Guild Wars 2

I main a guardian because I find fighting toe to toe with enemies in melee to be the only interesting style of gameplay and recently got my warrior to 80, as it seems to be the only other class capable of using 2 melee weaps effectively.

I’ve settled on hammer+sword as weapons of choice of wvw roaming/small grouping. I’m wondering if anyone has advice as far as good hammer/swords builds. I realize 20 points into the toughness tree for merciless hammer is basically a must and I’m looking to use either shield or horn as my offhand. Other than that my build is pretty wide open.

Relentliss.2170:

Scepter/focus and GS are your best bets. You can’t really engage with them unless you have Stability running. I find Guardians one of the easiest targets on my Skullcracking Warrior.

In my experience, most guardians are really bad at 1v1.

Rezzet.3614:

AsmallChicken.9634:

The runes are even more blatantly op on a warr who can get 9 stacks of confusion with each interrupt (and they have alot of them).

this so much i dunno why engineers are the ones getting all the hate to begin with

Probably because not that many wars run full condition damage sets, so it limits how many wars can actually make a super strong distracting strikes build at the drop of a hat. Basically all engies run pistol/pistol or pistol/shield with condi damage, making it extremely easy for one to buy some perplexity runes and run this troll build for under 10g.

Perhaps he uses superior runes of the warrior.

Zergs.9715:

I think that majority of complaints about perplexity runes come from ppl that were unprepared for this type of build or unwilling to change their play style. It’s a new kid in the neighborhood so it’s normal that it comes as a surprise. If you guys watched Auto-kill build vid you will notice:

- mesmer that is shooting with GS point blank
- necros that are not transferring debuffs
- 5 rangers out of which 4 didn’t use “Rampage as One” and one used it at the end of the fight. Two of them were full signet…
- Signet warrior that used SoR near the end

Not exactly the pvp elite. As soon as ppl acknowledge it’s existence in solo roam and adjust their play style a bit, this build will fall in line quickly. I just hope that Anet doesn’t nerf the set based only on initial whine wave. Plus perplex warrs aren’t even the biggest threat with this set of runes.

Also how come no one is whining about 1 hit kill riflelers? There’s a vid of it floating around now.

No, the majority of complaints about it is that it is the most blatantly op ability in the the game atm and possibly ever. Never has any rune/sigil etc. effect not had some sort of inner CD to my knowledge and 13 secs of 5 stack confuse is by far the most powerful effect of any sigil or rune set. No inner CD on by far the most powerful effect. Hmmm. Naw not op at all.

So will 500 weaponsmithing be required to make these or will they be tradeable?

Sigil of hydromancy is a very good option for a melee only build, particularly for roaming. I have exotic greatswords and swords with sigils of flame, leeching, battle and hydromancy. Hydromancy is my go to set for roaming, since it offers solid, on demand aoe damage, does not depend on crits/random rolls and gives some much needed slowing to help keep enemies in range and help create distance when running away.

That said, I would not use hydromancy with any set other than GS&Sword. You need the mobility skills from both weapons to keep your opponent in range so that the hydromancy novas do not go to waste. If you use a ranged weapon like scepter or staff you likely won’t able to keep your targets within melee range often enough to make them worthwhile.

All my chars have weaps for stacking but I support this change. It does not make a lot of sense to be able to stack with one set of weaps and just swap to another set. Seeing someone with stacks on them will actually mean something if they make this change. Obviously, you should not lose stacks simply for swapping to your second equipped set and back—only if you de-equip the stacking weapon. Make it happen.

I’m gonna have to go ahead and agree that food needs to finally be removed from WvW. It is an annoyance to use and if you don’t you are kitten . +40 cond duration is foolishly op.

Voicer.8239:

To me it is a matter of L2P, you can avoid the red circles like I do you know?. My necro is full condition, I do have a lot a dmg on conditions and can endure a lot of damage, but 1vs1 or any situation I face alone, im dead. Also theres so many condition removal out there, its nearly impossible to kill some1 that KNOW how to play and counter this. WvW is meant for us to work as a group, if you wanna 1vs1 sPvP is waiting for you.
Dear Anet, please keep in mind, the builds we do in our toons are results of hard work and dedication. Every time you nerf a class you seryously spoil the fun and make a lot of us just lose interest in keep playing. Stop the nerfing and make improvements in other classes to counter if you feel its necessary.
If I have to change all my gear( ascended is very hard and boring to get) and/or change class one more time because ppl demand a nerf for pure lack of skill to deal with skilled players, Im just gonna stop supporting this game, wont buy any gems and just gonna move on. This is gone to far and we have a lot of issues that should come 1st like this trolls trowing siege and caping all over our keeps and towers and making impossible to upgrade properly. Thank you.

