Buran.3796

Dragon Hunters kill foes mixing two knockbacks (Deflecting Shot and Shield of Absoption) and a pull (Hunter's Veredict) with a well placed burst from their traps (and sometimes a well placed True Shot, but that's hard to land since the selath from trap runes got nerfed). Use breakstuns and sstability access to prevent the cc and blocks and evades to void the damage. Since you run Shiro & Alliance and Jalis and Retribution probably aren't in the menu I'll suggest: * Riposting Shadows to breakstun and Reaver's Rage and Awakening to both breakstun and grant stability; Invocation trait Glaring Resolve will grant stability after the use of a breakstun, preventing the DH to cc chain you. * Use the evade, Imperial Guard, Warding Rift and Surge of the Mist to prevent damage from the traps (or Unrelenting Assault if you're using swords). Remember that when you arrive to a node keeped from a DH they probably did place traps, you will need to be able to negate the burst of the traps ALREADY in place AND the ones which He will place once the first are disabled. Time well your defenses. * Don't waste your main burst (as Eternity's Requiem) when you are blinded or they have up (or off cooldown) their Shield of Courage. No clue about thieves, I don't think that Vindi stands a chance vs them. And by the way first answer was not sarcastic: ditched Vindi at mid April; worst Rev spec to run. As a Herald (condi or power) DH doesn't bother me the least because their traps are my source to fully refill my life (Infuse Light) and I have more cc than them (condi Herald hardcounters DH) . As a power Renegade I just camp over Inspiring Reinforcement stacking stability and poking at range (but Rene is worse vs thieves at mele than Herald). Anyway, Arheundel is right: this is not the place to search for advice but the corner of the forum at which we gather to whine and get broken things nerfed, as core Engie, hammer Rev or Battle Standard. This is were trolling and "the fun police" merges...

They already have the basics due structurally the tengu share the same skeleton as the charr (same leg structure). But the animations should be entirely different and that has VERY LOW chance to happen since they reused dozens of older skill animations for the whole EoD specs (and even duplicated some of them between the nex specs, as the jump for the Viindi and the Specter). So, they are not interested in spending money in new animations, plus I doubt they would be able to retrofit every dungeon weapon and armor to fit the new race.

Is working as expected. You introduce a spec with strong damage, sustain and condi cleanses, handicaped by having a single, ultra expensive dodge. Then you nerf the damage because it was too much, nerf the sustain and the condi cleanses because were too good, and you end with a spec handicaped by phony evade mechanics and which provides nothing else in particular. Solutions? Play ATs, where instead of being beated by DH and regular thiefs you will be beaten by stronger specs, so at least you can moan that they are broken (ANet probably will hear you and proceed to nerf core Engie again, just in case). Or just reroll.

FB was so overnerfed (support, damage and sustain) that in PvP without the stats available in WvW is trash; it also has to waste a traitline in "Firebrand", which doesn't benefit the support role core Guardian mostly does. Also the axe has 0 synergies with that function. So no reason to run FB. Core Guard is just better.

Not Vindi. * Is easily downed when faces 2 foes, specially if they are WB or Harbingers in any combination. * Does no damage while defends, and its attacks are very telegraphed. * Has barely any ranged damage to pressure foes. Yes, is hard to kill. But at the same time is bad at killing others. Currently seing the MAT, and during the evening plenty of glass cannon builds seemed confy 1 vs 1 Vindis.

Successful competitive games (as the ones which top Twitch rankings) have strong developement support, frequent actualizations and balance patches, and views on dozens of thousands... GW2 has neither of those. Also, those games do generate most of their earnings selling cosmetics or convenience items for their PvP modes, whereas in GW2 the PvP has 0 love in terms of new content (no new skins, maps, game modes). With the game mode generating 0 income for ANet (due their own choices) and lack of views is hard for popular streamers to be appealed and for public outside GW2 to ever known that the game exist. Twitch numbers are higher when a outside top streamer accidentally plays GW2 for a while than at any significative date in the game (even release dates).

