Guild Wars 2

So last night I decided to play Tempest on a whim, to see if the changes had actually succeeded in making it better, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised, the marauder fresh air earth build I made that revolved around S/F usage with One with Air Repositioning was a TON of fun, and even felt like an improvement over standard S/F builds. But I’m not here to talk to you about that build, I’m hear to talk to you about a bruiser build I made.

I’ve spent the last 6 hours tweaking and refining this build to the point that I’m comfortable with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAodnMMANOg1NAeOAcYilNAzdvGYPsErgMQFY4BEAugA-TJxHwACeAA/2fAwJAoYZAA

Basically the point of this build is to be a point holder in conquest that supports allies through auras, protection, and heals, while doing respectable AoE damage with overloads and cleaving dagger attacks. Compared to Fire/Water/Arcane D/D Ele, this build plays a lot more like bunker staff ele, but overall has better damage, support, and utility in comparison, however it can’t clear conditions on allies as easily, overload water is the only way. This build actually uses overloads, and attempts to use them as much as possible, in order to maximize healing and AoE protection. Every aura shared heals for 1.45K with elemental bastion due to monk runes, which is almost as much as a water swap, and it even has a better radius on the heal. In particular overloading air and earth are the most commonly used due to the strength of the auras, and the quite high damage/protection applied by the overload.

Ether Renewal is chosen in order to manage conditions better, as this build is unable to take cleansing water. Cleansing Fire and Lightning Flash are chosen for a similar utility and provide some nice regen/vigor uptime for personal sustain. The last utility slot is a toss up. I chose air signet for movement speed when rotating from point to point, but armor of earth, mist form, eye of the storm, and feel the burn (lowest CD shout that gives auras) can all work. I used rebound for the extra aura proc, but I didn’t really notice it stopping death except once when I was running away (surprise, I was still downed in the end after the heal, it should be a bit stronger).

In general I thought that it provided a great mix of support and damage and sustain, and overall its a very fun build to play. It can’t stack might very easily so its not godmode like D/D ele pre-fire nerf, but it does hold its own quite well and is very difficult to kill both 1v1 and in teamfights.

Variations: This template for the build can be varied in a few different ways that I haven’t had the time to fully test out and explore (I wish this was a beta week, not weekend lol).

For example, you can take warhorn over focus, and its not a bad choice, unless they go ahead and nerf heat sync, then its a bad choice. Sand Squall is a good skill, and overall it gives you more CC to deny rezzes. The main draw to warhorn is boon spam with sandsquall and heat sync. Using them both after an earth overload with a herald nearby can stack almost a minute of protection, without the herald, you can get a good 30 seconds or so. Warhorn is also better healing due to the better than focus water skills. The main draw for focus though are the air and earth skills for being simply amazing, especially in this build where you can use obisidian flesh every 33 seconds, and magnetic wave also helps with condi management.

Another variation that I haven’t been able to adequately test is using soldier runes, taking wash the pain away, and feel the burn and flash freeze over air signet and cleansing fire. The one game I played on it wasn’t bad, but it just doesn’t synergize well since you need harmonious conduits in order to be able to overload and deal damage with overloads, so you can’t take tempestuous arias, and even then that trait is lacking due to cooldown issues. Its probably viable, but I felt that cantrips gave me overall better sustain and pointholding power, at the cost most of my AoE cleanse.

So feel free to comment and let me know what you guys think! I’m very excited to revamp this build at launch of HoT, and I’ll maybe be tempted to include earthen proxy or tempestuous arias if they’re brought up to compete with harmonious conduits.

Rain.9213:

So just finished trying out Marauder Amulet with Air/Water/Tempest.

And it’s awesome! The damage is fantastic and the sustain is pretty good. Using Lightning Rod plus dual Shock Aura from air line and Dagger mainhand plus Sigil of air, gives me a ton of passive spike damage while Burning Speed and drake’s breath give me active damage. Earth is nice for the immob, reflect, invuln, while water can heal and keep the sustained damage going with Cone of Cold and Comet.

All while having dual Frost auras that heal and reduce incoming damage, tons of aoe weakness, near perma fury and swiftness with Aura trait in Air line and Air overload which destroys anyone foolish enough to stay near me, and pretty good condition cleansing with runes of the soldier+condition removal on regen application.

Good idea mentioning the Marauder amulet nearlight!

Yup thanks! Even if its not top tier viable, it was still one of the most fun things I played this beta! I’m half tempted to stay up all night and skip class tomorrow to play it (and reaper, druid, and chrono) some more.

I also made a celestial aurashare build that worked really well as a pointholder, I’m gonna post a thread about it.

Glenstorm.4059:

nearlight.3064:

Later in going to try out a cele D/F build based on aura share and fire aura mightstacking. It sounds like it could work on paper with all the bottom line tempest traits, I’m just slightly worried about condition removal with fire/water/tempest, so I might be forced to take ether renewal :/

Or Rune of the Soldier/Trooper

Yeah those are an option for sure, but I’ll probably stick with hoelbrak for the mightstacking, and only run feel the burn if even,, not sure yet about wash the pain away or resto signet, but I’ll see if this build actually works as an aurashare version of frie/water/arcane D/F

From settlers traps one game I did 650K condition damage, but I’ve also done less than a third of that versus teams that actually had condi clears in AoE.

For marauder Druid, about 300K damage per game unless I get steamrolled.

Not recording the healing numbers but is imagine they’d be interesting to record, so I might get some down later.

Regarding might stacking on reaper, part of the reason why it feels so over the top is because most of the mightstacking is concentrated into spite. Chilling victory and the stunbreak shout push it a little bit over the top, especially with how much more fluid RS autos are.

That being said I think they should move the mightstacking traits around a little bit so you’re not necessarily guaranteed a ridiculous amount of might just from taking spite, it would also help with build diversity, as spite/SR/reaper will be what most builds default to running since their synergy is really strong. I’m not asking for a nerf or anything, but I think it should just be considered a bit, considering reaper has far more potential to abuse celestial stats than base necromancer ever did. The only thing really holding back cele reaper is that your sustain comes more from life force generation than from actual healing for the most part, since the vamp signet is a pretty weak heal skill imo.

Later in going to try out a cele D/F build based on aura share and fire aura mightstacking. It sounds like it could work on paper with all the bottom line tempest traits, I’m just slightly worried about condition removal with fire/water/tempest, so I might be forced to take ether renewal :/

Devildoc.6721:

Warhorn needs a second blast finisher. Focus has 2, Dagger has 2, warhorn has 1.

I disagree that it really needs another one. I mean churning earth and comet generally aren’t very reliably used as blast finishers.

I think wildfire needs its boon removal back and some of the skills just need lower cast times and need to come out faster.

Azel.4786:

And so it begins.

Now people are realizing that Tempest doesn’t add much to the game and does not give the elementalist the tools to survive the new meta.

And @nearlight, it does not improve team play. It worsens it because the trait line is terrible, so you actually going to battle with 2/3 traits against 3/3 trait opponents. It is a major handicap.

You could get more might to yourself and your allies with vanilla ele, access to protection is still the same way (elemental attunement), condi removal is still mostly through water and you still had almost equal healing with water swaps.

And with the new meta you have to consider that a lot of people got a lot more access to Vulnerability (which is a direct counter to our protection dependancy) and chill (which screws all our cooldowns, including attunement swap).

So yeah, it does not improve you at all and new meta is specially punishing to the elementalist.

@ the praises:

But, people should listen to me. Keep on praising the Tempest, but when HoT launches and you realize Tempest is terrible and the meta considers the Tempest a joke, think back on how your praising contributed to this terrible elite specialization.

It improves your AoE damage by letting you kitten kitten up with air overloads, of course a different build would play more supportively.

I haven’t tried cele tempest yet due to time, but I imagine it’d only be worth running since the fire line got nerfed a bit.

@supreme the best set up for offensive tempest, particularly fresh air S/F is earth/air/tempest, you need earth to have earth focus cooldown management and trained signets. I guess I’d take water for staff, but I think dps staff is meh compared to S/F.

I liked D/F too but S/f felt better due to positioning in teamfights.

Yeah, I agree with the sentiment that 1v1ing as a DPS tempest is really hard compared to normal ele, but the damage in teamfights or +1 is so much better.

In pvp this is totally fine because the damage is avoidable enough (just walk out of AoE) and the tempest dies if someone looks at it funnily.

I don’t want the best pvp tempest build to get nerfed because people in Open world PvE think its too much damage.

Rain.9213:

nearlight.3064:

Today I played 6 or 7 games on Tempest, and here’s what I found:

Fresh Air marauder builds work pretty well with it, in fact much much much much better than they do with base elementalist.

This is simply because air overload hits like a storm should hit, its AoE burst damage that you can use very frequently. I tried both D/F and S/F, but I liked S/F the best, since it lets you get in and lay an air overload down, and get out immediately after, and you have tons of active survivability and decent healing with the traied heal sig. Superspeed from One with Air and Eye of the Storm help a lot with survivng, as does the earth cooldown trait. Overall, I had a blast playing it! Tommorow I may try to put together a Celestial staff or D/F bruiser tempest to see how that plays, but honestly fresh air tempest is a load of fun, and I’m mostly happy with the state its in. My main concern is that I just feel as though lucid singularity is wasted on this build by role overlap with Geomancer’s Training. I wish there was a more offensive build option in the GM tier for Tempest, as I can’t really use any of the other traits to any practical effect.

