Aigleborgne.2981

I must admit it looks great but loosing toolbet skills kills it in the first place. Sure you can go for all mecha skills and be fine, but if you use any other skills, you will miss toolbet hard. Several skills are taken just for their toolbet. Not even mention tools traitline...

You don't have time to mouse over to look for time left. Yes, you have visuals when it will end. But I fully agree with this request. Berserk is the most important state when you attack, knowing exactly how much time you have is critical. When necro enters shroud, he knows exactly when it could end. Same for holosmith even if mechanics are different. When I play my berserker, I often loose count of berserk time. Having a visual timer would be awesome!

While soul barbs is definitly a good choice. I would still choose fear of death because of its synergy with dread. I find RS3 invaluable as a defensive tool, as well as offensive one thanks to 15% LF each cast. RS3 stability overcome one of reaper main issues : vulnerable to chain CC.

Waiting some minutes to get a group to solo one champion is a long time. And if it doesn't provide a chest, it is most likely that nobody comes at all because it is a waste of time. Let's say you follow my suggestion, yes you will do less damage than zerk, maybe 20% less. But against veterans or less, that difference won't be really noticed in time to kill. Berserker and minions can work, for sure. Just I hate those minions and never use them. Gw1 necro minions were something but here they are just damage sponge with terrible AI.

Blind only work vs trash mobs. This is a major issue when facing blind immune foes like champions. On my experience, vitality along with good LF regeneration work better. I would pick marauder or valkyrie along with decimate defense.

Obviously, trailblazer is easier sustain than any power combinations. You are certainly better than me then because even in Orr, there are many champions that give me troubles, capable of putting down my squishy ele in 1 or 2 hits. You have far less margin of error than trailblazer. There are also several veterans that are quite strong, almost champion level. Either you play with a defensive build with power gear, and then you don't need preparation. Either you play a full dps build with very little defense, but in this case, you can't handle all situations, especially champions.

From my point of view, it is clearly a hardcore profession assuming you don't spec for those cheesy tank condi builds. You need to put a lot of efforts to survive. When my reaper can run in a big pack of mobs in Orr and kill everything in a few seconds. My power weaver will need to prepare and play relatively hard to achieve the same results. But I will also enjoy a lot more my weaver for that. You need to prepare, anticipate, and react quiclky. it is closer to mmo I played 20 years ago.

All elites are power creep from core. It's not new! Tempest didn't change from core ele where as weaver introduced a new gameplay for ele. First time I tried tempest, I thought those overloads were nice. But using them and having a 20s CD is against ele principles. So I quickly returned to core. Fun part for many ele is attunement switch, which is further emphasis with weaver. Weaver also brings very good synergy with all traits related to attunement switch. Something that tempest never came close to, mainly because auras are not good to start with.

OP question is too vague. "Better" means nothing.Berserker is the most DPS but is it necessarily better? If you struggle to survive or like to solo champions, it is definitely not the best option.I play my reaper minionless and I can say it is difficult to solo strong champions with full DPS stats no matter what traitlines I am using. Most people are referring trash mobs, but are we playing the same game? Those mobs die almost as quickly whereas you use assasin, berserker, or marauder. What matters (to me) is staying alive when things become tough (chain cc foes, champions...). It is indeed a matter of preference anyway.

If I remember, enhanced signets were permanent when it was grandmaster trait. They restrict to shroud only when put on master.

Especially according the fact that there are a lot more people on pve than pvp and wvw combined. I can understand that competition is more important. However, pve patches weren't frequent enough to start with (medium size patchs every 3 months), so now we truly feel abandoned.

Suggestion, if I may: I set my keybinds as 1-5 for 1-5, shift+1-5 for 6-10, and alt+1-5 for F1-5. Helps loads. Seems weird to use shift or alt + keys. I personally use DRFG to move and all keys around. T, E, Z, A, 4 as F1-F5 keys (order depending on each character). H, Y, B, S, Q as weapon skills... Mouse for utility and elite.It takes some time to get use to, but then my hand barely moves, everything is close enough.

My new ele is thematically based on regen and mist form. I slot water most of the time instead of earth: fire water weaver.I'm using armor of earth or stone resonance, twist of fate, and mist form. I'm very new to weaver but I haven't die yet. I have been very low on health at times, but water helps a lot here. I did all orr skill points plus a few temples, it was challenging but I survived where my older eles would have died.Sometimes, I switch water for earth and I really like protection on aura. I feel it might be as good if not better. However, I can easily recover when I screw up with water while earth is better at preventing damage.I have healing power (Apothecary on a few slots) and I feel water is necessary while I am learning weaver and gearing my character. Riptide with water traitline and healing power is just too good.

I prefer weaver over tempest. And yes, I struggle vs strong champions especially with power builds.Read again OP last post. He want something able to solo most things easily.

I would say, use only Viper and replace it with some Trailblazer pieces if you need more defense. For shorter solo-fights in PvE, solo play in OpenWorld maps etc., I would not recommend a condition build. Because the fight is already finished before you have ramped up all your conditions and then you waste damage and it usually takes longer compared to a DPS build (berserker mixed with marauder for example, maybe also soldier) to kill things. The shorter the fight, the better the survivability, usually. :) EDIT: For PvE-solo-play and also WvW-roaming I think a fresh air tempest build with marauder gear is still a good and valid option that can have good survivability and is not overly complicated. You haven't read what he wrote. He likes long lasting boss battles. He meant champions or legendary on which power builds will have a hard time. Not even mentioning hot or pof, just fight some champions in orr.I would not even bother about builds for anything else in open world because it will be easy no matter the build you will use.Now, you can still play power if you are not alone and trust others to rally you (not guaranteed from my experience since others tend to go down almost in the same timeline).

