Playing power builds in PvP without unblockable attacks is horrific.

[WingSwipe.3084]

Jumped in to a SPvP session with the intent to play a melee power build  only to have 5-6 attacks in a row blocked when fighting anything. Burning every move you have only to have them just nullified is just horrible aggravating to fight.

Access to aegis and blocks has gotten completely out of hand and is killing power playstyles that doesn't have access to unblockable attacks by default or via traits and skills. Im assuming thats why condi damage playstyles are getting so prevalent from my own experience.

Is my observation of this aligning with anyone else experience?

[Vyseman.2947]

Sounds more like you had 5 Spellbreaker Enemies with Dagger+Shield  and Staff for extra Blocks? 

Usually i never have any Problems with Power Builds.   Aegis is just one attack or just simply boonrip them before you burst them down. 

And if they waste all their Blocks in the first seconds, then use your burstcombo after they are done blocking. 

[Flowki.7194]

It is how the game is now, if you don't have block/unblockable spam, then expect to be on the back foot vs half the specs in use, till they have burned there cycle. The only real outlier who is getting by is vindi with its "sky evades", which is no doubt going to be nerfed out of meta soon, as to not upset the natural order of block/cc spam.

 

WB can jump in and unleash its burst while covered with aeg/block, which offers no real counter pressure, and then it can renew out, with more blocks stab to cover the escape or attack on.

DH spews out blocks while spamming traps, which ironically hard lean on unblockables, again, another spec that you have to dance around for 15 seconds mimimum, even if they suck.

Virt, well, its virt. How a spec can have that much defense, and still do decent damage is pretty hilarious.

Condi zerker, that spec essentially follows a pve rotation, and one of the only times you really have a window to attack, is when he is tryin to land skull, which is the time you least of all want to be trading blows.. absolute degen spec. Thankfully not seing much of this anymore, thankfully.

SPB, hard carrid by FC, as if it isnt tanky/mobile enough, especially for its damage output. Worse than virt.

 

Ontop of block spam-immune, youre facing thieves who can't be pinned down, stab countering daze spam from mace rangers, or long kitten CC chains from double life reapers, should you dare to step near any group fight withought perma stab/block spam

 

It would be intersting to see the duration stats from an average current sPVP match, in terms of the overall uptime in "can't attack that player right now".. it is a very uninteractive meta from a trading damage point of view.

Edited July 7 by Flowki.7194

[ArthurDent.9538]

Most block skills block everything for their duration of 2-3 seconds. Try waiting for them to end their block animation before spamming 5-6 more attacks.

[Flowki.7194]

1 hour ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Most block skills block everything for their duration of 2-3 seconds. Try waiting for them to end their block animation before spamming 5-6 more attacks.

So specs that are not spewing out block-attacks, should "wait it out" while the block-attack spec spews its dmg.. sounds about as one sided as it can get. Oh wait, mace ranger daze spam.

 

The game I just played had 3 virts, 1 mirage, 2 dh, 2x necro, and 1 thief. So 7 of those specs are built around "you shall not attack me", while the necros have double life (again why attack that? waste of burst)>long CC chains which force the use of high stab/block access or just don't bother engaging.

 

I dunno about anybody else but I am tired of spending 80% of games checking boons/visuals to see if it is ok to attack, and the constant retargets with multiple thief/ranger/mesmers in games.

Edited July 7 by Flowki.7194

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

10 hours ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

Jumped in to a SPvP session with the intent to play a melee power build  only to have 5-6 attacks in a row blocked when fighting anything. Burning every move you have only to have them just nullified is just horrible aggravating to fight.

Access to aegis and blocks has gotten completely out of hand and is killing power playstyles that doesn't have access to unblockable attacks by default or via traits and skills. Im assuming thats why condi damage playstyles are getting so prevalent from my own experience.

Is my observation of this aligning with anyone else experience?

It is indeed especially wretched, especially because most classes with block spam do not need to spend an anim channeling the block and can just continue pressing buttons while it protects them. 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Just play shiro rev or s/d thief

[Shagie.7612]

i think it's a little more accurate to say that power builds that do less frequent but larger hits are the ones that you can barely play, while some others have multiple hits on each skill barely even notice

it's a symptom of the game being significantly more spammy than it was originally intended to be

[Myror.7521]

@Flowki.7194 in what way is spellbreaker worse than virt when it comes to block Chain lols. You have clearly not Understand how to Play against any type of warr build xp. Since you also said that Condi Berserker is only dmg able when they do skullgrinder.... you know all they have is 2 single blocks and 2 Times a 1 second imune to power dmg buff right? xD..... even ranger has more than just that xp

