Buran.3796

Roul saiys in the description that condi Rene is still faster despite He expects now a larger time with Rene due the nerfs to the sustain in the runes of tormenting, which susprises me due condi dps Rene runs Ninghtmare (and is way faster at killing things with them). My point is: WB does amazing damage but is a bit lackluster in self healing (Litany's cooldown is large without Valor's Monk Focus, and taking Valor crushes your damage); condi Herald, condi Necro, condi Soulbeast and condi Mirage are still tankier than most of the new specs despite the nerfs in sustain (the nerfs also didn't affect Soulbeast or Mirage) so I don't agree with the Stx.4857 argument of "ANet nerfed the old specs nerfs and delivered better new specs". That could be the case with the Bladesworn (but I will say that Hizen runs mostly the same stat combinations with the Bladesworn as He ran at his older Spellbreaker and Firebrand builds). I take that claim a bit personal because in some of the new specs in batlanty not true: Harbinger is not better than previous Necros at being tanky while dealing damage and Vindicator is one of the frailest specs ever made: it does way lower damage than condi Renegade and can put yourself in downed state faster than the glassiest Ele build. Soloing HoT maps with a core Rev instead makes you feel like a god...

Why you want space? You run a pure mele build, with barely any ranged pressure. Weakness is a problem since the whole plan relies on being able to evade oftenly, as so is fighting ranged roamers (probably most of them, actually). The only Vindi I saw in WvW beating my (Willbender) kitten after long, long strifes did run greatswords + swords, and HAD damage. How do you kill foes with no crit chance and no ferocity in a strike build? I appreciate your effort but lack faith in it. All bunker roamers I found in WvW with succesful builds had damage in another way or other: either constant apply of pressure or burst.

I think that sustain wise Willbender, Vindicator and Harbinger are quite low. Sure you have some nice mitigation tools in some of the new specs, and in terms of damage most are strong, but some of them have low self-sustain and must rely on bursting fast the targets to prevent going down.

Any 300 s cooldown skill, to start.

The only way to force people to play Vindi without buffing Vindi is nerfing everything else. A more competitive Vindi will push sales of EoD, whereas a strong core/Herald/Renegade will make people camp in the PoF expansion (which includes HoT). But I doubt they plan to buff Vindi since both Warrior and Ranger have priority (they have been neglected by longer, whereas Rev at least had a meta spec as alacrity sharing dude for a while). The jump is also extremely had to balance, because at 100 endurance unit cost is garbage, but with so much access to enhanced vigor between Retribution, Vindicator, sigils and rune combinations any cut will make the spec able to spam barrier and heals each few seconds. So don't discard things as Sevenshots going back to the botched state in which it was. Remember that they buffed Forced Engagement for no reasons just to finally end reverting the buffs back and in adition of HALVING the range of the skill. They recently buffed shortbow so now you cast Spiritcrush behind you, who says that they can't go and cut it to 450 range? My guess it that new nerfs are coming. And maybe new and unexpected bugs.

"Mobility creep" Makes me think about the one-legged Vindicator. By the way, is fun to have mobility in PvE since every new foe in OW seems to spam chill, cripple or other soft ccs. No wonder most OW players love ranged combat...

WvW is playable, but some builds are unkillable mostly due ANet removed 1/3 of the damage two years ago. Low damage + buffed defensive stats + disengaging tools = some builds can't be bursted 1 vs 1.

While WB is now after the buffs a worthy spec to be played in PvP I'll believe that is better than power Herald at that task IF replaces Herald at MATs. Meanwhile is a yolo build that in the hands of one of the best players in the world can reach the top in a game mode withut conformed teams.

The nerfs in sustain made power Herald significatively worse in PvE (solo), so condi Renegade is now the way to go. Couldn't care less about instanced team gameplay: outside fractals the rewards are crap, way worse than OW/PvP, specially in the ghost lands of Cantha. I can see ANet trying to further nerf Renegade and buff Vindicator, which would change nothing: my condi Willbender can put ~28 stacks of burns in less than 4 seconds and usually stack 12-20 might for himself . For context: it melts a veteran WvW hwarg in <5 seconds, or kill an awakened abomination before even rises the barrier, and that damage with the WB is while having 21K HP and over 3K armor and permanent +25% movement speed. No need to waste time in power Rev builds while burn WB cruises PvE content like a bullet train...

Bunker Scrapper also works well: you can't kill DE, but He can't kill you nor prevent you from breaking and capping control points.

