cat.8975

https://dps.report/hGfW-20210913-034450_arriv https://dps.report/F85N-20210913-033559_ai I wouldn't call it mediocre. The point is that this provides great boon uptime (100% bd in fractals!), more than enough healing to keep everyone alive, has access to loads of good utility (thanks to guard utils being fantastic), and does roughly half the damage of a dps spec. Check out my post above (along with the build link).

People also expect might from a HB, and the extra bd is very good at ensuring permanent quickness and fury. I would hope nobody is doing this. The increased crit chance from RI will only increase physical dps by ~15%, when AW increases all burns by 15% and Justice passive burns by an additional 20%. Burning is also the bulk of your damage, making AW even better. With fractal potion, there's no question, as you'd be grossly overcapping on crit chance with RI. While this wont replace cqb/pqb in raids or fractals, it can definitely replace just about any hb with better results. The current "meta" build for hb is laughable too, as all of the mainstat power from harrier's is useless on a build that's only pulling 2-4k dps. Every hb in fractal pugs should consider switching to a seraph or celestial build once they're more proficient with the class.

Cele "HB" is heavily slept on at the moment, and is incredibly good for pugging fractals. The only downside is that it requires a fair bit of knowledge about each encounter and when you'll need to swap traits/utils. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAc+ZlRweYdMMGJW0SvPfA-zxIY1oj/MSQFEiUwjTTA+qA-e This is using leadership runes, but variations with monk, firebrand, and traveler are all strong in their own ways. Keep in mind that the other rune sets require different sigils and consumables. While a seraph build has slightly more dps (<15% higher), it's much squishier and has lower boon duration than a cele one would. Sitting at the boon duration cap (when seraph is around ~60% bd) with ~70% more effective health should not be ignored. This build is comfy in pug cm+t4 groups, and it's a fun way to make your rev wake up and try to out-damage you. This is also pretty dang strong in open world and raids, though be prepared to tank the bosses that have a toughness fixation. For raids, change LL to WT and take the concentration trait in Honor. LL is lowkey griefing (in raids) as the regen and prot it provides is already covered (usually), and if your dps players drop quickness even for a little bit it'll nullify any gains you get from the 20% longer tome burns. Prioritize keeping your party buffed/alive and mechanics dealt with before you focus on dps.

While I wouldn't mind them extending Justice to 10s, it really wasn't as bad as you suggest in PvE (it's probably pretty bad in WvW/PvP but that should be no surprise). With an 8s duration and an 8.16s cd (alac+trait), it worked pretty dang well with PW.

Most condi builds have a 15-20s rampup these days, Firebrand included.

If a class has a bad weapon, that weapon should be buffed until it's competitive with the rest of them.

Could we get the ability to equip different weapons while casting back? It was great for taking silly screenshots (e.g. casting Empower and then equipping a greatsword). Edit: Will aegis/swiftness still be wiped at the start of 100cm/raid encounters?

These skills have had target priority issues for years now, I'd rather just have simple spheres (300 radius?) than deal with this mess of cone+sphere where allies in your party/subgroup are excluded if they're in the sphere and there are already 5 targets within the cone. If it's not feasible to create a custom shape with proper priority, whether for performance reasons or whatever other restrictions, a single sphere where the effects are consistent and predictable would be preferable. Pragmatism > Idealism

They've been "fixed", but are now broken in a new way. The first player to apply ashes gets ownership of the whole stack until their stacks are consumed, which sounds perfect, but the stacks are being used in reverse order (newest stacks are used up first, so the oldest ones are much more likely to expire before they can be used). If the original stacks expire before they're applied, the second player that applied ashes gets ownership until theirs expire or are consumed. Research courtesy of Muru in the SC discord:

I wouldn't mind if Whirling Light (the spin kick util) applied cripple instead of weakness, allowing you to better stick to your target. Heaven's Palm could maybe use some pbaoe cripple as well, considering how short the knockback distance ends up being (it doesn't do a great job of separating your target from their allies for very long). Wall of Reflection already exists and is one of the best reflects in the game. I'm not sure guard needs another in its toolkit.

Firebrand already exists and is in the game for you to play right now! Just buy Path of Fire and unlock it! 😄

I'd agree with this if SA was actually used in other builds, but as it stands it's kinda garbage-tier from all the previous nerfs to it. If you're running Zeal for damage in WvW, odds are high that you're running Symbolic Avenger (power) or Eternal Armory (condi). There just aren't enough ways to get aegis by default for this trait to be useful otherwise.

Did you try it out yourself, or did you just see some videos of people pulling it off successfully and writing it off as overpowered?

It only does this when SA is proccing. If you remove the aegis, the guard can't start up the aegis chain again until they get to that 5th hit themselves, and they're likely to take a couple hits every time this happens if they're diving into a blob. I've got a folder full of videos where I ate dirt with only a handful of clips where I pulled it off and got away, lol. Again, I'd much rather see the damage on Mystic Rebuke reduced before any awful ICD solutions have to be used, as those would kill this unique interaction entirely.

