WvW roaming specs, damage is sooooooo fast and hits so hard.

Jugglemonkey.8741 · August 12, 2020

@diomache.9246 said:
@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:I used to hit ele for 28-30k with Death's Judgement before the damage reduction in Feb. Just saying ^^

That's the point. And you still risk nothing by hitting me for 12k out of stealth. So this is what this whole thread is about. Either Anet turns damage down from thieves, rangers, warriors, etc or take away their options of condi cleanse, stealth, port, invulnerabilities and put them in line with the weaker classes.There should be always a trade off to achieve balance.

Well, a good ele will block all my projectiles with focus offhand, conjure earth shield, shocking aura etc and nuke me down with lightning rod and air scepter autos, it's one of the more consistently hard matchups I get if the ele knows how to react properly. Given DJ reveals the thief, just wait for him to attack, pop a projectile hate skill, and nuke him while he can't hide. Most DE will be dead or running after a couple turns of that. And frankly, given ele's sustain and projectile hate means that if I don't hit you extremely hard when you are vulnerable you will heal to full before I get another opportunity to hit you, I don't have much sympathy for your argument. Sorry.

Jugglemonkey.8741 · August 12, 2020

@saerni.2584 said:
@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:
@saerni.2584 said:Most Condi builds that fit into the top tier of Roamer are running Grieving stats mixed in. Basically, anyone running full tank Dire isn’t nearly as much of a threat except against players with low cleanse.
Elite specs in particular may still be overtuned depending on the situation but I think Holo is much better than it was along with Soulbeast. Rev needs to have the resistance uptime sPvP changes mirrored to WvW but otherwise feels ok-ish (although it can still stack a lot of torment that can be cleansed).
The main interesting thing I get from your post is that you wish celestial stats were more effective. Celestial is hard to balance because it is so dependent on what profession is running the stats. As in, you need a “jack of all trades” build that can use all those stats and scales well on all fronts. That’s hard to do even for a fairly mixed build (like a Warrior running a Hybrid Zerker with some sustain healing built in) because often you want big damage or big sustain and smaller numbers mean you need to play both defense and offense well to take full advantage of healing over time with consistent damage pressure on enemies.
As you pointed out, the best roamers are good at active mitigation to cover their use of glassy stats. You may get a fat 40% chunk of their HP bar in one hit but then not hit them the rest of the fight.
I’d be curious to hear any roamers who run around in celestial chime in to talk about their builds, assuming they exist. It’s a fun stat set to think about.

I've been messing around with celestial and soldier/crusader builds for deadeye recently, and they make a nice change of pace from the more traditional glassy builds. They are not as effective as my zerker P/D rifle deadeye in terms of just killing things dead, but they have their uses.

The soldier/crusader build is basically the old valkyrie D/P rifle SA/CS/DE scholar rune build with more baked in toughness;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAQhrlFwgYbsOmJWWPvvKA-zVhYCh2LYIEhwg8Ej6FYhkZR1aE0bqa7BIg/WqyMC-w

It's really nice to run alongside a glassy build like zerker P/D rifle DE to provide safer stealth engages without blowing all your utilities, and it still does comparable damage to a marauder setup if you get caught out before swapping builds.

The celestial build I'm running with SA/DA/DE and fireworks runes, using P/D and rifle;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAQpjlFwyYbsOmJOuOvvKA-zVZYVh7TMCWgsRNcIZqoaVE0rUVxHAx1DPG8YpKzI-w

Between fireworks runes, even the odds, M7 and strength sigil, you can get 25 might pretty happily as long as you keep attacking, and I've seen it get 4k total condi ticks while dealing consistent power damage. I started messing with this for open world and story instances, but it's a surprisingly decent build in general against a lot of things, you won't be one shotting people with it but it is fun to play.

Thanks, this gave me some neat ideas for updating my build.

You're very welcome ^^

Sobx.1758 · August 12, 2020

@diomache.9246 said:
@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:I used to hit ele for 28-30k with Death's Judgement before the damage reduction in Feb. Just saying ^^

That's the point. And you still risk nothing by hitting me for 12k out of stealth. So this is what this whole thread is about. Either Anet turns damage down from thieves, rangers, warriors, etc or take away their options of condi cleanse, stealth, port, invulnerabilities and put them in line with the weaker classes.There should be always a trade off to achieve balance.

