Buran.3796

Which build? I only talked about stats for weapons. I'll explain it better: Is not for PvE (not only), I already have full zerker stats for fractals in a Guardian and a full legendary set in a Rev; is about stats that can be usefull in WvW without hurting PvE too much. In WvW a glass cannon (full zerker, full viper, etc.) Guardian goes around 11-13k HP, which means staying in the range of being one shooted by certain builds. Just rising a bit the HP (~15k+) is enough to prevent that; valkyrie in the weapon was enough to up the health in almost 2k HP and when RI was in full force the loss of precission wasn't that terrible (again, in WvW). But now marauder seems a better fit, due provides ~1300 HP and adds ~11% more critical chance at the expense of a loss in power and crit damage.Most dps oriented builds in PvE do use viper: max condition damage + extended duration of conditions, which helps to stack condis over time and favours the use of more than one condition. But condition Guardian is mostly based in a single one: burn (albeit FB can do bleeds), and expertise in WvW isn't that great: burns kills fast so either the foe dies before having that much stacks or He cleans the single condi. So: being able to re-aply the burns is more important that how much they last. Finally, with a single source of condition damage, runes are better sources than expertise to boost the condition duration.The nature of the damage in burn Guardian WvW builds is hybrid: you can go full power and still with the propper traits and skills the burns will do a notable dent in your foe's HP. The same happens using celestial stats. Hybrid Firebrand can aply burns from each final charge from their mantras, from each skill of proc that disables enemies, from skills that do direct burn damage and and on top of that from Virtue of Justice. But they still can do decent burst of physical damage, which is applied isntantly and can't be "cleansed". So, my question remains: is marauder a good stat replacement in the weapons for valkyrie, which seems weaker after the latest patches? Would be a marauder set of weapons a subpar option in a hybrid Firebrand (with viper or griever armor and trinkets) taking in consideration that a bit of HP is desirable in WvW and marauder is still mostly a offensive set of stats? By the way, the build I was thinking of was something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABw2d7lRwoYQMMmJWyWavKA-zRRYiRPwG+QwZA-e ...But by no means is set on fire in terms of skills and traits (if you let me to do the joke).

I usually always craft my ascended weapons with berker stats, being the only exceptions weapons made for pure condi builds or (in the case of Guardian) making them with Valkyrie stats. That was due I used to play the class in PvE and WvW, and due the low base HP of the class and the powerful trait of Righteous Instinct trading precission for some health used to be handy. But that was before RI bonus to critical chance was halved; now Valkyrie seems just bland. I want to ask if you think that Marauder stats are a good alternative for the weapons (instead of the ubiquitous berserker), in the context of being berserker the whole rest of the gear. Would also want to known if you think that in a (ybrid) burn Firebrand build (made mostly of grieving stats) running weapons with marauder stats would be a waste. Thanx in advance.

Lots have players have solo kills taking less than 1/4th of the time on actually good builds though. Trailblazer was a mistake to begin with, that set should not exist. Soulbeast and weaver can spike 140k burst dps, a build like condi herald will just not work in a group setting unless you expect your party to die 5sec into the fight. You can find some faster videos here and there of one class and build beating one boss or two, and that's all. You won't find any video of a single build beating so many fractal bosses, event bosses and open PvE content (in fact He said that was able to soloing with His condi mirage around 50% of the content as with Jis condi Herald). He previously have done videos similar solo fights using Firebrand, Spellbreaker, Scourge, Weaver and Mirage, none of them as extensive in variety and numbers with a fixed single build as with the condi Herald. You see trailblazer as a waste of time because is not focused in damage, but in reality is amazing because turns around the concept of keeping the player alive while easily stacking 40+ torments of targets playing alone. Maybe you can build a single optimized class and loadout to be more time efficient against each task, but for me (and I talk as a player which has a full legendary armor set) having to reset stats, to change traits and weapons for different contents makes me yawn and sounds boring. A player can just drive that tank at any PvE content and smash it under its caterpillar wheels, and I couldn't care less about "some cars that can run that track faster". I think that condi Herald is one of the best classes for fractals and raids, and trailblazer Glint/Mallyx is way better at them than the alacrigade or the viper renegade (being Herald one of my two favorite classes in the game and renegade my least favorite by far).

This. Hard to beat that build for PvE solo content:

I don't have a clue about raids, but I think that Hizen soloed all the fractal bosses with his condi Herald.

