Guild Wars 2

Just swing the nerf hammer across all of the elite spec protection application.

Rev: Retribution traitline: Stab on dodge is a joke. Also portection+taunt on cc. Put some stability to another trait or skill (How about Facet of Chaos upkeep effect?)
Ele: remove Diamond skin, nerf elemental bastion, protection on aura limited to weapon skills.

The best one i could find, however it is a skill, not a trait:

Skelk Venom (Thief)
Heal yourself. Your next few attacks heal you.
1 Activation time 40 Recharge time

Initial Self Heal: 4,210 (0.5)?
Healing: 645 (0.2)?
Skelk Venom (30s): Striking an enemy heals you.
Number of Attacks: 5
Venom Duration: 30s

Enchanted Daggers (Revenant)

½ Activation time 5 Energy 30 Recharge time

Summon enchanted daggers which will attack as you attack, siphoning life from targets hit.

Damage Siphon Damage: 858 (0.05)?
Healing Siphon Healing: 808 (0.2)?
Healing Initial Heal: 1,640 (0.25)?
Number of Hits: 6
Duration: 15s
Interval: ½s
Range: 1,200

short: more cooldown no damage. Also remember that rev has 2 healing skills

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I think warrior is still fun if you run complete yolo zerker.

You can scare people into playing defensive if you get up in their face, that’s always a thing that makes me smile.

That being said, it has poor matchups versus anyone that knows both their class and the warrior’s class.

I..guess that’s the point, maybe. Strong, but easily outmatched by anyone with a high-functioning brain, like a classic bruiser.

Yeah i know that. if i play serious i go with my elementalist. But those 5 digit gunflame crits are just hilarious. I actually pray that i get dragonhunters into the enemy team, since they are really easy to kill with yolozerker. And there is still good old rampage mode for teamfights.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

So let’s look at this protection buff.

This is a buff that about 1.5 years ago was used to actively mitigate burst damage, being available on demand for a short duration. Bunker guardians are a good example of this, able to give AoE protection on demand to actively counter burst on allies through a variety of skills.

Fast-forward to now and 90%+ protection up-time across entire teams is now normal, nobody has to think about using protection on demand because they can simply spam the buff to maintain it. This basically means that all of the power damage in the game is permanently nerfed by 33%.

Protection needs to be brought back to being a buff that is used on-demand to actively counter power bursts by reducing the amount of passive access to this buff. Main offenders are the following:

Rune of Durability (4): 25% chance when struck to grant nearby allies protection and regeneration for 3 seconds and resistance for 1 second. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
Who even thought that this would be a good idea? Every twenty seconds you and all nearby allies randomly mitigate power damage by 33% for 3s and become immune to all condition effects for 1s (bear in mind this includes both damaging conditions AND things like immob that are used to set up a burst). This is only a single effect on a rune that every class has access to. This needs to be completely reworked. Even just making it only apply to yourself would be a good step to take (though a rework would be better).

Elemental Shielding: Grant 3s protection when applying an aura to yourself or an ally. No cooldown.
This was already a really solid trait before AoE aura spamming was a thing for personal protection, now it’s just way over the top. This needs an internal cooldown (even 5s icd would make a difference to the current aura-spamming tempest without breaking the trait for other builds).

Chaotic Dampening: Chaos armor grants 5s protection. No cooldown.
This trait is largely responsible for the permanent protection uptime on bunker mesmers, much of this protection can also be shared with allies due to the Illusionary Inspiration trait. The 5s duration is needlessly long when you consider that chaos armor itself already gives protection. I’d like to see a reduction in the duration from 5s to 3-4s. Realistically if you’re being focussed with chaos armor on, you’re going to get at least 1 proc of the 5s protection that chaos armor itself gives anyway. (For those who don’t play mesmer, bunker mesmer has plenty of access to chaos armor through 2 short cd leap finishers and 3-5 ethereal fields).

There’s probably other things I’ve missed, but these are the largest culprits of the AoE protection spam in this meta.

I agree, but you forgot the biggest culprit:

Tempest “Overload Earth”.

This skill alone gives 30s (!!!) of AoE protection. The worst thing about the meta is: everything is shared with your allies. Meta Builds are manageable 1v1 but they are extremely hard to kill if grouped up.

PvP dungeon reward track is the best option to unlock dungeon skins, sadly.

I would love to see some more rewards for dungeon, i don’t want to play swamp fractal forever.

critting a mesmer or guard with an unblockable 16k gunflame is just pure fun. Srsly, “Signet of Might” keeps my fun at the warrior class. Already collecting the tears of the meta players.

Rules:

- Allowed Professions: Warrior, Thief. Any other profession has to be played without the elite specialisation.

- Partys: 2 max, the other guy most follow the same rules.

- Teamspeak, Skype and any other voice comm is not allowed

So basically solo/duoq.

To make it short:

People should get punished for having friends that play other games than gw2? I believe you are just worried about not being able to farm pugs to gain ranks in the league.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Ross Biddle:

I/we run the metabattle builds, Which is not a good answer but since I’m a sheit warrior player I had to start somewhere….

I’m 100% sure that a more skilled warri player has better experiences.

We did not run Berserker since my guildy has no access to it. I just wanted to show her that Warrior can be played in sPvP… I was wrong!

As I said:

It might be just me! That I’m a crap player who did not get the concept of a warrior at all!

But after a few matches we both played traditional staff ele and did just well!

