Guild Wars 2

I think when people ask about personal DPS, they ask for solo exploration reasons, or for carrying reasons.

You really can’t carry a group with bad DPS as a mesmer or ranger, but if you’re a warrior or revenant you can more than compensate for their incompetence.

InsaneQR.7412:

Zenith.7301:

1) Increase Envoy of Exuberance’s protection duration up to 5-6 seconds. It also provides 2.5 seconds of quickness.

2) Crystal Hibernation can be channeled on the move, clears 1 condition per second, and reflects projectiles.

You can detonate the shield early to grant allies aegis and chill or weaken nearby enemies.

Voila, people might actually use this thing.

Pretty all your suggedtions are OP, the only thing that could be considered is moving in crystal hibernation.

For the love of god, I’m obviously talking PvE where it doesn’t see the light of day.

You can split PvE/PvP balance here.

1) Increase Envoy of Exuberance’s protection duration up to 5-6 seconds. It also provides 2.5 seconds of quickness.

2) Crystal Hibernation can be channeled on the move, clears 1 condition per second, and reflects projectiles.

You can detonate the shield early to grant allies aegis and chill or weaken nearby enemies.

Voila, people might actually use this thing.

PvP people have always used “balance” as a buzzword for “I don’t like losing duels to this class”.

Mesmer and thieves are the ultimate classes to frustrate/annoy people in 1v1 situations, so naturally they’re the ones that demand most nerfs.

Unfortunately when developers decided to move away from the GW1 mesmer’s theme of control and shutdown and introduced the visual clutter of clones and their terrible implementation of stealth with little counter play to said stealth, they doomed the classes that use these things to be the most complained about regardless of their overall balance.

And people won’t stop the QQ until said specs are erased from relevance, much like how they saw spirit rangers and any offensive ranger for that matter gutted to hell as well as any minionmancer.

Spartacus.3192:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Leveling Revenant is no different than any other plate class. The whole “Revenant without Herald stuff” is mostly bs…people just use it to abuse getting loads of boons out of combat (mainly Swiftness for travel speed and Might for dps).

It may be mostly BS to you but remember opinions are like A holes. Everyone has one. Rev without herald is boring is my opinion. It being BS is yours.

How can it possibly be boring? Glint is virtually the most passive legend Rev has?

If fun to you means passively gaining boons, I don’t know what to tell you.

It’s just garbage design because it means as soon as the population drops or loses interest in farming those events, latecomers/returning players are screwed as they can’t complete events/achievements/masteries, including some rather vital steps for their legendaries.

In core Tyria you could pretty much do EVERYTHING for your legendary by yourself, and if some hero point like in Arah might feature a silver mob you could just grab 2-3 other people and take care of it.

HoT is basically the fatal design flaw of creating content that’s dependent on permanent player density, which obviously won’t happen as the game ages.

Good luck getting into a map that completes Vinetooth Prime successfully, and it only gets worse as time goes by because less and less people need to do Vinetooth Prime which means more downtime you spend waiting for a group that will do it, and most of them fail at it anyways.

Character progressions should NOT be tied behind zerg events. You can’t control how many people show up to an event and how many can actually do it.

Those fractal chests should only be dropping large potions to begin with. A single of 5 stacks from daily chests is just disgusting.

Leveling in this game is hideously boring, it’s not just rev that feels bland at lv20.

Every class sucks at lv20 because you have nowhere close to an actual build with synergies.

Rev suffer from a similar syndrome of ele’s (and necros), where your utility can be brought by somebody else (might/fury from rev, PS warrior; condi necro just has an inferior version of projectile destruction and mesmer boon strips already).

So if either rev or ele get their DPS nerfed to a point, you’ll just replace them with thief or engineers (as engineers replaced eles rather recently prior to the xpac).

Problem with ele is even more accentuated because it’s the light armor class with the lowest base HP in the game; if it does the same damage as the next top class who has better durability, you just replace them.

To be frank, only by giving classes unique buffs like banners, frost spirit/grace of the land, and alacrity do you make them indispensable.

And it will continue to remain that way until this game’s systems start valuing more things than just raw DPS on a boss.

For example, the breakbar completely took a dump on necro and other debuff heavy classes that don’t have a lot of boon sharing or active support because they were designed as debuffers. So things like weakness/slow/chilled/cripple/blind are hardly attractive when many of the boon heavy classes also bring enough hard CC themselves for break bars. The only time when debuffs are even useful are short periods where the breakbar is active, and even there they’re of limited use comparatively.

They were so hamfisted, where they could have simply reduced the % values of weakness/chill/cripple/slow on bosses, they made them completely immune and made necromancers even worse of a group support class.

And sadly they balance solely with spvp in mind, so PvE people won’t see the light until a paradigm shift in their design practices.

