Guild Wars 2

Thedenofsin.7340:

I also have tried it and have reached the same conclusion. Some professions have little-no cast time on their attacks (thief), rendering it a fairly useless talent. Combined with races whose animations are difficult to see (asura), it isn’t really reliable.

This, plus most Mesmer interupt skills have cast times. Only Diversion + Mantra of Distraction/Power Lock are instant. Hard to interrupt most enemies’ short-cast spells with cast-time interrupts.

ANet keeps buffing Mesmer interrupt traits every patch, but until they remove cast times from most our interrupts, those traits and that meta will go unused and unplayed. Too bad too, would be a really fun playstyle.

Laserbolt.6731:

And what would the exact traits be?

Something like this. Runes of the Scholar and Ogre also options.

There’s also a Zerker Axe build – HB → Swap → #4 + #2 + #1 till HB cd up → swap → HB → repeat

Mace offhand interchangeable with Axe. Not sure what absolute top DPS build is among these, but it’s a variant of either 30/0/0/10/30 or 30/25/0/0/15. And it’s even more DPS than prior to the patch.

deathTouch.9706:

Good players would know that it would proc at 75% and not blow all their CDs before you reached 75% hp.

Then if it would proc, they’d wait it out and burst you after knowing that it’s down.

It would be pretty much useless against good players.

Was thinking this too.

D/D or D/P burst thieves tend to run trait/runes that give them 30% or more damage to foes under 50% health, they’ll whittle you down to 50% then go for the quick kill with C&D+Mug+BS+HS+HS+HS… Even if the thief is at 10% when you hit 50%, they know they can cover that gap quickly with their sub-50% buffed combo. That’s where Endure Pain at 25% shines.

If you’re running GS + Sw/Focus and the target closes range with you, cast Mirror Blade for the Might then swap to Sword → Blurred Frenzy. Helps to carry a weapon set for both ranged and melee.

Would love to join and help but already in 5 guilds. If anyone else in same boat, and would like to buy additional guild slots with gems, help get the word to ANet.

I agree in principal that the most complained about classes in games are the ones that can stun-lock or cc-lock, everybody hates that worse than anything else.

But GW2 is in an interesting place b/c its emphasis on Interrupts rather than chain stuns. Unlike, say, WoW, anything can be interrupted, even non-magical skills and non-magical class abilities like Hundred Blades.

ANet could completely nerf/remove long-duration stuns and CCs and leave just Interrupt mechanics and it would still be an interesting game.

And Mesmers have been getting tons of Interrupt trait buffs in the past two patches, and all but two of our weapons have interrupt abilities (MH sword, Scepter, though they provide Cripple and Blind). ANet clearly intends Mesmers to be the high-skill-cap dueling class.

So, yeah in general I share concerns about nerfing a class into irrelevance, but I don’t see Mesmers getting there in the near future.

Full Zerker Ascended gear with its crazy Crit Dmg + our PvE utility (reflects namely) will be enough to keep the class not just relevant but T1 in dungeons for the foreseeable future. Maybe not top damage, but 4x zerk wars don’t take 1x mesmer for their damage, but for TW, Fury/Might multiplying Signet of Inspiration, and reflects. I don’t think that will change much.

In PvP everybody runs IP Shatter variants anyway, despite the big buffs to Interrupt traits lately. I’m wondering if we’ll start seeing any Interrupt-based builds like 10/30/30/0/0 or similar at all, either in PvP or WvW. Probably too niche, but one can hope.

It’s kind of an interesting place in Mesmer land right now, in between meta’s, some negatives some positives, but I wouldn’t say it’s bleak.

+1 full bunker/tank. Commander goes down, all is lost, except with really organized pro wvw guilds.

I wouldn’t get a commander tag on my mesmer in the first place, but if I absolutely had to I’d go with build like 0/10/30/30/0 full survivability mode.

Only exception is Cavalier 1H weapons and Ascended pieces just b/c the Crit Dmg % on those is such a good deal in terms of stat point cost. But if that doesn’t matter to you, then full Sentinels or Soldiers for every piece. Don’t worry about damage, your zerg brings that, but only as long as you’re alive to direct it. Otherwise it all falls apart.

GiggleFairy.3807:

i like to run for my shatter mesmer.

20 : 1 or 3, 10
20 : 4 , 10
0 :
20 : 4 , 8
10 : 3

You can move that 10 in Ilusions to Dueling without losing any damage. You would lose 3% damage per illusion (9% max, but sustained average is less), but gain 100 Precision and 10% Crit Damage, plus be able get all of Phantasmal Fury, Blade Training,
and Deceptive Evasion.

