Selfish Soloist (build) plz discuss

Selfish Soloist (build) plz discuss

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

Perspective: In wvw I have most recently been playing the 10/30/30/0/0 auto attack 1hander meditation build ankittenpt seeing all these hammer guardians and thought, man that must be the most awesome thing ever! So, I swapped to the AH hammer build, made an exotic hammer and have been messing with it. My initial findings, the two builds are very similar.

Sword/focus and scepter/shield in 10/30/30/0/0 -

Pros: Crazy mobility once engaged in battle, fantastic fast damage, good luck keeping a condition on me. Heavy defense built on to the focus and shield. Good heals from my utilities. Ranged ability for real not the psuedo ranged stuff staff does; even the scepter is decent with Right Handed Strength.

Cons: If I need to run away I might as well lay down and hope I suddenly blend in to the foliage. If I want to cover the map to get to the action there better be a waypoint nearby or its going to take a while. in other words, it’s sloooooow.

Hammer/staff 0/10/30/30/0 -

Pros: Hammer is bursty, MB is awesome, the weapon just does a lot and can be used offensively and defensively. Banish off a cliff is the cherry on top. Looks sick! Staff gives healing, power buff, aoe damage, MOBILITY and the warding wall for knocking down nubblets.

Cons: Slow by comparison to a sword or even a scepter. If you can’t land the 3rd hit of the hammer chain in time you get no buffs, get no buffs, you get no heals, get no heals you gonna die. Shouts are ok, and the healing is nice with AH but only if others are near and shouts do no damage themselves.

So back to the drawing board and I am curious if anyone has tried or thought of something like this:

10/25/30/0/5 Traits are:
Power II
Radiance II and IX (?)
Valor VI X and XII

High crit, high power, high toughness, this is an “in your face” kind of build that is going to burst (in theory) someone(s) before they can outdamage you and it will allow you to get on them and stay on them. This is not a group hug, support everyone build, this is all about you and your personal survival. Meditations to keep you healed and to help your burst damage. (Smite condition is naughty if you haven’t experienced it)

Utilities:

Healing signet
All three meditations

Elite:

Your preference

Weapons:

Weapon is hammer mainly, swap with staff (traveling around) or scepter/focus (seiges)

Now, all that said, lets hash this thing out and see what’s wrong with this build. Thanks for reading this far and understand this is theorycraft at this point.

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Posted by: redknight.8036

redknight.8036

OK so your preference is solo-survival type in WvW that is capable of surviving a lot of damage and win most 1 v 1s.
First.
Throw away Altruistic Healing then, go for meditative healing.
If you’re running with less than 2-3 people AH won’t pay off as much.
Let’s take a look at what you’re building then..

A solo runner. Who takes care of just himself.
How about.. this?

30 Valor
I – Meditation Mastery
VI – Retributive Armor
XII – Monk’s Focus

20 Honor
II – Superior Aria
X – All symbols heal allies

20 Virtue
II – Vengeful
IX – Absolute Resolution

Utility Bars:
Healing Option: Signet.
At first, Shelter’s block may seem like a good idea, but eh.. the passive condition removal will help.

Utility:
7 – Smite Condition – Meditation
a fast 16 second heal and condition removal in one to keep you going with AoE damage.

8 – Stand Your Ground – Shout
Retaliation and Stability. Stun Breaker.

9 – Save Yourselves – Shout
Array of offensive and defensive buffs, don’t dismiss the Stun Breaker.

Elite: Renewed Focus

How it works is this:
This guardian is focused on self-preservation while keeping an endless chain of Retaliation boon up. Anything that hits him will get damaged back. That doesn’t count his auto-attack and other array of weapons he has at his disposal.

Take a look at the Virtue tree and you notice the following
25% Retaliation Length
Virtue Activation now grants 5 second Retaliation (7.5 with the previous trait .. +20% boon duration passive = 9.5 seconds.)

Let’s assume the fight starts, you get hit once…breaking your aegis.
You start the Virtue going.
F1 – Justice – Might , Burn on hit , Retaliation
F3 – Courage – Aegis, Protection , Retaliation

That’s already a massive 19 seconds of Retaliation up.
If you bring in Stand your ground (7.25s) and Save yourselves (14.5s) into the equation…

40.75 second.

But hold on. If you get 2-3 conditions, you pop the Virtue of Resolve. That’s another 9.5 second.

50.25 seconds!

But wait…hit Renewed Focus!

another 28.5 of Retaliation!

78.75s!

But wait! Symbol of Wrath (Greatsword #4!) another 7.5 second!

NOT YET!

LEAP INSIDE the COMBO FIELD!

ANOTHER 5 SECOND.

91.5 second of retaliation.

If the enemy is still alive after attacking your retaliation in 91.5 second on top of your other attack skills…then I admit defeat.

If you want to be mean, (Theorycrafting here)
Take away Renewed Focus and replace it with Human Elite – Hounds of Balthazar.
These two fiery puppies gets your Virtue Activated Boons and Retaliation as well.
At 6k hp each and 2k leap damage attack.

Am I just theory crafting, or what?

