Guild Wars 2

So you’re saying that HP shines in PvP/WvW and sucks in PvE..

Seriously, why is it even around? Our healing traits scale so poorly with HP that I wonder why it even exists as a stat, except maybe to benefit other classes. Guardians are supposed to be the Paladin-y, cleric-y class though, right??

I was screwing around on GW2skills.net today and fell upon this build for PvE because I get bored of glass cannon builds after awhile. It’s centered around building stacks of might and using symbols to survive and do damage. It’s not a great build, I admit it, it’s just what I was playing around with when the idea for this post popped into my head. For kicks I looked at it in full Zealot gear. The Zealot build has almost 400% more HP, but increases Altruistic Healing heals only by about 8%, Zealous Blade by about 40%, and Writ of the Merciful by about 38% at the cost of about 40% critical damage. I know, 38% and 40% is nothing to scoff at, but the actual numbers are already so low that it’s still a nominal increase when compared to the truck-load HP margin between the two builds.

So, my question is: why do you think Anet hates healing so much in this game? I get that, in GW2, combat survival has more to do with moving around, blocking, and dodging than straight up healing throughput or damage mitigation (ie, toughness, which is a much better stat to stack than HP). If that’s the case, then why bother with HP at all? There is something wrong when only a few gearing choices and a few trait schemes produce really good performing builds. It gets boring running around in the same zerker build all the time.

I vastly prefer PvE content in games, partly because I suck at PvP, but I also like all the exlporatory, character-driven content that comes with PvE. That said, my builds typically are for running around in open-world/LS PvE, but I’m just now getting my feet wet in 5mans (need to farm empys for those darn Vision Crystals…) and learning the group playstyle in GW2.

I’ve been running a 2/6/6/0/0 build for just open world PvE. However, I want to bring more utility to the group setting, so I’ve been playing around with a 3/5/0/4/2 build. Tell me what you think! (be nice and constructive or I’ll just delete your reply)

• Note: I realize that full zerker is the gearing meta for power builds, so don’t get stuck on that. For this build I’m experimenting with the idea that the more prec I have, the more crits I do, the more might I get/give, the more damage I do. Plus I have all this darn Assassin gear laying around….

I vastly prefer PvE content in games, partly because I suck at PvP, but I also like all the exlporatory, character-driven content that comes with PvE. That said, my builds typically are for running around in open-world/LS PvE, but I’m just now getting my feet wet in 5mans (need to farm empys for those darn Vision Crystals…) and learning the group playstyle in GW2.

I’ve been running a 2/6/6/0/0 build for just open world PvE. However, I want to bring more utility to the group setting, so I’ve been playing around with a 3/5/0/4/2 build. Tell me what you think! (be nice and constructive or I’ll just delete your reply)

• Note: I realize that full zerker is the gearing meta for power builds, so don’t get stuck on that. For this build I’m experimenting with the idea that the more prec I have, the more crits I do, the more might I get/give, the more damage I do. Plus I have all this darn Assassin gear laying around….

Kamikazi.5380:

No, Guardian should not get more condis because it makes no sense. Every condition Guardian can apply makes sense with the class. Burning, immobilization, vulnerability, and blinds. It all fits the Guardian image, though granted some chills in there wouldn’t hurt.

What Anet needs to do is make a “condi” Guardian more unique than other condi classes. The Radiant Retaliation is a good start, too bad Retaliation was so heavily nerfed in PvP/WvW so it’s still useless, that and our perma-retal builds are gone. A real condi Guard can not and should not exist, burning is enough for us, what Anet needs to do is get creative.

Burning should be a supplement to damage, not the main source. It’s the highest DoT condition, so you don’t need to stack so much condition damage to improve it, rather condition duration is enough and that doesn’t require heavy stat dedication. Think about the Pyro from TF2, it applies burning just like Guardian but because fire in TF2 can be so easily put out, it’s more of a supplement damage than the main source. No Pyro just sets someone on fire then sits back and wait for them to burn. However, if someone manages to slip away from them the fire, if not put out, will finish them off.

I’ve noticed this in my hybrid-burning power build, seeing how easily Guardians can be kited my high burning ticks ended up kill my opponent once they were out of my reach. This is what Anet should do. Give us more traits like Fiery Wrath that benefits if someone is on fire. Something like our attack speed increases on people with burning condition, or you are healed for a percentage of damage you do from burning someone, something like that.

