Guild Wars 2

Just reiteration because I don’t want it to be misunderstood as just ‘swap to your other weapon set’

J Eberle.9312:

Rising Dusk.2408:

That’s assuming you keep 25 stacks of might up for the whole fight, right? What about the case where you have a pub that doesn’t use might at all beyond the occasional FGJ? Would that rotation still be preferable to using staff to stack might before the combat engages?

As stated earlier, if in a team of useless pugs- You can do this, but then take it entirely off go to your inventory and replace it with a greatsword.

I’d just suggesting blasting your Purging flames with hammer#2, and focus#5. Swap hammer out for GS, then leap finish off it to get that shield thingy that gives might stacks when hit. After that pop VoJ to get more might stacks. With that you should have healthier stacks, without the useless staff.

J Eberle.9312:

Just reiteration because I don’t want it to be misunderstood as just ‘swap to your other weapon set’

You could also say get your might stacks, then DESTROY YOUR STAFF and place a greatsword on.

12 stacks of might costs an entire staff.

cries uggggghhh 3 minutes till I can go home x.x

True, or you could do both, but either way having staff on either wep set during combat is just no from a dps perspective.

@ lilith, DESTROYING it is an even better idea, the best way to learn the value of staff is to delete it :D

J Eberle.9312:

True, or you could do both, but either way having staff on either wep set during combat is just no from a dps perspective.

If I could run sword offhand staff, I’d totally do it. Even if staff offhand was useless. Dat true Gandalf build would be beyond tempting….

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_09-1_TXF3BQ/TJV17UCLanI/AAAAAAAAAMI/-fRCKZjYOKM/s1600/Gandalf-Glamdring.png

@Swift

Kitty right, cat.

>.>

@cat

Gandalf is too pro. Pls nerf.

That would be the tightest kitten.

laharl.8435:

Those might stacks are only going to help you for ~10 seconds, then you’re stuck on a crap weapon for the duration of the fight. If it’s a 10 second fight, fine, even though that might barely mattered in the first place for that scenario. Anything longer than 10 seconds and it’s a total waste. You’re missing out on burst, blind, gap closer, vulnerability, 5 mob pull all for ~10 seconds of might at the start of a fight. If you’re running in a pug that isn’t stacking might, then you’re personal dps is even more important assuming you’re running a meta build.

I think you’re misunderstanding. In those cases, you use the might, then you swap to Sword+Focus for the entirety of the actual fight. The discussion I was having was what the loss is of doing this as opposed to having GS on swap the whole time and skipping the weapon swap entirely. How much better is the GS/S+F rotation than pure S+F? 5%? 10%? 1%?

J Eberle.9312:

As stated earlier, if in a team of useless pugs- You can do this, but then take it entirely off go to your inventory and replace it with a greatsword.

Fair enough.

You lose DPS from missing out on the GS rotation. There’s also the loss of DPS because it’s a channeling skill. It doesn’t matter if you use it while in battle or right before. It is still a loss of DPS.

Ayrilana.1396:

You lose DPS from missing out on the GS rotation.

I know that now, but out of curiosity how much? No one has answered with an actual percentage yet.

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s also the loss of DPS because it’s a channeling skill. It doesn’t matter if you use it while in battle or right before. It is still a loss of DPS.

This doesn’t make sense. When someone else is aggroing, you’re stacking might. The only other way for the Guardian to contribute to the blasting is with Hammer 2, and I’m already using Focus 5 for its blast in other fire fields (and F1 for another 3). Staff is definitely stacking might better than Hammer is in this case, and if I manually swap to GS before the boss / mobs reach us, what harm is it doing?

Camping sword auto is worse than camping gs btw. You shouldnt go pure sword.

spoj.9672:

Camping sword auto is worse than camping gs btw.

That’s the first I’ve heard that. Is there a place where this math is located so I can stop asking questions about it? From having used both extensively, sword auto with the 2 and focus 4 mixed in for vuln/blind feels a lot stronger than GS camping.. but that may be deceiving.