Against Spellbreaker.... well okay this is a hard one but also do able when you simply evade its bursts (fullcounter inclueded) and yes its not too hard since you can also let enemys use fullcounter in porpose just to dodge it ^^

Edited July 8 by Myror.7521

[arazoth.7290]

13 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Flowki.7194 in what way is spellbreaker worse than virt when it comes to block Chain lols. You have clearly not Understand how to Play against any type of warr build xp. Since you also said that Condi Berserker is only dmg able when they do skullgrinder.... you know all they have is 2 single blocks and 2 Times a 1 second imune to power dmg buff right? xD..... even ranger has more than just that xp

Against Spellbreaker.... well okay this is a hard one but also do able when you simply evade its bursts (fullcounter inclueded) and yes its not too hard since you can also let enemys use fullcounter in porpose just to dodge it ^^

uhm condi zerker real damage comes from skullgrinder though, not really well spread over the other abilities to give them more use and instead overload that one

[Myror.7521]

@arazoth.7290 actually true but hmm i think its fair enough since all you need to do is beeing Sure your not hit by this one skill xp.

What i meant with dmg able is ...... Not that skulkgrinder does all its dmg but that flowski said that warr is only invuln when it used the skullgrinder skill^^

Edited July 8 by Myror.7521

[arazoth.7290]

Just now, Myror.7521 said:

@arazoth.7290 actually true but hmm i think its fair enough since all you need to do is beeing Sure your not hit by this one skill xp

yea, litarly outplayed czerker on Herald yesterday that he had 5% hp left. I did 1 small misstep brainfart about that and it did made me go from 90% to 0 😂, Herald cleanse 💜

[WingSwipe.3084]

5 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

i think it's a little more accurate to say that power builds that do less frequent but larger hits are the ones that you can barely play, while some others have multiple hits on each skill barely even notice

it's a symptom of the game being significantly more spammy than it was originally intended to be

This is fair, was trying power berserker in PvP (Big mistake to begin with, I know) and got Arc Dividers, Rupturing Smashes and even Gunflames just negated. This was especially prevalent around guardian players. Tried to pop a volley and all 5 hits where negated while I couldn't see them channelling anything defensive.

 

13 hours ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Most block skills block everything for their duration of 2-3 seconds. Try waiting for them to end their block animation before spamming 5-6 more attacks.

Dont think this is very viable, allow the mandatory "You cant touch me" time usually allows for people to prep their full rotation to burst you.

 

12 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

So specs that are not spewing out block-attacks, should "wait it out" while the block-attack spec spews its dmg.. sounds about as one sided as it can get. Oh wait, mace ranger daze spam.

Yeah, this is essentially the state you are left in. Damned if you hit them, damned if you dont.

[Myror.7521]

@arazoth.7290 x3 yea herald is in general kinda a mess 1v1ing condi stuff 😜

[WingSwipe.3084]

10 minutes ago, arazoth.7290 said:

uhm condi zerker real damage comes from skullgrinder though, not really well spread over the other abilities to give them more use and instead overload that one

This is true, the degenerate stain that is condi berserker in PvP is hardcarried by the Akeem Skullgrinder combo.

I will reiterate my solution to this:
"The nerfs to Savage Instinct and Eternal Champion in the October 17, 2023 patch need to be reverted for Power Berserker to have a modicum of survivability in PvP/WvW.
This nerf came in to play because Condi Berserker had excessive damage due to the Akeem Skullgrinder combo that allowed the team wide spread of disgusting amounts of confusion stacks.
To fix Condi Berserker in PvP all you needed to remove one stack of confusion from Skullgrinder, this would force Condi Berserkers to take Blood Reckoning to proc the Akeem relic interaction, which would have been fair as you would have needed to build less tanky for more damage.
The nerf was heavy handed and had the unintended effect of nerfing survivability of Power Berserkers in the crossfire. Survivability that it desperatly needs to this day."

Edited July 8 by WingSwipe.3084
Missing a word.

[Myror.7521]

@WingSwipe.3084 we do not need more sustain on Berserker i think its fine as it is rn ^^. The only thing Power Berserker needs rn would be Bring Back burst dmg to Axe burst again^^ 4k dmg on a skill that only does just that is kinda dump 

[WingSwipe.3084]

11 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@WingSwipe.3084 we do not need more sustain on Berserker i think its fine as it is rn ^^. The only thing Power Berserker needs rn would be Bring Back burst dmg to Axe burst again^^ 4k dmg on a skill that only does just that is kinda dump 

Attacks that hit once for big damage in PvP are bordering on useless since aegis and blind spam is so prevalent. Multi hit attacks are significantly more effective in all aspects of PvP.

