Guild Wars 2

AbsintheMinded.4609:

Also, according to the quote it’s a % of health, so without Infusions it will effect all professions equally.

I think you mean “WITH” Infusion as it’ll negate the effect for every class.

Let me clarify what i mean by better for low HP pools:

Guardian = 1,000 HP – 10% = 900 HP
Warrior = 5,000 HP – 10% = 4,500 HP

If we stop here, then te effect is equal, but then…

Guardian = 900 HP + regen + heal = quick health turn-over
Warriors = 4,500 HP + regen + heal = longer health turn-over

In a battle of attrition, the guardian will last longer for as long as they both have equal access and power of heals and regens.

But they don’t… actually guardians excel with heal and regen sources… this leads me to say: “this seems like an effective buff on the guardians/low max HP characters/healing power builds/light armor classes”.

Thoughts?

Based on the announcement here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Agony:

condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means.

Infusion:

The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions

Essentially these are that i can infer (not gonna make a pros and cons study yet until i get more guardians to provide input)

> Percentage of a low HP pool will benefit low HP characters, ie. Guardians, because the net eHP loss is much less
> Inversely, it is very damaging to high HP characters, ie. Warriors
> It penetrates toughness/defense/armor which renders heavy armor and toughness builds useless against it
> the above benefits light armor wearers, ie. elementalists
> for the guardian, the net survivability requirement would be high healing power builds (possibly with condition removals) for locations/dungeons that specialize in inflicting agony
> infusions will be another stat sink which effectively increases the stat gaps between builds (bigger difference between full offense and full defense)
> the above might bring out a more uber defensive build, possibly triggering the birth of the “real” tank among guardians

Comments:
I’m a pow/tou/vit hammer guardian. I can see this as a significant buff to our class, but i will be seriously disappointed if i have to suddenly spec into healing power (which i think is a super sucky stat) to maintain my tankiness; while at the same time making vit completely counter-productive (which would be bad game design if a place/dungeon is focused on agony damage).

Lastly, i read a post somewhere where a guy claims that small HP pool is better which is complete BS but “if you can’t say anything nice…” so i didn’t reply to it. It was one of the durnbest analyses i’ve ever read in my life… but after this change, it might actually make sense.

Needed a DE for my daily… went into WvW… spotted a lone guard (the capture point with 1 vet enemy and a flag)…

killed it, 2 guys caught up with me… ran to the next point, got that…

saw a supply camp being attacked, defended that….

ran to another point, got that… other two still following me not to far behind…

ran full force and speed into an enemy supply camp, rambo-ed it up with the other two behind me… tanked them like a baus (except the capture NPC which hurts a lot and had to kite)…

etc, etc…

got 4 points, 3 camps, defended 1 camp, few dolyaks, running headstrong using the world map with two guys behind me…

i never said a word the whole time.

I went with 30 zeal, 30 radiance GS weilding ball of death.

you can move some radiance into the one trait line that gives 2 handed weapons 20% reduced cooldown.

Renewed justice + more damage to burning is your friend.

For leveling, killing stuff faster is better than winning the battle of attrition slowly with toughness.

Kasei.8726:

It really depends on what you’re using for defense and how much toughness you have. For example, a player going in with super high health (for a guardian at least), low toughness, and little defensive abilities and traits isn’t going to survive much longer than a pure glass cannon. I never aim for any specific amount of health, but rather focus on general survivability instead. If I had to put a number on it, then I’d say your 15-17k i probably I good guesstimate.

Built my now item-lock guardian (except for switch weapon and water stuff)…

ended up with 18k-20k HP, 39-44% crit chance and 3,300-3,400 armor. Last i checked during WvW (which is why its a range)… thats well above the supposed “comfort zone” HP of most posters here… i’m ok with it. I have zero healing power in my gear so anything other than signet is pretty useless to me because of the high health, but pretty sure i can survive well enough.

I’m a shout build and i managed to RUN AWAY from a 4v1 even with the raining CC, that’s how i know i’m tough.

Era.2930:

here you go, on the wiki is a complete list with the vendors name:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_karma_merchant_items

I’m sorry, that is FAR from complete.

See how the level of items don’t even reach 60?

The link for dulfy is exactly it though.

Thank you!

Anybody have a list of karma merchants for level 80 equipment?

Links will be fine.

I’m specifically hunting for a karma vendor of accessories (rings, amulet, X).

I found level 80 pow/vit/tou accessories in Orr which was exactly what i needed.

