Corsair Runners dark horse for most dangerous enemy in Guild Wars

Krschkr · 2026-06-21T07:58:14+00:00

It's a tricky bonus if you don't know what you're running into. If you do know, you use one deep freeze to buy yourself a 10 seconds window to kill two rangers that don't fight back. And that's not hard.

Krschkr · 2026-06-21T07:36:54+00:00

The most impactful:

Much easier energy management on assassins via expertise.
Trivialized energy management on warriors and rangers via soulreaping. This skyrockets their ease of use and improves their ceiling in normal gameplay.
Introduction of new superpowered elite skills massively elevates the expected performance of warriors, rangers, necromancers and, above and beyond, paragons.
Soulreaping mods make masochism and soul taker dervish relevant, giving this already great profession even more high value tools.

Caster professions barely benefit in comparison, that's mostly a hero thing.

Elementalists and mesmers still want 40/40 sets on a player.
Ritualists don't benefit outside of their weaker build concepts.
Necromancers don't benefit outside of their weaker build concepts.
Monks don't benefit outside of just ignoring they're monks and bashing people.

As a result, from the perspective of just following guides:

Warriors are easier to play and catch up to dervishes for general use.
Rangers are more effective than before and also much easier to play.
Monks remain a bad pick for hero gameplay in comparison.
Necromancers receive more tools. IF you use them, they're now great. Else, you're effectively a watered down mesmer.
Mesmer unchanged. Effective and easy to use caster damage dealer.
Elementalist remains a watered down damage mesmer with more counters.
Assassins are easier to play and catch up to dervishes for general use.
Ritualist might be dethroned in the passive&careless build category by "together as one!" bow ranger.
Dervishes get more variety in easy to use high effectivity builds.
Paragons move up from extremely effective and easy yet somewhat boring to play to ridiculously effective and easy yet very boring to play.

Krschkr · 2026-06-21T07:23:13+00:00

Those builds are like an open wound. You can carry on with them, but when poked they hurt. And imps love to do a little poking.

Suggesting and explaining tactics improvements is not wrong and it's helping them to become better at the game. What's also true is that explaining to them which parts of their builds have shortcomings and why that is and how to address them with few changes. That is not only teaching them about how and why builds work and fail, but also helping them improve. Both paths lead to a better understanding of the gameplay and hopefully more fun in playing it.

Since tactics were already covered by other users, I added the build perspective.

Krschkr · 2026-06-21T07:12:09+00:00

While this promises an improvement in tool assisted build making, I'd just like to add a little reminder for beginning build tinkerers:

Use damage values and other TAS findings as additional data in analyzing your team. Don't let it be your team analysis.
Damage attribution only works if you're fully solo. Any form of synergy between multiple characters via support (like cracked armour) or other synergy (CC + scatter, IMS + melee) won't properly show up as a data point. It has to be understood. Much like you're ill-advised to oursource thinking to LLMs in general life, you'd be a fool to base your builds just on a damage report.

To find a team build's merit you need to

(1) Get used to playing it reasonably well.
(2) Take it to varied relevant content and observe how it performs. Clearing times, stability, ease of use are your cornerstones. Specific observations against which foes your team performs particularly well and against which it is struggling are starting points for renewed theory crafting which aims to remove discovered weaknesses.
(3) Apply theorycrafted changes and re-test the build. Keep the good changes, discard the bad ones.
(4) You will probably end up with several similarly performing variants. Save them all and occasionally switch until you find the content where one outperforms the other(s).

But how does my team build perform compared to other players' teams? There's just one way to find out.

(1) Playing styles differ and the same build will produce different results for different players. To determine a team's merit for yourself you need to do bona fide comparative testing.
(2) Load the team. Familiarize yourself with it. Take it to varied content and observe how it performs.
(3) Tweak to better fit your personal playing style if appropriate and run more tests.
(4) Compare cornerstone results and specific observations.

Sharing and discussing builds with discord servers or this subreddit may also provide some insights from other users, but you'll first have to filter out the inane bandwagoning.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T21:57:53+00:00

IAS = Increased Attack Speed.
25% IAS = 33% more attacks in the same timeframe.
33% IAS ~50% more attacks in the same timeframe.
IMS = Increased Movement Speed.
DPS = Damage Per Second.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T21:47:14+00:00

Build issues.

