Guild Wars 2

I don’t think there is an answer. It’s a very old build, like at least 2 years old. It evolved with the game.

Nobody made it viable. It just is.

Paladin.1279:

Great, you took out the one skill not on necros (their down state hits harder than warriors now? fricking really?)

Lol you nerfed the trait in that patch it was worst before. Apparently you just didn’t notice or more people use the trait now.

Amirio.3802:

Yeah I use to run shout on my warrior before I quit playing mainly for WvW group/zerg fights and it was great I was able to run into zergs of enemies and come out alive but yeah the reason I opened this thread was to see if it was still viable since my warrior is completely geared towards that. I have a zerker set which Ill probably use for GS/Hammer build since that seems to be more viable now.Its pretty sad that this build isnt what it use to be anyways thanks for the feedback.

I don’t understand? Pre patch Shoutbuild was good in zerg, but Hammger/GS was better for roaming just like right now. In PvE it wasn’t good before and it’s still not good.

The only place where shoutbuild is in a different situation post patch is in sPvP, but you don’t have gear there so ??

It’s not the only way. You can drop ascended chest, but getting all the right stats you want is almost impossible. So basically, you don’t really have a choice. You need to craft it.

The three worst type of Elitist in my opinion (btw I’m an elitist too, but I consider myself as a pleasant elistist )

- The guys that think he’s Elitist but he have the wrong answer. Like someone that ask to corner stack a boss that shouldn’t be corner or the classic ‘’Warrior is the highest dps’’ bullkitten.

- The guy that just copy paste what is ’’meta’’. For him every single change from what is on meta battle is like the end of the world and can’t understand that making some change can actually increase your efficiency in some situation/group composition or that some change have actually very limited negative effect. Like someone that use to freak out when you used an Hammer or a Mace on a guardian.

- Someone super strict about ’’meta’’, but not on everything. Like someone that kick a necro or someone not using a meta build instantly, but don’t mind that we don’t have the right composition or that nobody including him don’t use food or potion.

FGS worked like all the skill of the same type, but it had unintended consequence. It was in the game for more than a year.

Symbol Avenger is a trait that just don’t work like it suppose too and it was remove less than 2 weeks after it was put in the game.

Some huge difference.

Khristophoros.7194:

I need to go to the merchant either way to sell junk.

Not really. I salvage everything and deposit. Not much junk accumulate in those situation. I usually just sell stuff when I pass near a vendor or when I do my crafting.

Lol. People are so categoric in that post, that’s sad. Here the truth.

Shoutbow took a big punch in the nose with that patch. It used to be one of the best Warrior build, but not anymore. It’s still nice to play and viable and you will still be more resistant than most other build. But the nerfed healing is just not enough anymore to allow the shoutbow to do the same kind of just than it used to do. Cele Elementalist and Engineer do the same job but just better.

That doesn’t mean that Shoutbow is unplayable. If you are rather new to the pvp then it’s actually a great choice. It’s easy to play and people are good enough in low level PvP to actually take advantage of the new vulnerability of the Shoutbow. But at you continue to play you gonna have more and more difficulty to play shoutbow.

For PvE, yes it’s viable. But it’s not good and never was. You gonna need to sacrifice Phalanx strength, which is a super important trait and you also gonna need to sacrifice at least 1 banner or your signet.

For dungeon I would only use that if you play full zerker gear and have some difficulty to survive. Like some training wheels if you want. For open world, noboby care do what you want.

In WvW roaming Shout wasn’t a great before and it’s worst now. You can use it, but you may have some difficulty killing players depending on their skills.

WvW Zerg is where shoutbuild shine. I stopped playing WvW for some months now, but it used to be the best build for warrior and it seem it’s still are, but I can be wrong.

Can I have your stuff?

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

No clue why people still care about 5 Guard teams. when there are plenty of other team comp’s that are fare more efficient, Severely Out-DPS & Out-Burst them and more content-flexible. Also, why do you think Fury is OP from an ELITE skill? Most team’s have 1-2 ele’s who can easily blast 1m+ fury in seconds before any fight, or the warrior’s FGJ + Spammable Banner #2 by everyone Pre-fight. FMW, It’s a good elite with no real point in nerfing. There’s better stuff out there.

1) We cared about 5 guards team because there was a broken trait that allowed Guardian to do insane amount of dps. But now I think that trait is simply disabled while they fix it, so no problem anymore.

2) I don’t think fury is OP. I just think that every profession should have a balance between what they can provide. Guardian used to bring defensive support with limited offensive support. But with the new traits and skill they can provide good might, fury and vulnerability, while still giving good defensive support. Fury itself isn’t OP at all. But this give too much tools to the guardian.

3) Feel of Wrath feel a bit too powerful because compare to other quickness skill, it have the highest uptime of them all, while being party wide.

Khristophoros.7194:

I use them for everything. The extra coin from vendoring minor sigils/runes is kinda nice. Mostly I just don’t like to carry around basic kits though because they only have 25 uses. 50 uses on basics would be nice considering we do more salvaging these days compared to the old days.

