Guild Wars 2

It could be possible, though rev and necro and maybe Mesmer will be trying to use this amulet to spread Cancer as well

Scepter is a pretty hybrid weapon. Malicious sorcery buff may be small, but I’ll def give it a go next week.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

just how often do you go through a whole auto attack chain on scepter? how often are you going to be on scepter? the other skills on your bar are far more powerful than the auto attack.

Pretty much. In a 1v1 staff and shroud had all the burst condis you’d need to win. I think scepter will only be used for killing bunkers faster when outnumbered.. That is.. If there will still be any bunkers left.

Mesmer was mostly balanced after the PU/mantra nerf but before HoT. I think mirror blade needs its bounce back per minimum.

While I doubt that real teams would run it, save for maybe ZCP, I think condi mea could be an okay choice in fun-tier. The condi output is quite good, even if it’s not enough general utility to merit it over something else.

Well, reapers will be able to just press 1 a bunch of times to convert resistance to chill and proceed to sit on mallyx’s face, so yeah.

Hey ele friends. I’ve been busy playing smash bros now but I might come back and try out some new builds.

I’m thinking some sort of mender amulet build would work. Either water/earth with staff or air/earth with signets and S/Wh. Though thieves will probably eat both of those builds.

Back before I quit I played a cele deathly chill GS build but since cele is getting removed I think it could work with the new power/condi damage amulet since you didn’t need the healing power on cele anyway (the the ferocity was amazing) and just put it with scepter to autoattack your way to victory

I never thought power necro sans GS was all that terrible, it’s just that condi was more effective and will continue to be more effective as the new scepter, CB, and amulets all make it a rationally stronger choice in pretty much every way.

Aylpse.6280:

Power.2957:

Someone faced Kwok Eng in a match lmao

Kwok and a few others running it actually. I tried the build myself as well. Just maybe posting thishere so we can get the Eles to go someplace else.

Ohhhh yeah, kwok always loved playing the cheesiest builds he could.

And zerail, why did you switch to tempest?

All of my friends in this game are going over to the cheesy side

Zetsumei.4975:

Agemnon.4608:

Speaking of Super Smash Bros. Brawl is Little Mac getting introduced? He’d be overpowered like nobody’s business because he beat Mike Tyson. Even Solid Snake feels OP enough canon-wise compared to the others.

Yeah hasnt smash 4 been out for a while now? He’s debuting in there, they balanced it by making him weak in aerial combat and a beast on the ground.

Hey, I thought I’d join this conversation since I’ve pretty muchleft GW2 to focus on getting better at smash 4, since I just wanted to play something that required actual thought and skill and had a better community.

As for little mac, he’s considered mid tier at best with a strong ground game, but weak everywhere else with poor aerials and poor recovery. Cloud from final fantasy, who was just added to the game plays a lot like little mac, but way better in most ways. His ground game isn’t quite as strong, but his aerials are fantastic since his n-air and b-air autocancel (no landing lag) and he can get really early kills with limit breaks, however his recovery is about as weak as little macs (no horizontal at all) and his grab game doesn’t have a lot of followups but he’s heavier and overall a better character, despite having a similar playstyle.

I think its intersting because smash 4 is actual one of the best balanced competitve games I’ve played. Yes shiek and mario and pikach and ZSS are the top tier seen in tournaments, but if you play well you can make the bottom tiers like wii fit trainer and zelda work well, unlike in GW2 where if you don’t play a super meta bunker or super DPS revenant, you’re basically a liability that gimps yourself. Also you actually have to press buttons at the right time, unlike this game where you spam sustain and spam AoE CC on a point until your team wins.

Anyway thats just how I felt… also bayonetta being announced for smash got me extra hyped.

Also xenoblade chronicles X is getting a lot of views on twitch too and its not competitve at all, and to be honest, its probably the best RPG I’ve ever played. It’s gameplay is derivative of PvE in MMOs but focuses on exploration and makes actual MMOs look like dated and limited by comparison.