You must be a really bad condi necro if you can’t win most 1v1s. You can’t avoid necro staff circles because you are hit by them before they appear and oftentimes they are also unblockable. Unskilled/biased players always want to cling to overpowered mechanics as long as possible, but after the nerfs come the game will be better for it. Does anyone thing omnom pies should still have no inner CD? That confuse should still do PvE damage in WvW? That retal should do 50% more damage? No. Because all that stuff was stupid op, just like a number of issues currently plaguing the game that have all been caused poorly conceived changes Anet has pushed out over the past several months.

Pack stability, but then necro will remove it. Proceed to get chain feared.

Glenn.3417:

You do realise that this stat combo is gonna lead to more crying from tards that necro is “op” and “unkillable” when used in wvw.

Personally I don’t think they should have added this stat combo, conditions are strong enough as it is. The fact that you had to choose between rabid, carrion or a mix from the two came with some form of drawback; gave you either less hp or less toughness.

One could argue that they also have a power version (ppt) but those builds don’t exactly are hard hitters so come with a draw back in less overall damage. With this cond dmg set you gain survivability and don’t suffer any loss in overall dmg.

Condition builds did not need buffing, at all.

Terrormancer is pretty op for a 1v1, but luckily 1v1 so it doesn’t make a huge impact on wvw as a whole.

skillionaire.3574:

Completely disagree with suggestion of nerfing cond food duration. Idiotic idea actually. Since I use the same food on my guardian build to help negate cond dmg, nerfing that food would also destroy any chance my guardian has at surviving conditions. (and most decent guardians understand they melt on condis especially in massive zerg battles) so no. Rather it’s up to enemies to use + cond food to counter.

I totally agree ‘a t s e’ regarding healing signet. without it we’d get dropped by competent zerk players. (thiefs still hurts me massively i have to rely on kiting with my sword and warhorn to avoid burst) If you want to kill regen players get some support from poison cond builds. Plus what about rangers troll healing regen builds. I’ve observed idiotic situations whereby they are taking on and killing groups of players with kittened amounts of sustain.

Only thing that needs changing imo is the skullcrack from 3 to 2 secs, match it with the earthshaker that’s already 2 sec stun.

oh p.s I personally don’t use kittened cheese builds (but rather full tank low dmg builds, hammer, sword wh for support play) and i often stalemate many other good players with good builds like, healway guardians, zerk thieves, and MM necros along with clever high cond dmg engis. It always ends up in both parties just walking away.

Idiotic idea not to nerf a blatantly overpowered food? You sound like an Anet dev.
Not to mention you claim to play a guardian, which is one of the better classes at removing conditions.

And lol at condi spam being a big problem in zergs. Conditions are pretty bad in zergs because group condi removal makes it far easier to get rid of them. Duel a terrormancer sometime and tell me conditions are worse in a zerg than solo or in a small fight situation. In a group with a few guards, wars and other people using group clearing and stability, conditions become next to meaningless.

^^
If you are going to attempt a condi build with a guardian, which is borderline insane but I guess makes a modicum of sense if you are going to be a zero dps healway build anyway, I’d say you should probably at least use sigils of geomancy or earth for some bleeds or maybe sigil of genoristy and possibly a rune set that lets you apply some sort of condition. If you are lucky enough to be a sylvari, take root might not be a terrible idea for your ultimate, since the turrets use your condi stat and apply 10 seconds of bleeding base per hit. (can easily get 15+ stacks on a single target with the turrets, but it has to stand fairly still.).

The game is pretty much unplayable atm if you want to roam in wvw. Anywhere you go its rune of perplexity spam thieves, warriors, mesmers and engies. Getting old very fast.

