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WvW Support Spellbreaker - Useful trolling?


kshaeko.5647

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The Warrior is a new class for me. I still have a lot to learn and I think that a lot of information is missing in current discussions and the impact that the latest balance patch had on the different specs. Unfortunately, I haven't found a thorough analysis of the current meta on the Warrior, as I imagine that things are still evolving, from seasoned players.So I've been playing Support Spb (build on metabattle) for about two weeks now, geared in cleric's exotics and minstrel's asc. trinkets. So I run around doing some OK heals, keeping Might up, breaking a few enchantments, surviving basically everything with the help of F2, and dealing do damage whatsoever.

Hammer seems like a joke. I would gladly trade some of the CC (5 skills, really?) for damage, because it's not doing any! Fierce Blow is supposed to be a big hitter, but the most I get out of Crits is 900. Also, with all the stability buffs around, skills 3-4-5 end up missing completely (invuln.), even with Break Enchantments cast just before. With a 25 second cooldown and a 1 second wind-up, Backbreaker seems to land maybe once every 20 attempts. Earthshaker and Staggering Blow also seem very flawed.

The tradeoff for the absence of damage is that I can give some heals, boons and rip enchantments while surviving through pretty much everything but a coordinated nuke. I sometimes find myself standing in the middle of my dead group, giving boons to nobody but myself, until they eventually put me out of my misery. I feel like I have too many tools to help me survive this long.

So my question is: Is this what a Warrior should be doing? I'm kind of having fun doing it, but it seems broken in that the spec seems highly situational, and that I'm rolling the dice every time I try to use my weapons offensively. Lower the survivability and give back some damage, maybe? Being a support obviously means having limited damage, but I feel like a two-handed Hammer should have some weight to it. I know for sure that I'm doing many things wrong, so I want to improve and understand things better. What are your thoughts?

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Warrior has CC and Fierce Blow is still very much capable of hitting up to 8k while providing cleanses and boon strip. Earth Shaker is one of the strongest skills the entire class has.

What you're doing wrong is expecting to kill anything. You're a support after all. Do your job, provide mass CC, Shake it Off and Bubbles. Use the right runes and sigils to make you even stronger.

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With cleric warrior with trooper runes or the new minstrel variant you won't be doing much damage, especially if there's trailblazer/cele scourges or minstrel firebrands/scrappers on the opposition. Neither variant has any ferocity so the power is not going to be over 2.5K effective. Tooltip damage is based on noncrits (before traits/ sigils/scholar % rune bonus) on ~2600 armor.

If you're on a warrior specced for healing it should be pushing out shouts , using bubbles (Winds) coordinated with your DPS classes such as weaver / DPS scrapper / scourges (boon rip + wells) / DPS spellbreakers or berserkers / staff daredevil / any remaining hammer revs, and clearing condis with "Shake it Off". The hammer is meant for CC not damage ; with sword+warhorn it is for condi clear in bulk + a minor damage boost.

If you really want to do any damage as warrior you really need to be running berserker spec and marauder or berserker armor (mix it if you have to) if spellbreaker and ideally Greatsword (only 10% nerf to the burst skill). In PvP , spellbreakers already have transitioned to berserker amulet. Double axe still does decent damage but as far as burst, the burst has been cut and was never AoE (so save adrenaline for Arc Divider / Arcing Slice).

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If you outlive your allies, rejoice, atleast you were not a bag.

Have 2 sets

One full cleric and one Pvt zerker or wanderer zerker. You'll be doing 8k 12 k in no time. So judge the situation.

If you have enought fbs and heal tempest/scrappers then, go damage. But if you need heals, go clerics.

I personally play Pvt zerker warrior. And it's my favorite class. Because norn looks cute.

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(talking blobwise) as a support warrior you arent there to do dmg and you arent there to heal people (although its heal is not so bad actually)dmg is done by dps classes such as necro etc.heal is done mostly by heal tempests, guardsyou are there to corrupt boons with removal sigil on hammer through ccs , break enchantments , full counter and ofc the bubbleits just so happens that on heal gear , u provide double the barriers a scourge gives ( didnt notice if that was nerfed as well , at least it used to be double the amount) , you have condi clear, resistance and other boons, a party wise dmg modifier and ofc healsfor blobing heal warrior is a win-win :Dfor roaming, dunno whats up i have no idea

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Thanks everyone for all the great info.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out why I should use Cleric's over Minstrel's? In this build, Power seems unnecessary?

