Guild Wars 2

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about tankier gear in context of guardian and after hours upon hours of theorycrafting (I like you build editor) still couldn’t decide on specific one so I’ve wanted to ask you about your PvE experiences

There are few constraint under which I’m thinking about specific gear combinations:
- default weapons set: mace+shield & longbow
- traits improve traps and meditations and naturally promote these skills for slots in utility bar
- not going with full nomad even though it is obvious choice for immovable object that hits like wet paper (prefer to keep some semblance of damage dealing capabilities)
- thinking mostly about 5 man organized group

Without further ado:

Option 1 is your standard cleric guard with some extra vitality and less power.

Option 2 sacrifices healing power for additional critical chance and vitality. That is something that I think about the most. Whole build operates under premise that between hits from high damage bosses team of 5 can still heal (including party wide heals) to full and healing power doesn’t have great scaling, so extra tougness and more hp to survive burst is welcomed (we also have bigger damage to boot). Here comes the biggest question as we lose among other at least 100hp/s from VoR compared to option1 and average skill with healing component has from 500 to 1000 hp restored less per cast: can guard self-sustian without healing? power.

Option 3 is that weird thing in between that hits both of sweet spots regarding armor and health (respectively 4000 and 20.000 as my ocd and love for round numbers dictates) and still retains some of healing power that with proper food and buffs can round up to respectable near 1k range. Yet we have damage around full cleric build (less power more criticals)

Option 4 is almost full soldier – something that comes up a lot talking about tanky gear for any class with power-based offense.

In the end it pretty much boils to few questions:
- what was the highest burst health-wise you survived through?
- how much toughness + healing power made you self-sustain on hardest bosses you know (not counting ones that have dps checking mechanics)?

If you had to choose one of the options above, which one it will be and why? Maybe you have some specific tanky gear choice of your own or tried opinions regarding tankiness sweet spots.

Answers to faq:
1. Yes, I know that zerker on player with good reflexes is optimal …
2. … No, I don’t want to wear zerker (have one set when it’s completely necessary to die from boss snorting in my general direction, because my pug goes with “zerker or gtfo” or simply I’m doing even less challenging content and actually zerker IS optimal, because perspective of wipe is non-existant)
3. Yes, I’m playing with some irl friends that use even “sillier” builds and we are fine with that.
4. I know tanky gear is pointless in like 90%+ of all pve content
5. Let’s not bring up that toughness stacking discussion and everyone know about universally proclaimed sweet spot for armor amount – stating that toughness scales lineary vs with dimnishing returns vs expotentially depends on the factor which we take to base scaling upon.

BTW. 1st post so … hi everyone

If you don’t mind the time it takes to put the crystals together I would suggest celestial armor with zerker/celestial accessories.

You get good survivability with decent damage output as well as some + healing which helps you survive and keep allies alive.

I’m working on a celestial set for my guardian. I enjoy too many different playstyles, and I don’t do pvp/wvw, so I can just make the one set of armor, and then I can do tanky, power, condi, whatever.

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

I know this doesn’t answer all your questions, but…

Atm I’m really enjoying Zealot’s armor, w/ Cleric’s trinkets and weapons.

It’s a low health pool, but I’ve found if I’m stacking up enough healing sources and damage reduction it doesn’t matter so much…. and, yeah, I can only think of one class that can sustain very effectively w/o any healing power while on the front lines (and it’s not Guard).

~EW

Thanks for replies and it seems most common answer is celestial, which upon closer inspection looks nice, though condi power is a bit of wasted stat (burn is sweet condition, but I feel like comparatively big % of all pve enemies types are immune)

Cost is no factor as changing stats on ascended armor & weapons is dirty cheap and rings can be gained from fractals easily, leaving only accessories as hard to get and amulets + backpack as something that needs a bit more time.

