Buran.3796

Ok guys, thanx for the advices, they were informative. A month has passed, got my griffon, doubled the earnings it cost, had chance to try several builds in the Dragonfall, Dragon Stand, Octovine and other metas, made my mind, some of my conclusions: 1) As Mindcircus says, you don't need to tag much targets in most of those events. Most of foes currently barely drop things, the loot is condensed mostly in reward chest, and you get the chest as long as you do decent damage in the main event (which is fairly easy). Due most recent meta events (Dragonfall) are oriented towards the completion of mini-events to get keys for the reward chest a different approach works better:2) Focus on survability + damage, to complete the events faster. Support and mobility are secondary, usually not much needed. As result of that I'm currently playing mostly mele builds focused in either heavy AoE damage or anti-defiant bar burst: ) Condi Symbolbrand: large AoE with tons of vulnerability stacks and burn pulses; shared aegis to nearby allies, scepter as secondary weapon if range is required, good and flexible utility tools. Decent bar-breaking skills.) Condi Herald: strong AoE pressure with insane stacks of torment; almost unkillable. Good bar-breaking skills and some nice support boons and skills. Pure mele.*) Power Herald: strongest anti-defiant bar tools in the game, good single target damage while retaining sustain; high mobility. That's all, so far with pros and cons they are serving me well.

What are you talking about? The only skill from hammer affected by projectile hate is the auto attack, and no one ever run a hammer Rev in WvW based on the auto (you have plenty of other builds as long bow Rangers which are better at pew pew), The reason Rev hammer was picked were CoR, PS and DtH, none of them are projectiles, but long range AoE damage skills wich worked nicely in volleys against crowds. Hammer is absolute garbage and there's no reason to run such ballast in a WvW team instead of a mele Rev with condi weapons or a Necro/Ele if you want to reatain the long range AoE volleys. ANet should just delete the weapon and bring us main hand axe, a focus or something instead, because ranged Revenant won't comeback, ever.

Tried the hammer this morning for first time in months (maybe even in a year?).... Is such a monstrosity, such disgusting pile of garbage. Fortunately was just in PvE testing the scaling damage with different stats on different weapons, but I still shocked of how BAD the weapon is, even for open world content. Seriously, ANet should either DELETE this weapon from the Revenant and replace it with a long bow, a rifle, or something else or REVAMP the entire skill set and turn it into a mele defensive weapon (maybe the like of the Scrapper hammer). Is totally useless in every game mode and the first impulse after checking it was to gave it to my Guardians (then I remembered that Guardian hammer is neither in a good spot so I'm on the verge of salvaging it). I won't even touch this weapon again, makes me feel filthy and muddy. So that's the curren status of the Revenant armory at the moment: Mainhand sword: good.Mace: good.Offhand sword: useful, decent.Axe: good.Staff: weak, almost decent.Shield: weak but useful.Short bow: decent, but lacks a movenet skill and/or a block/evade.Hammer: abysmal. Spear: excellent.Trident: excellent, but needs a block.

1) Use /t to write only for your team.2) No. Some use it more than others, some never chat.3) If you lose a ranked match with one of your team mates disconected the remaining players on your team doesn't lose ranks.4) There's a running limit time to start the game, if happens that a match was near ready to start, one player leaved and you were offered the chance to join can happen that the match starts just seconds after jou oin to it. But you'll never invited to a match which already started.5) No.6) You can configure the select/rotate between foes; the default priority is 1: champions (for PvE and WvW), 2: enemy players, 3: everything else. It will prioritize players orver their phantoms or clones. You still can target them manually.7) You can perform a jump-evade which has the same duration but a bit larger distance travelling.8) Usually means that the signaled targed or area is going to be decapped, or lacks defense and should be capped for the closest member or your team, etc. You don't need to follow those indications, but the player which signs that thinks that is important...9) Matter of tastes; you can gain familiarity with the maps in the custom arenas. I prefer to not reveal my loadout to the enemy players before the match.10) Firghting before the match starts doesn't provide any material rewards, albeit offers a glimpse to the involved to get knownledge about their foes and their gameplay. A) Close is usually capped by either a bunker or a high mobility class.B ) There's no "true" answer for that. Time and experience will help to take that choice over what you had learn.C) Same as B.D) No, sadly.E) Intended, and there's not such thing as "fairness". ANet trends to fix bugs which could be exploited.F) Any finisher is fine; ANet has "llama drama", "chickennado" and similar silly finishers, plus the whole crap of the pedestals after the match for the winners, so any bad blood those things spill in the game they did that to themselves...G) Also fine.