Also, I imagine that shout runes are Trooper's? How do those compare with the healing provided by Monk's?

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@kshaeko.5647 said:Thanks everyone for all the great info.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out why I should use Cleric's over Minstrel's? In this build, Power seems unnecessary?

Also, I imagine that shout runes are Trooper's? How do those compare with the healing provided by Monk's?

There are variations to the build, but the common go to is clerics as it is both cheap, easily accessible, and lets the support SB excel at what it is suppose to do which is instant cast burst heal. Clerics provides more healing power than minstrels, and the 'Vigorous Shouts' tactics GM trait adds 13% of your power to your healing power. This makes a clerics build have ~350 healing power than a minstrels build, which results in around 600 more health healed per shout after outgoing heal modifiers.

The other thing minstrels adds is concentration and vitality. A warrior already has the highest based HP pool in the game though, so toughness is all you need. It also applies very few boons so the concentration gets mostly wasted.

As for trooper vs monk the go to is trooper because conditions are generally seen as more problematic. In situations where you don't have as much condi fear and you happened to have legendary armor or legendary runes you'd swap to monk.

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It’s a big joke man. You can run berserker bubble war and be 10x more useful than a support warrior. Even with 0 damage hammer.

I’m sorry, but cleansing? If I’m on scrapper, they would be the tiniest blip on my cleanse meter. As for healing, it’s mediocre at best, practically non existent. It has one significant healing ability, but it depends if you are clearing conditions..,so if I’m on scraper cleansing conditions than you are basically useless sorry bud.

Only good thing support warrior has is the 10 man barrier...that’s it.

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@kshaeko.5647 said:Thanks everyone for all the great info.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out why I should use Cleric's over Minstrel's? In this build, Power seems unnecessary?

Also, I imagine that shout runes are Trooper's? How do those compare with the healing provided by Monk's?

Because you do a bit of damage too as clerics. It may not be popular but you will be loved.

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:It’s a big joke man.Is this a popular opinion? I saw the build in the "meta" section of WvW on metabattle, so I presume it has its uses?Spb support has access to mediocre healing, boons, boonrip, condicleanse, and above average CC, making it it a decent support with Bubble having the possibility of making it shine every 90 seconds if not interrupted too quickly. Overall, the build is better replaced by a more specialized class is what I'm hearing.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:It’s a big joke man. You can run berserker bubble war and be 10x more useful than a support warrior. Even with 0 damage hammer.

I’m sorry, but cleansing? If I’m on scrapper, they would be the tiniest blip on my cleanse meter. As for healing, it’s mediocre at best, practically non existent. It has one significant healing ability, but it depends if you are clearing conditions..,so if I’m on scraper cleansing conditions than you are basically useless sorry bud.

Only good thing support warrior has is the 10 man barrier...that’s it.

This is so wrong. I am consistently cleaning 200+ conditions per fight on my Supp Warrior, easily.

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  • Runs a support build with minstrels that isn't supposed to damage
  • Doesn't damage.
  • Surprised Pikachu face?

If you want to do damage, you'll need to use more offensive stats such as marauder. That also means you'll have less survivability, and also reduce teammate survival for being more selfish.

But, I mean, isn't the point of all this to support your group? What does your personal damage mean anyways if your group loses? You need to specialize in a role and then build around it. There's no point doing some build that only heals and supports a little and still outputs mediocre damage. Either damage with support, or heal with support. If you try to mix all 3, you end up doing a whole lot of nothing.

if you ask me, you're probably better off running marauder gear with defense/discpline/spellbreaker and gs/hammer. If you want to be more aggressive, take strength over defense or if you want to help the group, take tactics over defense and use To the Limit/Shake it Off. You probably want to use warhorn in that case.

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Play full minstrel if you play healing power. Just by submitting to going cleric you're saying you won't deal any damage so might as well go minstrel and have better stats while dealing no damage.