I think He's trolling. Half of his "S+" tier choices are yolo builds that can't even engage in teamfights without dying in seconds.

BINGO. Close the thread, the debate is over.

I don't think new specs for the new expansions are a good idea: we "just" have 3 + core and they are already cloning animations like crazy, plus you don't see much roles to fill whichstill remain vacant. Instead I would prefer the implementation of a new base weapon, available to core & the specs, to try to fix the abysmal state in which some of the builds are. Anyway whatever ANed chooses to do, I would prefer it to be either hybrid or condi oriented, and better if is ranged. Because power damage overal suck in the game, specially in PvE. And outside that, for the new expansion I would want the imprementation of individual homing, which is one of the few things which could be borrowed from other MMOs which GW2 still lacks.

Necro. Is not Thief due Daredevil totally eclipsed Deadeye outside roaming. Is not Guardian due DH had ups and downs, and is not clear if WB will be any better than a dps FB (before the dps nerfs). Is not Ranger due Untamed is less than stellar. Is not Ele due alll three specs seeems a lot the same, filling the "typical mele caster trope", lol. Mesmer had some consistent good specs, but nerfs ended making then to not always look great. Engineer is another solid choice for "best specs", but is not as "meta" as necro or eas easy to play in every game mode. Warrior is nopium. Revenant has two trash tier specs, and outside PvP and WvW roaming/zergs (at which Herald do well) you could just play Renegade in all game modes and forget about it has other specs (or core). So is Necro: all specs (and even core) are powerful and fill a role. Plenty of room to chose either go condi or power, ranged or mele, playing a single character or commanding an army of minions...

Well, since Revenant was one of the selling points of HoT, but PoF's Renegade is way better at PvE content, they no longer need competitive core or Herald builds to sell expansions... Also, I known that in every forum there's moanings about changes at every class, but lest be real: what happens with some of the largely UNFIXED bugs in this profession would be entirely unnaceptable by Guardian, Ranger or Necro players. Just try to figure what would happen in the Reddit forums if those classes had random changes in the order of the utilities while moving from maps, mounts, game modes or instanced content.

Condi damage has very low presence in conformed PvP, so is not like WB profits too much for that feature. In my experience WB hits hard but has sustain issues; the mobility skills are extremely heterogeneus in terms of reach and castings, a lot of them with stops, or rooting animations at the end or the begining, etc.

Also Rev arrived 3 years later than GW2 with the HoT release, Anyway, lore wise Asuras are slanted towards schollar professions (and the ones focused in itelligence more than in physical prowness) and they are fairly invidualistic and competitive, so NOT making a heavy armor user asura makes sense. From the mid armors both Ranger and Thief look "too primitive" for the kind of intellect the lore adscribe to the Asuras.

I've been watching this morning the new Drakania class in BDO and I have to reaffirm in all of my criticism about Vindicator in terms of (robbed, poorly executed) animations and fx. Sadly the amount of grindy randomness in BDO is too much to me, but in terms of how design and execute a new class PA runs in circles around ANet. And that's only about the looks; in terms of performance Vindi is and absolute ballast...

For sure. Since the Forced Engagement range nerf battles against good necros with Renebow builds are a lost battle and those variants are fading from Ranked. They have now always a 300 unit range advantage and only need to hit you with a single cc (fear, chill... ) and then use corrupt and the fight is over. In best case scenario you breakstun and flee so then they don't use corrupt but still have plenty of cc and erease you from the euqation with a single skill.

The game is full of unblockable attacks or procs which makes unblockable your next attack/s .

Condi Renegade is still brutaly strong in OW. Torment rune users would miss the sustain from them (and also the shavings in Battle Scars), but the truly powerful builds use Nightmare and deal WAY more damage. Strong condi burst with both high single target dps and sustained AoE damage + range, high mobility, plenty of mitigation (Jalis) and bar breaking tools make it a well rounded all purpose design. Condi Soulbeast and Necro are still a beast, and barely affected by nerfs. I think that some of the new specs have potential, but so far, aside from Mechanist (which is powerful, tanky and easy to play) most of the newcomers have still a lot to prove before replacing the old solo OW meta.

But Firebrand already gave up all his damage and healing/sustain in PvP so became utterly unplayable in that game mode... We already paid the price of the Mirage (sort of: you still see some Mirages in PvP from time to time, which doesn't happens with Firebrand at all). Which other game modes would you like erase the FB from to consider it as "balanced"? You want to remove FB from WvW or maybe from PvE?

