Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

But for the most part i run with 3 shouts.

Which im pretty sure is how most guards have their bar as standard.

Its your choice but imo triple shouts isnt the best support you can carry for the team, especially since only one of them has any valuable impact on the team (stability) that other professions cant give out as well as a guardian.

I would say the opposite, any guardian with support as their main objective isnt carrying more than one shout in pve since there are much more powerful utilities in a low condi environment like pve/dungeons.

Hold the line= any competent team stack both boons so they never ever go down.
Retreat = same with swiftness. Aegis can be valuable though but very few can actually time it for the team.
Save your self = condi removal on the team, great utility and gets even better with 10 points in honor for cd and traited virtues to cleanse the guardian.

Imo this leave SY and SyG (and perhaps 50% of Retreat) and SyG already has condi removal which means in practice honor becomes a 30 point investment to get condiremoval in SyG and maybe retreat if you want the extra aeigs.

Imo a triple shout guardian is kind of poor support even though i see the merits of it in less skilled teams.

For condiremoval gs/whirl+ SY+purging flames+traited virtues out shines triple shouts any day of the weak when it comes to condi removal as well. But thats me.

ofc its relevant if you can add better utility and more dps by moving points into other lines.

Either people invest in honor because:

1. They dont know better and actually think its the best dps options, its been marketed so for a very long time and people might have bought it.
2. They need the HP cushion/survuvability the line offers
3. They desperately need PoV of because of some obscure reason.
4. Or a combination of the 3.

regarding EM, i described a test in this thread i have done with my tpvp teammates in fractals and i can tell you before that test i had the exact same opinion as you, that it was great and a must. But i realized it was mere an opinion and havent used it ever after that, not even in my frontline pusher build.

Fraps and encounter and set the team up so you are the only one giving out might and watch the clip and se how many stacks you have in average on the team.

But frankly it doesnt matter, traited consecrations with 25% boon duration outshines Em any day of the week as a complimentary might stacker.

colesy.8490:

And empowering might boosts group DPS.

Marginally, since the aoe is just tiny small. The team virtually has to be in the area of a symbol for it to hit. Its only in full out melee fights where this trait ever shine. Its 1-3 stacks on the team and approx 3 on you.

And not even then. if you have 20 points in honor use 2h mastery with traited consecrations and you have at least 15 stacks for 36 sec per 45 seconds and you can fill in the might gap with max 2 s delay and with a bigger aoe and the support those 2 consecrations add in general.

For pve there is only one trait, in a weapon neutral build, that has considerable value, PoV but is it worth 30 points?

If you can play well enough it is bad investment imo.

spoj.9672:

Pure of voice gives you potentially 3 seperate condi removals. The other condi removals are higher cooldown. For fights like alpha p1 the burning attack happens at pretty spread out intervals. You can cleanse it more effectively with shouts and pure of voice. Its a good trait when you arent maxing out the kitten but as you have said there are alternatives. And even though elusive power isnt that greakittens still something, so honor isnt completely wasted. You also get EM which is not a bad trait either. If you want examples of bad traits just look at the necro, most of them are a complete joke.

Potentially is the word, it only applies in triple shout builds which have to give up more “important” utilities like WoR, shield of the avenger, purging flames and hallowed ground both which removes/prevent conditions as well. Or why not bow of truth if its condi thats the issue on a particular boss.

And tbh all members of a coordinated team should have at least one condiremvoal with short cd, preferably team wide.

I have done all dungeons in a coordinated team, incl fractals, and i have never felt that conditions even is an issue. Maybe its different in speedruns but i dont do those since i dont farm anything in this game.

In pugs i see a use for it since you cant control the setup but i premades it has no value at all to me.

I didnt mean its wasted but we should at least look upon it compared to virtues.

And compared to virtues it only adds 3k health, 300 healing power and PoV, in general. There are exceptions in specific weapons setups.

colesy.8490:

Honor is more or less an HP cushion with a 30 point condiremoval trait which add very little value when using 1-2 other utilities like WoR, HR or spirit weapons. I think that sums it up.

I ran 10/30/30/0/0 with about 10.8k HP just fine in dungeons and I’d only consider myself a decent player. Zerker guardians absolutely do not need the HP cushion, it’s the utility skills which is what makes guards take points in honour, just how phantasm mesmers take points in inspiration (warden’s feedback is insane) but it boosts vitality too.

Which is my point that when people invest 30 points in honor that is the main reason, HP, since there are other and just as good solutions to add support/utility and dps in other lines.

Why not 10/25/0/10/25 and you have all the support in the world, higher dps, shorter cd on that one crucial shout, SyG, traited consecrations for max might stacking when needed and you can swap superior aria for larger symbol for max symbol dps on moving targets or longer lasting symbols on stationary targets and ofc the added support those symbols add when traited.

Just an example of a much more group centric build with higher dps.

so basically we are down to that PoV is such great support that it warrants a 30 points investment that could be invested in higher dps in any of the other lines or better support/dps thru virtues.

