Guild Wars 2

Been slowly building up a Knight’s set on the side. My question is this though, how do you still break 15k+ HP wearing Knight’s Gear. Don’t really see anything other than Valk accessories, is that what’s being used?

thanks for the reply Hjulstad. that’s very true and so far it’s been working out well. i might try a full our knight’s piece and mess around with rare armor before i fully invest in an exotic set.

i have started to save up different armor sets in my bank though, for reasons you stated exactly. : ))

i guess the same goes for sigils in terms of what kind of play style i want. i have extra hammers as well (collecting skins i enjoy if you will lol) so i might try throwing in different sigils in them to see what works best then. just wanted an opinion or rather, discussion on what other hammer users have found fun or useful : ))

@Lumines – that’s what i’m going for now sort of. not sure how the numbers will turn out but i guess you could try to do some quick math. or maybe someone out there can directly answer you. : )))

iirc, i was able to break 15k HP using a different hammer, which gave me massive HP, but of course, you lose out on other stats. this was with 4/6 or 5/6 knight’s and 1 valkyrie piece. my jewelry are still all low level and i haven’t really upgraded them yet.

@Trungalung

Real quick question. I’ve seen in this thread you list one of your sets as full Berserker’s. I’m assuming this is both armor and jewelry. In another thread I saw you say your armor is “runed” with Ruby Orbs.

I’ve been running a Knight’s set but I am starting to put together zerker pieces for farming/open world.

My question is, what do you use in your weapon? Another Ruby orb? or a sigil perhaps.

@Akamon
Thx for the kind words and im glad you “discovered” the “secrets” of targeting, dodging and a 4k aoe with almost 600 in range. If you have im rather certain that you also find 2h mastery to be invaluable in pve as well.

When you master it, grab a guildie and go into wvw, the playstyle is just supereffficent as a frontline stormtrooper. Even if your not that into pvp this will change your mind, its great fun and a pure killer. its not uncommon that i run alone into the hord of players, kill 2 or three and get out of there alive and seconds later i buff my entire team while healing with the staff.

Sidenote. I very tempted to write a similar guide regarding the staff, that weapon is a monster in openworld pvp and attacking towers.

@Hjulstad
Spot on and i appriciate that you to point out that this isnt a single build, its just a set of must have traits (3 or 4) and weapon, gear and utility and based on that you can actually take on what ever role you want. You can even switch role while in combat, the staff is a work of wonder for this.

@Lumines
Here is how you break 15k hp and with tons of precision and really good power. Personal record is now 6.8k with mighty blow on a warrior with this armor and accessories. How its done is up to you guys to figure out ;-)

build
0/15/30/20/5

Kights armor with 6*rune of the soldier.
Berserkers accessories with exquisite ruby jewels
Berserkers spring guard with exquisite jewels
Berserker hammer

Stats
Attack 2900
Crit 48%
Crit damage 75%
Armor 2800
14550 HP in statsheet and in healthpool i have 15178.

I assume the “bonus” comes from wvw where we are third atm so this buff everyone should have. If not, just change a couple of jewels in your accessories to vitality/pov, two is enough, and you will break 15k and still have 46% critchance.

Stats with all knight gear and berserker hammer.
Attack 2788
Crit chance 51%
Crit damage 43%
Armor 3200
14550 HP in statsheet and in healthpool i have 15178.

This one is one tough motherkittener to kill and hits like a truck imo.

I now have:
Knights armor and accessories
Berserkers armor and accessories
pov/vit/tuv armor and pov/vit/crit damage accessories
Half a set of och pov/prec/heal armor and a combination green vit/prec/heal earrings and exotic rings and amulets with heal on them.
Rampager accessories

Also have Explore, berserker and knights when it comes to hammers.

If you want anything tested or stats on a particular setup just post it here and i will try to check it out and answer you.

I dont want you to buy gear and then be unsatisfied with the outcome.

Like i been with my rampager accessories, god how bad they are for a guardian imo which brings up an other topic, they just has to fix so conditiondamage is a valid option for us.

Managed to put together a set up that had the following stats:

Attack 2820
Crit chance: 51%
Crit dmg: 42%
Armor: 3224
HP: 14875

My traits were set up as 0/0/30/30/10 (ground target Wall of Reflection or Sanctuary is boss).

It’s not too bad, I see the merits in the thought behind the build and took it for a spin in a few explorable modes and a WvW session to get a good judgement of its performance. I’m comparing this to my set up in Power/Vit/Tough and Cleric Accessories with a spread of 0/10/10/30/20.

Compared to my previous set up, I do considerable more damage. The higher crit chance and damage % made a huge difference, seeing as my previous set up left me with 16% crit and 12% crit dmg. So far so good, I expected as much.

It was hard to tell whether I had more endurance up due to vigor(theory points to yes) as I ran Sigil of Energy on my weapons, I never had a problem with dodging even before I changed builds, but I can assume that for most people, this is also an upgrade.

Now I will talk about some of the trade offs, the things I had to give up. Selfless Daring noticeably heals a lot less than before. It went from ~900-1k (depending on weapon, my staff was Cleric’s while others were Knight’s) to healing ~425. This was to be expected as this heal is probably our best scaling heal. My Signet of Resolve also is untraited in this set up, I got spoiled by the 32s CD forreals!