Now i’m wondering if there is a comparable karma item for rings and amulet with the same stat combination, maybe even weapons? I’m sure this will be helpful to others.

Please and thank you!

When someone has to use an old status quo MMO to compare to a supposed “revolutionary MMO” then something is wrong.

See, you’re falling for that mentality again… “It was like this in that game, so it’s going to be like this in this game”.

That’s not what the whole manifesto is about.

There is no middle ground, the nerfs were stupid. They certainly aren’t helping anyone except maybe people who QQ about retal… but even for that, a lot of Guardians have come to a consensus that the wrathful spirit nerf was deserved just not as severe as the 70% reduction.

Stay classy GW2.

No you should always be switching weapons. No one in this game should ever be using only one weapon. You have 2 weapon sets for a reason.
There is so much QQ about this breaking symbols and symbol traits. Last time I checked we get 5 symbols not 1…
Lastly, the GS was always a crappy weapon on the guardian. The Oct 7 changes haven’t changed that. The guardian has much better weapons if you want to gain synergies with the rest of what the class can do. On release, I would have rolled a Warrior or even a Ranger if I wanted to play GS extensively…

Opinions stated as fact…

Opinion stated as fact everywhere…

People are allowed to hate when their favorite weapon, WHICH IS NOT EVEN OP, is nerfed.

As for getting a refund, oh i hope this is possible. That’s like buying a diamond ring, then suddenly the jeweler comes to you to say, oops that’s actually cubic zirconium but its practically like diamond anyway so… DEAL WITH IT!

That’s just BS.

Less QQ, more pew pew.

Explains the nerf on retaliation… but does NOT explain why it was nerfed so severely, i mean a trait was reduced to 30% of what it used to be and ITS NOT EVEN OP.

The skill bar change, although it doesn’t bother me all that much, is s2pid because it bothers the muscle reflex and timing memory of devote PvPers (which i am not). If PvP is such a big deal then why did they screw a these players? huh? HUUUH?!

P.S. saying “don’t be stupid about things” just screams egoist and deserving of trolls, but too bad i have too much pride for that.

your best bet are:

Staff symbol
Retreat!
Save yourselves!

We are moving towards retaliation being more of a counter to taking many hits rather than a general boon to keep up all the time.

Felt like a direct response to use Guardians who are overly angsty about the 70% reduced duration from the Wrathful Spirit trait.

Will have to check the effectiveness of relying on a signet for it… still hoping for a balance change to make returning a fixed amount to a percent of damage received scaling with power…

Grew up playing much less realistic MH-style weaponry i see…

Its a visual effect so ok, but increasing it might block FoV quite a bit especially being regularly locked to the back of your character and needing to see forward.

because i’m always in /g… and i feel lazy to have to switch to /s then back to /g after…

so i look silent. ~__~

valdamus.6289:

Yep. look at the facts. look at what they patch vs what ppl complain about. it is 10/10 always dead on with QQing. Thiefs spam 2? Nerfd. Mesmers clones?? nerfd. Guardians Retal?? nerfd. Guardian stability?? Nerfed. Elementalists massive condition stacking + unlimited aoe range?? Nerfed. Engineers massive cripple stacking?? Nerfed. and many others. I’ve played many other mmos where patchs as game and strategy changing as this take MONTHS to develop and another month to test. Anet releases this patches weekly w/o proper testing.

It took them 3 years of developing a class and change how skills work and then only a little less than 2 weeks to start changing skills left and right? That just sounds like they saying that they didnt know wtf they where doing whether true or not. They should ONLY fix skill bugs and game bugs and take their time with skill changing patches to 1 every 3~5 months like every other mmo. there is a reason for that.

qft.

The undeserved QQ about retaliation makes me sad.

But again, passive damage = no no in action MMO so a bit of a nerf was due. 70% is just insane, even for OCD.

Exedore.6320:

No, I was aware of the scaling. Just saying it may shift more in that direction (even less base damage, but more damage per power).

Good to know. Shifting more into that direction will make retaliation a viable build imo since you’ll be able to focus more on supporting it with power and be different breed of glass cannon.

Still hoping for return percentage of damage with +scaling to power.i feel that would be a reasonable change considering the tooltip.

Exedore.6320:

Retaliation has constantly been on a fine line between useless and overpowered (this mostly applies to sPvP). If you build your character to stay alive as long as possible, Retaliation will end up dealing a lot of damage, giving you offense with little investment in actual offensive stats or abilities. That allows for a heavier focus than desired on defense. However, if you balance retaliation’s numbers for those builds, it feels like it has no impact whatsoever for characters that aren’t built to take a considerable amount of damage.