I’m not saying you are wrong… I just told you my experiences.

Happy Guardin’!

Metabattle is not everything. There is no berserker build for pvp and 2 rushed daredevil builds which are really suboptimal. Now ask yourself why people complain about Thief and Warrior (okay war really needs help, berserker needs like 4 specilisation lines to work properly)

I do not agree with all the statements, but understand those.

Thief: I believe Thief is not as bad as people might suggest. It is still the fastest class to run around (unhindered combatant+pack runes= swiftness 24/7), can escape nearly everything and has more dodges than any other class. It’s problem is not necessarily the class itself but more tools from other classes, mostly AoE perma protection from tempests, the barrier-type abilitys from DH (Dragon’s Maw, LB5) and lots of short CD reveals (Rev/Scrapper).

Warrior is a different problem: The class has some nearly necessary traits spread out over at least 3 lines to make a build work. Like “Fast Hands” on discipline, “Cleansing Ire” on Defense or “Berserker’s Power” in Strenght. Any warrior build is “Defense/Discipline/X” while X is strenght for power builds, arms for hybrid/condi and tactics for shoutbow.
Now the problem: Warrior has no way to use Berserker effectively. Berserker is not too weak, it does some of the highest DPS in PVE, but Warrior cannot build enough adrenaline to use berserker without crippling his defenses or offenses. He has to give up too much to use berserker, that’s why the few remaining war players often play with core builds.

Conclusion:
Thief fine, nerf Scrapper/Herald
Warrior: Give him the same treatment as Anet did with mesmer at 6/23: Fast Hands and Cleansing Ire Baseline, overall improved adrenaline generation, some DPS buffs for axe mace and hammer.

P/P isn’t necessarily bad but it is definitely suboptimal. I suggest you to play around with some melee weaponsets (commonly used in pvp are d/p, s/d and staff, but d/d and s/p aren’t that bad too).

About your build: It has good ideas, but needs to be refined:
1st Distracting Daggers: You know that your pistol #4 does the same? Some suggestions as a replacement:
-Roll for Initiative: Another stunbreak, creates distance and refills initiate for more unload spam. Since you traited for trickster, probably the best choice
- Signet of Agility: Refills all your endurance and removes a condition. Always good on any daredevil build.
- Blinding Powder: Emergency stealth/blind button.
- Impairing daggers: nice damage, low cd and immob/slow

2nd: Bandit’s Defense: This skill is great for 1v1 on a melee weapon, but is quite weak in Teamfights. May help against some ranged attacks like Rapid Fire from rangers or DH True Shot, but remember that it imidiately stops blocking and locking you in an animation if anything in 300 range hits you. For a P/P build use something i mentioned above.
3rd: some trait choices.
- you trait for shadow arts without using any stealth utility. Either keep shadow arts with a d/p build or swap it out for either deadly arts (i recommend this)for utility or critical strikes for more damage.
- trickery line is ok if you go for one more trick skill (roll for initiative), otherwise use thrill of the crime and bountiful theft.
- daredevil: weakening strikes is alright, but pulmonary impact is not optimal. If you can always interrupt people (but the initiative is better spend on unload) go for it, but i recommend escapists absolution. For the dodge bounding dodger is good if you go for tricks, if not go for unhindered combatant.

Sigil choices are good, maybe go for sigil of air instead of generosity.
Rune: Lyssa is ok but try pack: more damage and useful fury proc if you get hit.

Elite Spell: While dagger storm is good against projectile-based opponents, you want to go for Basilisk Venom or Impact Strike most of the time.

Some modified builds:
1st trick variant
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVl0MhynYvTw0Jw/ELwEmXa4M0Gm/glwVoWCIAsbA-TpBFABiXGohjAABnAga2fYhDBAAPAAA
2nd no tricks, some physical spells
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVn8lCdmi9OBmOBkmiFYCzLNcGaDzhwSYLULBEA2NA-TpBFABiXGohjAABnAga2fYhDBAAPAAA

for more help visit the thief forums

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

I designed this build around the air overload, on marauder amulet it does a huge amount of damage while having a lower cooldown compared to other overloads thx to fresh air.

pros:
- Huge damage output
- can stay a bit at range
- good conditions cleansing

cons:
- vulnerable to direct damage
- vulnerable to crowd control skills

Variations:
-Celestial amulet: Huge drop in damage but increases surviveabilty a lot. However with this build you want to stay at range most of the time, just go in to finish the overload and then back out.
- Cantrips over Shouts: Better to mitigate burst, but weaker in attrition fights.
- Dagger over scepter: Better damage and more auras at the cost of being melee-ranged. Also no instacast ablities to use while overloading.

short list:

attacks can be evaded, reflected or blocked: standard guard tank (ups i mean zerk of course) with dodges, aegis, active blocks on focus and shield, shield of courage… will work like always.

attacks need to be facetanked: summoned pets like earth elemental, certain ranger pets, consumables, thieves guild, engineer thumper turret.

boss does not give a kitten about pets and only targets players, attack can not be dodged (cuz high attackspeed or wahtever) or blocked frequently enough: cavalier necromancer. Necro does not need too much precision due to fury, some banner buffs and the amazing “decimate defenses” trait. However he needs some toughness to gain aggro due to him being a light armored class. deathshroud and high heatlh pool make him amazing for facetanking stuff without sacrificing too much dmg.

Cerbeius.7129:

So no Strength Runes?

