Guild Wars 2

And I thought the dungeon forums was a graveyard cos the devs left it since they disbanded the dungeon team.

30 in arms is good if you dont plan to ever switch weapons, it works out to be better DPS than going the extra 5 in discipline.

What I want to see is if what he calculated assumes WWA against a wall. If it doesn’t, then from what I’ve worked out, they’re about the same. He talked about using blade trail. I’m slightly suspicious on that front because if you can double-hit with blade trail, you definitely won’t be able to WWA, because if you WWA against anything that’s not stacked next to a wall, its a DPS loss because you need to run back.

However, realistically, you won’t be able to pull off the full potential of GS as easily as axe. Axe has a lot of sustain, whereas GS doesn’t.

You probably won’t be able to do HB whenever its off CD constantly because not all bosses are that easy. Rush can be very awkward to pull off because you can’t interrupt it and you’re open to being attacked (and it was also bugged the last time I checked).

Whereas with an axe, pulling off constant rotations is a lot easier because its a lot more flexible and your main DPS skill isn’t an easily-interrupted attack on a CD.

So I’m still sticking with my old philosophy that GS is great for slow-paced (or really easy) fights with high need for burst potential and axe is great for everything else.

Calculating actual DPS in this game is really not as straightforward as say, WoW or TSW, because in those games, as a DPS I can pull of solid rotations constantly, whereas in this game you really can’t sometimes.

I really encourage people to test stuff out, both theoretically and practically. Nike is a smart guy, but:

1. He might be wrong, not saying he is, but we’re all human.
2. It might not work out for you.

I’m gonna have to check that myself, its hard to believe. I can’t get the numbers to tie up just purely on a numerical calculation in favor of a pure GS build.

We are also assuming hundred blades fully go off in all calculations… hard to say. A pure GS build basically NEED that to happen, if you interrupt HB, your DPS falls through the floor.

I really want to see his calculations though, the assumptions used could absolutely make or break the calc.

Simon.3794:

me and some other warriors have tested it since release, not worth to take it anyway possible. tho we are pvpers.

i can imagine even in pve side its not worth because its arms 30, why would you give up berserker power or fast hand or 15% crit chance if you going 30 in discipline

Empower Allies.

And fast hands isn’t that useful if you don’t switch to a GS.

No. Stop.

Get it outta here

I don’t like all dem feels.

Jzaku.9765:

IDGI

You are tunnel vision-ing on that “extra hit” after ~10 seconds.

The entirety of the duration before that extra hit you are still attacking 10% faster than someone without this trait. Thus you delivered damage within a shorter timeframe. Which is the definition of a DPS increase. Unless I’m missing something???

Whilst this is true, the trait is a bit boring. I mean, I’m not asking for perm quickness but you can barely notice the 10% speed up, especially as dual wielding attacks as fast as it does already.

Weren’t they going to make a guild metaboss summon feature?

But still, Im still convinced that raids, no matter the size, needs to be instanced.

Guild Wars 2: Scarlet Strikes Back.

I would just tell guardians with a staff to just switch out their staves. It’s just a bad, bad weapon that destroys your DPS that most pug guardians don’t even use anymore.

Now we got that out of the way.

That build might work but it’s gonna be very awkward.

I’m not sure how much pre-fight might stacking will help because since you’re in a pug, you probably won’t kill a lot of bosses before the timer on the stacks are up.

After that, you can generate 14 stacks of might yourself without a GS. 8 stacks of which will have a 12 second timer.

I’m quite sure that you can’t mirror other peope’s might with PS anymore (initially you could), correct me if I’m wrong though.

Have you tried this build out much? I just can’t get it to work out in my head without a guardian constantly using empower.

Side note: it’s often not the guardian’s fault because of that silly trait that we can’t avoid without gimping our DPS builds that auto-drops a light field at 50% HP x:

Razor.6392:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Pure ferocity gear. Scariest thing in PvP ever. If they don’t crit, nothing happens but if they do, gg.