Just adding my +1 to this. I use Windows for one thing and one thing only – to play GW2 (the only game I’m playing atm). Linux for everything else.

Would be awesome to have a native client so I could ditch Windows completely.

Steam is coming to Linux, Steambox is going to be Ubuntu-powered, would rock to see GW2 hop on the Linux train too.

Dear ANet, please add guild slots to the gem store. People are using guilds for lots of different things these days and a mere 5 spaces isn’t enough anymore.

Use case example:

My current 5 are:

1. My main guild that I rep 90%
2. My secondary late night WvW rearguard/sentrying guild I rep in WvW when my main guild has mostly gone to bed
3. bank alt guild (guild stash)
4. second bank alt guild (because I figured at the time I had these extra guild slots so why not use them up, can’t delete now after the gold and influence put into them)
5. Gw2esports guild to help find people to play/practice with

Guilds I want to join but can’t:

6. A more casual sPvP team finder guild (used to be in it, had to drop to make room for another)
7. A guild to help newbies to a class get better at it
8. A friend’s small guild
9. Team DOLY

etc, etc, a couple more I can’t recall.

I won’t even bother asking for this for free since 1) I want to support the game but not interested in plushie backpacks and 2) this fits right in with character slots, bank tabs, and bag slots in the gem store.

I’m sure it would make ANet some decent extra revenue as I suspect many of the player base are getting to the same point I am – making many connections throughout the game and involved with different communities and guilds within those communities.

Please consider it.

Good video, nicely explained, especially the “how it plays” part at the end.

A few questions/observations:

1. I thought it was a PvP/WvW build at first due to the Confusion traits. Unless something changed with Confusion in the recent patch it’s not very strong against mobs, just players. Mob attack speed is to slow to get many procs before it expires, but autoattacking players on the other hand can kill themselves with it.

2. Temporal Enchanter increases the duration of all Glamour Skills by 2s. I tried it for a while, but decided against it b/c there was never a huge need for the extra 2s. I found reducing the cd of Focus skills and making them reflect to be much more valuable. There are a lot of fun things you can do with multiple reflections – Feedback, Temporal Curtain, iWarden, and Mirror healing skill are a good set. Especially vs the Tazza pre-fight golems in SE or fireball-tossing Effigies in CoF.

3. If you’re willing to try it without Confusion traits and Temporal Enchanter, try 20/20/0/30/0 (or this variant)

I think the logic is, at long range Mirror Blade is intended to optimal against more than one enemy. Eg, it’s an AoE along with Mind Stab and iZerker. You can cast all three almost simultaneously for really strong ranged AoE damage on groups of mobs or players, especially if Sigil of Fire procs.

At close range it becomes optimal even 1v1. Tradeoffs.

Prior to the patch I ran some variant of the Phantasm/Reflection build in PvE and dungeons : 20/20/0/25/5 or 10/20/0/30/10. Primarily low level Fractals (under level 20), Explorable dungeons, and Living Story dungeons.

I expected the IC nerf would hurt, more than it seems to have. But after a few days of 10/30/0/30/0 I’m not feeling the IC nerf like I thought I would.

Illusions have good enough uptime that if I spam illusion abilities on cooldown they overwrite more often than not, so many times I find myself having to check my impulse to spam illusion skills.

Blurred Frenzy cd is about 1.7 seconds slower and I notice that a little, but not enough to make me want to retire my mesmer and reroll.

What is everyone else’s take on this, anyone really hurting from the recent patch (PvE only, I know WvW is a different matter, and seems everyone uses Shatter in PvP anyway)

New player guid to leveling a mesmer the non-painful way

Somebody needs to organize an actual race and settle this once and for all. Say two races – one on a road where combat slows won’t be a problem, and one where they will:

Race 1

Start: Southwestern Gendarran Fields (Travelers Dale Waypoint)
Finish: Southeastern Gendarran Fields (Almuten Waypoint)
- Must stay on the road the whole way, but this is the fastest, most direct route anyway

Race 2

Start: Southeastern Cursed Shore (Shipwreck Rock Waypoint)
Finish: Northeastern Cursed Shore (Pursuit Pass Waypoint)
- Can use any route, but the shortest, most direct is to hug the roads on the eastern side of the map, though there are several gaps with no roads where you have to run through mobs who will slow you if they get a hit.

