Guild Wars 2

Conqueror.3682:

Good thing of engineer is that is the most versatile profesion to think what flavor of specialization you want on them.

Because branches of engineering are vast, like mechanical, electrical, chemical, computational, etc… >scrapper, per example is in some branch of robotic/mechanical engineering.

as a chemical engineer i really liked the class for the elixirs, even the idea of making an homunculus or the idea of being a mad chemist, throwing toxic and burning things at my enemies.

The flavour/theme coupled with a weapon and a unique mechanics niche was actually making for quite a difficult thing for me to come up with anything satisfying tbh. Thank god I’m not one of the game devs haha!

Doctor role with a scalpel or syringe-type dagger skin? (Unlikely syringe would be okayed by anyone in charge haha! But what would it’s abilities even look like as a melee support role, maybe trait lines focusing on either the stabhappy lunatic side or a… life transfer side? But that’s basically either part thief or part necro really.)
Golemancy is already pretty much covered thematically by function gyros and might stray too far into asura-specific territory.
Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde idea to expand on ground covered by Rampage? But mechanically that’s quite close to what hammer scrapper does anyway. (Using the pop culture Mr Hyde image that is)
I don’t know why technomagic isn’t appealing to me as a concept for a niche, maybe because it’s too vague, something to do with manipulation of leylines would fit story-wise but that seems like it should be in a different profession’s repertoire if it ever showed up.
Go full anime and give them a giant pair of impractical scissors as a melee weapon and some kind of paper magic? (Immobilises while shouting “there’s always time for a bow!”, taunts with cardboard cutouts of the enemy I don’t know haha!)

Vayne.8563:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

maxwelgm.4315:

The deal is that people consider it funnier and more enjoyable if they are doing something optimized. It makes them feel better in general that they are doing something well. This might sound weird at first but, are we not encouraged to do our best at whatever we do?.

That said, this is not a real pressure outside of Fractals/Raids. Marauder, Valkyrie and the like works wonders for survivability as well as damage. You can also wear Celestial to be an all-rounder (change build as you wish without ever worrying about equipment!) and do well at most stuff.

Just remember though, toughness in particular needs a rework. They have severly nerfed it because of a previous PvP bunker meta, and it is basically a junk stat. You need vitality and proper use of protection+vigor much more than you need toughness, as enemies will simply pierce through you in groups. So it might actually be hindering yourself rather than protecting yourself, if you wear toughness equips.

What’s more optimal though, a dungeon run with 3 party wipes or a dungeon run 1 minute slower than the world record?

You’re assuming that dungeon wipes don’t happen if people don’t wear zerker. However if one person doesn’t wear zerker and four do, everything still dies slower and if the zerkers die and that guy is left the only one alive trying to solo a boss it’s not any faster.

There’s no real evidence for what you say, or at least it’s not my experience.

We used to run Lupi in our casual guild, which you’ll find in every path of Arah. Every path. And we’d take 8-10 minutes to kill him, during which sometimes we’d have deaths and sometimes we’d wipe.

Now, everyone is the guild that runs dungeons runs zerker. We kill Lupi in about 2 minutes after the first phase is over or in about 20% of the time we used to take. Fewer people go down because we don’t have to play perfectly for nearly as long.

Saying that you can do a dungeon faster is non-zerk gear is an argument I used to make. I found out from experience, I was wrong.

The corollary to this point being in direct opposition of the usually stated belief of “zerker = more skilled play” haha!

Lahmia.2193:

Milan.9035:

Zenith.7301:

Knighthonor.4061:

I believe there wont be any major changes due to the developers working on the next Expansion. So all major changes will be on that Xpac update and will pretty much ignore the base class till then.

they did this with Necromancer and Ranger up to the release of the first expansion.

So just bite on something for now. I believe we getting something good.

Did necromancers get anything good?

They got a garbage greatsword nobody uses outside open world PvE because it’s so terrible, and the reaper traitline is a PvP traitline. Reaper shouts are worthless in raids and reaper got no % damage increase traits, reaper shroud is a DPS loss to just camping autoattack on greatsword which is already bad DPS.

Don’t think for a second an expansion will mean good changes.

Rangers wanted a viable DPS spec, and instead they forced them to be healbots.

Did hey say good changes? He said major changes. So calm down and i think he is 100% right. Necro and druid got huge changes.

What’s the point in major changes if they’re not good changes?

Because “good” is a lot more subjective than “major”?

For better or worse, major changes shake things up. So from a certain perspective all major changes could be viewed as good changes, depending on one’s personal definition of good. To some people a change would only be considered good if it was 100% their own idea/implementation.

