I found the Zeal trait line is kinda lame.
I suspect that is why he think a powerful trait should be moved there. Its also why i think AH should be a virtue since it would weaken valor compared to other traitlines.
50% boon duration and it starts the work alright so the issue is that in order to make use of the fury we need to bunker down even more. So basically it pidgeonholes the guardian even more.
should of made it so the third swing symbol applies chill
not this icd crap
One solution worth considering, the only issue is that its not fitting the hammer, hammer already got all the cc it needs, imo GH would be more fitting for sword/mace etc.
[quote:]
I’m not sure why you would only might consider it, especially in WvW.
First, it can be balanced with duration, 2s duration would be enough
Second, if you are skilled and “play the cool downs” there are already better options in the game thru sigils. One of my setups in Tpvp with sword/scepter that has instant aoe cc on every swap, fully predictable and no need to crit. Do you find that ridiculous as well?
Ill just repeat the same thing I have said… I don’t know, like 20 times?
Lower the CD to 10-15 seconds, make the effect for 2 seconds, make it effect all weapons, move it to zeal.
This is a good one, and maybe move symbol tratis to valor, those are defenitely more fitting in valor/honor than in zeal.
10-15s icd and for all weapons and i might consider using it in wvw and tpvp.
Considering the cool down it might even be pretty balanced, lol. Actually cant stop laughing even though i seen it earlier today.
Probably the best post ever in these forums!
Make hallowed ground and purging flames self centered. this would increase the value of those two babies.
Make consecrated ground increase the area of all consecrations instead of making them ranged.
Reduce cool down on hallowed ground primarily. Its just to much.
But tbh. Purging flames and hallowed ground would be much more worth if they were self centered. Why not let consecrated ground increase the area of consecrations instead of making them ranged.
I can understand why people think hallowed ground is subpar but its actually very good if you play organized in wvw. And by organized with teams or guilds that do organised play.
Its really supportive when using one tactic that really no pug zerg ever do but thats about it. I always used it when i was in one of these uberguilds and its very powerful but when you pug its close to useless.
Its less than 1% that play in such a guild and skills should be designed around the average joe.
Hallowed ground and purgin flames should be selfcentered and ranged consecration trait shouldincrease the are on those two.
I like that, i like it a lot!
Sitting at my office and laughing out loud, my employees probably think im crazy, or at least more crazy than before.
Yes we know the trait .was apparently bugged but that doesnt mean that they couldnt have kept it in its previous form. A lot of guardians relied on that for condition cleansing, they didnt give us anything new that could replace it when they “fixed” PoV.
They actually did but the improvements they made (consecrations) are making us even more pidgeonholed into being team cleansers and force us to build away from damage, making zeal and radiance relatively even more useless.
In order to get 100% uptime on a guard I need staff, Retreat, and maybe SYS. When it comes to traits I may only be required to spend 10 for superior aria.
And about 50-60% boon duration. The fact is that you have focus your entire build around support and support alone to get the uptime.
That isnt the issue most people seem to have, its in combat movement. The inability to connect and disconnect in combat is whats lacking. Or at least that is was some experience.
Well that’s the big problem with the guardian – how do you buff it effectively for one game type without making it overpowered in the other. It’s one of the reasons it has been a stagnant class for so long
I dont think we need a buff, we need fixes to stuff that make it possible to move from condicleansers to:
Builds based on zeal
builds based on signets
Full symbolbuilds
builds based on spirit weapons
condibuilds like war/Necro/etc.
My issues with this patch isnt with what they done, its with what they havent done.
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Berserker meditation guardian is one of the best professions in this game.
Guardian needs little changes, a few tweaks here and there, like increasing the accuracy of sword 3, decreasing the cooldowns on shield skills.
This class surely does not need a major buff, it is already strong as it is right now. Any major buff would make guardian dominate all the other classes.
Quit your whining really, it’s getting annoying.
