Solo OW power enjoyers: do you run Jalis?

[Buran.3796]

   Over a year ago I give up on playing power Vindi for solo OW PvE since the disparity in sustain compared to celestial was huge, and the ttk of the later for me was fine. Now that the relic of Zakiros offers enhanced sustain for power builds, I've testing the waters of mele power builds again. But while against simpler foes seems to work fine, some champions and bounties with spammy cc skills have been really annoying to fight against with Alliance & Shiro.  While in cele against those foes I can just use bow and Embrace Darkness at mid range and evade while needed whithout losing too much, in power mele oftenly oftenly in ended interrupted in my burst, or even in a chain of autos, since there's less time to react to those cc unless the attacks are slow, well telegraphed or display concentric patterns in the ground...

   So, do you replace your Shiro/whatever for Jalis and camp in the road? I'm considering to ditch Shiro (as I did in PvP) and just rely in passive stability most of the time; while both dealing burst and evading attacks seems easy, doing both while keeping high energy demanding skills as Impossible Odds and doing dps rotations seems very hard to conciliate when your foe spams daze, knockback or any other interrupt skill every few seconds... Should I just run Jalis?

[arazoth.7290]

43 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Over a year ago I give up on playing power Vindi for solo OW PvE since the disparity in sustain compared to celestial was huge, and the ttk of the later for me was fine. Now that the relic of Zakiros offers enhanced sustain for power builds, I've testing the waters of mele power builds again. But while against simpler foes seems to work fine, some champions and bounties with spammy cc skills have been really annoying to fight against with Alliance & Shiro.  While in cele against those foes I can just use bow and Embrace Darkness at mid range and evade while needed whithout losing too much, in power mele oftenly oftenly in ended interrupted in my burst, or even in a chain of autos, since there's less time to react to those cc unless the attacks are slow, well telegraphed or display concentric patterns in the ground...

   So, do you replace your Shiro/whatever for Jalis and camp in the road? I'm considering to ditch Shiro (as I did in PvP) and just rely in passive stability most of the time; while both dealing burst and evading attacks seems easy, doing both while keeping high energy demanding skills as Impossible Odds and doing dps rotations seems very hard to conciliate when your foe spams daze, knockback or any other interrupt skill every few seconds... Should I just run Jalis?

Cele build with centaur, jalis is mediocre and only carried by stability path as far it's atm  nvm it's for pvd openworld or ?  then jalis has more damage flr the mobs y

Edited July 25 by arazoth.7290

[Jobber.6348]

Jalis hands down. It's simply durability and sustained damage packed into one Utility set, and it also stacks up to 25 Might against packs with Retribution.

An extremely idiot proof LI OW build I use is Invocation Retribution Herald.

You flip between Glint and Jalis, turn on Upkeep and just go about your weapon rotations. Perma quickness and high Might uptime, and if you need more sustain, simply change Vicious Reprisal to Steadfast Rejuvenation.

You can choose to use Charged Mists for more Energy but it's not needed, you can just run Roiling Mists for the crit chance no problem.

Jalis stance is pure Upkeep to ramp up Quickness and then Herald is where you pop consumes. Standard GS and Staff, your Hydromancy, Force, Bloodlusts. Standard pve stuff.

Cleansing if you wanna save TN for Jalis Stability instead of laying down road. Alternatively you can run Cleansing anyway and have a massive power cleanse x4 if you encounter crappy mobs that spam Conditions. (5 Cleanse from Jalis heal, 3 Cleanse from Sigil, 3 Cleanse from Glint TN and 2 Cleanse from Staff 4)

 

Edited July 25 by Jobber.6348

[Eekasqueak.7850]

3 hours ago, Jobber.6348 said:

Jalis hands down. It's simply durability and sustained damage packed into one Utility set, and it also stacks up to 25 Might against packs with Retribution.

An extremely idiot proof LI OW build I use is Invocation Retribution Herald.

You flip between Glint and Jalis, turn on Upkeep and just go about your weapon rotations. Perma quickness and high Might uptime, and if you need more sustain, simply change Vicious Reprisal to Steadfast Rejuvenation.

