Guild Wars 2

Okay, I’m a new 80 figuring out how things work beyond normal open world mobs and veterans. From reading the discussions on the forum and looking at level 80 build recommendations, I’m piecing together the following understanding of how this game currently works for end-game PvE.

Damage mitigation is oriented around player movement to the point where passive character and gear stats like toughness and vitality are ineffective as a substitute. Even “tanky” characters like guardians and warriors don’t trade blows with mobs in dungeons and stay up on the power of their armor, health, damage reduction skills, and healing from themselves and the members of their group. I’m not quite sure yet if that is because even they can’t survive that way or if it is because they can’t hold aggro so the “tankiness” doesn’t benefit the rest of the group while everyone suffers from their lack of DPS.

As a result, all classes from the squishiest to the tankiest gear for maxium DPS and the strategy is for the group to burn the boss down as fast as they can while dodging as many attacks as they can and success depends on getting the boss down before too many people miss time a dodge and get 1 shot.

Is that somewhat correct, or am I just completely misunderstanding what I am reading?

Hi there, welcome to the game, and welcome to level 80!

The short answer is, for the most part you’re right. The “elitests” of GW2 who run high level fractals are all in full damage gear (berserker gear). They are built as glass cannon as possible to burn the boss down as quick as possible. This is done by combining classes together who can avoid most trash mobs / take advantage of mechanics. How do they avoid direct damage you ask? Mostly through dodges, reflect barriers and other utilities.

But, that’s not to say this is how you MUST play the game. It’s a shame that yes, the current meta really leaves no room for diversity in builds – but hell it’s your game and you can do what you want. You can build a support guardian that throws out tons of boons and heals to your party, while being able to “tank” a good amount of damage.

Just remember this MMO is very different from other MMOs. There are no true tanks / healers. It’s more like support, control and damage. No matter how tanky you are, you still have to dodge in and out, swap weapons and range. Don’t let the meta bog you down, build a character the way you want, and play it the way you want

Drannon.8254:

No matter how tanky you are, you still have to dodge in and out, swap weapons and range.

Thanks for the response. The part I don’t understand is, in the context of the above quote, is this: If you are a DPS warrior and get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, so you swap DPS attributes for toughness and vitality and still get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, can you even be “tanky”??? Can you meaningfully increase survival against PvE that way or are those attributes really only meaningful in PvP?

I had a priest and a paladin in WoW, and the paladin could stand and take hits that would absolutely one-shot my priest. I don’t get the impression that is even possible here, no matter how much toughness and vitality you stack.

For dungeons especially, most people recommend zerk gear because it makes the run go smoother and faster. When facing elite mobs, its usually just a matter of ‘kill or be killed’. If you gear for dps, then usually you will be able to kill all the mobs before they have time to do any real dmg to your group. The elite golems in SE P1 is one example of this. However one drawback of zerk gear is that unless you are familiar with a path, you will most likely down/die a couple times through it, especially if you are pug’ing it. This is why most people will suggest you start with knights gear and then add zerker pieces as you get more comfortable with it.

From what I understand, “tanky” builds aren’t necessarily a bad thing and they do make a difference in survivability. For some dungeons (like Arah) and some of harder PvE content, it might make more sense to run a tanky build, especially if you have a hard time staying alive without it. However one reason people dislike these builds is, to quote something i read once: ‘why, just so you can be the last one standing when the rest of your group wipes?’ Though tanky builds do help with dmg mitigation, to the cost of lowering team dps which with the new patch, I hear will be worse. In dungeons there are also mechanics where, you have to dodge and if you fail to do so then you will likely die no matter what build you have. The alpha fight in CoE P2/3 is one example of this. So yes, most of your information is right and in dungeons, mitigation (via skills or dodge) is more effective than gear. Only thing I would add is that some classes are squisher than others. This is because of armor type which also helps in mitigation, so an Ele for example would down more easily than a warrior when faced with a direct hit, despite both having the same gear.

You are right for the most part but tanky gear does allow you to stay alive for a little longer but that difference is almost negligible. You are better off stacking dps and dodging and stacking anyway.

I’d wait to see how the big changes coming April 15th change things. Some of us are hoping that it will work and more builds will become valuable.

