Guild Wars 2

I am currently running full Cleric gear, well, for the most part. Everything is Cleric except my 2 rings are Vit/Power/Crit damage. I am really liking the survivability I have, but my damage isn’t amazing or anything. I am sitting at over 3k total defense, 1000-1100 healing power, 16kHP and 3k Power. My crit is pretty low (in the 15-20%), but I do pump out A LOT of healing. In most fights, one person literally can’t do damage to me at all. It takes 2-3 people to really get me needing to use my heal and what not.

Overall, I like the build for PvE and dungeons (as I can almost straight up tank everything in melee, I still need to get runes for my gear though). I think I might try to build another set for a more damage focused build for PvP/WvW. Then again, this set up is great for small group skirmishes and SPvP, so it really just depends. The main issue is you are not really putting the hurt on people.

Also, I am not noticing a great payout on the Healing Power stat, and I am thinking about changing out some of my gear to beef up other parts. I would say around 600-800 healing power is all you really need.

Arken.3725:

-Completely remove invulnerability from traits and replace it with burning or blind, as it stand we can’t stack invulnerability for it to make a difference.

Invulnerability? What traits have that? Do you mean vulnerability? I might not be running that spec that has these traits.

Arken.3725:

-Also, remove all traits that in affect when you’re downed, no one uses them and they seem to be just put in there to fill space, same with falling damage.

I agree, these are the worst traits by far. Falling damage can be useful sometimes, like when doing some Vistas or Jumping Puzzles, but for the most part, yes, pretty useless.

Arken.3725:

-Rework the weapon master traits to give something else besides a 5% increase to damage, I don’t think it’s significant enough to warrant its use. Maybe add a certain amount to a specific stat within the tree.

I would like to see more diversity here as well. Weapons like the mace could give more defense. Weapons like the Staff could give bonus healing. The weapons should provide bonuses that appeal to more how it is meant to be used. More a long the lines of the Shield traits with +toughness and 20% CD reduction.

Arken.3725:

-Zealous blade needs to scale with healing power better, at base it heals for 25 a hit while at over 1200 HP, it heals for 26.

Never used this, but I heard it sucked, especially for a Tier 3 ability.

Arken.3725:

-Strength in numbers doesn’t provide enough of a boost to once again, warrant its use. 30 toughness just doesn’t seem like much. Maybe put it closer to 100 or maybe 70?

This needs to scale per level, or per trait point. Something like 1/level (probably less) or 2/trait point would be an improvement. 30 across the board seems pretty weak, especially at max level.

Arken.3725:

-Focused mind doesn’t seem like much of a change since two of the meditations are already instant and are stun breakers. Maybe change to give more burning?

Yea, useless. It would be nice to see the 20% CD reduction and this combined into one trait, and improved upon (like the Consecrations one from Virtues).

Arken.3725:

-Combine some of the symbol traits into one.

I agree that having 3 separate traits just for symbol size, duration and healing seems a little much. Feels more like filler than anything else. Combining a couple and adding something to a second and splitting it off into another tree would probably help and balance it as well.

Arken.3725:

-Remove Unscathed Contender, you’re almost never under the boon Aegis even in a small battle for this to make it useful. Not sure of a change here.

Yea, especially when I usually try to use Aegis to block attacks … not keep it up for as long as possible to do more damage. Counter intuitive to what Aegis is supposed to be used for.

Arken.3725:

-Elites: Renewed focus I think should allow for movement and skill usage and should remove all conditions when applied. As it stands, you’re not really invulnerable when using the skill.

All of the elites for Guardian just seem pretty lame overall. Especially when you compare it to some of the other classes. Warriors have utility skills that are better than Renewed Focus, hell their shield block is just as good basically. Taking stability off of the tomes is just horrible, especially when most of the skills don’t allow you to move when casting anyways. The need to pop stability in order to use your Elite is just dumb, while other classes are doing ridiculous AoE damage, while stable, while reflecting projectiles, while knocking everyone down, it needs some tuning I think. I hardly find the tomes useful in most “oh crap!” situations, as you are usually CC’d (by mobs or people) all the time when using it. 1 CC ruins the entire elite.