Works in the sense of "you can play condi Vindi in PvE" but is worse than condi Herald which is also surpassed by condi Renegade. Main problem is that the greatsword is a pure strike damage weapon, which can proc a bit torment on chill with the Retribution trait, and the Alliance has also a bit of burns and torment. So you barely get any condi damage compared with mace + axe and the elite from Mallyx. At the end, you're just running a core Rev with a single evade. In WvW and PvP you can use celestial/carrion, but is nowhere near a Willbender which can ramp up 25 to 40 stacks of burns in seconds depending on how frail you want to run your yolo build. Other professions get a lot more from celestial or trailblazer stats than the Vindicator. The day Vallun tested the build which was refered he dueled a celestial Virtuoso for over 20 minutes, and most of the time his condi Vindi was unable to lower the enemy HP below 80%. WB is also way better. So short answer: no, doesn't work.

Didn't enjoy too much WB in the first two betas and was sceptical running it in the first weeks of EoD, but after seeing the videos from Hizen and Roul builds and changing a bit my build and gear and after the lastest patch and the buffs (looking Naru streaming) I'm starting to feel more confident about the spec and finding a better flow in the gameplay. So far: Hizen's build is a full celestial set with Balthazar runes and sigils of wrath and concentration; Radiance 3,2,3, Virtues 3,2,1 and Willbender 1,1,1. Offers a pure hybrid build with ~1600 condi damage, near 20K HP, near 2900 armor, 35% base crit chance, 200% crit damage, max cap burn duration and over 52% boon duration. Is a very solid build with both great physical and condition damage. Roul has a pure condition damage build with half trailblazer and half plaguedoctor stats, sigils of bursting and battle, same Blathazar runes, with Radiance 2,2,1, Virtues 3,2,1 and Willbender 1,2,2 (there's a more offensive variant with Zeal instead of Virtues but sacrifices a lot of sustain for not much more damage) . It has 2K condition damage, nera 3K armor, over 22K HP, cap burning duration and ~17% boon duration. The physical crit chance and crit damage are weak, but doesn't matter since kills faster than Hizen's one. My approach to those two builds has been taking what I like of then and making some changes to my preferences. The result is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWzAw+tlVwUZdMMGJW0WbxUA-zxQY1oDzDrMKtC6IBc4AEuO4tMpnG-e Dire armor + Balthazar runes and full celestial everything else. Bursting sigil plus Battle (albeit Rage is under scrutiny), Litany, Whirling, Purging Flames , Stand Your Ground! and Feel My Wrath!, albeit those two last can be replaced by Contemplation of Purity and/or Renewed Focus if needed. 1800 condition damage + 3K armor, almost 22K HP, cap burn duration and ~29% boon duration, ~30% crit chance with almost 190% crit damage. Radiance 2,2,1, Virtues 3,2,1, Willbender 1,2,2. I'm testing which one of the first Radiance traits is better; also testing if Willbender 1,1,1 performs the best. With the current build as long as I'm hitting things I'm proccing burns and therefore might; I'm getting burst with over 26 burn procs and 25 might stacks are easy to get but the average in combat is ~15 burns all the time. As long as you have stability or blind your foes, is amongst the fastest crowd killing machine I ever run. But have to test the sustain vs hard foes befores reaching a conclusion. Meanwhile Naru is running in PvP a Marauder + Divinity rune physical damage build, with sigils of Energy and Cleansing, Radiance 3,3,3, Virtues 1,1,3 and Willbender 2,3,2. So far seems solid albeit not beta. I'll keep testing those in PvE, WvW and PvP; so far looks promising compared to what we had in the betas and first release. The pace is very diffrenet to what playing a Guardian usually feels, maybe closer to a fighting game or so. But yes, I would say that now WB is fairly decent, in most of game modes.

Another vote for Willbender; after the latest buffs is VERY strong in OW PvE with both hybrid (celestial) and condi based builds, and in PvP the power variants made good progress with marauder + divinity runes based stats. All those builds have good mobility and use fast hitting mele attacks, with plenty of damage and unexpected levels of HP for a class which is used to have to stay at 11K HP and have a very slow pace in exchange to deal big damage. Now you can stay above 21K HP, over 3K armor, move fast, do tons of bursty burns and still have decent crit chance and damage in PvE, while at PvP you have less armor and focus mostly in physical damage but still retaining a very dinamic gameplay.