General statement! You mean in all aspects of the game?
Precision has the Greater Impact on DPS and you still seem to think I’m going on about Crit Damage being better for some odd reason.
I wrote in my last post that it was me that said that your rule of thumb was stacking crit damage. I never said you suggested stacking crit damage.
This kind of thing is indirectly insulting and you’ve been doing a lot of that in your posts against me. I’m sorry if I didn’t word myself correctly in my own posts when I tried to get my point across but there isn’t any reason to be an kitten about it.
Frankly it wasnt my intention at all and it has never been my intent in any of my post where i have discussed stuff with you. I thought it was common knowledge and when you suggested over 75% crit damage with very low crit rating i thought you missed it. Not intended at all to be insulting, just informative even though it seems in retrospective it was a bit overambitious.
I never write to insult people i have a reasonable discussion with, like this one, and i blame the bluntness of the media for any misunderstanding and that english isnt my native language.
Its basically useless, it cant be controlled since you cant determine when it hits, even with as much as 50% crit chance. Key to any cc is that they are on demand, GH isnt. Using the aoe on it is more luck than skill.
And the damage component is less than the first hit of the chain so damagewise its a no go also.
So in short, its useless compared to the alternatives. Purity, strength in numbers, retrubitive armor etc.
It also only buff one weapon and any semi skilled player will keep swapping to utilize max out of the cool downs which means means the effective cool down is actually longer than 30 s. Depending on average attackspeed and crit chance i would say the average cool down is approx 33-35 s. 30 is max luck.
If you swap perfectly the cool down will be reached when you have your other weapon equipped, which even more increases the effective cool down.
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And as i said i disagree with that rule of thumb since it means lowering your overall dps while you increase the burst, even though very unreliable. Rule of thumb should be the opposite, stack power and crit chance (better budget) and top it off with crit damage to get that extra edge. Ofc in OP build, the doctrine is very different in burst builds.
I didnt state that you did say it was good to stack crit damage. what i said was that the only reason to stack crit damage is when you want to achieve bursts. So it was me stating the amount of crit damage is secondary to precision, not you.
The numbers display how crit chance and crit damage increases dps and it can be found in the link below. 1,408 and 1,438 are the coefficients used with 35% crit chance and 65% and 75% crit damage.
Sorry i thought this link was commonly known, my bad, in these forums. Its been up for discussion in a lot of threads.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit
80% crit damage and 35% crit chance isnt a burst build imo, its far to unreliable due to low crit chance and frankly OP has to low power also to create any significant bursts.
Frankly i cant see that OP asks for a burst build but for a frontline pusher, first in and last one out is my impression but he might want huge burst and i totally misunderstood his intent with the build
So yeah you’ve gone off on a tandem about Crit Damage stacking (still looking for where I said anything about that) where all I meant was Crit damage is pointless without adequate Crit Rate to back it up.
And as a measure of adequate crit chance you said that each percentage of crit chance he should have 2-3% crit damage, as a rule of thumb and its here i disagree.
Precision has a larger impact on dps (budget wise) than crit damage and if he aint going for a high burst build or high dps build (nothing in OP suggests that imo) crit damage should be considerably lower than your rule of thumb.
Serioulsy i dont understand why people keep posting inflated builds with rather poor stat optimization (just using celstial trinkets is really bad) and try to make them look good.
Start a new thread and remove the buffs and i will with 100% certainty improve those stats for you.
here is the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFAGoIyFYLA7BGhfHvekQKyQA-jECBYjAJfFRjtMMIVXRr8KsqaS1abY6XBBA-w
please show me how to improve it master
As i said, start a new thread and i more than willing to do it.
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Buy and sell stuff on the trader. Pretty much commodity speculation. Earned about 6000 gold that way since release.
Upside, it takes 15 minutes a day, max. So basically grind free but the downside is that you need to understand the basics of macro economics to do it.
