basically immune to CC for the duration long as you have stacks. However that’s why we keep to low duration (3-5s) but medium stacks (3-5) with medium recast time (20-30s) to keep things balanced.

No one is looking for anything OP here, just the ability to keep us functional in today’s WvW.

Illuminati confirmed in GW2.

Actually that group is a bunch of Medi Guardians who are already teleporting into the back (at one point I go down and tab through them to show that @9:03). What I’m doing is disrupting them by moving them out of position further. @8:56 they leap in and I move them back. @8:58 they Intervention onto me (<3 Resistance). @9:00 I move them further away from the entrance so now they’re completely separated and unable to secure the downs they get (me and a few others).

We run into them a few times about halfway through the video, and by the end of it they’re annoyed at me enough they started focusing me. There’s a few other fights I didn’t include where they specifically targeted me out of the pack and got me 3-4 times. After that started, I was proactively doing Unyielding Anguish and it was working much better as they’d be so seperated out our group would just turn on them and demolish them.

Also UA naturally teleports away from the Revenant best I can figure. So when I leap forward, most of the time people go backwards if I am still running so they go behind me and get caught. You can see that at the Tower at the end when I jump on them they “disappear” (go behind me off screen). They also appear to all go to the same spot when they are affected which means they’re clumped up and primed for AOE.

PA only gives 6-7 if you absorb 5. However due to large amounts of Condi removal in groups it’s pretty rare you will get that outside of Cow Trebs and Fire Mortars.

MP being useless assumes you have Invocation to crank Fury that high.

Corruption isn’t about group Synergy it’s about empowering the Demon line further (Resistance and Boon Strip) for more self survivability on the front line. If you were going to go pure Group synergy I’d probably go something along the lines of Malyx/Glint with Devastation/Retribution/Herald.

Again it all comes down to design for anything. There are plenty of gaps in each class, even Elementalist. Everything however has to be taken into consideration, and it wasn’t. The whole thing feels fairly rushed in fact and really makes me wonder how far along they were with the other version (sword) before they switched and whether or not it woulda been better if they just made sword into Axe instead and kept going with their original plan.

Regardless…the Tempest situation just makes you appreciate the current Glint design. Even if the numbers don’t work out on Auras to be as good, it’s at least a different role that we didn’t have before and that’s what Specializations are all about.

Roy’s our boy