Showing Posts For AdmiralSnackbar.4859:
Why Chilled to the bone over Lich? Chill doesn’t do much unless you really want the CC on mobs while Lich gives you a good 10-15 stacks of bleeding that you can upkeep. I also don’t see the point of plague signet since dagger 4 is more than enough to get rid of the conditions that matter from Blood is Power. I prefer going blood over spite since the group synergy is good (also means more damage) but if you prefer spite then the extra 20% damage from Close to Death seems better than making your signets slightly better.
I also don’t agree with Dhuumfire build dealing more damage than scepter / dagger.
I’ve never used Lich form for a condition build. The tooltip says you are summoning 5 jagged horrors which can each deal 10 seconds of bleeding on hit. I suppose the effectiveness would depend on how long you can keep the jagged horror’s alive. If they aren’t healed then your jagged horrors will be dead by the time your lichform cooldown is at 140s or so.
This might not be an issue in raids but the choice of plague signet was to serve both as a stun breaker and a method of removing the extra conditions from both the poison field and blood is power, also because signets can be used to generate might.
The scepter auto attack seemed weaker to me then dhuumfire but I’m willing to have my mind changed on that. At least if your condition duration is at 100%. Not that you would strictly autoattack in one or another.
Long lasting conditions are more important in a fight like this then topping off your condition damage. I crafted a viper’s set by taking an existing ascended set and converting it via the mystic forge.
For dealing condition damage at range I would recommend something like this:
That will give you close to 100% Bleeding and chill duration, and the relative difference in condition damage ticks between viper’s and rabid with undead runes is fairly small, especially if and when both builds are fully buffed (might banners and food) Also note that this build utilizes the spite trait line which allows for some automatic chill, automatic self-might, etc.
In terms of skill rotation, open with: 0,7,9,8,2,5,4,3: I.E. use your corruption skills, then transfer conditions to your foe to gain might, then use your most powerful 2 scepter skills, apply blind for an extra condition, then use your scepter skill to apply anywhere between 5-12 stacks of torment onto your foe depending on how long your conditions can stick.
Then autoattack in scepter, use 2,3,5 whenever they are off cooldown. Use your corruption skills whenever they are off cooldown but whatever you do, do not kill yourself with the conditions you apply to yourself. So do not apply self conditions unless your plague signet or consume conditions is off cooldown. (And also you can increase the effectiveness of your healing ability
Reaper with Dhuumfire seems to do a bit more damage then scepter attacks. Therefore if you are willing to play as a glassy hybrid and your party can fully buff and heal you, this will likely deal more damage, but of course it’s more risky.
Not my build btw
The idea would be to put a poison field on your target, go into shroud, soul spiral for a short period of 30 stacks of poison, then autoattack for a combination of burning and power damage.
The ranged build also has the advantage of being able to go on lightning bomb [or green circle of death] duty without losing any effectiveness in terms of damage]
Increasing your condition damage increases the intensity of the conditions, which raises the damage each condition deals overall, but increasing the length of time the conditions are applied means more damage within a given span of time, so long and only so long as the conditions you apply do not outlast the life of the target. (so if your target is going to die in 40 seconds, any condition lasting longer then 40 seconds will not have it’s full effect felt).
Viper’s (or Trailblazer’s when it becomes available) seems to add something close to 40% condition duration (I know it’s 37%) , and comes at the cost of something like 200-300 condition damage. Now i did some informal calculations in excel to figure out how much +300 condition damage adds to a necromancer if he’s standing at 1600, and for all of the conditions I looked at, it was between 10-16%
Bear in mind also that the relative change in condition damage decreases as the condition damage level increases. So full vipers might cost 300 or so condition damage, but if we have two buffed characters with, say, 2200 and 2500 condi damage, the relative difference in condition damage due to the stat difference is less whereas the condition duration remains equally effective.
The sinister viper trade off would be less if a condition build were only dealing one condition. (Say guardian which can really only apply burning) So with a guardian you could go sinister with balth runes and easily reach 100% burning which is all you need and the rest of your gear would emphasize increasing the damage of your attacks [Condi, precision,
Now what arenanet needs to do is fix rampagers gear, perhaps changing it to a 4 stat combination of power, precision, condition damage, and ferocity. I highly doubt there’s a class out there that could do better with sinister anything that could be done with rampager.