Did i mention its fun as well.
ok got it, my point is that honor line seems not so useful if I do not use shouts so that’s bringing me back to the traditionnal 0/0/10/30/30 with two shouts and a consecration.
It does seem that we are stuck with PoV in this condition heavy meta.
Honor and virtues are the best support lines we have and its not just pure of voice that contributes here. Healing power, reduced cd on supportive skills on 2h weapons, empowering might even though its not good its better compared to what radiance can offer and larger symbols to name a few.
You dont need PoV, rune soldiers do the same thing, the boon conversion is just nice to have, not need to have. My point is that you should have lots of team wide condi removal in wvw if you are into support. and yes we are definitely pidgeonholed into this and personally i am rather fedup.
Even if you go full out consecrations you can invest in honor. But SyG should be on the cast bar 24/7 since it also is a stun breaker.
No real source of removing condition but a long cd.
No passive source of removing conditions like purity
very dependent on staff to have mobility which dont stack properly and you dont have 2h mastery
The traits in radiance (blind especially) demands you to be close and personal. Your lack of healing besides #6 will make you have really poor sustain.
At least 25 point are placed in non supportive traits and your build sint designed for damage
The build feels very unfocused
Virtue line and honor compliment each other very nicely, you dont exploit that.
Honor and valor compliment each other and you dont exploit that
You have 2 2H weapons and not the trait. Both gs and staff relies heavily on cooldowns to be good in wvw.
You have 50% boon duration but very few boons to give
The stuff you choose in virtues can almost exclusively be achieved with shouts which also remove conditions when traited
I would say that there isnt a single support focused competitive build that have less than 30 points in honor. If you choose virtues or valor as secondary line depends on your ambition to do damage.
There is more but i think you get the point.
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Serioulsy i dont understand why people keep posting inflated builds with rather poor stat optimization (just using celstial trinkets is really bad) and try to make them look good.
Start a new thread and remove the buffs and i will with 100% certainty improve those stats for you.
A good rule of thumb I tend to go by is that for every 2-3% Crit damage I tend to make sure I have 1% Crit rate otherwise you aren’t utilising that Crit damage to it’s full potential. As for Power having around 2000 is more than adequate for dealing damage.
So 75% Crit Damage with 35% Crit Rate and 2000 Power is a perfectly balanced set of stats and once you have this you can focus everything else on giving yourself more HP and Armour.
I would argue that that is not a very good rule of thumb. Crit damage in it self adds very little to overall dps and the only time when its worth stacking is when you go for burst builds and imo that isnt what Op is looking for.
35% crit chance
65% or 75% crit damage
2k power
2000*1,403=2806
2000’1,438=2876
2876-2806=70
70/2806=2,5% increase in overall damage
Or have i missed something here?
Budget wise each percentage of crit damage roughly corresponds to 16 in precision so 10% crit damage corresponds to 150-160 in precision which is 7-8% crit chance. Why i chose to write roughly is that it differs from piece to piece. Celestials excluded in the above, those suckers has their own logic.
In a wvw frontliner crit damage is probably the last stat to invest in from a purely efficiency perspective.
In hope im right in the above or i have been calculating my effective stats badly for a very long time and none of my advise regarding stat optimizing should be taken seriously.
Dont look at the gear i chose but check the stats. Damage wise its marginally worse than the build you have but the difference in healthpool is huge and its marginally worse in toughness.
Just as food for thoughts.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASBmIyKsSsHYMjd86BFdIDB-jEyAY/ARfCU2jIjN9BVZLiGr2GT7GZ9rQqUA6qMC-w
Edit: my point is that i think those >2k health is more worth than the healing power you have in your build.
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I would add a couple of pvt in your armor, instead of knights. Imo a 16-18k health would be a bit more with in the comfort zone based on the “first in last one out” playstyle i suspect you want. Pretty much how i play it btw. I would also swap the berserkers to valkyrie.