They should revert the tome casting nerf in PvP; the tooltip still marks 0.25 seconds but the swap to tome skills is almost as slow as Rev's hammer #5 (1.75). Are the Engineers kits currently as slow to swap?

Burn Firebrand with axe is awesome, and can run ~23.4K HP, ~3.3K armor and over 2K condition damage making power core Guardian and Dragonhunter to look like a brittle, squishy houses of cards a joke. Yes, they do more damage, but they get one shooted if a boss farts in the wrong direction... The axe is nice, easily in the top three weapons of the Guardian.

Dire or Trailblazer or a mix of both. If you want damage as power Rev the way to go is full berserker: sustain comes from traits and the constant use of cc and defensive skills, not fro stats. Condi works in an entirely different maner.

The only place in which those classes are better than Rev is in instanced PvE and (only in the case of Guardian) WvW. Rev overall has a strong place across all the game modes at the moment. From best solo PvE character, to 3-4 viable builds in PvP, decent roamer and one of the back bones of the WvW zergs. The complaints come mostly from other PvP classes.

But you run core Rev. People won't be happy if they need to run Rev to counter Rev.

With PvP teams running up to 3 condi Revs at the moment and people asking for further nerfs in both power Herald, condi Herald and condi Renegade in the forums you can't even dream with those changes to take place, as much as I agree with you.

Is pretty much how should work up to gold. Once one reachs platinum there's skill enough involved so there's no dogmas to follow. But for gold and down the alternative is "ignore close, ignore mid, do what you want" and that is the reason why most of players don't reach platinum and keep coming to the forums to demand nerfs to builds that doesn't even show up in tournaments. Also, and this is only as example, there's similar problems understanding the value of secundary goals in different maps: in Forest the max amount of times the beast can respawn is 5 (assuming tat you can kill them almost instantly), which means they can potentially deliver 125 + 125 points. Holding a single control point for 14 minutes delivers 420 points and holding two for that time delivers 840 points. If you hold two points for the whole match is almost impossible for the enemy team to win, no matter how much beast they hunt down. That's why focusing in beast is so comical: I remember that in the old days of the Pro League, the ESL and so no decent team wasted time trying to kill them, so remained intact the whole match except in even matches near the end, in which became a valuable targets to seal a victory or a comeback due the respawn is 3'. This works different in plat+ because at that level no team will ensure full cap of nodes for such long time, but at gold and below the fever for killing the beast, getting the gifts of the djin or using the trebutchet is absurd. Anyway, wasn't a rant: is more than evident that a lot of people plays PvP just to fill the achivements or to craft the exclusive goodies, and in the mid-long term winning or losing matches doesn't change the overall rewards that the game mode provides. Was just that the essentials of the game mode are really basic, and I see them being ignored on regular basis.