NoTrigger.8396:

Rym.1469:

There might be small balance tweak on Tuesday. If so, I believe both Power Rev and Condi Mes will get some nerf.

they can nerf rev in pvp esports as often as they want as long as they dont wreck the class even more in pve.

+ if they are doing any balance tweaks for pve before touching eles kittened overpowered dps then i will completely lose faith in anets balance team.

honestly i wish roy was still on the balance team.

Varezenem.2813:

I wouldn’t recommend using precision strike due to the bug it’s weaker than just using AA.

you are wrong.

Unfortunately Roy was also behind core ranger and you see what’s the result with core ranger, kitten back then and virtually nonexistent now that they gave up on making offensive ranger good and gave him a new niche instead.

I mean, he was behind “Most Dangerous Game” as a grandmaster for rangers.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Most_Dangerous_Game

and Nature’s Vengeance:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature's_Vengeance

On top of actually nerfing Hunter’s Tactics by turning it from a 10% damage buff while flanking into a 10% increased crit chance, which is less useful in several circumstances.

Roy’s design of the revenant was a happy accident. Incidentally, those classes Karl is responsible for (ele, warrior, thief) end up pretty well in the long run in PvE.

So, we want Karl for rev, although I feel that is being selfish given the state of necromancers and offensive rangers, they kinda deserve it more.

Varezenem.2813:

NoTrigger.8396:

Rym.1469:

There might be small balance tweak on Tuesday. If so, I believe both Power Rev and Condi Mes will get some nerf.

they can nerf rev in pvp esports as often as they want as long as they dont wreck the class even more in pve.

+ if they are doing any balance tweaks for pve before touching eles kittened overpowered dps then i will completely lose faith in anets balance team.

honestly i wish roy was still on the balance team.

Varezenem.2813:

I wouldn’t recommend using precision strike due to the bug it’s weaker than just using AA.

you are wrong.

I tested the rotation he used vs the one without elemental blast and precision strike. And AA rotation won by 5%~. While obals calculations are correct AFAIK he didn’t know about the bug while modeling therefore the end result is off.

The “he” you are referring to for rotations is actually the “he” you’re quoting in your post. NoTrigger/Vicious was the guy doing the revenant rotation in the linked quantify DPS benchmark videos.

So, if you are having problems with replicating his results, you can just ask him in your reply.

Akrasia.5469:

Krysard.1364:

Akrasia.5469:

Krysard.1364:

Akrasia.5469:

I was initially horrified by the change to Deathly Chill and all the chill nerfs in general. But after some playtesting I’m seeing that this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Chillomancer isn’t the beast it once was BUT there are several benefits to the new system.

1st if you trait correctly then you hit with 4 conditions each time you apply fear (Fear, Chill, Vuln, Bleed) This is panics most low to mid level players and still mentally messes with experienced players who may pop their condi cleanse too soon. Chill alone applies 3 conditions in this set up. If you pair it up with scepter you can apply poison, cripple, and torment. (I know both on the giving AND receiving end, It’s not fun to instantly see 6-7 conditions hit you at once ack)

2nd You can combo with other Necros and even Eles to apply more bleeds so while individually this may be a nerf, its stronger for team play. Which is the main thing as a class we get complaints about (our strong but selfish abilities).

3rd It’s not as big a nerf as I thought. It’s definitely a bigger nerf if you are not a true chillomancer and wanted a little extra burst damage but for chillomancers and hybrids with lots of chill sources you can easily maintain 3-5 extra stacks of bleed(on top of other sources like scepter) in a sustained fight and possibly burst with your damage chain and apply 5-7 stacks.

4th Cleansing Chill doesn’t remove the damage so people need to remove 2 conditions to stop the pain. I think chill get removed 1st (can someone verify) so in the end you maintain damage longer.

So my opinion on this is it’s not the end for condi reaper. We may just have to tweak it to see what we can really do.

Before you could do dmg with marks, now you dont. No need to reply anthing else.

I’m not really getting your point here. What damage are you talking about? Marks Chilliblans and Reapers mark both spam out 4 conditions per hit. Shout Suffer when someone/something is hit by those 2 marks and you have 3 bleed stacks on them. Yeah we’re nerfed. We all know that but since it’s a mechanics change and not just a pure damage reduction there are ways to take advantage of the new system but you have to be willing to adapt. A 2 man Chillomancer team could spam 6 bleed stacks with the same skills mentioned. and thats only 3 of the 7 sources of chill my current build has.

My point is, before you could use chillblains and hit for 2k+. Now you cant, you just tick one bleed. Chillblains+Reapers+suffer was 10s+ chill, so ~8k. How can you compare 3 extra bleeds to this? Chill nerf was a huge nerf. Two necros using three quite relevant skills just to be able to stack 6 bleeds is ridiculous.

