You are right. But the problem with pugs is, they are all wannabe speedrunners. They better wipe 10 times in 1 wing instead of oneshotting every boss with a safe comp.
It's refreshing to hear someone actually say that Druid isn't the end all be all of healers. I'm a ranger main and I've done content as a druid where someone steps in a mechanic and immediately goes down and I get yelled at to heal better. I've done some bosses where I just cannot sustain through people taking hits to the face every two seconds. Druid has a lot of utility and party buffs in its meta kit but it's healing is what I'd called "decent"
Completely agree; I am the designated druid healer for my group xD When there is like 7 or more of our players everything is fine but trying to heal pugs is sometimes borderline impossible. But yeah, me and the chronotank do most of the mechanics that way so what can u do?
Druid is your 25 might mainly, anyway. Spirit buffs/projectile control/cc secondary. And a decent heal output tertiary. Tldr, unless you have a healscourge, do mechanics properly ppl.
I just came back to the game a month ago for the first time since launch year. This video was a moment of clarity for me. I was so guilty at looking at these builds and just gunning for the top numbers. Thanks for the much-needed perspective. Subscribed.
Came back to the game, swapped my weapon and accidentally lost my sigils and infusions. Gem store popped up saying I would need to pay real money to do that or template something. Logged out. Game is cash crab now? ._.
@@ElfTaleFilms this makes zero sense and sounds like a bug with your sigils. Report it. As for the templates that just allows you to have 3 different loadouts now as opposed to manually swapping like you had to do before.
well said, most people don't realize how hard some of the meta classes can carry and how difficult it can be to replace them with a different comp. Mesmer with aegis/stab, quickness, distort (e.g. shake blocking on Sloth), feedback, boonstrip on auto and especially focus 4 on any boss that requires adds to be pulled. Other classes can do similar things, but it's much more difficult to achieve. Most classes have an invuln, but it's usually too high cd to carry at sloth, so at least two people would have to alternate. Most classes have some sort of pull, but they are usually not as large range, projectile based (body blocked) or single target. Several classes can boonstrip, but most of them require additional utility skills/trait changes to do it consistently. etc. Mesmer can do all of that and bring quickness/alacrity and/or damage and carry cc. And the same goes for druid. Sure it brings spirits, spotter and 10man 25 might, but what makes it hard to replace is the utility it brings in entangle, tides, storm spirit and LB4 on top of being able to bring squad wide damage boosts and boons. Most classes have at least one knockback, but druid has tides (aoe) and can combo it into LB4 (ranged, potentially piercing). Try doing that on other classes, that usually only have one good knockback (ele) or have a difficult time chaining them (guard with shield+hammer). Most classes usually also have some sort of immobilization, but none of them is as long-lasting AND as large range AND multi-target and all of that in a single skill. And while spirits are only a small part, I'd also count storm spirit in the op utility as well. Especially as I've seen so many groups struggle even getting consistent 10 vuln on bosses, since all the cFBs swapped to virtues. A ranger just swaps in storm spirit and vuln is covered in the comp. Also the great synergy with Mirage comps, bringing storm to cap vuln and sun to give Vigor and a damage boost. etc. All that while also providing 10 man 25 might, a little bit of healing, 5man fury, swiftness and large chunk of the squad wide protection. Ofc they are still replaceable, but doing so will usually require much more effort and awareness and spreading the responsibility of mechanics to more than one or two players, who also have to coordinate and people are just used to this since the times of the mirror comp. It's hard to break a habit. So for bosses that I think at least one of them can carry hard or is much more effort to replace: w1 VG -> chrono and druid are a hard carry due to seeker control and chrono being able to distort greens, making it a very safe tank Gorse -> druid hard carries due to entangle on split phases, chrono can hard carry cc, aegis and pull the small adds Sab -> not really needed as much, but might as well stay on this comp instead of relogging (so much time on clears is lost due to this) w2 Sloth -> chrono is a hard carry due to focus 4 + shake distort Mat -> not really needed as much, druid is nice for bringing storm and sun, might as well stay chrono to bring feedback and carry cc, especially after bt died and you need a quickness source again. w3 KC -> not really needed, but might as well bring druid for frost spirit and pushing orb, chrono can help safely pulling to rifts with focus 4 and is the better quickness source for boss that favours power as much as KC. Xera -> chrono is probably the safest tank for any group that doesn't phase before any mechanics happen and focus 4 carries hard w4 Cairn -> druid is nice for storm and sun MO -> a golem might as well bring more damage and spirits Sam -> chrono as the better power comp quickness provider, also focus 4/entangle combo for the 66% and 33% phases Deimos -> chrono is the safest tank here (aegis can be unreliable), druid with entangle carries prides w5 SH -> druid is the best pusher by far, chrono has a much easier time tanking than other tanks (and can run cChrono) Dhuum -> both can be easily replaced w6 CA -> Chrono focus 4 is really strong for add control, can drop TW+wells from a distance while doing the mechanic Twins -> condi Chrono is imo the best tank here (may be biased), druid is nice to easily cap vuln Qadim -> both can easily carry golem control, especially focus 4 if you pull them in w7 imo the only wing where both can be easily replaced on every boss. Thank you for coming to my TED talk
You can kind of see the correlation between arguably easy static bosses that become hard pug bosses and mechanics that everyone has to take part in: Deimos Oils Sloth Poison Matthias CC, Poison and Corruption Dhuum Shackles and Bombs .... When you pug raids, a lot of bosses will be fairly smooth as long as you "randomly" find a good druid and chrono in your group since they'll handle a lot of the mechanics. But that might not be enough once you are on bosses where the monkeys will be forced to do some mechanics unless... Also: Xera Gliding (KEKW)
Another way to say it is: It should be obvious that max DPS values of a single player with simulated perfect buffs against a single inert golem is not a good proxy for determining total DPS of a heterogenous group of professions providing imperfect buffs while combatting dynamic mobile attacks from adds and boss mechanics.
But it's a perfectly valid way to benchmark performance; it stands to reason someone isn't going to be pulling 100% uptime as a Sim does. Therefore, they obviously won't be doing so much damage. But if your build is pulling half or less than those numbers? You're hurting a raid more than bringing some kind of utility with you.
man this is good stuff if you can you should do a vid like this about reading logs. In regards of why did someone perform the way they did. Maybe someone pressed F more times, maybe someone had more mechanics, why was the cc bar this slow, etc.
I have always loved easy safe builds/comps for non sweaty groups, no reason to run the sweaty build/comp when you might take longer to clear or maybe even not clear.
I would rather take 5 extra minutes to clear on first try with a safe group than 20 extra minutes wiping on the sweaty comp and being screamed at by someone who thinks everyone should be as good as SnowCrows
@@chip7427 i've been doing some tests on different builds cause SC only includes one poopoo build. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12YXcpMNved969J2gE1CY70MefCXQpLNt4_hQA39K424 Feedback on these is always welcome, but try to just understand what the traits/skills do and when to take them and you'll be golden.
Thanks for making this video and hopefully as many peoples as possible would learn something from this. Those misconceptions are reaaally hardrooted in raid community though, Kitty's noticed. Much of this is essentially what she's tried to teach for last 3 years but hopefully a big-name RUclipsr saying these things actually have an effect (as was what happened to heal scourge... THOUGH IT DOES 10-TARGET MIGHT with Harrier's with BM+Curses trait and some fury and swiftness with Pack Runes. Caps.) Lesser DPS options are way too ignored despite of what they can bring to table. Though power holo can do pretty high dps, power scrapper is a real MVP with its resses, pushes, boonstrips, stab, proj-block, cleanses, CC, immortality etc. with relatively low dps cost. And now also quickness. Tbh if every dps played power scrapper, we'd only need heal renegade now for alacrity and to keep itself alive and 9 scrappers+healrene is a comp that simply refuses to wipe. Thief's Invigorating Precision also has less than 10% dps cost to enter what is essentially godmode, same with scourge's Parasitic Contagion and PS power berserker (Mending Might is ridiculous trait on 10-target might PSzerker!). Those builds have been weaker dps-wise this far, until scourge got boosted, but that's been for a good reason. There's also tons of other niche super-utility dps builds. When it comes to heals, GotL druid is at the very low end, just 10-15% higher than Kitty's healchrono (which brings all chrono stuffs) and 25-30% higher than heal-DE which also does most of what druid can do except spirits and condicleanse, though that's a meme. Now that Soulcleave got nerfed, heal scrapper is the uncontested strongest healer at about avg. 6,8k HPS per target and 2nd ressbot, Frostbow tempest is 2nd (can use warhorn for boons), heal rene 3rd, healbrand conditional 4th, LL druid 5th, heal scourge conditional 6th/7th, GotL druid 6th/7th, heal chrono 8th, heal DE 9th. Kitty's mathed those, they're all boonbot versions and she's tested that they're pretty realistic as well. ...sorry, Kitty accidentally wrote a wall of text. Anyway, thanks for the video!
