Greyrat.2378

Depends on what you consider effective. If it's about amount of tools you have that you can mitigate damage with which makes the build ultimately hard or easy when it comes to PvP, and then you slap on top of it ability to easily pressure your opponent while still being able to mitigate most of the damage, that's when you can ultimately make safe conclusion that the specific build is easy to play. Ele suffers from this stigma that it has too many buttons to press = hard profession to learn, which is probably the only saving grace why the PvP scene is not completely overrun by signet cata or any similar iteration of the signet build. Easiest thing you can do is to go play that build, play others and then compare it.

1-2 stunbreaks depending on comp is mandatory, people that refuse to take not even 1 stunbreak are playing with fire and usually get punished for it. If you get cc chained by multiple players, that's on you and bad positioning. It's the same as people complaining about conditions while having 0 sources of condi cleanse. You have tools to counter it, use them.

Some more suggestions here since it got brought up again: Not a big fan of unrooting the skill, but if that would be the case they should rework the animation as well, since right now it would just look silly.

In PvE it's a solid pick in pretty much every content. PvP it's just not good unless you are playing the condi resident sleeper variant of zerker or bladesworn, everything else gets shut down very easily. I don't even consider spellbreaker that great anymore, but that's just probably due to how Catalyst pretty much outshines everything right now. WvW the LB/Scorched Earth zerker is still ok in zergs, although the new Arc Divider sucks pp in my opinion. For roaming both condi zerker and bladesworn are ok (rifle is kind of fun). Calling it trash is a bit harsh tbh.

We felt like the Catalyst still does not quite match our vision of the Omni-Man meme, so out of solidarity we've implemented the surrender feature where the side that is matched against stacked Cata team can just immediately surrender to get it over with.

*happy mario noises*

It's an honest profession, as was said in the past multiple times. No additional bulls*it, easy to understand, does not have too much of visual clutter, has clear strengths and flaws. Is it enough to pick it over some other stronger options? Probably no, but I am happy that GW offers me this choice. That being said, you should not be afraid to try other professions, due to how alt friendly GW is.

I've been thinking how to tweak the discussed cele build after the recent patch. In the end I've settled up for pure melee version since I felt like I did not really utilise LB that much. Sustain might be a bit worse but overall I am having fun with it and it has decent damage as well. Small doses of quickness on axe 4 also feel nice and in combination with Fast Hands and Axe Mastery it's not bad. Utility is still same, the Skale Venom. For food I went with Fire Flank Steak. Here is the build if someone would be interested: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKzAwyflZwoYTMMWJOSL+LPA-zxIY1olvQKIBioAqIEcfN8DA-e

You don't move alac/quick into skills that you have to spam again off cooldown just to get 100% uptime. That's just same situation as if you would leave them on utility skills. Why do I have to spam and waste everything in CA as druid to keep up the alacrity while Bladesworn can generate alacrity just by using Dragon Slash which is already part of his rotation? Why do I have to waste my skills like function gyro on blasting fields to provide quickness as scrapper when harbinger can use just his shroud to poop out some quickness? This is such backwards thinking that makes me wonder what is going with people that are coming up with these changes. How can you come up with quite good and easy/non disruptive way to provide boons like e.g. bladesworn or firebrand but do the complete opposite with e.g. druid? Did they even test these changes in real scenario? I do not want to bash on devs but this is not exactly rocket science, yet they manage to create the disparity between professions that provide these crucial boons even bigger, which feels exactly like the banners change fiasco year ago. In other words they have no idea what are they doing unless it's a spec that they actively play. This is just Solar Treatment 2: Electric Boogaloo

Because they either don't really play these specs/professions or they don't have any unified view on how these boons should be distributed. Final result is that it's just all over the place with various results. One spec can provide alac/quick on demand, another one needs to hit something or generate resources to spend in order to provide it, making it awkward if you want to aim for 100% uptime. One spec has the generation implemented into the general gameplay/rotation, another one has to spam everything off cooldown in order to upkeep it making the initial purpose of the skill obsolete. There is no consistency and things like this are just massive oversight on their part.

I belive Arc Divider change is prime example of balance team simply not giving a sh*t about how people perceive their suggested change. That skill did not really need such change, and if they wanted to make it more useful in sPvP, they could have just split it to make both parties happy. Same goes for scourge making the overall gameplay flow worse just so it can have alacrity. I believe people complaining about it here on forums and reddit as well should be indication that it's not a good change. I am also still waiting for their reasoning behind these changes (which will not happen anyway). If these changes are meant to be tied to the new weapons, they should have communicate it. Instead we got radio silence as always with no explanation. Also I am not exactly optimistic about their combat changes they are working on. Warrior is literally prime example that having access to multiple weapons does not guarantee better gameplay experience. I will wait for the beta weekend to try it out, but I am quite worried about this, since they've just created a lot more problems to solve by giving everyone new weapons to use.