In the long-term, this boon may become more dependent on an offensive stat like power or condition damage than it already is (lower base, faster scaling). That way, it will be stronger for the squishier characters and weaker for the survival characters that tend to get it extended as a freebie for focusing on defense.

Not sure if you are guesstimating or just didn’t know how its calculated…

Damage returned is fixed per level and scales with power, increasing damage by 1 for every 13.4 power. At level 80, base damage is 267.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

Its damage scales with power… that is why i said it is a balanced skill, because you are literally teetering between offense and defense. it can’t be OP based on that fact (at its current scaling levels).

Still heavily inconvenienced by this “hey lets make something 70% weaker” nerf.

Polle.6908:

The writing was on the wall and guardians could easily keep almost 100% uptime on retaliation with little to no effort. This change brings the trait inline with the others but shouldn’t change the way guardians are currently being played. So all is good as long as you don’t activate everything at once.

It did.

To quite a number of us theorycrafters.

Keeping it up 100% is in itself a bad investment now.

I would have stomached 5s, but 3 requires some venting.

I’ve already said most of the reasoning in a thread i started, but to give a snip:

The boon itself is worth so little (minimal damage, no reduction in received damage) and supporting it is so split between offense and defense which balances itself.

The only reason i accept as “reasonable” is the QQ that its a passive damage source which should not be a means of playing an action MMO.

Looks like i don’t have a case.

I’m admitting defeat and saying the wrathful spirit nerf is deserved.

sigh… i’m not mad, i’m sad.

i go for 25/25/0/20/0

GS Pow/your choice, the minors are good/2hand cooldown

If you go full offensie for leveling its usually much faster than going for a stable/balanced build.

You can respec easily when you get to 80.

So as it stands, recapping everything…

Why it was nerfed:
- Passive source of damage that doesn’t agree with the action-MMO theme
- People QQ about it being up 100%
- It “supposedly” works great for tanky build (which i was aiming for actually, but never made it, only at 4/6 of my knight’s draconic armor )

Why it was nerfed too much:
- It doesn’t give all that much benefit and supporting it is hard enough (my own argument)
- 3s is not enough for a sustained existence as a boon that we cannot control from the trait (in the event that we just want it from the trait)
- It became 3s just because of an OCD employee (thanks Valdamus for making this point) since the 70% reduced duration is a big red flag on nerfing… i mean just listen to it “hey guys, we’re reducing your benefit by 70%!”.

I think QQers aside, we have enough reason to put this up in the suggestion thread.

Comments?

What ^he^ said. Ask yourself, how often do you need to roll? If the answer is “a lot! i don’t wanna be squished by taking too much damage! i want to survive and win! rawr!” then congrats because then you found a good supporting trait.

Ynna.8769:

From what I understand, Guardians were doing quite some “passive” damage with Retaliation in PvP.

Heard of that too, but only for condition damage ticks that are unavoidable since it attaches to many skills while dealing minuscule damage if no specceed in condition damage and larger damage returns in the form of retaliation.

I always thought this was unintended and will be fixed later. Either way, doing passive damage still means you’re taking damage yourself and it evens out down the line as you get pummeled for taking on that damage. The self-terminating nature works even in PvP.

Got to believe in magic.

How did you manage do complete all hearts in Queensdale + you story quest and still be level 5? O.o

- avoid DEs
- do not explore, avoid POIs and vistas as much aspossible
- don’t gather
- don’t revive anyone
- don’t craft

This should be an achievement…

New Achievement: CLUELESS
Complete all hearts on a map without gaining any other form of experience other than the hearts.

Whoa, you actually moved the comment here…

You know it deep down that Guardians have too much of it already, this shouldn’t be a boon where it’s up 100% cause that just means the only counter for it is boon removal. If Guardian’s retaliation centralizes tactics that much, it’s a tad OP don’t you think.

True that 10 sec for practically is indeed “abusable” to the extent of permanently up… BUT we are talking about a skill of both minimal utility and contradicting support. To elaborate:

Damage returned is fixed per level and scales with power, increasing damage by 1 for every 13.4 power. At level 80, base damage is 267.

1. Minimal Utility
What does it do? it deals a “fixed” amount of damage that slightly scales with power. That’s about 300 per tick, 400 if you fully speced in Power. Unreliable damage output (since you have to be hit) and debuff-able. In builds that include retaliation, it usually plays second chair to a more reliable damage source, ie. your own. To have more than one utility skill devoted to something so unreliable is going to cost you stuff like a teleport, an aoe buff, damage, CC, etc. It is by no means a reliable means to deal damage and it doesn’t even protect the user from any damage.

