bigo.9037

Okay idk what kinda MU you’re on, and what level of skilled opponents you’re fighting, but my swoop can easily crit 3-6k depending on the targets armor. Swoop will ignore the run part of animation if target is close enough which makes it a 3/4 I frame that hits pretty hard. unless you’re fighting straight up Bots, you pretty much need stealth on ranger if you want to fight outnumbered against enemies with more than 2 brain cells. Gs isn’t for running, it’s for melee fighting. also again , Nm has better prot up time than WS does. And ws isn’t able to maintain the 25 stacks..

Sure, but getting your cleanses from sigils extracts more value out of them than anything else could. I don't like having to use a specific set of utilites just to cleanse condis. Especially when you consider that even LR at a 24s cooldown, only cleanses 2 condis (well, 3 if you count the immob, but if you're not immob'd then it does nothing ). Same with QZ or throw mud, even sharpening stone. but imo, other than QZ and LR, survival skills aren't great. and since most ppl will be slotting protect me + dolyak stance anyway, you can still run LR without the trait. Sure running troll urgent would then give you 4 cleanses on heal and an immob, which is nice but remember you're trading this for pretty much 100% uptime on 25 might stacks and all the other goodies. I'm not saying you cant run WS at all, play whatever you think is fun. I'm not someone who plays optimal builds either, but from what i have tried throughout the years, NM is just going to give you better results simply because of boons being as busted as they are. Better results as in more dmg with equal survivability. If you absolutely don't want to use GS, yea maybe WS could be better suited as you will have problems when it comes to your sustain, but NM is technically also better at this than WS, with the exception being cleanse. protective ward is a busted passive that should've been removed back when most other passives were being heavily nerfed. Also another point: unfortunately, condition dmg on ranger is just .. bad. It's pretty terrible. I've seen builds that can deal very good poison dmg, and I've personally tested condi builds on ranger / druid / soulbeast multiple times throughout the years and every time come to same conclusion: condi weapons and skills on ranger don't have good and easy application of dmg the same way power weapons do, and even if weapons have OK application of condi, they usually are extremely lacking in defensive options. Power builds have WH , LB , GS. lb has very high dmg, best range in the entire game, utility with CC and aoe cleave, + hunters shot, the one skill that makes longbow so good. GS has basically 3 defensive skills at this point , in addition to CC and burst dmg. there's the block, then there's counter attack which is an evade, and then there's the leap which is ALSO an evade + leap finisher. No condi weapons for ranger have abilities that are comparable when it comes to these 3 weapons. WH is pretty much necessary if you're gonna run axe, as you need a way to reliably blast stealth. ( which is why i used axe-wh in my build) shortbow has extremely lackluster dmg compared to lb, and it has way less range, and less utility on top of that with a longer CD on the daze than longbow has on PBS. MH dagger has a leap finisher, but it deals lackluster condi dmg ( power is fine ) but also requires you to be in melee distance, with no way of actually defending yourself while in melee distance, unlike GS. dagger is a weapon that can only work on enemies who will let you free cast on them, or using it right out of stealth for some quick hits before you swap to your other set. (dagger OH is not good either ) what else? sword? sword is just bad. bad dmg, no real utility. only works if you wanna play super passive and let your pet do all the dmg for you ( shame on those players ). So yea, my solution is to just use GS because GS is busted asf, and with the 25 might stacks which you will have easily, your GS is actually going to hit very hard. It's a boonbeast build obviously, but considering the insane amount of stats that celestial has, you may as well run celestial over commanders. you'll be able to utilize the axe MH very well. having 900 range wont matter much if you're gonna be able to facetank a lot with perma prot and insane stab uptime, and enemies still have to be very careful since a OWP + WH#4 + smoke assault combo can kill them quickly, not even to mention all the dmg you'll get from GS.

I don't mean to be rude but if you had actually looked at the build link i posted you'd see i was already running dolyak stance, it's mentioned in most of my replies in this thread. As for sicem, yea, that slot can really be whatever you want it to. moa stance? sure. sicem? yup. LR? that can work too if you want an extra bit of mobility. ( 30s cooldown is np tbh ) hecc you can even throw a spike trap in there. Stone signet, what have you. And for OWP, i'm not sure. I think if youre not running sicem, using SotP is going to decrease your burst potential substantially. I don't think people realize how busted OWP is. besides, sotp really only offers stab for the build, you already have 25 might stacks from wh + merge + heal etc, you dont even get to utilize the extra might from sotp. But yea. i would say you can run sotp but then id definitely suggest slotting sicem to make up for the dmg lost from owp. OWP + WH#4 + smoke assault is gonna hit very hard.

I don’t think WS would stay alive longer. I just think WS is slightly easier to play for newbies. Newbies being people who don’t know how to avoid going condi nuked lol. Explain please why WS is stronger then? Dagger is in every way worse than gs except for condi application, while gs has better defenses and more burst potential and actually has CC. i don’t see how 3s prot on dodge and poison on hit is gonna be better than easy 25 might on like 100% uptime as well as every other boon you can apply except stab which still has a very long duration. may i remind you 25 might is 750 extra power and condi power?

