90% of Stat Sets are Un-Used

[Kuma.1503]

If there's one thing I love about Gw2, it's buildcraft. There are so many stat types that look useless on the surface, but can actually be useful with the right build. Here's just a few examples of builds I've made work:

 

Weaver utilizing a mixture of Marshal and Celestial gear with Antitoxin runes for WvW. It's nigh unkillable 1v1, and I chose to make up for it's lack of pressure with strength and battle sigils, making it easy to stack to 25 might by blasting fire fields. This build doubles as my go-to for soloing difficult bounties, Hero Points, or when I'd like a cozy run through HoT.

 

Engineer with a mixture of Wanderer's and Commander's stats. Imagine pre-nerf Prot Holo in PvP. In ran a paladin amulet for a decent mixture for pressure and sustain.

Now imagine it with a ton of concentration on top (and about ~200 ferocity because I run berserker weapons), and you have my build. I love this build because it enables so many different fun, solo friendly builds on my engineer. I've found that this is a great mix of stats for soloing fractals, dungeons, and bounties.

 

Flamethrower scrapper that consistently upkeeps 25 might and quickness

Prot Holo for soloing bounties, but with near permanent uptime on prot, regen, fury, and might.

Regular old scrapper, running the traits: Kinetic Stabilizers, Mass Momentum, and Short fuse. This lets me give myself long durations of stability whenever I CC a mob or deal breakbar damage, might whenever I gain stability, frequent bursts of quickness, and perma fury.

Drunk Holo/Scrapper. Chug your elixirs, give yourself every boon in the game (except alacrity), go ham

or Static Discharge with Kinetic battery, which lets me sit on a permenant ~17+ seconds of quickness.

 

 

Note: you could use this same gearset on a Boonbeast to great effect.

 

Some other builds I've ran include: Plaguedoctor Scourge, Saraph+Viper FIrebrand. A good mixture of support and condi damage. Firebrand, I've found, doesn't need vitality to stay alive. You can easily keep yourself topped off with just a small amount of healing power and some concentration.

 

Full-Bringer Deadeye.

 

...

 

No I'm not kidding. Yes, that was a Bleach pun. Many considered it the worst arc in the series, so I made the worst possible wvw build to ever fight against.

 

If anyone doesn't know what stats bringer gives (I don't blame you, who runs bringer stats?) it's Vitality, Precision, Expertise.

 

If you want to do... anything deadeye is known for like, y'know, damage, this build isn't for you. But, this just so happens to have the **perfect** stat set for a bunker immobilize build. Vitality to ensure that any attempts to swat you away fail, Expertise so that you can spam 2 to your heart's content and keep some poor soul immobilized forever, Precision, so you crits can generate extra malice, allowing you to consistently proc Maleficent Seven.

 

I run this build as a meme when playing WvW with my friends. If anyone tries to mess with us, I lock down the target, they burst them, rinse repeat until they're all dead.

 

Aanyway, in conclusion, most stat types in this game have a place. Perhaps not in endgame PvE, but theres so much more to this game than raids and fractals.

 

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Fuchslein.8639" said:

> Sure you don't have to play meta, but some still don't want to lag behind and when I then read on reddit that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind no matter how well you would play, that's just not justifiable in my eyes ...

 

I'd like to see that reddit post claiming that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind. Also, the post might be true, if the comparison is with let's say Nomads (haven't done the math but it's quite possible), but otherwise it looks like misinformation, or misunderstanding. The most important part of damage in this game is Power. ANY set that doesn't include Power will be really far behind in damage compared to the others, regardless of what stats it offers (even on most condition builds). Which is something a lot of theorycrafters and builders fail to understand. For example, Power has a higher impact on your damage than Precision and Ferocity COMBINED.

 

Second important part of damage is being alive, if you are dead you don't do damage.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Fuchslein.8639" said:

> > Sure you don't have to play meta, but some still don't want to lag behind and when I then read on reddit that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind no matter how well you would play, that's just not justifiable in my eyes ...

>

> I'd like to see that reddit post claiming that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind. Also, the post might be true, if the comparison is with let's say Nomads (haven't done the math but it's quite possible), but otherwise it looks like misinformation, or misunderstanding. The most important part of damage in this game is Power. ANY set that doesn't include Power will be really far behind in damage compared to the others, regardless of what stats it offers (even on most condition builds). Which is something a lot of theorycrafters and builders fail to understand. For example, Power has a higher impact on your damage than Precision and Ferocity COMBINED.

>

> Second important part of damage is being alive, if you are dead you don't do damage.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if it's just bad maths. Like the person who heard that there's about a 5% difference between exotic and ascended and somehow concluded that means there's 5% difference per piece and it's cumulative, so in total with 6 pieces of armour, 4 weapons, a backpiece and 5 trinkets that makes an 80% increase in your stats if you use full ascended.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> Sinister: 1,556 condition damage, 0 expertise, 30% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

> Viper: 1,348 condition damage, 633 expertise, 72.2% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

 

Do keep in mind that the two sets provide different amounts of Power/Precision so in order to make a complete comparison:

Sinister: +961 Power, +961 Precision, total: 1961 Power, 51% critical chance (game rounds up critical chance)

Viper: +1173 Power, +633 Precision, total: 2173 Power, 35% critical chance

 

Let's take a simple skill (Crossfire) with a coefficient of 0.4, Shortbows have an average damage of 1000 (950-1050)

This gives us the damage for both Sinister and Viper:

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient)

Sinister: 1000 * 1961 * 0.4 * (0.49 + 0.51 * 1.5) = 984,422

Viper: 1000 * 2173 * 0.4 * (0.65 + 0.35 * 1.5) = 1,021,310

 

Viper does -marginally- more damage than Sinister when it comes to Power damage, as well as doing more damage with conditions.

