cat.8975

With Tyrant's Momentum the Justice buff lasts for 8s, and Lethal Tempo stacks last for 4s. Rushing Justice has a base 12s cd, and can be reduced via alacrity or the Virtues traitline (you only need one to maintain your LT stacks, but having both definitely helps).

SYS boons are self-only. HtL is sometimes a decent choice (I'm a fan of using it during precasts), but you could also just run Loremaster if you don't need the extra tome pages from Weighty Terms. Edit: I forgot to mention, if healing isn't an issue, you can take Protector's Restoration for an additional source of prot. Invigorated Bulwark is overkill in most areas anyway.

Playing on EU from NA is also hit or miss for me right now. Sometimes it'll be the usual 120-140 ping, other times it'll sit at 500+ for multiple hours. Definitely not an issue on my end as I'm able to connect to EU servers just fine for other games. Edit: After a tracert and some googling, it seems NTT is to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/160zr8q/anyone_else_having_ping_issues_lately/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1627v3q/constant_lag/ https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/482155-Bad-lag-again-with-NTT-s-NA-server-network?p=6330021 Guess you're screwed if you're not on the same continent rn

Trapper runes have never been good against established PvPers, they were always just a lower-tier pubstomping gimmick. Now that the bandaid has been ripped off, we can only hope for some compensatory buffs to DH so it can stop being a meme spec in PvP.

It's actually decent in fractals, though the lack of might gen limits what you can run it with. The change to give alac on f2 cast helped quite a bit, and I think people have been sleeping on it.

Disabling a niche trait that doesn't see much use versus disabling one of the core skills of an elite spec. I'm not surprised they chose to disable SA here. Putting an ICD on Crashing Courage would be a pretty severe nerf. I'm not a fan of traits functioning differently based on elite specs, but I can see why they did it this way instead of gimping f3 on WB just to avoid abuse from a niche trait that only sees use in WvW.

Shattered Aegis is only changed on Willbender, the other specs don't have the ICD. I think a better would've been to turn SA's damage procs into something that doesn't contribute to on-hit effects (such as the virtue passives), the same way lifesteal effects don't.

The SA fix is fine. This only popped up again because someone found an exploit that let you keep the WB Courage buff on other specs.

I think they made a mistake when they called it an expansion. This feels more like a season of living world, with the way its content releases are being spread out over the next year or so. I'm fine with having to pay for Living World content, but calling this an expansion when there aren't really any expansion-worthy features to speak of sucks. The fact that we aren't getting the new weapons on release is disheartening.

If you're having trouble maintaining 100% w/ that build, it's probably due to a lack of alacrity. It should work fine in group content as long as someone is providing alac.

UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL!!!

For instanced PvE, it's a fine dps spec. It'll suffer on encounters with a lot of melee hate, but is otherwise solid. After the recent change to Phoenix Protocol, support builds seem to be alright as well. I've been running it in CM+T4 fractals lately and it performs fine.

So the legendary rune recipe is going to become cheaper to reflect the loss of functionality, right?

The real problem boils down to the ways they've been implementing these new boon builds. Several of the changes have disrupted the feel of some specs, which is always going to alienate the people that loved playing them in the way that they were familiar with. It's also a design flaw when you're forced to load up your utility bar with the same class of utilities and spam them off cooldown just to provide a boon, rather than use them for their intended purpose (old quickness scrapper was terrible design). These boons shouldn't be free, but they also shouldn't cost your entire utility budget either. Firebrand is actually a great example of one of these builds done correctly (ignore the silly tomes for a second), as the quickness comes from 1-2 traits, your heal, one utility, and optionally your elite. This leaves 2 utility skills for actual utility, and some flexibility with the elite and your traits depending on how much boon duration you run. I also like that it prods you into using the mantra heal, because while it's fantastic for group support, it's not a very good "oh god i just lost 90% of my health what do i do" button. tl;dr: Some of these newer builds are too restrictive with how they apply their boons. Let utility skills be utility skills again.

