Vallun.2071

this is all really nice, but can we get a new WvW map or a new PvP game mode?

Minstrels allows supports to be tanks. Yes I know you can still be tanky as any other supportive stat set, but they have to trade some of their tankiness to make their party survive, or give up some of that support to be tankier. Either way it allows more counterplay to remove minstrels because you can either focus the support who gave up some survivability to keep their team alive (and will need better positioning to survive) or you can focus their DPS who aren't getting pocket healed so hard by a tank that can stand on top of them at all times. Any argument you can make against this can pretty much be negated by the fact that whatever value you see in minstrels can still exist but in a healthier state with one of the more interactive stat types.

I promote build diversity by removing the stat that everyone takes because no one uses anything else when minstrels dominates. I would be promoting zerg support builds like a plague doctor tempest, a crusader druid, commanders mirages, but at the end of the day minstrels is just generally better so i made this post instead

Good way to discredit yourself: "I don't like this person and also didn't read what they said, but I will go ahead and repeat their sentiment anyway"

Celestial already isn't amazing in PvE encounters where you have DPS/Support roles, but where cele is really good is where you can optimize your output by playing a support role while still providing some dps, which will still be good with a slight nerf to all the stats. In open world it will still be amazing to run cele stats with a slight nerf. Remember my suggestion is only nerfing it somewhere between where it is now and where it was before the buff. I'm able to enjoy playing cele builds while also recognizing that they are overpowered and need nerfing. Mostly rev, guard, engi, ele are the best uses for it, but as of late ive found that even a thief and mesmer can use it, and those builds felt nasty to play in terms of how uninteractive they were.

