Guild Wars 2

Silv.9207:

I think that he just do that videos to show how big damage a trap guardian can do.
If you look at the first 4 seconds, he pass through all the guardian traps without dodging while with the endurance full.

it’s just to show how Big AoE Damage a class can do without do anything more than press two buttons.

So you think we should balance builds around beginners randomly pressing buttons?

Late dodging, not using mortar 4 like you should, wasting cooldowns on blocks, not looking behind you while kiting, not dodging or reflecting true shot, not making proper use of blast finishers. Also your reaction time is terrible and you seem to just use every skill randomly.

Learn to dodge.

Sincerely, a warrior player.

Zerikin.1593:

No Pulse.2967:

runeblade.7514:

No Pulse.2967:

runeblade.7514:

lighter.2708:

Bloody roar nerfed

I don’t see the nerf. If I wanted a condi build, I would use king of fire.

But torch offhand sucks compared to sword or shield (unless you run sword mainhand, in which case RIP burst).

So you’re saying bleeds > Burning????

Yes. Block + 4 bleeds and 5 torment > a bit of burning.

For single target damage assuming you get to block within half a second or so riposte does more damage , but it takes 24s with 100% bleed time.

Impale and Blaze Breaker are quite comparable unless your target is moving or you want to hit more than one.

Just to prevent misunderstandings, I’m talking about pvp here.

You can’t afford to stand still, so torment is stronger – not to mention the pulsing which makes it perfect as a cover condition. You can already cover a good uptime of burning with traited Outrage and F2 (add Headbutt if you want).

Revenant feels too thief-ish. I personally took a liking in d/f fresh air tempest Ele lately :^)

runeblade.7514:

No Pulse.2967:

runeblade.7514:

lighter.2708:

Bloody roar nerfed

I don’t see the nerf. If I wanted a condi build, I would use king of fire.

But torch offhand sucks compared to sword or shield (unless you run sword mainhand, in which case RIP burst).

So you’re saying bleeds > Burning????

Yes. Block + 4 bleeds and 5 torment > a bit of burning.

runeblade.7514:

lighter.2708:

Bloody roar nerfed

I don’t see the nerf. If I wanted a condi build, I would use king of fire.

But torch offhand sucks compared to sword or shield (unless you run sword mainhand, in which case RIP burst).

Sometimes when I have a crap day

I play tempest in PvP and wonder why it’s so OP…

Valento.9852:

nearlight.3064:

Tomiyou.3790:

nearlight.3064:

I’d argue that tempest is much more viable than base D/D ele in the current meta. D/D ele is still the king of slowly winning 1v1s, but that doesn’t matter when the meta has become so teamfight oriented that coodinated dragonhunter trap bursts can almost one shot a D/D ele if it doesn’t react enough to avoid it, which is difficult to do.

Tempest on the hand works a lot better because it has a a very strong teamfight presence with air overload spam that outclasses what base D/D ele can do, while using shouts/auras to sustain itself and its teammates. Being able to have so much shocking aura and so much protection (40% damage reduction) uptime is insane for survivability. Furthermore, wash the pain away is an amazing heal if you position it correctly to heal allies on a point.

OP, you may not be building your tempest correctly. The old water-arcane synergies don’t apply here anymore, the best builds are a total 180 of that playstyle and trait spread, and you can’t get by with doing specific rotations over and over again.

Link your build? I’m desperate to find something, that will feel rewarding to play.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Tempest_-_Celestial_Auramancer

Yeah, I kinda wrote the metabattle page for it.., so the formatting is still kinda bad since I don’t know how to edit things properly, but yeah, true credit goes to phantaram for discovering this combo first while I spent most of my beta time playing with the slightly inferior water variant of the build thats also listed.

I plan to touch up the usage section with more tips on positioning with overloads and some nice stuff on shouts and projectile hates (theres a lot of depth) but this should get you started. Let me know if you have any questions, and try soldier runes if you have trouble maintaining diamond skin, which can happen since solo queue is more fulled with condi builds than the higher tier MMR bracket I play in.

I’ve updated that page (love wikis and formatting lol). If you need any help with that just PM me.