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Posted by: redknight.8036

redknight.8036

o well. 6 second less per virtue spam!

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

I decided to just spend the 3.5 silver or whatever the nominal fee is and try putting my build into practice. I am very pleased with the results thus far. Having picked up an additional 10% crit chance and 100 power from this build it hits like a truck! Another thing that I verified to myself is that one of the things that bugged me about AH healing is that when solo, as I often am, the healing comes in a small trickle. With this build, all I need is a single condition and I can have a large heal instantly plus heavy damage in the form of an aoe explosion. (see: Smite Condition – the heal is the same with a condition or without, damage is affected by the presence of a condition) All my mediations heal for almost 2k instantly. Contemplation of Purity is a gauranteed regen also if I am bleeding. Judge’s Intervention keeps me in the fight, heals me and burns in an aoe.

I have solo’d champion mobs with the build, but find that I can’t solo all champs; it depends on their abilities. Packs of mobs are no problem at all. I tested this against several types of packs in lower level events (working on world completion) and in Orr’s Cursed Shore pulling packs of level 80’s while gathering for dailies.

@redknight – I appreciate the input but I am leary of trying to do a build centered around retaliation. Anet has been more than clear that they want retaliation to be used situationally and not be this “full time switched on, heavy hitter ability” that basically allows us to kill people without ever really swinging our weapons. It used to (figuratively) be like this back in BWE and has since been nerfed heavily. I am not quite convinced they are done with it honestly.

As this build stands, there is plenty of Retal and the ticks hit harder than the standard AH hammer build will due to the increased power of the build.

The big drawback of this build is that my hit points are very low in comparison to the standard AH hammer. Thankfully, the meditation heals allow me to leverage health loss with timing the use of my signet. It’s very clearly a trade-off. I have to pay closer attention to my health, but I am hitting so hard and so fast that I hardly ever need to heal with the signet. WvW combat will be the real test. What little I have done so far though has been positive and I’ll keep working on it. I believe that if you run with people the AH hammer build is more likely going to be most people’s better choice. If you run with very competent players or solo, consider test driving this build.

As a side note, in the Radiance line I’m thinking I will continue to use Signet Mastery for my heal cooldown and will try Searing Flames to remove boons from my enemies. I find that the additional condition removal on use of the healing signet from Inscribed Removal is basically overkill on a build that already removes conditions easily.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

I personally run a 0/30/30/5/5 build with AH and have no issues running solo. the only thing that has been able to kill me is a fully retaliation speced bunker guardian. The key with the build is running mostly knights gear for high crit and toughness.

For the radiance traits I take :
II: signet cd
X: improved sword damage
XI: Right hand strength for 15% 1h crit
In valor I go:
II: Burn on block
VI: 5% toughness to percision
XI: Altruistic healing
And you also get:
Vigor on crit from 5 points in honor
boons off of virtue use.

How this build works is that every time you crit, you heal yourself for around 72ish health. Running in almost full knights gear with +100perc +10% crit damage food and Oil that gives 6% more percision from tougness and 4% from vit, you end up with insane amounts of crit. I currently have 86% crit chance with 1h sword between all the buffs, about 50ish with my greatsword. You also get healed pretty decently by your virtues as they apply buffs as well.

My stats are attached, the crit % shown is 20% less due to the trait and 5% sigil in weapon not actually showing on the character sheet. I also have around 61% extra crit damage with this build.

Attachments:

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
[Rev]

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

Awesome stuff Bash, thanks for posting something outside of the cookie cutter norm.

Looks like you have 10% more crit than I have, but I run almost 300 more power. I also have a mix of PVT and Knights gear and I want to trim that down to just Knights like you, I think. Probably due to my PVT gear I have around 500ish? more hit points. I think I have 13.3k hit points. Our toughness is almost identical.

I’m curious, what runes do you run on your armor? I’m using 5 superior ranger and 1 +25 toughness, can’t remember which it is.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

I dont have full knights yet actually only helm chest and legs. The rest is soldiers. I also use crests and orbs in my armor no runes. (partially because i am cheap, partially because they give better overal stats) I run soldiers crests in the knights gear and emerald orbs in the soldiers gear. i do have about 13.4k health, the stat sheet doesnt display full health correctly for whatever reason. Oh and also that picture is with food buff and the oil like I mentioned before.

Also one big thing with this build is running signet of judgement. The 10% decreased damage helps with condition damage and also makes you even more tanky. The only downside to this build is sometimes being able to catch people. Bunker eles are sadly unkillable with this spec but they realy cant kill you if played right. Also thieves are somewhat annoying but arent too bad. If you can land a full zealots on them with your sword then switch to GS and bindling blade pull then into a whirl, they should go down very easy. Also beware of retalation. Because this build is focused on doing damage with multi hit attacks you WILL blow yourself up very fast.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
[Rev]

(edited by Bash.7291)

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

Just and Update I figured I would post, I actually switched off of AH to Meditation healing running Smite, Judges, and whatever the condition to boon one is (can never remember the name) and found it to honestly be more tanky than before. The original build i was going off of used meditation healing which i never really like but it does seem to work with this build nicely. I think the main reason being the condition removal that was absent with my original build.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
[Rev]

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Posted by: akamon.2769

akamon.2769

Bash, that’s a great build and something i may want to look at. however, i’ve been almost too used to 2handed weapons. your build seems to benefit greatest from MH weapons. which i’m not against, it’s just been a while. and i’m looking for something new to play with. so i might try this as well eventually.

good thread going here! glad to see more people are still trying out builds and making them work.