You can choose to use Charged Mists for more Energy but it's not needed, you can just run Roiling Mists for the crit chance no problem.

Jalis stance is pure Upkeep to ramp up Quickness and then Herald is where you pop consumes. Standard GS and Staff, your Hydromancy, Force, Bloodlusts. Standard pve stuff.

Cleansing if you wanna save TN for Jalis Stability instead of laying down road. Alternatively you can run Cleansing anyway and have a massive power cleanse x4 if you encounter crappy mobs that spam Conditions. (5 Cleanse from Jalis heal, 3 Cleanse from Sigil, 3 Cleanse from Glint TN and 2 Cleanse from Staff 4)

 

I run a similar setup but with hammer instead of Staff for just tagging tons of mobs in open world.

[Jobber.6348]

23 minutes ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

I run a similar setup but with hammer instead of Staff for just tagging tons of mobs in open world.

Hammer nice too after the adjustments. Staff for better solo potential against tougher encounters. 

Edited July 25 by Jobber.6348

[Antycypator.9874]

Jalis is my must have on every solo power build.

Shiro lacks on survivability, healing, condi cleanse, stability, good CC. It's only damage and some mobility. Everything is too expensive. When you swap to Shiro for big CC, you're left with 0 energy. Healing is unrewarding, break stun comes with forced movement. I don't see any good reason to run Shiro outside instanced content.

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

7 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Over a year ago I give up on playing power Vindi for solo OW PvE since the disparity in sustain compared to celestial was huge, and the ttk of the later for me was fine. Now that the relic of Zakiros offers enhanced sustain for power builds, I've testing the waters of mele power builds again. But while against simpler foes seems to work fine, some champions and bounties with spammy cc skills have been really annoying to fight against with Alliance & Shiro.  While in cele against those foes I can just use bow and Embrace Darkness at mid range and evade while needed whithout losing too much, in power mele oftenly oftenly in ended interrupted in my burst, or even in a chain of autos, since there's less time to react to those cc unless the attacks are slow, well telegraphed or display concentric patterns in the ground...

   So, do you replace your Shiro/whatever for Jalis and camp in the road? I'm considering to ditch Shiro (as I did in PvP) and just rely in passive stability most of the time; while both dealing burst and evading attacks seems easy, doing both while keeping high energy demanding skills as Impossible Odds and doing dps rotations seems very hard to conciliate when your foe spams daze, knockback or any other interrupt skill every few seconds... Should I just run Jalis?

I run a alliance/shiro build pretty successfully in OW for everything other than the top of the top solo encounters. It falls off there due to just too high of chip damage without protection, added armor, and multiplicative damage reductions through traits that you'd get from the cele variant. That said it's able to face tank "Moderately Threatening" environment golem room setting extremely comfortably. So its sustain is decent while sitting at about 21k dps.

Initially I ran into the same issue as you with the stab, but all I did was alter my rotation slightly. The answer is spam Reaver's Rage. It's the first skill you use when you swap into alliance, it'll be the last skill you use swapping out. As long as you hit a single mob with it, it'll be 2 stacks of stab for 9s covering both swaps. In an actual fight it, it works out to be about 75-80% stab uptime. If you need more than 2 stacks of stab for an encounter then you either need to swap to jalis or possibly look at what attacks would be vital to dodge. Its definitely a more focus demanding build compared to its cele cousin because the energy is tighter, you're forced into melee, and evading the correct attacks is even more pass/fail for the hard fights.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAExzlZSMsTyjlSdMUijpSksSigp+VesC-DSZYBR9H4WQYwBdcKhJBCUEUoQITFgiPQUixk+B0HAnIgRDFOjAA-e

A few notes... normally you need to use 3x Scavengers Bursts to upkeep perma quickness. Well if you're adding 2x Reaver's Rages then thats already 75e out of your 100. So to cut down on some energy costs I use Celerity. That alters the alliance usage to 2x Reaver's, 2x Scavenger's for your perma quickness and 80% uptime stab at 60e.... leaving 40e-ish for GS skills and Energy Meld. That means you need to play this build like the PVE DPS variant and always pair GS with alliance and S/S with shiro (also helps that S/S procs more IO ticks in shiro and will net you more healing that way). Make sure to double swap every time. Legend swap > weapon swap. All of this takes practice, but I found it to be the best balance of raw damage, sustain, and QoL for me. 

