Guild Wars 2

Just started really playing again so my previous experience may be out of date that’s why I’m asking.

So here are a few dot points as to why the GS has taken over completely now:

• Prior to the patch (Dual sigils on 2h/rage buff)
  – Rage proc was bad (even knowing how to use it properly it rarely proc’d in good situations)
  – GS only had one sigil which pretty much meant Fire (some people said hydromancy but I’ll explain why that never worked in a sec)

• GS as a weapon
  – Extremely easy to dodge all skills
  – WW must be mid cast to use with JI therefore on swap sigils (Hydromancy) were useless
  – Reliant on allied control or enemies not dodging
  – Good for faking out/drawing out dodges so that other skills land

• Since the patch
  – Rage always procs
  – Hard to dodge now with rage
  – Binding can give you more control over targets you know dont have Breaks, with JI it’s impossible to counter without a break
  – You have a bonus sigil, so you can get more damage or survivability

So with all the obvious advantages of using rage now I don’t really see at all why people shouldn’t use it.
It has bumped the GS from your below average weapon to the strongest guardian damage weapon by a huge margin.

Am I missing something?

morf does, bullet does, I do, hehk does
did i miss someone

I used it after the patch, porting with binding blade, proccing rage and getting off full ww sounded strong on paper.

In reality that happens 1/10 times, it has a pretty huge cd so when it procs when you can’t burst yet and you just want to pressure with leap and autos and stuff (dueling warriors and they still have their stab/endure pain, just starting a teamfight or stuff like that) it won’t be up again when you want it and the best thing that can happen is that you quickness stomp somebody.

Also quickness shelter is not really something you want to happen ever.

Just using sigils that deal damage USUALLY give you more damage, running rage for the one time the quickness ww actually hits doesn’t really seem worth it, the cooldown is just too big (although i can obviously see why they wouldn’t want 9s cooldown quickness to be a thing).

I use leeching and fire now, leeching is a reliable hit with ji or after imob from scepter, 1k dmg, 1k heal, pretty nice with your low healthpool, nice spike plus for your burst after weaponswap and fire obviously reliable aoe dmg that actually hits the thing i want to hit and doesn’t get wasted on clones, spirits or smth when I want to burst something or just cleave on a downed body.

These are just way more reliable and considering the cooldown a way better damage plus.

EDIT: Stop using ji+whirling wrath, start using ji+binding blade and pull into ww. More reliable, actually hits decent players and way easier to pull people into the shield of wrath explosion than just to port with it and hope they didn’t see you and won’t dodge.

Keksmuffin.1450:

I used it after the patch, porting with binding blade, proccing rage and getting off full ww sounded strong on paper.

In reality that happens 1/10 times, it has a pretty huge cd so when it procs when you can’t burst yet and you just want to pressure with leap and autos and stuff (dueling warriors and they still have their stab/endure pain, just starting a teamfight or stuff like that) it won’t be up again when you want it and the best thing that can happen is that you quickness stomp somebody.

Also quickness shelter is not really something you want to happen ever.

Just using sigils that deal damage USUALLY give you more damage, running rage for the one time the quickness ww actually hits doesn’t really seem worth it, the cooldown is just too big (although i can obviously see why they wouldn’t want 9s cooldown quickness to be a thing).

I use leeching and fire now, leeching is a reliable hit with ji or after imob from scepter, 1k dmg, 1k heal, pretty nice with your low healthpool, nice spike plus for your burst after weaponswap and fire obviously reliable aoe dmg that actually hits the thing i want to hit and doesn’t get wasted on clones, spirits or smth when I want to burst something or just cleave on a downed body.

These are just way more reliable and considering the cooldown a way better damage plus.

EDIT: Stop using ji+whirling wrath, start using ji+binding blade and pull into ww. More reliable, actually hits decent players and way easier to pull people into the shield of wrath explosion than just to port with it and hope they didn’t see you and won’t dodge.

Actually the reverse is better on paper, on paper you ignore reaction times, ping etc. meaning the ideal sigils would just be higher damage as if you play perfectly you’re going to be more effective.
Rage got the c/d reduction so the 30’s isn’t bad at all and the quickness stomp never works because you run out of quickness too early.

I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think anybody is stupid enough to quickness shelter.