That’s paper logic and not how things work in the middle of a game. I don’t think anyone except for true noobs took the whole 8k damage you’re talking about. I’ve survived other Chillomancers with positioning, cleansing etc. There are a lot of articles and videos explaining why just running the numbers on paper do not equal what goes on in the game.

Yes we were nerfed and yes Chillomancer isn’t the monster it was but it wasn’t a straight damage reduction it was a mechanics change meaning there’s room for adaption.

Also 6 bleeds is more dmg per tick than chill damage. 6 was a very conservative #. My point was that there’s opportunity for team synergy and even higher potential damage with creative builds. We HAVE lost some base damage but not as much as it looked initially and we may have picked up some benefits in the long run. I would like to see the damage buffed a bit like perhaps a 10% condition damage increase vs all chilled opponents added to DC. But the mechanic itself looks like it will work pretty well.

If you’re gonna argue cleansing and positioning for chill damage the same case applies to your bleeds.

It’s a straight up damage loss. It was intended to be a damage loss by the devs’ own words.

Jaffawer.4932:

well… now I’m even more worried about trying the tank role The bigges issue is that I don’t have any stable raid group, and everyone expect you to be exp and best, with X amount of Li.

Trying out tanking with a PuG is virtually the last thing you should be doing. PuGs demand experience and competence and show no leniency where a stable group might actually show you patience and guidance.

Besides, a large part of your performance is tied with your chemistry with the group. You’ll struggle when you get a healer or DPS that each time do something and expect something different, unlike a proper static group who know how you play and likewise you know what they are doing.

Moa has existed for over 3 years and nobody has complained about it until now lol.

That’s PvP people for you, they will never be satisfied.

flog.3485:

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

I’m actually genuinely heartbroken. I preordered the deluxe version of HoT months before a release date, and couldn’t wait to explore the jungle!
I have been waiting for a friend to help me with my final story since october… Tonight we spent 2 and a half hours trying to kill Mordremoth, beating him down to a third of his health, [/spoiler even reuniting me with tybalt,] which, had me choking back a tear… only for the game to not let us jump into the air during his ‘ultimate floor of death’ move or suddenly having our wings disappear during mid glide, then being sent back to the very beginning?! What? WHY?? Fighting Zhaitan was tough, but if I died fighting the mouth, I came back fighting the mouth! Why are there no checkpoints in this fight at all?!
I am not here trying to slag the game off, I truly love this game! I have even defended HoT many times to my friends, even going as far as to say maybe the chaotic feeling in the jungle is to reflect the chaos of the situation. And the story is amazing as always!
But it’s too difficult to just go exploring solo. And so many people I know people who love guild wars 2 who have literally stopped playing because of this expansion. And others who promise if the next expansion isn’t ‘better’ they’ll stop playing too…
And if you are one of the people that aced this all first time, then I am happy for you, but you are not in the majority here.
I have played this whole game solo, only joining groups to do the odd dungeon or fractal. I’m not saying the people on the map now aren’t friendly, but the map is sparse most of the time, and i have been party to more failed missions than successful ones recently. Doesn’t it say something when I’m happier redoing old content rather than exploring the new areas?
Please ArenaNet listen to your players! I understand that some players want a ‘Real Challenge’ you have provided raids to people who want to push themselves to the max, but it’s unfair to us who play because we love the story, our characters, and your universe, to now have us play on insane mode to experience new content is ridiculous.
Now i’m not sure when, or if, I even want to try the last part of my story again, I will probably stay in central tyria just having fun instead.

Honestly, it boggles me….Why do you want to solo a map that was advertised as being an end-game content? You know it is not because some players are obviously better skilled than others that they aced it in the first try….They also had to fail and then they adapted their gameplay to the content hot contains because it is different than core GW2. I am casual player, I play the class with the lowest personal DPS (mesmer), I have no intention in raiding and yet I find hot maps a lot more interesting, valuable and fun that core maps…How do you explain that? If the map is sparse I suggest you to look at the LFG if you are struggling too hard to do the events. As for the personal story, I sympathize because it was so buggy before that you couldn’t do it but now it is possible. To jump into the air you just need to follow your group with bram, you don’t even need to press the jump bar, only do it when your are thrown into the air to activate your glider

No content that is beat by a brainless zerg is “end-game content”. Orr was not end-game content, and neither are these maps.

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Varezenem.2813:

Hooglese.4860:

I totally agree and have agreed for a while. It’s easily the strongest but also by far the easiest. There isnt much to Glint, but for power there is no alternative really. You never don’t take Glint for power; it’s 12 stacks of might, perma fury, protection and aoe boon duration. The activations are strong/easy to use too…

Its not just you, Glint needs a rework imo

On what exactly? Glint is meant to be a boonbot and does that well.

Which is a problem, as is ele and PS warrior.

Because when a class can pretty much solo stack might/fury, it completely devalues any other class’s less OP utilities.

Necromancer’s Blood is Power and some mesmer/engineer traits would see the light of day if might/fury stacking was actually a group effort instead of trivially being covered by 1-2 classes.