Or maybe you can pick a roaming class/build for roaming and stop trying to make zerg builds compete with roaming builds, which see next to no play in group settings?

If someone wants to use cele gear and then complains about not having enough burst when compared to glassy builds, then what are we even talking about here? The main purpose of roaming build is to have solid dmg/burst alongside mobility. That's not some gw2-exclusive idea, that's what happens in pretty much any mmorpg, isn't it?

What would you do about damage in wvw? is it okay in your opinion?

Yup, I think it's perfectly reasonable for different builds, specs or maybe even classes to excel differently in various situations as long as each of them HAS a field they're good at. If you want a total equality, remove the classes.

ledernierrempart.6871 · August 12, 2020

you understand that this is all because overall damage got nerfed right? so that only cheesy pure dps build deals enough damage to kill quickly rigth?and because of that bus got stronger while smaller groups got weaker. 1v1 got more interesting but outnumbered is even more of a hassle.now alot of semi dps spec or bruiser have better survivability but less damage. so more chance of +1 and less success in 1v2.

you must understand that, nerfing damage again like CMC wanted to do (with a heal efficiency reduction) will hurt roaming and small groups even more while making bus the kings.

damage in WvW should not be globally reduced (except for CC skills. that was a nice addition despite rendering a few skills useless because of it like the mine tool for engineer.) without any other changes.skills need to be nerfed independently so that specs like holosmith doesn't deal 20K on a reaper with photonforge4 (tested that in guild hall arena) while other specs that struggle in dealing good damage or burst isn't touched that much.another example is soulbeast. if you fuse with a pig you can, with the right build, hit someone from 10K to 13K just with the F1. you basically have a melee skill that one shot any glass builds with less than 13K hp. (still doable in WvW rigth now) those kind opf skills NEED to be nerfed but not at the cost of everything else.any change that helps small groups kill larger groups are a good thing.

BUT,

i can agree about a mass dps nerf if Boons and Downedstate also get a rework. (not just playing with the nerf and up button)

ASP.8093 · August 12, 2020

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:(tested that in guild hall arena)

Be careful with that: the guildhall arena still uses PvE stats.

Oakendale.2849 · August 12, 2020

In no way should Anet even think of basing balance in WvW based on roaming.

Roaming is and always has been a niche game style.

Are there specific classes and specs that excel at it - sure. But, a good portion of those specs and classes lack viable group spec options. So it’s a trade off.

I think if I read right an engi was complaining about roaming in this thread. An engi? Really? You have a meta build as a med kit scrapper in WvW and a top tier DPS build as bomb kit and your going to complaint about thieves who honestly have no group role in WvW.

So this thread really serves no purpose as there is absolutely no benefit to think of 1v1 balance in a group / Zerg gameplay setting.

KryTiKaL.3125 · August 12, 2020

@"LaFurion.3167" said:Now before I start, I understand that full dps gear should do large numbers for a tradeoff in tankiness or survivability. However, what I have noticed is that with all the power creep in the game, roaming (im sure zerging as well, but I am only talking about roaming here for now) damage specs have all evolved to a full dps set.
95% of top roaming builds have, for as long as I can remember, gone marauder or berserker gear, while condis have the luxury of going full dire. Instead of a tradeoff, the top tier roaming classes that have emerged and been prominent for years are classes that can survive running full dps gear by;
1) surviving with invulns or other mechanics . For example, warrior passive stances on top of active ones, plus shield to boot. can run full zerker easily with dodges+shields+stances+more stances +evade frames on bulls charge/gs3. Or thief, who runs full marauder but can survive by just not being hit, with the extra hp on marauder basically just acts as a soft cushion for you to survive with other means, like dodges or permastealth.

