Buran.3796

Compared to a mesmer Guard has low mobility and weak HP. The FB healings were serverly nerfed at the beguining of March; as result of that Firebrand must chose to either go mender to have sustain (greatly reducing their damage), sage for hybrid damage but halving the sustain, or to use carrion going full glass cannon with no heals. Is a very stat intensive class. Core Guardian is easier to play but teir support is much more limited. Also, large AoE presure made by half of the classes seems fair due the other half seens to rely in stealth and burst->disengage. You reap what you sow.

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.

^ Some thoughts: I''ve played 236 ranked matches in Season 20 PvP, so far waaay more than any other before (never past over 160 and in most of them I sit around 90, just enough to get the rewards of the first byzantium chest). I played that much beacuse I wanted to test the new 5 vs 5 meta and to secure the achievent for the PvP amulet (which I got at 109 victories, wierdly). Iwon 122 of those 236 matches and sit now around 1350 (gold 2), my best was ~1350. I've played in this season condi Herald, bunker Renegade, 3 different Firebrand builds but most of those matches were made played with power Rev, using the build discussed by Vallun a few weeks ago: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAwyZlxQKMPyi1RXMOCjRSiMCqgpsVezE-zZIPlMFC9KCyXCkwCQgDA Is fantastic. Feels as the most tanky power build I run (mostly due the February changes) but also because I learned to properly rotate the evades, blocks, cc, heals and and protection seing him to properly use the build (was not enough to reach plat but that's my fault. Feels really, really durable, aside from fights vs thieves, because stealth + steal + stun/daze & repeat is just too much, but hey, thieves are terribad at teamfights, and we shine at those. You can go tanky and condi; it means running Carrion amulet and either Glint + Mallyx (excellent sustain) with huge AoE condition pressure, but that build (which is probably the best solo PvE in the game) won't last against some hard counters as the Spellbreaker. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PmABkel7lpQIMLKidRSMMCiJSgsCSgj7SdrD-zZoOleFBRLBaXIkwCwfDA You can also run condi Renegade, with our without Kalla; but that one requires more team support because losing Glint means losing a lot of sustain and the short bow is terribad at close range (and you will be pressured, a lot). Condi core can also work well: Jalis + Mallyx, but lacks mobility. I also tried with Paladin amulet +Glint & Jalis and is tough as nails: Jalis damage reduction tools are strong in this meta of numbed damage, and the team stability to secure finishers feels fantastic. The problem is that with tanky condi bunkers based on carrion and mace + axe or shortbow you have both sustain AND heavy AoE damage, but your'e vulnerable to cc, whereas physical damage bunkers based on Jalis are durable and strong against cc but don't do damage. Their pressure is lacking in 1 v1 and just garbage in teamfights, because neither swords or staf work outside berserker amulet. That build (paladin + Jalis & something) works very well in a team with a Firebrand (you stack stability, protection, weaknes, vulnerability and cc and they stack even more cc, aegis, heals and much more AoE damage. But most of the time, playing alone, your team isn't aware of how this works, so if the FB makes a tandem with you the results are great, if not just doesn't work. So paladin, retribution and Jalis work pretty well preventing damage, is just that they lack the push of damage to be a real bruiser (and now paladin amulets were also nerfed in stats due other classes). But outside conformed teams in AT, the current best Revenant build is power Herald with the berserker amuylet and traits in that previous link. By the way, works also very well in PvE: I soloed almost every Hero Point in HoT this week with that build, is a breaking defiance bar machine which can toast most of those champions in a few minutes with either minimal damage taken or just recovered in a blink.

Ok, saw it entirely. First of: there's nothing wrong with having the axe with viper stats (griever can also work fine), but Firebrand's axe is one of the few weapons in the game which works as good having berserker stats as having hybrid ones (Rev's trident & spear and Renegade's short bow being others). Personally I use marauder in all of my Guardian/DH/Firebrand weapons (they wield Valkyrie in the past but swapped the stats when the radiant trait was nerfed) because I hate running around with 11-12K HP. Except torch, wich never crafted as ascended because always felt like a very glassy weapon to run (so I tested in exotics). I like marauder in weapons instead of in armor because weapons are easier to swap, and a zerk armor works for every heavy class in the game. Anyway, your build is purely power with burns and bleeds as extra damage, not one built around condi damage; and due your attack speed + AoE procs those pulses of burning damage will happen oftenly: is a wellcomed buff in dps but I don't think you should punish your power stacks to get that extra damage. Is the same with the signet: why to swap to Wrath to get extra condition damage? You run power, Bane makes perfect sense. Valor is a very interesting choice in your build: you will proc a lot of aegis which will grant you protection (probably uneeded) and might; I think I like Honor more (3,3,2) because provides also some might but mostly due the increase in both symbol radius and symbol duration. The larger area is phenomenal vs mobs, because you fill the entire view before your character, and the pulses will proc crits and burns like crazy (the more enemies, the better), but even agaist single bosses, the +50% (2 seconds) extended duration is really great to stack those procs. I like your build, much more interesting than the ones in the meta-pages. I'll farm some trinkets and try in one of my guardians.