Overall, I agree with most of what you have. My largest problem with Guardian is large WvW fights. I can do alright sometimes rushing in and leading the charge, but more often than not I find myself just kind of standing around in the back. The scepter just feels kind of weak, especially when so many other classes have this 1200 range and like 900 diameter AoE abilities … it seems a little silly TBO. Guardian also feels incredibly slow in PvP compared to other classes, making many abilities like WW almost impossible to land. I feel like I can basically just be kited and there is nothing I can do to close the gap, catch up, and lock them down to kill them. 1 dodge roll and they are gone again :P

Most of my complaints are about large scale WvW (small scale is fine), PvP and PvE seem fine for the most part, though there are definitely things here and there that could use some added spice, fun and diversity added to them.

Nukum.4502:

Zak.8274:

He wouldn’t need to pay that if he had his different crafts on alts.

His screenshot indicates “Master Crafter”, which means lvl 400 in all 8 crafts on the same toon.

That isn’t how it works. All the achievements are account wide from the looks of it. Even the daily you can work towards on different characters to complete it.

Having all the crafts on one character simply doesn’t make sense. As you can avoid the switching fee having them spread across 4+ other characters.

You can actually make a profit? Anytime I check the Trade Broker, every item I can make is already selling at a loss. My real question to the people that think they are making money crafting … is are you really? Remember, the 15% tax on every item you sell as well. I find you make more money selling materials than actual items, which needs to change badly.

The satchels are a complete waste of time and money. It is not hard to craft each piece individually. It costs tons of extra materials for the satchels, not to mention all the extra wasted money on getting the recipe itself.

There is no point to these recipes, unless they decrease the overall cost by a large margin.

Why is there so much love for cooking, while kittening over every other crafting profession in the process?

If you want to add butter/chocolate to the drop tables, do it in addition to the rarer crafting materials … it is basically impossible to find any of this crap it feels like. I end up buying like 95% of my teeth/bloods/etc. off the Trade Broker. And you are worried about cooks getting enough butter?

Not to mention you added in Mystic Forge recipes to get rid of butter on the market because it it completely flooded out … it is pretty apparent it went way too far. Cooking mats for one profession should not take precedence over every other one.

I am basically running very close to the same build. Focusing on Shouts and Consecrations, Defense and Support. I also have basically the exact same trait choices.

The damage output is actually decent considering you are running with usually Cleric’s gear mixed with some +vitality stuff. My Power is actually my highest stat right now … though, I am not done getting all my exotic gear and runes yet, so we’ll see how it plays out in a couple weeks.

But I do tend to be pulling decent numbers even when compared to people that are much more offensively spec’d. The biggest thing is melee weapons seem to do quite a bit more than ranged, and since I can remain in melee longer than basically any one else I have grouped with, I can really lay down some decent damage even though it isn’t my main focus.

Not to mention, you have a lot of boons, healing and support options available to you as a Guardian to protect and bolster your team even further.

GS → 5,5,2,3,4 … swap weapons to Hammer → 5, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 … back to GS and repeat. The GS makes pretty much all PvE easy-mode on my Guardian.

People whining about this are being silly. They whine and cry like it is a huge deal. While Asura in general have a huge advantage in most parts of the game. Not just PvP, but PvE as well (jumping puzzles especially).

Even if it is just graphical, the larger races have many more issues than the smaller ones. And there is one bug in a crappy skill that sucks for the most part, and the Asura’s are up in arms about it. I am sure it will be fixed sooner or later.

Nightwind Of Dwayna.3250:

How often do you find that the “heal others” component of HBreeze actually swings the tide of an engagement, though? When I run it, I find that the green numbers over the heads of the good guys are just so small that they make literally no difference taken over the duration of the CD. I am not heavily specced in +Healing, but neither do I completely ignore it.

I’ve used HBreeze, and I don’t hate it, but I think the supplemental heal could be a bit better or the CD slightly (5 secs?) shorter.

