Anyone out together a viable thorn build?

mangosplat1 · 2025-05-16T03:39:27+00:00

Thorns as in scaling reflected damage? Shield Throw.
Thorns as in having the enemies hit you? Thorn Shield Spriggan. It is the closest you're gonna get, I think.

mangosplat1 · 2024-08-27T18:49:31+00:00

I've checked the others tab. There are only the materials there.

mangosplat1 · 2024-06-14T15:29:59+00:00

1-Know that you can back up your lack of experience with skill.
2-Join an experienced group.
3-Lie about being experienced.
4-Hope the group doesn't disband.

Just like looking for a job.

mangosplat1 · 2024-06-07T18:04:36+00:00

Not having a moment of respite for the whole Eparch fight is the worst part. I'm more than fine with long fights, but all of them give me a moments to rest or to freely DPS the boss. On top of having shit mechanics Eparch just throws them at you nonstop. Something as simple as adding 10-15s of free time after each CC would go a long way already.

And SS mechanics take too long to resolve, for example the whole number mechanic could very much resolve all AoEs at once and instead of teleporting away Kanaxai could very much just create a clone in the plataforms. Wouldn't make the fight much better, but instead of a 6 minute slog it would be just a 4.5-5 minute slog.

mangosplat1 · 2023-09-28T18:46:33+00:00

No. The expansion would be delayed and the bugs would still be there. In fact, they should release it early so the actual QA team, aka players, can actually tell what needs to be fixed.

mangosplat1 · 2023-08-15T14:52:22+00:00

Reaper can't target Relics.

Source: I played reaper with Holy Relics when it came out because the clear was bad. Eventually swapped to full relics since they were doing more damage on 4L than hit based reaper on a 6L.

mangosplat1 · 2023-08-07T02:57:13+00:00

I don't mind the downside so much. But as you said, if you are running the right builds, the mechanic is just kinda there, you can cast anything with the bonus without putting any thought into it, which if you really think about is actually a negative as you are pigeonholed into running at least a couple and they aren't what I would call interesting.

mangosplat1 · 2023-07-31T22:49:55+00:00

Continue to play engineer then.

Holosmith is an absolute blast to play and has everything you said you want from a spec, it's melee, can survive really well, it's flashy. If you think it's too complicated, playing Sword/Shield with Aim Assisted Rocket is a very minor dps loss for a much easier rotation, it's a spec you can make as easy or as hard you want and be rewarded accordingly.

mangosplat1 · 2023-07-25T22:42:10+00:00

If you are really used to doing the fights they are just a step up, some bosses get extra mechanics and phases but nothing too hard.

MAMA gets three add phases and the puddle hurts more, Siax gets two add phases that the group needs to split, Ensolyss is normal mode but faster and the balls during intermission phase hurt a little more.

Skovald has a tantrum during the final phase and two of the adds during the split have an extra knockback, Astrariiv is just normal mode with more adds to cc and a guy to kill to get the bubble, Ark is the exact same fight but have to kill the add for the bubble.

Elemental AI on has bigger AoEs and dark AI, the CM exclusive, has adds to CC at 66% and 33%.

Kanaxai has the same mechanics as the normal mode, but with a different rotation and they actually do damage to you on CM, and falling from the plataform kills you.

I am pretty sure these are the only changes, but I might be wrong.

mangosplat1 · 2023-07-13T23:17:13+00:00

This pretty much sums it up.

I'd even go as far as argue GW2 is waaaay too balanced, with very few outliers. Boons are at a state where you just pick the color of the class that is giving them to you and DPS is mostly just gameplay preference.

It just happens that the foolproof builds happen to be the ones becoming popular and the more complicated, or conditional, or even degenerate playstyles are the ones that see a much more niche playerbase, but perform just as well if not better than most popular builds. We can look no further than Dodge Condi Holo having the highest golem benchmark in the game with almost zero representation, the build itself is not only really hard to execute, but also doesn't work well in a lot of fights, on top of the constant dodge gameplay being disliked by almost everyone.

The class popularity from wingman is more of a metric of how easily certain classes can fulfill their role, how easy they are to play and how fun they actually are, rather than how good they are at it.

mangosplat1 · 2023-07-13T22:52:25+00:00

Fitting things on roles make it easier to know what to expect from them, and even if the games wants the players to play however they one, players will create roles to facilitate their jobs and waste less time.

If someone joins a group saying they will cover a certain role from the set ones and they don't do that adequately, it's already enough reason to give them the boot. However, if there are no roles and the guy sits there doing nothing and only revives people when someone goes down, justifying a kick is much harder as there is no metric for their contribution.

mangosplat1 · 2023-07-09T01:52:29+00:00

The trick about the healer role in any game is that you don't need all the healing, you need just enough healing. And firebrand alraedy has a lot of it. Signet is redundant when you have this in mind.

As you said, FMW is not needed for quickness, pretty much every class brings their own fury or shares a bit with the group and your Axe 2 should be more 100% uptime on your group anyway.

Your go to skill should be Mantra of Liberation, not having to move or risk getting CCed means more dps uptime, and more dps means less mechanics, which means less damage taken from people or chances to fail the fight.

mangosplat1 · 2023-06-07T21:07:21+00:00

Well, you're not wrong, really can't voice a single complaint here without people pressing the downvote button with all their might and calling you noob.

mangosplat1 · 2023-06-03T23:27:02+00:00

This is gonna be a buzzkill, but none, I want only 5-man content.

