Guild Wars 2

You might want to check out

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Anyone-running-front-line-in-wvw-gvg/6101708

for ideas. It’s not exclusively driving but frontline should be close enough. Naturally, gear as defensively as possible, but I’ve managed to lead with just my standard gear on scrapper. With stability recently fixed, it should be even easier. But basically, my opinion is elixir S + Self Regulating Defenses can lead to a max of ~6 second of invul every 48s which is rather good on top of all the self sustain and condi clear scrapper provides. It lets you laugh off being focused, and yes the focusing can be pretty extreme. Toss Elixir S also is underrated because it lets you break target off yourself and they recently buffed it. I think it’s more selfish than a guardian though.

Streamlined kits does give swiftness though. Or failing that, final salvo can work too.

Ryou.2398:

Bomber.3872:

Teon.5168:

Celtic Lady.3729:

guildwarrior.6304:

As happy as I am about the patch, I can’t help but feel after so much hard work and labor we’ve gone through, it’s now just being handed out to everyone on a silver platter. So much gold, gems, time spent and now it’s being given out for free. Thanks though?

I don’t understand what you think is so unfair. We got a free shared slot and we got a free level 80 booster along with some minor goodies. It’s not like they’ve given all HoT purchasers a free precursor or something. The freebies are nice, but they’re hardly game-breaking.

Completely agree. But there will always be players that whine about others not having to do what they did.

This is the nature of the beast. Older mmorpgs have to do this to stay relevant.

Totally agree! Usually I criticize the game or patches a lot, but this time it’s just awesome! I don’t understand how anyone could see anything bad with this patch.

Looking around the threads since patch there is really not a single thread with shows any issue with this patch. (Well there are some elitists crying for no reason, but thats all^^)

Thats not the reason they are complaining there are quite a few reasons, one is some people will not learn how to play the game and class and you will end up with pugs and people who have no idea what they are doing and constantly wipe the group, well see what you say in a few weeks from now before you say people are crying.

Who’s to say that doesn’t already happen? Most early level content does very little to challenge the player to the point where you can reach 80 without knowing what you’re doing. Maybe if they’re tossed into harder content earlier, they’ll be forced to learn faster. Many of my real life friends abandoned the game because the leveling content was too easy and boring. They never even got to see the actual game.

The other reason is it ruins the sense of progression why play an rpg if your not going to play play the game? However people are right it does help promote more players but it doesnt mean the quality of those players will be any good hopefully they will learn before they pug. And I can understand after you played the content several times as well.

Now this is the main issue I have with this kind of argument. Reaching level 80 is merely the tip of the iceberg. It is but a minuscule part of the game experience, and the skill required is also minuscule compared to the rest of the content. To define the process as much of a critical portion of the game so much that you’re defining bypassing it as not playing the game is an insult to the game and the players. It is not a monument by any means. It’s not any cliff of a mountain worth climbing. It’s the slope that leads to the entrance.

And that is why they were wise to allow experienced characters that probably have done it multiple times if not dozens of times to skip to it.

The game has changed. New content being released is revolving around being max level. This is the best way to get everyone up to the content they want to show off. These are the areas where changes will be focused— so they want people to be there to see these things lives. The old leveling zones will still be there if people want to level conventionally.

Vertical progression is just so dated— but don’t worry— there’s plenty of grinds for ascended and legendaries for those that want it already.

Has there ever been a competitive game that wasn’t balanced around the latest version or had the main competitive scene around the vanilla version?

Dawdler.8521:

ArchonWing.9480:

Whether you agree with it or not is another issue, but it was not intended behavior. Although in reality, how could you argue that siege can scale with condition stats, yet not power stats?

Well you could argue that its possible to smear your snot on a catapult ball before shooting it while you cant exactly shoot it harder by pushing on it while it fly away.

I’m never going to look at condi users the same anymore. >.> Especially when it burns.

It clearly wasn’t a bug

It clearly was a bug.

Fixed a bug in which siege weapons that applied condition damage were scaling based on the player’s condition damage.