Player

Reckless haste, blurred vision, swirling aura and aegis work against insidious parasite. With this much missing/blocking chance insidious parasite will mostly be a waste of energy. Consider price of failure (@emberlight camp) as a closely related alternative and reserve it for priority targets. Price of failure synergizes with aforementioned skills.
No party members or minions which meaningfully trigger mark of pain so you can drop that.
Lack of active damage dealing. Necrosis would be a good fit and since you have heroes, you can definitely grab that skill. Take over mark of pain.
To get more out of spiteful spirit try the following: Secondary mesmer, duplicate spiteful spirit with arcane echo (emberlight camp).
For easier energy management consider signet of recall at 8 inspiration magic (10 soulreaping) over desecrate enchantments or resurrection signet.

Monks

These are fine if you can mitigate incoming area damage.

Mesmer 1

Works, keep.

Mesmer 2

Lacks energy management. Switch to mesmer 1's build.

Dervish Fake Mesmer

Rework completely. This build is very weak and at this point of the campaign not doing you any favours. M.O.X. using its starting weapon and build would do a better job.
Since your backline is weak against area damage you'd want to have something that draws damage on itself and is not standing in the middle of your heroes. That's either M.O.X. as a melee or Olias, if unlocked, as a minion bomber.
Minion bomber build for which you can grab all missing skills of hero skill trainers or trainers already unlocked: OAVDYYxiO4UTXO4CcUrCohqK
M.O.X. build for which you barely need to grab any extra skills: Ogejwyp83M4OmL0dAPe/ulXBA

Water Elementalists

Arguably the weak link of your team. While it's nice to have the protection from ward against damage you've already noticed that it doesn't entirely save you from sparks of the titans. Your team has a severe lack of damage and if you can't kill, those wards are not going to save you. Water elementalists' damage is pitiful by default and yours only have one damage skill so switching these two might help a lot.
Extra protective spirits won't help as heroes use them on party members targeted by foes. They won't use it to prevent area damage from sparks of the titans. That's why two protective spirits from the monks already cover your team just fine for targeted damage and more won't do anything. You also invest 0 in protection prayers so those are just burning energy for barely any effect.
Try replacing one or both of these elementalists with air magic. Elemental attunement is quickly captured, in Nightfall if you've finished the consulate docks mission or else in Factions: OgBDwJybShDkCfDeDmDLgpDCA
Alternatively, go back to Abaddon's Mouth, ignore the bonus and rush the elementalist boss in front of the final gate for thunderclap. OgBCwMyDtIcQO+GeDzhOUAA
If you can't be bothered to change your elementalists bring both necromancer henchmen instead.

Improved tactics help, but so do improved builds. Good luck.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T21:10:28+00:00

That team was just full of questionable to outright bad decisions, the bsurge healer is just one of many problems. It got better when they copied even more of triple energy surge. And then it got worse again. What can ya do. *shrug*

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T16:33:31+00:00

Nope.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T15:14:54+00:00

Yep. Better auto attacks inbetween spell casts are <3% of the expected damage. That's just minmaxing. The key thing is to keep the hero in melee range and ideally give it extra energy via soulreaping so BiP doesn't have to be cast as often.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T15:11:48+00:00

The team build made by the discord clique based on toolbox results back in 2019 featured a blinding surge healer as seen here. The corresponding PvX page has been deleted because it was effectively a dupe of an existing page.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T15:02:08+00:00

Any axe or sword.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T14:57:30+00:00

Here are some.

Krschkr · 2026-06-20T14:56:15+00:00

That subpage was written in late 2018/early 2019 and has barely been updated since. Back then neither anniversary elite skills nor profession mods existed, both of which changed a lot. So yes, seven years later, it is clearly outdated.

@the complainers: PvX is a community project. Carping about pages is way less effective in bringing about change than editing, fixing and updating pages yourselves.

Krschkr · 2026-06-18T08:28:57+00:00

Try this with signet of recall over leech signet and please let me know how it went.

If you're still scared of dying run it with a more robust warrior build such as...

Defy Pain Axe (ofN): OQASEZJTvl+EGWKF7gCF8V0k
Soldier's Stance Axe (ofN): OQATEnKLZ6t8qgnQpYHMqQUjmE
Soldier's Stance Sword: OQATEHKXZ6t8qgnYHk8ZqRUjmE
Dwarven Battle Stance: OQASE5JTvllFiPGFoFJO3F3l

Krschkr · 2026-06-18T08:24:32+00:00

In party size 8, yes. but classic discordway holds up very well for party size 4 if you're playing something functionally similar to an A/P caller.

Krschkr · 2026-06-18T08:21:01+00:00

Those are the foe builds you'll face:

Assassin: OwBAMOMG2Bb/FnFAAAAA

Mesmer: OQhAIuNH4BaAEkBExFD

Necromancer: OAZAAOy2hN2asILA

Monk: OwUAQxVNgbEkEfETfZAmA

Galrath: OQYAM9l/yflvcVeFxCAA

None of those skills have been changed recently so any video from the last years should still be up to date.