This is the build I used that I described above:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdncMA9NgdOAGYC8RgFJAzNxOZvsDfgJQJQYBEAqgA-TJBFABiXGYhTAgO7PAwDAAA

I will also though that I tried marauder LB/GS druid, and while I’m not totally sure, I feel as though druid is better, since it has a ton of CC and healing and better survivability, just less AoE damage, and less concentrated burst, and no real superspeed.

And then of course you’re competing for a spot with zerk herald and chronomancer that are on a whole new level in comparison to fresh air ele.

I’ve considered trying out a Marauder Dagger/Focus build, myself. It seems that with all the easy access to Weakness on my build, it could be pretty decent.

Yeah marauder D/F was really awesome too and had more cleave pressure, I just liked S/F better for more positioning freedom. Basically I’d lay down damage on the side in safety and run in with overload Air to lay down the damage, and then quickly get back out to a safe spot to cast fire skills or earth skills if I’m being focused. The earth trait synergy is really amazing too, and the ground targetted dragon’s tooth makes fresh air work way better with scepter than it honestly ever has. D/F to me couldn’t really do as much since it had to be in close up range, which was risky to do to say the least.

I agree with BlackBeard, the only pvp build that I found that truly worked with Tempest better than taking only base elementalist traits was indeed Fresh Air, either D/F or S/F (but I prefer S/F). It was honestly a joy to play this build, and it was the only Tempest build I tried that felt like it lived up to the concept of positioning based PBAoE combat. I would stay to the sides with scepter and go in and out of the fight to lay down the overload air (or fire sometimes) and then use super-speed, lightning flash, obisidian flesh, etc, to get out to safety.

In general though I feel as though the overloads need a 3 second pre-charge to be more viable and fluid to use. The concept works well with fresh air, but still feels a bit clunky, and it would let traits like One With Air synergize with the precharge time for more interesting positioning based gameplay.

And even then, for fresh air tempest, the best build with tempest, it is still a bit of a difficult trade off to make since as fresh air, you’re not taking Warhorn and you’re barely benefitting from the traits at all. Going Arcane over tempest lets you manage your other attunement cooldowns better and get more boons, healing, and condition removal, and overall more survivability. Tempest over Arcane gives you much much much more AoE damage via Overload Air spam, so I feel as though the trade is reasonable, its just an example about how the things tempest brings to the table are so niche and limited that its hard to justify speccing into it at all. You also get more superspeed by going tempest, which is really nice as well.

Other things I’ve noticed: Ludic Singularity is a bit weak, partially because its role overlaps with Geomancer’s Training, and fresh air builds (which spec earth for earth focus CDs and the signet trait) are forced to take both for very little extra benefit. I’d rather see Lucid singularity be reworked into a trait thats much more offensive in nature. While I know you won’t do this, letting it make overloads be channeled from a distance would be really lucid indeed, and would turn Tempest into a ranged AoE nuker spec, that it honestly should have been all along. Yeah it would change the positioning based gameplay concept a bit, but I think it’d be very cool to play with and it’d make Tempest much better. An other idea I had was to have lucid singularity give you stealth/superspeed/apply revealed AoE somehow, maybe when finishing an overload, which would be really cool, but it’d have to be coded differently to not reveal you from the lingering fields from air/fire overloads.. but I do think stealth would make Tempest a lot more unique and more flavorful.

Actually I feel like having overloads apply revealed would be the best for lucid singularity. I also think speedy conduit should be superspeed not swiftness, harmonious conduit’s 10% damage modifier should last for the duration of your remaining time in that attunement but end when the overload becomes available again, so the bonus is applied to you if you’re in an overloaded attunment. The stability should last one second longer, since there seems to be a slight break right at the end of the overload that the stability can’t cover.

I tested out two builds, a Settler Trap build (staff/S/D) and a LB/GS power survival BM build, and I thought that the power build worked much better for spvp.

The biggest thing that needs to be rebalanced is AF generation. You don’t have enough generation unless you run one of either (or both) of staff or troll unugent. I think to help with this, direct damage should generate 1/2% up from 1/4% while healing should be scaled back from 2 1/2% to just 2%, so you still get the healer based concept, but viable build diversity can be increased.

Basically, I feel as though the staff isn’t very good in conquest, and I don’t think thats a problem. A bunker build can still use it to some effect, I just think it should do slightly more damage, a bit more healing, especially on the auto, and I think it should have some access to bleed or poison or burn to make it more attractive to condi builds. The glyphs also all seemed fairly weak.

I did like the traits and the cele-avatar skills a lot. I think there healing power scaling is perfect for spvp, I just think that it would be nice to move with natural convergence, and it could use some more damage attached to it if the self-root is kept. For the traits, Druidic Clarity, Natural Stride, and Ancient Seeds seem to be the overall best pvp traits (for a marauder build per se) but I’m also considering running Celestial Shadow to help with disengages, even though Natural Stride is a huge boost in mobility.

Yeah thats a good point, but the original point of FA was to refresh your air attunement, and with base ele you have to be outside of air since that was the only way for it to be on CD.