Whether you agree with it or not is another issue, but it was not intended behavior. Although in reality, how could you argue that siege can scale with condition stats, yet not power stats?

Yea, that’d give more flexibility.

Bish.8627:

I do like these builds, but lack of self swiftness is a deal breaker for me everytime.

There’s always mecha legs which is 25% and if that’s too slow for you, you can also blast lightning fields.

If your group can’t fill in the rest for you, then find a better group. :p

Nothing wrong with this either: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUh2tY1VwkLQ7FLTG14HUBxH9fX37t4zUABAA-TViFABHqiDAXAgEeAAqv/gRK3WSJRVKBPTHAhqHUO4A4t3CA/93e/t3et3evNgb7VGgitA-w

But I prefer inventions for the defense against condis

Guardians were made better for WvW so I still do that, since base guardian is still a thing in large scale fights as well as them fixing stability, but I do understand how much they lack in pve and pvp. I actually play scrapper the most myself.

Not too happy with the DH atm, but I don’t want to be too bitter. After all, I never thought I’d see the day when Necro wasn’t trash tier pve, but here we are with those reapers.

This is just updating the daily rewards to match the current situation. 2g is really not what it once was and you can earn that in many areas of the game doing tasks that are even easier than dailies. If you did 50 days worth of dailies, you’d be able to craft one piece of ascended armor— almost.

They were already almost worthless before the change; it was removed so the price wouldn’t fall into even further oblivion since you can get them by playing normally anyways.

It really shouldn’t affect it much. Also dailies give 2g now; you don’t even have to pve— just do a few days worth of WvW dailies and have change to spare.

It’s largely just a convenience item in case you somehow ran out and summoning a TP is tedious. Level 80 food isn’t THAT much better than 70 and also much more expensive; I’d expect if and when they’ll add it, it’ll probably be pretty expensive. I’m still going to place buy orders to get the best food anyways and I have thousands of most food you could imagine in my bank, so I don’t mind this instant thing being a bit off a rip off— it’s only going to be for that particular use.

On the other hand, it’s not really that cheap: https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/badges-of-honor

If you got Badges of Tribute with your badges and sold, them you’d get 1.1s on average per badge. So the level 70 food has to be 5.5s or more to be cheaper, which would only be a few of them like sage salad and butternut soup (don’t get the tarragon bread here obviously)

OTOH, I have no idea how this will impact prices, as well as the fact you need guild hall upgrades to get Badges of Tribute, and also I’d imagine these things won’t be in demand forever as more and more guilds finish it up. In any case, any method of monetizing badges seems unreliable at best and even potentially risky so I think we are fine for now. Maybe heroics can be involved for better food.

…
For exactly one characater.

Please sit down and chill.

I noticed true shot got nerfed twice?

It says -20% for WvW and again in the patch notes for “professions”. So is that -40%?

Yea it kinda sucks in practice; I know why they won’t let us sell; it’s because of the perma merchant they want us to spend gold on. (BTW, I’ll buy it if it spawns its own window instead of trolling people with an NPC)

The only good thing from the provisoner is the level 70 consumables. Getting the hardened sharpening stones or sage salad for a few badges is nice. But you usually don’t need to constantly get food.

Contact support and see if they can help you.

I can see why the nerfs came but the healing turret nerf seems like a bit much. And we really don’t have a shield still. Nor a 3rd inventions GM.

/reads randomly

Barricades have been removed entirely.

Ok, I can go with this.

Stability: The frequency at which stability can be removed by control effects has been increased from 0.05 seconds to 0.75 seconds. A brief effect will now play on the character when stability is removed via control.
This change will ensure that there is at least a minimum duration of immunity to control, without being as binary (on or off with no middle ground) as it was when the boon stacked duration. While this change is primarily targeted toward WvW, it does also carry a positive note for the PvP and PvE game types as well. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of this and address it where appropriate.

Finding the sweet spot is going to be difficult no doubt, but we’ll just have to test it out.