Dagger is probably the best weapon to start with in the explorable zones [Along with minions whose abilities don’t scale with your gear] But if you get to other content Dagger can be superceded by other weapons depending on the encounter. There are some enemies in Maguma for example that are not worth meleeing 100% of the time unless you are very good or very daring.
Axe is not meant to be used as a direct damage dealing weapon, but rather as a power up weapon for DS 1 and for that it is very good yes.
You never want to be hit accidentally, come out of DS and be stuck with a staff for the next 10 sec, and GS is not always an option since the range glass build variant doesn’t use reaper.
Dagger lacks the 10% damage modifier that axe gets which does work with DS 1.Axe – focus is used to powerup your lifeforce so you can go back into DS1s.
Why is sometime range better to melee ?…
Despite what some people have thought the community for over 2 years, melee can suffer for major losses to DPS especially since you can’t use “teh icebow” to freeze something while you do 80K DPS to it, which means you have to dodge.
Even if you play perfectly in melee and the only time you don’t DPS is when you dodge…
5 dodged in 30 sec = 5-10 sec of DPS uptime loss = 15-30% overall DPS loss
A penalty which a range build does not suffer from.Also don’t pay much attention to that guide, it’s filled with misleading information.
Of course, you neither take into account that even as ranged build you have to stay pretty much in melee range for party buffs, range weapons in general have lower DPS and that you have to dodge as ranged weapon user too as there is enough that makes you. etc
Depends on the fight and the buffs. Blast finishers for might are 240 range (I think). Phalanx Strength, Empower Allies, Revenant Buffs, and Banners are all 600 range. So if you were to camp scepter or lich form or life blasts at 400-500 range you would be comfortably out of most melee attack range whilst likely receiving enough buffs.
Concerning Dodging, If a certain target range is so wide that everyone is forced to dodge then you’re right. But if you’re attacking a target at range 400-500 distance away and the AOE is only slightly larger then a ranged player can continue attacking, take 2 steps back, and then step forward again later.
The examples of this that come to mind are the lava shaman fractal, the ascalonian fractal boss, a couple of bosses in Dragon’s Stand, the Archdiviner (To a limited extent)
It also depends on the AOE, if the AOE is some kind of sustained damaging field or a channeled attack then melee users may be forced to leave the field or tank the damage, so it ceases to be a matter of dodging. Lack of buffs is less crippling then total lack of damage.
And on the other side it also depends on whether the AOE can be interrupted. If Anet allows for it a full melee party could forgo ever having to dodge attacks if the attacks they did need to dodge could be interrupted.
And on the other side again not all classes need to abandon all DPS uptime to dodge. If the attack is short enough the guardians have a focus, revenants, mesmers, thiefs have attacks which also grant evasion.
It would also depends on how bosses react to ranged. If the boss specifically reacts to players who attack at range by focusing on them (by chasing them around for example) having a ranged user in your party can make things unreasonable for people in melee since the boss then becomes a moving target. (For example, Ranged players make the Mai Trin fight much harder)
I think the role of icebow in allowing for uninterrupted melee is somewhat exaggerated. (Though I can’t speak for high level fractals because prior to HoT i never thought them worth playing) most risks of melee in PVE until recently were such that they could either be avoided or ignored. Even without conjures in every single dungeon except maybe Arah a full melee-glass cannon party a premade group could 1. Stability 2. Blind 3. Aegis 4. Water Field blast.
I don’t think those tactics will cut it anymore.
TLDR: Depends.
Maybe I’m missing something but even if you can chill bomb and get Chill trait DoT … the damage from it is pretty crap. You get more damage from Bleed on Crit. Is chill a serious condi damage build with Reaper? I don’t see it. What are the traits that make this build happen? Reaper all mid and ??
How do you know that exactly? I see damage ticks on chill for somewhere around 800-1200 per second depending on condition damage / buffs. Barbed precision is only 1 stack of 3 seconds of bleed which is quite marginal and there are probably better sigils you can put in a weapon set then sigil of earth.
For ranged power damage you already have life blast and lich form. [Reaper being a melee focused build]
I don’t think of Axe as a mainhand weapon but as a secondary power weapon you would whip out to restore deathshroud, and/or as a reaper to use against certain PVE bosses [current and future in the case of raids] where melee becomes temporarily unviable. So you’re primarily in melee and when the boss starts using AOEs you switch to axe and recover your lifeforce pool whilst still dealing some damage as opposed to none.