 

> Sinister: 121.13 damage per second for 1.3 seconds, coming to 157.47 damage

> Viper: 108.02 damage per second for 1.72 seconds, coming to 185.80 damage

 

The problem I have with Sinister is that it doesn't offer anything good over Viper. Soldier has a lot more health/armor than Berserker, Marauder has more health than Berserker, so they are actual options, they do less damage than Berserker but offer at least something. Sinister is just weaker than Viper, not by a huge amount, but it is in fact objectively weaker, and doesn't make up for that in survivability.

 

In the case of @"Fuchslein.8639" who can't acquire full Viper there is indeed no big difference between the two, but if a player does have access to both Sinister and Viper I see no reason to pick Sinister.

[Fuchslein.8639]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Fuchslein.8639" said:

> > Sure you don't have to play meta, but some still don't want to lag behind and when I then read on reddit that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind no matter how well you would play, that's just not justifiable in my eyes ...

>

> I'd like to see that reddit post claiming that without Viper you lag 50-80% behind. Also, the post might be true, if the comparison is with let's say Nomads (haven't done the math but it's quite possible), but otherwise it looks like misinformation, or misunderstanding. The most important part of damage in this game is Power. ANY set that doesn't include Power will be really far behind in damage compared to the others, regardless of what stats it offers (even on most condition builds). Which is something a lot of theorycrafters and builders fail to understand. For example, Power has a higher impact on your damage than Precision and Ferocity COMBINED.

>

> Second important part of damage is being alive, if you are dead you don't do damage.

Its from here

"Don't take this as shitting on your parade

Viper gear has expterise, which gives condi duration. You get pretty close to 80% extra duration afaik. If you don't have it, stands to reason that that you're doing something like 55% of the damage you could on a condi build.

The consolation is that you at least have access to viper armour/weapons.

Work towards as many ascended vipers weapons/armour pieces as you can with stat swapping and take Carrion trinkets. Just know that you'll be doing a good deal less damage. Even just getting LW3 episode 3 would fill 3 of your trinket slots with vipers quite easily. You can also get a free ascended amulet for finishing HoT's act 4 achievements, so that's 4/6 slots. The last 2 can be filled for 100 pristine relics each from that same vendor. Go to a new tab and they're called Mist ___, they're pink.

You didn't mention what your situation is now armour/weapons wise so my best advice until you can manage the above is to go core power warrior. It might be less exciting but it's the meta fractal build and the gear is way more accessible. Then once you get ep 3 and the 200 relics you can switch over

Or just do you, people won't care much below T4s"

 

I think I had the part with the dmg wrong in my head. But for me it had read as if viper was the non plus ultra.

With survival or so I have no problem. Have long time very successfully played raids and cm. Which is the reason that I now for my second account does not want to buy all living world parts again and have searched for replacements.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Kuma.1503" said:

> Aanyway, in conclusion, most stat types in this game have a place. Perhaps not in endgame PvE, but theres so much more to this game than raids and fractals.

>

 

I think this is the most important takeaway from this thread.

 

Metabattle and Snowcrows and such aren't the only available builds in this game, yet people always seem to act like nothing except that is viable. Those builds are for Raids and raids only. Maybe fractals, but those are just the 2 gamemodes available, each one has a different set of stats that might be more useful, plus, as seen above, some other stats than only "raid approved" can be just as viable if not more due to what else you get to bring to the table.

 

What's more - metabattle has some really downright stupid ineffective builds listed that make no sense, and people just copy those without a thought and just run with it, then wonder why it's not working that great. I see those sites as kind of a starting points for people who are maybe struggling. Like, see what they put out, understand how and why it works, sometimes they do have great explanations on synergies, and then just go from there, make your own, play around with sets, traits, etc. It's a great learning tool maybe, but certainly not "be all end all".

 

Like, recently, i made myself a Chronomancer build i named *"The Crit Kitten"* (i'm playing a Charr), and it's focused on a mix of Assassin's armor+weapons with Marauder trinkets and backpack. Chronomancer runes, precision sigils and the precision stacking one on greatsword. Might on crit generation one on Sword/Sword. And it's amazing! Just what i needed to freshen up from my usual Minstrel's WvW support (which i also built myself, i don't use the metabattle one). Hell, i even ran Minstrel's in open world and dungeons. Fights take an hour but i can't be killed, that's a plus i guess lol. I ran the Wintersday Strike standing in one spot not bothering to even move just facetanking all the damage while healing myself with inspiration traitline and Minstrel's. And anyone who was near me would of ocurse get alacrity and healing from my wells. I could have done the same in Wanderer's, trading some healing power for some damage, and it would have been just as fun.

 

I crit all of the time, my clones crit all of the time *and* apply bleeding when they do it, i have some easy quickness generation for some more bursty stuff and most mobs up to and sometimes including elites, just melt. There's constant bleed being applied, with phantasms high damage and shatters, it's like a constant assault. If i wasn't an idiot when it comes to dodging i would probably be able to solo Champions with it, it's really fun to play!

Is it the most DPS i could have gotten out of whatever i built? Probably not. But it's useful in just about any situation and if i had Ascended stuff on it, i bet i could run Fractals with it too. I even ran WvW blobs with it!