Concept art looks obviously nice but I would be wary until I see it in game, especially on different models (charr or norn specifically).

ayo where my mario bros at

Orange slice for everyone. Woo!

Quit or embrace the meme. I don't think it matters either way.

Since the trait itself is mostly useful only in sPvP (in WvW if you are roaming it does not offer much value and it's pointless to run it in zerg), you could argue that it can be useful, but question is whether you even get the chance to use Vengeance in first place. In teamfights you might get cleaved or you have support that has rez signet or something else making the trait obsolete, on side nodes in 1v1 scenario there is a high chance that person will just stack stability and finish you before you get the chance to use it. Warrior's Sprint offers way more value compared to Vengeful Return (more mobility, removes immob, more damage). I believe you also still need to kill the target, no? It just makes it guaranteed that you will be rallied if you get the kill. Idk why would you consider this a good trait.

IBS strikes - the 3 easy ones (Shiver, Fraenir, Claw and Voice) are very easy for new people and does not take much time, people do them quite often (check the experienced channel, people rarely use the other one - training I believe). For fractals having some agony resistance is nice but not super mandatory on Tier 1. You can get enough by going for ascended trinkets (either complete some of the story achievements or you can do living story 3 where each map has certain currency that you can use to buy ascended trinkets that are stat selectable). People do almost always only daily ones and recommended levels since these are most profitable. You can just tag along, you don't need to have the higher levels unlocked if there is someone in your party that have them already unlocked. If you are getting murdered, you are either running full glass build including gear or you are engaging with content that is meant for groups. Hizen has some good open world builds, or you can just google around a bit (guildjen, metabattle, hardstuck etc.) The cheapest one is Berserker gear that you can also buy with karma (certain merchant sells it in Orr), however it does not provide any defense/sustain, it's full dps. For stat selectable gear it's usually Bladed armor from Verdant Brink (Heart of Thorns expansion). Best all-rounder is usually gear with celestial stat. In general I would recommend you to check out this guide As for gold income, I would say mining quartz in Dry Top can net you decent income (Charged Quartz can be turned into e.g. skyscale food in Mystic Forge that sells for decent profit, you don't need crafting for that), also lower tier materials like Iron ore etc. can be profitable since there is always high demand for them. Outside of that, dungeons have basically 0 requirements (they are abandoned content but you might still need to do them for certain runes etc.) Raids are viable option as well but you need certain masteries for them. You might want to find guild that suits you for this type of content, since PUG experience can vary. Good luck and have fun.

I am already on it.

They are already ignoring sPvP/not spending their resources on it, and if I remember correctly, Grouch himself said that they want to spread their focus on other parts of the game that are popular. sPvP is sadly not one of them. The balance patches that are partially aimed towards PvP feels more like personal project of CmC and Roy.

I kind of like the Dual Wielding but yes, it's pointless if you are having quickness anyway. Vengeful Return is just 🤡 In what possible scenario would you even want to take that trait?

PvP in GW2 will never be balanced for new players. If you go that route, you will end up with very shallow skill ceiling that results in boring and stale gameplay and you can already see it occasionaly (e.g. core guard support). Reasons why PvP is dying are mostly 1) lack of content, 2) lack of moderation, 3) lack of any tutorial/new player experience for people interested in PvP that would ease the initial steep learning curve. Outside of that, the balance patches that keep skewing overall balance towards certain professions/specializations that are driving more experienced players away if they do not enjoy that specific profession. GW2 has very steep learning curve that requires people to invest their time into the game mode and start learning the game from different angles, rather then just practicing their perfect rotation on golem. Any other content in GW2 does not really challenge you the way PvP does, so it is understandable that it's difficult for people to adapt to it.

I would advise you to spend some time by actively playing other professions and then come back to ele if you still believe that profession does not suffer/benefit (depends on perspective I guess) from powercreep in PvP and makes the game not very fun if you are playing against it. Man I love playing against something that has excessive amount of stability access, can go invuln, can projectile block, can be excellent support, can pressure me while playing defensively etc. But why even bother, ele is clearly in need of more buffs according to CMC and his balance update. lol 😁 I am out. Not gonna bother with this 💩show meta any longer. 🤓

Meanwhile the Rupturing Smash cries in the corner. It's a cool skill as well! But yes, I agree.

Pointless if you don't bring them to the same level as tempest or core guard that is slightly worse. Not sure if that's something I would like to witness though. After playing core guard support for a whole season just to test it out, getting myself fairly easily into plat I've decided that I do not want to touch this build ever again, extremely boring and requires minimum skill while providing considerable amount of utility and has noticeable impact on the game. I can only imagine that tempest sits in similar place.