The 41-50 fractal instability applies boons to enemies on critical hits, which means against bosses you’ll often be hitting something that is fully buffed.
I noticed a few times that If I used Corrupt boon on a foe with stability (stacks?) applied, the break bar tended to drain very rapidly. What I can’t tell from the few times that I did it whether the break bar draining was caused by the acts of other players in the brief window that stability wasn’t active, or whether the fear was doing most of the heavy lifting.
So might a few more experienced necros have answers to the following:
1. How do Boon corruption skills [Including sigils and the well of corruption] affect foes with multiple stacks of stability? Does it inflict 1 second of fear regardless of how many stacks, or does it inflict 1 second of fear for every 1 stack of stability?
2. How does Fear affect the break bar of bosses if they are immune from the actual effects of fear? I know that bosses are immune to all movement impairment effects but I know these things still count as conditions applied to them (So reaper chill will not affect a boss phyiscally but if you have deathly chill the boss is still taking damage)
3. How does fear when applied affect a boss that has another stack of stability applied to him?
The obvious reason I’m asking is because for a few instances it seemed as if a boss with multiple stacks of vulnerability can have that turned into several seconds of fear, which unlike chaining crowd control abilities at fractals 41-50 would apply consistent damage to the break bar. I emphasize the word ‘Seemed’ because this might be too good to be true.
If you don’t like Tanky, this is pretty squishy.
I am all for personal dps meters. Nothing wrong with knowing the actual numbers without having do copious amounts of math to figure out good rotations/builds. It would also put spreadsheet math to bed which would be nice.
The issue I would have with dps meters is how people will use it as a crutch for meta enforcing. Anet needs to start policing these players, as they have no right to tell people how to play. In my opinion its only on group of players that do this. Today in my eyes we have four types of players:
- Hardcore elites: which are about playing the game at the highest level and enjoy it there. Totally fine.
- Softcore Elites :Which play at high level but play to enjoy them selves. Again totally fine
- Hardcore Casuals: Which play at a low level, but enjoy the high level atmosphere.
- Softcore Casuals :Which play at lower level and just enjoy the game. Totally fine.
In my experience the all of the groups except one all either have a form of understanding to either play together or avoid each other. The Hardcore Casual is the exception to this rule. They insert them selves in every situation and act like a boil; spewing puss on everything. The moment you call them out on not playing to standard they spew and the moment they see someone else not meeting their bar they spew. These are your people that are going to be trying to enforce meta, kicking for not having enough dps, spewing non-sense and generally making everyones else’s game play less enjoyable. It needs to stop.
I doubt Anet can compel players to keep other player’s in their party.
I find the argument that a DPS meter would induce exclusivity and elitism rather odd, considering how the whole complaint is that a lack of a DPS meter resulted in the community extrapolating spreadsheet DPS values to the entire PVE system. Most people have seen the stuff in LFG;
Suppose that the truth had always been that DPS values were more variable within classes but less variable between classes then the spreadsheet calculations could estimate.
If we assume that Arenanet knows what it’s doing and did not noticeably imbalance the classes. And if we assume that HOT/fractal encounters are sufficiently diverse to justify a wide variety of build configurations, then the two main determinants of what makes one player more effective then another will be the encounter (Which will advantage one build over another), and the player’s skill. Any internally calculated DPS values should reflect this fact better than the popular alternatives.
Provided, that is, that internally calculated DPS values are not shown to players and then extrapolated across the entire PVE spectrum (both in terms of how long the fights last and what is going on during those fights)
I personally would prefer instead of a meter which gives damage per second, instead give some sort of encounter based diagnostic. I.E. a program that reads player damage/healing only for specific instances in PVE content.
So During an encounter a calculator keeps track of the following information and saves it once the encounter has finished:
1) Encounter Duration
2) Damage Dealt ( #2 / #1 gives you your encounter specific DPS)
3) Damage Received
4) Damage Mitigated
5) Healing
If players wanted to advertise a particular DPS for a particular build, the diagnosic would be headed with the specific encounter which produced the damage and the encounter duration.