Cwnannwn.7681:

It’s gotta be bunny thumper (sadly, warrior’s first elite already has the perfect name for Hammer Ranger)

To be honest when I think of rangers and hammers my mind immediately goes to the echovald forest and those wardens that used to mess me up so much haha! So if they were making a hammer ranger my ideal would be for it to be themed around them.

I mean the good thing about precision as the main stat on Seraph is that half Seraph half something else doesn’t really need precision on the something else to still have decent crit chance. Which means, what is it, shaman, apothecary, settler to boost the condi and healing while providing your survivability stat of choice?

I would definitely rather not have another offhand until we get another mainhand. I’d prefer a mainhand weapon to a two handed weapon so we can get more use out of our existing offhands. I’d like a melee alternative to sword (so mace or dagger) more than I’d like a ranged alternative to axe (scepter, pistol or dagger). While I think hammer would be really cool for some reason the coolness doesn’t transfer over to mace, so… dagger. Hopefully they could do something fun with it.

Straegen.2938:

How about they change it, we live with it for a couple matches and see how it is BEFORE we start criticizing it and asking for it to be removed. You may be right and it doesn’t work as well but we probably won’t know all the ramifications both good and bad until they try it.

Hah! If only.

I never thought to take note of how long the last change got before people were up in arms about it being the new ruiner of everything. This probably counts as some kind of depressing karmic balance.

(I’m agreeing with you by the way, all for just seeing how it goes, in case that isn’t clear.)

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Samnang.1879:

I don’t think it’s OK to play whatever you feel like. Maybe if you’re roaming the open world, sure. But if you’re doing fracs or raiding with other people, you should be considerate and play in a way that supports yourself and the group.

Like you can’t become a magi warrior and focus on healing, because that’s not the function of warriors.

If they can find 4 other like-minded people they can play whatever they want however they want.

But I would kindly ask them to stay out of my groups.

Casuals are welcome in my groups, I am a casual myself after all. But terribad players who somehow think they’re too good for the meta are definitely not welcome in my groups.

When it comes to the meta, this is my stance; you first have to understand and master the meta before you can defy it and play non-meta builds. If you bring a non-meta build to my group you better know what the f- you’re doing.

This is straying slightly off topic but my stance on the meta is; the meta tries* to optimise around a specific variable. Off-meta builds are just prioritising a different variable.

When it comes to who I enjoy playing with, really it’s down to the people rather than the builds. I’d honestly much rather have a magi healing warrior in the party who was happy with everyone else playing the way they wanted than a zerker warrior who rages at the condi ranger for not being a full magi druid, for example.

When people ask for build advice one of the key things that should be found out is what they want to prioritise with their build (not just what area of the game it’s for but what they want the focus of their build to be) rather than just a “you’re playing x, your focus must be y” or just blindly linking to metabattle.

*important to note is that it also doesn’t always succeed. In testing, you try to keep as many variables as possible static so as to compare the ones being tested, but some of the variables assumed to be static by the meta aren’t always reliable in the situations that the meta often assumes.

In short, the meta is a handy tool, but that’s no excuse for players to be. =P

(I’m not intending to be antagonistic or condescending here or anything, I just can’t resist a pun)

Honestly came in here thinking “what could possibly be happening in July that could need venting about?”

Snow causing a power outage sounds like a fun time to have been in the office.

Anet should definitely introduce a coin purse mace skin so we can heroically clobber dragons with our accumulated wealth.

It’s ok to start friendly conversations during downtimes in ranked pvp.
It’s ok to turn off chat when people don’t keep conversations friendly.
It’s ok to feel like a child again when your favourite annual festival starts up.
It’s ok to not care about “meta”, or to optimise a build for something other than damage.
It’s ok to give your own opinions/advice on a class when that advice is asked for.
It’s ok to play something else when this game stops feeling fun. So far there’s always been a reason for me to come back. =)

UmbraNoctis.1907:

In teamfights you should easily be able to enter CA on cd with traited WHaO, so that’s not really an argument for water spirit.

If this part is replying to me, that wasn’t what I meant by that part of my post. Gah communication is hard. Never mind.

edit
Thanks =)

Fluffball.8307:

Rashagar.8349:

but one different utility and a different heal skill are a lot easier to live with.

It’s a lot harder to live with them, literally, because you’re giving up a really really good utility for complete crap. SoS, PM, SoR, gaurd, LR, etc for like…. sun spirit? WHaO for water spirit? No, objectively wrong answer if you’re not less than PvP level 80 like some people in this thread supporting spirits are.