Hunter’s Ward: This skill now creates barriers on enemies only if they are struck by the final attack. Barriers created by this skill now only stop enemies who have been marked (struck) by the final attack. The final attack damage has been increased by 33%. The ring duration has been reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. This skill’s cooldown has been reduced from 45 seconds to 40 seconds. Added a red ring for enemies so they can be identified as hostile.

May not be enough, will have to note more.

“Retreat!”: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.

<3

Blowtorch: The recharge time of this skill has been reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.

Wait what?

Healing Turret: The casting time of this skill has been increased from 0.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds.

:(

Rocket Charge: This skill now executes two leaps instead of three. This skill now charges straight forward rather than angling slightly on the initial two leaps.

Ah kitten it. But at least it won’t fling me off randomly.

“Search and Rescue!”: The radius of this shout has been normalized and now affects a radius of 600, down from 1200. The recharge time of this skill has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.

Well, that wasn’t fun.

Balanced Stance: This skill now periodically applies swiftness and two stacks of stability for 3 seconds every 3 seconds that the stance is active.

Mebe.

On the quality of internet individuals, it seems roughly equal to what I see anyways. But the internet allows you to communicate with people you’d never get to ever normally, and thus certain backgrounds and perspectives you’ve probably rarely come across.

This is amazing sometimes, and terrible other times.

And yea backseat commanders are the worst. I always invite them to do better; would be better for myself to relax. Unfortunately, so many get run off by these people and that negatively impacts the zerg who would have had a better time.

Anyhow, I really would suggest to everyone to bring up criticism and feedback after the next task is completed. When you try doing it in mid-fight, it can really be too much information and people tend to respond more defensively/aggressively in the heat of the moment. If you type or say whatever’s on the tip of your tongue, you’ll just say a lot of crap.

It’s fairly irrelevant in WvW. Under the list of toxic behaviors this is far from the worst.

Back then there were games where if you died, you’d spawn back in a place where someone could instantly kill you again. Stronghold, while not exactly, that does have that kind of snowball unpleasantness going on. That doesn’t exist in WvW, because you are invulnerable in spawn and there are other exits as well as other maps You also have these OP legendary defenders to pull campers in anyways. Unless the matchup is so broken they can cover ever single entrance from all your map spawns, you being spawn camped is something of your own volition.

Currently in Tier 4, but was in Tier 3 for the longest time. So I know exactly what’s going on.

Frankly, I had little pity for those getting spawn camped on our end because they were stubborn and refused to consider other options. Literally had people just doing that for hours to no avail. Sometimes I’d just play around for kittens and giggles but then ultimately found something better to do. And frankly, a lot of them were just as pathetic— they’d do the exact same thing when given the chance, toss siege, emote, w/e. Everything but considering a different approach.

Do you remember the last time your zerg ran over 3 roamers? Do you remember that time you instagibbed an uplevel trying to do their daily? Do you remember the last time you bashed down a wall to run over some AFK person? Do you remember that time you were dueling someone and then that person got jumped by 4 of your friends? You probably don’t. But if it happens to you…

Sometimes you get run over. Sometimes you run over someone. The game isn’t a conspirator to target you specifically. I won’t lie. In the current situation, it’s uneven in terms of who suffers more, but really, playing the victim gets you nowhere especially when you choose to ignore the obvious solutions.

In retrospect, a lot of us actually laughed at SoS in the past for abandoning their EB to go to another map. Little did we know that was just being smart and being more productive than being a target dummy.

I usually run something like this when doing a frontline

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASncoC1XhVXBubB0ehlJjKc7Smwi+vz79W8ZKgAA-TViFABEqeAAXAA13fwIlbnpD4QVcWSJRCPAgqUCWO4A4t3CA/93e/t3et3evNgb7VGgitA-w

I think Final Salvo will be nice in the future if they do end up fixing stability in WvW.

Juggernaut/FT is too cumbersome. I used to do that in the past but the problem is that it makes you camp FT and the AA is unusable thanks to retaliation. Plus it’s only 1 stack of stability for each pulse which as is doesn’t make it useful against heavy CC. Though in the end, you will need to borrow stability from a guardian no matter what you do.

grifflyman.8102:

Then I look at my warrior

Well, that’s where the problem is.

