Guild Wars 2

With the ongoing “trinity” discussion, I’ve become curious if we’re mostly all running the same build archetype, or if we’re actually hitting Damage, Support and Control. Yes, I understand that some people have the opinion that PvE is faceroll simple and you just hit ‘1’ all the time and you win. Recent failures on the southern invasion path have suggested to me differently. Certainly it’s easy when there is a zerg. But what types of builds are working well for you?

Here’s the obvious one that we all know and love:

Ranged direct damage with enough toughness to stay alive. (ex: Warrior with a rifle.)

Melee Control/Interrupter: Hammer – Mace/Shield Warrior
Build: 30/0/30/0/10 – Mending – Bull Rush/Stomp/Kick or “Shake it Off!” – Banner or SoR
Purpose: Interrupts, Area Denial, Leap/Blast Finishers, Defiant removal, Damage

Elementalist- Damage and control// Off defense and support

• D/D 30/0/30/10/0
• Glyph of EH//AoE/Glyph of S/Glyph of LE/ Glyph of GE

Traited for max uptime on fire skills, earth skills, and glyphs; as well as maximum bleed and burn duration. Basic strategy being lay down a ton of conditions then survive while they take effect by use of blinds, heals, disables, interrupts, and meat shields. By the time the conditions have run out and your defensive abilities have all been used you should have dropped aggro but your condition/buff-laying combos should be up again. Repeat and repeat.

• Damage through bleeds and Fire
• Control through blinds, immobilize, and chill
• Off-Defense through health, stability, interrupts, and Golems
• Off-Support through heals and might buffs and Golems

Guardian

Alturistic Healing 0/0/30/30/10
Hammer

the Faceroll Tank build that lets you faceroll everything whilst keeping almost every enemy focused on you because of aggro coding.

you are the tank, you are the support, you even dish out decent aoe damage, whats not to love.

Ranger

30/10/30/0/0
SB/LB

Seems to be easier to manage in PvE(only) than all my other chars. The damage is crap: you can never get as high-damage with bows than you can get with say LS on warriors. The skills modifiers are just really low. Rely on 1/2 power 1/2 condition damage – crit is used to just put more condition.

Switch between SB and LB all the time – use skill sequence on LB for crowd control/semi-burst on one target, then shift back to SB, count timer on LB skills, shift back again, etc..

Pet is key. Can generally solo all mobs and lesser champions by juggling bears, and positioning right. Pierce is necessary.

Very common, I suppose.

Control / Support Warrior

Hammer / Mace and Mace (or Shield)

10 / 0 / 30 / 30 / 0

Healing Signet
”For Great Justice!”
”Shake It Off!”
”On My Mark!”
Signet of Rage

OR

Healing Signet
Banner of Strength
Banner of Prowess
Banner of Defense
Battle Standard

Traits change depending on what I feel like:

Power

Usually the heal skill removes conditions. Occasionally change to 5% power to Vitality trait.

Defense

• Hammer Trait is accompanied by Endure Pain at 25%.
• Mace + Hammer Traits if running H / M+M.
• Mace + Shield traits when running Mace and Shield.
• Other traits tend to be adrenaline when hit, reflect missiles when blocking or increased damage against weakened enemies.

Tactics

• Banner or Shout traits, depending on the utilities.
• 1 sec immobilise on cripple (giving me a conal immobilise every 12 seconds. Very useful since immobilise isn’t affected by Defiance)

There is no incentive to play support or control in this game, whatever heals / boons / anything you put out is almost never worth it, they are just too weak.

If you are indeed facerolling PvE it’s attributed to individual player skill, not build type.

Gab Superstar.4059:

There is no incentive to play support or control in this game, whatever heals / boons / anything you put out is almost never worth it, they are just too weak.

If you are indeed facerolling PvE it’s attributed to individual player skill, not build type.

Enjoy being wrong.

great thread as i’ve just starting putting thought into this stuff having reached 80 on almost 3 toons but doing so just playing with whatever i had. 1 thing about the numbers here for the people listing their trait specs is what do your numbers for p/p/t/v look like with these builds?

Mackdose.6504:

Gab Superstar.4059:

There is no incentive to play support or control in this game, whatever heals / boons / anything you put out is almost never worth it, they are just too weak.

If you are indeed facerolling PvE it’s attributed to individual player skill, not build type.

Enjoy being wrong.

So your not going to even make a point not the best argument.

Any way healing in this game is on the low end because of the ability to roll out of any attk in the game. It IS more about individual player skill more so then most non action mmorpgs.

Copy/Paste the build links

Control (Tank) Thief – http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAsa6alcmyNHcS6E95Ex2jeqTe6pgsjtTxWtKA;TYALKGQcIYXwrgJGA

Gear – Soldiers Armor (Emerald Orbs), Knight’s Jewelry, Lifetap Food, Precision Crystals

How it works – Pistol Whip interrupts initially, then evades while swinging the sword for a total of 9 hits per target. This gives me high evade time (without even having to dodge/move) and procs my heals/lifetaps a lot.

