Guild Wars 2

So I am not 80 but planning ahead. I plan on using Sword/Focus and Staff for general PvE and Dungeons. My question is which stats do I need to focus to to more damage but still maintain my healing and duration on boons?

Berserker’s stats (power/precision/ferocity) is the optimum stat combination for nearly all PvE scenarios. If you find yourself having trouble surviving, sub in some knight’s gear (power/precision/toughness) until you get a good feel for the content and how to play to your active defenses.

And while I won’t tell you that you should play any specific way, I would recommend ditching the staff for a greatsword or hammer. Staff is a low-DPS support weapon, and PvE just doesn’t really require much in the ways of support beyond dealing your share of damage.

voxrar.2859:

So I am not 80 but planning ahead. I plan on using Sword/Focus and Staff for general PvE and Dungeons. My question is which stats do I need to focus to to more damage but still maintain my healing and duration on boons?

You shouldn’t use staff + sword/focus. Sword have a good auto-attack but need the burst dmg of a GS. Staff have poor support for PvE but if you really want to use it, its better to use Hammer with it since its a good weapon on its own and don’t need constant swamping like the GS and Sword need.

Healing power is not really good in PvE and the only good source of boons duration are trait and food. You shouldn’t focus too much on that. There is FAR better support in this game that you should focus on instead. The stats you should focus on are offensive stats (because your support don’t come from stats, its come from your trait and skills). Zerker should be your goal, but you can use defensive stats gear if you need them as you learn the game.

Sorry to both of you so far but GS is not my favorite weapon. I prefer this set up cause I trait into blinds giving Vulnerability.

voxrar.2859:

Sorry to both of you so far but GS is not my favorite weapon. I prefer this set up cause I trait into blinds giving Vulnerability.

Which is good, its a really good trait to have. FYI the GS also have a blind. So you could play Hammer + Sw/Focus, but Sw/Focus + Staff is not a great choice. It will work, but it’s not a great choice.

Right now your weapon synergy is not matching up with what you want to maintain, which is boons and healing while doing damage.

Sword provides little to no boons. At most you can trait to obtain might on crits and synergize sword with radiance and 1h strength to easily obtain good crit percentage. This will not net you any healing though.

The only way to obtain healing out of sword would be to also take altruistic healing as well. This will provide you with some decent sustain, but you are often better off with a symbol based weapon as it has more reliable boon application, such as hammer or mace.

Staff is good for support and quick self burst healing in groups when linked with altruistic healing, but in general pve it is lack luster. The best use of staff is in zergs for tagging and swiftness application.

If you want to do damage, you have to sacrifice healing. Our sustain abilities do not rely on healing stats overly much, which are monk’s focus and altruistic healing. The downside is, you typically don’t need these in pve and are seen as wasted traits and stats.

If the problem is you want travel speed, you may be better off investing in runes of speed and dropping staff for something else.

If you want to utilize blinds/vulnerability a lot, then sword/focus/greatsword are great for the plethora of blinds along with virtue of justice.

Healing is probably best done with symbol based weapons, and you can advance that to your allies with writ of the merciful which will layer even more self healing on top of regeneration/altruistic healing. You can invest in symbol based damage which does ok in pve as target tend to stay still. You won’t be doing crazy high damage but by layering two symbols on top of each other (mace and greatsword are good combinations) you have a form of burst via double ticking symbols.

Going back to your comment about boon duration/application, this is best done with a shout build, which again leads you more towards support…which takes away from damage. Also, enhancing boon duration does little in the long run, and better off with frequent application than 1-2 extra seconds of boon duration.

If you “need” healing power, don’t go much higher than 500-600 then invest the rest into power/prec/ferocity. Anything past that you lose way too much damage.

Boons you probably should only care about might, vigor, regeneration, and protection. Stability can be swapped in when needed by shouts.

This will lead you to taking empowering might and probably mace or hammer depending on the situation.

Remember though, if you are going deep into symbols you are screwing up your parties ability to stack fire fields and might, so try to mask your light fields after a fire field and/or bring a fire field yourself.

tldr: a whole lot of words to maybe let you make your own decisions (ie I said nothing)

Thaddeus.4891:

Which is good, its a really good trait to have. FYI the GS also have a blind. So you could play Hammer + Sw/Focus, but Sw/Focus + Staff is not a great choice. It will work, but it’s not a great choice.

Why not? wide attack arc, spammable 2, 12 stack might and a wall.

