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Banner of Tactics in raids


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Hello everyone,

I want to discuss about what influence it has to run a banner of tactics in addition to banner of strength and discipline. Here are in my opinion the pros/cons:

Cons:

  • Depending on how you play your cPS you lose either damage or CC, assuming you still running one Banner and "For great justice!".
  • Running now "For great justice" will result in a bad might uptime I think, but in special Raidcomps this could be a option, too.
  • A second banner has to be placed during the fight, which cost some time.

Pro:

  • The main aspect is of course the 10% boonduration the banner gains. Druids, Chronos, and cPS benefit from it, or more general classes that apply boons. In many comps the are 6 out of 10 players. As an example, Chronos are able to run more Berserker gear, cPS have better might uptime and druid can play with more magi or berserker gear.
  • Healing power is not so important, but brings in 1,7k healing power overall. This would help especially condi druids in healing and generate astral force (better gotl uptime). But even dps classes have a heal skill, which make the fight a bit smoother. However, I guess it is not notable for dps classes.
  • You have an additional blast finisher

After the change of banners targets from 5 to 10 I was expecting that this would be a thing. However, after PoF there are a lot of dps classes around that gain some boons, but don't have the chance to take boonduration in their built without losing a lot of dps. That's why I want to ask you what you think about it. Maybe someone have already some experience in running banner of tactics

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Been wondering about Tactics ever since they increased the numbers of affected players to 10 myself. We tried to test it a couple of times but is does not really seem a thing worth considering unless you specifically min-max your composition around it and even then only has a small impact.

The main problem is that these stats are completely inconsequential if you are already capped off. Just a tiny survivability increase of the individual members of your squad and a good boost to the supports. Those supports however have no issues with keeping people alive or providing proper boons. Meaning they are either capped on boon duration or already stacked enough healing power to keep everyone alive as it is, hell even both if you look at Minstrel.You are indeed freed up to change a piece of gear or two for a more offensive option with this additional banner. The thing is, offensive stats do not have a big impact if you are missing all of the needed traits, weapons, runes, sigils, food, etc to make them a big impact since you are running a build which does not include any of these factors.

Harrier sets on druid are a good example why adding a big amount of offensive stats does not cause a DPS increase worth mentioning (unless you struggle hard) over something like Minstrel Druid. Changing most of the other factors such as traits, runes, sigils, food, utilities to offensive options will increase this a little but cause a loss of everything you even played Minstrel for to begin with. In which case you might as well have just played Zealot or even full Berserker. Not that even Berserker Druid is that much of a DPS increase over even a Minstrel or Magi version but that is a problem with the terrible numbers of Power Druid more than anything else.The same issues could be mentioned with mesmers. Their aim will always be to cap out on boon duration which means the additional 10% is ultimately pointless. A small swap of gear would allow them to be more efficient but only have a tiny impact on the overall squad DPS just like with druids.

There might be a possibility that there is a min-maxed squad that uses non-META supports such as firebrands or scourges in the need of any boon duration they can get who'd love this additional amount but I kind of doubt it. We had the idea to replace a PS with a scourge before they were nerfed. Might have been good in such a case.Currently however, boons provided by such DPS builds aren't worth talking about if they are already covered by the three META supports without a problem.

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@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:Hello everyone,

I want to discuss about what influence it has to run a banner of tactics in addition to banner of strength and discipline. Here are in my opinion the pros/cons:

Cons:

  • Depending on how you play your cPS you lose either damage or CC, assuming you still running one Banner and "For great justice!".
  • Running now "For great justice" will result in a bad might uptime I think, but in special Raidcomps this could be a option, too.
  • A second banner has to be placed during the fight, which cost some time.

You always lose damage. Not bringing shattering blow is a damage and adrenaline loss. Not bringing Wild Blow is a cc and adrenaline loss. Not bringing FGJ is a might and fury loss.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

Pro:

  • The main aspect is of course the 10% boonduration the banner gains. Druids, Chronos, and cPS benefit from it, or more general classes that apply boons. In many comps the are 6 out of 10 players. As an example, Chronos are able to run more Berserker gear, cPS have better might uptime and druid can play with more magi or berserker gear.

Insignificant since druids, chronos and cPS bring enough boon duration to cap to begin with. You would have to run a custom raid to make any use out of this.