On a build that can build might with just RS AA (It is 1 attack chain (3 times #1) ~2s so 7 AA chain in 14s (the spite minor trait has a might duration of 15s) =21 might with scholar runes. Nearly every party should have at least 5 stacks might provided. Scholar gives a better modifier and more ferocity. And a lot cheaper than strenght.

Cheap alternative: Flame Legion Runes. 7% damage modifier and also increases dhuumfire burn damage (ticks around 2k with these runes)

Thx for Feedback.

@chunx: Regarding of personal defense, soul reaping and blood magic is about the same. SR gives better LF generation and the awesome vuln stacking on RS AA, making it better for unorganized groups struggling on vuln application. In good groups BM is as viable.

A significant issue with the valk/cavalier build and blood magic instead of SR: you have a “ramp up time” like conditions builds have. You will struggle on generating vulnerability stacks to increase your critical strike chance. Your dps will be quite low at the beginning of a fight. If you have an ele with glyph of storms, it will be great tho.

Quick note: If you don’t want to go ascended, you can also use valkyrie trinkets on the second build. It will push your hp to around 28k (30k possible with some wvw buffs). However, do not use the furious sharpening stone then, instead go for a simple superior sharpening stone (these scale well with vit and toughtness and are better in this build than a toxic sharpening stone).
If you want to go for some more precision, also consider groupwide precision buffs like banner of discipline or spotter.

EDIT: @captain unusual: death magic gives some more power, but SR gives the vital crit chance buff, vuln on RS AA and also a 5% damage modifer based on life force. DM is not a bad option but i think SR is better. However if you like to take minions (they got buffed) +"Rise" shout, go DM, great build too.

Actually 2 builds: classic full zerk setup and a tanky valkyrie/cavalier setup which is a surprisingly low dps drop.

zerk build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNBIhF6kZToxGslGwmGgDHsgLYxXxvYZk6M0GiWQDgAQLA-ThRBABXt/o8DP9B5dKAA4JAQp6PmpEMAwBwv9tv/G48zP/8zPvf/93f/93SBExwK-e

(i know looks similar to the metabattle necro build, but not copy pasted)

before nemesis trashes my work
- dhuumfire over death perception: Build has 50% base critchance with 2% addiotional critchance per vulnerability stack and 20% from fury of other party members. We will get 100% easily, so death perception has no use. dhumfire adds an average of 4-5 burn stacks for some more damage.
- this is a dps build designed for melee’ing bosses. If you need range you can go with axe instead of dagger.

- heal: shout heal has low cast time, does some damage and helps keeping up the 5% damage modifier. Take consume conditions if condi are a problem or well or blood for party wide heals.
utilities: The setup is useful if your party does not need additional utility. Some other spells you might consider in certain situations:
- Well of Darkness: AoE Blind, but GS#4 is usually enough
- Well of Power: Stunbreak+aoe condi cleanse.
- Blood is Power: If you don’t have a team setup with perma 25 might.
- Corrosive Poison Cloud: Projectile defense.
- Flesh Worm: Teleport
- Signet of the Locust: Running around.

Elite:
Lich for more DPS, use it at the beginning of the fight. Once boss drops below 50% start spamming gravedigger.
Chilled to the bone and flesh golem are great for break bar shredding.

Now for the “tanky” variant:

Remeber the Death perception vs Dhuumfire part? We can actually drop all our precision for some defensive stuff, and with death perception we will still have 100% critchance with reaper shroud and 75% critchance with fury outside of reaper shroud.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNBIhF6kZToxGslGwmGgDHsgLYxXxvYZk6M0GeWQDgAQLA-TxRBABXt/ge6DsU9nuU+xoSw8OFAA8EACAcA8bf77vBO/8zP/8z73f/93f/tUARs1C-e
(there are sadly no ascended valkyrie trinkets, so i took cavalier. if you need a bit less defensive stuff you can take zerker or zerker+valkyrie weapons or trinkets too reach 100% critchance outside of reaper shroud)

Food changes from toxic sharpening stone to furios sharpening stone or superior sharpening stone (still take slaying potions whenever you can)

It is only a small damage loss compared to zerker, but adds a lot of survivability (700 armor and 5k health). But no excuses for ranging with this setup

another trick: shadowstep (or any other teleport skill) can also get you to some of these points with these poison plats on the ground.

I saw an Arah group with a mesmer looking for a oneshot guard. To help them, i wrote an lfg as attached : You can OS lupi on mesmer too.

some seconds later a second lfg appears: “He is right”. Great moment.

thrag.9740:

UBcktieDL.5318:

Playing on EU, maybe it is slightly different in NA

- If guard fails to OS lupi, the whole party wipes. These parties generally struggle if someone does not go the “zerker” way.

Is zerker gear and exploiting considered synonymous now?

Nah just because a meta hating necromancer claim it in his videos?

zerk=high damage builds. i like those. I do not like excluding half of the classes in the game, especially if they can outperform the meta classes. But we already had enough of this discussion.

Pugging ascalon is quite challenging atm. If a pug does the spider queen at first attempt, then you can safely do a full run. Just happens quite rarely, most pugs wipe at her.

Zenith.7301:

UBcktieDL.5318:

Zenith.7301:

Which it shouldn’t have anyways. 10 sec icd on 3 vulnerability stacks is pathetic. Basically only makes it useful when in a group of 5 people fighting in proximity.

You’re sacrificing a utility slot when an engineer can cap vuln by just throwing grenades, which is his DPS setup.

