Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone!

Lately I’ve been streaming more and more and so decided to also share my build on the forums. So it is possible you already know this build, that’s good then.

This build is extremely strong with a great survivability. When played correctly you can easily beat blackwater builds with this. Eventhough phantasm is solo-based damage, you can still beat 1v3’s /1v4’s. I’ll put some video’s below of my gameplay.

For now, let’s focus on the build:
http://intothemists.com/guides/1793-phantasm_hybrid_20

Weapons:

Why Greatsword/Sword-Pistol?
Greatsword offers you a great long distance dps and a great way to chase targets with Izerk doing good damage and cripple for pretty long (Food buff +40% cond duration also works on this) The clones of greatsword hit multiple times which is also great (I will come back to this later on). It also allows to you gain 6 stacks of might quite easily and is great vs thieves to knock them out of shadow refuge.

Sword offers you a really long immobilize with a short cooldown and ofc an immunity which will help you quite a lot with your survivability. Please notice that you’ll have to learn to use blurred frenzy more defensive than offensive. Don’t use it with illusionary leap too often. Safe your illusionary leap to immobilize your targets so your phantasm attacks will be much harder to evade

Pistol offers you one of the best, if not the best, phantasm in game. Iduelist can stack a great amount of bleedings which helps your dps in this build a lot. The stun also comes very usefull since it can give you at max 10 stacks of might when interrupt (Bountiful interruption).

Gears, Food & Runes:

As you can see I use a mix of bezerkers and rabid. (You can also swap bezerkers gears for assasin’s if you want more crit strike for more bleeding stacks)
Basicly with all the vitality buffs you can obtain in WvW you’ll have more than enough vitality to survive. So what you want to build around is:
Power, Precision, toughness, condition damage.

If you want to use knights instead of bezerkers gears then I can already tell you that you wont have enough damage to win most 1v3’s
The reason behind this is because you don’t have any cooldown reduction on your phantasm, so sometimes you just lack damage, even with the gears I’m running.

With the 40% cond duration food you can stack up to 20 bleeds due the fact that izerk, iduelist and the Greatsword clones hit multiple times. Having Deceptive Evasion really becomes useful here, because with 3 greatsword clones you can still keep up 10 stacks bleeding. Add a few stacks of might with that (#2 greatsword and #5 greatsword can give you 10-25 stacks might easily) and you get bleeding ticks of around 80-100.
The Oil is ofc to gain more crit strike so your illusions will crit more often = more bleed stacks = higher dps.

Runes:
Runes of centaur are really amazing for this build for a few reasons
1. The power you get gives you more dps, which is great.
2. The bleeding duration +15% gives you the ability to do even more bleeding stacks and gain more dps.
3. This is the best of all: Constant swiftness

With 30% boon duration and 20% swiftness duration you’ll have +/- 15 seconds of swiftness every 10 seconds. This means that you can stack swiftness up to 2mins if you constantly refresh it.

With constant swiftness, blink and 3 stealths you’ll be able to outrun almost anyone. Even if you’re outnumbered 1 to 10, you can easily wait for them to get close to you, stealth, blink the opposite way and run away with perm swiftness.

Traits:
Don’t think theres much to explain on this part besides a few things:
1. Your dps is really high due: domination III, dueling II+X and 15 minor trait dueling and 25 minor trait chaos.
2. Your survivability gets boosted a lot with PU (Grandmaster trait chaos), Chaos III, Dueling X and Inspiration IV.

Why is dueling X good for offensive, aswell as defensive?
Offensive: Basicly because clones do crits which apply bleeding. This can add up, like i said before, with 3 greatsword clones to 10 stacks easily.
Defensive: Since you’ll have constant vigor you’ll be able to dodge a lot, which gives you an upkeep of 3 illusions constantly. This makes it harder for the enemy to spot who’s the real player and also gives you the ability to easily gain the full F4 shatter to stomp enemies or tank enemies till one of your stealths is back up so you can escape much easier.