If you want decent damage + tankiness + cleanse just try something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKwEIiNssA2FDD7ETrL93FA-zVZYiRNQEsRYlSTRRmhQvJQ3FgqHgA2DvF9PjA-w

And if you want to play purely DPS warrior, just go strength with GS + hammer or GS + Axe/axe or sword/axe . Main issue with trying to play damage with Hammer + Sword/warhorn is that the weapons don't support it enough, sword and hammer both have only 1 damage skill outside hammer autos.

Using your weapons offensively is not hard, just make sure your "shake it off!" is off cooldown before you do so, Then just chain evadeframes (dodges, gs3, full counter) followed by leaps after it. Do you know what is best friend of hammer spellbreaker? Other spellbreaker, just CC in his bubble with your hammer. And by doing so you also prevent enemies from interrupting his bubble.

Now as I type this I ask myself: can there be a hammer/GS shoutbuild with trooper runes that deals decent damage. Maybe. Maybe that is what you're looking for.

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This thread is amusing. It is easy to tell that people are no longer used to there being actual balance that brings choices with it or thinking for themselves.

I like the new balance because it opens up a number of different options that all works in different situations. So it is less about what is the best and more about what you and those around you want to do.

There are cases to be made for Tactics, for Berserker and for Spellbreaker. There are as such cases to be made for S/Wh, GS and Hammer (or Axes). There are also cases to be made for Minstrel, Cleric, Crusader (the pre-patch choice), Zealot, Marauder and Berserker etc. There are cases for Trooper runes or something else. There are cases for Burst precision (Arms) and using burst skills for spike damage rather than stacking precision and there are cases for stacking precision. It's not surprising that the meta has shifted towards Cleric but that doesn't mean that there are no options.

This is good balance. You have a number of options that are all appealing and useful (if not equally good) you just can't do them all at once so it is up to you and your friends to pick the things you want. Do you want shoutheals and cleanses? Do you want rips and control? Do you want more outgoing buffs? Do you want burst-skill damage? Do you want auto damage? It all works for what it may be intended to do even if it all can't be meta.

One thing people often overlook when they talk meta and large scale gameplay (in contrast to guild-play) is the balance of parties. This obviously stems from that a guild can choose how to optimize their groups where a pickup has to work with whatever it gets. That it isn't obvious is as such understandable. However, that doesn't mean that the following argument isn't fair: Weight is important. If everyone is funelled towards Minstrel. Who will do the damage in a typical party? If the meta leans towards what essentially becomes a full three-support party then the damage output will be affected quite alot. Perhaps momentum is so important at the largest scale that in a 50v50 being heavy will always outroll burst attempts now, we can't say for sure yet. However, just because damage and healing got slapped with some nerfs that does not mean that building some sharpness into your comps can't be a good thing.

While most people tend to follow trends, counter-play has always been an important aspect of WvW at least in the more competetive extremes. Most people remember vanilla for hammer trains while the competetive meta was rather a 5-party setup involving 2 melee, 2 ranged and 1 focus party @ 25. Most people remember HoT for either pirateship or boonball but many competetive guilds were running rather bursty comps with dmg% stacking or hybrid stacking when these forums were moping about how everything was just about boonspam, healing and tanking.

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@Blocki.4931 said:

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:It’s a big joke man. You can run berserker bubble war and be 10x more useful than a support warrior. Even with 0 damage hammer.

I’m sorry, but cleansing? If I’m on scrapper, they would be the tiniest blip on my cleanse meter. As for healing, it’s mediocre at best, practically non existent. It has one significant healing ability, but it depends if you are clearing conditions..,so if I’m on scraper cleansing conditions than you are basically useless sorry bud.

Only good thing support warrior has is the 10 man barrier...that’s it.

This is so wrong. I am consistently cleaning 200+ conditions per fight on my Supp Warrior, easily.

200? Try a 1000 bro.LmRR7gB.png

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:It’s a big joke man. You can run berserker bubble war and be 10x more useful than a support warrior. Even with 0 damage hammer.