So, you are now whining about weak healing when you are not spec’d in +Healing Power … what are you expecting? The same reason your Healing Breeze isn’t healing other people very much, is the same reason that your heal only heals 1/5 of your HP bar … You need +Healing Power to have improved healing abilities.

Is this not common sense? I can almost 100% heal myself with my healing stat being so high from my Cleric gear.

I am basically running the exact same build, and have been for about a week or so. 30 Valor, 30 Honor and 10 Virtues. I am also running around in full Cleric 80 Exotic gear. I am still working on weapons, jewelry and runes, but I will get there eventually.

I feel pretty tank in explorable dungeons, while still doing decent damage (due to the power from Cleric gear). Though, I would like to have a little more Vitality I think. So I might split my jewelry between VIT and Toughness/Healing Power.

Overall though, it is very supportive and defensive, and am enjoying it quite a bit. The only part I am not enjoying is the stupid Magic Find stat in the game. I hope it gets removed, but I honestly don’t see a point in not using it with how many more drops you get.

Since money is basically the only thing that matters at 80, I don’t see how I can go much longer without using all magic find stuff.

The only thing I don’t like is that the Focus is better than the Shield for defense. Why the hell is the Shield in the “Toughness” trait line if that is how it works? It should be leaps and bounds ahead of the focus for mitigation, but it isn’t.

The only time I have used the shield in dungeons was for the Lovers fight in AC, the “5” skill is incredibly useful to break them apart. But then, I immediately change back to Sword or Mace and Focus for way more defensive options.

1) The ranged options for Guardian are pretty horrible, it would be nice if Focus would give you longer ranged options.

2) A shield should be way more defensive than a magical stick with a bell on it. Come on now.

3) The traits for defense support the Shield (Valor), which isn’t defensive, which makes zero sense. This is one reason so many people are talking about the trait lines for Guardian basically just being a hodge podge of stuff that doesn’t really make sense.

The worst is trying to get high level mats. If you are complaining about low level stuff, just wait. I don’t think I have got more than 2-3 scraps of Gossamer with all the crap I have killed at max level. It also doesn’t help that the final zone is filled with all undead mobs. Makes bone way easy to get and everything else next to impossible.

Overall, I am not really enjoying the “grind” of killing endless amounts of monsters just to get drops to craft stuff. It gets incredibly old, and then we have the anti-bot code working against us? I mean, some major changes need to happen here.

400AS/400WS here, and I agree. All the stuff I craft looks freakingkitten and I don’t even know WHAT I am crafting until it is discovered/done. I can make Rare and Exotic Heavy Armor that is either Berserker/spiky looking, or Draconic armor that looks like I am wearing a freaking dress. The Rare and Exotic Weapons I make are Krait and Pearl, can we get any more bad looking? Give us more options, and more customize-ability.

Honestly, you should make crafting the cornerstone to everything in the game and just ditch karma all together. Make Karma give you the ability to buy recipe looks for gear/weapons, or special materials. But making everything from crafting look stupid as hell, while having all the good looking stuff from Karma Vendors and drops is stupid.

The best looking stuff should be a combination of all things in the game (like the legendary weapon stuff), I would like to see similar stuff in game that is not as large of a commitment, as well as armor that is even legendary.

Hell, maybe some of this stuff is there, we just haven’t found it yet. But overall, I am pretty disappointed at what I have access to at max level crafting. And of course, the material costs are justkitten You can sell mats for more than the items themselves. This is why I think more focus needs to get put on crafting, and less on stupid stats such as magic find and items just dropping left and right for nothing.

Is it even possible to get multiple legendaries (beyond 2) in the game? One character can only get 2 Gifts of Exploration. Are Legendaries Account Bound? Are the Gifts Account bound? Even then, you would need like 12 characters with 100% world completion to get them all …

I think the Gifts of Exploration are a poor choice for legendary creation. I hope they end up replacing that requirement with something else for the sadists that want to possibly get many legendary weapons on their character.

