Showing Posts For beriah.5168:
Dang, lots of good things to think about here. I won’t get another chance to play before tomorrow, but when I do I’ll see if I can try out a few different trait builds over the course of the day.
Quick thoughts:
I’m feeling like I probably don’t hold on to my aegis enough to get a lot of use from Unscathed Contender. I definitely want to try something with 10/25/x/x/x and work on a high burning uptime. It’s a real shame spirit weapons aren’t better – back when they were indestructible I had a lot of fun using them with A Fire Within to keep burning up.
I feel like I want to at least try out Permeating Wrath for open world PVE. If I am in a dungeon and I need to focus on a boss, I can always swap it for Absolute Resolution or some such.
I’ve used meditation based builds in the past – I like the damage and self-healing, but I do want to still be bringing some support to the team along with damage. That’s one of the attractions to a build heavy on Virtues and boon duration.
Also wondering if something shout-y along the lines of 10/25/0/30/5 with Pure of Voice and Runes of the Soldier would be worth a go. Does Radiant Power still increase burning duration even if you are not wielding a torch?
I also might try a Greatsword/Sword+Focus approach with 20/30/10/5/5 that can use some meditations for extra damage or condition purge, or 20/30/0/10/10 that can use shouts and/or consecrations.
Thanks for all the thoughts. I’m curious about the virtues of trying to combine some of these ideas with a boon duration / burning build. I figure at the very least it’ll play differently.
I’ve been playing my guardian for a while, gotten 100% world completion, almost entirely in PVE but occasionally in WVW. I’ve done some dungeoning – I’ve got a full set of Twilight Arbor armor, and a handful of runs on a few other dungeons, but I’m far from a dungeon master.
Basically, I’m not a highly skilled player, and while I do all right at dodging out of big red circles, I’m not so hot at recognizing telegraphed attacks and dodging them, so I take a lot of hits. I’ve really appreciated the crutch of high toughness and AH healing. I mostly like hammer, with staff for support (and healing myself via Empower), but I’ve got nothing against Greatsword for AOE and sword/focus for single target fighting. My power’s not too bad, between knight’s armor and berserker’s trinkets, and I’m close to 50% crit, but I can’t help but look at those +10% damage traits for burning and conditions and know that I could do a lot better in terms of damage output. I mostly like hammer, with staff for support (and healing myself via Empower), but I’ve got nothing against using Greatsword for AOE/control and sword/focus for single target fighting.
All that said, I know that any survivability beyond the minimum needed to get through a fight is wasted, and I’d like to be able to deliver more damage for my party when I’m dungeoning, and take down monsters faster in PVE when I’m solo or doing events.
Any thoughts on a build that would let me pull off some better damage numbers while still not ending up on the ground all the time? I don’t think I’d be able to live long in full berserker’s gear, but I feel like a hybrid of the burning builds with AH might be something I could use to be more effective, like 10/25/30/5/0 or something along those lines.
I don’t have a ton of gold to spend on new gear, but I wouldn’t mind either dungeoning for armor with a different prefix, or blowing some badges of honor from achievement chests if getting one more set of exotic armor would make a big difference.
Any thoughts?
Guardian’s a good choice if you want to combine tough melee with flashy animations, though actually depending on playstyle you can do melee/close combat with Elementalist and Mesmer too, and they put Guardians to shame with their effects. For Guardian, you pretty much have to appreciate blue flames. If you do, weapons like hammer and greatsword have some very flashy attacks; torch, too. Guardian can do frontline combat easily; the others will be relying on mobility to come in for quick strikes and then avoid/block/counter any attacks.
I’ve been running Knight’s armor with Berserker’s trinkets, and that’s been working out very well for me so far. It’s a nice balance of power, precision, crit damage, and toughness that’s applicable to a wide variety of situations. Pure zerk will certainly do more damage, but having a little more resilience has been quite nice for me.
For WvW, if you want to be more support-y, a healway-style set of cleric’s gear could be a good time as well.
My female charr mesmer is Crux Mindwrack. I like the warband surname – it makes it a lot easier to find a name for a character that isn’t taken and provides flavor at the same time.
I’m with you here. I’ve really been feeling the last few Living World updates that achievements were pushing my play sessions towards activities that were less fun for me, and it is genuinely refreshing to have an update that I can enjoy wholeheartedly. No “run around and click things an absurd number of times” achievements, or minigames that require being played well beyond the point of novelty, just being rewarded for fighting tough enemies and doing events, which are what is the most fun for me in the game.