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

CMF.5461:

(I did read all this here, just wanted to keep post short)

tldr: a whole lot of words to maybe let you make your own decisions (ie I said nothing)

Going one way or the other negates the opposite? I hate that. Even in games where it it better to take a negative penalty to maximize a stat I don’t do it. There has to be a way I can do a nice moderate about of damage and still provide good boons and heals.

CMF.5461:

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

So Guardian is just a DPS class? If so then I am in the wrong class at level 52 already….ugh.

voxrar.2859:

CMF.5461:

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

So Guardian is just a DPS class? If so then I am in the wrong class at level 52 already….ugh.

It’s not just the guardian. For dungeons, this game is all dps.
(Disclaimer: I play mostly WvW and have never stepped into a dungeon in this game.)

voxrar.2859:

CMF.5461:

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

So Guardian is just a DPS class? If so then I am in the wrong class at level 52 already….ugh.

Every class can be DPS class, or support, or control depending on weapons and traits. For PvE, your best bet is going to be DPS. For PvP/WvW, each “playstyle” (if you will) can be very useful. I like playing a support/healing build for WvW in small group roaming settings. I use staff and hammer. (although thinking of trying mace/focus or shield but we’ll see.)I use shouts for boons (stability, swiftness, regen, protection, might) and it really helps. Although I wouldn’t reccomend it for a zerg.

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yeah I have tried a few different combinations and my most successful one was a symbol heal based build while still building for damage.

Maybe you could try something close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5dlsApUo9CxZI8DNR8gUbgG4+s7lH7B-TRRBABXt/o87UdDpq+DAPBAzUCGA4AghHe4hjUARMMC-e

Self healing is around 500 heals per second with persistent symbols, and burst healing while double layering symbol of wrath with symbol of faith gets you about 700 self healing.

This will also heal allies in melee range with you for a lesser amount as they do not of virtue of resolve ticking on them as well, so they get about 400-600 on your symbol rotations.

Damage, whirling wrath will do about 8k without counting might/vulnerability stacks.

and symbols will tick for about 1.5k each, doing 3k combined. So a burst rotation with double symbol and whirling wrath will do about 11k damage every 20 seconds (assuming all crits, not always that high).

After that you get 1 more whirling wrath off, then swap to symbols for two rotations. Whirling Wrath and symbol of wrath should both be ready again.

Shield of wrath will let you blast might on your purging flames. Also purging flames helps cover your light fields a bit so your party can still stack might if needed.

You still maintain block/blind rotations with greatsword/retreat/protector’s strike/virtue of courage/shield of wrath.

You can also drop some points out of honor and put it into radiance to obtain blinds on virtue of justice and refresh on kills (less healing/damage with mace as well as less crit damage, but good utility).

This will put you at “decent” damage and “decent” healing. Still play like a zerker and dodge/block things…don’t try to face tank.

(I still advise to run meta or close to meta if you want to be optimal, but trying new things isn’t bad if you don’t want to)

voxrar.2859:

CMF.5461:

low damage, loss of dps while stacking might, wall is usless against champs and trash is unneeded.

So Guardian is just a DPS class? If so then I am in the wrong class at level 52 already….ugh.

All classes are DPS classes. There isn’t a hard line drawn to distinguish dps/healing/tanking. All classes do everything. The main goal of the guardian is to do damage while defensively supporting your team. You can go full damage in your stats and still provide plenty of support for your team such as blinds/blocks/reflects/protection/stability/etc. The single most important thing about a guardian in dungeons is knowing the encounters so that you can use your defenses at the right time. There are many times where a guardian is crucial to the success of the fight because they can bring so much support/defense while performing good dps.

For instance in the normal dungeon builds these are what you will bring to the fight, in terms of defense (depending on which weapon/utility equipped):

4 blinds blinds (greatsword 3/focus 4, sword 2, traited f1 (spammable for trash))
2 party wide blocks (Plus you can get another if you use renewed focus to reset the CD on f3)
2 additional personal blocks (mace 3, focus 5) and 1 self invulnerability (elite utility)
2 reflects (Wall of reflection will be your best friend when you learn the encounters, its a party wide reflect, sword 2 is a personal reflect)
3 stability (2 utilites and a traited f3)
2 projectile absorbs (spirit shield and shield 5 (unfortunatly the shield weapon sucks))
3 condition removers (2 utilities and a traited f2)
And of course dodge!