My max HP pool also went from 17k down to the above listed amount of just a smidgen under 15k. Wasn’t a huge deal in PvE but I noticed it more when I was in WvW.

I guess the biggest trade off for me was losing Absolute Resolution. I weigh this pretty heavily as I think a) Virtues has great attribute bonuses (boon duration+recharge) b) Some of condition removals are somewhat bugged for the Guardian. Purging Flames and 2/4 shouts not working with Pure of Voice. Being vulnerable to conditions was something I did not like as the Guardian also has a much smaller HP pool than most classes. I also really liked absolute resolution for the fact that I can save my shouts to remove conditions for allies and still have a reliable way to cleanse myself.

TLDR: Overall, I found my life-span in both builds to be about the same, no matter how you build it, Guardians just don’t go down easily! I found a noticeable increase in damage output but found myself more vulnerable to conditions (bigger issue in PvP). This is probably one of the most viable ways to be a “Tanky DPS” Guardian if you will.

For now though, my values still lean towards the more defensive side of things and will probably go back to my previous build for the time being. I see myself taking this build out for a ride when I want a change of pace and when they fix bugged condition removal skills though.

Hi Brutaly,

thank you for this guide. It really changed my point of view about the hammer and the Guardian class in general.

I now have knight armor, working on my 6* Rune of the Soldier and Berserker Accessories.

I am now at 0/5/30/30/5, but thinking of switching off Radiance for Virtues to get a little more flexibility with another trait.

I have a question for you. I haven’t decided my Sigils yet. Do i have to get a Energy Sigil for my Hammer or for the secondary weapon? And if the answer is 1), that means i have to make two swaps to have the regen: it is worth it?

I really can’t decide about the sigil, i think 5% damage is lousy, tempted on Hydromancy but i don’t really know if it is efficent.

Not related, i am having a really tough time with ranged guys, especially the bombardiers in Caduceus Manor Exp… they trash me everytime sigh. I guess adding a little more toughness could be useful, but i fear that i will lose on DPS.

Thanks in advance for the answers, and good job on the other posters too. You are really helpful for us newbies

Fabsm.5897:

I really can’t decide about the sigil, i think 5% damage is lousy, tempted on Hydromancy but i don’t really know if it is efficent.

Not related, i am having a really tough time with ranged guys, especially the bombardiers in Caduceus Manor Exp… they trash me everytime sigh. I guess adding a little more toughness could be useful, but i fear that i will lose on DPS.

Thanks in advance for the answers, and good job on the other posters too. You are really helpful for us newbies

The 5% sigil is pretty much equal to a major trait. If you have more than 50% crit damage on the stat sheet, 5% crit will be better. Wall of Reflection is your best defense against most range mobs (and bosses). I believe they do work against those guys in CM ex.

@Brutaly

@Trunglalunga
Sorry if i misinterpretated your statement as that you dont need to dodge in most dungeons.
English isnt my native language so i actually interpretate both those sentences in the same way. You dont need to dodge in dungeons while having aggro.
The fact still remains, if you want to do max dps you need 2h mastery but the rotation is chain, 1st step of the chain and mighty blow.

I’ve been trying to do some test on it, but it’s way too complicated and taking way too much time (especially with no add ons and the combat log is a piece of crap) So I’ve pretty much dismissed it as a play style preference.

On an entirely different note, you should collect the feedbacks and edit the guide into a more organized format so all the new players can look for the info easier. I’m willing to offer my help on this. Also, calling it a crithammer doesn’t roll off the tongue. Since this build is slowly reaching the meta, it deserves something more “flashy” like “Hammer of Protector” or just Protector or something (I just pick a random name since we give a lot of protection boon). Your guide deserves a sticky.

I’m running with 0/5/30/30/5, will love to have 15 in radiance, but I love also dungeons so for me it’s a must to have Pure voice.
I never did 5k with MB yet =S anyway I miss 2 o 3 Berserkers jewels yet, hopefully with those one I’ll achieve it.
I’ll try first running all Berserkers, and surely, as you say ,change 1 or 2 “runes” on them if needed.
By the way it’s a pity you cant mix those accessories directly if you craft em.

@Lumines

Yeah its weird that survivability doesnt go down even if you add dps, sure some support is lost but its arginal imo. But if ou are more conetent with a more defensive set up you should play that.

Regarding heals and selfless daring, this is why the orrian gear, with vit/prec on them are so interesting. It might be able to keep most of the dps/ah heals and still improve selfless daring immensly. I will get back to this as soon as i have the gear to test it with.

@Fabsm
Thx and nice to hear that you gotten enlightend, frontline killing in wvw is just so awesome :-)

There are plenty of valid sigils if you are not comfortable with energy. Hydromancy, battle, strength, fire, ice, life leech on swap, life leech on crit, just to mention a few.

I suggest you trait it how you want to play and then choose sigils and runes based on what you want to improve. Starting to sound like a politicians answer but there isnt just one solution.

@Trungalunga
Yes, thx for the advice, im planning to do that but my real life is kind of hectic but if i get the time (dictionary+not english=slow writer) i will make a new updated thread with all your reflections and suggestion as valid options. If its good enough it might be stickied or the effort will be in vain but i take the chance.

