Guardian is my main. It’s just that i actually multi class and actually care about balance as opposed to senselessly asking for stuff to be added to my main without regard for the rest of the game.
I always hate when someone yells out to fight on point in a match. If the point is covered in aoe circles, don’t fight on point. If you are the target of a focus, don’t fight on point, seek to break LoS. The only acceptable reason to yell at your team to fight on point is when they’re off chasing a thf across half the map for no reason.
In my experience I’ve been frustrated more by teammates nose diving into a point and blowing up in seconds than off point fighters.
This. A million times this.
It’s only trash players who think they’re too good to lose as often as they do that would yell this for no good reason. Sure, if the entire team is chasing and giving up caps left and right, that’s one thing; but more often than not the “fight on point” philosophy doesn’t fly. It’s better to give up the point, for instance, and stay alive long enough for help to arrive and 2v1; or give up the point in a 1v2 but stay alive long enough to troll those same two players, giving your team an advantage in the rest of the field.
As a scrapper, I regularly decap and cap a point, only to lose it to a 1v2 a few seconds later as I troll and kite them as long as I can, only to retake the point a few seconds later when one of them leaves and I kill the remaining player, only to give it up to another 1v2 a few seconds later, and so on so forth. And this is much, much, much more beneficial than dying on point to a 1v2. Also as LB ranger, I regularly let people decap or even full cap a point only to kill em a few seconds later and retake it for my team, as opposed to “fighting on point”, aka “dying on point” for no good reason.
This man gets it!
And you’re right. It’s usually the trash player who thinks he’s good that yells this out to the rest of the team when all he does is die repeatedly on mid cause he can’t seem to stay out of the melee ball.
Tomes are fine. Cds, cast times and resource limitation allows counterplay.
If you were to remove the cooldowns on entering a Tome, this would happen;
The skills in the tomes would still have cooldowns of their own, are you going to say that doesn’t allow for counter-play? The Pages you consume will have to recharge, are you going to really say that doesn’t allow counter-play?
If that’s what you’re saying then we definitely do not agree AT ALL.
Removing cooldowns on tomes depends on whether you are comfortable with the alternatives or not.
If you remove the cds then you either have to change the page mechanic or you have to increase individual chapter cds to be larger. If you choose not to change chapter cds aand instead change pages, how do you work with that?
The cds gave you a justification for having your pages refresh instantly when you enter a tome. Without the cd then the devs need new alternatives. If they decide that pages should refresh over time they gotta decide on two things: should the same page resource limitation apply to all tomes or have each individual tome have its own page counter. If each tome has its own page cd, then how do you keep track of how many you have before you activate the tome? if you decide to use a global page mechanic to make it more intuitive, then you run into the problem of having the share the page mechanic between tomes that do very different things.
And additionally, should firebrand be able to switch from condi burster to healer to stability and resistance bot all in less than 3 seconds? Is that balanced? The page mechanic would have to be more restrictive in order to keep it from getting out of hand and I’m not sure how many of you are really willing to accept a more restrictive page mechanic if you take tome cds away.
scourge barrier, 10k perma barrier haha. Firebrand tomes would melt. FB is worst spec on 90 sec cd.
What are you even complaining about here?
I am complaining cause barrier should be guardian spec thing also, weaver got it why shouldn’t we?
Scourge is clearly better for support (you can see that in the video).
If you want barriers make a scourge.
What i don’t understand is why you’re acting as if anet killed your puppy by not giving firebrand something they never promised you.
Sure, that’s a very specific circumstance where holding unto the point for dear life makes sense, but it doesn’t happen very often. Meanwhile, some peope seem to have the idea that it’s better to contest the point for 5 seconds, then die to focus fire and red circles, give the enemy 5 points for your death, leave your team down one member, only to give the enemy the point anyway since they have a chance to team wipe you now.
My suggestions:
1. change deception training to instead reduce deception recharge by 1 second when you shatter a mirror. this rewards generating mirrors as opposed to simply spamming the dodge button.
