Hogwarts Zebra.8597

thief, rev, ranger, holo, scrapper, mirage, weaver, i could go on. All hit harder, have more mobility, and more sustain than willbender.

Adding passives is never a good way to buff a spec. If a spec is weak (which WB is) they should get stronger actives. A simple solution here would be to make the activation healing on f2 bigger (around 3k) and have the cast of f3 be an evade. Many problems would remain but at least sustain would be passable.

100% of hero points are soloable by core guard with an empty traitline

Apparently you do in fact have infinite dodges, just only against power builds 👌 Edit: if you disagree then respond with a logical and factual argument. No need to be passive aggressive spamming "confused" on everyone who disagrees with you

For wvw roaming, take the build featured in my latest vid. Strong dmg, mobility, sustain, CC, it's one of the most well rounded guard builds atm For pvp just take the standard zerk DH build (u can find it on hardstuck.gg), since my wvw build doesn't translate well into pvp

Tbh posts like this are pointless. Everything is "functional" provided ur skilled enough and your opponents are unskilled enough. I've hit plat2 solo q with FB, one of the worst specs in the game, so yes DH will remain "functional" without trapper runes. But whether or not it remains viable is another matter

1) Never expect anywhere near the same performance as what u see in montages. These videos are very heavily cherry-picked. A 10 minute quality montage translates to at least 5 hours of raw footage. 2) The build featured is pretty bad. It's nice for farming newbs but pit it against any decent pvp main and it'll get destroyed. If you really want to play that build though, a typical burst would be: land f1-->JI+maw-->GS4-->GS2-->hammer2. But this is an extremely slow and telegraphed burst, and results will be disappointing against anyone who understands the basics of pvp

Speed rune works in wvw, but in pvp it's not good at all. without trapper runes the current build would become garbage and you'd be forced to play meditrapper, which is about as "fine" as GS mirage

Indeed, which is why more off meta builds should be buffed to be able to compete with holo/rev/thief. Deleting these builds will only result in them being replaced by the next most op builds that are currently being slept on due to holo/rev's prevalence (which then get deleted themselves in turn), as history has shown time and time again.

Look at the dps meta starting from PoF. First it was scg and sagebrand–ppl cried for nerfs, and they got nerfed into oblivion. Then it was burn DH, which also promptly got nerfed into oblivion. These are perfect examples of garbage balancing. These builds are now completely unplayable and likely will remain unplayable forever. Compare that to how nade holo, SB rene, and power herald were nerfed. They still remain meta to this day, despite numerous repeated nerfs. This is how nerfs should be done–the nerfed build should simply become slightly weaker, not completely useless. Now let’s examine our current problem: immortal core necro+supp guard stacks everywhere. Hmmm… didn’t there use to be a build that was extremely good at destroying bunker comps? Ah yes, burn DH. I wonder why we don’t see it being used to counter-comp the current meta? Oh right, it’s completely unplayable now. This is the issue with overnerfing builds–they sacrifice build diversity in favor of temporary balance, only for the “balance” to be immediately ruined by the next most busted build. Imagine if every class in this game were deleted except for one. That would be the epitome of perfect balance–everyone would have the exact same tools and options as everyone else. But would that be fun? Ofc not. Diversity is simultaneously what makes pvp fun and what balances it. Diversity cannot be sacrificed in favor of temporary “balance”. Yet most people are still constantly advocating for the deletion of builds/traits/runes/whatever, and in turn, variety. What should be done instead? Start buffing weak builds, rather than deleting “overpowered” ones. No current pvp build is so busted that it needs deleting (ofc overperforming builds should still be nerfed carefully, the same way nade holo/SB rene/power herald were). The only way this game survives long term is by greatly increasing its build diversity

You inflict 1 stack of burn for every 3 times u hit an enemy, so even tho scepter is in theory a pure power weapon it becomes a hybrid weapon on this build. u can also cast purging flames from range.

DH won't be able to fulfill your demands, look instead at FB and core. U will want celestial gear to compensate for the low base health, but otherwise just copy a condi dps build from metabattle/hardstuck and perhaps adjust some traits/utils to suit your needs.