CMF.5461:

yeah I have tried a few different combinations and my most successful one was a symbol heal based build while still building for damage.

Maybe you could try something close to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5dlsApUo9CxZI8DNR8gUbgG4+s7lH7B-TRRBABXt/o87UdDpq+DAPBAzUCGA4AghHe4hjUARMMC-e

Self healing is around 500 heals per second with persistent symbols, and burst healing while double layering symbol of wrath with symbol of faith gets you about 700 self healing.

This will also heal allies in melee range with you for a lesser amount as they do not of virtue of resolve ticking on them as well, so they get about 400-600 on your symbol rotations.

You still maintain block/blind rotations with greatsword/retreat/protector’s strike/virtue of courage/shield of wrath.

You can also drop some points out of honor and put it into radiance to obtain blinds on virtue of justice and refresh on kills (less healing/damage with mace as well as less crit damage, but good utility).

This will put you at “decent” damage and “decent” healing. Still play like a zerker and dodge/block things…don’t try to face tank.

(I still advise to run meta or close to meta if you want to be optimal, but trying new things isn’t bad if you don’t want to)

Nice I guess, but I don’t count WvW in PvE catagory. World bosses maybe but open world and dungeons are what I am aiming for.

This isn’t wvw focused, was trying to give you a healing dungeon build with some damage still.

Tron.3471:

All classes are DPS classes. There isn’t a hard line drawn to distinguish dps/healing/tanking. All classes do everything. The main goal of the guardian is to do damage while defensively supporting your team. You can go full damage in your stats and still provide plenty of support for your team such as blinds/blocks/reflects/protection/stability/etc. The single most important thing about a guardian in dungeons is knowing the encounters so that you can use your defenses at the right time. There are many times where a guardian is crucial to the success of the fight because they can bring so much support/defense while performing good dps.

For instance in the normal dungeon builds these are what you will bring to the fight, in terms of defense (depending on which weapon/utility equipped):

4 blinds blinds (greatsword 3/focus 4, sword 2, traited f1 (spammable for trash))
2 party wide blocks (Plus you can get another if you use renewed focus to reset the CD on f3)
2 additional personal blocks (mace 3, focus 5) and 1 self invulnerability (elite utility)
2 reflects (Wall of reflection will be your best friend when you learn the encounters, its a party wide reflect, sword 2 is a personal reflect)
3 stability (2 utilites and a traited f3)
2 projectile absorbs (spirit shield and shield 5 (unfortunatly the shield weapon sucks))
3 condition removers (2 utilities and a traited f2)
And of course dodge!

Ok right right. I keep forgetting the whole no Trinity thing. So I could crack out more damage. For some reason it was in my head that stats like Power or Condition effected healing and durations on boons. But would Engineer have different one other that prot, aegis, etc.? I do like guardians supportive abilities but I prefer to buff damage instead of defenses.

CMF.5461:

This isn’t wvw focused, was trying to give you a healing dungeon build with some damage still.

Ok ok, sorry miss understood. Saw the zerging term and applied that to WvW.

think I said “zerker” i.e. berserker gear (dps)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAsdWl0ApQo1CxZI0EJBARYVAWrA

My current set up.

right now, you don’t have access to a lot of the things that make guardian good. Just play as you like for now and understand the mechanics as you gain new skills.

I will say you should get renewed justice and inspired virtues to help increase survival as well as increase your damage while doing open world fights. Each kill will refresh Virtue of Justice. Every time you use Virtue of Justice you blind/stack 3 vulnerability on nearby targets, and give you and allies 3 might. In a big fight with lots of trash you stack on might/vulnerability quick and you avoid a lot of damage due to spamming blinds.

so when you get the points go x/3/x/x/1

The next thing that is going to increase your damage will be Fiery Wrath (2 into zeal) which will increase damage on burning targets by 10%. Since you are spamming Virtue of Justice, you will be have burning on your targets consistently enough, which is another damage increase.

For now look towards those synergies and after you learn them better you can come back and explore other mechanics of the guardian.

This all has actually helped. I thank all of you very much. I know my type may have sounded like mad but your all great.

voxrar.2859:

Tron.3471:

All classes are DPS classes. There isn’t a hard line drawn to distinguish dps/healing/tanking. All classes do everything. The main goal of the guardian is to do damage while defensively supporting your team. You can go full damage in your stats and still provide plenty of support for your team such as blinds/blocks/reflects/protection/stability/etc. The single most important thing about a guardian in dungeons is knowing the encounters so that you can use your defenses at the right time. There are many times where a guardian is crucial to the success of the fight because they can bring so much support/defense while performing good dps.