 

But what's beautiful about it is, i can swap Marauders for maybe Commander's or Diviner's for more concentration, giving me more quickness and alacrity to sacrifice some of the bleed application for quicker cooldowns, allowing me to use my skills more often and faster, maybe getting more damage output that way. Or i could get some Bringer's or Viper's in the mix to get more out of that bleed i apply!

 

There's many fun combinations with stats you can do, and anyone who says X stat combo is useless is either a hardcore Raider or has no imagination.

There's so much fun stuff you can do with builds, it's ridiculous!

[Nezuralli.2794]

This got some attention last night, although I was hoping to spark some talk about possible balance changes not "who says and does what".

The 10x less damage stat is from a comment from Anet that less experienced players do 10 times less damage than experienced ones. Which explains a lot when you do regular training runs like I do. In an ideal world I would stick every one of those training players on Valkyrie Reaper because it's easy to play with high health and does high damage by auto attacking in shroud. Of course that's not meta and it shouldn't be, but I'd like to see other options like it for the other classes you know? That's what I would hope the conversion traits are used for. Sorry if that message got lost in the rambling. I posted this on reddit and got loads of mis-understanding so I clearly need to learn to write better.

[Kuma.1503]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"Kuma.1503" said:

> > Aanyway, in conclusion, most stat types in this game have a place. Perhaps not in endgame PvE, but theres so much more to this game than raids and fractals.

> >

>

> I think this is the most important takeaway from this thread.

>

> Metabattle and Snowcrows and such aren't the only available builds in this game, yet people always seem to act like nothing except that is viable. Those builds are for Raids and raids only. Maybe fractals, but those are just the 2 gamemodes available, each one has a different set of stats that might be more useful, plus, as seen above, some other stats than only "raid approved" can be just as viable if not more due to what else you get to bring to the table.

>

> What's more - metabattle has some really downright stupid ineffective builds listed that make no sense, and people just copy those without a thought and just run with it, then wonder why it's not working that great. I see those sites as kind of a starting points for people who are maybe struggling. Like, see what they put out, understand how and why it works, sometimes they do have great explanations on synergies, and then just go from there, make your own, play around with sets, traits, etc. It's a great learning tool maybe, but certainly not "be all end all".

>

> Like, recently, i made myself a Chronomancer build i named *"The Crit Kitten"* (i'm playing a Charr), and it's focused on a mix of Assassin's armor+weapons with Marauder trinkets and backpack. Chronomancer runes, precision sigils and the precision stacking one on greatsword. Might on crit generation one on Sword/Sword. And it's amazing! Just what i needed to freshen up from my usual Minstrel's WvW support (which i also built myself, i don't use the metabattle one). Hell, i even ran Minstrel's in open world and dungeons. Fights take an hour but i can't be killed, that's a plus i guess lol. I ran the Wintersday Strike standing in one spot not bothering to even move just facetanking all the damage while healing myself with inspiration traitline and Minstrel's. And anyone who was near me would of ocurse get alacrity and healing from my wells. I could have done the same in Wanderer's, trading some healing power for some damage, and it would have been just as fun.

>

> I crit all of the time, my clones crit all of the time *and* apply bleeding when they do it, i have some easy quickness generation for some more bursty stuff and most mobs up to and sometimes including elites, just melt. There's constant bleed being applied, with phantasms high damage and shatters, it's like a constant assault. If i wasn't an idiot when it comes to dodging i would probably be able to solo Champions with it, it's really fun to play!

> Is it the most DPS i could have gotten out of whatever i built? Probably not. But it's useful in just about any situation and if i had Ascended stuff on it, i bet i could run Fractals with it too. I even ran WvW blobs with it!

>

> But what's beautiful about it is, i can swap Marauders for maybe Commander's or Diviner's for more concentration, giving me more quickness and alacrity to sacrifice some of the bleed application for quicker cooldowns, allowing me to use my skills more often and faster, maybe getting more damage output that way. Or i could get some Bringer's or Viper's in the mix to get more out of that bleed i apply!

>

> There's many fun combinations with stats you can do, and anyone who says X stat combo is useless is either a hardcore Raider or has no imagination.

> There's so much fun stuff you can do with builds, it's ridiculous!

 

Interesting, I may have to give that Chronomancer build a try. One thing I like about Marauder gear is that it has Precision as the primary stat. It makes it easier to crit cap, which makes it less of a dps loss than one might expect over Berserker.

 

Oh boy though, do I have bone to pick with metabattle. It's funny you mention Chrono because the Minstrel build is the one of the worst offenders I've seen yet.

Why, on a build with some of the lowest sustain in the game, would they **ever** run Minstrel gear? The reccomended build doesn't even run inspiration, so 90% of your self healing is coming from your heal skill. Is it worth completely forgoing damage just to heal for ~2000 more on your heal skill? I'd argue no.

 

Minstrel is just plain inefficient unless running the Inspiration Traitline. Otherwise, you don't have the healing to take advantage of the healing power. If running the domination variant like Metabattle recommends, you'd be much better off running Wanderer. It has a roughly equal amount of tankiness (swapping Swapping Toughness for Vitality but this is easily made up for with Durability runes), and comes with the added benefit of not completely gimping your dps.

 

You could take that same gear set and roam around in small scale fights while still feeling useful to your group or even do open world content with it with no fear of death.

[zealex.9410]

Sure, but the same was the case for Guild wars when it came to skills and that game is still praised for its theorycrafting and amount of choices.

[Sylvyn.4750]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Fuchslein.8639" said:

> >

> > So you have numbers what makes how much dmg?

>

> Why yes, I do ;) At least, I know how to get them.