The wiki page is still wrong, earthen proxy got replaced with the new “auras grant regen and vigor” trait. Actually, would you recommend running it over the stability on overcharge one?

zaced.7948:

hello fellow warriors,
back in the day i was playing warrior a lot and now i want to try the berserker. i played an aggressive condi build (sword/horn – bow) before and wanted to revive that playstyle with the berserker.
i have tried many combinations but sword/torch – mace/shield has worked good for me so far.
-> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRBMhl21ITHUFilhgjHwJilpA74IEAGZKBhaXP490+artA-TJhHAB0+EACa/BAOJAIVGAA
obviously this is just a rough blueprint, i guess there’s a lot of specific things that could be improved.
the first question that comes to mind is the placement of the weapons. right now there’s an aggressive set (s/t) and a defensive one (m/s). i thought that perhaps it would be wise to swap the torch with the shield because the f1 stun could hold them in my fire field. on the other hand with the sword i am able to close gaps should my prey gain distance.
another thought was to exchange shield for sword. there’s also a block on it and though it’s not as powerful the cd is shorter and it comes with some more conditions. on the other hand the stun is very nice and the block very useful since the build is somehow squishy.
i also thought about picking strengh instead of arms or discipline for the additional confusion and the endurance but i’m not so sure it does any good.
i also don’t know if the stances + signet are the preferred choice but double stab has helped me survive a lot more than endure pain has. also berserker stance helps out with pressure from condis (since i don’t pick ire) and with adrenaline gain in order to go into berserk.

well, my basic question is: how would you modify that build while keeping it’s intended functionality (condispam with sword and mace) intact?

A few things you wanna consider:

1) Traiting strength instead of arms (you gain traits that allow you to inflict bleeding, weakness and confusion on CC skills),
2) Running Cleansing Ire with slow hitting weapons like mace for adrenaline generation,
3) Shield instead of torch not only greatly improves your survivability but also has good synergy with the strength traitline and Sundering Mace.

If you like the sword mainhand, you can keep it. I’m not a big fan of it because it makes your damage reliant on constant pressure whereas mace is more bursty and allows you to play more defensively and turn the fight around with a single well-timed interrupt followed by a geo/doom swap.

Personally, I run a mace/sword /shield build in solo queue (str/def/zerk, carrion with traveler runes). Tons of defense and on demand burst is what makes it so great imo. It plays slightly different from power berserker builds, you wanna use F2 as a damage skill and immediately follow with a rage F1>weapon swap.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRApc5enMdAVhgdhAmkCkigFiAzIA8B7ZIngcwI494+cjuA-TJRHwAp3fIwJBAZZAAPBAA

As someone who never used that rune before, isn’t the 6th bonus pretty much wasted because of your F3 passive?

Ross Biddle.2367:

Came across one. Didn’t realize. That 15k gun flame is a killer -_-u

Now guess what else you didn’t realize

I’m using it for my condi/hybrid pvp build.

Link

Berserker mode is actually capable of extreme burst damage but probably not very useful outside of condi mace builds.

Rain.9213:

No Pulse.2967:

Rain.9213:

I did want to run Sinister but I don’t have armorsmithing yet haha. I was only able to craft the Sinister weapons. Also the bleeds were supposed to be the main damage from this build which is why I was originally running krait runes but I feel like perplexity might be a bit better. However there have been new runes added to the game. Gonna see if any of them have good synergy with this build

If that’s of any help to you, I run a carrion mace/sword hammer build in PvP and I found Nightmare runes to work best with it (condi damage, duration and a free interrupt).

Whoa now that you mention it, does the fear on that count as an interrupt? If so, I totally never thought of that! Haha that’s amazing if it does! I thought I was getting a good grasp of the condition playstyle but looks like I still have quite a ways to go. This is my first dedicated condition build so excuse the noobiness xD

Yep, it does. And no need to apologize, we all started as noobs.

Evaluating your video:

First, some general advice.

- If you keybind “Stow weapon” you can use it with hammer 5 to bait evades. Start the long cast, wait for evade, cancel it (doesn’t work if you’re playing with high ping).

