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Countering the post Mod2 GWF IronVan in PvP
rustlord
Member Posts: 1,454 Arc User
I share the same problem that my fellow rogues here are currently facing. Right now all of us are hurting so bad against an equally geared GWF who is occasionally really smart. I want to share some of the things I do that helps keep me alive in tricky situations. Some of which are not really easy to perform and doesn't guarantee a win. But they help me survive, so I thought they might be helpful to you as well.
1. Successive prones weaved in with heavy critical damage is the biggest problem right now. I am referring to the GWF that slots Takedown (15s) and Frontline Surge (18s) topped with Indomitable Battle Strike (14s) which is their hardest hitting burst encounter. The reason I specified the cooldown leads to my first method: I count their relative cooldowns. Loosely taking Recovery and other whatnot into equation, their cooldowns are about less than twice faster than our ITC/Lashing Blades. Knowing when to anticipate that very predictable rotation of theirs will improve your dodging maneuvers tenfold, barring latency.
2. Another technique that I find handy is the "forward dodge flurry" a term I came up with but I know some of you might be familiar with the move. First, you make sure that their Frontline Surge is expended. As you dodge Threatening Rush/Takedown, try to dodge forward so that your position will be behind the GWF. Immediately begin the opening Duelist Flurry as the GWF repositions the camera to face you -- and by the time he rushes into you, he will be running facefirst into the third part of your Flurry. At this point you are already immune to his knockdown powers. Try to weave in this move with your ITC, dodge rotations and it should improve your survivability against them.
3. Learn to jump as you execute the Duelist Flurry moves. Imagine that you are hitting the 3 dummies in the trade of blades per Flurry click, creating a triangle. This somewhat creates small deadzone that any smart GWF would try to avoid. Any GWF in his right mind won't want to be hit with a Flurry, regardless of whether he is able to facetank it. Do this to create a little extra threat to him and buy yourself some time. Don't weave any of these moves unless you are fairly sure Frontline Surge and Takedown have been expended.
4. The average distance that a GWF's sprint can cover (if my rough estimation is correct) would be somewhere between 80-100' range. If you are this far from the GWF, see #2, begin that rotation as he sprints towards you. Even though it doesn't help reduce damage, you are at least immune for a short time. The key idea is to expend their prone encounters as fast as you can, while being immune against it.
5. Courage Breaker -- weird choice. I get that a lot. But anyway, it goes through unstoppable and slows them by 90%. Unlike the other mobile classes, the GWF sprint is affected by the speed debuff, putting them in slow motion for 10 seconds iirc. Position yourself to the side or behind him and wear him down using ranged powers. If ITC is up, enter melee to cast a full Duelist Flurry. Otherwise use this time to escape or wait for backup in a non-prearranged 1v1.
Feel free to improve upon my ideas, offer corrections and share your own tactics.
1. Successive prones weaved in with heavy critical damage is the biggest problem right now. I am referring to the GWF that slots Takedown (15s) and Frontline Surge (18s) topped with Indomitable Battle Strike (14s) which is their hardest hitting burst encounter. The reason I specified the cooldown leads to my first method: I count their relative cooldowns. Loosely taking Recovery and other whatnot into equation, their cooldowns are about less than twice faster than our ITC/Lashing Blades. Knowing when to anticipate that very predictable rotation of theirs will improve your dodging maneuvers tenfold, barring latency.
2. Another technique that I find handy is the "forward dodge flurry" a term I came up with but I know some of you might be familiar with the move. First, you make sure that their Frontline Surge is expended. As you dodge Threatening Rush/Takedown, try to dodge forward so that your position will be behind the GWF. Immediately begin the opening Duelist Flurry as the GWF repositions the camera to face you -- and by the time he rushes into you, he will be running facefirst into the third part of your Flurry. At this point you are already immune to his knockdown powers. Try to weave in this move with your ITC, dodge rotations and it should improve your survivability against them.
3. Learn to jump as you execute the Duelist Flurry moves. Imagine that you are hitting the 3 dummies in the trade of blades per Flurry click, creating a triangle. This somewhat creates small deadzone that any smart GWF would try to avoid. Any GWF in his right mind won't want to be hit with a Flurry, regardless of whether he is able to facetank it. Do this to create a little extra threat to him and buy yourself some time. Don't weave any of these moves unless you are fairly sure Frontline Surge and Takedown have been expended.
