Guild Wars 2

Xhean.3452:

You’re right ArchonWing, though personally I feel more supporty going the way I explained than investing in healing power, did that a while back but this feels better in every way. Only thing I miss is high heal on dodgerolls
And yes f2 is not much but it often makes the difference, especially when you add up your guardians.

Well, 0/0/6/4/4 is a very solid frontline-support build and the good part about it is that it is not tied down to any runeset, like a shouts-bunker would be. (Pure of Voice sucks as a sole form of condi removal, after all). Before the patch I would say 0/0/2/6/6 is inferior to AH builds for bigger groups because you would sacrifice too much stats and AH, and would have had a harder time keeping yourself alive through big fights (the extra stability really isn’t worth it). However, I think because of elite tomes it may be a decent alternative if one uses the tomes well, though frontlining AH I think is just going to be better just because you are naturally tougher. The other kind of healway thingy is better just slightly behind them.

How about it causing blind? The birds will peck at their eyes and stuff.

It really depends on style, Xhean; your way is perfectly fine— I do 6 valor melandru myself—but if I’m correct OP wishes for a healer/support role and you should not use healing power with AH builds due to the abysmal scaling. AH/Melandru is generally more frontline/damage oriented.

I wouldn’t knock Battle Presence. I’ve used it to decent effect even with base healing power besides the HP from honor. I mean it is like giving out half a warrior’s healing signet to allies around you with some investment into HP. The other thing is that F2 is I would feel the least useful active virtue anyways unless Absolute Resolution is taken.

As for Purity of Body, I can sort of understand why it’s taken; and that’s mostly because of the tome which makes the other virtues traits somewhat useless because no Renewed Focus.

As for Deitus, you can check the tabs in the center (for the link I posted above) for some ideas of trinkets and stuff. In reality though you just want to keep tweaking the editor until you get your desired stats so don’t just copy me— whatever you come up with, you want say, 16k+ health, 3000 armor, 800 healing power.

Of course, you should really decide on what role you’d like to play first, before you invest in anything.

Well first off, do you want to be a healer? Because you do have other choices. Also, it’s not just healing that keeps people alive, but boons like stability and condition clears.

I agree that the health could be higher— this is why I don’t like clerics as a base; you will melt to conditions which toughness does not help mitigate. You should invest in soldiers armor I feel and you can use cleric for the rest. And yes, the symbol does heal. However, I don’t think the heal is big enough to really matter; getting people to stand in it in a protracted fight w/o symbol duration increase is not so hot. Two handed mastery would also give you much more crowd control ability. Maybe check out battle presence? I’ve had more success than any other heal method besides dodge heals.That also goes with purity of body because your allies will also receive endurance regeneration.

As for traits, I’d take consecration cooldown instead of retaliation duration because retaliation is pretty trivial to get.

BTW intothemists seems pretty outdated. I’d use http://www.gw2skills.net (though you have to click the US flag because it keeps making it german)

Example:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWl8ApWotCxZI0ENRCRl9MkDnJ2fQIUCXFAA-TFCEABL8EAGUJYLq/YlyPO1Fk0+DAcIAe4CAQGgltA-w

You lost with reflects?

lol

I worded it badly

SoS is instant cast, but your other skills can apparently be interrupted if the tooltip and wiki isn’t lying. So say, you cast signet of stone and use rapid fire immediately afterwards. People could interrupt it. You’d take 0 damage of course.

That also means signet of stone doesn’t really do much vs condi builds.

Oh signet of stone isn’t true invul? I actually never noticed that.

Well, to people who die to a ranger, lol @ you. So you can interrupt a ranger when he uses stone. :S

DonQuack.9025:

ArchonWing.9480:

And I would just come across as an *insecure know it all *on the internet if I claimed that such a thing could just be turned on/off and one could “get over it”.

I wasn’t even replying to you for the most part? Looks like you need to learn to read as well. You’re overestimating your own importance. I can read, but I didn’t pay much attention to whatever you posted.

If that wasnt a dig at me then my mistake. I dont think am great at reading comprehension but I read it as a dig at me for something I didnt do. Something that was a branch of a person saying what I said was “like” something. To which I further corrected at least 2 times thus far.

