Slygray.7051

Looking at how the Vindicator dodge plays it made me think of how Willbender elite could borrow some inspiration; when I read the elite (and in playing around with it during beta day) I am brought back to that scene in 'Kung-fu Hustle' where Sing uses the move to defeat the antagonist in the final battle. Its even called the same thing as far as I know - I might do a sneaky google after this post but yea its pretty much the same thing where you jump in the air and force palm your foe into the ground. In pvp and wvw Renewed Focus is too good to pass up, and overall arguably. Gives you the best emergency button to press in the game and it resets guardians virtues and you can move while using it. I mean, that's amazing. So to promote usage of this shiny new elite spec elite skill I suggest using something akin to vindicators dodge animation where you leap up into the air, and be able to move whilst in this invulnerability phase in the air-albeit slowly and not very far like vindicator. Perhaps instead its just a copy paste of the animation and 'port of Willbenders crashing courage? Could make do with some mental games like you see the animation but you dont know if its a diving courage or a diving palm. I feel like at first glance the idea it just straight-up taking away from Vindicator something cool and thematic but at the same time it's a knee-jerk moment where I cannot see that skill (Willbender elite skill) being used in any other fashion. It might not have to look it in the same fashion where you disappear out of the UI Vindicator; could keep the animation as is where you jump up and hover then slap on like guardian shield #3 animation, give the elite a stack of x3 aegis upon activation, each shield disappears on hit giving you that invuln and guard identity, and the duration goes away on hit. Maybe its just an invuln like RF. Maybe no invuln at all and its just an aoe blind on activation (kicks up dust from the ground bc you're a kung fu master and jump up into the air so fast ooooooh aaaaaaah). Dunno but just my two cents, hope this could spark some better ideas.

Catalyst was great showed a lot of thought and love in what I saw, of the craft that went into it. I re-watched the cata portion just to get some objective opinions going and 3 important things stuck out for me: 1 - I immediately was able to see combos in just the hammer skills alone. Granted its Ele and by getting a new 2h wep you get like 20 new buttons to press. Regardless, the main synergy of getting off your main big hits in each element and then chaining the #3 element into a final Avatar-Form hit was something that looked cool and fun to me Even IF it becomes something non-competitive I can say that something that feels good to press or a combo like that where you are just building up to this big ole elemental fiesta bash in open world would be mission accomplished imo. When I tested the basic oh sword on willbender #5--> #4 basic af combo I was like 'hmmm well this is ... not great?" This was just from weapon skills alone, as someone who has only played Ele by leveling it to 80 and leaving it there mind you - I know next to nothing about Ele secrets and traits etc. Compared to Willbender - OH Sword #4 is clunky as the mediocre damage is just reliant on getting the first unreliable hit so might as well just not press it ever, whilst #5 serves its purpose very well. Thats it. WB no longer has passives so the incentive to proc burns doesn't come from that but that rather the active of WB Justice Flames (which is clunky as well as its got that uppercut and delay thing we all were vocal about). 2 - The gyro thing was visibly thematic, and the well looked like it made hammer impactful. After my third watch I could see myself playing it in a way that I would enjoy something akin to a bruiser-support-mage or like an enhancement shaman from the Warcraft franchise. Being able to identify how I could see myself playing this thing, or even being able to see how I could play this differently was not a feeling I had when I saw Willbender. Compared to Willbender - Admittedly I was very excited when they showed some trait stuff, however I was let down overall by the things I was excited when I got to beta test. But still, WB was somewhat fun to play. What is the Willbender identity? They have dashes and ports now which on paper you're like 'Wow! Amazing! The only weakness they had is now gone at the expense of what passives on virtues? They must be broken!" I found the flames lacking in terms of thematic I was really let down by hopes of becoming the epic kitten that Almorra showed us we could be. Something seemed lacking kinda. It was just a worst Thief at the end. Like, Thief has traits that would synergize very well with any elite spec but when I looked at Willbender no longer having passive shut us out of a LOT of traits that were kind of the main appeal in their columns. 3 - Lastly and my main point I wanted to talk about was that we haven't had a Hammer weapon come out from Elite specs since scrapper,I believe, and it just showed me at glance only how much they could do with it. The hammer weapon is currently kind of meh with only 3 core profs (Rev, Guard, and Warr?) having access to it. 2 of which see some usage in WvW zerg builds (Sell Br. + Herald), correct me if I'm wrong here but I think as far meta builds go with raids - zero usage? and in PvP I think ppl just run hammer on warr for the memes and on guard for memes VERY rarely. Compared to Willbender - Guard Hammer has been vocally named the worst weapon in the game, which when you look back it was in good shape. Seeing how Hammer came out for Scrapper (granted they have no wep-swap so it made sense to put everything into it which fit the theme of engi swiss army knife), and now how hammer is shaping up at this first untested-glance for Catalyst, it just made me happy to have seen this in a selfish way to process it as hope and proof that the tools are in their capable hands to someday revisit this weapon we have and give it some positive attention. Very excited to play Catalyst this beta and see what it actually has to offer. May make a follow up to this to anyone whos in the same boat as me/ thinking the same stuff.