Yeah WoD instantly shuts this down, and boon strips kill it pretty quickly too. Not to mention, as soon as you down 1-2 people, they're going to invuln eat your SA procs and prevent you from getting aegis back until you do 2 more hits yourself. While you can do that pretty quickly, you'll still take a hit or two each time it happens (which can happen multiple times before the downed invuln wears off), opening up a window where you can just suddenly die. For the people claiming this is overpowered: Did you try running it yourself? Sure, you'll get that ideal situation every so often, but I found myself eating dirt most of the time. WoD is an instant kill lol.

That's because you asked in the bug thread instead of this one lol Hybrid (grieving+flame legion) running Virtues 311, Radiance 221, WB 222 Power (zerk) running Zeal 223, Radiance 233, WB 222 Healer (dunno what gear lol) running the 2nd GM trait in Virtues and whatever else you want from a third line (probably honor for more healing or radiance for signet sharing/damage). The core concept is that you can just press f2 and pump out heals for 6s with some fast hitting attacks. This is probably the most flexible build when it comes to traits/weapons/utils/gear as I could see a very offensive version of this working just as well as a very defensive one, based on the traits they have access to.

The argument for a buff to condi WB is that it's more of a liability to your group than a Firebrand would be. It's squishier, brings less utility, but is more mobile and would ideally do a little more damage (or at least equal). Druid on the other hand doesn't need to be doing damage for the same reason that Firebrand is overpowered. Builds that provide boons provide a larger party/squad dps increase than a regular dps build would, otherwise people wouldn't run those supports. (DPS firebrand is mostly fine, but cqb is literally contributing ~60-70k+ damage to their party.)

https://dps.report/oLnD-20210820-204819_arkk https://dps.report/3sri-20210821-130353_arkk https://dps.report/08Kh-20210820-172646_arkk https://dps.report/6s5m-20210820-085640_arkk https://dps.report/mxwg-20210819-225641_arkk https://dps.report/ztVk-20210819-210234_arkk https://dps.report/w3An-20210819-175630_arkk https://dps.report/3frD-20210819-110525_arkk https://dps.report/kMDv-20210819-034716_arkk https://dps.report/e7RQ-20210818-093958_arkk Can definitely do better than these too, as it takes a while (more than 4 days, at least) to master these fights on any given class. Fractals have an abundance of micro-optimization opportunities. As far as dependency on others, it's really not that bad if alac drops here or there. Sure, it'll hurt a little more than other classes, but it's also not as if the Justice burns are your only source of damage in this build.

For Guardian, it actually is. They only have Firebrand for PvE, as condi DH and core are just gimmick meme builds and have been for years. The nerf to Eternal Armory really hurt for core, too.

Is this kind of performance not good enough for you? https://dps.report/OULn-20210820-204423_arriv Also I didn't mean to press f2/f3 and stay in them for the full duration, I just meant that you can freely use them when F1 is off cd if you need to top yourself off or need some quick stability/aegis before using F1 again. It's a very minor dps loss when used that way, but if it's keeping you from downing, it's a dps gain.

That's part of what made it so unique to play though. You can choose to give up some of your burning output for a little bit if you need the f2/f3 survival, and you can still freely use the f2/f3 in conjunction with f1 for the mobility/boons they provide. All of those times in 100 CM where Ai would dash across the arena, I could just f2 + sword 2 + f1 and get right back to business. It felt great.

If anything, they could just do some more split balancing and further reduce the damage on shattered if it proves to be a problem. Having a build that could dive into enemy zergs and potentially survive was a ton of fun, and I'd hate to see that cool trait interaction removed entirely.

You're conveniently forgetting that each of these builds have unique playstyles, despite using the same spec. Power, condi, and healing all felt like unique ways to approach the spec, and they're all distinct from core/dh/fb. That doesn't sound like homogenization to me, unless you boil it down to "build A and build B do the same damage. why should i play build B instead of build A?". Question for you, how many of the following builds have you played in PvE? Core Power Core Condi DH Power DH Power (Virtues) DH Condi FB Quickness Healer FB Power FB Condi FB Quickness Condi WB Power WB Power (Virtues) WB Hybrid WB Healer

I was referring to group content where someone else provides the alacrity. You definitely want to take the 2nd GM trait if you're running any sort of burn build in PvE for the extra Justice duration. In solo open world, most mobs will die quickly enough that it doesn't matter, but if you want to take on champs by yourself then you should probably gear up in full Cele.

If you didn't have ascended gear in the bank beforehand, you'll be missing out on a fair chunk of dps in power builds (the weapons alone are a >5% increase). From benching, people were managing to do around ~1k higher than the existing DH builds, and while the hybrid build couldn't compete with FB, it still managed around ~34k. The extra mobility was heavily slept on by the playerbase, as more mobility = getting to the target faster = more dps uptime = faster clears. I pugged CM+T4s 15 times during the beta on hybrid and had an absolute blast. I wished the damage was a little bit higher to compensate for the squishiness, but it was quite effective overall. It was also pretty fun in open world, blinking from mob to mob and blowing them up. Those hydras didn't stand a chance.