Guild Wars 2

Would it be better to get Exquisite Ruby, or Exquisite Emerald Jewel. I plan on using Master Maintenance Oil.

To put in which items? If you mean for trinkets then the Ruby.

If you plan on going glass canon, go glass canon =). If you are just doing a high dps build some some good survivalbility then it would be a good idea to show your gear loadout to properly provide good advice =).

I’m wearing full berserkers with eagle rune, I am wondering how much of a precision increase would I get from the oil if I used Emerald in my accessories.

Can you give me your traits also? Are you using Retributive Armor? I’ll calculate it for you.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccz0oMz0mGrocmGrocGx0G0MkMoqMs
This is just a quick one throwing together I don’t mind changing it up for best results.

Based on the info you provided me you are sitting at 64% crit chance if you are using oils. If you were to change out to exquiste emeralds (I’m including back slot too) your are at 67% crit chance, but end up loosing +18% crit damage which is going to hurt your straight DPS.

Ok thanks for the incite.

New question, would I benefit more from Rune of Scholar or Eagle?

you can check my sig for a good example. I did three of those builds all different. But they all basically go all in on offense.

OP, that trait set up is a complete mess. If you wanna specialize in a weapon, you need to choose only 1, otherwise you just waste points on needless traits.

1. Zeal is prolly our kittentiest tree and noone ever goes beyond 10. So even if you like GS so much make yourself a favour and go 30 in valor instead of going further into zeal. Radiance is not worth past 15 points as GS IMO but some would argue otherwise.

1. IF you want to focus on Sword (which i doubt because you seem like a typical warrior wanna be) you might consider going 30 in radiance for right handed justice and maybe take 10 in zeal for Trait II. The rest can prolly go whenever you like but PLEASE, PLEASE, take 5 in Virtues because you are gonna get F1 refreshed after each kill, and more might stacks never hurt anyone

The trait set up wasn’t my real setup just how many point I had in each trait line, also the set up lets me change between GS and sword and shield.

Hunter.4783:

1. Zeal is prolly our kittentiest tree and noone ever goes beyond 10. So even if you like GS so much make yourself a favour and go 30 in valor instead of going further into zeal. Radiance is not worth past 15 points as GS IMO but some would argue otherwise.

For damage, Greatsword Power is a nice bonus and so is Radiant Power. If you plan on going full glass cannon and you don’t pick at least these two (and Fiery Wrath), you’re not a glass cannon, you’re just glass.

If you plan on using Greatsword/Hammer for damage, you might want to pick Perfect Inscriptions and use Signet of Bane for an extra 108 Power if you can spare an Utility Slot.

Even though people say Sword is superior than a Greatsword for single target damage, I don’t believe they accounted for all factors. On bosses it’s extremely easy to get a Whirling inside their boxes at get a 4~5x the regular damage. If you switch to Sword after a Whirling just for auto-attacking I don’t think it’s worth it as you’ll be losing 2~ seconds when you switch back to the Greatsword.

Don’t use Rune of the Scholar, it sucks.
The tooltip seems really nice and all, but there’s hardly some fights that you’ll be able to take full benefit of it. If you can or just want to see really big numbers, you can try picking 10 in Virtues and play with Unscathed Contender as well (it’s a 20% damage increase now), but for fights that you can win without taking any hit… I don’t think it’s viable, so I’d pick a safer and constant damage increase with Rune of Strength for example.

Hunter.4783:

OP, that trait set up is a complete mess. If you wanna specialize in a weapon, you need to choose only 1, otherwise you just waste points on needless traits.

That trait setup is almost the best dps setup you can get with a guardian.

1. Zeal is prolly our kittentiest tree and noone ever goes beyond 10. So even if you like GS so much make yourself a favour and go 30 in valor instead of going further into zeal. Radiance is not worth past 15 points as GS IMO but some would argue otherwise.

Zeal has bad grandmaster traits but that’s only that. 30 points in valor increase dps by less than 20 points in Zeal.

1. IF you want to focus on Sword (which i doubt because you seem like a typical warrior wanna be) you might consider going 30 in radiance for right handed justice and maybe take 10 in zeal for Trait II. The rest can prolly go whenever you like but PLEASE, PLEASE, take 5 in Virtues because you are gonna get F1 refreshed after each kill, and more might stacks never hurt anyone

Those 3 stacks of might last too short to have significant input.

Best DPS gs trait setups are 25/25/0/20/0 or 20/25/0/25/0 and best sword DPS trait setups are 20/30/0/20/0 or 15/30/0/25/0. So if you want to use both sword and gs 20/30/0/20/0 is the way to go.

Originally it was said Zeal has bad grandmaster because once upon a time in beta it didn’t. While I don’t remember if that is true or not. It’s also been stated that it will be fixed later with a over haul. That was three months ago I’m not holding my breath. But as haviz stated 25/25/0/20/0 is about as devastating as we get. Downside of that is you will get knocked over with a feather.

I have nothing against Zealous Blade. Of course, it could be better (26 healing per hit!), but for someone who wants even more power while sacrificing defense (you don’t need to sacrifice Honor to do decent DPS… at least, I do find it too glassy for my taste, but that’s just me), there aren’t that many other good self heals for Greatsword users.
In fact, many others weapons (such as sword) almost “need” Valor or super high Healing Power (and/or gear with HP), because they have no such boon. Yep, it’s not as strong as it should be, but it’ts better than zero healing per hit and poor defense, and if it’s true that they are planning on workin on it, I will be happy to at least see what they come up with upon fix.

When you do pull 5 enemies with No.5 and hit them all with your no. 2, you do get some decent healing with your big blade (despite all of those “26s”), though I admit this works much better for PvE purposes-especially for farming semi-dangerous enemies. The more enemies pulled, the better. Otherwise, yes, I understand how it’s not an attractive trait for most people, especially for math lovers who always go for what in theory are “the best” builds (and in all fairness, I do not find much use for Zeal either when I am using other weapons.)