Also I play on 5 different characters so moving a copper fed kit between them would not be convenient.

Ok, then yes you won’t be able to get enough mystic stone. Personnally, I put 10$ per month on the game just to do my part. So I bought 1 copper fed when it first came out and 2 more when they were on sale. I keep 2 on my 2 main and the third one change depending on which character I play in pvp. Basic kit are kind of a pain for my other character, but I rarely play more than 3 character on a regular basis, so it’s not a big deal.

But they should definitively add some recipe to make a 250 basic salvage kit.

KhanKatir.4038:

I completely disagree. For every person who posts personal complaints regarding the game like this in the forum, many others do just what you want and leave: Disgrunted, and with no hope for any change.

And you can guarantee that they will tell many more to stay away from the game.

What this kind of post is, is a customer service opportunity.

Do you see that large slice of pie? That’s you. You’re adding to the customer’s perception.

Yes but forum isn’t representative of the player base. Most people go on the forum to complain, exchange idea or ask question. Usually, you have a surrepresentation of complain. Meaning that for every complain, some people that have that same issue or love the way it is don’t speak up. You can never know the ratio from the forum.

You could have 1% of the population complaining, 4% having the same issue but not complaining and 95% of the players loving how it is.

Or you could have 1% of the population complaining, 80% of the population having the same issue but not complaining and 9% of the population loving how it is.

You don’t know, noboby know. So maybe only a small portion of the players have the same issue and will leave. But maybe by accepting to change what they ask you gonna upset the vast majority of your player base.

Khristophoros.7194:

How many? My last chest didn’t give me too many IIRC. I’m nearing my next chest but I’m concerned that it won’t give me enough stones.

5 per chest, 10 per large chest, 15 per heavy chest and 25 per massive chest. By the time you get to 5k AP you should have around 100.

My question is do you use mystic salvage kit just for exotic and rare or for everything? Because 100 mystic stone is about 33 mystic salvage kit. When I was in farming mode at Silverwaste I was able to go througth 1 kit per week, but that was crazy time. I usually go througth 1 per months, which mean that I always have more stone than I need.

But if you salvage with them a lot, you man not receive enough stone.

You get mystic stones from achievement chest. I have like 300 mystic stone right now and I use Mystic salvage kit on all my character. Just play the game and you should get more mystic stone than you use.

For the basic salvage kit, then it would be nice to have a recipe to craft a 250 use salvage kit I guess. But if you don’t want to buy a copper fed kit that’s kind of your problem. At 150 gold, it’s one of the best investment of the game. It’s just so nice. And it’s on sale sometime.

Ya usually people go after an exotic armor and weapons. Don’t worry to make a bad choice of gear at that point because they are very cheap once you know the game. You can also start your world completion, unlock everything with Hero points and maybe start some dungeons or find a guild.

At that point you should have enough knowledge of the game to make some choice about what kind of build you want to have and start getting some ascended trinkets and maybe change you exotic armor/weapons if needed. Ascended trinkets (amulets, earings and rings) are easy to get. Amulets with laurels, rings from Fractal and Earings from guild missions.

Ascended back items and ascended weapons could be your next goal. Ascended armor it depend. You don’t really need those, the buff in stat isn’t that great, while it cost a lot of gold. Some of my friends that play since the beginning of the game still don’t bother with ascended armor or just have a couple of pieces.

Like Starlinvf said a lot of stuff will change as Anet rebalance the game after the huge changes. Also, so many stuff is different that we gonna need time to test different build and see what is the best. We still don’t know exactly what the value of condition guardian right now. They used to be terrible with some viable hybrid build, but now we don’t really know for sure.

But at least to start :
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant

Personnally, I still prefer Hammer instead of GS while using Valor/Virtue/Honor with Beserker amulet. That give me less vitality, but more dodge. I’ll have a bit less dps, but I just love too much the cc from Hammer.

Apolo.5942:

I like pve. I think it is pvp and WvW that is meaningless. I also have no interest in getting ascended armor.

Then you are playing the wrong game.[/quote]

He’s playing the wrong game because he like PvE and not PvP/WvW? For the first year of the game I only played PvE, was I playing the wrong game? What is this logic.

And your are too literal. He was pointing out that saying that PvE is meaningless is only an opinion and this opinion will vary depend on the person. Saying that PvE is meaningless have no value on itself.

My point about the fury was that the lack of group wide fury was always a known weakness of the guardian. And for me that weakness was on purpose. The strenght of the guardian was his defensive capability and that should come at the cost of his offensive capability.

That’s why I make sense to me to remove the fury from FMW. It kill two birds with one stone. It’s nerf a little FMW, which is a little overpowered right now, while keeping the Guardian to go too much into offensive support (he already have decent vulnerability and might).

In the same time it keep the identify of FMW as a long cooldown quickness skill compare to the long cooldown Time Wrap.

Yeah, but Feel my Wrath is almost 3 times the uptime of Time Wrap + fury. Slow is a defensive ability, which is nice and all, but it’s not really the most important factor. You gonna take the defensive ability you need to get through the content, not more.