Sorry i dont buy it, especially since purging flames cleanses an entire team on multiple conditions, adds much more might per minute compared to EM (and even more in a elite surroundings since most fights are over in a very short time) if you just trait it in virtues. Even though tougher to cordinate.

Because every moment you are dead or dying is impacting your DPS. The 30 points in a defensive line allows you that sweetspot of realism between damage output and surivability and the reality that condition cleanse is pretty important for some portions of the content..

Which illustrates my point since condi removal can
be found in virtues/utilities.

Honor is more or less an HP cushion with a 30 point condiremoval trait which add very little value when using 1-2 other utilities like WoR, HR or spirit weapons. I think that sums it up.

check the FAQ

sword/gs is very viable and shield is also a great tool even though a bit situational.

Yeah i use energy in all my setups and with the heal power this build has its mandatory imo.

That setup in rune is really nice and i used it before but i only have two monks and if i end up with that setup i dont want to use them now. Would feel awful to salvage a celestail timegated armor or ditch the runes.

Yeah with consecrations you can really add in some huge might stacks. Think i got 12 stacks out of hallowed ground and purging flames during one fight in EB tonight. but you need to have both 2h mastery and master of consecrations.

I dont like the stack on kill sigils, i hate when i lose those stacks but if i use them i will use power sigils.

Haviz is correct about the lenght of the dodge. I took the liberty to add in a 0,25 seconds for two reason:

1. Dodging in general brings you out of position/range/los so you need a couple of tenth of a sec to commence doing damage.

2. 1s is dividable with 5s which makes the illustration of the usefulness of elusive power easier to understand.

Sorry for that.

there is no contradiction in dodging to keep your aegis and how useless elusive power is but the thing is that you need to dodge every 5s to keep endurance below 100%.

Do you dodge every 5 s in a dungeon/fractal?

If you dodge every 15th second to avoid damage/keep aegis the net effect from elusive power is approx 3%. That is the reality. Personally i dont have to dodge every 15th seconds in fractals to keep aegis but that might be my playstyle but it works at level 40 at least.

Tbh pve is close to test a dummy and also the best place to test mechanics which is the main reason why i even run fractals.

typo meant honor.

Elusive power sucks big time since you need to dodge (loose dps) in order to gain dps. A dodge takes approx 1s to do and after that you need to get in range/position so in reality you loose more than 20% dps by dodging.

And due to constant vigor from crits you need to dodge every 5th second to trigger elusive power.

The only time you can speak of any gain of dps is when you facetank and dodge every 5s and use a hammer with 2h mastery so you can dodge every chain and bounce back in with mb. But that isnt top dps to begin with since spamming the chain with traited symbols is higher with the hammer.

In a dps build the idea is to share aggro so bsically you have aggro 20% of the time and the dps gain will be achieved during that time.

The gain from elusive power is just tiny.

What it is is a interesting feat for max bursting which is important in wvw/pvp but in pve its weak.

I think to many look at buildcrafts effective power and actually believe that elusive power adds a straight 10% when the reality is closer to 2%

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Anyway, if you want to do max damage on your guard just go 10/25/0/25/10, and since damage is 99% of what you want… yea.

The only setup that even can be considered a max dps build with your trait distribution is when you play solely with hammer and spam skill one and use symbol traits. Which is fail to begin with since you absolutely need to swap weapons and use cooldowns to perform max dps and gs being the main secondary with suitable cooldowns. The exception might be if you run with 1h sword and spam the chain but i suspect swapping to scepter is max and swap back after two smites. But then RHS should be traited.

With all other weapons that isnt a max dps build.

Any build with points in valor isnt a max dps build.

@CptAurellian
Frankly i made testruns and watched clips for hours. I had the exact same impression as you regarding its strength but after doing tests with my team i just never use it, not even in my wvw AH build.

It takes 20-30 minutes and a couple of hours of watching clips and i honestly suggest you use that time if you have doubts in what im writing.

Same goes for elusive power and also why im not a fan of selfless daring. Elusive power is as the name says elusive and selfless daring is more of a selfish daring.

I do agree that burning is very situational and its aoe. The real killer in virtues imo is power of the virtues.

That is a multiplicative damage booster and with 25 points in virtues you can keep at least 4 boons up at all times on your own and if you add the team you have 7-8 boons at all times.

@Blasino
Post a new thread, “book” a couple of pages and we can discuss you write up in that thread.

I know you where kidding, hence the smiley in my answer.

colesy.8490:

Actually, in basically every single encounter in the game your team will be grouped together.

Really i havent seen what implicitely you describe, that 4 players staying in approx 280 range from the guardian for en entire encounter and its not how i run level 40 fractals but om no pve pro

But that wasnt the point, the point is that there are better ways to boost dps and give better support in virtues. Master of consecration and 6-9 stacks from hallowed ground alone is better due to might and stability.