It would be cool if it could let you just camp air the whole time, but I feel going to fire/earth on fresh air build in between air attunement spikes is overall helpful.

Today I played 6 or 7 games on Tempest, and here’s what I found:

Fresh Air marauder builds work pretty well with it, in fact much much much much better than they do with base elementalist.

This is simply because air overload hits like a storm should hit, its AoE burst damage that you can use very frequently. I tried both D/F and S/F, but I liked S/F the best, since it lets you get in and lay an air overload down, and get out immediately after, and you have tons of active survivability and decent healing with the traied heal sig. Superspeed from One with Air and Eye of the Storm help a lot with survivng, as does the earth cooldown trait. Overall, I had a blast playing it! Tommorow I may try to put together a Celestial staff or D/F bruiser tempest to see how that plays, but honestly fresh air tempest is a load of fun, and I’m mostly happy with the state its in. My main concern is that I just feel as though lucid singularity is wasted on this build by role overlap with Geomancer’s Training. I wish there was a more offensive build option in the GM tier for Tempest, as I can’t really use any of the other traits to any practical effect.

This is the build I used that I described above:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJArdncMA9NgdOAGYC8RgFJAzNxOZvsDfgJQJQYBEAqgA-TJBFABiXGYhTAgO7PAwDAAA

I will also though that I tried marauder LB/GS druid, and while I’m not totally sure, I feel as though druid is better, since it has a ton of CC and healing and better survivability, just less AoE damage, and less concentrated burst, and no real superspeed.

And then of course you’re competing for a spot with zerk herald and chronomancer that are on a whole new level in comparison to fresh air ele.

Pimsley.3681:

Hi Ithilwen – I see what youre saying about reaper. It kinda does seem OP at first but once you learn their animations, they are incredibly easy to counter and interrupt.

If your interrupt skills are on CD, you and your team should treat the reaper like you would any other necro…focus it down focus it hard.

And that’s exactly what this team did to my poor, harmless, innocent, solo queue reaper because I’m still noob and cant 4v1 like that one reaper you saw

Lol just interjecting, since I was playing the revenant on the red team this match (Near Despair). Was a fun time killing OP necro’s dragonhunter with rev hammer 2 spam that game.

Although I don’t remember killing you that much specifically, but I played so many games tonight I can’t recall all the details, just that you guys ate a lot of hammer attacks from a zerk rev build.

What build are you running btw? It looks like you managed to do a lot of damage and rip a lot of boons.

Hmm, I’m going to revisit tempest later tonight to see what I think of it now. Base ele bored me to tears, but some components of tempest do genuinely interest me.

Run enhanced bulwark, it gives you tons of survivability with the F2 and the stab on dodge trait. I basically ran this build last beta, its pretty sweet.

Also run carrion/scavenging (or forge runes). Dolyak runes are kitten, and rabid stats are infererior to carrion since carrion lets you survive burst better.

I don’t really know the algorithms involved or anything, but I have been on both sides of crazily imbalanced matches this beta.

Hey supcutie, the build you made is pretty much the build I defaulted to when testing things out. I don’t think lost time is that great since they understandable reworked it, and I’m liking chronophantasma a lot. The well of precognition is just to good for support and survivability, its honestly amazing.

I also tried a phantasm-mantra-stun-lock build with chronophantasma and inspiration over dueling for protected phantasms and mental defense, but tbh, mantras without harmonious mantras aren’t that great.

So I think druid looks awesome as hell, but I’m not really sure how to create a good build, since I don’t have much ranger experience outside of playing traps/spirits over a year ago.

Can you guys post builds here that I could get ideas from? It would also be helpful to justify your builds role, strenghts, and weaknesses.

Yeah basically, VP is generally needed unless you take a combination of blighter’s boon/unholy martyr, which is still dependent on having allies around you to work. The other thing I can see being problematic is that spite is mandatory on most non-minion builds because mightstacking is too easy and too strong, since might is so strong in this game, and its synergy with reaper is so great.

I can get to 25 stacks of might on reaper faster than anything else I’ve ever played if I play spite/SR/reaper (the most common build for power and celestial) and I’m just a little concerned about it, since chilling force is making it a bit over the top. I’d honestly suggest nerfing spite’s sources of might, spreading them to other traitlines (ie move reaper’s might to soul reaping or curses) and raising chilling victory to compensate.

Trying it out and the pointholding potential is insane, but I find that any class with a modicum of CC combined with burst ends you instantly.

My dearest Evan,

I’m stuck in the match while in HoTM, please send help,

Love nearlight.

I’m too lazy to put up sigils since those typically don’t hold things together. You could you nothing can save you, but I think suffer and weaklings are better.

My main point is that the lack of condition damage makes the staff pitiful for damage even if the utility is nice. My build doesn’t revolve around chill at all actually, it’s just kinda there. The big thing though is that the warhorn is needed on this build to get from point to point faster since I don’t have any other source of movement speed. Rotation speed in conquest is extremely important. I also don’t need putrid mark because I have shrouded removal and tons of other condition removal from shout runes.