@EphemeralWallaby right now I’m wearing my cleric/knight set on Guard and I’m thinking exactly about low total health: in things like 77th fractal I can certainly sustain even in offensive rotation against mossman but there are times when my hp goes extremely low. Not mentioning (rare) situations when half of team gets downed due to no surviavbility and even minimal lag – getting them back is a pain as in that moment using most of my mitigation/healing means stopping reviving and I can’t really just stay there with such small hp pool.
I’m actually curious which class you are talking about (depending on which section of forum you’ll visit, I have seen people swear by their eles/revs/druids/chronos and even more common stating that “other” class has certainly op sustain/tankiness and should be nerfed :P)

P.S. If I came across as someone who don’t like zerker then I need to add: certainly zerker has it uses and I like it for most tasks; it’s probably just preemptive knee jerk reaction as half of all threads I’ve read here come down to
Q: valid question about something more or less theoretical, for example “what’s the exact damage of boss X and is there way to build to not be ohko’ed”
A: “git gud and wear zerker”

jacky.7932:

@ EphemeralWallaby right now I’m wearing my cleric/knight set on Guard and I’m thinking exactly about low total health: in things like 77th fractal I can certainly sustain even in offensive rotation against mossman but there are times when my hp goes extremely low. Not mentioning (rare) situations when half of team gets downed due to no surviavbility and even minimal lag – getting them back is a pain as in that moment using most of my mitigation/healing means stopping reviving and I can’t really just stay there with such small hp pool.

Unfortunately there’s always going to be those times… and that’s where build tweaking comes in. It’s not a popular choice, but for a little while I was utilizing Signet of Judgement, Runes of the Scrapper, and Perfect Inscriptions trait for a nice 19% damage reduction… I was even considering switching to hammer for the perpetual protection… meaning I’d have 52% damage reduction nearly all the time… but then I got distracted with other builds… ‘cause I’m a build-aholic. (thinking about it now, there’s potential in that being a way to sustain w/o Healing Power… gunna have to give this some thought now, lol)

jacky.7932:

I’m actually curious which class you are talking about (depending on which section of forum you’ll visit, I have seen people swear by their eles/revs/druids/chronos and even more common stating that “other” class has certainly op sustain/tankiness and should be nerfed :P)

Lol, in this case I’m only speaking from my personal experience, but I was thinking about the Necro. IME other classes can sustain well w/o any healing power only if they’re intermittently on the front lines… but my (non-reaper) necro utilizes life steal in many ways (LS barely benefits from HP, so I didn’t bother with it at all)… My necro can front-line longer than many of my guard builds… not all, but many.

jacky.7932:

P.S. If I came across as someone who don’t like zerker then I need to add: certainly zerker has it uses and I like it for most tasks; it’s probably just preemptive knee jerk reaction as half of all threads I’ve read here come down to
Q: valid question about something more or less theoretical, for example “what’s the exact damage of boss X and is there way to build to not be ohko’ed”
A: “git gud and wear zerker”

Zerker does have it’s uses, I completely agree. But, the people who are “zurker or gtfo” are the people I see going down in waves while fighting Jormag or Tequatl, while I usually remain at 3/4 health or more, even with 12k hitpoints compaired to their 20k+. And, that’s when I chuckle a little bit.

On a little side note, the place I like to test the potential survivablity of any build I’m working on is to go to the Southsun Cove and try and solo the Karka Veterans (hopefully no zerg is meandering about). If I can solo them w/o much difficulty, then I feel I’ve got a solid build going. If I go down, well then it’s back to the drawing board. I’m sure other people have other places they prefer (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to be flamed for it), but I’ve found ’em to be a good litmus test in most cases.

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Zerker does have it’s uses, I completely agree. But, the people who are “zurker or gtfo” are the people I see going down in waves while fighting Jormag or Tequatl, while I usually remain at 3/4 health or more, even with 12k hitpoints compaired to their 20k+. And, that’s when I chuckle a little bit.

The people that are zerker or gtfo can either be good or bad. Frankly if they die at Tequalt it’s a face plam. Zerker or Sinister or Assassins or Viper are objectively better as long as you can survive on them.

Personally, I saw very few Zerker or gtfo people in my 3 years in the game. Most people, don’t even try to know what you use, a good portion just hope that most people will bring decent build.

Thaddeus.4891:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Zerker does have it’s uses, I completely agree. But, the people who are “zurker or gtfo” are the people I see going down in waves while fighting Jormag or Tequatl, while I usually remain at 3/4 health or more, even with 12k hitpoints compaired to their 20k+. And, that’s when I chuckle a little bit.

The people that are zerker or gtfo can either be good or bad. Frankly if they die at Tequalt it’s a face plam. Zerker or Sinister or Assassins or Viper are objectively better as long as you can survive on them.

Personally, I saw very few Zerker or gtfo people in my 3 years in the game. Most people, don’t even try to know what you use, a good portion just hope that most people will bring decent build.

