Guild Wars 2

DeathPanel.8362:

If you go boon duration+ runes with that trait and gear setup you’d end up with something like 12k or lower hp and no ability to remove conditions from yourself or your teammates. (No soldiers runes, no pure of voice trait) You are essentially a dps warrior with half the hp and less damage.

Also, how do you not get 1 shotted by trash mobs in fotm 20+ with that setup? (Not all mobs have telegraphed red circles for attacks that you can dodge…)

Well, saying a +300 toughness guardian with 12k hp is twice as squishy as a 18k hp warrior is somewhat untrue. Ignoring the extra toughness and the fact that if you factor in heals (guardian having slightly superior heal/reg) puts you at more like 22k hp vs 26k hp.
Ignoring that, and the aegis cushions, you’re still comparing a ranged weapon to a melee weapon. Compare the dps to warrior rifle and guardian will have way more dps. Also, guardians have useful off hand weapons available (focus). Though I agree boon duration may not be the optimal way to go with this build ^^
Also, Anet, plz fix scepter #1

Bombul.2506:

Pretty sure the table reads 30% crit chance 0% crit damage = 15% increased damage, 30% crit chance 30% crit damage = 24% increased damage netting to a 9% difference in damage. The table seems to be a multiplier…i.e. 1.15 = normal damage * 1.15 or 115% of normal damage total.

And 1.15→1.24 is an increase of 7.826%

Well, the claim you made sounded like you needed a certain level of toughness for it to be effective to get at all. While the truth is that toughness is more effective in the first points you put in while the “sweet spot” is actually a point where you don’t really want more armor because it’ll be more effective to get precision or vit. A point where more armor ruins your build balance.
I’m sorry, just tired of people making unwarranted claims on this forum. So many people do it that I’m just tired. Probably won’t read/post here anymore.

Defektive.7283:

The math will support a direct reduction in damage.

I’m saying from an end user point of view, that’s you and me – we won’t feel like the change in damage mitigation is worth while until 1800 toughness.

dunno about you but I get a feel for how much mitigation by the actual damage that is mitigated

Defektive.7283:

We start at 990ish toughness (so lets round it out to 1000).

Please count in armor

Defektive.7283:

At 1800 toughness lets say it’s a damage reduction of 45%.

Let’s not just assume numbers from nowhere

Defektive.7283:

Example. If you have 14k HP.

If the enemy hit you for 5.5k, you can survive 3 hits. 1800 toughness

If the enemy hit you for 7k you can survive 2 hits. 1500 toughness

If the enemy hit you for 10k you can survive 2 hits. 1000 toughness

And at 11k health you’ll die from 2 hits at 1800 toughness (with your imaginary numbers)

Please don’t try to fool people by making up random numbers to suit your claim. The very best thing you could possibly argue here is that against this specific thief, with this specific health pool, a certain armor is optimal to survive his burst.

My very first statements about how extra toughness is more efficient the less armor you have is actually relevant, since armor in the damage formula reduces damage in a linear fashion and independant of enemy power.

No. Show me with maths that what you’re saying actually means something.

Sorry, that doesn’t really make sense

@Larynx: Yes it is. ?
@Defektive: Extra toughness should be more noticeable the lower your armor is, just like power?

Wat u guyz mean

If they would fix scepter #1 orb to follow targets and make #2 smite a real AoE I would use it all the time, even with offensive builds.

Well, I didn’t even realize this build had healing power, those are definitely unwanted stats xD

Anyway 2696 armor reduces physical damage 26,75%~ better than 2127 (2696/2127, because of how armor works in the damage formula)

Whether sigil of Force or Accuracy is best depends on both your crit chance and crit damage actually, but cases of the latter are really rare if in any serious build at all.

Personally I basically recommend the same build as DeathPanel (0/0/30/30/10, it’s the best) but instead of PVT/Knight gear you should have at least berserker trinkets and a mix of knight/soldier rest. You’ll do basically the same thing while actually doing damage. And no, you won’t be squishy.

DeathPanel.8362:

or actually learn to stay on the topic of the thread.

That is quite rich, coming from someone who seems determined to drag the discussion away from the subject. I have also already given my opinion in an earlier post.

DeathPanel.8362:

So you admit your point was irrelevant and in a real gameplay situation your build is like a “warrior with 10k hp”.

