Buran.3796

I've been using cHerald (Mallyx) in the PvP mini season and it worked well: tanky plenty of cc to mess enemies... Patch should make it fairly strong, maybe flavour of the month untill people moan about "too opressive" and then nerfed again. The think I like is that works also well in WvW and OW PvE: spikes of up to 35 torment stacks, 10 to 25 stacks of might (will be easier to top with the patch changes, albeit quickness will be lost in PvP).

The timeframe in which you'll be only able to get gear with 2 stats is so small that doesn't even matter (a bit like barely matters to worry about gear at all until you reach 80, which will also happen in matter of days/weeks, as much). Condition and vitality or condition with power will work well. Jalis paired with Retribution provides a lot of self sustain and defensive tools and you'll have so much cc that most of the content would melt without even doing anything if you play well your cards...

Actually there were a good amount of Mesmers in the last MAT, some Catalyst and tons of Tempest (wanting Fresh Air eles being meata at PvP MAT at this point is a bit like demanding the same for hammer Rev, to be honest). Willbender started EoD dead at PvP due how clunky was all the selft-pauses, self-roots and after cast animations after every skill implementation for "such a high mobility class". Then they fixed a lot of that stuff, buffed the numbers and voila: 4 months of WB blasting PvP... Had a couple of nerfs and high end players fastly ditched it for "newly busted specs", but Willbender is still a respectable spec to run in that game mode, even at MATs. As I said, I don't think that Rev is bad at PvP at the moment, but has some real problems due ANet chose to kill build variety pre-EoD nerfing everything that could overshadow the new specs, but happens that the new Rev spec was a nightmare to balance (as expected since they spent 0 time testing EoD's PvP), so they nuked it out from the game. So now we are waiting some changes which definitely will push out power Herald outside the meta, some buffs to condi Herald which outcome ise hard to predict, and some qol Vindi inprovements which probably won't affect too much to PvP. To be honest, MOST of EoD specs are bad at PvP: they have broken things, but oftenly also game breaking mechanics which once are fixed/balanced let them severely lacking. Mechanist, as example, can go from having a strong mech which makes it too powerful at very low effort, then you have to nerf it and becomes crap since has all the eggs in the same basket. Harbinger goes from op nigh unkillable glass canon with too much sustain to trully a glass canon which doesn't endure teamfights in MATs and fades way... Vindicator goes from infinite re-sustain with random AoE nukes deletes enemies to clippled fighters with no heals and 0 endurance... I already talked about WB. The thing is that EoD brough us a higher pace of balance patches, but if you look at the results albeit the EoD spec dominance remains (outside Tempest) the path seems like a roller coaster. Meanwhile de game mode (PvP) is just dead: is not even about the "health" of the balance, but about the lack of population or new rewards, maps, anything...

I don't think that Rev is bad at PvP as SoulBlaze states, but isn't also stellar at the moment, as can be argued: * In the last MAT Boyce swapt from Herald to Untamed at semis and in the final, so wasn't a single Rev in the last 3 matches. * Naru stated that Herald is stronger at MATs in conformed teams compared to how performs at Ranked, at which the lack of VOIP and communication amongst peers makes it less effective. * The small increase of Herald popularity at PvP lately is related to the addition of quickness to Herald, which is going to be entirely removed from that game mode in less than two weeks. I doubt it would have a significative presence at the MAT this weekend... * Vindicator has been essentially nuked out of PvP for more than two months; I don't known if the October 4th patch will change that, but I guess it will be more relevant for WvW roaming than in PvP, since at the later The Alliance legend essentailly lacks heals, whereas in WvW remains functional.