More of a common occurrence here and in-game, which is why I didn’t want to single anyone out.

Actually I was like “Blah, it’s just a video game” upon my initial reading at first (And I do that a lot on these forums) but figured that wouldn’t help much. So it’s also a dig at myself too…

DonQuack.9025:

ArchonWing.9480:

I will not jump on a high horse and look down on your behavior, nor offer some pretentious internet psychologist life changing advice, because I have no idea of your life experiences and personality and there is way too much of that nonsense already around these parts. If you really do have severe anxiety problems, then it is real and it can be overwhelming causing you to do everything to escape from an uncomfortable situation. And I would just come across as an insecure know it all on the internet if I claimed that such a thing could just be turned on/off and one could “get over it”.

But on the other hand, I can’t just tell you that you did nothing wrong and everything should be sugarcoated— neither approach has any value whatsoever.

You have to look at it from their perspective, rather them as bullies that are there out to get you.

Honestly, the people getting mad is to be expected. I’m not saying they are right, but you definitely could have been a bit better in communicating what had just happened a bit better and going afk would seem malicious. It was not, but they don’t know that. You really should have just make an effort of some kind; even if it doesn’t accomplish much at least you can display that you are just new in good faith.

I understand that 90% of people simply don’t care and will be abusive anyways, but at least they’d be wrong and now it’s their fault since you did your part. You could now just report and block. Sometimes a lot of stuff would have been stopped if one just “said so”— and this has applied in game and out of game so it is worth learning to do.

It often takes two to tango, to say; that often these things happen because of wrongdoing/negligence/impatience from BOTH sides.

No you come across as a person who cant read. But then again I lack sentence structure so its understandable if what I write comes across as mean. or where I told him how to fix his anxiety.

I wasn’t even replying to you for the most part? Looks like you need to learn to read as well. You’re overestimating your own importance. I can read, but I didn’t pay much attention to whatever you posted.

Mad props to the folks still kicking it on Maguuma. A lot of folks would have just thrown in the towel many weeks ago in your situation especially with season 3’s absurd matchups but it’s always nice to see people delivering the other side a bloody nose or two.

I will not jump on a high horse and look down on your behavior, nor offer some pretentious internet psychologist life changing advice, because I have no idea of your life experiences and personality and there is way too much of that nonsense already around these parts. If you really do have severe anxiety problems, then it is real and it can be overwhelming causing you to do everything to escape from an uncomfortable situation. And I would just come across as an insecure know it all on the internet if I claimed that such a thing could just be turned on/off and one could “get over it”.

But on the other hand, I can’t just tell you that you did nothing wrong and everything should be sugarcoated— neither approach has any value whatsoever.

You have to look at it from their perspective, rather them as bullies that are there out to get you.

Honestly, the people getting mad is to be expected. I’m not saying they are right, but you definitely could have been a bit better in communicating what had just happened a bit better and going afk would seem malicious. It was not, but they don’t know that. You really should have just make an effort of some kind; even if it doesn’t accomplish much at least you can display that you are just new in good faith.

I understand that 90% of people simply don’t care and will be abusive anyways, but at least they’d be wrong and now it’s their fault since you did your part. You could now just report and block. Sometimes a lot of stuff would have been stopped if one just “said so”— and this has applied in game and out of game so it is worth learning to do.

It often takes two to tango, to say; that often these things happen because of wrongdoing/negligence/impatience from BOTH sides.

Join any enemy borderland and he’ll be in front of you.

I have no idea why the placement is so bad.

Becka Williams.4978:

The tickets were important to me, so I found out how to get them, and made sure I did. Sometimes, you have to put a bit of effort into knowing what to do in game.

Most people expect the system to be done in an intelligent, logical fashion that is consistent with previous actions.

Fortunately for me, I do not expect that from Anet, therefore I have my tickets. But I really do feel for those that get screwed over.

It’s a awful way of rewards distribution. What kind of reward disappears after a week? Why can’t it be mailed? And I knew complaints like that would happen, even though I personally have retrieved all my tickets. It doesn’t affect me, but what if people are just on a trip or busy the next week?

Personally, I would have preferred the tickets to only have been given out at the end of the tournament, but I guess expecting competence from wvw design is too much. Then again, what do you expect from filler content?