The point of this thread is for an effective FULL SUPPORT build for dungeons. You are just using situational builds to show big numbers that are not effective in a real gameplay situation. It’s like that troll earlier who posted nonsense pics of him hitting dummies with 2 characters in soldier gear without a real trait setup.

Wow, you’re jumping to conclusions too quickly for your own good. I don’t really feel like getting dragged into any type of discussion with you. CBA
Just to clarify, I was not making a point in the first place. I was simply disputing his claim that ANY guardian dps build would do HALF of his (inefficient) warrior build.
Surely you can’t have a problem with that? half page response inc?

DeathPanel.8362:

Yes and that’s why farm teams are always 4 zerk guards and 1 mes or 5 zerk guards.

Wait…

Well, that proved whatever I stated wrong. Oh wait…
Thing is, guardian get crazy dps but in doing so they forego all the utilities that make guardians guardians. It’s like playing a warrior with 10k hp. And while this damage would be ranged, warriors damage is AoE. Farm teams typically farm CoF which is a cramped dungeon of garbage minis.

Sweet, I would deffo play it if scepter #1 wasn’t broken and smite unreliable :| because they actually do have good coefficients

Red Falcon.8257:

I for one I’m very happy with my DPS Warrior with 100% crit chance 250% crit dmg who deals twice as much DPS than any Guardian builds (7005 effective power, NOT counting Fury and Mights)

Woopie, just made a scepter guardian build with 7500 effective power. And it can be improved, as well as food. Also no fury/might yet.
Btw getting so much crit chance and crit dmg (how, btw?) on warrior is not very effective

Overall I like your build. It comes about as close to being max efficiency in battling other warriors or physical dps classes without too many conditions.

But change the sigil to force. Accuracy raises your dps by 2.94%, while Force is 5% (70% more than Accuracy).

Danicco.3568:

At the cost of something else that I spent for support or survivability.

That could be the same for the Guardian, though the reallocating would be a bit more drastic (the hit on survivability/support would be that of 15 points, but I’d get 15 points in damage instead).
That’s why I made a balanced build for both (both are missing 10~15% damage increase from traits).

I understand that, but the 10% more damage is more than what those points would increase the warriors tankiness. What I kinda argued is that the build was badly “balanced” since my definition of balance is what increases your characters efficiency treating offense and defense of equal importance.

Danicco.3568:

My full Power with a 30/0/10/30/0 build deals 950~1050, 950~1050, 1600~1900 with the Greatsword’s auto-attack.
My Warrior only gets 1050~1150, 1050~1150, 1350~1500 only when I’m at 3 bars of adrenaline + 10 stacks of Might or more (Signet of Rage + For Great Justice).
Both with same gear, same runes, same stats, same target, and using a DpS build with decent survivability/support (Guardian’s 30/0/10/30/0, Warrior’s 20/20/0/20/10).

While I totally agree with the essence of what you’re saying and proving, I have to chip in that the warrior build could get more than a 10% dps increase by relocating 5 trait points. And unfortunately GS warriors don’t really want to use their auto attack, since their dps is so much better with 2,3 and even 4,5. Guardians have good burst with their whirling wrath too but it’s so much shorter than warriors hundred blades.

A guardian specced purely for dps will rival a warriors dps over longer periods of time, without a doubt. I have a fully optimized berserker warrior and the dps is honestly not that impressive even if it is almost twice as much as my BALANCED guardia that is needed for other glassy warriors to put out their dmg in the first place. They do have way bigger burst damage though, with quickness. Again, though, a BALANCED guardian to me has mainly berserker gear and only 1 or 2 soldiers and knights pieces at maximum. It’s just the defensive traits that are too good to pass up, perhaps if the zeal tree was better (+5% more GS dmg like warriors plx, grandmaster trait plx) you’d see more zeal/valor meditation builds and their damage would rival warriors while being tankier.

Also, again, I see no point going FULL support. It’s not like you’re gonna provide much more support than me anyway (with the protection part not scaling with healing power, the tome of courage being flat amount on 3,5) while I do twice your damage.

Also, the places where “support” is really needed are usually specific instances like for example the harpy fractal. I got 39% uptime on wall of reflection, 33% uptime on partywide balance boon and the aegis if needed.

This game is kind of built in a way that it’s best if everyone tried to optimize and just use whatever cheap support skills that are given to us. That way you’ll have a whole group who’s improving your clear time while you can all semi-support eachother.