>

> The way that the game calculates damage isn't mysterious. All of the equations are on the wiki ([condi,](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage) [power](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage). The only hard part is putting it all together. But, what you can do is take some shortcuts to see how much you'll be doing in each little part.

>

> Say, for example, you want to compare how much condition damage you do in Sinister gear as compared to Viper. The [item Nomenclature](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute_combinations) page has how much each set gives you. Throw on some runes and sigils (Bursting, Malice, Nightmare), and you'll get the following stats

>

> Sinister: 1,556 condition damage, 0 expertise, 30% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

> Viper: 1,348 condition damage, 633 expertise, 72.2% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

>

> From there, you can see how much damage you'll do with each condition. For example, say that you have a skill that inflicts 1 stack of bleeding. Bleeding does 0.06 condition damage + 22 for every second. So, we'd get the final numbers:

>

> Sinister: 121.13 damage per second for 1.3 seconds, coming to 157.47 damage

> Viper: 108.02 damage per second for 1.72 seconds, coming to 185.80 damage

>

> You can do these kinds of calculations for all of the other conditions, and for all of the other gear prefixes. You can change runes, add or subtract traits, add might, etc. For reference, this means that Sinister does 84.8% the damage of Viper.

>

> --------------------------

>

 

Woof...Condi isn't very straightforward when it comes to stacking attribute points in Condi vs. Expertise...the bottom part of your link to Condi damage calculates a break even for when you have too much of one or the other that isn't doing you much good...I've generally run Power builds as I only do WvW and Open World stuff...in WvW you just don't know how long a condi will be applied before it gets cleansed, and in most Open World situations, mobs don't last long enough to get the full effect of a condi anyway.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Kuma.1503" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"Kuma.1503" said:

> > > Aanyway, in conclusion, most stat types in this game have a place. Perhaps not in endgame PvE, but theres so much more to this game than raids and fractals.

> > >

> >

> > I think this is the most important takeaway from this thread.

> >

> > Metabattle and Snowcrows and such aren't the only available builds in this game, yet people always seem to act like nothing except that is viable. Those builds are for Raids and raids only. Maybe fractals, but those are just the 2 gamemodes available, each one has a different set of stats that might be more useful, plus, as seen above, some other stats than only "raid approved" can be just as viable if not more due to what else you get to bring to the table.

> >

> > What's more - metabattle has some really downright stupid ineffective builds listed that make no sense, and people just copy those without a thought and just run with it, then wonder why it's not working that great. I see those sites as kind of a starting points for people who are maybe struggling. Like, see what they put out, understand how and why it works, sometimes they do have great explanations on synergies, and then just go from there, make your own, play around with sets, traits, etc. It's a great learning tool maybe, but certainly not "be all end all".

> >

> > Like, recently, i made myself a Chronomancer build i named *"The Crit Kitten"* (i'm playing a Charr), and it's focused on a mix of Assassin's armor+weapons with Marauder trinkets and backpack. Chronomancer runes, precision sigils and the precision stacking one on greatsword. Might on crit generation one on Sword/Sword. And it's amazing! Just what i needed to freshen up from my usual Minstrel's WvW support (which i also built myself, i don't use the metabattle one). Hell, i even ran Minstrel's in open world and dungeons. Fights take an hour but i can't be killed, that's a plus i guess lol. I ran the Wintersday Strike standing in one spot not bothering to even move just facetanking all the damage while healing myself with inspiration traitline and Minstrel's. And anyone who was near me would of ocurse get alacrity and healing from my wells. I could have done the same in Wanderer's, trading some healing power for some damage, and it would have been just as fun.

> >

> > I crit all of the time, my clones crit all of the time *and* apply bleeding when they do it, i have some easy quickness generation for some more bursty stuff and most mobs up to and sometimes including elites, just melt. There's constant bleed being applied, with phantasms high damage and shatters, it's like a constant assault. If i wasn't an idiot when it comes to dodging i would probably be able to solo Champions with it, it's really fun to play!

> > Is it the most DPS i could have gotten out of whatever i built? Probably not. But it's useful in just about any situation and if i had Ascended stuff on it, i bet i could run Fractals with it too. I even ran WvW blobs with it!

> >

> > But what's beautiful about it is, i can swap Marauders for maybe Commander's or Diviner's for more concentration, giving me more quickness and alacrity to sacrifice some of the bleed application for quicker cooldowns, allowing me to use my skills more often and faster, maybe getting more damage output that way. Or i could get some Bringer's or Viper's in the mix to get more out of that bleed i apply!

> >

> > There's many fun combinations with stats you can do, and anyone who says X stat combo is useless is either a hardcore Raider or has no imagination.

> > There's so much fun stuff you can do with builds, it's ridiculous!

>

> Interesting, I may have to give that Chronomancer build a try. One thing I like about Marauder gear is that it has Precision as the primary stat. It makes it easier to crit cap, which makes it less of a dps loss than one might expect over Berserker.

>

> Oh boy though, do I have bone to pick with metabattle. It's funny you mention Chrono because the Minstrel build is the one of the worst offenders I've seen yet.

> Why, on a build with some of the lowest sustain in the game, would they **ever** run Minstrel gear? The reccomended build doesn't even run inspiration, so 90% of your self healing is coming from your heal skill. Is it worth completely forgoing damage just to heal for ~2000 more on your heal skill? I'd argue no.

>

> Minstrel is just plain inefficient unless running the Inspiration Traitline. Otherwise, you don't have the healing to take advantage of the healing power. If running the domination variant like Metabattle recommends, you'd be much better off running Wanderer. It has a roughly equal amount of tankiness (swapping Swapping Toughness for Vitality but this is easily made up for with Durability runes), and comes with the added benefit of not completely gimping your dps.