After that i would have a long talk with my team about the importance of fury to compensate. I think the survivability will skyrocket to the moon and as long as you have fury the dps would be more than enough.
I also found the pre/tough/pow trinkets to very good in the build you are looking for, sure power and crit damage goes down but precision goes up by a huge chunk.
Do you have all the armor and trinkets or can you adjust? If you can adjust armor/trinkets i can send you my stormtrooper setup with hammer/gs in a PM or post it here if you like. Its the same traits but more crit and health.
If we dont look at how much damage you do and instead look at your ability to reliably crit and have big numbers i have found that the more reliable burst i have (guardians dont have reliable burst like most other professions) the more the turn out gets predictable.
With that said i would look for reliability instead of max damage and the small differences in dps in your three options are realy tiny tbh.
When it comes to sigils i have skipped using any stacking sigils. Why run with a sigil that prevents me from actually playing the way the build was intended to be played? Assuming that you, like me, use energy as your main sigil.
If you insist in them i would go for bloodlust and use MH+OH to stack fast. I assume you plan on having a zerg setup (based on attack stats posted in OP) and you will still be the last one to go down and honestly healing power on dodge roll is mainly a selfish trait that you wont need based on your level of skill displayed in the healway clips.
I am going to level my warrior. Its clearly better in every way now.
3 sec of fury is a kittenn joke.
I feel kind of alright atm, i have thief, necro, ranger, warrior and mesmer at 80 with full exotics. So i can at least have fun tomorrow night.
I have no issues with the changes to guardian from a stand alone point of view.
What i find weird is the buff to warriors. The change to staggernig blow with the motivation that it felt clunky would also fit into ring of warding.
The same goes for the trait change to shout traits. The reason for that was that a warrior couldnt use all shout related traits and at the same time they buffed the healing by a huge margin. 25% more heals and considerably better scaling with healing power. So basically we are talking about 7k burst aoe heal while removing conditions (rune of soldier) for my warrior. Combine that with 500 passive regen.
I think our symbol traits definitely should fall under the category of “clunky and awkward” or that you cant invest in all of them if you chose symbol weapons, its 55 points.
Also a huge boost to both necro and thief and aoe condition capability. Like it was needed.
9 sec of fury is just silly tbh compared to that, the above forces guardians even more to build for condition removal and its kind of tellling when we look at the build they used to demonstrate the changes to guardian.
As been said above, this wasnt everything but that clearly said it was the high lights and frankly if they dont adress zeal, spirit weapons or symboltraits that havent even been into these parts of the forum.
If anything meditations got less viable due to even more conditions flying around. Im not even sure its a relative boost to a x/30/30/x/x build compared to what necro, warriors and thiefs got.
I usually try to stay positive but i dont think positive is particularly realistic approach atm. If the stream accurately displays the overall major changes i think Anet is very disconnected from their own game.
I hope i dont get my “hopes” fulfilled tomorrow.
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Using trinkets in particular isnt optimal since using them makes you loose effective stats, sure raw stats are higher but effective health and damage is lower compared to mixing other gear types.
Chest and legs can be used since they have a slightly higher budget and maybe head and weapons, im not certain about those. None of the trinkets or the other armor pieces are worth it. Mix cleric/berserker/knights/valk and get better overall stats
Healway or any build with more than 5 points in honor wont win versus a skilled opponent in a duel situation.
I dunno man I always duel with at least 20 Points in Honor..
Ofc you can but versus a properly built and played mesmer you wont have the damage to kill them fast enough so they cant disconnect in time. I only played maybe 50 hours mesmer at level 80 and i can always disconnect versus a guardian that plays tankish builds (>5 points in honor). They just kill stuff to slow and always give me the choice to disconnect.
EDIT: After reading your other posts i realise where you are coming from. To clarify things, the number of really good players in wvw is very limited compared to tpvp so it might be that you and i have completely different perspectives on things, hence why i also high lighted some stuff in my posts.