What would be even better is, since the encounters are standardized, players could access data on all diagnostics for all players on a particular encounter. You wouldn’t just get an average matrix of values but a range of values.
You could also make it so that any time a party entered a raid all of the numbers above were recorded both at a party wide and profession specific level, with the duration being equal to the amount of time the raid takes, such numbers would be recorded automatically when the raid begins. This wouldn’t give you DPS values but it would measure overall effectiveness of a particular party.
Even better still is this also tells us how much time you actually save in an encounter by picking a particular class configuration. People won’t
The key here are two assumptions. One is that Arenanet balanced the game properly, two is that the data they provide players is presented accurately and in such a way that it does not mislead players. You’ll get elitism if 1. The game is not properly balanced and accurate data shows this 2. The game is properly balanced but data is inaccurate and doesn’t show this.
It’s wrong to think players won’t try getting and comparing data one way or another. If Anet wants to avoid elitism it should forgo trying to prohibit such comparisons and instead nudge the community to make more ‘fair’ comparisons.
My thoughts:
Dhuumfire does not seem like a worthwhile thing to invest in, as it would require sitting within reapershroud attacking primarily with power damage. I’m not sure a hybrid power-condition damage build would deal more damage versus investing in critical strike damage to compliment your 100% critical strike chance, but I’m simply guessing that this is the case.
If Anet ever adds gear that gives Ferocity, Condition Damage, and Power as stats, a reaper that used Dhumfire could be viable.
Chill on the other hand seems useful. On the target golem I didn’t have much difficulty maintaining almost permanent chill without relying on shouts or a great sword. The trick is you need a sufficiently high chill duration (i think a 50% bonus will suffice) and a couple of traits: Chilling Darkness, Chilling Nova, and (I recommend) spiteful Talisman. Using a dagger and a focus as your offhands and keeping your scepter mainhand allows you to never lose your primary condition damage weapon. Start out with spinal shivers, then reapers touch. Switch to Dagger and use deathly swarm.
I think the reason though that the target golem seemed to always have chill was that at half health spinal shivers was being activated, in an actual fight if the boss’s took longer to kill, you would likely need to every so often switch to reaper shroud until their health fell below 50 percent. RS skills 5, 3 and 2 will generate chill quickly if used in that order. Extra chill could be generated with chilled to the bone, but doing that costs you your golem which I imagine deals more damage over time if not instantly killed.
The question I’m wondering is that now that Condition duration food no longer gives a 50% bonus what is the trade off relationship between maximizing your condition damage via sinister [or even rabid + undead runes] versus condition duration optimizing via vipers/givers/condition duration runes.
But here is my Take on conditionmancer: Note that corrosive poison cloud can be swapped out with epidemic or corrupt boon depending on what is called for.
Using Viper:
Necro is viable but not optimal, as other people have said before. The damage output is on par with other classes (I do not believe the Developers would intentionally create classes capable of optimising damage to be something like 1.5x or 2x times that of another optimized class. The only exceptions to this historically are odd cases of reflect damage and unintentionally high conjure damage)
If every class’s damage is on par with all other classes damage, then the optimal party is one where each class brings something unique that the others cannot provide. Warriors have banners, Rangers have spirits and spotter, thiefs/engineers have stealth and blind fields, guardians have projectile reflecting, blocking, blinding, etc. Eles up until now had conjures which was the big damage dealer, they still have meteor shower and glyph of storms though.
Necros have epidemic and insane vulnerability stacking, and boon removal. A party of 5 without a necromancer should be able to get vulnerability without difficulty, and there currently aren’t many
Most players, myself included, do not run PVE so optimally that they would be remotely capable of noticing the difference in having a party with versus a party without necromancers.
If you want to do a record breaking speedrun, you won’t bring a necro along, but people who spend 5 minutes in LFG kicking necromancers to run a 10 minute dungeon are just plain daft. If people kept that kind of behavior out of LFGs and restricted it to premade groups and clan events [Where it rightly belongs] everyone would be happy. No DPS numbers, even if they were handed down by Arenanet themselves, (And they’re not) justify people being so abusive to each other.
At any rate, a pug scenario where players aren’t consciously trying to optimize on might and vulnerability, having a class which can max out both is an asset.
At 25 might [which is easily attainable with reaper] I can hit gravediggers between 15-17k, occasionally I’ll see 20k but I expect that’s a target specific feature like low armor or vulnerability.
