'Perfectly balanced' build

[Patccmoi]

Alright, I was trying mostly for fun to make a build using one of each profession. I wanted all professions to be truly using their prof mainly, so at least half their skill bar should be their own class skills (so no N/Mo healer or something). I'm conscious that it might have some weaknesses that might be overcame by switching a prof, but i don't want these suggestions, because that's not the point. This isn't the build we're using in GvG anyway, it's really just an exercise to see what kind of build could be made if you go 'perfectly balanced'.

Here's what i came up with up to now:

http://www.gwshack.us/400c3

Basically you have N/Mo and Me/Mo spamming hexes for degen and mostly shutdown. Ranger adds to caster shutdown with his interrupts, and he spikes along with the warrior's Evis-Exec using Dual-Savage (with Kindle, it's really nice damage overall and if they spike someone at around 80%, realistic with the degen, it can pretty easily be a straight kill). The Assassin adds significant pressure and can Siphon Speed to add to the hexes.

The Resto Rt is something i started using in the last days and it seems really efficient up to now to counter pressure, especially with softies (since Resilient turns everyone into a tank if they're under degen pressure, and along with Vigorous it pretty much negates the degen). GwT + Infuse works really well too to save spiked people. It's quite efficient overall with no dependency on spirits, which is required if your team isn't spirit-heavy.

I think i might've gone overkill in hex/condition control though, considering Resilient is in the build. But then again, at least it insures that the team should be working at pretty good efficiency most of the time.

In case of splits or the like, Ranger is built so he can easily split from the fight and go help runner.

What do you think? Any particular suggestion or tweak you would make? Keep in mind the 'rules' of the build, which is keep 1 of each prof, and at least half their bar needs to be their primary prof's skills.

[flaming caster]

i personaly think migraine really isnt a verry powerfull skill in gvg and not really worth the elite.
i also think some wards would be nice extra defense.

an infuser with a supperior rune (restoration) dies fast and heals less with infuse since he has low health, never take supperior runes on a healer

im also no big fan of asassins as a replacement of warrior, if you really wish to keep the sin i would drop siphon speed since you would catch a running target with coward anyway

[Patccmoi]

i personaly think migraine really isnt a verry powerfull skill in gvg and not really worth the elite.
i also think some wards would be nice extra defense.

an infuser with a supperior rune (restoration) dies fast and heals less with infuse since he has low health, never take supperior runes on a healer

im also no big fan of asassins as a replacement of warrior, if you really wish to keep the sin i would drop siphon speed since you would catch a running target with coward anyway

Migraine with an interrupt ranger provides pretty good caster defense, and can be used to get rid of wards or the like (Migraine the warder and interrupt them, works pretty well overall).

The superior rune honestly doesn't matter much because of Generous was Tsungrai, which you should be holding nearly all the time and which raises your max health by +146. I prefer to have all my healings at max efficiency with a Resto Rt because you don't have Divine Favor to compensate. Infuse heals for around 400 with this setup (really sufficient), and you can go back full straight by just dropping/recasting GwT for 5E.

Wards could be nice extra defense i agree, but i'm not too sure how i could make them fit in. On my first draft i put the ranger as Cripshot runner and used the Ele midfight with LOrb-LStrike-BFlash and Wards, but i felt low on interrupts to take advantage of Migraine (which i find truly awesome if you have an interrupt ranger around and a war with shock/dblow) and i really like the Dual-Savage-Kindle spike, more than LOrb-LStrike. They could possibly be changed around though, but then you can't really have Heal Party/Extinguish on the ele because on an ele that needs to participate in spikes (so be midbattle) they are really unreliable and way too prone to be interrupted. And if i pick the Ele for combat, i also lose Expel Hexes.

The main reason i put Siphon Speed there on sin it that it's additional hexes in the build so that they're not as easy to remove and a running skill on top. Overall i think this sin build does quite well in high pressure environment because it's high sustained pressure itself and it can kill pretty well. I tend to prefer straight spike Sins like Flourish build, but i played it a lot in GvG and i felt that the pressure in this build wasn't high enough for it to function correctly (you need high sustained damage for Flourish Assassin to shine).

[Dogbert]

I like this build alot :)
Pretty similar to what we run in gvg aswell.

[Hendrixbrother]

I've loved spirit shackles for a long time, but that character really needs all the energy it can get. I'd sub in drain enchant for shackles.

[mrankh]

umm, you come off a little strong with the hex removals. I personally dont thing you need expel if u already have blight and empathetic, or just get rid of empathetic period. Expel on a ranger woudlnt be my thing either. Also you have no debuff whatsoever, and your snares and blind are on your flag runner who will be running flags most of the time..., This build will NOT work nor will it be split friendly which is what a balance is supposed to do.

[Patccmoi]

umm, you come off a little strong with the hex removals. I personally dont thing you need expel if u already have blight and empathetic, or just get rid of empathetic period. Expel on a ranger woudlnt be my thing either. Also you have no debuff whatsoever, and your snares and blind are on your flag runner who will be running flags most of the time..., This build will NOT work nor will it be split friendly which is what a balance is supposed to do.

Price of Failure, Spirit of Failure, Shadow of Fear, Spirit Shackles, Migraine (with an interrupt ranger midfight)... aren't they all debuffs? Resilient Weapon is also one hell of a buff (+24 AL/+6 regen if you have any hex/condition for 21s) and turns any softie into a tank if they have anything on them. It's extremely useful against all the poison/bleeding team, where you don't even bother to remove the conditions you just Resilient them. Along with Watch Yourself!, it's easy to have a 60AL guy suddenly have 104AL. You don't need that much debuff when your casters have warrior level armor. Also got Distortion on Mesmer and Ranger + Life Siphon on Necro (it's regen if nothing else, not awesome but you need to prot him a bit more) and Watch Yourself! on the sin, and Generous was Tsungrai on the Resto Rt (precast self-infuse makes Resto Rt seriously hard to spike down, much more than monks). No one is that much of a softie in the end.