That’s also true – by simply avoiding “zerker only” parties I’ve managed to be schooled only once in this whole time, though it’s rather funny story as I got chewed out in 10th fractal single run for admitting that I was at that time half zerk half cleric. But back to topic at hand so it won’t become “zerk qq” :P

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

jacky.7932:

@ EphemeralWallaby right now I’m wearing my cleric/knight set on Guard and I’m thinking exactly about low total health: in things like 77th fractal I can certainly sustain even in offensive rotation against mossman but there are times when my hp goes extremely low. Not mentioning (rare) situations when half of team gets downed due to no surviavbility and even minimal lag – getting them back is a pain as in that moment using most of my mitigation/healing means stopping reviving and I can’t really just stay there with such small hp pool.

Unfortunately there’s always going to be those times… and that’s where build tweaking comes in. It’s not a popular choice, but for a little while I was utilizing Signet of Judgement, Runes of the Scrapper, and Perfect Inscriptions trait for a nice 19% damage reduction… I was even considering switching to hammer for the perpetual protection… meaning I’d have 52% damage reduction nearly all the time… but then I got distracted with other builds… ‘cause I’m a build-aholic. (thinking about it now, there’s potential in that being a way to sustain w/o Healing Power… gunna have to give this some thought now, lol)

So fellow build-a-holic To be honest after many hours spend in game and builder, tweaking all the things I’ve came to something that I’m content with in terms of traits and default skills selection. SoJ have it’s stellar place in this, though I’ve dropped Perfect Inscriptions as rest of radiance line just didn’t bring anything so worthwile as to guarantee it’s place … and perfect insc. were good only for 2% extra reduction and nice overall upgrade of healing skill. Though I must say after you’ve mentioned them, I’m now looking with great interest at scrapper runes. Actually it would be easier to talk about gear in context of actual trait selection so it’s something like THIS. (trap heal switchable to meditation one depending on the situation and dragons maw as ulti until renewed focus is required to survive) With hunter’s fortification and all available cleansing we can count on 20% constant reduction among other perks.

What I’m considering (with some extra ideas taken straight from your input) is closer to THIS
By sacrificing almost all the healing power we gain significantly grater dmg and almost 5k more health. The whole starting point for this is personal experience in which I’m having no problems with sustain but my health jumps up and down to much for my tastes (and also my damage is fairly lacking to say the least even for someone who is not in a hurry so I’m mostly switiching parts of nomad armor to zerk anyway). I’m actually pondering if that extra health buffer doesn’t in the end increase sustain (more freedom to survive to next cooldown of heal and more time for VoR per second heal). I was curious if anyone tried it before, but I’ll probably check it myself anyway

*Regarding traits choice I’m actually still torn between hunter’s determination and bulwark for second column major in dragonhunter tree.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

On a little side note, the place I like to test the potential survivablity of any build I’m working on is to go to the Southsun Cove and try and solo the Karka Veterans (hopefully no zerg is meandering about). If I can solo them w/o much difficulty, then I feel I’ve got a solid build going. If I go down, well then it’s back to the drawing board. I’m sure other people have other places they prefer (in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to be flamed for it), but I’ve found ’em to be a good litmus test in most cases.

~EW

That’s great hint as I was starting to think about new place for myself. So far I’ve tried all my builds in Heart of the mists on Svanir and Chieftain Utahein but with recent removal of defensive amulets it’s now practically impossible (shame as both these guys were hard hitting to the point that if you could sustain with them attacking then build was fine).

Thaddeus.4891:

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

marauder

jacky.7932:

So fellow build-a-holic To be honest after many hours spend in game and builder, tweaking all the things I’ve came to something that I’m content with in terms of traits and default skills selection. SoJ have it’s stellar place in this, though I’ve dropped Perfect Inscriptions as rest of radiance line just didn’t bring anything so worthwile as to guarantee it’s place … and perfect insc. were good only for 2% extra reduction and nice overall upgrade of healing skill. Though I must say after you’ve mentioned them, I’m now looking with great interest at scrapper runes. Actually it would be easier to talk about gear in context of actual trait selection so it’s something like THIS. (trap heal switchable to meditation one depending on the situation and dragons maw as ulti until renewed focus is required to survive) With hunter’s fortification and all available cleansing we can count on 20% constant reduction among other perks.