But people are prone to think that big numbers = big DPS.
My impression of an optimal usage for reaper isn’t fighting bosses at all but for killing adds while the rest of the party is fighting the boss. With the reaper you get a class that can almost instantly attain 25 might and 25 vulnerability on oneself, can chill enemies for very long periods of time. Also deathshroud benefits from being able to hit and kill multiple targets instead of just one.
In dragon’s stand you get a lot of fights where players have 1 or 2 bosses to slay [Usually with toughness that’s high enough to make condition damage clearly superior] with adds that spawn away from them but often give players a lot of trouble. Who do you want fighting away from the mobs capable of single-handedly applying 25might and 25 vulnerability, and chilling enemies so they can’t reinforce the boss? Sounds like a job for a reaper.
Or just bring them near the boss and cast Epidemic while continuing to DPS the boss.
That works too (I tried it myself before crashing for the 3rd time on DS) though not all mordrem get that close. Also, depending on what exactly the adds are capable of doing you might not want them close to the boss even if you could kill them faster that way.
There are also other situations where you might not have a boss, say an escort mission involving large numbers of vets/elites (As a conditionmancer i always hate when that happens) or your party is defending an object.
If you already have the GS as your Melee weapon and with reaper shroud giving you a scythe, having daggers would give you a third melee weapon which is likely superfluous unless you find value in dark pact or life siphon, which i doubt.
I find in the Maguma that there are always certain fights where 100% melee is difficult to attain (the boss flies around, or has deadly AOEs, or spams CC’s) So having a ranged weapon makes sense.
I went with Axe / focus. Scepter would only make sense if your running Sinister gear. Staff is your other option, but has the downside of needing soul marks to be genuinely effective at restoring lifeforce, and I prefer to use Unyielding blast since it turns the reaper into a vulnerability stacking machine. With axe-focus you’re not dealing much in the way of damage but reaper’s touch followed by gastly claws can restore a fair bit of life force.
Warhorn might work over focus but I already have the speed-shrooms / locust signet for movement speed, the focus skills apply vulnerability and chill which synergizes better with reaper abilities.
At 25 might [which is easily attainable with reaper] I can hit gravediggers between 15-17k, occasionally I’ll see 20k but I expect that’s a target specific feature like low armor or vulnerability.
But people are prone to think that big numbers = big DPS.
My impression of an optimal usage for reaper isn’t fighting bosses at all but for killing adds while the rest of the party is fighting the boss. With the reaper you get a class that can almost instantly attain 25 might and 25 vulnerability on oneself, can chill enemies for very long periods of time. Also deathshroud benefits from being able to hit and kill multiple targets instead of just one.
In dragon’s stand you get a lot of fights where players have 1 or 2 bosses to slay [Usually with toughness that’s high enough to make condition damage clearly superior] with adds that spawn away from them but often give players a lot of trouble. Who do you want fighting away from the mobs capable of single-handedly applying 25might and 25 vulnerability, and chilling enemies so they can’t reinforce the boss? Sounds like a job for a reaper.
These are a few of the Necro Builds I run [Rank 73 and half of my plays are with Necromancer, not that I’m a ‘good’ player, but no one can complain if they don’t post their own builds]:
Minion master: Very low learning curve and relatively effective when your opponents aren’t organized. Weak against AOE.
There isn’t much strategy to the MM, it’s just about knowing when to use your CC’s [Warhorn, staff 5, and elite skill] properly combined with the immense amount of health regeneration and decent levels of damage that the minions provide for you. Ideally you want to focus one target at a time.
Conditionmancer
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakhG6rxuawpGYvxx0QMfuqkDFB057UA-TZxGwAAeAAFOCAr2f4ZZACnCAA
You can swap these depending on your needs: Signet of Vampirism – Consume Conditions. Choose the signet if you expect to be up against boon-heavy classes, or consume conditions if you expect to be up against condition heavy classes. You can replace the corrosive cloud with plague signet if you want speed that way and don’t need projectile blocking, you can also swap your undeath signets with travelers runes but that will reduce your damage output. Blood Bond – Quickening Thirst: If you need the extra movement speed this is another way to get it.
