Sorem.9157

I might be late to the party but here we go Do not associate specializations with types of damage. Think of them by their core concept. Dragonhunter has always been a power build, but tomorrow it might not be. Six months ago, Firebrand was strictly considered a full condition build, now it is one of the meta healer builds and has aswell a quickness power variant. My first advice is pick the gear for the setup that you enjoy the most. Now if you wanna talk optimization or versatility, i can do that aswell. For PvE, you always wanna look at the most damage possible. Survavibility comes with experience (and cleaving effectively, which will cause you to rally, if necessary). Leave the more tanky variants such as Marauder and Trailblazers for PvP/WvW, where you'll be fighting players that can outsmart you, instead of AI. Now let's dive into it. For Open World, in general, Power will always be superior to condi, mathematically. Monsters die too fast for you to take advantage of all your condition damage. Most of the times mobs will die with quite a few stacks on them that would tick for awhile. That is very relevant, but the most important thing you need to look at is cleave potential: hitting a lot of things at once aka the capability to generate BIG BAD RED CIRCLES. It is more important than high personal single target dps in open world, since there are frequently quite a few things to hit and, at that, Firebrand excels. Reset on F1 tome from radiance is amazing in open world, which is what causes this specific profession to be able to get away with running condi optimally in open world. Tome of Wrath scales off both power and condition damage, but leans more to condition damage, which gives us an odd situation: condition is superior but power still being VERY reliable. Power Dragonhunter has a lot of cleave, don't get me wrong, but the Tome of Wrath being so overtuned on Firebrand and its synergy with the Radiance line, which causes it to reset everytime you get a kill (which in open world will happen a lot), is hard to pass on. Being completely frank, optimization is kinda pointless in open world. Nothing there is challenging enough for you to bother with it, unless you wanna flex at your high scores at the dps meter. Spoiler alert: nobody will care about it there, most people just spam 1s. But definetly, Firebrand will provide you with a better time, being it great at cleaving thrash mobs using both the optimal condition build or the very good power build. For Fractals and Raids though, it is a whole different story. Optimization is important here. Fractals are usually faster fights, which gives power DH an edge on top of condition firebrand, dps wise. Firebrand has those nice utilities that could really help out your party, though, like reflects, resistance, stability, aegis, etc, which you can get from your mantras and F3 tome. Keep in mind though, it is not necessarily your job to use those if you're a dps, so nobody can blame you for not using them, as theoretically, every ability you use that isn't hurting the enemy, is a dps loss. Personally, even though it is not my Job to carry those, I still prefer Firebrand for your average fractal, simply because it offers better party support at the cost of being less bursty. When we are talking about raids, fights will be longer and require greater coordination, which gives condition firebrand an edge, since it has stronger dps in the long run. What will be the icing on the cake for Firebrand specs though and what in the end i think you should consider when making your gear: Quickbrand. That is a very strong build, which provides strong POWER dps and even though, the "meta" build uses Perfect Inscriptions in Radiance and a mix of Assassins/Diviner armor, you can very well swap that off for Righteous Instincts in full berserker and maintain quickness for your whole party at practically the same level. This is not 100% optimal, but it is i would say 90%. The icing on the cake is that if you are running with full berserker, that is exactly the same gear setup you'd run on your full meta power DH, giving you versatility. Now, while most people prefer the condition variant of Quickbrand, Power is definetly VERY viable. In conclusion: if you go Condition gear, you'll be fixed at only playing Firebrand, while if you go Power, you are able to play both. I'm assuming you are not looking for the most optimal setup for everything - that will always require multiple gear sets, but as long as you're willing to give up that 10% effectiveness on some eventual builds, you can get away with running Power on most scenarios. Firebrand is optimal with Condition gear and viable with power, Dragonhunter and core Guardian are optimal with power but NOT viable with condition. Berserker gear is also easier to transitate into a more tankier variation with Marauder, which will be very welcome if you ever decide you wanna get into some WvW, where you can play DPS Guardian for Zerg Fights or Dragonhunter for Roaming/Havoc. To me, the choice is clear: if you can only pick one, go berserker. TL;DR: Go Berserker. You'll be able to play Power DH / Power FB for open world and Power DH / Quickbrand for Fractals and Raids.

Wild Magic Backpiece and Glider Combo on BL Statuette please :(

As much as Scourge can soak up a lot of damage it will never see much use as a solo sidenoder for the simple fact that it can be easily shutdown by a +1, due to having no channeled blocks/invulns, low mobility, little access to stab and stunbreaks. Scourges cannot disengage or rotate fast when necessary and until that is addressed, it won't see much use outside of teamfights where the other players can cover up for those weaknesses. My opinion on the matter, at least.

