Guild Wars 2

So having played an E/N Minion/Cold damage build in PVE Guild Wars 1 I was pretty interested in running a dagger/focus melee minion master in this game (especially with the condition transfer/+Toughness per minion traits).
I see that in anything other than world zergs (not even great there) or solo play this is not viable due to minions being;

1. Stupid – They stand in damage they sometimes don’t attack at all.
2. Fragile – They drop easily to incidental AoE even with flesh of the master.

So how can they be fixed? One idea I had (and this also goes for Guardian’s Spirit Weapons as they used to be) is to make them take either no or vastly reduced damage from mobs (but not players) i.e. either make them immune to mob damage (a la the old Spirit Weapons) or give them very high mitigation vs. mobs (80-90% and reduce their damage to compensate) but not players (so they aren’t invincible in pvp).
Also perhaps make it that if they die to mob damage or when you get killed their cooldown is halved (so they only go on max cooldown on skill swap or when you use their activated ability).

Anyone else got any thoughts on how to make them work better in Dungeons/Fractals?

I don’t really fancy carrying around exotic versions of every weapon, well not the Hammer and Mace anyway as I hate their playstyle.

How do you mean shield is for “support”? My Guardian is largely a hybrid Offence/Boons on crit/shouts etc but I’ve been told the Torch is just weak compared to the others for anything (I was only using cleansing flame for Onom procs, sigil procs and EM stacks).
When dealing with Fractals at 10 or more is it worth it then or is the Focus a must have due to its shield ability? Does the Shield provide more overall mitigation during a long fight with its Protection boon and passive 61 defence + 90 Toughness from trait?

I’m running a Soldier/Berserker mix of gear which relies on crits and power (right-handed strength build) for damage. I currently use the Sword mainhand along with a Torch offhand, but recently found out that the torches abilities are rather weak (weaker than just spamming the basic sword attack) and don’t provide much utility.

I was considering Focus as it’s been mentioned as an excellent Dungeon/Fractal weapon or Shield with the Honourable Shield trait for extra mitigation.

Any advice?

Adine.2184:

how could a pure melee class have a pistol….

Never said those skills would be long ranged….more for flavour.

The official wiki says very little about armour and toughness except on the armour discussion where it says it has to have diminishing returns otherwise you could end up 100% mitigation.
The last stuff I read on it was very mathsy and I didn’t really get it but the laymans terms said that armour and damage mitigation had to be multiplicative and not additive.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/59433-after-lots-of-math-and-research-toughness-vs-vitality/

Plus another thread I made in the Guardian forums pointed out that Vitality is simply much better than Toughness, especially for low health classes.

Class Name: Duelist
Type: Light
Weapons: Rapier (stronger than a dagger but weaker than a sword with instant activated basic attacks), sword (main and off), dagger (main and off), pistol (main and off).
Theme: A pure melee class that’s encouraged to get close to foes at all times and attack with rapid burst damage, bleeds or debilitation.
Mechanic: Duelling – shown in the class skill bar as a coloured icon that gets more intense the closer to an enemy you are (shifting from blue to yellow to red) at each stage you get a buff to your armour and health pool, gaining more the closer you are to a foe. When all your non-1 weapon skills are on cooldown you can hit either F1 to deal damage with the Duelling skill and gain an offensive buff or F2 to feint with the Duelling skill and gain health or protection.

The class would be highly mobile and could be played as either a bursty damage dealer or a bleeder and as a glass cannon high risk high reward type or a balanced survivable type.

PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THIS IS ALL WITH REFERENCE TO PVE ONLY, NOT PVP OR WVW.

So after trying out some builds and classes (namely Guardian, Thief and Warrior) I wanted to ask people what they think the “soft” stat caps are for each class or build? By this I mean, how much armour is enough, how much crit chance is enough when does crit damage outweigh crit chance, what is the baseline vitality you should have? etc.

I’m asking this as I recently tried running a power/prec/toughness Sword Guardian focusing on big, fast crits and crit procs, I figured that the armour he had would be enough to protect him with low health. Turns out that wasn’t the case and vitality is waaay more important than toughness/armour so I had to redo my build, leaving me with a choice of a piecemeal crit build (50% crit, 2900 attack, 2900 armour, 14K health) or a Greatsword build focusing on power/vit/toughness (3100 attack, 2400 armour, 18.5K health).

I figured that seeing as I was pretty much forced into going for more defensive stats why not just play my old thief (who I loved the responsiveness of with dagger basic attacks), problem there was that that build was pretty crit-tastic too and you can’t really mix power/vit and crit in any meaningful way (3100 attack, 2300 armour, 19K health and 33% crit…).

So I could use some guidance really, does a piecemeal approach work? Can you make a melee thief with a focus on Soldier gear and emerald orbs into a reasonably durable fighter? Are melee mesmers impossible? Are there soft or hard caps on certain stats (toughness has diminishing returns apparantly yet I can’t find official sources for it).

Thanks

Thanks, I’m annoyed now that there’s no option for Power/Precision/Vitality gear now : /
What would be the better option then if I want to focus on that? Go for Soldier (Pvt) gear and load up on Emerald orbs for more tough prec and power? I think i calculated I can hit about 55% crit chance (inc. sigil and traits) with that whilst having a decent health pool and armour, although that requires me to use berserker weapons and amulets.
Or should I try Ruby orbs instead so I get some crit damage at the cost of some precision (only about 3% crit overall)? Or Beryl orbs for power/prow/vit?

I’m a bit disappointed as i was drawn to the guardian by how their toughness line is tied to crit damage and the retributative armour trait is really nice….tempted to try out a mesmer build I had instead but its a S/S one so is probably not much good…seems all the playstyles I like aren’t really catered for in PvE.

So I’m building a sword based crit build for my guardian and was reading a thread in the warrior forums which discusses mixing Knight’s and Berserker’s gear when i realised I have no idea how armour works in this game, I know it reduces damage but I don’t know by how much (i.e. is it a flat % damage reduction per amount of armour or is it more complex?).

Essentially the problem I have is that I can either stack Knight’s and Berserker’s gear and gem it with a mix of rubies and beryls and get a good crit chance and crit damage modifier and about 3000 armour but abysmally low health (talking about 11,000 or so) or I can mix soldier gear with berserker’s and get better health levels and lower toughness and crit damage or I can mix valkyrie gear and berserkers and get higher crit damage and healith at the cost of armour.

This is for PvE, fractals, dungeons and soloing.
Thanks

At the moment I’m trying to decide whether to use a Thief or Guardian as my main, I’ve knocked up a few builds online and ingame and found I really enjoy the D/P thief as dagger strikes are much more fluid than the sword strikes the Guardian uses (I keep auto-attack off, I like spamming buttons).
So at the moment I’m torn between D/P Thief and Sw/Sh Guardian (both crit builds). The Guardian has a much higher crit chance thanks to Right-Hand Strength and has about 400-500 more armour endgame but 120 odd less attack than the Thief but the Thief has a more “fluid” feel to its playstyle and has blinds and weakness procs as a defence.

So my question is which is more likely to actually work in dungeons? Do D/P thieves have enough survivability from blinds and weakness procs to make up for the lower armour rating or do you pretty much have to go heavy armour class to use a melee build in dungeons?

Thanks