I’m sorry, but cleansing? If I’m on scrapper, they would be the tiniest blip on my cleanse meter. As for healing, it’s mediocre at best, practically non existent. It has one significant healing ability, but it depends if you are clearing conditions..,so if I’m on scraper cleansing conditions than you are basically useless sorry bud.

Only good thing support warrior has is the 10 man barrier...that’s it.

This is so wrong. I am consistently cleaning 200+ conditions per fight on my Supp Warrior, easily.

200? Try a 1000 bro.
LmRR7gB.png

ScrapperPurge Gyro - 25 clears/20 seconds Or 1.25 Clears per second.Cleansing field - 20/16 = 1.25Bandage Self - 5/17 = ~.3Fumigate - 25/12 = ~2.1Super Elixir - 55/20 = 2.757.65 clears per second maximum.

SB with Trooper runes.To the Limit - 5/24 = ~.21For Great Justice - 5/20 = .25Shake it Off! - 25/60 = .42Shrug it Off - 10/25 = .4Charge (halved due to targeting specific conditions) - 15/16 = ~1Call of Valor - 20/20 = 13.28 clears per second maximum.

Of course Shake it Off and For Great Justice both have ammo, so for the first 10s of the fight the SB has matching clear levels. The scrapper will pull ahead after about 25-30s when its Super Elixir comes off CD again.

Edit: probably also something to be said about the fact the SB is doing all these cleanses in a 600 AoE around itself, whilst the scrapper does absolutely no such thing.

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@"God.2708" said:

I appreciate that you are actually doing the correct procedure to calculate the efficiency of the cleanses on the class... most people don't do that, or don't do it correctly.

Just a few notes.Super Elixer doesn't cleanse that many conditions. It's either a bug or just how the skill works but it only cleanses 5 conditions total (Only on the first pulse). Also Bandage Self doesn't cleanse conditions, but rather a trait that procs every 10 seconds, every-time you use a heal skill (this includes swapping into med kit) so every 10 seconds is 5 conditions cleanse, so long as you are using medkit (which is quiete often)Call of Valor only cleanses 10 conditions/20 seconds, and Shrug it off is only 5 conditions every/20 seconds (traited). Essentially all shouts with trooper runes will cleanse 5 conditions, except for Shake it Off! which is as i mentioned earlier, it's primary condition cleanse+healing ability.

Lastly the entire setup on support warrior is based on Trooper Runes, which if you ask my honest opinion is the only viable way to get the build to remotely work in the first place...doing so means you have to sacrifice healing power and healing mods from monk runes, and on top of it, it's required to do any amount of sustained healing or cleansing because nearly all of it's cleansing is compacted into a single utility.

I even did a rough back of the envelop calculation a while back when tactics first got buffed herehttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1068998#Comment_1068998

where i was actually defending it. After a while of testing it, it proved to be quiet mediocre in practice because of the lack of any sustained support on the build. Like you said, you are useful for the first 10 seconds of the fight, and then it's pretty bare bones afterward.

The fact that meta-battle has the monk variant as the meta just shows how terrible theory-craft in the community is in general.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@God.2708 said:Super Elixer doesn't cleanse that many conditions. It's either a bug or just how the skill works but it only cleanses 5 conditions total (Only on the first pulse). Also Bandage Self doesn't cleanse conditions, but rather a trait that procs every 10 seconds, every-time you use a heal skill (this includes swapping into med kit) so every 10 seconds is 5 conditions cleanse, so long as you are using medkit (which is quiete often)

I have definitely cleansed more than 5 conditions with Super Elixir before. And I've tested the trait cleansing by swapping and it did not work (though I didn't look into it that much).

Call of Valor only cleanses 10 conditions/20 seconds, and Shrug it off is only 5 conditions every/20 seconds (traited). Essentially all shouts with trooper runes will cleanse 5 conditions, except for Shake it Off! which is as i mentioned earlier, it's primary condition cleanse+healing ability.