I'm more interested in what new sidenoder builds will rise now that the so dominant condi rev is significantly weaker. People say condi builds will be stronger but who knows, maybe side noding turns into a more aggressive meta and warriors start to pop around? Maybe soulbeast gets back into the scene? Condi, power? Hell, maybe even holosmith turns back into a more sidenodey meta, with the grenades and mobility nerfs. Honestly, right now it is impossible to say for sure.

"Potentially broken" is not a thing. Either it is broken or it is not. I don't know your rating but on mine i definetly do not see many people playing any variation of burn guardian as a sidenoder and the few that do have little success with it, from my experience. Guardian is designed in a way that if they want to invest into burning they have to give up quite a lot of survivability. This happens because Guardians traitlines require a lot of synergy and burn damage is spread across 3 different traitlines: Zeal, Radiance and Virtues, the first two being exclusively offensive lines and third one being an utility line. In order to pull off insane burn damage numbers OP is describing you need all 3. Zeal and Radiance have strong burn modifiers but are not great source of burning damage - the high amount of burn stacks usually require virtues, which reduces hits for Justice proc from 5 to 3 and makes it AoE. So ideally you want to at least run virtues and another line, either Zeal or Radiance, for really high burn damage. If you want to run an elite spec that forces you to NOT have either honor or valor, which are the main survivability lines so you're usually stuck with core guardian if you want to get high burn damage but, by design, core guardian has a lot of flaws, lacking a lot defensive options and having a really predictable gameplay. Either that or you need to settle for very very acceptable burn damage, by picking one of the offensive lines, one of the defensive lines and an elite spec. All of this of course is without mentioning that Guardian inherently is a bad sidenoder due to not having mobility to disengage when necessary or the ability to survive outnumbered unless some serious outplay is made.

As much as I agree the burn stacking on Guardian can be potentially toxic, the build you described is a meme build at best and will not work against anyone with a clue. Now regarding the real issue, which is burnstacking capacity, yes it can be problematic in terms of "enjoyable gameplay". It is toxic and annoying and unfun, but by no means it is overpowered. In fact, with all the nerfs Firebrand got, the really really poorly designed burn and symbol syacking mechanics are the only two things that allow Guardian as a whole to remain somewhat close to viability.

Eternity on Night has much better particles than standard Twilight, same for Day version and Sunrise. Particles on the character are different, the glow on the blade is different, footsteps are different, the pommel is different, draw effect is different. Eternity is much better looking and I don't actually feel like this would be hard to do, considering something similar is already avaiable: when you unlock Mistforged Chestpiece or Obsidian Weapons (for both PvP and WvW) you also get a Slumbering version with less particles. My suggestion is exactly what @Shadowmoon.7986 is saying. Unlock Eternity and you get 3 skins: Current one, that cycles between day and night, a day only version and a night only version. I believe this problem is something that holds a lot of people back from crafting Eternity, being it a big limitation to what is the most expensive weapon in the game.

Please allow us to choose which skin of the Eternity greatsword we want to wield, unlocking them both separetly when you acquire eternity. It is hell to mix eternity with armor and i usually end up just using sunrise :(

which is weird cuz if two guardians use it against each other both will have their damage mitigated, which means zealots defense is supposed to block itself

I would suggest you to run a glass build for raids and fractals if you wanna do those properly. With time, you'll get used to it. But if you want more survivability for Open World content, another option that i'm very fond of, specially on Firebrand, is plaguedoctor. I prefer it over trailblazer, if you're replacing parts that won't cost expertise. Firebrand is a profession that has access to a lot of utilities, in therms of both healing and boons. Plaguedoctor provides concentration and healing power to enhance that, allowing you to maintain better might uptime and quickness, which can lead to more personal dps if you don't have a support (which most times you will on higher tiers of fractals and raids) - this is mostly for open world.

I mean You got jumped by 2 glass heralds, not only being alone but with no utilities and being a necro, the class that is most vulnerable to those kind of bursts. They were also coordinated. Every game has assassin type classes that can do that, specially to classes like necromancer. I feel like if you were coordinated with someone appropriate aswell, say a tempest, that wouldnt happen. Yes, it is frustrating but that is how it is when you play Necromancer and wander around alone vs 2 experienced coordinated heralds. As you said it yourself, if this is a plat 3/leg game, you will be punished for small mistakes like that.

why are symbols radius 180 if meteor shower is 360?