Some fast tips (had to read it entirely later): 1) Axe + shield/scepter + focus synergize better that scepter + shield/axe + focus (but don't believe me, that's based in my experience against players, and tot the A.I.).2) In Zeal, Furious Focus is massively stronger than Kindled Zeal. You're running mostly a power build, Kindled ads a pitty 248 condition damage to your build, Furious makes that, under fury, your attacks stack vulnerability. You get 48 seconds Fury in a row if you rotate your sources, which means that in PvE you effectively have perma fury; each symbol under perma fury procs vuln, you will stack 25 vuln over any foe in matter of seconds (assuming they don't melt before). That's a 25% increased damage, compared against 248 condi damage... Ditch KZ.3) Not sure if I would chose Agony sigil over Battle, check with a cheap weapon which one stacks more might and salvage it after to recover the sigil to put the one which performs the best in good use. Congrats, seems a sick build for PvE.

I have a couple of ascended armor sets in my two guardians (1 zerk, 1 marauder) and serveral ones more amongst my two revs (1 serk, 1 trailblazer, 1 viper, 1 legendary set) and was starting to work in either a new heavy legendary set or a new dire or celestial set for my guardians when ANet announced that they will implement a "legendary wardrobe" shared across your account, which made me halt the crafting to see how it goes. In the last weeks I've played plenty of power Herald, condi Herald, condi Renegade, power Dragonhunter, hybrid Firebrand and dire Firebrand, in both open world PvE, PvP and WvW, experimenting with the stats, the weapons, skills and trait selection. Until April the power Dragonhunter was my favourite iteration of the class: easier to play, bursty, excellent in PvE and decent at PvP/WvW. Is no longer the case: I changed my mind. Guardians traditionaly had two handicaps: limited access to permanent movement enhancers and low base HP; the Firebrand spec, after the last two months of patches (nerfs) added a new one: bad healings. This means that the class is stat-intensive: you need to chose either maximizing damage (which means being vulnerable to be one shooted and having mobility limitations) or enhancing your HP, healings or movement in different degrees which would subsequently lower your damage. To some extent is also what happens with the Paladin in the D&D tabletop game. But I'll encourage you to chose the Firebrand over the Dragon Hunter, and to craft your first ascended armor in berserker stats. My reasons: GW2 prioritizes melee combat above ranged combat, and PvE pushes that to the max: most of the encouters in instanced content are about people stacking the foes and themselves against a wall. Longbow is currently meh at long range and pretty terrible in cqc, and even scepter is used mostly at point blank in PvE. So in terms of the new weapon and playstile the DH doesn't flows with the "mainstream". Yes, you can kite at 1200 with the LB and retreat with F2 and place traps in the way, but, that's not how you will figth in fractals, raids and even in world events.Firebrand, instead, is a close range AoE fighter; most of the damage will come not from a spike from traps and greatsword #2 or sword #3, but from regular pulses from your symbols. Those symbols will stack over time both physical and burning damage, covering a large area and proccing boons for you and your fellows and debuffs to a large number of foes.Firebrands have better cc than Dragonhunters; wasn't always the case but at the current moment it seems so: as a DH most of your cc comes from skills with a medioum to long cooldown; as Firebrand mixing axe + shield/scepter (or sword) + focus (or torch) means spamming your weapon skills over and over. Soloing hero poins and champs it FB feels easier becauseyou can break the defiance bar on regular basis without too much troubles. And those cc and the learn of their use is way more important to future PvP/WvW endeavours than to land burst in PvE. The thing is that the "stackontopareyouusingscholarrunes?burstnow!" won't teach you much about the GW2 combat system. Sure FB is more complicated than DH in terms of number of skills, mechanics and management, but will make you a better player.In the past guardians had only a single condition to cause significative damage, burnig, which ramps up very fast but was hard to cover; core and DH had good fire builds, and part of that for DH was due the trait that applied burns on block. But that trait no longer exists. Firebrand has bleeds to cover your burns, and cripple, slow, immobilize, vulnerability and even a daze. Most of them are short lived, but very handy against mobs, and one of the reasons why dealing with bosses damaging their defiance works really well with this class. The Firebrand is a hybrid damage class; even if you gear your FB for pure power damage you will deal a good amount of burning thanx to the symbols and the F1 procs. I think that pure condi FB is a better burn guardian than a pure condi DH, and if we chose an hybrid (viper/griever) or even pure power build the extra condition damage fovours the Firebrand.The aegis on demand through Mantra of Solace is huge; don't last much, so requires a good timing, which means that you're forced to learn which hits you should endure and which ones you should pro-actively block or evade. Is harder to use than the hard mitigation from DH's F3, but you will use this skill a ton more times. You will use cc to gain time to recover from cooldowns your evades, you will use evades to recover time to your mantras, you will use your mantras to recover time for your ccs... The more you play the FB the more organic will become that flow....And there's the tomes, which of course are part of that flow. Enhances for better what before PoF was arguably the best support class in the game. So best became better. You have more damage and cc, cleansing and buffs, extra healing and support. So, do that: craft a berserker ascended armor; and get some cheap trinkets in the new S4/S5 maps: a set for power damage, a set for hybrid damage (viper/griever), another for support (cleric or minstrel) and even another for tank condition (trailblazer or dire). Craft marauder weapons if your HP seems too low or zerk if is ok. Don't bother with maximizing runes for a while: use fireworks or the cheap traveller alternative. If you have no much time gather iron or quartz, if you can play longer events do Auric Basin, Entangled Depths, Dragon Stand, Istan Domain and (once you have a Griffon) Dragonfall. For the time you would able to do T3/T4 Fractals you should have gold enough to craft more ascended armor sets. Or plan to play ~5 seasons in PvP to get the legendary one at low cost. Probably the next expansion will arrive sooner, so at that time maybe the new spec spices the things. Forget the metas, experiment with builds changing the trinkets, and Just have fun.

