Guild Wars 2

Is it only from LS it can be obtained?

I do get what crit does, maybe check what i posted in these forums previous to this. You are doing the same thing you did previously versus Obal, judging with out knowing.

There is no contradiction in having both crit chance and power. The question when it comes to celestials is what contributes most to damage and what do celestial lack. You realize you can have both in a build without sacrificing the amount of power celestials do.

And i dont know if roughly 9% point for point is marginal, if you think its marginal is up to the beholder, for me its win or lose.

So once again do you disagree with power>crit chance>crit damage?

Evalia.7103:

Power is better the more precision&critical damage you have. Precision is better the more power&critical damage you have. Critical damage is better the more Power&Precision you get.

Points for point power is worth more than precision. If i remember correct 1 point of precision is worth about 0,91 points power given everything else equal. And budget wise its the same with the relation between precision and crit damage. Knights>Cavalier.

There is no discussion regarding how stats syneriges, the discussion is about what stat contribute the most, point for point which is the important part since you have a limited number of points to distribute in your build and the question is how to max the dps and maintaining survivbility, ie effective healthpool. Power>Precision>Crit damage and it will be even more evident after todays patch when ferocity is launched.

Or do you disagree with power>precision>crit damage?

And the number of stacks from crit change very little if you just reach to about 40% crit chance, the number of stacks are more prone to be increased with boon duration.

It can also be calculated and have been so in these forum and its a degressive relation after reaching a certain threshold. So as long everything else is equal between two builds (and in this example crit chance) the variable can be excluded from the discussion.

Read the stickies.

Its all in there.

For commanding you can start out by stacking vitality/toughness and healing power in your gear. Its as simple as that.

Aether the Nob.9172:

Actually, I was showing Brutally that celestial trinkets can compare with, and possibly out-do other trinkets in some cases. I was NOT looking to fight about my build, and,if anything, was looking for advice as to what gear celestial should be replaced with. Sounds like a discussion to me.

The builds you posted arent comparable since they have both different levels of healing power and also base damage.

Trinkets cant match the other stat combos, period. Any build with celestial trinkets can be made better. There is only one exception here and that is if you have strict thresholds that needs to reached but that is more of a psychological thing and have very little with performance to do. For instance when i run 0/5/30/30/5/ i just cant get out of my head that i have to dodge roll for at least 1k.

I havent said that celestial trinkets are much worse, they are only marginal worse but OP insists on stating the superiority of the build and gear. And since people read this they might get the impression that he is on to something and waste time and gold and get trinkets that wont be optimized.

If you want celestials i would go for the armor.

@OP
The site is very viable. Both the calculations for effective power (damage) and effective health (mitigated damage) are correct and for every thing you miss you can adjust that manually.

What i do agree on (if that is what you ment in your post) is that celestial gear benefits relatively more from guard kills and stacking sigils as long as we are talking about power.

Sidenote you can use that site to add in condition damage, we know that VoJ proccs every 5th hit and 400 condition damage adds 100 more damage to that procc. Its roughly 2% in overall dps or the equivalent of 30 power or 33 precision in a full celestial build. do a couple of damage rotations on the dummies in LA and scribble the numbers down and manually calculate the effect of crit damage and crit. Note how many burn proccs you got and voila you have all the numbers you need.

Evalia.7103:

Interesting how you count effective stats, really. It’s obvious even to a moa that power becomes better when you have a lot of precision and critical damage, but it doesn’t become quite as much better as celestial gear, which provides nearly 50%(!) more stat points.
Budget? Who cares about budget? It’s about what’s better, not about what costs less.

I see now that you dont understand what im trying to tell you. 1 point of power increases your dps more than one point of precision, given everything else equal.

Go to this build tool and fiddle around with builds and watch the effective stats change and you will get what im trying to tell you.http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Budget wasnt refering to how much gold it takes to get the gear. Budget was refering to the budget of stats in the item. You look at raw stats, ie how many points the piece have in total, i look on the actual impact (damage done and damage mitigated) of the piece. And if you use the builds tool i linked to you can easily see the effective stats.

add to that that crit damage (the only strong point celestial has) will be nerfed.