Am i really the only one that think that Feel my Wrath need at least a small nerf? Everybody is 100% fine with the current skill?

I plan on doing all 3 color. I did the first one during the event and I slowly accumulate shard since. I did the second color some time ago and I’m near the completion of the last one.

I have the aetherpath mining pick on my main and everyday I mine the sprocket node in my home instance. That give me very little shards, but it give a fair amount of sprocket, which I use to multiply shards in the mystic forge. It take a long time to accumulate enough.

You need almost 1000 shards to complete the final back item, which mean between 3 000 and 4 500 sprockets. You can get that amount in between 250 and 780 days by mining the sprocket node (lower if you use more method than just that one) or you can buy them for 90-140 gold.

I don’t mind mining everyday and taking my time because I just want to complete all three and have them in my wardrobe. But, it will be way more efficient to just buy all those sprockets on the market. It’s faster to accumulate that amount of gold.

Well let’s compare Feel my Wrath to time wrap.

Untraited Feel my Wrath is 16% uptime of quickness. Traited it’s 21%.

Untrainted Time Wrap is 6% uptime of quickness. Traited it’s 7%.

Time Wrap give slow to ennemies (which is a plus in pvp, but not really in PvE).
Feel My Wrath give fury (which is a plus in both PvP and PvE).

My point is that Feel My Wrath is more powerful than Time Wrap. Time Wrap used to be a big reason why Mesmer was usefull in dungeon and now Guardian can do it better? I just feel that Feel My Wrath is a bit too overpowered right now.

If we want Feel My Wrath to be more on par with Time Wrap, we would need to have 80 second of cooldown on it to get around 6% Quickness uptime.

Anyway, there is several solution to nerf Feel my Wrath. I don’t mind whatever method, but I just feel it’s a bit too much right now.

It’s doable, but will need more coding and I don’t think this improve the game. At least, it doesn’t improve the game enough to be worth the time the devs would be putting into that instead of actual content or features.

All new maps from now one will be 80, so any change won’t really help the game in the future, except if we add some new starting maps for new playable race (which won’t happen in the near future).

I prefer the approach Spoj propose. Dungeon should all be level 80 and scale people to 80. The majority of player that do dungeon are level 80 and they should be made for them. But I don’t think they will ever really touch dungeon at all. Reworking existing content isn’t that profitable for Anet and they seem to focus on fractal anyway.

ThyShadowPaladin.9521:

Besides, why should it matter to you when other people post 5 Guard teams? I agree, seeing Guard-only posted by newbs who just recently decided to put hammer’s on their guardians is.. /meh.. but hey, it doesn’t affect you, nor me.

It doesn’t affect us if some people like to run suboptimal 5 guards group just because they like it or find it super easy.

But it’s a problem when 4 Guards/1 Warrior have :
- Perma Quickness
- Perma Fury
- 25 Might
- Decent Vulnerability
- High Damage because of the stacking modifier
- High defensive ability

A 4 Guards/1 Warrior just sacrifice too little to gain too much. I think that just removing the fury from the shout and fixing the stacking bug should be good enough.

GS/Hammer is the meta for WvW Roaming for a long time. It’s a good killer build for the warrior. It was also popular in sPvP, but less than shoutbow because it fit less the strategy. In that build you use a lot of movement skill during combat, mostly whirlwind attack, which get you out of node.

So ya, it’s a great build to kill people, but you probably gonna lose the point while fighting, which isn’t good for your team.

The reason why it’s popular right now? Peak Performance + Rampage. All of your skill in rampage are physical skills so they all have 20% less cooldown and do 10% for each bar of adrenaline. In a bursty build like the Juggernaut on meta battle you do intense damage, while doing cc. It’s pretty hard to survive that, especially that for now not that many people know this trick so you can catch a lot of people unaware and kill them super fast.

Don’t think that it will be meta. Yes it kill, but if you can’t really keep a node, then your value is decreased in a team. Still, if they don’t change peak performance, it will still be popular in the future even if people get used to the trick.

Tarkan.5609:

Save your stolen skill, especially if you have improvisation!
Use it after they rotate out of water, they may not be able to cure the chill

This exactly. Cele Ele are all about attunement swapping and rotation of skill to keep them alive. If you screw up that with chill you affect them of two side. One, their skill won’t be up at the proper moment, and their will be gap in their rotation. Those gap will mean delay in their healing, defensive skill, etc. Done right and they won’t be able to keep up with your damage.

The second side is psychological. Like I said, cele ele is all about rotation and a chill can thought it off sync. That can screw up with the player itself that kind of lose track of its rotation for just a moment. Good Ele know what to do in those moment, but most will have a moment of hesitation. They gonna need to think about what they need to do next and not think about what you are doing. They can take a bad decision and swap to soon or wait too long in a particular attunement.

NikeEU.7690:

Even if they fix the symbol trait bug the build will be really quite viable. Perma-protection, perma-quickness, significant passive healing, good might stacking etc make it rather easy mode even still.