The basic strategy is to target LOW hp classes like guardians, elementalists, and thiefs, with boon removal skills as well as bleed and torment. Start the fight by using your scepter 2, 5, and 1 skills your lesser signet of vampirism should automatically proc after 4 bleeds have been applied.
Whenever they don’t have stability, interrupt them with shroud fear, staff 5, or your golem charge to prevent them from cleansing. If they do have stability, use corrupt boon on them if and when you feel confident that they won’t dodge it.
When the conditions on your target gets high enough for your liking [3 or more in my opinion should be easy since autoattack applies bleed and poison, you can also likely get cripple and weakness under certain circumstances] Use feast of corruption to add torment to the mix.
You have use of 3 skills to transfer conditions, dagger 4, plague signet, and staff 4, you also have access to an automatic condition transfer from your curse traitline, and you can additionally use consume conditions if your health gets low. [Assuming you aren’t running with signet of vampirism]
It’s not ‘Meta’ but i find it’s often easier to use effectively then the celestial signet because lifeblast is often fairly easy to avoid.
I basically adjusted the celestial signet necromancer into a conditionmancer due to the changes made recently to feast of corruption and corrosive cloud.
(edited by AdmiralSnackbar.4859)
I’m interested in becoming a student. I’ve done all of the dungeons and fractals [not at high level though] but I’ve consistently had trouble doing Arah.
Tactics
Each paragraph is basically a separate ‘Tip’ for using the class effectively
Try to position yourself where your boons can reach all of your allies. That means in the center if your party is spread apart and one step behind if your party is stacking. Since you’re very tanky, there’s no problem getting close to the fighting.
At the Start of each fight, Activate Empower and virtue of Justice simultaneously, 2 seconds or so before the enemy makes contact with your party. Also activate Virtue of Courage so that all opening attacks are blocked. If you don’t need to ration your condition removals, you can also activate “Hold the line” to grant protection and regen. Then switch to your Mace/Shield and activate shield of judgement. When using shield of judgement, try to align it so that allies and enemies are both hit. If you do that correctly, you’ve just given 15 stacks of might, Aegis, Protection, Regen, and a short bit of Stability.
For General combat, Use the Mace auto attack, especially against bosses, so that you get the auto-attack heal. Staff can hit multiple enemies but you also want to be killing foes with the mace in order to get the 250 Healing Boost from your Sigil. If you’re smart in your playstyle you shouldn’t be getting downed.
It might seem more sensible to have put the life Sigil on the Staff since it can hit more enemies, but that means you would have two on weapon swap Sigils for your mace and offhand. Your Sigil of Energy should, in theory, allow you more dodge rolls, increasing survivability and allowing for more healing.
When your enemy relies primarily on direct damage, use the shield to stack protection combined with Aegis if necessary. If you’re confident that you won’t need it to cure conditions later in a fight, use virtue of resolve as a powerful group heal [if health drops below a given threshold]. You can also combine this with a detonated orb of light [Double tap 2], healing breeze, and/or a dodge roll or two. Remember that switching from Staff to your mace gives you back endurance, so you may wish to dodge once with the staff before switching to a mace.
When your enemy relies primarily on conditions, it may be a better idea to use a Focus or a Torch. However, as I said, the Shield can also create a light combo field which can either be used to cure conditions or can be detonated to grant more healing. I prefer to use the shield. Do NOT spam Shouts or virtue of resolve when you may need it to cure conditions later on. If you desperately need more team condition removal, replace Retreat with save yourself. But 95% of the time I use retreat, since Aegis and the effects of it being brought down are so useful and synergize well. Also, granting tons of boons to yourself isn’t the purpose of this build. — This is ALSO why we don’t get altruistic healing. There’s nothing Altruistic about sacrificing your support abilities just to give yourself more Healing. [And as I’ve shown, this build has tons of ways to keep you alive already] If your stacking with your party, use your light combo fields to cure additional conditions.
I said you could use for your master trait, either pure of Heart, Resolute Healer, or Wrathful Spirit. Resolute healer’s effect only lasts for 1 second, so is the least useful. I recommend Wrathful Spirit over Resolute healer most of the time since you’re very often granting Aegis to people at full or near full health, making the 900-something burst heal also rather useless. However it’s just as possible in certain PVE situations to lose Aegis and have an NPC attack you only after Retaliation is gone. [Although that would be 6 seconds] On this issue my recommendation to you is to experiment and see if you notice a difference.