- Hammer lacks gapclosers (Earthshaker is too valuable most of the time). Always swap to it when you’re in melee range.

- With your kind of build, you shouldn’t combo CC very much to ensure many Distracting Strikes procs (exception is hammer 5 since the cast time is too long to reliably interrupt anything).

- Don’t expect very long combo chains to be effective. Bait evades, blocks and stunbreaks before you try going for one. Short and effective combos are ideal (one of the reasons I like Distracting Strikes so much).

- Most of the time, people won’t dodge 2 times in a row. Time your CC right at the end of the first one. Expect stunbreaks and evades.

-When you dodge roll, dodge towards the enemy to proc Reckless Dodge (unless you’re trying to run away/line of sight).

Now to the specific fights in your video:

- You were on sword/shield when the ranger used his LB#5, but you used Flurry instead of Shield Bash.
- When the ranger used Rapid Fire, you dodged twice, even though Shield #5 was up.
- You were not in melee range when you swapped to hammer against the engi in the 3rd fight.
- Wait for Gear Shield to end before attacking. Expect a dodge roll right after the gear shield (I don’t know why, but so many engies do that).
- You close gap with Bull’s Charge, immobilize the engi, swap to hammer and… dodge away from him – why?
- The next fight you did much better. Shield #5 at the right moment, Reckless Dodge, you actually interrupt LB#5, very nice. You lose momentum after Sword#3 > hammer swap, luckily the ranger doesn’t realize his advantage and self roots himself with LB#5 again instead of kiting you.
- The fight afterwards, good use of Bull’s Charge and nice comboing of weapon skills.

I’m talking as a pvp player btw, so correct me if anything I said doesn’t apply to wvw.

Pretty much what OP said. The tooltips change but there is no actual effect.

Rain.9213:

I did want to run Sinister but I don’t have armorsmithing yet haha. I was only able to craft the Sinister weapons. Also the bleeds were supposed to be the main damage from this build which is why I was originally running krait runes but I feel like perplexity might be a bit better. However there have been new runes added to the game. Gonna see if any of them have good synergy with this build

If that’s of any help to you, I run a carrion mace/sword hammer build in PvP and I found Nightmare runes to work best with it (condi damage, duration and a free interrupt).

lorddarkflare.9186:

shion.2084:

Phineas Poe.3018:

For raids I’m planning on tanking with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhSsYtWwPLQ7FLsFFdwP8JPYIWiBg4GVF3IA-TxRBABSr+DS7PQtyvmfAAAcBAcWHQaKBJFAM7qA-e

If I’m not tanking, I’ll probably not run Scrapper.

How are you getting the speed in this that triggers both your vigor boost and your sustain trait in scrapper??

Heavy armor exploit from Firearms.

Don’t even need that with EG #2.

That continuous jumping annoyed me so much I stopped watching halfway….

A few things which I not necessarily want in GW2 but sometimes miss:

1) The old tank/healer/dps trinity, being forced to rely on eachother. Socializing isn’t as natural as it was in older MMOs and open world parties exist for LFG-taxis and anti-dc.

2) The uniqueness of items. Almost everything can be obtained on the trading post and gem store. A good variety of skins that use the collection/achievement system and give you the feeling of “whoa, this player is really dedicated to X”.

3) Visuals for stuff like WvW ranks or the amount of completed champion titles/won games in PvP that can be seen by other players. I’m talking special symbols next to your name like the star you get from world completion.

Aristocracy runes would be a really nice addition as an alternative to strength/hoelbrak for condition builds. I’d also like to see Sinister amulet available in pvp (1200 condition damage/900 power/900 precision). You should also add Sigil of Cleansing to have another source of protection against condition damage.

Maybe it’s just me, but I still don’t see axe/shield being better than hammer. It’s a one trick pony set and can be kited extremely easily. I tried it multiple times, but always switched back to hammer afterwards.