Benchmarkers and speed clearers are the WvW Montagers of PvE, they sit on a golem for several days to min max their one shot builds then they keep resetting the boss till they get perfect RNG. I think low manning and optimizing downtime is the real skill of PvE
"I think low manning and optimizing downtime is the real skill of PvE" well said my good sir. also more fun for me at least. i prefer to participate in a "fight" rather then close my eyes, press few buttons of memory and then wait for the next phase ;) playing meta means less playing the game
I think it's far more important to find your own build for PvE. Even in raids, since you can mix and match what works for you and still do 20-25k dmg with all dps classes, even without the meta. The big thing for me is not getting locked animations and a rotation that doesn't require 100 steps to achieve.
Teapot spits the truth people don't wanna hear. 100% right, no matter what MMO you play the "meta" varies between group skill levels, encounters, raids/dungeons. Just because one person hit 50k doesn't mean that's the best class, it depends on what they bring to the table class wise. Very well spoken, my man.
Double healbrand is terrible? Your mainheal is always a druid because of the spirits and might. 1 hfb is a good offheal but 2 is pointless - get the quickness for the drudi sub from a quickness dps hybrid class (stm chrono, quick scrapper or quick firebrand). If you run 2x hfb you are just bad lol.
@@aethelwyna8618 I overall think that healbrand in raids is kinda useless - just like Teapot suggested, I much rather prefer running qfb, mostly because hfb does not heal the other sub and cannot help them by other means, while other off healers can. But yeah, double hfb is pretty common and I was even kicked out of lfgs because I suggested to go druid when I saw double healbrand comp xD
@@nyappynen I have genuinly never seen that before. Not bringing a druid means no sun and frost spirit. I can't even imagine loosing that much dps on purpose. That's actually hilarious. The only exception that I know of is some niche largos speedruns where they go 2x hfb tank and 8x mirage. That is a mirage problem though.
Well assuming you're already bringing a druid for the spirits and want an offheal for the other sub: either you bring a hfb (which also does quickness and yes healing does flow over to both groups a bit, either way you have the druid anyways) or you bring something like a tempest and force a dps role to go quickness. So you loose out on total dps by not going hfb in this scenario.
I've tried to tell my friends that sometimes it isn't damage that is the be-all/end-all in terms of raids or high end dungeons. It's the same reason why even if they're not the top DPS, Warlocks will always be brought to WoW raids regardless of how good or bad their DPS is simply because of their Battle Res, their gates, their summons, etc.
@@MightyTeapot Thanks, can't wait for it! As a new player, I see how sad is when the specialization you like the most is kinda left aside on those guides, benchmarks etc etc
Reaper: Death (lots of Chill, tanky while in shroud, lots of lifeleech including group lifeleech, switching between slightly more tanky, more dps or more support roles often doesn't require major gear changes)
Couple notes on FB: *The aegis on heal is very strong, but the heal/s is pretty low. It's a significant trade-off but you generally don't see the downside in group content. *While scepter does give you an option to do purely ranged dps, it's garbage dps. Scepter's sustained damage is utter trash, and the weapon is only used for the geomancy proc and symbol casts before/after tome. I can not overstate how bad the DPS is if you're camping scepter at long range. That aside, cqb absolutely should not do as much damage as it does. I'm fine with the purely damage-focused build being in the 30-40k range, but QB needs to be knocked down. They could probably cut the base burn durations on F1 tome skills and then boost LL to compensate (and do something similar with the axe trait). Alternatively (or additionally), they could bump up the required BD to ~60% or more so you'd need to run FB runes AND some more conc from your gear. The reason pugs prefer HB over QB+another healer is just the old role compression meme (you acknowledged this). Why spend more time LFGing for two non-dps roles when you could just look for one. Role compression is usually the determinant when it comes to pug meta comps. (You're totally right that HB is garbo in raids though.) Power creep across the board is a little wack right now. I kinda miss when the top damage (excluding ele shit) was around 30k. P.S. You forgot to mention the forbidden trailblazer/dire builds and how they sacrifice very little dps to massively increase their survivability. I imagine most pugs in raids/strikes would be better off with those pure cheese tanky builds than they are with the full glass ones.
A dev was on Teatime like a year ago and was asked about FBs and Sourges- totally paraphrasing here but he basically responded by saying they were not sure how to nerf them in a way that wouldn't completly destroy the classes, and the meta. Ill always remeber this tho- He then went on to reference mesmers- and how he'd take a look at the stab they provide. He believed at the time this was streamed that firebrand and chronos were innerchangable simply because of quickness. Lol. Now that we have Scrappers with this boon, not seeing the game time - maybe that will change how anet views guardians. In refrence to scourge, something worth mentioning- Barrier can prevent one shots- in that sense it's the strongest heal type in game- regardless of mode.
just means guardians can come as a dps build with great sword with burns with dragon hunter etc, ppl don't get that raids were implemented b4 path of 🔥on hot elite specs. the fact ppl sit n discuss the best comps on pof elite specs is ridiculous , when they can neither play around not understand hot mechanics ...sufficient boonuptime can still be generated as before on dragon hunter or banners w/ warrior scourge barrier is like shroud but aoe , scourge torment comes from 10 dif sources alone traiting n camping🏕️ a single weaponkit. 1 shade alone + 5 other things inflict torment before a single punishment skill. it's the easiest to play strongest class open world in game. even stronger cause of group barrier it provides in the process infinitely. the problem is no1 plays enough druids or support builds on any level to make raiding viable much less understands how .. ANET offered no approach to fix the game, by forcing raid content to be completed on hot mechanics only, which they should have done ...not to mention this game is largely dogshit content throughout . what ANET should do, but they dont is provide specific pof elite raid content ,
I have to post because you did ask in the video. For the 'ranged only' parts of Dhuum on condi weaver you have a couple of options. Flamewall, Signet of Fire and (f you prepared for the phase) Natural Frenzy (Earth/Water Dual Attack). Thanks for this video! Love the knowledge your dropping, I hope that more players will listen and learn from you.
Ive noticed that when I try and play dps scourge in strikes I almost always regret int compared to playing heal scourge. People ignore the downed people or just get downed constantly and someone has to run over and heal them where I could instead just press 4 and heal them and everyone around me for a bunch. Had a wipe on bone skinner in 20 seconds, I swapped to heal scourge and we completed it with only 1 person dead at the end.
Scourge can outdps firebrand (very close anyways, depends on whether u count the epi damage on the adds really) and if you have 2 epis you can skip ccing sorrows completely.
@@aethelwyna8618 I can burst for 60k/s in like 4secs with my cfb when scgs are still at 20k/s and boss already phases ( for example 1st boss of 99 and 98) but ye for longer phases they are very similar in dps
I think Heal Scourge is very similar to Heal Firebrand in the sense, that what makes it so strong is not necessarily the raw healing but the huge amount of utility it offers. The amazing comeback potential due to "transfusion" and "well of blood" and the barrier (i am not going to type out every single thing about it because there literally is a 40 minute video on it here)
Only thing I disagree with in this video is The Holo praise. They are just A power version of condi Weaver, Very high damage, any utility and buffs are all personal, it's a very selfish one that doesn't contribute much to the whole team at all.
i personally feel like this is just a common problem for mmorpgs without the holy trinity. anytime you want to give a class supportive abilities when all classes are technically dps, people will complain and say then what's the point of bringing a pure dps class without support skills, or if you choose to nerf the dmg of the class with support skills, it will either be "yea it's lower dmg but overall utility still higher, so still meta", or "the dmg is so shit and the support is meh so no point in bringing the class even as support" and since this is meta discussion, even a 5% difference in content clearing statistics is significant enough to decide what class to take.
They really put themselves into a corner with a lot of these builds. I mean originally the game didn't have raids and was designed in a way that a person can pretty much solo everything, there was no tanks/heals just everyone could dps and heal/support themselves solo. Now suddenly you have builds that "just" dps, which is not enough. Everyone has to have support a long with their dps. Mesmers staff being broken due to them being able to do the same dps as dps classes with so much support, they got nerfed but still useful. Those Benchmark stats though, is that also with all buffs on 100% of the time at max stacks? Cause assuming a perfect situation including 100% dps uptime is insanely unrealistic, lol
Its only the buffs that would generally be used. Ofc not not realistic, which is why people always point this out. You don't understand what the meta builders are saying, and neither does the community, because the community doesnt understand the game. If you look at "average" thats what you can realistically achieve. Top is the highest dps achieved with the rotation. And yes, in GW2 you can actually get so close to these numbers that pointing out how "unrealistic" it is is a moot point. For the average player? Ofc not, but these builds and pages are not made for those people.
@@frostdracohardstyle It's the same way people misunderstand when professional players make tier lists. People take those tier lists and brings it into their unranked games as somekind of holy bible or even ranked but they aren't even Gold. Almost every game with enough depth changes depending on the skill level. Everyone wants to pretend that by picking the top meta builds they are the top player and if they fail it's not their fault but the other people, despite them playing a character/build who's role is designed to need others to enable it. But just like a game like LoL, an MMO is a team game. The weakest link is gonna be the limit of your strength, and by playing with random people the chance to have such a weak link increases by A LOT. That said I do feel these meta build and tier list websites aren't completely without fault by giving no other option. Nobody will listen that they aren't good enough to play them, many just wants to pick something and play, but there's also no alternative builds presented that forgo damage and more survivability and team utility to give what might be an optimal build for an average pug player.