1) Quit button for team vote. If a team surrenders loses the match and doesn't get any reward but the match ends. 2) Better rewards for winning (more peeps and gold) and no rewards for loses. 3) A new game mode which people cares about. A 15 vs 15 guild vs guild or a remake of Guild Wars 1 8 vs 8 PvP (I still don't understand why they ditched the posibility if it was as popular as people claim). Being said that: a team of afkers vs a team of afkers still will provide a loser team and a wining one, and over time those players stll will have the same amount of earnings as a gold III player. Best way to increase the quality of the matches is increasing the PvP population, which won't happen if ANet devotes almost no effort to support PvP.

1) I disagree. I think that in general GW2 is not a P2W game, and most of the mechanics implemented don't provide any advantage to players which chose to spent real money in the game. 2) You will reach level 80 even without trying since every action in the game (discovering new landscapes, gathering and mining, crafting, killing foes, rezzing allies and even passively providing boons in a event or partially AFKing at WvW or PvP STILL gives you experience. Currencies are all centralized across a single account and thanks to the tomes of knownledge from PvP/WvW leveling alts is a breeze. GW2 is very environmentally friendly to free accounts, leveling alts and for people which doesn't want to touch the gem store. 3) Once you have an ascended trinket or weapon you can share it across all your characters and for armors is the same with the heavy/mid/ligth limitation based on professions. Once one of your items is legendary is perpetually shareable and they are the most convenient items in the game by a large margin. 4) You don't need any gear for PvP and it provides a solid amount of gold x hour (above 5 gold coins x hour with a 50% win rate in Conquest and over 10 gold coins at ATs). PvP is also the cheapest (albeit slowest) way to get the legendary armors in the game. Core Guardian and core Necro are perfectly fine at PvP. 5) Expansions provides some advantages (as more choices for classes), but the main advantage is giving you gliding, mounts and better content fo farm gold. Being said that, you can convert gold into gems and buy any "convenience" item or service you want without paying a dime (outside for the expansions themselves), and I would say that most of the convenience items and services as extra slots in inventory, bank, shared inventory slots, extra characters, extra templates, etc. ...have a clear diminishing returns limitations so most of people will end stop buying some of those. 6) Some of the new specs from EoD are blatlanty bad at some of the game content. That's really evident at WvW but happens also in PvP and even PvE. Sure, Willbender is meta at PvP & roaming and great at openworld, but for zerging or instanced content Firabrand is stronger; in PvE Vindicator doesn't have a chance vs Renegade or Herald and equally Soulbeast and Mirage are stronger than Untamend or Virtuoso at PvE... And core Necro is just op. So far I've spent ~220 € in ten years at the game (which is ~1.8 € a month) and don't feel myself handicaped at all vs whales, neither also think that I have any advantage vs people which just paid ~100 $ for the basic games + expansions. Free accounts are at disadvantage, but still very viable, and if you really like the game paying the minimum for basic game + expans wouldn't break the bank. Come on, If GW2 were P2W then Black Desert Online is assault & robbery and Diablo Immortal is war crimes...

Mirage, Soulbeast and Renegade are arguably stronger specs than their EoD replacements. In pure dps Willbender surpasses Firebrand, but is nowhere near to provide the same amounts of tools or support.

I would want to known about what would be your profession of choice (in order of preference) for a male sylvari and a female charr, based on lore and cultural backgrounds. I already have all the professions and a total of 16 characters, but I'm re-rolling some of them because in terms of racial representation I made the mistake of making half of them from my fav race, and while at short term felt great in the long rung having 5-6 characters with exactly the same voice is turning out very annoying. So I want to increase the variety, and already have at least one character of each race and sex combination outside those two. My thoughts are something like this: Charr (female): 1) Warrior (which I already have, in male form) due military culture and the Blood Legion. 2) Engineer, due the Iron Legion and being charrs the pioneers of that class, plus their war machines and overall architecture. 3) Thief, due the Ash Legion and the furtive nature of felines. 4) Elementalist or Necro, due the Flame Legion, but they are more like outcast inside the charr because the cultural distrust towards magic and spell casters. Sylvari (male): 1) Ranger; links with nature and outdoor skills, focus on traditional weapons... 2) Thief; subterfuge, elusiveness, finesse and flow over raw power or tankiness. 3) Necro/Mesmer; links with the Nightmare Court and their twisted view of the Dream and deceit. 4) Revenant (which already have in female form); the youngest race and the youngest profession, the Mist feels a bit like an after-life version of the dream. What are your thougths/preferences around the topic? My only gripe is that I'm having really hard time to find out a class at which female charr animations doesn't look bas -very bad-.... Thanks in davance!