I would really appriciate if you could help me with the pve part and your input. You play it a bit different then me and more input is always nice in a “guide”.

@Krulz
There are more then gear needed to hit superhard but that i will keep to myself :-)

The jewels drop on a regular basis in open world pve, just buy an explorer set and you will have the jewels of your choice in no time.

@Brutaly

I agree, I think this is a really solid path for Guardians who aren’t content with being just “support,” with this path, you are indeed the jack of all trades, you have pretty good support as the by-product of your playstyle, your damage is by no means lackluster and you will out last all glass cannons and probably most other specs. My post was obviously me nitpicking at details which really in the end is up to the individual.

That being said, aside from Orrian gear offering that spread, I’m currently in the process of collecting TA cabbage armor that carry precision/vitality/healing, i’ll perhaps provide more input when I can actually make a build with that.

Brutaly.6257:

@FabsmThere are plenty of valid sigils if you are not comfortable with energy. Hydromancy, battle, strength, fire, ice, life leech on swap, life leech on crit, just to mention a few.

Incidentally, you gave me an hint on a possible build.

Is the

Superior Sigil of Blood

Double-click to apply to a weapon.
30% Chance on Critical: Steal Health (This effect cannot trigger more than once every 2 seconds)
Bind on Acquire

actually viable in this setup?

As we base our DPS and our gamestyle on crit, this sigil could be another survivability buffer to try.

Speculating:
With 50% crit chance on hammer, 1 hit out of 6 will activate the sigil.

I read on the wiki and on guru that the sigil heals for about 453 (AND +12,5% of healing power on top, unconfirmed).

If it is activated every other cooldown (statistically we activate it 1/6, but we have at most a 50% chance of it not being activated, due to cooldown), it is almost like having regeneration with 100% uptime (regen is about 148 per second) and stacking.

Did i crunched my numbers right?

This strategy could be further advanced using 2 Runes of Vampirism (5% life steal on hit, 15 sec CD) and Blackberry Pie (40% steal life on critical, +50 Precision), to get good and steady life stealing.

That would mean giving up Rune of the Soldiers 6th bonus, so they could be switched off with other great bonus as Eagle, Forge, Divinity and so on.

Let me know your opinions.

By the way I have +5% Crit on my hammer due I have 38 so far, so I have 43. As soon as I reach more with my gems I guess it’s better to swap the sigil right?=)

@Lumines
TA, nice, forgot about those, might take a look, farming for karma is a kitten and doing dungeons is much more fun. Thx.

@fabsm
yeah those are nice if you are happy with the dps/cc/mobility.

I played around with those and steal health on swap (about 1k) and had both in my spvp set during bwe 1 and 2 when i was playing 1h sword and scepter mainly.

Those are really nice and i think they team up very nice with a crithammer build.

Your math seems correct but you need to add one parameter and that is its only in pve you are not actually gonna hit even close as often. In pvp people tend to move hence i like sigils that i can control the effect on and not be dependent on an other persons skill or shortcomings.

Those runes and food are great with that setup. Shiat i got interested myself to try those in wvw, here goes an other 10 gold :-)

@Krulz
Once again, not neccessarily. Those sigils are really nice since they add both survivability and dps. If you like them, keep them, you cant have to much crit imo…

@Brutality
Do you see value in changing up some Knight’s armor pieces for Orr Heal/Precision/Vitality for some extra health and healing buffer and making up the Toughness in Emerald accessories? That’s what I was looking to invest in as I finish the home stretch to 80. I come from playing a Necro originally and it’s hard for me to look at a 14-15k health pool and not wince.

I was also thinking about a Sigil of Fire to just stack more AoE triggers on crits. This option would be mostly for PvE where I’m fine with standing still and chewing on a pack of mobs so I wouldn’t expect to miss the energy on weapon swap that much.

Also, I would love to read a guide to Staff in WvW. I was trying it out mostly for the sigil and heal/buff on cooldown, but especially in sieges it felt like the auto-attack and orb were pretty hard to leverage and the ward was very situational so I spent a lot of time just standing around and tentatively looking for fools to expose themselves on the walls.

@Brutality – a second vote for that staff WvW thread or even just info. I’ve been using it in WvW, but primarily just for the speed buff and might… It doesn’t seem to be much use for anything else – but my experience is very little.

Having leveled to 80 as a GS Guardian and now transitioning to hammer, I am having a lot of fun. I’ve gone out in both WvW and some dungeons and am having a blast. I still don’t think I really understand the synergies that well, but I’ll get there. I think the highest MB i’ve seen is ~4k, but usually more in the 2-3k range, but I’m not reviewing combat logs to check… this is just what I might be seeing/missing on screen, while in action.

Question: I think I should start working my armor (currently all green Knight’s stuff). I seem to be able to make karma faster than gold, so what is my best option for getting into some rare/exotic armor? And why the heck is t3 cultural so darn expensive!?!! I just want my Stag armor so I can pretend to be Robert Baratheon!!!

Lucubration.8361:

@Brutality
Do you see value in changing up some Knight’s armor pieces for Orr Heal/Precision/Vitality for some extra health and healing buffer and making up the Toughness in Emerald accessories?

That’s what I was looking to invest in as I finish the home stretch to 80. I come from playing a Necro originally and it’s hard for me to look at a 14-15k health pool and not wince.