title TL;DR: builds focusing only on 'melee' [Sword - Mace - Axe - Focus - Shield - Greatsword - Hammer], which build to you think is most effective in solo or roam/small group, scares you the most, you have trouble fighting against, you play best with, you find you have an easier time surviving with, and you would choose between the two to be the better suited for melee build. I love guardian, cant play any other prof with the knowledge and 'tricks'/ combos that I know of Guard. With DH having settled for some time now in its place with both PvE, PvP, and WvW and FB notoriously bouncing on the scale from being 'balanced' to 'OP' to 'pls buff' etc. I want to know from all sorts ranging from beginners, to veterans, 'pros', and streamers - alike what they think is the best suited elite spec for a full 'melee' build of guardian. To those of you that reply I appreciate you. I am currently boarding a 9 hour flight which will lead to a 6 hour longer commute to my final destination so I wont be able to reply for some time. If you feel the urge to challenge my views and broaden my horizon on what I should be running in WvW solo/small grp roam as a guard for full melee please feel free to share and post or pm/dm(?) me. Hope everyone enjoys the beta weekend and finds copious amounts of fun playing the Willbender!!! *I very much dislike DH longbow so if you have to contradict me on that, please feel free to promote your point and educate me further.

Here are a few ideas I have: Weekend event - Reduced cooldownsWeekend event - Core specs only (no elite spec)Weekend event - Triple WvW exp gainWeekend event - No Warclaw or gliding allowedWeekend event - No fall damageTuesday - Double WvW exp gainFriday - Extra magic find in WvW or Extra rewards from WvW tracks or More tickets from tracks If at this point WvW 'doesnt matter' in terms of competitiveness lets have fun stuff imo to shake up the stagnant and mundane nature of WvW

@Obtena.7952 yea its just something to play for fun in open world for like world bosses or running around when I'm bored, in WvW to shake things up when am with a small group - that's all that build is.

Overall I see it as too slow with punishing cool downs. Speed and cast time is everything and if you look at the other professions Hammer skills you'll see that Guardians is the slowest and needs some tuning to get in line with others (Scrapper has longer windows to support as defensives with #3 leap+evade frames and #4 block frames, and longer offense on #2 whirl). My personal suggestions:. Skills #4 and #5 get shorter CD that would be a good start - maybe 14 seconds for #4 and 25 for #5. The #4 knockback could do with having a better 3/4 cast time.. Be able to move, albeit at a reduced speed, when casting #5 warding circle; the reason for this is because it cancels itself upon movement.. Auto attack final chain speed to match other Hammer speeds at 3/4 - not sure what can be done to balance the symbols that come from the last AA chain but the current speed at 1^1/4 is brutal, and youre forced to make sure that the last chain hit lands for symbol and protec and light field so your stuck trying to make it work.. Glacial Heart to also include chill on the final blow of the AA chain - I dare suggest making the entire attack #2 unblockable but I feel that would bring in hugely powerful abuse