As far as my other testing went. Swapping Deva for Retrib drops you down to 17.5k dps and you lose a lot of healing for a bit of damage reduction. Swapping Deva for Salv is like 15k dps but you trade for pseudo healing in the form of barrier and better damage reduction. Swapping Forerunner of Death to Vassals of the Empire is a drop all the way to 9k dps xD. And Finally, swapping Shiro for jalis is a drop to 18k, down to 15.5k dps if you use 30e on road. However the kit offers better QoL than shiro and is a valid option. Combining any combination of these and you'll notice a HUUUGE drop and damage. 

Edited July 25 by UncreativeGreen.2019

[Buran.3796]

1 hour ago, UncreativeGreen.2019 said:

Initially I ran into the same issue as you with the stab, but all I did was alter my rotation slightly. The answer is spam Reaver's Rage. It's the first skill you use when you swap into alliance, it'll be the last skill you use swapping out. As long as you hit a single mob with it, it'll be 2 stacks of stab for 9s covering both swaps. In an actual fight it, it works out to be about 75-80% stab uptime. 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAExzlZSMsTyjlSdMUijpSksSigp+VesC-DSZYBR9H4WQYwBdcKhJBCUEUoQITFgiPQUixk+B0HAnIgRDFOjAA-e
 

  Tha's quite close in traits and gear to what I've been running (cap crit chance and 207% crit damage in my case), the main difference being that I only have 15% boon duration due marauder + dragon stats & surge rune for mobility, whereas you go zerk + diviner & fireworks to reach 50% boon duration instead of the large boost to HP I have. Makes sense since you aim to maintain stab using Reaver's Rage in advance, whereas my mindset (from PvP/WvW) was always "save the breakstuns for the worst". Need to try that skill use, before going to Jalis. This is my current build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmgAEVlZSMsTqjhScsUyjpSksSigJ/lasC-DSRYiRFH0cQvHShKgMlC9KCE5BiEIwe4+hkAeAA-e

   Thanx everyone for the answers!

[UncreativeGreen.2019]

25 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

Makes sense since you aim to maintain stab using Reaver's Rage in advance, whereas my mindset (from PvP/WvW) was always "save the breakstuns for the worst". Need to try that skill use, before going to Jalis. This is my current build:

Yes. I took a bit of rewiring in my brain to use it preemptively as well since I came from a 1 v X solo roaming playstyle for most of the game... no stab or stun break equals death there.

Luckily in PVE there's very, very few mobs with boon rip. Which means that "wasting" the stun break portion of the skill for the stab will make you immune to cc and not need the stun break portion any ways. That coupled with how slow most mobs attack means that 2 stacks of stab every 10s is generally enough. Pair that with well timed evades and it's very rare that I actually get cc'd on this build. And as a bonus, if you do get cc'd through those 2 stacks of stab, you can just insta swap to blue, and use awakening. It's essentially free as you'll spend 15e and then get 15e back from contained temper. Then go back to red and continue about your day.

the 50% boon duration was also to just make quickness, and 25 might more comfy. It's already a pretty rigid rotation, I didn't want my boon table to immediately suffer if I had to go off the rails. And the mobility is a weakness of my build. I wish I could get swiftness into it but you'll lose too much might doing so and the less dps you do the less you heal with zakiros. So I learned to deal with it and just hop and port around or just mount up. Surging is a extremely valid option for some mobility. Id just swap around some diviner/berserker/assassin pieces in my build to get to the same crit chance/boon duration at the cost of some total power/crit damage. Also I don;t get to the hp pool you do, but with tier 10 jade bot you can get to about 18.5k hp and I found that to be enough to not be one shot and recover from accidental hits.

like this....
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAExzlZSMsTyjlSdMUijpSksSigp+VesC-DSZYBR9pbLUQGwhIK/UCTCEoIoQhQmKARegoEjpI6HQ3uEB8aowZEoC-e

edit: Also yes, go for maximum strike percentage multipliers if you can. You'll hit harder than my build. I just traded some multipliers for QoL stuffs like condi cleanse, extra healing, and resistance so if I ever do get immob'd I'm not locked out of my dodge.