^ You forget to said that duration in some conditions like burn were halved in the Feb patch. In fact ANet went forward and back in some of the changes because probably didn't test enough what worked better, if longer duration with lower stacks or viceversa. Again: I don't see a buff in what were able to do. What changed is that due the physical damage was more nerfed in February than the conditions across all classes, pressure bunkers as condi Revs, burn Guardians and core Necros became more impactfull, because they can't be bursted that fast so they can ram up AoE condi pressure and became relevant in teamfights.

You see more condi Revs because latest patches trashed the staff, so once you wield a mace or even a short bow, there's not much reasons to run zerk instead of condi. Can't remember buffs in the latest patches, can you quote a source? Edi: by the way, I'm against buffs to Revs at the moment (outside changes in the hammer, which is useless in every game mode).

...In PvE, but if the Build Editor figures are accurate, in WvW and PvP those numbers are way lower. I also made a mistake with the Firebrand stats: a patch in the second week of March slashed the aegis base heals to 199 in PvP, not sure if the editor adjusted that scale. But yeah, no one seems to run a sage or mender amulet with Revenant in PvP, so I guess doesn't provide much advantage.

I see. In the Firebrand after the latest nerfs sustain depends a lot of the Honor traitline and the heals provided by evades and blocking aegis while casting the healing mantras; the base value of the healing in those aegis is 645, and each point in power healing increases the value healed in 0.5 (so 1000 healing power as the Mender's amuelt in PvP increases the healing to 1145, and Sage's 500 healing power to 895). That coeficient changes based on the skill, but since most of the heals (#6) for that class have long cooldowns and do require specific trait lines to work well most of the Firebrands do need to take Mantra of Solace and Mender or Sage if they want sustain. I've played bunker variants of Rev either based on Carrion or Paladin amulets in PvP, and I was wondering if Sage would make any difference, but seems that in this class is mostly wasted. Thanx for the detailed response.