20% constant reduction with consistent cleanse is very nice, indeed.

That 2% is definitely not worth it when taken by itself agreed, but I find myself attracted to the Signets of Resolve and Courage when I’m going full-bore healing power… so having that cleanse and heal trigger every 8 sec on top of the 2% extra became worth it. I’m also a sucker for signets, lol.

jacky.7932:

What I’m considering (with some extra ideas taken straight from your input) is closer to THIS
By sacrificing almost all the healing power we gain significantly grater dmg and almost 5k more health. The whole starting point for this is personal experience in which I’m having no problems with sustain but my health jumps up and down to much for my tastes (and also my damage is fairly lacking to say the least even for someone who is not in a hurry so I’m mostly switiching parts of nomad armor to zerk anyway). I’m actually pondering if that extra health buffer doesn’t in the end increase sustain (more freedom to survive to next cooldown of heal and more time for VoR per second heal). I was curious if anyone tried it before, but I’ll probably check it myself anyway

Oooo, I really like that second build, and I think you’re definitely making up for the lack of healing power with the 5k health and extra power. The extra health buffer is always nice… imo it gives you more time to cleanse and/or recover from spike damage… and is also necessary if you’re giving up some of the ehp from healing power.

If I may make a suggestion? For your amulet, consider exchanging for a Captain’s stat (Charisma / Third-Place Medal / Protomatter Chain). You’ve now lost nearly all your healing power, but you’ve grown your base crit chance to 19% which opens up the ‘on crit’ sigils for viable use. Sigil of Blood is the one that comes to mind to me… to regain a bit of that lost healing, and gain a bit more damage.

…and taking that idea even further (you’ve lit my brain on fire), it opens the possibility of exchanging Virtues for Honor… especially because you’re wielding that mace, but also because it gives a few more heals from more sources to make up for the lacking healing power. I suppose it depends on how much you trigger your Virtues whether it’d be worth trying.

jacky.7932:

*Regarding traits choice I’m actually still torn between hunter’s determination and bulwark for second column major in dragonhunter tree.

IMO Hunter’s Determination is the better choice. I also think Zealot’s Aggression also has potential as it keeps enemies from quickly leaving your mace/symbol range; and likewise slows them down getting into melee range when they’re charging in (so more time with the bow). It synergizes with Pure of Sight.

Very, very nice builds. They both look like fun.

~EW

I use a mix of marauder and crusader on my guardian
But if you’re using nomad’s, that might not be tanky enough for you, though it’s way tankier than zerker, and does respectable damage. (iirc it was 30-55% tankier for 20% less dps)

reikken.4961:

I use a mix of marauder and crusader on my guardian
But if you’re using nomad’s, that might not be tanky enough for you, though it’s way tankier than zerker, and does respectable damage. (iirc it was 30-55% tankier for 20% less dps)

Nomad is more of novelty as it can bore both user and boss to death (wearing half nomad and more is extremism on the scale comparable to full zerk :P). Actually that as you proposed is really interesting build and I will certainly consider having a copy of my own (though I would consider it solid, not squishy, offensive build). The only barrier are 4-stat trinkets available only from raids to my knowledge (not much of raid runner myself yet, so can’t comment how hard it would be to get full set of trinkets)

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

That 2% is definitely not worth it when taken by itself agreed, but I find myself attracted to the Signets of Resolve and Courage when I’m going full-bore healing power… so having that cleanse and heal trigger every 8 sec on top of the 2% extra became worth it. I’m also a sucker for signets, lol.

Ah yes, glorious signets (hate-love relationship here) and radiance/honour/X with full cleric ? Certainly fun but whenever I’ve run something in that vein SoC was bugging me to death – that active! that active I’ll never use! I have nice passive ult that I’ll never click because active portion sucks .-.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

If I may make a suggestion? For your amulet, consider exchanging for a Captain’s stat (Charisma / Third-Place Medal / Protomatter Chain). You’ve now lost nearly all your healing power, but you’ve grown your base crit chance to 19% which opens up the ‘on crit’ sigils for viable use. Sigil of Blood is the one that comes to mind to me… to regain a bit of that lost healing, and gain a bit more damage.

…and taking that idea even further (you’ve lit my brain on fire), it opens the possibility of exchanging Virtues for Honor… especially because you’re wielding that mace, but also because it gives a few more heals from more sources to make up for the lacking healing power. I suppose it depends on how much you trigger your Virtues whether it’d be worth trying.