If it did what its supposed to do and reflect a portion of damage received (maybe 20% + 1% every 100 Power) then by all means 1-3sec is appropriate since timing that hundred blade into eviscerate would be so clutch.

2. Contradicting Support
It is an ability that scales on disconnected stats. Think toughness and healing power {insert lengthy analysis here} which supports eachother in effectiveness. Then think Vitality and healing power, they are off-sync since the more you pump one, the less effective the other becomes because {insert lengthy analysis here}. Now go to offense and defense, its the two most opposing elements of all (skipping the “a good X is the best Y” argument), offense is better maximized by crits or conditions while defense is maximized by boon duration and regens. It is, by its nature, self terminating.

If anything, id’s say its the most balanced effect since you’d need to balance offense and defense while not getting a good edge in either direction.

If anything, the minor Virtue of Retribution (3s of Retaliation when using Virtue) along with Stand Your Ground + Hammer are still ample sources of Retaliation. Wrathful Spirit didn’t seem that powerful in comparison as Courage has the longest CD out of any of the virtues, unless you also pick up Retreat.

I made a thread for this discussion… but anyway, that’s more reason why the duration is important since we’re not exactly magically generating protects every few seconds. Retaliation is underwhelming as it is, now we have to focus on it and lose utility? that’s just bad balancing right there. You wouldn’t say:

“Hey, i can do X from time to time, so the boon i get from X should be shorter because i can source it from many things.” while in fact you had to give up a lot so that you’ll have to get enough X sources to make that even work.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

If its not you, its somewhere else, but it still affects you.

Rich.9503:

It does seem a pointless change. What’s the point of being a guardian if they nerf the guardians defences. I may as well become a warrior.

That’s exactly the thing… it doesn’t even help with our defenses nor does it scale with being a turtle (as it scales with power instead of received damage).

This is annoying, I might have to rethink my 25/25/0/20/0 build now.

Looking for a clear explanation why the Wrathful Spirit trait (Honor I) was nerfed.

Old: Gives 10sec retaliation when aegis is broken
New: Gives 3sec

I’m working up to my equipment but i’m basically running a retaliation build (albeit i didn’t finish my toughness set in time and my PVE MF set isn’t so good with retaliation).

So… why is this deserved? Its not like we can be dedicated tanks nor does it reduce received damage.

> sad_guardian.jpg

The tree climbing vista in Straits of Devastation…

Youtube + another guy in front of me showing me the way… fell of one branch… landed on another… winged it from there. got to the vista before the other guy who kept falling from the “right” way.

then i waited at the bottom to rez all the falling bodies… so glad the game isn’t “realistic” in that aspect.

Also… one time, saw the kill champion mob in the “safe zone” DE. Me (guardian), elementalist and archer only people there. i “tanked” by kiting the thing with my scepter and getting agro for a good 5 mins. slow orbs > boss CC, my hits were never too far apart for the aggro to change.

Last… the giant vet spider guarding the skill point in that one map where your personal story tells you to save some scientists in the ruins… kited that kitten thing for a solid 15 mins with my scepter/focus. True testament to “battle of attrition”. hand was sore after… was downed 1 time at boos 5% HP, where a guy came in, got the aggro and i got the chance to get back up. the hand fatigue really kicked in.

Saving up gold and mats to get my craft to 400 and craft myself an exotic armor set.

I’ll be busy for a while.

P.S. level 80, still waiting to get bored and play my lvl 2 i created on day 1 to reserve the name.

I just finished my “chicken run” of Straits of Devastation…

Guardian with complete MF set (so no toughness), armed with Retreat! and Save yourselves!.

Died 1 time.

Tell me that’s not punishment. (though i kept losing my weapon MF stacks)

This game can be as hard as you want to make it. Its “instinctive” to old gamers like ourselves to have forethought and prepare for the min-maxing, it probably has never occurred to us that if we die too many times by taking on too much too fast, we’d run out of copper and we’d be scratching the bottom of the barrel for repairs. THEN it gets to insanity mode. The fact that you already have foresight of how to do things makes it so that the game doesn’t seem punishing… wear only stuff you craft, do a run solo, raid a supply camp on your own (i tried this with a small degree of success but never managed to completely capture) if you really want to be punished.