It would just be back to pre-nerf… actually I believe it would be a little lower still.

Nothing too scary tbh.

Im kidding but, it’d be quite funny if they made a set with 15000 fero. Completely silly but would be hilarious to see.

Pure ferocity gear. Scariest thing in PvP ever. If they don’t crit, nothing happens but if they do, gg.

But they really need to. Because of the LS, GW2 has really become a game that’s very dependent on fast updates, because there really isn’t much core content beyond the vanilla game.

This is really why I think Anet should sometimes stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Raids have been instanced for the last 10 years in MMOs, and this is why.

Hannelore.8153:

Its a game, most people play it to unwind when they feel tired or stressed, not take on hardcore bosses with uber skill for several hours after a long day at work.

IMO, this kind of content does not belong in open world and never did.

If you don’t want to be organised and listen and just do your own thing, just don’t come. Its a bit blunt but thats the truth of it really. It’s basically a raid, and the first thing most raiding guilds in most games will tell you is that if you don’t want to listen to orders, be focused and organised, then please don’t sign up for a raid.

Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you need to do it.

rainynoble.6531:

Xae Isareth.1364:

To be honest, eles that can stack might properly are actually quite rare in a pug, even for dungeons.

and most of time pugs will put down combo fields beside fire which screw up might blasting.

To be honest, that’s not their fault half the time. Guardians have a trait which auto drops a light field at 50% HP, and it’s a 5 point trait in a meta build line so you have to take it.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

In a perfectly organised group.

I think this is where the real problem is occuring. People seem to be under the assumption that perfectly organized parties are easy to come by. Aside from that, it also seems that perfectly organized parties are really less useful in most of the recent content.

I’m not sure how well an ele can stack might while doing the Teq event, but I know that I can keep up huge amounts of might on people.

I have limited experience playing an ele though, so maybe they can keep up all those might stacks on people around them with ease.

Not very well. Too many other fields around, guardians fir a start automatically drop light fields because it’s a fixed trait, and WoRs are gonna be everywhere in Teq.

GS can’t stack might either but what you can do until Anet wakes up and fixes world bosses so they can be critted is have a guardian cast empower on you, then PS should mirror that to everyone around you.

I’ve never tried the following but if it then affects another warrior with PS, that warrior should mirror it again to everyone around him as well, so you can probably set up a chain reaction to keep the entire zerg mighted.

Someone needs to go and try that, if it works then there’s something else you can do with the trait that would be hilarious in WvW.

Delay.6908:

Ye fractals are the one time where ele stacking might becomes problematic, not going to deny that. Along with the fact that you want 2 eles optimally to maintain that 25might (or else you will run out of might after 20seconds or 30seconds depedning on runes) But like in any regular dungeons you dont run out of might if you just bring 1 staff ele and 1 LH ele due to how they complement each other, so phalanx warrior there is kinda moot due to the LH ele constnalty blasting the might field. Of course this doesnt work in PUGS since.. what are the odds to get 2 complementing ele builds. but i was only commenting to talk about this new phalanx strength changing the meta.. which is quite untrue, i litteraly see no point in running it in organied meta groups in dungeons like CoE/TA/SE/Arah etc…

The eles can just change builds to compliment each other. But that’s not the problem in pugs. The problem is that often they won’t know what to do, and that LH eles (and eles in general) drop like flies if they get hit.

Arah is a perfect example of this. If your ele can stay melee range at Lupi, great. If they can’t, it’s either dead ele or the ele screwing it up for everyone else by going ranged.

It also depends on what you mean by meta. The pug meta is still really 1 mes 4 warr and maybe a guardian, because it is just simply the most guaranteed way to get through a dungeon relatively fast.

Warlord.9074:

Xae Isareth.1364:

It doesn’t matter. Axe’s raw damage pretty much purely comes from its auto attack, so that extra hit still means 10% more DPS.