So even with EM hitts 2-3 stack per teammember its not that good compared to virtues.

Brutaly.6257:

foofad.5162:

After much hemming and hawing, I finally finished a burny-boony hammery-healy Permeating Wrath sample build. I won’t be able to test it personally for a little while due to the use of Celestial armor, but I’m excited to give it a shot. If anyone has Celestial and would like to report on it, that’d be great.

• +Boons, boons everywhere
• +Above average AOE DPS
• +Blast finishers like a boss
• +Above average AOE healing with water combos, Empower, Selfless Daring
• +High Symbol uptime plus two AOE-heavy weapons yields good PW procs
• +Above average survivability – 400hp/s passive regen, reasonable HP and armor

• -Nothing about it is outstanding, everything is either above average or just okay
• -While PW does add some respectable AOE DPS, single target DPS is lacking
• -No burning beyond Justice, no burn duration beyond Zeal
• -Celestial armor is time-gated
• -You’re probably gonna get kicked out of some pugs for this
• -Only condition clearing comes from Absolute Resolution

Gameplay Notes:
This is essentially a variation on the Booninator, re-tooled for both Healing Power and higher EHP. Make no mistake: This costs damage. Some variations on the theme that you might consider are giving up the food in favor of DPS variety of choice, replacing one Water and one Monk rune with something else DPS-focused, and so on. You could also give up a shout for Bane Signet to squeeze out some more damage. Essentially should be played roughly like a Healway build; it’s more about outlasting than outfighting. Note: A one-handed weapon variant of this can also be achieved with 0/30/0/30/10 which dumps PW and AR completely in favor of RHS/EM/POV. Using a sword, you’ll end up with roughly 10-15% more DPS to single targets.

I have full celestial armor and celestial rings and amulet.

I can try it out later this week and do a short write up regarding my impressions.

Will do it with 2*water and 4*altruism though since i dont want to waste my monks (will test my celestials with other stuff/runes/orbs later on) by replacing them later on.

Have tested this in wvw and swapped in boon duration food as well.

In short it works really well in aoe fights and when i say really well i mean great.

I also swapped hold the line for hallowed ground which allows for 9 stacks of might if coordinated properly and if you pop empower, swap, trigger hallowed ground two times and pop SyS this starts to hit extremely nice in aoe fights. The aoe burning alone is just amazing.

I also tried it with HG and purging flames and doing the above and after that pull purging flames makes it possible to stack 8-10 sec of aoe burning that hits hard, really hard.

The main drawback is that you are extremly sensitive to conditions. so i think the symbol trait should be swapped for pure of voice, which also improves the dps of the build thru more boons.

If you use hallowed ground and purging flames as main utility and one shout i think this build could be very nice indeed.

I need to get some more time in wvw to get the full picture but this was really fun and the first pure support build i played that actually was remotely enjoyable.

Perma swiftness thru staff is great btw.

Im very happy with it, i still think its the most competitive setup around. I just think these forums needs some comprehensive info about dps setups. I think the community needs it.

What AH does (besides from adding approx 9% dps from valor) is that it allows you to go into really absurd situations with very offensive gear as long as you have your team with you. A well played AH guardian/team is just the most competitive setup.

But its not per say a dps build. Traits/runes/sigils are in many cases more powerful enhancers of dps than armor, trinkets and weapons.

So when i run with 105% crit damage and over 2k power i wouldnt call it a dps build, its more of an offensive semi tank.

The brutal setting was fun and ofc the finishers where great but very random.

Fury rocked until 1.5 and its also the main reason why i would like to have more pve content in wvw. I loved the feeling doing missions and just waiting for a backstab. That game had so much going for it but that Morrison dude just wrecked it by turning it into a gear centric wow clone.

CptAurellian.9537:

Ah, thanks for remembering lazy people like me and providing numbers, so I don’t need to do it. So, to take your numbers, 3 stacks of EM are a realistic scenario, which would provide 3.5 % more damage at 3000 power (halfway between no buffs and all possible buffs, so probably realistic). However, the EM range is not as tiny as you claim, which means that anyone who knows what he does (= is in melee range) will get it. That 3.5 % group DPS increase can be translated roughly into what would be 17.5 % of your own DPS. I don’t see many traits (except FW, which is another story I’ve already discussed in my previous post) which provide such a boost. Taking Virtues or whatever is not as effective, unless your group already has its 25 might.

Ok so we agree on 3 stacks as a average number from EM.

Now lets break that down. 3 stacks are only true if you have 100% uptime on dps. Any time during an encounter you dont do dps the EM stacks are reduced. So if you have 20% downtime when dodging, being out of range or breaking los the gain from those stacks are reduced with 20%.

The range on em is somewhere 280 and 380 in the tests i made. Only a few encounters supports a team to be gathered so closely and when dodging/breaking los you also in general increase the range from your team, in general being close to the aggro is bad.

I was huge fan of EM as a supportive tool but after we had a discussion in my tpvp team we decided to check out how good it really was so we ran 2 fractal runs. We used a team that had 0 might in it so we could with 100% certainty determine that all the might came from the guardian and EM.

Our conclusions are thakittens highly situational and on some fights we could have 2-3 stacks on the team but in most fights we had less than 1 stack in average.

In average we had about 1 stack running on the team over time. Ofc we arent pro pvers, it was a level 30 run but we did try to play it as EM centric as possible.

Its even worse in Tpvp and the only time i think its worth taking is when you are symbolbombing with 4 frontline pushers in wvw or “maintanking” in melee.

You are overrating the value of that trait just like people overrate the value of selfless daring as a heal, the mediocre range makes them highly situational as a support tool.

with 10 points in virtues you can stack more might per time frame and also faster on the team by just triggering your own firefields with the hammer. 9 stacks from consecrations for 33s.

Btw going into honor makes it possible to have close to 25 stacks of might on the team permanently from the guardian alone with the proper runes.

Honor isnt close to virtues when it comes to support or dps.

So grab the zerker gear add 4*boon duration and two ruby orbs and feat 10/25/x/x/25 and start doing some real support while having decent dps.

Decent is the word since neither your build or mine is max dps.

@Oxxy
Dont want to intrude in this but just to make things clear.

“the most effective possible (in PvE effective means fast)” this comment is brought forward as a universal truth and im sure i misunderstand you. Its your opinion/definition of whats effective in pve. To you time is the gauge by which you measure your effectiveness.

For other players that isnt the case and the game doesnt reward speed in the individual encounter as long its cleared. So speed isnt rewarded other than on a personal level and ofc if you grind for rewards, doing multiple dungeons.

I think the point is that other players do measure their effectiveness with a different set of key performance indicators.

For me enjoyable company and zero downed players are the most important KPI:s. Hence the numbers of dungeons i can do in a given timeframe is irrelevant.

@Foofad
10/25/10/25 or 10/0/030/30?

Bamboocha.8129:

How about the AH build from you Brutaly in full Zerker? Wouldn’t it be a good dps-build? Haven’t tried so far.

BTW…Tarsius…Brutaly…have I seen your names in good old Age Of Conan?

The only AH build that can be considered a dps build is x/25+x/30/x/x but personally i would run meditations with that one in wvw and might consider AH in some pve content or just skip meditations and AH entirely.

This is the reason why i think a guide is needed. Dps on a guardian isnt achieved solely by gear, traits are extremely important and specifically damage multipliers.

And absolutely, second pvp 10 Dark Templar in the world and the only bori i did was to get the head, hands and belt :-). I log in occasionally to play a minigame or two but GW2 is so much better so its more seldom than ever.

Im with Tarsisus on this one. We shouldnt focus on specific builds but what the traits contribute with and how they add to specific weapons.

Blasino and Foofad has stepped up to the plate and Tarsius has outlined a disposition. lets go with that and after we got a first initial guide we give feedback and suggest additions to it.

How about that?

@Foofad
I agree and personally i dont have any issues with mat, my issue is that it alienates the majority of the potential readers. My point is that in order to make it readable for the average joe they need to be easy to understand, straight to the point and the main focus should be “how to get good dps” not “the math behind good dps”.

Ofc one chapter should be math centric and that is one of the reasons why i like Tarsius outline where chapter 4 has the math part covered.

But the main goal must be to write something that actually gets used by the community as a whole, not for the few. And it has to be very easy and comprehensive for that to happen.

@Blasino
I agree, traits should be the first chapter since that is the main dps contributor.

The math chapter should be more of an appendix or a reference.

personally i dont like some of the guides ar guru, i find them in some cases to be more of a stunt in mathematics than guides that aim to serve the general crowd. But gettting help from over there isnt bad at all.

I like the outline Tarsius made.

Thx Blasino (and ofc Foofad) :-)

I can contribute a bit if i can free up some time between my business and the newborn.

Perhaps in the area of gearing and traiting for might stacking. Maybe something about swap/block builds and ofc firefield gameplay.

If you guys set the level of ambition i will adapt and write a might stacking chapter.

Thx but my point wasnt to get a build suggestion. Personally i have a pretty good grasp on dps after a couple of hundreds of hours testing with steady weapons and literally thousands of hours in wvw/tpvp

It was that we have a pretty decent sticky part but we lack a guide to dps, we have nice writeu ps and a great FAQ and it would improve even further with a guide to dps like the one Foofad made on burning builds for instance..

haviz.1340:

Brutaly.6257:

Since we are talking about OP sweetspot, which is a personal preference, i assume you know him well to make that statement.

You don’t have to know anyone to know that no amount of defense would help him at that high level because mobs attack too fast and some of them can actually cleave.

Which in no way contradict that it is still a personal preference and as such i cant even speculate which sweetspot OP find in his combined tankiness and open world pve build. You know, the one he asks for in his opening post.

its not a fact what hp and toughness he should use, its a personal preference, yours being that none is enough.

