Guild Wars 2

While I like to be efficient in dungeons and fractals, I also like my characters to wear pretty skins and to be consistent from the RP perspective. Mace is bulky, ugly, barbaric and turns a guardian into some dumb tanky Hulk; torch is like… well, it’s a stick on fire.

Prior to the specializations patch, I used to have Sword+Focus on swap and found it really fluent; but currently I see that the meta is mace, torch and only occasionally scepter and focus. So how bad are now PvE builds that use, say, GS/Sword+Focus or even GS+Hammer?

So mace is bulky and hammer is not ? 0.0

Beside that, you can choose the way you play, no need to follow the ‘meta’ to the letter.
And i find some skins really nice for the weapons you mention. Torch on the side : no fire, pull it out, it lights up (as supposed).

I use : https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Torch . Love it with my character skin/dye(s)

Sthenith.5196:

So mace is bulky and hammer is not ? 0.0

Hammer is not, it is a dynamic powerful weapon of a definite shape. A mace is a boulder on a stick to smash things with

Sthenith.5196:

Beside that, you can choose the way you play, no need to follow the ‘meta’ to the letter.

I know I do not have to; I want to go as close as possible to meta to be helpful, while maintaining the maximum of fun.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Hammer is not, it is a dynamic powerful weapon of a definite shape. A mace is a boulder on a stick to smash things with

Lishtenbird.2814:

Mace is bulky, ugly, barbaric and turns a guardian into some dumb tanky Hulk

Yea, totally. Except that historically mace or one handed warhammer is main close range weapon of every friggin knight (well, some used axes instead), while two handed hammers were rarely used (and when similar weapons were used, it was by the infantry). You have that exactly backwards.
And no, swords were not primary weapon used for killing. They were more status symbol.

Daerian.6523:

Yea, totally. Except that historically mace or one handed warhammer is main close range weapon of every friggin knight (well, some used axes instead), while two handed hammers were rarely used (and when similar weapons were used, it was by the infantry). You have that exactly backwards.
And no, swords were not primary weapon used for killing. They were more status symbol.

I’m not saying anything about history, you know. It’s about fantasy. Ogre, ugly troll? Cudgel. Something humanoid, advanced and powerful? Large swords (or hammer) — stuff that has a definite shape and has to be crafted. At least that’s the image I have.

Politically correctness asside, it’s PvE… if the item set you’re using doesn’t wipe the group, then you’re good.

How “bad” you are is only determined by the group you’re running with (and overall experience but I assume you’re… experienced). There is no definite wrong or right way to pve.. only efficiency like you’ve outlined. Can you make sword/gs/hammer viable? Absolutely.

Lishtenbird.2814:

It’s about fantasy. […]

In fantasy most paladin-like archetypes usually use swords, two-handed swords and… yes, exactly, maces. Usually full iron crafted ones (morgenstern mostly).

Lishtenbird.2814:

Something humanoid, advanced and powerful? Large swords (or hammer) — stuff that has a definite shape and has to be crafted

I’m going to just leave it here ;-)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Various_Indo-Persian_maces.jpg <- totally barbaric weapon ;-)
On different note, correct use of https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Klassischer-Flegel.jpg required much more skill than using sword.

I can understand why you prefer sword in game to mace, but you really can just say it without writing paragraphs about “barbaric maces”.

Meta is not torch if you aren’t running a hybrid or condition build. There are in fact, many equivalent meta builds you can run if you aren’t absolutely fixated on being in the top 1% of damage output.

Hammer GS Zeal/Honor/Virtue is around 15% les dps than the meta.

GS + Sw/Focus Zeal/Radiance/Virtue is around 10% less dps than the meta.

Otherwise all other build use either Mace or Torch or have even less dps.

Obtena.7952:

Meta is not torch if you aren’t running a hybrid or condition build. There are in fact, many equivalent meta builds you can run if you aren’t absolutely fixated on being in the top 1% of damage output.

Torch is very much a part of the Power Meta due to changes to Torch 4 and Radiance Trait Radiant fire. It can crit for 10k or more depending on might stacks and vulnerability. If I am lucky with Crits I can use torch 4 back to back.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Sthenith.5196:

So mace is bulky and hammer is not ? 0.0

Hammer is not, it is a dynamic powerful weapon of a definite shape. A mace is a boulder on a stick to smash things with

This seems like an issue with how ArenaNet has represented them. Early on, it looked like ‘mace’ and ‘hammer’ were essentially labels for one-handed blunt and two-handed blunt respectively, and we saw ‘hammers’ that were two-handed maces (eg the Punisher) and ‘maces’ that were a lot like one-handed hammers (Glyphic, and arguably Royal Ascalonian and Mystic). Since then, though, the artists seem to have taken the descriptors to heart, and a lot of maces have essentially boiled down to ‘something heavy on a stick’.