I’m running 0/0/30/30/10 with a soldiers coat, knights leggings/helmet, berserker trinkets, gloves, shoulders, boots, GS/Staff. 2 Water, 2 Monks and 2 ruby orbs (haven’t figured out if they’re worth switching yet), boon duration food. It’s a balanced shout build with enough hp to survive bursts, enough armor to sustain any long fights.
Not really calling that a “support” but it does help out the team in various ways! It lets you “tank” well, do good dps and all your boons are up for so long.
In a minute you can provide your team with a lot of might stacks (love the new buffed staff). You have your natural virtues (1.7k(?) heal, aegis, shouts), regen which is another few thousand hp, dodges for more team heals (perma vigor), 18s team protection (and more if you use tome of courage) every minute, stability, staff heals~. Now add in 15s of each boon for yourself every 48 seconds to that, and a random boon every time you shout to convert a condition for the team (5.8~ shouts/minute).
For sigils I use sigil of battle just because of the boon duration I already have at 60% (+20 food, +10 traits, +30 runes), providing mostly 9, sometimes 6 stacks of might in prolonged fights which beats sigil of force damage-wise while adding very slightly to your altruistic healing.
Also, if you need consecrations you can just switch your adept trait anytime.

Honestly, I can’t play other builds atm on my guardian and I don’t even think about playing my warrior who can hardly survive in harder dungeons, while I can carry less useful players on my back with the guardian.

So, to respond to your question more clearly. You don’t have to sacrifice a lot to get the best of all worlds with a build like this. There’s no reason to increase dps by 20% to lose all your healing and your team boons, there’s no reason to improve your tankiness and lose dps when you already survive burst and sustain like a beast. A balanced build just wins!

Looks cool, I’ve been wondering for a while if warhorn builds are viable/strong for roaming in WvW for example.
I would argue that the opportunist traits could be changed to something else though. For gear I guess since you have +3k hp and it’s a sort of condition converter build you could use some toughness, cavalier trinkets/knights coat, helmet, leggings with the thought of maxing stat efficiency in a duel.

Please do share how it works out if you try it

Happy to contribute, though I find it very hard to give you an actual opinion.
Seems to me like when you near around the 2500 armor mark it becomes hard to justify one over the other as they are both better than the other about half of the time ^^

In WvW I’m usually running a glassy, bad condition-removal spec, on my warrior so I prefer berserker gear as I’ll lose any fight against very competent conditionbuilt players who get a fair fight against me (confusion mesmer, looking at you). I can however sneak up on them or snipe them from the sideline.

If you’re playing a well balanced build, or duelling berserker warrior (all physical dps), or just PvEing in a group I see cavalier being better since your group will have condition removals (f.ex. 1 or 2 guardians can 100% cleanse any conditions of a group).

Yo yo. I hope you’re reading this because gathering the numbers takes a few minutes of my time~
First off I’m going to assume you’re using a GS since you didn’t write and only gave the atk stat instead of power ^^ sorry but cba to count for all weapons
The stats are basically
2349 power vs 2319 power
2436 armor vs 2562 armor
77,3%~ crit chance vs 73,3%~ crit chance – with fury, these are rounded numbers without too many decimals, since the number I get is a rounded number it might be inaccurate
79% crit damage vs 79% crit damage –
vit~ unimportant for comparison (don’t worry about comparing to toughness yet, it’s still inferior)

So basically crit multiplier: 1.99717 vs 1.94557 – 2.65%~ more with berserker
Power: 1.29%~ higher power with berserker
Toughness: 5.17% higher armor with cavalier

Damage reduction is linear, like power
Overall comparison: 3.98% more damage vs 5.17% more damage reduction

My input: I’m not even going to factor in mob aggroing toughness targets because I only play wvw/spvp. Unless you have a special reason to value damage over tankiness, cavalier seems to be superior against non-condition damage. If your condition removals are bad and you are prone to run into condition specs, berserker is superior.

NOTE: This is counted before any might stacks, any might stacks would only further tip the scale in cavaliers favor albeit very slightly as power isn’t the big contributor to the dps increase of berserkers in this case.

Since you’re obviously so interested in maximizing your gear, judging by all your posts asking for advice (and ignoring it), you should maybe learn some maths?