The idea is that you don’t weapon swap.

And it’s been proven. I’d link you to Nike’s thread/video but I can’t link stuff on my phone.

Id like to see the thread later. That shows this new build out DPS the old one.

BTW I have watched NIKE before and listened to stuff he says. Everything this guys says is based on his guild runs, where he plays with people he knows that are good. If your dungeon runs are not just like NIKEs you can throw half the things he says out the window. I know I do. Because I dont have a PVE guild to run with or a bunch of PVE friends that can for optimal perfect groups where everything nike says works like he says it does as it exists inside a vacuum chamber.

That’s the point we’ve been making. If you’re in a perfect party, don’t bother with Phalanx, if you’re not, it’s a good trait.

It doesn’t matter. Axe’s raw damage pretty much purely comes from its auto attack, so that extra hit still means 10% more DPS.

The idea is that you don’t weapon swap.

And it’s been proven. I’d link you to Nike’s thread/video but I can’t link stuff on my phone.

^ you know even RuneScape sometimes balances PvE and PvP differently right?

And dear moderator, this is nothing to do with profession balance ._.

Warlord.9074:

Dub.1273:

Loses up to 40% personal damage compared to an ele.
Provides 7 more stacks of might, all might with ~20% higher uptime and less (no) chance for failure (fire fields being covered by light fields, etc). Also brings Empower Allies and permanent Banners. Overall, an ele is somewhat better in an organized group on TS that doesn’t mess up. A PS warriors is A LOT better in any unorganized group or for fractal runs, let alone HotW.

This is a flat out wrong mate. please explain how. 30/25/0/0/15 is 40% more damage than 0/25/0/30/15

If it provides 7 more stacks of might +150 than this build has 95 more power than the meta build and 25% less weapon modifiers. By your calculations.

The new meta is 30/30/0/0/10 or 30/30/0/10/0, no weapon switching, depending on boons. In a perfect party with 25 might (cos eles don’t lose DPS in a co-ordinated group to stack might), you lose 150 power (30 in strength – EA) = roughly 5%, 15% from berserker’s power, 10% from dual wield speed trait, 5% from dual wielding, 10% from the axe critical trait, and 5% or so from axe having higher DPS. Totals to about 50%.

Using the second option for ease of comparison, you offset that by a 10% gain in crit damage because of 15 in discipline. Thus 40% DPS loss for yourself.

Ignoring multiplicative effects, which reduces the loss by a bit. Don’t have acalcukator nearby

We assume 100 crit chance, and ignore the 3% from low endurance because it’s rather questionable if you would waste a dodge for 3% when that dodge can mean life or death.

But again, perfect party needed. Rare stuff. Oh, and someone needs to run an EA build anyways, so you might not use the DPS meta build.

Im sure this has been mentioned again and again but I really think its something which is very detrimental to the enjoyment of the game.

PvE and PvP/WvW is very different, both on amechanical level and from a point of balance.

Mechanically, take the Confusion condition for example: in PvP if the person you cast it on can’t cleanse it, when they want to use a skill, they need to make a decision between taking damage or to not use it. NPCs don’t make decisions (and also attack much slower), so the entire mechanic of the condition becomes moot and it becomes just a really bad DoT.

From a balance point of view, it’s very different as well. Take Hundred Blades for example, it’s very strong in PvP because of its huge burst potential, but in PvE, it’s average at best by itself (ie, without traits) because it works out to be low overall DPS. The focus and thus what balance means is just not the same between the game modes.

I’m not saying I know how to do a dev’s job, but the way balance is being done at the moment, you got PvP balancing which aren’t appropriate for PvE wrecking things in PvE, and then PvE balances which aren’t appropriate for PvP returning the favor.

pdavis.8031:

Akari Storm.6809:

pdavis.8031:

and it looks awesome.

Subjective, not a real fan of the looks in their entirety. Like maybe 1 or two pieces per weight. All I can say is “Reskinned”.