Support Thief – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAV6alYmaPHcS6E95Ex2DgqTeqzAnvs/wVB;TYArCGlcIYTxrgJFA

Gear – Berserker’s Armor (Ruby Orbs + 2xWater Runes), Mostly Berserker’s Jewelry, Condition Duration Food, Precision Crystals

How it works – Primarily spam Cluster Bomb for DPS, which is a blast finisher (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher). Alternatively, I can maintain Choking Gas, which is a poison field. With the “Lotus Poison” trait, I apply Weakness whenever I poison. The pistols are mainly for destroying things like the endboss of CoF path 2.

I run a hybrid damage/offensive support build on my Warrior, focusing on boon duration and might stacking to provide solid personal damage output and high uptime on offensive boons to the group. I flip between regen banners and healing shouts pretty regularly, but tend to stick with regen banners since I find that groups that provide constant regen aren’t very common. That 150-200 per second tick of healing certainly isn’t nothing when combined with the active defenses of group members, especially when I don’t have to do anything to keep it up besides cast a banner every minute and a half.

necro. damage and only damage because i dont like playing with others

30/20/0/20/0

ok fine, i use a warhorn for interrupts and other such stuff and a few wells for combo fields. just nothing really to heal others and all. oh and i keep vulnerability stacked as best i can. other than that, im just a total scrubnub

Mackdose.6504:

Gab Superstar.4059:

There is no incentive to play support or control in this game, whatever heals / boons / anything you put out is almost never worth it, they are just too weak.

If you are indeed facerolling PvE it’s attributed to individual player skill, not build type.

Enjoy being wrong.

Are you denying that the only way Arena Net developers can create fights that require high skill is through forcing players to dodge?

Just ask yourself; how do you progress in FotM? You dodge every agony inducing effect. Which bosses are often considered the hardest? Lupicus and Subject Alpha. How do you beat them? You learn how to dodge properly.

Thief-short bow, bleed and poison enemies. While getting health for damaging them.

JaironKalach.4938:

Here’s the obvious one that we all know and love:

Ranged direct damage with enough toughness to stay alive. (ex: Warrior with a rifle.)

This is pretty much why this game is filling up with thieves and warriors. Nothing else works like these classes or has the same 1 shot abilities while having the perfect balance of protection to survive in pve. why bother rolling any other class.

Engineer can do a tanky survival build but is so nerfed even cond dmg doesn’t work eventually you wear out all your cooldowns and can’t damage fast enough to be helpful.

tanky-ish support eng

0/0/30/30/10
converts 5% tough to power/ elite enhancer thingy or shield enhancer/ elixer-infused bombs
elixer s at 25% or elixer recharge rate 20% decrease/ throw/use elixer for condi removal or elixer duration 20% increase / HGH or gain regen from using a kit
speedy kits

Soldier armor with runes of altruism, emerald trinkets
weapons don’t really matter, but I have sigil of life on the shield. weap is still sigil of rage (precursor, will change into something once I have quip).

Basically kite around eating peach tarts (the one that gives +vit and regen), and doing bombs that heal, throwing elixers for added might to friends while removing our conditions and heal skill for extra might and fury to friends. Typical fighting style is putting down big-ol bomb, then fire bomb for an aoe might knockback, then fire bomb and shield blast finisher for the next aoe might, then big-ol bomb is back on cd.

Still isn’t as tanky as a guard, but i can slow mobs down, blind them, even group stealth for 3 seconds. toss elixer S is a boss also.

Minion Master Necro

20/0/30/20/0

Staff – Scepter/Dagger

Minions are stupid, but not useless as many people claim. I give them the 50% more life trait, 30% more damage trait, siphon health to me when they hit and when I get life siphoned to me, it heals my allies.

My minions can blind, immobilize and get the attention of a mob that would otherwise be on a player.

My abilities allow me to AoE slow, AoE heal Aoe Condition removal/transfer and fear and have short cool downs.

All while sucking the life out of everything on the screen.

If they would tweak the minion AI the MM Necro would be pure beast mode.

Oh yeah, I’m also pretty kitten hard to kill.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Are you denying that the only way Arena Net developers can create fights that require high skill is through forcing players to dodge?

Yes.

Alpha fight in Crucible of Eternity path 2.

You don’t have to dodge even once to survive. It’s simply a matter of understanding how that fight works.

CoE is probably the best dungeon in the game.

support DPS warrior
20/20/0/30/0 shout war with axe/mace

tanking/support shout warrior mace/shield +bow
10/0/30/30/0

tanking/support guardian mace/focus(or shield) +hammer
0/10/30/30/0

healing ele staff
0/10/0/30/30

Lalangamena.3694:

tanking/support guardian mace/focus(or shield) +hammer
0/10/30/30/0

what.