Everyone who wants to prove which is the fastest can guest to the same server. Have a couple people at both Start and Finish timing it, start each racer 30s apart so their AoE Swiftness doesn’t buff nearby competitors.

Use any build, any gear, anything “legal” in game. Teleport/Map hacks disqualify, but anything else goes.

Wow, I retired my Norn Guardian when this pot broke, and just finished powerleveling a regearing an Asura guardian two weeks ago. Lol, now they fix it.

Caffynated.5713:

Warrior and ranger are a distant 2nd, with mesmer and ele being an even more distant 3rd.

Unless you’re talking about staff ele’s, mesmers are not remotely in the same class for sustained travel speed.

Mesmers have pretty good in-combat movement, at least if running Staff + Sword + Blink, but their sustained travel speed is down below Guardians, unless they run Focus + Runes of the Air (or Centaur which nobody does) and then they’re roughly equivalent with about ~80% swiftness uptime and some movement tricks (Blink, reverse Phase Retreat).

Hammer Sigil

Sigil of Generosity > Sigil of Nullification. Steal a boon, don’t just remove it. Generosity not available in sPvP, but is in WvW/PvE.

That said, I run Sigil of Stamina on my Hammer, but this is for a bunker zerg frontlining build that is specifically meant to never die (and revive all the downed enemy that tagged me). More dodges = more invulnerabilities.

Dolyak Signet vs Balanced Stance

Normally I would say Balanced Stance b/c Dolyak Signet doesn’t give you the armor boost when it’s on cooldown, which it will be a lot in combat, so it’s better to just have a shorter cooldown on your stun break + statbility.

But then I looked at your low 2600 armor, and I’m honestly not sure. I think you’re just gonna have to experiment with the two and figure out which fits your build better. I’m guessing it will be Balanced Stance, since your build is very much a “kill or be killed” build – 200 armor from DS probably won’t make much of a difference in that regard even when it’s up.

Sykper.6583

I did look into the Warrior’s Sprint, but I find myself mobile enough already between my Greatsword and Swiftness from Signet of Rage which tends to be up more often than not.

If you’re not having problems with Time on Target or getting locked down with cc, that should be fine. Otherwise consider Warrior’s Sprint + Mobile Strikes. For roaming, that combo can compensate somewhat for lack of Leg Specialist.

Food

Lemongrass Poultry Soup: -40% condition duration, +70 Vitality.

How does this fare against sword Thieves and Corrupt Boon Necros?

I made mine female b/c I wanted the tiniest possible character model. Voice acting is ok, it doesn’t annoy me at all, which was my only concern. Can’t speak to whether you’ll actually enjoy it or not though, that’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

On a more serious note, plenty of skilled players do well on other races. For just one example, Supcutie the mesmer of Team Sleepy [ZZZ] that won one of the first post-spectator mode tournaments recently seems to do fine on Human. Pretty sure there are more.

And if you have a big enough monitor with good enough resolution, as I think most serious PvP’ers do, Asura aren’t small enough to effectively obscure their movements enough for any kind of real advantage.

Esplen.3940:

As an Asura, I agree. However, I just came back from a game where I, and another Mesmer, both ran Male Norn while only making the Height to the tallest, the body size the fattest/biggest and the head size big/wide. We then ran around with the guild name “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm” and the character names Illl Il Il Il Il Il Il and Illl Ill Ill Ill Il.

It was fun because he ran shatter and I ran clone with condition damage, and you’d just see clones dying while we rarely got hit.

There’s a vid on Youtube of an all-asura team doing that too. I wonder which is more of a PITA to fight against.

And of course, the master race comes up with these master strats.

Lord Erik.6903:

Engineer: Bit Hypertech & Mesmer: Lucid Mindbender

9.7/10: Doesn’t follow the lore/naming rules, but techy & creative hence mostly fitting (and same thing I did). I suspect after Asura have lived amongst humans, norn, and charr enough some might start adapting surnames for themselves too.

In a similar vein, all mine are named after programming stuff:

Guardian: State Machine (boons = state)
Engineer: Mersenne Twister (algorithm)
Warrior: Tar Ball (unix zip file)
Ranger: Blum Blum Shub (algorithm, yes really)

Props @ FA & KN. No matter how outnumbered you guys are, you fight tooth and nail for every frikkin thing on the map, be it a supply camp or your Garrison. Restcpa.

darkace.8925:

kurtosis.9526:

The new Stomp is especially nice, particularly when traited (20/0/20/0/30).