Of course style is subjective. I was being factitious… :P

The heavy boots matches a lot of armor very well :0

My personal ‘especially’ being the female Norn t3 heavy. Just the right height to not clip with the stockings or the metal leg guards and matches the overall theme of the armor very well.

Dub.1273:

Loses up to 40% personal damage compared to an ele.
Provides 7 more stacks of might, all might with ~20% higher uptime and less (no) chance for failure (fire fields being covered by light fields, etc). Also brings Empower Allies and permanent Banners. Overall, an ele is somewhat better in an organized group on TS that doesn’t mess up. A PS warriors is A LOT better in any unorganized group or for fractal runs, let alone HotW.

You really aren’t losing 40% DPS. You’re losing something like that off the DPS meta build, but you’d have at least 1 warrior run an EA build in an optimised party anyways.

The argument is really that in a perfectly set up group, the extra stacks doesn’t help since you’re already on max might stacks, so all you’re doing is just losing DPS. You can replace the ele in a perfect group but they can do the same thing as you can (as long as other players co-ordinates) without losing DPS.

Personally, I think the way support is set up is a massive design flaw, and how everything is capped is a problem, and a major contributing factor to why we all use the same builds in PvE, but that’s a different argument I guess.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Weapons are around 5% DPS increase over their exotic counterparts. Not really anything massively game changing, you’ll finish fights slightly faster.

Armour… you really will struggle to tell the difference unless you’re in FotM .

The raw stats are 5% increase. But if you use gear with stats that synergize well (for example Power, precision, ferocity) that 5% can be boosted up to 10-15%.

Not really. It’s still a flat 5% over what you have without the axe. IE, your DPS would be just 1.05 x what you had previously.

Warlord.9074:

Guess what guys? we dont care. Nothing you can say is going to make us think Phalanx might stacking isnt great. And so far I have seen no real numbers or tests to state that the meta is better. I have also seen no proof at all that a warriors own personal DPS carrys the party more than increasing everyone else to an insane number. I am pretty sure its not. And even if so we don’t care because we dont need eles anymore.

Well, the numbers are in a perfectly organised group you’re taking a 20 odd % DPS loss personally to stack 25 might, whilst eles take next to 0. In a perfectly organised group.

(whether that’s good game design is a different argument)

But we know how organised pugs are and I think most if us will mostly do stuff inside pugs. Being in a guild doesn’t help, and tends to makes it even worse fit efficiency, because you can’t just kick your guildies from a party or refuse them entry.

Weapons are around 5% DPS increase over their exotic counterparts. Not really anything massively game changing, you’ll finish fights slightly faster.

Armour… you really will struggle to tell the difference unless you’re in FotM .

Charak.9761:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think the idea was that it wasnt supposed to be easily unlocked on a new character.

then this game ends up locking in its current players and turns away new ones, that’s not a healthy design.

Not really, one of the complaints people had was that you just get given everything so quickly that you don’t feel a sense of progression.

I think the idea was that it wasnt supposed to be easily unlocked on a new character.

Molch.2078:

No ele around in an organized group? I think not.

I was arguing against his assumption of no ele in an organised group.

But I think we’re all quite sure that this trait is moot in a perfectly organised group. But the reality is that those are pretty rare.

Also, I think we’re only considering half the argument anyways, because as you’ve all noticed, Anet pretty much doesn’t do instanced content anymore.

In a lot of LS content (more if they ever make structures crittable), you’re looking at the very definition of a pug, and yet the content has hard DPS checks.

Delay.6908:

Im talking about this from an organized guilds perspective, basicly the meta runs. you know the thing you talked about before? The time saved putting the party together (since it is not as restrictive) outweighs the time lost due to 1 warriors lower DPS. is a moot point. The time is exactly the same since the people i group with are “skilled” (if you can call it that) enough to be able toe xecute a simple might stack combo.