Mace + Shield/Hammer Warrior does lower damage than could be expected due those are weapons of control and can stack stuns and hard cc like a crazy, so ANet nerfed the damage to prevent one shooting targets wit a brief stun chain. As a result, the damage in PvE is also a bit limited. Is not like doesn't work, but the gap in damage compared to other Warrior builds is large. Mace + Axe/Shield condi Herald is probably the strongets PvE build in the game, able to solo unthinkable content, but the hammer is a ballast there, because does low damage and is a physical weapon. Guardian can work well albeit Mace + Shield is stronger than the Hammer, which is a fine utility tool but too slow; most of Guardians wielding amces and shileds which like to pair them with a greatsword, a sword + focus, scepter + torch, etc. The only class with a strong hammer is currently the Scrapper.

Used to be Shiro, but lost so much things over time that now the only reason to employ it is to have frequent teleports and instant backwards breakstuns, so Glint (albeit greatly nerfed also) currently feels more useful, thanx to a better heal, more cc and the larger wide array of tools it provides. Mallyx and Jalis are almost decent, whereas I never use Ventari or Kalla.

Can't dispute that Mesmer's specs works a lot the same (albeit to me having along the Guardian the overall strongest presence in the game in terms of how well they perform), but about the "lots of diversity" the Revenant enjoy which each legend I would only say this: past Thrursday I crafted The Shinning Blade despite already having Bolt due "how much diversity" I discern in the Revenant gameplay. The class has been using essentially the same build in PvP/roaming for 50+ months in a row (only more plain and dumbed down after each patch), a build which is as subpar to PvE as the other builds are to competitive gameplay. A total schism in functions with no touching points which I'm sure had made sick a lot of players wanting changes.

You're playing against the A.I. of the game. The things change when you're playing against other players with functional brain and your tools are extremely unreliable in a class which lacks build diversity and in which half of the weapons are garbage. But don't worry, eventually you'll get it.

3, maybe 5 times in all those years. I expected Stronghold to be a sort of Leage of Legends game mode, not the bag of crap they provide us; so after a very few matches (not even a half dozen) I abandoned it entirely.

Without a major expansion (in something like Cantha), no new specs on sigth and no support for WvW/PvP, there's close to 0 appeal to me to play the game, and consequently I jump in ~a couple of times a month...

Guardian has a lot more build variety, is clearly better at support and lacks the brutal amount of bugs that the Revenant has faced forever, mostly due was a late introduced class which never had a functional core build and always felt rushed and incomplete. Don't fiorget also that the Revenant designer left the company time ago and seems that the team that currently balances the profession is unable to make changes in the code without accidentally breaking and bugging essential lines. If you google "Revenant bugs" you'll feel yourself flooded...

Thieves, Rangers and Mesmers have access to stealth and powerfull burst of damage at range. Playing only classes that lack stealth I find fighting those ones very annoying, but I guess for them should be very fun to play builds that are very capable at killing while keeping the most valuable asset at WvW: well played, being unkillable.

Ranger has a extremely powerful power-based longbow and an oftenly forgotten condition shortbow, which works very well against players... If the power longbow weren't as dominant. Thief's shortbow is also a very powerful condition build, which is barely used due most of Thief builds are based on power, and despite the shortbow is meta in PvP that's mostly due as the one from the Ranger it provides both defensive tools and mobility. Renegade's shortbow is crap: no defensive tools or mobility, so remains largely unused in PvP; half of the skills are bugged and the reason due is used in PvE is because the Renegade spec buffs the numbers: does almost nothing relevant in terms of gameplay, but pushes the autoattack numbers so high that for most of players there's no reason to use another PvE weapon, since ranged is safer than mele and the sb stacks migth as fine as the sword while also adding bleeds, burn and torment on top of that. Warrior's long bow is not very competitive and DH's lonbow albeit effective is a gameplay more based on the traps than in the use of the bow (in terms of damage). So I would say Ranger and Thief have the best bows all around. I say this as an archer, not only as a GW2 player.

...And that's why I don't touch the hammer since March. I don't rely on things that "usually works", specially having other choices whithout that random factor.

