Buran.3796

> @"Gwaihir.1745" said: > Nice you wanted radiant (niche) and fb nerfed, now you get to play with DH again. You got what you asked for. Yep, people's moanings thrashed FB as a tank and support, then complained about symbol Guardians until got nerfed (aka: deleted from pvp) and now are whining about PvE builds having success in Conquest. Guess what happens when you nerf builds which were fine from people which won't want to change their main class: they keep playing the same class and find a more annoying build to beat you.

> @"Doctor.1384" said: > but since they never revert any balance decisions they wont revert any of changes they made in the previous patch That last part is wrong. They butchered the ability of Phase Traversal to teleport when target was beyond max range (1200 units) just to backpedaling and restoring the ability in less than a week. They also restored some changes made in the mace and axe after fooling around with Mallyx, because either the changes did nothing or made the damage & stacks too powerful. My point: ANet usually doesn't revert changes, but sometimes they do it. But I agree about not asking nerfs (don't worry, they don't read the forums).

Won't be done because the moment the game showcases a platinum fighting amongst silvers and golds will portray how depressingly low is the roster of players (revealing that the matchmaking must mix players from 2 entire categories away). Another two elements, also: GW2's matchmaking works based on Glicko, which is a variation of Elo with calculations for ratings of deviations when the system lacks enough information. But the reason why is used over Elo (the deviations) is not because lacks info about the player, but because both systems, Elo and Glicko, were developed to test 1 vs 1, whereas the base for all those calculations in GW2 are n vs n players (5 vs 5, 3 vs 3 and 2 vs 2). And the less players are available to initiate the match, the worse will be at predicting a balanced roster. The second elements that ends fumbling the whole system is that in both Elo and Glicko you'll never see in a tournament a 1.300 player fighting a 1.500+, because tournaments, don't waste time pairing such disparity of skill in a match. You earn in local tournaments the chance to increase your score, then regionals, then nationals, and then once you have proved skill and feats and score you can have the chance to be invited to top-end tournaments in which players are ordeded by seeds. So, between the numbers being low, and the score system being developed to work just in 1 vs 1 duels, the matchmaking in GW2 just doesn't work. It work in the sense that the best players have higher scores, but fails at providing balanced matches because ends mixing whatever vs whatever...

Only if you learn something while multiclassing... Can happen sometimes that tasting anther classes just gives you a bad taste. I've only played 4 classes in PvP, and one of those for less than 30 matches (currently ~6000 matches). Those 28 ones made me better? Probably not...

Condi builds using Renegade and short bow can go running either viper or trailblazer stats. The later one offers roughly ~90% of viper's dps because most of the damage from the short bow comes from conditions (from 80% to 90% in PvE, when the enemies usually don't clean the conditions they suffer). In this builds the optimal legend mix seems to be Kalla and Mallyx, and the best runes are Nightmare beacuse most of the damage comes from bleeds and burns, and not from torment. This is an example of the build: Physical builds with Renegade and short bow on the other hand can vary from pure berserker to a mix between zerk, cavalier, commander and even diviner based on the amout of sustain and boon duration we want to achieve. Devastation traitline and the Jalis legend can be combined with Kalla to maximize damage and sustain, providing a large access to vulnerability, Kalla's Fervor and Battle Scars, which lets refill the HP at high rate and to have a broad access to protection, stability and damage mitigation, and let to use swords combined with the short bow without losing too much on the swap.. This is an example of that: Finally, in not Renegade but Herald condition builds, mace axe/shields in trailblazer gear with torment runes are the best combination; Glint provides cc, damage reduction/absortion, cc and boons; Mallyx torment pressure and condition burst. Lord Hizen has a couple of videos about that build, albeit is currently working of it's take on Revenant at the end of this 2020. So which (or other iteration as the Wooden Poatoes) one works best at PvE? Depends on tastes and goals, but those are my thoughs after trying all of them: Woden Poatatoe's pure berserker build is better suited for solo open world normal content and instanced PvE content in terms of pure damage. But can't solo champions, bounties and legendary events designed for large team groups in the way that some of the other three can. Has more evades and blocks due the staff and Shiro, but the sustain and ability to fastly recover from damage is very limited there, and with less that 2300 armor, is a touch away from being one shooted in those scenarios. The other 3 builds have way more armor (2900+) and sustain. Nike's DTN relies only in the short bow and the Renegade traitline + Kalla to achieve sustain, but has less evades; doesn't need much energy since most of the time just spams sb #, sb autoattack and f2, but the healing can be a problem since energy is needed to maximize sustain. The annoying part of that build is that lacks mobility once in combat. Paper Roll's build has similar armor stats, but uses physical as the main source of damage and the conditions as a bonus damage. Is more energy consuming but a way larger pool, since has Charged Mist and is constantly depleting from 75 to <10 units. As results, uses a way more skills and also alternative weapons (swords). Has better mobility because Rapid Flow, and Kalla isn't the only source of sustain because Battle Scars. Has also access to perma-stability when needed, and Jalis can do notable damage while healing you at the same time and providing damage mitigation, all at once. On paper, usually condition beats power for solo content because you can use 2 stats to do the damage (condition, expertise) leaving thoughness and vitality as a nice bonus, but due how Devastation works it ends providing both damage and sustain. Invocation provides a large pool of energy and mobility while in combat (perma swiftess in both legends as long as you spent energy). Hizen's build is different: is even more tanky, has good mobility in combat, very strong cc game... But is full mele (and a Herald build, not a Renegade one). Is still my favourite amongs those, but I don't like the short bow and hate the Kalla skills. For a Renegade build, after playing the three, I like more the Paper Roll's build because adds more variety (sb, swords), makes both legends equally functional and have more sources of sustain, plus the mobility is better than in the one from Nike. That are my two cents.