Captain amulet (or commander?) is certainly something that fits. Ironically I roll with lbow and keep that shield/mace on second set “just in case”. As such with zerk(or maybe assasin) lbow with sigil of accuracy there’s healthy 33%+ crit chance before buffs that can be easily used for sigil of air or what not.

Honor in place of virtues fits like a glove (that’s the special thing with guardian: there are opinions that traits are all over the place, yet thanks to that once you’ll get into theorycrafting you can practically change one traitline to get completely different build with the same amount of synergies). Extra health or better symbols + heal on every aegis + better mace … what’s not to like, though selfless daring shines only with a lot of healing power due to low base and 1:1 scaling.

Personally I just can’t part with virtues as I’m using them all the time and would trade a lot to get that sweet frontal shield from VoC’s cooldown even few seconds lower (that was always missing for me in core guard – duration based block and suddenly we got one and it’s not even channelled to boot so I can block and attack at the same time – the future is here)

jacky.7932:

Thanks for replies and it seems most common answer is celestial, which upon closer inspection looks nice, though condi power is a bit of wasted stat (burn is sweet condition, but I feel like comparatively big % of all pve enemies types are immune)

only ones I know of are destroyers. If there’s something I’m forgetting let me know.

Cost is no factor as changing stats on ascended armor & weapons is dirty cheap and rings can be gained from fractals easily, leaving only accessories as hard to get and amulets + backpack as something that needs a bit more time.

Join a guild that does guild missions, you can use the commendations you get from those to get accessories for the guild commendation trader.

@EphemeralWallaby right now I’m wearing my cleric/knight set on Guard and I’m thinking exactly about low total health: in things like 77th fractal I can certainly sustain even in offensive rotation against mossman but there are times when my hp goes extremely low. Not mentioning (rare) situations when half of team gets downed due to no surviavbility and even minimal lag – getting them back is a pain as in that moment using most of my mitigation/healing means stopping reviving and I can’t really just stay there with such small hp pool.
I’m actually curious which class you are talking about (depending on which section of forum you’ll visit, I have seen people swear by their eles/revs/druids/chronos and even more common stating that “other” class has certainly op sustain/tankiness and should be nerfed :P)

Me too.

P.S. If I came across as someone who don’t like zerker then I need to add: certainly zerker has it uses and I like it for most tasks; it’s probably just preemptive knee jerk reaction as half of all threads I’ve read here come down to
Q: valid question about something more or less theoretical, for example “what’s the exact damage of boss X and is there way to build to not be ohko’ed”
A: “git gud and wear zerker”

I’ve seen that alot as well and it’s truly annoying…

Zantmar.5406:

Thaddeus.4891:

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

marauder

Which is basically like berserker. You lose a tad bit of power and ferocity to gain a bit more precision and a smidge of vitality. It’s berserker for HoT zones basically.

bearshaman.3421:

Zantmar.5406:

Thaddeus.4891:

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

marauder

Which is basically like berserker. You lose a tad bit of power and ferocity to gain a bit more precision and a smidge of vitality. It’s berserker for HoT zones basically.

ur so called smidge of vit is over 2k hp
marauder gives 10% more stats compared to tristat like zerk it is mroe efficient then running any thing elese if u desire bit of tank. honestly didnt have problem with pve content in my current set (marauder armor, Zerk twinklets) solo HoT champs just fine

Just playing with a bit of numbers, I was wondering what a ‘reasonable’ consistent damage reduction a guardian can get. What I figure is if you’re wielding a hammer, you can get 60% damage reduction nearly 100% of the time, and retaliation 3/5 of the time…

The base shell of the build would need the following (caveat: the equipment is just a placeholder so the rune set could be input): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQFASEOCxiHRJTrjRAkp+A-ThQPABAo+jz7PAA-e

You need those specific traits in order to guarantee your symbol stay up all the time, and give you the opportunity to use Mighty Blow for the combo finisher Retaliation.

After that, I think there needs to be a bit of a focus on boon duration and condition cleanse in order to help keep Protection and Hunter’s Fortification up respectively… but other than a head nod towards those things, I think this shell can invite a few different build/gear variances to fit play styles. Personally, I’d probably pile on a bit of the Cleric’s gear for heal sustain… but I could see full Zerker’s being employed to good effect, too.