Recently Celestial stats were given a buff from having every stat except boon duration and condition duration to having all stats including those, meaning it went from having 7 stats to 9 stats. While I liked this change and have been making lots of celestial builds, it made me realize a huge issue in the diversity of playstyles that exists in WvW. Celestial is a bit overpowered in small scale World vs World and Minstrel is likewise overpowered in large scale. While that's not too uncommon for WvW to be unbalanced, at least having some diversity is nice. This is why I think celestial should be nerfed and minstrel should be removed. Celestial Doing some quick math, you can see that the celestial ascended gloves give 22 to every stat while any 4 stat combination would give 22 to its minor stats and 40 to its major, so the ratio of celestial to 4 stats is approximately 9 to 6, and when you compare it to 3 stat gear its an even rougher ratio. The balance here is that without any specific specialization in stats you don't fit into a specific role or that sometimes you don't get the most out of each stat because your build will struggle to get synergy if it tries to reach every stat. Also celestial isn't really going to give you enough stats to deal meaningful damage compared to a full damage build or even a full trailblazer build which is still pretty tanky for how much damage it gives. When you look at the damage that celestial gives, even though you have a decent amount of hybrid stats, its still pretty pathetic. However, when used with a build that can generate a good amount of might, the damage skyrockets because of the hybrid synergy from the power and condition damage bonuses. Combined with the boon duration, a celestial build can upkeep quite a bit of might, allowing them to do significant damage especially in drawn out fights which their tanky builds allow them to create. The thing is, its not just the amount of raw stats that celestial gives, it's the variety. The way Guild Wars 2's combat system works, most weapons have the potential to do both power and condition damage, so long as I theorycraft a build that can get synergy from both condition and power damage I can generally get good value out of the damaging stats. Then the defensive stats are very conveniently allocated. Toughness is a really good stat to have just a little bit of because a build with no toughness is very squishy, but a build with a lot of toughness gets diminishing returns on the stat due to its exponential nature. Vitality is the same way, you want just enough health to not get bursted, but also having too much vitality is a waste without sustain. The sustain definitely is there though, healing power scales very linearly, so there's no threshold for too little or too much healing power, however, some classes have better healing power scaling on their abilities which mostly you need to research through the wiki. While some classes like warrior and thief do not have access to great healing power coefficients, there are some basic mechanics like regeneration and healing combo finishers that all classes have access to which do scale very well with healing power. Now here's the part where celestial really goes over the top. The recently added boon duration and condition duration add interesting synergies, but when you realize that the entire combat system has been designed around simplifying buffs and debuffs into specific boons and conditions, you realize that celestial has way more utility than just stats. For example, the weakness, immobilize, and chill condition getting longer duration gives even more potential to debilitate your opponents. Also boon duration doesn't just give you more sustain from protection and regeneration or damage from might and fury, it also gives utility from quickness which makes your animations harder to react to, and it gives more vigor uptime which allows you more mobility and avoidance. While power builds wouldn't necessarily go for condition duration, you can still see how they would benefit from it just from increasing their vulnerability uptimes and such. So as long as you are running the right build, celestial gives great damage over time, sustain, tankyness, support, and even utility. I'm not saying celestial shouldn't have all 9 stats, because I think its interesting, but maybe it shouldn't have so much of each. Instead of being a 9 to 6 ratio of cele to 4 stat types it could be an 8 or 7.5 to 6 so giving 20 or 18 instead of 22 on the gloves for each stat. I still think celestial should be one of the best options for small scale builds, but not by such a wide margin. However, you also have to remember that most of the optimal builds for small scale include shadow arts thieves, nade scrappers, and soulbeasts, but this is mainly because their class mechanics provide them so much utility. For other classes to compete with them, they kind of need celestial, which is why I suggest that some of the changes that were made in PvP be ported over to WvW such as the shadow arts nerfs, the grenade nerfs, and the dolyak stance cooldown increase. Yes, these things have already been nerfed in PvP but not in WvW. If we bring celestial down a bit, and nerf the insane utility of some of the classes that already dominate small scale without the use of celestial, it should promote a lot more variety in classes and builds. Minstrel Obviously the celestial issue isn't much of a problem because in larger scale WvW fights, the composition of groups is much more role based. You have your zerker DPS and your minstrel supports. You don't need a jack of all trades build in your squad because everything is covered by the composition. What allows this very binary composition to exist within large groups is the fact that minstrels allows you to play two roles in one. In the past, there were frontliners who could take the brunt of an engagement, mostly warriors and guardians. Then there were backliners who provided the damage and support, mainly necros and elementalists. While it is great that more classes like revs and engineers exist in squads nowadays that is mostly due to elite specializations. But the diversity in classes is opposed by the diversity in playstyles. There is no longer a need for this kind of backline frontline arrangement because minstrels gear allows your supports to also be the tanks. This is the same reason why minstrels was removed from PvP, to play around a minstrels composition you simply needed overwhelming damage or superior rotations because you can't focus the supports since they are bunkers and you can't focus their DPS because they have an insane support with them. The removal of minstrels would place these support builds on more fair and interactive stat types like plague doctor, clerics, harrier, magis, etc. Because none of these stat types have EVERY defensive stat, there is some weakness to them. This would mean positioning is much more important, because supports can't just sit in the middle of all the damage and keep pumping out their heals. They would need to avoid damage to survive and provide their support which would also make it more difficult to land their heals on their allies. So their allies would also need to have good positioning. This would promote splitting up much more often, because large groups can't just stick together in a big ball if they can't bunker up with minstrels, it may even promote smaller squad sizes. A 20 person squad is much more interactive and manageable for the servers and the average player's computers to handle, and can allow much more diverse play than just zerging and sitting on top of one spot. Some potential arguments against the removal of minstrels: "My guild is 500 players and we often squad up to play together." Just because your guild isn't in the exact some spot as each other doesn't mean you can't be in communication with them and still interacting with them through strategic movements around the map. "I prefer zerg balling in 50 person squads, why remove that potential?" Removing minstrels does not remove tanky supporty builds, it just makes them more fair. There are just some tradeoffs you'll need to make to maintain that playstyle which will allow others to play around you. Just because you like winning doesn't mean you deserve to win. "No minstrels means even more pirate ship because no one will want to push." Wrong, large zergy combat is why no one wants to push, because the team that does not win the engagement gets punished much harder. "Aren't firebrands and scourges more of a problem than minstrels?" When the meta is to stack together, these classes are the best at doing that yes. When there are more varieties of ways to play the game, firebrands and scourges can still be good in larger fights, but not every fight would be a large fight if we promote splitting them up. I could see a slight nerf to these classes too, such as bringing the 60 second cooldown of stand your ground in PvP into WvW (though this may just promote stacking more firebrands to make up for that loss of stability?) This suggestion does make WvW more punishing to play and more skill requirement for sure, which could be harder for the casual player to feel rewarded in, but let's be fair to both sides of the argument and understand that the average casual player also may not be accepted into a public squad because they're not running optimal builds or classes, so I think the trade off is worth it. You still can zerg up if you want but there should be less incentive to do so. TLDR: Provide more variety in WvW play by promoting different size squads and more class representation by removing Minstrels and nerfing Celestial while also bringing in some utility nerfs to some of the overpowered skill: Shadow Arts, Grenades, Dolyak Stance, Stand Your Ground

