Buran.3796

Runes are meaningless now: they are just two atributes stacking 400 stat points. They should have to delete them and integrate the numbers in the armor and trinkets: they no longer provide any effect. If you run power, you run Scholar unless your spec doesn't top the crit cap; then you use eagle runes until you notice you made a mistake selecting your class so you rerroll to a good one. In instanced PvE (which is a niche game mode). ...But in Opem World solo PvE (which is what most of the player do) Scholar was garbage and most of the raid builds were garbage. That's wehere Tormenting runes, Fireworks, Blathazar and other non meta runes (for raids) shine. Now they are gone, and the relics are just atrocious: they are less than half of the runes, and 95% of them are entirely useless in any game mode. And since they are so bad and so few will find any use, the few that will be used will end nerfed "beacuse they are OP". Look at PvP: year and half with Divinity rune filling 80% of builds, was OP? No. Is just that everything else was so putrid and niche that was the only one oto bring a benefit. If runes had a weight as in Skyrim, peple won't put them in their armors due being a useless encumbering burden. So here are now: runes are at PvE as useless as in PvP, the dead game mode. And 0 diversity/theoricrafting since relics sucks.

Build got deleted. The main use of stealth was not only to detarget (very usefull in large teamfights) but also to make enemy to guess if we would release a true shot or spear of justice or not (forcing to waste evades and other defensive tools). Rune (and traps) were already nerfed in stealth duration, quickness duration, burn procs and overall damage and there were 0 reasons to delete a entire build from the game (specially since PvP and WvW roaming were the only places in the game in which you would find a DH). Good DH players were incredible strong in Conquest (but beatable) and had no presence in MATs. The same can be said from trapper Rangers. I don't support this kind of evolution in which options are deleted from the game instead of added, specially now that we no longer will get new specs and PvP and WvW are pretty much dead. I fondly depise this changes.

Relics already at 30+ gold coins despite being shadows of the former 6th rune effects; dozens of builds trashed by a systen with less variety than the previous one.... Glad I voted with my wallet.

I don't do instanced content. In PvP, the runes and sigils were nerfed along the history of the game so hard that in the last year 70-80% of the builds only ran Divinity rune not beacuse was good, but since everything else was garbage. Now the same will happen at PvE: only scholar or eagle for power builds. The difference was that in open world and WvW was plenty of variety: Leadership for more boon duration, Nightmare for more condi damage, Durability for better sustain, trapper for stealth, Fireworks for boon procs + mobility.... Now that variety is gone: everyone is running antitox in PvP and you can expect 1 or 2 more in PvE and that's all since most of relecis do nothing, the same as PvP runes outside Divinity did nothing. Also, most of pugs will run at PvE with the relic slot empty...

I don't want to play stealth classes, but happens that DH is terribad in PvE, and the only build which has any use in PvP/WvW roaming was tapper DH. So now one of my 2 guardians has no use (outside muling). The other, a Firebrand which was aleady useless in PvP, is now weaker in PvE due Balthazar runes gives no extra HP and Fireworks don't proc fury/might/vigor (neither improves mobility).... I can follow relating the loses until completing my 18 character roster but I think you get the point: runes provided some use and variety, what the relics provide? Nothing, nothing at all: they are weaker versions from some of the old 6th perk (most of them are gone) so characters are now slower, have less HP, less boons, do less damage, etc. In open world and even instanced content, now you can expect most of the players to not run any relic, since they are crap and some are already over 70 gold coins in the Black Lion Market. I will only update 2 builds (with different runes) and won't use any relic; the other 16 characters are now mules to camp in daily large chest or mining ores; thanx ANet for freeing me from playing the game...

Condi Herald has been a punching bag the last several MATs. Can't understand the delusional CMC "buffs" and my guess is that the only reason it had any representation is due those couple of players main the class and are unable to run anything else, but the performance has been laughlable. By the way the SotO patch deletes the +10% HP from Divinity and Balthazar, so Herald and Vindi are now even weaker... Rebebow still playable and best option with Lynx + antitoxin relic but nowhere near to be meta.