4. The average distance that a GWF's sprint can cover (if my rough estimation is correct) would be somewhere between 80-100' range. If you are this far from the GWF, see #2, begin that rotation as he sprints towards you. Even though it doesn't help reduce damage, you are at least immune for a short time. The key idea is to expend their prone encounters as fast as you can, while being immune against it.
5. Courage Breaker -- weird choice. I get that a lot. But anyway, it goes through unstoppable and slows them by 90%. Unlike the other mobile classes, the GWF sprint is affected by the speed debuff, putting them in slow motion for 10 seconds iirc. Position yourself to the side or behind him and wear him down using ranged powers. If ITC is up, enter melee to cast a full Duelist Flurry. Otherwise use this time to escape or wait for backup in a non-prearranged 1v1.
Feel free to improve upon my ideas, offer corrections and share your own tactics.
Post edited by rustlord on
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And while using courage breaker may prolong the fight, it's not very useful. Wait til someone (hopefully with a prone) rotates and kill him together (with SE,) til then, just survive as best you can.
Lurker's Assault is leaning more towards a stealth-based TR, which generally fares better against the IV GWF. So if I were to disagree, I wouldn't dismiss CB as entirely useless. I would put it second to SE in terms of utility against the GWF in a 1v1.
And IMO the range of Frontline Surge is just ridiculous.
WTB Class Reroll please
IMO CB's more of defensive tool within team-play environment -- an assistance tool to save other players, like, if a GWF goes into Unstoppable and sticks to your CW, and your CW can't dodge anymore... I'd use CB in those cases to buy him time to escape.
Would it not be a better choice to use Bloodbath during one of the Unstoppable activations to basically offset whatever regen/heal surging up during that moment of total CC immunity? GWF goes into Unstoppable -> You go into Bloodbath -> spend time in BB mode to recharge Shadow Strike -> attacks with BB to offset shave off regen/heal HP -> SS and stealth away -> Unstoppable ends ... ?
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
The only possible way to beat a GWF is to pop Shocking Execution after his Soulforged procs AFTER your team chain prones him to death. IV Sent's are practically the only class that requires this much effort to beat, which is why I make it a point to not play against them and just ask my teammates to not engage them when they're on our node and just leave that point to me so they don't gain any points from it. I'm a TR with only 12.5k GS. I may not be able to kill the GWF, but at the very least I will be able to contribute to the team by staunching the point gain of the enemy team from that node. That's the point where they start talking smack. My teammates can then concentrate on getting the other nodes while I do my best to keep the enemy fixated on me.
There are a variety of reasons why the IV Sent is so impossible to take down alone and the upcoming PVP patch should address a few of em such as the amount of time you spend recovering from a prone, the effectiveness of Temp. HP and healing (Healing Depression), CC resistances and more. I personally think Healing Depression will be a start. Though I believe that DC's should get their Righteousness mechanic removed or toned down to 15% if Healing Depression is to be implemented.
Some other possible solutions for this would be the following.
- Move Deep Gash to T4 Destroyer or fix it over all. This is one of the IV Sent's main contributors for their DPS. If it gets fixed, we could be able to at least live through one of their rotations. If it gets moved to T4 Destroyer, at the very least Sentinels won't be able to benefit from this perma-critical bleed while PVE Destroyers will still be able to make use of it.
- Remove the Temp. HP from the Unstoppable mechanic. Temp. HP staunches whatever damage we do against GWFs when they are under its effects. This, in conjunction with Regeneration and Unstoppable Recovery, allows them to heal back some of their base HP while their Temp. HP soaks the damage we deal, not to mention the added Damage Reduction they get from Unstoppable further reduces the amount of Temp. HP they lose since it reduces the damage we deal against them.