2. make decepting clone generate a clone when you shatter a mirror and meanwhile you have shards of glass generating mirror charges when you shatter illusions (maybe consider changing it to phantasms so you don’t shatter clones to get more clones but rather shatter phantasms instead to generate the clones via mirror shatters). the reason for the change is that you want clones for the ambushes but if you generate clones on ambush you just create this incentive to spam dodges to get mirrage cloak to spam ambush to generate more clones to spam more ambushes which i think is not healthy gameplay. meanwhile by making the change i suggested you create fluid synergy between minor adept 1 and major master 1.
I think suggestion 2 is a good idea because it creates a process specific to mirage by which to convert phantasms to clones which keeps the identity of the elite spec in tact: mirage uses clones and chrono uses phantasms.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
I always hate when someone yells out to fight on point in a match. If the point is covered in aoe circles, don’t fight on point. If you are the target of a focus, don’t fight on point, seek to break LoS. The only acceptable reason to yell at your team to fight on point is when they’re off chasing a thf across half the map for no reason.
In my experience I’ve been frustrated more by teammates nose diving into a point and blowing up in seconds than off point fighters.
scourge barrier, 10k perma barrier haha. Firebrand tomes would melt. FB is worst spec on 90 sec cd.
What are you even complaining about here?
it’s condi/support, so zerker gear won’t do
Tomes are fine. Cds, cast times and resource limitation allows counterplay. the tome on f1 ans f3 are also valuable. what other guardians need to stop doing is going in and fighting as if they were dh and diving right into the point. guardians players unfortunately also tend to be lower in skill because they’ve grown used to the simple game mechanics guardian and dh allowed, so they’re not used to actually having to think when using a specific tome might be a good idea rather than spamming tomes during combat like a madman in a rush to use up all cds (because that’s all they ever did on dh).
The only tome that needs work is the f2 since it feels like a waste of time to use it. it’s supposed to be for condi cleanse and healing, but the heal values are too low for skills with so much cast time and resource limitations while the condi cleanse isn’t impactful enough to make it worth using over spamming resistance from f3 while you use mantra of lore. They need to at least considering putting more tools to handle conditions such as resistance on f2
Another problem on firebrand is the mantra range as far as support is concerned. mantras work well for yourself but for supporting allies it’s way too difficult to land them correctly. additionally while i like the mantra heal, i would also have the heal apply to allies near you and not just the aegis to further emphasize the role of firebrand as support/condi.
Finally, axe symbol needs work. it either needs to be faster or it needs a better payoff, whether that comes in the form of higher bleed stacks, quickness or burns i leave to the balance devs.
My HoT nerf wish list:
1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.
2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.
3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.
4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.
5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.
6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.
7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?
8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.
9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.
Druid damage has already be gutted to like half or more of what it could do previously because of the nerf in 2 HoT pets. Staff doesn’t do much damage to begin with so there’s no need to nerf the auto-attack anymore, considering Druid’s 2~5 literally have no damage whatsoever. It is always the pet that does the damage for Druid, and both of the most overused pets has been gutted to like 1/3 of their original damage, so what more do you want?
Herald doesn’t need a nerf. Mallyx and Shiro does, and Anet already did that.
The resistance up-time and infinite dodge from Shiro has all been patched quite awhile ago and now they’re balanced.
You don’t need to get defensive.
If you think that druid’s damage has already been nerfed enough to balance it, then go ahead and make that argument, but try to use an argument beyond the “but they already nerfed it!”. The fact that a spec has already been nerfed does not mean it’s balanced right now. Your argument needs to be that druids can’t do both high quantities of damage to spike someone down while also having high sustain and you need to explain why that is true.
Now, the reason why i aimed for staff and not pet damage is because nerfing pet damage also nerfs core and soulbeast and i want to avoid touching anything that isn’t a HoT related skill or trait. Hopefully by lowering the already pitiful damage that staff does, the numbers go down enough so that even with pet damage a druid can’t be expected to take someone down with a defensive amulet with staff/sword/dagger. If, as you say, staff damage is negligible, than nerfing it further doesn’t really matter since i presume you believe the purpose of staff is not damage but to heal, so it shouldn’t matter to you.