I have no issues killing mesmers in wvw either but the thing is that 99 out of 100 in wvw is just poor players with bad builds and the same goes for every profession. Its like playing a thief and being killed in wvw, its just bad.
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smite condition and blow up the clones and a burst build to take the real one down quickly. Pro longed fights cant be won since when they see its downhill a good one will always disconnect.
So in short full burst if you want to win and ofc chose the right one when you do the burst.
Healway or any build with more than 5 points in honor wont win versus a skilled opponent in a duel situation.
Really the same versus a good thief, thay always have the option to disconnect and in order to win you need to surprise them. I can literally run for hours in wvw without getting killed when i play my thief.
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Start with the FAQ, stickied at the top.
havent played my guardian extensively in a long time. Focusing on easy mode now.
Stealth thief, can literally run for hours without being killed
AOE condi necro, it just dont get any easier.
And ofc my war that runs the build displayed in the clip and a hybrid condi build. Whats not to like about over 500-600 regen and good damage.
Have my hopes on the 15th of october though and that we arent just condicleansers after that.
Fix symbol traits:
Either consolidate them into one line or move all symbols to one weapon. As it is now you need to invest 55 points for a full area control build which is just bad considering anet stated we are about area control and we can use max two symbols with swap.
no skill should force us to stand still while we use it, Im looking at you ZD and E! It might be worth it in pve but in pvp/wvw its no good.
Remove spirit weapons in its current iteration and instead make them real weapons. When you activate Spirit sword you actually equip a sword with unique abilities.
Introduce a fourth virtue, im all for moving AH to such a virtue which would allow us to use more offensive builds and indirectly increase the value of zeal. AH procs when we give out boons (as it does today) and if we activate it all boons we give the team heal them. The current AH is replaced by a small aoe heal when using a shout.
Fiz Zeal, enough said.
Give us a valid condition based way to play.
Make it so 2h mastery infact increases dps on hammer.
Buff/nerf weaponskills so all skills contribute in a dps rotation. This would mean that even cc skills would/could be used in pve and still maintain its function in pvp/wvw. This can be done in a number of ways and some of them are:
Buff damage on weapon based utility skills while nerfing the chain
Make them “castable” while performing the chain attack
Reduce casting time
EDIT: During beta there was talk about skills that needed to be charged. The longer you held the button the more powerful they became. What happened with this? This would be so nice on skill one on the staff.
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Whats to fix?
The game is delivered as “promised” in the manifesto even though people seem to have read in a lot of stuff that wasnt covered by the manifesto in the first place.
The only real problem with this game is that there are to many individuals that expected something that wasnt promised and they seem to roam the forums posting “Is this game fixable” like threads.
Basically they cant change their expectations and seem to think that changing a wonderful game to suit their own agenda. I assume that people tend to do that rather than implicitly admit that they didn’t understand the concept in the first place.
Are there things to improve? definitely! Is the game in any need of a “fix” due to being broken? Absolutely not!
i would miss the damage component and protection from the hammer. XDD
No you wont since orb of lights damage component should naturally be moved as well. :-) Good times for melee with mace, hammer and gs!!!!
imo this wouldnt just improve the staff but all other weapons as well.
And suddenly kitten point investment in symboltraits seems worth it. There is a reason why they placed 4 marks on the necro staff, unafortunately they designed the guardian traits the same way but forgot to place the symbols on the staff.
ahh, interesting idea, Brutaly. but but, please don’t take symbols away from my other weapons! : ((
I think you would appreciate orb of light on third step of the hammer chain, empower on mace and line of warding on gs even more. And just imagine stacking 4 symbols in wvw. After all red circles seem to be anets vision of the meta and it would allow us to join in on the meta.
It would allow for a very decent impact in sieging and would allow us to do more than spamming skill one on the door and using empower when off cd.
i personally hit for almost 2k (no might stacks) with skill 1 and over 4k with skill 2. In wvw.