For instance in the normal dungeon builds these are what you will bring to the fight, in terms of defense (depending on which weapon/utility equipped):

4 blinds blinds (greatsword 3/focus 4, sword 2, traited f1 (spammable for trash))
2 party wide blocks (Plus you can get another if you use renewed focus to reset the CD on f3)
2 additional personal blocks (mace 3, focus 5) and 1 self invulnerability (elite utility)
2 reflects (Wall of reflection will be your best friend when you learn the encounters, its a party wide reflect, sword 2 is a personal reflect)
3 stability (2 utilites and a traited f3)
2 projectile absorbs (spirit shield and shield 5 (unfortunatly the shield weapon sucks))
3 condition removers (2 utilities and a traited f2)
And of course dodge!

Ok right right. I keep forgetting the whole no Trinity thing. So I could crack out more damage. For some reason it was in my head that stats like Power or Condition effected healing and durations on boons. But would Engineer have different one other that prot, aegis, etc.? I do like guardians supportive abilities but I prefer to buff damage instead of defenses.

In my opinion, if you want to have offensive support abilities, a warrior or elementalist is what you would want. The best offensive boons are might and fury, which both classes grant to the full party. Ranger also provides great offensive boons as well with spotter and frost spirit. I’m not to well versed on engineer.

Ok one last thing. Why zerker over other types of enchants like knight or celestial?

Because of the games emphasis on active defense and no tanks or healers, other gearsets are at a disadvantage.

PvE content can be completed by maximizing dodges, blinds, blocks to prevent big insta kill damage (no amount of tank gear will let you live long enough to face tank typically, and you don’t have reliable agro mechanics even if you wanted to try).

So that is left with the most damaging of stat combinations.

power precision and ferocity work in synch with each other, while toughness power precision has 2 dps stats and 1 defensive stat that is needless if you are dodging everything anyway.

Condition damage builds are less optimal in pve because of condition caps and damage modifiers. Direct damage builds can push out more damage in a shorter span, thus shortening the duration of the fight better than condition damage builds can, so that negates any condition gear emphasis.

Knights and celestial may be nice to learn the fights as it gives you 1 or 2 more hits you can soak up, but you are still dropping to 50% or lower in life if you face tank a dungeon boss’ hits.

Now in WvW and sPvP, this can be a different story, and celestial builds maintain “decent” damage while having great sustain, thus outlasting most zerker builds…but that’s pvp, not pve.

So PvE – Zerker
PvP – Mid way zerk, but still emphasis on damage with some survival. Conditions much more useful here.
WvW – wider range of flexibility, support builds are welcome, but someone still needs to bring the damage. Conditions also good here.

voxrar.2859:

Ok one last thing. Why zerker over other types of enchants like knight or celestial?

Because there three important thing to bring to a team. Damage, Support and CC. CC is often skipped by most pugs group, it will help but you often need coordination in the group of really take advantage of CC. But Damage and Support are really important. But the stats on your gear don’t improve support. The gear can give you 4 type of things.

1) Condition Damage : good in PvP, it’s broken in PvE right now so nobody should use that except if they play alone. (Hopefully, Anet will fix that eventually)
2) Personnal Survivability : Vitality and Toughness only improve your own survivability. Since active defense is so powerful, more and more ppl don’t need personal survivability to stay alive in PvE. It’s all about knowledge of the encounter and timing.
3) Support : I lie two stats improve you support. Healing Power scale terribly and is not worth taking except in niche situation, while boon duration on gear only give you ridiculous bonus, getting that from trait, runes and food is the best way to go.
4) Direct Damage : With the other three not that important for PvE, that let us with Direct Damage gear which is either Bezerker (Power, Precision, Ferocity) or Assassin (Precision, Power, Ferocity).

The support will come from your trait, runes, weapons and skills.

Thaddeus.4891:

voxrar.2859:

Ok one last thing. Why zerker over other types of enchants like knight or celestial?

Because there three important thing to bring to a team. Damage, Support and CC. CC is often skipped by most pugs group, it will help but you often need coordination in the group of really take advantage of CC. But Damage and Support are really important. But the stats on your gear don’t improve support. The gear can give you 4 type of things.