Edited July 25 by UncreativeGreen.2019

[Angesombre.4630]

It's been such a long time since I've used shiro,  lack of survival since the battle scar nerf. So I'm on jalis very often, plus the jalis care removes alterations, it has the little regeneration of mateau despite their nerf and the stab just in case and with epee 2 and the jalis path it's an excellent combo.

Edited July 25 by Angesombre.4630

[Buran.3796]

  Did run the power build with Alliance & shiro for like 4 days soloing the HoT bosses; while hitting with Requiem for 30k+,  Unrelenting Assault and True Strike for near 25k , autos for 4-8k and most of single hit burst and jumps for like 10-15k is fun had problems against the Tengu and specially the Hrabinger of Balthazar (there the 700+ difference in armor and fewer cleanses really makes a difference). Maybe one extra sigil of cleansing or moving from Rising Tide to Cleansing Channel would be better (specially since every time I'm below 19k HP the damage buff is lost, and in demanding figths at mele that happens quite often). I would love to have Demolsiher stats added to PvE since after certain point having armor is better than just a bland health pool.

   Will try this week the same build  but with Jalis instead of Shiro...

[otto.5684]

I prefer running Shiro. IMO the dodge and quickness offer much more than Jailis, at least on a full power build. Celestial could be a completely different story.

[Buran.3796]

Ok, I've been running the power build for a week, soloing the HoT Hero Points route every day, some impressions

* Marauder + Dragon with cap crit chance & ~207% crit damage and three swords was the best in damage and weaker foes fell fast, but harder foes or emenies with minions which pressured at range were a pain and some fights became slower just due the effort to survive (compared to celestial which usually kills slower but facetanks). Harb of Balthazar beat my kitten...

* Same build and stats as the first one but using Jalis instead of Shiro made things a bit comfy, but fights with minions as the Tengu or the Frogs were still dangerous and too slow.

* Then I chose to make some gear changes: I did keep marauder for weapons and armor, but swapping runes from Surge to Dragonhunter, replaced the relic with Wayfinder to keep the mobility lost from Surge, and put dragon in amulet and back pack, knight in two rings and one ear ring and cavalier in the last ear ring. That reduced a bit my HP (not needed) but boosted my artor to ~2800 while keeping 100% crit chance under fury and 208% crit chance:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmgAEVlZSMsTqjhScsUyjpSksSigJ/lasC-DShYiRFbOoQjgcOCC6QKUBkpUoXRgM/PkAB2D3PkEwDA-e

   I got better survability while keeping similar damage. But still some bosses gave me problems, so replaced the swords for the hammer. That made the fights vs champs with minions way easier, but nerfed my damage. The build was fantastic for teamfights since had range, good dps, tons of evades and projectile hate tools, but in solos still a tad slower that what I wanted. With swords mauled the Vinetooth cham in like 48", with the hammer in like 55". Cele was still bub minute wile tankier.

*  Finally I've trying damage enhancements in the celestial build. I swapped weapons and armor to viper and all trinkets to trailblazer except at ear ring to viper. From full celestial I lost a bit over 100 armor (but remained over 2800), around 4k HP, all boon duration, halved my crit chance and limited my crit damage to base 150%, but in exchange my condition damage rised ~36%, from 1149 to 1600+ (before foods):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PmwAUlflZSIsTSihSRsUCipSgsSSgj2zasF-DSRYkB9ZG1cgHSkigMlC9qAU4HgEEue4BA-e

   Did the Hero Points this evening a felt closer in tankiness to celestial than the power builds, but a bit faster. I have to try it against bounties and more demanding foes. 

   The thing is: this test convinced me that going power is better in a group, because targets get deleted in seconds, but didn't convince me that in solo power is as good as cele or hybrid builds, because in the later I don't struggle to remain alive.