If you are or plan to be good as Ele and you enjoy the playstile there's no reason to not devote your time to that class: albeit hard to master is powerfull in all game modes and at the moment has sustain to endure anything in PvP/WvW. If you want to play something easier from the trio you listed I would recomend you the Ranger: I like both Guardian and Necro, but both have a low roof in terms of mobility, and Guardian is a "stat intensive class", because has very low base HP, so need to invest points in vitality (and Firebrand even in healing power) to survive in WvW. The Ranger offers variants with high sustain, strong damage (in both physical and condition based builds) excellent mobility and also a good disengaging tools (access to stealth) to avoid unneeded deaths or just to reset a fight (is lame, but works for them). That's what I would chose if I were in your shoes.

Ok, I've been busy looking at the healing coeficients of the Guardian (specifically: Firebrand) and out of curiosity I took a look over non-healer Revenants (i.e.: bunker builds not based on Ventari). Seems that Jalis, Glint and Mallyx provide the most for that kind of build, specially Jalis; so I took a look over the essential tools in terms of heal recovery: Out of the box Vengeful Hammers to heal 53 units x second, and Steadfast Rejuvenation heals 67 units x second x energy unit of upkeed cost. So with 0 healing power a Rev using Vengeful Hammers + SR heals (6x67 + 53) = 455 x second. A Revenant in full ascended cleric gear and rune of the Flock (+1556 total healing power) increases the Vengeful Hammers basic healing from 53 to 59 x second (+11,3%), and the Steadfast Rejuvenation from 67 to 83 x energy unit x second (+23,8%) for a total of (6x83 + 59) = 557 x second (+22,4%). So going from 0 to 1556 healing power increases that synergy in less than 1/4 or 102 healing points x second.Also out of the box Elevated Compassion goes from 389 healing x boon (but with an internal cooldown of 3 seconds, and I don't known if that includes us) to 661 healing x boon with 1556 healing power (+69,9%), but this trait seems weaker based on those icd limits. So, based on that, seems that healing power is pretty much a useless stat for tanky Revs? The base values of those traits seems fair, and diverting so many atribute points on helaing power doesn't show much impact, at least on paper. I'm missing something? Can I ditch entirely healing power for this class while theorycrafting?

ok sure, but 1 hour dishonor ? come on you ruin the game for 9 other people. 1 hour is perfectly fine if you are continuously doing it. If the game disconnects the rest of the team suffers no ranking loss and even if they lose (which usually happens fast) they still get rewards. But yeah, is not faoult of others if He lacks a stable connection...

Vallun main is Thief. He's currently in the top 50 of the ranking and has over 30k matches; I saw his pie of classes usage in PvP and I'm pretty sure that He has a FEW THOUSANDS matches played as Revenant. I'm pretty sure that He can play in platinum any class in the game, including power Revenant (which due their role in PvP has strong resemblances with the Thief playstyle). I would have post videos of some other top Revenant players (which main the class) as Aka Cryptic or Tubby TwoTon but they play mostly WvW roaming and don't post much content lately. Most of the top PvP Revs aren't very active sharing their gamaplay (there's few exceptions) but since the Vallun video helped me and is amongst the most recent (up to date) power Rev video and is very concise in terms of explaining how the build works, why He choses some traits over others and how to optimize the performance in the matches I judged the video as flawless to people which struggle playing the class. But I'll be glad to see and share any videos from you about the topic. Because seems like you entered in the thread no to help the creator to play the class better, but to discourage him from playing it. He's struggling, asks for help, you advice him to resign. That sounds awesome /s.

They follow the Hollywood rule: armors are useless and always have been this way.Tankiness/sustain in this game is more related to skills (blocks, blinds, protection, weakness debuff... ) or placement/mobility (evades, i-frames, disengagement...) or mitigation (barrier, regeneration, healings...) than raw atributes alone. Plus toughnes/armor is ignored by conditions. Being said that: you can build very tanky armor plate users in GW2 (the boneback of any WvW zerg is made of heavy armor users), is just that in PvP you use the class builds which performs the best for a given role, and if happens that bunker eles are better at tanking and zerker heralds are better at bursting that are the roles you will see the most...

If you want to play power Rev in large teams in WvW probably you should focus in support: using Glint to share/enhance boons and Jalist to provide stability or protection. I would say that at the moment for power Rev in zerg vs zerg at the goal is not to provide damage (a role in which will pale in shame compared to Necros or Eles). Hammer had a long run, from initially being mediocre for PvP, subpar in PvE but amazing in WvW to its current status in which is a ballast in every game mode. If you want to both provide support and deal damage a condi Rev will serve you better, because Mallyx + Jalis have good synergies and is tanky while dealing a hell of short to mid range AoE damage. Anyway you will found better sources than me in this forum; I leaved my WvW 3 years ago, and talk about what I see while roaming...

