Guild Wars 2

I have tried full zerk and then venom share with pugs.
IMO zerk can deliver much more damage in a constant way.
I used this and Shadowstep.
Had no survability issues unless trying to res someone in the last phase.
The heal from SoM is pretty good.

You didn’t say Tips about thieves so..

Best Tip: Change class into Revernant

Personally I’ll use Invigorating Precision over SoM unless I have an reliable healer.
I’ve found that SoM keeps me alive for sure, but it’ll be harder to keep up my scholar and Flawless strikes buff.

I’d say, only use thief if you are sure you’ll have 25 stacks of might and 25 vuln on the target at all times. You MUST be in the full Melee DPS party. As good as thief’s mobility is, assigning a thief to the ‘green circle’ duty is a really bad way of using a slot. You have to constantly be damaging the boss.

Try your hardest to never be teleported away. I’ve seen a difference of 10-15 seconds between rounds which I got teleported away once (worse if i get downed), to ones which I’ve had a flawless DPS rotations.

I’ve found that for Vale guardian, the best DPS rotation is by starting with autoattack, until the blue-teleportation circles appear.
Bound in the circle (deals damage whilst evading the teleport)> x3 Weakening charges> Autoattack until the blue circles appear again. Rinse and repeat.

I’ve found that the ‘normal’ rotation, Bound> x2 Weakening Charge > auto-attack gets me killed often, because you’ll be screwed if you start your Weakening charge as soon as the blue circle appears. It’s better to adapt your rotation to the mechanics, rather then trying to force your rotation onto the mechanics.

Using vault in Phase 5 is a better way of of dealing damage when your tank is moving the boss around, until the boss is standing still again.

The damage from a failed green circle is around 90% of your health. If you used Invigorating Precision, that means roughly 1 dps rotation worth of heals. You should not die from a failed green circle.

You have to most dodges available, so you should honestly be the last person to get downed (maybe aside from a druid tank). I’ve been in situations where I’m the last one alive in the whole party during a wipe, with full HP while everyone is hard-dead. I’ve probably got reported for hacking =P.