You could extend this same argument to literally every boon. If we're supposed to have 25 might all the time, then get rid of it and give everyone 750 power and condition damage. Fury? Get rid of it and raise the base crit chance. Protection? Remove it and increase armor by 50%. Boons are a fun way to support your allies, and removing them would remove the need for anything but damage and healing. This game does not have and has never had the classic trinity system found in other mmos (dps/tank/heal), and that's a good thing.

You mean the three skills they tweaked on guardian that we've been asking them to fix for years? Greatsword feels much more fluid now, and I no longer have to tell people to "move after the symbol appears" for a ~2-3% dps increase. While they could have gone the opposite direction and forced the longer cast times, I always felt that those three skills didn't flow as well as the rest, and skipping the aftercasts helped to alleviate that. As for the weapon stow "mechanic", I think it's fine. You've always been able to cancel channeled ability casts with the escape key, but the inability to rebind it (and the fact that it opens the menu if you mash it) lead to people using (misusing) the stow bind instead. Its ability to fake people out in PvP contributes to the "mind games" factor, creating an extra layer of depth beyond mechanical execution.

The nerf to CC skills in PvP gamemodes a couple years ago is what really killed hammer. Banish has such a long windup, only to knock your enemy away from you (?????) and does no damage. The teleport it added to hammer 2 is beyond pointless, as you'll still always need to run JI with a hammer build.

Barring reverting the tome changes entirely, I'd like them to change Resolve 4+5 and Courage 3+4+5 to only use a single page instead of two. PvE split it and give them longer cooldowns, I just want that utility back. Two pages is just so restrictive when you're playing a hybrid build that focuses on both doing damage and providing group support (cele).

I'd be bored out of my skull if we went back to the slower-paced pre-HoT gameplay. Why are people taking such issue with these boons now, anyway? Is it because other classes finally have access to them?

Add revealed to banish.

Condi DH could exist with a few small tweaks. Add some burn application to the pulse on Light's Judgment, and have Big Game Hunter double the passive f1 burn stacks (stack count in PvE, duration in WvW/PvP). There was a bug some years ago where you could have the tome passives on the other specs (effectively doubling the f1 passive) and it was almost enough to push condi DH into viability.

WvW: Longbow + Sw/Sw was a great combo on both WB and DH. While LB struggles to proc the virtue effects on WB, this becomes irrelevant when you realize just how terrifying it is for a LB guard to have high mobility. It felt like I was playing Rifle Deadeye at times, loaded up with stun breaks, teleports, dashes, etc. PvP: Didn't play, but LB and OH sword will probably find some uses on the other specs. PvE: Off-hand sword needs to do more damage. Buff it to the level focus is currently at, and then nerf the damage on focus 4 (give it something like vuln or lifesteal to compensate). Axe is incredibly underwhelming on non-FB specs, due to how much of its damage is tied to Unrelenting Criticism. The 150 CC pull is sometimes handy but gs5 usually does that job just fine on its own. Longbow is also a little lackluster, as its PvE identity is "does ranged power damage" without much else. It might be cool if it applied more burning on the symbol, and maybe even a burn on True Shot. (I always found it weird how LB has burning on the symbol but is absolutely terrible as a condi weapon.)

i love you forever

Scepter was nerfed because it was stronger than sword (which was silly), so they kept buffing sword and nerfing scepter until that wasn't the case. Rather than revert those nerfs, I'd prefer if they would pivot it into a hybrid power/condi weapon and give it some burn (or other condi) application. With the upcoming rework to Firebrand, you'll only swap to scepter on an 8 page build, as it wont be worth swapping away from axe otherwise. I've always found it weird that the core Guardian traits have so much for condis, but there aren't any core mainhand weapons for it. Would also be nice if we could get a rework to the auto attack (giving it a chain, similar to what they did to staff), but that has a substantially higher development cost.

Dang, was hoping for a slight cd reduction on Rushing Justice (PvE), but the rest of these WB buffs are great.