I didn’t even catch the CD on Stomp dropping to 45 seconds. I was running Physical Training for a 48 second CD and the extra damage, and was bummed to lose that trait when Berserker’s Power moved to the grandmaster tier. But the reduction in CD means I’ll only be missing out on the extra damage if I forgo PT. But with PT it would be a 36 second CD. Hmm…

Yup. 36s, double damage, breaks stuns, provides Stability for the cast duration, sends all nearby enemies flying. Throw in Death From Above, EarthShaker, and Heightened Focus, and Fury and you can really cause havoc in keep defenses.

Haha, yes that would. I was thinking more of Healing Surge and Mending though. Their cd’s are too long for the amount of healing they do.

deathTouch.9706:

Melandru Runes + Dogged March + Lemongrass Poultry soup

How is that not enough cond removal as is?

I run this and it’s good enough most of the time, but sometimes you’ll get focus-conditioned, esp in big zerg battles, with 10+ stacks of Vuln, Bleeding, etc, and even with shortened durations they can hurt. Nice having one more option to clear them without having to waste a utility skill or run traited horn.

Gratz Sacrx & RG, and thanks for the unmuted vids!

My 10/0/30/0/30 wvw hammer build got a slight dmg nerf but very good survivability and QoL nerfs. The new Stomp is especially nice, particularly when traited (20/0/20/0/30).

Personally I’d just rather have the cd’s reduced, no other changes. Was looking forward to that. That would have been perfect.

Cleansing Ire doesn’t suck though, at least not in WvW. It’s a must-have for me there.

Thx, been looking at that issue too. I think 2x conditions every 10s, combined with Melandru Runes, Dogged March, Lemongrass Poultry soup, is probably enough condition removal, but we’ll see.

Think I’ve got defenses covered, but doing enough dmg is an issue now with the loss of Berserker’s Power.

Moral Hazard, human female.

I run a 10/0/30/0/30 Hammer build in WvW, and the new traits give the opportunity to get both Destruction of the Empowered (Master) and Burst Mastery (Grandmaster) or Heightened Focus.

However, that would require forgoing Mobile Strikes (Master), which I’m not sure I want to do. So if I have to choose, anyone figured out yet which trait is more optimal, DoE or BM (or HF)?

Completely agree. If IC was being treated as a base ability, so necessary every build was taking it, the solution isn’t to move it out of reach of all but one build, it’s to get rid of it then compensate, either by partially or fully building it into the class, or increasing illusion heath/armor, or drastically reducing their attack cd’s or something.

In a recent big patch, Thieves’ Revealed debuff got increased from 3s to 4s, and there was much QQ about how it broke their flow and rotations. ANet realized this was true, made the profession less fun, recanted, and set it back to 3s.

The incoming Illusionists Celerity nerf does something similar to all Mesmer builds except Illusionary Persona Shatter builds – breaks flow, makes all non-IP Shatter builds less fun, hurts Phantasm uptime.

I’m wondering if ANet can’t be persuaded this is a similar situation to the Thief Reveal nerf and un-nerf, and perhaps find a better way to nerf Mesmer dps without nerfing Illusion cooldowns, or whatever they were going for with this IC nerf.

Lord Titan.3791:

Both Cavalier and Berzerker Ascended trinkets are the way to go. It’ll be up to you to find the right mix of those to fit your playstyle.

Thanks, any thoughts on what stat distribution to aim for? Sounds like minimum 40% crit chance, but what about overall Attack, Armor, Health, and Crit Dmg?

Normally I run with max P/V/T armor, Sentinel jewels, and Knights weapons, focusing on survivability primarily so that I don’t go down and mass-revive any enemies.

In pure Exotic gear, that’s about 3000 Power, 3500 Toughness, 27k Health, 4% crit, 0% crit damage (31% with my 10/0/30/0/30 build + Rare Cavalier back).

But this new patch, if the leaked notes are true, is going to buff survivability nicely – Cleansing Ire + 25% run speed Warrior’s Sprint, so I’ll be better able to avoid damage and get out of kill zones.

And one thing I’ve learned from this thread is, against pro guild groups that have a lot of AoE Stability spam, Hammer warriors need to focus on more on damage.

So I should figure out the stats to aim for, pick up a mix of Cavalier and Zerker Ascended trinkets, then use Armor & Weapons to fill in the rest of the stats.

Zeki.7829:

Lol wtf are you serious..who cares.