No, this 'rotation' i was speaking of just means that in any particular fight youre likely going to use your heal and youre going to break stun at least every now and then, so in a fight youre going to have more than 100% uptime on protection. YOUR point on the other hand, being that WS has more prot uptime, includes burning your dodges for protection? contradiction much? NM gets these bonuses passively and gets much, much more duration in any given fight than WS does. WS doesnt quadruple your boons when you merge + heal, NM does. OK, you say 90 % of players in wvw are awful, yet you are somehow UNABLE to avoid a condi burst, despite the fact which YOU stated, 90 % of players are awful. AM i really asking too much here? Are you one of those people who panic cleanse all your condis the second they are applied? even confusion? If you get condi bursted while playing this build: 1, youre going to take less dmg cus of perma protection -33% dmg, resolution also -33% dmg, dolyak stance - 33% dmg. 2, you can pop dolyak stance ( which is a skill you use as last resort, regardless of build. ) to cleanse chill, immob, cripple. 3, swap weapons. 4, block, evade, stealth to avoid getting hit further. 5, stop playing like the 90% of wvw players who are potatoes and getting hit by a full condi burst. 6, if you got hit by a burst, break stun and evade to avoid letting them land the entire combo on you. i mean look, the possibilities are endless for your options here. I understand you are personally part of the 90% of potatoes, but just because you cant dodge or block doesn't mean the build is bad. Just because you want a build that you can just play while afk and your ultimate goal isn't to WIN, it is to "not die", doesn't mean WS is actually better.

I'm sorry did you miss the part where i explain that you can DODGE and BLOCK with gs? you have smoke assault that is an evade, you have 2 evades, you have a 3 second block PLUS an extra evade all from GS#4. This argument is so stupid tbh, "a good condi burst" well, hello? dont get bursted? and youre not even right about dying to it either. The only way you're going to die to a single condi burst is if: 1, ALL your utilites are on cooldown including heal. 2, opponent corrupts all your boons 3, you dont have weapon swap ready, either ( cleansing sigil cleanses 3 condis ) So, yea, SURE... if you have literally everything on cooldown and you get bursted, you will die. but.. if you had 2 braincells, maybe youd block the burst with gs, reposition yourself to avoid getting bursted while you have everything on cooldown? Both weapon sets in my build have a finisher which means you can stealth both with WH and with gs NP. You also don't lose ANY protection uptime unless you are actively being corrupted, repeatedly. Durability runes = 4.5s/20s protection, Protective Ward = 6.5s/15s, protect me gives 6.5s/24s. merge = 5s/10s prot, WHAO = 3s prot. SO.. you add all this up, you have 25.5 whole seconds of protection just by doing a rotation and using protect me, every 24s. protective ward resets every 15s, dura runes every 20s, merging every 10s. you have 100% prot uptime unless you get corrupted repeatedly. MAYBE try to understand a build before you go and tell me its a "YOLO" build. I currently play a build that has 0 boon duration and somehow i get away with playing the same amount of condi cleanse. i get 2 from my heal, and otherwise 0 ( except yakstance ) from traits/ skills. only cleansing sigil. and that seems to be enough for me.

If you don't think my build is good , fine with me. I'd personally rather have fewer players running around with such a setup regardless. if you all go WS cele slb, that makes my life a lot easier.

its a rather simple solution. just make a guild with all the active players on your current server so you can all play together.

Sure, but with changes that promote 5v5 combat styles instead of larger 20+ player squads that isn't much of a problem imo. I mostly care about bringing down the scale of the fights. Right now theres too many things that favor running around in a huge blob.

kitten, Koolgai spot on in this thread. Yea I love when blob fighters try to pretend blobbing is somehow the intended way to play wvw.. the game engine cant even handle it even on low settings you run around with like 15fps, the servers start crashing etc etc. The game is much better off if it starts to promote and encourage 5 man group play, 5 man is enough to take down walls and gates , its the perfect sized team to have enough variety in builds also. 5 man teams spread out across the map(s) means more fights for everyone, just smaller. Instead of all the pugs feeling like they contribute nothing to a blob fight because they are only 1 out of 20 or 40 players, 5v5 group play means you the player is now contributing 20 % of your team efforts, which is MUCH more engaging. blobfights literally make me fall asleep at keyboard. Remove DS permanently and rework traits, refund finishers or whatever. Remove target cap for Aoe DMG only, not healing. (healers were never supposed to be in gw2. yall wanna talk about DS being core game feature, well, having 0 support builds in the game was ALSO a core game feature, how funny you DS lovers always forget that. Then nerf EWP cooldown to 90m 🙂 EDIT: I also wanna add that, not only does wvw fighting require skill in terms of combat, but it also requires good positioning. if you die during the no DS event, have you considered maybe you strayed too far from your team mates and got picked out as an easy target to burst? 99% of the time, when me and my team gets a kill in a fight, say its 5v10, the nr 1 reason our targets die is because they got greedy or went out of position to the point where his teammates could no longer defend him in time. I don't understand all this fuss about NDS means kills are luck based or dont require skill. All we do is punish your mistakes with very coordinated attacks. Last night my team with 1 aura mancer and 1 core corrupt necro + power roamer herald + me on soulbeast + scrapper had to coordinate our burst attacks by having the necro strip stab off of the enemy nade scrapper at exactly the right time so the rest of us could port into him while he was out of position and burst him down. This gameplay strategy requires lots of coordination between all members of the team. please explain how it requires less skill for 4-5 ppl too coordinate an attack on a target? If you think it doesn't , im pretty sure you just got targeted cus you made the mistake of getting way out of position, which in itself is a SKILL.

