So I guess this is the meta now?

[Turkeyspit.3965]

Sounds about right OP, but as some above have said, I'm rarely in a squad of 15 or more that doesn't also have a Medi Scrapper, even if I'm the one playing it.

[Xterra.6172]

@Israel.7056 said:I feel like you guys have forgotten how boring and easy the pre hot melee ball GWEN meta was. There were so many fewer things you had to get right back then.

Like earthshaker was fun don't get me wrong but today's meta is so much lower margin for error it's way more fun to play imo.

after earthshaker monkey ball, we reached a sweet spot for a considerable amount of time where guild front lines were running some berserker, celestial, or a combination of valkyrie and knights with PVT instead of full PVT, guild groups had a combination of Staff/GS or Staff/Hammer and GS/Hammer guardians, and even a mostly to full berserker warrior running axe/shield. The necro's and ele's could not run around in the melee ball at this point otherwise they'd just get spiked. This meta was a battle to throw the opponent off balance and force them out of safe space and both ranged and melee had equal roles to play in defence and offence. It was far more dynamic. Mind you, I look at this topic from a frontline bias as I was a frontline player myself and I can't think of a more snoozefest frontline meta than piles of minstrel firebrands healing and boon sharing their backline and that's it. and now that I think about it, you could argue that we are in just as much of a hammer monkey meta than ever before. it's just that now you can hammer monkey from 1200 range instead of melee range.

[freedomtolove.5476]

There is no melee because the high risk high reward philosophy doesn't exist anymore. Only braindead passive ranged gameplay where you drop circles or dodge circles. Every expansion will be the same with more circles to avoid. We should just program robots to play the game perfectly for us because at this point we're playing against the game mechanics not each other. Full dire/trailblazer armor vs full nomads/minstrel. There's your backline and frontline but in reality they're the same.

There is a big difference between as people call unskilled play and what is actually fun. Old Hammer Trains were fun and so was the game but every expansion increases the power creep. I mean Arenanet actually had to add healers to a game with a manifesto that said they wouldn't. Why would they do that except because the game's DPS was reaching 1-shot levels and fights were not happening only ganking.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@messiah.1908 said:regarding numbers

usually for 20 man squad1 FB in each team (if not guildies its hard to finds)1 power backline rev in most groups

so its 20% FB and power backline rev2 SB so 10%1 mesmer so 5%1 scrapper or healing ventari (me) 5%rest is power scourge 40%

in group of 50 we get 15% FB and power backline rev

Power scourge has its uses, but when enemy movement is good, they do only very little. I think it's better to run at least some condition damage. Especially if you look at how much torment dmg you do in wvw on scourge.

So you have to decide for your group wether you go power scourge with almost no sustained damage, but very good spikesOr if you go hybrid, with good sustained damage and still very good spikes.Uh what? Power scourge (full marauder) is literally the zerg meta now.

[jakt.9381]

Yeah this pirate ship comp sucks. Been this way since at least July.. I really dont find it fun to choose from 4 builds (and one of them a healbot) across all these awesome specializations we have.

Roaming is a thing I guess where you can run off meta builds but I would really find it more fun if they could balance melee somehow to where they were more useful. Entire classes are just not even viable for WvW and its a real let down when you enjoy a class but there is zero viability for your favorite game mode. Sure I can keep playing my Scourge every day but there is very little variety and it just gets stale playing the same class all the time. I have actually considered raiding just to get some playtime on something different than the same builds over and over.

I love theorycrafting and making new builds but thats not a thing in this game unfortunately.

[Israel.7056]

@Xterra.6172 said:

@Israel.7056 said:I feel like you guys have forgotten how boring and easy the pre hot melee ball GWEN meta was. There were so many fewer things you had to get right back then.

Like earthshaker was fun don't get me wrong but today's meta is so much lower margin for error it's way more fun to play imo.

after earthshaker monkey ball, we reached a sweet spot for a considerable amount of time where guild front lines were running some berserker, celestial, or a combination of valkyrie and knights with PVT instead of full PVT, guild groups had a combination of Staff/GS or Staff/Hammer and GS/Hammer guardians, and even a mostly to full berserker warrior running axe/shield. The necro's and ele's could not run around in the melee ball at this point otherwise they'd just get spiked. This meta was a battle to throw the opponent off balance and force them out of safe space and both ranged and melee had equal roles to play in defence and offence. It was far more dynamic. Mind you, I look at this topic from a frontline bias as I was a frontline player myself and I can't think of a more snoozefest frontline meta than piles of minstrel firebrands healing and boon sharing their backline and that's it. and now that I think about it, you could argue that we are in just as much of a hammer monkey meta than ever before. it's just that now you can hammer monkey from 1200 range instead of melee range.

I was a frontline player too until rev came out. I mostly played hammer warrior and I had a lot of fun earthshakering but the current meta is way more fun imo the margin for error is a lot less now than it was back then and the gameplay feels faster paced than it did back then.