Just when i start enjoying WvW on my warrior again they decide to mess up my trait build >< i don’t give 2 kittens about axe or sword i love my hammer/GS build and don’t want to be forced to play a cookie cutter dual wield build.

What’s your WvW Hammer build? My 10/0/30/0/30 GS/Hammer build gets a nice survivability/sustain/mobility buff, and I’ll just replace the lost damage from Heightened Focus with gear. Can’t wait.

Lord Titan.3791:

Great build, not to far off from my own. Unless your dead set on Embrace the Pain I’d suggest either 10 in Tactics for Leg Specialist or another 10 in Strength for Slashing Power. Also I’d prefer Cavalier trinkets over sentinel due to the large damage increase versus the minimal survivability increase.

Thanks, I’m starting to think about Ascended trinkets, have enough laurels for most of them – is 5x Cavalier the way to go for these?

New warrior, hit 80 during Flame & Frost, have been running this Hammer build in WvW zerg frontlining, your thoughts?

Notes:

1. Primarily intended for zerg battles where each side is in the 15-30 range. When it’s 40v40+ zergs, I swap the armor from Knights to Soldier/Sentinel mix, same Runes.

2. Build up Adrenaline quickly with GS + Embrace the Pain, Earthshaker, use additional Hammer attacks if possible (esp Staggering Blow), run out, repeat. I’m usually looking to cc and disrupt more than dps, or both if I can hit their squishies.

3. Melandru Runes + Dogged March + Lemongrass Poultry Soup for handling conditions, and Mobile Strikes + GS for avoiding kill zones. I prefer this over Soldiers Runes so I’m not locked into Shouts*. If the leaked patch notes are true, this will get even better:

- Cleansing Ire for condition removal on Adrenaline use (3x conditions removed every 8s with traited Earthsaker), with Embrace the Pain baked in.
- Dolyak Signet gets a stun break
- Endure Pain and Defy Pain cd’s reduced to 60s
- The new Stomp also looks like an interesting alternative to Dolyak – turn the tables on a pileup trying to gang burst you down.

4. Heightened Focus going away, but if Warrior’s Sprint gets +25% movement speed, that will be the new Discipline Adept trait.

5. I swap Burst Mastery for Destruction of the Empowered when I want more damage, but usually stick with Burst Mastery for more rapid Earthshakers (and immobilize escapes).

6. Death From Above – Too much fun. I just can’t quit you.

\* on Shouts – coming from a full Clerics, dodge-healing, 3x Shout Guardian I haven’t been overly impressed with Warrior shouts so far for zerging. They seem more oriented toward PvE dps – two of them are about damage, and only one of the four breaks stuns. Whereas with Guardians, all four are about AoE group support, one also about damage (SY!), and two break stuns.

Reading this thread and seeing Vigorous Shouts + Soldiers Runes builds makes it clear you can make shouts work for defense/support on a warrior, but you have to jump through a lot of gear/trait hoops to do it, and even then there’s still strong incentive to only use 2 shouts + a stance or something, which wastes a bit of that gearing effort.

Just my initial impression so far, and why I wanted to avoid gearing that locks me into Shouts. But I haven’t jumped into sPvP on my war in full Clerics + Soldier Rune + Vigorous Shouts build to actually test it yet.

Doopslayer.2304:

Im sorry but where did you hear that #5 takes control of people? the necro number 5 was leaked to be 1. aoe torment, 2. at the end of a cast immobilise in aoe

thats as much mind control as throw bolas lol.

The patch notes used the word “control” instead of “crowd control”, pretty sure they meant the latter, and people are just misreading the former and thinking “mind control” (a WoW priest skill to actually control another player). But it just meant cc.

Nice buff to my favorite 10/0/30/0/30 WvW Melandru hammer train build.

Embrace the Pain combined into Cleansing Ire in Master tree, and Warrior’s Sprint (now +25% run speed) to replace Heightened Focus. Didn’t think this build could get any more fun.

The new Warrior’s Sprint + cripple on Sword autoattack and Savage Leap should make an interesting option for peeling in PvP too.

Sorry to see the PvE dps nerfs, but pretty sure everyone knew they were coming. I think ANet’s #1 priority with this balance patch was to end the 4x zerker/1x mesmer $!$!$!$!$!$ shenanigans. We’ll see if they went far enough.

Thanks, I was starting to wonder about a Clerics + Healing Signet + Adrenal Health + Vigorous Shouts build for WvW, but think I’ll just stick with my Sentinels + Melandru Runes + Dogged March build instead.