For rising a core REvenant from level 1 to 80 leveling it playing the game, I would chose to go with a condition build, with Jalis + Mallyx as legends and Corruption/Retribution/Invocation as traitlines, something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAkeZlhQHMJyhFRNMI6hBSfMBKgjuSfKD-zxIY8o7vUSoA6KByMC6ME8fA-e After the nerfs in Battle Scars and Tormenting runes the sustain in the Rev builds are lower than before, so the condition builds have the advantage of being able to deliver high damage while having well over 3K armor and 25K HP, whereas the power builds in order to do damage need to stay as much as they can in berserker gear which means least than 2.5K armor and 17K HP. If you still want to push strike damage I would run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAwyZlxQHMPyh1RNMO6hRSfMCKgl+U16H-zRIYR09PCeHA-e Condi/hybrid builds have also the advantage of working with celestial stats, which means a HUGE buff in total stats (a full ascendant set of geat in four stats is a 10% increase in total numbers of ~10% (as from berserker to diviner or marauder), but going from berserker to celestial is almos a 75% increase in the total amount of stats available. That's something that power builds can't take advantage of. Then after reaching 80 the choice of first spec to unlock is harder: Renegade is great at any range and has higher dps whereas Herald has more tankiness and is more mele oriented. Vindicator is just harder to play and I wouldn't recomend until you unlock the two before.

Necro and Mesmer share the same armor tier (light), so once you get ascended gear you can swap it from one to the other (albeit the usability could difer based on the role). Then later, if you go for a legendary armor set (you should) you could entirely adjust their stats at will. At the moment, Necro and Mesmer had both utterly strong solo builds (Scourge and Mirage, suing trailblazer stats) and the Necro has also a very strong support build (albeit not exactly a healer). On the other hand, Revenant and Guardian share the heavy armor tier (the same can be said). For solo builds both have strong choices (Renegade and Willbender); for team content Rev can share quickness and alacrity, whereas the Guardian can share quickness but has a huge array of utility tools (mostly in the Firebrand spec). Both have good healing builds but at the moment are overshadowed by the Engie, and yeas you hate it but the Mechanist builds are currently good at everything, some of them at different roles at the same time. I've mained Warrior (4 months), then Guardian (3 years) then Revenant (until now), but those are my preferences. In terms of gameplay I enjoy Herald the most, then Willbender, Renegade and Firebrand. You should try out all the classes & specs and for your own ideas, which can change along the time (and is fine!).

There's not in the patch notes (which are incomplete and not final) but in the demo they said that the jump properties would be adjusted. Also, not in the notes but Energy Meld will be instant cast and have some energy cost changes.

After reading your post again I'll conceed that I'm bad at using Mallyx and you can be right. Still, not sure if in a conformed team a Mallyx Herald would fit better, since the finesse nuances required to maximize the Mallyx skills seems to work better in 1 vs 1 than small n vs n skirmishes, since Conquest is currently full of AoE cc spamming and long range attacks (I feel safer in Shiro since allows me to put a lot of distance if I get focused). But I'll try Glint + Mallyx in October, you convinced me...

If you are already at level 80 and you have the boosted gear my advice would be to select celestial stats and to start to unlock the Firebrand spec first, which is ok for solo content but the best for teaming. Then I would focus on Willbender unlocks since is better at solo/PvP and for me more fun to play. Last would be Dragon Hunter since is currently underpowered compared to the other two. For builds, recently Mighty Teapot started at Youtube a "From 0 to Hero" series of videos using a Guardian as starting point and would help you a lot understanding how to operate the class (mind that He's a very good player, so don't expect to have the same success without having some pains learning the systems). If you're starting from level 1 I would go with a condi build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABk6t3lVwAZIsP2IO+OmrMA-zRZYLBTGpM2oCKjEqgMTB9OAhrHeNn4TD-e Replace TB stats with Dire or any other core condi gear you earn.