And even if for some reason none of the people in my group can play ele its still much better to run meta DPS builds, and just drop a fire field and use all the blasts across the different classes/banners to reach 25 might. Since the end result is 25 might for 20 seconds and the warrior doesnt lose alot of DPS specing deep in a dumb line.

Then what happens when 20 seconds runs out? Happens in a lot of bosses outside of the faceroll dungeon set.

After you FGJ, you need to hit a fire field 8 times with everyone around it. With no ele around that can be pretty awkward in a lot of fights even for an organised group.

Not to mention for other problems like for example, on a GS/sf guardian metabuild, without picking up banners and doing that annoying slamming animation, you got 1 blast finisher on a 45 sec CD, which is actually a skill you would also want to use normally.

Beldin.5498:

Oh no .. please no weapon level grind like in Lotro.

I’m still convinced that if you cut all the grind out if a MMO, your MMO won’t be very popular. Some sense of physical progression and achievement is needed.

And I don’t really see what’s wrong with naming weapons. You can’t just red-tape everything which can offer enjoyment to people which miigghhhht have some negative effects on society, otherwise we may as well censor most of the internet.

Of course some names have to be censored and it does rely on the community to not embarrass themselves but I think it would be awesome from a RP perspective (the two words that comes after MMO which people seem to have forgotten about).

It would be even more awesome if we got some sort of weapon progression system where our weapons get experience as well as us after level 80 and unlock unique effects and modifiers. There’s really no point to experience after level 80 currently, because you get enough skill scrolls as it is.

I’d rather see interchangeable weapon skills, separate balancing of PvE and PvP, and changes to some existing weapons first.

New weapons are great and all but, finish what you started and fix what’s already broken before jumping to something new.

Delay.6908:

Julie Yann.5379:

Delay.6908:

Julie Yann.5379:

Kagamiku.9731:

I said 12 was the bare minimum. An experienced group can have 25 stacks 24/7. And the warrior would be doing much less damage. In some pub groups it might even be better overall dps then the standard build, it just crashes when you’re running with an experienced one.

What is involved with an organized group to get 25 stacks? With this trait all you need a is warrior with a gs to attack something. Everyone can be doing pure DPS 100% of the time. I’d have to spend some time going through the numbers but I truly believe that a group built and geared around Phalanx could out DPS the current meta since warrior does only mediocre damage as it is anyways.

Going 30 deep into tactics really meses up a warriors damage, you cant ignore that. If you run say 4/4/0/6/0 your already about 25% less modifiers then the current meta warrior build. So the damage difference is not :slightly less. And in organizde groups just grab 2 eles, 1 staff 1 S/D and boom, perma 25 might no problem and both those ele builds pump out alot more DPS then a warrior. So no, phalanx strength wouldent be better in meta groups since ele pump out the same ammount of might thanks to the synergy of LH and Staff and the front loaded S/D might, while not sacrificing a lot of DPS unlike the warrior.

I’m still curious to see the actual numbers. Until I do I remain with the idea that it might be possible to create a party (which doesn’t require 2 specific Eles builds) that is equal to or better than the current meta using this trait.

Those specific ele builds are higher DPS then the warrior build, so even IF the warrior carrying might was optimal you would still run those eles over anything else. And the math behind the warrior isnt to hard to do. Your prolly running 4/4/0/6/0 so your missing the 10% dmg mod from bleeding foes in arms, the 15% mod from full adrenaline in strength, the 3% mod from empty endurance in strength and then the 10% attack speed (8.2% dmg iirc) mod in arms. Thats alot of damage for something another class can do better.

You’re better off running 0/25/0/30/15. The bleed 10% is better than 10% on GS, 150 fero is better than 200 power, and the weapon swap comes in handy for either LB assist when things get messy/3 might from sigil of battle/DPS with axe when you can slack on might stacking.

And you can stack 25 might perfectly well in most dungeons with scholar + boon duration food, so you don’t need strength runes.

