This is the fractal Meta

[Blumpf.2518]

1x Chronosupport

1x Healscourge

2x Dragonhunter

1x Bannerslave

 

A Chrono for all the nice Boons who pulls stuff together and can reflect:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiABw6x3lVwOYNMH2JeyT1tXA-zxIY1onvMaJFSvCUbaGx4G-e

 

A Healnecro who buffs the Group, Heals and spreads conditions all day long

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAYt/lNwCZgMN2Im6X+vKA-zxIY1omvMSPFCpCUbaKw4G-e

 

DPS class with high Burst for Short Fights

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWwAEt3lVwQYOsJWJO0L+tcA-zxQYhomZDuMqNFqoCsdaowMA-e

 

BS for Banners, Empower Allies and a lot of CC

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PKABcelnlZwQYdMOGJO2SdLLA-zxQYhoH9tDH4p0iIICJQFKgWGC2aWkfZD-e

 

Fracs have never been that fast and easy.

[Infusion.7149]

Why would you run chrono in 2021 for fractals? Firstly it doesn't really work well in sunqua peak, secondly it takes far more effort if your clones pop against trash mobs. In addition you are reliant on people standing in wells for the boons so if you have a bad instability such as flux bomb you are going to have an extremely rough time.

After the exposed change, firebrand is far stronger than power DH as a DPS class as well. CFB also has better synergy with epidemic. Because it needs zero boon duration if you use fractal potions you don't need StM chrono for quickness. If you do decide to run power DH it's better to use Perfect Inscriptions.

You also have a semi-heal scourge which is overkill when you could run plaguedoctor or full viper. Since curses isn't used your scepter damage is going to be poor as you're missing devouring darkness as well as Demonic Lore in the Scourge traitline.

The warrior is a fairly standard core warrior but I would definitely swap the heal for mending to proc Peak Performance.

Also what do you consider fast? With no requirement other than HB+alac you can clear T4+recs in below 50 minutes so on average <9 minutes per fractal.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Armen.1483]

It is not META, it is not a good comp, it is too sad to be even a meme comp.. it is actually a horrible comp. Chrono is a joke especially if you are referring to diviner chrono with wells.

 

Healscourge is just a no no in fracs... it can carry very bad groups in raids, good on boneskinner, but in fractals it is the same trollpick as chrono. And gl epiing anything with a healscourge, you need condi damage for that.

 

DH is the only good class mentioned here, I prefer DH to firebrands in fractals if groups are good, power is still faster in my experience.

 

Bannerslave.... well unless your warrior is a godlevel war player that knows about banner prestacks, yeah maybe...  but playing with a HSC and support chrono makes me doubt that... Especially DHs are not banner dependant. BS is out of fractal meta for a long time, only playable if some veteran player wants to have fun, but even there it is a suboptimal pick. You'd rather ask your war to swap to DH too your group DPS will rise for sure. BTW where is your might generation ? What about Stab ? 

 

Just taka a good advice, make your life easier, stack firebrands and get an alacrev.. Still not META, but at least you'll know what the comfortable zone is.

 

Edit: Okay I have just seen the Celestial and Valkyrie stats along with traitlines... My eyes hurt... It is even worse that I have imagined. Please tell me it is a late april joke.

Edited June 20, 2021 by Armen.1483

[Cyninja.2954]

9 hours ago, Blumpf.2518 said:

Fracs have never been that fast and easy.

Doesn't say much given that T4 fractals are a joke.

 

On topic:

The comp is just a thrown together batch of classes from someone who thinks he has a remote understanding of how setups work.

 

Chrono - hasn't been a solid pick for fractals in ages. If your group is good enough to properly stack in wells, which comes with its own issues given specific fractals or instabilities, you do not require this level of protection. If you do need this level of safety, chances are high the players will not be stacking properly to make use of chrono to begin with making this a weak pick (easily identified by double checking boon uptime post fights).

 

Dragonhunter - remains a solid, reliable and beginner friendly pick. Yet you managed to mutilate it with splashing Valkyrie in, why? Also with the change to exposed, cfb is stronger in all areas. Given this setups level of inefficiency, the power burst of this group will not outperform a condi setup.