- Reduce the range of Threatening Rush or put charges on it. This way, mobile classes will be able to kite them somehow. Threatening Rush is spammable and enables unlimited use, while Dodges and Teleports cost stamina which is a limited resource. By adding a charge mechanic to Threatening Rush, it will not be as spammable as before. And by reducing the range of this At-Will, the squishy classes should be able to kite them a little better. They can also increase the range of a CW's and DC's Dodge since these 2 classes are somehow the most prone to this. Rogues are fine as they are.
And that's basically it. Just by these simple changes, it will not become an issue if GWF's stack all the deflect and defenses they want, it will no longer be an issue because there will no longer be any Temp. HP to staunch whatever DPS we throw at them whenever they pop Unstoppable. It's the Temp. HP that needs to be removed. They can keep the other toys but removing the Temp. HP mechanic from Unstoppable will actually allow us to dent them. Unstoppable Recovery and Regen will not become much of an issue because of Healing Depression, but the amount of Temp. HP they gain by popping a single full bar of Determination just prevents us from damaging them whenever they're Unstoppable. Just imagine how a match would play if the Temp. HP is gone. Even if they have the Prones, you will still be able to dent their thick armor if played well.
1. I believe the Threatening Rush issue has been addressed on the preview, you cant spam it, now it has a CD after every use, very easy to dodge, it's still good as a gap closer but it wont hit you at all- it was done to counter the animation canceling.
2. Unstoppable is fine, it gives less than 7% temp HP and heals for 2.5% on preview atm, if it is nerfed the class will become an underdog once again. I believe a lot of the people who play TR do not understand that different classes function differently and 1 class cannot beat every single other class in game just by default like rogues did pre mod2. Though I must agree IV Sentinel is currently overpowered in pvp on live the changes I saw on preview toned them down. They are no longer immortal and get barely any healing from their effects, the tenacity gave them slight increase in defences but not as high as "squishy" classes received, prones are shorter, Frontline Surge damage has been decreased, Threatening Rush "fix", crit reduction hit sentinel very hard since tenacity gives a good 15-20% crit chance decrease. Nerf IV sent more and that tree is gone.
I can't hold myself
But honestly it didn't seem like you read my post at all. I already mentioned that I know of the changes the devs made to the GWF in Preview. But you decided to take it as an attack before actually providing relevant feedback. You really don't have to take this personally because this is a discussion, just like what you guys did in order to have us nerfed. Which I personally didn't mind, really. They did make sense, and it's not as if adapting was a hard thing to do. Anyway, moving on.
1. Threatening Rush will only have CD when cancelled early. But when you don't, it's spammable. Hence, the need for charges or a reduction in range.
2. As for Temp. HP, I concede. It's an idea I had even before the PVP patch was announced but either way I can live with the Preview GWF thanks to Healing Depression. I think it's a much better idea than just removing the Temp. HP but I just raised it anyway, because I could, for discussion. Not as if it's going to get implemented.
3. A lot of TRs kept saying that the TR Impact Shot chains hits less in Preview now, Lashing Blade included because of the Critical Hit Suppression. So either that is a REALLY, REALLY squishy low HP CW or they weren't trying to win at all. But this is a thread about GWF's. You can place your TR complaints on another thread, or maybe even write a feedback in the Preview Forum. They should reach the devs faster that way. Your opinions are valuable, after all.
Ofcourse, the 16k+ monsters with full regen/HP settings + artifacts + Zombieforge even.. no chance. Maybe a stalemate at best.
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
Dude I understand it's a discussion, though it started with strategies on how to counter GWF and then turned into calls for nerfs) but understand me here as I'm trying to understand you. Shadowmantle did very little to TRs nerfs wise apart from fixing the broken stun from Impact Shot that was a bug, they didnt reduce your damage or change your class mechanics that resulted in a "nerf". No, TR is still and absolute king of pvp and can take any class 1v1 or even 1v2 or 3 apart from Sentinel IV, what happened instead was TR shifted to No2 not because of the nerfs to their class but because of the buffs GWFs received.