I was also thinking about a Sigil of Fire to just stack more AoE triggers on crits. This option would be mostly for PvE where I’m fine with standing still and chewing on a pack of mobs so I wouldn’t expect to miss the energy on weapon swap that much.

Also, I would love to read a guide to Staff in WvW. I was trying it out mostly for the sigil and heal/buff on cooldown, but especially in sieges it felt like the auto-attack and orb were pretty hard to leverage and the ward was very situational so I spent a lot of time just standing around and tentatively looking for fools to expose themselves on the walls.

I think orr MIGHT be an alternative, havent got them all yet so i dont know for sure and i cant promise anything, theoretically it looks like a very promising setup. Will get back to that when i know.

Ignore the size (weird but in this case size dont matter) of the healthpool, the effective healthpool of a guardian is much larger then it seems, this is a thing many people seem to totally miss out on.

There are multiple ways to mitigate/negate damage and in the guardians case its all about timing on a necro its large healthpool and death shroud. Can promise you there isnt may necros that give me any trouble what so ever in wvw.

Will consider the staffguide but to be honest i have a shortage of time and writing with a dictionary in my right had is a hassle.

Question: I think I should start working my armor (currently all green Knight’s stuff). I seem to be able to make karma faster than gold, so what is my best option for getting into some rare/exotic armor? And why the heck is t3 cultural so darn expensive!?!! I just want my Stag armor so I can pretend to be Robert Baratheon!!!

imo the absolute fastest way to get armor is to play the game, run a couple of dungeons in explorermode and roam cursed shore for events and ofc gather mats and sell them.

Dungeons can give you the gear you want and you can get about one piece of armor in an evening.

An hour on cursed shore and couple of rare drops to salavage and you have 1 gold in 1-2 hours ,easy.

Imo karma is the slowest path to go down, the reason why i have issue swith getting orrian gear.

Frankly i play 90% pvp and still i have 4 complete sets (knights, berserker, explorer and vitality/power/toughness) and 4 set of accessories. Only three of those pieces comes from wvw, the rest is dungeons and pve.

Brutaly.6257:

build
0/15/30/20/5

Kights armor with 6*rune of the soldier.
Berserkers accessories with exquisite ruby jewels
Berserkers spring guard with exquisite jewels
Berserker hammer

Stats
Attack 2900
Crit 48%
Crit damage 75%
Armor 2800
14550 HP in statsheet and in healthpool i have 15178.

I assume the “bonus” comes from wvw where we are third atm so this buff everyone should have. If not, just change a couple of jewels in your accessories to vitality/pov, two is enough, and you will break 15k and still have 46% critchance.

Stats with all knight gear and berserker hammer.
Attack 2788
Crit chance 51%
Crit damage 43%
Armor 3200
14550 HP in statsheet and in healthpool i have 15178.

This one is one tough motherkittener to kill and hits like a truck imo.

If you want anything tested or stats on a particular setup just post it here and i will try to check it out and answer you.

I dont want you to buy gear and then be unsatisfied with the outcome.

I’m still on the way of the Crithammer.
How lovely fun is this way of play But i’m still really far of the numbers needed to be good.
- Because i was playing on the CoE donjon, i’m 5/6 set Power/Préci/Crit (~Berzerker) with Soldier Rune.
- Accessories are not finished (i still have jewel of my past cleric build) , i have full exotic
Ring Berzerker / Knight
Earring Knight / Cleric
Amulet Cleric
- Hammer Knight

By reading you, my question is: Am I wrong in a Berzerk gear with Knight Jewels/Weapons, or should I switch/transmute in Knight gear with Knight jewels ?
I was thinking Berzerk gear should have had more Critic Chance & Critic damage than Knight, despite of the 5% Thoughness turn in Précision of Knight gear.

Sorry if my english is bad, i’m not English too ^^

No your not wrong. Its definitely valid, what ever you feel comfortable with.

Berzerker has higher critdamage but infact lower critchance as long as you use retributive armor. Knights add toughness and retributive armor converts toughness into precision. The have the same basestats precisionwise.

UPDATE:
Just played a couple of hours wvw with vit/tough/pow with 3 rune of the monk and 3 rune of water and ofc my berserkerhammer.

I got these stats:
Attack 2879
40% crit and 43% critdamage
Armor 3062
Healthpool 15948
Healpower 350 (corresponds to 500 heal per dodge and 77 heal per altruistic healing.)

This gave me constant quickness thru staff and retreat and ofc 24/7 retal and protection, in fact 15% boonduration gives you 24/7 uptime on those two. This is mostly relevant for pve since in pvp you wont hit as often.

If i would switchout those runes for 5*rune of the ranger and one rune of the eagle my critrating would be about 48% and my critdamage would be 51%.

healpower would be 200 and each dodge heal for 350 instead.

I said earlier that i found this setup to be kind of weak by i changed my mind, this is definitely valid, its just a bit less offensive then full knights but still very valid.

So if you want a slower, less risk/reward intense gameplay this is one way to go. I really like those runes btw.

To the OP. Nice write up, but I don’t really get every thing you are saying. What is this synergy between SoP and MB and how do I use it?

Oh, by the way.
Been meaning to ask you Brutaly.

