Guild Wars 2

Hey all! I reached level 80 a few days ago. It’s my first level 80, and the first character to have ever made it to level cap in a MMO so I’m new at the whole endgame thing and gearing up.

I bought a cheap exotic/rare mixed set because the stuff she was wearing was still level 60-70ish blues and greens and I figured I could atleast get a decent set to go and run TA with for the Nightmare set, but for my final set I want to do it right.

My traits are 0/10/0/30/30 at the moment, but I might change that to 0/0/10/30/30 or 0/0/20/30/20 later for more survability. My aim is decent DPS, but I don’t want to be a glass cannon. I want to kill things and I want to live, so I guess I’d like to be somewhere in the middle in both damage and survability, as I understand I can’t have both. I’m a staff Elementalist that will mostly do PvE. I want to be able to hold my own in dungeons.

So, for my gear. I was thinking full Soldiers for the armor, Soldiers for the weapon, full Berserker for the trinkets. Now for the stones to put into them, I’m confused. I think the armor I bought already had stones (sigils, runes, whatever they’re called) in them? Can you take them out and put other ones in? Since I wanted +25 thoughness stones in my armor and Beryls in my trinkets. Is this possible?

With this gear I’d have these stats:

Power 1938
Precision 1272
Toughness 1432
Vitality 1672
Critical Damage + 46%
Condition Damage + 0
Condition Duration 0%
Healing Power 300
Boon Duration 30%
Critical Chance 20.95%
Damage 0%
Armor 2352
Health 18365
Endurance Regeneration + 0%
Agony Resistance 0
Attunement Recharge Rate 60%

How does it sound? I was thinking I could get some armor pieces with healing power (Cleric or something) instead of Berserker, but as I said I’d like to do some damage aswell, I don’t want to be solely support and I was affraid I might spread everything out too much.

Any input would be awesome!

Edit: by the way, what stat improves crit chance? Precision?

Precision improves crit chance, yes.

Don’t use any Cleric gear.

Use Exquisite Ruby Jewels (Power/Prec/Crit Damage) in your Trinket upgrade slots. Crit damage is very good there because it only uses 5 stat points for 1 crit damage (15 -> 3%).

You can replace the Runes in your armor, yes. Don’t put Toughness there. Scholar is a good choice for damage ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Scholar ), Divinity is a good choice for overall stats ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Divinity ), Ruby Orbs are another great choice for damage ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ruby_Orb ). Take your pick.

As for Sigil on your Staff, it would be a good idea to get 2 and use a Bloodlust Sigil to 25 stacks and then swap to the Staff with Battle Sigil for overall damage. If you find yourself at 25 stacks of Might too much then you can swap to a Fire Sigil or similar.

I was actually in the same position as you were. I like to be survivable (really tanky) but still pull out decent damage. I tried permutations of zerker -PTV combinations but didn’t like it at all. Too squishy for my taste. I found out that what works for me best is a combination of PTV gear, valkyrie and cavalier.

Heres my Set up atm.
0/10/0/30/30

Armour:
Full PTV with full 6 rune of earth. Got this from either WVW or Karma vendors

Trinkets:
2 Valk earrings, 2 Cavalier rings with Beryl jewels, Cavalier amulet. Cavalier are from the Balthazar karma vendor and Valk is from the TP

Back item:
PTV back brace with soldier crest. Karma vendor again

Weapon:
2 cleric daggers -I just use this since i couldn’t afford the invaders dagger yet.

Combined with the use of perma fury through zephyrs boon, maintenance oils and precision food (bowl of butternut squash), I can get the following stats:

armor: 2643
HP: 18.9 to19k
Crit chance: 41% (thats with fury)
Crit damage: 53%

Its quite decent I must say. I run dungeons, fractals and WVW with only this build and it quite works well for all 3. Problem though is its for my D/D so you might wanna tinker with it a bit.

get knight’s / valkyries.