 

Bannerslave - Healing Signet in 2021? Really? BS in charge of cc with maces? I guess that is what happens when you cut the revenant. Poor BS.

 

Healscourge - the actual carry class which you can take in combination with literally any other 4 classes and T4 fractals will be easy. Doesn't make it meta, just a hard carry. Also with necro running celestial (why not plaguedoctor?), chrono running celestial with power weapons and the remaining group being power, your epi while certainly strong enough to clear light trash, the conditions you spread will be meaningless (which matters little given enemies in T4s are paper). Not enough blinds or other debilitating conditions in this setup to make mention of.

 

Finally celestial. You can run anything with celestial now. It has always been a good all-rounder mediocre stat set. Now made less mediocre with the addition of concentration and expertise. If you want to go celestial, at least do so on proper wheel chair builds:

 

Edited June 20, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Blumpf.2518]

Well you all obviously never played this. You can stand at the Bosses and do DPS all day long and ignore all mechanics. You just Block/Shield/Stabi/Reflect everything.  You dont have to care about Fluxbombs or area damage or anything at all.

[CasualElitist.8795]

2 hours ago, Blumpf.2518 said:

Well you all obviously never played this. You can stand at the Bosses and do DPS all day long and ignore all mechanics. You just Block/Shield/Stabi/Reflect everything.  You dont have to care about Fluxbombs or area damage or anything at all.

aaand you need chrono with healscourge for that? ever hear of a quickbrand + alacren?

[Fangoth.4503]

why not take both hfb and healscourge?

[Infusion.7149]

10 hours ago, Fangoth.4503 said:

why not take both hfb and healscourge?

Because you could run plaguedoctor scourge and condi firebrand , HB+ condi scourge, cQB + heal scourge (less common for a reason), or even full DPS on both because of fractal potions' boon duration. You really don't need to go heal scourge or even run blood magic if you have a healbrand: using Desert Empowerment (barrier on sand shade), Sand Flare, and Sand Cascade is plenty of barrier.

You could do fractals with more than 1 heal but you'd be far slower than a full DPS comp or even one with HB+alac running proper fractal gear (not raid gear).

Edited June 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Pablo.3259]

My non meta team :

 

1 Quickness Scrapper

2 Alac Mirage

3 Forst spirit Druid

4 Banner Slave

5  Any dps that wanna join us ( I like FB DH Daredevil Reaper Scourge )

 

Looks better than your team 😁

Edited June 21, 2021 by Pablo.3259

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

I like my fractal meta better. 5 condi mirages who just auto attack and dodge. Just ignore every mechanic possible with constant aegis, evades, invulns, have perma every boon except resistance (and even then you could get lucky with SoI), and you have all the utility you ever need.

 

Or how about:

2 quickness fb

3 minion scourge

 

 

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

I like my fractal meta better. 5 condi mirages who just auto attack and dodge. Just ignore every mechanic possible with constant aegis, evades, invulns, have perma every boon except resistance (and even then you could get lucky with SoI), and you have all the utility you ever need.

 

Or how about:

2 quickness fb

3 minion scourge

 

 

Staff mirage doesn't generate quickness. So forget about perma "every boon" when you don't even have the most basic one.
Also aegis is not going to be constant because it is RNG on chaos storm.

There's also no reason to run 2 quickbrand when you can just run 2, 3 or even 4 full CFB in fractals. You need zero boon duration.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

30 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Staff mirage doesn't generate quickness. So forget about perma "every boon" when you don't even have the most basic one.
Also aegis is not going to be constant because it is RNG on chaos storm.

There's also no reason to run 2 quickbrand when you can just run 2, 3 or even 4 full CFB in fractals. You need zero boon duration.

persistence of memory + phantasmal haste, time warp, multiple SoI, and celetity sigil if you really need it. FB quickness hits 5 targets. With 3 minion necros there is a lot more than 5 targets that need boons.