I could be wrong. I seem to remember it was discussed before when comparing and finding rotations. Pure sword always feels a lot weaker than gs in my personal experience so it kind of makes sense.

I’ve already shown how OP the Gandolf build is with the below. Why is there another thread?

vet giant – http://youtu.be/3oPcqGeDoVE
lupi solo – http://youtu.be/4x9CkPuKWto

Gandolf OP. Gandolf how you want

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ayrilana.1396:

You lose DPS from missing out on the GS rotation.

I know that now, but out of curiosity how much? No one has answered with an actual percentage yet.

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s also the loss of DPS because it’s a channeling skill. It doesn’t matter if you use it while in battle or right before. It is still a loss of DPS.

This doesn’t make sense. When someone else is aggroing, you’re stacking might. The only other way for the Guardian to contribute to the blasting is with Hammer 2, and I’m already using Focus 5 for its blast in other fire fields (and F1 for another 3). Staff is definitely stacking might better than Hammer is in this case, and if I manually swap to GS before the boss / mobs reach us, what harm is it doing?

When you’re not engaging the enemy, you’re losing DPS that could have been done during the time you spent channeling the stacks of might. The DPS gain from your 12 stacks (which deteriorates very quickly), will not offset the time spent channeling. Couple this with the loss of DPS for not having SW/F and GS as your rotation will further exacerbate the problem.

fadeaway showed the difference of sword only, greatsword only, and rotations in many different builds and gear.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-dps-numbers-for-various-builds

obal.3218:

I’ve already shown how OP the Gandolf build is with the below. Why is there another thread?

vet giant – http://youtu.be/3oPcqGeDoVE
lupi solo – http://youtu.be/4x9CkPuKWto

Gandolf OP. Gandolf how you want

LULZ! I almost died when you brought up the character window and Gandalf was there. I blame you for the prevalence of staff guardians!

Bumbler.7581:

I blame you for the prevalence of staff guardians!

It only gets worse if you look at the bottom of my signature. Someone actually pm Brazil saying that it was good and referenced my vid

Greatsword is vastly superior to sword when you’re clearing groups of trash. If you use sword you’re by definition suboptimal in any of those cases such as clearing the first group of golem in CoE etc.
Sword autochain – third hit is pretty meh unless you can hit everything in a line because it’s not a cleave skill and GS has Leap of Faith, Symbol of Wrath, Whirling Wrath which are all pure AoE (5 targets).

Oh by the way, sword’s third hit is a projectile to boot. The cases are few but it’s easy to forget about that and use/swap to sword and selfdestruct with it because of a reflect. The centaur boss in CM, Wraith in Arah p4, jade colossus.. you can feel it when you’re hitting yourself on a dps guardian build.

Plus all the minor issue with sword third hit not connecting sometimes on structures, or the auto attack chain bugging when you’re trying to hit two things at once without being centered on a target (like destroying the barriers in SE path 1) leading to it continuously trying to do sword wave before failing after a couple attempts and going back to the beginning of the auto chain.

Sword has good auto attack dps but it’s a rather quirky and overall suboptimal-to-camp weapon. I’d rather you just camp your gs (or even a hammer) if you had to chose only one melee weapon. The best thing is to use both in a rotation and be aware of sword’s limitations and behavior, but if you really insist on having meleeweapon/something else (like staff) as a swap, please, don’t camp sword.

obal.3218:

Bumbler.7581:

I blame you for the prevalence of staff guardians!

It only gets worse if you look at the bottom of my signature. Someone actually pm Brazil saying that it was good and referenced my vid

Brazil also made a video suggesting to run GS+Staff combo. So…. There’s that.

Nikaido.3457:

Greatsword is vastly superior to sword when you’re clearing groups of trash. If you use sword you’re by definition suboptimal in any of those cases such as clearing the first group of golem in CoE etc.
Sword autochain – third hit is pretty meh unless you can hit everything in a line because it’s not a cleave skill and GS has Leap of Faith, Symbol of Wrath, Whirling Wrath which are all pure AoE (5 targets).