I’m sure you can make it work, but you’re making subpar choices let’s be honest.

Hehe I’m sure you know I meant it in the figure of speech way but I do appreciate wordplay. =)
Since I haven’t played with it myself, from the point of view of water spirit vs WHaO, I sort of assumed it depended on how quickly you could charge celestial avatar and using it to take pressure off your heal skill. It’s definitely sub par from a personal perspective but in team fights I can’t be as sure. It’s probably also true that this spirit druid idea is even more vulnerable to focus fire due to their utilities.
Checking the wiki quickly to see if they changed it, it does seem a shame that half the water spirit stuff still doesn’t seem to benefit from healing power though. As weird as it might be, that small bit of disappointment is always what turned me off trying water spirit, rather than anything else.
edit to check
Does anyone remember how long spirits continue to affect their surroundings after they die? I used to know but…

Foxfire clusters?

It’s just lazy stereotyping, but when dealing with large groups like that, especially pug groups, it’s probably also necessary lazy stereotyping. I don’t mean necessary to succeed btw, I just mean necessary to start playing within a reasonable amount of time.
I’ve never really paid attention to where I’m put though tbh, I just play the way I like to play, I mean from an organisational standpoint it might make sense to have the commander dealing with the overarching stuff and having “lieutenants” or whatever delegated with fiddling with party comp or looking at individual contributions to optimise teams or whatever but really, honestly, I’d rather everyone just get on with playing and having fun.

I saw a small few ranger spirits when I decided to pvp and it always made me smile to see them. I’m not so sure about the elite one, opportunity cost, fairly long cooldown working against the preemptive nature of the skill use, more of a priority target than the others to enemies (even if it’s just out of spite heh, though I suppose if it’s being attacked and you’re not then it’s technically doing it’s healing job) etc., but one different utility and a different heal skill are a lot easier to live with.

I assumed the “stronger attacks” were just referring to the longer bleed duration when I read it, since it didn’t used to bleed from the front? I have no idea when that change happened though.

Will Peasant’s Solution do?

Some great advice so far.
What didn’t you like about your last 3 gear choices out of curiosity?
The way I play my ranger is by constantly switching things around and trying things out, so for me stats are kind of a secondary concern.
I’d suggest start with what weapons you enjoy using and work from there.
When I started I loved mainhand axe and shortbow, and just couldn’t get into using longbow however much I tried. Then I found that greatsword was very much to my liking, and the trait changes to longbow meant it was a more fun accompaniment for me. I decided early on that I didn’t like mainhand sword due to constantly falling off cliffs with it, I can use it better now but it still doesn’t really click for me, and staff doesn’t really do it for me either right now.
Swap around utilities and pets depending on what you’re doing, with traits to complement your choices. (The hybrid destroyers is a great example). I’ve gone from having shouts be my favourite things ever to preferring a mix of traps and spirits in pve.
Take a break and play other professions if it turns out that nothing works for you right now. Future elite specs or simply a change in personal tastes or mood means you might enjoy coming back to your character later.
When you’re changing your builds what gear are you replacing? Just to say you don’t have to replace it all, keeping your berserker armour (or whatever) and trying trinkets and weapons that have power and condi stats (rampager/carrion/sinister/viper) is more than ok, you don’t have to go all viper (unless what you don’t like about ranger is a lack of big numbers?)

Sigfodr.9576:

Easy go full magi for raids. Get the tinkets from the new maps, and armor from the dungeon AC, from AC you can get exotic magi armor with monk runes directly. So its the fastest and cheapest way of getting a full sett of really good healer gear. A full run will net you over 300 tokens a day. And the cost of a full sett (+ staff) is about 1500. So 5 days worth.

For fracs/dungeons and open world, go berserker or viper. Both setts can also be used as off-healer in raids.

I’m going to have to keep this little tip in mind for myself I think.

Following on from the analogy in my first post in this thread, a lot of the points of view expressed here would seem to be the product of cultural imperialism, and could benefit hugely from adopting a broader perspective.

Hmm, to eviscerate the poorly thought out posts or to ignore them… the eternal struggle…

I never really did pvp all that much, the most I played was when stronghold was in beta, but I stopped again after because I don’t like feeling like I’m letting teammates down. In the last week or so I decided the ranked rewards were enough of a reason for me to be selfish and say screw the teammates I’m here for me, and I’ve actually found to my shock that I occasionally amn’t terrible! Or at least amn’t the worst.