The attempt to destroy dozens of builds and force players to re-gear again while diminishing the daily rewards and simultaneously increase the amount of time wasted to get them is so puerile and so in line with korean grinders as Lost Ark is so blatant that doesn't even require any arguing. Nothing providing from SotO increases the qol of the players in any form. Game will bleed causals faster tha Twitter beleds money; a bold move, lets see how it pays off!

They are exotics. Remember that they still have to sell you the ASCENDED relics, then the LEGENDARY relic, then probably a belt, a nipple piercing or maybe a butt plug. Plenty of ways to make you grind like this were Lost Ark and you should spent 3-4 hours a day just to do the dailies, regear your whole roster and put your characters where they were yesterday...

Bad would have been removing the 6th rune effect making tons of builds unviable. This is worse: this is removing that 6th effec and replacing it for nerfed effects which still require a grind. This was an hostile act against the players.

To think? What we have "to think"? If you had trapper build based on stealth (Ranger, Dragon Huner) congratulations, that gameplay style now doesn't exist! is not like they nerfed it, they deleted it. If you had a build based on minions and you use Ogre/Golemancer/Privateer now that component doesn't exist, so the build is the same, just now is worse. If you did use Fireworks for 25% movement increase and the procs of might, fury and vigor cangrats, now you can use Traveler for the same speed with wasted stat points and no procs, or grind hundreds of tokens to get runes of surge for the same speed with decent stats but still no procs... EVERY relic is bland as hell which will end in 2-3 used across the whole game and dozen of fun builds removed. I'm happy about not having bought the expansion, and after the relic and dailie changes I doubt I'll spent a single dime in the game again. Enjoy the mess ANet, you reap what you sow...

The new system is garbage, and overall a huge nerf in variety and abilities. Most of relics are so bad that everyone will run the same 2-3 forever... It also deleted lost of builds.

Didn't known about Surging. Still: * Rune of Surging is a huge nerf compared to old Fireworks; 0 procs of might, fury and vigor... * Rune of Surging cost in tokens is MASSIVE, whereas Fireworks cost was, what? One gold coin yesterday? Now its value is 0... Now, Surging > Traveler, no doubt, but I did use Fireworks in 7 of 18 characters; I won't grind 7 x 7 runes of Surge. I will grind a set and the rest will remain as a mules, and won't play them again. I didn't make a large roster of playable characters and build for over 11 years just to see how with a single gear piece change all falls apart. I won't wait a new expansion in which ANet hypotetically would do the same intoducing a belt, a nipple piercing or an anal plug as new gear to mess all again and make everything useless and force a regrind again.

The only runes which still provides +25% movement increase is Traveler. Traveler anthrax levels of bad since it onluy provides 252 stat points (regular runes with 2 starts provides 400 stat points) and +15% boon duration (good boon duration runes as Leadership or Fireworks provide +25% boon duration). So the lamest, most useless "jack of all nothings" rune is now the only which provides movement increase to sloth classes (most of them, since traits with +25% movement pace are rare and passive skills have a cost of oportunity). Ugh...

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic Most are gone. They are maybe 2-3 which have any use; most of the ones which keept the name are utterly nerfed versions of the old ones. I s like PvP in which since all runes are garbage 80% of builds use Divinity...

Don't be melodramatic: PvP died in 2022 after the release of EoD. 2023 and SotO is the killing of WvW.

My main advantage was playing a lot of PvP. The first legendary armor which I crafted came after already having more of a dozen of legendary weapons amd the PvP back pack, but when I finished the heavy I had so many spare tokens that I crafted the medium and light in the following 8 months, and each set took me less than 1k gold coins in raw gold to complete. Later I became aware that the Grandmaster Marks could be obtained without being limited to the Seasons, so getting the 20 you need for each armor set could have been even faster.