Video’s:
WvW Mesmer Roaming #7
WvW Mesmer Roaming #6
WvW Mesmer Roaming #5
How to Survive – Guardian + Ele
WvW Mesmer Roaming 30 Mins Stream with multiple 1v3/4’s.

What I find hilarious is I have been cleansing and High dps the whole time. With the Paladin 2.5 build I made 8 months ago. The only thing I change is my gear which you can see here. And for surely isn’t a kitten thing kitten on my dps. And that’s with Zeal in the trash somewhere.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARGoIyFYfAgYKqYGveQRFyQA-j0yAY/ARFCUyXgN5poV4QLuERj6aMlLq2dIy2bioZbOqQACWAA-w

Hit like a truck cleanse heal and don’t die. Because people can call 15/25 all they like. It’s not the end all. And you are not worthless if you don’t have it. Guys need to stop this BS of belittling other players. If you get the job done that is all that matters. Any one who has a problem with that can suck it.

In my case I get it done and make it look extremely easy. I do it every event and have easily 100+ videos showing it. Not using the so called best meta. Which goes to show you bring the player and the skill. Anyone can do that example. Do not listen to try hards tell you that you can’t. Just because you’re not doing the popular opinion. It’s just what it is a opinion that doesn’t mean anything.

I have an armor rating of 2682, and i am getting critically hit by thieves up to 12k? What gives?? I am stacking toughness to defend against this crap and still am getting dropped faster than i can even counter it. Unless i am doing something wrong, i am getting close to uninstalling this game. I dont mean to rage or anything but there appears to be a serious WvW balance issue. The average hit from them is around 4k but still with how fast they strike it kills me 4-kittens.

I prefer to group with level 80’s since it leaves more room for error. They have more stats, even with being downscaled, and more traits/utilities. They are also mire likely to know their class better than someone just starting out and are properly geared. When people level, they are often rarely not up to date on armor/weapons.

Every time I have been with a low level, they are the first to die. I did AC story with several of them and they were consistently face planted into the ground. I personally do not feel like carrying people through the dungeons. Nor do I feel like spending more of my free time doing a dungeon that can be completed quicker with an all 80 group.

There’s really know reason for a low level to run dungeons anyway. If you’re going for rares then that’s a waste since they’re cheap and they’ll be obsolete by the time you have enough tokens for them as you level up pretty quickly. If you’re going for exotics, there’s no need to get the armor now as you can’t equip it.

I’m not saying you can’t do dungeons as a low level but be aware that a large percentage of players do not want to play with them.

Nosoyelarty.7268:

But why people use signets of 25% movespeed on dungeons and boss fights. That is all i want to know.

gtta go fast son

Mario Lemieux.9107:

What CryxTryx said.

Most people run dungeons for the gold or the tokens, in which case they want (and in my case, I expect) efficiency. Your screen shot shows 3 dead party members, meaning you guys barely killed the boss. Which means the run must have taken a while and involved several wipes.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind running with sub-80’s. And by running I mean switching to your alt once the boss is dead. I’ll hold the cutscene

Also notice that in the first screen shot the OP is displayed as a low level character, yet for the boss he has logged on his 80.

This leads me to believe that the boss was not downed on first attempt.

Based on the clock in the screen shots the dungeon also took over an hour to complete.

First screen shot shows the party already past the spider boss at 4:36 and the dungeon was completed at 5:19.

“The exception proves the rule.”

The fact that it is screen shot worthy for a low level group to (from your screenshots) squeeze off that final boss kill only proves that 80 only groups are justified in wanting all 80’s.

Don’t get me wrong, we know it can be done with lower level toons. In fact when AC was first revamped and there were more tears on the forum then there ever were in Ascalonia a group of players got together and created a video of a full group of level 35’s with average gear completing the dungeon.

Just because it can be done however, doesn’t mean I want to role the dice more then I already am when usin the LFG tool.