Tarsius has made a very nice FAQ that got stickied and in that one you can find builds for competitive gameplay and also for casual pve and wvw.

What cant be found is a guide on how to achieve dps (even though burst builds can be found in Jax tpvp thread) and what traits that are of interest in order to do great/good dps and what type of builds those traits could support.

I think that would be a great contribution to the community and also a very nice addition to the FAQ.

So my question is if there are any plans on making such a guide? I personally think its needed but i dont have the time atm to sit down and write it. There are certainly also people more capable of writing it, that also might feel an urge to contribute to the community.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Brutaly.6257:

haviz.1340:

Brutaly.6257:

mix berserker, pvt and valkyrie in your armor to hit you personal sweetspot in HP and toughness.

I have to ask that but what’s the HP/toughness sweetspot for ascalon fractal at level 79?

Well i have no idea what so ever what his personal sweetspot is. You need to ask him, not me.

The answer is that there isn’t one. Because no amount of additional HP/toughness will help you.

Since we are talking about OP sweetspot, which is a personal preference, i assume you know him well to make that statement.

haviz.1340:

Brutaly.6257:

mix berserker, pvt and valkyrie in your armor to hit you personal sweetspot in HP and toughness.

I have to ask that but what’s the HP/toughness sweetspot for ascalon fractal at level 79?

Well i have no idea what so ever what his personal sweetspot is. You need to ask him, not me.

Personally i play with about 11k health when going full berserker in fractals but he asked for both tankiness and open world pve so it might be a bit different for him.

Sometimes i go with 17k with pvt armor and atm i fancy a 17k with full celestials and might stacking.

It all depends on what i find fun atm.

Sorry Op for neglecting you.

If you want tanky (take a beating) and do open world pve (dps centric) at the same time a 0/30/30/5/5 might be what you are looking for.

mix berserker, pvt and valkyrie in your armor to hit you personal sweetspot in HP and toughness.

berserker weapons and a mix pvt and berserkers in your trinkets.

Use stat increasing sigils in MH and sigil of battle in OH.

I would go for 2*water and 2*monk for moving around in the world and boon duration for the team and 2*ruby orbs for some added damage.

Scepter and 1h sword as main weapons (with right hand strength those are really nice) and ofc have staff for moving around in open world.

Shelter as heal and smite conditions as condition remover and aoe. Stand your ground as supportive shout and the last one you can swap for retreat (open world running) hallowed ground, wall of reflection or shield of the avenger or anything else you might fancy.

CptAurellian.9537:

Brutaly.6257:

Aven.7295:

colesy.8490:

Run full berserker, 0/30/0/30/10.

someone didnt read. thats the guardian dps build

Actually its not, its the dps centric build some berserker guardians use since they need a hp cushion from honor. Hence why i think most full berserker are full of it since they dress for dps but do not fully trait for it.

Its infact possible to squeeze out just as much or more dps from a pvt armor and berserker trinkets guardian with a different build.

Obviously, you have no idea about zerker builds. Vitality is probably the last reason why any zerker player goes into the Honor line, it’s all about support. Unless you have a group which already stacks 25 might in another way, EM alone beats the 30% crit damage from Valor, for example. The only true DPS trait missing in Brazil’s build is Fiery Wrath and that’s the tradeoff between squeezing out the last bit of damage and being able to provide easy condition remove or some other support so the rest of the group does not have to do it.

Oh i do have a clue, sure there are some nice supportive stuff in there but people seem to marketing it as a max dps build (which the point of zerker gear is in the first place)

And no EM contributes with max <4,99 stacks of might (average should be around 3-4 stacks with 70% crit chance) with 0% boon duration which in a 2140 (zerker with ascended trinkets and 10 points in zeal) power build is 8% with 5 stacks (which is theoretically impossible from EM alone and 0% boon duration) and more like 5% in reality with a tiny aoe which very seldom benefits the team.

And i didnt say anything about valor but since you mentioned it valor ads in roughly 9% dps that isnt conditional like EM and elusive power.

And if its support and dps you want there are even better options in 25 points virtues since you get bot boon duration (might stacking on weapon swap) for the team and extra damage per boon. Its practically impossible to play with less than 6-8 boons at all times in a coordinated group and 4-5 in a really bad group.

Personally i go 30/30///* with zerkers and alter the last 10 points to fit the scripted content at hand. If its dps we are talking about why degrade the zerker gear by not building for damage.

All the support needed are in the utility skills and consecrations and spirit weapons are both boosted by virtues.

In short honor isnt the best support for dps centric builds either.

Aven.7295:

colesy.8490:

Run full berserker, 0/30/0/30/10.

someone didnt read. thats the guardian dps build

Actually its not, its the dps centric build some berserker guardians use since they need a hp cushion from honor. Hence why i think most full berserker are full of it since they dress for dps but do not fully trait for it.

