Buran.3796

4 stats gears offers 8% more points over 3 stats gear. As long as you can reach crit cap going for Marauder and Dragon is usually better for OW PvE than just running full zerk, even if you can lose some damage. You will lose damage anyway unless you're only fighting the dps golem...

Didn't known PvE FB was in need. My complaints (as a non-guardian main) is that the spec in PvP remains as a ballast. FB has been dead there for well over two years, and the changes didn't do any better.

In PvE doesn't affect me due as a rule I don't run mantras in my FB builds. In WvW roaming FB is way behind Willbender, and this change only increase the gap. In PvP the effect is 0 due FB is unsuitable for that game mode, and the change makes the spec even weaker. The need to precast mantras means that in case of dead you're not ready to return to the game after 15 seconds, so you need to arrive later. Nice exytra handicap for a spec with 0 PvP presence. Overall very irrelevant changes; since the tome rework I already deleted one of my 3 guardians. One survives due has two crafting skills maxed and the other because remains active in PvP due Willbender.

Which class you main? Most of them can solo legendary bounties in just celestial exotic gear. If I were you my goals would be to finish the unlock of the mounts and to start the crafting of a legendary armor (PvP, WvW, PvE or a mix of them), which is fairly easy and convenient. Since the WvW guild in which I was faded 6 years ago I only solo the game, with plenty of success.

Not surprising taking in consideration how the four EoD betas over 5 months delivered almost no changes in the EoD release. And by the way this is the balance team which made possible that the roster of the best 10 PvP slots between NA and EU ended filled with 7 Catalyst, 1 Tempest and 2 Spellbreakers...

They should jus remove Energy Meld. The spec mechanic is the dodge jump, not a F2 which uses a valuable space which should be filled with the Alliance swap. That's not a imposture: I'm being honest here albeit objetively selfish. I'm used to only care abour F1 and F2, because all is what you need with Rev, Guardian and Warrior builds (you can argue that sometimes you use F3 in Guardians and F3 and F4 in Renegades, but usually you don't spam those buttons. In Vindicator, as soon as The Alliance became best in slot for most of builds, you need to use the F3 to swap, since Selfish Spirit alone is a very weak heal (you need Selfless Spirit also) and your condition cleansing is in Tree Song , and you spam that swap. I had to move from a 110 € Razer Mamba mouse to a 60 € Naga to make room for that F3, only to learn that the ergonomy of that mice sucks to me. So I spent another 77 € in a Logitech G604 (which I found much more suitable for me but still not optimal). So yeah: please delete Energy Meld. No one uses it and anyway does nothing, so is making a bad use of the F2 and made me waste almost 140 bucks for nothing (at the end condi Vindicator doesn't require either Energy Meld nor swap to Kurzik in PvE, and in PvP and roaming I just run Willbender, which has the Herald gameplay with better cleanses but worse cc, and is fine thanx ANet). That's my funny history with Energy Meld.

In part due is a money sink (that function was more relevant at the beginning of the game), in part due the high cost prevents players to adquire the tag at low cost and troll in large events. Must be said also that at the release the tag was only blu, and has lower cost (~150 gold coins, if I remember it right) and later ANet doubled the cost but added plenty of colors (even to the ones as me which purchased it at the initial cost). Also, 300 gold coins is not cheap, but isn't really outrageous if you plan to command. You barely craft an ascended armor set with that gold, or a legendary rune...

...So when I beat someone using my marauder/dragon Willbender in WvW I'm not being carried, but the fun I experience is false due I lack boon duration (which is hard to understand anyway since people inn this thread says that WB doesn't have boons to enlarge, anyway). Seems just an opinion. Mine differs. WB isn't the top tier dog at the moment but I think that works fairly well and to me has an enjoyable gameplay.

WB is not only very capable in WvW/PvP, but also extremely fun. It nails two of the classic handicaps of Guardians: low mobility (now we have a 25% increase pace as default, and tons of new mobility skills) and low HP (since the builds work very well with celestial, trailblazer, marauder and dragon stats, whitout losing much damage). WB also frees Guardians from having to run Traveler/Fireworks runes in order to not be a sitting duck. I've been using TB in solo PvE and is fantastic (very good burst, decent sustain), and in WvW I've been using marauder + dragon and so far so good: can kill things based on how you play, and when I found a Cata or Weaver which I wasn't able to kill after a long fight it surprised me due WB allowed me to disengage. I found also that in some matchups (vs Necros and Mesmers) WB works for me way better than my Vindicator; probably due the high access to blind and cleanses.

They removed almost every PvP rune which had any "effect" or meaningful use. They also removed every amulet with high defensive stats, cut the vit/thou in Crusader to 400/400 (is the only amulet with only 2800 stats points) and nerfed the sigils to death. Guess what? Now most of the builds in PvP run berserker amulet with Sanctuary rune: they are tankier tan ever while delivering good damage. So don't assume for a single second that removing celestial or trailblazer would make the next meta roaming builds less capable in terms of self sustain, damage output or in their ability to disangage.