Although I find it very annoying that these elites were touted as another way to play, yet they’re so dominant and apparently balance is being conducted around these elites (base classes aren’t really tinkered with) that it does in fact, make them mandatory.

DeceiverX.8361:

Ricky.4706:

ya, they have some of the grimiest tactics, obnoxious attitudes, and odious techniques i’ve seen in game

…

like it or not, whether anyone is willing to admit it or not, mag’s form of foul play brings meaning to winning a wvw match.

Enough to harass a guildmember of mine to the point of breaking her and quitting the game and MMO play in general.

Yup. Real sportsman-like these folks are.

I moved away from the T3 matchups for the sole reason the players on mag are the most disgraceful excuse for a community I’ve seen in gaming, just because of how they handle strangers. I’ve seen some things – especially having worked support for a game which legally allowed trash talk, scamming, and espionage – and even those players in an open-PK world weren’t so awful.

They don’t provide meaning for WvW. They take it way over the line to a point of creating an incentive for not playing.

Wow, never imagined it got that out of hand. You seem like a decent person; sorry you and your guildmate had to go though that.

Well, not much to me, but I’ve seen tags get too much crap for no real reason. Too much left and right. It’s very unfortunate as we’d have more people willing to lead if they didn’t get run out by someone that contributes nothing anyways.

Zerglings can decide to work on their own if they don’t like it.

Just imagine a little, insecure dog yapping at you, and realize that it’s honestly no different. By the end of the day you will still have done your job, 95% of people on the map are going to leave with their loot and happy while trying to poke away at Noxious Pods, and the malcontent will still be an idiot. Don’t let a few minutes of that crap bring you down.

I used to be adamant at not letting those people get their way, but I realized that a lot of people are so pathetic that they need to gain these small “wins” to give their lives validation. In that case, I don’t mind being gracious.

Wow, you took a Keep.

Oh, we can discuss matchups again?

#PvFRevival 2016

Anet forgot Jewelcrafter existed.

But then again, as you cannot craft ascended things from jeweler, I guess that’s why they don’t sell ascended ingredients. Still sucks of course.

Remaking the world under the guise of legitimate causes while putting oneself at the center. As a god they will be— gods of a ded game mode.

Common problem found with the delusional and the megalomaniacs. What else could you conclude from people that still find so much effort to manipulating ratings and coverage in 2016?

This game in general is pretty unforgiving when it comes to crashes and whatnot. Maybe they should really reserve a spot for a few minutes.

Soloing on a Druid was fairly painless since the pet is so tanky. I use staff to escape things while shooting things with longbow. Picking up the Bristleback and Smokescale pets would help a bit.

Hmm, some of the adventures make me physically uneasy. Doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else.

@Supreme Okay… I’ll just take your word on it then. I didn’t realized eles had gone downhill in roaming.

@ Infusion. Well, Gravity Well has a 900 range, and if you manage to stunbreak out before the last beat you can get out largely unscathed. Not saying it’s okay either, but I think it’s not as badly designed.

Well, it is wholely bizzare atm.

You can access Marauder without HoT for example, but everything else seems to be special. I say split the difference. Runes weren’t always universally accessible even before HoT (some were locked behind dungeons and living story recipes and crap), but it wasn’t that big of a deal because runes are often niche enough that they are hardly essential. So that’s almost fine. However, the stat combos do provide some major differences and some are practically straight upgrades, so I think the prefixes should be more widely available.

I think one possibility is to allow the orange recipes to be tradeable. You’ll have to use stat swapping to get the proper ascended armor and you need to buy materials for the insignia/inscription (Well, actually that’s cheaper anyways, but whatever!). This would also give people that actually want to some extra incentive to convert their map currencies to gold or something. For anyone that actually does pve regularly, buying such a recipe is a one time purchase anyways, so it won’t be a big deal.

And maybe have an expensive way to craft the runes. Maybe.

As a side note, there really needs to be a way to get ascended materials/more ascended gear drops or have them be purchasable with wvw currency.