Not to mention that, once you are outside the range of the Banner of Tactics your supports now suffer a 10% boon duration loss. Meaning this setup is not ideal for some boss fights.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

  • Healing power is not so important, but brings in 1,7k healing power overall. This would help especially condi druids in healing and generate astral force (better gotl uptime). But even dps classes have a heal skill, which make the fight a bit smoother. However, I guess it is not notable for dps classes.

More realistic is 340 healing power considering both druids. Most classes use their healing skills as part of their rotation and not for actual healing.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

  • You have an additional blast finisher

So?

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

After the change of banners targets from 5 to 10 I was expecting that this would be a thing. However, after PoF there are a lot of dps classes around that gain some boons, but don't have the chance to take boonduration in their built without losing a lot of dps. That's why I want to ask you what you think about it. Maybe someone have already some experience in running banner of tactics

The drawbacks far outweigh the benefits. The main drawback compared to strength and discipline is that boon duration is caped at 100%. If this were not the case, tactics might be a thing.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Insignificant since druids, chronos and cPS bring enough boon duration to cap to begin with. You would have to run a custom raid to make any use out of this.

To make somthing clear: I assume that builds have to be adapted, e.g. like I said chronos take more berserker instead of commander same on druids. And cPS NEVER cap on boon/might duration even playing with rune of strenth.

Not to mention that, once you are outside the range of the Banner of Tactics your supports now suffer a 10% boon duration loss. Meaning this setup is not ideal for some boss fights.

Tell me whats is the difference here to banner of dicipline? Are you running extra assasins gear because in some tiny situations you are out of range and don't have 100% crit chance anymore? In every encounter expect escort banner placement isn't that hard.

In general, I assume that the dps decrease of ONE cPS and the dps increase of TWO chronos is nearly the same amount. Chronos already do a lot of damage, in the current meta (10k+). There is a reason why there are experiments running a full zerk chrono and a firebrand together.

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@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:To make somthing clear: I assume that builds have to be adapted, e.g. like I said chronos take more berserker instead of commander same on druids. And cPS NEVER cap on boon/might duration even playing with rune of strenth.

That's the point @Cyninja.2954 is trying to make. Chrono's and Druids are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for damage, and this is entirely intentional as you bring those classes for support, not damage. So even if you have your Chronos/Druids take more offensive gear by their damage is still next to nothing as they have more things to worry themselves with such as tanking, healing allies, etc; their job is not DPS, their job is to boost the DPS of others.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:And cPS NEVER cap on boon/might duration even playing with rune of strenth.

This is true which is why PS's are generally more concerned about the quantity of Might they generate vs the quality of it. As in, the +10% Boon duration would not at all make up the loss of Might stacks if you have to drop FGS for it. That or you're losing a big CC if you drop Wild Blow. About the only place I can think of to take Tactics is in the case that you drop Shattering blow. But even then you lose out on some damage and fluidity on your rotation if you're banking on that stab.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:Tell me whats is the difference here to banner of dicipline? Are you running extra assasins gear because in some tiny situations you are out of range and don't have 100% crit chance anymore? In every encounter expect escort banner placement isn't that hard.

Chrono's, in particular depend on Boon duration. Don't get me wrong, the margin of error is pretty generous, but you end up on a downward spiral if you drop uptime on Quickness since you have to wait for a "reset" to get back on track. Ultimately, this is a hit/miss issue depending on the encounter. Doubly so an issue if you're a Chrono that's tanking as you may to be in the best spot to catch buffs/boons (VG, Xera, etc).

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:In general, I assume that the dps decrease of ONE cPS and the dps increase of TWO chronos is nearly the same amount. Chronos already do a lot of damage, in the current meta (10k+).

You assume wrong. 10k+ damage is what Chrono's do on a golem. So you'll likely see that sort of damage on Overseer, but you're never gonna be seeing that more aggressive encounters like Matthias. In more aggressive fights your support team should be more concerned with boon/buff uptime since your DPS classes would be better catered to land their damage.

@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:There is a reason why there are experiments running a full zerk chrono and a firebrand together.

Of course there is, people are trying new things and looking to squeeze out as much damage as possible. Though personally I would feel the Chrono's Well radial radius is much more consistent to land that a FB's cone Mantra. Even worse, you may still be able to pull off 100% Quickness uptime, but now the rest of your boons have suffered as a result since Signet of Inspiration is not sharing boons at half the duration it would if the Chrono was full zerker.