Trinkets of ascended quality can be bought by nothing just farming Season 3, 4 and Icebrood Saga tokens. They are so cheap and unexpensive to obtain that I never crafted exotic ones despite having jewelry at 400 since the release of the game. Dam, the amulet, ring and back piece from Bloodstone Fen can be even reset in stats for 100 unbound magic... To put that in perspective: a single farming run of 4-6 minutes in Bitterfrost Frontier will provide you wintebrerries enough that once consumed you could reset your Bloodstine Fen trinkets a dozen of times... On the other hand, ascended armor pieces are expensive, and reseting the stats is also expensive. So going first for amrnors and then for trinkets makes tons of sense, due convenience. Also, legendary armor allows to swap runes, which had more impact in builds than the trinkets.

Herald was nerfed pre-EoD release (so the new specs could shine) and so far I've avoided using it since, with great success. Seems that the ofensive support build with quickness for PvE team content works great, but I'm not interested in "teams" at PvE. In PvP I don't think it would be meta again, since every top choice is either a better bruiser with much more sustain and stability or has a powerful ranged game with plenty of cc chains and mobility. It still can work in Ranked vs pugs but the game evolved and is now entirely based in cc combos, and with no stability and so few condi cleanses, being a purely mele build there's just not a reason to play Herald (lets see if short bow changes anything, but I don't see how it would work better than Renegade or Vindicator). Playing Renebow vs Soulbeast, Untamed, Mirage, Catalyst, Harbinger, Spellbreaker, Scarpper... Only convinced me more about how futile Herald is. It also doesn't remotely plays as was released; one thing is numerical nerfs, but some features were removed and the spec just lacks flow: resembles the new Willbender, just that Willbender has poor cc but better AoE damage, mobility and cleanses. And still WB is not meta, so guess how far Herald is...

I didn't preorder since lately (in the last 7-8 years) I've been "voting with my wallet" and that has been extremely successful avoiding turds; in pervious expansion always pre-odered since they have something of interest, but so far I found that SotO has nothing to me: * Now new PvP map, game mode or content. * No WvW alliances or any new relevant feature. * No new specs, with the new weapons not available on release. * No homing, no relevant new masteries (I consider masteries outside Core Tyria, gliding and mounts largely irrelevant; also making EoD masteries soul bound killed my interest in playing alts in that expansion). Meanwhile, SotO brings up plenty of "loses": * Daily rewards disabled, replaced by a not fully revealed new system that probably would be either less rewarding, more demanding in time or a mixture of both. * Runes nuked from orbit, replaced by spongie "relics" with worse features and which had to be farmed again. And probably monetized, in some still undisclosed way... The expansion also arrives between Bardur's Gaste 3 (which already had) Starfield (which will look carefully and won't buy untill some weeks of full test from streamers after the release) and Lords of The Fallen (which will probebly pre-order given what they showcased pleases me a lot). So I can wait half year until they add some missing content... If the changes in the dailies are bad enough, I maybe won't came back for a while.

Yep. But remember that the best order in which you can craft legendaries is armor (for your main) > trinkets (for all characters) > armor (for your not main) > weapons > runes > sigils. So legendary runes sits in the very long way run of crafting for most of players. Relics defeats the purpose of legendary runes (fortunately for me I'm finishing trinkets and some weapons) so won't hurt me (I never saw a reason to craft the runes since for the cost of a single one you can buy a pack of 7 of each rune in the game and legendary armors already allow you to equip/unequip without damaging them), but for people which already did the work... Yeah, relics are a shame.

Dungeons were the initial instanced content for up to 5 player groups. They have a easier story mode and 2-3 additional paths. You can start to do them at lvl 30 (Ascalon). Fractals are level 80 instanced content for up to 5 players which scales in difficulty. The first tier (level 1 to 20-25) can be done with any equipment; after that you need ascended gear to equip resistance to agony (a condition which gradually kill your character if gets hit from some attacks). Fractals are very profitable. Raids are up to 10 players instanced content, with some encounters which end in bosses with oftenly complex mechanics. Strike missions are also instanced content for up to 10 players, but usually involving a single boss fight. PvP has unranked matches (in which you can play in conformed teams with up to 5 partners) ranked matches and automated tournaments. Every 3 months you have a ranked Conquest season (Conquest is the main game mode, 5 vs 5 with control points and specific mechanics in each map) and betwen then ranked mini-seasons in 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 arenas. Automayted tournaments happens every few hours. Scoring at that earns you progressioin to weekly and monthly ATs. The most important thing in GW2 PvP is that all the gear is normalized and every character has automatically level 80 and all skills unlocked at it. So skill is the main filter. Also, the toxiticy is only 3.6 roentgens...

