Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I am currently working towards full Zerk and I have done a lot of research about it and people seem to have different opinions.

For people who only have one set of full zerk it seems pretty pointless having Superior Sigil of the night when your just roaming around PvE. Do people just use Ruby Orbs instead or do people have a set of gear for dungeons then something else for roaming/WvW/Factals ect

Thanks

There is really no reason to build for general open world pve combat as its so easy. Most people build for dungeons and in that case, a lot of people use the metabattle.com builds and gear setups.
For most professions Scholar tunes are considered best for personal damage whereas warriors go with strength for the might duration. In terms of sigils I run force+frailty on most sets.

For the most part most the “average player” has just one Berserker set for PvE. Open world is fairly easy and forgiving since it’s a blob-fest the majority of the time. Silverwastes might be a little bit different depending if you’re farming in general or going for achievements. In which case you may opt for different gears, but that’s mostly a preference.

But I digress…

If you are sticking to one PvE Berserker set I would encourage you to focus that gear towards what’s needed in dungeons and fractals that your frequent rather than trying to put together an all-around gear set.

Depending on your class you’re generally looking at the following runes:
Scholar
Strength
Flame Legion
Rage

For Sigils:
Force
Night
Strength
Battle
Frailty

Ultimately though it boils down to what you feel most comfortable with and what you feel you can make most use out of.

Thanks for the response!

Yeah I agree probably no need for it with pve so I’m thinking of using a good all round rune that will be useful in both day and night dungeons ect as I only have one set.

Thanks

Thanks I will have a look into those and decid which to go with! I’m running a guardian by the way! Is it best to stick with a particular rune or mix and match?

Thanks

savacli.8172:

For the most part most the “average player” has just one Berserker set for PvE. Open world is fairly easy and forgiving since it’s a blob-fest the majority of the time. Silverwastes might be a little bit different depending if you’re farming in general or going for achievements. In which case you may opt for different gears, but that’s mostly a preference.

But I digress…

If you are sticking to one PvE Berserker set I would encourage you to focus that gear towards what’s needed in dungeons and fractals that your frequent rather than trying to put together an all-around gear set.

Depending on your class you’re generally looking at the following runes:
Scholar
Strength
Flame Legion
Rage

For Sigils:
Force
Night
Strength
Battle
Frailty

Ultimately though it boils down to what you feel most comfortable with and what you feel you can make most use out of.

I agree fully BUT in low cash situations I’d suggst:

• Pack
• Ogre
  or even
• Ruby Orbs (16-20s /piece)
  
  for PvE
• Stacking sigils (Bloodlust for zerk builds)
• Fire or Air
• In some cases the +7% crit chance also helps…

Thanks I’ll keep that in mind!

I currently have about 25gold so I imagine that is classed as a “low cash situation” ha

I shall so my best to save up for some decent rooms anyway.

Thanks

Here some math on different runes. I take scholar as the baseline. The % numbers next to each runes is the damage different between scholar and that runes. The first numbers is in solo situation and the second one is in full buff party situation.

- Scholar : 100% – 100%
- Ranger : 98% – 98% (Need a companion, so this only work for Ranger, Mesmer or Minion Master).
- Flame Legion : 95% – 95% (Need burning. Should be ok with most party, but for solo it will depend if you have enough burning)
- Strenght : 93% – 93% (Work with might. Never a problem in group, but it might be for some solo build)
- Pack : 93% – 92% (It’s most efficient when you don’t have perma fury)
- Eagle : 94% – 94%
- Thief : 98% – 98% (Only work when you can attack from behind/sides. Most AoE doesn’t work so profession like Guardian and Elementalist will be pretty bad with this rune. You probably never gonna reach 98%)
- Rage : 91% – 93%
- Ruby Orb : 91% – 91%

For Sigils I don’t the numbers but anyway here some info.

- Sigil of Slaying : Best choice, but not worth it since it only work against one type of enemy.

- Sigil of Night : Best choice, but only work during the Night. So 5 dungeons and 5 fractals.

Sigil of Bloodlost or Perception : Fully stacked, they are almost as powerful at sigil of night/slaying, but they work everywhere. They are usually not worth using in dungeon/fractal (with some exception) because you will only fully stacked at the end of the dungeon. For Open world, they are some of the best option as long as you don’t change map too often.