 

Also you could get a couple mes to run inspiration for inspiring distortion + blurred inscriptions, and you could have up to 10 chaos storms every 30 seconds or so.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Paradoxoglanis.1904

[Infusion.7149]

1 minute ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

persistence of memory + phantasmal haste, time warp, multiple SoI, and celetity sigil if you really need it. FB quickness hits 5 targets. With 3 minion necros there is a lot more than 5 targets that need boons.

So you're going to run a worse damage staff mirage with SoI + phantasmal haste (which is in Illusions and is 1 to 3s base personal quickness only) just to generate quickness that won't have 100% uptime because warlock has a cooldown of 14.4 seconds with chaos traitline before alac? The meta DPS staff mirage is Chaos + Dueling + Mirage.
You do know phantasmal warlock currently is a DPS loss to use after precast, right? Plus if you don't have regen uptime then you lose 10% damage from Chaos Traitline as well as 250 expertise (~16.7% condition duration).

The whole premise is flawed, especially when you consider trash mobs.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

1 minute ago, Infusion.7149 said:

So you're going to run a worse damage staff mirage with SoI + phantasmal haste (which is in Illusions and is 1 to 3s base personal quickness only) just to generate quickness that won't have 100% uptime because warlock has a cooldown of 14.4 seconds with chaos traitline before alac? The meta DPS staff mirage is Chaos + Dueling + Mirage.
You do know phantasmal warlock currently is a DPS loss to use after precast, right? Plus if you don't have regen uptime then you lose 10% damage from Chaos Traitline as well as 250 expertise (~16.7% condition duration).

The whole premise is flawed, especially when you consider trash mobs.

Yes i know 5 mirages is not a meta comp. Its a theoretical meme comp. Its not supposed to have optimized dps.

[Firebeard.1746]

I think OP and everyone else are talking about 2 different things.

@OP: I broke down and moved my harrier's trinkets to a guardian and made a heal brand. What I learned playing PuG meta with it is that you can literally kill bosses in 1 breakbar burn phase now (and if not, something close to it). Everyone here is talking about hosing the bosses down as fast as possible as being "META." According to the community, that is "META." Anet is leaning harder into this meta with their enhanced exposed debuff.

What you're posting about is probably "Fault tolerant" and is probably a comp you built with friends that seems to work well. YOu may even have to play mechanics more, but you're fine with that. I won't attack anyone for doing what works for them and playing professions they enjoy.

While my experience has taught me that heal tempest is a stronger healer, but you don't need those heals if you can stab/aegis a group through a burn phase or 2 and suddenly the boss is dead because you gave more offensive boons. I used to wonder why HB was meta while pushing my tempest through the fractal tiers because I noticed that when there was a lot of pressure, it seemed grossly ineffective. Well it turns out I was the problem. HB isn't designed for throughput, it's designed to get people through just enough burn phases to ROFL stomp bosses while providing offensive support. By not providing that DPS, I was actually a tax on the group. XD. In fairness though, I was running arcdps and before getting to t4 alot of the "DPS" players in my groups were highly ineffective, so everyone probably needed me on that tempest to carry us through. But in T4, there was no reason for me to run tempest anymore, it was a liability in group formation.

Your comp has alot of survivability, but it's more than what is needed if you have a good level of DPS.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Firebeard.1746]

On 6/19/2021 at 3:35 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

Why would you run chrono in 2021 for fractals? Firstly it doesn't really work well in sunqua peak, secondly it takes far more effort if your clones pop against trash mobs. In addition you are reliant on people standing in wells for the boons so if you have a bad instability such as flux bomb you are going to have an extremely rough time.

After the exposed change, firebrand is far stronger than power DH as a DPS class as well. CFB also has better synergy with epidemic. Because it needs zero boon duration if you use fractal potions you don't need StM chrono for quickness. If you do decide to run power DH it's better to use Perfect Inscriptions.

You also have a semi-heal scourge which is overkill when you could run plaguedoctor or full viper. Since curses isn't used your scepter damage is going to be poor as you're missing devouring darkness as well as Demonic Lore in the Scourge traitline.

The warrior is a fairly standard core warrior but I would definitely swap the heal for mending to proc Peak Performance.

Also what do you consider fast? With no requirement other than HB+alac you can clear T4+recs in below 50 minutes so on average <9 minutes per fractal.