So now I come to the point of my rant and the whole reason rogue community should STOP asking for nerfs to GWFs and rather look at what they want improved about their class/other classes- if the greatly toned down version of GWFs currently on preview gets nerfed to ground, and yes, unlike rogues in shadowmantle GWFs are actually getting damage nerfs on their abilities, if that happens rogues fly up to no1 again, there are no effective rogue killers in game AGAIN, TRs are absolutely op again. The question is, does anybody apart from ez mode fanboys need or want that? No. So how about we leave the nerfed GWFs alone and concentrate on giving other classes more means to counter whoever they are fighting? GFs are getting some buffs, I would like to see more, I would also love to see some sort of mechanic that allows at least some powers of the CW to ignore defence. Good GFs already stalemate sents, with decent buffs they could become sent counter.
Regarding the Impact Shot nerf, it had its mechanic changed, the more shots you got left the higher the damage. I assume it was done because the devs were listening to people who gave bad feedback... I'm 99% sure it wont go live so don't worry, after all TR is the most popular class in game and therefore contribute the most cash to it. I do believe TRs need certain balancing *cough ITC and perm stealth cough* but after the Impact Shot perma stun got fixed it was not necessary to change anything about it.
Edit: to answer your question, I haven't had a chance to test new sets but before they were released on preview but I did play pvp on it with devs before those darn new sets got released. I had some trouble with GFs, I got killed by TRs a couple of time, but most trouble is HRs with their broken vines and GFs because now if they want they can stun me and run out of range and punt me again, and I think their cooldowns are shorter now, it was not as much damage as it was them just kicking me even harder than before and now they seem a bit more tough, I landed a 2,2k ISB crit on a marked GF, meanwhile he was landing 2k-3k non crits on me.
The main problem with GFs in pvp on preview is imo lack of crit on their gear which im 200% sure will be resolved with new pvp items, so lets just wait an see.
BTW 2 people would melt me veeery quick and trollforged is currently useless with healing exhaustion.
gwf holds the point tr comes and kills him now you send 2 to one base we all know its game over from that point.it becomes who has the better tr game.thats cool to i like that but gwf is dead class then.
Tonight we were in an amazing PVP. The red and blue bars were even the entire match. I was playing with my Guilds top GWF and we had a solid CW and DC.
The other team had an equally impressive GWF, a really good TR and I forget what other, but they were excellent players. I had to use Cloud of Steel and Impact Shot like a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, when my daily was ready, I would fly in, nail the GWF and tumble out as fast as possible. Most of the time, I let my GWF fight their GWF and did what I could to help him and keep the other team's non GWF's from helping. That strategy worked.
I have to say this was one of the toughest and funnest battles I have ever been in. Kudos to everyone in this match!!!
When the game was close to ending, we were fighting like crazy at 2, our team had 1 and they had 3. The in game announcer stated,
Your Enemy is about to win.
I went stealth, peeled off and ran like crazy for 3.
I got there solo and cancelled their point gain. 3 of their team followed me. I stealthed, bounced around, Cloud of Steeled, Impact Shotted and Shadow Striked my butt off. I Killed their CW and dodged ITC'd and just ran from their GWF. Eventually the GWF got me, but I soulforged, hit my Blood Raven, hit ITC, rolled and the inevitable death caught up with me. The GWF Shredded me. As I laid there, dying in a haze of glowing green, watching the backwards countdown of death, the match ended and
we WON!!!!
My teammates captured 2 while I distracted their biggest and baddest fighter with 2 others.
I ended up 11-3 with 20+ assists
our GWF had 20+ kills
Team Work, and smart play won this epic Domination.
PVP is more than just a single player
Leaving dead question marks everywhere
Glad we were able to move a little past that aggression. And yes, believe me I'm also trying to understand you and to be impartial. In return, please do not misunderstand me as well, I'm not calling for nerfs. I've never been a fan of nerfs as I always believe that buffing is a better solution to nerfing; just like you. The devs will decide those for themselves since it's their game and I honestly would like to believe that they know it better than us. I just wanted to present some of my thoughts regarding the current state of GWF's in terms of PVP balance. This is merely a discussion, and in my opinion there may be FAR better solutions presented by other forumers than the ones I made up. I just wanted to add some of my 2 cents and contribute via presenting feedback.