I genuinely love the hammer for guardian - not so much where its at now but still a cool weapon and skills to boot. However, I've had this hammer/mace build since forever and I use it every blue moon to shake things up - I instinctively take the Glacial Heart trait. Just now I noticed that while it does add some nice features to hammer #2 it does also extend the CD of it to 6 seconds vs the normal untraited 4 seconds. So now, it got me thinking "well am I losing dps by running GH?" It seems to be leaning to a very burst niche back to the old pvp days of hammer guard but honestly its such a slow weapon with such long cooldowns that I struggle to see why I would be hurting myself even more by using hammer on top of furthering the CD of hammer #2 (its real shining value). This is the build [open world shenanigans and some wvw fun times when im bored]:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAIl7lFUwyKbXdNsw2YjesSZLfA-zRxYQhoIEEWXETrAjCIMowzgMKkGTgOLgqjg0DBA-e tldr; does Glacial Heart increase the DPS of Hammer if used on CD, and in what game modes 'should it be used'

Ah understood thank you for the answer. Is it really THAT strong though i mean only what a 5 second window for burst when you can just stay tethered for 66% longer and receive 15% damage with ticking vuln. I dont do fractals that much in fact I just now climbed to level 21 in t1 so im not trying to debunk you just wondering if that window of burst is that much more valuable that a longer sustain.

The tool tip says nothing about how long you have the 15% damage buff - I also dont see any visible indication on my buff bar when I use any of the mentioned disabling methods. It says it has a 10 second CD but thats for the stab buff :/

thanks N A T E! ill message you in game in like 5 mins? if youre not on ill catch ya when you are.

I wanted to to make something for scrapper hammer since I love everything that surrounds the engi, the charr, etc ,etc. I dont really have a gear set for my engi for wvw except for a full set of soldier atm and some zerker pieces building up but where I spend most of my time atm (learning the nuances of the prof and testing out free ez builds) is in the pvp lobby.So far ive tried kit-less bruiser scrapper [demo+scrapper rune], and FT+hammer [carrion+engi runes]I havent honestly noticed a difference in either too much to the point that ill say 'oh wow this is MUCH better!' its more like ill have a one or two incredible games with either and then the rest in between are 50/50 skirmishes.The build ive used for both builds are Firearms [bottom-bottom-top]/ alch [top-middle-bottom]/ scrapper [bottom-bottom-top] this was my power FT build. Condi was more or less the same with some tweaks to firearms and scrapper.I dont have holo 100% unlocked just bc scrapper is too much fun atm in both open world and pvp, but im working on that for sure - having said that I dont have any inclination to go into core engi at all and would hope to hear back from some fellow geniuses in the making on what FT + hammer or solo hammer build yall are running with some modicum of success!If youre not willing to share your build I feel you on that - any tips/ tricks are most welcome and ill take any criticism other than 'play the meta' xD screw the meta.But, say if demo amulet or carrion dont translate well for scrapper then id like that to pointed out. For wvw I tried my best but soldier doesnt seem to cut it; Im tanky sure and I can pepper some people down but im alone or with one other person im pretty much a goner. I take rocket boots to get out of roots and gtfo with the same power build I mentioned above but once again love to compare and get some notes on what are scrappers 'jobs' and strong suits for wvw - ive seen some support builds that im not keen on wondering if they can fill the role of bruiser? or is FT+Hammer a bad cat time? Ive tried tinkering with some stuff on the build editor getting an idea of what gear I should start to make my ascended set towards but they expensive and mat consuming so if I make a set its going to be the only stat set I use for a LONG time xD Sitting at 179 games played atm on my scrapper if that helps anyone gauge where im at - and about a good amout of time in WvW with mediocre success with a soldier set.