Now my question to you is this: If i am offering to nerf something negligible on druid, staff damage, why would you complain about that when i am sparing pet damage and leaving it well enough alone?
I guess i should have said proleagues. It was the worst thing i have ever seen in pvp competitive matches.
My HoT nerf wish list:
1. nerf dh f2 to only heal itself. nerf f3 to only block for the dh. nerf fragments of faith to only be useable by the dh (this might be a buff). make f1 active not pulse burn.
2. i think berserker nerf was sufficient in last patch.
3. change reaper grandmaster that bleeds on chill to something that applies phys damage on chill or something, or increase damage on chilled targets, idk.
4. make chrono shield 4 only block 1 hit and apply blur on allies. keep the phantasm. lower how much well of eternity heals the chrono, but raise how much it heals allies.
5. make tempest aura share plit into two components. one lower heal for the tempest, and keep the heal values for allies the same on aura share. remove damage increase on harmonious conduit. make it so eles loose self sustain and dps if they go tempest, but gain dps and self sustain if they go weaver.
6. not much you could nerf on herald. maybe restrict it more to defense boons and leave the offensive ones for renegade. you could change the fury on facet of darkness and might on facet of strength for defensive boons. What else is there to apply? Resistance? Other options are stability, vigor, pulsing aegis. Since giving stability, resistance and/or aegis on pulse might be over the top, making one of the facets vigor, and then choosing one of the other 3 OP boons might be a good balance to it.
7. I don’t particularly feel scrapper is known as a damaging spec in pvp. I dunno what else you could do with it besides lowering damaging coefficients on hammer, but why?
8. not sure what to do with druid. the problem is that it’s a supportive spec that allows it to survive while the pet does all the dps. maybe put some damage nerfs somewhere on staff so it’s practically useless to auto attack on someone except to heal, would probably cause all druids to go lb, which is at least easier to counter. make staff do 1 damage on auto or something, idk.
9. Seeing as how deadeye has higher damage capacity, probably damage nerfs are in order for daredevil. probably damage nerfs on pulmonary impact, perhaps an icd. basically make it so you go daredevil because it massively raises your self sustain but lowers your damage as opposed to deadeye with lower mobility and higher damage. Should probably keep the condi damage on deadeye and keep it as the condi spec since it probably has more flexibility with that than deadeye.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
You have not used the mesmer if you say they are just as balanced.
Chrono is 100% better
I say Mirage and Chronomancer are almost equal to each other
because
Mirage has better mobility (Mirage can close gap and leap away very often)
Mirage has more CC
Mirage has more evades
Mirage dodge duration is 1 second (Chronomancer dodge is 0.75 seconds)
(Mirage is the only class that has 1 second dodge
every other class has 0.75 second dodge)Mirage dodge breaks stun and removes conditions
(This means Mirage can remove Stuns and Immobs every 10 seconds)I think that you are looking at numbers on paper. From experience, Mirage is in no way equivalent to Chronomancer and is a little inferior to core Mesmer.
After testing Mirage myself. I came to the same conclusion. But hey it looked cool, right?
In all fairness Chrono set the bar insanely high…
Well, it did ruin pvp season 1.
On an unrelated note, my job recently decided to start doing workshops on statistics for the staff.
You don’t play and you’re still here complaining about stuff you don’t play anymore?
He’s complaining because he obviously still likes the game and cares about it, but can’t stomach it in its current state. Its a very mature position to take tbh. Much better than what alot of losers do when they play WHILE actively not enjoying what they’re doing.
Never understood that mentality lol. Take it or leave it is such a weak philosophy.
I can understand complaining about specific aspects in a video game forum for a video game you still like and play.
I can’t understand complaining about various aspects of a video game you don’t play anymore because, presumably, you don’t like it anymore. I just can’t wrap my head around thequantity of emotional investment you’d have to have in a videogame to still whine about it in its official forum like some guy stalking his ex.
You don’t play and you’re still here complaining about stuff you don’t play anymore?
I thought you quit already.