I agree with the poison, thats true. but otherwise no. I think you've reached a point of diminishing returns on celestial soulbeast when it comes to that. NM can easily provide you with a permanent 25 stacks of might, 100% fury uptime, more quickness, weakness, and if you run Dura runes, WHAO, + merge, you have much much more stab + quickness uptime on top of that. KEEP IN MIND.. 25 might stacks improves your condition damage also. 25 might stacks nearly doubles your condi stats. Also, what stunbreak are you running on cele soulbeast that needs the CD reduction? you already slot yakstance and probably protect me which is most cases the 2nd best in slot ( LR is too situational and will proc shock aura ), are you seriously telling me you wanna run 3 stunbreaks including the stab from yakstance? youre better off with sicem for extra dmg so you can kill thieves, rangers, engis, mesmers more easily, or a trap, moa stance. You really, really don't need 3 stunbreaks if you already have yakstance slotted. check out this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEE6MsMDWI7hByMxU7a/VOi0A-zVRYVRMPYUAHSnSgeVBdLE04A-w with 25 might stacks ( which you will have nearly all the time ) you get 12 % dmg from NM trait cus youre always gonna have 6 boons on you, ( might, swift, fury, protection, resolution, regen ) 2500 power, 3000 armor , 1300 condi dmg. SO much stab uptime youll be able to play very very aggressively, perma prot. ANNDDD on top of all that, insane amounts of weakness spam from warhorn + NM traits which will STEAL ENEMY BOONS on interrupt cus warhorn #5 now dazes. power builds will do absolutely nothing to you, and you have enough passive CDR to ignore pretty much all condi dmg and you have cleanses on every weapon swap anyway. Again, you dont need WS cleanses because you have yakstance to stay in their face so you can always move quickly, and with blocks + evades + stealth you will barely even get hit in the first place. I would happily challenge everyone in this thread to 1v1 on their celestial build vs this setup , youre going to get completely obliterated, but i dont play this level of kittenous sustain and have no intention of playing celestial. but if you want to, THIS build is the most optimal setup and it isn't even close. WHY would you bother playing celestial NOW after the boon buff, and not utilize the boons when soulbeast has some of the most busted boon uptime with NM? Heck you could even swap the dura runes for mad king and just destroy anything within radius by popping OWP since OWP procs mad king runes and you have so much dmg. OWP + smoke assault + warhorn #4 = people die. Your maul from gs is gonna hit very hard on squishies. WI is gonna hit hard. Axe #3 is gonna hit hard and chill + weakness. But i have to say, if you run this type of build, i have 0 respect for you. this is a perfect example of build wars 2. carries wayy too hard.

I don’t actually think roaming is dead I just wanted to point out problems. No DS event gives roamer builds more leverage at least, coordinated single target kills actually mean something now.

Thief has been the Meta roaming spec since launch. Sure, not all classes that use stealth are abusing it to the same extent, but D/P SA Dash needs to be either straight up deleted or heavily nerfed.

Yea how about addressing the other issue i pointed to that kills roaming? the fact that the escalation literally forces people OFF OF roaming builds and into blob builds, thus meaning you are no longer roaming, you are blobbing. This is a balance issue. And to address your point about escalation, is it worth to gather up X2 as many peeps to guarantee your winning chances if it means enemy team group will quit and do something else? then theres no more content. I'm not saying all escalation is bad, but i'm saying I personally see people who will stop playing as soon as enemy decides to pull up with X2 numbers with 1/3 or 1/2 of them playing support specs. I'm lucky enough to main a class that allows me to pick and choose my fights as well as have a somewhat viable blob build, so this doesn't affect me directly but i see people quit or go afk because of people bringing way too many ppl to kill the same small group over and over, and that means *I* also have less content.

? It is fairly common that roamers end up “comping” up to be able to deal with a group of 5 cus it’s more effective. it can go like this in some cases: team 1 of 5ppl against team 2 of 5ppl. Team 1 gets tired of losing or going 50/50 > they all pull out their comp builds of scrapers, fbs, aura minstrel tempest and necros. > having no chance vs blob comp on their roamer builds, team 2 either quit, or comp themselves. Either scenario in this case is bad imo, as blob comps with 3 supports (which is very common) is just a pathetic and unfun play style.