I think that your understanding about celestial condi Herald is at least as bad as my own about condi Mallyx. First of all, celestial Herald doesn't run Devastation at all, but Herald + Invocation + Corruption. So has the same access to Permeating Pestilence, albeit most of times I prefer Diabolic Inferno because a) you don't always face high condition pressure, and when your foe runs power damage Diabolic Inferno provides more value, and b) due the much higher HP compared to power Herald (despite running the same legends, Glint and Shiro), I don't bother too much about condi pressure from enemies. I already have two extra cleanses in the shield.... PvP build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmABkex7lxQKsO6ixRYMPyiRSiMCqgjqUX7F-zZxsQisCyMB6NE8aAA PvE/WvW build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmABkex7lxQKsO6ixRYMPyiRSiMCqgjqUX7F-z1IY14/QiUV1pEoXhgkPBh73yjeaA-w As I said, the build doesn't need to spent energy to kill: just camping mace auto attacks and proccing the sigils on weapon swap and Invoking Torment in legend swap is enough to put high pressure in not-broken builds, and the energy saved can be used in the expensive Shiro skills, a luxury that Mallyx camping EtD oftenly doesn't have. The strike damage is also decent, so is not like a foe with good cleanses can tank our hits forever. This is one of my favourite builds in the game since fuses hig HP, high armor, high cc, strong boon duration, excellent mobility and solid hybrid damage in a single package which works well at every game mode (PvE, PvP, WvW roaming and small scale skirmishes) and the only thing which lacks is ranged damage (which is partially covered by Shiro mobility: won't outrun the builds with the best mobility in the game but will put some pressure on them). My point remains: best condi Herald doesn't even use Mallyx, the changes in Mallyx won't push it in the meta. Power Herald wasn't also in the meta and it already stacks more might than the changes would allow, so for PvP the changes weren't bad but mostly meaningless. I focused my thoughs in PvP since this is mostly the theme of the 4th Oct patches. The Vindi evade should now work close to a normal dodge, with two stackable in a row, but they probably will tune down some traits related to vigor/endurance and the effects from the jump traits. The changes will be wellcomed at PvE, where Vindi will still remain largely unuseen because provides nothing special. In PvP won't be used because doesn't have heals (Shiro and two 716 HP heals every 30 econds...) and Jalis+Retribution were nerfed to cripple state, so Shiro + Jalis is mostly mediocre. I guess in WvW roaming Vindi could come back, since the Alliance heals weren't nerfed at that game mode and the new dodges will be much better. But won't have a place in zergs, since Vindi is a worse Herald and if you don't wan't a Herald the new changes in AoE stability to Mesmers will make them more appealing and valuable than having a Vindi which, again, does nothing special.

Best: Charr followed by Norn. Why? Charr are in a culture of war which values physical power and skill, and have an entire Legion devoted to physical combat; Norn are physically imposing and have a culture of selfishness and labour their own legend, albeit the nature theme of Ranger fits them more. They are mostly nomads and hunters-gatherers. Humans with all their background of organization and use of magic are more slanted towards Guardians, Guardians also doesn't fit well in Charr culture due distrust towards magic, spell casters, gads and everything related. Worst is Asura, since they doesn't rely in physicality and getting dirty; they value intellect and their advanced civilization have thrieved due magitec and golems.

Not even close. Mallyx skills cost a lot of energy (even after the changes) and the legend doesn't provide much in terms of dps or sustain (obviously Glint does for both), whereas Shiro variant kills even without spending energy (more now that the legend swap proc returns) which gives resources to spent in the much more impactful Shiro skills. And for all the fame that Mallyx carries in condi dps builds at PvE, I tested pure traiblazer Herald Mallyx vs pure celestial Herald Shiro vs champions and veterans in both PvE and WvW and the kill times were pretty much the same. Aside from Embrace the Darkness (which depletes your energy and leaves you unable to do anything) Mallyx barely does damage (torment with cold, if traited), and PvP players won't stay in EtD. Shiro is just more flexible, allows to increase your damage, stick to your target, disengage... No color.