My necromancer alone can keep up 15+ stacks of vulnerability rotationally without any utility skills.

Come HoT with reaper you cap vulnerability in an instant.

The spirits die to a sneeze and won’t have 100% uptime on most content that is actually challenging anyways, due to the aoe/cleave spam and the spirits for some stupid reason are on the aggro table, making mobs attack them.

Anyone who thinks a 50% nerf to ice bow is gonna make ranger replace an elementalist is an idiot, ranger DPS is only above necro and mesmer. I’s about as mediocre as it gets and more importantly that’s peak idealized performance, not the practical DPS of trying to use 1h sword on archdiviner or mossman.

As if elementalist can do perfect rotations on diviner and mossman. 3,5s channeled meteor shower anyone? And pls give some proof about dps numbers before you claim anything.

The problem with elementalist is: It is taken for DPS and some swiftness and fury(at least the staff build). It works good for eles as long as they remain the highest DPS class in the game. As soon as ele falls behind in dps in favor of some other class, they will drop out of the meta. Icebow nerf reduced ele’s burst a lot and, more important, they no longer have party-wide dps buffs beyond basic boons.

lol have you even stepped in a fractal 50? This comment is so unbelievably dumb.

Elementalist gets perfect rotations easily. It’s a ranged build that can stand just right behind the melee stack to still be in range of boon sharing but be far away from boss melee attacks, and with a communal defenses guardian the ele basically never needs to worry about getting meteor showers off.

“Provide DPS numbers”. How about you stop being lazy and look up the DnD/rT guild spreadsheets that have been constantly linked in forums and is available in their webpage?

I’m not about do your homework for you. It’s your responsibility to be informed instead of spouting off this clueless crap.

P.S. Ele doesn’t just provide “boons”. It’s the class that can provide permanent fury on its maximum DPS loadout, it provides a permanent fire field on lava font, it has access to TWO water fields on that same weapon, has 2 blasts, an AoE daze, a line root, a line of warding, and an aoe chill field. Earth elemental elite (compared to your crappy bear pet which nerfs your ranger’s dps considerably). Glyph of Sandstorm for aoe blind.

On top of the highest single target and aoe DPS currently in game. Even if engineer beats ele in DPS, ele brings so much utility besides DPS it will always be meta.

If you want to play this way:

- “Permanent fury”: Thief has 50% FUry uptime just by spamming steal, Ranger by just spamming Pet Swap on CD. Add 1 warrior shout or a ranger using warhorn pre fight and you have “permanent fury”
- “permanent fire fields” : Who needs that with a decent PS war stacking might for a party???
- “Two Water Fields” : At the cost of crappy ele dps for 10 seconds since he locked out of fire. But talks about "maintening “perfect dps rotations” easily.
- “2 Blasts” : Even Necro has 2 blasts for prestacking
- “AoE Daze” : again with crappy dps for 10 seconds, also requires enemies to walk through a wall
- “line root” : 1st earth attunment, again crap dps. 2nd: Every class has strong immobs, ever seen engi dropping net turret and supply crate at tar in arah? Ranger entangle? Warrior bola?
- “Earth elemental elite” : that one is true but since ele only has crappy elite choices anyway and is not reliant on these. btw most tanking can be done on ranger with drakes which deal significantly more damage.
- “AoE Blind” : Necro has Well of Darkness, Engi Flash Shell on mortar, ranger can use pet f2 blind with a bird bet every 5s. More than enough alternatives

And using dps charts from last year is a no go.

I will not continue this discussion. It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it’s kitten near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.

Zenith.7301:

Which it shouldn’t have anyways. 10 sec icd on 3 vulnerability stacks is pathetic. Basically only makes it useful when in a group of 5 people fighting in proximity.

You’re sacrificing a utility slot when an engineer can cap vuln by just throwing grenades, which is his DPS setup.

My necromancer alone can keep up 15+ stacks of vulnerability rotationally without any utility skills.

Come HoT with reaper you cap vulnerability in an instant.

The spirits die to a sneeze and won’t have 100% uptime on most content that is actually challenging anyways, due to the aoe/cleave spam and the spirits for some stupid reason are on the aggro table, making mobs attack them.

Anyone who thinks a 50% nerf to ice bow is gonna make ranger replace an elementalist is an idiot, ranger DPS is only above necro and mesmer. I’s about as mediocre as it gets and more importantly that’s peak idealized performance, not the practical DPS of trying to use 1h sword on archdiviner or mossman.

As if elementalist can do perfect rotations on diviner and mossman. 3,5s channeled meteor shower anyone? And pls give some proof about dps numbers before you claim anything.

The problem with elementalist is: It is taken for DPS and some swiftness and fury(at least the staff build). It works good for eles as long as they remain the highest DPS class in the game. As soon as ele falls behind in dps in favor of some other class, they will drop out of the meta. Icebow nerf reduced ele’s burst a lot and, more important, they no longer have party-wide dps buffs beyond basic boons.

However they still have lots of blast finishers on their scepter|dagger/focus sets for huge prestacking of might. Ranger can provide a fire field on his torch weaponset for prestacking but lacks blast finisher’s out of combat (in combat he gets Clarion Bond and Drake Pet blast. I don’t want to trashtalk ele but i believe they actually have competotors for the dps role now.

Iris Ng.9845:

You probably need reflect in AC p2 and p3 at last boss, SE all paths, COF p2, CoE (icebrood, golems) and you don’t need stealth in Arah.