If you want something that looks to be designed for a purpose, then I’d suggest the simple Krytan or, if you’re willing to spend, Gallant, which are good approximations for historical maces that were given a specific shape in order to deal with the armour of the time rather than simply being lumps on sticks. There are also a few four-flanged maces around, such as Aureate, but I’m less fond of those – historically four-flanged maces existed, but the ones in-game look like they’d be more effective simply being a hammer or mace rather than messing around with side-flanges.

Talyn.3295:

Obtena.7952:

Meta is not torch if you aren’t running a hybrid or condition build. There are in fact, many equivalent meta builds you can run if you aren’t absolutely fixated on being in the top 1% of damage output.

Torch is very much a part of the Power Meta due to changes to Torch 4 and Radiance Trait Radiant fire. It can crit for 10k or more depending on might stacks and vulnerability. If I am lucky with Crits I can use torch 4 back to back.

Like I said, if he doesn’t want to be in the top DPS builds, he doesn’t need to run torch. Very few people require you to be in the top DPS percentiles when teaming. If he did want to be in that top 1%, he wouldn’t CARE about PVE builds that don’t use specific weapons; he would just whatever gear gave him that top 1%. Clearly, that’s not what the OP wants to do.

Obtena.7952:

Talyn.3295:

Obtena.7952:

Meta is not torch if you aren’t running a hybrid or condition build. There are in fact, many equivalent meta builds you can run if you aren’t absolutely fixated on being in the top 1% of damage output.

Torch is very much a part of the Power Meta due to changes to Torch 4 and Radiance Trait Radiant fire. It can crit for 10k or more depending on might stacks and vulnerability. If I am lucky with Crits I can use torch 4 back to back.

Like I said, if he doesn’t want to be in the top DPS builds, he doesn’t need to run torch. Very few people require you to be in the top DPS percentiles when teaming. If he did want to be in that top 1%, he wouldn’t CARE about PVE builds that don’t use specific weapons; he would just whatever gear gave him that top 1%. Clearly, that’s not what the OP wants to do.

I don’t care what the OP does or doesn’t do. I must have miss read what you were saying because to me It came across as you were saying Torch was not a part of the Power meta and only useful for Conditions or Hybrid builds.

Obtena.7952:

There are are few builds that compete for high damage. The one using torch is just one of them. Therefore the OP thinking torch is ‘meta’ is not correct. If he doesn’t want to use torch and still get a high damage build to satisfy PPUG zerkers or whoever, he can.

Like I said, if he doesn’t want to be in the top 1%, he doesn’t need to run torch. Very few people require that when teaming. If he did want to be in that top 1%, he wouldn’t CARE about PVE builds that don’t use specific weapons.

Meta is only one build and it include Torch. Now there is a lot of great build that don’t use torch, but that doesn’t make them meta. Now, there is a very very very limited amount of build in the Top 1%. Pretty much just the meta. Now if you are ready to sacrifice 5-10% you can get 2-3 builds (a lot more if you cound just changing one thing as a new build).

If he was just asking a build with no torch, it would have build easy and you would be totally right. But the fact he asked for both mace and torch to not be part of the build, reduce the option if he still want to have 85-90% of the dps of the meta.

This post is so backwards. Mace is a historically good combat weapon favored by many while hammer was rarely used, just by barbarians that couldn’t make proper weapons

You could go with one of 2 builds for what your looking for ones a AOE condi burn one or one with massive AOE condi burn with GS and H and here they are.

Maigor Burn AOE: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARSlsAhmhYlQwQIQQEHxDltEy3HNPGvYVUDgtseB-TxhFABA8EA4Y/BfVCur5PevEguAgV/RYlfAA-e

Massive AOE Burn: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJARSlsAhmhYlQwQIQQEHxDltEy3HtGAbZ9iXi/bLA-TxhFABA8EA4Y/BfVCur5PevEguAgV/RYlfAA-e

Both these builds use Retaliation and burns to help with the damage I could even build a better tank AOE one though with more survivability but its all up to the player. Still this build ether gives high damage or big AOE with minor support.

Azure.8670:

This post is so backwards. Mace is a historically good combat weapon favored by many while hammer was rarely used, just by barbarians that couldn’t make proper weapons

Actually, historically speaking the mace was effective for smashing chain, but began to fall out of favour when plate started becoming common – a hammer was more effective for hammering dents into plate, especially when it also had a spike on the other end that could be used as a can opener.

That said, there’s a distinction between Late Middle Ages warhammers and the blocks on sticks that a lot of GW2 hammers are. The Gallant set, as well as the various human sets (particularly Krytan) are, perhaps unsurprisingly, probably closest to historical medieval weapons, but even those are proportionally larger than the real things.