Akaimon | Jolly Good Guardian
Akaigi | Warrior Made of Wood
[CDS] – Sanctum of Rall

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Posted by: Valmarius.4150

Valmarius.4150

Really interesting builds, and similar to what I’ve been trying out lately.

I’ve just started running a 10/30/30/0/0 build, using Power/Precision/Tougness armor, with all Power/Precision/Crit Damage upgrades and trinkets.

Zeal
II – Fiery Wrath

Radiance
II – Signet Mastery
X – Powerful Blades
XI – Right-hand Strength

Valor
I – Meditation Mastery
IX – Honourable Shield
XII – Monk’s Focus

My strategy is to pop Virtue of Justice, and then Sword 2 to my target. I have a fair amount of crit rate and damage anyways, but the (really high damage) burn, plus the increased damage from Fiery Wrath and Radiant Power after my target is on fire really, -really- hurt. At this point most people will try and escape, and that’s when they get a Judge’s Intervention to the face.

The trick is to use life steal food. It gives you a steady influx of heals, and when you mix it with the burst heals of the meditations, you can really take a lot of damage.

(edited by Valmarius.4150)

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

That is actually the build that was originally told to me but at the time but i hated meditation healing so i switched it to a way to use AH healing instead. Now that i have more knights gear it honestly does work pretty decent. Also switching to shelter was nice because of the might on block and also getting rid of my last signet so i could move my signet cd trait to vuln on blind since i have so many.

As fars as 2h weapons go. They are still pretty viable with the build. i use a GS for my other weapon normally. If you wanted you could switch out traits for signet traits and run a build with that.

As far are the condition removal on signet use the issue i run into is that it only removes one condition per signet. And also signet of judgement is never meant to be used but always on as a 10% less damage shield. So that would leave me with healing signet, which i wouldnt want to waste unless i actually need a heal, and one other signet of my choice, since i will never drop judges intervention.

Once i get on my computer today instead of my phone I will give an update on the build and what i changed
.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
[Rev]

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Posted by: Lucavern.6829

Lucavern.6829

I’ve been retooling my guardian almost daily for the past week or two, trying to find a combination that works for me, and think I finally found it. I had tried the shout build, but I found myself doing a poor job remembering to activate them even when I didn’t need the healing for the boons. I had also originally started with a symbol build which was really nice, but didn’t do the damage I was looking to be able to do.

Current build is a Meditation build that I am loving.

0/15/30/20/5

Radiance (15) -
II – Signet Mastery – Signets recharge 20% faster

Valor (30) –
I – Meditation Mastery – Meditations recharge 20% faster
VI – Retributive Armor – 5% of toughness given to precision
XII – Monk’s Focus – Meditations heal

Honor (20) –
III – Writ of Exaltation – Larger Symbols
VIII – Empowering Might – Crits apply might for 5s to allies

Gear:
Mace/Shield + Hammer
Soldier weapons/armor, knights jewelry.
Sigil of Accuracy on Shield and Hammer. Sigil of Life on Mace.
6x Runes of Lyssa

Skill Bar –
Signet of Resolve
Signet of Judgement
Smite Condition
Wall of Reflection
Renewed Focus

Rough Stats (at work and don’t remember exact stats)
2.8k attack
46% Crit (41% shown on sheet, bonus 5% sigil)/37% Crit Damage
3.1k armor
16,725 Health/275 Healing

This build works great anywhere I’ve taken it so far. Plenty of healing, even with the low healing power score. Multiple forms of Condi Removal to clear different severities of pressure. Armor/Health pool that allows you to not worry being on the front lines.

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Posted by: Kurieg.4158

Kurieg.4158

I’ve been running the Meditation build 0/0/30/20/20 in WvW lately and really liking it. I do use Focused Meditation solely to make Smite Condition instant. It’s a subtle but big playtime change imo – you can then Smite Condition anytime while not interrupting your other skills. Smite Condition only has a 16 s cooldown and hits very hard, making for good burst opportunities all the time.

Build:
Honor: Meditation Mastery, Focused Mind, Monk’s Focus
Valor: Writ of Exaltation, Empowered Might
Virtues: Vengeful, Absolute Resolution

Skills: Signet healing, Smite Condition, 2 of the following depending on situation (Judge’s Intervention, Merciful Intervention, Contemplation of Purity, Stand your Ground)

Generally use Hammer/Staff, though sometimes use GS and mace/shield. Depends on which symbols I want to leave around. I find this build decent as anything I’ve tried for soloing and still very group friendly with all the virtue and symbol benefits spread around.