I am planning on getting mine … but I know it is a very longs ways off still I am shooting for the skill points and the 100% world completion first, as well as upgrading my other gear with exotics. Once I get those done, I will worry about all the karma and cash farming I need to do.

Volatility.6729:

Thanks.

Re: crafting yellows yourself – is it not more economic just to buy them off the TP (~20s) if you don’t have the mats readily available, or are you saying you’ll generally be better off because you have a shot at getting more than 1?

It is more economic. I can craft like 4-5 yellows for less than a gold. I average 6-7 ectos from 5 items. This is considerably better than paying like 1.4g buying them on the AH. The only thing you have to worry about is that it is a gamble. You could get zero, but you could also get 3 from one item. And it feels like it averages out at 1-2 per item when doing them in bulk.

I haven’t played the changes yet, but I doubt they will effect me too much. My guild plays pretty casually, we usually only run 1-2 dungeons a night. Though, that might change soon as people get higher level.

The main thing I don’t understand is “we don’t want it to feel like a grind”, yet everything in the game is 100% grind. 20 slot bags have a 10g cost from a vendor bought material … really now? So one stupid bag is equal to buying 3-4 exotic pieces of armor?

You have Karma gear that costs over 40k, really, that isn’t grindy?

You have overall ridiculous costs of many things, including way point costs and repairs. You think reducing the money you get from dungeons (for which I pretty much always get crap loot) is going to make it better? I know some people that have died 10+ times in dungeons, it is going to make then simply not want to do it at all. This isn’t even mentioning that you have to run the same dungeon like 50 times to get the armor from it … what if you want multiple weapons? Running the same crap 100 times isn’t a grind? I have never had to do that in any game, at least, not wanted to.

I am basically 100% broke all the time since hitting 80 recently. I just got 3 crafts to 400, and am working on making my “end game” exotic gear. I have bought some gems with in-game gold to get bank slots and what not though. And it doesn’t help that the TB is full of the mostkitten consumers on the planet (almost everything on there is selling at a loss … the mats are worth more than thekittenitems, fools, stop posting them up for so cheap!). /sigh

I am hoping these are temporary fixes, with tweaks coming. Nothing is set in stone, people need to chill out.

I would much prefer to have story/explorable set to a level that PUGs could complete. Though, I like difficulty. I would love to see “Hard Modes” like the original game had, that would give a lot more rewards, and be substantially more difficult. These could have a lockout as well.

Honestly, a better choice would be to have lockout timers, to force people to try out other dungeons and paths. Creating lockouts, and increasing rewards would go far for the casual scene.

The main thing I don’t like with these changes is how they let the hardcores all farm the crap out of this stuff for hundreds of gold and thousands of tokens … and then they nerf it into oblivion. This is basically along the same lines as “exploiting”, a not tested, badly designed mechanic gone wrong.

I honestly don’t have time to run more than a few dungeons a night, and I don’t find farming the crap out of them particularly fun, so this probably won’t effect me much. Then again, I would like to see more rewards for exploring and participating in different things. There are so many things you could do …

Dungeon Dailies – A different dungeon every day, even a different specified path. Extra reward at the end for completing it.

Dungeon Lockout timers – This is way better than nerfing rewards for completing the same content at the same difficulty. This is as much BS as your anti-botting code (if that is even true …).

I don’t have problems with the difficulty, especially seeing how horrible most PUG people are. It has little to do with team communication and make up … and a lot more to do with people simply not knowing how to play at all. Every “bugged dungeon event” I have heard about and tried myself is most definitely not bugged … people are just bad and want everything handed to them on a silver platter because they can’t figure it out and complete it themselves.

I would like to see MORE difficulty, honestly.

Straight DPS? Because CM Story mode is easy as hell? By far, this is the easiest and shortest dungeon I have played … why does it matter what you are playing?

You can’t really tank anything in the game. If your group is getting some good field + blast finisher spam, you sort of can. But most bosses, you are playing the avoidance game more than anything.

I never found the bonuses of the virtues worth using. I pop them every once and a while, but it doesn’t seem to really benefit all that much.

1) Burning is usually up 100% on targets in most groups I am in, so who cares about Justice?