I just want to clarify something here in particular for Warrior; Warrior doesn't really run stances anymore. Spellbreaker will use Frenzy but thats it, not to mention none will ever really use Defy Pain or Last Stand (the passives you're talking about) because they have 5 minute internal cooldowns. Its not worthwhile to run Defense anymore honestly, you can still get some benefit from Last Stand if you use stances like Balanced Stance and Endure Pain still on your bar, but you're cutting off a lot of your actual damage by doing so. Thats why Tactics is more the norm, at least for Core it achieves about the same, or better, in sustain and provides much more opportunity for damage due to higher Might generation, that is also more consistent.

2) Crazy crazy amounts of boons that further exacerbate the situation and increase their survivability/damage through the roof. Holosmith/boonbeast are the two large offenders that come to mind, with holo having high uptime of nearly every boon in the game including protection and quickness that just.... idk.

Pretty much any class right now that has significant boon uptime, and has access to a variety of boons at a consistent level, are all of the ones that are overperforming and are overbearing to fight against. The only exceptions being Thief because it is still a class that has the best mobility in the game, and Necro because it is, and always has been, the King/Queen of Boon Strip, more so than Spellbreaker ever has been. Boons and how accessible they are on a per class basis is probably the biggest contributor to how well a class performs in PvP.

Basically, in wvw (again, I am refering to roaming/small fights here), you have pretty much zero flexibility. This makes me so sad. I have crafted a full ascended celestial set of medium armor for my engi, but compared to a roaming holosmith (or even scrapper), my damage output is seriously hindered, and the effects toughness/vital/healing power (and other stats from celestial) are barely felt during the many, many, many, crazily short time frame that it takes for "actual" roamers to blow me up. just BOOM, and dead. A reaper can rock up to me and the fight can be over in literally 3 seconds if I don't dodge everything. It didn't used to be like this. Even full condi builds used to not be able to stack 30+ stacks of confusion or ridiculous numbers of torment (i reach 20 stacks of torment easily on my rev on a player)... but nowadays its so easy (i have seen 37 stacks of confusion from one shatter combo in pvp, im assuming its doable in wvw aswell, if not stronger due to gear choices/food buffs etc).
This is just a rant, but at the same time I am hopeful that stats are reviwed for now. Its honestly a mess with what elite specs did to the game (holosmith compared to scrapper compared to core engi for example. Each being way way better than the next. who plays core power engi? WHY would you, when you have holosmith?) the only celestial build is weaver, and thats just unkillable gimmicks due to the amount of evades they got for that elite spec. Its beyond help haha I dont have any suggestions.
What would you do about damage in wvw? is it okay in your opinion? I think elite specs are the main offenders, but it is too late to change that (other than with OH WAIT ITS NOT AN ELITE SPEC ITS MEANT TO BE A TRADE OFF SPEC LUL -300 toughness for you berserker LEL type changes). I really wish damage stats for berserker/marauder were toned down by 10% and condi damge was reduced across the board by 15%... is that too much? too little?

Truthfully I think damage is okay in WvW outside of the outliers that have been mentioned. Grenade engi is actually super oppressive with its damage due to Explosive Entrance and how kits in general make that work, and of course the still existing one shot soulbeasts because ANet still hasn't learned to disable the Sic Em damage bonus while in Beast Mode and to have that be a PvP only type change. Turthfully its not the fault of the damage oriented stat sets, its more the kind of damage modifiers and access to boons these classes have that makes them have ridiculous amounts of damage or sustain. Also yes in smallscale Conditions are very oppressive, but thats unlikely to see any change since they are more concerned with large scale combat and Conditions are practically useless in zerg vs zerg because of the sheer amount of cleansing going on during any single fight.

LaFurion.3167 · August 12, 2020

Thanks for the comments guys. Few really good points mentioned.

But at the end of the day then.. what do I do with my celestial set ??? cry?

For the 4 years I have played gw2 I have only ever seen one medium celestial build actually be decent enough to be "meta" and that is celestial holosmith pistol shield. But that's no longer meta due to the last balance patch, and also just going marauder was probably more efficient..