Ya, but the goal is not to break the build, is just that Stacking 5 Guardian shouldn’t be an op strategy like right now. Anyway, it’s a minor problem that will be fix eventually. Not a big deal unless they don’t fix it for like a couple of months.

Yesterday me and my friend went throught the new traits Dungeon Thief to see what could be the next meta. Today, I looked at Metabattle and saw some stuff that just don’t seem right.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_D/D_S/P_Shortbow

- Dagger Training over Mug : Steal is not an important skill and you should use it on cooldown (or almost). In that situation, Mug will always give better dps than the poison of dagger training.

- Side Strike over Flawless Strike : 1% Crit Damage is usually better than 1% Critical Chance. It’s even more true with a PvE Thief which already have such a high critical chance %.

- Sundering Strike over Practiced Tolerance : Practiced Tolerance is a better choice in solo situation or when your group can max out vulnerability. But since it’s a Dungeon build and in most team composition, you shouldn’t be able to max out vulnerability, Sundering Strike should be the default choice.

Well, we lost a couple of good dps trait. Either they removed, change it completely or just nerf them. But we also got a couple of really powerful trait. What is the final result of all those change are hard to tell. Some people think it’s a nerf, other thing it’s a buff, this tell you that it won’t be a huge affect. We won’t be the worth dps, but we won’t be the best one either after the patch. A good and a bad thing is the Symbol of Avenger trait. It’s so powerful that most guardian PvE build will probably use it. Which mean that GS – Mace/X and Hammer build will dominate PvE for guardian. But at the same time the timing and rotation of a GS – Mace/X build will probably be the most interesting build to play in PvE for the guardian ever.

Now, we have most information about condition, but not totally. Guardian is already not that good at giving condition just because he’s limited in the diversity of condition he have, so it’s pretty clear that we probably gonna stay in direct damage mode, while being a little bit nerf since condition without any condition damage will do less damage. But still, hybrid condition/direct damage for guardian might not be laughable anymore and could be decent, even if I doubt they will be great.

We’ll have those answer once we gonna be able to test thing out, do some math and really see what is the real difference in dps between now and after the patch.

Ragnarox.9601:

You can’t win in pvp without 1 range option. Mesmer will destroy you with shatter clones, necro will destroy you with aoe’s , rangers will kill you with traps (lost of them recently), thief will just stay out of symbols and range you with shortbow, warriors – well you know – burn you to death with shoutbow or hambow’s … symbols are bad even compared to DH traps….they are just death sentence.

You are aware that it’s a PvE tread? Why should we read what you have to say, if you can’t even bother to read the freaking Title???

Ragnarox.9601:

I don’t know why they are pushing us into symbols, traps and similar she.it which are not even good in pve (light fields). If you give us symbol then give it a cripple or something worth slowing enemies in it. One dodge and you are out of symbol and god thank all those vigor things and sigils that improve dodge…..
As I said we need new dev who knows our skills not someone who don’t even play guardian at all.

I like that they push us toward symbols. It push toward more skillful use of, well of our skills. GS + M/x for exemple, will need a good rotation to achieve maximum dps. The difference between someone that master his guardian and someone that don’t will be more apparent.

Arken.3725:

Keksmuffin.1450:

Did everybody forget about the quickness shout already? :<

No, just it’s the same issue with litany, their counterparts are still far superior. (Rf and shelter)

I’m not sure about that. Renewed focus is now the best option, but it’s mostly a defensive ability. The shout will be superior when dps is needed, which will be most dungeon.

Stars.2179:

It’s stated above if you actually read and learn how to do the math. Guardians lost most their multipliers. 10% from powerful blades, 10% from radiant power, 20% from unscathed contender – which one would take master of consecration. It is at 1.1×1.1×1.2 = 1.452 which is actually a 45% lost in direct damage. Even if you count unscathed contender as only a 25% upkeep, it would be 1.1×1.1×1.05 = 1.2705 which is a 27.05% damage reduction. When I said 20% loss of damage, it is an understatement, not an exaggeration.

That’s a terrible way of estimating the change in dps. First of all, there is no reason to not take UC if you go into virtue. MoC is a situational trait, that most guardian use rarely. Both 6/6/2/0/0 and 4/6/2/0/2 already don’t use MoC and one of them don’t even use UC. So what, not having UC is a nerf to 6/6/2/0/0 which don’t use UC? Powerful blades is only for Sword, meaning that it’s not a 10% nerf, but more close to 3-4%, since less than half of your damage come from Sword in a normal rotation. Radiant Power didn’t disappeared. It’s now 10% crit chance, which is around 2-4% nerf depending on crit chance and crit dmg. So the first problem is that you are completely wrong with your assumption.

2nd, you only took 3 trait out of everything. You didn’t talk about the 3% nerf of fiery wrath, but you also didn’t talked about the 20% CD reduction for the GS, which is a huge deal. Hard to estimate the percentage of increased damage from that, but it’s substancial. You didn’t talked about the additional burning from Symbolic power. You didn’t talked about symbolic avenger, which could be a 20% damage increase (we don’t know yet the final number). You talk about the nerf to AW, but what about the fact that we won’t waste burning anymore. So many thing you didn’t took into account.