1) If at the start of the match you go to the middle and after a long fight your team arises victorious don't inmediatly disband chasing into enemy territory. Far isn't your bussiness, neither the enemy beast: chances are that if you struggled to win at middle in team (even under the wing of support classes) you'll be crushed alone, and the enemy team will snowball to mid. But even if that weren't the case, most of the time the rival team team loses mid then they will try to decap far (specially after a wipe). Instead, be ready to defend the territory your team already own. I swear that I don't known what happens with Forest, but that map is a IQ sink... 2) Fighting in "corridors" is pointless (pun intended). You don't always need to stay in the middle of the control point, and sometimes you'll forced to fight on the way to a control point or a buff, or to help another team mate, but just fighting for fighting, away from any goal, and specially duelling off point while your team is bleeding in the scores is loosing the control over the map makes no sense. I don't mind when the enemy players are more skilled and me or my pals are outplayed in terms of combat but man, is shocking to play in Temple, to win the first attrition war at middle, to see that your partners known how to fight, to score 14 enemy kills in a row tanking at middle, to get the underground buff, and still losing by a long marging because my fellows were really excited about fighting off point. PvP isn't about splashing foes against a wall, and neither Jotun or the Svanir bring you a reward chest for doing a good skill rotation on them. ANet should run both 2v2 and 5v5 leagues in parallel; 3 control points seems "too intellectual" for the mainstream population of the game...

^Thanx, I'm working in Astralaria and expect to finish at the end of June, but the Glacial Axe looks so dope that I even ask to my self if would worth the change...

At the moment: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABc6t3lRwAZdsP2IOqTrvKA-zVZYXBzFmY0DlRmpQpVg8ziZqWA-w ...But I don't raid and barely touch dungeons. I'm prone to use in open world what works in PvP, because I found survability appealing over killing things fast. At the moment run condi based burn Firebrand in OW and mender based Firebrand in PvP. I have to upgrade the traveller runes to fireworks but outside that is pretty much the same build, going from power and healing in PvP with burning as accesory damage to burning being the main damage dealer in OW PvE because the forbidden stats od Dire or Traiblazer are available in PvE/WvW and they stack punching power and sustain. Still, I have to end a Celestial + Cleric gear combo to test how performs in PvE (because is probably the closest thing to mender). I mean, PvP is a little weird sometimes: bunker stats are forbidden (Knight, cleric, dire...) but on the other hand has a few exclusive attribute combos which are excellent (paladin, demolisher, destroyer, mender... ) and not available in PvE. For open world PvE (solo and in groups) I would rank condi Herald > power Herald > hybrid Firebrand > power Dragonhunter. Some other classes as Necros and Mesmers can work very well, but overall I don't think that they have advantage enough. Rangers is touted as one of the best "solo PvE classes" in the game thanks to the tanking pets and survability, but on the other hand, is not very great in terms of AoE damage. Hybrid firebrands and condi Heralds can do massive amounts of AoE damage while surviving without the need to support or retreat tactics.

I choose Revenant but I should say Herald, because I don't like Renegade at all and core Rev is meh and the class is full of bugs. Before HoT my main was Guardian and I should say that overall has appeal in both the core builds and the Dragonhunter and Firebrand specs.

Not that odd taking in consideration that in the real world maces are weapons specifically designed to negate the protection from armors creating trauma through delivering kinetic energy instead of slicing and bleeding enemies. A non armor/light armored fighter has no business wielding a mace vs foes with metal plates.And in the real world a hammer is not a ranged weapon.... but tell that to Rev.I would love to see the currently useless Rev hammer turned into something usefull in cqc. And the use of undewater spears as ground spears: spears and bows were the most usefull weapons in history untill the arrival of the gunpowder and in this game are almost absent.

^ But even after a chain of defeats in a row you end recovering those loses into wins. If you play 50 games chances are that will be 50/50 so at the end doesn't matter that much. And as other said, the difference urges to try to win. To be honest, It would be fine even if losing a game only provided 1 or 2 pips.

11 pips x victory, 4 pips x defeat; 30 and 15 silver coins respectively. Since for most the progression will stall ~50% w/l ratio, the progression seems fair.

Is not very good. I did play power Herald, condi Herald, condi Renegade, carrior Firebrand, sage Firebrand and mender Firebrand in this season (~260 mtaches). In Firebrand I moved from carrion, then sage and finally mender because the amount of damage gained with carrion didn't pay off how weak the healings were with the spec. Core burn guardian does more damage and has better heals in 1 vs 1 than the symbolic Firebrand, but lacks the axe, which is much better weapon in teamfights. You sacrifice too much team presence running a yolo burning Guard, that's why you don't see them in the AT. Maybe it can feel strong against some builds, but is a one trick pony with small weight in the current meta; don't see the reason to nerf it.