Wvw I go through phases of it being my favourite game mode to just having barely enough motivation for popping in to do dailies.

Would be nice alright yeah.

SkyShroud.2865:

Rashagar.8349:

SkyShroud.2865:

Crinn.7864:

SkyShroud.2865:

Berseker is highest dps only after you include other modifiers like fury and traits that further boost the crit rate.

If you don’t have those modifiers then Assassin’s is optimal DPS. And Assassin’s is a three stat amulet.

And? That has nothing to do with the given arguments, isn’t—————it?

Rashagar.8349:

On the topic of 3 stat vs 4 stat, if you discount boon duration and condi duration which don’t exist in 3stat armours anyway, then the only stat combos you have with higher stat totals are marauder, which gives a bit of vitality and hence contributes to tankiness, and crusader, which is the only way apart from celestial to get ferocity and healing power on the same item, which a lot of people already discount healing power as a decent stat.

Just saying it’s a bit of a false equivalency to just say “4 stat gear has numerically more stats than 3 stat gear” because apart from those two armour sets above the rest have numerically less stats but include boon or condi duration which don’t exist on 3stat gear.

*edit; if you do count boon and condi duration as stats then some rune sets give significantly more stats than others!

Of course you have to include those stats. Of course there are runes that are significant more stats than others which is why such runes are not usually found in PvP. PvE/WvW balancing is simply terrible. Gw2, all in all, is primary a pve game and with that, many hardcore pvp players already left due to it.

Anet dev team, (or the initial dev team if they are no longer around) had a very simple idea which is to standardize the gears so they focus balancing on skills, traits and runes. That much is obvious when you look at all the gears available in pre-hot. Obviously, that idea is abandoned.

It’s all well and good to say “of course they are included”, but unless your problem is specifically with either marauders (still not better dps than berserker) or crusaders (only really works in small amounts paired with zealots or with huge amounts of +crit from traitlines like reaper) then it’s still a bit of a false equivalency.
By which I mean, the scaling of 15pts = 1% is completely arbitrary, so they could have set 4stat armour totals as equal to 3stat armour totals and still had the other 4stat armours give the same amount of raw stats and duration as they do now. So if a problem exists with the other 4stat armours being more powerful than 3stat ones, it’s due to the scaling factor they’re using, and not the total, which can be fixed easily. So no I don’t think you do “have” to include those stats.
I for one like the idea of them introducing the higher stat totals in HoT armour on the condition that they keep choosing stranger or less seen stat combinations (nothing gave prec with vitality before apart from magi/celestial which are already very niche, and ferocity with healing is unique outside of celestial), which gives them a way to make weirder more niche stat combos less instantly worse than the ones that already exist and are “meta”.

This isn’t meant to be aggressively nit picky or anything, I’m just trying to say an answer to “why do HoT armour sets have higher stat totals than pre-HoT armour sets” could be “so they can try out more niche stat combinations”.

*edit; maybe I’m not explaining myself well, but I can’t figure out how better to say it.

Why shouldn’t those stats be included? It is really silly not to, how you make two gears balanced without accounting for every single part of it? In zero sum, to gain something, we need to lose something equivalent . Just look at a simple comparison with trailblazer and dire, dire do less damage just purely because of lesser duration. Trailblazer while having higher damage, it doesn’t lose significantly in the area of HP or toughness.

Sure, you can change the scaling of 15 points to 1% to another thing. However, it doesn’t change the fact that the overall stats is still higher. Btw, ferocity was percentage too, I find it contradicting when you didn’t exclude that stat, it makes your argument unsound.

Not really unsound at all, in the case of ferocity they already had an overall numerical percentage that had been present in the previous iterations of the items (some individual pieces were deemed to be overtuned), and a numerical value of the secondary stat totals on gear.

Edit; tldr, different situations

The mystic weapons for specialisation collections need them if you’re mystic forging them, but you might be better off buying them from the tp and selling the coins than forging (haven’t compared prices in ages).
Making mystic clovers for legendary weapons uses them, but I’ve been slowly accumulating mystic clovers via other methods instead since I’m in no rush for them.
The newer legendaries also require a stack of the coins by themselves, which is what most of my coins are being saved up for.
Then they’re also used in an assortment of other mystic forge recipes for other funky skins of varying value.

SkyShroud.2865:

Crinn.7864:

SkyShroud.2865:

Berseker is highest dps only after you include other modifiers like fury and traits that further boost the crit rate.

If you don’t have those modifiers then Assassin’s is optimal DPS. And Assassin’s is a three stat amulet.