If you want to know where reflect is needed, play a staff ele in a zero-reflect group and always aggro first. Then count the number of time you have to interrupt your rotation for Magnetic Aura and dodge. If you can comfortably solo Bloomhunger many times as a staff ele then yeah, you can safely assume that reflect isn’t needed in any dungeons.

But at most of these you don’t need a dedicated reflect build. At AC p2/3 the boss dies so fast that a single ranger axe 5 does the reflect job. Nearly every class has some form of projectile defense if we fail there i simply ask them to use them.
Short list:
Ele: Swirlings Winds, Magnetic Aura
Warrior: Shield Master trait (Reflect on Block)
ranger: Whirling Defense
Necro: Corrosive Poison Cloud
Thief: Smoke Screen, Daggerstrom
Engi: Toss Elixier U, Air Blast, Magnetic Shield

these ones are more than sufficient for most encounters in AC, SE and CoE.

But stealth is necessary for pugs in Arah As well as oneshot at lupi. Most of them do not even know that engineer or mesmer can also OS lupi.

Taku.6352:

Ranger is pretty much warrior 2.0 with the downside that storm spirit might not be at its optimal use if capping vuln. But all in all this patch alone has been pretty much the best patch for PvE rangers and makes it a serious choice for “speedruns” and maybe even record runs.

Warrior is still useful for might and banners. I would be more worried about elementalist since they are primarily taken for DPS. They have some serious alternatives now with ranger and engineer. Ranger now stacks vuln and swiftness even better than ele and engi does overall more damage with the same vuln stacking and can provide additional stealth.

It could also mean bad times for thief getting replaced by ranger/engi.

laokoko.7403:

I think the reality is you exclude enough noobs, that’s why you have smooth runs.

If you compare pug meta zerk group, they are usually 2x slower for normal dungeon compare to world record, and 1.5x slower compare to world record in fractal. Those kind of time are doable even in 5 necro group.

For me I dont’ really care about group composition. Because unless I get into a group which can get close to meta time which is almost impossible for pug. I just hope my teamates isn’t a bunch of new players who spend 1 hour in cliffside, since even 5 bowbear can run it in 18 minutes, which is usually the time for meta zerk “PUG”.

The latest balance patch makes “sorting out noobs” kinda easy. Was kinda similar before with thief vs engi, but now with ele nerfed, guard nerfed and ranger/mesmer buffed, groups still asking for thief/guard, 2ele/war are simply not reading patchnotes.

When i ook for a group, i read the lfg and watch the current roster. I am currently playing a lot of ranger and enginner, but also have a well geared warrior and mesmer. I decide dependend on dungeon, whether you need stealth or reflects:
AC: None needed, but stealth makes some things easier
SE: None needed
CF: None needed
CoE: No stealth needed, but can safe 10 seconds on p2 and 3 (not worth the extra wait time). Reflects are useful but not mandatory
Arah: Here i want to see both Stealth and Reflects on a party.
Also i want to see at least 1 warrior in a party (unless i play my own war).

No3
Ele could stay meta, maybe not on D/D fire. There is still Cele Staff, D/D with air/earth magic and scepter is getting buffs, so we may see some more fresh air or cele scepter.

No2
PU will still be strong, however some Mesmer might go for stealthless inspiration shatter builds. Not necessarily the old Mantra Shatter but Mesmers trading stealth for some heals and condi remove is quite interesting.

No1
Condi cancer will still be kept in check by Cele Necros. If Cele Necro gets nerfed too: welcome condi meta.

I believe ele will drop in popularity ( but takes around 3 month) in favor of engineer.

inc “metazerk 1ps war 1 guard 3 engi gearcheck” lfg’s…

Playing on EU, maybe it is slightly different in NA

I did quite a few dungeons runs on pug’s. Sometimes i joined “metazerk” groups with properly geared characters, but more times simple “p1 exp” groups.

Some results:
- The AP of the “metazerkers” is usually between 5k and 10k. I rarely see anyone above 10k.
- They know the typical pug tactics including prestacking might (takes up to 15s), lupi OS (guard only) and Icebow 4 with some typcial DPS rotations.
- Stealth blasting is practiced a lot, but sometimes they forget to keep up swiftness or the thief is running ahead
- Utilities or builds are rarely changed during the run, usually only at tar in arah p1.
- If guard fails to OS lupi, the whole party wipes. These parties generally struggle if someone does not go the “zerker” way.
- Surprisingly high number of staff guards or pistol offhand “defiance stripping” thieves.

Now for the “p1 exp” groups
- AP ranges from 2k up to 25k.
- About equal waiting time for lfg (looks like many people like “metazerk” on eu)
- Groups still have 2-3 “metazerk” classes.
- People know their classes, the runs are quite the same time as meta runs.
- I did not encounter any bearbow ranger or fear necro in those groups. However some more staff guards or FT camp engis.

However i had some really good runs with “up to date metazerk” groups. It means they know that not only thief has stealth. The lfg looks like “metazerk 1 ps war 2 ele 1 guard/mes 1 thief/engi” . A lfg like this shows that these guys actually know the latest meta and they are usually a lot more experienced than the usually metazerks. I had a very good CoE full run with them in just 35 minutes, including evolved husk in p2 with group stacking and icebow stun chaining. The usualy pug full run takes about 60 minutes.