Good to see a youtuber promoting different builds to finally turn this game's PvE meta around. I quit years ago because of the mind-numbing "Zerker or Viper only" meta, "LF Druid LF Chrono" meta. It became so boring and frustrating. If shit hit the fan, it was a full wipe every time because nobody ran any real utility beyond providing DPS boons.
As a player that prioritize utility more than damage potensial or speedrun, this video really resonate with me. I'll gladly switchout my mirage with firebrand if my fractal party doesn't have one or doesn't bring much utility. Better play safe than sorry
Also for pugs its standart to look for: Druid, Alacren, Hfb, Tankchrono, Bs, Dps As its just messy too look for: Mightsource( aka druid/mirage/healele/10man might dps ele/ and if mightsource not druid then soulbeast dps and if mightsource is mirage/dps tempest then offheal and when might source is mirage then no alac) Thats just shitty in lfg haha. So when i play with several friends we try to mix up the meta a bit, give room for healtempest and show its sometimes even easier when you have a proper healer and a plaguedoctor scourge. Instead of your standart druid/hfb exp. Also mixing up the classes, lead us to become better at mechanics as we had to do them somewhat differently. Many classes can take many different roles. Scrapper dps or quickness is an amazing tank for example, nice sustain because of the amazing barrier generation and a block, everything without changing anything.
You need multiple soulbeasts to replace a druid to get at least sun and frost spirit. You can't just toss all spirits on a soulbeast, his damage will tank too much... Not bringing a druid is a big dps loss, no matter how you try to compensate for it.
Firebrand being the only real "perma stability" class is the reason it's mandatory for wvw too, I really wish there were alternative professions that could fill this role :1
I always built my general use pve builds being balanced in health or survivability, CC, and power or condi power. If I could take down a champ on my own or a swarm of enemies and feel not pushed to hard in combat vs surviving the encounter, it was a good build. The hero points in HOT were my measuring stick of a build. Totally agree with MT on judging a good group build for a player.
TL;DW: Every MMO situation: Stop looking at top parse in a dummy, consider uptime and utility/buffs more than the "perfect performance a god player did on an unmoving dummy".
Yet another fantastic video, Man is on fire lately. At last some truth about certain classes and how they perform from a creditable and experienced source.
Agree with most of the stuff, but why shouldn't Scourge be allowed to do 36k dps? Can we stop gatekeeping Necro from ever doing decent dps cause Epi exists? Benchmarks are honestly relevant for top tier guilds only, for everyone else they should be just a rotation showcase (flawed again, most benchmarks, mine included, make use of a lot of iffy stuff like bugs, golem finishers, different sigils that you wouldn't run in raids, golem ticking etc...), and when that is the case - as you said - people will play around a strat that allows the best dps class for that encounter to do the best dps possible. Is Necro benching 36k in the current meta absolutely completely insane? No. Even with epi bounce it will still fall behind more bursty condi classes like cWeaver and cFB on most encounters. And even if Necro is suddenly BiS for one or two fights why the fuck does it matter? I'm not even a Necro enthusiast, I hate Epi and how it deletes mechanics and I wish they just removed it and allowed Necro to be an actual class, but I don't see why it can't be allowed to have a passable benchmark. I can't stress this enough, class dps is a non-factor in pugs (and the video is catered towards pugs), it won't matter if they clear in 2mins or 3mins (and I agree that running not necessairly the safest choice, but rather the class you're most comfortable with, should be the strat for any pug) so let Necro have some oxygen for a while, it's been benching 30k for years, let it have its moment to "shine", there's other builds outperforming it and I assure you you won't see a Necro-stack record unless they massively overtune it or bring Omegaepi back xd For that exact same reason, we should also cut some slack to pReaper, the "iT hAs TwO hP bArS" argument is void, your shroud is part of your rotation, let the build see the light of the day (despite it being in a decent-ish spot rn, I believe). EDIT: Also unless stuff happens - as it most likely will - Deva cRen is a no-brainer choice for pugs, great dps on top of extreme survivability through Battle Scars heal, and if that heal is not enough, swap Nightmare runes to Tormenting and you're suddenly unkillable at the cost of like 3k dps.
One of the problems is that if you try talking about normal realistic dps numbers that people get on actual encounters you get called bad and insulted all because those people saw a video one time of that class doing WAY more dps than that. I pretty much ignore anyone that says that reapers have two HP bars. They have a HP bar and they have a DPS bar. When you take a hit in reaper you are losing DPS and it's not something that can be healed back. When you are in reaper you can't just stand in damage and make the healer deal with it, you have to move, you have to dodge, you have to play better than the guy that just eats it to the face so he can greed more dps.
It's not epi, it's the mechanics of scourge. Scourge totally DESTROYS almost every PvE encounter in the game thanks to it's barrier, insane dps uptime (it can literally do benchmark pretty much all the time) and godlike utility from signet of undeath, epidemic, trail or just whatever you need. Stacking scourges is also INCREDIBLY strong as they actually force multiply eachother (the more the better) All that combined means that yeah scourge probably shouldn't do that much DPS. It was absolutely god tier at 29K dps bench and at 36K it's just absurd.
Nerfs are the wrong approach to balance something that needs a rework(Elementalist) to be as useful to a group as a firebrand. ArenaNet doesn't want Elementalists to be top dps
Thank you for this video! Weirdly this is the best breakdown that made me understand how the utility skills go with the traits in this game 😅 Hey if you get a notification that I disliked this video - I was trying to get onto your channel page. Sorry about that.
I have to say it: I wish you would be ANet's worker. You put thoughts from my heart to your video - thank you, thank you, thank you very much. I doubt that anyone from ANet even care about your opinion but...man... I love it. ANet dont play in their own game - that's sad. Thank you again. You get my respect and subscryption ;p
Last Night A CondiFb with 240 AR and Fractal Goddess buff carried our t4 party with 50k dps while doing mechs and helping out healing and stab. The fuck man
The whole time I am watching this video I am thinking how the people who "have their priorities wrong" are the developers themselves. These last round of changes on may 11th just scream to me once again that they don't play their own game.
bias leads to frustration. most changes on may 11th were good changes. id say only dumbing down mantras was a bad decision, and ofc the dps numbers have to be adjusted now. but taking a slow step-by-step aproach is better then gutting everything and leaving it for months.
@@Coobanmen I would heavily disagree that mantra's were the only dumb thing. Nerfing Power Ele across the board based on its peak DPS in unrealistic situations was an extremely stupid thing for exactly the reason's highlighted in this video. Its straight up like the devs are too lazy to understand their game so they go on sites like snowcrow to see which class they need to nerf. Meanwhile a certain class who is already top tier in every category gets another round of buffs.
Personally I like to play daredevil when dps. Why? Because it has some incredible utility on Steal effects on most of bosses. Sloth doing his condi burst? Who cares, here take 10man cleanse all condis. Someone goes down? Oh, I can just teleport them to me and partially revive. Saved many people that were lying on the danger floor. CC? Here take the venom. And actually has some decent numbers as well. And list goes on.
Good video. I've often said that I wish there was more realistic benchmark info available in the form of real logs from real encounters showcasing different, non-cheese comps. I also kind of wish someone out there was able to test the dps difference on low end vs high end system setups. I see plenty of videos where peoples skills seem to go off quicker, and their abilities just seem more responsive in general. I wonder how many people are playing correctly and simply getting capped by the games performance.
I run reaper, because it’s always going to do a fuckton damage every patch, it requires no brain, second healthbar, less dependence on alac, self sufficient for might, invuln, and quickness. I can shroud 2 to move quick, axe for range. Sustain from damage. I can straight ignore mechanics and keep damage near max even with supports gone. So many fractal groups where people have been like “not optimal DPS.” Then at the end of the frac, I’m top DPS because 0% Down-state time. Being on Arkk and getting the last 4% off solo or duo as reaper even once makes up for less DPS over 100 runs.
Is it wrong that I love playing the support based classes? I find the dps race boring, i like to support my team. I really love playing my druid, and even a condi firebrand that can do a bit of support.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO THINKS LIKE ME (22:05 onward), especially on Druid stuff. I make my raid comps usually based on very similar logic. Good analysis and putting it in words.
It makes me think about in FF14 the Black Mage and Samurai do top damage while they offer zero utility. Dancer/Bard doesn't but has utility. Class damage should first be balanced around their utility, and then maybe you get into how hard it is to play the class. Also to the point of Healbrands I think they are so popular also because their role compression can involve being an excellent tank. A tank that can heal is valuable, especially since Druid tanks also are slapped with managing immobs and pushes.
You could have spared me 40 minutes to simply say people are stupid in 40 seconds. But you are right. People arent smart enough to understand the benchmarks in any game. There are a lot of problems with players in MMOs. Theres some weird fascination with trying to be the best in such a pea-brained way. They want to min/max but dont understand the min/maxing and force people to play in their SMOrc mentality.
100% trues are beint told here. I just can't take the time to educate people on this when I'm pugging but it pains me so much that everybody goes on about dps when they are clearly whiping constantly because of other factors..