Crafty [CR]
Yak’s Bend
Ir Regardless – Engineer

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

After a week or so of play in wvw, I have determined that I am very happy with my build. The only class that still gives me problems is a well played thief or other guardians because they take so long. I have had some great 1 vs. 1’s and I just wreck people. To necros, I just want to apologize because it’s simply not fair.

My final build is still;
10/25/30/0/5 using Fiery Wrath, Signet Mastery, Searing Flames, Retributive Armor, Focused Mind, and Monk’s Focus

full meditation build with healing signet

Hammer and Staff

I no longer swap out for scepter and focus while seiging, the staff #2 works well enough for my purposes and staff #3 targeted on walls is very similar to scepter #2

Only thing I am not happy with is the 13.5k health and I think this is the reason this build has trouble with thieves; simply because they can land 5k crits and 3 shot me (or anyone else…balance ftw I guess).

Otherwise, I have improved some armor/accessories and with 61% crit damage and 55% crit chance now I can pull some hefty numbers. I almost feel like a thief because I catch people holding off on blowing their heal and I can take them from 50% health to zero in two moves.

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Posted by: Blissified.8369

Blissified.8369

lower ur crit chance to 40 and get more hp, you wont even notice lower dmg.

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Posted by: Lonewolf Kai.3682

Lonewolf Kai.3682

After a week or so of play in wvw, I have determined that I am very happy with my build. The only class that still gives me problems is a well played thief or other guardians because they take so long. I have had some great 1 vs. 1’s and I just wreck people. To necros, I just want to apologize because it’s simply not fair.

My final build is still;
10/25/30/0/5 using Fiery Wrath, Signet Mastery, Searing Flames, Retributive Armor, Focused Mind, and Monk’s Focus

full meditation build with healing signet

Hammer and Staff

I no longer swap out for scepter and focus while seiging, the staff #2 works well enough for my purposes and staff #3 targeted on walls is very similar to scepter #2

Only thing I am not happy with is the 13.5k health and I think this is the reason this build has trouble with thieves; simply because they can land 5k crits and 3 shot me (or anyone else…balance ftw I guess).

Otherwise, I have improved some armor/accessories and with 61% crit damage and 55% crit chance now I can pull some hefty numbers. I almost feel like a thief because I catch people holding off on blowing their heal and I can take them from 50% health to zero in two moves.

This sounds like a nice build. What’s your armor stats? What armor, runes, sigils, jewelry are you using?

I was thinking of doing a 10/5/30/20/5 myself with berserker equipment, but the armor rating was like 2.2k and health was 17k

“Be like water” – Bruce Lee

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

I run an unusual mix of 3 Knights, 2 PVT karma exotics and 1 piece of berzerkers, all exotic level 80. I run all exotic player made knights jewelry with the exception of earrings which one is valkyrie and the other is berzerker with a knights jewel in it. (I think, it might be a soldiers jewel)

I use 5 superior ranger runes and 1 superior dolyak in my armor.

I use a 5% damage on my hammer and an energy on my staff

I have just over 3100 armor, 2950ish attack (over 3k with sharpening stone) 55% crit chance and 61% crit damage

Future changes:

I will most likely be replacing my zerker helmet for a knights or Valk helmet. I would really like to wring out a bit more hit points but I’m not sure if it is worth it. I will try them both as I get more cash and see which fits better. I think that zerker earring is going away also. I am starting to be a fan of the Valk stuff because I am happy with my toughness and the added crit damage is just fan-freakin-tastic. At 55% crit chance I crit a ton already, if I can keep it there and make those crits hit harder while adding more health for myself that is a good thing.

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

One thing I noticed that made me cringe is your crit is far too high. At about 50% crit begins to lose usefulness and starts getting diminishing returns. You be better suited scaling back some crit for other stats. Being that your about 15% over what you need. Same as other games crit stacking is capped.

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Posted by: Lonewolf Kai.3682

Lonewolf Kai.3682

That’s one thing I don’t understand. I questioned the mentality of keeping crit chance @ 50% or less in the Player Helping Player forum and got some interesting answers. Yeah, crit chance is capped in other games, but not in gw2 from what I understand. You can get 100% crit chance and make your attacks keep crit’ing every time you hit. I think the diminishing returns comes from when you are adding all those points to get crit chance at 100% in which adding points to other stats are more beneficial. Other than that, I don’t see why people continue to preach keeping crit chance at less than 50%, especially if you are trying a glass cannon guardian.

What I’m looking at is, would you rather have half your attacks crit’ing with 50%, 2/3rd’s of your attacks with 75%, or every single hit you make at 100%?

“Be like water” – Bruce Lee

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

You may want to test out (I did) going that high in crit. The reason it becomes capped and not needed is because at 50% crit you crit more than enough in spam hits. In pvp no one is going to live through it anyway. And in pve unless if its a boss you can actually stand still for. Dps really isn’t that much of a factor as it is in other games. If you can find a stand still fight it’s probably not that long.