And? That has nothing to do with the given arguments, isn’t—————it?

Rashagar.8349:

On the topic of 3 stat vs 4 stat, if you discount boon duration and condi duration which don’t exist in 3stat armours anyway, then the only stat combos you have with higher stat totals are marauder, which gives a bit of vitality and hence contributes to tankiness, and crusader, which is the only way apart from celestial to get ferocity and healing power on the same item, which a lot of people already discount healing power as a decent stat.

Just saying it’s a bit of a false equivalency to just say “4 stat gear has numerically more stats than 3 stat gear” because apart from those two armour sets above the rest have numerically less stats but include boon or condi duration which don’t exist on 3stat gear.

*edit; if you do count boon and condi duration as stats then some rune sets give significantly more stats than others!

Of course you have to include those stats. Of course there are runes that are significant more stats than others which is why such runes are not usually found in PvP. PvE/WvW balancing is simply terrible. Gw2, all in all, is primary a pve game and with that, many hardcore pvp players already left due to it.

Anet dev team, (or the initial dev team if they are no longer around) had a very simple idea which is to standardize the gears so they focus balancing on skills, traits and runes. That much is obvious when you look at all the gears available in pre-hot. Obviously, that idea is abandoned.

It’s all well and good to say “of course they are included”, but unless your problem is specifically with either marauders (still not better dps than berserker) or crusaders (only really works in small amounts paired with zealots or with huge amounts of +crit from traitlines like reaper) then it’s still a bit of a false equivalency.
By which I mean, the scaling of 15pts = 1% is completely arbitrary, so they could have set 4stat armour totals as equal to 3stat armour totals and still had the other 4stat armours give the same amount of raw stats and duration as they do now. So if a problem exists with the other 4stat armours being more powerful than 3stat ones, it’s due to the scaling factor they’re using, and not the total, which can be fixed easily. So no I don’t think you do “have” to include those stats.
I for one like the idea of them introducing the higher stat totals in HoT armour on the condition that they keep choosing stranger or less seen stat combinations (nothing gave prec with vitality before apart from magi/celestial which are already very niche, and ferocity with healing is unique outside of celestial), which gives them a way to make weirder more niche stat combos less instantly worse than the ones that already exist and are “meta”.

This isn’t meant to be aggressively nit picky or anything, I’m just trying to say an answer to “why do HoT armour sets have higher stat totals than pre-HoT armour sets” could be “so they can try out more niche stat combinations”.

*edit; maybe I’m not explaining myself well, but I can’t figure out how better to say it.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Husky, I don’t have a concept other than , I believe they will never add a new race, so I want my Tengu in whatever way I can! (…and because we cannot have Zhed Shadowhoof the ele because of that hippie horse they gave us!)

It’s not a gw1 specific lore thing (doesn’t suit Talon for example) or anything but there is that trope of tengu/bird-like monsters using razor sharp feather-like projectiles, so a dual wielding ranged dagger spec mechanically themed around agility, bleeds and kiting? Might tread on Shiro’s toes a bit too much though even if it is condi focused.

I’m definitely loving the Urgoz suggestions though more than anything else in this thread.

On the topic of 3 stat vs 4 stat, if you discount boon duration and condi duration which don’t exist in 3stat armours anyway, then the only stat combos you have with higher stat totals are marauder, which gives a bit of vitality and hence contributes to tankiness, and crusader, which is the only way apart from celestial to get ferocity and healing power on the same item, which a lot of people already discount healing power as a decent stat.

Just saying it’s a bit of a false equivalency to just say “4 stat gear has numerically more stats than 3 stat gear” because apart from those two armour sets above the rest have numerically less stats but include boon or condi duration which don’t exist on 3stat gear.

*edit; if you do count boon and condi duration as stats then some rune sets give significantly more stats than others!

I have no idea if any advice offered here will be too general or too specific to be of any use but here goes. (It sort of depends what content you do?)

I really like staff with mallyx because of the leeching bolts and blast finisher. Bad thing is it doesn’t make good use of your condition damage investment, but it can really help when you’re on the defencive. So for me condi is more of a secondary investment than a primary one, even on a mallyx rev.

As someone who has never run an optimised stat spread on any of my wvw characters, I can honestly say that my stats have never impacted my enjoyment of the game mode that much. So no I don’t believe that the “gear treadmill for new players” argument holds water, unless you count getting to level 80 and buying whatever exotics are cheapest on the tp a treadmill. More important for new people to learn is everything else about the game mode that a lot of more seasoned players probably take the knowledge of for granted.