So yeah to be honest, I take axe/horn more for the amazing warhorn than the axe itself, but it does help with incidental damage and support with the boon strip and let’s me damage a fleeing target in a teamfight. It worked great last beta even without the range, and will be even better now.

Sounds like a really cool idea. I’m too busy to really help with it, but I wouldn’t mind donating a little bit to the project.

While the crit substitution is there I don’t think it’s a good idea because you don’t really have the sustained dps on Mesmer to make it viable in scenarios where you can’t put slow/fury up and can’t crit, unlike necromancer or revenant. It’s just not dependable compared to death perception or rolling mists.

Also you don’t have as much passive healing, so there’s that too, and in general I feel as though having high toughness on Mesmer is really pointless.

messiah.1908:

so funny

on necro forum ppl say condi necro is not good in team fight
condi thief also not good in team fight
condi ranger also only for 1v1 with traps
engi almost the same
warrior common …
so only cele ele with the burning and carrion guard with burning

see my point….

now lets try to compare condi necro and mesmer

mesmer can burst with 10 torment and 15 confusion if all shatter hits and cover it with 1-3 bleed and maybe burning if AA staff get spamm. even more if chaos storm on the enemy . but in reality its like 8 confusion and 8 torment which does around 2k dps for 4 sec at best

necro can burst with 15 bleeding 10 torment 2-5 poison, fear and if trait burning and can cover those with chill weakness , cripple and also transfer condition back and rip boon to conditions.
so around 3.5-4.5k dps for 4 sec

carrion guard just with 1 condition can do 4k dps for 4 sec . but in average 2.5k dps

now assume anet buff mtd back to 2 stacks so you can burst 16 torment which means you will do more 1-2.5k dps and with all the stealth ability yes it will be OP as now it will be same as carrion guard dmg and even higher

if you can see the main problem is not our condition application rather the burst
guard can burst fast in a condi spec which makes it more deadlier than power spec.
the burning need tune down a bit like with ele but than we wont see any condi build out there in pvp arena

condi will never be better than power spec in team fight as its boring to watch

thus i think ppl need to start looking for other builds around condition. like condi bunker, or condirupter or condi block etc…

While your analysis is correct, it’s not because guard does it better per se, or because it’s boring to watch, but because so many mainstays of this games meta have passive Ale cleanse for themselves and allies. Whether it be ele, shout guard/war/reaper, inspiration Mesmer or soon to be Druid with grace of the land, it’s just stacked against condis.

This is also a problem due to how condis and cleansing were designed in order to sync with the faster paced gameplay style, it’s inherently impossible to balance.

I ply both of these in pvp. Typically, necromancer builds in pvp are generally best at being a tank or bruiser who can do decent damage while taking a lot of damage. They have low mobility, and without reaper, most of their damage comes from autoattacks. Marauder builds are decent too, but relatively easy to kill,

Mesmer builds on the other hand aren’t bruisers at all, there is no viable tank build that I’ve seen yet. Most builds will be twitch burst specs, where you lock your enemy down and burst them. They’re also much more mobile than a necro due to portal and blink and staff. They have condi builds too that are easy to pick up by new players, but reach an effectiveness cap earlier against organized teams.

In general, mesmers have poor ability to tank damage while remaining on a point compared to necromancer. Necromancer has better sustained damage but weaker burst while Mesmer has poor sustained damage but higher burst damage.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nearlight.3064:

I have howler and I’m never letting go of my 1500g paperweight.

At least they haven’t removed the stat-swapping?

Oh the stat-swapping is meaningless to me since I’ve retired my days of fractals and WvW raids to languish in conquest forever.

I’m never letting it go, like I’m planning on gimping myself by running axe/horn over staff on reaper builds, so that I never feel cheated by the countless times I’ve spanked the spiderqueen into submission in AC.

Yeah thats what I meant by 1v2, I meant hold off alive until you either die or get help, and while bunker guard, settler shoutbow, and D/D ele do that with no porblem, necro typically gets CC locked into oblivion and executed too fast for anyone to help it.

Obviously by 1v2, I didn’t mean 1v2 and win..

I have howler and I’m never letting go of my 1500g paperweight.

Oh dear, I can’t stand idly by and watch this post devolve any further.

Necro, especially not cele sig necro, isn’t the mystical pointholder you speak of, except for once ever 3 minutes with plague. Other than that, necro is pretty easy to annihilate in either a teamfight or a 1v2, as Chibbi has been saying, they can’t 1v2 at all, nor can they disengage unless they take wurm, which they probably won’t because wurm has its flaws. While dying in a 1v2 can give their team a rotational advantage, you must realize that this advantage is extremely shortlived unless they have plague up. The Vamp signet’s healing values are pretty kittenty, so their sustain isn’t as great as you may think.