2) The heal seems weak, and the regen to myself seems better, why bother?

3) Blocks one attack for everyone, or everyone can pay attention and dodge.

I just don’t see how it is of that much more benefit to use these over using many of the other skills we have. Maybe if you are traited deep into Virtues, but right now, I am running with only 10 points.

Psy.6153:

Knights amulet in sPvP is pow precision vita, thats the combo i said we dont get, sorry to disappoint you
And also what youre saying is that we must take meditations and a 30 point tree that i dont want to compensate for what warrior dps get? Because aside from that an 80 point virtue passive isnt going to convince me

It is fairly apparent you don’t know what you are talking about. Vitality doesn’t really mean anything. So a Warrior has more HP to heal, good for them. I can out last basically any class I have played with as a Guardian, with half the HP. Toughness and Healing power make a huge difference. Our skills, passive regen, and heals make a huge difference. I can dodge roll 2 times and heal like 30% of my HP.

Warrior DPS gets owned in half a second. I was in a dungeon with a faceroll warrior last night, straight damage. I had to rez him at least 30 times in one fight. Was easily the worst build/player I have ever seen.

A glass cannon build is going to suck balls in difficult PvE and even PvP. You have to focus on survivability somewhat, just having a high Vitality is only one part of the puzzle. The moment you are focused, or run out of endurance … you are dead … one shotted. A dead player, is a worthless player, especially if it happens a lot.

I have tried using it a couple times, and found that it was just garbage. The cast time is too long, and the recharge is long as well. When other classes can do this 3-5 times better, I don’t see the point in using it.

I do feel that our job is to more prevent damage than heal it, but still, there are a lot of really horrible players in this game that die at least 10-15 times in some boss fights. Oh, how I hate PUGing.

I definitely agree on the Cleric armor choice. I am also running a 0/0/30/30/10 high support, high durability build and this armor is just fantastic. I plan on picking up a few pieces of jewelry to buff up my vitality some (like a mix of Shaman’s and Soldiers?), but we’ll see how that goes after I finish crafting my armor set.

Right now, I feel like a total beast most of the time. Between my durability and all my healing, I can survive and support my team in dungeons through basically anything. My damage isn’t amazing, but I die probably less than 10% as much as most people I see in dungeons.

I run heavily focused on shouts and convictions in dungeons, swapping stuff out when I need to.

Also, my name is in my signature, if you need any armor or weapons made, let me know. I just hit 400 WS and AS last night, and have bought all the karma recipes for gear.

From what I have seen on my way up to 80, and at 80, is there really never felt like there was a point to using anything above the crude kits. Unless you were trying to recover upgrades.

Now, I am using the Master kits to get the highest chance to get Ectoplasms from 70+ rare/exotic gear, so I can make my exotic 80 set from crafting. You might get a tier up material or something, but overall, they are basically all the same except for the 80 stuff.

I would think the Mystic kits and the especially the Black Lion kits need to be boosted up some. The Black Lion only gives 10% to get rare materials? Is that bugged, or is the tool tip wrong or something? I would think that the cash shop items would be the best in game /shrug Especially since they cost the most resources to make/get.

I used to think the Staff was pretty weak. Then I actually used it for more than the Swiftness buff and found it to be amazing. The auto-attack is great for tagging mobs in DE’s. The “2” skill is kind of meh, but need to play with it more. Symbol of Swiftness gives speed buff and does damage, sweet! Empower (or the “4” skill, might not be the name) is simply ridiculous … 12 stacks of might and a decent heal at the end for your group … amazing. And Line of Warding is just an amazing skill, especially in some of the dungeons I have done.

On all the classes, I tend to find the weapons “bad” for the first while. But when you get playing with it more, figure out some of the combos you can do and the timing, they start getting very powerful. I suggest taking some more time and playing with the Staff … and all the weapons we Guardians have at our disposal

1) I am very surprised they sent out that Digital Deluxe E-mail about how you can upgrade in game for 2000 gems the other day with this still broken.