Its infact possible to squeeze out just as much or more dps from a pvt armor and berserker trinkets guardian with a different build.

didnt even bother to dodge or use blinds/blocks. It is just a matter of killing them in the right order.

Did it with full celestials and spamming skill one with the scepter/focus.

Just to clarify. You might add a text to the builds that most/all of them also work in other areas of the game.

For instance the tpvp burst build in Jaxes thread isnt present in the wvw links and still its one of the most competitive wvw dps/burst build available with crazy survivability.

Maybe remove the “naming” of the links or explain a bit better. Atm a person that has a question might think that the tpvp builds are exlusively for tpvp and vice versa which is a bit misleading.

A cross link to Foofads burn thread might be good. After all those builds and reasoning are the most comprehensive ones for condition builds.

EDIT:
Thought this one might fit in there as well. Nice thread and nice clips.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Paragon-Build/first

Personally i would like both empowering might and elusive power in zeal and have the symbol tratis in zeal to be moved to honor. This would radically improve the value of zeal and make it more suitable for other weapons than scepter/gs. And at the same time make symbolbuilds and area control a very valid option. Sure its a huge nerf to AH but that would be good for the profession. It would make more builds valid.

Honor has both health and healing power and symbols are about area control which demands sustain and hence why i think the symbol minors from zeal is more suited there.

Regarding the staff, i feel the same. And even more so after playing my power necro. That staff is just a work of wonder imo and when you have 4 symbols/marks on one weapon its justified to spread out the traits as they have done. I dont know how o fix it since i find it unrealistic that Anet would move all symbols to the staff which would justify todays spread out traits.

@Setoo
Which would be absolutely correct if there is only one way to maximize and measure performance.

Suprise, time to take down a boss isnt the only way to measure performance.

@The rest
As long as we (us players that have mostly, or exclusively, berserker gear) insist on putting 20-30 points in honor in our dps builds i genuinely think we should just shut our trap regarding performance and being selfish.

And as Scaramuccia says, the difference in dps is marginal given you use the same build. As been mentioned above, playstyle have more impact than the gear.

For instance i have:
80% crit chance
2400 power damage (3500 attack)
89% crit damage
50% multiplicative damage enhancers
55% boon duration

And only use 4 pieces of berserkers.

Would you kick me for being selfish?

Amins.3710:

^^ Makes sense to me.

Zeal – Offensive 2h’s and Symbols
Rad – Offensive 1h’s / Signets
Valor – Med’s / AH
Honor – Healing / Symbols
Virtues – Shouts (boons) / Virtues

Clearly they tried.

If this was the reality i would be very happy.

Honor is healing, symbols, boons and shouts.

Virtues are about consecration, virtues, spirit weapons and boons on general.

Zeal is gs, symbols and spiritweapons.

Imo zeal and honor should have a couple of traits swapped so zeal actually is about 2h weapons and honor improves symbols.

Zeal and virtues should also have traits swapped between them so spirit weapons ended up in zeal,

I wouldnt mind if superior aria was moved valor and the mace trait moved from valor to honor.

Just examples to prove a point. I think Anet needs to streamline our traits and make the purpose of the traits to be clearer.

Compared to my necro, warrior and thief the guardians tratis isnt as organized even though i find the traits them selves to be much more thought thru.

foofad.5162:

After much hemming and hawing, I finally finished a burny-boony hammery-healy Permeating Wrath sample build. I won’t be able to test it personally for a little while due to the use of Celestial armor, but I’m excited to give it a shot. If anyone has Celestial and would like to report on it, that’d be great.

• +Boons, boons everywhere
• +Above average AOE DPS
• +Blast finishers like a boss
• +Above average AOE healing with water combos, Empower, Selfless Daring
• +High Symbol uptime plus two AOE-heavy weapons yields good PW procs
• +Above average survivability – 400hp/s passive regen, reasonable HP and armor

• -Nothing about it is outstanding, everything is either above average or just okay
• -While PW does add some respectable AOE DPS, single target DPS is lacking
• -No burning beyond Justice, no burn duration beyond Zeal
• -Celestial armor is time-gated
• -You’re probably gonna get kicked out of some pugs for this
• -Only condition clearing comes from Absolute Resolution

Gameplay Notes:
This is essentially a variation on the Booninator, re-tooled for both Healing Power and higher EHP. Make no mistake: This costs damage. Some variations on the theme that you might consider are giving up the food in favor of DPS variety of choice, replacing one Water and one Monk rune with something else DPS-focused, and so on. You could also give up a shout for Bane Signet to squeeze out some more damage. Essentially should be played roughly like a Healway build; it’s more about outlasting than outfighting. Note: A one-handed weapon variant of this can also be achieved with 0/30/0/30/10 which dumps PW and AR completely in favor of RHS/EM/POV. Using a sword, you’ll end up with roughly 10-15% more DPS to single targets.