Assassin's Presence... I don't think that trait exist since last June. For solo play in PvE Notoriety usually grants 25 stacks of might to power builds. That eclipses the trait alternatives. I don't agree about Devastation being bad: in WvW/PvP Agressive Evassion is really good since being rooted = dead, and Vindi has 5-6 movement skills based in the weapons of choice. The problem is that in WvW/PvP Rev's boons usually last femtoseconds, so people trend to run a traitline with larger benefits. But In PvE is fine, despite most of the traits are useless. That's for instanced content played in teams. In OW condi Vindi runs in circles around any other Rev build, without requiring Devastation at all.

Can't talk much about both in instanced content, but the quorum seems to be that power Bladesworn has higher dps and sustain compared to power Vindicator, but is more tricky to play than a power Spellbreaker or Vindi, since you need to known well the mechanics of the encounters to properly load and trigger your attacks. For open world I instead would run condi (celestial) Vindicator: mace + axe + greatsword. The dps is modest, but is immortal and can solo everything.

Well, Willbender got 6 physical skills, and so far only Whirling Light (and to much lesser extent Reversal of Fortune) are used. If casting the mantras becomes annoying (specially taking in consideration the ratio between the new buffs and the annoyance potential), they won't be used (or used in minimal amounts). The amimation cast of the Mantras were cool, but only the first 5k times. Most of them aren't specially useful at team content either, since the nerfs limited their utility and compete against Guardian's shouts and consecrations, which are some of the best supporting skills in the entire game.

I will point you that at the EoD release of Vindicator, along the limit to a single evade stack (as Mirage in PvP), the endurance cost of each evade for this spec was 100 and not 50 as everyone else. At the time most of players in PvP had to run Energy sigils + Retribution (Unwavering ASvoidance) + Song of Arboreum to make it work. "Enough" =/= having to devote the entire build to solve a problem which other Rev specs didn't have. After the double dodge recovering (which also lowered the endurance cost to the regular 50) the poorly tested changes lead to the need for new nerfs which crumbled Retributiuon (lol 1s vigor... ). Again: people are running Salvation due ANet forced players to ditch useless traitlines, not due players choice.

Skill flipping was terrible and made no sense. No one asked for a second row of legend skills, much less taking in account that swapping the Alliance didn't provide any extra energy, and much less with half of them being offensive and the other half support. The skill flip added 10 extra seconds of cd + the need to waste energy just to recover the use of the one you wanted. Imagine to be a Firebrand and having your tome pages switch between virtues with each use, or an Ele and your skills changing attunement with each use.

Sorry, dp.

It doesn't work that way. Vindi has different evading option and endurance costs at the second EoD beta and in the 4rd beta they gutted the damage, the sustain AND capped the evades to a single, non stackable dodge. Then ANet released EoD and they keep nerfing the damage until no one was running Forerunner of Death. People moved to Saint of zu Heltzer and then they nerfed the heals/barrier until the trait did nothing, but they still kept hammering down the damage. So people moved to Vassals, a PvE trait. Then in July ANet had the great idea of nerfing the two 714 HP heals in The Alliance legend designed for often usage from 10 to 30 seconds cooldown. So people moved from Devastation to Salvation, because the damage was being meh anyway. Salvation is a corner in which ANet put Vindi players, not a free choice. As with scepter Catalyst, is a self-inflicted wound. The same as making most of the runes SO BAD that now almost everything runs zerker amulet + Divinity. Is Divinity any good? Naah, but they made the others so trash that the combo makes sense. Never saw Azurrs playing staff neither Salvation; you'll see gs + staff in less capable hands because at the moment the best role Vindi can fit is "make other players to waste time on me". Is not good at ccing and not that great bruiser, but has mobility to disengage and blocks/evades to bore people. Is semi-useless at competitive matches but can waste a lot of time from others. Now ANet claims that wants it to move towards more offensive traits: "We'd like to see vindicator builds move into more offensive trait choices to make up for the loss in damage, instead of remaining a damage threat while focusing on defensive traits" ...But they just chose to cut damage across greatsword and Archemorus skills. Why should the players move from Invocation to Devastation? Devastation won't make you win vs a bruiser or a duelist build, whereas Invocation turns the fight into mud wrestling and makes hard for others to kill you. With Ren botched and Herald utterly unable to +1 against EoD top dogs Vindi fill perfectly the role of "slippery tank". Just where ANet ignoratly had guided it.

Where do you get that is overperforming? I think that was only 1 in the whole roster last MAT and didn't last long. "Because balance team is nerfing it" Well, the balance team brought us machinegun rifle Mech, bugged Bladesworn, scepter Catalyst... I won't take their words as gospel in terms of balance based on they works so far. "Is not fun to play" Well, that applies to 95% of the current specs and core builds, imo. They sucessfuly made Herald and Renegade obnoxious to play (with) and Vindicator isn't better. I haven't played Herald in PvP in a year, Renagade in 6 months or Vindicator in almost 4. I won't play a Vindi in PvP nor WvW if they remove the evade again, tho.