So, in short, the +10% boon duration and +healing power does little to nothing for the group as classes that would benefit from the extra duration are already bringing it to the playing field and wouldn't benefit from taking more offensive gear as a result. On top of that, why would I bring/craft additional gear for the niche situation that Tactics banner can be used when I know that I can run a +100% boon build that would be viable for every encounter? Same thing for Druid since Harrier gear now gives them all the +boon duration they need. So I would be bringing some pieces of Magi in the off-chance I get a Tactics banner? Hard pass. I'd rather just tell my PS to bring what he usually brings since I already got myself covered.

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@savacli.8172 said:You assume wrong. 10k+ damage is what Chrono's do on a golem. So you'll likely see that sort of damage on Overseer, but you're never gonna be seeing that more aggressive encounters like Matthias. In more aggressive fights your support team should be more concerned with boon/buff uptime since your DPS classes would be better catered to land their damage.Even if it is only 1k summing up all dps increase of both, druid, chronos and the other PS (since he can geard more offensive too) it is enough to compensate the dps loss of the one cPS.

So, in short, the +10% boon duration and +healing power does little to nothing for the group as classes that would benefit from the extra duration are already bringing it to the playing field and wouldn't benefit from taking more offensive gear as a result. On top of that, why would I bring/craft additional gear for the niche situation that Tactics banner can be used when I know that I can run a +100% boon build that would be viable for every encounter? Same thing for Druid since Harrier gear now gives them all the +boon duration they need. So I would be bringing some pieces of Magi in the off-chance I get a Tactics banner? Hard pass. I'd rather just tell my PS to bring what he usually brings since I already got myself covered.

There are legendary armors, weapons, etc. But this is something I don't want to discuss here. Even if it is not pratical in pug-groups we can still discuss about such a comp.

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@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:Even if it is only 1k summing up all dps increase of both, druid, chronos and the other PS (since he can geard more offensive too) it is enough to compensate the dps loss of the one cPS.

So, here's what I got on Chrono:

qT's Firebrand Chrono comes out to

  • 2377 Power
  • 2065 Precision
  • 518 Ferocity

A theorized Firebrand Chrono + tactics (Swapped 1st weapon, amulet, and shoulders to berserker):

  • 2425 Power
  • 2016 Precision
  • 750 Ferocity

Add in the typical buffs (spotter, dis/str banners, EA, Might, vulnerability, Fury (leaving out more short term buffs like Glyph, spirits, etc)) You gain about a 7.60% damage increase with your Chrono if he shifts his gear to accommodate the extra +10% from Tactics.

Let's pull in some damage data regarding Support Chrono from GW2Raidar against two bosses on opposite extremes:

  • A median of 5,638 points of damage per second against Overseer (Easy mode)
  • A median of 2,469 points of damage per second against Matthias (herding cats)

So, if we apply the 7.60% damage increase from the gear swap since our Berserker is running tactics

  • A median of 6,066 points of damage per second against Overseer (Easy mode)
  • A median of 2,656 points of damage per second against Matthias (herding cats)

Thus you get as much as:

  • 428 damage per second increase against Overseer
  • 187 damage per second increase against Matthias.

Now, for the point of reference. Let's say that your PS is dropping Shaterring blow. Using qT's Condi PS and the same buff parameters as I used for the Chronos a single cast of Shattering blow is doing 21,013 point of damage per cast with a cooldown of 15 seconds. Granted, Alacrity will make the skill come off cooldown in about 11.5 seconds, but then again a PS may not be capable of using Shattering Blow off CD everytime be it they broke their rotation, having to dodge, rez, etc.

Thus, you get each activation of Shattering blow pulling the followng numbers:

  • 1,827 points of damage per second if you spam the skill off Alacrity CD (11.5 seconds)
  • 1,400 points of damage per second if you use the skill off of its natural CD (15 seconds)
  • 840 points of damage per second if you are horribly lost and forget to use that skill (25 seconds)

Note, there's some +/- for skill activation and such. I get that, but that would be more numbers to crunch than I have lemonade to do.

Now, I ran the numbers for this against for Druid:

Minstrel Druid would make no change as they would make use of the additional boon duration; they're not already capped. Harrier Druid would take something like Magi or Berserker over Harrier, but the damage increase was extremely small (barely 1%) that I didn't bother running the rest of the numbers. Condi druid won't necessarily make use of the banner as you bring them mostly for glyphs, spirits, and GoTL. The extra healing power may help your AF generatio, but I would need someone else to run the numbers on that.

What's this all mean?