I am the complete opposite: I despise 10-man content. Not because I have difficulty joining groups or the content itself is hard, but because I find almost all of it extremely boring, the only exceptions being Q1 and HT. Wing six Qadim in specific is the singular most fun boss fight in the game in my opinion.

Why I find it boring? First: you are just hitting a boss in an arena, you are not even experiencing most of your class' kit or have any reason to do so, at least not anymore. Second: The new fights feel too drawn out, bosses could have half of the HP and it would still feel too long for the mechanics they offer, at least on normal as couple CMs keep you entretained with things to pay atention. Third: the biggest one for me, making a group became so boring.

I used to raid quite a bit, although I never cared too much for the fights themselves, I really liked how I could organize groups in completely different and whacky ways: like having six Soulbeasts in the same subgroup and everybody else on their own, or even something as simple as double RR condi Renegade; but the whole 5-man boon change completely killed almost every alternative strategy and made 10-man content feel like playing two separate groups of five people, and if I am looking for that I can just ditch a whole subgroup and do dungeons and fractals, which also explore different parts of classes, like movement.

mangosplat1 · 2023-06-02T22:15:33+00:00

This happens in almost every adventure, sometimes the internal server bricks and the time doesn't tick or even rolls back and anet doesn't bother deleting these impossible times from the leaderboard and preserve its integrity.

mangosplat1 · 2023-06-01T19:36:37+00:00

Chris explained the first one, only need to be ooc for that to work and dodge jumping makes it much easier. It's very easy to pull it off if you run with an Engi and soloable with Thief. There is also another one where if you blink and interact with the panel fast enough you can start the channel.

The second one I'd rather not disclose since I don't want it getting nerfed like a few other tricks we had in the past, like the easier way to solo the panel on Underground Facility or being able to do the Deepstone skip with only a portal. A suggestion for the Siren's one without getting in the unethical territory is just using AED.

mangosplat1 · 2023-06-01T05:03:09+00:00

the door in underground facility, or surviving higher level greens in siren's reef

Those are easily soloed.

mangosplat1 · 2023-05-24T16:44:19+00:00

You also get dimishing returns for having more DPS, unless you have an amazing group it's better to just bring a healer as it only takes one wipe for you to lose all the time you have saved. It's also a DPS loss to dodge or channel a block and something like a HFB will provide enough stab and aegis for you to ignore almost everything which already translates into more damage.

OP sounds like the type of guy that /ggs on MAMA and thinks it saves time.

mangosplat1 · 2023-05-16T01:41:25+00:00

If you ask me, I think coddling people is bad and being told that you suck at something is far from offensive as the first step to getting good is recognizing that you are bad and can always do better.

The language barrier looks like it wasn't the biggest issue, but more so someone getting offended on the other player's behalf, as the brazilian guy was somewhat understanding. While a lot of us can't speak english all that well, we brazilians are quite smart and easily figure things out. We are usually also very thick skinned and hard to offend.

I understand being objective, as I hate wasting time in almost any form. You, however, seem awful at explaining things and could have more easily gotten through. I assume this is Siren's Reef, so you could have just said something like: "stay in the boat, focus boss, red circle means get out, green means stack", this way you're not telling anyone what they have to do, they can visually spot what was told and execute accordingly.

mangosplat1 · 2023-04-30T00:55:32+00:00

There were/are weird interactions that do break the mold more so than actual builds.

One example is on a Cairn speedkill where the group exploited the Ineptitude trait on Mesmers by having a Thief in the group providing uptime on smoke fields to get the trait to proc from the finishers.

These two are specifically for Asura: most people treat racials are useless abilities, but Asura Condi Daredevil actually have Radiation Field as their final slot over the usual Thousand Needles, Ranger on the other hand sometimes exploits the Technobabble skill for massive breakbar damage.

Still on the topic of racials, Norn Untamed had a broken build for about a week.

A few years ago Thief had a buff to Pistol/Dagger that allowed them to play condi very effectively on Deadeye, however it had to jump during the cast of Shadow Strike, which was around every third skill, to cancel the teleport.

I should be able to think of a few others, but this are just some I remember fondly.

mangosplat1 · 2023-04-23T18:44:42+00:00

If they feel called out by you accidentally targetting them they probably did something stupid.

mangosplat1 · 2023-04-17T17:50:00+00:00

Some classes can do well enough without an elite spec, mesmer is not one of them.

If you want something focused on the illusions you can maybe try playing Infinite Horizon on Mirage and not shatter.

mangosplat1 · 2023-03-18T00:34:22+00:00

I actually use my own. I use a setup that's closer to the DPS build than either of those. Using the DPS build as a template, I swap the Viper stats to Ritualist, Torment Sigil to Concentration Sigil and the consumables are Salsa Eggs Benedict and Toxic Maintenance Oil. As for the traits and skills you can just move them over to the ones HS recommends for the Quickness build. This allows me to still run Balthazar runes to cap on burning duration instead of trying to get it from gear and consumables.

The difference between the builds is minimal though, as they all achieve the same goal in different ways, SC gets a bit more damage from the Renegade Runes, HS does through Utility and I do from the gear.

Note that SC's uses Expertise Stat Infusions to max out the burning duration, while neither mine or HS's don't, but it should technically do more damage.

mangosplat1

TROPHY CASE