Yes, taking the time to read the LFG can avoid some problems. Yes, explaining that you are new, and seeing if you can find a good learning group is a good thing, and yes, starting your own dungeon group is the best way to avoid being kicked, however…

The poster could have said it so much better.

There are a LOT of people out there who are not simply looking for the next farm or the speed clear.

Post your own LFG asking for people who are learning. Ask in map chat if there’s anyone who wants to run with a new player. Communicate with the group before you go into the dungeon.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to absolutely guarantee that you won’t be kicked for one reason or another, but if you lead, others will follow. Take the chance, and don’t let the farmers and speed clearers get you down.

Good luck to you!

I think people use the Anet has only had GW2 out for a year excuse way to much. That excuse worked for World of Warcraft up to Wraith of the Lich King because they where pioneering new idea’s. Arena.net had a very solid foundation to run the game off of. They had the original Guildwars, World of Warcraft, Rift, and Starwars the Old Republic to pull ideas from. Instead they decided to focus on one area of the game (living story) and that was just straight poorly done.

I think that’s whats leading to the toxic environment the game is starting to form. People feel lied to about the direction the game was suppose to go in. The game was meant to be casual friendly instead its extremely casual unfriendly with extreme RNG’s and new time gated items (from crafting and vendor’s).

That does not even mention the fact they have blatantly lied to the community as of late. I am sorry if you don’t like that anet your deserve to be called what you are.

Where are the fractal boxes with skins you can pick?
Where are the fractal leader boards?

We had a huge content wipe for these amazing fractal leader boards that where advertised as part of a patch that never manifested.

This does not even go into broken class system in the game that seems to show untold amounts of favoritism in design.

nexxe.7081:

Redenaz.8631:

I don’t do dungeons often (not generally my thing,) but the times that I had, I didn’t have any issues with people. Just steer clear of “experienced only/speed clear” runs, and, if you’re worried about getting kicked, there’s the old standby of starting the group yourself. Hopefully your future experiences will be better.

Except it doesn’t matter if he/she starts the group. It only takes 2 people to kick. What kind of idiocy is that? Who at A-net thought that a minority should have the leverage over the whole group? It boggles the mind. Not only that, but the person who starts the cutscene of the dungeon is the leader, and so if he/she is kicked, or leaves, the rest of the group gets kicked.

Who ever enters the dungeon first is the owner of the dungeon not who ever starts the first cut scene.

Why don’t you just make your own group?

I think it’s important to note that some people really do just play the builds they’re happy with. I run a sword/shield & greatsword warrior with full Celestial Gear and Shout Heals. I find that I like having the security of being able to heal in a pinch, and still put out enough damage to be relevant in most game situations.

I also realize, however, that my build isn’t geared towards speed clearing, experienced groups. I know that my build won’t measure up to the standard of those groups, so when I run dungeons I always put “Noob Friendly” in the tag. I typically get grouped with people with some understanding of their classes that can benefit from the support I provide, and I get to run dungeons without people kicking me for not running a meta-DPS spec.

In short, if you join a group clearly listed as “speed clear” and can’t pull your weight, then yes, you’re being disruptive with the build you’ve chosen, and playing your way is going to get you kicked, just like complaining about my group being full of noobs and people in crappy gear is gonna get you kicked from mine. It’s all about ensuring a good experience for everyone, and it’s up to us to determine what that means in any given situation.

And that, OP, is the clincher. Everyone is playing how they want (unless they’re using a build that they dislike, which is a silly thing to do). Sure, some are more efficient than others, but ‘play how you want’ is nothing more than a moniker applied by people to belittle others that choose builds that are not up to their standards.

spoj.9672:

You do realise its meant as humour. And yes we do play how we want. But we have the common decency to run builds which benefit the group and make runs go smoothly and quickly. Which happens to be how we want to play (being helpful).

Honestly, then some people have a weird way of expressing their humorous intent.