Save it for legendary gear. Gold comes and goes, but the quality of life providing by legendary gear stays forever. You'll need those coins sooner or later...

Honestly I prefer the current 2 gold coins x 3 dailies of your choice. Won't mess with the new system if the reward is lower or requires more timne to complete the daily. And by the way, I won't buy SotO on release date (this is a first). Zero new PvP/WvW content means zero interest for me...

In Automated Tournaments the best Guardian build is core support, specially in a conformed team with voip and coordination. Is also good in duo at 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 mini seasons. In ranked is not as strong, even in a coordinated duo, since oftenly the players disperse and lacks mobility to help when is needed. For that reason DH is probably the best there, because at least can do very strong AoE burst to slant teamfights, snipe/cc targets from stealth and cause intense disruption in teamfights thanks to long bow #5. DH is frail, but has good defensive tools and the means to hit and run. Power Willbender has very good mobility and high AoE burst, but is a mele spec and since the nerf from 2 to 1 stacks of Flowing Resolve (F2) in PvP struggles to deal with condition (you can have plenty of condi cleanses in your utilities, but then your ofensive abilities will suffer). Is not strong enough to be meta, but could be if the top dogs get nerfs or some of the last nerfs get reverted. Firebrand is auguably the weakest spec at PvP (all professions), but still can work sometimes (I can't reach further than gold iii, tho). My fav build with FB isn't support (is worse there than core); instead I run a carrion dps build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAc6FlVwuYdMM2IW2WfvUA-zZoKjEqgMTB5HAA I use Valiant Bulkward to reflec projectiles in control points to avoid enemy pressure, abuse my cc in teamfights (Heated Rebuke, Shield of Absoption, Blazing Edge, Binding Blade, Symbol of Vengeance) taking advantage of chill on cc to land my burst (Scorched Aftermath, Ashes of the Just, Purging Flames, Whirling Blade) and deploy Shield of Judgement, Advance!, Stand your Ground!, Unbroken Lines, Azure Sun and Eternal Oasis as defensive/support skills when needed. Your self sustain is low and you lack range damage but you can easily wreck teamfights if you use well your tomes and utilities and when the things go well I oftenly stack 15-20 kills in a match.

I agree with your friend. People usually start crafting a dps gear build (mostly armor and weapons, since ascended trinkets are almost free from Living World maps). After that, usually the strongest "do all with minimal investment" is celestial, which for most of classes and specially in the Guardian works wonders (take in consideration that an ascended set of armor pieces can be expensive, around 300 gold coins, but replacing all your ascended trinkets and going celestial armor + harrier trinkets is almost free). So I encourage players to go for the Legendary armor set as soon as their second or at worst third armor set. You can get the pieces from 3 different sources (raids, WvW and PvP) at the same time if you will or just stick to the most convenient source (for me was PvP and I got the 3 sets from there). The new expansion will only make it EASIER. To me there's no reason to spend resources incrafting ascended armor pieces after your first or at worst your second set. For the cost of crafing a single ascended armor set you can craft a single legendary armor piece (start with chest, then legs and the helm, which provide most stat points) and just forget about having to craft an ascended gear piece of that kind forever for that giver armor class. Another example: just doing the daily (usually less than 10 minutes, 2 gold coins in raw gold) and mining orichalcum rich nodes for 20 minutes with 5 characters (or cathering seaweed, or falx, or other stuff in high demand) will provide you another 8+ liquid gold coins, you you'll get 10+ gold in 30 minutes a day, enough to pay a legendary armor set in six months (or two in a year) while devoting the rest of your time to anything you want (including not playing the game). Legendary sets are easy to get, and the quality of life they bring is exceptional. Do yourself a favor, ignore most of the coments advicing you to demore it and start the journey now!