Guild Wars 2

My friends and I tried to run CoF path 1 and had a very difficult time getting through the dungeon. The only other dungeon I have run is HOTW (all paths) which is a joke compared to CoF

Spec in HoTW & CoF is
0/0/30/30/10
valor: retributive armor, purity, AH
Honor: superior aria, two-handed mastery, pure of voice
Virtues: consecrated ground

I ran knights gear + knights jewelry + dolyak runes, hammer, and sceptor+shield
3k+ toughness 16kish health

I felt that I was melting like butter in CoF. Problems started immediately with slave driver and his spawn . I didn’t have enough tricks in my bag… blew through all my virtues, my heal, utilities, elite book, and dodges at one point while I was being nuked…. and slave driver was only at 75%. Probably didnt help that eveyrone I was with was dps spec. The real problem came at the gate control part. I had a brazier to defend.. the mobs were too much. The final boss of the wing was the easiest part tbh

I have access to knight’s accessories, knights armor, prec/heal/vit gear, and power/tough/vit gear — all exotic Any suggestions on playstyle and spec + gear so that I can be more of tank then paper would be appreciated. Out of my group of friends I typically have aggro most of the time.

Thanks to anyone willing to help

i think the problem is you lack Vit, also some Healling power wouldn’t hurt, i run with a very simillar spec but my gear is different

tanky set: Soldier Armor and Magi trinkets and weapon

not so tanky spec: Knight armor, same trinkets/weapon

on my tanky set i’m using a mix of Giver and Monk runes to get that 30% boon duration plus some healling power, trinkets with Knight orbs cause Magi tinkets don’t have their own jewels

the not so tanky set has orbs (prec/vit/%crit dmg) instead of runes with the same magi trinkets

so that way i have about 18k hp, 2.8k armor, 800~ healling power, almost 1.4k power, 40-something% crit chance

well i hope that helps you, cause i have no problems whatsoever running cof or hotw, sometimes i can’t believe how tanky i can be xD

COF is about killing.

it’s about who kills who first

OK I am working with what I have….

Im at 18khp, 2.8k armor, 680 healing power, 1.5k power, 36% crit ( will eat omnoberry), 40% boon duration

Running 5 magi/1 soldier— 2x rune of water, 4x rune of altruism, knights jewelry and hammer. My lack of healing power compared to you is making me a bit nervous. Will try tonight and report back

For CoF i would do. Knights armor + Soldier runes, Zerker Trinkets and a DPS build such as:

10/30/30/0/0 GS/Sword+focus

With this build, party buffs, my GS autoattacks are typically 3k-4k.

Come to the dark side, go for full berserk! xD

• I’d replace either 2h mastery or pure of voice with empowering might. This is another source of AH heal that you’re missing out on. I personally use soldier runes over using pure of voice as a trait, so I save a major trait slot.
• I’d run master of consecrations over consecrated ground for the wall of reflection uptime. Against slave driver, you should be in the frontlines, putting up wall of reflection right about the time the effigy starts hurling fireballs at you (refresh if the battle lasts that long).
• You’re honestly not supposed to facetank damage like general “tanks” in other MMOs (well, it works on certain bosses, but not all). Damage mitigation/negation comes from proper use of dodge and survivability skills. Against slave driver, you shouldn’t have to heal until he goes into quickness mode. Wall of reflection can cover you from the effigy for a bit. After that, you can stall with a signet of resolve heal, a few dodge rolls, renewed focus elite (activate virtue of resolve for a little heal before it refreshes), protection from hold the line, protection from virtue of courage activation, shield of wrath (optional focus on swap), and empower AH heal if enough of your allies are nearby (optional staff on swap).
• I wouldn’t stick to only using hammer and scepter/shield. Use weapons that help you deal with the current scenario best. Against slave driver, I personally like to start off with empower on staff before he goes hostile, and then I swap back to GS to DPS him down. I’ll switch back to staff if I ever have to blow all my other stalling skills to kill him. During the acolyte part, if your team runs to the safe spots, you could use staff to block away the mobs.
• You shouldn’t be having an issue at the brazier part unless, for some reason, you’re pulling more than the normal 3 mobs that each brazier defender should have. One common mistake that I see here is that people don’t pay attention to where everyone else is, and they just immediately start a brazier. The safest scenario for this part is to not touch any of the brazier rings until everyone is in the room. My static team likes to stack every defender in the middle of the braziers and go to 4 separate ones when everyone is ready. There’s no need to take unnecessary damage by triggering the braziers too early.
• I’m not sure what weapon you’re using at the braziers, but I personally like to use GS as the skills can kill a group of 3 mobs really quickly compared to the hammer. There’s a bit of a delay between each spawn, so killing them faster is what you want to do. You have the advantage of faster cleave hits, retaliation, and AoE control versus the hammer. Also, your most powerful hit won’t accidentally cause you to step outside the brazier. Aside from that, you have many ways to reduce damage, which I listed above for slave driver. If you blow through all of those, and the gate controller is still up, then the issue is probably the person on the gate controller. The person with the highest DPS should be taking it down, usually a warrior or thief (should go down in 3 seconds at most).
• You can only sustain against damage for so long, so I definitely recommend getting a bit more offensive power where possible. ~3k armor is really as high as you should go for toughness for more frequent mob aggro, and anything much higher than that is pretty much stalling the fight, since bosses have so much HP in this game. If you want to start somewhere, I’d suggest putting exquisite ruby jewels in your knight trinkets because, first, the jewels that come with knight trinkets, for some reason, don’t actually have toughness as its primary attribute, and second, because crit damage % is higher on jewels. You have a decent crit chance because of your knights gear, so why not take advantage of it over minor toughness?
• I forgot to mention this, but I find it helps to have a weapon set with a superior sigil of energy for survival, so you get a free extra dodge, which means a slight extra heal with your traits. I typically have this on my staff.

Sorry if I covered stuff that you already know, but this is what I came up with based on your information. I run pretty much the same build as you except I have more offensive attributes on my gear. I still have about 3k armor, 47% crit chance and about 15.5k HP. In my experience survivability comes from knowing how to counter the boss’s mechanics more so than stats.

P.S.: This is a neat build site: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/

Seems like you’re off to a good start. As stated above, you usually cannot “face tank” these bosses unless maybe you have an elementalist dropping water fields that you can proc your hammer blast finisher on, and probably not even then. Dodge rolling the big hits is important (e.g. the slave driver’s fire whip attack)

I agree with Lightrayne above: Empowering Might from Honor line would be another group buff that would proc Altruistic Healing for a boost to your survivability while boosting your group’s damage. I would swap out either Pure of Voice or Two-Handed Mastery for EM.

I’d also drop the Dolyaks runes in favor of either Soldiers or a combo that offers +40% boon duration (e.g. 2 superior Monk / 2 superior Water / 2 major Water).

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Just want to be sure, “Magi” = Healing Power, Vitality, Precision?

Are these craft able stats by a jeweller?

ionix.9054:

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

Just want to be sure, “Magi” = Healing Power, Vitality, Precision?

Are these craft able stats by a jeweller?

nope, you cant craft those

those trinkets are sold at the temple of Lyssa(?) for karma of course

You can buy the Rare magi trinkets and Enhancements on the TP, I didn’t know there was a source of Exotic ones?

Kozai.8269:

You can buy the Rare magi trinkets and Enhancements on the TP, I didn’t know there was a source of Exotic ones?

Yep. Lightbinger Brutefur sells them for karma.

For anyone interested, scroll down to Karma category: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats