11 replies to this topic

[Biff Rangoon]

So, because someone thinks I play a selfish warrior when we're partied up <cough> matthen <cough> I've been giving some thought to how best to support a small team when I'm not rolling solo.

As a point of reference, I've mostly been running the build below for the last several months. It has very good damage output, lots of cc, good mobility and escape, and is effective in a broad range of wvw situations. There's a reason you find a lot of warriors running a similar config in wvw....

GS/H Roamer

So matt wants me to at least carry Battle Standard to pick him up when he falls down , but I can't bear the thought of a 4min cool down on my elite, so I'd feel compelled to trait it. With banners traited, I'm thinking I should carry at least one other because traited non-elite banners give solid buffs to allies when planted, are almost always available (90s on a 96s cd), and give fury and swiftness to people when they aren't planted.

With already two points into Tactics for the banner trait, I figured I should also put in another couple points to trait that wonderful support tool that is the warrior warhorn, which led to the following two builds:

Banner Bruiser
Banner Buddy

Neither of the banner builds have the damage, mobility, and control output of the Roamer build, but they do have way more support. In addition to the party buff from the Pack runes that all three share, the Banner builds also give the party:

• 170 precision and ferocity (switchable to best suit the party comp)
  
• Rez for downed via Battle Standard
  
• Perma swiftness
  
• Good vigor uptime
  
• 2 condi conversions on decent cool downs
  
• Clear of movement impairing conditions every 12s or so

I'd also have perma vigor for myself with either banner build

If running Banner Bruiser, the idea would be to mostly stay with the hammer unless condis needed clearing or we wanted to coordinate a burst and my hammer control skills were on cool down. By using the hammer, by personal damage would still be very high (usually around 2-3k per auto attack) and I'd have lots of control.

If running Banner Buddy, the idea would be to stay on sword/warhorn most of the time, which would have me tooting the horn more often for greater party support, but would cut down my personal damage output and control skills by a lot. I'd still be useful for setting up party bursts through the immobilize from Flurry and (less so) Pin Down, but I wouldn't be contributing as much pressure. I could spend my time seeking out opportunities to land big Final Thrust hits for 9k though....

What the Buddy build does bring is permanent regen for the party (about 120 health/s), and then (I suppose) a path to party might via the fire field on the bow + blast finishers. In truth, the bow could easily be switched for hammer for control and damage or greatsword for mobility and damage, depending on the situation. All three have there own advantages, but none of them are optimized in this build.

Any thoughts on the above? Am I better off with the Roamer build? Should I stay high pressure and just suck up a 4min cool down on Battle Standard? Any changes you think I should make to any of them? Should I just pack it in and go shout heal with Battle Standard? Clearly the banner builds contribute more the closer to 9+ allies I have around me.

In terms of gear I have to work with: two sets of zerk armour (pack runes, strength runes), one set of soldiers with soldier runes, all weapons in zerk, and condi armour plus condi bow and swords.

[Slein Jinn]

Shouts are INSANELY better team support than banners.  If you want to run team support, run Shouts with Sword/Warhorn and either Hammer or Longbow.  Your train of thought for running Banner utilities is flawed at basically every step of the process.  It doesn't really matter what the cooldown on Battle Standard is; whether it's 4 minutes or 3:12, it's still going to be a skill you use exactly once in a fight.  This is even more true in WvW than it is in sPvP, since the pace is so much slower and the fights are so much more spread out, so you're pretty much guaranteed to have Banner off cooldown for every engagement.  Banner is incredibly strong because it offers you a "reset button" for after the other group has blown big engagement cooldowns.  Getting a good opener is absolutely monumental in team fights, and a good banner can completely negate that.

[Biff Rangoon]

Yeah, I suppose I knew I could get more support (at least for a havoc) using a shout build (hence the smiley question), but... 4 mins on Battle Standard, man! Biff don't have no time for no patience!

Also, having one fight string onto the next isn't that unusual. Even when roaming that happens semi regularly for me, usually when one poor fellah realizes the fight's not going his way and calls for backup.

if I can bring myself to bring an untraited Battle Standard, then I may just stay full-beatdown gs/h rather than going support. The mobility, damage, and cc I can bring to a fight seems so much more valuable (party support by pressuring/killing enemies) than the few thousand heal I can churn out of healing shouts. True, the warhorn is still very good, so I could run a 0/0/6/4/4 build and forego the heal on shouts while still maintaining decent damage and control, or keep the heal on shout and suck it up, but... meh. Plus my trooper runes are on my pvt set.....

Anyway, what would you say about banners when running with 10? Iirc, shouts only affect 5 people, but banners (and the warhorn) affect 10. Do the numbers work out in that scenario?

[matthen]

You misunderstood what I said... it was that your wife said you were a selfish lover. My bad. I'll be more clear next time.

But yah... run the elite banner.

[Slein Jinn]

Biff Rangoon, on 16 May 2015 - 07:04 PM, said:

The mobility, damage, and cc I can bring to a fight seems so much more valuable (party support by pressuring/killing enemies) than the few thousand heal I can churn out of healing shouts.