The problem with going pass 50% is that you are using far too much resources to get it. Which means you become a weak glass cannon that is USELESS in almost every part of the game. You will need to be protected or run your behind off with perfect dodging to not be useless. My very first berserker 1.0 build I showed why that is a inferior way of playing in this game. And the rule remains a dead dps does no dps.

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Ridgeblader.7135

Ridgeblader.7135

So I went with Redknights build of:

30 Valor
I – Meditation Mastery
VI – Retributive Armor
XII – Monk’s Focus
20 Honor
II – Superior Aria
X – All symbols heal allies
20 Virtue
II – Vengeful
IX – Absolute Resolution

Utility Bars:
Healing Option: Signet.
At first, Shelter’s block may seem like a good idea, but eh.. the passive condition removal will help.

Utility:
7 – Smite Condition – Meditation
a fast 16 second heal and condition removal in one to keep you going with AoE damage.
8 – Stand Your Ground – Shout
Retaliation and Stability. Stun Breaker.
9 – Save Yourselves – Shout
Array of offensive and defensive buffs, don’t dismiss the Stun Breaker.
Elite: Renewed Focus

I have switched heal signet for shelter because I don’t need the passive condition removal as much in PVE.

Switched out symbols heal for symbols last longer because lets face it, hot footing it around Orr doing your story, I don’t get involved with many players. I may join an event or two if its on the way but hey, most people are pretty durable by this stage.

This build, for solo play, is great!

I just hit 80 on my guard and had irregular reward gear on him so I went out and bought the Vigil armor, just for some semi-decent gear while I work towards a better setup. Went for 4 superior runes of the water, will get 2 (only have 1 now) superior runes of the monk with the idea that the extra boon duration will assist.

Great build for me, working with the Hammer is a treat, combo of hammer and GS at the moment. Obviously that changes depending on the situation but I find I am killing things faster, staying alive longer and having an easy time doing it. I can keep retaliation up for an entire battle with the right rotation and careful management of the shouts! Most fights dont go very long but with the Hammer, extra boon duration and all the retaliation in the shouts I could keep retaliation up all day long.

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Similar to my berserker build but I’m long done with zeal. No more points for that tree ever lol.

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

I felt good about my crit at 50%, I do feel like I crit more at 55%. I haven’t seen definitive information yet on what actual caps are in this game (some claim they don’t exist) and I am only working with my builds from a WvW aspect. I do not run this in spvp. PvE, as far as I am concerned, you can run anything and be successful.

I am happy if I can keep my crit chance at 50-55% (Just happens to be at 55% right now). What I am more interested in is where I can push my crit damage maximum. My build is actually bursty for a guardian so I need that crit damage! I really like my armor where it is also. I wouldn’t mind tweaking that on up to 3200 if possible and I want to keep power toying around the 3k mark.

I freely acknowledge with my build that you have to pay attention to your health. If you are not good at paying attention to your health and you don’t know how to dodge, don’t play my build. You’ll just die. If you can hit your meditations by muscle memory and know which one breaks stun and which cures conditions and which one to push when people are standing near you, give it a test drive.

Also, not my build, or any other, is going to let you stand still like a turret solo and take on 4+ people. I took on a 3 vs. 1 this morning and downed 1 and beat the others nearly to death but went down. A friendly messmer came along and finished them in seconds and got me up so I could loot my 3 loot bags. I call that a good day. Had it been a 2 vs. 1 I have no doubt I would have won. However, this also doesn’t mean I win every 2 vs. 1 or even every 1 vs. 1. There are some smokin hot players out there and you know when you run into them.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

Hey bleeds can i suggest using shelter for your heal? The reason i suggest it is because if you are running 30 in valor the might on block makes the skill damn near over powered. The might you gain for blocking is 15 seconds long and can stack very very quickly. In zerg vs zerg fights you can charge in, get 25 stacks alone off it, and just go around destroying people. And Although it may heal for less than signet you also negate any damage you take while casting it which could be more than signet heals in group fights.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
[Rev]

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

See the thing is i’m saying it has a cap. Because at a point you start sacrificing other stats. Usually that point is between 45-50%. Now if you already crit say 50% of the time. You really need 75% to even really notice that one more time you crit in 5 hits.

Which means lower health defeating the purpose of even wearing heavy armor. That same thing goes for missing toughness. And your a guardian with many healing mechanics why nerf that? But as I said in another post a guardian who isn’t guarding anything including himself isn’t a guardian. What you may actually want at that point is a warrior/thief.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

That may be true in some cases but in others crit doesnt have a detremental cap. My build is an example of that. I use AH and the 5 point honor trait (vigor on crit) for my sustainability. In my case more crit = more self healing. I also run 85% crit between traits, sigils, and food buffs for my 1h sword. And around 65ish on my GS

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Ok let me break this down for you because it’s not like I didn’t do this for 4 months. Vigor will stay up regardless even if you have 25%. The reason why is the speed of attacks in this game. You can hit something 4 times damn near in 1-2 seconds. Which you usually crit in those 2 seconds. Hell it does it with almost no crit try it you’ll see what I mean.