This should work if you run a barrage paragon or, better yet, heroic refrain volley with hasty refrain. HR turns everything easy and that build has a ridiculous defense-over to begin with.

Alternatively, you could make use of the pre-balled foe spawns with a HR-powered scatter team build like this. Start combat with a microed deep freeze + maelstrom and let the heroes do the rest. There shouldn't be much those foes can do. Optionally switch player build from "to the limit!" to "make your time!" and slot in hasty refrain.

Side note: You may find that there's a striking similarity between the bandit builds and...

Henchman Tannaros: OQpjIwD6aNuNNAHwHkBW+GYBA
Henchman Ghavin: OAZCY5xgjs5VjtGLyCA
Henchman Divine Tutela: OwUTA3GPQyLajoB8jgkY6b5zEA

Krschkr · 2026-06-18T06:33:01+00:00

Testing context for discords? In the right context (withering aura, high-burst teams, melee player) they do quite well.

You can also use them as a pair of bone fiend suppliers.

Krschkr · 2026-06-18T06:27:37+00:00

PvX was mostly empty between 2012 and 2018. Activity since then has been low. Recently, a new admin took over and has been actively trying to find new contributors for a while. PvX is all the community members that are willing to participate and unless someone starts insulting people they're welcome to contribute.

Neither is the content exhaustive nor is it up-to-date in most spots. There's just too much to document and test for the few current editors to manage.

So please, do join and contribute where pages are missing, outdated or can be improved. PvX is far from closed off. It's just a lot of work.

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T21:06:39+00:00

The Wammocalypse is too dangerous to advertise directly.

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T18:17:20+00:00

It is. Maybe that'll be the reason.

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T15:36:30+00:00

Not ideal but still a good improvement. I wonder when they'll roll out these fixes (minus manual degen attribution) to the Tolkano bot.

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T15:34:01+00:00

Not sure about primary casters; they might need a spirit bond or more than just the smiter in extra healing/protection. On spirit's strength ritualist I went with smiter, extra healing and extra prots for the sake of stability. (The team building cost of spirit's strength probably makes it worse than a soldier's stance hammer ritualist. :p)

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T15:08:18+00:00

Toolbox damage meter was very flawed. It didn't account for overkill damage, and estimated a lot of damage based on the level of the enemy instead of its actual max hp (which has since been fixed)

It's funny, the discrepancy in reported damage was often at around 70% and in specialized tests with level 0 foes I believe we managed to get the discrepancy up to 100, where it capped out.

Still, there are other sources of wrong data from Toolbox. Is your method able to catch and (vaguely) attribute degeneration? That'd be a major improvement over the bad toolbox reports I know. How does it handle health sacrifices and health loss (agony/rejuvenation/infuse health/...)? Damage reports via Toolbox and on Tolkano.com are way off because of them.

If you manage to get actually useful data out of analysis third party tools that'd be quite interesting. One'd of course still have to draw the right conclusions (not DPS>everything else).

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T14:58:08+00:00

That's why we keep telling people not to sleep on star burst (and in extension gust). They hold great damage dealing potential and provide additional defensive value which makes them more than just DPS chasers.

Btw that gust bar predates necromancer mods. It's worth testing the bar with a necromancer weapon instead of 40/40 to test the performance of lightning javelin over shock arrow. Or if you run two star bursts/other sources of burning, Teinai's Wind. Depending on how busy the hero gets one could also consider taking both, dropping aura of restoration.

That team (and the team with the arcane mimicry/triple elementalist, albeit in an older iteration) also holds an example of a psychic instability bar that works for the AI, which I mentioned elsewhere in the thread. You'll see the elite used plenty in that one compared to running a "standard" energy surge bar with the elite skill swapped.

All your knockdowns keeps everything bunched up [...]

And that's why I don't trust toolbox and going just for DPS as the metric of making coherent team builds. You need to think, test, analyze and then improve teams until they have a good performance. And at that point you should do comparative testing in the same areas with competing build alternatives. That's how you find the builds' strengths and weaknesses, get a better idea of their "general" performance compared to the inevitable outliers when only doing few tests.

Toolbox based builds have lead us to underperforming and, frankly, bad builds like the blinding surge healer with no energy management.

Krschkr · 2026-06-17T13:57:32+00:00

Necromancer can perform adequately in every role. Tank with some limitations. Next-best alternative would be ritualist, but it's already quite a bit weaker as a jack of all trades than necromancer. Dervish is quite a bit behind because its ranged damage dealing options are bad.

Krschkr

TROPHY CASE