1) Condition Damage : good in PvP, it’s broken in PvE right now so nobody should use that except if they play alone. (Hopefully, Anet will fix that eventually)
2) Personnal Survivability : Vitality and Toughness only improve your own survivability. Since active defense is so powerful, more and more ppl don’t need personal survivability to stay alive in PvE. It’s all about knowledge of the encounter and timing.
3) Support : I lie two stats improve you support. Healing Power scale terribly and is not worth taking except in niche situation, while boon duration on gear only give you ridiculous bonus, getting that from trait, runes and food is the best way to go.
4) Direct Damage : With the other three not that important for PvE, that let us with Direct Damage gear which is either Bezerker (Power, Precision, Ferocity) or Assassin (Precision, Power, Ferocity).

The support will come from your trait, runes, weapons and skills.

Ok, I prefer to do some damage but also have nice buff times over healing. What stat do I roll for that? Damage and boon duration, I mean.

voxrar.2859:

Ok, I prefer to do some damage but also have nice buff times over healing. What stat do I roll for that? Damage and boon duration, I mean.

You shouldn’t run Boon duration stats. That’s nice thing to have, but if you focus your build around that, you will hurt yourself. Of course you can do it, but it won’t be good.

One thing you can do is getting some food with boons duration. Chocolate Omnomberry Cream will give you 20% and if you are using the build 4/5/0/0/5 it will give you an additional 25% for a total of 45% boon duration. You shouldn’t try to get more or you will screw up your build.

Thaddeus.4891:

You shouldn’t run Boon duration stats. That’s nice thing to have, but if you focus your build around that, you will hurt yourself. Of course you can do it, but it won’t be good.

One thing you can do is getting some food with boons duration. Chocolate Omnomberry Cream will give you 20% and if you are using the build 4/5/0/0/5 it will give you an additional 25% for a total of 45% boon duration. You shouldn’t try to get more or you will screw up your build.

Please explain, don’t just say “don’t do that, do this.” I am not a cookie cutter build user.

voxrar.2859:

Please explain, don’t just say “don’t do that, do this.” I am not a cookie cutter build user.

Don’t cookie cutter me please. Ask question and i’ll answer, I hope you don’t expect me to explain every single aspect of the game everytime I’ll give a advice that would take a freaking long time. Especially since I already explain it to you.

Thaddeus.4891:

while boon duration on gear only give you ridiculous bonus, getting that from trait, runes and food is the best way to go.

voxrar.2859:

Thaddeus.4891:

You shouldn’t run Boon duration stats. That’s nice thing to have, but if you focus your build around that, you will hurt yourself. Of course you can do it, but it won’t be good.

One thing you can do is getting some food with boons duration. Chocolate Omnomberry Cream will give you 20% and if you are using the build 4/5/0/0/5 it will give you an additional 25% for a total of 45% boon duration. You shouldn’t try to get more or you will screw up your build.

Please explain, don’t just say “don’t do that, do this.” I am not a cookie cutter build user.

If you’re not a “cookie cutter build user”, then you probably shouldn’t be asking others for build advice.

I don’t think he meant that he won’t use the cookie cutter builds, but simply he wanted to know “why” behind the cookie cutter builds so that he can come up to the same educated reasoning that the original build developers did.

He wants to play with knowledge and understanding instead of simply just imitation. Is that so bad?

As far as why to not push for boon duration: Boons duration will not extend long enough to become permanent on self reliance.

Group utilization of combo fields such as blasting fire will provide enough multiple applications of the might boon without extending the duration of the might boon itself.

Think of it as 20 seconds of might versus 30 seconds of might.

You gained 10 more seconds, but you can re-blast the field to maintain might again way before that 20 second window is up.

Other ways to apply might via groups with banners/shouts/procs of weapons and so on.

So extending the boon in essence gets you nothing, especially while grouped.

As you are gaining next to nothing out of boon duration, you might as well apply those stats to power precision ferocity.

As previously mentioned, healing power typically scales badly unless heavily invested and using support skills, but then you lost drastic amounts of damage, to the point where you typically hinder the group and not help.

Condition damage again is less than optimal in pve, hand in hand, so is condition duration.

This leaves toughness and vitality.

With proper utilization of blinds/blocks/dodges, you won’t need those two stats either. It will take some experience with the fights to learn when to dodge and get the timing into muscle memory, but overall you will be fine. A down or two won’t matter too much as long as things die before you perma down.