I don’t think it’s a good comparison to compare this build to the meta axe build because you’ll offer to run an empower allies build anyways (0/30/0/20/20 unless I’m out of the loop on this one).

Compared to that, (rough calculations) you lose 10% DPS from dual wielding speed, somewhere around 5% because of axe having higher DPS, and about 10% from 50 less ferocity and less eviscerates. Totals to about 23% less than the axe EA build.

In a perfectly organised group, yeah, not really that useful because the game is still so badly designed for support builds, but a single ele stacks around 15-18 stacks of might in your average semi- organised group (from experience) less if the boss isn’t melted quickly enough. So that’s 7-10 stacks more of might for the whole group, which is 7-10% DPS increase for everyone, outweighing your own loss by far.

And let’s face it, perfectly organised groups are rare, especially for fractals (rubbish rewards), and a good s/d ele that doesn’t die when a boss looks at him is also rare.

To be honest, eles that can stack might properly are actually quite rare in a pug, even for dungeons.

Agony.3542:

Xae Isareth.1364:

A bit off topic but, I think this kind of highlights a major weakness in game mechanics: you don’t need to give up anything to give what’s considered vital and useful support.

That’s one of the reasons why we have so little build diversity. If guardians have to build differently to give aegis, blind and reflect up times that are considered vital in FotM, if eles had to lose considerate DPS themselves to stack might and benefit the whole party, and etc for other classes then we’ll have a lot more considerations to think about and have more build diversity.

I think Phalanx Strength is where the game should aim to when making support builds viable. You lose considerate DPS yourself but your party in the lack if other might stacks gain hugely in DPS, so there’s that weighting of benefits and consideration of the situation at hand, which makes things more interesting.

I have to /disagree here.

If you use fire combos for might, an active way which requires you to have timing, coordination and teamwork, you can cut all the “gimmicks” like boon duration or traits like PS.
If you don’t want to put that much effort in it you are free to use passive mightstackers, like PS or Empowering might, but you will have to sacrifice some damage in return.
You actually have a choice, putting in more effort is rewarded, playing in a more passive way comes with a cost.
I

That’s exactly the same issue with zerker gear. And we know and Anet knows how much that’s corrupted most of the game.

Skill and effort should be rewarded, but there needs to be a choice even at the highest end of skilful play, otherwise like now, you’ll have everyone playing exactly the same or rather, aiming to play exactly the same, and thus no build diversity in PvE at all.

@above post that itself doesn’t matter. Anyone running this will have 9 -12 second might stacks unless they don’t use food, and those stacks will be constantly refreshed anyways.

So unless you’re all running around like headless chickens (which would screw over field might stacking anyways) that should not be a problem.

A bit off topic but, I think this kind of highlights a major weakness in game mechanics: you don’t need to give up anything to give what’s considered vital and useful support.

That’s one of the reasons why we have so little build diversity. If guardians have to build differently to give aegis, blind and reflect up times that are considered vital in FotM, if eles had to lose considerate DPS themselves to stack might and benefit the whole party, and etc for other classes then we’ll have a lot more considerations to think about and have more build diversity.

I think Phalanx Strength is where the game should aim to when making support builds viable. You lose considerate DPS yourself but your party in the lack if other might stacks gain hugely in DPS, so there’s that weighting of benefits and consideration of the situation at hand, which makes things more interesting.

I’m sorry but if you’re going to play a MMO, you should not dislike change. New builds will constantly be created and what’s good and what’s not good wil change all the time. It’s just going to happen.

And regarding heroes. From what I can tell its a pretty split opinion from the community regarding those. Some people loved them and others thought they turned GW1 into a single player game. I for one would never bother to put if we had heroes.

Why would I risk all the potential frustration of pugging if I can avoid it and still get the content efficiently done?

The stat change is less of a perk but more if a gimmick in my eyes. If you want to be efficient you need to change the sigil as well. Heck to make a lot of builds work you need a new sigil, and since you can’t change the sigil you need a new weapon anyways.