Anyone know if Adrenal Health scales with Healing Power, or just with bars of Adrenaline + effective level?

Zaulhghev.5308:

Except for rare occasions 40 of us are consistently melting under their organized 20. You know why TC is destroying us when we meet them on the field?

Because they care about what armor and runes they are wearing. We do not. Why is berserker gear in WvW the norm? When did this become a good idea. Especially given how easy it is to pick up a second set now with the WvW exotic armor vendor. Your CoF grinding gear and trait build makes you a free rally.

Fwiw, SoR told us the exact same thing when they steamrolled us last weak – wear tougher gear and use bunker builds. Here’s one example, several more in that matchup thread.

Not sure if/how many TC’ers took it to heart. Our WvW guilds are generally built tough, but not all our militia are, and there are some new players who may not be aware.

But yeah, it’s interesting how the PvE and WvW gear meta’s are so extremely diametrically opposed – full zerker everything for PvE, full Sentinels/Soldiers everything for WvW.

Zaulhghev.5308:

Because if you watch the way TC moves on a commander, it is obvious that they are on TS.

…

Do you know how difficult it is for the commander to write everything out in /t? Especially in the middle of a fight?

Our guilds are in TS (or Mumble), but our most popular commanders actually relay their commands to /s too. We have a lot of militia that can’t/won’t use Mumble (have to keep an ear out for crying baby in the next room, stuff like that), and many of our commanders try to be accommodating to that.

So it is possible to command with very terse /s commands, but it depends on the militia knowing what they all mean:

Stack: Stack on the commander, spam fire fields and blast finishers, and only fire fields unless something else is specifically called for.
Push: Push all the way through the enemy zerg to the safety of the other side, don’t stop in the middle, don’t stop to stomp, don’t chase stragglers, stay on the commander
Fall Back: Back up, don’t get drawn into their kill zone, stay on your commander
Follow: We’re moving, stay with me
Build: Flash build this siege ASAP
Use this: Man this siege

Those few used in /s pop a chat bubble over the commander’s head that everyone can see, even militia not on TS, and as long as they have some idea what zerg fights are about they can figure out the rest.

And all the militia really need to know is just two things – be tanky, and stick on the commander like glue. If they can do those two things reliably, they at least won’t be free revives. We’re still having to reinforce that point too.

Yes, thank you ANet for making it an hour, sooo much appreciated.

But also, slingblade is right – for lower pop servers it’s still not long enough. And even higher pop ones wouldn’t complain about a further extension.

And stof’s idea above about marking siege for overwriting is even better.

Dailies + Ascended + WXP = grind + power grind = everything GW2 wasn’t supposed to be. :/

At least dailies happen naturally in WvW without much thought about them, but the WXP power grind sucks.

The problem with the orbs is that the team strong enough to take them is generally strong enough to keep them indefinitely, coverage permitting.

The solution is that Orbs should:

1. Increase the XP, WXP, Karma, Gold, and MF of the team that has them.

2. Decrease the Armor, Health, Power, and Condition Damage of team that has them.

The idea being, the risk of owning them is commensurate with the reward, and further, the more of the orbs you have, the more likely you are to lose them, and the harder you have to work to keep them and their reward.

That introduces an interesting tactical dilemma into the game and would force dominant servers to make a real choice – do we take the orbs and lose some of our dominance but gain a lot of “financial” reward, or do we ignore them and maintain our dominance but not reap the financial benefits of having them as well.

I’m 99.999% sure that ANet will reduce the randomness factor in a few weeks.

High randomness and ranking volatility is useful initially to get a lot of varied data about how different servers really fare against each other, and as a result has made the ratings much more accurately reflect all servers’ true abilities (SoS is a good example with their 2-tier jump).

But once the true ratings are dialed in after a few weeks they will almost certainly reduce the randomness factor in the matchmaking by a lot. It will still be more than the previous system that kept servers locked in stale matchups for months, but much less than it currently is.

Patience, grasshopper. And failing that, spend a few weeks honing your skills in sPvP instead.

Guardian.

GS + Sw/Focus + full Clerics + healing/boon duration rune set (3x Monk, 3x Water) 0/0/10/30/30 3x Shout + Virtues Healway build. Google/Youtube it.

That build also works well in ZvZ, just swap in Staff + Hammer and now you’re a zerg frontliner.

That said, a tanky 10/0/30/0/30 hammer train warrior in a zerg is the most fun I’ve had in WvW yet. But it’s quite a challenge 1v1’ing good players with it.