I mean, let’s not pretend like passively sitting on 12-14 aoe stacks of might and perma fury isn’t outright ridiculous, on top of a facet that gives 50% increased boon duration.

And that’s on a class with the DPS potential of a revenant, who’s only SLIGHTLY below Tempest and Daredevil while having far more powerful utility and durability.

It’s not unique to the rev, though. These elite professions were advertised as sidegrades but they are total power creeps. Just like Chrono eclipsed and ruled out any chance of running core mesmer, or druid preventing any offensive ranger from being run, Glint will make sure that you only have a choice of a single legend as Glint is pretty much mandatory in PvE.

I’m fairly sure that might stacking is something a PS Warrior can handle just as well (actually better) and they even bring banners… So in group utility Warriors outclass heralds.
On perma fury that’s ridiculously easy to achieve it’s something druids, thieves or elementalist can achieve if they want to.
Perma protection is something guardians achieve by AAing or Auramancing tempests achieve if they go earth/water/tempest.

Pretty much any boon heralds can do others can do just as well. The only things unique to heralds is the boon duration and assassins presence.

Glint is mandatory in PvE because it’s a boonbot but isn’t irreplaceable.

Glint is mandatory because no other class will give as immense a DPS boost as a revenant increasing quickness uptime on the group by 50%.

That is not up for debate.

And neither the guardian or PS warrior or ranger are putting out the DPS a herald is doing, which is above everyone else besides ele and daredevil who are empty utility specs.

Well I guess you also need to copy paste less since you seem to forget the context in which these tests were made.

BTW no revenant variant

It’s almost like it flew right past your head that a “variant” does not mean “optimal”, much like there are variant builds for when a PS warrior is not present or you don’t have a Druid in the group.

Can’t wait for improved DPS parsing tools in-raid to be done with your hand-waving about context, because said context applies to every other class’s performance and many of those classes don’t just get the bulk of their DPS from mashing the autoattack and occasionally #2 like the revenant does.

Did you watch the videos, or were you just complaining? Revenant video used Precision Strike rotationally to achieve that DPS, and to make recommendations based on some inconsistent bug seems pretty silly.

You can look up similar replicated parses both on dummy and on bosses using unofficial DPS meters.

Whatever, I’ll just leave you to go on about your pity party about revenant mediocrity.

Wrong subforum.

I’ve gotten 4 ascended items, 2 of them armor boxes, 1 accessory, 1 ring.

I think accessories and rings should let you choose the stats.

Rewards seem pretty decent now for fractals imo. Doing the 3 tier 4 dailies plus the 2 recommended I now come out with easily 20+ gold per day.

Raven.1793:

Zenith.7301:

Raven.1793:

Zenith.7301:

Raven.1793:

How about using a scepter condi elementalist in the OP’s initial comp? They stack might pretty well and provide some protection while dealing decent burn and bleed damage. Does anyone know if it is possible to build a burnzerker with PS and EA?

Please don’t. Scepter is only equivalent to dagger under the scenario of perma alacrity.

Scepter has horrendous sustained DPS since the scepter autoattacks are among the worst in the game, so all your DPS comes from overloads and Dragon Tooth/Phoenix with Lightning Strike.

In any scenario scepter would shine over dagger, staff would do even better.

Scepter is a garbage weapon pretty much every class but necro.

Scepter easily stacks and maintains 25 might and perma fury. Dagger and staff do not. S/W condi deals 19k dps fully buffed, 9k with no buffs. D/W power may be capable of 36k fully buffed but only manages 10k unbuffed. In a group without a PS warrior, it is generally a good idea to run S/W might stack over D/W fresh air.

BTW, the S/W numbers were obtained using sinister gear with balthazar runes. This build should perform much better using viper gear with berserker runes.

Who cares about the ele might stacking? PS warrior and people blasting your lava font should keep full might stacks and fury stacks, and if you wanted to be optimizing anyways you would have a revenant in your group to maximize quickness uptime from the chrono, and that herald is providing a passive 12 might stacks and permafury himself.

Core dagger rotation leaves a fire field for might stacking as well.

If you as the ele need to run a kitten 19-22k DPS gimmick spec to give party might, you have greater problems to worry about with your group.

Scepter ele also has garbage sustained cleave compared to dagger or staff.

I don’t see the need to immediately dismiss S/W ele just because meta builds do not work well with it. I know that everyone’s favorite comp is Chrono, PS, Druid, 2 DPS and that it is very powerful. I happily run D/W fresh air anytime I’m in a meta comp. However, the OP is attempting to do something different and from what he reports, condi appears to be promising for high level fractals. I’d like to help him find an alternative to the same old comp. He is trying to build a condi-oriented team and necros do not have enough blast finishers to max might on fire fields. The fact is that condi builds benefit a lot from might stacks and ele happens to have a might stacking condi build. This same build also brings along a good deal of protection, something that should not be overlooked given the title of this thread. Finally, 22k is about what you can expect from a PS warrior. Considering the toughness scaling, it is quite possible that a condi ele can out damage a PS warrior in the same role.