What needs to be nerfed are HoT elite specs.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a few things that need work. Firebrand mantras need work as far as range is concerned. Mirage ambush skills are mostly lackluster. There are numerous bugs to work out. But the design of PoF elites is meant to fill a niche and to have clear weaknesess. Firebrand has great team support but long cast times, spellbreaker has great team disruption but low damage, Scourge has high damage and some team support but no stability.
Meanwhile, HoT elite specs, since they were the first, Anet designed them with the expectation that they had to fill as many roles as possible which led them to being able too do too much at once. With a second set of elites coming soon, anet can afford to dial back the HoT versions and bake into them clear weaknesses (when they are lacking). For starters, if Firebrand is to be team support, then DH needs to have its team support reduced by taking away the ability to heal allies on f2 and block for them on f3. DH should be a solo bruiser/phys dps. Similarly, if Scourge is high damage condi and some team support, then Reaper needs to be a Physical damage based bruiser with selfish utility.
With that in mind, it’s good that the profession subforums are complaining alot because if they all whine that the new elites are underpowered, then that might mean we have actual balance this time.
The Spellbreaker is all about incentivizing people to play a shutdown build. Rather than just GS/Axe all day every day. Boon stripping is just part of the incentive because there has been and there will still be a ton of stability being spammed in PvP/WvW so giving the Warrior the ability to boon strip, allows him to play the Hammer set-up without worrying about people having a ton of stability. He can just feed off of that to boost his damage.
Interrupts and increased damage on interrupts is where the power is at. Get it right guys, get it right.
Except your cc = boon strip minor trait doesn’t work on targets with stab so… ??
Dagger burst strips two boons regardless as does winds of disenchantment and break enchantments. Not to mention boon strip sigils.
So is the supposed tankyness of warriors referring to base warriors running defense, strength and discipline? And is the critique from the perspective of power classes?
I found that i could kill warriors as condi reaper. Usually with backup but if the warrior was sufficiently unskilled as to try to tank plaguelands, it was also possible for me to solo one.
I never understood why we complain that skills are too spammy, yet we demand skills for the classes we like to main have faster cast times. We complain about an overabundance of stability yet we demand they add it to our classes so we don’t get interrupted. We complain about too much condi spam yet we say axe doesn’t have enough condi or that mantra of flame needs more stacks.
Maybe if we want a balanced game, we should start by having a little more perspective and actually expecting and wanting our own professions to have exploitable weaknessess.
Mirage:
Played it like a condi d/p thf focused on +1 and decapping. Went with scepter/torch and sword/torch. Scepter by far has one of the best ambush skills making it an excellent condi spike which you can tack even more on by using shatters and scepter 3. Torch was more about using burns as cover condi and stealth to disengage. I felt like it worked as far as being a good decapper was concerned i guess but the dps spike isn’t as fast as a thf’s. With the idea of making mirage the condi version of d/p thf:
1. Jaunt’s range needs to be longer. It works great for disorienting your enemy and getting away from them but it’s not as good at providing the mobility to match sb 5 on thf. Additionally jaunt could simply be made to give superspeed when used so a mirage can conserve charges but it seems that by increasing jaunt’s range you give the mirage 3 tactical options: either spam it as dps, spam it as condi clear or spam it as mobility.
2. Only sword and scepter ambush skills are good I feel like more needs to go into making ambush attacks complement the weapon’s use. For example, staff’s ambush dps is nice but too slow. However staff is mostly used to keep your distance on a target while you do a little dps, so maybe letting its ambush either blur you or port you back would feel worth the long cast time. In the case of gs ambush, it should really be more about using it to follow your spike. Perhaps the gs ambush can be a stun or a daze to keep your target from recovering from your spike until you can finish them.
3. I’m not 100% sure about this but i think one of the deception skills that shadowsteps you at 1,200 can’t be used if you’re not in range. At the moment it’s mostly good for disorienting your enemy and shake them off you. That’s ok, but if the skill could shadowstep you even if you’re enemy is out of range, it can also be used for mobility. Basically, it should work like judge’s intervention or symbol of blades on guardian.
4. There is another shadowstep that is 900 range. It should also work like judge’s intervention in that you can use it to close the distance with an enemy even if you’re outside the 900 range.