Power Berserker either needs more sustain or it needs unblockable attacks to make any big Burst attacks connect.

[arazoth.7290]

17 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@arazoth.7290 x3 yea herald is in general kinda a mess 1v1ing condi stuff 😜

Yea, the condi cleanse Herald got on 20 seconds isn't helping😅

[Shagie.7612]

1 hour ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

the degenerate stain that is condi berserker in PvP is hardcarried by the Akeem Skullgrinder combo

But Czerk was still the top sidenoder before relics released.
Akeem just made it even better.

1 hour ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

This is fair, was trying power berserker in PvP (Big mistake to begin with, I know) and got Arc Dividers, Rupturing Smashes and even Gunflames just negated. This was especially prevalent around guardian players. Tried to pop a volley and all 5 hits where negated while I couldn't see them channelling anything defensive.

Between how crazy projectile hate is since EoD, and rifle being very much a slow hitter, you're kind of out of luck there unless you've got signet of might up tbh
Spear actually improves that by pretty considerable amounts because Wild Throw is 7 hits and hits like a freight train, and you can use every single attack except the auto while running away. It'll easily make rifle obsolete if nothing changes, as far as glass cannon war goes anyways. That same gunflame build is like infinitely better with spear.

[WingSwipe.3084]

21 minutes ago, Shagie.7612 said:

But Czerk was still the top sidenoder before relics released.
Akeem just made it even better.

Between how crazy projectile hate is since EoD, and rifle being very much a slow hitter, you're kind of out of luck there unless you've got signet of might up tbh
Spear actually improves that by pretty considerable amounts because Wild Throw is 7 hits and hits like a freight train, and you can use every single attack except the auto while running away. It'll easily make rifle obsolete if nothing changes, as far as glass cannon war goes anyways. That same gunflame build is like infinitely better with spear.

Just a lil horrific that the warrior spear design seemed like an afterthought when you look at the kit.

[Skary.8956]

What is the issue?
Often I need to wait for like 20 secs before I can deal dmg to a Dagger/Dagger Hybrid Tempest to wait for all shields, blocks and barriers to end + it's not like he has access to 19k heal with perfma regen and protection 40%.
Same goes for Druid, Support Herald, Support Chrono and Spellbreaker.

sPvp as a Power Build is like I'm non stop waiting my turn to deal dmg to the enemies but my turn never comes 🤣

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

5 hours ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

This is fair, was trying power berserker in PvP (Big mistake to begin with, I know) and got Arc Dividers, Rupturing Smashes and even Gunflames just negated. This was especially prevalent around guardian players. Tried to pop a volley and all 5 hits where negated while I couldn't see them channelling anything defensive.

 

30 minutes ago, Skary.8956 said:

sPvp as a Power Build is like I'm non stop waiting my turn to deal dmg to the enemies but my turn never comes 🤣

Glad to see some people are picking up on this. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

5 hours ago, WingSwipe.3084 said:

Power Berserker either needs more sustain or it needs unblockable attacks to make any big Burst attacks connect.

They can't add more sustain to it because condi zerkers will abuse it to become immortal. This is what got savage instinct nerfed.

What I need is quickness so I can shred people with autoblocks because they didn't anticipate future damage like their builds demand I anticipate (when does scepter ele burst come? Whenever the vibe feels right), or multi hit bursts to clear random aegises and activate my traits, but Anet went out of their way on both avenues to make sure that didn't happen with the heat the soul split and arc divider rework ❤️

I don't want to just ignore game mechanics by having unblockable on everything.   If I did Id play mesmer. Not to mention I'm sure they'd be sparse with its uptime and give unblockable bursts an icd that makes it situationally useless, because they like aggressively balancing just power zerker.

Again, idk who I terrified on the balance team, but this grudge ain't worth it lmao

Edited July 8 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Terrorhuz.4695]

12 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

It is indeed especially wretched, especially because most classes with block spam do not need to spend an anim channeling the block and can just continue pressing buttons while it protects them. 

yeah yeah nobody cares about that, did you bring your despicable thiefing to EU tho?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

4 minutes ago, Terrorhuz.4695 said:

yeah yeah nobody cares about that, did you bring your despicable thiefing to EU tho?

Yeah c:<

I'm on Underworld right now

Square up

(After work though OTL)

Edited July 8 by Azure The Heartless.3261