Yup, we had a saying on TS3 in 2014 when my guild was still alive "the best DPS is alive DPS" even the best build does nothing if someone is still dead
Heal Firebrand is actually too strong for 5 man sustain if played well. In a raid, where you have a Druid or Healtempest in a more stable group, there is really no need for the HFB compared to a CodniQuickness FB. The HFB performs in raid pugs only very well, when the Druid is new to the class, unsure in mechanics or actually sleeping. And when a group manages to not do some mechanics. But that is it. I agree, that a Healtempest is safer in a regular raid pug group. And I am glad that someone points out the strenghts of the druid. I am so tired of hearing Druid players say, they are valuable only because of might stacking and spirits...
Yeah double healer is standard so running both together is fine, can take more rez power and utility on both and the druid can run lingering light/SnR/any utility skill while the tempest handles might and protection
I must agree with Teapot on Ele-Necro healing synergy. On fractals Heal ELE can cancel like 50% mechanic cause of healing ,reflects, stuns+heal not to mention with overload aoe cleanse ^_^ People tend to look at healing classes through,how much plain heal can it do ^_^ but they should look through skills like "aftershock " at ele heal. Like how much healing u save on oasis boss on air phase or Mai Trin ^_^ ....Gr8 video and tackled GW2 from angle people tend not to look at ^_^
Not always agree with this man but he's speaking straight facts. Fb is too damn overloaded, it does basically everything especially in 5 man and it's NEVER bad to have fb and if u stack them then u can do go nuts since ashes stack lmao don't forget other guard utilities that bring lots to table. Other peasant dps classes just bring same dps and maybe cc but that's it. Cfb concept should never exist, cqfb can be viable but again, dmg can't be competitive with other full dps classes. Either rework whole fb kit orrr just do few simple changes like remove ashes stacking on allies, tone down basically all burning stacks applied on everything. It can keeps it's overloaded kit but u can't make it's dmg nowhere great that is currently. Don't get me started on new virtue cfb, it gives fb whole new build that's overall better to the team even more than zeal build which was mainly big burst with lots of vuln. Virtue cfb brings so much more to table it's laughable
If you stack ashes, 1 person gets the damage of the other peoples' ashes. The other people loose this damage. Your group does not actually do more damage in total. It has no effect at all except getting an inflated arc number on 1 person. It's stupid and leads to toxic behaviour (people casting ashes earlier than what is ideal rotation to "steal" ashes of others for a bigger arc number) but it doesn't break anything other than the addon numbers.
@@aethelwyna8618 I know about that and it just stopid, good cfbs could abuse that knowledge in pugs but overall group gets off the same amount of stacks fbs apply yes but if ur hfb casts first ur burns will do much less dmg so no, the party CAN get less value out of it. Now it can't happen anymore but the concept of ashes applying on others is too strong since burning is most bursty and most solid condi there is. That's the problem in my eyes along with tome 4 being straight up so good even power fb uses it as part of rota
i hate the fact that he glossed over the fact that quickness and alacraty is not evenly shared amongs professions thats what healer brand revenant and mirage are in such a high demand in fractals.
Whoever started this DPS thing ruined a lot of things for the game. There isn't even a way to keep 100% DPS. Survivability is so much better than having to die on a hit or two.
I'm considering giving GW2 a go and came here to see what the PvE game might be like. I didn't understand a word you said, lol. Not the video for me, I guess.
the problem on the scourge isn't the dps, it is the fact that the shields are accumulated from everywhere and from all sources. 1 scourge dps with 10 people doesn't bring much 6 scourge dps bring a lot of support in dispell and shields in PVe or WvW. Except that it is a mechanical problem of the game and not only for scourge class because in solo it isn't a problem. Moreover scourge dps must inflict condi to send them back for dps it is enough a dispell or a combo light and you lose 3K of dps. It brings no useful combo zone, nor any finnisher for blast or prebuff. And he was very low in DPS for that he was getting rejected from all HL content in Dps for 4 years, except on desmina for epi. On FB, the problem is that it can do everything and that it has no counterpart. And the fact that the aegis cancels 95% of the attacks of this game. If mechanics of boss could not be blocked with aegis, it would reduce the FB considerably without affecting anything. All classes should have a build with decent dps and only do DPS. It's just that the archetype traits should be more marked, either you support or you dps. Except that on some classes traits / skills linked are so bad or ussless that you end up with support traits because the others are too weak. I take an example on the scourge: With last maj, part of the increase of our dps is that we take Soul Barbs (to increase our dps before it worked only on the power dps) instead of Fear of Death (which increased our CC and helped us to manage our LF) It's a good thing but beside that our "Punishment skills" are extremely weak, even useless (apart from heal) so instead of taking "Sadistic Searing" (which increases our dps), we use "Desert Empowerment" (which supports our group with free shield). If "Punishment skills" and " Sadistic Searing trait" were more pronounced in our dps, it would force us to lose support. And this is how it is in many buid dps in almost every class. What I mean is that you want to reduce the dps of X or Y because it brings support. While personally I resonate all classes should have a dps in average (melee higher than distances, dps with combo lower than those without combo). But it's choices you make in terms of stuff or trait that should be more marked. If you want to support then you lose dps by choosing support trait and you lose dps because you have to use a stuff with concentration or healling. Currently we have classes that support alac, cele, power, banners ... and have almost the same dps as a full dps because they don't have to sacrifice traits or stuff with support stats. And problem comes from the traits and X seconds of buff given by skills or trait and some on not compromise of class. Example with miralac staff before the last patch if we had put it that natural counterpart that it has in PVP and WvW, so only 1 dodge! The build in term of dps and boons would have been fixed. But all other versions of mirage would have been rebalanced. Most of the patches in GW2 are band-aids and after several years it shows. Instead of changing what is wrong with a class, trait/skill/mechanic, it changes some value. Except that the problem is still there.
the homeless man makes a very good point
I don't get it?
Lol, i understand, didn't know others think so too
@@Davidrunz the lost on an island hair doesnt give you an indication?
@@jonathansoko1085 regardless, it's not something nice to say to someone keeping GW2 community alive...
He can take a joke we all love moldyteapod
As someone that can't stop themselves from cleaning up their inventory every 10 minutes
10:28 what the fuck
It's been worse before ahha
What in the actual fuck is this abomination? Are there really people out there with such inventory?
That inventory would make an angel weep
Bro that is like hoarders buried alive shit there.
@@sirlezard670 oh hell ya! I'm one of them and I hope you have a kaniption😂😂😂😂
You are right. But the problem with pugs is, they are all wannabe speedrunners. They better wipe 10 times in 1 wing instead of oneshotting every boss with a safe comp.
What is a pug? Im a new player
@@ok_listen It's an acronym that stands for "Pick Up Group". Basically random players coming together for a shared goal.
It's refreshing to hear someone actually say that Druid isn't the end all be all of healers. I'm a ranger main and I've done content as a druid where someone steps in a mechanic and immediately goes down and I get yelled at to heal better. I've done some bosses where I just cannot sustain through people taking hits to the face every two seconds. Druid has a lot of utility and party buffs in its meta kit but it's healing is what I'd called "decent"
Completely agree; I am the designated druid healer for my group xD
When there is like 7 or more of our players everything is fine but trying to heal pugs is sometimes borderline impossible.
But yeah, me and the chronotank do most of the mechanics that way so what can u do?
Not even heal Tempest can save people who refuse to dodge.
Can't heal stupidity
Druid is your 25 might mainly, anyway. Spirit buffs/projectile control/cc secondary. And a decent heal output tertiary. Tldr, unless you have a healscourge, do mechanics properly ppl.
Heal tempest has highest heals and not even that can save you if you face tank mechanics in t3 and t4 fractals
Teapot farming Truths as usual.
This is easily one of the best GW2 videos I have seen in a very long time.
Thank you.
I just came back to the game a month ago for the first time since launch year. This video was a moment of clarity for me. I was so guilty at looking at these builds and just gunning for the top numbers. Thanks for the much-needed perspective. Subscribed.
Came back to the game, swapped my weapon and accidentally lost my sigils and infusions. Gem store popped up saying I would need to pay real money to do that or template something. Logged out. Game is cash crab now? ._.
@@ElfTaleFilms this makes zero sense and sounds like a bug with your sigils. Report it. As for the templates that just allows you to have 3 different loadouts now as opposed to manually swapping like you had to do before.
@@ElfTaleFilms sounds like you swapped your build using a template and it unequpped your gear. Just equip your stuff again and you are golden.
well said,
most people don't realize how hard some of the meta classes can carry and how difficult it can be to replace them with a different comp. Mesmer with aegis/stab, quickness, distort (e.g. shake blocking on Sloth), feedback, boonstrip on auto and especially focus 4 on any boss that requires adds to be pulled. Other classes can do similar things, but it's much more difficult to achieve.
Most classes have an invuln, but it's usually too high cd to carry at sloth, so at least two people would have to alternate.
Most classes have some sort of pull, but they are usually not as large range, projectile based (body blocked) or single target.
Several classes can boonstrip, but most of them require additional utility skills/trait changes to do it consistently.
etc.
Mesmer can do all of that and bring quickness/alacrity and/or damage and carry cc.