Mallyx: small energy cost reductions across most of skills. Increase in resistance from Demonic Defiance from 1 to 2. Vindicator: evade duration cut to 0.8 seconds, cost endurance reduced from 100 to 50. Energy Meld is now instant and changes its cost. More nerfs in vigor traits. Herald: Dacronic Echo quickness replaced by migth. BIG: legend swap activating sigils is back again. Thoughs: best condi Herald doesn't even uses Mallyx, i don't see that changes pushing the meta. Changes in Vindicator are good but will remain unused. Replacing quickness is fine but why might? We already self stack 25+... Edit: fantastic comeback of the legend swap procs... Revenant Condition revenant is in a similar position to grenade holosmith in PvP: a once-powerful build in the meta that fell out of favor after a few rounds of nerfs and is currently underperforming. The build's resistance sources were reduced significantly back when the boon still granted full condition immunity, but now that it only negates nondamaging conditions, we're bringing the durations back up. Skills Demonic Defiance: Increased resistance duration from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP only. Fiendish Tenacity: Increased resistance duration from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP only. Increased base healing from 132 to 165 in PvP and WvW. Spirit Boon: Increased resistance duration when invoking Mallyx from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP only. Echoing Eruption: Increased ammunition from 1 to 2 in PvP and WvW. Pain Absorption: Reduced energy cost from 35 to 30 in PvP only. Call to Anguish: Reduced energy cost from 35 to 30 in PvP only. Herald The recent update to Draconic Echo pushed power herald builds a bit over the top by granting easy access to a lot of quickness. The change was primarily targeted at PvE modes to make herald a viable source of group quickness, but it's clear that this isn't a healthy mechanic for competitive modes. Lingering facet passives is already a powerful effect, and we've changed the boon to might in competitive modes to bring the trait down to a more reasonable power level. Traits Draconic Echo: This trait now grants might instead of quickness in PvP and WvW. Vindicator The single dodge that vindicator has access to has been a long-standing point of negative feedback, and for this update we've adjusted the timing and endurance cost of the vindicator jump so it's more in line with regular dodges. We've also made some small usability improvements to the vindicator's group stun break Awakening, increasing the range and removing the casting time. Vindicator no longer consumes all endurance to dodge. Reduced endurance cost of dodging from 100 to 50. Reduced dodge evade window from 1.6 seconds to 0.8 seconds. Traits Awakening: This skill now activates instantly. Reduced energy cost from 35 to 30 in WvW only. Increased range from 360 to 600.

1) cWB is my fav build at the moment but Rev is my main and haven't mained Guardian at all since the HoT release; I think most of WB's skills are poor but you can still get a good build which performs well and the spec has martial artist theme which to me happens to have success in its implementation. I'm not sure about the theme of Vindicator, aside from thieving animations from other classes. 2) I think that the cc from Jalis and staff is fine, but I'm not longer compelled to use them since I'm too used to the original design of the skills to endure the botched nature that they stacked over time. Is the same with Coalescence of Ruin: once you've tasted the original is hard to swallow the current iteration. I guess Warriors feel the same about things as their hammer, a cc weapon with slow and impactful skills centered on cc which got destroyed when the "cc = 0 damage" patch was implemented. As a result, I tend to not use them (the next iteration for my Renegade build is meant to be played with double short bow). Equally, when I run Vindicator I use gs + swords and Alliance + Shiro; just I can't endure them any longer. 3) Vindicator fails as design (the role doesn't matter, Vindicator is fractually wrong at every game mode in every role available) and is reflected as on average in instanced content at which is played by 1 in each 300 (three hundred) players. I can only talk about what things I found wrong about Vindicator, which you don't agree, and as you say, they surely are personal biases. But if no one is using it, you maybe can infere that there's reasons why those people are avoiding the spec.