What is “Berserkers spring guard with exquisite jewels”

I think that’s the masterwork back lace from the personal story. Don’t quote me on it though.

Ahh… If that’s the case, then we can trace some commonalities between Brutaly’s two set examples.

In both cases, Berserker’s Hammer and probably the back brace (unless you’d consider buying a Guild Defender version).
In both cases, full Knight’s set, I am assuming both with Soldier’s runes.

That would make sense, because it would let you keep the same armor for most applications, only switching out all Jewelry/Accessories for PvP or specific encounters.

Personally, my first exotics were the zerker jewelry. Now I’m wondering if I made a mistake and I should have made Knights to go with my armor. I’ll probably end up crafting a set, putting me in a position to do what I mentioned above, gear-wise.

Trungalung on the other hand frequently advertises the full Berserker/ruby setup for nearly all applications. I can only imagine the killing-speed of that set must be so much faster. I can tell you from running with a Thief/Mesmer/Engineer regularly, my Knight’s DPS is pretty pathetic, but I stay up when all of them fall over.

That being said, I’m surprised to see the Berserker’s crowd mention relative safety in dungeons. In explorables, I find my groups getting stomped left and right, and toughness just feels mandatory for survival (as if it really helps much).

That being said, my initial explorable dungeons were in Ascalon and the Butler in CM, so I may have been unfairly exposed to cruel and unusual punishment my first time around.

I love the hammer, but the auto attack, as many have said, takes getting used to.

Until I hit 80, though, I plan on primarily using a greatsword instead. This build seems like it would all work fairly well with a greatsword instead of a hammer, but would you suggest any changes? I can’t really think of any off the top of my head. Perhaps Altruistic Healing is a waste, but otherwise it seems reasonably safe to me.

Altruistic Healing works great with the Hammer as the symbol is from an auto-attack and is not restricted by cool down like other weapons. I’d imagine it would work fine with a Greatsword, just that the frequency in which you’d apply boons would be less especially after the recharge increase.

@ Whiskyjumper, you can blast the Symbol of Protection with Mighty blow for AoE retaliation.

@TeamRaveGreen The staff it’s just awesome in WvW you can push enemy lines hell a lot with it, you can use it to heal/might before launching an attack.
Gather 3 or 4 Guardians with a staff just pressing “1” charging and you’ll see all your enemies running .
Also to defend the gates it’s awesome.

@Whiskyjumper
Question answered by Lumines and i want to add that its almost seemless with the chain if you use 2h mastery, in pvp, and with a certain playstyle in pve, it infact is seemless in reality.

@Melizande
Answered by Trungalung so you can infact quote him on that.

@Krulz
Yeah you are so right but it takes just two guardians in the front popping empower with a 3 sec gap and #1 hits for 2k, we are talking about 20k of damage each attack from the two guardians, in the front of the enemies zerg. Try it with sigil of rage, its freaking hysterical…

Then add in wall of reflection which forces their melee to move in and then you drop line of warding behind the melee and just kill them with you hammer. It pretty much works everytime. No other class can push as hard as a properly played guardian.

Great at keeps, both defending and attacking.

When attacking, support the frontliners at the gate, spamm skill 1 thru the door, heal/buff with empower, symbol on the wall. Drop line of warding if the exit or try to get into the tower and then kill them off with the hammer and use wall of reflection when needed. If you really need to clean the wall you just pop tome of wrath and #4 and then spam #1. This gives me 5 badges each siege.

There are better ways to do it but i cant understand people that says guardians are useless in wvw, kitten i think we are the heros on the battlefield, start acting like one.

When defending, its the same, but the other way around, just see to it that you have stand your ground ready when leaving the tower to kill some pesky doorknockers so you can avoid their line of warding.

Or just run out with the staff, pop wall of reflection and starts spamming #1 or pop tome of wrath and just force the entire zerg away from the door.

No need for guide, if people cant understand how to use the staff and be a wvw monster then there is no help :-)

@Melizande

My question is, what do you use in your weapon? Another Ruby orb? or a sigil perhaps.

Trungalung on the other hand frequently advertises the full Berserker/ruby setup for nearly all applications. I can only imagine the killing-speed of that set must be so much faster. I can tell you from running with a Thief/Mesmer/Engineer regularly, my Knight’s DPS is pretty pathetic, but I stay up when all of them fall over.

I run with Sigil of Strength since it should take advantage of my Altruistic Healing (never test this, I just assume it does).

There’s one thing I have over other people. Experience. I’ve run dungeons so much that I know what most mobs will do. Once you know what they’re gonna do, all you have to do is switching your traits, weapons, and utilities to counter them. I’m at the point that I’m comfortable with full berserkers (I also have full knight and magi set stash in the bank except for some jewelry). I push the potential of the class and build. Before all of this, I would mix and match for some survivability then once I’m comfortable enough with that particular instance. I’d run with full zerk. I’d not recommend this however if you’re easily spaced out. You need quite a bit of concentration and focus to see through all the cluster kitten in melee.

In WvW, I rarely run into any small skirmish so I’ll stick with full damage or running Magi for support. In SPvP, I use Knight with zerk jewel however.