I’ve been trying to organise and make sense of my feelings for this idea.
From a balance perspective I doubt it will achieve much of anything unless it’s hyper-restrictive and unfun. I’m all for trimming the extremes of some builds or whatever but I think that’s more about trait and boon interactions than stats.
This idea is great for the purposes of individual build experimentation, I love theorycrafting but rarely put the specialist builds into practice because of the cost, sometimes cost in gold but more often the cost in inventory space.
But, I don’t think I’d see this as an overall positive step I’m afraid, because it would just make the gear choices in gw2 even shallower and more berserker dominated than they already are. I just feel like it would take from the feel of gw2 as a whole, and I can’t figure out a better less abstract way of phrasing it than that.
However, if the change happened, I can’t say that it would stop me having fun. I’d probably have a great time experimenting at will with no cost attached. (The corollary to that being that decisions about stats would feel less meaningful, but I personally rarely am able to commit to those decisions anyway)

I assumed it was an area around you but I’ve honestly never tested it, I have the feeling that if it was an area around the recipient then the wiki would point that out specifically.

Amaimon.7823:

Gaile Gray.6029:

X T D.6458:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We all have our favorites, but the Kittenizer™ has been with us for years, and I’m not sure we’re willing to move up to the Skritt-o-Matic 2000 quite yet.

The skritt just hit the fan…the dream is dead…kitten everything!

You ain’t kitten!

Can’t we change it to quaggans? since no one likes to talk about them anyway

Aww yes! If we change it to quaggan then every time a quaggan speaks it’ll be like they’re just cursing like sailors!

The most recent kitten that I enjoyed was a post that said content was a kittenallenging.

I really like this idea.
Or whichever of these implementations of this idea makes the most sense.

I think blinding truths if I was trying to support in melee range (I think it’s radius around you rather than the tablet) and nourishing roots if I was supporting from range?

So, just for the sake of discussion, on the topic of removing target limit of aoe. Do you not think that this will just further increase the gulf between efficacy of aoe skills and single target skills in the game mode? And hence the attractiveness of a smaller and smaller group of professions/weapon specs to WvWers (less build diversity). Is that just something that’s willing to be lived with for the sake of the desired end goal?
The other point of discussion I was curious about was of diminishing returns for larger groups, I’d be worried that the ideal quantity would be minmaxed within a week and then any new players being attracted to the game mode from there on would be made feel unwelcome to join a group after that critical number had been reached.
As is that sort of elitism/cliquiness is usually not present in the game mode because “more bodies almost always = better” and I tend to see that as one of the big plusses to wvw.
Just thoughts, not meant as attacks or anything.

The arguments that state that any current problem with epidemic is due to a shift in player attitudes/playstyle/builds/whatever and not really to do with the skill itself are the ones that make the most sense here. As such I feel that the solution lies in another shift in player attitudes/playstyle/builds/whatever, and not in devs altering the skill itself.

Sorin Noroku.5342:

with pulls on focus and gravity well, things are now nice and clumped for your warrior friend to WRECK UTTER HAVOC!

Enjoy!

This was all I really had to contribute heh, the pull on focus is really satisfying in pve and your warrior partner has any number of great melee cleaving options to take advantage of it with. I imagine that gravity well is just as satisfying if not more so.
Another thing I find really satisfying in pve is the power block trait in domination. Between the interrupts themselves, the weakness from that trait, and all the fun support options from inspiration, I feel supportive even without any kind of boon sharing.

Zero Day.2594:

Drakz.7051:

Because it is all about the Meta, if you are not playing meta for min/max stats you are not wanted in parties, hard to believe from the game that wanted us to play how we wanted.

…

It’s not really the game that imposes the meta on players…
It’s the players imposing the meta on players.

If you get into, say “hardcore” raiding, then one would expect from other hardcore players to be on top of the ball on builds and such… But it’s your choice to push your self that far to hang with the “hardcore”…

The others that you meet in pugs and demand that you play meta, are somewhat understandable too. By running the meta, the thought is that it will take less effort and time to overcome a task, so pugs tend to favor that religiously – even if the players aren’t performing well enough to bring out the “meta-ness” in w/e meta build their running, and could perform better on a non-meta build. But it’s the belief that the task will be easier to over with a meta build that defies their reasoning – and beliefs are hard to change.

gets kind of teary eyed
very carefully replaces the intended reply with a simple…

+1

Nothing to add except for appreciation of eloquence.