Even if we do present some outrageous suggestions for fixes and all those balancing <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> we can think of, more often than not the devs go for something that doesn't resemble anything that we suggested. And I think it's sort of better like that, because it's their game. They know and realize things we don't, and at the same time we know and realize things they don't which is why the Preview Server is a valuable tool for smoothing out these changes. Its because of these objective discussions that the devs had something to start with. It's true that TR's aren't getting much nerfs to their DPS with the exception of Impact Shot's abhorrent adjustment, but then again if we look into the history of the game, the TR's received the most nerfs practically in the entire history of the game. Pre-mod 1, we lost most of our good toys like Lurker's Assault, Cloud of Steel, and Duelist's Flurry. Some of our feats also lost efficacy during those times.
Second, however the GWF class turns out, I'd be cool with. But I think Healing Depression is a good start at least for most of the "sustain" builds, except for DC's. Healing Depression will reduce the amount of HP healed all over the board while in PVP which is nice because this includes the Temp. HP from a GWF's Unstoppable. And yes, I agree. GF's and other GWFs may be the only ones who can really hurt IV Sents at this rate thanks to them having 2 prone encounters each. But of course GWF's will always stand on top because they can negate CC with Unstoppable but GF's can only watch their Guard Meter burn down.
About Impact Shot, you are mistaken about that one. Impact Shot will not deal higher damage when it has full charges. It actually will deal normal damage for the 1st charge, 33% less damage on the 2nd charge, and another 33% which gives us a total of 66% damage reduction on the 3rd charge. Its been nerfed severely which is why some Executioners are now trying to find other alternatives to Impact Shot. Lashing Blade right now seems to be the next choice. But I doubt players will shift from IS to LB that quickly. IS can still be good if you use the first shots inside and outside stealth for full damage on both strikes. Couple that with First Strike and Whirlwind Sneak Attack if you are built for Scoundrel and those 2 shots deal 15% extra damage. It can remain viable if people just built their rogues for it. But the bonuses we get from Overrun Critical and Brutal Backstab from the Executioner Tree is just too good to not get.
And you should try getting the new set. Though I think the 4pc bonus for the GWF's T2.5 PVP set is overkill. I like the extra Deflect they can gain from it but the Slow effect seems useless. They can just use Threatening Rush. And are you kidding? Vines is still going through CC in Preview? I thought we had a Preview Patch for that already.
It is EXACTLY because PvP is more than just a single player, that GWFs are causing balance problems.
In all practicality, realistic sense, the only class that can at least try to match it head-to-head against a GWF at equal terms is us TRs. The rest of the classes have it bad, and I mean really bad. In the end the GWF is so effective at its role -- literally the vanguard/shocktroop of the team -- that the rest of the classes have to resort to extreme levels of kiting.
A team without a same GWF, or at least a GF to meat-shield it, is simply pressed hard and forced to retreat, continuously buying distance in hopes of taking it down in relative safety. This creates a very, very wide room to maneuver for the rest of the opponents which usually totally dominate the midfield. Empirically speaking, even in varying levels of PvP skill, I'd say a single GWF is worth around at least 2 players of different classes, not because they kill as much (well, in most cases they actually DO kill as much.. but..), but because tactically they have that much impact -- especially with a game design that is centered around tactical node-domination for the win.
Your team has to advance and take the field to win, except you can't do that when there are GWFs around.
In retrospect, tactically speaking, a single-TR can actually be handled easier by simply ignoring the node where he's at. He wants to be unkillable at that node? Fine. Leave him there. The opponent team is then -1 person. Dominate the other two in turn.
...
I've actually been in a game where the opponents had an "orthodox" premade team consisting of a very tanky DC, two well-geared GWFs, an equally well geared HR and CW. By a stroke of miracle my team, were consisted of random PuG, but all fully prepared, geared, and skillful. No GWFs, no GFs. We were two TRs, two HRs, and a CW.
Now, despite well-endowed in GS, the enemy GWFs, both of them, were clearly not the "very-experienced" type. They were more of "rely on the GWFs raw power and DC heals/shields to simply steamroll" type. They'd often be lured in easily and then killed, but even so killing one of them took effort. Now, you have two of those to take care of, which is supported by a DC, HR and a CW in the back.. and the end result is that we did win. But it was simply exhausting. The amount of effort and concentration required, if I do say so myself, isn't something you can expect from any average grade of players, or even a bit experienced players.