Brutaly.6257:

No need for guide, if people cant understand how to use the staff and be a wvw monster then there is no help :-)

I don’t even have a staff, perhaps that is why I don’t think wvwvw is any fun at all, but please enlighten me.

also, how you can manage 10 enemies at the same time I don’t quite understand, with a bad build I could manage 1, maybe 2 will cooldowns, with a better build up to 5, but 10….. I am not Yip Man.

@Trungalung

That is a perfect answer. I think that’s the specificity a lot of us have been looking for in this thread. I appreciate it.

@Enyeez
Wasnt my intention to offend anyone, hence the smiley, but as i wrote i just dont have the time to write an other guide, especially since i think rewriting this thread so its more accessible.

10 enemies will back down if they all take 2k damage per second and me and my guildie has 8 other behind us and they cant reach us with ranged. Its a simple as that.

@Melizande
Sorry if i been unclear, its been on purpose, i dont think people should be spoon fed with “truths” since those truths tend to change over time.

I tought it was obvious that less hp and toughness ment more risk and with more risk you need more skill. Apparently not, and i apologize for me being prejudice.

I will continue to be unprecise in this thread and the reason for that is:

1. I got appriciation for not being a “truthteller” and instead of reading the book to them i just make them intrested of whats inside. I get numerous ingame tells that thanks me for the thread and lots of pms as well and the showing appriciation in this thread are by far less then the ones that chose to do it in a pm or ingame tell.

2. Its not one build or one setup. People need to make choices they are comfortable with. Would i have bought berserker as my first set if i know what i know today? The answer is no, i have a to much of an offensive gameplay so i cant be first in with low toughness and/or hp. As a first in last out person it just doesnt cut it.

Would i recommend someone else to buy it, yes i would, becasue its superfun and they might value that more.

could i go berserker in all dungeons and i wvw, definitely, its doable and really nothing complex at all. Would i do it, no and for one single reason, i tend to be the last one standing in almost every situation and its my job to pick people up and i need toughness to do that.

3. The last one and maybe the most important one. If you want people to try stuff you dont tell them what to do, you make them curious. This community was full of people with no experience that was very loud regarding the hammer and the changes it “needed” in order to be valid. Pretty much the same persons that are loud regarding the gs atm, for no reason at all really.

If that had continued im certain that anet, based on customerignorance, would have shortend the animation on the third hit (nerfing damage and ofc reeduced symbol duration or removed it completely) and effectively destroyed this work of wonder.

This is by far the most read non sticky and i actually think the approach i took, and will maintain, which forces people to think and contribute is effective and it has served its purpose.

How many “fix the hammer thread” have you seen recently, very few, if any, and i like to believe that this thread, its approach and its participants is/was a major contributor in doing this.

Do you see my point, telling people what to do isnt going to help people since i have no idea about their gamestyle, preferences, skillset or teammates.

So i will persist using the same approach of these three reason, i hope you can accept that.

@ Brutaly

The thing i love the most about the thread really is that you get ideas and read other ppls experience.. But i dont know about you other guys, but i never played a weapon / Class in any MMO cause its the strongest or easiest to win with, i usually end up rolling the most underpowered Class or i fall for a specc that maybe is just 50% effective then the best possible. But if i enjoy the Class/weapon/specc i Will be better with that then something i dont even like even if its just faceroll win..

TL,DR Like he says, not 1 specc is best, play what suits you

@Brutality
“Wasnt my intention to offend anyone, hence the smiley, but as i wrote i just dont have the time to write an other guide, especially since i think rewriting this thread so its more accessible.”

Heh, I didnt mean it like you offended me, sorry about that.

I meant more in the lines of, why do you think the staff is better in wvwvw than for example tele(port)-sword or scepter ?

obviously it does a great deal in the supporting role, but that would hardly get you tokens

I’m sort of newb to all this but is Rune of the Pack as good as it seems at first glance?

PvP Rune of the Pack
Power: 25
5% chance to gain swiftness for 30s when hit. (cooldown: 60s)
Power: 50
5% chance to grant nearby allies Might, Fury and Swiftness when you attack. (Cooldown: 10s)
Power: 90
Precision: 100

Seems like the extra buff procs would work with Altruistic Healing right?

@ dristig

Yes the boons Will Work with altruistic healing.. But 5% chance is bad.. And imo swiftness is not as great addition to you in fights as longer boon stacks imo

@Brutaly

Thanks again for the detailed response.

I appreciate you taking the time. Let me make one thing clear. TOTALLY not my intention to imply that I think you should be writing a definitive set of instructions.

I think I may learn differently from some.

One thing that Trungalung gave me in his most recent reply was context. That was the specificity that I am referring to. I absolutely value your perspective that every set/spec can be viable if you have the right mindset for it.

Let me explain.

You have multiple exotic sets. That’s very fortunate. It is extremely hard to make money in this game without explicitly farming and selling materials or competitively working the marketplace.

I think as some players (I can speak only for my social circle) get into their first real rare and exotic sets, there are a lot of questions, a lot of fears. It is a HUGE “financial” commitment, and it can be very nerve wracking to think you may be committing all of your gold in the wrong direction if your preferred playstyle isn’t viable, if for instance you finally decide to go for full Berserkers only to find out you splat instantly in dungeons and feel useless, and now you’re broke.

Can you see what I mean?