Hi OP, Berserk gear is more favorable considering the short time period to complete a dungeon. However, full zerker gear is not good for a pug’s party. Because the mob and boss will most likely target you due to your high damage, thus you will find yourself kissing the floor more often. However, Zerk gear is extremely good in a full Zerk team.

I would advise you to get yourself familiar with the dungeon first, learning when to dodge, etc before getting full zerk. The only different between a Berserk and Knight stat is just the time difference to complete a dungeon.

My build: 10/25/10/25
Save Yourself + Retreat + HoldtheLine or alternate change with Bane Signet
GS(Superior Sigil of Strength), Sword(+5%dmg) + focus(berly orb).
+10%dmg on Burning mob
+10%dmg on conditioned mob
+10%dmg when endurance not full
Invulnerability when Blind,
Sword +5%dmg,
Empowering MIght
20%Shout cool down

The bottom line is, play however style you like(support, dmg absorber) so you are happy playing it.

Fernling.1729:

I think it made them look bad by presenting that goal and not coming anywhere close to meeting it. With that, I would never have expected them to still give out rewards.

Even if they hit it they’d reward all who participated with a green and some bloodstone dust.

kokiman.2364:

Paul.4081:

Fernling.1729:

I think it made them look bad by presenting that goal and not coming anywhere close to meeting it. With that, I would never have expected them to still give out rewards.

Even if they hit it they’d reward all who participated with a green and some bloodstone dust.

But that’s not true, we already knew what the rewards were.

A blue and bloodstone dust?

Arena.net sets a goal and a deadline. The goal is met 5 months after the deadline. People are furious that they aren’t getting a reward for not making the deadline.

Makes sense. Ya gotta believe me.

Peetee.9406:

Once again, goes to prove how out of touch ANet is with their playerbase.

Do you really think any of us neckbeards use facebook?

I do, and I like it.

It’s another way for them to communicate with the playerbase, and they respond to people quite often.

I think humans can stand to take a backseat in the consideration department for a while. There’s four other races which are not catered to nearly as lovingly as humans.

Stop with the “AH is for new people” already..
It’s in the grandmaster line. No where does it state “this is for new players only”.
It’s a trait, it’s there to be used by anyone who wants to.

It’s like saying only new players use Selfless Daring because they don’t have any friends to heal them.

I really do think half of you forget that there are a large portion who play MMO’s for enjoyment, and not to fuel their ego about being “best” or “better” than others. If someone wants to play AH then let them, there’s nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

Some of the advice in this thread is terrible, my god.

Guardian can be tricky to get used to at first. You must understand that your support is pro-active (you will help your allies before they need it). This also mean that if you’re doing it right, no one will be able to notice (which doesn’t have the same feeling of instant gratification as making green bars go up).

Your support takes 3 forms.

1. Boons
Boons are a vital part of your kit. You can apply protection (33% damage reduction, so op), regen, stability, and aegis more than any other class. These allow your group to run self-destructively glassy builds, and can force people to clear content despite themselves.

2. Utility
Reflection/projectile absorption is probably the most important thing to have in pve in this game. You have wall of reflection and shield of the avenger. Lots of classes specifically have the class weakness of having low condi removal. You have pure of voice, purging flames, and Virtue IX trait. Elementalist can trait so that every time they blast a fire field they give fury. You can drop long duration fire fields they can blast with lightning hammer.

3. Direct heals
You can sort of do this, but if you’re doing your job well otherwise this won’t be necessary. Ideally this is only something you incidentally do while performing your actual support functions of damage mitigation.

I suggest you try the build I run.

intothemists

-I run boon duration runes and food, and trait into the boon duration tree. Hold the line gives 8 seconds of protection =)

-try virtue bombing in dire situations (use renewed focus, mash all virtues, mash them all again).

-One of the best parts of guild wars 2 is that you are not required to take damage. So, I run berserker gear to help clear things a little faster. One thing to note is the 5 trait in honor, that gives you vigor on crits. If you don’t want to run berserker, I understand, but I would recommend knights as an alternative, so that you can maintain your vigor uptime.