Thanks to all who replied, especially @Artemi for taking the time to write that post.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Warrior, Guardian, and Revenant all include power/DPS roles: you can outfit all of them with a single set of zerker + scholar (or strength) runes.

It’s more complicated for the other two armor weights, depending on the content that interests you. Ascended matters for T3-4 fractals, but isn’t required for WvW, open world, and (arguably) raids; understanding the mechanics/encounters matters more.

Consequently, I use Ascended just for fractal builds and exotics for the rest.

Ah yeah I realise it’s not needed, it’s more coming from a place of wanting multiple build options for my characters, that gives enough of a nod towards profession optimisation to satisfy, without each of my characters needing to have multiple exotic equipment sets cluttering up their inventory space.
It’d probably be cheaper to just buy them all more bags than to create this much ascended armour but still.

More of a thought exercise for when insomnia kicks in than an actual end goal for my account but it wouldn’t hurt to actually find a solution I liked and could aim towards either hehe.

Berserker makes the most sense for power damage alright, though marauder for the armour is tempting to make it slightly easier to bulk up a bit with it via trinkets for surviving a bit longer in WvW (thanks @Pifil) (the higher precision making up for a potential lack of precision on trinkets)
In saying that I’m not sure how or if 1/3rd marauder would hurt overall performance (or acceptance rates of pugs) in raids/fractals.

No matter how much I look at it and want to differentiate between the weight categories, I think Artemi is also probably right about Viper too. Definitely for the medium classes anyway, (who all seem to have good power coefficients on their condi sets) and while I haven’t dabbled in condi with mesmer yet I know that my necromancer would enjoy that +duration in PvE at least.
Which is a bit of a pity since there are so many condi prefixes available in the game,
but having Viper on the armour (and either weapons or some trinkets, whichever is easier to normalise across characters) would allow for going either full glass or part bulk depending on the content, and even in bulk scenarios, “only” +20-25%ish condi duration is still very tempting.

Not fully convinced for the heavy armour professions that Viper would be the theoretical way to go though.
Warriors I feel would benefit from it nicely but since guardians only really have burning they might do better from raw stats over +dur?
Revenants pretty much have to be hybrid damage dealers if they want to deal in conditions (a point in Viper’s favour) but I also feel like they’d need good bulk since their only condition weapon set is melee.

Then it comes to the tricky problem children of the last slots.

Zealot is a really good call that I’d completely overlooked so thanks for that. Especially for the medium professions.
It would mean a raid druid would be a distinct possibility without having to dedicate an armour set to that sole purpose (ie no Magi armour) as it’d do better than magi for Engi and potentially allow for a bit of fun spent as Dr McNinja.

The other option is if I wanted to dabble in condi while healing the way that Engi and Ranger seem perfectly capable of doing.
Then the only real choice is celestial, due to my dislike of having no power to back condis up. But that rules out a raiding druid should I ever want that.

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk in favour of +boon duration on mesmer, so that would probably mean Commander armour if the whole +40%ish boon duration from stats was needed, if +20-25%ish was fine however then could cover that with trinkets/weapons instead.
Outside of might stacking, boon duration seems a bit of a waste on necromancer, and it’s pretty much the same build as the berserker one but… less satisfying.
The benefit for elementalist as always remains a mystery to me haha!

I’m determined that a ventari revenant will see some play from me in WvW, however unoptimal, so Cleric is probably the way to go with the heavy armour too since a supporty warrior or guardian are both possible with it (those shout runes the warrior uses being the only downside to that plan). Again celestial raises it’s jack of all trades head though. And I know boon duration is a thing to care about for supporty revenants/guardians too but minstrel armour is far too niche for my tastes, I wouldn’t like to have to rely entirely on people around me for doing more than tickling an enemy or boring them to death.

*Edit: Jesus I write too much.

Anyone who thinks that there are no rules in war isn’t a very good student of history. There are, however, no universal rules for war. Different cultures had different rules and different taboos during war times. So what this is, is simply a clash of WvW subcultures. As such, no side is inherently right or wrong. Though one side might be said to have different priorities to the other. Whether or not one set of priorities is better for the game than the other… can only be surmised.

I’m curious if anyone else does this too, and what other people’s “solutions” might look like.

So, occasionally when bored/unable to sleep, I like to treat ascended equipment as an account-wide brain teaser that can be solved. By which I mean, I have 9 characters (one of each) at level 80, since ascended equipment is account bound, how can I equip them all in such a way that I allow each of them to be able to cover 3 distinct roles in all areas of the game (ie. by swapping armour sets with another character in the same weight category, sharing ascended weapons, and having the minimum pool of communal trinkets).