Traitlines were designed around specific legends (with Invocation being an all-around traitline), and the weapon variety was so low that they just were happy releasing it with overpowered numbers (which late became overnerfed in compensation).

> @"Tora.7214" said: > Seeing as you are updating your build videos, and you seem to be having trouble with reve, you might want to check the Battle Scars trait line. it seems to be doing quite well with power builds. I been using this build for a week and it feels to me altmost as powerful and tanky as your one man army warrior build (when it came out). you might get some ideas from it for when the time to revisit revenant comes Very instructive, great build and video. What amuses me is that despite all that protection and tankiness some foes cut through the HP like paper, and is the sustain (heal recovering) which saves the day. I feel funny how dangerous the bristleback channel is to the build (a power Herald can delete his defiance bar on demand, but fails miserably in sustain on long fights against some of those champions). Anyway, thanx for the upload! I'm also intrigued about which build will showcase Hizen when he re-takes the Rev.

Yesterday just ended Astralaria; added it to the wardrobe of both one of my guardians and one of my Renenants.

By the way: take in consideration that at the time of chosing a weapon for a given spec for a class, ANet won't work "in the void". They have nine classes, and some of them already have have a lot of weapons (like the Warrior). So probably they will carefully call which weapon goes to the classes with less options available (example: giving the staff to the Warrior to make a warrior monk, or a scepter, or a pistol or focus, because there's very few weapons to chose for that class), and then will feed the next class. And one of the basics of that choices will be TO NOT REPEAT the same weapon for more than one class, so people will be more motivated to try to craft multiple legendary weapons, which are long term goals which keep people active and attached to the game. In that landscape, is plausible that the choice made for the Rev will end being one of the last ones, because isn't as full of weapons as some other classes.

> @"butt joint.3982" said: > I've heard good things about Grieving Firebrand (what Blood Red mentioned but I've yet to try it since I only just maxed out my first Guardian). Really looking forward to trying it out since I've had good fun with the gear on other builds despite how awful people have mentioned it is on everything _but_ Firebrand. That's because the main condition source of damage with FB are the burns (albeit has some bleeds with the axe) and they proc is not based in weapon skills but just in the passive effect of the virtue F1 (the F1 tome from FB is also extremely strong, even more with Radiant traitline (foes killed refresh F1) and Permeating Wrth from Vitues traitline (the burns proc more often and they are AoE). That combined with the physical damage from weapons and symbols and the quickness access and the very bursty nature of the burn damage makes an excellent PvE killer. ...But I'm not entirely sure about how great is the condi/hybrid FB at soloing PvE: at one hand, kills packs of mobs at blazing speed, on the other, is not that great at breaking defiance bars from champions and the top solo builds I saw are based on physical damage to achieve sustain. I'm slower with my power Herald killing multiple mobs than with my FB due the lack of AoE damage, but on the other hand my power Herald crushes the defiance bar from champions like nothing, and can deal with 3 bristlebacks at the same time whereas the FB struggles vs them...

