cat.8975

Needing two lines is fine. It just sucks that UC is where Virtues gets most of its damage from. Would be nice if they'd change UC to give +10% at all times, with an additional +10% w/ aegis. I don't think it needs a full rework, just a few tweaks. Buff sword off-hand coefficients/reduce cooldowns. Remove the trade-offs from the GM traits. Add another strike damage mod somewhere (I've said it before, I'll say it again: add a damage mod to Righteous Sprint when the player has swiftness). There, I fixed Willbender. They could probably stand to increase the base alac duration on Restorative Virtues and then let it be shared w/ Battle Presence. Would solve the issue of being unable to give alac in those windows where you can't hit anything, and would also allow for a quick burst of alac at the start of fights/phases. Would also be nice if we could share the might from Holy Reckoning when using Resolve as well.

Wrong. Damage dealt is damage dealt, regardless of how long it takes. The idea that condi classes suffer less than power when dealing w/ mechanics is total nonsense, and has been since 2015 (condi rework) when people started parroting this entirely incorrect take. Here's an example: Skill A) 10,000 strike damage instantly Skill B) 10,000 burn damage over 10 seconds Skill C) 10,000 bleed damage over 30 seconds They all do the same damage. Just because the condis continue to tick when you're not hitting the boss doesn't mean you're not losing the same amount of dps for it. The difference is that, for power builds, time spent not attacking the boss is felt immediately, but for condi builds, it's felt over the next 10, 15, 30, whatever amount of seconds your avg condi application is. The real advantage of condi specs is that the devs have intentionally balanced them to be stronger than power on longer fights (or at least they've tried to do this). There are also some fights where running some condi builds is mandated, such as Vale Guardian for the split phase.

DH is currently parsing around 33k on the golem, but that's not even the point. Golem numbers are thrown out the window as soon as you fight something that prevents you from attacking in melee or moves out of your AoEs. Beyond Mechanist's decent golem number, it's almost 100% ranged, and ~35-40% of its damage comes from a pet that is always attacking. Mechanist should NEVER have been given competitive benchmark golem dps considering its dps uptime and ease of play. I can only hope the late Nov update knocks it down a good 4-6k, but until then, we're stuck with seeing these stupid jade mech swarms for the next ~3 months.

They're not going to do that.

It's just Mechanist, really. It blows most other builds out of the water for players that are afk auto-attacking, and is incredibly safe/forgiving. Things will hopefully change w/ the next big balance patch.

If you're willing to actively play, Willbender is pretty good for tagging thanks to its mobility and f1 resets. If you just want to mindlessly spam, staff or longbow are solid as long as you continue to tab target.

alac wb is nonviable, don't bother

Core is not better than DH in PvE, lol. DH's solo performance is still as good as it ever was. Where it got hurt was group content where you had banners and spirits, as it lost around ~10% of its dps. Still playable, but when you consider a Mechanist playing at ~70% efficiency will beat a DH at 100%, you have to wonder why anyone would pick DH for a pure dps role.

Off-hand sword is already really close to being better than focus, so I doubt it would take much to push it over. Would love to see some slightly lower cooldowns on it, and then maybe bumping up the damage on Executioner's Calling (sw4) by a bit if cd changes aren't enough.

Every time someone says LB is viable you end up moving the goalposts and complaining about DH instead. Which is it? Longbow is fine. The actual issue is that power builds (for all classes) were hit harder than their condi counterparts w/ the removal of class-specific buffs. Guardian was arguably hit a little harder than others, as it didn't receive a new crit chance trait like everyone else (~100 stat value) because Radiance builds already overcap by a ridiculous amount. Radiance needs 1 or 2 small buffs, longbow 5 could use both a damage increase and cooldown reduction, and Willbender needs another strike damage modifier.

I'd rather they work on optimizations w/ the existing first.

LB+GS is perfectly viable and won't get you kicked out of groups unless you're doing something weird (e.g., standing away from everyone else and camping LB autos). The damage output is actually quite competitive with sw/f, and it brings arguably stronger cleave and (slightly) more CC. It's not a bad weapon for instanced PvE.

You can. Even before the recent buff to the auto, it was already competitive with sw/f.

It wouldn't even take that much to fix DH too. Retribution: 10% to 15% Radiant Power: +150 ferocity to +250 ferocity Hunter's Ward: reduce the cooldown to 25s (from 40s), and increase the damage from 3*0.25 + 2.2 to 3*0.5 + 2.5. Would push GS+LB into ~35.5-36.5k territory, more than enough to be considered playable.

You're both slightly off here. Whirl finishers are supposed to (?) proc for each full rotation the player does, so Whirling Wrath *should* proc 3 times but currently only procs it once. Here are some before/after videos showing it proccing three times and now only once. Not sure which update broke it. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/380903704808652801/844614728952315984/jIWE8GSWNm.mp4 https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/380903704808652801/994121117281304616/G2vK3G5yTr.mp4

Only 14.4% of your damage on CFB is from non-condi sources. Source: https://dps.report/PlrD-20220703-123541_golem I wouldn't recommend CFB on a "power" boss like KC any time soon lol.

It's 400 to the target and a 150 knockback to nearby enemies. The tooltip display of 550 is a bug.

The changes to hammer were (comparatively) much larger. While I'm still hoping for an eventual scepter rework and some tweaks to sword, I'd still hope for GS to be the best weapon for power damage just due to the design of its skills.

To be fair, the only DH-specific change they made was to increase LB autos by a little bit lol The changes to GS should give every power build another ~800 dps or so.

Power builds are definitely kinda garbage at the moment, but sword is still stronger than scepter for them. The only PvE Guardian builds running scepter at the moment are cfb and cwb.

Definitely agree w/ cwb being a viable dps pick for fractals. I just wish they would bump the damage up a tiny bit to push it ahead of cfb, considering the amount of baked-in utility available with tomes. Sigil of Absorption combined with Heel Crack is an underrated way to handle NPNG on the CM fights.

The 5 is a little lackluster outside of PvP/WvW, but otherwise it's an incredibly solid support weapon. If we're going to rework any guardian weapons, hammer, scepter, and sword should be looked at first.

Even assuming solo play, Firebrand will be a better pick just because of all of the quickness it can give itself. Go try fighting the golem without any boons from the console and you'll see what I mean.

Alac share was an afterthought, it was never meant to be competitive with the top-dog alac builds, but is instead just something you can play in a pinch if you can't find someone else to provide it, or if you just want to play it for fun. I do hope we can get some pwb/cwb buffs though, it should definitely be parsing a couple thousand above CFB. Power guardian builds in general need some love (core, dh, and wb).

You've got this backwards, FB is much more self-sufficient than WB, and is overall a safer pick for open world. CWB without a reliable source of alacrity both feels and performs awfully.