Guild Wars 2

By reduced cool downs do you mean traits that reduce the cooldowns on your weapons and utility skills? I find that on most classes those are actually the best traits to take.

Numbers vary with each class, situation, and play style. My tanky warrior has about 2k armor and she can walk through most WvW zergs.

You can’t go wrong with Power, Toughness, Vitality stats especially if you are soloing a lot. Just change Power to Condition Damage if your running a condition build.

Look for builds in the profession forums or post the build you want to run and ask for help with gear. Finding a solid and friendly guild will also clear up a lot of problems like this. Don’t be afraid to talk to people! Over half of the MMO nerds i have met in my life are really friendly!

Above all experiment and experience different parts of game play!

It is all about builds.
Take your guardian for example, if you are trying to go for a more tanky build, try to invest in Power/Toughness/Vitality armor and weapon and then the trinkets you try to keep the same and if you need extra stats you can change the jewel from the trinkets and the runes/orbs of the armor to get that extra flavor, like healing power and boon duration to rise the support or power and precision for more damage.

Try to check the specific forums for each class, you’ll find many builds there after that you can customize the gear as you feel like it.

Generally speaking it’s better to focus on just a few attributes, with your traits and gear all giving bonuses to the same ones, rather than spreading your points between them.

In PvE full-damage (commonly known as beserker after the stat combination) is popular, in WvW it’s a good idea to have some defensive capability, which means some points in either vitality or toughness. But you still want to try and focus on just a few attributes rather than all of them.

The Virtuous Blade

“Guardians are devoted fighters who protect their allies and smite their enemies by drawing from the power of their virtues.”

The main idea of the Virtuous Blade build is to focus on the two things that are supposed to make the Guardian class unique to other classes: Virtues and to an extent Boons. Obviously, there is a concentration on Virtues, thus Virtuous in the name, and the Blade part comes in part from my preference for the Greatsword and Sword/Focus but also because of the dependence from some of the outlined traits. As a note, I play PvE and WvW only, so I don’t know how well this would do in PvP.

I. The build and ratiocination of its specific traits:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlYg67mFyIEfIFSOjCEBrUEP3D+BM6qQCB-e
I left the equipment stats blank (see Gear selection for reason).

Zeal:
-Zealot’s Speed (5): symbol damage, and provides Retaliation, which is both damage to attackers and gives you a boon, and a bonus Light Field.
-Fiery Wrath (10): 10% on burning foe. You’ll be doling out a lot of burning, along with the possibility of the burning condition from teammates.
-Symbolic Exposure (15): with this build, you’ll have access to a couple symbols, and this applies vulnerability to the target, and vulnerability equates to more damage.
-Zealous Blade (20): 5% extra damage with greatswords, and healing for each attack. Couple the healing from this plus from the other sources, it becomes important to have.

Valor:
-Valorous Defense (5): aegis provides another block plus it’s a boon while it is up.
-The Valor Adept Major (10) trait slot can really use any of the traits, depending on your preference, and what you may be doing. I use Strength in Numbers because it’s 150 toughness points for you and teammates, and it helps when trying to crunch your stat numbers into the minimums you’re trying to get to.

Honor:
-Vigorous Precision (5): vigor is important for dodging, but it also provides you with another boon. You’ll need a decent critical chance to take advantage of this.
-Superior Aria (10): You’ll use most of your shouts, and recharge reduction is important.
-Selfless Daring (15): dodging equals healing. Couple the healing from this plus from the other sources, it becomes important to have.

Virtues:
-Inspired Virtue (5): boons for Virtue activation.
-The Virtues Adept Major (10): trait slot can really use any of the traits, depending on your preference, and what you may be doing. If you’re pushing high boon duration, I’d advise against using Vengeful because duration caps at 100% and if you’re already that close, you’re wasting a trait slot. If you aren’t close to the cap, then it’s a nice trait to use. I personally use Unscathed Contender for the 20% extra potential burst damage and also because I’m close to the duration cap.
-Virtue of Retribution: Retal on activated Virtues. Provides a boon that damages attackers.
-Absolute Resolution (20): removes 3 conditions from you and allies and passive heal is increased. Couple the healing from this plus from the other sources, it becomes important to have. The other traits are subjective for use, but could be used in place, which again depends on preference. However, AR is almost completely necessary in this build for the dual benefits it provides.
-Power of the Virtuous (25): 1% extra damage per boon you have. Since you’re producing so many boons, this helps your damage output.

You roll a thief

Street Rat with unkownn parents. Gotta admit I liked the part where my thief learned what happened to her parents.

Can we have human ancestry (ascalonian, elonian, etc) as a personal story instead of the carnival, dead parent sister ones? Those last three doesn’t really do jusctice to the history of humanity in tyria.

Ancestry would give human more depth and at the same time give non-GW1 players some more lore education.

I was hopig that it would be developed more after choosing one in the Dead Sister story but turns out otherwise.

While we’re at it can we get a more epic boss in the tutorial? Idk, maybe an actual golem insted of just 2 hands that pops out like daisies.

TL;DR human personal story needs more love

I was a Thief, so…. totally saved Quinn. Didn’t really matter to Armaud that some people got poisoned (he was a lot angrier back then.) I’m glad I did, too, I keep getting burned on these “do you save one person or a village” decisions. They make it sound like saving the one person is being selfish and the village will die, but that’s bunk. I almost deleted my second Mesmer because I decided to save Astorea or whatever instead of helping the guy with his wife, and it turned out that the village would have been fine, and the guy would have still been alive. kitten

I like this post. There’s only one problem…

Thief: Get zerk gear. Get good at Steal+CnD+Backstab. Win. Against bunkers, use SB and leave.