So context can be very helpful. I don’t think any of us need rules telling us definitively which sets are the best, but I like having an idea of how they work beyond “assumptions”, to use your word. It’s like deciding on a credit card. Every major card is viable and obviously successful, or they wouldn’t still be in the market. But I might find that certain credit cards come with benefits that are more suited to my lifestyle.

Knowing for example that Berserker’s gear does not offer the kind of survivability that a player that enjoys rushing headlong into battle requires is valuable. Knowing that Knight’s gear is largely both PvE and PvP viable is valuable (for players looking to craft a single set to serve multiple purposes, until they have more money).
Knowing that an experienced dodger can accomplish incredible things in a Berserker set is valuable.
A good PvE question might be: does the Knight’s set provide enough DPS to complete the Lover’s Crypt explorable in time?

See what I mean?

That’s not to say there are any rules. But like any purchase, some customer’s enjoy knowing what benefits each product offers.

Having a waiter tell me that every entree on the menu is “good” doesn’t help me decide on my Dinner

THAT BEING SAID! You’ve been doing an amazing job fielding questions and I DO value your fair and balanced perspective. Promise! You too, Trungalung. You’ve committed a lot of time to helping the community and I’m grateful!

Cheers.

@Melizande

A good PvE question might be: does the Knight’s set provide enough DPS to complete the Lover’s Crypt explorable in time?

Berserkers will provide more damage since power is its main stats. Knight shouldn’t fall far behind since crit and condition damage are useless against the burrows. Just grab a GS and switch it between hammer and you should be good.

Just to confirm this build is not viable with ranged party members right? I ran with a full melee party and i picked empowering might, i couldn’t go down.

But with a party with ranged users, i melt instantly…

@ImarKurumi

It’s perfectly viable. Unless your group are staying far back, you should be able to get empowering might up on most of them. The only thing is that you can’t give them protection, but it’s only a small part of altruistic healing. The melee probably brought Weakness to reduce the damage even further which is why you feel squishy without them.

I don’t see how to get even close to the stats described in sPvP. I have to wear the knight or Zerker amulet to get my crit up to recommended levels but that drops my toughness or power in the crapper.

I’m also feeling super squishy when I’m alone or facing 2-3 people which happen a lot in pug sPvP.

Knight’s Amulet in PvP adds VITALITY, Precision and Power. The Knight’s crafted set in PvE adds TOUGHNESS, Precision and Power.

Soldier’s Amulet is probably still the way to go for most builds in sPvP.

I can’t get even close to 40% crit with Soldier’s Amulet. Can anyone link a crit build that includes sPvP equipment?

PS Having equipment with the same name and totally different stats is silly.

I use the meditation skill that burns, aside from that with the virtue and other classes that burn, is Fiery Wrath viable? 0/0/30/20/5 is pretty much the minimum as you said so I got 15 points left to spend. 10% dmg increase that is up a lot seems like a nice choice. What do you think?

So in regards to weapon(s), are you using anything overall or something with +crit?

Are the weapons (staff/hammer) via honor badges workable? Compared to 2 gold off the trading post for one with crit vs. PvP centric (WvWvW I should say).

I’ve been following this thread for about a week now.

Currently I have full Knight’s Draconic with Berserker rings/accessories/amulet. I swap between my GS and Hammer, GS for PvE, Hammer for PvP. Stats are as follows…

2884 Attack
52% Crit Chance w/ 71 Crit Damage
2792 Armor
14,455 Health

I’m wondering if I can get my crit damage higher, and my hp over 15k.

Don’t see how I could…

@Cezton

You can, but possibly at the cost of some of your Crit %.
You can socket some of your knight’s gear with Beryl Orbs if you don’t mind losing a potential rune set. That will bump up crit damage and vitality at the cost of toughness/precision.

Regarding your stats. Are you counting a Sigil of Accuracy among your listed Crit Chance? I am running the exact same gear setup and I only have 47% listed crit.

Dristig.9678:

I can’t get even close to 40% crit with Soldier’s Amulet. Can anyone link a crit build that includes sPvP equipment?

PS Having equipment with the same name and totally different stats is silly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUMQNAS8dlYg67WEyKEmIFRuA7DEETBGz41DHSRGC;TsAA1CqowxgjoILOOck4sIYQwkAA

35% + 5% from sigils.

When people talk about gear here we are talking about wvw and pve gear. The stats are different.

So in regards to weapon(s), are you using anything overall or something with +crit?

Are the weapons (staff/hammer) via honor badges workable? Compared to 2 gold off the trading post for one with crit vs. PvP centric (WvWvW I should say).

Berserker
Knights
Hammer from ascalonian catacombs
Stuff with crit, vit, pow, crit damage, toughness, healing power works fine in this build. Weapons are a nice way to finetune so you get the stats you want.

Cezton.2415:

I’m wondering if I can get my crit damage higher.

Dont focus to much on critdamage, its not as great as one might think.

A hit for 1000 with 50% crit damage hits for 2000. If you add 25% more critdamage it will hit for 2250. So you increased the stat with 50% and gained about 10% in the individual blow and if you have 50% critchance you gain5% overall dps.

If its huge hits you are looking for then i would go for might stacking, its much more effective.

Brutaly.6257:

Dont focus to much on critdamage, its not as great as one might think.