The room of error is so small, the effort required is so large, when you face a team with GWFs. Notwithstanding their prowess in the actual 1vs1 combat, in terms of general tactics, GWFs are too dominating.
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
If they were talking about the Open Beta TR which I do honestly believe was over the top in all things "OP", then I would point the discussion to several other broken mechanics during that time. This is besides the one-hit build, pretty much every kind of rogue could pull off the one-hitter move before. Here's how:
IWIN Button => In the Trade of Blades before PvP starts, spam your powers on the training dummy to build up action points. The moment PvP starts, pop lurkers and blam dead random person from full health, follow spam 15-20k impact shots, more bodies hit the ground. Thankfully, that's been fixed. The rumored unkillable rogue didn't surface until post server-merge, where Seals of the Executioner - regen builds became the run-of-the-mill TR. Enter the HP stacking and 40% deflect combat rogue.
Never in my experience, having tried each and every single one of these specs, has it become impossible for a whole team to take me down within seconds. Much less require more than two skilled person to kill the Executioner rogue.
Yes please! ITC is currently bugged and goes into cooldown when canceled by a prone. If this wasn't the case, I don't think very many TR would complain about the IV GWF.
TR has such a bad reputation because of the lack of build diversity. There is the Combat Executioner who relies on hit and run tactics, otherwise he can't even stay alive against two equally geared opponent. And there is the permanently in-stealth TR who can barely kill anything. So..to answer your question, NO, it's not the "same" TR.
...
Since coming to a fuller understanding of the ongoing changes on Preview, the possibly broken mechanics of the IV GWF, and expecting that the PvP Patch won't be here for a while, I really want to get us back on topic: Countering the GWF we have now. Following this post, I have a few ideas. Do share yours. It doesn't matter so much now if there are calls for nerfs, or what is being nerfed -- I'm simply positive balance will come at some point. In the meantime, we need to make do with what we have and not be obliterated.
Emphassis: 44% Deflect, 33% DR
Offensives stats at 2K
Feated 3 Dodge Rolls
Feated 10% run speed on crit
Feated 10% slow on enemy on crit
Heroic Feats (Human)
+9% hp
+3% crit
+10% stamina regain
+3% deflect
+6% encounter - Endless Assault
+6% (iirc) damage bonus from STR
+9% at will on enemies not targeting you
Paragon: Executioner, +10 points in Saboteur
^ The above build is the best I can come up with to give my rogue the best mobility while retaining my offensive ability. I perform just as well against other classes, as before. Offense-wise, my build on live can somehow stalemate the GWF. The key is outmaneuvering them.
The first thing I would do is lure the GWF away to be fairly sure I won't get a stray Ice Knife or Aimed Shot behind my back -- usually defending node #1 from the Sent, much like how @todesfaelle described.
The opening move is Deft Strike, enter ITC and Flurry. The Flurry will charge his unstoppable. Enter stealth as they come down from ragemode, hopefully in time to get in a Lashing Blade as you pop into view. The 10% slow feat on crits + Deft Strike slow fresh out of CD really tames the rampaging monster. Presuming his prones are up, you will have to rely on up to 3 dodge rolls to keep out of range.
I know there are arguments about using at wills against the GWF. I have a GWF too, so I'm privy to how Unstoppable works. I find it easier to just wait it out than wear it down. Passive Skill: Steadfast Determination allows us to fractionally gain Determination by just being in Combat. It's not that hard to anticipate when he's about to go berserk.
The rotation is easily randomizable, weave in some dodge rolls (use sparingly as we still can't queue it the way CW can), and try to take your latency as a variable when dodging. Do it right, and time it good, you may stalemate a highly geared IV Sent. And if the moons are aligned and you can DPS him to 50%, drop that Shocking Execution (twice!) and there you go. Against zombieforge IV Sents, you do actually have to survive two rounds of Dailies - Everyone knows that he's just going to zombie up to full health after the first kill.
===
So, that's how I roll. It's not perfect, and definitely not ez mode, but at the very least it helps me survive. It gives me a chance to stalemate without having to go permastealth. You're welcome to try it yourself and add more strategies for us to consider. I don't want to call for nerfs. I want balance. Absent that, I want all of us to think together like civilized people
Interesting.