I have full celestial armor and celestial rings and amulet.

I can try it out later this week and do a short write up regarding my impressions.

Will do it with 2*water and 4*altruism though since i dont want to waste my monks (will test my celestials with other stuff/runes/orbs later on) by replacing them later on.

I wont go into micro level, as i think op made a nice writeup and i share 90% of his opinions, but stay on a macro level.

Zeal:
No group centric traits that benefit the team.
To much focused on one weapon, gs. The damage enhancers should also be more supportive of one handers. Like zealots blade should heal on hit with every weapon not just gs.

Radiance
Radiance is the opposite, to much focus on 1h weapons. There should be an other grandmaster trait, like the one that was in place during beta that added a chunk of precision when you where inside a symbol and there should be more groupcentric stuff. Why not fury to symbols as a grandmaster trait.

Symbols:
To many traits for one skill in one weapon, max two symbols per setup.. This would be alright if we had the necro setup with 4 marks (symbols) on the staff and we could specialize in them but as of now there are only two weapons (Mace and hammer) that actually have the uptime for it to ever consider it and than boon duration, healing power and toughness is much more important (better synergies) due to the nature of the weapon.

Some might argue that the symbol stuff in zeal is offensive and in honor you find defense/support but frankly with mace and hammer that is just wrong. The fact is the best dps enhancers for those two weapons are infact longer lasting symbols in pve versus static opponents and larger symbols in pvp and versus mobile pve opponent.

So either move the minor symbol traits to honor or just move all symbols from hammer, mace and gs to staff and keep the traits as they are.

If theu move all symbols to the staff we would also have a very decent ranged alternative with staff and scepter which would allow us to play guardian at range with serious impact.

And symbol bombing with 4 symbols would be hysterical tbh.

Runes of Exuberance looks interesting indeed but i dont think i need more vitality though. Im sitting at 15k with no points in honor. That is definitely enough.

Its power i lack atm and i feel that might stacking takes care of it..

updated with some minor changes due to change in meta and tons of typos fixed.

You need more power and crit damage to have a respectable burst.

Aim at 2k power and 95% crit damage, unbuffed. Crit chance dont improve bursts, just the probability for it to happen.

The build i use for bursting in wvw is:
0/30/30/5/5
hammer and scepter/sword+focus combined with judges intervention gives you a 1200 ranged instant +10k burst. Its very possible to almost oneshot a berserker guard and my personal recod is about 14k burst, on a target that isnt debuffed, with this one. And its instant and from 1200 range, unlike ww its almost impossible to avoid.

Long bow rangers, thiefs and dps eles are very likely one shots.

I use pvt as main armor, i add in valk chest and legs, divinity runes (scholar would be even better for burst) and berserker amulet, back and accessories. In rings i have ber/valk and ofc berserker weapons with energy sigils. Could be swapped for +5% damage sigils.

Traits are vulnerbility on blinds, 5% extra damage from sword, right hand strength. Im valor i have meditation mastery, strength in numbers and monks focus.

Utilities are smite conditions, bane signet (Stand your ground) and judges intervention.

I use sharpening stone and truffle steak as buffs.

Unbuffed without bane signet i have :
2046 power
49% crit chance
2740 armor in combat
14555 health
104% crit damage
10% extra damage on opponents with conditions.

With buffs and bane signet:
2461 power
52% crit

Have fun!

Hammer, staff and mace are the champs when it comes to procc AH. GS is fourth and scepter and sword are the worst ones.

Empowering might has 1s internal cd so it cant procc more than twice on ww. Also remember that it has tiny range.

Hammer for instance have three protection pulses each chain, six hits and with 50% crit chance it proccs empowering might 2-3 times each chain. and every second chain you trigger retaliation with mighty blow.

This means 9-10 boons every 7th second approx and then you multiply it with the numbers of opponents in the aoe. Writ of exaltation makes this silly good on a hammer in wvw and writ of persistance adds one boon per chain making it 11-12 boons.

with 3 allies and you in the aoe it means 12*4*76 (30 points in honor) which equals up to 3648 in incoming heals or 1824 heals per chain. No other weapon can trigger AH this way.

Hence why its possible to be the first one in and last one out in zergs with berserker/valkyrie gear combined with signet of judgement and protection from two shouts.

Sure you can swap for empowering might an in pve i would do that, if you want to pvp i would say that 2h mastery is mandatory for hammer gameplay since might blow is the major dps tool in pvp and in pve its the chain.

If yopu want to go for GS i would have 2h mastery in both pve and pvp since it increases both utility and dps.

good point, i removed the percentage. Tbh i dont really care what OP adds in, i just see that there are a lot of people actually thinking it has a place in a max dps build which is very doubtful to say the least.

If there is a correct and simple answer, that you or any one else dictates, that explains it in a simple fashion would be great.

And yeah i know the differences between dps and damage which was my point, elusive power is a very situational buff and its highly questionable that it actually increases overall dps compared to other traits.