Other classes: Learn all the thief skills. Listen for thief. Watch thief at all times. Use different/odd weapons. Use AoEs. Swing wildly at the air. Use stun-breakers. Dodge more. Build differently. Etc, etc, etc.

But you know, other than that, good post.

Edelweiss.9815:

Another clueless Thief circlejerk thread.

Did you see the traits? Stuff like Infusion of Shadow, Quick Recovery, Opportunist? It’s possible to Stealth every 3 seconds and never run out of Initiative using CnD and only some of these traits….

Yeah, thieves have stolen trait points from other classes, that’s why they have 250 trait points to spent while other classes only have 70.

Seriously, you can trait for survivability, stealth, mobility, condition or straight damage, but not all of them at the same time.

I really like the trait system of Guild Wars 2, but a ton of pickable traits seriously lack in terms of description: duration, # of stacks, actual damage numbers, etc. Some traits have also very vague wording.

Here are a examples of traits that are very well described, for the Mesmer class:

• Confounding Suggestions (Domination XII): 50% chance to cause a 1 second stun when you daze a target.

• Furious Inspiration (Dueling XII): Gain 4 seconds of Fury when you interrupt a foe.

Here are examples of traits that are not well described:

• Crippling Dissipation (Domination V): Clones cripple nearby foes when killed.
  Is the effect triggered when they’re shattered as well?
  How long does the cripple last?
  Define “Nearby” – 300 range? 400 range?

• Halting Strike (Domination II): Deal damage when interrupting a foe.
  How much damage? A base value would be helpful, a scaled value would be even more helpful in making a decision

• Protected Mantras (Dueling VI): Increase armor while channeling mantras.
  How much armor?

• Blinding Beffudlement (Illusions IX): Cause confusion when you blind a foe.
  How long is the confusion?

• Confusion Cry (Illusion II): Cry of frustrations grant retaliation.
  To myself I’m assuming?
  How long is the retaliation?
  Is the retaliation applied once per illusion shattered, or simply once on activation of the shatter?

TL;DR – A ton of tooltips for traits lack information that is required to make informed build-crafting decisions.

id like to see…
1 – spell effects filters example – show mine only/show group only/show all
if not filters then a way to adjust the spell effect separately

2- make story rewards scale to you actual level not your adjusted level.

3- the ability to reposition all skills on the hotbar to my liking.

4- allow us to set status to invisible by default.. or invisible to all not onf riedns list or in guild.
thanks

First off, thanks for the great game ArenaNet! The level of polish at launch beats any other MMO launch in recent memory. I have enjoyed every minute of play times so far.

That said, there are a couple places where some improvement might be possible. So here are the things I would like to see given a little bit of love.

• Preview gear and weapons on the trading post. Ever since the trading post has come up I’ve been browsing it often for upgrades, but right now it is very difficult to predict how gear or weapons will render based solely on the icon.

• Load more characters on screen and/or load characters faster. This is fairly uncommon but can be devastating in WvW. Getting chased/killed by an invisible hate train of invaders is a bit frustrating.

• I’d like to see badges of honor treated as currency. I know this is probably impossible, but WvW basically has me constantly mashing the F button during combat.

• Helper NPCs in storyline quests should be more useful. I’m probably spoiled from the companion NPCs from another recent MMO title, but especially for vigil storyline quests I often have a small army of NPCs following me around and they feel like more of a hindrance most of the time. I’d like them to do a bit more damage and prioritize helping me a little more.

I’ve got more but I don’t want to make this seem like a hate thread. I really do love the game and these minor complaints do not make me any less happy to be playing.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? I’d like to see what other players are thinking as well.

I have a couple.

• Please stop auto moving my characters on the character select screen. at least leave them where we first created them or let us order them ourselves alphabetically or something.
• Add titles to the three orders for each rank that you get. Only cosmetic fluff but it was disappointing when I discovered I got nothing for it. More titles in general would also be good.
• Waypoint costs need readjusting. A reduced cost for completing a zone you can travel to would be nice.
• Karma armour and weapons could be reduced a bit
• At least let us salvage karma weapons and vendors to get something useful from them rather than letting them go to waste.
• Some tooltips don’t update after being affected by traits. The mesmer shatters are one I can think of.
• Add a Suggestion Forum to avoid cluttering up this section

EDIT :

• Add a token collection tap in the bank. They clutter up the inventory and let us deposit them in there.
• Add coloured borders around items depending on their quality.
• Let us know who the party leader is and let us transfer leadership if possible.
• Option to sell back karma gear and weapons, dungeon armour and weapons if the wrong item was bought by accident.
• Add the option to auto swap town clothes when entering a city
• Link the city channels together so it’s more global.
• Add an LFG channel or something similar.
• Add a notifcation when an item sells on the trading post.
• Preview items on trading post.
• First person view
• Mass collapse / open in the collection tab

EDIT 2 :

• Add the trading post fee to the total selling value rather than having to manually do it. Might actually mean the economy could improve a bit.
• Dungeons need tweaking. Keep the challenge but graveyard zerging should have an alternative.
• Lower health of trash mobs and some damage. Boss health needs to be reduced before it just gets boring.
• More interactive encounters rather than tank and spank.
• Add difficulty options to the various options you can choose in dungeons i.e Easy, Medium, Hard and adjust the rewards accordingly.
• Jute! Need more Jute and wool etc
• Group join to WvWvW