And you also didn’t took into account the new stats. Depending on how they choose to distribute them, we full zerker could have his damage buff by transferring some defensive stats from trait to only damage stats from gear.

The reality is that, until we can play with the number and see in-game all those details, we have not even a clue of what will be the dps of any profession. We can extrapolate, but really, we are all talking through our hats.

KaosNinja.4967:

i understand the need for some form of meta so the ultra-casuals this game is targeted at don’t have to over think gear choices, but why is it so infinitely inflexible? is it a problem of game design (bosses simply NEED to be max dps’d to death), or stubborn community opinion? .

There is a portion of the community that view metabattle as a bible. Whatever change you can make to metabattle is blasphemy and it make your build horrible. Those people are the worth. They don’t really know about the game and their opinion isn’t really worth listening to. They don’t even have an opinion, they just regurgitate metabattle. Here a couple of exemple.

- Changing sword to mace for a guardian is around 1-2% lost in dps, but if they see you with a mace, they will freak out.
- Signet of Fire was meta a couple months ago on Elementalist and if you weren’t running it, you were bad. By then speed runners were already using glyph of storm. Now that metabattle catchup with speed runners, you are bad for running signet of Fire.
- Metabattle used to put S/X as meta. If you were running both an Ele and a Warrior, the warrior was better to change to the standard dps build. Now, it’s the other way around and it’s the ele that better change to staff. In reality they are both good option, but these clown just follow what metabattle say.

Any of those are Tell-tale signs of someone that don’t really understand the game, they just copy paste whatever metabattle tell them. And sometime they are not even up to date.

If you found leveling a pain there is several little trick.

If you gonna eventually get all your crafting profession you can do them on your low level character. I did that 2 years ago and they changed how it work since, but you could probably get to 20-40 just by doing your 2 crafting profession (up to 400 is cheap, to 500 is a little expensive).

You can also do some EotM. I find it boring, and a efficient map can be hard to find, but it’s the faster way to level up while playing. It also level super quickly your wvw level and karma.

You can switch character at the end of a dungeon (don’t work with all path) so you do the all the dungeon on your level 80, kill the boss, then switch to a low level character to get all the xp on this one. You just need to have someone holding the cutscene, but people are use to that kind of demand in pugs. That a little bit less fast than EotM, but it doesn’t feel like a grind at all.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Honestly i wasn’t even aware i could do that, but even so, that only works if some is chatting, right?

The time is on your minimap, you can always see it. No need to write something in chat. You can either show your time or server time.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

but my question is, where does all the extra dps come from? He never actually shows the build in the video in action.

even assuming 100% uptime of 25 might stacks (is this possible solo?) and 100% uptime of 25 stacks of bleed (is this possible on warrior?) that is only 4.3k dps

100% burn uptime is 1.2k dps

that gives 5.5k dps, where is his other 4k coming from? I highly doubt condition warrior attacks do 4k dps in rabid gear. If they can then they need a serious nerf. a full condition necro does ~250dps in full rabid gear without condition.

The 9k dps is in group situation. In solo situation, it’s 7k dps.

So in group situation, you gonna have Banners, 25 Stack of Might, etc. In those condition, just the direct damage from auto-attacking with the sword will give around 2.5k dps. Take into account the minor trait that give you 10% damage modifier against bleeding foe and 25 stack of vulnerability and you get near 3.5k of direct damage.

That’s just a quick calculation and we already see that the numbers are working.
3.5k of direct damage and 5.5k of condition damage equal to around 9k of total dps for group situation. In reality, it’s probably more like 4-4.5k of direct damage and kitten of condition damage, but I don’t really want to do the complete math on it. DNT’s number seem right.

Orpheal.8263:

Condition Build should never compete in a 1:1 basis with direct damage builds and you know why?

Because direct damage builds require alot more player skills, than condition builds.
it requires alot more and better positioning of the direct damage build, the direct damage build in itself is also alot riskier to play because you need for example as thief to be in direct near to the enemy, risking to be hit self alot, while the condi builds can spam their aoe condis oftenyl from wide away from a safe spot, like Mesmers and Necromancers with their 1200 range condit skills and home in clones that cause conditons on destruction/defeat.

Condition builds are basically made for beginners with less game experience in this game, because the condis allow you to be successful without requiring too much positioning, cause when you can spam your enemy full with conditions faster, than he can remove all the Dots that you keep constantly on reapplying much faster, than any of the games condi removals can reload, then its for the condi spammer just a waiting game, until the DoTs do most of the job for you.
If you suffer on all DoTs at the same time and you don’t get them quickly awayy, because they get covered with other junk like weakness, cripple or immobilize and fear, then this is NO FUN.

It would be more balanced, if you as a player could directly decide over it, which conditions your removel skills should remove for you by markign them, before you use the skill. Then you could react a bit better on the situation by giving priority over what is more important to you to remove instantly and very often its alot better to remove a strong DoT over a silly condition like weakness

What?? That’s so bad lol. You assume that all condition build will play from 1200 range?