5. The superspeed on mirror cloak is barely noticeable and you have little to no motivation to use it as mobility instead of saving it for stunbreaks and condi cleanse. In order to make it worth using as mobility it needs to be as good as dash in that the superspeed needs to last longer or it should just be changed into a much longer lasting swiftness.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
Scourge:
1. Played it as i would play condi reaper and found that both it sustain and damage are higher. Placing shades on a point turns that point into no man’s land. They function as mini plaguelands. The sustain i felt was higher because you had a alot more flexibility in kiting. You can use shades along your path to slow down the enemy. You can teleport away from your target and then play keep away. You can leave a trail behind you that both burns and cripples. It felt like it was too dangerous to chase a scourge. Oh, barrier also felt like a good sustain tool. The problem with shroud was always that once it ran out you were a sitting duck. Barriers on the other hand can be reapplied much more frequently and they can be used whilst being cc’d.
2. The class’s one clear weakness is ranged dps. Probably the purpose of Deadeye. As far as i can remember it has no native projectile hate. Since ghastly breach already looks like a bubble, consider adding projectile destruction to it.
3. Sand swell is great but it feels a bit slow and i feel there is no reason why the range can’t be 1200. The skill seems to be bugged though since it clearly lasted less than the stated 20 seconds.
4. There seems to be a bug where the icd on torment and burning breaks down on downed targets.
5. The amount of condi that stacks with f5 along with demonic lore and dhuumfire is very strong. Not sure if it needs to be nerfed since the opponent actually has to be standing within range and stay within range to get ripped apart and that feels like a good way to deal with the problem of that good old fashioned necro ganking. Can’t kitten a necro if the ground he’s standing on will destroy you in seconds
(edited by Kuya.6495)
Firebrand:
1. I found that playing it as mostly a support class with some burst condi on the side was the best way to play it. Using sage amulet and focusing on opportunities to provide your allies with resistance, projectile denial, condi cleanse and healing. And when possible, go into justice to burst condi.
2. While playing support seemed like the best way to play firebrand, the mantras weren’t very good for support. I found myself using them mostly for myself than for allies. I think that either making than aoe centered on the guardian or increasing range would be a good idea if mantras are intended to be used as support. The cone range is just not practical in spvp.
3. Axe seems to work great with permeating wrath and easily stacks 10+ burns just with the auto. But when playing support, there was rarely a chance to actually use the axe. Axe is probably best if you focus on playing firebrand as condi offensive or in pve. My only complaint was that the symbol was as annoying to use as the mace symbol. I felt i got more out of the axe with the auto than ever using the symbol. The symbol on axe could either use a lowering on the animation cast time or giving the symbol quickness as a boon to make it worth waiting so long to drop it.
4. Tome of resolve was the weakest tome to use. I felt like i rarely ever had a reason to use it and it was a waste to get into it even though i was playing support. I didn’t feel like i healed enough and the 3 skill on the tome was pretty useless considering what you get from justice and courage. I think to make it a worthwhile tome to use as a support class, the healing power contribution for tome of resolve should be increased. Additionally, i think skill 3 could use resistance as well or some other defensive boon to make it worth using. Resistance makes the most sense since you can drop it first to stop condi damage and give you time to remove them with skill 5 and 2.
Spellbreaker:
1. I played it basically as a stunlock warrior. I went dagger/shield and hammer. Traits were defense, discipline and SB. I really liked how i had a response to every playstyle. I had a response to condi users, ranged users, and power dps. Cycling between full counter and the burst skill seemed very fluid. It was easy to keep enemies stunlocked since daze and stun immobilized thanks to a trait, dagger 3 ccs, dagger burst ccs, full counter ccs, then i can switch to hammer and have access to 3 more ccs and these ccs strip boons and when they strip boons they do damage and i gain adrenaline. There was some specific synergy where if there was a group of people and you used hammer, you could use hammer burst and full counter back to back since the trait that gives you adrenaline for boons removed seems to have no icd and the hammer burst removes boons from up to 5 people so that’s 10 adrenaline, and full counter dazes so that’s 10 adrenaline too. Additionally, it felt like spellbreaker was the only class i could use that let me get close to a scourge and kill it without being ripped apart by shades.