Celestial Mirage if you plan to fight mostly at range and play a more relaxed, mid to low input keystroke x minute. Celestial Vindicator for a pure mele build able to facetank most of punish (aside from mechanics able to deliver over 25k single hits through 2.9k armor) but with a higher keystroke output. They are not super fast but are super safe and very forgiving. Condi Vindi could tank the Balrog from Moria...

Instead I would prefer a usable PvP Firebrand build. WB in PvP is good, DH is decent, core is meh but can be played but Firebrand? Firebrand is easily the worst class at PvP in the whole game, no matter the role you try to push (dps, bruiser, support...).

Yep. Also: is funny how no one was running the damage jump when they released the Vindi with a 150 endurance cost (and no stackable dodge) so everyone instead was using the heal/barrier one. Then they nerfed the heal/barrier so everyone moved to the chill/boons jump, because the other two were pointless. And now that option A and C are bad, they will nerf option B, which isn't great at all: is just that everything else is bad. And is the same with almost every class now. The thing is: at one point it has to work and be fun to some extent, otherwise people just stop playing garbage builds. And that's what happened in 2022 with PvP: 0 new content and almost every spec burned to ashes, players fled and the remaining face the silver vs plat low pop paradise...

It doesn't work that way since swapping from orange to blue (and viceversa) doesn't provide any energy, and our "two" new legends have things like two heals of 714 HP each one, not to mention that Archemorus skills are oriented towards dealing damage whereas Kurzik skills are team support, so whatever gear you chose they don't synergize well amongst them. Dps Vindicators run Archemorus + Shiro or Jalis and support Vindicators run Ventari + Viktor. The problem with Vindi was never having a second row of legend skills (otherwise Eles having 4 attunements would have been impossible to balance) since they consume too much energy for a single swap, but things as changing the evade properties, which already did cause heavy problems in the Daredevil and Mirage. That and having two unspiring third-row human heroes from Cantha when we already have the superior Shiro to entirely cover that crap. So, wasted opportunity in terms of lore and a mess with the basic mechanics of the game just because someone had a bonner with FF XIV's Dragoon gameplay design...

Is not about thinking, but about how things are factually going. When CmC revealed the EoD specs in summer 2021 I though there were brain power in the design, but wasn't sure about the output. When CmC was rised to main designer for PvP after the initial rollercoaster which was the EoD release, I had some hopes. But that hopes vanished. We are 11 months into EoD and the balance patches keep being a total roller coaster: 2-3 specs overperform, the rest are mostly garbage, each 3 months the coin flips and that could swap some spec but the overall situation remains the same. I see what ANet TRIES, but they are failing. In part is due lack of testing (they should have weeks of PTR prior to any major patch release as many games do, just to prevent bugs, exploits and unbalances, and specially due they don't have enough work force to properly scan the interactions of their changes). But the thing is not what they are trying or how should they pre-test, the thing is what they are delivering, and they are failing, badly. I don't remeber The Civilized Gentleman, The Abjured or any other top PvP guild running a monolithic single-spec roster a whole MAT. This is not about what I think, this is just a reality check: they aren't being efficient at the task of delivering a well though, roughly balanced, fair experience for most of players. I see the new patch and I wonder "why are nerfing specs which have been out of the meta since the summer"? Why you re-introduce precast for mantras in PvP for Firebrand, arguably one of the worst spec in that game mode? The patch is full of random things that will collide between themselves, and since they lack workforce to test it or open trial realm for beta testing will deliver bugs and unexpected interactions.

Beware the long lost prodigal son! Wellcome! Last time you were here you were swearing that ANet would never revert the single evade since ANet never backpedal (despite they do it a lot, as happened before). Then Vindi recovered the second dodge and you faded way to lick your wounds. Any new acute prediction to make? Don't bother to answer, I was just being rethorical... I don't think Vindi has much to balance since is not a top choice in any game mode Revt only stands out in terms of not being ftp and the number of new bugs that can stack x patch...

Did you read the patch? "Vindicator is still overperforming relative to where we want it to be in PvP. With other top elite specializations like spellbreaker and catalyst seeing some reductions, we wanted to make sure to bring down vindicator as well, and we're continuing to pull back on some of the damage improvements that were made following the Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons™ launch when vindicator was still struggling with access to one dodge. We'd like to see vindicator builds move into more offensive trait choices to make up for the loss in damage, instead of remaining a damage threat while focusing on defensive traits." So in one hand, they say that want to move sustain from Vindi and focus on damage, which makes sense, and in other they remove damage from the build, which contraditcs with point 1, and then is the insult over the harm, calling Vindi "overperformer" when never in 10.5 years of history of PvP a single class filled 80% of the MAT roster like Ele does now. I doubt Vindi competes in AoE damage with Catalyst (can be argued), but for sure it doesn't in mobility + invulns + re-sustain + cc. I mean: they pested rifle Mechanist due was doing good damage while being easy to play in PvE due people moaned that filled 30% of raids, but having Eles making 80% of the meta in PvP is fine? Graciously is not a think to be worried about, since the game mode has been dead for almost a year, but still...