As for snare, the Assassin has Coward! and Siphon Speed (which is basically a 5/1/5 hex cripple as far as snaring goes). Honestly i played often with only Siphon Speed and Bull's Strike for catching running people and it works fine. You siphon one, it gives you a speed buff to catch the other and Siphon him, etc. and in the meantime the warrior picks of snared targets.

I might have too much hex removal, but then again hex teams are becoming increasingly popular. Honestly i'm not too sure what other elite would be worth it on the ranger. Melandru Arrows/Crippling Shot, the most common ones, are kinda pointless here since the build has very little conditions and they'll just get extinguished or the like, or removed along with a hex from BLight. Expel is quite usable on rangers, we do it often and it's great overall.

As for split, i don't think the build has more problem than nearly all hex-heavy builds. The ranger is able to split well, the warrior can easily split from main team too, etc.

I'm not saying there is no weaknesses, but i don't think the points you mentioned are not covered.

[Psychotic]

I like the build, however i do believe you've gone heavy on the anti-hexes. Hex builds aren't bad... but i believe you'll less commonly find such hex-heavy builds. As such i'd probably get rid of expel hexes and give your ranger a better skill(not sure off the top of my head).

[Patccmoi]

I like the build, however i do believe you've gone heavy on the anti-hexes. Hex builds aren't bad... but i believe you'll less commonly find such hex-heavy builds. As such i'd probably get rid of expel hexes and give your ranger a better skill(not sure off the top of my head).

Actually i think i'd leave Expel Hexes on the ranger, honestly there is little worth it (could go Punishing, but it's kind of a waste imo). But i could give the Resto Rt Martyr for elite instead of Empathic Removal. With Resilient on himself he'll be pretty much a tank and it can take care of all the mass condition spreading. Then both hexes and condition pressure are much harder to apply.

[Psychotic]

that might be a good option.

[Djinn Effer]

Your build honestly doesn't have enough healing. It would be very easy to chain your Monk, which effectively means your entire team will die shortly afterwords.

Ritualist healers look good in design, but not in application; I've tried, yes they suck.

I've been gone from GW for ~3 months, so I don't know the current meta thats floating around but you should ask yourself if your build can effectively, not so much counter it but stand up against it. This is because you can't run exact counter builds, because then you are a gimmick and easily beat by another team. (Rock, Paper, Scissors gameplay)

So, my suggestion to you is watch top guilds and keep track of their builds. Most of the top 20-40. Then from that determine what could best fight against those teams and what would be most effective at doing so. Builds most reflect the metagame to some extent, ignoring it completely is just going to end up in catastrophic failure.

Like I said though, I've been gone 3 months so I can't give any further suggestions at the moment as I don't know the new meta(s). I do have a post somewhere around here though, with a good way to think about making builds if you can find it. It was probably over a year ago that it was posted, but it should still be relevent in builds today.

Anyways, good luck with your build.

[Patccmoi]

Your build honestly doesn't have enough healing. It would be very easy to chain your Monk, which effectively means your entire team will die shortly afterwords.

Ritualist healers look good in design, but not in application; I've tried, yes they suck.

I've been gone from GW for ~3 months, so I don't know the current meta thats floating around but you should ask yourself if your build can effectively, not so much counter it but stand up against it. This is because you can't run exact counter builds, because then you are a gimmick and easily beat by another team. (Rock, Paper, Scissors gameplay)

So, my suggestion to you is watch top guilds and keep track of their builds. Most of the top 20-40. Then from that determine what could best fight against those teams and what would be most effective at doing so. Builds most reflect the metagame to some extent, ignoring it completely is just going to end up in catastrophic failure.

Like I said though, I've been gone 3 months so I can't give any further suggestions at the moment as I don't know the new meta(s). I do have a post somewhere around here though, with a good way to think about making builds if you can find it. It was probably over a year ago that it was posted, but it should still be relevent in builds today.

Anyways, good luck with your build.


For some reason i feel talked to as if i didn't know much at all hehe.

Well, obviously with NF coming this build wouldn't hold now anyway.

For Resto Healers, they don't just look good on paper... We used them for tons of games as primary healer along with only 1 monk and did very good with them beating quite a bit of top 100 guilds (i'm in Illu). DeeR took their 3 Rt/Me build they used in tournament from us after we pretty much destroyed their balanced attempt (2 wars-2 mes, common stuff...) in GvG with it the night before.

I think this build could've worked against quite a bit of stuff we faced in the end. But it remains a gimmick of sort (not that much since it IS balanced, but still) and i can't say that everything would've been covered either. Sadly didn't get the chance to try, we started our 3 Rt/Me build in the end and kept doing it with very good success until ANet decided to bug offensive spirits so that they don't attack half the time now. Happily realized that when facing Nuke at the start of season with 1 lone warrior killing my 3 attacking spirits without them hitting him once...

[Djinn Effer]

For some reason i feel talked to as if i didn't know much at all hehe.

..Well, you are posting a PvP build on a majorly PvE forum. I didn't mean to come off that way; but, it is generally safe to assume most people on GW don't know what they're talking about either way.

(P.S. Listing DeeR doesn't exactly give you much credibility either - just for future reference.)

But like I said, I've been gone three months; I was trying to be helpful.

[Symbolic Self]

You're mainly being condescending.

[Djinn Effer]

You're mainly being condescending.

It happens.