2. I actually have very few suggestions for spellbreaker since i felt it was very balanced. Maybe what could be looked at are its utilities since the only one i took was featherfoot grace and the rest were stances.
3. Sight Beyond Sight was useful for chasing down deadeyes, but i felt like 2 charges was very little for how often they can enter stealth. I suggest 3 charges and an increase to its radius, since they frequently ported away from me before i had a chance to get in range to use the skill.
4. Imminent threat could use some boon removal and a lower cast time. It looks like something you might use to prevent stomps or rezes, but when you have access to full counter and hammer, this utility seems pretty bad. If it had a count recharge mechanic and boon strip and was instant, it might be the go to utility for stopping rez and stomps.
5. Not really sure what do with Break Enchantment. You already get so much boon removal that it seems over the top to take this trait and i’m not sure anything is wrong with this one. It’s unblockable and raises your damage. I guess switching it to 1 target as opposed to 5 and giving it like 900 range or something would give it something that you don’t already have with the rest of your kit. Long ranged boon removal.
edit: i’ll post about scourge and mirage later.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
I liked playing it and also found that i could keep up with thfs quite easily. But i do have a few suggestions:
Increase jaunt range. At the moment, it frequently almost feels like it would be faster to just not use it. It has been useful for getting out of enemy attacks, but i think it needs longer range so it can be used for mobility better. I suggest 600 range.
I switched from axe and scepter and i found my gameplay got better. The problem with axe is that the ambush skill leaves you open for too long and the gapcloser on axe 3 isn’t good enough to justify taking it over scepter. With scepter i can keep my distance and condi dps, and then switched to sword if i need to defend, but with axe i just felt too vulnerable, but perhaps the purpose of axe is pve and not pvp.
Increase duration of superspeed on dodge. I sometimes tried to dodge to see if i could use it for mobility like daredevil does but the superspeed does not last long enough to risk endurance. Another option is to change superspeed for swiftness and just let the swiftness last like 5s or something.
There is a shadowstop on mirage that blinds foes. It lost to portal and blink since 900 range seems to limiting. I can’t see the balance reason why it’s range is only 900 when the return skill is 1,200.
Does Loss aversion have a target cap or an ICD? I notice that when i use earthshaker I can inmediately do full counter and then earthshaker again, and sometimes right back to full counter again. Wrecks groups of people massively.
Firebrand feels like two opposing specs rolled into one:
- close range axe + mantras vs.
- tome support
It doesn’t work. The burning tactic with F1#1 only works against people who stand in it and don’t cleanse.
It works because most people trying to kill the support guard don’t expect him to turn around and start defecating fireballs.
I’d say you are correct as far as being an aoe damage dealer. But FB has more sustain than the old glass condi reaper due to tome of courage blocking cc, projectiles and condi damage via resistance and power spikes with aegis. if you can predict enemy burst you can get into courage on time to counter and then return to justice to respond with nukes.
Having a scourge back you up with barrier helps tremendously to cover up your weaknessess.
Just spamming chapter 1 of justice with permeating wrath turns a whole point into a nuclear wasteland.
Agreed on f2 being pretty bad for healing. It’s the one i use the least. F3 on the other hand, along with pure of heart and legendary lore works great. Also the tome that is best for support. allowing to both prevent enemy cc to your team because of stab spam, prevent projectiles with chapter 3 and protect them from condition damage with chapter 4.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
I agree with the op. If you play support, you get more out of fb rather than trying to dive right into a point. You function better when you drop heals mid fight, cc mid, drop reflect at mid and spam stability and aegis on your team. You are just a support that can drop mean condi spikes if he decides to use justice.
I also suggest changing mantras to aoe centered on the fb so actually using mantras supportively is actually rewarded. As it stands now i just use mantras to defend myself. Would also be great if we had a mechanic to reduce the cd on tomes so we don’t become too reliant on renewed focus again. Maybe something like a recharge reduction on team mate rez.