Necromancers start the game with no life force. They are pathetically easy to kill in an opening teamfight or if they go home, sending two to them ensures a quick and painful death for the necromancer. Add to that, their lack of stability makes them pathetically easy to get a decap on if your build has enough CC, its like being a mere plaything for an engineer. Speaking of Engi, moa through the plague or moa through the DS when they have no health, and all that pointholding prowess gets hardcountered away.

Most take spectral armor and have the minor trait proc for it. This has a lot of counterplay in a teamfight, simply bait out the spectral armor so they can’t turbocharge their life force. Most people don’t pay attention, which of course means that the necromancer is going to sustain for that brief period of 6 seconds.

And to be honest, like I said cele sig necro isn’t even the necro build out there for holding a point. Run either cele with master of corruption for more plagues, or run a soldier’s DM/BM/SR tank spread if you really want to hold a point. The other main problem with cele necro compared to say a D/D ele is the lack of burning. This basically means that a cele necro has to either get lucky with a transfer or slowly whittle his target down below 50% health for his might stacking to really ramp up, because he doesn’t have burning or high damage PbAoE attacks to make up for the low damage during the mightstacking ramp-up phase.

Anyway I’m glad you’re not calling for nerfs, and I hope my post made you more aware of the strengths and limitations (theres a ton) of the necromancer class in pvp.

Also, if you think their point-holding power is strong now, just wait a month and get reaped.

Not necessarily. Herald farts out boons like nothing we’ve ever seen before, but has pretty much no group healing to speak of, unless it gimps itself by going Ventari(plz dont do this ever). It also can’t clear conditions on allies with any degree of frequency.

Conversely, Druid heals like a boss, but provides almost no boons for allies.

Elementalist, and Tempest too, still have a niche because they can do both of that at the same time.

Lily.1935:

nearlight.3064:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

nearlight.3064:

Well considering axe has 900 range now I don’t see any reason why you’d want to run the old scepter over the new axe for a ranged somewhat underpowered power based weapon, just saying.

Why would I run axe over staff? That seems illogical.

Maybe because the word staff was never even used in the quoted post…

This gave me a good laugh! Thanks guys!

But as for axe vs. staff, you’d only really want it if you wanted to use another offhand, like I’ll proably run axe/wh GS on soldier’s/knight’s reaper builds because I don’t want to throw my howler into the garbage bin just yet!

that honestly depends on what you’re doing with that reaper. soldier/knights doesn’t tell me much.

PvP, and being a general bruiser that holds a point while yelling at people until their condis fall off.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhOD7kZTocTs2GwdTgeTsYNYSBgQWJLODGCLhUrgYwkC-TpQWQAxyAg9HAA

My friend wants to to use dagger isntead of axe, but I think the range makes it viable at least for utility and smacking a target thats trying to kite you.

Well its difficult since we have to account for the base classes to make this “tier list”.

I think tiers are stupid and unneccessary considering we have 9 classes, unlike something like competitive pokemon that needs tiers for 720 pokemon to each have their niche.

Anyways I can see chronomancer, reaper, herald, and scrapper all having potential very strong builds for reasons that should be obvious by now. Druid may have potential, while Daredevil, Dragonhunter, Tempest, and Berserker have all of their identities overshadowed by generally more solid pvp builds using base class traits.

Tyring CPC on a bunkerish settlers MoC build and I’m actually doing more condi damage per game than a carrion build that doesn’t use CPC. I think I’m in love.

Ara.4569:

I use settlers and it seems pretty strong, not to mention fun. After around 10-12 games in high mmr ranked, the attrition gameplay feels pretty solid (finally!), but everyone was testing builds.

Here is what I currently use (death, blood, SR): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZakjGKvxmbwzG4vxB0QNn5aeDkNQAss0coHeBA-TJhHwAPLDEc/BAnCgAPBAA

Previous version with curses insted of death: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZakjGKvxmbwzG4vxhxQNP6k+FoNRUMExfOAGAA-TJhHwAPLDEc/BAnCgAPBAA I started with this but the self inflicted damage from corrupt boon with MoC (bleeds + poison) was too much for my taste, and I felt like losing most of the benefits of Life from Death because of it. Really off-putting. Although I was pretty rusty with condi builds at that time, and should probably try again.

And yes, CPC is wonderful. I will always remember the first mirror blades disappearing into it. Being able to protect party from ranger/mesmer/engi feels great. It also seems to have blocked some engi’s knockbacks, which is invaluable as a point holder. I could also use it to prevent a ranger from decapping a point, nullifying his point blank shot.

Going to test out versions of your build soon, I just want to say, that undead runes are really really really really good on Settlers, and that I think Curses/Death/SR seems to work the best on paper. Yeah you lose group support, but I feel as though shrouded removal is needed to make MoC with that many corruptions work, then you can drop plague sig for spectral armor.