If your going to crit that fast it doesn’t matter what percent you have vigor will always be up. You have your auto attack fire procs weapon procs skill procs. Say you attack 10 times in 5 seconds. And you crit twice ok now you have vigor up with just 25% crit. It will stay up period with just 25% crit. Going any higher won’t make it magically more useful. Because its going to stay up regardless. Because of the amount of times this game allows you to attack in a second spam.

Say you normal attack cancel it into whirling wrath. Call out purging flames cancel out of PF into JI all of that is quick and vigor will stay through out. I counted at one point with a excel sheet 61 attacks in a minute. No way possible for vigor to ever fall off due to that. So that’s really just your want to do that but you going to 85% isn’t doing anything to keep vigor up it be there anyway.

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

The point was that each application of vigor heals me because of Altruistic healing. Thus meaning that every crit heals me. ’m sorry if that went over your head but you really dont need to try to belittle me with information that isnt actually the intent of me having built the way I did.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
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(edited by Bash.7291)

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

Being that precision scales in linear with no diminishing return per point(unlike other MMOs such as WoW), I haven’t heard of any draw back of having crit chance too high (unless you break the 100% hard cap) unless you mean by sacrificing other stats.

There’s one thing that really helps if you have a really high crit chance. The burst damage you gain from multiple hit attacks such as Whirling Wrath (14 hits), Zealot’s Defense (8 hits), and Smite (15 hits) will be higher since the probability of having most hits crit will be higher.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

Being that precision scales in linear with no diminishing return per point(unlike other MMOs such as WoW), I haven’t heard of any draw back of having crit chance too high (unless you break the 100% hard cap) unless you mean by sacrificing other stats.

There’s one thing that really helps if you have a really high crit chance. The burst damage you gain from multiple hit attacks such as Whirling Wrath (14 hits), Zealot’s Defense (8 hits), and Smite (15 hits) will be higher since the probability of having most hits crit will be higher.

There is a slight balancing issue with that though, you do have to have some power to go along with the crit. i actually just switched off of using oil back to sharpening stones and my zealots went up about 700 damage, give or take RNG. This does sacrifice a tiny bit of my self heals to do it, but i think the damage was worth the tradeoff.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

It does heal on refresh. Anytime a boon is applied, regardless of it being a new stack, a refresh, or just a new boon you haven’t had on you yet, you get healed. It is pretty much the basis for my build. Also vigor on crit has no built in cool down, so you never have to worry about missing a heal on a crit

And yeah, that is totally random about the quote, i don’t think it ever did that before…

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Those minor heal ticks will not save your life or even come close to the usefulness of the stats you won’t have. It’s basically a stronger Zealous Blade lol yea… It’s not like I didn’t spend 4 months making vids on this lol….Or didn’t put it on the net clearly showing its kinda pointless to glass cannon a guardian.

But hey if you want to really learn the hard way go ahead. I had to learn to let Zeal go and that I was wrong to stack high crit in build 1.0. You will figure it out when you take enough dirt naps.

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

The balance of Damage vs. Survivability is varied between each person. What works for you may not actually work for someone else.

10/25/30/0/5 was my original build way back during the release of GW2 (you can check my very first few posts, I was an advocate of this particular build). During that time, I had run 100% Berserkers with Ruby Orbs and did just fine on every game aspects (In SPvP, I ran with Knight amulet and Berserker jewel instead). This build is the most fun I’ve ever had in WvW with guerrilla tactic (I filmed a video, you can check it out on my previous posts).

I now run a more typical 0/0/30/30/10 set up due to its flexibility, but I’m still using my full Berserkers set at 30’s Fractal. I now however also have a more defensive set in the bag to switch around for certain fights. In WvW? Full Berserkers still.

(edited by Trungalung.7850)

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

I use full Berserkers as well and no way you can do anything but a paladin like build in fractals after 12th lvl. PVP kinda works the same way. You can force it but you soon learn balance or die. Doesn’t really matter if it works for me or the next guy. That is just how this game works.

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

Challenge accepted. I’m confident that a med build in full zerk can still do high fractal easily. I’ll modify it a bit into 10/25/30/5/0 picking up Vigorous Precision instead of Inspired Virtues.

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

Ok, just because you tested it for 4 months or whatever doesn’t make you a god on the subject. You do realize that other people have been testing and tweeking builds too right? Also who said ANYTHING about being a glass cannon? I run a mix of knight’s/soldiers gear. im over 3k armor and run signet of judgement on top of that for another 10% damage reduction. Please stop assuming that just because I went high on crit I sacrificed everything else to get there. And don’t act like just because you make videos you are the only person that knows everything. I respect your build if it works for you, thats fine. I do the same for the other guardians in my guild that I talk too all the time about builds, which we all have different ones of.

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

@trung way to go lets see it. Make a you tube of it I actually did one fractal with my Berserker 3.0 build http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B73P_NwVAfc. Wasn’t anywhere near as smooth as it is in Paladin builds. You have to know thats going to be painful to do lol……..