BTW, good job on the research Snapalope. I’m always glad to see people not only proposing different ways to play the game but also doing the legwork to demonstrate either its effectiveness or lack thereof.

The problem is, you post best case scenarios with S/W ele. The truth is, to get the optimal results from a scepter ele you need far more effort than rolling your face on the autoattack button and the occasional second button, and you need high alacrity uptimes.

I’ve had scepter eles in my group, I’ve mained ele, and trust me, god knows I’ve tried to find an excuse to dust up my meteorologicus (my first and favorite legendary), but you can tell straight away the deficiencies in the weapon and the real world damage differences that come with it when you step out of the theorycraft corner.

I don’t think an experimental might stacking scepter ele build has any room in a PuG, where people can’t even properly might stack on the premier might stack classes like PS warrior/rev!

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

XxsdgxX.8109:

It is a “solid” class for PvP but far from OP, just a really solid competitive choice for a power build although it gets hard countered by any condition build.

In PvE they are easily replaceable because their DPS isn’t that great anymore. I’ve noticed that raid groups started completely replacing Revs a while ago after the huge AA nerf they got a while ago.

Any raid leader that replaces a Herald is an idiot. 50% boon duration = 50% more quickness, and that facet makes it so you don’t even need to might stack yourself and can spam more sword #2 before switching to Jalis to recharge.

The AA nerf wasn’t even a sustained DPS nerf, their DPS actually went up in any circumstance where they could land the 3 projectiles from Precision Strike, which is pretty much every boss.

Herald tested DPS is 30k. That’s only behind Tempest and Daredevil. They are the third highest DPS class with might+fury stacking, strong break bar destruction, 50% boon duration, 150 ferocity aura for the group, and on demand ranged protection and a 50% reduced damage intake elite on demand.

No class can actually beat that level of combined utility and damage. Eles and thieves are pure DPS classes with far inferior utility.

I wouldn’t recommend using precision strike due to the bug it’s weaker than just using AA.
You might want to test it on the DPS golem

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

Varezenem.2813:

Hooglese.4860:

I totally agree and have agreed for a while. It’s easily the strongest but also by far the easiest. There isnt much to Glint, but for power there is no alternative really. You never don’t take Glint for power; it’s 12 stacks of might, perma fury, protection and aoe boon duration. The activations are strong/easy to use too…

Its not just you, Glint needs a rework imo

On what exactly? Glint is meant to be a boonbot and does that well.

Which is a problem, as is ele and PS warrior.

Because when a class can pretty much solo stack might/fury, it completely devalues any other class’s less OP utilities.

Necromancer’s Blood is Power and some mesmer/engineer traits would see the light of day if might/fury stacking was actually a group effort instead of trivially being covered by 1-2 classes.

I mean, let’s not pretend like passively sitting on 12-14 aoe stacks of might and perma fury isn’t outright ridiculous, on top of a facet that gives 50% increased boon duration.

And that’s on a class with the DPS potential of a revenant, who’s only SLIGHTLY below Tempest and Daredevil while having far more powerful utility and durability.

It’s not unique to the rev, though. These elite professions were advertised as sidegrades but they are total power creeps. Just like Chrono eclipsed and ruled out any chance of running core mesmer, or druid preventing any offensive ranger from being run, Glint will make sure that you only have a choice of a single legend as Glint is pretty much mandatory in PvE.

I’m fairly sure that might stacking is something a PS Warrior can handle just as well (actually better) and they even bring banners… So in group utility Warriors outclass heralds.
On perma fury that’s ridiculously easy to achieve it’s something druids, thieves or elementalist can achieve if they want to.
Perma protection is something guardians achieve by AAing or Auramancing tempests achieve if they go earth/water/tempest.

Pretty much any boon heralds can do others can do just as well. The only things unique to heralds is the boon duration and assassins presence.

Glint is mandatory in PvE because it’s a boonbot but isn’t irreplaceable.

Glint is mandatory because no other class will give as immense a DPS boost as a revenant increasing quickness uptime on the group by 50%.

That is not up for debate.

And neither the guardian or PS warrior or ranger are putting out the DPS a herald is doing, which is above everyone else besides ele and daredevil who are empty utility specs.

Also, keep in mind that the PvP whiny brats are hellbent on getting Chronomancer demolished with nerfs, while they’re campaigning for Dragonhunter buffs.

And this game is wholly balanced on their e-sport PvP garbage, so your experience as a PvE player will be subject to the whims of the PvP populace.

Healix.5819:

Mastery points will likely be easier to acquire in a few months when season 3 starts, assuming they don’t also throw in new masteries.