Yeah, I mean in an ideal world it would be great to get that chill off, but most players will end up sticking with the stabilty, especially when focused.

gavyne.6847:

Why would I be tired of signet builds that are effective against some tougher opponents/builds? There’s a reason people use signet builds…it’s simply because signets are effective against a lot of the builds you see the higher pvp rank you go. I personally enjoy signets, but then I also enjoy being competitive and not get hard countered.

Ironically the class that can give signet builds trouble is the reaper class, played by good reapers. I find fights against reapers a toss up because it comes down to condi transfer management and timely use of cc’s.

btw I love running a signet build that includes traited Suffer & Chilled to the bone shouts. In team fights Suffer is a 12 second condi transfer skill when traited. More condi transfer is always a good thing as you know the higher MMR the more condi issues.

Tbh gw2 is so easy and requires so little skill to play that almost any build can work if you rotate well and can play it mechanically well (which is easy since this game is so easy). Thats kinda why I’ve lost interest, because HoT has made most of the popular builds in the game feel like a cheap, cheesy, spamfest.

Though I will say that Rise with necromantic corruption (death magic) is cool, since it turns that shout into a mini-transient plague signet, and the traitline gives you overall a huge defensive boost.

333 games isn’t that much at all. Statistically speaking, it’d take over 2000 games to reach legendary if the outcome of every match is decided randomly.

Good for you though, its quite a feat making it to legendary without pimping out the ambers or playing in full teams a lot. I doubt I’ll make it that far since I’ve been busy this time of year and my interest in this game has finally started to dry up.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Every weapon a Guardian can use is balanced but the Longbow is more balanced than the others?

It simply doesn’t have any blatantly useless skills like most of the vanilla guard weapons. The symbol is the worst skill and even that is usable compared to things like torch 5, focus 4, sword 3, most of the hammer/scepter skills.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

nearlight.3064:

Also, fear is a lot less common in the current metagame since most reaper’s don’t use the source of fear they have in reaper shroud. They prefer to hold onto the stability and autoattack to get those mad burnz.

actually its useful to use the fear before the pulsing stability runs out.

I mean it can be, but since it has a cast time, and its not 1200 range, you’ll see a lot less fear than before.

Also, fear is a lot less common in the current metagame since most reaper’s don’t use the source of fear they have in reaper shroud. They prefer to hold onto the stability and autoattack to get those mad burnz.

Azure.8670:

nearlight.3064:

I think the issue is base guardian being lacking more than DH not being strong, especially since DH doesn’t do enough to fix core guardian issues compared to how other elite specs (ie. reaper) do to fix their base class flaws.

Reaper is perfect though, but I get what youre saying. The thing is, Necro had a GREAT base but was missing “something”. It was Decent for PVE, Great for PVP and great for WVW due to certain things it had. Reaper found a way to pull it all together: it made condi builds better, added more aoe, made melee stronger, more survivable (somehow) faster… It just truly upgraded the Necro.

Guardian on the other hand had possibly the best base besides ele and DH didnt really fix the flaws it had, it just added strengths it didnt have before. Thats why DH is cool and its good, but theres still something missing.

IF any of that makes sense lol

No it totally makes sense. I think part of the issue is DH being selfish on a class thats always been about support, and while the new virtues are great, having a cast time to make them higher risk/ higher reward isn’t great in a meta where people spam AoE interrupts on points without thinking, while you’re forced to run stupid traits in virtues to get your virtures to work well enough to keep you alive, much in the same way necro needs soul reaping for staff LF gen and vital persistance, its just that the cooldown of the virtues being a bit high despite their strength makes it a weak class mechanic if you ask me.

Also in my opinion, most of the guardian weapons are a bit lacking aside from longbow, theres usually a useless skill or two on each set, and its not like necro where you have shroud skills to make up for the kitten iness of most your weapon skills. Instead you get traps, and longcooldown virtues that give you momentary extra surviability.

Yeah, overall, I’d say that dragonhunter/guardian is lacking sustain in the nature of the current meta, because their virtues are their primary defense/cleanse, have long cooldowns, and the low health pool works against them because they can’t spam heals as well as an ele can.