Hamster.4861:

Jeknar.6184:

Hamster.4861:

snip

“They want to folks to go hard all 4 weeks” and giving us 5 events per week to do are kinda contraditory…

Are achievement points what people really want out of the tournaments, or is it the skins?

I actually want AP because I don’t really pve and the regular wvw achievements are terrible.

Tourettes Engineer meta build for 2015!

Ranger runes may have been fixed though: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Superior_Rune_of_the_Ranger

I don’t really care about running dungeons much, much less buy or sell, but this is truly pathetic that a minority (2/5) can possibly ruin a party. And it’s pathetic that people would grief others just to steal a dozen or two gold (really, gold is so easy, why are you going around cheating people for it? Are they really that poor/lazy to increase virtual bean counters to get more pixels?). It’s also pathetic people would even take enjoyment in seeing others get griefed just because they participate in an activity they disagree with (but Anet says it’s okay).

Greedy, envious. pitiful behavior. Griefing has no place in this game and Anet has been too lenient regarding this in many areas of the game.

Hmm, yea incendiary powder is a good trait, but that seems to be more for condition builds; I usually take the trait for 10% more explosion damage, not sure if that’s the best.

As for ranger runes; I do have them… on my ranger. The other classes don’t seem to be able to take advantage of the companion bonus.

Thanks for all the suggestions. It wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have to gear across 3 characters or if the runes could be salvaged, though in reality it’s certain reasonable to think they’ll pay for themselves before I get ascended anyways. Though I mostly see dungeons as a source of gold and isn’t my main interest.

Scholar Runes seems to be a pretty good goal though. For flame legion I know that guardians can get good burn uptime with virtue of justice, but where are engineers getting it from? The fire bomb?

Turrets are bad in wvw because people can just walk away from them, and in bigger fights simply get aoe or cleaved down before they do anything. You sacrifice a ton of utility or damage just to use them, and when turrets are used they are often just overcharged and blown up immediately for blast finisher, though some have good toolbelt skills.

Besides healing turret, I would only put one more turret in as if you put two you’re sacrificing too many kits and other utilities. Best choices are thumper turret which is the only one that can survive a big fight if it gets ignored long enough, and contains a stunbreaker on the toolbelt. The aoe launch and occasional cripple can be useful. If you take experimental turrets, it can also occasionally grant protection, and also causes healing turret to grant vigor.

Overcharged flame turret can also give aoe blind and a smoke field which could be useful.

If you do want to continue using turrets, accelerant packed turrets can help quite a bit just to annoy the enemy, especially with supply crate.

But overall these things are rather niche and you’re best off pursuing other things in most cases.

I’d like to get some better runes for my Guardian, Thief and Engineer for doing fractals/dungeons, but a lot of the zerker gear I have is karma and thus can’t be salvaged and the runes would be lost. Currently I’m using ruby orbs but I heard those really suck now so I was wondering if there were some mid-price alternative that would be better than ruby orbs but not expensive like strength/hoelbrak. I don’t really run dungeons that frequently so I don’t want to put that much gold down for this kind of thing.

Prysin.8542:

which ranger has that?

6 sec from a 60 (48) second CD utility
3 sec from a BM GM trait on a 16 sec CD
2×3 sec possibly from sigil if RNG favors you…. (and if you use that sigil, you are dead)

i repeat – whatever ranger sets out for a xxxx6 2x invuln + QZ utility – you are such a bad scrub you deserve to get rekt. And if the enemy cannot kill you, they deserve to LOSE.

Right. Not referring to this specifically, but when people talk about OP “invincible” builds that just one shot everyone, I throw up a little, because I wonder what would happen to them if they encountered a real ranger build that isn’t just a one trick pony and can sustain themselves while doing sustained damage.

Tiibags Tyler.3125:

Keksmuffin.1450:

Tiibags Tyler.3125:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNApeWlsApYo9CxeI8DNRCRk1M2jtrXHscA-TVCFABV/EAwV9HZ2fALlg2qNAAzP5q8rWdALcKAEDATA-w

Prepare to be amazed!

I would use focus over shield and Signet of Judgement to make it even more selfish and useless. Apart from that it’s perfect.