Do i like the staff? No! Is it good? Yes!
What the staff actually miss imo is what the necro staff is, a viable ranged aoe option. I would love if all our symbols was moved to staff and the staff support was moved to our other weapons. But thats an opinion to make it more likable. Would it be more viable, i dont know.
one ever said i don’t weapon swap, the problem is one of those weapons seeming mostly useless in comparison to the other and its alternative, but thank you for the advice.
Think you missed the point, if they kite out of range you shouldnt be using melee weapons in the first place.
If you perceive one of the weapons to be “mostly useless” i believe its more of a matter that that weapon doesn’t suit you. Neither of those two are useless if played correct.
Its as Akamon says, if you want to be successful with the hammer you need to play it very offensively. Even though its perceived as a defensive option (i suspect its the symbol of protection) its in fact best used on the other side of the scale. And 2h mastery is almost a must in any type of pvp.
and ofc his other advise are really worth looking into as well, there is and endless list of options to handle kiters.
Me, i just kick them till they run, in wvw/pvp that is a win. But some might fancy the kill more than the actual impact.
EDIT: Rune of the traveler might be worth considering
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swap weapons, using one weapon alone is useless. There are two slots for a reason.
Use scepter or staff as secondary and the problem is solved if you use the terrain with some finesse.
I use scepter and hammer as my primary setup in both tpvp and wvw. Both weapons are very underrated in this community.
ya, im fine with that, xpt that you can’t really burst with a full PTV gear setup.
And you have no stability fyi
Ofc you can burst, if you have survivability you will have time and if you have time you can stack might and if you can stack might you can have silly amounts of power.
People should really look into the concept of might stacking in wvw builds. I can even make magi/celestial gear look good when it comes to damage.
When i might stack with a 1h setup i never ever have less than 10 stacks from swapping alone. If you pull scepter focus 5+2+3 and follow up with torch 4 and JI+sword chain we are talking well over 10k of damage here. Its a pretty neat burst for a tank. Sure its not the 17k i pull off with my valky/ber setup but its still a reliable burst to land 10k damage in 3 seconds.
Im running triple meditation all the time in wvw and stability isnt a must for me, it works and im still the last one going down.
Anyhow its offtopic, i just responded that you can use full pvt in wvw and still be very offensive and a major source of damage.
Personally i use pre/tough/pow trinkets and amulet and the the rest pvt in one of my setups which allows me to get better stats since i can focus food on survivability.
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lol, ofc you can run full PVT in wvw.
73% crit chance with fury,from burning, your team or that you get hit.
53% crit chance
18,6k health
3160 armor
2274 powerits absolutely competitve today, if you fancy the play style, and it will be even more so after the 18th when it can be used with melandru and still maintain a decent uptime on fury.
Only 1 problem with that build: When was the last time you killed anyone with scepter outside of a burst comp?
I kill with scepeter in wvw all the time, in zergs it works since people cant see it coming and in small scale roaming its a perfect second melee weapon very suited for might stacking.
Just as with hammer its a l2adapt issue. Keep using it in a way that maximize its weaknesses and it will be bad.
Scepter/focus and mighty blow is one of the strongest burst setups we have.
lol, ofc you can run full PVT in wvw.
73% crit chance with fury,from burning, your team or that you get hit.
53% crit chance
18,6k health
3160 armor
2274 power
its absolutely competitve today, if you fancy the play style, and it will be even more so after the 18th when it can be used with melandru and still maintain a decent uptime on fury.
Move symboltratis from zeal to honor and move EM and vigorous precision to zeal. Symbols are about area control and for area control you need time and to get time you need survivability and honor and valor are the two trees that give you that.
Honor should be about symbols and shouts imo. This would also improve zeal by a metric ton.
hammer is one of the best aoe weapons (staff and hammer being the ones we have, gs is a burst aoe that heavily depedns on cool downs and basically for noobs) in the game, dps wise, since it can keep aoe up 24/7 and probably the only weapon i would even consider investing in symboltraits for, in wvw ofc.