I find greatsword to work best in pvp with celestial stats and deathly chill. I wouldn’t suggest using it with a pure condi based amulet, though viper could work, I wouldn’t chance it, since GS feels the best in a tankier setup.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Pistol. One that summons a jagged horror on one of its skills ^.^

Can it be on the autoattack plz?

Something similar happened to me once when a druid LB 4ed me into the limbo of the walls of the castle.. I didn’t get dishonored for logging out to reset, but only because I was fast enough.

It did give an uncoordinated team a chance to make a comeback against a steamroll, but they couldnt get enough momentum before I came back.

I think the issue is base guardian being lacking more than DH not being strong, especially since DH doesn’t do enough to fix core guardian issues compared to how other elite specs (ie. reaper) do to fix their base class flaws.

As a necro main I’d love a minion bomber build to be available.

In the betas you could kind of get something to work with Rise, DeathNova and Lich Form, but they changed it so lich/plague wouldn’t destroy your own minions anymore, so that build never got off the ground

What new weapons would you guys like to see for future necro elite specs?

Personally, I’d be in favor of a main hand mace with hybrid damage or support. A lot of off hands like torch or shield sound plausible too, but I don’t want to imagine playing necro without warhorn so I wouldn’t want them as much.

Jekkt.6045:

tbh i don’t feel like tempest has too much sustain, without minstrel it even feels like as if it’s barely enough. usually tempest is the build i’m the least scared of.. manageable in 1v1 and easy targets in teamfights.

and your facts are not right. it’s 40% reduction only for the ele and diamond skin is useless against everything except necro. i’d rather have a gm trait that gives me something useful against everything instead of only vs necro.

It’s 50% reduction within 600 range units of they run earth for the GM minor trait (10% from that) and frost aura gives another 10% though that is less commonly up.

Diamond skin is also bad because it pushes out things like burn DH and condi scrapper/chrono, which have even less hope against tempest compared to necro, so overall it’s detrimental for this game’s build diversity in my opinion.

I’ll be fine shaving chill damage when the sustain of everything else with tons of sustain gets looked at too. But I do agree as a necro main thats a bit oppressive against people that don’t run lots of cleanses, -%imparing conditions or whatnot. Its the main source of reaper condi damage right now, and in general I’d like to see better traits in lines other than spite and sould reaping too, but necro build diversity really isn’t that bad compared to others, which is probably the main reason I never get bored of necro like I do with every other class. Theres always something new and different to play.

Its interesting to think about how broken this game will be with another round of elite specs. I don’t think I want to even think about that.

Akikaze.1307:

kdaddy.5431:

you mean you will face people like caed? If you wish to continue please go ahead

Legendary queueing with an Amber, hah. Thanks for the screenshot. Just reinforces the disgusting MMR manipulation people do in leagues.

Yeah, I mean everyones quick to blame them for exploiting, but I think they’re merely trying to salvage a flawed, unfinished, “beta” system for leagues than purposely exploiting. They typically get hour+ long queuest at that division if they try to go solo, so I doubt they’re picking up amber kids just to get easier matches, since they’re doing it just to get matches at all.

I mean I’m sure most of you would do it too if you cared enough about stupid stuff like division and status enough to want to do that, so yeah, I don’t blame at all for wanting to be legendary, when legendary doesn’t mean a kitten thing.

I played D/D ele back when it was very weak in 2013, and I played it when it was overpowered in 2015. Its always been a classic gameplay style that designed the class. Sure it became too dependent on a rotation, sure it became braindead when it was too strong, but its always been iconic in a way.

I kind of wish tempest could feel a little bit more fluid to play. While D/D ele was all about juggling your skills and attunements to manage cooldowns, sustain for days, not get locked out of swap procs to stay alive, tempest is a more slow and oppressive teamfighter, similar to how many necro builds have been, but more of a bunkery pointholder.