And the same goes for druid. Sure it brings spirits, spotter and 10man 25 might, but what makes it hard to replace is the utility it brings in entangle, tides, storm spirit and LB4 on top of being able to bring squad wide damage boosts and boons.
Most classes have at least one knockback, but druid has tides (aoe) and can combo it into LB4 (ranged, potentially piercing). Try doing that on other classes, that usually only have one good knockback (ele) or have a difficult time chaining them (guard with shield+hammer).
Most classes usually also have some sort of immobilization, but none of them is as long-lasting AND as large range AND multi-target and all of that in a single skill.
And while spirits are only a small part, I'd also count storm spirit in the op utility as well. Especially as I've seen so many groups struggle even getting consistent 10 vuln on bosses, since all the cFBs swapped to virtues. A ranger just swaps in storm spirit and vuln is covered in the comp. Also the great synergy with Mirage comps, bringing storm to cap vuln and sun to give Vigor and a damage boost.
etc.
All that while also providing 10 man 25 might, a little bit of healing, 5man fury, swiftness and large chunk of the squad wide protection.
Ofc they are still replaceable, but doing so will usually require much more effort and awareness and spreading the responsibility of mechanics to more than one or two players, who also have to coordinate and people are just used to this since the times of the mirror comp. It's hard to break a habit.
So for bosses that I think at least one of them can carry hard or is much more effort to replace:
w1
VG -> chrono and druid are a hard carry due to seeker control and chrono being able to distort greens, making it a very safe tank
Gorse -> druid hard carries due to entangle on split phases, chrono can hard carry cc, aegis and pull the small adds
Sab -> not really needed as much, but might as well stay on this comp instead of relogging (so much time on clears is lost due to this)
w2
Sloth -> chrono is a hard carry due to focus 4 + shake distort
Mat -> not really needed as much, druid is nice for bringing storm and sun, might as well stay chrono to bring feedback and carry cc, especially after bt died and you need a quickness source again.
w3
KC -> not really needed, but might as well bring druid for frost spirit and pushing orb, chrono can help safely pulling to rifts with focus 4 and is the better quickness source for boss that favours power as much as KC.
Xera -> chrono is probably the safest tank for any group that doesn't phase before any mechanics happen and focus 4 carries hard
w4
Cairn -> druid is nice for storm and sun
MO -> a golem might as well bring more damage and spirits
Sam -> chrono as the better power comp quickness provider, also focus 4/entangle combo for the 66% and 33% phases
Deimos -> chrono is the safest tank here (aegis can be unreliable), druid with entangle carries prides
w5
SH -> druid is the best pusher by far, chrono has a much easier time tanking than other tanks (and can run cChrono)
Dhuum -> both can be easily replaced
w6
CA -> Chrono focus 4 is really strong for add control, can drop TW+wells from a distance while doing the mechanic
Twins -> condi Chrono is imo the best tank here (may be biased), druid is nice to easily cap vuln
Qadim -> both can easily carry golem control, especially focus 4 if you pull them in
w7
imo the only wing where both can be easily replaced on every boss.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
That's one of the videos I've been waiting for a long time.
Let's hope anet rethinks a lot of the mentioned stuff.
You can kind of see the correlation between arguably easy static bosses that become hard pug bosses and mechanics that everyone has to take part in:
Deimos Oils
Sloth Poison
Matthias CC, Poison and Corruption
Dhuum Shackles and Bombs
....
When you pug raids, a lot of bosses will be fairly smooth as long as you "randomly" find a good druid and chrono in your group since they'll handle a lot of the mechanics. But that might not be enough once you are on bosses where the monkeys will be forced to do some mechanics unless...
Also:
Xera Gliding (KEKW)
Another way to say it is:
It should be obvious that max DPS values of a single player with simulated perfect buffs against a single inert golem is not a good proxy for determining total DPS of a heterogenous group of professions providing imperfect buffs while combatting dynamic mobile attacks from adds and boss mechanics.
But it's a perfectly valid way to benchmark performance; it stands to reason someone isn't going to be pulling 100% uptime as a Sim does. Therefore, they obviously won't be doing so much damage.
But if your build is pulling half or less than those numbers? You're hurting a raid more than bringing some kind of utility with you.
my experience with pve meta...zojja for power, viper for condi…
the end
Lack of gear diversity bothers mee too.
I think of Kylo Ren yelling for more damage at the golem, "MORE!!".
Love your stuff.
This has needed to be said for a long time. Well done, indeed!
27:48
Personally I think it's great that only a few players are handling mechanics. Can you imagine having to find 10 competent people in LFG?
man this is good stuff if you can you should do a vid like this about reading logs. In regards of why did someone perform the way they did. Maybe someone pressed F more times, maybe someone had more mechanics, why was the cc bar this slow, etc.
27:41 thanks for the shoutout Teapot
As someone newer to raiding thanks for this discussion, benchmarks are something I’ve been trying to understand for a bit now
I have always loved easy safe builds/comps for non sweaty groups, no reason to run the sweaty build/comp when you might take longer to clear or maybe even not clear.
I would rather take 5 extra minutes to clear on first try with a safe group than 20 extra minutes wiping on the sweaty comp and being screamed at by someone who thinks everyone should be as good as SnowCrows
I've been trying to shill boonheal tempest for years now so thanks for putting in a good word for it my dude.
im interested in a boonheal tempest is there a build i can look at? as i main ele would love to learn it.
@@chip7427 i've been doing some tests on different builds cause SC only includes one poopoo build. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12YXcpMNved969J2gE1CY70MefCXQpLNt4_hQA39K424
Feedback on these is always welcome, but try to just understand what the traits/skills do and when to take them and you'll be golden.
Thanks for making this video and hopefully as many peoples as possible would learn something from this. Those misconceptions are reaaally hardrooted in raid community though, Kitty's noticed. Much of this is essentially what she's tried to teach for last 3 years but hopefully a big-name RUclipsr saying these things actually have an effect (as was what happened to heal scourge... THOUGH IT DOES 10-TARGET MIGHT with Harrier's with BM+Curses trait and some fury and swiftness with Pack Runes. Caps.)
Lesser DPS options are way too ignored despite of what they can bring to table. Though power holo can do pretty high dps, power scrapper is a real MVP with its resses, pushes, boonstrips, stab, proj-block, cleanses, CC, immortality etc. with relatively low dps cost. And now also quickness. Tbh if every dps played power scrapper, we'd only need heal renegade now for alacrity and to keep itself alive and 9 scrappers+healrene is a comp that simply refuses to wipe. Thief's Invigorating Precision also has less than 10% dps cost to enter what is essentially godmode, same with scourge's Parasitic Contagion and PS power berserker (Mending Might is ridiculous trait on 10-target might PSzerker!). Those builds have been weaker dps-wise this far, until scourge got boosted, but that's been for a good reason. There's also tons of other niche super-utility dps builds.
When it comes to heals, GotL druid is at the very low end, just 10-15% higher than Kitty's healchrono (which brings all chrono stuffs) and 25-30% higher than heal-DE which also does most of what druid can do except spirits and condicleanse, though that's a meme. Now that Soulcleave got nerfed, heal scrapper is the uncontested strongest healer at about avg. 6,8k HPS per target and 2nd ressbot, Frostbow tempest is 2nd (can use warhorn for boons), heal rene 3rd, healbrand conditional 4th, LL druid 5th, heal scourge conditional 6th/7th, GotL druid 6th/7th, heal chrono 8th, heal DE 9th. Kitty's mathed those, they're all boonbot versions and she's tested that they're pretty realistic as well.
...sorry, Kitty accidentally wrote a wall of text. Anyway, thanks for the video!
Benchmarkers and speed clearers are the WvW Montagers of PvE, they sit on a golem for several days to min max their one shot builds then they keep resetting the boss till they get perfect RNG. I think low manning and optimizing downtime is the real skill of PvE
Lmao T R U E
"I think low manning and optimizing downtime is the real skill of PvE" well said my good sir. also more fun for me at least. i prefer to participate in a "fight" rather then close my eyes, press few buttons of memory and then wait for the next phase ;) playing meta means less playing the game
I think it's far more important to find your own build for PvE. Even in raids, since you can mix and match what works for you and still do 20-25k dmg with all dps classes, even without the meta. The big thing for me is not getting locked animations and a rotation that doesn't require 100 steps to achieve.
I am a weaver player and Thank you for bringing all your knowledge to light.
Teapot spits the truth people don't wanna hear. 100% right, no matter what MMO you play the "meta" varies between group skill levels, encounters, raids/dungeons. Just because one person hit 50k doesn't mean that's the best class, it depends on what they bring to the table class wise. Very well spoken, my man.
Finally someone talking about those healbrands in raids. Too tired of seeing double healbrand lfgs for raids/strikes.
Double healbrand is terrible? Your mainheal is always a druid because of the spirits and might. 1 hfb is a good offheal but 2 is pointless - get the quickness for the drudi sub from a quickness dps hybrid class (stm chrono, quick scrapper or quick firebrand).
If you run 2x hfb you are just bad lol.