I rember everyone (including Thiefs) hating on true shot beeing op because it could hit for 8-10k with full zerker etc. ( basically same conditions deadeye has). But now you guys really try to defend a skill that allows you to oneshot a player from 1500 distance in stealth ??? Cnon guys
Pepperidge farm remembers
I think i love it more than dh in pvp.
Went sage amulet with fb, honor and virtues and i felt i had a response for everything. need a condi spike? use justice 3>4>2>1. Deadeye giving you trouble? courage 3. team needs heals or you need condi cleanse? resolve 5>4>2.
If you take the trait in the honor line that heals with aegis, you can use courage 1 as an emergency heal with a stab spam.
I just felt like i was never out of options once i learned by memory what each tome skill does.
Also, reflects and projectile blocks help with condi thfs.
condi damage/boon duration gear in pve, condi damage/healing power in spvp, toughness/boon duration/condi damage in wvw
But not unrelenting criticism like Ragnarok, RabbitUp and Fashion Mage’s posts.
Maybe a firebrand burned their houses down and that’s why they’re so mad?
I can’t tell what’s funnier. squishies getting ganked by thfs or thfs getting salty about guard anything.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
With two elite specs that drastically change the way a profession plays, now, more than ever, does having custom build templates become a serious necessity.
Can we at least get a non-official ETA?
Playing marauder dh serves a vastly different role than sage firebrand and if another guard on the team has the same elite that i do, even 1 minute won’t be enough to change everything on time.
Sounds like this is gonna be a race to see who finds a broken build first to carry themselves to legend.
Don’t care honestly. I got mine.
Anet really needs to look at the time gating for the pvp legendary armor. Since seasons are the only way to get tickets and ascended shards, you have to hardcore grind when there is an active season, but if there isn’t one then you can’t make any progress at all. We’re now waiting for the ability to grind lol. That’s just silly.
Raids have a weekly cap on insights. WvW has a weekly cap on their tickets. We need something similar so we can work on our armor between seasons.
It not a “hardcore grind” to unlock the top tier of the PvP reward track. You don’t get any more tickets or shards for repeating it.
They changed that recently. You do get shards for repeating byzantium. not tickets though.
mace/shield is definitely the way to go for quickness spam firebrand while axe/torch is what you use of you wana focus on condi dps. i suspect firebrand in pve will use the later and focus on getting quickness from tome of courage, mantra heal, potent mantra and elite mantra while pvp focused on taking mace/shield and scepter/focus for self sustain with honor, firebrand, virtues along with a sage amulet.
I think tournaments are a good spot to place those rewards in.
For artist’s notes, IMO the problem with the newest set of badges is that they were just too similar. The most noticeable color on each badge was actually completely unrelated to the division name, and was really the secondary color of the division emblems. Furthermore, for the primary colors, metal colors just… aren’t terribly distinct. And when you take in various location-based color filters, the subtle difference on the few available pixels can become even more ambiguous.
And I think character design can apply even to little symbols; the silhouettes of the new emblems were almost all completlely identical, moreso than the previous(now current) set. I know you don’t have much room to work with, but the thing about the second emblem set is that you can at least make out the basic shape of the core of the emblem without discerning colors; bronze is largely solid, silver is an empty core, gold is a hexagon with a little star, platinum is more of a diamond. Legend could perhaps use another look; it looks like a slightly off color bronze at a glance, sharing similar colors and not having a terribly distinct shape. It perhaps could use something a little better, something that catches the eye, worthy of those who are in the highest league division.
As for the argument that the second generation required familiarity with the divison art, I don’t really see how the third generation was an improvement since it was an even more arbitrary mapping to rank. I would see that if you had actually mapped them to, say, item rarity colors – a color all players can relate to – but instead they just came off as fairly randomly chosen, and lacking the character and prestige one would expect for what should be a point of pride for those who display them.
Following that advice, if you choose to reexamine the emblems, I think redoing the colors so that they map to items would be a better starting point: Fine on Bronze, Masterwork on Silver, Rare on Gold, Exotic on Platinum, and Ascended/Legendary(ascended would “pop” better) for, well, Legendary. Ignore Basic, it’s too bright for what should be 0th tier.
