Guild Wars 2

Hi,

Crazy schedule here, can’t really live up to guild participation so i end up pugging a lot.

Dungeons is what i love the most so i end up pugging a lot. I know the strength of the might/vulnerability potential, which is something puggers neglect. So question is what are my choices of worthwhile builds to bring those two myself,

Now i opened two windows on wiki, one with might another with vulnerability, but what i need is practical insight of its effectiveness. At the moment i’m running a guardian with Binding Jeopardy, Blind Exposure, Symbolic Exposure , Inspired Virtue, Empowering Might but then i was doing a dungeon and some pug complemented another pug (this warrior) for bringing Phalanx Strength, which i guess is stronger than my two traits.

TLDR: So hence the question, i can see in paper what skills/traits bring what boon/condition but then again dunno in practice what’s more effective. For example i keep daydreaming about thief’s venom share with the Venomous Strength and stealing with Thrill of the Crime, and engineer for the insane vulnerability stack with bombs etc… so how does these options fare with each other?

The problem with pugging solo is there are alot of variables involved specially with % modifiers like vulnerability & frost spirit.

There’s also capping might and vuln stacks.

Now to me, ele, engineer, warr & rangers are your best bet if you want to bring the team dps up effectively.

Ele is obviously on top because of FGS, might stacking and possible capping vuln with weak spot + FGS. Might and vuln could be over stacked but you can adjust your build accordingly for more personal DPS.

Engineer shines most in vuln stacking without FGS and decent might stacking. There’s also the convenience of a smoke field.

As for warriors, you talked about PS. There’s also obviously banners and the option to run higher personal dps instead of PS in a good might stacking pug group.

As for rangers, spotter will always be helpful but FS won’t do as good with pugs not bringing good base damage.

So long story short, I’d go with Ele first, Engi next if you expect not much vuln/might stacks, warr if there are no or only 1 warr, Ranger if you expect the pugs to do good base damage.

Thief, ele, and classes with a no-ICD vuln on crit trait will cap vuln in a second with fgs. If your pugs use fgs stacking, those are the best relating to vuln. As far as might goes, ele is a good choice but keep in mind that a pug guardian’s role is to put down a light field every time might stacking will happen, you’ll have a hard time fighting against your team to might stack. Also, ele is squishy so the skill ceiling in pugs is higher. PS warrior is obviously good for might stacks but since a lot of pugs take their war for dungeons, you may want to take something else. Engineer as said upper has a crazy vuln stacking and good might stacking ( on a high cd though), and their dps is far from lacking. Other classes won’t give much in term of offensive support in a low dps group, so i agree with Izaya, go with ele or engi.

Just wanted to say Empowering Might has an ICD of a second, which makes it quite useless especially since you have to go into an defense line for that.

Engi’s vulnerability stack sure is impressive. Tried a lvl56 myslef (before trait rework) and the only thing throwing me off the engi is the might stacking: you basically need to sacrifice your kitten nal to bring a lot of blast finisher, than drop a fire field and manage to link all those finishers together, after roughly 15 sec you have to drop all of what you’re doing and focus to pull off the entire combo again… it’s a very active and selfcentered might stacking method, although i haven’t dismissed the idea completely.

I’m divided between the PS warrior or the Thief Venom share, although that Ele tip earlier does make me wonder, even tough my ele is lvl20ish…

Venomshare thief sucks, so go with ps warrior.

With the next balance patch, might be easier to might stack using flamethrower now for the 10 second fire field.

I’m not experienced with classes outside of warr/elementalist really, but I can definitely say that for groups ele is the best for what you’re asking. I’m never an advocate for PS on a warrior because of how much they have to sacrifice for it. An ele doesn’t sacrifice personal DPS while maintaining close to capped might just with their own fire fields and blasts and fury and as others have said, are capable of capping vuln with FGS + weak spot.

As far as vuln is concerned, I’m not entirely sure how ele compares with warrior when FGS isn’t included. A GS + A/M warrior with V in arms will be able to contribute quite a bit of vuln on bosses, and I’m pretty sure they’d be able to apply more vuln stacks over time than an ele would with just D/F or S/F+LH, but taking the mace out of the equation I think they’d be roughly equal for vuln. Someone else will probably post and correct me, just guesstimating on that.