@@aethelwyna8618 I overall think that healbrand in raids is kinda useless - just like Teapot suggested, I much rather prefer running qfb, mostly because hfb does not heal the other sub and cannot help them by other means, while other off healers can. But yeah, double hfb is pretty common and I was even kicked out of lfgs because I suggested to go druid when I saw double healbrand comp xD
@@nyappynen I have genuinly never seen that before.
Not bringing a druid means no sun and frost spirit.
I can't even imagine loosing that much dps on purpose. That's actually hilarious.
The only exception that I know of is some niche largos speedruns where they go 2x hfb tank and 8x mirage. That is a mirage problem though.
Well assuming you're already bringing a druid for the spirits and want an offheal for the other sub: either you bring a hfb (which also does quickness and yes healing does flow over to both groups a bit, either way you have the druid anyways) or you bring something like a tempest and force a dps role to go quickness.
So you loose out on total dps by not going hfb in this scenario.
I've tried to tell my friends that sometimes it isn't damage that is the be-all/end-all in terms of raids or high end dungeons. It's the same reason why even if they're not the top DPS, Warlocks will always be brought to WoW raids regardless of how good or bad their DPS is simply because of their Battle Res, their gates, their summons, etc.
Herald is a class that has an decent damage for an "Utility Class".
Just the utility is missing
Ohoho! BOON LORD Herald is a god tier build, video incoming on that!
I really miss a good herald build that can compete a little in raid :/
@@demokdawa There is one! Video inc
@@MightyTeapot Thanks, can't wait for it!
As a new player, I see how sad is when the specialization you like the most is kinda left aside on those guides, benchmarks etc etc
@@MightyTeapot Can't wait to see the video then :)
What does your DPS build bring?
Weaver: Damage
Deadeye: Damage
Soulbeast: Damage
Firebrand: What doesn't it bring?
Reaper: Death
(lots of Chill, tanky while in shroud, lots of lifeleech including group lifeleech, switching between slightly more tanky, more dps or more support roles often doesn't require major gear changes)
Soulbeast brings spotter, spirits and stances, it's not gamebreaking utility, but it's breddy good.
Couple notes on FB:
*The aegis on heal is very strong, but the heal/s is pretty low. It's a significant trade-off but you generally don't see the downside in group content.
*While scepter does give you an option to do purely ranged dps, it's garbage dps. Scepter's sustained damage is utter trash, and the weapon is only used for the geomancy proc and symbol casts before/after tome. I can not overstate how bad the DPS is if you're camping scepter at long range.
That aside, cqb absolutely should not do as much damage as it does. I'm fine with the purely damage-focused build being in the 30-40k range, but QB needs to be knocked down. They could probably cut the base burn durations on F1 tome skills and then boost LL to compensate (and do something similar with the axe trait). Alternatively (or additionally), they could bump up the required BD to ~60% or more so you'd need to run FB runes AND some more conc from your gear.
The reason pugs prefer HB over QB+another healer is just the old role compression meme (you acknowledged this). Why spend more time LFGing for two non-dps roles when you could just look for one. Role compression is usually the determinant when it comes to pug meta comps. (You're totally right that HB is garbo in raids though.)
Power creep across the board is a little wack right now. I kinda miss when the top damage (excluding ele shit) was around 30k.
P.S. You forgot to mention the forbidden trailblazer/dire builds and how they sacrifice very little dps to massively increase their survivability. I imagine most pugs in raids/strikes would be better off with those pure cheese tanky builds than they are with the full glass ones.
I agree trailblazer on ele the difference in DPS is barely 2 + 5k DMG Compared to the fact that you gain some 500% to survive, it's a small sacrifice
A dev was on Teatime like a year ago and was asked about FBs and Sourges- totally paraphrasing here but he basically responded by saying they were not sure how to nerf them in a way that wouldn't completly destroy the classes, and the meta. Ill always remeber this tho- He then went on to reference mesmers- and how he'd take a look at the stab they provide. He believed at the time this was streamed that firebrand and chronos were innerchangable simply because of quickness. Lol. Now that we have Scrappers with this boon, not seeing the game time - maybe that will change how anet views guardians. In refrence to scourge, something worth mentioning- Barrier can prevent one shots- in that sense it's the strongest heal type in game- regardless of mode.
just means guardians can come as a dps build with great sword with burns with dragon hunter etc, ppl don't get that raids were implemented b4 path of 🔥on hot elite specs. the fact ppl sit n discuss the best comps on pof elite specs is ridiculous , when they can neither play around not understand hot mechanics ...sufficient boonuptime can still be generated as before on dragon hunter or banners w/ warrior
scourge barrier is like shroud but aoe , scourge torment comes from 10 dif sources alone traiting n camping🏕️ a single weaponkit. 1 shade alone + 5 other things inflict torment before a single punishment skill. it's the easiest to play strongest class open world in game. even stronger cause of group barrier it provides in the process infinitely. the problem is no1 plays enough druids or support builds on any level to make raiding viable much less understands how ..
ANET offered no approach to fix the game, by forcing raid content to be completed on hot mechanics only, which they should have done ...not to mention this game is largely dogshit content throughout .
what ANET should do, but they dont is provide specific pof elite raid content ,
I have to post because you did ask in the video. For the 'ranged only' parts of Dhuum on condi weaver you have a couple of options. Flamewall, Signet of Fire and (f you prepared for the phase) Natural Frenzy (Earth/Water Dual Attack). Thanks for this video! Love the knowledge your dropping, I hope that more players will listen and learn from you.
Ive noticed that when I try and play dps scourge in strikes I almost always regret int compared to playing heal scourge. People ignore the downed people or just get downed constantly and someone has to run over and heal them where I could instead just press 4 and heal them and everyone around me for a bunch.
Had a wipe on bone skinner in 20 seconds, I swapped to heal scourge and we completed it with only 1 person dead at the end.
That's the best video I've seen on the meta. You just reflected all my thoughts and I love you teapot, thank you for that
I've already seen an increase of Scourges in fractals since the patch
Scourge can outdps firebrand (very close anyways, depends on whether u count the epi damage on the adds really) and if you have 2 epis you can skip ccing sorrows completely.
@@aethelwyna8618 I can burst for 60k/s in like 4secs with my cfb when scgs are still at 20k/s and boss already phases ( for example 1st boss of 99 and 98) but ye for longer phases they are very similar in dps
Mr Teapot is criminally underrated as a content creator.
condi weaver brings swirlings winds :peepohappy:
I think Heal Scourge is very similar to Heal Firebrand in the sense, that what makes it so strong is not necessarily the raw healing but the huge amount of utility it offers. The amazing comeback potential due to "transfusion" and "well of blood" and the barrier (i am not going to type out every single thing about it because there literally is a 40 minute video on it here)
Only thing I disagree with in this video is The Holo praise. They are just A power version of condi Weaver, Very high damage, any utility and buffs are all personal, it's a very selfish one that doesn't contribute much to the whole team at all.
I'm no expert but it brings vulnerability and some might? When I do my t4 frac dailies I run hard light arena for pull/ protection too
I have mained guardian since HoT and FB since PoT. Love guardian so much
We need carry classes for pugs. What about when they nerfed chaos Chrono. Thankfully we had hb to replace.
i personally feel like this is just a common problem for mmorpgs without the holy trinity. anytime you want to give a class supportive abilities when all classes are technically dps, people will complain and say then what's the point of bringing a pure dps class without support skills, or if you choose to nerf the dmg of the class with support skills, it will either be "yea it's lower dmg but overall utility still higher, so still meta", or "the dmg is so shit and the support is meh so no point in bringing the class even as support" and since this is meta discussion, even a 5% difference in content clearing statistics is significant enough to decide what class to take.
They really put themselves into a corner with a lot of these builds. I mean originally the game didn't have raids and was designed in a way that a person can pretty much solo everything, there was no tanks/heals just everyone could dps and heal/support themselves solo. Now suddenly you have builds that "just" dps, which is not enough. Everyone has to have support a long with their dps. Mesmers staff being broken due to them being able to do the same dps as dps classes with so much support, they got nerfed but still useful. Those Benchmark stats though, is that also with all buffs on 100% of the time at max stacks? Cause assuming a perfect situation including 100% dps uptime is insanely unrealistic, lol
Its only the buffs that would generally be used. Ofc not not realistic, which is why people always point this out.
You don't understand what the meta builders are saying, and neither does the community, because the community doesnt understand the game.
If you look at "average" thats what you can realistically achieve. Top is the highest dps achieved with the rotation. And yes, in GW2 you can actually get so close to these numbers that pointing out how "unrealistic" it is is a moot point. For the average player? Ofc not, but these builds and pages are not made for those people.
@@frostdracohardstyle It's the same way people misunderstand when professional players make tier lists. People take those tier lists and brings it into their unranked games as somekind of holy bible or even ranked but they aren't even Gold.
Almost every game with enough depth changes depending on the skill level. Everyone wants to pretend that by picking the top meta builds they are the top player and if they fail it's not their fault but the other people, despite them playing a character/build who's role is designed to need others to enable it.
But just like a game like LoL, an MMO is a team game. The weakest link is gonna be the limit of your strength, and by playing with random people the chance to have such a weak link increases by A LOT.
That said I do feel these meta build and tier list websites aren't completely without fault by giving no other option. Nobody will listen that they aren't good enough to play them, many just wants to pick something and play, but there's also no alternative builds presented that forgo damage and more survivability and team utility to give what might be an optimal build for an average pug player.