Oh by the way, sword’s third hit is a projectile to boot. The cases are few but it’s easy to forget about that and use/swap to sword and selfdestruct with it because of a reflect. The centaur boss in CM, Wraith in Arah p4, jade colossus.. you can feel it when you’re hitting yourself on a dps guardian build.

Plus all the minor issue with sword third hit not connecting sometimes on structures, or the auto attack chain bugging when you’re trying to hit two things at once without being centered on a target (like destroying the barriers in SE path 1) leading to it continuously trying to do sword wave before failing after a couple attempts and going back to the beginning of the auto chain.

Sword has good auto attack dps but it’s a rather quirky and overall suboptimal-to-camp weapon. I’d rather you just camp your gs (or even a hammer) if you had to chose only one melee weapon. The best thing is to use both in a rotation and be aware of sword’s limitations and behavior, but if you really insist on having meleeweapon/something else (like staff) as a swap, please, don’t camp sword.

This is a very useful post. Thanks. I’ll give the GS/S+F rotation a shot over the next few days with a modified build and see how it fares.

J Eberle.9312:

The other problem with the empower is the duration is awful. In a proper group, your warriors/eles put down fire field and blast + fgj up 25 stacks before each fight and it lasts longer as well. So, you do bad dps and you actually screw ppl over with bad might stacks.

Some will argue ‘well most of my teams don’t do that!’

Cool story, so do you put your staff on before the fight, stack the might and then swap it completely off for another actually useful weapon? Do you put a purging flames down before a fight and blast it with focus and hammer? Do you use Virtue of Justice? 9 times out of ten – nope.

From my experience in pugging, only about 1 in 3 guardians spam Virtue of Justice. But from the same experience only about 1 in 30 parties will have close to full might without guardian staves, and half the time they would curse your hammer for laying down all those bloody light fields.

Seems no on uses sword 3.. is it really worse than just the autoattack?

Wow I see a whole lot of stupid crap here with a very obvious solution….

Start with staff. Use empower. Switch back to greatsword. How is this so hard to grasp? If you use that swap cooldown to swap to the greatsword, you get the best of both worlds…

Ezekiel.1985:

Wow I see a whole lot of stupid crap here with a very obvious solution….

Start with staff. Use empower. Switch back to greatsword. How is this so hard to grasp? If you use that swap cooldown to swap to the greatsword, you get the best of both worlds…

You obviously didnt read did you.

Hammer is good for FotM.

Ezekiel.1985:

Wow I see a whole lot of stupid crap here with a very obvious solution….

Start with staff. Use empower. Switch back to greatsword. How is this so hard to grasp? If you use that swap cooldown to swap to the greatsword, you get the best of both worlds…

1. you didn’t read
2. camping gs is pretty kitten in most cases, you should be rotating s/f and gs

spoj, guang, you guys forget. Reading is OP. Plz nerf.

Staff is really overpowered.
I use it for the “Ambient Killer”-dailies in Godslost Swamp.
20 sec.
Should be nerfed. ;-)

These kitten guys eh
complaining about staff while it isn’t even clear that a GS + S rotation is better than only GS, which would make GS/Staff a better practical choice.

^ I agree. Reading is OP.

obal.3218:

fadeaway showed the difference of sword only, greatsword only, and rotations in many different builds and gear.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-dps-numbers-for-various-builds

Iris Ng.9845:

^ I agree. Reading is OP.

Shh I don’t want them to catch on to our super elitist tactics.

What’s more funny is I got kicked from a fractal 49 once by a guardian wearing full celestial and running 0/0/30/30/10 while I was on my zerk (with a bit of valk) guardian. He called me useless and threw a hissy fit when I responded saying his damage is pitiful. He said he’s contributing way more than me by healing us with his f2 and staff 4. After I got kicked I joined a zerk run and got a fractal skin.

Alquinon.2957:

What’s more funny is I got kicked from a fractal 49 once by a guardian wearing full celestial and running 0/0/30/30/10 while I was on my zerk (with a bit of valk) guardian. He called me useless and threw a hissy fit when I responded saying his damage is pitiful. He said he’s contributing way more than me by healing us with his f2 and staff 4. After I got kicked I joined a zerk run and got a fractal skin.