IDarko.4709:

True. But if i really need the crit damage, i use my zerket set with ruby orbs and get crit damage traits. Check out: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

I thought we were talking about ascended trinkets since cavalier was mentioned~

You can see how much crit damage/stat you get by… looking at your items.

IDarko.4709:

I’m using Knight in WvW, Berserker in PvE and also have a P/V/T set in my bank if i want to play full support or something.

I started getting ascended cavalier trinkets but learned after getting the rings and backpiece, that it’s a bad slot to get crit damage in. There was a thread and you would loss out on stats. It’s better to get crit damage in other slots basically.

Also, they added knight ascended trinkets in the last patch. Even with precision as MAJOR stat! So now i’m planning to get knight ( prec as major) accessories and amulet. This means that i will have a 50/50 cavalier/knight split on my trinkets, which will work very well with all my armor sets.

I wouldn’t advise overkilling your warrior with even more precision instead of precious crit damage slots on your trinkets.

That is a nice set up from Coaxial but I’d like to say that there’s a specific reason in that build why he’s not taking coat/leggings/helmet as knights gear and switching some jewelry to maybe berserker/valkyrie. It’s the fact that he’s using the hammer build, so his crit% is already maxed when accounting traits/fury.

Anyway, mixing the gear is overall most efficient for most warrior builds if you value offense/defense equally. Personally atm I have Knights coat/helmet/leggings, Berserker gloves/shoes/shoulders and a mix of Cavalier/berserker trinkets (can probably switch to full cavalier).

Ah, and health becomes better than toughness once you can count health+healing(for all the duration of your fight*potentially reduced from poison) = 10*Armor. That is true for all situations where you don’t meet a lot of condition damage, where armor would be useless.
Example where you would benefit more from health over armor: 30 second long fight vs a thief: 20k health, 1 Healing surge ~ 8k, 3k Armor. You would like to move some armor into health since the fight is so short. If it’s a condition thief with poison while you’re healing, needless to say you want to move all your armor into other stats.
So you really wanna have a few more points into health after you max your effective health against regular non-condition damage.

Just checked a bit briefly, looks pretty solid but things that can be improved:
*Moving at least 5 points from discipline to arms must increase your dps by a few %
*Crit dmg optimization: For example, make your coat knight rather than accessory (get cavalier or berserker there)

Can’t really say much else sorry, dunno about shout warriors except i loved playing a healing shout condition damage warrior with LB/Sw+Sw in spvp all day

Yes, it’s just a description bug but it still does 6 stacks. You can make sure by finding an enemy and using it xD

Is it any consolation that certain dungeons groups doesn’t even want to play unless they are at least 3-4 warriors?

Nice work. I think we all agree that stacking vitality is useless but my opinion is still that having 1 or 2 soldier pieces is useful to survive burst damage or when fighting a conditionstacker in pvp.
I’d like to note in realistic PvE scenarios though that I never have problems outsustaining the damage from mobs with mostly berserker gear so only a few knights pieces are indeed necessary as well.

As you said you’re full berserker. Try switching your breastplate to soldier (better than knights), it’ll give you more +% tankiness than the +delta% damage you get with berserker. Just don’t overkill it with soldier pieces after that or you’ll miss your damage ^^

Ok then let’s assume we all have a group when we’re discussing builds. I get 25 might stacks for free so my power is 3k. So my build has 50% more damage than yours.
No seriously though, when we’re talking builds we’re talking about what your build gives you and if you want to add in other factors you need to make it CLEAR from the start what you mean. Otherwise, please don’t be mad when people react to your claims.

Brutaly.6257:

Alvik.4207:

I’m sorry but you’re already proven to have exaggerated your stats so much that for me you’ve lost all credibility anyway.

I haven’t exaggerated anything, check what i have written, in a team that is viable. And discussing soloplay stats when we are talking dungeons isnt relevant. Especially when stating that you give up dps when tanking, which was what i quoted. You dont have to give up anything but your own comfort.

which is what i think of people stating it, they just dont want to play the game to the brim but want an easy ride spamming orbs from a distance and running around with a weak kitten staff and actually think they contribute to the max.

The stats i posted are viable in a competent group and if you cant accept that maybe its your credibility that a bit shaky.

These are my solostats atm, with food:
1949 power (3060 attack)
38% crit chance
76% crit damage (a bit to high and should be dropped to about 65% for a couple of percentage of crit chance and health)
3001 Armor
17725 health (should probably add some)
20% boon duration

This is without ascended.