Anyhow, the grind in HoT maps isn’t actually that horrific though grinding out multiple rune sets would be daunting. For your viper, It’s basically just arrive at the meta a few times at the right time. However, it is annoying because you will have a much more difficult time if you don’t follow the timetable for the maps, and that is a very big annoyance in HoT, so it really feels like you have to go out of your way for it and be left AFK’ing and then remembering to LFG when the timer hits. That kind of sucks and definitely feels like you are being dragged by this pve. Try to grab a friend or two.

What’s really bad though is that you have stuff locked behind Raids and Story achievements. That probably sounds dreary to many PvE’rs too much less WvW’ers. That just needs more channels of acquisition period, of course WvW should possibly be one of them.

apharma.3741:

ArchonWing.9480:

Guardians are also the only class that must wear traveler runes if they don’t want to fall asleep roaming.

Tell that to my non chronomancer power shatter mesmer =(

ArchonWing.9480:

Hunter’s Ward IS stupid, but fixing stability would go a long way. The other thing that needs toning down is spear of justice as it is unstoppable with zero tell. Reflects shut down about 1/2 of what a DH can do in bigger fights, though.

I’d argue a 6s CC is way too much and toning the time down would be better. Agreed on SoJ and I think WoR is just way too good. I’d like to see the base virtue resolve and WoR have the same CD but somewhere between the two values as 50s for virtue of resolve always felt a tad high.

Well, at least mesmers have a very good choice. But it’s somewhat true that I’d never go back to base mesmer as a result. Unfortunately they have decided to use elite specs to “balance” things which means base classes aren’t even part of the equation.

Hunter’s Ward also wouldn’t be as bad if you could actually SEE the kitten ed thing. And it should not knock you back like a ring of warding. And yea the two resolve values could be a bit more balanced. Base resolve is pretty sad if not traited.

WoR isn’t too bad given comparable reflects I would say actually, But SoJ is definitely overtuned. What is HoT’s obsession with unblockable?

Simonoly.4352:

Despite being a major problem in WvW, Dragonhunter will likely never see any important changes until it can find a meta role in sPvP. Stuff like the duration of LB5 and the lack of counterplay for Hunter’s Verdict are real issues to be addressed, but Anet would have to reconsider how they balance the game in order for this to be finally sorted.

Probably impossible to resolve if you ask me. DH is not seen in high pvp, from what I’ve been told, and while “good” in pve, they’re not considered anything that special. Split balance would save a lot of elite specs, really.

What? Why pick on Guardians? What about eles? Are they actually not excellent at anything? Reapers aren’t far behind.

Also, Guardians haven’t escaped all nerfs. Virtues range was cut to 600. Dodge heals are utter trash thanks to the stat/trait split. Might of the protector has a cooldown now. Guardians are also the only class that must wear traveler runes if they don’t want to fall asleep roaming.

Hunter’s Ward IS stupid, but fixing stability would go a long way. The other thing that needs toning down is spear of justice as it is unstoppable with zero tell. Reflects shut down about 1/2 of what a DH can do in bigger fights, though.

I haven’t set off this message for a very long time. While annoying; I think that it still is a valid safeguard against bots and other exploits that always aggressively exploit any loophole.

Honestly, I see little or no reason to bother TP’ing anything that isn’t a material, an exotic, or a specific rare. Convering them to generic materials makes them simultaneously easier to sell (you can set sell orders and still have them sell regardless) and make more money in the long run. Actually it’s not even “long run”, it’s like within the next 30 minutes.

I used to tp everything too because I was afraid of RNG and wanted gold right away. But how often is it that you need a few gold hand? Why open the bags now? After that I just got around much more efficiently.

Failing it, I often also just vendor things when they’re too close to vendor value and tp’ing them would be an utter waste of time.

I think the real culprit is the overwhelming amount of trash overloading bags. The most basic things are t7 materials, but also applies to the endless amount of keys and other useless materials that are hard to sell/make use of. HoT in particular has brought up an excess of useless spam materials that have really niche uses and just annoy the heck out of me, making the bag space seem much less.