I think the DPS factor I’m overlooking a little bit due to relying on it as a fallback if your WW/SoW misses but I still think without rage it’s wayyy too easy to avoid too much of the GS’s damage:

• Whirling Wrath
  – You don’t even need to dodge all of it, just some of the damage. It has huge indicators and is easy to dodge

• Binding Blade
  – Big Indicators, again, making it easy to dodge

• Binding Blade’s Pull
  – Once again another big indicator making it easy to dodge and although you do get knocked down you don’t get pulled.

With rage they’re nowhere near as easy to dodge, not to mention if you get the jump with JI.

I mean this is all practical too, you were basically saying you can land the GS’s DPS easily without Rage and I don’t find that really to be the case.

I gave it a shot on sword and I do think it lets you get some nasty damage out in a short amount of time, but it can sometimes be wasted.

Example: You can’t or choose not to connect w an enemy

I’ve been giving it a shot right now, works pretty well. I toss it on the GS for the SoW > JI > BB > WW burst. Combining both rage and binding blades seems to get most of the burst in reliably, and can drop 2-3 people standing on point looking baka.

Also, if you open combat with a SoW JI WW combo the rage cooldown should be up, so it will proc on your WW if you have enough crit chance with fury.

Though, I’m also trying energy sigils on my dps build which drops the damage procs. Nice to switch things up frequently though.

Jax.5261:

Actually the reverse is better on paper, on paper you ignore reaction times, ping etc. meaning the ideal sigils would just be higher damage as if you play perfectly you’re going to be more effective.

That was my point. Rage sigil might get you more damage sometimes, your ww will hit like 2-3k more in the best scenario. Considering the cooldown and that it procs when you don’t want it often enough sigils like air and fire give you a lot more damage. 1-2k with 3s cd, 600-1,5k with 5s cd. Fire and leeching basicly are 2-3k free damage that procs pretty much every weaponswap.

Also like I said before ji+ww is a terrible combo, quickness or not you won’t hit decent players with it. Also it’s very possible to hit your leap and your autoattacks with gs if you use the scepter imob and the gs leap to gapclose and don’t try to hit ww on a moving target without ccing them.

Rage is not a terrible sigil, it’s fun and it certainly boosts your damage on bursts when you actually hit one while the quickness is up. The high cooldown and the fact that there are other sigils like fire/air that just deal damage on low cooldown makes it somewhat subpar especially in 1v1s and 2v2s where you often can’t burst on your first swap to gs because you know that your oponents still have defensive cooldowns up meaning you either have to camp scepter until there is a possibility to burst or waste the quickness proc. You can’t tell me that that’s an ideal sigil considering that 1v1s and 2v2s are the strength of dps guard.

I have to agree with Bullet Punch
I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work that well. i tried Rage in Warrior too with GS plus Bull Change and in there work wonders (You just AA till quickness procs, once it procs it will help land Bulls charge and 100b), but not with the Guardian. Too random, sometimes I needed the GS, but wasn’t ready to burst and there it is the rage proc, then when I’m ready I AA till it procs (hoping it procs) and guess what, it’s on CD.

I don’t like, doesn’t help much with the skills GS on Guardian has

My thoughts, having tried your triple meditation build on your old post (I rarely run triple med so while I do have my own build now too it’s hardly streamlined) I will say I wasn’t all that thrilled with Rage sigil. While sure it does some really great stuff it only gives you what, 3 seconds of quickness and then you have to wait 30 seconds before it can proc again? That’s not a lot of uptime on it. So that’s why I’ve started staying away from it.

[EDIT] Sorry been awhile since I used it so I don’t remember the cd off hand but either way I said still stands, its a long cd so you only get a small amount out of it.

its 30 secs CD, and traited JI refreshes before it comes off CD.

@OP: I have been using it for a while and I must say I dont like that sometimes it can be unreliable. I would rather JI into pull and then spin them away.

Thanks for the input guys.

Shhh~~I use Hammer (Sigil of Rage) / GS(hydro) combo.

JI+RoW, swap GS chill+ GS4+GS2*Rage mode On, bam bam bam, sucking HP with Zealous blade instant heal =D’ lots of people kissing floor. Though its luck, once pull it off, its stronKkKK~~

The unintended procs aren’t always completely wasted. Quicknesss will net you a few extra stacks of Might from GS auto-attacking for a few seconds.

This still doesn’t come close to the sustained dps bonus of Fire/Air – on the other hand we’re talking about increasing burst reliability/damage here which is a somewhat different beast than a flat dps increase. I guess it depends which is most useful and that probably depends on your map/team/build/playstyle