I can confirm the opposite of what Druinex said. My achievement panel says I am still missing Arah P3, but I have done that path thrice already. After just finishing P2, I got the achievement for P2.
See attachments, you can confirm it was indeed P2 that I just completed based on the dialogue with Scholar Yissa.
Basically — the indicators in the achievement panel is switched for P2 and P3.
@Thaddeus: Highly disagree with your opinions on the staff. Empower alone gives quite a long duration (around 15 seconds with 16s cd) of 12 stacks of might, so I don’t see where you got the idea that the might doesn’t last long enough. Staff 2 is good at pulling and staff 3 also compounds with the symbol of protection to give vulnerability. Furthermore, staff 5’s wall is much easier and more reliable than the wall of the hammer.
I figured using the staff along with my hammer was a good way to compensate for the light fields of the hammer because of Empower which I can constantly use during long fights without the need of fire fields, and the weakness from symbol of swiftness.
1) Staff empower give 10sec of might on a 20sec cooldown. Now, you need 50% boons duration to get that 15sec you have. That mean that you probably have like 6pts in virtues and superior rune of water of something (food maybe) to reach 50%. And you have two-handed mastery trait to get the 16sec CD from your staff. So ya you sacrifice a good runes and some good trait to reach that level of empower with your staff. A might blast is 20sec wihtout any boons duration, FGJ is 25sec, HGH is 25sec there is better way of getting might than the staff Empower for PvE. So if you want to use boons duration, use that on an Ele or a Warrior for might, not for Empower.
2) Ok so you have 15s of might on a 16sec cooldown. Ok, but if you do that in the middle of the fight, you will do kittenty DPS (from what i can see of your build you probably don’t do that much DPS anyway) with a staff during 10sekittenil you can switch to the hammer.
3) Everything range is good at pulling man. Focus skill 4 work just fine 100% of the time. You want to pull stuff more? I rather see a sceptre, at least you can put a high DPS symbol on the ground before switching to your hammer, or use your staff to pull, empower, switch back to hammer and then never switch back to your staff until the fight is over.
4) Oh ya skill 3 is good right?? Vulnerability right?? Its just that GS symbol do 8 times more dmg, but shhhhh. Staff 3 is good.
5) There is no hammer wall, its a ring. And for the staff, its a line. But anyway, both line and rings and rarely useful PvE (except maybe in solo). Ya you denied the passage of those mobs. Cool. What does it give me? Either i kill them, or i run past them, and if i’m gonna run and skip, i rather have my focus shield than a line of warding. Its not useless, but not a really efficient skill in PvE.
Conclusion. Staff have kittenty DPS and inferior support for PvE. But its a kitten great weapon for WvW. That’s why I crafted Bifrost for my guardian. I don’t dislike the staff, i don’t want a buff to it to make it better. Its an awesome weapons, but PvE is not really its place unless you get it a really specialist role like Jesus do (before fight, never during the fight) or during TA for the blossom.
Sure staff does inferior DPS, but it’s really more about the utility it gives. Imagine this, you pull with the orb and stack might with staff 4 at the beginning of the fight then switch to hammer. What happens when the might stack of the warriors and eles wears off in long fights? I highly doubt pugs will be coordinated enough to make fields and stack might again during the fight. Switching back to staff to use empower again gives them 12 stacks of might and that is enough compensation for the inferior DPS of the staff, since you buff your allies’ damage.
Further to that, staff 3, like I said, also gives vulnerability, and along with spamming orb 2 during the fight (and not detonating giving it a 2s cooldown) while alternating with staff 1, can actually contribute more damage than you think.
Knight’s armor would be a good choice. It gives you the damage you need while having some survivability. As for weapons, I suggest keeping berserker’s. If you need additional survivability, get runes of trooper or trait 6 points into honor (which a lot of builds do anyway) and use force of will.
Generally, you want to start out with some survivability to learn the dungeons, and as you become more experienced, you’ll want to get more damage to shorten fights.