Now those stats look better to me

To each his own style. Personally I prefer getting just enough defense to not crumble/stop dpsing from getting the aggro to provide as much dps as possible. Though I prefer splitting the aggro evenly as the natural guardian skills help your teammates as well as yourself.

Sure, I can estimate your power but you didn’t even mention which weapon you are using. I was just trying to get YOU to stop giving us a stat that we can’t use for reference.

I’m sorry but you’re already proven to have exaggerated your stats so much that for me you’ve lost all credibility anyway.

Brutaly.6257:

rasfo.9358:

why to facetank boss and do minor damage if you can deal some serious damage or provide nice utility for group. In this game any class can take care for themselves so why tank?

Why tank, well because its the best overall damage mitigater/support in the game. It effectively removes damage from the team.

Minimal damage???
3k attack
3k armor
50-60% critchance
70-80%% critdamage

With a competent team you dont have to dress down to be able to tank.

And with that you can infact facetank almost everything in dungeons while bashing away and giving the same support as with any other style of play.

Wut…
3k attack – useless stat as a reference, try power
3k armor – hmmmmm
50-60% crit chance – No. More like 10%?
70-80% crit dmg – 30% from traits, rest from where?

Are you really talking about his build?

In order to increase effective power, have you considered changing sigil to force instead of accuracy and move 10 points from discipline to strength (for axe mastery and +100 power and stick/move 3%) or tactics (for empowered, probably at least 6% damage with perma swiftness/might/fury and occasional stability/retaliation/aegis/regen/vigor/protection boons for +2% each with buffs from teammates).

haviz.1340:

~~

Apologies, I’m the fool.

haviz.1340:

Actually simple math tells otherwise, unless you have some procs on-crit but most of the good ones have ICDs so higher crit chance won’t give you anything. In his case Force is better than Accuracy.

I really like that name “tanky DPS”. Real DPS guardian deals about 50-60% more damage than standard “tanky DPS” spec.

As to your first statement, since he has +78% crit damage sigil of Accuracy is simply just better.

Yaki.9563:

Power has a much larger increase in damage than precision, but precision (especially for guardians) has a lot of procs (lifesteal, EM, Vigor, etc.). I don’t there are any achievable stat values for which the damage of precision will be greater than the damage of power.

Actually it’s quite much preferable to get precision rather than power in my current guardian setup that has mostly berserker pieces (which I have counted to be most efficient in this build). Now, I don’t know for sure if the build is the very best you can have but it’s very mainstream with 30 in valor and honor~. This is without even taking into consideration the procs that are possible on crits, so oils rather than sharpening stones is obvious. Ah, not counting potential might stacking that decreases the relative increase that power does for you either.

Hi guys. Just thought I’d share my philosophy on gearing my guardian.
You see, the guardian only has a few builds that are indeed better than others. These builds include 30 points into valor. Now I know I’m going to make a very simplistic claim that ignores a lot of things, such as specific bursts of damage which certain amounts of tankiness will allow you to survive etc. You’ll just have to use your judgement wether to change things up to adapt to those situations.
… Anyway. The first thing you should do when choosing stat combinations is (if you choose any defense stats) to try to make your damage mitigation(armor) – HP(Health+hp reg/heals) ratio correct. That means having your health (also counting heals and hp reg for the amount of time you can survive – might be hard to determine) 10 times higher than your armor. Also add a few % more into health depending on how crystal your condition removals are and how quick you are to remove them.

… Whew, off track. What I wanted to say is that Your stats will raise your characters efficiency by different rates. For example in terms of offense: at 2000 power, an additional 100 power raises your damage output by 5% ((2000+100)/2000=1.05). Example for defense: 100 more toughness at 2500 armor increases your defense by 4%.

This post will be too long soon and I should sleep soon… What I wanted to say is from my findings so far is that, with the specific valor build I’m using atm, what seems to be the most efficient stat combinations in regards to what boosts your characters abilities (ignoring technicalities like crit procs, foods, surviving specific bursts) is the berserker combination. Full berserker. gn

@Gulbrandr – I’m a newbie at this game but… True, the entire party is doing 1% more damage, but that was still caused by one person. Meaning it’s the equivalent of a single person doing 5% more.