I wish the warhorn was stronger, and I wish there was a viable attunement-dancing build with warhorn. I love the idea of overloads, but they just don’t synergize well with the classic conceptions of the class, since they’d be strong to the point of overpowered if their payoffs felt more worth the cost. Right now they only feel good for AoE spam and auras, which is fine, but its not as thoughtful as I originally thought, especially earth overload which is borderline stupid in how much protection it spams. I do love the clutch feeling of positoning and timing water overload right.

I might try arcane tempest builds to try and blend the classic D/D play with warhorn for fun. I know its not popular but warhorn works well enough compared to D/F or staff if you take diamond skin and kitten like those builds do.

Anyways I haven’t played ele too much the past few weeks, since necro has felt more satisfying in nearly every way, especially in terms of build diversity. I hope that I can come back to it fresh provided it gets rebalanced for the better in january (DS rework, warhorn buffs plz)

Yeah sure thing boys, I’ll be glad to show off my horn to y’all ingame. I need to come up with new dagger, scepter, and axe skins to pair it with though, ley line skins get boring after all this time.

I don’t think it would have been too strong at all. If your team stays within range of earth overload you can easily give them permanent protection, and near permanent protection through regular shouts and auras if they kite around the point more. Tempest never had much mightstacking compared to D/D ele so I don’t think that would have been broken, and it would have given armor of earth a new lease on life.

So yeah, why nerf this skill, if you can already permanently maintain protection on allies, the boon that this skill was most likely nerfed in the first place for?

PierPiero.9142:

The old marauder meta with rifle is really strong even now. you find it on metabattle. I don’t say it is stronger than/as scrapper … but it is quite strong. Scrapper is more bunkerish ok , but old marauder rifle build with nades have something that scrapper has not : Great aoe damage. In some match i prefer scrapper , especially for going 1 vs1 .. .but on other hand in teamfight rifle with nades ( the elder meta ) is really really strong. It depens on your role and your team. In general , for soloing perhaps scrapper is a little better

I might try that build with scrapper instead of tools so I too can be a bunker in marauder stats.

Gw2 has a lot of fundamentally great ideas on its overall design, and it’s pvp has generally always been a ton of fun. However… The skill threshold has been drastically reduced, and that is painful to think about.

It’s like, whoever spans their cooldowns the most wins a teamfight, which was especially true of bunker mes before it was shaved. Even d/d ele of old took way more thought to play than tempest, even if that build was all rotations.

I play other games that are somewhat competitive (like smash bros for wii u, a totally different type of game), and you just realize how other games are built to involve so much more strategy and mental and mechanical skill.

I agree with you 100% OP. Any builds I try to make on this class fail pretty quickly. My friend has a bruiser build that works well for him, so I’m gonna try that out before I make any final conclusions about guardians mediocrity in pvp build diversity.

Arya.9021:

You realize you’re crying over one necro build that ofc DS ele can hard counter? It’s one build while ele really only has 2 viable builds left for this meta. There’s always going to be a counter build to another. You take away or revamp DS and ele goes down the drain yet again for this meta. Easy way to fix this… dun play cele necro in a 1v1 vs DS ele. Just like you dun wanna play DS ele vs a straight dps class. Ele has their own hard counter builds; get over it that your cele necro is just not one of those.

Just curious, what would you say is the diamond skin tempest hardcounter in 1v1? Pretty much everything I can think of either stalls it if it has sustain or loses since it doesn’t have enough damage or sustain. I could see power rev doing well against it though if it baits cooldowns to spike with unrelenting assault. Viper rev seems like it would have a shot of it stripped DS with sword autos but I’m not totally sure on that.

Dagger autoattacks. Such combo. Much wow.

It’s so weird. I can wreck face and give everyone aids if I play an offmeta viper or settler reaper build in soloq and everyone loves me. But if I try to bring a a burn dragonhunter or play scrapper against more bunkery teams, everyone on my team blows up at me for being unable to carry and tells me to go to unranked.

So this means that either necro has more viable build diversity than guardian or that I suck at other classes. I’m willing to think the first assumption is true.