For me, “not punishing” means free revives on the spot you died on with no stat/exp penalties. that’s not the case in GW2.

Equivalent exchange doesn’t always work…
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Fullmetal_Alchemist_-_02_-_Large_21.jpg

As a guardian, i know your pain… but i would’t want to lose my defensive abilities for more HP. Still, this leaves me terribly vulnerable to condition damage if i don’t spec removals which is silly since i’m supposed to be able to mitigate a lot and it piegoenholes me into builds that have to compensate the HP.

The limit is only as much as you want it to be. My guardian has 10 from weapons + 1 heal + 3 utilities + 3 virtues (you shouldn’t really be using the elite so often), and it seems to be more than enough for a cycle.

As for Grandmaster traits, they should have better utility, but not flat out “better” than everything else. I’m one of the few people who go for 25/25/0/20/0 and that’s pretty counter-intuitive considering i’m giving up possibly 2 grandmaster slots… but works for me. I just don’t like that some are RIDICULOUSLY weak like the GS healing trait.

check the TP.

there is always a need for MF stuff (opal) and pow/prec stuff.

A critical hit (also known as a critical strike, or abbreviated to crit) is a type of hit that deals more damage (minimum 150% base + critical damage) than a regular hit.

The amount of additional precision required to increase the chance of a critical hit by 1% is determined by the following formula:

(0.0024 × Level2) + (0.06 × Level) + 1

this and other useful info here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

there is a translucent blue set of weapons… in think order of the whispers. no particles to my knowledge though…

my traveler’s GS with MF sigil has a small “drippy water” particle effect. subtle but cool to see during lull moments.

i’d prefer it to be more like 1 sec since its not supposed to be invulnerability… better yet if 0.5 sec to get the “practically” same instance hits counted (which is practically impossible with a single skill that spaces the attacks evenly but can be from multiple sources that is inescapable because its instant and you can’t react).

The temporary nature of aegis can sometimes be a good thing depending on how you manage. In your case you want “protection” rather than aegis, i suggest you look into that with duration extension and building duration stacks.

oh… so many attacks that proc multiple small hits… sure do hope some wrathful spirit helps me get back at those baddies…

There have been control tests conducted by Redditors… though i can’t link because i don’t want to open up my history.

Basically, it DOES help to wear a MF set, but not to the degree of double the loots…

the 1% normal drop with 100% MF = 2% drop rate its to an extent true, but also misleading…

the tests showed roughly the same “frequency” of drop, but a skew towards rarer drops. This means something like of 100 items:
50 white 30 blue 15 green 5 yellow
you might expect something like (making the numbers up)
35 white 35 blue 20 green 10 yellow

Anyone willing to scavenge up the Reddit post for OP?

P.S. regarding the “kill more, get the same” argument… in theory it’ll work better since you’ll get 200 of said items in my example and eventually get the same rares and lots more junk… but the beauty of MF comes in mob tagging. Keeping it on you at all times helps every little bit too. It’ll eventually boil down to “i’ll eventually kill as many as you did anyway and i’ll still net more rares”.

Jotun Greatsword.

As for other options… the dungeon sets look cool.

So if the condition damage build is pretty bad.. Then I guess the spectral weapon build is bad as well? as they do inflict burning damage.
So do anyone have a good build to recommend, mainly using Greatsword. I mostly play WvW.

My exact build. currently using MF stuff for farming so it might seem a bit off, but this is the best in terms of a good offensive build i can think of for GS.

For WvW, this works,but remember that GS doesn’t give much CC and you’d only really be able to shine in smaller clashes.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#MVcz0mzMmRGaomnLvMpp0G0Mkoszs

As for spirit weapon burning, its not so much you burning the life out of targets, its applying the conditions and making use of your traits that deal effects on top of it (like +10% damage on burning foes). I seriously hope you didn’t think that the spirit weapons are a summon > forget > free kill build, because its so not.

I still prefer scepter/focus for the ranged capability.

Shield is limited to defense while a focus can be used for both, and its a pretty well-known concept that a good offense is the best defense… that and kiting, lots of kiting.

Makes vendoring too too toooo convenient.

Players will find less need to travel around, look for vendors, and sell stuff.

True that the pick-up system will hinder it a bit… but ANet doesn’t want to spoonfeed us too much since we’ve been already received quite a bit in terms of convenience.

Interesting…

Always thought it was FIFO when prices are equal.

Noted, will make good use of this info.

Should really be FIFO though.

