Guild Wars 2

I’m going to assume here that most fights will not be 1v1, so it will not be a dps race between 2 zerkers. I would want some defense, so what defensive stat should I or we focus on? Toughness ofcourse for pure damage reduction. But what about vitality and condition duration reduction?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes a few more times regarding things which you haven’t asked about as far as personal defenses go in WvW.

If you are new to WvW and are seriously considering giving it a good try and get some gear for it, trait for it etc. which is nice to see instead of all these whiners, then I have a few pieces of advice for you.

1. Pick a known sturdy profession to do so if you have the option, guard, war, necro are good. Ele and mesmer can both be built very defensively as well for this purpose.

2. Check out your respective class forums. There are multitudes of bunker builds available for each professions, each one with specific advantages / disadvantages.

3. Get in touch with your server’s WvW community, you do not have to be part of their guilds. Most will welcome you and help you out A LOT. They will not pull a PVE elitist style crap on you and boot you. They will really help you out.

4. Get on your server’s comms and talk to them. Find out how in your WvW map or team chat, again they will welcome you and you will make some friends in the game. Unlike zerging champs or pugging dungeons. Your entire experience of the game will become different.

P.S. Asking for defenses 1st, is actually a great way to start. Go with a bunker / condi clear / CC breaking build for starters for your class / profession. You are making things a lot easier on yourself this way and you will make a better team mate. Later on when you get decent at it, you can start switching towards DPS and various different roles, but a bunker to start is the right idea.

I aim for 2,800 toughness, this reduces direct damge by approx. 33%.

20,000 health, higher the better but you still want to do decent damage.

When it comes to damage in WvW I prefer AoE damage or weapon skills that hit multiple targets ie…3 bounces or guardians staff, can hit 5 targets. This also gets you more loot.

Other important basic stuff

Mobility is important, try to have 25% to 33% movement speed buff. Also, any leap, side stepping abilities are pure gold.

Conditions will kill you, because you can have half a dozen in secs, so make sure you can deal with conditions in some way. There are loads of different ways.

Utility skills/traits, go with group ones unless your roaming, the more group buffs the better. Its simple picking traits for WvW, its either got to help you survive or deal more damage, no ifs or buts.

Try to have some ‘escape’ buttons, for when you are outnumbered and after run away.

I have not played EOTM’s yet but players that have, say you will need stability to avoid being knocked off cliffs and obviously abilities like fear, knockback etc will be good for sending other players over the cliffs to go splat as in Skyhammer (pvp map).

Play as a mesmer or thief…

-Attack from range.
-When they come in range. Invis and add range

My lvl10 mesmer has more survivability in WvW than my PVT Guardian in Ascended/Exotics