That, Drone Race, and Wings of Gold are probably the only easy ones. And some of the non-adventure ones are very hard just for 1 mastery point; possibly even harder than many adventures.

I don’t think the mastery points are bad at least for Maguuma. One problem is availability; a number of points are centered around events and bosses and if you arrive at the wrong time, you won’t be able to do a lot of them. Doing the chain events mastery for example, requires you to pretty much camp for the beginning of each meta, and of course the worst are the VB adventures which are locked behind long metas and then night is usually quick to come anyways and of course you have a 20 minute window to fight night bosses.

I still need 5 more points to max out mastery; so I probably have to do the story achievements which don’t look very easy, or some obscure mastery points, or try to get gold in some of that adventures. Oh great, Chak Gerrent came along; if only I had logged in 20 min earlier because I can’t do any of these adventures anymore.

Tyria Mastery points are another issue. Very boring and pointless.

God forbid people be able to earn games in-game.

Also, the value of 35 bauble baubles is NOT 5.25 gold. I would gladly spend 5.25 gold but I can’t have them because I don’t play SAB. So trivializing it to a 5.25 gold purchase is disingenuous. There’s also a limit on rewards per dungeon path per day.

I think the problem with rewards is that you have to be in the right time and place for things, and this inevitably rewards blobbing. The tag and loot system is simply too outdated and you will note the rest of the game has essentially abandoned that because honestly having people act like it’s a Black Friday sale and trampling everyone else is just silly.

On the other hand a meta event is better, but also means you must contribute at a specific time and place and yes, I think people need to be rewarded for showing up at any time if they contribute.

What I think might work is something similar to what they had during seasons and that was that you had to participate.

I would suggest week long achievements metas… which obviously correspond to the matchup. They wouldn’t give any actual AP but would function like fractal dailies.

There would be two types of weekly metas. One personal (kills, captures, stomps, defenses) which is unaffected by your patrcipation, and a global server-wide meta which you need to have a certain level of participation. For example, 5 events gives you bronze tier reward, while 50 gives you gold tier. So let’s say every 50,000 points you’d get a reward if you did x amount of events, so there is still reason to play even if you’re hopelessly behind. The personal rewards are much like the in-game personal rewards which are typical. The server-wide event is about people working towards a combined goal regardless of who wins and loses.

Other server achievements could include:

• Accomplishments like holding X structures as fully upgraded for a X period of time; naturally the achievements will focus on the borderlands of this kind.
• Having a certain K:D ratio by the end of the week.
• Passing various stomp kill thresholds
• Gaining positive glicko by the end of the week.

Then we can have ascended gear, food, and crap for whatever currency they come up with this, or use existing currency like heroics. Whatever works.

Again, this is more about the thought that counts. Obviously if you want more loot, go to pve, but the game needs to at least show some thought into making people feel they’re not wasting time and thus deserve a token of appreciation.

Can this be abused? Sure. All systems can be abused. But if you’re going to be afraid of that constantly, then nothing goes down at all.

And that’s why I can never roll a dude. >.>

He still has a point though. When people talk about disliking pve in WvW, it often is really vague, so it’s nice people are differentiating between vital game mechanics and what is basically noise. For example, everything in the middle, oasis event or not, does absolutely nothing to add to anything.

When obstacles and NPCs present you a bigger threat than other actual players, I think that’s a problem, because then it really is dependent on your ability to fight AI. Not very interesting. On the other hand stuff like guards and walls set a minimum threshold to be able to capture something. NPCs are just speedbumps and it’s the players that need to be able to stop attackers. When you have keep lords that can stall people for a ridiculous amount of time, then it just feels like the place defends itself and you might as well just go somewhere else.

As for the camps, themselves, meh, whatever. I don’t really think it matters. Dumb AI is dumb AI. Camps are never going to be threats to any group greater than a solo player and nor should they, considering people regularly solo/duo towers and keeps already.

The only problem is the map system that requires you to LFG, because people constantly taxi until maps get full while everyone unfortunate enough to arrive off the “proper” time can locked out into empty maps that close themselves anyways. Also, resetting your participation to 0% is frustrating.