- Sigil of Air : Work any time. Best result in short fight against single target. The longer the fight the less efficient it will be. Pretty much for speed run

- Sigil of Force : The best general purpose sigil for PvE. It will work better than sigil of air outside of speed run and it work at anytime, anywhere.

- Sigil of Frailty : Not useful in speed run situation, but anywhere is it’s a very good sigil. It not only give you good dps, but also boost your team’s dps.

- Sigil of Accuracy : If you search a sigil that work at anytime, for dungeon/fractal, you don’t reach 100% critical chance in party and you consider that you gonna max out vulnerability, then Sigil of Accuracy is a good choice. It’s rarely the best choice.

Hi,

Wow thanks someone has been doing there homework! This is appreciated there is more than enough information to help me decide here. Thinking long term say I were going to use this full zerk set for factals/wvw/raids would this make a difference to which runes I used or do have people have a separate set of armour for each game type with different runes?

I guess what I asking is should I make this armour just for dungeons or dungeons and fractals or will it be good for dungeons/fractal/wvw.

Also is the best way to get the best armour to buy them using dungeon tokens rather than using karma?

Thanks

Problem: WvW vs PvE,Dungeons,Fractals

WvW tends to ask for tanky solutions, and dungons fractals as they are now ask for DPS solutions, WvW will see some healers, but spikes are so large, healing will not change the fact people are insta-killed.

PvE/Dungeons/fractals do not need tankyness in most, if not all cases: they require max dps for fatest completion.
For world bosses and true noob/newb-ility in dungeons some toughness might seem nice, but aggro patterns of some bosses seem to focus on toughness… (could change with HoT….) and you’ll face more aggro if you’re using tougness, if this is a problem: do not join lvl80 zerk/meta and in most cases exp groups as they’ll likely be glass, l80 will see more bit or most tanky builds.

RAIDs are fairly new territory and gear will likely change per leg added…

WvW
WvW tends to be a fairly high pressure situation where you’ll need to survive in case of melee characters or midlines, but for ranged characters…. well… you could run berserker…
Changing either your armor or your trinkets set could be all you need…

WvW Casters:
1st Berserker has been meta in WvW for ranger, mesmer, necro (axe/support) and ele’s… if you feel uncomfortable or when you get mashed too much (most comanders will focus on casters in the 1st 2 or 3 pushes) get some toughness: get 2300-2600 armor on light ranged classes max if needed else your dps will suffer and your support will make no lasting impression.
Celestial Ele is used regularly, some classes have a lot of benefit from cavaliers (toughness/power/ferocity) and knights (toughness/power/precision) trinkets or armor (OR, not AND!)
(counter Melee trains)

WvW Melee
For melee’s (warrior/guardian/necro dagger(GS?)-melee(revenant/scrapper) and others wanting to use a melee class ) :
2400-2700 armor (flankers, focus groups, hit squad, medium, scouts)
2700-3400 armor (main melee-train, hammer stun infighters, heavy) will do nicely, to do so check sets as Knights, Cavalier, Soldiers, (and if needed valkyrie) and combine those with as much zerk (or assassins (for more precision) as possible until you have a feel it’s balanced for you some people want some more vitality and add some valkyrie. One thing to keep in mind is your critical chance should stay above 30% for WvW (unless you run a dedicates support build not build around DPS (mace bunker guardian (clerics with nomads or zealot depending on your wish of location)
(counters: Area denial (siege or casters))

WvW Roaming (1,2 or 3 (somtimes up to 5) ppl):

See Metabattle or use your own PvP build(s). If you are fond of PvP: roaming could be the thing for you, but the new maps will need to prove themselves for roamers. As roamers are generally running 1vs 1 or small group vs small group this reliance on PvP builds should work out perfect. Roamers tend to be stealthable classes or small groups with 1 or 2 characters having acces to stealth, with more reveals available this could become harder
(hard counters: engineers, rangers and any other class with patience and stealth traps in greater or equal numbers)

Havoc Squads: (5-10 man “infiltration” groups)