I’m also thinking of a reaper variant with shouts and trooper runes, but its competing with soldiers/knights shoutreap which can use the GS to great effect unlike settlers, but with dhuumfire death/SR/reaper could work well for it.

Theres a lot of great stuff you’ll be able to do with chronomancer. The shield didn’t titilate me at all until we heard that the block skill was getting buffed, but now I bought the tormented shield skin and plan to use it all the way. An offhand that gives us actual on-point defense that doesn’t revolve around stealth? Yes please! Sword/Shield will be mostly a defensive set compared to say GS, and it will make you very hard to lockdown and kill while providing consistent setup for bursts.

Chronomancer is great because it puts more bite into interrupt builds, it gives you cooldown management thats even better than Illusions traits, and the time-reset mechanic is just all around really powerful.

In general though, most classes besides maybe Ele/Thief will want to be running their elite spec in pvp. The extenstions/changes to the class mechanics make you overall more versatile and capable of doing more powerful things with a higher skill-cap.

Daniel Handler.4816:

nearlight.3064:

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

I completely disagree that you spoke with any certainty. Your points about it making it easier at the beginner level has no basis on the conversation.

What matters was what effect it had on upper level tournament play. Your barometer was at june 23rd. When mantras still had not been nerfed. July 28 was when mantras and mirror blade received their changed.

You friend who does coordinated bursts is self nerfing himself in someway or the other. The possible utilities are decoy, portal, and blink. Which utility did he give up to pick up mantra of distraction?

edit:
the effect of chaotic interruption on thieves was sharply reduced with the trait don’t stop. and immobilize has never been a big player on warriors or those with innate reductions. It is also completely redundant with confounding suggestions. not to mention the faction that interruptions are not dependable.

No, everything I’m talking about actually happened after the mantra/mirror blade nerf on July 28th. The friend thing was just to simplify a reddit discussion about a certain mesmer on a certain NA team who still uses mantras in ESL on one of the best NA teams even to this day, I just didn’t went to get too off-topic in my rebuttal. Anyway the point is, after the July 28th nerf, to be precise, you haven’t seen teams with PU mesmers in their core win major tournaments consistently, as evidenced by Helseth’s WTS performance, oRNG’s EU dominance, and the fact that the only teams to fight abjured with any shot of success since July 28th either didn’t run mesmer at all, or ran one with mantras.

You’d give up decoy for mantra of distraction of course. You still get blink and portal, which is all you absolutely need. That stunbreak stealth peel isn’t necessary when the mantra just lets you blow up what ever you’re fighting. Granted you have to be good enough to make sure that instant cast lands, which is so much harder to do than camping stealth.

Also Don’t Stop? How many thieves have you seen that run acro since June 23rd? Oh wait, NONE, since they all run vamp runs D/P shadow arts. Even caed ran S/D with critical strikes over acro because acro is that bad and totally irrelevant to this conversation.

CI isn’t redundant if you run AoE interrupts, Chaos Storm and GS5 being a prime example, since it lets you bypass the CS ICD and CC multiple targets. And anyway, its just an example of something else you can run that works better than PU. Theres also inspiration mantras which I personally don’t like, but has its strengths even post-nerf since you can duel condi builds with impunity and actually go on a point without blowing up (which certain NA teams have done very well with post-nerf I might add) and Illusions shatter builds which as I have stated before, have better burst potential than PU builds due to shattered strength and MoF, and can burst much more often due to shatter and illusion generating skill cooldowns.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

nearlight.3064:

Well considering axe has 900 range now I don’t see any reason why you’d want to run the old scepter over the new axe for a ranged somewhat underpowered power based weapon, just saying.

Why would I run axe over staff? That seems illogical.

Maybe because the word staff was never even used in the quoted post…

This gave me a good laugh! Thanks guys!

But as for axe vs. staff, you’d only really want it if you wanted to use another offhand, like I’ll proably run axe/wh GS on soldier’s/knight’s reaper builds because I don’t want to throw my howler into the garbage bin just yet!

Idk, maybe you just need to practice dueling thieves without using PU? Sw/t and soon Sw/Sh are more than enough defense against thieves, you just have to time your defensive skills properly to wait out time between weaponswaps to land bursts.

Also, any interrupt based build eats thieves so hard it’s not even funny.

Well considering axe has 900 range now I don’t see any reason why you’d want to run the old scepter over the new axe for a ranged somewhat underpowered power based weapon, just saying.

ozzy.8059:

how is it a favorable matchup against mesmer… every time they reveal themselves they are out of range or invulnerable or im blind and then they just pop back into stealth if they are not invulnerable then im stunned if i break stun im stunned again and they go mass invis.. bleah

i cant hit them enough with scepter to stack any decent amount of condis, do way better on power

Most builds have pitiful cleansing unless they run full mantras, which is actually a bit of a counter if precharged, you just have to wait till their cooldowns are up before unleashing a condi burst, but it makes them drop so hard.

denis.9487:

nearlight.3064:

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

You start by saying you don’t follow then go off on a tangent name dropping. While ci is great it doesn’t fit the role of the Mesmer. Plus 1 fights get in out burst repeat. We are basically pre patch Mesmer bottom again thief takes role.