Healing signet is fine. Stun spam probably needs to toned down slightly. Condi necros to be nerfed significantly in terms of terror/burn damage/fear uptime. Runes of perplexity need to be nerfed into the ground. Condi duration food should be nerfed to 20% just like boon duration.

Spirit weapons have a lot of problems.

1- health is very low
2- traits for spirit weapons are spread across 3 trees and 5 traits.
3- AI is poor.
4- Cooldowns are long and begin when the weapon dies. SW build has absolutely no sustainability for a long fight because you have all your weapons for the first 30 seconds or so if you are lucky and then none of them for the next 30 seconds. You sarcifice way too much in terms of boons and condi removal/overall utility when you use them. Cast times are also quite long which makes it troublesome to summon them during a fight.

Spirit weapons should not be destroyed when they use their special ability by default. HP needs a significant boost. Casting time should start after cast. If they made those 3 things they might become somewhat useable.

Terrahero.9358:

fishergrip.4082:

Strong condition spam is basically impossible to counter solo no mater how much removal you have.

And thats bad? If someone builds to do direct-damage you dont expect to mitigate 100% of it. Why is it a problem if you cannot mitigate all conditions? You do realize dd is much weaker with these skills right? And that condition damage is the main source of damage, right?

That’s your idea of balance?

I never said mitigate 100% of it. And that raises the very problem with condi damage. You can’t mitigate it at all. It always does a fixed amount of damage per tick. All you can do is remove a few condis here and there and maybe try to reduce the duration a bit, which is hardly worth the effort since any condi player will have 50%-100% duration. The main culprit is condi necros, terrormancers in particular, because they can apply and absurd number of conditions very fast and reapply them faster than it is possible to remove them, while spamming CC that also ticks for thousands of damage. If they tone that down and nerf confusion runes, it might be manageable. Introducing a new condi in torment, dhuumfire and confuse runes on top of that is just too much. You can blow 3-4 condi removal skills and still have 3 or more condis left on you.

Strong condition spam is basically impossible to counter solo no mater how much removal you have. Most skills only remove 1-3 conditions per use and have cooldowns of 20 seconds or longer. In groups condis get a lot easier to deal with due to group cleansing, but it is totally out of control for small fights.

It’s sad that so many players have turned to such a lame form of gameplay. As a guardian, the only interesting fights I have anymore are against non-condi, non-ranged and non-stealth spam players. So basically other guardians, warriors, D/D eles, melee rangers(rare breed) and power engies(also rare.). Thieves, necros, mesmers and most engies and rangers are simply not fun to fight against. Not necessailry hard to beat, just not fun. The only things that are blatantly op are terrormancers and people abusing runes of complexity. Stun spam wars get an honorable mention for those classes that have limited access to stability.

Yaki.9563:

fishergrip.4082:

You should try permeating wrath sometime.

I didn’t know that the measure for good damage was packs of trash, and that burn damage was remotely significant for guardians who wear no +condition gear.

Burning is actually quite a significant source of damage with no condition gear. It has high base damage and with a few stacks of might you tick at around 400. It’s never going to be 50% of your dps, but it can be 20%+ just from equipping permeating wrath in fights with multiple enemies around you. It is good for taking camps solo, punishing rezers, fighting clustered enemies, fighting enemies with clones/minions, pets etc. and as you said burning trash mobs for getting 25 stacks of bloodlust in no time. Obviously, it is a bit hit or miss since a lot of the time you only have one target in range, but when it hits it is quite noticeable.

Also, the last 15 points in virtues give you +damage per boon (averages around 5% damage) and +15% boon duration (build dependent, for mine about +4% damage.) +9ish% damage >> +15% crit damage.

The only interesting dps ability in valor past 15 points is might on block. Like permeating wrath it is a bit hit or miss and requires shelter and a focus to make good use of it. For the type of fighting I do—taking camps solo, small group fights, occasional zerg fights, killing trash to get 25 stacks quickly, PW gives substantially more dps than anything in valor and I don’t have to take and burn shelter in the hopes of gaining a bit of extra dps. If you just run dungeons and zerg all day long you probably wouldn’t benefit from it as much.

You should try permeating wrath sometime.

How exactly do you define “healway.” You can go 30 honor and 30 virtues without going full up on healing gear. The virtues line offers just as much if not far more dps than valor depending on the situation.

