Al Masone.1274

Dragonhunter would be your best bet right now. In fact, everyone should just roll a guardian since they can do everything and Anet is never gonna adress that. That said, for the dragonhunter you need to reach level 80 and unlock the spec, which generally means playing through the HOT storyline and doing the HP in the heart of maguuma. As DH you bring a lot of burst damage and crowd control, or you could go FB and be able to pretty much everything else, with a staff to act as a ranged support. I say DH because it's the only melee class with a meta build, that still allows you to change into other roles whenever you want. You could also try the revenant, but people generally want you to spam alacrity on them or gtfo, which limits the fun you're going to have in group content. You could try something like ranged warrior, but doing anythng outside of open world will get you harassed to the point where you may want to uninstall the game. Or maybe I was just very unlucky...

wvw is not pvp, even if it mostly revolves around it. There should be more nuance to it in terms of more reliance on enviromental tools and possibly have a more marked pve element, in terms of npc soldiers and commanders fighting all over the map. If you want to play pvp just play pvp. Worst thing is seeing people "duel" or just squatting in wvw and even get mad if you attack them. They're taking away space from people who actualy enjoy big fights and sieges, because they are obviously afraid of real pvp with any element of competition.

Since when has WSR enough wvw players to remain alone? Not a complain, I'd be actually curious about knowing the numbers

Personally I don't really like the Wurm because it is such a cheap tactic. I'd rather die fighting after the opponents have thrown everything they have at me, than run away all the time. Spectral walk on the other hand feels quite mandatory most of the time, since it does a lot of stuff, and it's one of the best tools to keep up with the rest of team during a teamfight. I do try other things from time to time. Spectral walk and ring are strong and useful abilities, the only thing I dislike is that they have a pretty long CD. Not that I never use them, I just like to switch every now and then to try stuff and get some variance.

only well of darkness and corruption were affected, and they shouldn't be used for raw damage in the first place. So it's not a really bad thing, and hopelly it will promote some diversity.

A non meta thing I'm using for group wvw is the following: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwEE6MsMBmHbjtwKxz+arlD-e I haven't put the itemisation cause I'm still still mixing stuff to see what I like most. That said, I think Knight gear should be the best, possibly mixed with cavalier, and use the Rune of Vampirism. As for sigil, right now I'm using sigil of strength and impact, but I'll prob try other stuff. Basically I wanted to exploit the fact that, as the necro in general lacks stability, he's often the target of cc, followed by burst damage. This build basically tries to get the best direct damage mitigation and just enough personal condi cleanse to survive that first moment when to blobs collide with eachother. The runes of vampirism I find are a great sustain tool once the bodies start hitting the floor. I like to act more or less as a meat shield for my team, taking damage that could've been better spent on squishier party members, and landing as much CC/ boon corrupt as i can. Your damage isn't great (quite the contrary) and I don't expect to survive to most meta builds or duelists, but I'm not doing that anyway. "Nothing can save you" I feel works pretty well in wvw, since it has a low cooldown, that gets lower the more targets you hit, is an unblockable boon corrupt, and makes your next attacks unblockable, which I'm 99% sure includes "spectral grasp" and "chilled to the bone" (just don't quote me on that). That means unblockable hard cc, and spectral grasp hits 5 targets at 1200 range. Damage is pretty much secondary, but again, your just is to tank and disrupt, you should think of yourself as a moving well that tries to stick to the opponents. Your sustain isn't very good from the get go, but"your soul is mine" has a fairly low CD, and rune of vampirism works surprisingly well even when a fight isn't going very smoothly for your side. Still, for actual sustained healing you fall back on your team. Shroud I use mainly defensively, and that is why I picked "unholy sanctuary": it's definitely worse than "corrupter's fervor" In almost every situation, but here is a neat saving tool; still, try to use it actively to withstand burst damage that you see coming your way. It reduces all damage by 50%, which stacks with your toughness, albeit with diminishing returns (still good enough though). In any case though, you want to use shroud defensively first and foremost. Of course you don't want to rush big blobs on your own, you need your group to follow, you just act as the tip of the spear, possibly behind a warrior with disenchantment if there is one. Again, I think this is as far from the meta as it goes, but I have so much fun in wvw with this build, acting as a sort of battering ram, and actually surviving many fights.

> @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > @"Al Masone.1274" said: > > Thanks. > > So I guess that's one more reason not to play condi reaper > > Well, you can also see things the other way, the fact that we are in a power meta in which players are more likely to encounter power reaper is a good opportunity to play condi reaper and catch them off-guard. As for PvE, condi reaper flirt with the 30k dps potential so it's not a bad option. Do you have any builds to suggest? Though I'm not a fan of a pure condi reaper, I would like a version where you can combine direct hits with some condi damage (think about the Death Knight in wow, for instance), but I can't find anything. I would even try a pure condi build out of curiosity. But to get it out of the way already, please don't give me "open world builds", cause there everything works and it's not a relevant ground for builds. (I don't mean to sound rude, it's just that I'm discovering that an awful lot of people take open world so seriously that they make dedicated builds...)

Thanks. So I guess that's one more reason not to play condi reaper

I keep hoping that necro will get the shield for the next elite spec and be able to be an effective tank. The reaper is in theory quite survivable, but it's more of a dps spec than a tank one.

> @"HotDelirium.7984" said: > > @"Al Masone.1274" said: > > > @"Opopanax.1803" said: > > > As a player who is on and off due to life being busy (not another game), my biggest lack of draw is old and uninspired traits and weapon skills being updated to be relevant. > > > > > > I so wish just a little time and care was done to tweak older and underutilized skills and traits were updated. It makes the new content more enjoyable when you have more build variety! > > > > This > > > > There are so many traits and skills in the game that aren't just "undertuned", but either old, dull, useless and all combinations of those words. There is just to much stuff that could be done about them. > > To me TRUE balance is having all traits that you can't select be the ones that can be used in the majority of situations and then the selectable ones are the ones more specific to a build. Well, the baseline traits should be the ones that more clearly define a whole traitline, or an elite spec. The traits you can choose should offer variations in regards to the playstyle/s intended for that build, either by doubling down on its strengths or by giving some utility for situations in which that spec can't work at its full potential. All in a fluffy way, possibly.