This is about the only other TR build/tactic from mine, that I've seen which would emphasize in direct melee attacks as a mode of combat against GWFs. Would it be possible to see some demonstration vids?
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
Take it from a very experienced and nearly unbeatable 1v1 character
My Character DarkMaster has progressed to the point that he will win 1v1 against any GWF. In fact, the only 1v1 loss I had in recent memory was against steamroller in a GvG premade. And I actually did defeat him but he SF res'd and popped pvp artifact. (OP combo for GWFs)
There are 2 main focuses:
1) Build
2) strategy
1a) I built my character to be able to face tank anything. 41% deflect, 29% Damage Resistance, 10.4% Life Steal, Over 30k hp and tons of regen are the keys to playing a high burst executioner style of play. These stats give you the survivability to take on whoever and do so without needing to rely on stealth. In order for the strat to work you need to have the build. With that said, my toon is very strong with 3 legendary artifacts, rank 10s, and a perfect vorpal.
1b) next we have the encounters, I simply use ItC, Lashing, and Impact.
2a) Now that the build is taken care of, the key to beating GWFs is actually BURST
Why do I say this? well, its pretty simple.. the burst moves will FAR outpace the 5-6% healing regen they get from unstoppable. Deflect is the most important stat for all pvp TRs yet is neglected. When you get 75% severity you better maximize it to the fullest.
You can easily face tank a GWF with those mentioned defensive stats... In the small window in which their unstoppable ends you unleash your furry with lashing blade and Impact. You can do thousands in damage in that small window before they re-enter unstoppable
Good GWFs will still be able to "out facetank you" even with all the defensive stats mentioned above, however, what was not mentioned was ITC and Dodge. These will help you turn the tide and win the battle.
The truth is all you need to do is get them to 40% hp. That's the biggest advantage we have. They have to kill us 100 to 0 while we need to simply bring them around 40% and shocking usually kills them. If they survive it they are still severely weakened and usually try to run away
Sorry if I'm skeptical, but I'll have to see this one to believe it.
You're saying you simply face-tank a GWF with the meager defensive stats achievable by a rogue, assisted by some dodges and ITC.... but I've seen some of the best TRs in the game, and I've also been into games from time to time where occasionaly they'd actually meet some of the very impressive GWFs in the game as well. None of them had any chance just dancing face-to-face.
Now, I agree that the standard TR tactic of throwing knives during stealth have it especially difficult against GWF, and I also agree the best way to bring them down is by concentrated bursts... which is why my method concentrates around pin-pointing their weakest moments when Unstoppable is down. So in my case, my tactic would simply be to land Dazing Strike + follow-up attacks every time Unstoppable is down, and hide whenever it is up, throwing in just enough damage to simply neuter the regen factor.
But whatever the method may be, I just don't see how a TR is going to survive long enough going just head-to-head with a GWF. The smart ones time their CCs specifically when the auto-immunity is not in works with Dual Flurry, and ITC lasts only so far. Even with Dual Flurry. the amount of damage you do to GWFs (at least the really well-geared ones) is simply pitiful. (Which is also the reason why I invest in defense debuffing).
I'd be interested in watching some vids, if you can provide it, please.
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
Your also underestimating deflect for TRs. 41% is nothing to scoff at especially when TRs get 75% deflect severity. With a potion and a boon TRs can easily achieve 88% deflect severity meaning 41% of the time you basically take no damage.
I can also post screen shots I have taken with my phone as well. you can cleary see the opponents we have faced with character names and scores. These are all set pvp premade matches against the best pvp guilds in the game. One thing you will notice is that I always come in first place with most kills and often the least deaths. I can also share some other matches I have with 50+ kills, something I have yet to see a perma ever do
I know for sure that my TR build is the best in the game. I get defense (survivability) that's comparable to perma TRs yet my dps is 3 times higher.
Add me, @stoxbox2. I'll be back on Sunday ^.^
LOL, that's all I have to say. GL against stox :rolleyes:
How this stats even possible.
I want to see how this works too, Ill log on for a bit to see if you're on add me in-game @keltz0r, I play a TR and GWF