In terms of difficulty, maybe a few mobs could use retuning, but they’re honestly sort of okay.

The exception to all this is the obsession with gating exploration and adventures (and thus progression) behind metas; DS is guilty of the former while VB is very guilty of the later. But that’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s just annoying.

I hope this better illustrates the roamer vs zerger situation; kitten fight resetting crows:

Yea, I did; I actually read my post again just now and that’s been fixed. The three traits suck so bad that I forgot they existed Naturally you will want to pick Protective Reviver by default, unless you feel like trolling your zerg and the enemy with the fall trait in the DBL, but then the combination of the two may ensue you lose followers. :p

But yea, durability runes for whatever reason just made it so much easier to zerg dive. Arguably for folks like me, to be even possible but as always, don’t overestimate your capabilities. Shelter shall be used to block attacks, trigger smiter’s boon, and mitigate the brunt of the attacks— it’s a last resort for actually healing. It’s also not perfect and sometimes you can get interrupted via unblockable attacks like necro fears and whatnot they have these days. If you can find a way to restore your health through allied waters and heals, do that.

EDIT: Beyond the 2 energy sigils, I’m not too privy on what other runes to take. I also edited the staff to contain a sigil of life, but you may want to consider a stacking sigil of your choice. IMO, a little bit of healing power to round out your build without screwing your entire build over if and when you get downed seems to be the best choice.

But yea, these stats are just an idea of what I consider to be desirable thresholds just to give an idea whatever order or combination of stats you use to get them is up to you.

As a side note, here’s a few more things to look out that are fairly new.

Not HoT, but gamechanging

• Indomitable Courage has stability. That is nice but not the main appeal. It’s an AOE stun break. Thus, save it for you being stunned, as it is likely others are stunned too. Call it out on your comms, so everyone knows to get out of the way since it is very likely that if there’s an AOE stun on your location that your enemy isn’t going to be tossing more flowers and kisses in that direction.

• The ridiculous power creep and overall weakening of stability. has actually increased the need for stability. It stacks in intensity which kinda sucks, but as a result your stabilities in your group need to be spread out too for more coverage while maintaining a decent amount. Fortunately, as a tag you can steal guardians to put in your own subsquad. You may want to have 2 other guardians, a warrior for condition cleanse, and something else to round it out. Could be another guardian, warrior, or maybe an Earth Aurashare tempest, but it’s not all the time that you can pull specific builds on demand to you, of course.

Post HOT hazards:

• Hunter’s Ward. This is a very overpowered Dragon Hunter ability in zergs atm. You can recognize it by it looking like spiked looking fences. This traps people and they cannot dodge out— you need multiple stacks of stability to get out and even worse, the game sometimes fails to render them but like a black hole you’ll know its there when people are stuck and inevitably speaking all kinds of profanities towards Arenanet. Now, you as a guardian can typically get out but you must also pay attention to how your group is doing because if you get out, leap to the enemy and then realize everyone else is stuck behind you, well, that’s not going to end up pretty. As a result, murder any DH you can with extreme prejudice, as they are not as tough as their guardian counterparts, though they do have a very powerful block (it looks like a barrier) and an escape so take note if they have that up.

• Dragonhunter Traps. Yet another gigantic nuisance, they have barbed edges which make them distinct and CANNOT be blocked. Thus, it’s not a good idea to try ramboing past it unless your dodges will take you through it. Proceed with caution through chokes and be wary of DH’s trying to kite you into trap. You may also consider using a trapsweeper to trigger the traps. Pets or someone with invuls can do this.

• Gravity Well. This ability is all pinkish and you can recognize it by it launching you in the air. Stunbreaking and getting out of the way will mitigate most damage.

• Gunflame warriors. Kill shot has been heavily buffed with the warrior’s elite spec. It has a fast cooldown and casting time, only limited with some setup of adrenaline. I don’t know what to say against this, but you definitely will get shot if you’re into front and reflects will help a lot. Terminate these with extreme prejudice; most generally have to go really glassy.

• Necro wells. You’re probably familiar with this, but reapers have many ways of chilling you and making your life miserable. Soft CC is the silent killer, so note your cleanses strategically.