1) Some direct damage build are melee and some are range, exact same thing with condition damage. Some are range and some are melee.

2) Even in a range build you need to keep near your team to share buff. Staff Elementalist is a range build and still need to stay near the target and it will be the same with a condition build.

3) Condition build isn’t more easy to play. That the specific way a build work and is played that decided that. A sinister or assassin grenade engineer will almost play exactly the same. So right there your point is debunked. The fact that you play condition or direct damage doesn’t mean that you have an easier or harder build to play. It’s how the build is played that matter. Does most of my damage come from my auto-attack or from different skill. Can I just spam all my skill when they come out CD or do I need to use a specific rotation to increase their efficiency. That’s what make the difference.

Where I do agree with you is when you say that Condition Damage and Direct Damage shouldn’t compete on a 1:1 basis. They should feel and play different. They should have different strength and weakness. I my opinion, condition build should have a higher potentiel dps than direct damage. But Condition build need a build up time, while direct damage have a higher initial burst. That way, condition is better against bosses with high hp, while direct damage is better against bronze and silver mobs. While both would be good against gold champion. Add to that a clear distinction between high armor and normal armor mobs. Those high armor will be easier to kill with condition (like husk) and normal armor mobs will be easier to kill by direct damage. That give a good diversity that push people to bring different build for different encounter. Of course, no composition shouldn’t be able to complete a encounter. So you can’t make a boss with high armor that 5 direct damage build will take 15min to kill. Or waves of mobs with normal armor that 5 condition build won’t be able to kill fast enough.

Well, we already have a good diversity in weapons.

Yes GS + Sword/Focus is the most optimal in most situation, but.

- Hammer build are only 5-10% less dps and give one of the most powerful support in the game.
- Mace can replace sword with only a 2% lost in dps, while healing the group.
- Torch is actually better than Focus in 20sec + fight because of the low CD. It’s also a more consistent dps than focus.

Really the only weapon that is bad is shield.

But anyway. With HoT Hammer and Mace will be improved a lot by the trait that give 20% damage on foes on your symbol. The vulnerability change might just be what will push the Torch on par or even higher in term of dps compare to focus. So GS + Mace/Torch might be the next meta with replacing Torch by focus when you need the defensive capability of the focus.

Pistol/Pistol have a dps of around 8-9k in a fully buffed group compare to around 14-15k for a Dagger/Dagger thief in the same situation. Both of those are single target numbers.

Shortbow is even less dps, but it’s better against group of mobs.

You can reach up to 2745 condition damage. Sigil of Bursting, Rune of the Undead, Sinister Ascended gear, malign infusion, stats from trait, banner of strength, Blood Injection for an engineer.

4493.75 dps from bleed
358.5 dps from poison
1014.25 dps from burning

Total of 5 866.5 condition damage. With the vulnerability that’s
5 866.5 × 1.25 = 7 333 dps

Anyway, those numbers are kind of irrelevant because a lot will change with that update, the stats from trait, trait themselves, gears, condition and we’ll have to do some math. But here my opinion.

For solo situation, some profession are almost on par with direct damage already. I don’t think that will change much since the two biggest change here will be for group play (the stacking problem and the vulnerability). Still, the engineer for example could be better in sinister gear than in direct damage gear because he can put so much vulnerability by it’s own.

For group, the gap will close quite a bit that’s for sure. Take a condition build into a dungeon or open world even won’t be a waste like right now, which is a HUGE step. But will condition build be able to compete on a dps level with direct damage build? With all those damage modifiers that doesn’t help condition, i’m not sure. Warrior might be good in condition since he have a medium direct damage right now and have a good condition build potentiel. Engineer could also be good, but he already have a high direct damage dps in group, so i’m not sure. Necromancer and Mesmer are also good candidate for good condition build since they have such terrible direct damage dps anyway. For Ele and Thief, I’m not sure. Their direct damage dps is too good.

It might or might not be enough to make direct damage and condition on par, but whatever the final result, it’s a step in the right direction.

Coulter.2315:

Saying “stacking is bad” is a not true, it is CLEARLY faster than any spread out tactic… (and the most efficient method for any PUG). You are a liar or dumb to say it is “bad” (or you don;t know what “bad” means which comes under dumb).

Name calling nice. That’s tasteful.

Corner stacking is almost always a less efficient tactic to use, but it’s a simple tactic easy for pugs to use. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad tactics, but it kind of rub the dungeon community in the wrong way when bad players use this tactic and then complain about it. Most good dungeon runner don’t use this tactic.

Hell, sometime corner stacking is hurting so much the team that it’s hilarious to see pug waiting on a useless corner, while I solo a boss on open field. I don’t remember the exact number, but I think that there is like 5 or 6 place where corner stacking is a legitimate tactic.

Weylin.6478:

Belenwyn.8674:

Many players will lose 30% boon/condition duration. It will be interesting to see how this will be compensated.

If I understand correctly, when you choose a trait line, it will have some baseline attributes straight away.

For example, if you went withTools, you would instantly get a 30% reduction to tool belt cooldowns. Or, it might be a 5% reduction per trait into it.