  • I clearly have too much time on my hands
  • Based on median data the damage your support classes would gain by taking more offensive gear to accommodate the +10% boon duration does not offset the damage lost by dropping Shattering Blow from a single PS.
  • Whether it's worth dropping Wild Blow is up to the squad if they can compensate the loss of CC. FGS is a huge backbone to a PS's Might contribution so dropping damage is almost nonnegotiable I would feel.
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@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

@savacli.8172 said:You assume wrong. 10k+ damage is what Chrono's do on a golem. So you'll likely see that sort of damage on Overseer, but you're never gonna be seeing that more aggressive encounters like Matthias. In more aggressive fights your support team should be more concerned with boon/buff uptime since your DPS classes would be better catered to land their damage.Even if it is only 1k summing up all dps increase of both, druid, chronos and the other PS (since he can geard more offensive too) it is enough to compensate the dps loss of the one cPS.

Doubtful, shattering blow is easy 2-3k of safe damage plus adrenaline.

On top of that, not every encounter allows for tactics banner to always be in range.

Let's assume the net gain is 1-2k of raid damage. How many hoops did you now have to jump through to get this?

  • tactics banner needs to be in range of the entire raid
  • every class needs to change stats constantly (either via legendarys or swap out gear) between encounters were tactics banner works and those were it doesn't work (1 more thing to keep track of)
  • even less room for rotation mistakes for support classes and they now need to focus even more on dealing proper damage
  • a specialised raid setup which works only in the comp where warrior takes tactics banner

It's simply not worth it.

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@savacli.8172 said:What's this all mean?

  • I clearly have too much time on my hands
  • Based on median data the damage your support classes would gain by taking more offensive gear to accommodate the +10% boon duration does not offset the damage lost by dropping Shattering Blow from a single PS.
  • Whether it's worth dropping Wild Blow is up to the squad if they can compensate the loss of CC. FGS is a huge backbone to a PS's Might contribution so dropping damage is almost nonnegotiable I would feel.

Nice, to give us some numbers, but you did one huge mistake: Taking chrono dps values over GW2Radar is a good idea, but you can't compare that to raw numbers of the dps potential of shattering blow. You have to take into account, that you don't have perfect buffs or buffs are completly missing. Beside that you forget about the other PS: He benefit from 10% boon duration and is able to run a more offensive gear. Already a small buff lead in a high number since the dps potential of a cPS is much higher than a chrono.

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@EpheSOSIayer.6370 said:

@savacli.8172 said:What's this all mean?
  • I clearly have too much time on my hands
  • Based on median data the damage your support classes would gain by taking more offensive gear to accommodate the +10% boon duration does not offset the damage lost by dropping Shattering Blow from a single PS.
  • Whether it's worth dropping Wild Blow is up to the squad if they can compensate the loss of CC. FGS is a huge backbone to a PS's Might contribution so dropping damage is almost nonnegotiable I would feel.

Nice, to give us some numbers, but you did one huge mistake: Taking chrono dps values over GW2Radar is a good idea, but you can't compare that to raw numbers of the dps potential of shattering blow. You have to take into account, that you don't have perfect buffs or buffs are completly missing. Beside that you forget about the other PS: He benefit from 10% boon duration and is able to run a more offensive gear. Already a small buff lead in a high number since the dps potential of a cPS is much higher than a chrono.

Great, do you have numbers to back up that claim?

As far as the other PS running more offensive gear? That part makes no sense. PS is already running full offensive gear capping Condi duration on burning and bleeding and then dumping everything else into Condi damage. Stength sigil and dumplings are taken to generate Might but nowhere in the build is anyone concerned about +boon duration. As in, it's less important to have duration of Might as Condi PS is generally starved for Might generation to begin with.

And yes I can compare Chrono dps to Shattering Blow. Since I don't care enough about this to have my group test this live I'm using the next best thing which is using median data from GW2Raidar. So what I'm starting is that the overall boost in damage to Chronos (druids other PS would be unaffected) is still less than the resulting damage from Shattering Blow. As in the extra damage you would get from more offensive Chronos would only outweigh the damage contribution of a shattering blow if a PS waits more than 25 seconds in between each cast. Otherwise, casting shattering blow every 25 seconds or less is still contributing more damage overall to the squad than would taking more offensive Chronos benefitting from tactics.