> @"draxynnic.3719" said: > That said, being a little less ambitious, it _could_ offer a possible solution of making hammer have different effects depending on legend, similar to how trident works. That way, hammer could be a condi weapon when used with Mallyx, a support weapon when used with Ventari, and so on. The trident does a lot of physical damage, has small cooldowns, some skills are fast to cast and on top of that provides either condi damage (torment for Mallyx, fire for Glint) or debuffs (vulnerability with Shiro, weakness with Jalis). The hammer does little damage, has huge cast times and larger cooldowns; just adding some condis/debuffs to some bad skills won't make it viable. Guardian's hammer, which at its current state is considered "deplorable", is way ahead of Rev's hammer. I would love to have the Guardian or Scrapper hammer to use it with Jalis (or even the Warrior's hammer).

I crafted the Legendary PvP Armor (Heavy). Imo is the best path: * It takes ~year and half, because you need to complete the byzantium chest of six season to get the grandmaster marks, (you need 20 of them and you get only 3 x season): * Is free. I mean, the cost of the materials for the whole set was ~1800 gold coins to me, but you will earn way more money just playing PvP. Yes, PvE provides way more gold, but the PvE armor cost x3 the amount of gold the PvP one requires. * You only need to main one class, and play ~30 matches with another 3 to get all the achievements for the whole set. * You can be as bad as you can, because if you lose a lot of matches you will end playing against people with similar stats. Statistically you will end with at least ~50% win ratio, so the progression is constant at predictable. YOU CAN'T FAIL at getting the legendary armor at PvP. Even if you lose, still progression happens, which is not the same in PvE. * Free swap of stats, runes and infusions is amazing, and with the templates gives tons of options of customization for different game modes. And will be even better with with EoD ANet implements the shared legendary items for your whole roster of characters. I will craft another PvP armor again (already have the tokens and almost the gold again). Was going to be another heavy plate, but after the legendary wardrobe anouncement I'll wait to see how is implemented, because now makes more sense to craft either leather or clothes to give the same versatility to other characters. It will depend on how ANet implements the use of the skins (same look of everyone or a layer of customizable appareance on top of the armor you wear?).

I have no problems with the "lack of customization" of the utility skills because the legend swap mechanics can compensate the stiffness of that approach, but weapons entirely useless as the hammer must be erased from the game. Also, the blueprint of the design of the class was to rely in energy consumption, which was true at the release, but now the Rev has cooldowns everywhere, so is like a regular dude but worse, because on top of cooldowns has to pay energy... ant what cost! The breakstun in Jalis, which is supposed to be the "tanky legend" costs 40 units! You swap legend, cast one skill and remain the next 9 legends casting autos... Utter trash.

> @"Scoobaniec.9561" said: > I for one want condition gs. With torment obviously. So Rev stays as a "condi only" PvE class forever?

The class lacks a physical damage ranged weapon (you known, one which works, not that pile of garbage called hammer). It also lacks AoE physical damage (swords and staff are single target, both core and Herald are really slow at dispatching groups in PvE when use physical damage). So either rework the hammer into a mele range AoE physical damage weapon and add a main hand ranged physical damage weapon with the next spec, or give us a mainhand axe which wortks as Firebrand's axe.

> @"Eugchriss.2046" said: > Why the hell does it have 6s duration? like if you do the math, you only need to maintain ~2k dps to reach the high end of average healing skills which is 6000. Not hard on a class based on aoe. If traited, it's effective cooldown is only 18s for skill wich is only surpassed by infuse light. > Anet should reduce it to 3s. This is funny. The signet heal is bad, really bad. Shelter is mostly useless since most of classes have access to unblockables, and oftenly they can mix unblockable+ interrupt. Purification is garbage tier and Mantra of Solace was nerfed so bad that you need a whole traitline and 1000 healing power just to make that poor thing to heal "normally", which at the end did deleted the Firebrand from the meta, because does no damage, provides limited support and is not tanky at all. An now you want to nerf a heal which demands to inflict damage (and this game has tons of ways to avoid damage) in order to provide a decent heal. Listen: the reason you think that Litany heals so much is due two reasons: the base HP of Guardians is low, and you're not doing your job avoiding the damage. Just that.