The simple solution is to not bother with masteries. If you only unlock what is actually required, it’s a fairly casual experience. Some of them are simply pointless, so you can for example save 12 points by not unlocking the last Nuhoch one.

The masteries are required for legendaries, which is pretty much the whole point of the expansion.

Hell, some cosmetics like Glint Bastion still requires some maxed out masteries.

Raven.1793:

Zenith.7301:

Raven.1793:

How about using a scepter condi elementalist in the OP’s initial comp? They stack might pretty well and provide some protection while dealing decent burn and bleed damage. Does anyone know if it is possible to build a burnzerker with PS and EA?

Please don’t. Scepter is only equivalent to dagger under the scenario of perma alacrity.

Scepter has horrendous sustained DPS since the scepter autoattacks are among the worst in the game, so all your DPS comes from overloads and Dragon Tooth/Phoenix with Lightning Strike.

In any scenario scepter would shine over dagger, staff would do even better.

Scepter is a garbage weapon pretty much every class but necro.

Scepter easily stacks and maintains 25 might and perma fury. Dagger and staff do not. S/W condi deals 19k dps fully buffed, 9k with no buffs. D/W power may be capable of 36k fully buffed but only manages 10k unbuffed. In a group without a PS warrior, it is generally a good idea to run S/W might stack over D/W fresh air.

BTW, the S/W numbers were obtained using sinister gear with balthazar runes. This build should perform much better using viper gear with berserker runes.

Who cares about the ele might stacking? PS warrior and people blasting your lava font should keep full might stacks and fury stacks, and if you wanted to be optimizing anyways you would have a revenant in your group to maximize quickness uptime from the chrono, and that herald is providing a passive 12 might stacks and permafury himself.

Core dagger rotation leaves a fire field for might stacking as well.

If you as the ele need to run a kitten 19-22k DPS gimmick spec to give party might, you have greater problems to worry about with your group.

Scepter ele also has garbage sustained cleave compared to dagger or staff.

XxsdgxX.8109:

It is a “solid” class for PvP but far from OP, just a really solid competitive choice for a power build although it gets hard countered by any condition build.

In PvE they are easily replaceable because their DPS isn’t that great anymore. I’ve noticed that raid groups started completely replacing Revs a while ago after the huge AA nerf they got a while ago.

Any raid leader that replaces a Herald is an idiot. 50% boon duration = 50% more quickness, and that facet makes it so you don’t even need to might stack yourself and can spam more sword #2 before switching to Jalis to recharge.

The AA nerf wasn’t even a sustained DPS nerf, their DPS actually went up in any circumstance where they could land the 3 projectiles from Precision Strike, which is pretty much every boss.

Herald tested DPS is 30k. That’s only behind Tempest and Daredevil. They are the third highest DPS class with might+fury stacking, strong break bar destruction, 50% boon duration, 150 ferocity aura for the group, and on demand ranged protection and a 50% reduced damage intake elite on demand.

No class can actually beat that level of combined utility and damage. Eles and thieves are pure DPS classes with far inferior utility.

I’m not sure why in hell they forced us into mallyx. By now I would prefer Jalis+Shiro if they’re not giving us Glint.

I don’t know what is it with Anet’s obsession with useless hybrid weapons that help nobody.

The useful PvE specs are power based because any condi spec that doesn’t have access to burning has pretty terrible PvE DPS, since torment and confusion suck on PvE mobs since they don’t even move and rarely attack.

Also, what’s killing you in Aquatic Ruins T4 is what’s killing everybody: Afflicted instability. You get spammed with burning/poison/ 5 stacks of confusion and those 5 stacks of confusion just wreck you.

It’s not special to rev, that T4 Aquatic ruins screws everybody up. It’s just that rev doesn’t even have a proper ranged autoattack.

Varezenem.2813:

Hooglese.4860:

I totally agree and have agreed for a while. It’s easily the strongest but also by far the easiest. There isnt much to Glint, but for power there is no alternative really. You never don’t take Glint for power; it’s 12 stacks of might, perma fury, protection and aoe boon duration. The activations are strong/easy to use too…

Its not just you, Glint needs a rework imo

On what exactly? Glint is meant to be a boonbot and does that well.

Which is a problem, as is ele and PS warrior.

Because when a class can pretty much solo stack might/fury, it completely devalues any other class’s less OP utilities.

Necromancer’s Blood is Power and some mesmer/engineer traits would see the light of day if might/fury stacking was actually a group effort instead of trivially being covered by 1-2 classes.

I mean, let’s not pretend like passively sitting on 12-14 aoe stacks of might and perma fury isn’t outright ridiculous, on top of a facet that gives 50% increased boon duration.

And that’s on a class with the DPS potential of a revenant, who’s only SLIGHTLY below Tempest and Daredevil while having far more powerful utility and durability.