BUT I do like the second generation/current emblems, to be clear.
I like this suggestion. Using the colors of fine, mastercraft, rare, exotic and ascended is something peoplw are already familiar with and would translate easily into the emblems.
Same. Also eagerly awaiting my chance to get some legendary armor. The amount of saved space for pve has me salivating.
I do wish they would add some visual flair you can add to the armor if you: win monthlies, get into top 250, get into top 10, top 1, etc. Kind of like wvw has a more elaborate ascended armor that you can get with high rank.
They nerfed all classes cause you need to buy new expansion to be competitive.
Except every expansion Elite Spec is strong on its own and fills a niche untouched by the current elite specializations, and Spellbreaker doesn’t get Arc Divider.
Except Berserker is now no longer strong, and does not bring any additional benefits over running Vanilla warrior in PvP. The niche is gone, and Arc Divider without sustain and with its long cooldown and insulting casting time is pointless.
Berserker is better for condi. Spellbreaker will likely be best for physical dps.
Is that just a generic statement you are making based on something you have read, or do you have real experience with condition based berserker as having usefulness in pvp after the current patch versus pre patch power berserker? Warrior was already irrelevant in pvp, why destroy it further?
I can’t really understand your passive aggressive question, so I’m just gonna pretend you asked me why berserker is better than base war for condi builds in pve, wvw, and pvp.
While i should think it should be obvious that berserker, even after primal burst nerf, is still better for warrior condi builds because of the fact that many primal burst skills are better condi attacks on general and because berseker actually offers traits that directly boost condi damage, i am also gonna say this: power war never replaced condi war because the latter ceased to be meta in pvp back when war was meta. Power war was simply better at shredding guardians who at the time were also very common. Condi war was always very viable in pvp. So is guardian. But neither of these classes have been meta at the pro scene which is another thing entirely from being meta at solo queue.
That’s just pvp. Berserker is still meta in pve because the meta there is condi ps war.
(edited by Kuya.6495)
They didn’t give axe any support skills because guard already has multiple support weapons. The only thing it didn’t have was a dedicated condi main hand weapon.
Yes, but while I understand that guardian got many support weapons already, none of them (main hand) really synergize with Firebrand except mace…Moreover making you use a power based weapon on a condi spec…which is really meh if stuff like Ashes of the just scales off your condi stats. Druid bring a lot of % dmg boons, but i’m not allowed to give my team extra damage with my skillset because I have to use “opposite stats” weapons ?
And even if we consider that axe is supposed to be a DPS weapon, we do not have to forget the supporting core which guardian as a whole revolves around.
So why do stuff like a sword, GS etc etc keep even a tiny bit of support with boons, symbols and so on, while axe have literaly none ? Could understand that if it was pre weapons’ revamp. Where some stuff like scepter and sword actualy had no symbols, but now you make a symbol with no beneficial effects at all ? Then just call it a normal field, because like this it ain’t a symbol at all. It just feels off.
Moreover from the description it’s not even a true symbol. It doesn’t have any pulsing tooltip…i wonder how it works at all.To end this, i’m not asking for axe to be the like the druid’s staff. Just make it on par with the other guardian’s weapons.
Axe has a symbol. You can trait it with honor to give healing .
They nerfed all classes cause you need to buy new expansion to be competitive.
Except every expansion Elite Spec is strong on its own and fills a niche untouched by the current elite specializations, and Spellbreaker doesn’t get Arc Divider.
Except Berserker is now no longer strong, and does not bring any additional benefits over running Vanilla warrior in PvP. The niche is gone, and Arc Divider without sustain and with its long cooldown and insulting casting time is pointless.
Berserker is better for condi. Spellbreaker will likely be best for physical dps.
They didn’t give axe any support skills because guard already has multiple support weapons. The only thing it didn’t have was a dedicated condi main hand weapon.
Might help to have different tournaments sets running simultaneously for different skill teams. Like a rookie cup and pro cup with the rookie cup not letting you compete if your skill rating is too high or if your character was too recently created. Meanwhile the pro cup has no skill rating limits to compete.