Straight up condi guard is impossible, and even if it were it’d be boring and just like other classes. We already can apply the most burning than any other class, Anet should make burning a more important, supplement-type damage effect to the class.

Thanks Kamikazi. I disagree with you that the devs could not make a viable condi guardian. I think bleeding, chill, and confusion could easily be woven into the Guardian mythos, but I agree, maybe torment is a bit “dark” for the class, but the others would work.

However, I agree with what you reiterated from my original post—that burning needs to be made more interesting and provide benefits to the guardian’s primary means of damage. I also think that just giving guardians a condi build like what other classes have would be more of the same, boring. I would really like to see more interesting things built around burning that props up the guardian playstyle. Like I mentioned: give us traits that give us increased ferocity, crit chance, healing power, toughness, etc, or something new and unique against burning foes or when we have a burning stack applied to an enemy.

I agree with most of the people posting about the Apr 14 patch: that it was pretty much pointless. We didn’t really get any new gameplay choices and it basically just nerfed the zerker meta somewhat, which most people will still probably run with.

Kamikazi.5380:

The point of what I said is that Guardian should have a “condi” like build that has condis benefit Guardian’s main source of damage, power rather than condis itself be the main source of damage. Traits like Fiery Wrath are a good example of this. Condi damage is a useless stat for Guardian, seeing how they only have one damaging condition and even that would benefit more from condition duration rather than condition damage, especially thanks to traits such as Amplified Wrath and Kindled Zeal. We need more burning abilities, and traits benefitting from burning as well as more chill to actually stick to our target.

This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about! Burning stacking duration already works for this kind of change: stacking burning on an enemy increases duration and thus increases the duration of the buff on the guardian provided by the burning. Also agree that chill would be nice.

I appreciate the devs’ intention to break up the monotony of the zerker meta, but these changes seem confusing and kitten to me. Don’t center our condo builds around burning and only burning… give us bleeds, give us torment, give us poison, or something unique. Or maybe make burning matter for more than mild damage and dmg multipliers. How about having burning provide increased critical chance, increased ferocity, new passives that proc off burning. Make it more interesting.

I don’t think we need to get rid of the PS. By my understanding, PS is more of a leveling thing anyway and LS more of the endgame thing.

I’d like to join as a student! I have lots of experience in dungeons in other games, but not much in GW2: just AC and CM story modes, haha. I’d like to improve and delve into more 5-man content.

Sporting my new helm

Thanks so much for the helpful responses! The Dungeon Mentors thread looks really encouraging and the GW2 Dungeon Guide is exactly what I’ve been looking for—yet somehow missed entirely—to have some semblance of a clue of what to do in each dungeon. I’ll give Obal’s dungeon guides another look as well for help with gearing/spec/technique.

I will be the first to admit, I suck at dungeoneering in GW2; hopefully this post will help me out.

It’s obvious that 5-man content is a lot more involved than the faceroll that open-world PvE content is; I pretty much run a glass-cannon ‘zerker build for roaming around the open world. I can’t cut it in dungeons with this setup though as I die pretty easily. I’m pretty sure that this is more so due to my poor skill at dodging and my lack of understanding the fights. So…

1. What are some gearing/build/technique tips for dungeons?
2. Where can I go online to learn dungeon fights?
3. Which dungeons should I hone my skills on?
4. Is there anything I can do/download to improve the obviousness of monsters’ telegraphed “tells” that they’re winding up for a one-shot? (I’m thinking of anything like WoW’s Deadly Boss Mods)

Thanks in advance for your help!

Totally agree that Arah story mode needs to become a soloable mission like every single other personal story missions. I was away from the game for a LONG time, then finally came back, leveled my Guard from 55-80 having lots of fun with the Personal Story. That is, until getting to the end and seeing that I needed to battle my way to the instance gate to finish the story.

Today, I finally saw some people in the Cursed Shore doing the events leading up to the dungeon so I hopprf in, enjoying the “epicness” of it all. We finally kill the High Wizard and…….. no story modes in LFG. /sob

I think having the final PS mission take place in the Arah story-mode 5-man was a cool idea and can see how it probably made sense to do it when GW2 first dropped, but now, more than a year after release, there’s just no draw to the Arah Story dungeon anymore because so many have done it, are not interested, and because of the lead-work you need to do to un-contest the area.

Some suggestions:
- make the waypoint/dungeon non-contested
- tune down the lead-in events for less players to succeed or ramp up the spawn time of the events so it’s more available.
- improve the rewards for doing story mode (badges, skins, achievement points, etc)