I beat three of the Gauntlet bosses yesterday (which was great fun), and when I ran out of tickets, my thought was, “Oh no, to get more tickets I have to play other, fun, rewarding activities… SHOCKING!”
Whatever Living World team made this update, I hope they keep it up!
All the weapons are useful, and it’s worth trying them all out for various periods of time as you level up. I hated hammer and staff when I was first using them, and now they’re the weapons I almost always have equipped.
Greatsword has excellent AOE damage, though a lot of that comes from the 2-5 skills, more than the 1, which means you’ll want to have another good set to switch to when you are waiting for cooldowns.
Sword is the best single target melee damage; scepter the best at range, though scepter is less effective vs. enemies that are moving. I actually used scepter at melee range a lot while I was levelling, with torch to light the enemies on fire – if you are in melee with the enemies, you don’t have to worry about them leaving the circle of damage from Smite.
Mace is more defense/healing oriented, and pairs well with shield and focus.
Guardian’s hammer is one of my favorite weapons in the game, of any of the classes I’ve played. The 1 chain creates a symbol of protection with every third hit – once you’ve been through the chain once, you have protection for almost the entire remainder of the fight. The 2 skill is a blast finisher on a relatively short cooldown (especially with the trait that reduces cooldown on 2handed weapons by 20%); the other skills are primarily control oriented – it’s particularly fun to hit an enemy with 4 and see them go flying , especially if you can arrange for them to go over a cliff.
Staff is fantastic if you are in an event with a ton of enemies, as the cone attack on 1 is very wide – you’ll almost always be able to hit 5 enemies at a time if there are at least that many to hit. The might stack on 4 is great when you are in a group, and when you are higher level, it combines startlingly well with the Altruistic Healing trait. The 2 skill does deceptively solid damage and can also heal your allies, and while the 5 skill takes a little too long to go off, it’s great to throw in front of a bunch of enemies rushing at you.
I’ve thought a bit about what a new magic-oriented weapon might be, if they were adding them to the game, and I was thinking that an orb (like a crystal ball) wouldn’t be a bad choice. You could project beams from the orb at your enemies; maybe some kind of bouncing ray would be a nice complement to the scepter, and for guardian I’d guess it would probably have some defense-oriented skills. It might be a little too close in concept to focus, though.
What’s the benefit of Defender’s Flame over Retributive Armor or Purity? The build doesn’t seem to get any benefit out of opponents’ being on fire, and the damage seems minimal.
Also, thanks for posting the build! I’ve heard a lot about Healway but it’s great to get the info from the original source. :-) I’ll have to craft up a set of cleric’s gear and try it out.
You might want to try using scepter/torch in melee range – it’s a little counter intuitive, since scepter is our only decent long range weapon, but using it in melee means you can get enemies to stay in the Smite field for substantial damage, and setting yourself on fire with torch adds burning to that. Mace/Shield in your weapon swap gives you a more defensive stance in case you start taking heavy damage.
Mostly I recommend taking some time to try all the weapons as you level, as they all lend themselves to difference situations and play styles; the weapons I use most now, hammer and staff, were my least favorite when I was playing early on (to be fair, Staff is significantly improved compared to my early guardian days).
The best thing about Smite Condition is pairing it with Monk’s Focus for easy healing; I ran a meditation build for most of 60-80 and liked it fairly well, but I ditched it for an Altruistic Healing build with shouts and consecrations after I hit max level.
For what it’s worth, Monk’s Focus is still pretty great – it’s a very solid heal (not quite half as much as Shelter) and combined with Meditation Mastery it’s almost like having a couple extra healing skills. I had a rather fun solo PVE build (10-25-30-0-5) that focused on burning, bonus damage vs. burning foes, and using meditations with Monk’s Focus to heal easily. Nice thing about running a bunch of meditations is that they give you a lot of resilience vs. conditions and stuns; downside is you give up a lot of your group support, though you can mitigate that a bit by adjusting your trait choices if you end up grouping.
I want to add another shout-out for hammer, especially if you plan on using the same build for PVE – I know it feels slow, but the damage is very strong, and the bind and launch options at 3 and 4 can really throw someone off their game.
That said, whatever your weapons, a guardian support build like this is just going to get rocked by someone with decent single target DPS if you are roaming, though with shouts and swiftness off the staff, you might be able to at least live to run away.
You can do a little better solo with 0/0/30/30/10 by using Meditation Mastery (I) and Monk’s Focus (XII) out of the Valor line and using Judge’s Intervention and Smite Condition as comparatively quick self-heals, along with Two-Handed Mastery (Honor IX) for more use of the better skills from GS, hammer, and/or Staff.