SuperNova

Out of nowhere AMD released Catalyst 12.1 with some surprising performance updates.





Pretty much across the board increases with Battlefield 3 showing a staggering increase in performance so much now that the 7970 GHz edition blows the 680 away.

The Xmas bundle is very nice as well -

http://www.hardwarec...graphics-cards/

I've been holding off on getting a 7950 but this could be what finally makes me jump....

I can't find any GW2 benchmarks but still looking.

The Build

(Original Build)
http://gw2skills.net...UloKbVuqkVNAZ6B

(New Build - thanks to politesowter)
http://gw2skills.net...UloKbVuqkVNAZ6B

There will be some stuff in there that makes you think "he must be trolling", but trust me it works.

How it Works

It's tanky - very tanky - and mostly kills people with Signet of Fire and bleeding combined with the usual Signet of Earth/Dragons Tooth/Phoenix.  That's pretty much it.  Obviously it is still capable of dishing out some good damage but as you can see there is no effort to crit people to oblivion, it's simple fire and bleeds mixed in with whatever else you can get to hit.

What else?

This build in particular is also permanent swiftness/high protection uptime.

How you might change it

You might go 10 Water for Shard of Ice, dropping 10 Air.  This will give your fire a bit more protection due to adding vulnerability to the Signets.  Any more suggestions, feel free to add.

Lava Tomb (now swapped out for Burning Fire (Fire 2)) - but feel free to try this out for a laugh.

This one is pretty much hilarious.  People who down you are generally on very low health, bleeding and burning to death themselves, and the last thing they want to see is a lava font at their feet as they are trying to finish you off.  I've weighed up the pro's and cons and for me, Lava Tomb is the best choice at 10 fire with this build.  If you are downed first, then your opponent goes down before he finishes you off, the damage from lava font will put you in the lead in the "throwing rocks at each other" stakes.

They might also just decide to leave you or dodge out of it, buying you more precious time.

Fire Shield

This one gets a bad rep but you're going to be seeing it a lot.  Honestly I think it's pretty good - I've seen some Unload thieves take themselves apart on this.

So how to play it?

I'm not for a minute suggesting this will work in tournaments, but it's working for me in sPvP.  Signet of Fire is key as it is the vast majority of your easily-landed damage output.  It's like 8K damage plus every 16 seconds if not removed, and condition removal is still a lottery in many ways.

Keybind Fire and Earth to good keys - I'm using Q and E.  As soon as you are rooted, hit E5 and use that "free" invulnerability.  Remember the blind at 3 can buy you more time - all the time your opponent is burning to hell due to Signet of Fire.  Your ranged defences are fantastic with S/F as well and with Magnetic Wave + Fire Shield you can have ranged profs crying while burning to death as well.

After you've got Fire and Earth mastered, concentrate on adding Air to your repertoire.  The knockdown at 5 is great, another blind at 3 and the projectile killer at 4 are all designed to save your life while your opponent burns and bleeds.

Here is a free pic of my lovely lass, just to break the monotony.



Strengths and Weaknesses

Very tanky.  It has very good "free" condition removal due to magnetic aura and Phoenix.  You are gaining health while being tanky due to the healing signet, all the while your opponent is burning and bleeding away.  If they don't have good condition removal they are toast for sure.

Which brings me to the obvious flaw - good condition removal is going to make your life a lot more difficult.  That's why you might go 10 in water for the vulnerability on signets - but don't forget you also have Water 2 which causes vulnerability.  That's adding a 4th attunement to your repertoire and if you're doing that then grats - you're already better than me at my own build.

Summary

This is quite easy to play as your main source of damage is a signet - SoF should be used on every cooldown and believe me it will kill people - especially those glass cannons who will melt under it.  There is no "bad" attunement to be in but obviously being in fire for extra damage and earth for extra defences makes the most sense.

You should be able to solo the mist bosses without breaking much sweat (once you've got it Svanir won't do any damage to you at all), so go try it out.

Question/Comments feel free to add.

http://www.xbitlabs....gtx-660-ti.html

Like I suggested, it falls in-between the 7870 and 7950.  It definitely has the beating of the 7870 looking at these graphics -



As I also said, it would lose some games to the 7870 and in this case it is losing 5 or 6 out of 13, which is more than I expected.  However, the Ti wins by larger margins in the ones it wins at, on average.

Against the 7950 with the new bios (850 MHz + 925 MHz boost), it loses by a lot -



It loses most of the 13 benchmarks, only holding on in Shogun 2 (which is an AMD sponsored title bizarrely) and the ancient Lost Planet 2 benchmark which is Nvidia sponsored.

So like I also said, AMD will be forced to drop prices on the 7870 to keep that card competitive.  They will also probably drop prices on the 7950, which although a faster card and a better card in every way, will still suffer a loss of sales because of the 660 Ti.

So I've been really out of the intel loop as far as personal use goes - my last 3 cpu's have been a Phenom II 940, Athlon X2 6000 and Athlon X2 3800.

I had a Zerotherm Nirvana NV120 cooler on my Phenom II and was really happy with its performance and acoustics at low speed, but can't get an LGA1155 bracket.

Anyway, I'll be overclocking my i5 probably to near 5 GHz.  My case has plenty of airflow so that's not a worry.  What I need is a reasonable quality cooler that is quiet.  I'm not willing to spend a fortune on it, and cant be arsed with watercooling.

Recommendations?  I put lower noise ahead of ultimate performance, generally and will take lower GHz as well, 4.5 GHz will be fine.

This game really, really needs it.  I've tried to find a system that works but when you go from playing say, and elementalist to a warrior, there is basically nothing except a full rebind of the prof specific keybinds that works.  F1-F4 simply isn't an option.