The thing is that zerker warrior has a sort of conceptual flaw that means it almost can't be top tier, regardless of tuning.  There's a reason why you never see them in competitive play.  Basically, zerker warriors look good when you think about them in terms of damage over a period of time, but their damage output is very "smooth", whereas the damage you need from a zerker in a teamfight is very "spiky"--burst damage.  In skirmishing, both "training" and "bursting" down targets are roughly equally viable, but as you get into comps with around four or more players per side, you need to be able to 100-0 a target with a coordinated one-shot.  Mesmers, Thieves, Guardians, and even Rangers can do that much better than Warriors.  

On top of that, the secondary benefits zerker Warriors bring along with their damage pale in comparison to what other zerker classes bring.  Thieves offer stealth engages (which are completely game-changing, regardless of whether your opponents "know" you're there) and boon removal that prioritises the most important boons--Protection and Stability--and extremely reliable interrupts; Mesmers offer more boon removal, Moa, and some unique utility; Guardians bring excellent CC and incredible short-term party support.  

0/0/6/4/4 with Sw/Wh+Hammer and Stances is okay as middle ground, but once you go that far, it's hard to see any real advantage to not just going 0/0/4/6/4 (or 0/0/5/6/3 or 1/0/4/6/3) and taking the Shouts.  Shout Warriors are top-tier support with very good CC and excellent individual resilience.

[Biff Rangoon]

The thing is, I can't help but feel I have to bring the damage to the party with my warrior, no matter how "smooth" it is. That's probably because, apparently, matt can't stay on his feet long enough without a banner to get a backstab off, but hey, we have to roll with the hand we're dealt. Just ask my wife...

I'm really surprised to hear anyone would choose Reckless Dodge over Destruction of the Empowered, but there it is. The 0/0/5/6/3 I could see if I was using the pvt set, otherwise the 0/0/4/6/4 if using zerk.

On the issue of spiking, yeah, I know that as well. I seem to be irredeemably awful with my thief, tbh, but I've resolved to get better with my mes once the new stuff is released (don't want to gear it until the dust settles). I like the mes/thief gank squad concept, and it clearly has value in wvw beyond the gank (e.g. keep capture).

[Plainsman]

Just my 2 cents....
1st off, after reading this thread which made me look into my build, i realized i've been screwed for a long time lmao.. ty folks

My personal distaste for banners, include the cast time (easily interruptable) and the annoyance of grabbing a flag while trying to loot. < Very annoying in a hectic fight. I'm always hitting F.


I personally enjoy continually pulling aggro as the main support for the group, with the faster shouts, blasts and immobilizes as an extra benefit. I'm the Lt, I need a ss/spike/emo etc....

Gear is full ascended Knight's across the board, with Dolyak runes and weapon sig.
The downside is obviously your not gonna win many 1v1, much less 1vmore. This is why you guys always find me dead. I go off and pick a fight I shouldn't have.

I do run the Banner Elite if I'm running in party. I'm so busy using everything else, I don't even think about it being basically unused cept for the above mentioned cooldown negaters.

However you play, a competent Warrior is always a welcome addition to any group comp.

[Slein Jinn]

Biff Rangoon, on 16 May 2015 - 08:15 PM, said:

The thing is, I can't help but feel I have to bring the damage to the party with my warrior, no matter how "smooth" it is. That's probably because, apparently, matt can't stay on his feet long enough without a banner to get a backstab off, but hey, we have to roll with the hand we're dealt. Just ask my wife...

Well, that really shouldn't be your job on a warrior.  If that's inescapably your playstyle mentality, then you really should invest in a good alt.  Warrior is 7th or 8th out of 8 among zerker builds in an organised teamfight.  Thief/Mesmer/Guardian are top tier, with Necromancer/Ranger just below them, and Elementalist comfortably above the dominated Warrior/Engi builds.  

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I'm really surprised to hear anyone would choose Reckless Dodge over Destruction of the Empowered, but there it is. The 0/0/5/6/3 I could see if I was using the pvt set, otherwise the 0/0/4/6/4 if using zerk.

Well, 1/0/4/6/3 was popularised by Tarcis and gets a lot of play in the NA PvP scene right now.  Part of the logic is that the 50 Power in Strength is better than the 50 Ferocity in Discipline, and there isn't such consistent boon sharing in the meta right now, with Elementalists very much on the periphery of the meta and taking the backpoint duelist role when they're taken at all.  That is a sound enough basis for dropping Destruction of the Empowered, but I find taking Armoured Attack to be the better conclusion.  Destruction of the Empowered requires you to have a lot of Might or your target to have a lot of boons; see this spreadsheet I made to compare.  Obviously, in WvW, you're going to have higher base Power than in sPvP, so that can push the balance toward Destruction of the Empowered, but the concept is the same.  

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On the issue of spiking, yeah, I know that as well. I seem to be irredeemably awful with my thief, tbh, but I've resolved to get better with my mes once the new stuff is released (don't want to gear it until the dust settles). I like the mes/thief gank squad concept, and it clearly has value in wvw beyond the gank (e.g. keep capture).

