Guild Wars 2

I spent almost all of my pve leveling time in S/D and it seemed sooo much more potent than D/D, especially vs. groups.

You time your initial attack right with dragons tooth and phoenix so that they hit about the same time. You can often get two hits from phoenix, and hit multiple targets with both of them and the tooth. That there does a ton of damage and they will be mostly dead and you can finish them off however you want….such as fire ring and fire grab, or into earthquake, or arcane wave after fire ring. All of that there takes little time and is aoe damage that will crush most enemies without you taking any, or little damage.

That being said, I did switch to D/D later on (level 60 or so) in order to get used to it. It just doesn’t flow as well for pve IMO and doesn’t do as much aoe damage. It also requires you to be very close which means you’ll be hit more, and CC’d more. D/D will certainly lead you to change attunements more out of necessity and that will better your skills. S/D can really do well with just fire attunement and will probably make you lazy…..but it really shines in pve and aoe and I never had much trouble with taking damage. I actually never even dodged till I was D/D cause I didn’t need it. I seriously forgot it was even possible.

Also, make sure you keep upgrading your armor/weapons as needed. Usually you can do most of this from the karma “heart” vendors as you go. Then every 10-15 levels you may want to buy some cheap upgrades from the AH.

I hear you Mek. I have been changing builds constantly and can’t find anything that works. The bunker build, mentioned above, didn’t seem to work for me either. You do very little damage and I guess I died easily cause I didn’t spend all of my time dodging. Regardless, it just didn’t work for me. I had some success in the past using all out damage builds but thieves and rangers completely dominate you. I’ve all but given up. I can’t do enough damage to outlive my opponent, regardless of build.

Signet build….signets don’t seem to work half the time and the passives are not very effective anyway. With no stun breaker you are just held still and die in seconds.

Bunker build…i don’t see where all this healing is supposed to come from….and where the damage is.

dps build….damage is respectable but, for me at least, I still die before my opponent. Thieves insta-kill you. 100b’s kills you if you are stunned and can’t escape. Rangers out cc you, out damage you, out run you and their pets do more damage than most of your spells. Without much cleansing, necros kill you with dots. Mesmers are impossible regardless of build. So that leaves engi’s, guardians, and some warriors that you can kill sometimes.

I’m certainly open to learn what works!

Thanks, I’ll check that out, but I suppose I was looking for specific gameplay things or something else that I may not understand rather than the build itself as I’ve already used the traits, gear and utilities that are expected.

I’ve been a rather casual player since I started this game so I didn’t pay too much attention to builds and did my own thing. But after I started playing spvp I looked around at ideas and saw all the noise about the bunker build. I tried it out to see what was so great and apparently I’m missing something so I’m hoping someone could tell me what it is. From what I hear, and saw in videos, the build lives a long time and i saw nothing of the sort. From what I can tell, it all revolves around regeneration, but regenerating a few hundred health every sec vs taking several thousand damage every sec doesn’t really help and I still die very quickly….while doing very little damage. I’ve found that 1v1 it’s pretty close to a stalemate vs most classes, some i win some I lose, but they are long fights. But when there’s more than one opponent, I get crushed before I can get through like 3 of the attunements in my rotation. I take massive damage and the regen doesn’t mitigate much. I also spend most of my time CC’d many more times than my cantrips can cure.

So what am I missing? Why am I taking so much damage and not able to mitigate anything with regen?

In the videos I’ve seen, those ele’s seem like they barely get hit at all, even vs many opponents. I suppose if I weren’t taking damage I could win too but how is that even possible? One ranger (with much better range and cc than I) can drop me really fast…so how can someone live vs more than one?

You can save the “L2P” posts cause that’s exactly what I’m trying to do….just looking for help.

Thanks