[ArchonWing.9480]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"RisenHowl.2419" said:you guys claiming boon chrono is still relevant are badly mistaken. pop some altruism runes on a scrapper and spam mortar kit with purity of purpose. every swap removes conditions and converts them into boons+regen, 1.5s CD.

even if the scrapper sucks and only swaps ever 2s, that's 300 boon applications per minute.Except if it had actually been conditions that did some damage, the scrapper would be dead after a couple of swaps. You dont have infinite condi cleanse yourself you know. This is the same reason why necros never ran unholy martyr beyond the first try. Because they instantly die if trying to "cleanse" a bomb.

It's mostly for this

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity_of_Purpose

The idea is not about taking damaging conditions as it is about countering corrupts. Basically when people corrupt, the scrapper could uncorrupt them basically by turning them back into boons.

That being said, it's also likely to kill yourself just from the sheer number.

[Nimon.7840]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@messiah.1908 said:regarding numbers

usually for 20 man squad1 FB in each team (if not guildies its hard to finds)1 power backline rev in most groups

so its 20% FB and power backline rev2 SB so 10%1 mesmer so 5%1 scrapper or healing ventari (me) 5%rest is power scourge 40%

in group of 50 we get 15% FB and power backline rev

Power scourge has its uses, but when enemy movement is good, they do only very little. I think it's better to run at least some condition damage. Especially if you look at how much torment dmg you do in wvw on scourge.

So you have to decide for your group wether you go power scourge with almost no sustained damage, but very good spikesOr if you go hybrid, with good sustained damage and still very good spikes.Uh what? Power scourge (full marauder) is literally the zerg meta now.

Well. We tried a lot. But marauder scourge didn't work out for our guild, as we are playing ball-comp.Wenn ein Mix of celestial and grieving. We have at least some healpower for slightly better barriers.While we do the same, maybe even more damage than power scourges. (Axe/focus, scepter/dagger)

Again, power scourge only has a good spike, but almost no sustained damage. While we do slightly less spike damage, we can apply constant pressure to enemies while standing inside of them. The overall damage of hybrid was higher than the power one, when we tested it.

[Rampage.7145]

@RisenHowl.2419 said:30% fb40% power Herald20% corrupt scourge sc/dag, axe/f10% weaver

Stay at 1200 range and chunk with heralds, push if they come into <900 range and run through with corrupt scourge and Herald on staff/jalis. Superspeed the parties with glint 5 before swapping?

No room for other classes =/

Loving the 16k+ hammer hits on 3k armor btw, feels good to play against.

Maybe if KRTA actually fight any of the good guilds instead of waypointing away after 1 wipe they would understand the meta better, just a tought. Meme aside, you can run many many different builds for every class even in the current meta, power heral, condi herald, support renegade, glass renegade, support heal herald, power tempest, heal tempest, power weaver, power scourge, cele scourge, power reaper, heal engi, misntrel FB, burn FB, power warrior, power daredevil, condi vemon daredevil, different types of chronomancers. If you actually had any understanding of the meta you would know most actual decent guilds combine all this stuff into their very own composition to fit their playstile better making the current meta effectively the most diverse meta ever in WvW. Only real class left outside is ranger but even then some guilds run rangers too so there is that my dude.All i can tell you is that you should try actually fighting any decent guild for once and see how things really are, just my 2 cents brother.

[Rampage.7145]

double post gg

[Dediggefedde.4961]

@ArchonWing.9480 said:That being said, it's also likely to kill yourself just from the sheer number.

It all depends on the condition source and situation. 90 stacks of poison are no problem and often 30-50 stacks of burning are manageable. Near a mortar fire field, you can melt yourself within 3s, though.However, at least in our current matchup (aba/dzago) I noticed condition/dual skilled enemy players, where conditions actually hurt in a 5-10 stacks range.

The main problem, though, is movement impeding conditions.You need to stay near the commander for optimal heal output, but if you convert everyone's cripple/chill/immo, you start to lack behind. I run kinetic stabilizer and slick shoes for super-speed, but I still often need my hammer-3 for catching up.However, this rune really shines at things like crippling arrow-carts, chilling fog, and other condition-ticking fields.

Spamming this rune also might counter boonstrip, but you can't heal except by regeneration and rapid-regen+mdf. That's why for strong condition cleanse (rune only cleanses 1 condition from 5 allies every second) and heal, you will likely pause from swapping anyway.

So, while I think this is the best rune for healscrapper at the moment (despite monk getting buffed), I don't think of this as too strong.

[shiri.4257]

The larger problem with power vs cele vs other scourge (or DPS classes rather) isn't necessarily the build. It's getting all your scourges to saturate a bomb in a certain area. you'll find with stronger groups, the bomb saturation is more condense, as it gets more puggish, the wells are flying in a 180 area vs 60 or 90 degree area in open field. then you get the peeps that drop a bomb about 10s after you call for one in no man's land.

This is probably one of the most inclusive metas for wvw. there's just a lack of commanders that understand it and can execute. much less train newer players.