General points to take into consideration:
Some people take offence to you having survival stats in endgame pve content.
Survival stats are often necessary in wvw.
There are more than 3 distinct roles available through gw2 stat selection.
Runes/sigils might have to be lost in equipment transition from one character to another in favour of different ones.

Personal points I take into consideration: (you don’t have to)
I don’t like condition damage that isn’t backed up by at least a little power.
I shy away from vitality on weapons since I don’t know how it works when you weapon swap from a set with vitality to one without and vice versa during combat.
I still don’t really know some professions that well (ele, engi, thief)
Armour is the most important one to “get right” since it’s expensive and takes up a lot of inventory space to have everyone having backup exotic sets. On that note having one backup ascended set per weight category if it covers a 4th role might be acceptable.

I’m nowhere near having this amount of ascended stuff in game, but as a brain teaser it’s certainly been managing to tease my brain, and now I’m curious if there actually is a good solution anyone else can come up with.

Can we make this a thing only after I get nightfury? =P

I would seriously like this by the way.
Added satisfaction for me if for every 5 people within a short radius the game generated 1 communal torch effect and 2 communal pitchforks.

Choppy.4183:

Could be they were traps from more than one person/class, but only one of them stuck around to stomp any hapless victim who stepped in them.

I was thinking this too.
Big physical damage wouldn’t be a thief or ranger trap, unless you got longbow comboed? (But that’d definitely show in combat log)
The explosion bit is the most confusing for me, there’s ranger flame trap (but you didn’t mention burning), how do engineer minefields look to enemies? Maybe a dragonhunter trap that can look explosive when all other particle effects are added on top of it?

edit Oh maybe the thief didn’t even stick around to stomp, and it was actually just that the teleport to target trap was one of the many traps placed.

I can’t quite figure out how to explain the way it works in my head, since I’ve never really thought about how I use the terms before now. Like, I think of them in terms of prefixes and attributes, but I say stats or stat combos in map chat or whatever because… it’s easier to type? There’s also some kind of shaky poorly defined distinction between prefix and stat combo in my head, I think where prefix is about the specific names/items and stat combo is more about the desired end result you want from a certain collection of names?

This isn’t helping is it haha!
I’d say just be as official/technical as you can be on the wiki and people can use whatever words they want, since if the game/wiki will be around for years to come then the most common player-used terminology will probably change. I mean, at least half the time I say “class” but I wouldn’t want the wiki to stop calling them professions just because of it. (I know that’s not exactly the same but still)

If you can anticipate the arrival of zergs I find traps very helpful in lag situations, especially in sm. Don’t put them all in one place, scatter them about likely areas and then when they’re tripped or you’re bored, amidst your autoattacks try placing more traps wherever you happen to be while you’re running around blindly hoping you don’t die, since it doesn’t really matter when you actually use the skill and the other servers are also likely running around blindly hoping they don’t die.

If the ascended gear is an issue for you you might try engineer before you try ele? They’re both what I think of when I think jack of all trades (though I’ve little experience in either).

I don’t know if my experiences of wvw will be similar enough to your’s to be helpful but I find ranger really fun there so I wouldn’t say they have no place there, they’re just less effective at long ranged aoe spam than some other classes, but between bouncing axes, piercing spread shots and piercing arrows I’ve never really had a problem tagging enemies even with the current amount of antiprojectile stuff. The key to my enjoyment of it is in constantly swapping around what I’m specced into though. Particularly utilities, I change them around a lot while running depending on what’s going on. In more cramped fighting scenarios traps can be nice aoes too. Both of their melee weapon choices have nice survival and mobility options (even if main hand sword can take a bit of practice) and the longer you stay alive through defence and mobility the more help you can be to your group.

Yeah, I doubt I’ll be buying them at this price but then my spending habits are hardly standard. I haven’t maxed out the bank tabs (if there is a max), bought any extra bag slots for characters besides the 3 I got at some point (from HoT?) of which I’ve only used one so far because I couldn’t decide which character should get them, and at least half of my guys still have 12 or 15 slot bags instead of 18 or 20.

I do find the one shared slot they gave out extremely handy though, so after I eventually get around to doing all the other stuff, or if they’re ever on sale, I could certainly see myself getting more of them.

While I’ve been really enjoying reading how everyone’s doing and how you’re all finding the different weapon/trait set ups (especially how it’s all your own personal experiences and not negatively commenting on others) I have to say this

Fluffball.8307:

whatever floats your boar

is still my favourite part of the thread.