Overall I don't play instanced content, but if I would do it I would run either a short bow based Renegade or a Firebrand build, not a Mechanist. So is not like I wouldn't play Vindicator due the Mechanist has better dps, or because is easier (my current fav OW solo build is condi Willbender, which is key stroking intensive), but because the trade offs it has (single evade, high energy cost) isn't balanced by other quality of life features. * No cc. Run Jalis! No, is bad after the nerfs and my Renegade now oftenly fails Forced Engagement since the bow was best used at max range. Yes, is better for mele builds, but won't reward ANet playing subpar options after making choices which worsened the gameplay experience in builds which still are better than Vindi. *No cc. Run staff! No, it plummets my dps, I no longer run staff at PvE content, and you probably shouldn't also. *No ranged damage. Run hammer! No, I only touch hammer in troll PvP builds, my PvE/WvW has not seen any decent hammer play time in ages. Even without bugs the weapon is still utter trash tier and the damage is also irrelevant: won't touch it until gameplay mechanics are restored and then we could maybe talk about dps. The fun thing is that Anet nerfed legacy specs pre-EoD but most of the new specs still trails behind the older ones because even with the power creep the older were better designed.

SC build is probably designed taking in mind a team in which an alacrity provider is up 100% of the time, so they limit the diviner pieces to min max damage. Both run exactly the same traits. If you don't have a legendary armor to try them, I would encourage you to craft berserker armor pieces and play with the diviner/berserker ratios in the trinkets, which are easy to farm in the seasonal maps. For OW the stats could be fine (zerker and diviner also works well with renegade builds) but the traits and runes not (can be easily adjusted, tho). IMO the best OW builds for Rev are either condi Renegade (with or without alacrity depending on if you're soloing or teaming) or celestial Herald.

Vindi isn't going to be popular at instanced content at all, anyway. A month ago crafted my third and last legendary armor set (this time for mid armor) and have been testing Mechanist in solo OW PvE... It equals/surpases in speed my condi WB TTK for most of HoT HPs while being ranged, and with 1/3 of the key strokes x minute (not as tanky, tho), while also providing good boon support. Vindi is a vintage build; would fit well in a meta of 2012's core professions at which having perma fury, 25 stacks of self migth and perma protection would be enough. But in 2022 GW2 is moving towards OW content which requires team coordination and even complex mechanics that demands you to move away from the main target to survive, which makes the dps testing vs static golem a joke:. The Mechanist is perfect because can do good dps at any range, break defiant bars and provide support without clunky gameplay and the use is so streamlined that you can run not knowning the class so you can focus in the encounter mechanics (pun intended) without trying to calculate if you should jump to renew the damage buff or save the evade for the next cc or instagib from the boss... In that sense Vindi seems in the same ball park as the Catalyst or Untamed: even with top dps they aren't popular because they are convoluted to play and the damage doesn't translate so well from golems to real fight scenarios,. A 40K dps Vindi would equally struggle in popularity because is a mele build with poor cc and counter-intuitive mechanics, with expensive skills and weapons full of bugs...

Albeit Willbender is eclipsed by Firebrand at instanced PvE content, in the sense that FB is a "swiss knife" with all kinds equiped with all kind of tools for every situstion, the Willbender is WAY stronger than FB at solo content, with much more damage (specially the condition variants) and also solves two of the main eteranl issues from the Guardian class: having poor mobility and low HP if you want to deliver high dps. My burn WB has over 21K HP, over 3K armor, over 1800 condition damage (with no foods), 100% burn duration and can make burst of up to 39 stacks of burns scoring ~20k damage x tick. The gameplay is also compelling (albeit requires a high number of key strokes x minute) due resembles the combo system of some fighting games: you're always unleashing your virtues and trying to maximize the amount of hits you get to proc burns. The only drawback is that in therms of team support you only provide stability and maybe some utilities/elite, but at the cost of losing dps (and FB is better at that role). The Bladesworn is a extremely powerful dps spec with high sustain (even higher than WB) but is also best at solo than giving support; the pace of fights is slower and the weapon variety decreases a lot, since Warrior is designed to be the class with a more alrge amount of weapons available but Bladesworn was built to chop off that feature. At the moment (and has been for 6 months) I enjoy more the WB over the BS, despite I'll admit I didn't spent enough with the BS to entirely apperciate all that has to offer.