I hate the hyper DPS meta for PVE in this game. I don't have a good solution though, because as others have pointed out in other threads, anet doesn't do a good job of making encounters that aren't nightmares otherwise. I actually moved from MOBAs to an MMO so I could do PVE more, but find myself playing the PVP modes more and am wondering what I'm doing. I probably would have quit by now if I didn't have an IRL friend getting back into the game. And he's doing WvW with me XD.

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

I hate the hyper DPS meta for PVE in this game. I don't have a good solution though, because as others have pointed out in other threads, anet doesn't do a good job of making encounters that aren't nightmares otherwise. I actually moved from MOBAs to an MMO so I could do PVE more, but find myself playing the PVP modes more and am wondering what I'm doing. I probably would have quit by now if I didn't have an IRL friend getting back into the game. And he's doing WvW with me XD.

Why would you run full sustain meme in fractals? There's no enrage timer on the enemies, there's an enrage timer on your teammates if you take 30 minutes for 1 fractal for example. Unless you are extremely new to the game and in T1 fractals (which means you don't need full sustain there anyway) there is no reason to do that.

Some of us have been doing fractals for years and don't want to deal with people being "creative" that don't have any basic let alone in depth knowledge of the game mechanics whatsoever. You can put those people on normal DPs builds or support builds and have them do reasonably well if they have the basics down (or at least autoattack DPS is 15K+ bench on most meta builds), while someone with a "creative" build will end up with something like sub 5K DPS (less than alac renegade and possibly the heal firebrands) ... how do I know this? I frequently have HB complain I'm doing more DPS than DPS players while on alac. It's blatantly obvious that someone has no regard for other people's time if they're not running fractal potions and a decent food/utility. It could be a level 60 cheaper food/utility but if it's halloween food it means they're gambling on teammates dying and wasting time ressing them instead of everyone /gg. The same thing goes for rangers running movement speed signet on soulbeasts instead of signet of wild (+180 ferocity), it means they have no clue as a merged soulbeast has a larger movement speed bonus than the signet.

This isn't conjecture by the way. I had someone in a strike mission run soulbeast with longbow+shortbow and 10 ranking toughness (i.e. full tank mode). Their rotation was autoattack + rapidfire and they had signet of the hunt (movement speed signet). Nobody is going to be super annoyed with you if you run a defensive utility stunbreak that also does damage if you don't drop your highest damage utilities. Similarly, if you run marauder stats instead of berserker stats. Some people have next level ideas of what it means to "clear" content however, seeing what is being run by random people. Spending one hour for something you have done hundreds of times successfully is a failure IMO but everyone has their own definition of success.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Armen.1483]

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

There's also no reason to run 2 quickbrand when you can just run 2, 3 or even 4 full CFB in fractals. You need zero boon duration.

Actually running 2 semi can work quite fine in Sunqua Peak. Both take only mantras for quickness and Renewed Focus. Idea is your group dps doesn't suffer (if not the opposite) and you get some more might if the rev hasn't found the magic of f2 yet 😁

[Fangoth.4503]

the safest comp is:
1 HFB (quick + stab)
1 Healren (alac + CC)
1 Healscourge (resbot and barrier)
1 Healtempest (might + fury + boon extention)
and add to it either a second healren if need extra cc or staff heal tempest for lots of constant healing or heal scourge if for some reason the other one tend to die 😜
 

[LittleYoshi.2548]

3 Scourges 
1 Alac
1 HFB 
Can clear everything without ever being in any danger while still doing decent damage.
Worst case if group is still struggling for some reason then maybe take blood magic over soulreaping on 1 of the scourges, but in 99% of groups that shouldnt ever be necessary.

[Firebeard.1746]

6 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Why would you run full sustain meme in fractals? There's no enrage timer on the enemies, there's an enrage timer on your teammates if you take 30 minutes for 1 fractal for example. Unless you are extremely new to the game and in T1 fractals (which means you don't need full sustain there anyway) there is no reason to do that.