I'll encourage you to take a look at this guide from Vallun of power Rev: If you want to play the classical Glint/Shiro you should run berserker amulet. Sustain is obtained through protection, life siphoning, blocks & blinds and weakness, with mobility and cc playing a key role. If you want to play condition Rev, there's at least two viable builds (condi Herald and condi Renegade) and if you want physical tank there's also a few variations of core Rev and Herald using Jalist that can work very well. Being said this, power Rev is mainly a +1 or a team fighter with high mobility, good cleave and excellent cc in small skirmishes, which benefits not playing alone. You shouldn't try to solo thieves or mesmers because most of the time they will beat you, and you shouldn't try to solo everything else (except to defend a node) because the other classes are tanky and even if you can win it takes just too much time, which would be better spent in +1/teamfights.

Currently the main difference in PvP between a Thief and a power Rev is that the Herald has much better sustain in teamfights. If you reduce the extra effects on the current Shiro skills you will find that:1) The damage won't be that great.2) In n vs n teamfights the Rev will die fast. At the moment power Rev clearly loses vs Thieves and Mesmers, and the other classes are so tanky that there's no point to try to solo them, even if we think that we would win. Also, there's no reason to touch Jade Winds: does 0 damage and spents the whole energy of the legend swap, so the follow up is usually an auto attack. Is more a team-fight oriented tool than a skill which benefits Revs on duels.

Which one and why?

A well played Weaver is also unkillable. Prepatch I would say either Mirage or Daredevil. Post-patch Mirage is still strong but I would say Daredevil has the edge. Still, with the current meta of nerfed damage if they crash against a bunker Ele or Rager is almost impossible to score the kill.

PvP is mostly ~2~4 minutes of wait to join, ~1~2 minutes for the match to start and then roughly 10 minutes of gaming. So the inactive period consumes easily 30-40% of the time x match. Is easy to understand why most of people chose to PvP while farming different content in either PvE or WvW maps, because the lifeless PvP hub won't produce any value from our waiting time. Be as edgy as you want; I don't have any phone linked to the game. Anyway, this beg was made more than two years ago, when I used to play GW2 content while waiting for a PvP match; nowadays when I want to queue I just minimize the game and run twitch or any other thing in my desktop while I wait for the horn.... For sure their disregard about the topic did nothing to improve the game mode, and to be honest I no longer care.

Guardian is a burn specialist; burns were until FB their only relevant condition in terms of damage (and still the bleeds in the FB can't compete with their burns), whereas both Eles and Engies can apply aditional condition damage from bleeds, poison... And FB works more like a hybrid class in terms of damage, even in PvE.

Build templates for Revenant keep not working (randomly swap the location of the utilities when moving ebetween game modes, jumping between mounts, being encased in shards, etc.). I can't talk for others, but I paid money for extra templates in my Rev and Guardian and while the later works perfectly in the Revenant just doesn't work and I must manually check every utility when I enter in a PvP match.... So, they are being lazy (or blatant unable) to fix coding errors EVEN in features with a entry fee. That's a critical problem for me: has been months since the template system implementation, a monetized feature and they still hadn't fixed it (or made ANY KIND of manifest about when they expect to fix the problem). Their PR is just atrocious.

Guardian's only drawbacks are that is slow moving (lacking traits or skills to give them permanent +25% or +33% speed movement) and having a low base health pool. The first handicap can be mitigated using things as the traveller or fireworks runes, skills as Judge's Intervention or weapons with close gapers as the sword and greatsword (and once you get access to the expansions, using gliding and mounts). Health pool is noth that important due Guardians have good access to blocks, aegis, blinds and other forms of damage mitigation. The strong point of that class is that has a lot of build variety and usually is "meta" in every game mode. Core Guardian has strong AoE builds based on symbols, both for physical and condition (burning) damage; Dragon Hunters excell in physical burst of damage, thanx to their traps; Firebrands can be tuned to be the strongest support class in the game, a fierce hybrid damage dealers or a nigh unkillable bunkers. There wasn't a single time in GW2 history in which a Guardian built wasn't essential in the WvW meta, and most of the time they are also top choices for PvP and PvE raids. Mesmers and Warriors are also viable and fun to play but better some which main them to talk a bit about their current status.

Is even simple than that: would anyone pay for a game which randomly would ban some specs you paid for? Is like buying a car, and then being telled that you are not allowed to use more than 3 wheels...