I like radiance/zeal/valor with GS+sw/fc, u only lose ~10% dmg from dropping virtues (unscathed contender is too unreliable to upkeep) but gain a lot of staying power in fights. U do lose stunbreak+stab on f3 but usually I don't find it to be that problematic. Still a budget pherald/holo but unfortunately that's just what dps guard is these days

Nades are broken in pvp and wvw (wvw especially). Every competent competitive main knows this. Nade autos out-damage even some melee autos while also being able to spam them at your feet/behind u. Every single nade skill should only be able to be thrown in the direction ur facing.

One stack of burning out-damages one stack of bleed, indeed. However, ranger is able to stack far more bleeding+poison stacks than FB is able burn, resulting in similar dmg output overall.

Ranger simply isn't optimized for burning dmg, that's just how it is. If u were to try and make a poison FB it'd be doing similarly pitiful dps as ur seeing with your burn ranger right now. Likewise, if u started optimizing your ranger for what it's actually meant to do (poison+bleed), it will be dealing comparable dps to burn FB

Sry but if ur only doing 600 dps as condi ranger there's something seriously wrong with your build/gear. Btw ranger's main condis are bleed and poison (and possibly immob, depending on build), not burning. Might wanna focus on those instead

Necro does need to be nerfed, but lich is not the issue atm--the issue is shroud simply being able to tank too much dmg. Remove the 50% dmg reduction while in shroud and necro will be on par with other classes.

Actually it is possible with AED running, since it negates the lethal hit. And yeah transforms are just one tricks but some ppl still run them for fun/memes

Just chiming in to say that 40k in one skill is indeed possible with the norn racial elite: Charge (Become the Bear) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W). It's only 34k here cuz I had 3k toughness--with a glass build it would've definitely exceeded 40k.

If u simply want to defend your structures burn guard is quite effective. Even though you'll be doing minimal dmg to the actual enemies, siege does not have cleanse so you can usually melt the siege in a couple of bursts. I've often solo held structures against 20+ enemies with burn DH and sneaky use of siege disablers (swap templates to trapper rune build to stealth up, so they can't see you using the disabler)

Chill man - the fact you are interpreting my invitation to duel as a flex says a lot. I'm sorry if my request to see your build in action has hurt your feelings.

In that case, yes I enjoy guard very much 😄 After reading his post, I believe it is indeed mostly a build difference. He seems to prefer the traditional meditrapper DH build or the radiance trapper version, which can get mowed down by more bruisery builds. I however run custom builds with more mobility and more sustain that can easily run rings around such bruisers. Skill is also a factor though in that the traditional DH builds can burst down these glassy builds if they mess up, but that requries them to eat tether, eat trueshot, eat ToF, all of which will not happen against higher skill opponents.

I see ur completely ignoring draining+absorption sigils, which I have repeatedly emphasized are key to my build. Axe autos also hit very hard if u land the 3rd chain. I have no problem securing kills on non-bunker opponents. If ur on NA we can duel each using our own builds, u will stand 0 chance with the setup u linked. Btw sagebrand was never 1.1.1, it was 1.1.3

2 isn't really overkill for FB, ur forgetting that your heal skill only heals for 200 health base 😂 Half the point of honor is to make your symbols bigger so that it's much harder to simply walk out of them. If ur gonna drop one defensive traitline u drop valor 100%. I've tried a few variants where I dropped valor and radiance worked well as long as u kept axe/shield with absorption+draining (I use sw/torch as the other set) Speed runes are half the reason FB works, with your setup yes u can momentarily port/leap onto someone but they will just easily re-create the gap. Absorption+draining sigils are also crucial, so one of your weapon sets must be axe/shield. Remember that in order to make a FB build work u have to find workarounds to the useless baseline heal skill (with my build it's done through the double aegis synergy from valor+honor and relying on draining sigil for healing). I've revised the build since my vid, I currently run this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABc6x/lRwkYXsP2IeMTrvKA-z1IY1onvUyMC6NE6uACPBsbA-w. U can also drop valor for radiance (no other changes to gear/build necessary) for more dmg, but personally I don't cuz if I wanted dmg I'd simply play DH; I play FB for the sustain and AOE. WvW rank has no indication on player skill (I'm bronze myself but being a former pvp main I can beat over 99% of ppl I come across). That said the opponents in my vid definitely were not of the highest caliber--it's simply impossible to win 1vX against opponents of relatively equal skill to your own unless they're playing garbage builds or get way too overconfident.