How about keeping the insta cast but instead shorten the daze duration to 0,25s (similar to a thief’s Headshot) while removing the stun from Confounding Suggestions to replace it with X stacks of vulnerability?

brannigan.9831:

Dirame.8521:

Ragnarox.9601:

Never seen dragonhunter with hammer and traps, you just talk nonesense. I am playing 2 days in a row for over 200+ matches in pvp and seen 0 ZERO guardians with hammer (that applies to DH as well).
Maybe in theory that would work but in practice not.

I’ve seen few DH with traps, dodged their traps and killed them with ease with my DH.

Lol, you are obviously the only one playing this game and your opinion on what someone else has encountered is obviously fact. I mean, Arenanet clearly only sold 1 copy of the game, those 4,999,999 other people who bought the game don’t exist.

I didn’t see one dragonhunter trap in about 50 ranked matches over the weekend. And maybe a handful of people playing the elite including myself. Traps are crap.

Funny, because I’ve seen a 3-trap dragonhunter at least every 5th match. I was playing unranked, though….

Y u no like engi Iris? :/

Your OP seems familiar Good luck with the guild!

Shala.8352:

ragnarokda.1805:

I run into warriors with soldier runes on often enough to consider them. And it’s not like bunker guards are uncommon, either. I still don’t understand where you’re getting this “double experience” stuff with power builds? What builds are you talking about that are so much more complicated than condi builds? I honestly want to know because I feel like I wanna play those ones since there is so much more prestige in playing power over condi.

Scrubs play condi? I guess? No idea.

well question is another: did condi players started by playing condi builds or power builds? And why they switched to condi players then? not enough fast, or just easy gameplay? just make 2+2 man, is very easy to understand that condi gameplay is much more easy.

Also i dont consider soldier a power build, is a tank build. Guards bunker as you mentioned are not power build either, they are just hibrid. I think of this since the fun thing is that the main dps of a bunker guardian will come out from the burning instead of the direct damage XD XD XD.
Also celestial that should be an hibrid, since should have both power and condi, is in fact carried by condi too.

What?

Have you ever played against a soldier/clerics necro auto-ing you with dagger or DS?

Ever got hit by a cleric’s guard intellgence sigil mace counter?

Do you even know how WEAK conditions are if you have 0 condi damage?

Celestial doesn’t get carried by condi, but might stacking…

Better nerf that burning so OP can 1v3 on his thief.

Varonth.5830:

I wonder why… like why would a necro spam condi cleanse when they have 40k+ health with Death Shroud?

Death Magic

Varonth.5830:

Oh yeah… my 40k rampage healthpool was depleted in 6s by burning.

So after 8s of failing to force some of the guard’s/engi’s cooldowns you failed to cancel rampage for 6 whole seconds?

Maybe you should stop playing hotjoins, because actual games are full of eles/guards/wars/necros/rangers that just spam condi cleanse after condi cleanse after condi cleanse after condi cleanse…

No.

/15necromancers

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

Finally finished the new video. Rendering times are a thorn in my backside it seems. Discussion about the confusion of the terms viable/optimal, confusion usually leading to heated topics/arguments.

A proper understanding of the term before demanding criticism on a certain build or proper details when asking about a build (in the case of not knowing the terms) so we can understand what is asked for (viable/optimal setup) is key to more constructive topics overall, gaining trust of the populace outside the sub forum.

Any other topics anyone would like to hear me discuss in the future are always welcome, just leave a comment here or on the video. Stop sending fangs by the way.

Enjoy the Video!

Thank you very much again for your support and I’ll see you in game!

I really like your videos, although most of what you said has already been discussed here for ages… Maybe you should post it on reddit? I don’t mean this in any offensive way!

stachekiller.2591:

Being very bored with the game I did something I swore I would never do and made a necro. I felt the necro hate first hand as I was booted from a dungeon for the first time.

Of course it was because the entire group wiped in about 5 seconds and my solo of the boss was taking an ungodly amount of time (well over 5 minutes) while they all begged me to kill myself. Kicked with the boss at 20%.

I find that I am having a surprisingly fun time with the class doing surprisingly little damage. #necrolife

I’m kinda in the same situation right now, equipped my necro for dungeons, and all people do is either booting me (even though they had nothing specified in the LFG, maybe Path X or exp/lvl 80) or asking me to change my class.