i like these relinks, finally i can stop being in perma zerg tier

Lately there has been a lot of balance opnions, this is broken, that is broken, but in a lot of cases most people are bashing their heads into a situation they shouldn't be in or one they can certainly play around. I'm not saying some classes aren't broken, because they certainly do, but most people resort to the balance card much sooner than they should rather than learning to handle it. I finished a video series on how to rotate as the four main roles of PvP, and while the videos themelves are long they are mostly just different situational commentaries. If you watch the first 20 mins of each video and understand each role you will be able to adapt to things that appear imbalanced, but actually aren't it is just them finding better places to be at than you.

lynx does give condi and power, but traveler gives a little bit of everything, vitality which gives necros more shroud, precision which scales with condition damage, some condition duration, some power and condition damage, and so on. Both work though

Often I see players playing support builds because they are very powerful for their team, but then these players don't understand the role of a support and the situations where they are powerful. Sometimes I see supports who tunnel vision on objectives without healing their team or supports who try to take 1v1s. I made this video which will explain the priorities of the support role and then showing off 4 builds while explaining the role of support in numerous situations.

I can definitely see that trade off working, because in a lot of situations you have too much shroud or not enough damage, and having zerk and curses will give you much more aggressive potential. However, its going to be much more situational. The best part of core necro is that it can always survive most situations, and just surviving in PvP is giving your team presence (because if you die then they will also die) and because necros tend to be focused and dont have the mobility to create advantageous situations like other classes (maybe you can fight a thief, but a thief will never fight you unless it knows it can kill you outnumbered) it means that the situations where your damage matters can be played around easily, and in the situations where your survivability matters cant be played around if you arent building into blood magic and vitality. So in other words there is more play potential and role independence as you said for 1v1/x whereas if youre in ideal situations always, then your variant is better.

A bit harsh, valluns a good player and prolly didnt waste too much time to make perfect video with perfect enemies.I wont say the enemies didnt play stupid, but yes, sadly you see that daily even at 1600 elo. Scepter dagger for me works way better than expected.Seems like in bunker meta, yo play more slow and pressure wit #2s and swaps, while in power meta you want focus, more survial lifeforce and spam #1.In my posting there is not a single word stating he is a bad player. The posting is about the situations he uses as examples for the builds to work. These are low skill level situations on the opponents side. The only thing I could criticize here regarding him is why you would pick bad players as opponents to demonstrate a build. That doesn't make sense and to me this would be wasted time for the production of the video. Sure the tone is harsh, but think about the bigger picture: tons of bronze division skill level players jumped on the nerf train after he made that minion master video, even though minion master is trash - without any doubt. He was basically provoking nerf demands for things that are already trash on necro. Now it's the same with scepter/dagger and power core necro (both is not viable). S/D is the worst you can run on necro and producing videos that cherrypick situations where it worked somehow, sends the wrong message to the devs and the community. If you honestly care about necro, then you don't do this.It's not cherrypicking if this is how most of the PvP matches are. If I want to find a good match I have to play for many hours or only at prime time. I don't really invest that much time into a simple build video.

Here are two core necro builds I have a lot of fun with and think will be good in many situations for PvP because of how survivable and resilient to focus they are while also having good sustained damage.

If so, then I have a late Christmas gift for you: my guide to learning some of the more complicated combat mechanics of gw2 and getting your character to move how you wish.

builds are in the description