I think the main thing is that CORE stats are being removed from it, but I could be wrong.

No. There will zero stats from trait line. The only exception is profession attribute which will be divided in 2. The first half of the buff will become baseline to the profession and the second half will be unlocked by selecting the specific trait line. The elementalist for exemple.

Right now you have a attunement recharge time of 13sec. After the patch it will be 11sec and if you select Arcana as one of your 3 lines you will have a recharge of 9s.

We know that stats will be transferred to base stats and gear, the only thing we don’t know is what will they do with the Boon and Condition duration.

Genlog.4983:

lets say it so
if every1 just want ubber dps to kill fast what is the use of so many type off gear then and builds that anet made ??

they can better scrap all other builds and only go for zerker build

also like world bosses like Jormag ore TEQ
i try to help out and not to dps with my build i can survive pretty long

see if i can ress players and so on

but maybe its because am very must used to the trinity system i always play full healer ore full tanker i never play a dps role

thats just me sorry

You need to see build and gear differently in this game. Gear is only a slider between personnal surviability (toughness, vitality) and DPS (power, precision, ferocity, condition damage). For PvE, the better you are the more you want to put the slider toward DPS. Since the game is 3 years old, players are used to the content so much that even people that shouldn’t be able to run full DPS can now because they know the content by heart. There is two exception to that. Healing Power is a hybrid personnal surviability and support, but there is better support than healing power for PvE and the second exception is condition damage, which should be good but is not because anet did a bad job balancing it. Hopefully, they will fix condition with the expansion.

Build on the other hand have a lot more possibilities. Yes DPS is still a major focus, but so is support. All meta build include a good portion of support either from trait, weapons or utility skill. Stealth for skipping, blind, aegis, reflection to protect your team, fury, might, vulnerability to boost the team, etc. There is a really high build diversity in this game. For guardian for exemple, from meta dungeon to AH WvW frontliner to medi guardian in pvp, etc There is different build for different mode and for each mode there is an optimal build, but with dozen of different build less optimal, but still powerful.

People complain is usually not about build diversity, but gear diversity in PvE. Because in sPvP and WvW, there is a large gear diversity. From cleric guardian in zerg to zerk thief to celestial warrior to condition terromancer, etc. But in PvE, condition isn’t great, healing power is sub optimal and toughness/vitality is less powerful than active defense. There is two camp on that issue.

1) They like the current system. PvE is focus on dps and active defense/support. You need skill, knowledge and timing to survive because active defense will keep you alive not some passive stats that allow you to take the hit in the face. The only thing they would like to change is to make condition damage good because they are pro glass canon not just direct damage. And they would like new and challenging content that would need the use of more support and active defense.

2) They have the same reaction as you. There is 20+ different type of gear and only 2 of them are optimal in PvE. There is something wrong with that and Anet need to rework their system so that we have true gear diversity.

This discussion is going one for a long time here on the forums. Usually, at least one or two tread pop up each months about that. Sometime, about 10 of those can start in a week. We all want Anet to fix condition damage and make more challenging content but other than that no consensus have been reach and I don’t think there will ever be one.

Jim Hunter.6821:

It is your fault that your group is dead.

You are drawing mobs out of cleave range and your lousy dps is weighing your group down.

He was weighing his group down, but it’s not his fault if the group is dead. Good zerker can solo almost anything, if the group downed because the dps wasn’t good enough that’s their fault for not using their head and switching tactics. Anyway, if only 1 person isn’t zerker it shouldn’t impact the group enough to cause a wipe. If the group died because there wasn’t enough dps, and that a big speculation, then he wasn’t alone not meta.

I hate when bad player just copy paste meta build and put the blame of their death on someone with less dps. They can complain that the guy didn’t comply with the LFG, but if they die because of the lack of dps, that’s because they are just not good enough.

To answer the original question. A lot of people are ignorant and jus spitting information from Meta battle.

- Replacing Sword for Mace equal a dps lost of 1-3% depending on your build.

- A Hammer build is around 6-10% less dps than a standard GS Sw/Focus build.

- The best secondary weapon for a Hammer build is Greatsword (6% dps lost), but Hammer just by itself is good (8% dps lost), meaning that you can bring whatever secondary weapon you want for specific situation.

- The Hammer can interfere greatly with fire field, but that can be limited if the Elementalist and Guardian coordinated with each other. Anyway, the problem is becoming less and less of an issue since PS Warrior is slowly replacing S/F Elementalist for the might producing role and this trend will probably accelerate even more with the incoming changes to traits.

Astralporing.1957:

Tradeoffs on other sets of gear are much bigger (you lose more for far less gain) than in zerkers.

No it’s not. It’s been demonstrate time and time again that the trade off from zerkers isn’t bigger than other gear. That’s just not true at all. If that was the case, no other gear would work in PvP except Zerker and it’s just not the case. But in PvE, zerker work so well with the system that it appear like it.

Astralporing.1957:

The real problem lies in fact that the gear stat system is simply not designed for the active combat mechanics we have in this game. It’s almost as if those two things were made by different groups that had no communication with each other. As it is, both systems use completely different (and conflicting) underlying principles, so it’s no wonder that when they meet, it creates a mess.