The problem is, he just wants to stand there. The protection from the shield helps more than 3 blocks, at least in a zerg, and that knock-back bubble is priceless XD I would have like to add Signet of Judgement, however, the other utilities are too valuable; tons of Stability, immunity to ranged weapons for a while and of course, an impenetrable healing bubble.

IMO, you need a little more power to be able to tag! That way you can be a true leech.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdWlsApaolDxRI8DNxARZVAgdJkDx51PwFUBA-TVSDAB5s/Qv6CAW5XCPBQJ4umfaU9HA1CAgJIJOFAkBgZBA-w

OP doesn’t even want to assist with tagging, because that slight bit of extra damage is actually beneficial to the team.

Oh, never mind then. I make zerg builds with loot in mind all the time, lol.

I think support is fine. 20 sec water field and frequent blast finisher iand with an extra water field to go is not irrelevant at all. The other thing about fireforged trigger is the cooldown gives you blinds for a bit more survivability and also lets you use no.2 more. Using no.1 too much will make you get hurt from retaliation.

I’m not a fan of snowball sigils and on kill effects such as Compote. They work well against disorganized group, but against groups with more sturdy hammer trains that aren’t filled with uplevels, it’s hard to get kills— you’ll need to wear them down and it often takes a few tries, involving regroups. The other problem with snowball sigils is that there’s often overkill in which you get your stamina infusions when you don’t actually need them since you don’t have that much control over kills as opposed to just having something casted on you.

I think it has its uses farming certain groups more easily , but I don’t trust them to win a fight where it may be hard, ie “zergbusting”

As for AR the thing is that I don’t see much situations where you’d want to get hit at 25% health that much anyways so often the trait just doesn’t get used at all especially when you’re going for so much sustain anyways. I mean I can sort of understand you’d do it with such a large health pool but IMO it just doesn’t come in play that much.

Omg I see this red thingy under a ranger and a signet above his head.

I’m just going to walk away. What’s he going to do, chase me with his gs?

But trust me, a zerker ranger in wvw is nothing. If that makes you cry, a balanced 6/0/2/6/0 ranger is going to make you uninstall the game.

IMO, you need a little more power to be able to tag! That way you can be a true leech.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNApdWlsApaolDxRI8DNxARZVAgdJkDx51PwFUBA-TVSDAB5s/Qv6CAW5XCPBQJ4umfaU9HA1CAgJIJOFAkBgZBA-w

Actually with Protection Injection/Stabilized Armor and help from protective shield, it’s not really that bad. Rozbuska would have 29k health and 3200 armor with guard stacks, lol. I’d take elixir gun over rocket boots myself. I also guess it’s possible for a build like that to ignore juggernaut and it’s sort of a selfish trait anyways, but Fireforged Trigger is too good to give up, even for the sake of a pushback or AOE blind.

Although I don’t really agree with automated response since it does not apply to existing conditions. I think invigorating speed would be much more valuable since in zergs you always get swiftness on you, and you can proc it yourself if needed.

Personally I use this FT build for zerg…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUp+q1axdLseRSdBNqoEqQAyAUARnwFGDA-TFTAABJpE7HVMKa/BeUH5UVC2S5BAmgYRHwDPAALUCygJGPuAAkBoYLA-w

And yes I rely on others for stability, though you could always use toss elixir B. That’s kind of annoying though.

What they should have done was have the 5 events a week as a baseline. (Personally, I think 20 would be a bit better.) If you do these, you’ll get the wvw reward tickets, but to get the title you have to do a host of the typical achievements and throw in an extra chest. Basically it will be sorta like living story season 2 achievements. Right now, I would definitely not wear that season 3 title at all.

That way, the people that want to do the bare minimum can do so, while everyone else who wants to do their thing can also do that and many pve achievement hunters may aim to do so.

I don’t get why people complain about having to counter ranged because umm they don’t want to? It’s not like rangers are the only ones with ranged attacks but zomg 300 more range.

WvW? The only time a ranger has killed me is when I’m already fighting someone else or they knocked me off a cliff. However, I do use daze on steal, which makes things easier.

