Buran.3796

Not so long after the release of the game the most WvW-oriented guilds from Baruch (Seven Instincts, etc.) moved to other servers with similar tastes. The one in which I played for ~4 years moved to Gandara (CORE, faded like two years ago). What remained in BB is mostly PvE guilds which enters in WvW en masse at late hours just interested in harvesting achievements and stuff, and not so much in "fights". They love to take undefended fortress, "roam" in swarms containing the full cap of the map in a single blob and do leave and disband if face strong opposition. They also had some roaming clans (as Order of Shadows, made exclusively from thieves) more slant to ganking than to GvG. So: they as a whole (exceptions do exist) don't chase competitive fights; they like easy karma trains, getting rewards and stuff at low risk, and go back to PvE as soon as they "harvest" the map of collide against fierce enemies. Also people is very active in late nigth in Spain due their GMT and cultural manners.

In PvP I think it could be room for bunker condi Herald, with Mallyx and Glint, and maybe even for core bunker with Mallyx and Jalis, albeit I think some other classes as FB, Scrappers and even Reapers could be stronger tanks/bruisers, totally relegating this class (it will depend of how the changes come together). My current PvP build has ~29600 HP , and despite not using Shiro (which have been mostly garbage for a while) or having access to stability or empty vessel the Glint and Mallyx breakstruns are overall enough, except against stunlock thieves and mesmers, and the build is resilient, full of AoE damage and all kinds of cc. The main problem with Jalis is that "lacks" stunbreaks (being in the elite and costing 40 energy units on a 1.25 seconds cast is pure garbage), but Inspiring Reinforcement and Vegeful Hammers are interesting utilities in team play. The lost of HP due changes in traits in the incoming patch will be minimal, albeit I'm not sure of how it will affect the damage (which doesn't matter: I don't feel that dps builds will have a place in this new meta). To me power Herald with Shiro/Glint seems over, for sure. Related to WvW, I have no clue why a guild would ride Revenants; main reason before was the not reflectable area damage of CoR, but being CoR so nerfed in damage along 2019, so inconsistent in landing the hits, and now halving its use and also nerfing the damage of the other hammer skills, what's the deal? No reason to run a Rev instead of a Necro.

3 bunkers, 1 bruiser, 1 support. No need to kill foes, just cc them out of the central control point until the team gets it, then defend it in attrition fights until the clock ends or the enemies ragequit. 3 in middle, 1 at home and the last player rotating between to ensure support. I guess FB, Reaper, Scrapper and maybe Warriors seems better suited to fill those roles.

I'm pretty happy with how the Guardian lands. I'm not a good player but the current season I'm playing a PvE condi bunker Herald which seems to do well in gold (while only using mace, axe and shield) and most of classes seems to have hard time trying to kill me in 1 vs 1 end even 2 vs 1 despite I don't have any access to stability and the build doesn't use Invocation (so no empty vessel). The next season, using a fully fledged Firebrand Tank I guess I would able to camp in control points for hours (specially in larger ones as in Foefire). But that implies that Rev will jump from being too dominant (two Revs x team was excessive, in a landscape in which some classes had no place to go) to being discarded. In HoT I fled from Guardian to Rev due how boring was to tank/support, and now I'll complete the full circle coming back to Guardian (and some other games with better horizon).

The developer of my main class leaved ArenaNet more than a year ago and the replacement weren't able to make any patch without botchering the program code and introducing all kind of new bugs (or re-booting older ones). Sorry but science based in statistics and facts prevents me from "having faith" in the capabilities of the balance team. I also don't believe their promises of a fast cadence of patches: they promised the WvW server alliance revamp more than two years ago, and was ndever delivered, I could go on and on...

Taking in consideration how much the whole damage will fall across the classes and how strong are the multiple variants of Guardian bunker and bruiser builds are I think this class will be the strongest one, albeit the amount of variety in builds will suffer (still, better than be entirely removed from the game as will happen with some).

Shiro was only used in PvP and WvW and I don't think that Rev will fit any role in those game modes after the patch so is mostly irrelevant, as most of the weapon selection with this class.

They nerfed the damage and the access to abilities, the HP of each class remains the same. You won't be able to kill bunkers; +1 builds will be replaced by tanks, bruisers and support classes. Also I dont want "go for it", I have a main with no viable builds in the incoming new meta. I didn't swap from Guardian to Rev in HoT to being forced to play a tank again...

I don't think Snipped for relevance. This is applicable to everyone with complaints about their class losing stuff. Go back and read the beginning of the posts by CMC and Irenio.Did you think that this patch had any kind of testing? Most of ANet staff is devoted to produce content for the gem store while coasting the corpse; I doubt they even have 10 people (PvP designers) to play a full 5 vs 5 PvP match. Hell, the plantiff patch arrived two months ago and is still broken for the skill asigment for the legends in the Revenant...

Who cares about bursting anymore? you won't be able to beat 5 bunkers going for two control points. I don't think people will waste time in dps dealers anymore, since won't overcome team self-sustain.

...Instead of looking at the patch though the lenses of the remaining developers, which had no clue about how the game worked in the competitive parts of the game and never tested the truckload of changes that they will introduce suddenly, with no remorses...

Revs just got erased from PvP and WvW. With the nerfs in damage over all classes PvP will be again the realm of inmortal tanks, as was in the age of the celestial eles; since Revs lacks any good tank build and power Herald no longer will be able to kill other classes, they will njsut dissapear. The change will be even more drastic in WvW, since the only reason to run Revs in zergs was use the hammers and range, and after a year of nerfs in the damage of Colescence of Ruin + multiple bugs which made it unconsistent now they doubled the cooldown, effectively halving the damage. So no longer reason to use Revs in team composition. They aren't but Waarriors with slower attacks that need to pay energy cost on top of longer cooldowns...

What a pile of garbage. Sure ArenaNet is coasting hard this game towards the same graveyard Wildstar reached. Hammer (which has 0 use outside wvw zergs) is now 100% useless. The swords do even less damage than before (power Herald was bottom tier level), but you are still slower than the Warrior and have to pay energy on top on larger cooldowns. And the overall decrease in damage across the game means that in PvP tanks (Revs were always very weak tanks) will reign supreme again (like in the times in which celestial eles were defacto inmortals). So no place for Rev builds in PvP, and bye bye to their role in zergs. Time to go back to ESO/BDO...

This build and gameplay was brilliant, congrats.

Entirely disagree. Shiro used to provide high sustained movement speed, enhanced damage in the otherwise mediocre heal and superspeed which made the abhorrently slow weapons from the class (specially hammer and mace) somewhat playable vs hoomans. Now the still entirely mediocre heal provides less heal and less damage, you need spent trait to move slower than before with Impossible Odds and that skill no longer provides superspeed so you need essentially afk players to land a Phase Smash or Drop the Hammer on anyone (not to mention that any Mesmer, Thief or Ranger gains free interrupts on Revs any time they wield a mace or a hammer, making them essentially useles in PvP). Also, due no longer superspeed on demand, harvesting ore, plants and logs do requiere to spent money in enhanced gathering tools. Also, along 2019, Rev lost most of its sources of vulnerability, most of the procs related to that condition and saw how the might stacking was halved (in a class with barely deals damage without that boon, and even with 25 power Herals is bottom tier dps since forever. Meanwhile, Mesmers and Thieves can enter and leave stealth at will and stunlock for ages slow classes as Shiro Revenant while claiming that that legend needs nerfs... What a joke.

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.