Some of us have been doing fractals for years and don't want to deal with people being "creative" that don't have any basic let alone in depth knowledge of the game mechanics whatsoever. You can put those people on normal DPs builds or support builds and have them do reasonably well if they have the basics down (or at least autoattack DPS is 15K+ bench on most meta builds), while someone with a "creative" build will end up with something like sub 5K DPS (less than alac renegade and possibly the heal firebrands) ... how do I know this? I frequently have HB complain I'm doing more DPS than DPS players while on alac. It's blatantly obvious that someone has no regard for other people's time if they're not running fractal potions and a decent food/utility. It could be a level 60 cheaper food/utility but if it's halloween food it means they're gambling on teammates dying and wasting time ressing them instead of everyone /gg. The same thing goes for rangers running movement speed signet on soulbeasts instead of signet of wild (+180 ferocity), it means they have no clue as a merged soulbeast has a larger movement speed bonus than the signet.

This isn't conjecture by the way. I had someone in a strike mission run soulbeast with longbow+shortbow and 10 ranking toughness (i.e. full tank mode). Their rotation was autoattack + rapidfire and they had signet of the hunt (movement speed signet). Nobody is going to be super annoyed with you if you run a defensive utility stunbreak that also does damage if you don't drop your highest damage utilities. Similarly, if you run marauder stats instead of berserker stats. Some people have next level ideas of what it means to "clear" content however, seeing what is being run by random people. Spending one hour for something you have done hundreds of times successfully is a failure IMO but everyone has their own definition of success.

Why do you think I'm running full sustain meme? or encouraging it? I initially picked heal tempest because whenever I ended up in a pure DPS comp (no dedicated healer), we would never succeed when I started in T1s. An extra healer is rarely an actual liability while climbing. And outside of T1 and T4, there's a lot of weird crap going on (people may not be running true DPS builds, but beleive they're DPS, or just be really bad). I have no regrets full carrying some of those groups ( and even occaisionally out dpsing the bad dps I was with). Getting through content doing what works is what makes sense for most players. You try getting full meta comps in ANY decent time in t2 and t3 using players who only play in those brackets. Normally in the off-hours I played, i was lucky if I even got a party together in any decent amount of time. But if you feel you have to attack players choices, please, by all means keep going, and talk down to them. If you think I was explicitly trying to party with HBs, I wasn't, it's just what happens when you take what's available while climbing. In T2s and T3s, you easily become a beggar and can't be a chooser given the low population in those brackets.

I was very clearly stating I had switched to full glass cannon meta being the support and explaining why sustain isn't necessary.

The ONLY thing I would do differently if I had to start ALL over is perhaps run a plague doctor's scourge, I think it'd be far more effective and hard carry even better.

If you're asking why I don't like the hyper DPS meta, it's because it's deceptive. There are mechanics in the fights. In just about any other game, you can't out-dps them. Or at least not initially until ilvls come into play. In this game there's so much freedom in stat and trait selection, it gives the illusion that it's okay to pick something more durable and people easily fall into those playstyles to balance their builds against mechanics. There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play chill. In fact some other MMOs have much more chill rotations and there's less mechanics being thrown at you at once. Plenty of newcomers may be used to chiller and may prefer it. It becomes a gros wake-up call when you start getting lectured by others and they're literally dying and you think they're the bad player because you know what to dodge and can survive things they can't. XD. You don't even get what the other players are talking about until you try it (and your party actually does it well. There's LOTS of bad DPS out there XD. ). And I guess that's my other complaint with the hyper-DPS meta. There is a minimum skill for pulling it off and if players don't meet that bar, you're SOL. Other games, most of the time, it's people just have to play mechanics and it will be over. You don't have this issue of forever fights, because it's understood how many pure DPS to bring. Some games have very uncomplicated DPS rotation (or at least very reasonable skill floors) and the two of those things combined mean fights actually end (baseline # of DPS + reasonable rotations). So in just about any other game, it's expected to learn mechanics and play them, not just hose them down so fast you can't see straight XD.