@bash No one said I’m god but I’m hitting you in the head with numbers and facts. Your raging opinion at me when it’s not even true. I’m never going to let anyone spread things that will lead people to failure not happening. Post a vid of you in a fractal/spvp/WvW of you not being curb stomped. Then maybe you can come on the forums talking stuff. I respect builds all builds but like I said I don’t allow people to follow a bad mentality. Over stacking is a bad thing in this game unless your a tank.

So in your own words you sacced crit bonus on a crit build yea I’m done with you……Dismissed

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Bleeds.4029

Bleeds.4029

@Trungalung – I think it’s cool that I arrived at a build that you have also done. Makes me feel like I am doing something right. All I know is that the 10/25/30/0/5 works in wvw for me. I crit often and for great damage and I have survivability. So, thanks for the input. I agree, in guerrilla tactics situations the build just melts faces. 1 vs 1 it is also a real contender, at least for me.

@Bash – I think it may be a waste of time to argue with Silentstorm, you and I both know that more crit is working. Maybe it isn’t for everyone, but for some of us it works great, ’nuff said.

I think it comes down to two types of survivability. 1) you can just outlast your opponent (classic bunker tactics) 2) you can burst them to death without being blown up yourself. (Glass cannon? maybe, not in our builds imo) I suppose I would buy in on the whole glass cannon idea if I was running all power and crit with no armor and no health. For instance: full berzerkers armor, 6 ogre runes, all zerker jewelry and a 30/30/0/0/10 build. Now you’re trying to be a warrior or thief disguised as a guardian. Again, just my opinion.

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Bleeds as they say on the net post it or it didn’t happen. Every high crit guardian I know and trust I know alot. Cut that out when they realized you hit harder and live longer for less. It’s just the truth I mean I proved it so hey don’t listen it’s your game. And your aware Zeal is totally useless right?

The 10% crit bonus of divinty out runs the entire damage bonus of the 10 points. Test it out unless you want the wrath symbol or something you could use that 10 points else where maybe. Like maybe finish radiance out get PI or 15% crit on 1 handed and rearrange crit for for more bonus. Or throw 10 into honor and get the 10% damage with aegis on. Which actually has more up time than 10 in Zeal does. And you get more health and healing and still get more damage then using zeal with a divinity swap. I wasn’t talking out my kitten when I said zeal is useless atm.

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

You know, it is funny, i actually watched your berserker build video silent. you have 2k less health than me and 500 less armor, and you call me the glass cannon. Also, i have 61% crit damage on top of my crit (which i did actually drop 10% on my 1h sword for sharpening stones and different food) I also did a little math as well. in 60 seconds with just the 1h sword auto attack you get about 120 hits in. with 75% crit that comes to 90 crits per min. At 90 crits per min I heal for a total of 6480 health (72 per AH heal). Meditation healing is about 1800 per meditation, which totals out to be 9000 health over 60 seconds. (3 smite conditions, 1 judges, 1 purity) However the difference is that my healing actually scales based on the number of targets I hit, and also activates on every single one of my attacks.

I’m sorry you cant accept the fact that my build works without video proof. Which is kinda funny considering I run a 0/30/30/5/5 build just like yourself (with different trait selections though). But you can ask some of the people I duel with how effective this build is. The only classes that give me any trouble solo are bunker ele’s, which are just a pain because they run so much, P/d thieves, for the same reason as ele’s, and a completely retaliation spec’d guardian. The only one that can generally kill me is actually the guardian, the other 2 are just annoyances. Once I get the time, and im actually on my computer ill get you a screenshot of my actual stats if you want them, but I have a feeling you wont believe me regardless.

Also bleeds, i was actually thinking about switching to that 10/25/30/0/5 build but im not to sure about it. I personally dont like meditation healing myself, mostly because i use judges and smite as damage and almost always open with zealots + judges. Ill have to try it though, since i like to try different varients every now and then.

Edit: something else i forgot about AH healing with my spec, it doesnt have the overheal worry like meditations do, using a meditation at full health does nothing, possibly lowering your actual healing amount compared to AH.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
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(edited by Bash.7291)

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Bunker ele’s do pose a problem but I knocked them down and drag them when I can. Or trick them with land layout. In most cases if it’s open field you have yourself a problem. Same can be said about self healing thieves. I think those builds heal a bit too much or maybe I need to research them better. Meditation builds have heavy combo linker implications. But that’s another story and another vid I have been too busy to finish. I do however want it out before the 14th patch. I’m going to keep my the promise I made 2 months ago to list all the guardian combos every weapon.

(edited by Silentstorm.7531)

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Posted by: Wrath x CrAzY.5741

Wrath x CrAzY.5741

To be honest with you, after two weeks of trying Trung’s build I have yet to find a problem with a 15/25/30/0/5 build yet, that wasn’t due to my own lack of skill or smarts. I DO NOT do PvP yet, and haven’t tried many fractals, so I cannot attest to those, but I can attest to Solo PvE, all dungeons, and Tier 1 WvW (Stormbluff Isle).

I run with Zerker stats, using a GS + Scepter/Focus, and they both destroy. I died often at the beginning until I learned to time my dodge rolls and Meditation heals, and also found conditions to be a problem. Conditions wise, I didn’t have Purity or Inscribed Removal, but found Purity to be plenty for resolving my problem, although with a WvW focus I would definitely throw on IR.