The hardest "team PvE" content in the game are raids and fractals, and the "meta" for that content with Revenant are the condition Renegade (uses mostly viper ststs) and the alacrigade (another Renegade build, which uses diviner stats), you can find detailed guides in the Snow Crows page: https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/revenant/renegade/alacrity/ ...But those are builds optimized to fast farm team content, doesn't mean that you can't do the task with other builds and stats (in fact, the three main roles in the game are doing dps (physical or condition), being a healer or a support, and I would say that 70-80% of the time most of builds for PvE do use berserker stats, being the use of viper between the 10-15% and being diviner (support) and harrier (healer) the remaining stats that are currently "meta". Meanwhile, you can find people trying to do PvE content even harder "soloing" dungeons, fractals and bosses/champions; those builds oftenly have a mix between damage and sustain, which choices in stats, traits and skills designed to enhance the personal ability of their player and their choice of play instead of following others with a copy & paste from metabattle. Lord Hizen trashed alone most of the fractal bosses and an impressive amount of champions from open world events using a condition Herald (Mallyx + Glint) with a full trailblazer set, torment runes and mace+axe/mace+shiled (yes, two maces!). He states that is the strongest solo build in the game and that with his mesmer was only able to do half of those feats (the build is in the description): I find it cool because a) the build is not meta and probably won't be wellcomed in public games yet the potential to trample PvE content with is uncontested and b) even having the gear is darn difficult to even try to do the same, which speaks volumes about the personal skill of Hizen (is a shame that no longer plays the game).

That's easy to answer: English is my third language and I play the game in my native, so when I try to translate some names and expressions from my game version I can fall into mistakes or use terms which doesn't properly fit with the main version of the game. My apologies if that happens; I took for granted that the question was easy to catch in the context, even if the terms weren't exactly matching (I known also that ANet doesn't use the term "loadout" but seems to fit better what they are now providing).

The game seems to randomly shift the order of the utility skills in my legends when I jump from game modes; seems also unable to remember the exact legend I was using the last time I entered in the game with a Revenant character and shifts instead to the "default" listed in the template I'm using. I'm doing something wrong or is just part of this disgracefull bag of bugs called Revenant? I swear this class feels like a house of cards: every time the encoders change a line the entire build crumbles and falls apart...

Can someone explain me how the new plantiff system works (or provide a link to a video which explains it in a clear way)? I'm trying to configure a couple of loadouts for my Rev and has being a pain: it keeps resetting the placement of the hotkeys from the skills in my legends when I move from PvE to WvW, so the instant switch has been totally useless for me...

For what I care they could delete the whole class; I no longer play Rev in PvP. Dragonhunter provides me better results and can be played while taking a nap, which is perfect to confront the "skill" of the programmers and balance managers in this game... Fight ineptitude with laziness in an attrition battle; everyone wins.

In general terms there's only 4 kind of gear stats demanded for high end PvE content in this game: berserker, which counts for ~80% of the dps builds, viper (the other 10%, dps builds albeit sometimes is balanced with sinister or grieving) harrier (the 5%, best current combo stats for a pure healer) and diviner (best combo for a support). So usually crafting other stats is a waste (specially for armor and weapons, because are expensive whereas ascended accesories are easy to get/restat). But we are talking here about doing alone content designed to be beated by teams of 5+ players. So, every point invested in the balance of damage and sustain is crucial. Skill aside, some of those feats are impossible to perform without the best in slot gear (including runes, sigils and food). Some of those bosses have a rage timer or a time cap, so using different stats that will decrease a bit the % of damage or its duration (and stacking) will have an impact. My advice would be: try it with exotic, because trailblazer isn't as useful outside solo content/WvW and there's the chance that you end crafting an expensive gear but yet end unable to replicate the feats of those players (or you end disliking the gameplay). Anyway, stats from ascended crafted items can be reset at the cost of ~25-30 gold coins.

Take a look at the trailblazer Herald build from Lord Hizen in Youtube; He pretty much stomped all the fractal bossses and a lot of HoT and PoF events playing solo with that one.

Enjoy your 4 minutes + queues...

I agree with the first words of the first phrase. But doesn't need a rework, because both the legend and the short bow were specifically tailored for PvE and to be bad in PvP and they don't have a single interesting thing to provide, so trying to improve them would be as bio-engineering a chihuahua with the goal to compete in greyhound racing: a total waste of time. The time would be better spent in trying to make the next Rev spec les onesided, flat-dimensional, just conceived to punch the sandbag dps golem in PvE.