Moradorin.6217 · August 12, 2020

@"LaFurion.3167" said:Now before I start, I understand that full dps gear should do large numbers for a tradeoff in tankiness or survivability. However, what I have noticed is that with all the power creep in the game, roaming (im sure zerging as well, but I am only talking about roaming here for now) damage specs have all evolved to a full dps set.
95% of top roaming builds have, for as long as I can remember, gone marauder or berserker gear, while condis have the luxury of going full dire. Instead of a tradeoff, the top tier roaming classes that have emerged and been prominent for years are classes that can survive running full dps gear by;
1) surviving with invulns or other mechanics . For example, warrior passive stances on top of active ones, plus shield to boot. can run full zerker easily with dodges+shields+stances+more stances +evade frames on bulls charge/gs3. Or thief, who runs full marauder but can survive by just not being hit, with the extra hp on marauder basically just acts as a soft cushion for you to survive with other means, like dodges or permastealth.
2) Crazy crazy amounts of boons that further exacerbate the situation and increase their survivability/damage through the roof. Holosmith/boonbeast are the two large offenders that come to mind, with holo having high uptime of nearly every boon in the game including protection and quickness that just.... idk.
Basically, in wvw (again, I am refering to roaming/small fights here), you have pretty much zero flexibility. This makes me so sad. I have crafted a full ascended celestial set of medium armor for my engi, but compared to a roaming holosmith (or even scrapper), my damage output is seriously hindered, and the effects toughness/vital/healing power (and other stats from celestial) are barely felt during the many, many, many, crazily short time frame that it takes for "actual" roamers to blow me up. just BOOM, and dead. A reaper can rock up to me and the fight can be over in literally 3 seconds if I don't dodge everything. It didn't used to be like this. Even full condi builds used to not be able to stack 30+ stacks of confusion or ridiculous numbers of torment (i reach 20 stacks of torment easily on my rev on a player)... but nowadays its so easy (i have seen 37 stacks of confusion from one shatter combo in pvp, im assuming its doable in wvw aswell, if not stronger due to gear choices/food buffs etc).
This is just a rant, but at the same time I am hopeful that stats are reviwed for now. Its honestly a mess with what elite specs did to the game (holosmith compared to scrapper compared to core engi for example. Each being way way better than the next. who plays core power engi? WHY would you, when you have holosmith?) the only celestial build is weaver, and thats just unkillable gimmicks due to the amount of evades they got for that elite spec. Its beyond help haha I dont have any suggestions.
What would you do about damage in wvw? is it okay in your opinion? I think elite specs are the main offenders, but it is too late to change that (other than with OH WAIT ITS NOT AN ELITE SPEC ITS MEANT TO BE A TRADE OFF SPEC LUL -300 toughness for you berserker LEL type changes). I really wish damage stats for berserker/marauder were toned down by 10% and condi damge was reduced across the board by 15%... is that too much? too little?

First off well, no the first sentence in your post is wrong my friend. top condi roaming isnt going to take dire its going to take vipers or trailblazers both of which are 4 stat. The reason is expertise is important to condi in the same way ferocity is for power, the difference is when people cleans a condition it negates both the duration and the damage in one swoop, just like if someone blocks or evades your power burst and the same way aegis can negate your big damage hit.

Personally, if I compare the two I would say its much easier to cleanse condi damage vs trying to time block, evade, apply aegis vs just hitting a cleans after you see the red icons. I think ppl tend to overlook little factors like this with condi damage. That is you have more slack time to deal with condi damage vs power damage, yet these days condi damage is often on the slow side. So it can some times seem like it has more advantage than it does.

That aside sure I think balance could use more work. I think some tend to outperform in small scale and some also have better zerg roles than certain other classes.

Anyway, not trying to actually dispute or argue against your rant, just pointing out that condi roamers that I have seen arent using dire too much. I mean maybe a mix of stats w dire sure. Any condi class that prefers performs better w Dire over Trailblazers should probably have condi durations looked at and maybe nerfed. The only thing that would make that handy is if duration was already going over 100% on main conditions without the trailblazers for expertise.

Also about the celestial stats. Im sorry Im not up enough on engi to suggest how to make that work, but I would say that you can always run an exo set with some other stats to swap to for roaming. We get Warlords armor chests pretty often in wvw now and the armor inside is stat selectable. Its not ascended but TBH exo works just fine. Ascended gives a very little edge on stats, but not enough generally matter much in a 1 v 1 type event. If you keep playing wvw and stuff you will end up with extra armor and weapons anyway. Many ppl carry around a few sets in equipment tabs to swap around builds depending the fight.