Some last words: Most of the “metazerk” people are not the “kickers” some people encounter. They just want fast runs. If you join a “ps war 2 ele guard thief group” as mes or engi and explain to them that you can do the necessary reflects/stealth skips, they will accept you most of the time. Linking gear increases the chance further. Still, i recommend the “p1 exp” groups for daily runs since they are better for the community and our fellow ranger/necro/engi/mesmer players.

Ele masterrace

PVE: Ele is the only class which is taken twice in a meta group
PvP: Top Teams stack at least 2 Elementalists every match
WvW: Every commander wants eles in their Zerg ( you might see a lot of longbow rangers, but organized Zergs always want eles.)

Warrior is fine too but heavily overplayed

Thief is good, but don’t expect to ein 1v1 fights in pvp unless you are really good, it isnt your job anyway

@bladex

your list is about solo dps. The list above is considering a group setup with 25 might, fury and warrior banners active. In a solo setup, professions which can stack might themselves rank higher than in a group setup (that’s why warrior ranks way higher than in a group setup).

People should consider group buffs too. Quick List
Warrior: Banners, PS, EA, Shouts if necessary
Guardian: WoR, Aegis, Stablity, Swiftness
Thief: VArious Stealth skills, highest Frostbow dps, Defiance stripping, Blind fields
Ranger: Spotter, Frost Spirit, Group Swiftness+Regen, strong ranged dps if necessary
Engineer: has nearly every buff in the game, but a bit weaker or in a random elixier variant: Projectile defense, stealth, Stability, Fury, Blind Fields. Hugh amount of immobilizes and CC if necessary
Necromancer: Condi Transfer, Lifesteal Aura, corrupting/removing enemy boons, can facetank. Necro utility isn’t that useful in current dungeons but it may be a thing in raids.
Mesmer: Portal, many reflects, Time Warp (unique Slow condition)
Ele: Icebow, Icebow, Icebow: Also some blinds or vulnerablity with Glyph of Storms, Fury and Might stacking

quick list:

Warrior: very vulnerable to blinds, no teleport skills (can easily get outkited by porting to high ground), reliant on stances to not get bursted.
Guardian: Cooldowns, vulnerable to attrition builds (they can easily mitigate burst with shelter/renewed focus/virtue of courage, but these have high cooldowns). Burn guard is vulnerable to condi transfer (necro, some mesmers)
Thief: getting bursted outside of stealth. thief is hard to catch in stealth but has no blocks/invulnerable skills. You can screw up a thief heavily if you interrupt his black powder→heartseeker stealth combo or by using knockbacks against his shadow refuge. Also thief has low health, a quick burst can down him. Remember a stealthed thief cannot capture points.
Ranger: Projectile reflects against power builds, also low cd condi cleanse against his pet taunt. His defensive tools have some large cooldowns, avoid getting stunned by greatsword in melee. Condi Ranger: Condition transfer and moblity, condi ranger is much slower than power. Also no teleport skills.
Engineer: Spamming different conditions at him, beware of his random transmute every 15s . A lot of Stablity on your side or stun breaks are effective too, most engies have lots of knockbacks. Remember the gear shield cd (16s), nearly every engi uses it.
Mesmer: Has either weak condition removal (PU build) or low amount of stealth (Inspiration build). Also has low dps, but large burst, so either run tanky attrition builds or a glassy build which can evade/absorb shatter combo. Remember that a stealthed mesmer can not capture points.
Necro: Low moblity, no ways to absorb damage outside of evade. Do not attack him while spectral armor is up, you are just recharging his shroud then. Be careful with condition builds since he can transfer them back at you (however blind can prevent it).
Spamming crowd control is extremely effective.
Ele: Ele has no weaknesses and rule pvp right now))
jk they have some but they are hard to use. D/D has no way to prevent taking damage outside of a dodge roll, a coordinated burst from 2-3 mesmer can instantly down an ele. They also have a low amount of stunbreaks on them. Chill affects their attunement recharge rate, a well timed chill after they left water attunement can screw up an elementalist.

There are some niche uses for turrets in pve. Net Turret is very useful at Tar in Arah p1, Crate summons another Net Turret, very useful. I have also seen some reflection builds with turrets (uses the inventions grandmaster trait).

However, Turrets got heavily nerfed because of pvp. Turret Engineer was a brainless build, we had an engi with full defensive stats (usually sentinel) with full turrets on skill bar. These turrets were quite tanky since back then they could not be critcally hit or hit by conditions (they were completely invulnerable to condition builds and even power builds took some time to destroy them). So they got nerfed to get vulnerable to condi and crit without adjusting their health.

I guess if stealth will be a thing, it will be mesmer. Veil and Mass Invisibility and Portal already affect more than 5 people, unlike thief.

10 man buffs in raids would be nice. Bit i fear it would kick out any profession without specific group buffs (speaking about thief and engineer) and would limit ranger, necro and warrior to 1 only per raid. Other spots would be filled with eles like always, 1 guard and 1 mesmer

there are good reasons why some stat combos should not be allowed in pvp

2 examples

1st:
1200 Healing Power
900 Toughness
900 Vitality

ultimate bunker stats. Try killing an elementalist or guardian running this. You won’t.

2nd
1200 Condition Damage
900 Toughness
900 Vitality

Super tanky condition spec. Nearly impossible to kill but still maxed out condi damage. This one on burn guard or burn engi…

Some of the stat combinations would just be toxic to play against.