I don’t follow the EU meta, I only talked about NA mesmers with any degree of certainty. CI fits the “Mesmer role” fine. If they get immobed when you plus the fight they will die. Stealth isn’t as needed for that role as you may think, I mean power rangers have crap stealth and they do it third best behind mes/thief. Asking a friend why he runs mantras instead of PU after the mantra nerf, he said he preferred mantras to make the coordinated bursts for his team more nasty.. In essence PU didn’t give enough damage and wasn’t very useful.

The Mesmer role though is something that people are viewing as a bit too one dimensionally. But there’s now way it’s exactly the same as the thief role. Mesmer does crazy rotations with portal, and their stealth is mostly selfish, and like apharma said, PU isn’t needed. Thieves do a much different role in using shortbow mobility to decap and their stealth to Rez like no other class can. As a trade off though, Mesmer has been brought up to be overall better damage in fights and better 1v1 ability compared to their that can only burst down debilitated targets and can’t 1v1 any bruiser.

So yeah, that’s just to clarify that the Mesmer and thief provide different roles.

Trigr.6481:

nearlight.3064:

Well I mean bleeds are generally pretty awful in this game to begin with, so I doubt the extra bleed stack would have mattered.

You should apply for A-net based off that logic, you’d fit right in.

I should probably explain a bit better. I think that the scaling on bleeding is way too weak (and the scaling on burning is a bit too high), so I think the numbers should be adjusted to account for this. Thats what I meant when I said what I said, and I also called for developer-based explanation for the decision which sometimes happens. I’m not agreeing with the developers, I’m just saying that bleeds are so weak that it wouldn’t feel much more powerful even if the trait wasn’t nerfed into uselessness.

And lastly please don’t insult me. I actually look up to you a lot as a mesmer player and streamer because you do your own thing and don’t follow the meta, and while I understand that this upsets you, I personally find it disenheartening to be sassed by a streamer I really respect.

Sabre.8627:

Thank you nearlight, that’s exactly the response I was hoping for.

Blood magic seemed tempting to me because of blood bond+ wail of doom for warhorn or quickening thirst + vamp aura for daggers offhand. Plus the options of transfusion for fun or unholy martyr. I’ll definitely try out spite also.

Yeah thats the general recommendation for the “aggressive condi build” playstyle. I wouldn’t count out Dreaming serpent’s settlers build though, although maybe not with minions, I’m still salty about moa still being able to kill them all.

Settlers historically has been a condition ranger mainstay, and has new life on the “meta” shoutbow warrior build. I haven’t really tried it on necromancer, but I feel as though something with corruptions and traits like unholy sanctuary could be really beastly as well, though I haven’t tried it first hand.

I don’t follow the EU meta very closely, but hasn’t helseth played a ton of staff/GS shatter mes in the past before the PU buff?

Anyway Kentigem, my point is that 100% duration PU was unhealthy for the game because it made it way too easy to survive as a new mesmer player. I hadn’t played mesmer in nearly a month, but played PU when I started coming back before realizing how utterly ridiculous that someone with relatively poor mechanical skill as a mesmer (at the time, I’m better now) could pick this build up, play it in zerk, and NEVER die with torch and decoy.

And what of PU mesmer being an actually great choice? How many tourneys were run since June 23rd with a PU mesmer in their core? Lets see, theres none in the abjured (backpack as a sub ran mantra) oRNG didn’t run one in their core, Helseth did somewhat poorly with it in WTS even if he did win some ESLs on TCG, Mime on Spookie still runs mantras, Zeromis runs CI, radioactive doesn’t use mesmer except with olrun for like one week, and Misha runs some staff/GS build if I remember correctly the last time I watched EU.. so it seems to me that PU zerk mesmer isn’t the meta powerhouse you think it is.

Just because metabattle says its meta, doesn’t mean its truly the objectively best build. It just means its an easy build for new people to pick up and play.

Also in general: CI, especially with staff/GS gives a ton of CC for your team, making it offensively a better choice than PU, and Illusions over chaos gives you much higher and much more frequent burst damage than PU. Doesn’t that sound more like the min-maxing success in pvp that you were referring too? Investing in better damage and better ways to ensure burst? I don’t see whats uncompetitive about that, you just need to be competent enough to not need PU to survive, which shouldn’t be that hard for an experienced mesmer.

well in your other thread you basically said, “Now that PU is nerfed we have to buff the pledge so we can have more stealth, because withou PU the pledge isn’t good enough”.

That was the reasoning behind my remark, not that it really means anything rude or offensive. It was just a casual observation, no harm intended.