1.) Save Shadowstep for when you get knocked down
2.) Dodge away (back left or right) from their RF. If you dodge towards them, you will often suffer a pet knockdown or immobo and then suffer because you ran out of dodges.
3.) If you don’t like your position, then Infiltrator Arrow x 2 + stealth away and reset or make them chase you. It’s good if you make them chase you. They will not catch you with their GS. Your main goal is to get them to burn their elite and signet of stone. Then they’re pretty worthless. If you try to engage in a deathmatch when they have those up still, then chances are you will get planted into the floor. That’s just life.
4.) Also been fighting on the other end and have noted thieves using trees and uneven terrain which works really well too.
5.) I can understand being hit by rapid fire, but barrage? No!

Well, thanks to anet, s/d is now nerfed, so what else am I supposed to do? Thanks for pushing me to d/p p/x SA runaway stuff!

I have a hard time juggling between all those MM traits. What do you folks think of spotter in these cases?

Please just keep this “feature” to new accounts instead of mindlessly putting it on new characters.

Definitely go ranger. Necro isn’t very good in pve and the development for the class has an identity crisis in general. Plus necro mobility is just no good.

They really need to change this. I think it’d at least save the hassle for support for dealing with kind of thing.

A lot of things “work” but you can do better than AH. Sustain is no good in instanced pve when enemies can 1-2 shot you anyways. Sustain is good when you must deal with a lot of incidental damage and stray shots (and thus good in wvw and such) , which is not the case for most encounters! You’re just going to have to learn to dodge and use blocks properly. Good use of Aegis will help you a lot more than some healing.

You can only become as good as the build you play. Even if you can’t execute the build, you can improve. But if the build is weak, then you are limited by it, regardless of how much you improve. So why optimize a dead end?

Obal’s hammer build is good for survival if you do feel squishy and need a leg to stand on: http://intothemists.com/guides/3793-max_utility_dps_hammer_guardian

Black Box.9312:

ArchonWing.9480:

Considering the buffs meditation guardian got recently, it would seem Anet is becoming aware of the situation and will reconsider the other side.

To be honest I wouldn’t really say that they were all that significant as far as buffs go. The change to fury on medi becoming AoE for allies is a greater buff than the renewed focus change IMO, and that wasn’t even mentioned in the patch notes, let alone the ready up stream.

I never said they were that significant. There were generally more buffs than nerfs so the intention is that this class needed more help, at least in the amount of choices they have and if the class continues to underperform, more will be given. ANet isn’t (that) stupid.

As for the rest of the stuff, balance isn’t something that can be done overnight. Taking a class through drastic changes will ruin it; such as the necromancer is in an utterly terrible shape in general in terms of design with no vision whatsoever.

Considering the buffs meditation guardian got recently, it would seem Anet is becoming aware of the situation and will reconsider the other side.

Oh wow, I guess that is really strong!

That’s a good build.

I’m wondering what the purpose of Keen Edge is. Would the bleeds beat out steady focus or more invul uptime?

And holy crap, I didn’t even know there was a pet that grants swiftness! Does it cast out of combat?

Hmm, I appreciate the swift action, though couldn’t there be something in between, like just have recently dead players be worth 1/2 xp and -50% mf penalty (in regards to their personal drops) or something.

Well, doesn’t matter really. I guess this will be fine too. WvW loot was never too good.

(all wvw)

I’d imagine this would be a pretty typical one trick pony thing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjMq0waJLGsw1ag+ga9DEAjdrfgdG8BdQJjqJ-TVBPwAY2fAkyPAq/EUXwLlgkCIltAA-w

I use (looks familiar?) for ranged support:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBjYDbkRlGW7XxlFuWD0HUrfg+NAamD7Az/9DKZUNB-TFTBwAFVStTljg7PgTdkIXAgrKXQpbYxBBAhJNJKB18AAAcEAIDwyWA-w
or a less selfish build with cleanse and soft CC
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNBjYDbkRlOWbYxlFqWD0HUrfg+NAa9DuviBOtLZUNB-TFTBwAFVStTljg7PgTdkIXAgrKXQpbYxBBAhJNJKB18AAAcEAIDwyWA-w

I don’t really do much damage (maybe 7-8k rapid fires?) as I don’t roam on ranger but usually beat other LB rangers pretty handedly in a firefight, lol. Though I don’t really count bow ranger kills as kills, typically. And yes, I use melandru because ranger active condi removal = lol. I’ve also used pure zerk after the patch to test out the hype with max dps builds and the ones I listed above as well, and well, meh, that’s just not for me— at least against people that don’t have a broken dodge key.