Hammer Rev needs more nerfs; some of the skills still do damage and none of them did reach a 2" cast time, so there's still room for "improvements".

Given your preferences, based on what you said: * Light armor: if Necro is out of the menu, condition Mirage with staff/staff works wonders. Gear choices would be either rampager, carrion or dire/trailblazer based on how much glassyness you would to have. Lord Hizen has a phenomenal solo build for open world PvE in his Youtube channel. When playing in teams at instanced content Mesmer is mostly used as alacrity provider. *Medium armor: condi Soulbeast, trailblazer stats, huge damage & sustain (remains mostly untouched by the sustain nerfs of the last months which affected other professions). Again you have a great video in Hizen's channel. In teams Ranger is usually either dps or as a support (Druid) as one of the best healers. *Heavy armor: plenty of options here. Guard is strong at PvE as power DH, condi FB or WB; in instanced content Firebrand covers all the roles: power dps, condi dps, hybrid support provider of quickness with great dps or full support (healer) with decent dps. Currently Guardian is meta at everything. FB is more versatile but WB has better mobility which opens the door to run any rune you want whitout having to rely in traveler, fireworks, etc. Serch videos from Roul in YT. Alternatively condi Renegade is still amongst the best solo classes around (same damage, albeit less sustain after the recent nerfs); in instanced content is mostly used as alacrity bot in power gear. That would be my choices, but be aware that a big balance patch is expected in 6 weeks, so things could change. My last advice: try to start to farm a lengendary armor of the type of class you think that you'll play the most asap; it takes ~18 moths to get a full set in PvP, ~6 months in WvW and ~2 months in PvE (but PvP and WvW are cheaper and soloable, whereas to get a legendary armor set in PvE you will need to farm raids).

No. You were wrong. At the time of the first post (beta 1), in August, Willbender was a POS, not even functional at any game mode, Naru and Crusaedir depised it and the spec clearly lagged behind meta builds as power Herald. Was clunky, lacked damage and had some problems in terms of sustain, and was nowhere near to replace other specs of Guard at any content. Then, when the second beta arrived in September, Vindicator was even stronger than Herald, with Eternity's Requiem and Mist Unleahsed delivering 50% more damage than currently, and Saint of zu Heltzer endurance cost was 50 and provided 3K heal and 3K barrier (later the numbers were halved). That was peak time for Rev and top bottom for Willbender; the gap was simply huge (specially at PvP) So, NOW, NINE months after your post, Willbender not only had some polish and refinements in terms of clunkyness removed from his animations, but also got massive buffs in the March 29 balance patc: Righteous Instincts: Increased bonus critical chance from 25% to 40% in PvP only. Advancing Strike: Increased immobile duration from 1 second to 2 seconds in PvP and WvW. Lethal Tempo: Increased damage bonus per stack from 2% to 3% in PvP and WvW. Flowing Resolve: Reduced ammo recharge from 30 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased initial base heal from 783 to 1,331 in PvP and WvW. Crashing Courage: Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 30 seconds in PvP and WvW. Roiling Light: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW. Heaven's Palm: Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP and WvW. Mighty Blow: Reduced cooldown from 8 seconds to 6 seconds in PvP and WvW. Zealot's Embrace: Increased power coefficient from 0.8 to 1.2 in PvP and WvW. Ring of Warding: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds in PvP and WvW. ...Which were enough to make him top meta in PvP, to the point that last MAT was won by stacking 3 guards (1 core, 2 WB) and 2 Harbingers. Meanwhile, in the last 9 months Revenant got multiple Jalis nerfs, hammer nerfs, greatsword nerfs, Kurzick nerfs, Kalla nerfs, plus the sustain nerfs (-65%) to Devastation (heals from Battle Scars) and Runes of Tormenting that halved the price of those in the BL market. So yes, Willbender is NOW the better Shiro, which wasn't the case 9 months ago. Is not fair to vindicate (pun intended) a claim made so far away in time after so many changes and patches, specially taking in consideration that WB has been buffed to megastar status whereas Rev had only bad news after bad news every time a patch arrived. But Naru din't use WB in MATs until March's patch.