Generally with 2 or more (condi)mesmers and 2 or more thieves, (condi)engineers, dagger ele’s, dagger/condi necro’s are often used for infiltration and if capable can stay out of enem hands for quite some time. reliant of stealth anda mix of conditions and DPS these are mostly group specs thought up by the squad themselves for maximum sustain and most flexibility, you will need to be able to do anything if your specialized characters in group are killed… often these parties focus on ressing their dead because they need to run too far… this tends to be a weakness. they often use modified PvP builds. Their goal interupt supplies/ capture camps, tag buildings to close waypoints and shank respawned players, and occasionally try to cap stuff…
(counters: guild parties or other havoc squads, the zerg is way too much honor, unless they cross paths)

PvE/ Dungeons/ Fractals

For PvE/Dungeons and Fractals(1-39) -> Go Zerk. above 40 run whatever you stay alive with and can still dish out a punch. Some people swear by zerk, I sometimes run my own builds…
Heart of Thorns is said to be less forgiving vs Zerk builds. I do not have an opinion on this matter….

RAIDS
No meta exists, people have seen a few raids completed on youtube and all present speculationis based upon these few completions. most gear for the 1st leg was glassy with 1 or 2 exceptions, sinister/berserker/zealot and celestial are the conbinations I heard most. As there is no real information and my personal experience in raids is limited to 2 tries with random pugs during a beta weekend where noone had prepared themselves…. Our group had 3 ppl in ascended armor with a “semifunctional build” and 2 condition users, no cc-ers…. We have seen only the split (and finshed the 1st split) only to killed by an Enraged Guardian a short while after completing this 1st split…

Aquiring armor:

• Dungeon armor stats are bound to certain dungeons, you’ll need 23 paths ran for full bonus to get an armor (same dungeon)
• Karma armor stats are bound to the vendor, UNSALVAGEBLE, migh change with HoT
• WvW armor (UNSALVAGEBLE, after HoT launch the should be salvageble for wvw tokens, WvW sometimes drops ascended chests (RARELY!)
• Crafted armor acces to all stats provided you have lvl 400 (or 500) crafting also gives acces to ASCENDED gear, which will allow for WVW and Agony Resist (Fractals) infusions…
• Fractals tends to drop exotic armor with uncommon stats (including magi, shaman, dire, soldiers) and at _high levels 30 (or 40+) has a chance for armor boxes (ASCENDED) as you can change stats now on ascneded armor it can be nice to aquire armor like this BUT at lvl 50 droprate for Asc boxes is ~12% which is fairly low… but higher the any other content.

Unsalvageable armor will give problems in retreiving runes….

Pax did a great answer there.

People usually have the same armor for Dungeon/Fractal, which is usually full dps

But for WvW, it’s always never a good idea to have the same armor. It’s not the end of the world, but you always gonna miss something. Either the armor stats shouldn’t be the same or the rune shouldn’t be the same. It usually also change depending if you are in a zerg or if you are roaming.

For Raids, we don’t know. We only did the first encounter, so maybe we’ll want to use a totally different armor set later in the raid or maybe zerker will stay the best option.

What out for unsalvageable armor. It’s ok if you gonna put a cheap rune, but it will be frustrating if you put a expensive one and you can’t recover it when you change armor later.

Hi,

Thank you both for your answers this has pretty much filled me in on what I needed to know. I will aim to get full zerk first which I plan to get it from dungeon merchant. I will then carefully decide on what runes will suit me and my budget.

Then when I get more involved with PvP I will look to get some soldiers/knights armour from dungeon to mix up my stats.

I’m currently levelling chef and armoursmith so maybe at a later date I can look to craft my own.

Thanks again

with the changes to minions/pets/clones/turrents in HoT, the ranger rune is alot more attractive for eng/rangers/mesmers as these things will rarely die (in PvE anyway) now. Much easily to keep up the 7% dmg bonus in all pve (openworld, dungeons, fractals, etc).

I like scholar, but if you ever solo, like SW or Hot harder content, keeping the 10% bonus may not be as easy. Whereas if you are a pet-class (eng/ranger/mes/necro) you always have the 7%

Coming from someone who has multi sets and runs fractals often. I believe pack runes to be amazing for high dps (( not top )) for those days where you don’t feel 100% and in fights where you know your gona get hit.
Don’t get me wrong, scholar is best. It’s just some days I don’t feel up to keeping the upkeep of the scholar runes

Sarah

Can I ask what people do with the runes that come with dungeon armour for example the superior rune of smothering that comes with COF exotics? Do people just use them or use extractor tool from gem store?

Thanks