I hope this is helpful, guardian is a lot of fun, and their support is game changing.

Ethics.4519:

ShannonKasull.2091:

Lyssa runes gives precision, random boon on healing and on top of that, cleanses all conditions, gains all boons and has a cooldown of 45 sec.

We are talking about a support guard here, while healing, you gain boon and on elite you become tanky due to the boons and removes all condition. This frees up my self condition cleansing utility slot and also allows me to use healing breeze instead of Signet of resolve if I do not have 1.
On top of that, you have a 5 sec all boons that allows you to soak up plenty of damage.

Sure, if you want to be a dps guardian by all means wear zerker but if you are trying to increase overall dps to party and sustain party dps by playing support, you need those heals and survivability.

Think about it, a full Zerker guardian(lowest hp pool) that gets downed often cannot control the battlefield and instead of tanking, preventing party members from dropping and giving boons and constantly stacking 15 Might to the entire team attempts to provide DPS.

In the end, it’s a matter of play-style and if people want to play DPS guardian, by all means, but IMO a support heal/buff/tank guard contributes much more overall dps than one that attempts to do nothing but provide mediocre damage.

You can say whatever you want, but it depends on why you’re playing the game. If you want to do dungeons quickly and efficiently, then you’re wrong and should just go with DPS guard.

If you want to play how you want and role play as some white knight paladin pretending you’re keeping the party alive (which, mind you, you can still do in zerk) while ‘tanking’ all the damage (Don’t forget most attacks are AOEs or cleaves, so that’s silly) then sure, you’re spot on.

Mind you if you want DPS, go play a Warrior instead, why try to be something you are not?
While your DPS guardian is trying to do damage instead of upkeeping might and boon heals and damage mitigation you are affecting the overall dps your entire party can do.
Doing dungeons effectively means maintaining group DPS and staying alive, what good is a guard who does nothing but swing his greatsword around.

Downed players do no DPS, that applies for you and your party. Even when stacking in dungeons, having someone in a downed state and having to stop attacking and resurrect them means lower DPS.

However much you want a guardian to be a DPS class, they just don’t fair as well as others in this category, so instead of “role-playing” your “DPS” guardian swinging his greatsword and thinking it is efficient, you need to take a step back and look at the entire picture on how group synergy works.

The true power of a support guardian is not their raw healing abilities. It is the boons. Consant boon application and longevity.

Edit: also their abilities to remove conditions.

Chullster.3608:

ShannonKasull.2091:

A good guardian will also make use of rune sets that gives all boons when elite skill is activated.

Those Lyssa runes are rubbish, bring some DPS runes as damage is the meta, like scholar runes.

Lyssa runes gives precision, random boon on healing and on top of that, cleanses all conditions, gains all boons and has a cooldown of 45 sec.

We are talking about a support guard here, while healing, you gain boon and on elite you become tanky due to the boons and removes all condition. This frees up my self condition cleansing utility slot and also allows me to use healing breeze instead of Signet of resolve if I do not have 1.
On top of that, you have a 5 sec all boons that allows you to soak up plenty of damage.

Sure, if you want to be a dps guardian by all means wear zerker but if you are trying to increase overall dps to party and sustain party dps by playing support, you need those heals and survivability.

Think about it, a full Zerker guardian(lowest hp pool) that gets downed often cannot control the battlefield and instead of tanking, preventing party members from dropping and giving boons and constantly stacking 15 Might to the entire team attempts to provide DPS.

In the end, it’s a matter of play-style and if people want to play DPS guardian, by all means, but IMO a support heal/buff/tank guard contributes much more overall dps than one that attempts to do nothing but provide mediocre damage.

This got pretty wordy, so sorry about that. I’ve read some other posts about this sort of thing, but most of them are trying to refine builds, whereas I’m really more concerned with the overall play style of the class.