No, but that was that way at PoF release, 4.5 years ago; when the damage nerf hit 2 years ago a lot of those specs were already toned down, and after the cut both Spellbreaker and Firebrand started their path to become deleted from PvP At the begining of 2020 we had more build variety than today (and for build variety I mean builds being competitive at MATs). Last week Anet even nuked DH and core Engineer, two builds with 0 presence in the meta.

June's patch is PvE focused. PvP nubers weren't as low as currently, ever.

You must be kidding. How before 2020 could be less variety than 2 Willbender + 2 Harbinger + 1 core Guardian? I don't remember any moment in time at which PvP stacked only 2 classes.

Doesn't people in power builds drop Shiro for Jalis due Vengeful Hammers provide better damage while also provide damage mitigation? So the legendary Assasin legend is worse at its task than a bunker oriented legend (which also has better tools for things like breaking bars)...

Impossible Odds should revert to its former version, to provide self quickness in PvE. Between the nerfs in damage fron sword skills, the removal of vulnerability procs across the traits, the removal of quickness and the general damage nerfs across all the classes from Feb 2018? 2019? there's no reason to run power Rev in PvE. Aside from low damage, the energy cost in Shiro are so high that you're basically camping autoattacks. A bad autoattack bot.

I found that the forward placement from axe works better than the other ones (centered on you) because for PvP it adds some range and doesn't waste AoE behind you, whereas in PvE you can easily make work both systems.

This would make professions with long range attacks and mobility not based on selecting a target (as Rangers, Deadeyes, Mesmers and now also Harbingers) utterly unkillable. You won't be able to chase them across the map and their long reach skills will poke you to death with any chance to close the gap and get in to mele. It will be bad at PvP but utterly terrible in WvW, when there's no "control point" to force the enemy to engage at close range...

Actually that's not true. With exactly that same skill (Phase Traversal) they introduced a nerf wich canceled the teleport when the target was out of the range. But since they didn't do the same to the rest of teleports in game (as Judge's Intervention) the outrage was so loud that they backpedaled 180º and entirely restored the functionality. But at that time they probably had like a dozen of people designing the balance patches so in that sense, yeah the probabilities now are very low. But don't say "ANet never reverts a change" since albeit rare, they sometimes do it.

No chance. They buffed the skill when no one was asking for and now instead of reverting the buffs they HALVED the range of the original skill, making it way worse than the original. Is clear that they want it to stay trash. Is the same as happened with the hammer or the nerfs to the core Engineer from four days ago: if you destroy something that isn't even meta (or barely played) it means that is a personal crusade of the main designer. We wouldn't see it back.

Weakness is fine. The only reason you're having problems with it is due Vindi is hardcountered by, which was called it since the begining. This is not Devil May Cry, Dark Souls or Elden Ring, games with a broad access to evasion due other limitations balance the dificulty, as low sources of healing, regen, small windows to burst bosses with complex attack patterns, etc. This is a game designed to have only a couple of evades across all game modes, with limited access to extra i-frames. When you design a class to circunvent (Daredevil) or fall short (Mirage) in that basic schedule problems arise. That was known, and ANet still still insisted in releasing the Vindicator, a spec around the concept of a single evade (which is also needed for other functions which conflict with the main concept of using evades to prevent damage). And then they doubled the endurance cost... Of course, since is Rev and ANet, they tried to compensate it buffing the numbers, which of course delivered obscene results. They nerfed (as they should) and now the reality already called months ago emerges: enjoy the train wreck. Just realize that Vindi is not well designed to PvP/WvW, which isn't anything new: some specs are really terrible in those game modes, since ANet barely supports or care about them.

Are you aware that the changes benefits mele? That means that the winner is the boon death ball: you have a zerg which wins due sheer numerical advantage. If the numbers are similar and two of them are in the same map they usually evade the other and focus on getting undefended keeps and ganking small groups or roamers along the map. If the two zergs collide the loser one just leaves the map. Ranged meta allows smaller guilds with brain and discipline to harrash, bait and defeat larger groups. A mele oriented meta largely disables that chance. Is the opposite of competitive gameplay. Is not like I care about it, but the changes will favour ktrains over anything. I guess that years after nerfing the rewards of Edge of the Mist is now the time to turning again the WvW borderlands in the definitive PvE experience.

Is because Rev players doesn't care. No one is running Vindi.