Has no stealth

Anet pls

-suggestion: smoke field on churning earth

Rampage

Message Body length must at least be 15.

I played around a bit in Heart of the mists at the target golems and

-there is a way to hit more than 4 times with whirlwind
it is not easy, you need to get quickness buff in the middle of the whirldwind animation. You can try it with frenzy if you want.

ANET FIX PLS!

i managed to get up to 6 hits

Okay guys, the best and fastest way to kill an ele:

Step 1: Make sure to play a necromancer

Step 2: Equip “plague Signet” on your skill bar

Step 3:Stack burn on yourself like the guy in the video above

Step 4: Use Plague Signet active. Make sure that you are not blinded (use life siphon or so before to remove it

Step 5: Congratulations: Ele is in downed state

Thanks OP for this new method. Necromancer meta inc.

PS: do not try that with arcane thievery mesmers. You just get rekted by blinding ashes.

Had some fights against warriors today and they always ended because they hit me 6-7 times with a single (1!) whirlwind attack dealing instant 13-16k dmg. Anyone else experienced this?

no it was not bugged death recap, i double checked the combat logs.

EcoRI.9273:

is there a difference between behind and flanking?

no, thief rune works with both. it is even in the description of the rune

good critics, but some answers:

slaying potions will affect all builds the same way. 10% more damage is always 10% more damage, no matter how many multipliers you will add. that is simply a wrong statement.

Flame Legion and engineer: The meta build has the napalm skill on flamethrower which applies around 14 second of burning if placed at a boss. Also engi can simply trait for incendiary powder instead of modified ammunition for burning uptime.

Thief rune, well nothing to add. I did not consider ground target skills. My bad.

Scholar: well some miscalculation, my bad. The other are right but scholar is around 130 too low. I edit the first post

I just wanted to show with some quick calculations that other runes can achive good dps too. Scholar buff is very hard to maintain if you don’t know all the attacks, just add a -9,1% damage reduction for scholar if below 90% health. Not everyone has a specific weapon for every dungeon in his inventory, strenght runes are expensive (and only useful on warrior tho) and flame legion damage modifier is much easier to maintain than scholar (you basically just need a guard in your group)

assuming a
-lvl 80 elementalist
-full ascended berserker gear with infusions
-no might or fury or any group buffs
-100% damage modifier uptime on any rune.

the result is the dps with an 1.0 modifier attack every second (equals a traited ranger long range shot at max range). however, every attack scales with these values, so the percentage values (compared to scholar) are quite correct.

5732 scholar (health above 90%)
5465 (-4,7%) flame legion (needs burning enemy)
5363 (-6,5%) Strenght (needs might boon on you)
5108 (-10,9%) any other power rune
5340 (-6.8%) pack
5418 (-5,5%) eagle (assuming 50% uptime of the buff)
5629 (-1,8%) ranger (active companion)
5647 (-1,5%) thief (attacking from behind)
5232 (-8,9%) rage (fury boon required)
4795 (-16,4%) melandru (just for comparison if someone is not using dps runes)

important notes
-fury and group precision buffs (ranger spotter, banner of discipline) can increase critical chance on the precision runes (eagle, ranger, thief) beyond 100%, decreasing their effectiveness.
- some of the damage modifiers are hard to maintain.
- not using bufffood will decrease your damage by around 6,1% (around 7-8% if you are not full ascended. I used toxic sharpening stone for my calculations, in dungeons you want to use 10% slaying potions for 10% extra damage

conclusion:
some heavily underrated choices are very good for you dps. the precision runes are great dps boosters, they can even beat scholar by a very small margin.

recommendations

budget (below 10g)
- flame legion (ele, guard, engi)
- thief (always stay behind the enemy, does not work with ground skills like lava font)
- ranger (for ranger ^^and mesmer, works with every summoned pet and even consumables)

pug
- pack (nice for groupwide fury uptime, not depended on conditional modifiers)
- scholar
- strenght
- thief
- ranger

organized (full groupbuffs)
- strenght
- scholar

build used
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWmMIiBBAjeCbhMZEAKAHA5SGCSBA-ThBBABYt/o8DgLAQe6AC4BAUp6PnpEMAwBwv/GAO/8zP/8z73f/93f/tUARMsC-e

pls fix some broken interactions:

1st vamprism rune
every zerker takes this now. no matter how hard you mess up, this one will save you. covers the whole time span of revealed, so it is basically a free god mode for thieves and mesmers if someone gets a burst on them. Really broken on thief with their condi removal and lifereg in stealth

also fix these godkitten vampirism rune stomps

2nd burn application on ring of fire and purging flames
sometimes it bugs out if you are walking at a tangent of these circles so you get instant 6-12 stacks burn from these.

then you can nerf ele

sadly still in beta. mallyx condition revenant trolls d/d ele extremely hard. he can send burning back to them and convert all of their boons into confusion stacks

thrag.9740:

Really? I always assumed the “metazerk lfg’s” just meant every one should be running a meta build. I figured if they wanted specific classes they would list it, hugh.

Well op, I wish I could help you by making the other classes more viable, but I can’t. What I can do is tell you easy ways to get around it.

-If you have map completion, cooking on an alt is like a free 10 lvs. Jewelery crafting is another very cheap 10 levels. From there you can do pvp dailies (on daily servers like “mad dailies” or “KOR dailies”) and you will rapidly get tomes of knowledge. About 10 mins a day for a level on your alt. If you do reward tracks like citadel of flame, you will even get a lot of the exotic zerkers weapons to gear your alts with.