>

> You could take that same gear set and roam around in small scale fights while still feeling useful to your group or even do open world content with it with no fear of death.

 

Cool! :smile:

Yeah, that's why i went Marauder. I aimed at 75+% crit without and 90% with precision sigil stacking. Becasue, you have 3 clones all critting. If one misses a crit, the other two won't, so anything above 70% is optional really. With 25 stacks of precision, without food, you have 90% crit chance. I run mine at lower, around 75% and it's working just as great. And marauder's as opposed to full assassin's gives me some beef as well, and more raw power.

 

For Chrono i go 2/2/2 but you can also do 2/1/1 if you want some alacrity instead of quickness on slow, plus extra crit chance on slowed mobs.

If you go 2/1/1 then you probably don't need Shatter storm in Illusions, but whever, just take it as a base then play with it to your liking, not everyone will like the same stuff. So have fun with it! :smile:

 

Here's the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiyAExzlNwcYLsNWJW6WZNVA-zRRYbKxMFgYwHSUSgAFCRoCU5BIkMA-e

I specifically put no food and exotic armor because that's what i was going to use (and am now). If you have legendary stuff or want to make ascended for it, you can get 90% crit way easier and can then use different infusions or sigils maybe. But the build above assumes exotic armor and weapons. Plus ascended greatsword because Caladbolg, i mean, come on, half an hour running errands to get, everyone should have an ascended sword by now haha! :tongue:

 

 

To me, i like that playstyle a lot!

 

My facvorite combo so far, total overkill for trash mobs but great for vets and up is have 3 clones on, have them apply bleed, then cast all your wells, cast Phantasmal Swordsman, do Blurred Frenzy as your Swordsman does it too, and as you're doing it, shatter all your clones as you enter auto attack. Brings a smile to my face. And i'm not even using continuum split, i still haven't tried experimenting combos with that one! If i use that, then the burst would be higher. What's nice about it is that You have sword 4 block, and blurred frenzy as evades too.

 

You also get all sorts of armors for blasting Swordsman on Well fields, but meh, that's not what you're there for. :wink: Still, cool that you can do that. :tongue:

 

And when you mention Metabattle Chrono build... I know **exactly** which one you mean!!! The one that has Minstrel's and has freaking Illusions traitline with Shatter storm? :smiley: If so, SUCH fail lol, you want Wanderer's for that like you said, not Minstrels lol, where's all that healing power going!?! Plus, it relies on clones and you're never going to have them up in blob fights - which this build is for since it's boonstrip support! Best not to rely on clones for your support too much.

 

This is what i run in WvW, this is my "Tankstrip" build. :smile:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiCBs2x7lNwcYfMNWJOuSptPA-zRJYjRP/ZkpKobpgGPEBZP8Wa/SD-e

 

And yes, inspiration for Minstrel's, lol.

 

And this is a more pure boonstrip/utility version, just minor changes to shorten cooldowns on focus for pull, and no heals. I run this when we're going guild fights, where there's dedicated healers. And the Tankstrip version for when shit hits the fan and for public comnmander squads (since you can't rely on pugs to really follow anyone properly lol, that's where the healing comes in).

 

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PiCBs2x7lNwcYfMNWJOuSntOA-zRJYjRP/ZkpKobpgGPEBZP8Wa/SD-e

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> I don't know the numbers of course but it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of players actually do use those sets "no one" uses.

That's actually part of the problem. A number of players that use those stat sets with full knowledge of what they are (and aren't) good for is very small. Most players that do use those do that simply _because they don't know better_.

 

Basically, those stat sets are a massive noob trap, being utilized mostly by players that lack enough knowledge to make proper use of them. And in this context the fact that those stats _are_ used, and quite often at that, is highly problematic.

 

 

[Strider Pj.2193]

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> **highly problematic.**

>

 

For who? Them, or the people around them.

 

I guess why should we say it’s problematic?

 

 

 

 

[Crackmonster.2790]

Every single stat has a time and a place where it is desired. All stats. The "problem" then is that some combinations of stats are not good. That is fine hands down - if you wanted to remove all but the top efficient choices so essentially you can't make any choices then it's just so soulless in the end and oversimplified. The good thing is now maybe in the future other stat combinations will open up to allow other builds to be more effective, gives us something new to farm, etc.

 

It's really fine, like there are some stat combinations that are not ideal but not everything needs to be perfect item. Obviously you won't be crafting these non-ideal items, and so for gearing purposes it's only really impactful in the characterization experience during lvling and up till 80 exotics, but unless you wanna make ascended a lot easier to drop and can't be stat changed then that's just that. It still gives life to the game that items are not oversimplified so you can't make any mistake or have no room for experimentation.Then you might also have a separate argument about single stats if they should be boosted to give more power, but just as much that is a discussion of skill coefficients for many of the stats and better adjusted there.

 

So yea, i will only agree that some stats are not ideal. But i won't say that's a problem, and you never know what builds might make use of some combination one day. Much rather have these fixed combinations with specific grinds to get them than just free fully selectable stat choices for genericism.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

> @"Sylvyn.4750" said:

> > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > @"Fuchslein.8639" said:

> > >

> > > So you have numbers what makes how much dmg?

> >

> > Why yes, I do ;) At least, I know how to get them.

> >

> > The way that the game calculates damage isn't mysterious. All of the equations are on the wiki ([condi,](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage) [power](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage). The only hard part is putting it all together. But, what you can do is take some shortcuts to see how much you'll be doing in each little part.