Good to see a youtuber promoting different builds to finally turn this game's PvE meta around. I quit years ago because of the mind-numbing "Zerker or Viper only" meta, "LF Druid LF Chrono" meta. It became so boring and frustrating. If shit hit the fan, it was a full wipe every time because nobody ran any real utility beyond providing DPS boons.
As a player that prioritize utility more than damage potensial or speedrun, this video really resonate with me. I'll gladly switchout my mirage with firebrand if my fractal party doesn't have one or doesn't bring much utility. Better play safe than sorry
Also for pugs its standart to look for: Druid, Alacren, Hfb, Tankchrono, Bs, Dps
As its just messy too look for: Mightsource( aka druid/mirage/healele/10man might dps ele/ and if mightsource not druid then soulbeast dps and if mightsource is mirage/dps tempest then offheal and when might source is mirage then no alac)
Thats just shitty in lfg haha.
So when i play with several friends we try to mix up the meta a bit, give room for healtempest and show its sometimes even easier when you have a proper healer and a plaguedoctor scourge. Instead of your standart druid/hfb exp.
Also mixing up the classes, lead us to become better at mechanics as we had to do them somewhat differently. Many classes can take many different roles. Scrapper dps or quickness is an amazing tank for example, nice sustain because of the amazing barrier generation and a block, everything without changing anything.
Perfect pug comp indeed
You need multiple soulbeasts to replace a druid to get at least sun and frost spirit. You can't just toss all spirits on a soulbeast, his damage will tank too much...
Not bringing a druid is a big dps loss, no matter how you try to compensate for it.
Firebrand being the only real "perma stability" class is the reason it's mandatory for wvw too, I really wish there were alternative professions that could fill this role :1
I now have a different perspective on raid builds... Thanks
21:00 so true, 4 months later and we literally have people asking for only scourge on CM+T4 lfg.
I always built my general use pve builds being balanced in health or survivability, CC, and power or condi power. If I could take down a champ on my own or a swarm of enemies and feel not pushed to hard in combat vs surviving the encounter, it was a good build. The hero points in HOT were my measuring stick of a build. Totally agree with MT on judging a good group build for a player.
TL;DW: Every MMO situation: Stop looking at top parse in a dummy, consider uptime and utility/buffs more than the "perfect performance a god player did on an unmoving dummy".
Yet another fantastic video, Man is on fire lately.
At last some truth about certain classes and how they perform from a creditable and experienced source.
Agree with most of the stuff, but why shouldn't Scourge be allowed to do 36k dps? Can we stop gatekeeping Necro from ever doing decent dps cause Epi exists? Benchmarks are honestly relevant for top tier guilds only, for everyone else they should be just a rotation showcase (flawed again, most benchmarks, mine included, make use of a lot of iffy stuff like bugs, golem finishers, different sigils that you wouldn't run in raids, golem ticking etc...), and when that is the case - as you said - people will play around a strat that allows the best dps class for that encounter to do the best dps possible. Is Necro benching 36k in the current meta absolutely completely insane? No. Even with epi bounce it will still fall behind more bursty condi classes like cWeaver and cFB on most encounters. And even if Necro is suddenly BiS for one or two fights why the fuck does it matter? I'm not even a Necro enthusiast, I hate Epi and how it deletes mechanics and I wish they just removed it and allowed Necro to be an actual class, but I don't see why it can't be allowed to have a passable benchmark. I can't stress this enough, class dps is a non-factor in pugs (and the video is catered towards pugs), it won't matter if they clear in 2mins or 3mins (and I agree that running not necessairly the safest choice, but rather the class you're most comfortable with, should be the strat for any pug) so let Necro have some oxygen for a while, it's been benching 30k for years, let it have its moment to "shine", there's other builds outperforming it and I assure you you won't see a Necro-stack record unless they massively overtune it or bring Omegaepi back xd
For that exact same reason, we should also cut some slack to pReaper, the "iT hAs TwO hP bArS" argument is void, your shroud is part of your rotation, let the build see the light of the day (despite it being in a decent-ish spot rn, I believe).
EDIT: Also unless stuff happens - as it most likely will - Deva cRen is a no-brainer choice for pugs, great dps on top of extreme survivability through Battle Scars heal, and if that heal is not enough, swap Nightmare runes to Tormenting and you're suddenly unkillable at the cost of like 3k dps.
One of the problems is that if you try talking about normal realistic dps numbers that people get on actual encounters you get called bad and insulted all because those people saw a video one time of that class doing WAY more dps than that.
I pretty much ignore anyone that says that reapers have two HP bars. They have a HP bar and they have a DPS bar. When you take a hit in reaper you are losing DPS and it's not something that can be healed back. When you are in reaper you can't just stand in damage and make the healer deal with it, you have to move, you have to dodge, you have to play better than the guy that just eats it to the face so he can greed more dps.
It's not epi, it's the mechanics of scourge. Scourge totally DESTROYS almost every PvE encounter in the game thanks to it's barrier, insane dps uptime (it can literally do benchmark pretty much all the time) and godlike utility from signet of undeath, epidemic, trail or just whatever you need. Stacking scourges is also INCREDIBLY strong as they actually force multiply eachother (the more the better) All that combined means that yeah scourge probably shouldn't do that much DPS. It was absolutely god tier at 29K dps bench and at 36K it's just absurd.
why necros arent allowed todo dmg? because they double/ tripple the amount of health and some really strong utility. wtf
I agree with your argument on Ele-Weaver totally. It should be doing > 55K < damage minimum, than would be O.K. like this.🐣
I currently run a Staff Weaver with Arcane instead of Earth though so I still give out boons when allies are close enough lmao
This video is friggin' amazing and probably everyone interested in raids should watch it.
Nerfs are the wrong approach to balance something that needs a rework(Elementalist) to be as useful to a group as a firebrand. ArenaNet doesn't want Elementalists to be top dps
Thank you for this video! Weirdly this is the best breakdown that made me understand how the utility skills go with the traits in this game 😅
Hey if you get a notification that I disliked this video - I was trying to get onto your channel page. Sorry about that.
Glad you enjoyed!
I have to say it: I wish you would be ANet's worker. You put thoughts from my heart to your video - thank you, thank you, thank you very much. I doubt that anyone from ANet even care about your opinion but...man... I love it. ANet dont play in their own game - that's sad. Thank you again. You get my respect and subscryption ;p
Hopefully Thieves become a good choice for raids when the new elite spec comes out. Maybe they'll make a healing thief spec?
I came from the future to tell you they did a healing thief spec.
@@antoniobn I saw and I'm excited!
20 seconds in and already deserving that like smash...
Last Night A CondiFb with 240 AR and Fractal Goddess buff carried our t4 party with 50k dps while doing mechs and helping out healing and stab. The fuck man
What makes a pve build so strong is sustain (active dps time) and your overall comp. The faster a boss dies the more dps any class will do.
I'm a mythic raider in wow who dabbles into gw2 on a casual level. It's hilarious how little the gw2 pug playerbase understands this.
lol pug playerbase in wow doesn´t understand too and try to copy meta...This is in every single mmo!
Thats why dps meters shouldnt be a thing. People only focus on how high is the dps not the versatility that the class brings
The whole time I am watching this video I am thinking how the people who "have their priorities wrong" are the developers themselves. These last round of changes on may 11th just scream to me once again that they don't play their own game.
Their priority is to break the player-made meta?
bias leads to frustration. most changes on may 11th were good changes. id say only dumbing down mantras was a bad decision, and ofc the dps numbers have to be adjusted now. but taking a slow step-by-step aproach is better then gutting everything and leaving it for months.
@@Coobanmen I would heavily disagree that mantra's were the only dumb thing. Nerfing Power Ele across the board based on its peak DPS in unrealistic situations was an extremely stupid thing for exactly the reason's highlighted in this video. Its straight up like the devs are too lazy to understand their game so they go on sites like snowcrow to see which class they need to nerf. Meanwhile a certain class who is already top tier in every category gets another round of buffs.
well, i do agree that ely needs to have something going for it. maybe new spec in eod is the reason for this nerf. ;O
Firebrand is exactly the same thing as Scourge. Except one spams boons and heals while the other spams barrier and conditions
Personally I like to play daredevil when dps. Why? Because it has some incredible utility on Steal effects on most of bosses. Sloth doing his condi burst? Who cares, here take 10man cleanse all condis. Someone goes down? Oh, I can just teleport them to me and partially revive. Saved many people that were lying on the danger floor. CC? Here take the venom. And actually has some decent numbers as well. And list goes on.
Good video. I've often said that I wish there was more realistic benchmark info available in the form of real logs from real encounters showcasing different, non-cheese comps.
I also kind of wish someone out there was able to test the dps difference on low end vs high end system setups. I see plenty of videos where peoples skills seem to go off quicker, and their abilities just seem more responsive in general. I wonder how many people are playing correctly and simply getting capped by the games performance.
I run reaper, because it’s always going to do a fuckton damage every patch, it requires no brain, second healthbar, less dependence on alac, self sufficient for might, invuln, and quickness. I can shroud 2 to move quick, axe for range. Sustain from damage. I can straight ignore mechanics and keep damage near max even with supports gone.