DeceiverX.8361 · August 12, 2020

To be totally honest if you're not able to recover after losing only 60% of your HP you're probably not gonna win a fight with slower speeds unless your build is literally just better at being a stat stick with higher sustain. Fights are generally won and lost on such combos coming in fast and hard, even if not at the onset of the fight.

The current potent roaming meta is heavy sustain more than anything else, and really, roaming builds haven't been cheese-free since the patch before HoT when they relatively fixed the game. If you're getting bursted, most of the time the enemy's build is just as weak and you're just slower on the draw or running a weak build. Which if it's celestial core ele or power core engineer as indicated, is not exactly a pillar of strength.

WvW's always been fast-paced. That's a huge part of the appeal given how slow sPvP has historically been.

ArchonWing.9480 · August 12, 2020

Leave Cele in 2014 where it belongs (at least for Engi). I actually tried experimenting with it yesterday when I finished my legendary set for Engineer. I figured I'll change my memethrower build from trailblazer to celestial, and using arcdps on npcs I found out my damage went down and flamethrower is a hybrid weapon dependent on might already. If you're using a power based weapon, you have no chance. The base power is just too low and cannot burst. So you have no dps and/or burst, so people just aren't afraid of you at all. What's more telling is that switching to PTV did more damage lol

If Cele had concentration and expertise, it'd be interesting, but now it's just something you get to fill out your stats. I do have a few hybrid builds out there, but they're all gimmicky and do not use Celestial but rather stats like Grieving.

Also don't facetank reapers. There's no reason to, and no stats will save you from that.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 · August 13, 2020

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@"diomache.9246" said:What is this shaved damage we are talking about? I can get easily get hit for 50% of my hp on minstrel ele which means basically almost oneshot on marauder.I'm ok with the damage, but it doesn't come with a downside for most classes as the op stated. It's not a downside, when you have the option to stealth or being invulnerable to damage.A downside would be "You hit me for 12k and have to finish this fight now or die". That's not how it works with the fantastic four roaming classes. And never was.

Well, Ele has very little health even with full Minstrel gear... like Warrior baseline HP and with 3k armor you'll still get hit the occasional +10k Maul/Vault/MemeFlame if they aligned their stars right. Bear in mind that these used to be +15k numbers.

I used to hit ele for 28-30k with Death's Judgement before the damage reduction in Feb. Just saying ^^

I know. I used to do the same with Arc Divider. Maul can still get +24k though on Soulbeasts right now. Also, why does it feel like threads like these are always started by Eles...

Ele is my least played class. I play Engi in case you didnt pick up on it lol

Still on the low end of HP. Core, Scrapper, or Holo? Core you're kind of in a pickle, but Power Scrapper can get sick levels of barrier and Holo is still stupid imbalanced.

I made an unconventional marauder power build for scrapper to suit my roaming needs. And like I said I have made a full celestial set using pistol/shield (also going to try pistol pistol, and also have a rifle) for a core engi build I am tinkering with right now.

I absolutely refuse to play holosmith. That "elite" spec is a GOD spec that shouldnt exist. Press 1 button and you have the equivalent of full berserker gear just from the prof mechanic, not to mention it has no cd (while reapers shroud does), WHILE BEING ABLE to use utility skills. No. Just no. I hate holosmiths.

I too try to steer away from builds that are too cheesy. I had to shelf my Burn DH and Soulbeast for those reasons, wins were too easy.

If you're sticking with Pistol/Shield then try something likes this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PewAo6JlFwuYdMH2JO+OdNPA-zVJYiRH/hUkKoJhQ4SANONJYGA-w

You'll be able to perma maintain protection, so things should hurt less.

I find that surviving isnt a problem. As full ascended celestial (running shield) I am pretty tanky. My skill makes up for it.