Supreme, cele necro only has diamond skin breaking power if you can stack might fairy quickly, which is hard when you can’t proc siphoned power. Moreover, it’s not as good against scrapers or Druid as carrion or wanderer and wanderer gets hardcoubtered altogether by DS. Even on viper reaper I can’t bring it unless I take dagger over scepter which hurts me in nearly every other matchup.

Pimsley.3681:

nearlight.3064:

On a related note, howler got intos nighttime animations un-nerfed, so thats a huge fashion buff for me!

Howler? Wut? Rich PVEr

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Howler in action at night. I tried checking the TP but gosh darn there were only 4-5 legendaries available and no Howler.

Originally it had the night time effects, being that a moon would flow between the wolf head and the fringey things, and the wolf head would howl and move when you used a skill in addition to sending out a wolf head animation. But when they changed the sound effects on it over a year ago after I had first gotten it, they left it so the wolf head would continuously move and howl when you used a skin. People complained and anet removed the night effect and howling animation. Then they finally fixed it back to its original incarnation. And yeah it’s my only legendary, though I’d go for meteo or astralaria or nevermore if I had more time to grind away.

And I’ll show you in game sticker when I get a chance, though due to winter break travels I won’t be on again till like tomorrow.

Pluton.7364:

All you need is here… condy cleanse/tankiness/DPS

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRAsd7flsAhmhY5QwVIwPEL+Dl86P+tvVAUB1ZWSMhZIA-T5gAwAjLD05oAA4FAAA

ppl saying burn DH doesnt have survivability? what about F2 and F3?? 2x!!!

tested and killed everything!!! except eles running diamond skin.. :/ in that case just run and find another dead body

The burn build I tried is almost identical to this one, and I found it to be lacking compared to condi reaper builds. I may give it another go though.

hotcarl, your cele build looks interesting, so I’ll be sure to try that out.

I’m glad that you guys are trying to come up with good things to run though!

StickerHappy.8052:

nearlight.3064:

What if Diamond skin was changed to make protection work on condition damage as well as direct damage in the same way that the rev trait versed in stone augments rite of the great dwarf?

It would even stack with hardy conduit, so if you ran tempest you’d have -40% damage from conditions, and because tempest has infinite protection, you’d easily have 100% uptime.

I don’t think some weird pulsing resistance system is a good idea for a rework, its better to simply take this passive, odd, aged, trait, and remove the threshold to make it useful in every situation but not overpowered or completely useless in certain matchups as it is now.

This is very good, My suggestion:

Make condition damage work on protection and make retal effectiveness by 50%, gain retal when you get struck by a critical 10 sec icd.

That would be cool too. Some other proccy thing would help sell it as a trait compared to stone heart.

On a related note, howler got intos nighttime animations un-nerfed, so thats a huge fashion buff for me!

hackks.3687:

nearlight.3064:

What is rotation? I constantly hear this term mentioned by casters, my rabbit rank teammates, and even pro players. But when I watch Phantaram play, he just goes far.

Rotations in Guild Wars 2 PvP are what you might call “troop movements”. It’s the movement of your teammates from a position of value to another in an effort to support a teammate, or pressure the opposing team.

For instance, after winning a mid fight it’s typical for the losing side to push towards a different objective, i.e. your home node. Your teammate defending home calls the number of enemies inbound to his objective, and your teammates wrapping up at mid send an equivalent number, plus an additional player (the +1) to support and maintain control of the objective. That is to say, you rotate players from one point to another point.

What Phantaram is doing is a very specific tactic that is part of a greater strategy based on denying points (objectives and scoring) to your enemy, while keeping heavy pressure on the enemy. It takes strong individual skill, as well strong team coordination and communication to pull off. Which means it’s not ideal for pugs to try to execute.

Oh I know what rotations are silly forumgoer. I was just giving this thread the gift of relevant dank copypasta.

arnitheking.8427:

nearlight.3064:

Ironically, I think rev has better build diversity than most of the other classes in the game.
Theres 2-3 viable rev pvp builds with variations on eachother, meanwhile something like tempest or dragonhunter or druid really only has one viable option to be competitive.