The metabattle build will work just fine for general frontline. DH is good but not for frontlining because your defense will take a hit.

If you are pinning, you’ll have to gear more selfishly than standard frontline because you will most certainly be focused. You also want greatsword for the mobility because you need to lead in and staying in any one place these days is suicide.

Anyhow, it is likely that what you have already will probably work fine, especially if you played after the stability changes from last year and adjusted but as for what options have opened since HoT

Example:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJAWRlsAhehYtQwVIwPEHJEFeDeuU4usBwBknh/LAB-T1SDQBRRp3XUCOv9H6lOADq+yf0EMJVIozhAgKKDkwTAAAXAASBUkwI-w

Note that all the fancy stats are not needed, good ol’ soldier/nomad/whathaveyou is fine.

Wall of Reflection can be replaced with anything that suits your fancy. Only get enough crit to proc empowering might— you’re not taking it for damage and it is very likely you will have fury placed on you already, so you do not need much.

Durability runes are a very effective way in staying alive that seems unequaled due to the higher boon duration = more stability and protection as well as it giving you protection when hit. Unfortunately, that’s HoT only so you may try other runes such as Melandru or Hoelbrak for the -condi duration.

Honestly, Guardian just is the same old…

@PabbyGaul

I find that to be a accurate assessment of what’s going on for the most part.

You encourage people to join a game mode by elevating it to a level of quality, not by dragging other parts of the game down.

This would make about as sense as removing open world pve content to encourage people to join raids.

Besides, a lot of people use that place to level— those aren’t going to go into WvW anyways. Unless, of course, they’re WvW’ers that have no better place to level their characters and were going to WvW anyways.

Well, there’s always the rallybot fear. Although, that’s largely been downplayed lately.

Well, a lot of pve grinding definitely isn’t fun, especially if you’re doing it on multiple characters. It really just feels like busy work. Plus if you’re truly pveless on a character, that means you have to go into TD, and getting HP there tends to be sketchy. Most folks in AB/VB have the HP training to a tee. If you try to skip TD and run straight for DS, you get the genius design of locking hero points behind succesful metas and being plagued with a 15 minute time limit to get things. What? Did fun become a dirty word or something?

Well, okay, you could go get some Central Tyria HPs too, but those only give 1 point at a time, and you have to cover an entire map to get the same as a Maguuma mastery point. Yea….. no. Not hard, but this borders on soul crushing given how boring a lot of this is.

Granted, I don’t think that’s the worst kind. Central Tyria mastery points are pretty awful and might be a problem to those who don’t have it in WvW autoloot comes around. It’s not hard, but a lot of those points are so boring.

The worst I’ve found thus far is Sinister Trinkets which is only pve. You could either get it RNG from a raid (lol) or it requires you to do the later half of LS season 2 which I have found not very fun at all, and one of: Do ALL achievements for a chapter requiring more repetition or get 1000 bandit crests for 1 trinket. Then comes the time when people wonder why I never have pve condi setups. Sure, I can do such a thing, but that just feels unnecessarily cruel. What’s wrong with 25 laurels + 250 badges, or even a greater cost?

There’s also stuff like me being on the brink of getting specialization collections and thus some nice ascended weapons for my alts but I have to deal with finding crystaline ore, doing unfun “adventures”, and even relying on RNG drops from world bosses that spawn every…. 3 hours. And that’s the real killer. Much content in this game, HoT especially, loves to rely on set schedules meaning you can’t hop in and expect lively maps where you can get stuff done quickly. If you’re here to enjoy the scenery, that’s nothing. But you’re probably not. Anyhow, I think I’ll stop here, since I imagine people are getting nauseated already.

/insert mandatory “You want it all handed to you” pretending professing virtues of hard work in a video game somehow justifies masochism. But then again, after playing many years in an undersupported, unrewarding, unrecognized game mode, it is obvious that pve’rs thinking they’re superior at that is also an utter joke. We’re just not into their kind of torture— we already have enough of our own.

It’s coming with the WvW overhaul.

Soon™.