The game has ruined uplevels in wvw by denying them traits until they get much higher. Uplevels are a liability sadly. While they were rude, I would suggest using EOTM to learn about the basics of stuff as well as a faster leveling experience.

And it really depends on the group of people you’re playing with. Public tags, fine, but other people have no obligation to cater to you— trying to follow a wvw guild with an uplevel is little different than joining a pve speedrun with cleric gear and not warning people you are new.

I would cripple the user experience, and then offer the original experience as a “reward” as an excuse for content and rewards.

Oh wait…

Ever since they improved pet AI in that patch a few months ago, it’s been mostly a L2p issue for pets. Even more so in ranger’s current situation. Post-patch, the only time my ranger’s pet dies in wvw is when I die as well or come close to it. Now granted I use my moa as a buffbot and spiders to be ranged but it makes sense that some pets are better than others when the nature of the fight itself changes.

The only they need is more aoe. But that applies to the ranger in general.

We really need a 3 vote kick, but the response here is pretty disheartening since griefers can take advantage of this pretty easily even outside of selling dungeons.

It’s been insanely frustrating; I don’t see it as much as on guardian, but playing thief makes me dizzy, as I literally do not know where I end up at times.

Thanatos.2691:

I’m still really new to guard so take my opinion with a grain of salt: I run full ascended zerk in PvE/sPvP/WvW without any problems. Even a full offensive guard has enough healing to out-heal other classes from what I’ve found – won a 4v1 earlier today with 2 necros, 1 ranger, and another guard in WvW earlier and although they weren’t top-tier players (and 1 was an uplevel), it was a good demonstration of guardian survivability.

Zerker is viable in small fights, especially if you’re in a group where your teammates can help you if things go south. You have to be pretty careful as you will die fast if you get caught out of position. And yes it’s possible solo but even harder.

Soldier gear is preferred in big fights because of the way rallying works. If you die, anyone that tags you will get a rally, and because of that, the benefits of superior damage and being able to spike an extra person or two down faster cannot outweigh the rally risk when there’s so much aoe/cleave from the enemy. It’s not like guardians have lots of ranged options to keep them out of harms way either. The other mechanic is that you need to stomp people to quickly take them out, and as a zerker you’re less capable of doing that too. It is certainly possible to survive as a zerker (I’ve done it by accident because I sometimes forget to swap gear), but the playstyle fundamentally changes, and does not highlight the strengths of a guardian in large group play.

There’s also a fundamental importance in damage roles. If you’re alone, you need to contribute 100% of the damage (duh!) so naturally going dps has a greater effect. But in a zerg of 50, this becomes a bit less apparent and even 50 wet noodles can take people down.

I wouldn’t recommend full soldier though. Full soldier is best in world bosses where you can’t crit them, and leading a big group because your point is not to do damage but to stay up. (Though in that case, mixing in nomad/cleric isn’t out of the question).

Soldier does provide great survivability and because it’s a power primary stat, also makes sure your damage exists to some degree. In most cases, I would say pure soldier gimps you in regards to damage and healing/support guardians would be better off in a soldier/clerics mix since I believe pure clerics is too squishy too. But if you want more survivability, soldier is a good piece of armor to mix in that will rarely make you regret it.

It does but sometimes there’s a delay to when the fireball comes out. I usually just tap 2 twice but not too rapidly.

This class is so easy to kite and has so low health, so I think retaliation is fine if a guardian can bring others down with them.

As for the flamethrower, I thought that was a problem, and the autoattack is sort of sucky for that reason. However, I realized there is no reason why you should be spamming 11111 with a flamethrower build except to tag people in zergs— it should only be used when you have every other damage skill on cooldown, and considering FT 2 is a 6 second blast finisher, this shouldn’t really happen that much. You’d do a lot more damage and as an extra plus not kill yourself.

Understandably, engineers don’t really have much non-aoe skills either.

In any case, there is the possibility that when they changed the fields that the extra damage may not be intended behavior. Given the overall bugginess of the patch, it’s hard to tell.