Warlord.9074:

I think eles are using lighting hammer. So while it is equiped they are not throwing out fire fields. There is an ele build specifically designed for might stacking but its not a high dps build.

I migggght be worthwhile having the warrior buff instead then. I know that eles when played well (note, well), has noticably higher DPS than warriors, and this Phalanx build is kind of an extension of an Empowered Allies build, so even in an organised party, if the Warrior doesn’t use strength but scholar runes (because having played for quite a while, I’m positive you can keep 25 stacks up even with scholar), it miiiggght be actually optimal. Hard to say without doing the maths, and I can’t do math at 5 am in the morning

Agony.3542:

Ok I was thinking about this for a bit.
Here is the deal.
With 20% reduced cd on shouts, FGJ! will give you 3 stacks of might for 42 seconds, on a 20 second cooldown. ->6stacks permanently
Sigil of Battle will grant you 3 stacks of might for 35 seconds with a 10 second cooldown. -> 9 stacks permanently, 12 for 50% of the time
Signet of rage will grant you 5 stacks of might permanently.
This will bring you to 20-23 stacks beeing easily maintainable. Arms X might not even be necessary .

I might be wrong on this but the might you give to others with Phalanx are fixed at 6+ boon duration.

sinzer.4018:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Agony.3542:

I like the combo between phalanx strength and arms X.
Sadly I don’t see it beeing useful in speedrunning groups, since there are better ways to stack up might and the current might mechanics can actually hurt the group, due to the low duration – 8 seconds at best. This sucks and should be changed already.

In less “try hard” groups the combo is pretty nice, granted most of your group have some idea of what they are actually doing (not if they die all the time or run very poor builds). I would say that if you run with friends/good guildies this might be something to go for. For PuGs? Depends on how much credit you want to give yourself and your fellow random r… player. I’d stick to 6/5/0/0/3 for arah&co, but that’s because I know I can get any group through arah with this build.

I guess the most optimal build would be
0/5/0/6/3
Full Zerker
Strength runes
FGJ! Banner of Discipline (still better than Banner of Strength) anything SoR
GS with Slaying/Night + Force/Energy / Axe+anything with Slaying/Night+Sigil of Battle
Why 3 in discipline? Because GS camping is bad. period. Also Sigil of Battle will compensate for most of the might you don’t get when you are on Axe.
5 in arms? Attack of oportunity!
6 in tactics? well duh.

You can pump your boon duration to 205% with a banner of tactics:

30% from traits, 45% from runes, 20% from chocolate omn cream (40% MF, so you’ll want that anyways), 10% from banner. That’s 12 seconds of might.

But I agree, I don’t see this build being in an optimised speedrun. Also, you can still stack to 9.6 seconds without Strength Runes (food + banner), so Im debating whether Strength Runes are actually optimal for the build.

I havn’t done the math, but I was stacking to 25 fine with Scholar, which of course, gives you higher personal DPS.

Strength runes definitely aren’t needed. Was having no problems being at 25 stacks without them. It’s only the 7% dmg that intrigues me. The rest is filler imo.

The 100 ferocity on scholar’s alone basically equates to that on a forceful GS build, and then there’s the 10% damage on 90%+, which isn’t hard to keep up cos of the build’s higher HP if you just slot healing signet.

So, Im really wondering if all this hype on strength runes is anything but hype. I can see it being more useful in WvW though, where things aren’t so rotation-based.

Agony.3542:

I like the combo between phalanx strength and arms X.
Sadly I don’t see it beeing useful in speedrunning groups, since there are better ways to stack up might and the current might mechanics can actually hurt the group, due to the low duration – 8 seconds at best. This sucks and should be changed already.