I do like AH, especially with my mace & shield/staff build, but I like to try new things all the time. There are so many ways to play effectively other than with AH, for all of that virtue’s greatness.

Hmm, I would think 20% crit damage through the Valor tree would be better than Empowering Might if you just want to do the most damage possible. How many stacks of might can u sustain with a berserker build? I’m running a boon duration build (rune of water, monk, and Hoelbrak, with 25 points in Virtues [75% might duration]) with 35% crit chance and I can’t really get above 7-8 stacks at a time using only Empowering Might.

edit: I also use GS and Sword to get the most crits in the shortest time

Vitu.3580:

Hmm, I would think 20% crit damage through the Valor tree would be better than Empowering Might if you just want to do the most damage possible. How many stacks of might can u sustain with a berserker build? I’m running a boon duration build (rune of water, monk, and Hoelbrak, with 25 points in Virtues [75% might duration]) with 35% crit chance and I can’t really get above 7-8 stacks at a time using only Empowering Might.

edit: I also use GS and Sword to get the most crits in the shortest time

Without additional boon duration, it’s pretty simple. Since EM has ICD of 1s and gained might lasts 5s you can optimally get 5 stacks. Also, you can get 2h Mastery instead of EM. 20 points in Honor is better choice due to better adept and master traits there, Valor traits mostly don’t increase dps (Retributive armour with zerker gear gives 56 precision). Another thing, if you get 25 in Honor, you’ll get Elusive Power, +10% damage when endurance isn’t full (and it won’t be with glass build).

haviz.1340:

Vitu.3580:

Hmm, I would think 20% crit damage through the Valor tree would be better than Empowering Might if you just want to do the most damage possible. How many stacks of might can u sustain with a berserker build? I’m running a boon duration build (rune of water, monk, and Hoelbrak, with 25 points in Virtues [75% might duration]) with 35% crit chance and I can’t really get above 7-8 stacks at a time using only Empowering Might.

edit: I also use GS and Sword to get the most crits in the shortest time

Without additional boon duration, it’s pretty simple. Since EM has ICD of 1s and gained might lasts 5s you can optimally get 5 stacks. Also, you can get 2h Mastery instead of EM. 20 points in Honor is better choice due to better adept and master traits there, Valor traits mostly don’t increase dps (Retributive armour with zerker gear gives 56 precision). Another thing, if you get 25 in Honor, you’ll get Elusive Power, +10% damage when endurance isn’t full (and it won’t be with glass build).

The Adept Honor traits don’t increase DPS in any way (maybe Wrathful Spirit), so it’s really just Empowering Might. In Valor you can get Defender’s Flame. With Shelter, offhand Focus, and other sources of Aegis you can get a few stacks of burning to increase DPS. The Valor Master traits are no good for DPS, no argument there.

But for simplicity’s sake lets just ignore the Adept traits. What it looks like to me is at 20 points you are weighing perma-5 stacks of Might in the Honor tree vs perma-+20% crit damage in Valor to see which has the most DPS. I would think the 20% crit damage would outweigh 5 stacks of might.

Edit: Just re-read your point about Two-Handed Mastery. I think that would be more competitive with 20 points in valor than Empowering Might. Also, if you’re in a group I would concede that Empowering Might is probably better than 20 points in valor because of the group-wide damage increase

From a point distribution point of view, I would definitely choose the ruby over the emerald. 25+15+15 points in the emerald versus 25+15+3% points in the ruby. This means that 5 points for 1% crit damage. If you look anywhere else, you sacrifice A LOT MORE than 5 points for 1% crit damage.

For an example, an exotic breastplate that gives 5% crit damage has an alternate version which gives 72 points of something else instead. This means you sacrifice 14.4 points for 1% crit damage. However, in the ruby jewel you are sacrificing only 5 points for 1% crit dmg.

Vitu.3580:

The Adept Honor traits don’t increase DPS in any way (maybe Wrathful Spirit), so it’s really just Empowering Might. In Valor you can get Defender’s Flame. With Shelter, offhand Focus, and other sources of Aegis you can get a few stacks of burning to increase DPS. The Valor Master traits are no good for DPS, no argument there.

But for simplicity’s sake lets just ignore the Adept traits. What it looks like to me is at 20 points you are weighing perma-5 stacks of Might in the Honor tree vs perma-+20% crit damage in Valor to see which has the most DPS. I would think the 20% crit damage would outweigh 5 stacks of might.

Edit: Just re-read your point about Two-Handed Mastery. I think that would be more competitive with 20 points in valor than Empowering Might. Also, if you’re in a group I would concede that Empowering Might is probably better than 20 points in valor because of the group-wide damage increase

Superior Aria for better fury uptime increases dps if you don’t have permanent fury from other sources and Writ of Exaltation makes symbol larger which might increase dps if you fight a lot of trash mobs.

Next thing, I’ve just did quick calculations and assuming you have 2000 power, 60% chance to crit and 80% crit damage it appears that having 5 stacks of might (175 additional might) is more beneficial than having additional 20% crit damage by about 2%. Funny thing is, even with those stats and having 100% to crit, 5 stacks of might are still better. With 60% chance to crit you would need to have about 2400 power to get better return from additional 20% crit damage than from 5 stacks of might.

Again, additional crit damage doesn’t increase dps that much. That’s why I stand by my view that the best dps builds are 20/30/0/20/0, 15/30/0/25/0, 20/25/0/25/0 or 25/25/0/20/0 and those have 0 points in Valor. So called “Tanky DPS” build gives a false illusion of high dps because you have a lot of additional crit damage.