Ele is not garbage because you can't play it.I have played all professions so I know a bit. Warrior has passive defense (high armor, high health) while ele is active defense. It means you need a lot of experience to use it properly. You just can't play ele for 1 month and think it is bad because it needs a lot more. I see ele dying everywhere in OW (mostly vs champions), I would never die myself but I did while learning.Warrior dies less while learning but with experience, I survive better with ele, with less single target damage but more aoe damage. Power ele is hard, but it can work. Condi is a lot easier though.

I remembered alpha with centaurs event in queendale. There were so many centaurs in each wave, it was very challenging and without proper cooperation, it was a death player field.ANet got many complaints about difficulty and sadly lowered it. It was a mistake, now most core events are easy, sometimes even NPC alone can complete them... Event scaling is terrible as previously said. Player scaling is bad too. Too many players get 80 with tomes, do elite rush and complete maps with their OP toon. For new players or others that play the old way, they will have a hard time to get credit or fun. Mounts also add another issue. Players can move faster than other, and have a special skill. The latter will for example pull 5 mobs away from that new players that was fast enough to place an aoe skill. But the former is just as bad because by the time you can close 1500-2000 range even with swiftness, mobs will be dead. As an old school player without mounts, I must anticipate a lot to fight my own in events. If I do not, I'll get that bronze medal, silver if lucky. Please note that reward is not everthing. You could have a lot of fun, even challenge, if alone but nothing will several or many people. To a point that you feel you didn't contribute to that success.

As others have said, it is beneficial to attune to element according to your trait lines.If I have air and not fire, I would be in air for axe and greatsword.If I have water, any conjure can be used for regen.As a conjure heavy user, I even switch attunement to get several effect during conjuring time. I would remove 2nd conjure, and lower recharge to 30s, 60s for greatsword.

I have leveled and played a lot with turrets.They are great at low level and then gradually become weak and unwanted, mostly because no power scaling and no critical.Around level 20, you quickly destroy a pack when deploying all turrets, it's fun and feels powerful. Around level 40, it's over and frustating. However, when you need aoe cc, rocket and thumper are great. Plus thumper will act as a decent tank. I even tried net turret to slow down melee elite, it works but it is still overpriced and not worth a slot.Riffle turret is worth using for its toolbelt but deployed or not, it doesn't make much difference, sadly.Elite turrets are good though, good defensive skill.

On my experience with untraited (I mean specific downed traits) downed skills in PvE, warrior is the worst.Guardian has a great symbol that helps a lot and can be traited with several symbol traits. This one has saved my butt countless times.Ranger skill 3 is definitly one of the best in any mode.Necro is a powerhouse, all his downed skills are good. He took a hit with skill 5 rework but it was almost cheating before.Revenant, thief, engi and mesmer have either good synergy with their traits, either decent to great power coef.Ele is not great, loss of downed lava font AND signet skill 5 kills any hope of rallying when alone. It could be worst than warrior, but skill 2 saved several times (beeing able to reach a safe location)

Yes, but it still shows that you should never use this untraited skill in PvE unless you know that you will kill several things and so get a real chance to rally. Other professions have stronger chance to rally with their 3 skill.

Vengeance conditions are too high to be valuable. To me, this down skill is only usable if you trait for it. But who would pick a trait that only enhance down state ? Let's replace vengeance by a downed burst skill, that could be enhanced by all burst traits, this would be better !

Only if you traited vengeance! If you did not, you will get the kill and probably die just after...

Well then they need to Axe the downed skill and make it do something else. Yeah, because getting up while being downed to freely move around and use your whole skillset is just so bad for the downed skill standards! Just axe the downed state altogether and we're k. :no_mouth: Yeah, it really I when all you do is die. Even if you don't roll into the chance of staying alive, you have a better chance to kill someone (or otherwise contribute to the fight) after using it than you have by staying on the ground and pressing 1. Even if you die afterwards, it still can accomplish more than you can hope for with many other downed skills. If you think differently, then I'd like to understand exactly why without some backhanded "and then you die so w/e" answer. You also die while staying on the ground and dashing/stunning/whatever once. The difference is that when you get up, then depending on your active skill/weaponset you can do it much more frequently while having an option to actively move/react to what is happening. I fail to see how that's not strong when compared to other downed skills. Making it a guaranteed rez after a kill with no setbacks is simply putting it multiple tiers above anything else in that category. You have to wait quite some time before being able to use vengeance. In PvP, you will probably die before.Without trait, it is generally a death sentence in PvE, and I see warriors dying of vengeance every days, whereas they could have survived by just auto attacking or wait for revive (if anyone around).Compare this one to other professions, it looses to most of them. Personally I never use it, especially considering I usually get downed to champions or strong veterans so 25% is hopeless as I will probably get one kill at best.Even in PvP, its value is not great as you will most likely die just after. You might down someone, but he can still be revived. With traits, it is obviously better but it forces you to trait to have a good down skill. I would rather remove all downed traits, and increase vengeance to 75-100% in PvE and 50% in PvP