Most of the current cc does minimal damage. The reason you see so much is because with the nerfs in damage you need to be sure that you can apply pressure, so in skirmishes players try to stack cc to land their heavy hitters. The lesson is: you shouldn't try to step in the control points if you're unable to endure those combined attacks for a given time. The same that you can use Rev's staff #5 to enter in the DH pit to disable their traps, you can bait the enemies with some classes to waste their burst of cc in invulnerable states. What makes no sense is jumping in the central control point at the beginning of the match running a Thief, or a Mesmer or a Ranger, expecting that "thing will go well".

Because top-tier PvE dps classes and builds usually are trash at soloing content. Or because they had bad mechanics which don't transfer well from Fractals/Raids to open world bosses, etc. As example: scholar runes are absolute gabage for map completion, specailly for a Guardian.

Scourge had a great ride at the release of PoF but in the second year faded away; has been years since the last time that core necro had presence in PvP. And if I can play power Rev with berserker amulet in ranked anyone should do the same with any class and at least a few builds. In fact I think that we hadn't so much build variety in years; I did use 5 diffrente builds with only two different classes this season 20 and in the past 2 vs 2 mini-season my build was also different. When was the last time we had condi Rangers or Thieves, Renegades using short bow, oer even Tempest playing around? You didn't even mentioned Guardians, and I saw at least 3-4 different builds from that class doing decently at both ranked and AT. The difference between berserker herald and other classes is that herald still sits on 18.5k hp and has a lot of tools to avoid incoming damage. Something which isn't a reality for other classes.But Ranger has plenty of ranged damage to pressure targets and kill them while playing outside the control point areas filled with AoEs, the same as the Deadeye or DP Thieves (which play a hit and run). Mesmers also doesn't need to stay at melee range to do their job. So we have a fair amount of builds which tank and spam AoEs while not being much mobile, but also a good chunck of classes which can move fast around the map and poke at range or burst and disengage, decap uncontested nodes or get the map buffs while the bunkers slowly fight each others at middle. Before February, the problem was just the opposite: huge spike burst, half of a team downed in 30 seconds and the winning ones snowballing the map winning in 5 minutes after a 4 minutes queue. The current state, with the slower pace, the build variety and the balance between "yes I normally can tank damage but still I can die fast if I got cc chained" is way better.

Yep. The sequence is usually shield #5 > axe #2 > axe #3, then either shield #4 or just swap to scepter #3 > scepter #2 > focus#4 > focus #5. With the PvP version of Firebrand (oftenly traited 1,1,1) each one of the cc add immobilize, slow and burning, and the axe #2 has a haze, so doesn't only works well in player vs player covering the burnings and containing the foe, but in PvE is very effective breaking defiance bars. Obviously He's running a 2,2,2 totally commited to permaquickness so won't be nearly as strong at disabling bosses, but still once you get used to push with the shield, land the symbol and pull the enemy towards it to then swap, root and stack the other symbol is hard to go back, because works really well.

Let's compare wall of reflection with feedback. Wall of reflection is better in any way shape or form. Feedback lacks cd reduction trait. WoR basically has higher uptime. WoR is a light field (aoe cleanses btw) while feedback is an ethereal field (1 confusion per projectile finisher :)). I agree entirely, that's a fair comparison. I wouldn't have any problem at ANet buffing Feedback, specially at WvW, because outside some instanced content is at WvW where Wall of Reflection had more presence.

What are you even talking about? I was just asking to compare https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feedback with guard symbols lol. I saw the wiki entry before my post, what should be compared? Feedback seems more related to Wall of Reflection or Sanctuary, both are consecrations, both are utilities, most of the symbols used by Guardians are weapon based skills...