The only way he could have been more awesome would have been if he also spammed staff 3 to disrupt every possible fire field blast.

While, in dungeons, I normally run a gs/sf 10/30/0/5/25 build (and yes, I do spam my virtue of justice, I love that thing) however, when I do my fractal 49/50’s I will generally use a hammer/staff 15/15/0/20/20 setup, open with staff’s empower then spend most of the time using hammer for the protection,

I will, however, use staff to block trash mobs (ie,dredge and the ac vets, etc, etc)and kite around a bit if I need to, but that’s usually it, the staff itself does terrible damage to boss mobs and other important fights.

You’d be surprised how many people get confused between Wand and Staff. Once saw a guard get kicked because he was using Wand/Torch for DPS.

Oddly enough, a ranged weapon is our top damage weapon as well.

I’d kick someone even faster for wand/torch.

While torch isn’t too bad, I really do prefer focus, and sceptre is boss if you can land all the hits on smite, except it is terrible for mobs ^^

Kain Francois.4328:

Oddly enough, a ranged weapon is our top damage weapon as well.

Oh yeah, our top DPS weapon in the 0.1 % of boss fights where all necessary preconditions are met. How amazing …

The only class whose ranged weapon is actually their highest dps under all conditions is elementalist with staff. And that ranged weapon still does better damage in melee because of traits (need to stay close for a trait proc) and the fact that you don’t want mobs to move out of lava font.

And then there’s the classic and universal fact that you should always be within boon range in your party which means just stick to melee and don’t chicken out.

^ rite!!!

Staff is amazing in Ascalon Fractal. And Fireball cleaves.

Staff in dungeons is great for skipping trash. Swiftness, plus Line of Warding to stop aggroed mobs. But yeah, that should only work if there is time to switch to S/F before actually fighting.

Because every guardian is using it. Herdmind.

robertul.3679:

Because every guardian is using it. Herdmind.

Who said that?

laharl.8435:

robertul.3679:

Because every guardian is using it. Herdmind.

Who said that?

I noticed. I don’t know if you pug, but if you do you must have noticed.
The following answer I got from a mesmer after inquiring for the reason of using greatsword in melee(or ever): “Every mesmer is using it.”
#puglife

robertul.3679:

Because every guardian is using it. Herdmind.

I don’t know if anyone else noticed but lately I’m getting alot of these pugs for AC where guards sit in that corner you stack for the spider boss and spam staff auto for no apparent reason. The 1st time it happened I didn’t realize what they were doing so I was like ‘stop plz..’ coz it was kinda annoying, then someone else explained they were doing it to kill that turret. It literally took them like 5min to clear it.. a good example of how low staff dps really is.

Equip staff
Begin channeling 4
While channeling, equip your regular weapon over-top of staff (NOT weapon swap)
Enjoy channeling might on a not terrible weapon and pulling when it’s done casting

This is the only way it’s acceptable to pop those baby might stacks out of your long staff. Ofc never do this to overlap blast stacks, but that’s a given.

kitten , except for me, I have not seen a non-staff guardian in a dungeon in a week!

I thought the community was going better then all of a sudden since one month, it’s really bringing that bad staff up. This is kitten annoying! >_<

Fror.2163:

kitten , except for me, I have not seen a non-staff guardian in a dungeon in a week!

I thought the community was going better then all of a sudden since one month, it’s really bringing that bad staff up. This is kitten annoying! >_<

You should see the number of staff guardians trying to take down warden 3 in the marionette event. I use staff way more often than I should, and even I’m embarrassed by that. It wouldn’t be so bad except my server is big on instructing its players to range warden 3.

Actually I was half hoping that the marionette event would give some people here an appreciation for the quality of the average dungeon PuG.

In the Marionette event, yes I use staff. It’s a zerg content and the staff makes sense. However right before entering the ring, I switch staff out and take sword/focus instead.