Aether the Nob.9172:

Ahhhhhh I understand now. Celestial IS viable, but only when used with a mix of gear. However, when you mix the gear effectively, we always need the most expensive pieces (trinkets) to be celestial for the build to work.

And here I was, thinking that you hated celestial, until I took a hard look at your thread and then back at this post. Sorry for not understanding you correctly.

Celestial is very much viable/competitive in wvw but only if you use a couple of pieces from the armor. Trinkets are poorly designed since they dont offer as much effective stats as a combo of other trinkets do.

No i dont hate celestials, my only ascended armor (and probabaly the only i ever will get due to just playing wvw) is 100% celestial but i never use my celestial trinkets since i can better my effective stats by combining clerics, berserker, valkyire and pvt to get larger effective healthpool, equal healing and higher dps.

Evalia.7103:

Meanwhile, celestial gear pulls quite a train ahead(slightly higher amount of stats when you consider 5 out of 7 useful, that’s ~40% more stats than any other gear set).

The problem with your reasoning is that you look at raw stats. And celestials has more raw stats, the issue is that stats are worth different in ANY build. For instance power>precision>critical damage.

So celestials actually has less EFFECTIVE stats in general with the exception of 2-4 pieces. Trinkets are crap budget wise so any build with them in it is by default a poor build.

Evalia.7103:

*Come and give, Celestial gives a lot more stats point-for-point if I consider all stats but condition damage.

And its here the problem is, not all stats are worth equally. What people should look at is effective stats as effective healthpool (combination of healing power, toughness and vitality) and effective damage (power, precision, critical damage and condition damage) and it is here celestial falls short. The lack of power, which is the base, always makes a mix of gear more attractive

I have done numerous of builds trying to find a celestial build that cant be bettered with a mix of gear but budget wise celestials are poorly designed.

With that said when i chose to do my set of ascended i chose full celestial for armor and the reason for that is that i probabaly wont be able to make a second set in the next year or so since i only do wvw.

I kind of regret that now due to Anet stating they gonna nerf critical damage, which is the only stat a celestial can stack. On the other hand we will get double sigils on 2h which will improve are capability to stack might but i still fear that the celestial setup gonna get the short end of the stick in the upcoming patch.

Most pve dudes seems to be stupid (its a bait) or just being really bad on being reasonable.

OP, dont scare Obal away since he is the one of the most knowledgable guys around thats into pve.

Its even gone so far that the build refered to as “obals build” has been nominated the meta.

So as a humble advice, just sit back and let him unfold some truths.

In short, anything that focusing on celestials suck, in wvw for one reason and in pve for an other.

But in short it sucks.

EDIT its been discussed in numerous threads already and when it comes to effective stats its just bad.

read whats “stickied”, its there for a reason!

Celestial was kitten pre balance, at least trinkets was, and even worse after the patch.

If you actually think celestials got a place in the game atm give me a PM and i will explain why you are wrong.

Its all about effective stats, if you dont get the concept keep investing in bs gear.

Remove autotarget and autotarget on damage in settings.

Remove auto facing. This allows you to fight on guy and target an other.

Keybind closest target and next target.

Problem should be solved.

Edit: remember that you always need to have one person targeted for the symbol to be placed. No. target, no symbol.

Might stacking for the win. Good changes imo, it will favor skill based game play. The nerf on vp isnt to bad. You just need to focus your build and play wisely and you still have perma vigor, or at least close to depending on changes to the runes.

Elusive power and hammer just got more interesting and did empowering might.. Time for a knights guardian with em and battle!?

The main source of dps in wvw/pvp with the hammer isnt chain.

Its mighty blow.

Just hit with the first two steps and if you use larger symbols the symbol will hit and most likely force them to dodge and then you pull mighty blow. Throw in a dodge in the chain, if 30 points in honor, and it will boost the damage from might blow. In wvw/pvp hammer is the only weapon that actually can exploit elusive power in an efficient way.

If they dont dodge out of SoP, pull skill 3 followed by 5 and a chain, pull 4 and aim them so they dont bounce to far and follow up with mighty blow.