> >

> > Say, for example, you want to compare how much condition damage you do in Sinister gear as compared to Viper. The [item Nomenclature](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute_combinations) page has how much each set gives you. Throw on some runes and sigils (Bursting, Malice, Nightmare), and you'll get the following stats

> >

> > Sinister: 1,556 condition damage, 0 expertise, 30% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

> > Viper: 1,348 condition damage, 633 expertise, 72.2% total condi duration, 5% increased damage

> >

> > From there, you can see how much damage you'll do with each condition. For example, say that you have a skill that inflicts 1 stack of bleeding. Bleeding does 0.06 condition damage + 22 for every second. So, we'd get the final numbers:

> >

> > Sinister: 121.13 damage per second for 1.3 seconds, coming to 157.47 damage

> > Viper: 108.02 damage per second for 1.72 seconds, coming to 185.80 damage

> >

> > You can do these kinds of calculations for all of the other conditions, and for all of the other gear prefixes. You can change runes, add or subtract traits, add might, etc. For reference, this means that Sinister does 84.8% the damage of Viper.

> >

> > --------------------------

> >

>

> Woof...Condi isn't very straightforward when it comes to stacking attribute points in Condi vs. Expertise...the bottom part of your link to Condi damage calculates a break even for when you have too much of one or the other that isn't doing you much good...I've generally run Power builds as I only do WvW and Open World stuff...in WvW you just don't know how long a condi will be applied before it gets cleansed, and in most Open World situations, mobs don't last long enough to get the full effect of a condi anyway.

 

I'm aware. I was showing some example comparisons on how to calculate the difference in condi damage and power damage between sets. I picked Sinister because it is a core set, and it was the go-to set for condi builds before Viper was made.

 

Getting a full breakdown of total build efficacy on hybrid builds is... messy. You have to know the average sustained rate of conditions, as well as the mean skill coefficient over time. Then, from there, you can create a weighted skill coefficient and weighted average conditions to come up with how much each gear set changes those. It is all excessively complicated. There's two really short ways to look at it that'll help you from getting lost in the forest of details:

 

(1): Viper is better because it gives more stats overall. The 4-stat prefixes give more total points than the 3-stat prefixes.

(2): Knowing the basics and starting with a good base set of numbers means you'll do well in other areas.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said:

> > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > **highly problematic.**

> >

>

> For who? Them, or the people around them.

Everyone

 

> I guess why should we say it’s problematic?

Because it makes balancing much, much harder. It is, remember, one of the causes for the massive dps discrepancy between top and average players. Not the only one, of course, but still very impactful. And this negatively impact all players, both those that fall for those noob traps, and those that actually do know better.

 

Like i have been saying in countless theads before: freeform build system is something that looks very good on paper, but it is also something that can be utilized well by only a relatively small minority of players. For everyone else it is either flat out useless (because they will be following someone else's advice, thus missing the whole point of such a system), or an active hindrance that drags them down. It is a system that is well-designed for a relatively small game aimed at niche target group of players. In an AAA game with mostly casual audience, however, it turns into a major catastrophe.

 

To put it a little bit differently, to show where the issue is:

Making a system that offers players a multitude of choices that are impactful balancewise (with most of them being bad) ensures that some players _will_ pick bad ones. If the game will avoid it by guiding you towards the right ones, then the choice is only an illusion, and there's not much point to it. If the game will _not_ tell you which choices are good, though, you will end up with a lot of players that picked poorly. And then the game will need to accomodate those players with bad choices - which, consequently, will pull even the "good" players down.

 

In the end, everyone loses.

[Teratus.2859]

I partially blame the meta mentality for it since a lot of people tend to get fed the same line about DPS is king so only use X stats.

 

Personally I have fun experimenting with different stats sets on different builds to see how the result turns out.

It's why i've clashed with some people in the past when I disagree with their opinions about certain stat sets which they claim to be garbage and "useless".

 

I don't disagree with the overall subject here though I do think there are sets in the game which don't really have much purpose if any at all and I would like to see them find a use somewhere.

But I do disagree with some claims about some stats being useless.

 

For example I think Maddoctor said Power and Ferocity is a useless combo without Critical chance.. Precision and while that is true there are ways to obtain high Crit chance without needing the precision stat.. such as, certain Necromancer traits, one of which can give you a flat 50% crit chance that is extremely easy to maintain in group play.

So for them that is a viable stat combo to some degree.

I won't deny that these are very niche circumstances that occasionally only apply to a single class or elite spec but this is something I think should be a thing in this game and would like to see more of going forward.

 

To be clear Im not saying we need more useless stat combos that only benefit one class or spec or something.. i'm saying Anet should improve existing classes and specs via traits to where these less useful existing stat sets are actually viable for currently ignored potential build on them.

Give people more reason to take or at least play around with largely neglected stats and traits.

[Hannelore.8153]

I've done alot of testing recently and it seems you only need about 2k/sec sustained DPS to clear enemies comfortably in open-world. The same damage is effective against enemy players in WvW unless they're specifically built for bunkering (sustain). Clearing a dungeon with that DPS (per player) is even slightly faster than it seems designed for, with a full party at least.

 

This is also about the DPS you see from players in PvP outside of bursts, with a few exceptions.

 

It seems to be about the average DPS output of a character with only a single damage stat (Soldier's, Dire's, etc.), and almost all the game seems to be balanced around this, which means that almost every stat combo is viable in any content including competitive. This is of course excepting the support builds like Nomad's, which were meant to be carried by other players in exchange for heals.