Use x5-6 superior runes of the citadel + save yourselves.

It is not just you. Guardian is the most range limited class in the game and has been since release. Luckily, we are also the most tanky class, have decent options from within 600 range and have some decent gap closing options.

To be invincible. It worked up until omnom pies and vigor on crit got nerfed.

Both are good classes in PvE and WvW.

Guardian has lower base HP than warriors, lower mobility, lower physical damage output potential and much lower condition damage potential. Guardian also lacks viable ranged damage. On the other hand, guardian is able to avoid a lot of damage with blocking, blinds and high projection uptime, which means guards typically have better sustain than warriors. Guardian is probably a better zerg fighter than a warrior as it brings many useful abilities to large fights like aoe condi removals, aoe stability, aoe retal and wards/walls that block/reflect movement and projectiles. In WvW I’d say they are about even. Warrior is better for PvE.

Sounds to me more like the guardian was badly trolled by you. P/D thief is the biggest troll spec in the game. Anyway, it was just a healing speced guardian.

“You can tell healways primarily by the heavy use of shouts and dodgerolls. And of course the immunity to conditions…”
^^
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. Almost all guardian builds include heal on dodge, shouts and a good amount of condi removal.

You can tell healways by them having poor damage output and getting healed a lot upon roll/generally being impossible to take down without multiple people.

Rawr.5930:

remove the stat buff trait lines.

We have a winner.

Celestial works quite well if you account for the lack of power by getting + power elsewhere (runes, food, might etc.) It is best if you have a build that makes fairly good use of healing power and condi damage. If you don’t have that, I wouldn’t use more than a couple pieces at the most. My build includes heal rolls and permeating wrath so I make good use of healing and decent use of condi(for a guardian…). I have full accessories and chest+helm so far and I’ll probably not add much more since the margins are getting pretty slim. I would’t go for celestial legs or weapons since the stat ratios on them aren’t quite as good.

I’m new to the engie but elixir gun seems pretty fun. The auto attack does ok condition damage and cuts the dps output of your target by 25% with perma weakness. F glob does decent direct damage and snares. Acidic elixir hits really hard if you can get something to sit still. The healing elixir is a nice extra source of healing and condi cleansing + light field for aoe retal or more condi clearing.

The main thing that sucks about it is the damage on fumigate is absurdly low. I find myself never bothering with fumigate since I do much more dps without it. The only purpose of it seems to be group condi clearing and maybe trying to poison someone right before they heal (not things that ever really come up during leveling.). I feel like they should up the dps to around 2/3 of what guardian’s torch 5 does (which is basically the same attack without pois and vuln.). As it stands now it’s a highly situational skill that should almost never be used.

Hello. I’m a longtime Guardian and Ranger player, but I recently decided to use the free 20 level scroll to try out an engineer. Things are going ok except I’m noticing the engineer seems to lack options for dealing with CC like stun, fear, knockdown, etc. What’s the best way to deal with control effects as an engie?

Some people find stealth to be a cheese mechanic in general and the current popularity of infinite stealth pistol/dagger thieves is very annoying.

Sword/dagger thieves are still extremely powerful and perhaps OP against guardians.

The other problem is that they just aren’t fun to fight against. I never feel like I have good fights against thieves because their mechanics mean you spend more time running around like a chicken with you head cut off looking for them then actually fighting.

In terms of WvW, guardian > warrior. You’ll own warriors 1v1 all day long.

What exactly do you have questions about? Can’t give advice if you don’t ask any questions.

Since it sounds like you are still low level, so it’s good to not have any direction yet. Try out all the weapons and skills and learn what you like. Direction is only really needed when you hit level 80 and want to commit to some expensive or time-gated gear.

Junkpile.7439:

Clerics > all

Not if you want to kill anything.

Celestial is worth considering as well if you are running a build that can benefit from all stats.

A good support build. Definitely favors zerg fighting and small groups over solo play though due to low damage.

It really depends on your traits and other gear, but I agree that if you are already around 3k toughness and 2k power swapping some pieces of knight’s for celestial is probably an overall win.

foofad.5162:

There is diminishing returns as I illustrated, but that’s not what soft cap means. Soft cap means that you don’t directly benefit from it in the primary fashion but still receive benefits tangentially. Hard cap means that you do not receive any benefit at all from going beyond that point.