In less “try hard” groups the combo is pretty nice, granted most of your group have some idea of what they are actually doing (not if they die all the time or run very poor builds). I would say that if you run with friends/good guildies this might be something to go for. For PuGs? Depends on how much credit you want to give yourself and your fellow random r… player. I’d stick to 6/5/0/0/3 for arah&co, but that’s because I know I can get any group through arah with this build.

I guess the most optimal build would be
0/5/0/6/3
Full Zerker
Strength runes
FGJ! Banner of Discipline (still better than Banner of Strength) anything SoR
GS with Slaying/Night + Force/Energy / Axe+anything with Slaying/Night+Sigil of Battle
Why 3 in discipline? Because GS camping is bad. period. Also Sigil of Battle will compensate for most of the might you don’t get when you are on Axe.
5 in arms? Attack of oportunity!
6 in tactics? well duh.

You can pump your boon duration to 205% with a banner of tactics:

30% from traits, 45% from runes, 20% from chocolate omn cream (40% MF, so you’ll want that anyways), 10% from banner. That’s 12 seconds of might.

But I agree, I don’t see this build being in an optimised speedrun. Also, you can still stack to 9.6 seconds without Strength Runes (food + banner), so Im debating whether Strength Runes are actually optimal for the build.

I havn’t done the math, but I was stacking to 25 fine with Scholar, which of course, gives you higher personal DPS.

A good guardian never uses a staff in PvE. Ever. At least not when hes playing seriously.

I’m not too familiar with eles, but, isn’t fire their DPS attribute anyways?

About as intended as 6 signet warriors.

Palador.2170:

MotherKitten.6795:

I think letting anyone learn any skill is called free classing. It seems kind of strange to me that anet dumped the trinity but didn’t adopt free classing at the same time.

It’s hard to have free classing and not need a trinity of some kind, unless you want everyone to have the same basic build. There needs to be a good reason for people to look for builds that can do what they can’t.

That’s only if you designed your game badly, like, very badly, because even if everyone just piled DPS, different weapons would still offer different benefits.

Algreg.3629:

Xae Isareth.1364:

2. I wanna give an example for this. I think when devs talk about balance is pretty much alwats about PvP. The Secret World has a pretty tiny dev team compared to GW2 after Funcom laid off half their staff, and certainly doesn’t have a balancing team (the last balance patch was like a year ago).

Yet PvP in TSW is a lot more balanced and diverse than GW2. How? Because TSW has an extremely open build crafting system with no class restrictions at all, so the complexity of it means that there’s a lot more options open for many different play styles so you don’t end up having a few metabuilds that’s better than everything else. You can have a lot of skills in every class, but each class will still have a pretty much pre-defined play style and attributes, so you end up with a small pool of builds which synergises with that best.

two words: glance tank.

Don´t get me wrong, I really have a soft spot for that game, but pvp balance… gimme a break.

You mean evade tanks? (that was the most complained about ‘meta build’, which was not actually that good when you broke it down).

The standard evade tank builds around Backlash dealing sizeable damage back to the attacker when they evade.

You have a lot of counters to that. There’s augments for your skills to lower their already low evade chance, a lot of skills are unevadable.

The build itself even has a lot of weaknesses. It doesn’t work well against single hit attacks, it’s really only very strong when using a skill that has a very long cool down to force evades (I just pop my own cool downs and laugh when they do it), evade itself has terrible returns compared to other defensive stats: for example, a block tank would have nearly 100% uptime on 25% mitigation, whilst you’ll still be open to spikes, and you need a lot of evade to make it work, meaning lower a lot of other important stats compared to other builds.

Cylokin.2560:

Maybe not drop anything valuable as that, but I agree that there should be something more to lose other than time to go fix your armor.

No, because then no one would bother roaming. One run into a zerg means a very high chance that you’ll die.

Zerg vs Zerg wouldn’t work then either, because large scale battles tend to mean large scale casualties.

In fact, the whole system would break apart when you’re on a weak server because in addition to being constantly stomped, you’ll also lose items/gold/exp.

In short, it’ll wreck WvW if you lost anything more.