If you go 5/5 in Radiance/Valor instead of 10 in Valor, you’ll lose the 150 Toughness, but you’re virtue of justice will cause Blind, which in some respects is almost equivalent to Aegis. However, the blind only lasts for 3 seconds. So whether or not it actually gets used is a function of how quickly your enemy attacks and how well you can time virtue of justice. The problem with ‘timing’ virtue of justice is that my strategy calls for using it as a means of granting burning and might to allies. Think the costs and benefits over and experiment.
Though not specific to this build, When fighting mobs, you can use the Shield of absorption as a form of crowd control. Your staffs line of warding can be used similarly when running from enemies down a chokepoint. [Say, COF or CM dungeons]
Renewed focus can be used both to double down on whatever boons your virtues grant, but also as a quasi ‘block’ skill, since it makes you temporarily invulnerable.
Finally, there’s no real set rotation to the build. Your role is to use abilities as circumstances demand.
Healing:
GW2 isn’t supposed to have a healer class, but if such a thing does exist, it’s probably something resembling this build. One thing you’ll notice with this build is that you’re literally teeming with burst heals, some of which are quite considerable. This section lists only the burst heal abilities your class can dish out to yourself and allies. Notice that with the superior Sigil of life and Giver’s Gear, you should be able to max out at 1300 Healing. Each of the below Burst heals assumes you’re at that max healing potential.
3076 – Healing Breeze [7876 on yourself]
2850 – Empower
2638 – Virtue of Resolve
1570 – Shield of Absorption [Detonate the Shield]
874 – Selfless Daring [Heal on Every Dodge]
578 – Faithful Strike [Mace auto Atk]
1598 Orb of Light [With Detonation]
541 – Orb of Light [Without Detonation]
500 – Superior Sigil of Renewal
982 – Whenever Aegis Breaks if you’re using pure of heart instead of Wrathful Spirit
Adding these up is a bit pointless since Burst healing is situational and you would never be able to activate all of them simultaneously. But, for example, you could simultaneously activate healing breeze and virtue of resolve, Healing everyone in front of you for roughly 5700.
I’ll discuss this more in the section on tactics, but You Normally can’t heal people out of damage in GW2, but it becomes close to possible when you combine healing with the defensive boons AND condition removal.
Lastly, Condition Removal
Your two grandmaster traits in Virtues and Honor cause your shouts to convert boons into conditions [the only thing better than removing conditions is turning them into boons] and to turn virtue of resolve into a triple condition removal ability. This is useful since your healing ability doesn’t doesn’t cure conditions. [I suppose if you use Anti-toxin instead of healing breeze you can] Using a focus or a torch instead of a shield will add an additional condition removal skill.
Also don’t forget that even with the shield, and also with your mace and staff, you can create light combo fields, allowing allies to cure their own conditions.
Overview
The general idea of this build is that a single guardian is capable of exceling at boon stacking, condition removal, all simultaneously in such a way that these abilities compliment one another. Having used this class to run through several dungeons, I’ve observed that it will vastly increase the survivability of other classes. If you’re focused entirely on keeping allies alive, it means your allies can focus entirely on offense. [Or nearly entirely]
The main weakness of this build is that it has virtually no damage output, but that’s what you would expect given how superb it is at keeping allies alive. I have sometimes found that enemies will deal as much damage to themselves via retaliation as I can deal to them. At level 80 you will probably never see damage numbers above 500. The main way by which you add to the damage of the team is by might stacking and keeping the glass cannons alive, also by stacking burning on foes and retaliation on yourself and allies.
So Support is great, and damage Sucks, how about Defense? You probably already know the answer.
As a guardian you have to suffer with 14000 HP, but that’s 14000 Health, fortified with 3200+150 base Toughness [+150 from Strength in Numbers], as well as persistent protection, Regen, countless burst heals, Three layers of Aegis, and possibly Blind [if you went 5 into Radiance] And again to top if all off, you’ve got retaliation. I’ve had a few instances in WvW where people killed themselves trying to kill me.
Continued…
Link to the Build: [Or one Variant]
Most of the information on what to invest in can be found in the link but I’ll provide a written description as well.
Gear: Armor and Trinkets should all be givers, Cleric’s would be a second best option.