Additionally, WvW is absolutely hilarious, if you catch a portal bomb, casters, etc. you can absolutely destroy them with a well timed WW+Symbol (and I assum MB). More often than not I find casters to be specced and geared glassy, and a simple JI + BB + WW will knock 2-5 of them down in one Whirl, especially if they’re busy laying siege to something.

I’ve been testing out other traits, but not weapon sets yet, although I have been tempted to try a hammer, so if you do, you should post your results!

Cheers!

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

So I played around with the 10/25/30/0/5 build and found it to be pretty decent. Went Hammer/GS as i wanted to play it as a 2h spec and was blowing groups up pretty decent with the hammer. I did end up going back and switching a few pieces of my knights gear to soldier gear, just because i felt a bit too squishy at times. getting my health back up to 17k really seemed to help with that I still have to say that i hate meditation healing though. Feels too clunky and i waste so much because I almost always open with JI and lose out on a heal doing so. Either way it is a very decent spec and is most likely going to be my go to spec if i get massively bored with my 1h sword spec. (which I am right now for playing it too long >.<)

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

So I went and did level 20 twice and 30 daily today as 10/25/30/5/0.

I admit I struggled a bit with some downs on the very first fractal (Urban Battlegrounds – Scale 20) due to the lack of consistent self-healing (as oppose to burst heal like Monk’s Focus). I decided to switch over to Altruistic Healing with a hammer to see if it’s any better. To my surprise, my survivability has improved much better. I went on a complete the next two with minimal issues.

I then did some re-gearing and replacing my boon duration runes with 5 x Rangers and 1 Lyssa to further improve my crit chance. I also replace my sigils to “Superior Sigil of Blood” in conjunction with Omnomberry Ghost to improve my self-healing even further. Afterward, I went back in and did Fractal 30.

I got Urban Battlegrounds again. I actually liked it since there’s a lot of hard hitting mobs around to test my survivability. I survived much easier as oppose to the 20 Fractal earlier. I still get one shotted into down state randomly and finally figured out that 25 Mights stacked Monk’s Heal Area actually deals quite a massive amount of damage when there’s a bunch casting. Well, now I know to dodge back when they start casting it. I carry on and complete the 30 daily.

Now, I went back and do the level 20 again with much more knowledge and having adjusted to the build. I got Urban Battlegrounds for the 3rd time in a row as the first Fractal. I did exceptionally well if not better than my 0/0/30/30/10. I also want to point out that even with 0/0/30/30/10, I still had to swap to some Soldier gears when I stepped in this particular Fractal. This time however, I was in full Berserkers with an offensive build.

I am currently uploading this clip on Youtube and will put a link up tomorrow. I will also upload the next Fractal after this one which is Underground/Dredge to show my tactics and how this build performs. I also have clips of Urban Battlegrounds, Underwater, and Snowblind on scale 30 if you guys want to check them out.

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

Here are the clips:

Urban Battlegrounds/Ascalon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7NMK_XJDs
(I equipped a wrong ring for this run so I wasn’t technically full Berserkers).
Underground Facility/Dredge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfmxk8p4klM&feature=youtu.be

Both are on scale 20. If you don’t think it’s high enough, I’ll fraps some more on scale 30 later or I can upload Urban Battlegrounds, Underwater, and Snowblind from yesterday.

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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

Nice lol but naming it glassy guardian lol? I’m looking to change out 10 of honor and see if it affects me too much. I notice I heal too much and maybe need a lil bit of a scale back on that now.

So we will see if i miss the symbol healing much if at all. If it turns out I don’t miss it I’ll have to redo the 2.0 build into 3.0 finally. I been getting spammed with builds on my channel. With try this try that use this use that. I don’t want guys to think they are being ignored.

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Posted by: Manticore Five.9867

Manticore Five.9867

Trungaling, are you finding it difficult to keep your targets burning with a slow weapon like the hammer?

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Posted by: Trungalung.7850

Trungalung.7850

Keep up burning is pretty easy with this build.

Bosses: Virtue of Justice lasts 25 seconds (5 secs x 5 party members). Cooldown: 30 secs
Trash: Renewed Justice spam

(edited by Trungalung.7850)

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Posted by: Bash.7291

Bash.7291

So I transfered servers for the week and ended up dueling on of my fellow guardian guildies. I started off with the 10/25/30/5/0 AH build and lost twice. I switched back to my 0/30/30/5/5 build and won 4 duels without any losses, 3 of which I didnt even use renewed focus. I think the issue with running the 10 in zeal for a soloist build is that if the burning gets cleansed at all you instantly lose 10% damage potential. Where as the 0/30/30/5/5 build has the added survivabilty through the 15% more crit (alon with the actual 50 more perc) and the buffs from virtues.

Living Dead Girl ~ Necro
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Posted by: Silentstorm.7531

Silentstorm.7531

I want to believe in zeal it just needs a little A-net love. For now I’ll stay away from it. Maybe the next big patch we will get some fixes or new toys with it.