A hit for 1000 with 50% crit damage hits for 2000. If you add 25% more critdamage it will hit for 2250. So you increased the stat with 50% and gained about 10% in the individual blow and if you have 50% critchance you gain5% overall dps.

If its huge hits you are looking for then i would go for might stacking, its much more effective.

Crit damage is a really good stats given that you have a high crit chance to go with it. With 50% crit chance, every % of crit damage equals to 0.5% damage (if you have 100% chance to crit, every % of crit damage equals to 1% damage, so half of that). So if you increase your crit damage by 25%, you increase your total damage by 12.5% overall damage. In his case, he has 52% chance to crit which equals to 0.52% overall damage per one percent of crit damage. He needs to find a balance of crit chance and crit damage.

I’ll help and calculate that for him:

Empowering Might has an internal cool down (expect to be 1 seconds, I tested this in the mist with Sword Wave and it never procs more than 1). At 100% crit chance, you’ll be able to maintain a 5 stacks of might just from the trait which is a total of 175 power. So every % of crit chance, it will provide a damage increase of 1.75 power over a period of time.

So now let’s look at his stats:
2884 Attack
52% crit chance
71% crit damage

Every % of crit chance he gains will increase his damage by 1.21% (50% base + 71% crit damage). Assuming that attacks equal to damage, every 1.75 power he gets from Empowering Might per % of crit chance will equal to 0.06% (from 2884 to 2885.75). So every % of crit chance equals 1.27% of damage. 21 precision equals to 1% crit chance so 1 precision equals to 0.06% damage.

Every % of crit damage equals to 0.52% overall damage. Each % of crit damage equals to about 12-14 stats, so 13 stats in average according to the Berserker’s itemization. Then every 1 crit damage stat equal to 0.04% overall damage. This is not taking into account of your damage overall gained from crit damage will diminish with lower crit chance.

So overall, his best stat is precision follow by crit damage. But if he wants to hit 15k hp, switching out one or two piece for Valkyrie will still be fine since his damage will reduce by only a few percent (I can calculate the exact damage difference but it requires me to know which pieces he will replace).

I must totally misunderstand the formula! What am i getting wrong here?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_damage
“Critical Damage is added to the default 1.5x bonus (rather than multiplied). For example, +50% Critical Damage results in 2.0x critical hits”

An example based on
x=Basedps with no crits=1000
y=Critchance=50%
z=Critdamage=50+50% 50% are the basevalue, see definition in wiki, of critical damage and 50% is obtained from gear.
Z=additional critdamage=25%

1000+0,5(1000*0,5)=1250. With 50% crit chance and only basevalue in critdamage the dps is 1250. It contributes with 25%

If you increase the critdamage with an additional 50% you will receive an other 25% of the basevalue. So 1250+250=1500. Which is 250/1250=20%.

So with 1000 basedps and 50% critchance and 50% critical damage from gear you will have 1500 in dps.

If you add in 25% more critical damage you will gain 125 more in dps or 125/1500=8%.

Empowering might is only one component in mightstacking. With the proper build you shouldnt have less then 10 stacks of might as a minimum, empowering might excluded, EM isnt neccessary to stack might.
And if i havent totally misunderstood the critical damage formula this is why power is nice when you have reached 50% in critical damage. Im not saying its better but when you reach rather high values on crit and critdamage the investment to get even more has a high relative cost.

Assume:
2800 attack
50% critical damage
50% critical chance
1000 basedps
1500 incl crit+crit damage

Add 10 stacks of might which equals to 320 power which adds 320/2800=11% compared to the 8% increase you would gain from a 25% increase of critdamage. This can be achieved by not even changing gear and accessories and if we take a look at what can be gained from sigils and runes it would mean that in order to match 10 stacks of might you need increase critdamage with roughly 34%. 25%/8*11=34,375. There are no runes or sigils in the world that can do that, hence why stacking might is favorable.

About 7-8 stacks of might in his build has the same tradeoff as 25% more critical damage. Those 7-8 stacks also boosts noncrits so they infact has even more value but lets keep it simple.

My personal record in a hit is 6.8k mighty blow on warrior in spvp with a might stacking build, with a rather conservative 18k hp set up

My point wasnt that critical damage in in any way or means is a bad stat, its just that the relative gain rapidly decline when you reach over 50% crit and crit damage.
Considering a change has to be done in gear, changing sigils and runes to boost critical damage are inferior to might stacking, he has to be aware of what he gives up.

I think it would be nice with a “conversiontable” of the stats availbale, clearly there is a forumla on what each stat is valued at in the itembudget.

The most important thing to remember is that the more you have of something the worse is the investment to get even more, hence why balanced builds has more overall effectiveness. Specialization is only optimal under special circumstances, as the the word specialization imples.

All this with a huge disclaimer, have i totally misunderstood how critical damage is calculated?

Well yeah.. I red through this fast cause im on the phone reading and its a Pain hehe.. But from what i understood is this: if base hit is 1000 it would mean with no added crit damage that your crit would hit for 1,5k .. Adding 20% extra crit damage would make this crit hit for 1,7k .. But overall a balanced build of gear is best since with more power the harder your normal and criticals Will hit.. Tho like i said, its just how i always thought it was.. Will read through all when i get to the computer..