Guild Wars 2

Hi all, just got my war to 80 and am gearing him up primarily for zerging. Would appreciate any feedback on it: 10/0/30/10/20

Notes/Goals:

1. Multiple ways to get out of stuns, immobilizes, slows. 4x movement skills + 2x stun breaks.

2. High armor, low health, so need reduced condition duration. Melandru runes + Dogged March + food buff seem to be best way to do this. Other options are Runes of Lyssa + SoR, or Runes of the Soldier + 3x shouts. Thoughts on these appreciated, haven’t bought the runes yet.

3. Leg specialist for now, though debating putting those 10 pts into Discipline for reduced Burst skill cd for more frequent Earthshakers. That’s 1x AoE Daze every 8s vs 2x AoE Immobilizes every 15s (or 16s realistically, including weapon swap time).

4. Defy Pain – is there an internal cd? The wiki isn’t clear

5. Will swap between Strength II and I (Death From Above) as needed.

I recommend following:
1. Drop Mobile strikes or swap it for something else. If you run Melandru+Lemongrass+Dogged march, immobilizes is not a big danger.
2. Swap Bull Rush for Endure Pain if you planning to be frontline. It can eat 20-30k damage alone, if you time it properly (just before jumping inside large group of AoE spammers)
3. Swap Defy Pain for Spiked Armor. Yes, retaliation damage is not that much now after nerf, but with 1/3 uptime of retal buff you will tag ALOT more ppl. More tags – more wxp, more loot, more kills for Realm Defender achievement.

peter.9024:

Hey! A couple notes:
1. I personally like berserker power over restorative strength. If you run dogged + melandru, movement conditions are not a big issue and berserker power will increase your damage significantly.

Ok thanks, will use BP instead, and swap b/t that and Death From Above as necessary.

peter.9024:

2. Currently you have no source of stability and I think you should consider running either Last Stand in place of Embrace the Pain and/or Balanced stance

I do have Balanced Stance here.

peter.9024:

3. I definitely wouldn’t run shouts. Shouts leave you with only 1 stun break, 1 shout which is basically single target and 1 shout that adds slight amount of group DPS.

Only reason I took Shake It Off! is for the short-cd stun break. With Melandru + DM + food, the condition removal isn’t important. Is that not a good way to get a stun break?

peter.9024:

4. If you want to get Burst Mastery, you can either remove 10 in strength (loose damage), 10 in tactics (loose utility) or 10 in defense (loose defense). I’d personally try without tactics see how it goes, but I’m aware that leg specialist helps a lot with hammer.

Yeah, gonna have to experiment with that tradeoff. I’d hate to give up 10 in Strength b/c I intend to swap that trait on the fly for Death From Above when needed – tower/keep defense, traveling.

peter.9024:

5. Defy Pain has an internal CD. Like 90s or so

Darn, knew that was too good to be true.

Thanks for the feedback, will go with Melandru Runes and experiment with your suggestions.

Rednik.3809:

I recommend following:
1. Drop Mobile strikes or swap it for something else. If you run Melandru+Lemongrass+Dogged march, immobilizes is not a big danger.

Ok good to know, thanks. Mobile Strikes came mainly from running around Orr and getting immobilized and pulled all the time, but don’t have the reduced condition duration yet.

Rednik.3809:

2. Swap Bull Rush for Endure Pain if you planning to be frontline. It can eat 20-30k damage alone, if you time it properly (just before jumping inside large group of AoE spammers)

Yeah, Bull Rush is fun, but not useful in a zerg, esp since it only hits one target. WTB AoE knockdown like it implies in the tooltip.

Rednik.3809:

3. Swap Defy Pain for Spiked Armor. Yes, retaliation damage is not that much now after nerf, but with 1/3 uptime of retal buff you will tag ALOT more ppl. More tags – more wxp, more loot, more kills for Realm Defender achievement.

Alright will experiment with that too. Love retaliation on my guardian, won’t take much convincing.

Thanks!