I can agree with that. In PvE only dps, active defense and support (a little bit CC) are worth something, but of these important part of the PvE game, only dps is improved by gear stats. That’s why zerker is so prevalent. But if personally, I don’t see it as a problem, I can see why some people do.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Right. It comes down to your party comp and when your party prefer that you use D/D, you have to comply for the good of the run.

No you don’t have to comply. I run D/D because I like being efficient and if someone ask me something specific that I don’t know I like to try it and see if it’s worth it. But otherwise, people have no business in telling other people what to run unless they specified it in the LFG. If they asked for meta only and he bring S/P, I can understand, but otherwise he can play how he want.

First of all, there is nothing to ’’fix’’ here. The system isn’t broken, but some people don’t like it. I don’t like McDonald, that doesn’t mean that it need to be fixed. I’m not saying that the game is perfect, but it doesn’t need a big deep modification of its core system.

Your ‘’Gear Set Modifiers’’ is terrible and totally bias. All gear have a positive bonus, except bezerker which have both a positive AND a negative bonus, get out of here you are not serious. That’s just another nerf zerker crying tread, you just tried to disguise it.

Making monsters tougher.
I kind of agree, but only partially. There is a lot of mobs that are just right. Lupi, Mossman or Archdiviner don’t need higher hp or higher hitting attack (unless they give us higher level fractal). But on the other end, the vast majority of bosses in dungeon and in open world are pathetically easy. The final bosses of AC is the perfect exemple of that.

Random Attack Patterns, ( + )Monster Attack Speed, ( – )Monster Damage
I also kind of agree on that one. Again, some bosses are interesting to fight. Lupi have a wide range of different attack, some are quick and deadly and make for a really nice fight. But again the vast majority of mobs are just boring or not challenging enough. But there is a danger. If random attack patterns and quick attack is nice, it should never be possible to be killed by random unblockable, undodgable attack, or attack without any sign that tell the player that an attack is coming. That attack need to be dodgable and not force you to take it in the face otherwise that doesn’t make the fight more engaging.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Thaddeus.4891:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Thaddeus.4891:

Sir Vincent III

You can spam PW, but not with the best dps build. Anyway, you can still do 2 PW, then alternate between PW and Auto-attack to keep your initiative higher than 6 all the time.

If that’s how you define spamming, then sure why not.

No no. I’m saying two thing here. First it is spammable but for that you need a special build, which won’t be optimal in dps. It’s doable, but not a good idea.

Second, with the meta build using S/P the best rotation would be 2 PW, then alternate between auto-attack and PW.

Then it’s counterintuitive.

The main purpose of spamming a skill is because it brings high DPS for a low cost, just like how we spam Heartseeker on a 25% health target.

If the purpose of your build is to spam PW at a cost of damage output…well, that’s a whole new level of bad judgement or bad math. Because in that case, Dagger autoattack will out DPS PW.

What are you talking about? I don’t have any build, even less a build with the purpose of spamming PW. Dude i clearly divide those two issue, can’t you read?

1) FIRST ISSUE : Yes you can spam, but that’s not a good idea because you need to butcher your damage modifier for that.

2) SECOND ISSUE : With a normal S/P build you can’t spam the skill, you need to alternate between PW and AA and compare to a D/D that give you less dps against 1 target, equal dps against 2 targets and more dps against 3 targets.

Black Box.9312:

Celestial is only working in the current meta with classes that can consistently stack might.

Bash.7291:

Pretty much this, Cele builds work because of might stacking, because might makes up for the lacking offensive stats on the cele ammy.

That’s not true. Yes it was the case at first, but not anymore. With the nerf to might and sigil of battle, now only D/D Elementalist is still relying on big might stacking.

Most cele engie now don’t use sigil of battle + rune of hoelbrak even if that still a viable choice. Sigil of Intelligence, Leeching or Doom are more popular or as popular choice now. With runes of Leeching, Scavenging or of the Pack. If what you both say is true, then Cele engie couldn’t be good wihtout sigil of battle + hoelbrak (or Strength) because that’s his only way to stack a good amount of might. Most cele engie right now, stack almost no might and are still at the top of the food chain.

Warrior is between Engie and Ele there. He still use some might stacking, but he’s not as dependent as Ele on that. In theory, he can stack 13 might, but that never happen. He usually keep it between 6 and 10.

Might stacking isn’t THE reason that make celestial so good. Otherwise why only 1 of the 3 celestial professions can stack a high amount of might, while one can only stack 6-10 might and the 3rd don’t stack might at all.

Celestial work with profession that have a bit of everything. Some healing, some condition and some direct damage, which all profit from celestial stats. I wasn’t saying that guardian will be celestial. I’m only saying that hey a medi guardian with an emphasis on burning could be potentially a good candidate from celestial and that it’s worth testing. Mesmer was also a good candidate on paper, but nobody was able to come up with a build that worked well enough. Maybe that’s what will happen with guardian, I don’t know.