It is honestly too early to tell. Balance has not yet settled and many builds are still being tried out or are yet left to be found. Keeping this game mode would not only divide the already scarse population would escalate exponentially the intricacies of balancing the game, now for both game modes. Remember that we are already struggling to get balance patches in every what? 3 months? This would be an extra item to expend development time into. Having that said, keeping PvP the way it currently is will just cause the population to keep shrinking and reinvention is needed. I think 3v3s could be a great way to start that if ArenaNet is willing to make the investment to go the extra mile and balance properly for both game modes, improve rewards for playing high in the leaderboards (honestly 2 extra pips in plat is just pitiful), block class swapping so we can have an actually working mmr, fixing ATs UI and extent and allow incentive to spectating matches. tl;dr: depends if anet is willing to actually invest in developping 3v3s as an actual alternative and a first step to try to develop pvp as a whole or if they plan to just slap it there for ppl to play whenever they feel like, with little to no incentive.

The only "real" point you made is that you assume PvP and WvW players don't feel against PvE as much as PvE players feel against PvP and WvW. Exactly what i said. Your argument is based of an assumption, which, as a PvP player i can testify to be false. Several of my friends simply don't go for a number of things (myself included) because they do not want to leave heart of the mists. We get our sense of achievement through improving and honing our personal skills. Not being able to get a specific item will rarely cause any competitive player to come here and complain. It is not that we don't feel against PvE enough, its that we don't expect this kind of demand to be attended and choose to forefit the "shiny", but i guess taht if your main sense of achievement comes from collecting those shinies, it is understandable you feel frustrated. Though honestly my best advice is get used to it. It is "life".Keep that up and might aswell get a free pair of legendary weapons on character creation cuz ain't no way everybody is gonna be pleased. Imagine if legendaries were exclusively PvE? There is a considerable number of competitive players that would be utterly ignored. Now just for the heck of it, imagine the polar opposite, if all legendary weapons required you to do craptons of PvP and just a little bit of PvE (what I would personally prefer). The way it currently is is good and though not fair (to competitive players) it is the best that we will get. As a PvP man myself I don't mind having to hop into WvW for a couple days to get GoB. Y'all think it is basically the same thing but it isn't, it is like putting open world grinding in the same bag as raiding - different things. Oddly enough, the PvE community is very vocal when they can't get the stuff they want. I don't know why. Raids are too hard, PvP is too hard, WvW is too hard, yada yada yada.

If I have to put up with craptons of PvE and Achievement Hunting for my legendaries you can endure one reward track of wvw which you can get done in a couple of days. The fact that Legendary Weapons have one element that REQUIRES you to WvW and have a lot of requirements that require you to PvE should be an issue for WvW players yet it is the PvE players that we see complaining. Imagine yourself being somebody who despises PvE to the point of not being able to spend two days in it (time it requires you to finish a reward track with reasonable playtime for GoB). How would YOU feel about all the stuff you need to do in order to create a legendary weapon? Truth be told, if you are into PvE you have and always will be privileged in these matters. Can't blame ArenaNet though, PvE is afterall, the most popular game mode and it is reasonable for them to invest into that. Doing this isn't exclusively to make you like WvW, in my opinion. It is first to make it a harder achievement for you, thus making your accomplishment feel more worthwhile and second to help keep competitive game modes populated, because they can't afford to make actual investments to improve it (bad business strategy imho). Oddly enough, PvP and WvW players aren't making threads about this injustice and biasing towards PvE when crafting gear though. Complaining about this will only make you look spoiled and I believe in your potential to be better :)

I'm having the same problem here Anyone else?

I'm having issues aswell Only w GW2 - already tried running repair

When you're plat 3 pvper but cant 1v1 a bristleback Feels

OH GOD THE VETERAN BRISTLEBACKS UGH THE BONEBREAKERS THE NIGHMARES

Rangers weren't simply meta. Ranger was superior to every single other sidenoder by a pretty big margin in pretty much any setup.

Years later, i'm sharing this same pain. lmao. Is there even a timer for this event? I can't find it anywhere.

I'm usually around 180ms ping from Brazil. I do not feel like it holds me back A LOT, though i do not know how 20ms feels in this game. I can maintain myself in plat 2 hovering up to plat 3 occasionally, playing mostly guardian and necromancer. I have also played Revenant in this rating before the 25th Feb big patch. I'd recommend avoiding mesmer and specially thief, though.

Let's be real and admit that the best 1v1 class in pvp is the pet tiger. Shits strong son

Rewards didn't increase much, but the daily ATs got way longer. Too long if you want my real opinion, specially if you're in one of the stronger teams.

PMA is not welcome here. How dare you.