It’s not unique to the rev, though. These elite professions were advertised as sidegrades but they are total power creeps. Just like Chrono eclipsed and ruled out any chance of running core mesmer, or druid preventing any offensive ranger from being run, Glint will make sure that you only have a choice of a single legend as Glint is pretty much mandatory in PvE.

Raven.1793:

How about using a scepter condi elementalist in the OP’s initial comp? They stack might pretty well and provide some protection while dealing decent burn and bleed damage. Does anyone know if it is possible to build a burnzerker with PS and EA?

Please don’t. Scepter is only equivalent to dagger under the scenario of perma alacrity.

Scepter has horrendous sustained DPS since the scepter autoattacks are among the worst in the game, so all your DPS comes from overloads and Dragon Tooth/Phoenix with Lightning Strike.

In any scenario scepter would shine over dagger, staff would do even better.

Scepter is a garbage weapon pretty much every class but necro.

Snowblind is manageable when PuG’s aren’t doing their kittened suicide rush and actually bother to try to not aggro extra elementals and run behind shacks and kill whatever they aggro.

I’m also seeing this idiotic behavior with Archdiviner, where they hit the seal and just leave the other 3 chanters up and then wonder why people are going down as the ignored chanters pelt people for half their life.

It must be so hard to target switch and deal with peripheral encounter mechanisms instead of just tunneling damage into the boss.

My only complaint is with afflicted instability 5 confusion stacks wiping out my dagger ele’s health within the second it takes me to see it on the UI. Confusion feels just brutal on a class with multiple actions per minute like dagger ele, I wish its damage proc was normalized across weapons instead of wrecking thieves and eles while doing little to hammer guardians and greatsword users.

Silverkey.2078:

aelfwe.4239:

stuff

May I ask a question: do you even want the PvE of this game to be balanced?

What you are saying is you want 1 mesmer to be able to buff 9 other players with about 80% uptime of quickness and alacrity? Do you realize why this is not a good idea?
1 mesmer buffing 4 players is already the highest DPS buff of all professions, but you want to be able to buff 9 players????

You see that is why I say PvP is definitely more sensitive to balance than PvE, because PvE mesmer is currently beyond OP (whether you like or not the buffing role) and you complain about a change which will reduce this OPness by a fairly small amount.

So thanks for your input, it made me realize that I should definitely change the title of this thread to “CS should be nerfed for PvE balance”.

PvE mesmer buffs that much because mesmer DPS is garbage by equally as much.

We’re talking like 14k DPS in a world where tempests and revenants and daredevils are doing 30k+ DPS.

Chrono are high demand for groups but weak individually as mesmer is the lowest DPS class in game with poor tagging and aoe properties for open world and pvp.

So it stays a rare, on de mand class because it’s virtually a complete support class dependent on having allies around to perform.

If you prefer to be self-sufficient in the DPS department, dragonhunter is much better. You’ll have to choose between popularity or individual performance.

I will also say Herald is stupidly good as well, he amplifies everything a chrono brings and he alone with the tempest can cover might and fury so you don’t even need the PS warrior (and the Herald has better DPS and bar-break utility on top of better survivability).

I stand corrected. I was just using token stuff to mystic forge it, so I guess I overlooked the value of additional tokens.

Hopefully at some patch they’ll get Arah up to snuff, as it was my favorite dungeon.

Yeah, but let’s be honest, getting rabid as a consolation prize is like getting knights trinkets instead of zerker.

Sinister trinkets for example are a pain in the kitten to get as a necromancer or guardian if you’re doing that labyrinth achievement, while it’s incredibly easy on a thief or PU mesmer or even engineer.

Condi builds are just plain more time consuming to gear up optimally compared to power specs, and that’s a gap that needs to be rectified.

It could be as simple as introducing sinister/viper trinkets for laurels/pristine fractal relics.

Rewards are still crap compared to pre-HoT. You’ll make more gold in open world zerg farm than doing dungeons.

Thing with dungeon change is it commits you to 8 paths for you to see any return to your time investment.

In the time to do those 8 paths you could have knocked out the t4 fractal dailies and earned far more gold and much better rewards, or you could have done open world farm for much better returns.

Dungeon tours for profit are dead.

Longbow is one of the better ranged weapons in-game, so you use it when ranged weapons are appropriate. For example, if you need a quick target swap to burn down an add while wanting to stay near boss, you can just swap to LB and throw in a rapidfire+barrage before switching back to melee and returning to DPS’ing the boss, or a mechanic forces you off the boss, LB is perfectly viable to use there.

Only issue with LB is it competes with staff, if for some reason your raid requires you to run full healer duty.

Staff makes it much easier to keep up your grace of the land group buff up, which is what groups bring you for instead of a healer tempest.

Remember that as a druid your DPS, and even for the ranger, will be utterly mediocre and you will be brought as a buff/healbot with some secondary DPS capacity.