In other words dont rely on the third step of the chain. The only important thing that one actually does is to give the team protection and retaliation, one of the best support tools in the game but kittenty dps in wvw, rely on might blow for damage, start figuring out on how to set mb up and how to maximize the support from SoP.

In short, change focus and you will find the hammer much more powerful.

Actually if you are looking for 2 vs 1 and 3 vs one i would go healway. The issue i have with that build is that i relies on the opponents stupidity since its retaliation based.

It doesnt have the power to finish a fight so pretty much any profession can kite you to regain health.

Personally i dont think a 0/30/30/5/5 build with scepter/focus and hammer is so glassy. Sure you cant be first in in zergs but it has pretty decent sustain with meditations.

1 vs 2 or 1 vs 3 you absolutely need stand your ground in a more aggressive build and skip AH and go for meditations.

I use a number of valkyrie pieces in combinations with zerker in my burst/roamer and i think i have about 17k health with buffs from food and killing 5 npcs.

I can post some pics om my stats when i get home from work when running 0/30/30/5/5.

For me roaming is all about burning stuff down as fast as possible as a guardian, since you have no means to disconnect properly, except maybe judges intervention and the leap on gs and blink on sword. You just wat to avoid being caught my stragglers or an incomingzerg when fighting. If you want to roam i think most people would prefer GS/1H Sword and it would also have synergies with the traits in radiance.

Personally i run with hammer and scepter/focus but if a mess up and don’t pay attention to my surroundings i die due to lack of disconnects.

Piken square or seafarers rest are both english speaking, well populated and nice servers to be in. Been on both and they where/are nice and pretty crowded.

I wouldnt recommend them if its wvw you want. They have waiting times as long as my johnson. I moved from both due to i want to play with my friends and not wait in a random queue.

May i suggest you check out the builds chapter in the 30 point valor guide. Stickied at the top. There is also a chapter on stats and how to obtain some of them and all builds are fairly optimized stat wise.

You have both medi builds and AH builds there and also builds for both 1h and 2h setups.

But roaming with 2h weapons i would go for 0/25/30/10/5 with zerker/valkyrie in all pieces and rune of speed to compensate for lack of mobility and low healthpool. For one hand weapons you trait 0/30/30/5/5 with the same gear and runes.
Both builds have Stand your ground for stability and stun breaker and smite conditions and judges intervention for connect and disconnect.

Sigil of energy is a must to mitigate damage versus a skilled opponent so add them in 2h and OH.

Having points in honor for roaming isnt optimized imo. When you roam you want to kill fast so you aren’t caught in a fight when the zerg comes running. So kill fast and get out of dodge city.

Food is used based on what you need. I would go for – condition duration and crit chance, you want to max the reliability in bursts.

I would use purity as well, its really nice tbh, and skip fury on meditations. Its enough with the cd and heal on meditations.

Great work OP.

Regarding making it public on google i think its a good idea. You would definitely get some assistance to add more builds that are of general interest.

There are a number of builds that has general interest that would be great if they where in there. The ones that come to mind are:

10/25/30/5/0 (2H)
0/30/30/5/5 (1H)
0/5/30/30/5 (Probabaly one of the most common builds in the game)
10/0/0/30/30
If those where added the chart would be of a general interest in all game modes and not just pve.

So i suggest you share the chart and some more builds and this deserves a sticky on its own.

Sorry, Android spelling suck.

Burst is kind of useless in pve, dps rules and i havent seen a dps maximizing build where gs has a place.

The issue i have with zelous blade is when you want max dps you need to swap and having a trait that only boots one weapon gets reduced with 50% by swapping.

The qurstion is ur zealous blade actually vad higher dps compared to scepter/1h sword and continously swapping.

Personally i havent seen a single example of gs beating scepter/sword so imo zelous blade is moot and the only reason to use it is for the feel or the cc or aoe.

Aoe wise i find hammer more appealing due to higher uptime on aoe.

It might be personal, the dps junkies might be able to fill in the blanks.

Shanks.2907:

Brutaly.6257:

All questions in your post is answered in the 30 Point valor sticky and some additional info can be found in the stickied FAQ.