-Or you could try making your own lfg.

-Or you could try to find a guild that isn’t so strict about dungeon runs.

I know they aren’t the solutions you would prefer. But they are the only ones I can offer.

i have all 8 classes on lvl 80 with zerker builds. i just don’t like to play ele every day:) if i want to play necro/engi/ranger, i simply do it. In most cases, many metazerk groups do not even clear the dungeon faster than a group with 2 necros.

If it helps, i play on EU.

I recently joined a group titled “exp metazerk” without class requirements as an engineer. 2 People start flaming about my class as soon as i joined.

Most Lfg’s are just searching for these 4 classes. I understand ranger and necro do not bring as much dps or group buffs than other classes, but mesmer and engi?
Engi can bring everything, might, vulnerability, very high dps and even stealth. Could easily replace ele or thief. Even metabattle lists them as alternative for higher dps to a second ele.
Mesmer can replace any guard with his reflects, null field, portal and time warp. Why are these still unpopular?

don’t forget to bring an viable alternative to peak performance into strenght adept tier. and buff some defenses, so we don’t need to use double endure pain.

Kharr.5746:

Have you tried celestial hambow + shouts? Great group support, very tanky, mid-tier dps, very easy to stack might up to 25 for your team while CCing the enemy team. Good control on point.

The build on metabattle is a bit off — if you go for brawler’s recovery + vigorous shouts over what’s there, you live a lot longer. You should be able to 1v1 a d/d ele pretty evenly.

i don’t know how you survive on such a build. i even struggled on soldier hambow , damage is just kitten high at the moment. if you don’t run any stability, any decent rampage warrior will cc you to death, especially with the low mobility of a hambow build.
after some more matches, i believe the primary problem is the lack of active defenses and condi removal. i died quite often against burn guardians because they blinded any burst skill and brawlers recovery seems to cleanse the 1 stack vulnerability more often than the 10 stacks of burning

- shouts help a lot against conditions but leave you very vulnerable to cc/burst damage builds (basically any mesmer/warrior build)
- stances leave you vulnerable against condition builds once berserker stance runs out. helpts quite a bit against burst damage. still weak against surprising condition burst (hello burn guard/condi shatter mesmer)

i started to build around shield. it gives me the defense i personally need without the “oh no i lose, better press rampage” kitten tactic. traited shield seems very strong, i start playing more with axe/shield gs and mace/shield gs.

I tried to play warrior WITHOUT RAMPAGE in the last days. With different setups (zerk, marauder, celestial, soldier, even clerics).
Result: Even tanky builds with soldier amulet just get bursted in seconds, they die faster than my d/d fire magic ele even with 28k and 3,3k armor.

Some conclusions:
1st. Warrior lacks active defense. Stances prefer zerk/marauder setup and leave warrior defenseless once they have cooldowns. Shield Block and Rampage are everything warrior has if getting focused by crowd control (stablity is easily removed by mesmers)
2nd. Sustain is too low. The class relies on healing signet and dogged march regen buff to recover hp. overall damage is too high to for these heals to do their work. shout heal is a joke right now, shouts also leave warrior completely defenseless against focused fire. Blinds also make it impossible to remove conditions with cleansing ire, leaving brawlers recovery as the only reliable way to remove conditions.
3rd. The only way how warrios can work in the meta is full damage with quickness buffs and rampage. consider it as “kill them before they kill me”. quickness allows rampage to quickly burst down enemies while they are stunlocked and rampage gives warrior the necessary defenses to survive it.

how could it be fixed?
quickness+rampage is too strong, but it is the only thing that keeps warrior viable. remove it and the class will be a complete joke. the only build that i tested without rampage with some succes was gs//a/s since shield gives warriors an additional way to mitigate damage. gs/hammer without rampage is simply not working, gets focused way too easily.

some ideas:
1. nerf quickness to 25%. Will solve a lot of issues with rampage. Increase duration of some quickness buffs in the game to compensate for other gamemodes (pve)
2. give an good alternative strenght adept trait. maybe move leg specialist there. restorative strenght fits quite good into tactics.
3. make burst skill immune to blind or let them at least proc cleansing ire without hitting. gives warrior some chances against mesmer.
4. somehow buff warrior defense. lets say a 10% damage reduction while having might?
5. chance berserker stance to pulsing resistance (3*3s). would help alot against condi burst builds.

Rampage Warrior

Physical DPS (A)– Very high dmg with quickness and cc to land it
Condi DPS (F)– not there
Control (A)– Many stuns from hammer and rampage
Mobility (B)– GS skills to move around fast
Disengagement (B) – stanches+mobility. no target required
Sustain vs. Physical (C ) – Double endure pain and GS evade. Also CC to defend, but still squishy
Sustain vs. Condi (C ) – Only zerker stance and resistance from healing signet active (not recommended to use). has to facetank condis with large health pool
Team Support Synergy (C ) – fast stomps with quickness+stablity, good cleave on downed to ress party members. can stunlock high priority targets.
Effectiveness as a Primary Engager (E)– too squishy, but can survive a few seconds with stances
Effectiveness as a Point Holder/Bunker (D) – very effective in 1v1 situations, can 1v2 with rampage. weak otherwise.
Effectiveness as a Peeler (A) – Warrior comes from the side whith rampage for quick devastating attacks. Extremely strong if not focused imidiately.