Rune Darkmoor.3269

This. After playing pretty much only Guardian for a literal decade I've abandoned it. I can't stand Firebrand and I'm not going through another Guardian kitten show for however long ANet decides the other specs are once again "in a good place" when they're clearly not.

Not gonna lie. I've never particularly cared, stabbed fun at some friends from time to time for way too overly sextualized characters, but to each their own. Personally, I've almost always played male toons. Male Dervish, Warrior, Monk, Assassin, etc in GW1. Male Elyos Templar in Aion. T1 (male) in PSO2, but in GW2... no matter how much I try I can never find armor sets or mixes or looks I like for my Sylvari Guardian, and it started male at launch, then swapped to female. I've swapped back multiple times over the years to try to make it work but nope, the proportions of all the body types drove me nuts. In GW2 female heavy armor is just better on Sylvari IMO, and I've TRIED.

Take Litany or Shelter and you'll notice much better survivability. Reversal would be good in 1v1 or in situations where their are big hits with long time between them, but that's not MOST PvE. I think of Reversal like a worse version of Guardians Selfless Daring trait (Heal on Dodges). Took away the mobility and AOE, heals a bit more, But now can be interrupted and ends as soon as you get hit by something, but heals more when you stop. Think about how well that would work in MOST PvE situations - it doesn't.

Blah, accidentally double post.

Basically this. Once I realized this was similar to base burn guardian in sPvP, but actually viable for raids cause you can actually fit in some utility. . . hot kitten. Dropping Firebrand like a bar of used soap. For those who like cFB, have a field day, but I'll play cWB over over cFB any day of the week. Firebrand just DOES NOT do it for me personally. Just like the Mesmer meta awhile back, I don't CARE how meta Mesmer is. I'M NOT PLAYING ONE.

As someone who's never been able to jell with the base Warrior, Berserker, or Spellbreaker, and I've tried as I have WANTED to play warrior more. I found myself catching onto Bladesworn rather well actually. It does need some tweaks, which people have already questions the design decisions behind. Why is dragonslash locked out while not in Gunsaber if we don't have access to our other burst skills? Why F2 IS Dragonslash when F1 has been bursts historically? Why the after-cast CD on weapon swap after Dragonslash when it essentially has a cast time? Why is Positive Flow a square buff on the already overloaded buff bar when the arrows to indicate positive resource gain on a bar already exist on reverent and positive flow is a core mechanic of the elite spec? None of these feel like they BREAK the spec, but would make it FEEL better to play in general.

I had a thought after discussing Bladesworn Flow with my guild. How much positive flow your generating is actually more important than the flow bar itself imo, and GuildWars already has a visual indicator for this kind of positive increase, the arrows for increasing energy or decreasing energy as seen on Revenant. I feel like it would make more visual sense for the Positive Flow buff to appear as positive arrows on the flow bar, or above it like energy does for Revenant. This would more compact, and easier to see to get an idea of your potential flow at a glance of the bar vs having to look for a number on a square buff on your buff bar to the right of your HP bubble, as positive flow is a core mechanic of the specialization.

PSA about Flow for all the suggestions about you need 100 of it, when I did just a minimal of optimizing my build for flow and went into raids I realized why it's called FLOW. Cause it continues to gain constantly as long as it's positive, even when you go into stance. I'm seeing lots of suggestions about "100 Adrenaline before stance". You're warrior habits are playing against you. If your flow is positive enough you can go into stance at 50% or 75% flow and reach Max charges still. Matter of fact if you wait till 100% you are WASTING Flow. If you use To the Limit and Flow Stabiliser with Signet of Rage (passive) you can start a raid boss in dragon stance and reach max charges and let dragon slash be your opener if you want even. Another trick. Did you ever find you ended up with 1 or two charges missing and your out of flow? THIS is what Flow Stabiliser is for, you can use it while IN stance to get the last few charges. To me this is great design, it allowed me to play around boss mechanics and not feel like I was wasting flow on many bosses as I could pick and choose my moments to enter stance and still expect to reach Max charge as long as I kept my flow positive. If I played with a 100% flow mindset it would be significantly WORSE. When I tried daring dragon with this setup I could easily use it 5-6 times in a row allowing for insane mobility with Dragon Slash: Boost. Overall I had immense fun with the spec in raids and did not feel like it was a hindrance at all.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PW1Aw6FlRwmYPMJGJOAS+PdA-zRRYBREGOaYHSEqgKECpLBU8JJM2DPA-e I pretty much run this build and tweak as needed. (Helps to have legendary armor/weapons). ramps up to 25 might on self with how often your in and out of combat and can maintain it for quite a while as long as you keep fighting. Is it a 100% optimal build, no, but it's good enough for open world and fun.

The thing I find ironic about this is instead of gear you need to play the game at a high level being locked behind RNG it's arguably the best skins in the game... still can't decide if that's better or worse. Also, last 3 or 4 items I wanted that were BLC exclusive I didn't get cause of RNG. So now maybe I'll get one of them with statues when it finally comes up instead. :/