What I'm finding now, is that I don't do nearly as much damage to end a fight or swing the fight in my favor with a mix of damage; my conditions arnt bursts, my power spikes arnt spikes... compared ofc to the roamer builds. I understand the game/opponent class well enough to sometimes survive and pull out a win, but more likely than not, the fights are lose a "streamlined" roamer builds that just go BOOM and dead, and flip around like a ninja while doing it. Example is soulbeast; rapid fire will 100-0 me if I am not careful (knockback - sicem combo). Then I kite/negate his smokescale merged teleport attack, dodge the worldy impact (all this while he has stab/quickness) and then he just goes greatsword puts down a smoke field and murders me in it with double mauls capable of hitting up to 10k+. That is my problem.

Well, that is the problem with Celestial. It is an all-rounder stat set, and Scrapper isn't really the spec for it. To be honest the problem here is Soulbeast, a case in point where if a spec needed a stat penalty it is that one not Scrappers or Berserkers.

Longbow+GS on ranger is an extremely balanced weapon set combo to begin with, great damage in close and long range. Add Soulbeast in and all of that gets compounded in a major way.

Like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POgAENlZwAZhMPGKOcX6v6RkG-zVJYiRFfp0UEEWIURBUeCY70IgZAA-w

Not even an optimized Soulbeast, but with taking into account vulnerability stacks, this build can hit +22k with Sicem, and a Hilt Bash -> Maul combo. Close to 23K if there are max vuln stacks on the target, 25.5K with a sigil of impact instead of Rending and max Vuln Stacks. All against 2.6k armor.

Even a warrior will kitten bloodstone bricks when hit for that.

Honestly Sic'em still needs the damage modifier reduced on Soulbeast. Something like 10% and not the 40% that it is now. Even then that 22k hit would be a 17.5k hit.

Still a glassy spec, but when you pew pew someone on Longbow from 1500 for 20k that rarely matters.

That build is hard countered by anything with conditions, it's got only one mobility skill on a 12s CD, under 20% uptime on Swiftness, it only has the capability of restoring 30% of its health every 30s and you have no way of removing poison so that's more like a 20% heal every 30s. It doesn't matter how much damage it can possibly do because it will be down in seconds to any halfway reasonable roamer. Unless you're spawn camping to take down bronze uplevels.

Sic Em at 10% would be utterly useless and essentially removed from the game. It's already a useless skill for pets because they can't hit anything, but if it were changed to 20% for 20s instead of 40% for 10s, it would be fine and tone down some of the huge burst for more sustained pressure.

I main Ranger, but I play Cele Weaver for roaming in WvW. Wrecks SB face and they can't escape from you. All the big skills have huge telegraphs and you can interrupt or avoid them pretty much all the time. Reflecting their SicEm RF back in their face is just hilarious because they more often than not down themselves if they were close to 60% health when they started it, even if they dodge.

Honestly, people act like 1500 range on a LB is some huge advantage and that gap closers, evades, dodges and stealth do not exist when matched against a Ranger. That the Ranger can just pew pew from 1500 with total impunity with some force field around them lol. If you can see a Ranger engage from 1500, you can avoid all the projectiles without even dodging. The only time RF is dangerous is if you're up close. Or, don't see it fired and it was fired under Quickness. Even then, an old fart like me can still dodge 50% of the damage because a dodge evades more of the projectiles if it was fired under quickness.

ASP.8093 · August 13, 2020

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:Sic Em at 10% would be utterly useless and essentially removed from the game. It's already a useless skill for pets because they can't hit anything, but if it were changed to 20% for 20s instead of 40% for 10s, it would be fine and tone down some of the huge burst for more sustained pressure.

Isn't it 25% for 10s right now in WvW/PvP? (On Soulbeast, I mean.)

Lan Deathrider.5910 · August 13, 2020

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@LaFurion.3167 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:
@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:
@"diomache.9246" said:What is this shaved damage we are talking about? I can get easily get hit for 50% of my hp on minstrel ele which means basically almost oneshot on marauder.I'm ok with the damage, but it doesn't come with a downside for most classes as the op stated. It's not a downside, when you have the option to stealth or being invulnerable to damage.A downside would be "You hit me for 12k and have to finish this fight now or die". That's not how it works with the fantastic four roaming classes. And never was.