All that matters is effective HP and each point of toughness boosts effective HP by the same amount as the last. Looking at % damage reduction creates the illusion of diminishing returns, but it is not relevant.

The complaints about thieves are mainly related to WvW. They just have too many cheese mechanics that make them unfun to play against, if not overpowered.

There is soft cap or diminishing returns on armor.

The build looks pretty solid now. I’d still go with superior sigils of fire over +5% crit chance and use a +5% damage sigil on your focus.

If you are interested mainly in zerg fighting, you will probably want to swap out sword/focus for staff. Staff is by far the best weapon for tagging enemies in a zerg and empower works extremely well with altruistic healing while giving your allies a big damage boost. Just use sword/focus when you are roaming solo or in smaller group and staff when you are in a zerg.

You should use either beryl or ruby jewels on your trinkets to pick up some crit damage. Consider going with a rune set that gives + power like 5/6 runes of citadel + 1 ruby orb. Runes of the soldier are nice if you are facing heavy condition spam, but other than that, pure of voice and purity take care of most of your condi removal needs. Superior sigils of fire, battle, hydromancy or leeching will increase your dps.

More power and pure of voice.

Greatsword and sword is good start. Its also useful to pack save yourselves and retreat for high swiftness uptime and sigils of hydromancy for chills. Realistically, there will be certain classes/builds that you won’t be able to catch if they really want to run away. Thieves, eles, warriors and rangers can all be built so that they are difficult for a guardian to stick to even if you include judge’s intervention in your build. You shouldn’t have as much trouble staying on the other classes.

I’ve been using permeating wrath for months now. It’s an underrated trait. That said, a true burn build—ie building for condi damage—is not worth it. Burning has good base damage and fairly poor scaling with condi damage.

foofad.5162:

Celestial is terrible. Don’t use it for condition damage. In fact, don’t spec for condition damage as a Guardian. It’s just not worth it. The exchange rate between direct damage and condition damage is not in any way shape or form equitable or advantageous.

Celestial is actually quite good, although you’re correct in that condi damage is by far the least useful stat.

Unless you are running meditations, you’ll probably want pure of voice with 2-3 shouts to deal help deal with conditions. Absolute resolution doesn’t hurt either.

30 zeal is way too much. The zeal line is not good even with the new buff. I’d say you shouldn’t go with more than 10 points in zeal at the most unless you really want to try for some sort of weird scepter or spirit weapon build. 10/0/30/30/0 or 0/5/30/30/5 with some shouts would be much stronger. Slight decrease in DPS for huge gains in tankyness, group support and sustain.

Soldier’s gear ( power/vit/toughness ) is not optimal to have in every slot. It limits your DPS due to lack of precision and +crit damage and doesn’t help your long-term sustain much due to lack of healing power and only middling toughness. A mixture of berserker’s and knight’s items will result in significantly better damage and similar long fight sustain with a bit of a decrease in burst survivabilty due to lower max HP. Mixing in some ascended celestial trinkets eventually can help round out your stats toward better tankyness and sustain if desired or go with berserker’s ascended trinkets to pump up your dps.

Yes, knight’s gear with zerker trinkets works well pretty much anywhere. It is best, however, not to think of gear in terms of armor vs. trinkets. It is better to consider how much stats you are getting for each piece and how much you give up to get more +crit damage.

For instance, you get a good ratio on crit damage on your boots, gloves and shoulders—> 2 crit damage for 24 stat points. On the other hand, on berskerer’s exotic rings, you are getting +3 crit damage and giving up 48 stat points, which is a bad ratio. Similarly, berserker’s pants are bad because you only get +3 crit damage and give up 48 normal stat points.

If you want a mixture of zerker and knights, you should probably go knight’s helm, chest legs and rings. Zerker boots, shoulders and gloves. Amulet and earrings of whichever type you want to lean toward (probably zerker) and then socket any knight’s jewelry you have (rings) with ruby jewels.

WvW is now officially grind to win.

At least ascended gear is fairly easy to obtain and has minimal stat advantages over exotics.

+2500hp +100 pow +100 condi is strait up bonkers.