As a rule of thumb, avoid anything related to condition damage like the plague, it’s the worst attribute for Guardians. Burning stacks on duration and higher burning damage takes priority.Which means you gain very little dps/second from it,not to mention if other people have higher burning damage,it will take priority above yours and you may even never take damage credit for it,since your ticks will be at the bottom of the priority list to hit.
Power,Precision,Crit damage,Vitality and Toughness are all important depending on your setup.
Healing power is a little lackluster but still useful and condition damage is an absolute waste of an attribute.

Ok, i’ll clarify this a bit since it raised some confusion (SO NOBODY USE SKILLS YET! haha)

For Burning:

• Burning stacks DURATION not damage
• Burning takes the character’s condition damage as a queue ticket, the highest damage goes first at the duration the character used it
  - example of above is using VoJ on yourself and a fully-speced condition damage necro… you attack a mob, burn it for 10 sec… first 5 sec the necro’s burn, the 2nd 5 sec your burn… means your condition damage isn’t worth anything until that time it ticks.
• Burning is the most reliable condition for guardians, so there is no “efficient” way to make use of condition damage other than burning
• To make your condition damage really worth it, you have to really pour it in so that you know for sure you’re the one burning the mob (think of it as the line you cross between magikarp and gyarados)

For healing:

• its scales terribad, with good reason, since if it scaled too well then we’d be effectively healers
• [ healing power : toughness ] as [ power : precision ] thus cleric stuff is as self-supporting as berserker stuff (p.s. crit damage is pretty difficult to make worth it so it is much less valuable to precision)
• high vitality will just kitten your healing power since you are not getting enough percentage health back with numeric heals (which they all are)
• aoe heals are always taken for their “multiplicative effect” when used in groups, thus its the only (and you can quote me on this) really effective use of healing power… also self-heals are good initially without healing power for the reason that no multiplier means you are actually losing on benefits by stacking healing power (good guy Anet made self heals viable without any healing power at all)

More on topic:
i already have a MF set, you should always consider getting one early when you hit 80… planning on pow/tou/vit stuff like vigil armor since the stuff from dungeon vendor morro has insane token costs and aurora stuff isn’t a complete set. As i farm for the gold… i’d also consider FULL KNIGHT armor (tou/pow/prec) and try to pump vit using accessories. i’ll be really weak to conditions with little vit (from not mixing in valkyrie) but i’ll let retaliation and removals deal with that.

[img]http://www.guildwars2guru.com/uploads/gallery/album_197/gallery_3318_197_23053.jpg[/img]

Fancy any?

[img]http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/image_thumb837.png[/img]
[img]http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/image_thumb846.png[/img]
[img]http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/image_thumb855.png[/img]

Mt. Maelstrom…

The one at the north end of the dungeon circle.

The one at the bottom with the frog people.

For retaliation does not work if the move is blocked or it misses…
It counts per hit (a big attack will tick 1 retaliation)…
Damage depends on Power, not incoming damage, which is counter-intuitive to the description…
Supposedly it is called out for being OP since you can return damage from conditions, and considering the damage is relatively weak and your power is pretty good, then you are returning more than you are receiving…
There is a general consensus that its pretty useless if you go up against burst damagers.

it would be too “stacking invulnerability” if it did happen. imagine a party of 5 guardians…

maybe every additional stack of aegis gives 1sec of protection… i think that would at least not completely waste the stack if ever two sources happened to hit simultaneously. It wouldn’t even be noticeable since you’ll have to get aegis out of the way first within that 1sec frame. (well unless you’re stacking protect and it just becomes a neat new mechanic)

Can’t find it here… and this is the most comprehensive i know of…

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/zrd0c/complete_level_80_exotic_armor_list_find_the/

Currently 70. Still not much in terms of experience but i do plan on stacking toughness.

This is because i hear of many dissatisfied customers of healing stacking. Toughness is easier to upkeep than raw HP.

If i’m not mistaken, toughness can be penetrated by conditions to a more effective degree (although i hear talks that toughness reduces it to an extent), which is why people prefer the well-rounded vitality because it’ll basically mitigate any form of damage…

My take on the above paragraph is to take some vit with the toughness, but ultimately pump toughness because it’ll maximize your heal (don’t want to go into an eHP discussion here). If it is true that conditions will be your bane, i’m sure condition removal is somewhere in a guardian’s arsenal. A bit selfish, yes, but i’m not building a martyr or cleric, i’m building a knight. Can you guess what rune set i’m going for?

P.S. the world is full of physical pow/prec attackers and and only a few condition dealing builds. I’d rather test my mettle against the many.