2) It needs to get fixed, but people need to simma dan na! I am sure they are working on it.

3) Something that we should get out, is the work around if it works. Buying the upgrade on another character unlocks it for the others on your account, just not that one? So a work around would be to create a new character, buy it with gems, then delete that character, and you will have it on all your others?

Hopefully this gets addressed soon.

Does that even really matter in the long run? I guess it might be a bug, but you can talk to many NPC’s to move your character’s alignment as many times as you like. Including many of the NPC’s that give run speed buffs in the cities.

People are getting way too dramatic over this. Look at the other side of the coin for a second.

What if the crafter simply made this box and is posting it up to sell? What if the person posting it isn’t even the same person? The game has a “crafting crit chance” but I have never seen anything every crit, what if the creator thought they critted it into an exotic box? What if the creator thought it was an exotic box of gear, and sold it as such (10g), thinking they were helping a person out by offering it for sale … yet, it is bugged.

People are non-stop whining about “exploiting” but it could honestly be happening without anyone actually knowing what they are doing. The box of armor looks like a box of exotic lvl 80 armor to the buyer and the seller. They obviously need to fix the problem.

Hell, I was about ready to make one of these until I read this post … but apparently it isn’t worth it. Or is it? Haha.

faddi.9482:

MattVid.7905:

That is what hundred blades does. It is multiple hits, over a channel, in which the attacker cannot move. This could have been coupled with Frenzy, and you also had a Veteran Guard crushing you for 2k+ damage.

Hundred Blades hits like a truck, but is very easily avoided, as again, the attacker is rooted for the duration. Have stability ready to pop and be ready to move out of the way when he gets on you.

They could have been cheating, but from the screen shot, it doesn’t look like anything wrong happened. You honestly don’t even need to dodge roll from a 100 blades … you just take a few steps back and they are missing. Keep moving, and don’t stand still for long … especially in PvP.

that wasn’t me but my friend. I did 1vs1 with the warrior and he did 4 skills in 1 seconds. I swear this isn’t possible , i also played the warrior and i can tell you this is impossibile. How can you even defeat me in 2 seconds???? And defeat all my mates in one hit . We were 8 against 3 and we died in 4 seconds totally defeated . It’s impossible

I don’t know, I wasn’t there. All I can go from is the screen shot. It looks like your friend was hit with “Chains of Light”, which applies Vulnerability to you with 3 stacks. There are Guardian spec’s that add more stacks with blinds/immobilizes, so you could have had multiple stacks just from the one Guardian hitting you with 2 instant cast skills.

So your friend is rooted, debuffed, and then are hit with 100 blades. Again, with skills like Frenzy (giving quickness, skills execute twice as fast), Fury/Might buffs … who knows. I can easily see it hitting for 13k. I have done damage similar to this using the standard build on the SPvP dummies.

This doesn’t look like a “zerg vs. zerg” fight, so likely, they popped many of their utility skills before they engaged … resulting in a lot of debuffs and buffs possibly. Also, 100 blades can hit multiple targets, and you all look rather close together in the picture.

Again, just trying to make sense of it all. But from what I see on the picture, I could see this being possible (lots of defensive debuffs, and Frenzy allowing the warrior to blast through the whole attack in 1-2 seconds).

I have noticed this with stealth in general. It would be nice if your auto-cast skill was disabled when entering stealth. Allowing you to get into position, then excecute your “from stealth attacks” by pressing “1” again.

At least, I think this is what is happening when I am playing. Will have to test again tonight and report back.

That is what hundred blades does. It is multiple hits, over a channel, in which the attacker cannot move. This could have been coupled with Frenzy, and you also had a Veteran Guard crushing you for 2k+ damage.

Hundred Blades hits like a truck, but is very easily avoided, as again, the attacker is rooted for the duration. Have stability ready to pop and be ready to move out of the way when he gets on you.

They could have been cheating, but from the screen shot, it doesn’t look like anything wrong happened. You honestly don’t even need to dodge roll from a 100 blades … you just take a few steps back and they are missing. Keep moving, and don’t stand still for long … especially in PvP.