Runes: 2 Runes of Water The Traveler, and the Monk.
[If Traveler’s Runes are too expensive for you, 4 runes of Altruism and 2 of Water is my secondary recommendation]
Weapons [All Clerics]: Staff, Mace/Shield . Put a Sigil of renewal in your Staff and a Sigil of Life / Energy in your main-hand and offhand, respectively. I’ll talk about this later but you can also switch a shield out for a focus if you want to prioritize regeneration / condition removal over protection.
Traits:
There are a few different variations to this build, so let’s start with what doesn’t change.
You want 30 in Virtues and 30 in Honor, and either 10 in Valor or 5 in Valor and 5 in Radiance. So in other words, 0/10/0/30/30 or 0/5/5/30/30
In Virtues: II, X, IX, in Honor: II, [I,V,VI] XI And if you’re 10 in Valor: IV
Slot Skills: Healing Breeze, Retreat, Stand your Ground, Hold the Line, and Renewed Focus
How it Works: This build has three main components. Boons, Condition Removal, and Direct Healing. I call this build a ‘Dedicated’ Support build because it excels beautifully in supplying all 3. When you’re finished, you’ll find you’re equipped with a Guardian that can make their entire party virtually unkillable. [In Dungeon’s at least] And in roaming WvW, enemy players will have difficulty killing anyone on your team unless they outnumber you considerably.
Boons: If you’re using the Gear and Traits I assigned, you’ll notice that your character has 91% Boon Duration That’s without the addition of food. [I’m not sure if there’s some limit over 100%] Normally an optimization of this kind would be wasteful, but you’ll also notice as you play this build that virtually all of your skills involve granting boons to allies [in addition to other effects]
I’ll list each boon you’re granting and how long you’ll expect to be granting it. Also note that all boons granted via virtues can effectively be granted twice every minute and a half due to renewed focus. This build does not rely upon the passive benefits of any of the Virtues.
Protection: Hold the Line [7.75s] Virtue of Courage (with inspired Virtue) [9.5s] Shield of Protection [9.5s] Protector’s Strike [5.75] = 32.5s Total
Regeneration: Hold the Line [11.5s] Virtue of Resolve [9.5s] Symbol of Faith [1.75*5] = 21 -> 29.5s total [The upper limit is somewhat theoretical as the symbol of faith is basically melee range. Though you could Activate virtue of resolve twice in a row.
Might: Virtue of Justice [3 stacks for 9.5s] Empower [12 Stacks for 19s] Note that this renders getting reduced CD on 2h skills is irrelevant, the duration of Might is nearly as long as the cooldown.
Swiftness: Retreat [38.5s] Symbol of Swiftness [15.25s] Total 53.75
Stability: Stand your Ground [7.75s] Virtue of Courage [5.75s] Total 13.5s
Aegis: Once for Retreat, and Twice from Virtue of Courage if you use Renewed Focus.
Retaliation [Allied Only]: Stand your Ground [10.75s]
Note that if you are using Wrathful Spite [one of the 3 I recommended for the Master Major trait in Honor] Each time Aegis breaks on yourself or an Ally, they’ll gain Retaliation for a bit more than 6 seconds.
Retaliation on yourself includes everything above plus every time you activate a virtue, you will personally gain Retaliation for a bit more than 6 seconds.
Notice with the Vengeful trait our retaliation our duration is actually at 116%,
So in other words. We have the power to grant nearly permanent protection, regeneration, swiftness [when needed], near permanent retaliation [ definitely permanent for ourselves], 15 stacks of might, as well as a fair duration of stability. Superior Aria and 30 points in Virtue mean that all of the skills that grant these boons recharge as quickly as possible.
Also note that Shouts, Virtues, and Weapon skills can be used simultaneously, meaning there needn’t be any downtime between activating your boons. [I’ll discuss tactics below but I seldom recommend activating every skill at once.]
Finally, if you went 10 points into Valor, strength in numbers gives an extra 140 toughness to allies, which you can think of as an addition to the protection boon.
Note that you also gain 9s of Vigor when you critical hit, but since your Crit chance is crap, I don’t view it as something integral to this build.
The only boons your class can’t give on a regular basis is Fury and Vigor. I would leave that do your Warriors and Ele’s
Continued…