I don’t agree with this at all. The Esports meta is only malyx/shiro. It IS true that there are 2-3 STRONG rev builds, but there are a ton of viable STRONG ranger builds too (alot more in fact). Druid META has 2 builds at least (cele might stack, MoC cleric)

but I wasn’t even talking about pvp as I said multiple times, I’m talking about viable wvw roaming/dueling builds

Well who cares about that? Most WvW players would be instafood if they tried to enter a real pvp match.

What is rotation? I constantly hear this term mentioned by casters, my rabbit rank teammates, and even pro players. But when I watch Phantaram play, he just goes far.

What if Diamond skin was changed to make protection work on condition damage as well as direct damage in the same way that the rev trait versed in stone augments rite of the great dwarf?

It would even stack with hardy conduit, so if you ran tempest you’d have -40% damage from conditions, and because tempest has infinite protection, you’d easily have 100% uptime.

I don’t think some weird pulsing resistance system is a good idea for a rework, its better to simply take this passive, odd, aged, trait, and remove the threshold to make it useful in every situation but not overpowered or completely useless in certain matchups as it is now.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

morrolan.9608:

Yabbut they could keep themselves and others alive almost indefinitely. PVP was being dominated by 2 classes, bunker chrono and condi revenant. Both were nerfed.

The bolded is not true. How did you think that was true?

Becuase they could rez with 10% bonus revive speed, quickness, stability, and depending on the specifics of their build, put resistance on the downed body to ignore poison’s effect of slowing rez speed on downs. Not to mention they could use precog for a rez as well.

While I wouldn’t say its indefinite rez potential as there are some, albeit short cooldowns involved, its definitely the best rezzer in the game. Though I will say that radiant revival on downs proc made the issue more problematic than it probably was.

Polismassa.6740:

nearlight.3064:

It honestly depends on your class and your build. I play a condi reaper build that’s very different from the meta build and I think I do just as well as the meta build, if not better in certain match ups.

Meanwhile if I try to play some off meta burn dragonhunter build, I’ll be completely useless and lose if I try to do anything with it.

So it all depends, sometimes the meta isn’t the one true God of the game

I can’t really say for sure, but i’m of the opinion that Condi reaper will be more meta because of the balance patch. To me, Mallyx rev and tempest were the two classes that basically checked condi reaper, and with mallyx rev resistance being nerfed quite hard, reaper can now do a lot more against them.

Tempests are still a pain, but a condi reaper should be able to kill most any class in the game other than a diamond skin ele or a scrapper (which is debatable).

Remember that Spoookie actually ran double condi reaper before chronobunker and mallyx rev became basically mandatory, and were pretty successful with it too

My condi reaper build has been made in part to be able to handle mallyx revs a bit better. Like I said, its all situational.

Death Aggro.9602:

I was speaking of equally skilled players. EQUALLY SKILLED. Of course in reality no players are equal. But as an example. Meta wins that match up VS Non Meta.

That’s far too broad of an assumption to generalize to every situation.

It honestly depends on your class and your build. I play a condi reaper build that’s very different from the meta build and I think I do just as well as the meta build, if not better in certain match ups.

Meanwhile if I try to play some off meta burn dragonhunter build, I’ll be completely useless and lose if I try to do anything with it.

So it all depends, sometimes the meta isn’t the one true God of the game

Hammer tends to be better because it’s less dependent on other kits, allowing you to have more freedom with your utilities. With rifle, you get better lock down and decap potential, but then you have to take nades and explosives to have good enough leave and possible tool kit for the block. Rifle is also a much more button and combo active play style, so if that’s your thing then I’d go for it.

Ironically, I think rev has better build diversity than most of the other classes in the game.
Theres 2-3 viable rev pvp builds with variations on eachother, meanwhile something like tempest or dragonhunter or druid really only has one viable option to be competitive.