So many fractal groups where people have been like “not optimal DPS.”
Then at the end of the frac, I’m top DPS because 0% Down-state time.
Being on Arkk and getting the last 4% off solo or duo as reaper even once makes up for less DPS over 100 runs.
can they please buff ele now :(... or not necessary buff but maybe rework slightly so it is not quite so sad
@Rozrywka Po Pracy did you watch the video? no one is saying dammage is a problem for eles, is the lack of utility they bring to the table.
@@xxjzz well if your on weaver thats true but not tempest.
Is it wrong that I love playing the support based classes?
I find the dps race boring, i like to support my team. I really love playing my druid, and even a condi firebrand that can do a bit of support.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO THINKS LIKE ME (22:05 onward), especially on Druid stuff.
I make my raid comps usually based on very similar logic. Good analysis and putting it in words.
The golem isn't the only controlled environment. You could always do MO instead.
It makes me think about in FF14 the Black Mage and Samurai do top damage while they offer zero utility. Dancer/Bard doesn't but has utility. Class damage should first be balanced around their utility, and then maybe you get into how hard it is to play the class.
Also to the point of Healbrands I think they are so popular also because their role compression can involve being an excellent tank. A tank that can heal is valuable, especially since Druid tanks also are slapped with managing immobs and pushes.
Great video! Learned a lot and I love your enthusiasm!!
What spec is the best long term for raids and fractal as melee dps
The most consistent Melee DPS has been Firebrand/Dragonhunter for a long time!
You could have spared me 40 minutes to simply say people are stupid in 40 seconds. But you are right. People arent smart enough to understand the benchmarks in any game. There are a lot of problems with players in MMOs. Theres some weird fascination with trying to be the best in such a pea-brained way. They want to min/max but dont understand the min/maxing and force people to play in their SMOrc mentality.
100% trues are beint told here. I just can't take the time to educate people on this when I'm pugging but it pains me so much that everybody goes on about dps when they are clearly whiping constantly because of other factors..
Yup, we had a saying on TS3 in 2014 when my guild was still alive
"the best DPS is alive DPS" even the best build does nothing if someone is still dead
I only play firebrand in openworld, but I can agree that a class should not be able to dps and boon support in raids/fractals.
Heal Firebrand is actually too strong for 5 man sustain if played well. In a raid, where you have a Druid or Healtempest in a more stable group, there is really no need for the HFB compared to a CodniQuickness FB. The HFB performs in raid pugs only very well, when the Druid is new to the class, unsure in mechanics or actually sleeping. And when a group manages to not do some mechanics. But that is it. I agree, that a Healtempest is safer in a regular raid pug group.
And I am glad that someone points out the strenghts of the druid. I am so tired of hearing Druid players say, they are valuable only because of might stacking and spirits...
Is there no reason to take Tempest support with Druid? Like if Tempest is giving 25might/40prot/regen/vigor while healing and other stuff with druid?
Yeah double healer is standard so running both together is fine, can take more rez power and utility on both and the druid can run lingering light/SnR/any utility skill while the tempest handles might and protection
as a thief main i should have just rerolled to a more versatile class
Have the same thoughts :(
Man a lot of players hate guardian but they have one anyways just to be able to fit in a party to get their dailies
Holosmith go BOOM!
I must agree with Teapot on Ele-Necro healing synergy. On fractals Heal ELE can cancel like 50% mechanic cause of healing ,reflects, stuns+heal not to mention with overload aoe cleanse ^_^ People tend to look at healing classes through,how much plain heal can it do ^_^ but they should look through skills like "aftershock " at ele heal. Like how much healing u save on oasis boss on air phase or Mai Trin ^_^ ....Gr8 video and tackled GW2 from angle people tend not to look at ^_^
Not always agree with this man but he's speaking straight facts. Fb is too damn overloaded, it does basically everything especially in 5 man and it's NEVER bad to have fb and if u stack them then u can do go nuts since ashes stack lmao don't forget other guard utilities that bring lots to table. Other peasant dps classes just bring same dps and maybe cc but that's it. Cfb concept should never exist, cqfb can be viable but again, dmg can't be competitive with other full dps classes. Either rework whole fb kit orrr just do few simple changes like remove ashes stacking on allies, tone down basically all burning stacks applied on everything. It can keeps it's overloaded kit but u can't make it's dmg nowhere great that is currently. Don't get me started on new virtue cfb, it gives fb whole new build that's overall better to the team even more than zeal build which was mainly big burst with lots of vuln. Virtue cfb brings so much more to table it's laughable
If you stack ashes, 1 person gets the damage of the other peoples' ashes.
The other people loose this damage.
Your group does not actually do more damage in total.
It has no effect at all except getting an inflated arc number on 1 person.
It's stupid and leads to toxic behaviour (people casting ashes earlier than what is ideal rotation to "steal" ashes of others for a bigger arc number) but it doesn't break anything other than the addon numbers.
@@aethelwyna8618 I know about that and it just stopid, good cfbs could abuse that knowledge in pugs but overall group gets off the same amount of stacks fbs apply yes but if ur hfb casts first ur burns will do much less dmg so no, the party CAN get less value out of it. Now it can't happen anymore but the concept of ashes applying on others is too strong since burning is most bursty and most solid condi there is. That's the problem in my eyes along with tome 4 being straight up so good even power fb uses it as part of rota
Green and Blue above anything else.
Pug runs are way more fun which is why i made my guild nothing but random ass pug runs
i hate the fact that he glossed over the fact that quickness and alacraty is not evenly shared amongs professions thats what healer brand revenant and mirage are in such a high demand in fractals.
First gw2 class ever. Best senpai.
New guardian elite spec will probably get alacrity
If they get alacrity I'm quitting this game
@@Yusufsanad you'll be back 🤷🏾♂️
@@fai591 I know plenty of people who left because they were sick of overpowered guardian, soooo not the case.
Whoever started this DPS thing ruined a lot of things for the game. There isn't even a way to keep 100% DPS. Survivability is so much better than having to die on a hit or two.
6:51 Too much salt in the teapot.
I feel condi renegade is incredibly powerful. Way more powerful than my power holo.
The British Jack Harlow speaking FAX!
I'm considering giving GW2 a go and came here to see what the PvE game might be like. I didn't understand a word you said, lol. Not the video for me, I guess.
The thing about MMO's is... how many years do I have to play to understand this video?
Please explain all of this to ANet!
the problem on the scourge isn't the dps, it is the fact that the shields are accumulated from everywhere and from all sources.
1 scourge dps with 10 people doesn't bring much 6 scourge dps bring a lot of support in dispell and shields in PVe or WvW.
Except that it is a mechanical problem of the game and not only for scourge class because in solo it isn't a problem.
Moreover scourge dps must inflict condi to send them back for dps it is enough a dispell or a combo light and you lose 3K of dps.
It brings no useful combo zone, nor any finnisher for blast or prebuff.
And he was very low in DPS for that he was getting rejected from all HL content in Dps for 4 years, except on desmina for epi.
On FB, the problem is that it can do everything and that it has no counterpart.
And the fact that the aegis cancels 95% of the attacks of this game.
If mechanics of boss could not be blocked with aegis, it would reduce the FB considerably without affecting anything.
All classes should have a build with decent dps and only do DPS.
It's just that the archetype traits should be more marked, either you support or you dps.
Except that on some classes traits / skills linked are so bad or ussless that you end up with support traits because the others are too weak.
I take an example on the scourge:
With last maj, part of the increase of our dps is that we take Soul Barbs (to increase our dps before it worked only on the power dps) instead of Fear of Death (which increased our CC and helped us to manage our LF)
It's a good thing but beside that our "Punishment skills" are extremely weak, even useless (apart from heal) so instead of taking "Sadistic Searing" (which increases our dps), we use "Desert Empowerment" (which supports our group with free shield).
If "Punishment skills" and " Sadistic Searing trait" were more pronounced in our dps, it would force us to lose support.
And this is how it is in many buid dps in almost every class.
What I mean is that you want to reduce the dps of X or Y because it brings support.
While personally I resonate all classes should have a dps in average (melee higher than distances, dps with combo lower than those without combo).
But it's choices you make in terms of stuff or trait that should be more marked.
If you want to support then you lose dps by choosing support trait and you lose dps because you have to use a stuff with concentration or healling.
Currently we have classes that support alac, cele, power, banners ... and have almost the same dps as a full dps because they don't have to sacrifice traits or stuff with support stats.
And problem comes from the traits and X seconds of buff given by skills or trait and some on not compromise of class.
Example with miralac staff before the last patch if we had put it that natural counterpart that it has in PVP and WvW, so only 1 dodge!
The build in term of dps and boons would have been fixed.
But all other versions of mirage would have been rebalanced.
Most of the patches in GW2 are band-aids and after several years it shows.
Instead of changing what is wrong with a class, trait/skill/mechanic, it changes some value.
Except that the problem is still there.
Scrapper pusher, two hfb tanks with hammer. Soulless horror. I find it easier on the Hb tank than the druid.
Great content. Teapot unchained!