DON’T interrupt your hammer AA symbol, EVER. That’s your main source of dmg (make sure to use writ of persistence). You just need to use it at the right time. Stacking might usually occur before the right or at the beginning of the fight (the first few second). In an organized group, you will have almost constant might stacking with a staff ele. That’s why in speed run with my guild I usually take S/F instead of hammer. But for pugs, don’t worry about might stacking during the first. Just make sure you don’t use your hammer during like the 5 first second of the fight. You can put your symbol on top of the first field, no problem.
I would suggest you use something else than a staff. Staff is a really bad weapon for PvE (freaking great in WvW). The might stacking last way too short to count for anything, the dmg is poor, swiftness is not that useful in dungeon and the cc have limited use. Check for a Greatsword, you can start the fight with it so you don’t put symbol right away, then switch to hammer for the rest of the fight (or switch around both to maximize dps). Or if you need a range weapons, the sceptre is better than staff for this purpose.
Anyway, Hammer is one of the best weapon for the guardian in PvE, so good choose.
@Thaddeus: Highly disagree with your opinions on the staff. Empower alone gives quite a long duration (around 15 seconds with 16s cd) of 12 stacks of might, so I don’t see where you got the idea that the might doesn’t last long enough. Staff 2 is good at pulling and staff 3 also compounds with the symbol of protection to give vulnerability. Furthermore, staff 5’s wall is much easier and more reliable than the wall of the hammer.
I figured using the staff along with my hammer was a good way to compensate for the light fields of the hammer because of Empower which I can constantly use during long fights without the need of fire fields, and the weakness from symbol of swiftness.
Simply put, I like using hammer and staff in dungeons. Especially when traited well, the aoe damage in a stack is really good. But I see a lot of people complaining about guardians using hammer because of the symbol of protection and light field.
Generally, is it okay for me to start putting down the symbol of protection after the eles have stacked might (i.e. during the fight)? Or should I simply not allow my symbol of protection to proc at all?
I have done all the achievements for Wintersday, which count for 12/20 of the achievements. Further to that, I have completed the jumping puzzle 20 times, giving me the achievement once, the Bell Choice Ensemble thrice, Snowball Mayhem and Toypocalypse twice. By my count, that’s exactly 20 achievements, but I didn’t get the reward once I completed my last activity.
I am still working on getting better equipment, particularly trinkets. However, all of my armor is knight’s with berserker weapons and I am currently aiming for berserker trinkets as well. My weapons are Sword/Torch + Staff.
As for my traits, I am considering Empowering Might in place of 10 points in virtues. I am also questioning wondering if Strength in Numbers and Signet Mastery is worth it at all.
As for utilities, I am pretty lost. I really like Purging flames for it’s burning AoE, combo field and condition removal. However, I feel that Save Yourselves is too selfish. Should this be replaced by Stand Your Ground instead? I only got Bane Signet since I didn’t know what else to get. I was thinking Hallowed ground for this one.
I have reached this point of the personal story line, I understand that I need to finish Arah before killing Zhaitan, but which path do I need to finish? Isn’t Arah four paths with no story mode?
Also, do I need to gather four other people who are at the exact same point in their personal story with mine so we can beat Arah and Zhaitan together?
Hi, I apologize that I already made another topic on this, but I really want to finish the Krytan Explorer achievement already! I am at 174/175, finished Claw Island and all the jumping puzzles in the area and checked and rechecked my map with the areas in the wiki, and everything is just fine.
I suspect that I am lacking one area because of the Bilge in LA. I can’t seem to ‘discover’ it. I can’t check if I’ve even already discovered it because I can’t view the underground map level of LA.
I suspect the missing area is The Bilge in LA. It seems that I can’t ‘discover’ the area when I approach the sewer. Is there anyway I can check if I already actually discovered the Bilge? For some reason, viewing the different surfaces (ground level, below or above that) of the map is disabled in LA for me.
Thanks for the help, I haven’t done Claw Island in my personal storyline yet, despite that, I’m still missing one more area in my map, I’ll just go over it again.
Is there any bug for the achievement as far as we know?
I am stuck at 170/175 and have cross checked the areas I need for the achievement to my map in-game, and it all checks out just fine. I did miss some jumping puzzles, but when I completed them (got the achievement and treasure), I didn’t ‘discover’ them and my counter didn’t go up.
Any suggestions as to what I might be missing? Do I have to further progress through the story or do I have to explore something in CM?