Furthermore I put Chronos at an advantage as the data I pulled includes Chronos benefitting from temporary buffs such as GoTL, Spirits, and Empowerment. The only buffs I used for Shattering Blow are stat based buffs, and I also didn't even factor in crit chance nor warrior specific traits. Thus, that means the Shattering Blow number I posted earlier is missing:

  • +10% power and Condi damage (perma 5 stacks of GoTL being considered realistic)
  • +10% Power damage from frost (75% chance to proc, 20s CD after 60s)
  • 2 stacks of burning from sun spirit (75% proc chance every 8 seconds, 20s CD after 60s)
  • extra Stack of Bleed from Bloodlust (33% chance to proc on crit)
  • +10% power damage for 6 seconds from Empower Glyph on a 20s CD
  • +180 condition damage from Deep Strikes
  • Up to +250 condition damage from Furious
  • +50% power damage from a critical strike.

And with some simple math I can come up with median uptime of those buffs/procs and and average boost in damage. Which would boost the number of Shattering Blow by a noticible amount.

Again, I'm using data here since I just don't care enough to test this live. I'm sure there are situations where taking tactics would net an overall damage increase. But on average, based on collected data, taking tactics is a damage loss.

If you want to run more specific numbers for more specific situations? Go for it.

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If I understand the numbers right, the average might during mat is 18.5, or about 75% of maximum. quickness is 65% on average. Every mechanic in that fight disrupt rotations in a significant way and wells has the least efficiency compared to any other raid bosses.

With those averages, using tactics give on average 2 more might per player and 6.5% more quickness. If you translate that to dps, how much is that and is it bigger or smaller than shattering blow?

On average I would guess that tactics is superior for that fight.

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This is a very interesting idea indeed.If there's anyone who can answer this, I'd like to know:For the appropriate encounters, is the 10% extra boon duration enough to allow PS warriors to switch from aristocracy build into nightmare+trapper, or allow switching from nightmare+trapper into renegade (by that I mean they will provide sufficient might with reasonable ramp-up time)? This switch alone might be enough to compensate the DPS lost from 1 utility skill on one PS war (not sure though).

For encounters where you'd run renegade runes anyway, this will probably do very little. Druids might be able to take other pets instead of stalker, but the DPS difference will be very small if any.

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@Belorn.2659 said:If I understand the numbers right, the average might during mat is 18.5, or about 75% of maximum. quickness is 65% on average. Every mechanic in that fight disrupt rotations in a significant way and wells has the least efficiency compared to any other raid bosses.

With those averages, using tactics give on average 2 more might per player and 6.5% more quickness. If you translate that to dps, how much is that and is it bigger or smaller than shattering blow?

On average I would guess that tactics is superior for that fight.

Doesn't actually matter since even though tactics might be useful during matthias, cc is also a requirement. Having a warrior not take Wild Blow needs to get worked around yet again.

Also don't mistake average might uptime with damage loss. Matthias has invulerability phases during which cPS will not stack up might and wait with their rotations. Once the phase is over and the boss can get redamaged the group will be quite fast at max might again. Having average 18.5 might or 65% quickness (which would be unaffected by tactics since chronos are at cap boon duration) does not mean that the group is not at cap boons for damage phases. It just means that during parts of the fight the boons will run lower, usually during his bubble phase.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Belorn.2659 said:If I understand the numbers right, the average might during mat is 18.5, or about 75% of maximum. quickness is 65% on average. Every mechanic in that fight disrupt rotations in a significant way and wells has the least efficiency compared to any other raid bosses.

With those averages, using tactics give on average 2 more might per player and 6.5% more quickness. If you translate that to dps, how much is that and is it bigger or smaller than shattering blow?

On average I would guess that tactics is superior for that fight.

Doesn't actually matter since even though tactics might be useful during matthias, cc is also a requirement. Having a warrior not take Wild Blow needs to get worked around yet again.

Also don't mistake average might uptime with damage loss. Matthias has invulerability phases during which cPS will not stack up might and wait with their rotations. Once the phase is over and the boss can get redamaged the group will be quite fast at max might again. Having average 18.5 might or 65% quickness (which would be unaffected by tactics since chronos are at cap boon duration) does not mean that the group is not at cap boons for damage phases. It just means that during parts of the fight the boons will run lower, usually during his bubble phase.

Good point about chronos already having maxed boon duration. CC however has become less of a concern with current meta if you got 2 condi mirage for DPS. With 4 moa and potential of 2 additional through cs, CC checks should never fail. Shattering blow is the main contender.

The main question then becomes, how much of the missing 6.5 might stacks in average is caused by invulerability phases, and how much is caused by disruptive mechanics and misplays? Since we can disregard quickness in the calculations, and I will also disregard healing in this context, it really just the damage from the extra duration to might vs damage from Shattering blow.

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