It also feels cheap. Like the mechanics written into the game don't mean anything when things die so fast you don't experience the mechanics.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[avey.4201]

rev for alac
DH x3
quickbrand
 

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Why do you think I'm running full sustain meme? or encouraging it? I initially picked heal tempest because whenever I ended up in a pure DPS comp (no dedicated healer), we would never succeed when I started in T1s. An extra healer is rarely an actual liability while climbing. And outside of T1 and T4, there's a lot of weird crap going on (people may not be running true DPS builds, but beleive they're DPS, or just be really bad). I have no regrets full carrying some of those groups ( and even occaisionally out dpsing the bad dps I was with). Getting through content doing what works is what makes sense for most players. You try getting full meta comps in ANY decent time in t2 and t3 using players who only play in those brackets. Normally in the off-hours I played, i was lucky if I even got a party together in any decent amount of time. But if you feel you have to attack players choices, please, by all means keep going, and talk down to them. If you think I was explicitly trying to party with HBs, I wasn't, it's just what happens when you take what's available while climbing. In T2s and T3s, you easily become a beggar and can't be a chooser given the low population in those brackets.

I was very clearly stating I had switched to full glass cannon meta being the support and explaining why sustain isn't necessary.

The ONLY thing I would do differently if I had to start ALL over is perhaps run a plague doctor's scourge, I think it'd be far more effective and hard carry even better.

If you're asking why I don't like the hyper DPS meta, it's because it's deceptive. There are mechanics in the fights. In just about any other game, you can't out-dps them. Or at least not initially until ilvls come into play. In this game there's so much freedom in stat and trait selection, it gives the illusion that it's okay to pick something more durable and people easily fall into those playstyles to balance their builds against mechanics. There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play chill. In fact some other MMOs have much more chill rotations and there's less mechanics being thrown at you at once. Plenty of newcomers may be used to chiller and may prefer it. It becomes a gros wake-up call when you start getting lectured by others and they're literally dying and you think they're the bad player because you know what to dodge and can survive things they can't. XD. You don't even get what the other players are talking about until you try it (and your party actually does it well. There's LOTS of bad DPS out there XD. ). And I guess that's my other complaint with the hyper-DPS meta. There is a minimum skill for pulling it off and if players don't meet that bar, you're SOL. Other games, most of the time, it's people just have to play mechanics and it will be over. You don't have this issue of forever fights, because it's understood how many pure DPS to bring. Some games have very uncomplicated DPS rotation (or at least very reasonable skill floors) and the two of those things combined mean fights actually end (baseline # of DPS + reasonable rotations). So in just about any other game, it's expected to learn mechanics and play them, not just hose them down so fast you can't see straight XD.

It also feels cheap. Like the mechanics written into the game don't mean anything when things die so fast you don't experience the mechanics.

If you've been playing since launch you'd know that the average DPS has basically doubled on all classes. If you joined a party with a HB as a heal tempest then you were asking for trouble from the start. The group would basically be 4 manning. In addition your assessment of healbrand is incorrect because you don't count aegis blocks as prevented damage (i.e. higher scholar uptime). Aegis on a fight where there aren't often high damage attacks mitigates most if not not all of the potentially troublesome damage.

It's really not a hyper-DPS meta, since healbrand is already not a DPS. That's 20% of your party that is healing , and another player with  ~20% less damage than a full DPS if you bring alac renegade. Hyper DPS meta would be something run by a speedclear guild such as CFB x3 + 2 condi RR. Before this current meta we had chrono + druid which was worse because the wait time for chrono that actually was not terrible was long (which was one of the main uses of my chrono).

I join T2 groups that don't seem to fill after finishing T4s, often on alacrity renegade or CQB, when I need more of the Globs of Coagulated Mist Essence. (This will probably stop once legendary armory comes.) People still are going to play far better with proper builds than a healer. If people are doing terrible DPS then you need to deal with more mechanics. The better idea would be to play a build with high sustain that doesn't give up all of its DPS such as power quickness scrapper, renegade / herald if no might, or even reaper. In low tier fractals often times quickness is stronger than alac because people just seem to autoattack with only 1 or two skills used. In fact that's the primary use of my scrapper build outside of WvW : to run ad Infinitum for people in the T1-T3 CMs.