Call of Valor is 2 conditions on 10 people. Albeit they are on record as saying they plan on making the 10 target traits to 5 targets. But as it stands its 20 clears on a 20s CD. Shrug it off is coded as a shout so cleanses the 5 conditions base + 5 conditions from trooper runes, forgot about vig shouts applying to it though. (all shouts were calculated assuming trooper runes)

where i was actually defending it. After a while of testing it, it proved to be quiet mediocre in practice because of the lack of any sustained support on the build. Like you said, you are useful for the first 10 seconds of the fight, and then it's pretty bare bones afterward.

I mean, it is a CC-bot + boon stripper as well. It makes perfect sense for it to lead in with hammer and Winds, then drop winds and use its huge AoE big burst clears/heals to get the group out to reset. It's a very turn off/turn on support play style compared to how scrapper and elementalist operate. IMO It'd work best with something like a condi/heal scourge that can open with barrier and provide supplemental cleanses to play into the on/off nature of the SB support. Makes for a very melee centric party with very offense oriented off healers.

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@God.2708 said:Call of Valor is 2 conditions on 10 people. Albeit they are on record as saying they plan on making the 10 target traits to 5 targets. But as it stands its 20 clears on a 20s CD. Shrug it off is coded as a shout so cleanses the 5 conditions base + 5 conditions from trooper runes, forgot about vig shouts applying to it though. (all shouts were calculated assuming trooper runes)

Ya your right. Sorry haven’t logged into the game for a while now. I knew I was wrong, but I didn’t have enough time to fact check what i said.

I have definitely cleansed more than 5 conditions with Super Elixir before.

But no this is definitely how it works. I tested it and there’s also a note on the wiki.

And I've tested the trait cleansing by swapping and it did not work (though I didn't look into it that much).

i remember testing this, and i believe I remember it procing on using Medkit. It’s been a while since I’ve played the game so I should probably check again to confirm this but I’m just not available to do so.

Anyway, I’m not saying you can’t cleanse conditions on warrior, to an extent you can. But as a support build, in conjunction with a comp, it just doesn’t give enough to warrant being useful. It’s only use, is in fact it’s CC component, which you can do much more effectively as a damage dealer. Most warriors I’ve come across running cleanse support while I’m on scrapper only cleanses for 50-100 cleanses.

The truth is that there is a thing called cleanse real estate. There’s only so many conditions in a fight and if the estate is hogged by better cleansers, than other cleansers become less and less useful...this is even why Tempest also falls behind in cleansing, when technically they should be cleansing the same if not more than a scrapper. But as you can see from the image, the scrappers cleanse about 75% of the total conditions. If these tempests run pure cleanse builds, rather than healing focused (since they drop monks for troopers as well) they fall by the wayside as a healer element...makes them overall a detriment to the comp, which is IMPORTANT if you are trying to fight outnumbered GVG (15v30)

You can’t have dead weight players when the composition number gets smaller...each player has to have a higher and higher “potential” factor to not be dead weight.

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For anyone needing support spellbreaker build, heres a up to date one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKwEwEmosAGG7iJxOxRfa9tB-zVIYf0xXI9kCBFBpWAqeJCwe4t43mF-w

Clerics stats is mainly there cause of "Vigorous shouts" traitline which converts power into healing power (250 extra more healing stats added cause of that). When you have might stacks from either allies or from your "For great justice" skill, you also get that conversion applied into healing power. Minsterls simply isnt worth it as the amount of boons you give out to allies is pretty tiny and you need that extra healing power.

Replace out "For great justice" or "Break enchantments" with stability if you dont trust your firebrand/revenant for stability on melee pushes, mainly thats the case in public raids. First skill mentioned adds more support, second skill adds more boon removal.

Strength traitline can be replaced with sth else but i find it most suitable as it helps out with your hammer CD and gives you more HP + more power from might stacks which converts to more healing power. You can use another traitlines if you want but other options are just as meh as strength trait.

While not supporting your squad, you have the option to remove boons with "Break enchantments", bubble, hammer 4, 5 and F1 + F2 skills while 4 of the last mentioned skills also apply CC.

Short sword is there mainly for nr 2 skill leap, which helps you position back to the tag. If youre not a pleb then you can also properly use F1 immobilize but most warriors playing the game are plebs.

The site doesnt show food appliance + sigil benefits on the healing power but overall youll be running around with ~2400 healing power at good times, when you also got might stacks.

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