I’ve just finished leveling my Guardian to 80 and after getting my final armor and traits set up, I’m kind of disappointed with how poorly the class fits into the current meta. Traditionally I’ve always played tanks, and while I understand that GW2 is designed to do away with the holy trinity, I have to say that I’m really at a loss. Up until now I discarded my low HP and ineffective toughness as simply not having all the trait points, or using low level armor. But now that I’m here, I’m discovering that the high defense/support class of the game really has to be built as a DPS to be any help at all in a group PVE scenario. I’ve tried out building for healing, for vitality, for toughness, and a combination and the fact is that none of these has the potential to change the flow of a fight.

The whole point of playing support is to be able to change the flow of a battle in a way that isn’t damage oriented. But realistically, even a maxed out healing stat will only give allies a few hundred HP each tick, and only if they stand still and wait for it—which is never going to happen in a game where every player has to dodge constantly or take a burst to the face.

Again, I understand that this game isn’t meant to be a standard MMO where you sit around hiding behind a tank and being healed by a full support class, but I was at least expecting to be able to heal someone back to full and give them a real chance at survival, rather than just stalling their inevitable demise with a slow regen and a completely impractical AoE heal. The class has some great options as a buffer, but when it comes to damage output vs. healing there’s really no way to justify choosing healing in the current meta. If you heal someone for 1k health they will still die on the next hit, if you burst 5k you might manage to steal agro and save them. If you choose healing, you are throwing away a lot of game changing potential in the tanky DPS build, trading it in for toughness (worthless against PVE mobs) and healing (weak, slow, and impossible to direct at the specific allies who need it).

Guardian needs a viable support build in order to justify its place in the profession line-up. After all, why would you choose guardian when you could get better DPS, better movement, and equally good buffs from a Warrior? The difference in armor between the classes hardly matters in a dungeon scenario, as the mobs in dungeons will down you in 2-4 hits regardless of your armor. Check any of the most effective builds, after ~1500, toughness is wasted potential.

From what I’ve read in the forums, a lot of players seem okay with this, but I really feel like the game is missing out on a lot of potential for group strategy by ruling out a true cleric class in favor of yet another DPS buffer. Sure, they get there in different ways, but aren’t the high level PVE builds for a lot of classes essentially the same? Whether it’s power or conditions, we’re all basically slaves to damage output.

Besides my confusion about the role of guardian in the class line-up, I’m really troubled by the fact that the way I play my guardian is indistinguishable from the way I play my other, squishier characters. Despite my toughness and vitality, I still spend most of my time dodging and running for my life. If I wanted to run around on the razor’s edge, I’d play my Thief or my Mesmer. I go to a tanky character because I’m in the mood to jump on a giant monster and take the damage like a boss. I choose a guardian because I want to guard, to get between my team and the bad guys. I choose to play my tanky character because I want to stop running around like mad and just be an unshakable force, and it’s kind of hard to feel that way when you are dodge rolling every chance you get.

Am I preaching to the choir here? Missing the point of the class? Because as it stands Guardian is a total dead weight to the team if you build for its strongest stats—toughness, vitality, healing—which makes no sense. And if you build for other stats, then what’s the point of playing the Guardian in the first place?

Oh how nice … people that play how they want aren’t being called terrible anymore, they are referred to as ‘slightly less bad’. You can tell it’s the holiday season.

Painbow.6059:

Amins.3710:

Painbow.6059:

Amins.3710:

Painbow.6059:

AH in pve is designed for babies who can’t reach the dodgeroll key

quit being a kitten bag.

It’s getting old.

Obviously he’s new and that’s why he’s asking.

so use a dps build with more defensive gear and don’t rely on a trait to keep you alive

There…

Wasn’t that easier than being a kitten? If you’re so good at the PvE, be insightful and share your “epic elite skillz” in a way in which people will respect you.

Be a kitten and no one will make note of anything but that.

AH is junk so I was trying to deter him from using it, i’m not a pro at pve either, but AH is awful and shouldn’t be used

Here we go again.