Eh, I still prefer bringing my tempest and revenant. Metric ton of boons for everybody, ele in zeker can pretty much heal the entire group just fine with his shouts and water attunement swap right back into fresh air DPS spam.

And to be honest, getting full viper stat ascended is far more work than just properly using your zerker classes like tempest and rev.

The pain is not the shaman. It’s the stupid ice elemental before him and the idiots who keep using an outdated suicide rush strategy as a pug only to be wiping over and over because god forbid they try not to aggro adds or those they do aggro, they bother to kill instead of ignoring them and letting the 7k ice spikes pelt them to death.

There’s no greater stupid check than the Snowblind fractal. It will tell you straight away who’s the tunneling idiot.

Unfortunately, it has been 3 years of a game that encourages people to tunnel DPS so it’s a hard habit to erode and get people to actually do mechanics other than “kill it fast before it kills us”.

Vicky.4563:

Zenith.7301:

No. PvE has suffered enough at the hands of PvP.

I think you mean PvP has suffered enough at the hands of PvE. There is nothing challenging in PvE that requires fine tuned balance.

Oh, please, like your gimmick use of rock/paper/scissor builds makes your format any better.

Your garbage format cannot be balanced. It’s like a wheel that goes on and on, with the people losing to x build/class on a 1v1 whining that’s too strong, and then it’s nerfed and the next meta build comes in and the pvp crybabies have it nerfed as well.

While all PvE needs is to balance DPS numbers and spread utility. It can actually be balanced since it’s not centered around crying over a lost duel or the fact that a roamer could 1v2 you and your buddy.

Varezenem.2813:

Zenith.7301:

The problem is that stats like healing power and boon duration are too costly of offensive performance budget wise. You’ll never get people to sacrifice offense for healing power in PvE short of some niche pure healer gimmick build.

Merging those stats in turn might make them more attractive to take in PvE.

And broken in PvP. And what about druids? I’ve heard that Magi’s is fairly popular and that’s literally the worst DPS combination.

They need to split PvP and PvE balancing, they’ll never be able to balance the game properly around both.

There’s a reason sPvP has amulets and caps crit damage bonus to 60%, while PvE can have crit damage bonus more than double of that cap.

No. PvE has suffered enough at the hands of PvP.

The problem is that stats like healing power and boon duration are too costly of offensive performance budget wise. You’ll never get people to sacrifice offense for healing power in PvE short of some niche pure healer gimmick build.

Merging those stats in turn might make them more attractive to take in PvE.

Burtnik.5218:

Zenith.7301:

lol, Revenant has the highest mainhand sword autoattack DPS in game

Hello, its 2016 here. How 2015 is doing?

Daredevil uses staff for DPS. What other class uses mainhand sword for DPS?

Mesmer is the lowest DPS ingame. Their sword autos did about 30% less damage than thief sword before thief sword was even biffed.

Ranger sword DPS is only slightly above mesmer.

I mean, how hard is it for you to understand that Herald DPS tests put him at 30k DPS while mesmer and ranger, the only two other sword users, are 24k DPS and below?

Joining requirements are fine by me so long as they’re reasonable.

What makes me laugh is the kind of people who ask for full berserker ascended and a specific class comp for ASCALONIAN CATACOMBS.

Requirements to ensure success are fine, but what’s pathetic is people who want to brute force success by making requirements far above what’s necessary to complete the content.

It reminds me of WoW’s mythic dungeons, which are tuned to ilv685 gear yet people are demanding ilv720+ for some runs. To give you an idea, ilv720 is the ilv of Archimonde’s loot on heroic mode, the end boss of the relevant raid. Mythic dungeons drop ilv685 gear on average with a very rare chance for 700-725 gear.

So, in essence, avoid people who place unreasonable requirements. It is virtually red flags screaming at you that the people that compose that raid are not very confident in their capacity to do the raid so they rely on getting carried.

lol, Revenant has the highest mainhand sword autoattack DPS in game, with the autoattack with one of the greatest vulnerability stacking capabilities.

If there’s one class that’s not underpowered in the game, it’s revenant.

Mallyx and Ventari might need some buffs for PvE, but that’s about it.

The facet actives just need to get buffed so they’re more attractive to use.

S/S for PvP, S/A is a PvE DPS combination.

If you are getting kited though, you can try switching to S/A as it has an additional gap closer with axe 4.

Problem with Ventari as well is that horrible traitline with the same name. They should really scratch healing power as a stat.

Condense healing power into vitality and boon duration into toughness. Voila, you made less desirable stats now more attractive. Buff Ventari traits so they aren’t such undiluted garbage.

Which is really annoying, they have not the slightest clue about balancing autoattacks for attunements so we don’t just sit in one attunement because the rest of the autoattacks suck, and they don’t even bother to balance autoattacks across weapons let alone across classes.