There seems to be some misconceptions regarding Empowering Might regarding function and and range. A lot of people seem to think they can gain >10 stacks from EM.

Q23. What are the internal cooldowns and duration on might gained from EM?
A. ICD is 1s and duration is 5s which means that it is theoretically impossible to have more than 4.99 stacks at any given time without investing in boon duration. Average number of stacks, even with extreme critchance, is inbetween 3-4 stacks.

Q24 What is the gain from elusive power, in calculators and in the tooltip it says 10% but is this correct.

A. its theoretically correct but in practice its not, when you dodge you lose out on dps and in order to take advantage of elusive power you need to dodge approx every 5 seconds due to vigor from crits. This means that dodging to trigger elusive power alone is a loss of dps. Different weapons also do benefit differently. For instance the hammer has a short cd gap closer, Mighty blow, which allows it to lose less dps than with a mace for instance.

Great initiative.

Suggestion on a question i seen that been asked numerous of times:

21. In what order do pure of voice and rune of the soldier trigger and how many condition do they remove and convert?

Follow up on that one would/could be:

22. If i have pure of voice and rune of the soldier and use Save Your Self in what order do these there remove and convert condition.

Due to my newborn i dont have time to play as much but i continued to test this and here is a quick report, from a wvw perspective.

I have tested a 0/30/10/30/0 with full celestial armor and celestial trinkets and it actually works really nice but you still need to stack might in order to hit some what hard.

Seems that might stacking is indeed the way to go if you want to play these babies which leaves us with rather poor condi removal. So basically 30 points to get pure of voice which isnt bad since it has nice synergy with the healing power in the gear.

But in short the build above works really nice but you need to have might stacking or at least 20% damage from zeal and radiance so i think we might end up with a 10/30/0/30/0 or 10/30/0/20/10 with soldier runes.

Personally i kick:

Any guardian that claims to be dps built with points in honor since elusive power adds less that 2% dps and empowering might has kittenty range and almost never hits the team in fractals and adds less than 5% dps.

Any guardian that cant maintain 10-12 stacks of might on their own

Any guardian that plays any other weapon than gs, scepter and 1h sword + focus and torch.

Any guardian that havent got retreat on the cast bar.

Any guardian that havent got renewed focus as their elite.

Any guardian that havent got scholar runes in the armor

Any guardian that isnt using food appropriate to the mobs we are facing.

Any guardian that doesnt swap weapons every 10th second.

Why? Because they slow the team down.

Sarcasm off.

@OP

Pvt or berserkers are both fine and as foofad points out pvt has the highest potential when it comes to power (the best dps enhancer we have) and if its combined with with the proper food and build it can do very nicely in any type of content.

10/30/30/0/0 and use berserker weapons and a couple of valkyrie pieces in the armor and maybe berserker rings.

Why not something like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.0|c.1g.h2.f.1g.h1h|b.1g.h1.d.1g.h1h|1c.77.1c.77.1c.a7.1c.79.1c.79.1c.a7|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1c.67.1c.67.1c.67|a2.u000.u46c.0.0|2e.1|w.z.15.13.1i|e

Just learn to swap weapon every 10th second and you will have over 5k effective power with pvt armor and great sustain thru monks focus and the ability to keep the target burning with voj, judges intervention and purging flames. Swap purging flames needed for the specific encounter.

Only an idiot would kick you in a pug if you know how to play this one.

Edit: Only idiots kick in pugs btw, if they cant handle to have random builds they shouldnt pug in the first place.

Great job mods and slightly over due.

Congrats Jax and well deserved.

Not shameless at all. Been asking moderators on several occasions to sticky this one.

Personally i wouldnt write a single line about tpvp since its competitive and i find it very decent of you to do so so other can get some help.

Hopefully Anet sticky this on in all its modesty.

Well swap in scepter/torch instead of gs and combine torch 4 (double tap) and focus for bursts. This also give you one extra sigil for more crit or power or kill stacking. 1h weapons in general are more suited for might stacking.

mace insted of 1h sword might also work. If you can coordinate focus, torch and mace 3 in combo with JI its almost a one shot on a berserker thief with the build you use. if used correctly you can land it almost instant from 900 range due to torch travel time. I wouldnt try to do it from any longer distance than that.

In average you will hit for more since its much harder to avoid torch 4+jl than ww. At least versus skilled players ww is actually pretty poor since its like a light house and takes to long to execute, at least that is my experience in tpvp.

Ww works in ww versus less skilled opponent but on the other hand most ww opponents are pretty mediocre.

But i would go for a scepter/mace and torch/focus if its burst you want. mace also has synergies with the healing power you have.

If you want to expand on that build may i suggest that you look into mightstacking as a compilment to your presetn bursts,

You write that you have decent burst in the start of the battle and if you can squeeze in might stacking into it you will have the opportunity to also create burst in the latter stages of the clash. And a burst that doesnt rely on cool downs at all.