 

Stat combos like Berserker are just more efficient damage-wise; in anything but basic PvE they always made you a liability because if you don't dodge or manage your blocks and other defenses properly, its easy to go down. Thus associated with skill.

 

So what's the deal with Fractals and raids? Its simple, the enemies are built differently. They're built to literally be tanks.

 

They were mostly created with the powercreep in mind as new encounters were designed over the years, so they feel horrible if you aren't pulling in 5k/sec from your whole group minimum, and you really need at least a few players doing 10k+ sustained to not feel like you're playing in molasses. This is with permanent Quickness, 25 Might, Fury etc, on T3/T4 Fractals mind you.

 

Raids are even worse, the whole concept of Enrage Timers is essentially all or nothing.

 

Judging the game by content that was intentionally made for powercreep isn't particularly wise. We're talking about encounters that were designed to fail if you don't come at them with an "all-in" approach, and that's not a good benchmark.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Nezuralli.2794" said:

> This got some attention last night, although I was hoping to spark some talk about possible balance changes not "who says and does what".

> The 10x less damage stat is from a comment from Anet that less experienced players do 10 times less damage than experienced ones. Which explains a lot when you do regular training runs like I do. In an ideal world I would stick every one of those training players on Valkyrie Reaper because it's easy to play with high health and does high damage by auto attacking in shroud. Of course that's not meta and it shouldn't be, but I'd like to see other options like it for the other classes you know? That's what I would hope the conversion traits are used for. Sorry if that message got lost in the rambling. I posted this on reddit and got loads of mis-understanding so I clearly need to learn to write better.

 

I think it helps to put your post in order of priority rather than laying out all the background info first. If there's a specific point you want to make put it right at the top. You don't have to write it that way of course, you could start by laying out your thoughts as they come to you, but then go back and add an 'introduction' to summarise the key points. Also if it's a long post you could use headings to break it up a bit and call attention to the important parts. It also helps to re-read it once you're done and see if there's anything you can cut out because it's not entirely relevant.

 

Consider that most people are essentially here for entertainment - they're reading and talking about the game because they can't play right now and presumably don't have anything better to do. So there's very low commitment to reading any given post or topic beyond a desire to find something interesting and to share their own thoughts. As a result some will only read the title, some will read the title and first sentence or two, maybe the first paragraph if it's short. Even if they do read more those first few lines set up their expectations and their attitude towards the rest of the post.

 

In this case your first paragraph is all about how useless you think most stat sets are, which sets the expectation that the entire topic is about that. Then, at a glance, the rest of the post appears to be all about examples of specific profession/trait/stat combinations and running the maths to demonstrate the point. It's difficult to see what your suggestion actually is.

 

(It also helps to avoid statements that imply everyone reading will agree with you like "We know this happens" or "everyone/no one does X". It's the internet, people will disagree purely for the sake of disagreement, either to be difficult or to spark discussion by playing devil's advocate, _especially_ if you set it up by telling them that they agree with you. Even factual statements will get subjective disagreements. You could probably say "We all know there are 9 professions in GW2" and get someone arguing that 2-3 at least are so useless that they don't count so really there's only 6-7.)

 

----

 

On a separate note I don't think restricting inexperienced players to a build so painfully simple that they don't really have to do anything is a good way to teach them, it just removes the need to learn. At best they can finish some content using that very simple build but will need to do their own research to figure out how to move on to anything else. At worst they conclude that combat in GW2 is too easy and simple to be interesting and stop playing.

 

It reminds me of when someone, years ago, told me you should always choose the basic fighter class first in any RPG and not play anything else until you've finished the game with that because otherwise it will be too complicated and you'll get overwhelmed. Fortunately they told me this when I was starting Baldur's Gate, where you have to play your whole party anyway. I soon noticed I was largely ignoring my fighter because I couldn't do anything except pick a target and wait for it to die or until it was time to use a healing potion. Instead I was spending all my time on the characters with more interesting abilities because they were actually fun to play. So I rerolled as a druid and then a cleric and had a lot more fun. If I'd stuck with that advice and hadn't had other characters to use I'd probably have given up on the game for being boring before I ever got close to finishing.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> Raids are even worse, the whole concept of Enrage Timers is essentially all or nothing.

>

> Judging the game by content that was intentionally made for powercreep isn't particularly wise. We're talking about encounters that were designed to fail if you don't come at them with an "all-in" approach, and that's not a good benchmark.

 

Do you think that, if they removed enrage timers and you had all the time you want (per week) to finish a boss that there would be more build variety in Raids/overall?

And would more builds be accepted into Raids with less "toxicity" debate surrounded by it?

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> I've done alot of testing recently and it seems you only need about 2k/sec sustained DPS to clear enemies comfortably in open-world. The same damage is effective against enemy players in WvW unless they're specifically built for bunkering (sustain). Clearing a dungeon with that DPS (per player) is even slightly faster than it seems designed for, with a full party at least.

>

> This is also about the DPS you see from players in PvP outside of bursts, with a few exceptions.

>

> It seems to be about the average DPS output of a character with only a single damage stat (Soldier's, Dire's, etc.), and almost all the game seems to be balanced around this, which means that almost every stat combo is viable in any content including competitive. This is of course excepting the support builds like Nomad's, which were meant to be carried by other players in exchange for heals.

>

> Stat combos like Berserker are just more efficient damage-wise; in anything but basic PvE they always made you a liability because if you don't dodge or manage your blocks and other defenses properly, its easy to go down. Thus associated with skill.

>

> So what's the deal with Fractals and raids? Its simple, the enemies are built differently. They're built to literally be tanks.