Are you on EU? We should play some dungeons together

The only reason for someone to take this trait over Soul Marks is the reduced cooldown on DS for DS flashing builds, because let’s face it – giving up unblockable CC on staff just for slightly higher running speed that’s easily overwritten by swiftness is not really a fair compromise.

I would suggest reworking it to have better synergy with DS flashing. Something like spoj already suggested – swiftness or super speed on entry or exit.

What’s wrong with soloing Arah for money anyway?

ODB.6891:

Truefrost.6815:

azizul.8469:

well, Reaper actually kick kitten in dungeon. but, till then , yeah……

Err, what? No it didn’t. This previous beta it was BARELY performing above normal DS build, lol. Dagger build was still better, hell… It was only useful for RS so you could AoE but even that wasn’t so great.

Agreed, they need at least one % damage modifier on RS to make Shroud attacks better than not using Shroud.

Wasn’t the RS attack speed trait bugged anyway?

I can only recommend this guild, they have nice people to play with. Highly friendly and mature community with skilled players. The guild is small but grows at a steady pace.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Lack of a job.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

Thanks to you I choked on my coffee…

Druss.6917:

Muchacho.2390:

Druss.6917:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Druss.6917:

You use the dark fields to blast into,

Wat? Necros really can’t do this.

staff 4, bone minions, then you have shroud 3, duration food and runes to sustain the chill for a time. Not 100% uptime, but it wasn’t meant to be anyway. It’s a part of the build. Without it though it becomes pointless. Might as well just run a cripple spam, or terrormancer… would be more effective

Since when is shroud 3 (or any shroud skill) a blast finisher?

I did not say shroud 3 was a blast
was a mistype anyway meant 2 (dark path)

Since when does any decent player save staff 4 to use it as a blast finisher?
Why would you ever use bone minions outside of MM builds?

I disagree. If anything, the AI should be buffed, they are very weak to AOE even when traited. A dead flesh wurm/blood fiend means dead necro. The golem is still bugged and doesn’t attack most of the time.

As someone who tried every possible warrior build I can recommend you 3 builds using mace/shield:

1. GS swap – Skullcracker

A bursty build using berserker amulet. With sigil of paralyzation you have 4s stun on mace f1, combo that into a 100% crit Hundred Blades.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeRjMdUFaZIehQKaAlgCZofBHb7AQ9U0FPBA-TpBCABA8AAG+IAUxhA4iTAQO7PEWZAA

2. LB swap – carrion or celestial

Hybrid build with decent condi dmg spikes (better with sword offhand instead of shield though!) coming from confusion on interrupting.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNApeTjMdUFaZIuewJagfgC5t3CGDgjWdaMHdPA-TpBHwAAeAAD3fQwhAIZZgAHBgBnAAA

3. Sword/warhorn swap – banner regen bunker

Bunker build that provides permanent aoe regen, very fun to play in pugs because of mercy runes (10% faster revives with Fast Healer + 20% from mercy runes + reviving people with more health).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQRBJdxG2ITHVhWGiBI0hG4HoQf7tQOYKASXEbRWA-TJxHAB1eSAQqMAK7PAwTAAA

Wolfe.3097:

i too have been intersted in this. also for spvp wich i imagine will ruffle some feathers lol

I’ve been running this build for a very long time in pvp:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJASRjMdUFajHehwJigfgC9t3C7gpAQ5b0GpOCA-TpBHwAEOCAAeAAV2fYwhAIwFAoZZAA

Enjoy.

Now that you mentioned exploiting, they split up at the acolytes so their HP wouldn’t scale up like it usually does for a 5man party.

Am I doing this right?

Congrats

But what we really wanna know… Did the Ranger have a bear pet?

You just gotta BELIEVE…

Derenek.8931:

Use their toughness, death shroud invulnerability, and conditions to crush your opponents.

Derenek.8931:

death shroud invulnerability

Derenek.8931:

invulnerability

Anet pls?

Skill 1 on my necro.

Where is the squirrel cult when you need them?

spoj.9672:

Can we ask what they are going to do to allow necros to survive the encounter without being carried?

What are necros?