This is the first balanced patch I genuinely don't care since the release of the game. At EoD spec design table they were so oblivious about the PvP balance that most of them were useless, so we endured 3+ months of betas and patches nerfing legacy specs just to ensure the EoD ones had some value. Still half of them failed, and at the spring had to be rezzed with broken buffs, which later had to be nerfed and which made them bad again. At the end, after 6 months of post EoD release, what we have is a totally erratic performance of EoD specs, and a bunch of pre EoD specs which not only underperform but also feels bad to play. I'm only using two of the new specs in PvE and one in PvP...

Love shuting down enemy teams stacked with Mechanist using hammer Herald; the build is bad, but fun to use. I don't known why people don't play more Tempest, because that is actually a good build which entirely hardcounters Mechas...

Power Herald is strong at organized teams in ATs, but close to fall out of meta. Does good burst damage and relies in stunbreaks and mobility for sustain, not stability or health recovery. In ranked and unranked is way weaker; without team coordination to +1 is brittle in current reamfights, lacks self sustain and loses to almost every sidenoder when the skill is similar. Has barely a chance vs the EoD bruisers, specially since a lot of them have both range pressure and condition pressure. Condi Herald has a lot more sustain, better cleanses and similar cc, so is good in teamfights, but far from being meta. Hammer Herald is fun to shut down enemy teams which stack Mechanists and harbingers, but weak in 1 vs 1. Revenant could have some strong pressence in PvP if ANet wasn't busy nerfing every pre-EoD spec prior to the expansion release; Vindi was doomed to fail from the start: every attempt from ANet to circunvent the basic mechanics of the game (like dodging) delivered either overboosted specs which overshadowed for years the alternatives (Daredevil vs Deadeye and core Thief) of ended deleted from the game mode (Mirage). Is important to state that in general ANet spent 0 effort thinking about EoD's PvP: no new map, game modes, runes, nothing. Most of the specs were garbage at release (Willbender, Bladesworn. Virtuoso... ) then buffed with very little consideration to balance (WB, Mechanist, Catalyst) or bugs (Bladesworn). They have ramped up the pace of the balance patches but I think that is mostly due PvP pupulation have tanked HARD since EoD release, and the game mode is at its lowest even after the Seam release...

The most valuable crafted items are usually either time-capped materials for ascended equipement (armor or weapons) or legendary weapons; since every crafting skill allows you to make them I just would focus on the ones which fits better your main (i.e.: if you main a Warrior riser your armor smith and blacksmithing crafting skills).

True, but my answer is more slanted towards "were to get ascended trinkets" in general, because some people will find out useful and not every one are interested in farming for weeks/months the stuff to get the legendary ring (despite they, in the mid term, should). The only ascended ring I bough from PvP in 10 years, was just for Conflux, beacuse the tokens had more value spent in armor pieces.

Bitterfrost Frontier for easy to get/farm ascended ring, earing, back pack and even underwater breather (which by the way, once salvaged is the best way to get balls of Dark Energy). Dragonfall ones as a more expensive alternative. Also Bjora Marches for amulet & ear ring (Sandswept Isles and Ember's Bay to get extra ear rings at slower pace). Bloodstone Fen to get reseteable ring, amulet and back pack, albeit after the nerfs is way slower to farm. Won't use PvP/WvW currencies for trinkets except if you plan to use them as precursors for legendary ones: the best use for PvP/WvW currencies is always legendary armor pieces or the legendary amulet, ring or back pack.

You have also the Ebon Falcon weapons from Ascalon which can be obtained with karma and some of the guild weapons (can't remember the name) were also mostly black.