"Chill" doesn't mean play random stuff that does 2K DPS and running off with a longbow auto-attacking with rapidfire off cooldown, it means no flaming people for missing a mechanic or wiping because of a failed mechanic. You can play offmeta stuff and still be effective, for example power holo, power daredevil, or reaper but you still want proper boon coverage. By definition, people are more "chill" when they get all their T4s done in less than 30 minutes, they don't care if you run whatever as long as they get their boons covered by someone and the thing is done.

I'm not sure why you feel it is "cheap". If you have low DPS you just repeat a phase, the best example is Sunqua Peak (i.e. lightning cloud or meteors). It only becomes a problem when a phase is completely skipped.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Firebeard.1746]

24 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If you've been playing since launch you'd know that the average DPS has basically doubled on all classes. If you joined a party with a HB as a heal tempest then you were asking for trouble from the start. The group would basically be 4 manning. In addition your assessment of healbrand is incorrect because you don't count aegis blocks as prevented damage (i.e. higher scholar uptime). Aegis on a fight where there aren't often high damage attacks mitigates most if not not all of the potentially troublesome damage.

1) You initially only have resources for 1 character at a time, otherwise you're doubling your climbing time. So it was between healing or not healing. I was comfortable with elementalist when I started, so that's what I did as healers were rarer. Again, I didn't have a ton of control over comp, nor was it worth the effort. This is kind of a prime example of newer players and veterans speaking completely different languages. Alot of times vets don't know how to work with players where they're at or even understand where they were coming from. I didn't even have a character slot for guardian when I started fracs.

2) It's more than 2k DPS if a heal tempest knows what it's doing. You can also slightly buff other members with additional strike damage using lightning overload. You have more freedom to do stuff like that if there's another support, if there's more pressure, then you basically stick mostly to fire and water attunement.

3) HB falls flat on its face with bad DPS, it's possible the HBs I ran with were bad, but the Aegis has cooldowns, there were times I focused on as close to being a power DPS tempest in harrier's gear and it was more than obvious an HB is reliant on high DPS to make things work. And as I stated before it's not uncommon to be playing with players doing whatever with their builds (and they may be taking more survivability on purpose because of trying metas and having it fall flat on its face for them while climbing in a lower population environment). My recommendation to anyone finding themselves in this position while climbing is plaguedoctor's HS with krait runes.


The game also doesn't really do a good job teaching players how much damage to do, so I really wouldn't fault a noob with 2k DPS, I might privately whisper them with some suggestions, but I wouldn't have a hernia either.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[mikko.4013]

7 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

3) HB falls flat on its face with bad DPS, it's possible the HBs I ran with were bad, but the Aegis has cooldowns, there were times I focused on as close to being a power DPS tempest in harrier's gear and it was more than obvious an HB is reliant on high DPS to make things work. 

I've been playing Tempest Healer, HealBrand, Druid Healer, Heal Scourge  in fractals, and HB only falls flat with very very very bad teams.

Aegis are quite spammable (mantra) if you don't waste them, and mace-shield can bring even more Aegis... not to mention #3 Tome...

In addition to these, HB has projectiles negation (#5 shield, #3 Tome, and other situational reflects).

You can add might, quickness, stability, regeneration, healing, cleansing to that huge utility package..

 

These are the reasons why I think that HB is the "negation" class : Aegis, Stability, cleansing, allow your team to face-tank/ignore most mechanics (with the exception of "no pain no gain" which is more of a debuff).

 

It is true that "newborn HB" tend to spam all their skills in very little time, therefore quickly suffering from "on cooldown syndrom", but there is a huge difference between meh HealBrand, OK HB, and good HB, indeed.

 

As long as you teach your team how to stack on the healer, HB can carry almost anything...

 

On the other hand, Tempest Healer does have huge healing power, but brings very few "negating utilities". No aegis, little stability... Overloads take time, auras are meh (can be heal traited though)... CCs, Rebound, and mobility are the only better features, in comparison to HB.

 

HealScourge is  the "low PUG" carrier (barriers/rez), and it does very good job in that regard, with some nice CCs and "good" DPS depending on the gear.

 

Druid healer can do the job well, but spirits can't move, no Aegis, little stability... Druid healer shines better in raids than in fractals.