One obvious drawback is that you’ll be employing the AA most of the time, meaning utility choices will need to be brief/insta-cast (and combat could become a bit monotonous).

Thoughts on potential? How would you fill this shell of a build out if you wanted to try it?

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

What I figure is if you’re wielding a hammer, you can get 60% damage reduction nearly 100% of the time, and retaliation 3/5 of the time…

The base shell of the build would need the following (caveat: the equipment is just a placeholder so the rune set could be input): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQFASEOCxiHRJTrjRAkp+A-ThQPABAo+jz7PAA-e

scrapper rune damage reduction is multiplicative
ie stacks with protection to give 37.7% reduction, rather than 40% reduction

check out mussel soup though (or any other food made with mussels). I use that stuff whenever I really want to facetank something. stack protection and mussel food and tank like a boss in full marauder’s

Zantmar.5406:

bearshaman.3421:

Zantmar.5406:

Thaddeus.4891:

Celestial would be your best choice if you don’t like zerker.

marauder

Which is basically like berserker. You lose a tad bit of power and ferocity to gain a bit more precision and a smidge of vitality. It’s berserker for HoT zones basically.

ur so called smidge of vit is over 2k hp
marauder gives 10% more stats compared to tristat like zerk it is mroe efficient then running any thing elese if u desire bit of tank. honestly didnt have problem with pve content in my current set (marauder armor, Zerk twinklets) solo HoT champs just fine

No argument really. 2k is a smidge compared to what you’d get with Carrion or Soldier. My assessment of marauder is the same as yours; the better choice IF you want to be a bit tankier than berserker. I’ve seen it used alot for HoT zone stuff, where berserker takes a hit on dps simply because you get downed more frequently.

reikken.4961:

scrapper rune damage reduction is multiplicative
ie stacks with protection to give 37.7% reduction, rather than 40% reduction

check out mussel soup though (or any other food made with mussels). I use that stuff whenever I really want to facetank something. stack protection and mussel food and tank like a boss in full marauder’s

I had no idea it was multiplicative… huh… thanks for the head’s up.

Mussel soup look like a great addition, thank you for bringing it to my attention!

~EW

Use minstrel gear.

Forgive my noobish question since I haven’t delved too deep into HoT yet, but how does one go about acquiring quadruple stat gear.

Can you craft it like other gear, or can you only get it through rewards (karma, drops, etc…)?

Starbreaker.6507:

Forgive my noobish question since I haven’t delved too deep into HoT yet, but how does one go about acquiring quadruple stat gear.

Can you craft it like other gear, or can you only get it through rewards (karma, drops, etc…)?

It can be crafted like normal gear, with a few caveats.

1. marauder and crusader recipes are available at the usual crafting merchants. The rest require purchase from vendors on specific HoT maps (depending on which one you want), using the special currency of that particular map.

2. They will require their own special crafting component like every other stat set (like Black Diamonds for Viper Gear) which are rare drops. You can purchase them on the TP, but depending on which one you want, expect to pay alot for them.

3. You will likely need to build up a particular mastery in order to access the vendors that sell the crafting recipes.

As you’re discussing tanky Guard/DH setups, I will post my current ‘wrist friendly’ build that has evolved from concepts in WvW (old T1 havoc group play), and Obal’s build, and found a working point between them.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVIQJATRnsABddilCBuCBEEhlKiKb8Ov0DbACgIQ+2z9fH-TxBBwABeEAV3fIlugcq/oV5HalgAuCANGCAIIA-e

I find this extremely flexible and damaging, while still being a safe build to run on long metas like DS (and without resorting to painkillers, gah!). I keep a complete set of Zerk trinkets on me, and swap various bits back and forth as needed; My second common weapon pairing is hammer/staff. And ‘hold the line’ can be swapped for other things (lately its been Bane Signet, for the knockdown). Big drawback of this build is that it works best with a group around you; Solo will probably work in PvE for someone more physically skilled than I am.

I’m hoping to find Captain’s stats for the two Assessory slots; hints on where to find that is appreciated. I’ve also been told to consider a Marauder and Nomad mix, but tbh I don’t play often enough anymore to justify the amount of gathering needed. I’m also not involved with Raids, and never will be. I cannot always dodge at the right time (and sometimes a finger will spasm and cause a dodge to kick off at the wrong time).