DavidH.7380:

Drannon.8254:

No matter how tanky you are, you still have to dodge in and out, swap weapons and range.

Thanks for the response. The part I don’t understand is, in the context of the above quote, is this: If you are a DPS warrior and get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, so you swap DPS attributes for toughness and vitality and still get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, can you even be “tanky”??? Can you meaningfully increase survival against PvE that way or are those attributes really only meaningful in PvP?

I had a priest and a paladin in WoW, and the paladin could stand and take hits that would absolutely one-shot my priest. I don’t get the impression that is even possible here, no matter how much toughness and vitality you stack.

You have to consider personal survivability and group survivability.

It’s usually quicker for you in maximum DPS to be downed and then ressed back to life and continue hammering again.

But if you’re in a PVT gear, then the group survivability actually goes down to compensate your own survivability because the battle actually takes longer to finish so they run more risks of getting hit.

This is exactly how a staff AH Guardian full PVT or Cleric’s thinks. He is never downed so he thinks he’s carrying the whole team, but in fact the whole team dies because he doesn’t help to kill the enemies much.

DavidH.7380:

The part I don’t understand is, in the context of the above quote, is this: If you are a DPS warrior and get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, so you swap DPS attributes for toughness and vitality and still get 2 shot if you fail to range or dodge properly, can you even be “tanky”??? Can you meaningfully increase survival against PvE that way or are those attributes really only meaningful in PvP?

Defensive stats have an impact because you have more room. Every situation is different so it’s hard to put numbers of them, but here some exemple. Lets say there is 3 build. The first is full DPS, the second is full Defensive/Healing and the third is hybrid.

The first is full zerker gear and full DPS trait. It have almost no room for error. It depend on which profession, but 1, 2 or 3 shot and that’s the end. So you need to dodge about everything that is coming your way. The problem become more difficult when you figure out that you usually don’t have enough dodge for that and that its easy to waste a dodge. You usually need to go further than just dodging (evade, block, invulnerability, reflect, boons, etc). You also need to dps the boss as fast as possible because there is always some minor attack that you can’t evade. On some encounter that will kill you eventually, on most that will simply make your live much more difficult as the combat last more and more.

The second is full defensive (defensive trait and gear like clerics AH guardian). There is only a few of those out there right now, but they exist. You simply don’t want to play with more than 1-2 of those in your party of you run will take forever. They can facetank a big part of the content of gw2 if you have a full party of those and they support each other. Actually there is video about that kind of party and they disable their dodge button for the run. It was a troll video that last FOREVER but they made their point. You can facetank a lot, but it take a lot of time. If you have only 1 or 2 of those, they can’t facetank everything, but only to dodge once in a while. They are usually the last to die (but not always lol), but even when they do, they won’t be able to finish stuff most of the time because of the lack of DPS.

The third are hybrid. Full zerker gear, with defensive trait or offensive trait with knight/Valkyrie gear and things like that. They are the most numerous group of people pugging in the game. The strength of this build is against new content. Full dps have some problem against new problem since they need to have good basic knowledge of the encounter to survive. Its also great to learn, for ppl that just want a easier time in the game or people not good enough to run full DPS. You need skill and concentration to run full dps build, here you have a little room. You can take more beating that a full dps for almost everything, but you still have to dodge the biggest attack as they will probably still one shot or leave you really low. But these are only the big attack. For the most part, you have a way more easier time. Another problem come from high end fractal. At higher level of fractal, the mobs hit harder and harder, making less and less different between a full dps and a hybrid. At these level, you can be one or two shot by a lot of enemies. That leave you no other choice than to avoid most attacks if not all, even if you run a hybrid build. At that point, you are better with a full DPS build to make the fight as short as possible so you have less time to make an error that will get you kill.

From what I understand, going the “tankie” route might allow you 3 or 4 hard hits before going down (where the DPS-Zerker will go down on the 2nd hit (Possibly 3). This leads to the theory (and rightfully so) that BOTH of these NEED to avoid the damage (the “Tankie” can just be a bit more sloppy and stay in the fight).

You can’t run the Tankie build and have high DPS (there are exceptions….Bosses that are immune to crits for one), so the theory is that if you want to be the most effective party member, go full Zerker, and learn to avoid damage better. Unfortunately (for the sake of Build Diversity), that theory is not wrong.