>

> They were mostly created with the powercreep in mind as new encounters were designed over the years, so they feel horrible if you aren't pulling in 5k/sec from your whole group minimum, and you really need at least a few players doing 10k+ sustained to not feel like you're playing in molasses. This is with permanent Quickness, 25 Might, Fury etc, on T3/T4 Fractals mind you.

>

> Raids are even worse, the whole concept of Enrage Timers is essentially all or nothing.

>

> Judging the game by content that was intentionally made for powercreep isn't particularly wise. We're talking about encounters that were designed to fail if you don't come at them with an "all-in" approach, and that's not a good benchmark.

That's exactly what i have been talking about. Since the freeform system creates such massive discrepancies in ability between players, it also results in the content that cannot be balanced for too large group of users.

 

Open world is meant for everyone, which means it needs to be balanced so low, that anyone (even a bad player) running a proper build and gear can literally autoattack to victory. While being semi-afk at that. On the other hand any content that is to present even a sliver of challenge for the top 10-20% of players has to be balanced to be miles above of what an average player can achieve. And it goes on and on, because the same happens when we jump from top 20% to top 10%, and from top 10% to top 1-2%.

 

Thus, Fractals and Raids _have_ to be designed completely differently than OW. It's because they are meant for players on a level that is so far away from what the average playerbase represents they might as well be playing a completely different game.

 

[Hannelore.8153]

> @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> > Raids are even worse, the whole concept of Enrage Timers is essentially all or nothing.

> >

> > Judging the game by content that was intentionally made for powercreep isn't particularly wise. We're talking about encounters that were designed to fail if you don't come at them with an "all-in" approach, and that's not a good benchmark.

>

> Do you think that, if they removed enrage timers and you had all the time you want (per week) to finish a boss that there would be more build variety in Raids/overall?

> And would more builds be accepted into Raids with less "toxicity" debate surrounded by it?

 

I believe so, yes, because in MMOs there's always been players who prefer to "tank & spank". Even in GW2, in the era of dungeons, it was common to see stuff like guilds clearing Arah with five Cleric's Guardians, just to ensure they're always successful.

 

There's always going to be players who prefer 100% guarantee with low stress over higher risk and reward. Its a middleground between casual and hardcore players. That is to say, players who like to complete hardcore content in a casual manner. Although its rare in Guild Wars in the last few years since we've moved closer and closer to encounters being entirely DPS checks.

[Veprovina.4876]

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> > @"Veprovina.4876" said:

> > > @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> > > Raids are even worse, the whole concept of Enrage Timers is essentially all or nothing.

> > >

> > > Judging the game by content that was intentionally made for powercreep isn't particularly wise. We're talking about encounters that were designed to fail if you don't come at them with an "all-in" approach, and that's not a good benchmark.

> >

> > Do you think that, if they removed enrage timers and you had all the time you want (per week) to finish a boss that there would be more build variety in Raids/overall?

> > And would more builds be accepted into Raids with less "toxicity" debate surrounded by it?

>

> I believe so, yes, because in MMOs there's always been players who prefer to "tank & spank". Even in GW2, in the era of dungeons, it was common to see stuff like guilds clearing Arah with five Cleric's Guardians, just to ensure they're always successful.

>

> There's always going to be players who prefer 100% guarantee with low stress over higher risk and reward. Its a middleground between casual and hardcore players. That is to say, players who like to complete hardcore content in a casual manner. Although its rare in Guild Wars in the last few years since we've moved closer and closer to encounters being entirely DPS checks.

 

I think so too. A lot of people would probably be more open towards raids if there wasn't a timer on doing them and just 1 build that is succesful at defeating a boss.

That's why there's just dps builds allowed in Raids and i think Raiders are poorer for it. The content wouldn't be any less challenging if you can finish a boss whenever without a timer telling you when you failed, you'd still need to learn the mechanics if you want to do it and not take a week fighting one boss, there would still be skill involved, just a lot less toxicity and more build variety. Then you could choose, do you want to do full DPS speed clears with your guildies or pugs, or do you want to do normal clears.

I think making Raids so DPS dependant was a mistake, and it's seeping into other content like Fractals. Fractals were never "mini raids" like they are becoming today, they were always "mini dungeons" like, hard content but within reason.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> The important thing to remember is that the META is largely about community enforcement. The community is focusing on speed clears and defined roles when they recommend builds. A strong case can be made for creating builds that don't do things quickly, but comfortably. Even for raids, you don't need to run the super-effective comps with pure glass builds to win. A community can have expectations where the players prefer not to wear glass cannon gear, because they don't want to spend their time dealing with losses from thin margins of error.

>

> The gear prefixes are there largely to help with preference in play. Factoring in overworld preferences and WvW builds of limitless specialization, there are far more uses for gear sets than you'd expect. I myself have a Marshall Weaver for WvW and particularly stubborn PVE overworld bosses.

 

This is a good point. I hate to say it, but there's a lot of groupthink influencing hype around different sets.

 

For example, the conventional wisdom that offensive stats always beat defensive stats in PvE is a bit of a flawed oversimplification. Power/condi damage is king, but Precision/Ferocity/Expertise vs Toughness/Vitality is a lot more nuanced. Swapping Soldier's in place of Berserkers to some extent can can assist your ability to control fights, become more strategic with dodging, etc. People tend to look at it in theory rather than in practice, which doesn't tell the full picture. Furthermore, if you assume you're doing a lot of casual group activity, TTL is arguably more important than TTK is.

 

And that's just one straightforward example.

[sorudo.9054]

all i can say is, welcome to guild wars 2.

a place where stats are linear and roles are reduced to 1.