Its also our best burst weapon and even as a bunker you can hit for 6k aoe if you know what you are doing.
But it requires a person that actually knows how to play it. Very few do.
I wouldnt play a single zerg vs zerg and not go hammer and/or GS/staff, its as simple as that.
Either swap guilds to a guild that:
Knows how to play and can appriciate what the hammer is, one the best melee aoe weapons in the game, in zergs.
Understand that wvw isnt competitive and dont give a flying kitten about builds
Or that you stay in the guild and conform.
in short we arent forced to play a certain setup but some players needs specific weapons to play certain setups.
This depends on what you are doing, both are slow weps, but hammer does bring more burst to the table. i can do a 4k mighty blow, and im running bunker, mace is nice(imo better for 1v1 bc of the lack of cc) … in a group, in terms of zerg busting or larger groups fights then hammer is just boss, immobilize on it is insane and ring of warding is just excellent, so why would it not be great for killing folks?
This ^^
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/first
In the thread above i think Anet started something really good and i would like to encourage them to continue down the same path.
A while back i read a post by an Anet employee and he/she (cant find it now) stated that most changes are final about 4 weeks before they are released. This means that most of the 15th of october patch is set and whats left to do is mostly balance and polish and ofc the actual coding/design/QA.
So why not post the 15th of October patch and specifically the profession related changes that are coming.
This would allow the community to give feedback on the balancing, like cooldowns, duration, damage, range etc.
Im certain that the community can behave as good as i think they did in the link i included above.
I would verify that with either the support or with someone that explicitly tell you that they have done that stunt.
The reason for my concern is that in this game chars isnt bound to a server, the account is. There is no reason why choice of server should be reset just by deleting the char.
When the game was launched i think i actually chose the server before i started a char since server choice was the important part for my team. But it might be my bad memory.
the only thing that would make it interesting is if the ICD is 10s and that the damage component hits for 3-4k on crit on a berserker/valkyrie setup.
Otherwise there are a bunch of traits and sigils that are better.
Sorry for not updating as promised!
There are three reasons for that:
1. RL
2. Balance patch 15th October.
3. just minor things to add.
RL is about to change so i will have some more time. what i am having issues with is if its worth updating some minor stuff when i perhaps have to rewrite the entire guide based on the patch.
Well i have decided to wait it out and update after 15th of October instead, hope its alright with you guys.
If not traited virtues is a pretty weak mechanics, if traited is pretty strong one. Guard have greats traits for virtues.
That force you to trait them for being really useful.
It cost you exactly 5 trait points to get the equivalent of 1.5 shouts on a 60 s cd. That is the same as 1.5 extra utility slots. Pretty easy choice.
even though i can agree with OP untraited the passive is pretty mediocre.
I said the fight is determined in 4-5 seconds, it can last longer.
You cant get enough dodging in wvw and especially a burst or healing build are built around it. Hence why use both vigorous precision and energy sigils when i play my burst build. In some of the encounters the opponent will get the first shot at you.
regarding stacking sigils i dont use them and the reason i simple, in a solo build you will die and stacking on kill is only really worth it if you have some trash mobs to kill on your way out of the spawn.
In average you die once per kill you get, if you are a medium player and your class is medium in one on ones.
If you really need more damage use 5% sigils instead, those correspond to approx 5-6 stacks or have a secondary set and kill mobs and swap to energy at lets say 10 stacks.
On the pic i posted i have 46% (+15% from RHS) unbuffed, that is enough to have a reliable burst.
And yes, if fury is added to meditations a triple meditation build will outshine AH in all types of wvw game play. You can dress extremely defensive and still have reliable burst thru high power and hig crit damage. it will be enough to have about 25-30% crit chance on a burst build. We will have the ability to burst really nice with almost full pvt?