"Gank squad" is a concept for large-scale WvW.  Until you've got comps of around 10+ or so on both sides, that sort of division of labour between frontline/backline/pick team doesn't really exist.  There's just damage and support.  In large-scale comps, there can be room for midline destroyers with smoother damage output who can chip away at the frontlines, but smaller fights are all about focus fire.  You don't have a pick team trying to gank people; you have your entire comp bursting as one coordinated unit and trying to 100-0 a target, then move onto the next.

[Biff Rangoon]

Slein Jinn, on 17 May 2015 - 07:55 AM, said:

Well, that really shouldn't be your job on a warrior.  If that's inescapably your playstyle mentality, then you really should invest in a good alt.

Lol, no. It was a joke and a poke at matt for the wife joke.   I typically have no sacred cows in anything I do. As it happens, matt's a very capable player, as are the other people I run with most of the time. When with them, changing to whatever's optimal (depending on what they're running) is a relatively obvious and simple thing to do.

Reckless Dodge instead of DotE makes sense for the scenario you described in pvp, but definitely not in wvw. As for DotE vs Armored Attack, shifting to my pvt gear to use the trooper runes would certainly make Armored Attack more valuable than if I was running one of my zerk sets. I just don't see myself crafting another set of armor for this unless it becomes a mainstay build (and it won't unless I'm running in organized havoc more consistently). I'll have to do some calculations to figure out the break point in terms of number of boons needed between those choices.

Also, I think you may be calculating DotE incorrectly in that it shouldn't be [1+(0.03 x # of boons)] but 1.03^{# of boons}. For most of my time playing the game, I understood it to be exactly how you're calculating, but I recently stumbled across this:

Quote

Damage multipliers are combined multiplicatively. For example the Superior Sigil of Force (5%), Superior Sigil of the Night (10%), a 10% trait, a 20% trait and the (6) bonus of the Superior Rune of the Scholar (10%) combine to roughly 68% more damage (1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 * 1.1 ≈ 1.677), not only 55% (the summation). Consequently, combining a lot of multipliers is exponentially effective ("the multipliers increase/affect each other").

https://wiki.guildwa...age_calculation

Slein Jinn, on 17 May 2015 - 07:55 AM, said:

On gank squads....

Yeah, I was probably being a bit too loose on my use of the word. I meant more leaving people with the feeling, "DAYAM! I was just ganked hard!". Essentially, what we'd been discussing... controlling the start of the fight and having the target(s) spiked before they even get started.

[Slein Jinn]

Biff Rangoon, on 17 May 2015 - 09:16 AM, said:

Also, I think you may be calculating DotE incorrectly in that it shouldn't be [1+(0.03 x # of boons)] but 1.03^{# of boons}. For most of my time playing the game, I understood it to be exactly how you're calculating, but I recently stumbled across this:

I've looked for an answer and not found one, and I haven't felt like fighting with trying to figure it out myself since they nuked the Steady Weapons; it's hard to say.  It depends on the internal mechanics of whether the game treats each boon as "spawning" a separate iteration of DotE, or whether there are different "versions" of DotE for each number of boons, and the game chooses the correct one from a check on the target.  The latter seems more likely to me from my experience with how MMO's tend to be coded, so that's what I used, and when I was chatting with ROM about it, he was operating under the same assumption.  It doesn't change the balance too substantially one way or the other, though.

[zen]

http://gw2skills.net.../BAeAAkCgJlRA-w

On paper I love this build for small groups as a heal shout / worker build. Really nice burst from evis / final thrust, flurry imob to lockdown for whirling axe, and all the stuff the worker warrior bring to the table for a small group. That being reliable fury, swiftness, and vigor, plus some condi clears, a bit of healing, and banner.

Having said, let's be honest though. 90% of roaming encounters are thieves and mesmers that can kite melee with ease, pew pew rangers hanging out at 1200-1500 range, or condi builds that are super defensive against melee as well (like an engi). Usually you see this build being ran with longbow + sword / wh to just imob lockdown players for easy kills, and a lot more celest gear to sustain.

[Biff Rangoon]

zen, on 19 May 2015 - 08:40 AM, said:

http://gw2skills.net.../BAeAAkCgJlRA-w

On paper I love this build for small groups as a heal shout / worker build. Really nice burst from evis / final thrust, flurry imob to lockdown for whirling axe, and all the stuff the worker warrior bring to the table for a small group. That being reliable fury, swiftness, and vigor, plus some condi clears, a bit of healing, and banner.

Having said, let's be honest though. 90% of roaming encounters are thieves and mesmers that can kite melee with ease, pew pew rangers hanging out at 1200-1500 range, or condi builds that are super defensive against melee as well (like an engi). Usually you see this build being ran with longbow + sword / wh to just imob lockdown players for easy kills, and a lot more celest gear to sustain.

If you're in a group, I suppose you can leave others to catch the kiters for you. Watch out for retaliation with that axe 5 though, especially in group fights!