How do you expect to kill foes with the wet towel level of damage we have since the February nerf if we don't have CC? In fact, every cc attack which hit hard was neutered to the point that now the only reason to have those attacks is to disable enemy foes, since in terms of damage they essentially do nothing.

Firebrand and Weaver are extremely strong when they focus on AoE burn stacks, so they are great in both single target and multiple foes fights. The Weaver has the edge in terms of stacking, and maybe at breaking defiant bars, albeit is harder to play than a FB. FB has better support while dealing that damage. Neither of them are great in mobility when fully specced to condition damage, tho. Condi Herald and condi Renegade work well, but in a different way: Renegade has higher dps and specially single target damage, plus can be used both at mele and range, and has a strong bar breaking game; Herald has better sustain and mobility while in combat, but is not as great at breaking defiance bars. From the other classes that I known less both Necro and Mesmer have strong condi AoE game. Probably the Mesmer is best of those two in terms of balance between damage/sustain/mobility.

> @"Kichwas.7152" said: > That seems good in solo content. In group content that toughness boost is going to make you a hyper focused target by NPCs, which dramatically reduces survival odds. I know they say toughness is only used for aggro in raids - but I've found having a toughness of even 1021 from a single back item can make me the near 100% target in dungeons and fractals and very often the target in open world group events. Just shedding that small bit from an old back item upped my survival dramatically on several characters. If toughness is that bad, how most of builds, classes and players soloing team content (from fractal bosses to OW champions, bounties and ever raid bosses) run so oftenly builds totalling 3.5k to 4k armor? Here's a 3K armor dire/trailblazer Weaver soloing the Verdant Brink Night Bosses Trio: A 3.5K armor Soulbeast soloing all kind of content: > And from the same channel you can find Hizen doing the same kind of content with a 3.4k armor Cavalier/Valkyrie Firebrand, a 3.2 armor Cavalier/Knight Spellbreaker, a 3.2k armor trailblazer Weaver or a 3.5k armor trailblazer Herald. If high sustain "tanks" are able to deliver damage enough to complete alone content designed to be hard to 5+ players (sometimes even with time limit) I fail to see how running full glass cannon stats makes the thing easier, specially in the named case of a Renegade build based in the use of shortbow.

> @"otto.5684" said: > The power damage of attacks, especially SB, is pretty good. You are leaving a lot of damage. I dunno the exact breakdown for renegade, but condi builds deal between 25-50% of their damage from power. I would not bother with this in PvE, especially that condi renegade has good survivability. I think that people didn't catch the whole landscape painted by the Nike DNT video or the reality of the viper vs trailblazer in a pure shortw bow Renegade build. The thing is that in therms of condition damage, both viper and trailblazer provide the same stats: condi damage as main stat and condition duration as secondary. So no differences there. Then, vipers boost the physical damage upping critical chance from 5% to 35% (a +30%) and doubles the power(1000 to 2172) in the given build of the video. But what does that exactly means in that context? The build is based almost exclusively in the short bow skills to deal damage, playing F3, Call to Anguish, Embrace the Darkness or the Kalla skills a very small role in terms of dps. And from the short bow whe have that in the #2, #3, #4 and #5 skills even if the physical damage is doubled going from trailblazer to viper, the whole amount of physical damage represents in those skills less that a 15% of the total damage, so the viper boost is ~8% of the total damage or less. In the auto attack the physical damage is ~37% of the total, which means that viper's power and crit chance boost the WHOLE damage around a 10%. So, in exchange of viper stats, Renegade bow boost the damage in less than a 10%. Trailblazer, on the other hand, retains 90%+ of the same whole damage, ads 1172 armor and 6330 HP making us almost invulnerable to one-shooters. Which means that with trailblazer you can kill almost as fast as with viper, but being able to recover from almost any mistake.