Thanks for that. I knew it was somewhere but must of missed it looking for “AH”. Still, a few of my questions weren’t answered. Like if hollowed ground, and the symbol of protection/swiftness only trigger 5 AH heals. Also, with empower on the staff does it only effect 5 allies once or 5 allies on the 3 bursts?

Actually the aoe limit can be found in Q7 in the FAQ. And how AH works per application of boons can be found in th valor thread. If you combine those two informations you will get the same result as the Foofads explanation.

Basically each aoe effect can max affect 5 targets but targets can switch while channeling.

All questions in your post is answered in the 30 Point valor sticky and some additional info can be found in the stickied FAQ.

and what makes them really interesting is that a guardian has low healthpool so 2,5k health is actually more worth for a guardian compared with a necro or warrior.

And also the power gained is more worth for a celestial geard toon compared to a non celestial geared. And guardians is possibly one of the professions that can benefit from celestial armor.

Yeah its unfortunate that its from food mainly but the similarities with dt is actually rather big.

chass was on crom i think.

Sygma was on some rp server and i was on the pvp server, fury. Brutalshadow was my nick.

I was pvp 10 before sygma. I think Blacksoul and Nemacysta beat me to it but they were frequent bori cappers.

In Sweden 24th of december is “our” center of the holidays so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Now off to our “smorgasbord” and raw herring and a couple days with the family.

Now lets see if i can find that off switch on my computer, it should be somewhere………………………………………………………………….

hey cool to see a fellow DT. i was the third pvp 10 dt on eu servers and loved the concept that the more damage you do the better you survive.

There are multiple similarities between dt and guardians:
Worst mobility
Low healthpool (DT had lowest amongst soldiers)
Active skills for survivability instead of passive stats like helthpool and mitigation even though dt could mitigate well enough.
Rather bad cc.

Back after game release i actually tried to get a similar playstyle out of my guardian and its absolutely doable and also fun.

The back bone is omnomberry (life tap food) and sigil of blood. These stacks so with high crit chance you will get back approx 340 health every 2 seconds from crits. This is actually no bad at all.

Runes of vampyrism is rubbish tbh. The life leech from them are mediocre and i would invest in rune of speed or hoelbrok instead. Speed for vitality and mobility and hoelbrak for the reduced condi.

Weapons ofc, you only need one sword in true templar style and luckily the cooldowns are low and mobility ok so you dont need to swap to a second main hand. The sword you fit with sigil of blood and the shield and focus are fitted with sigil of leeching which leeches life when you swap. Mind you, you only need one sword and shield and focus and when you swap only the focus/shield are swapped if the second main hand slot is empty.

DTs weapons where shield and talisman and here you get shield and focus. One advise, check for a focus called “Adam”, its just pure dark Templar.

You can also use mace ofc as templars do but the playstyle with mace isnt templar at all and is also to slow to trigger food and sigils for leeching.

DTs are all about crit (Void of madness) and so are guardians as well. So trait wise you need to go for right hand strength to get very good crit chance which also increases your chance to leech. The stats in the build is without right hand strength and fury.

So your overall crit chance is about 65% and 20% extra from fury/meditations when bursting.

And for even more crit go meditations and 30 points in valor which also adds condi removal and some mobility and ability to escape with judges intervention.

5 points in honor for more survivability and 5 points in virtues because those are to good to miss out on.

Ofc you can use a scepter as ranged option and just fit a sigil of blood in the scepter as well.

Armor, well i would go full knights, those are the ones that can exploit the low healthpool and the leeching best and are also most true to the dt-koncept.

Triple meditations ofc and you can swap the healing skill for shelter but the new worthless meditation heal suits the dt concept. Works like pact of blood and we all know how situational that one is.

Renewed focus as elite ofc.

Here is my dark templar a la GW2. And you also find some pics below.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAs9enQElGabIyhwHiiIXg1DAeQ/hL46BEjYDB-jgCBofC0EGAUIhO3UIN7UasYqIasalYKXCyqYJ1grIa1CBUeBA-e

Dont be fooled by the low health pool, this cookie is tough. Avoid large scale battles though.

And best of all, the more damage you do the better you survive. Recognize the concept? :-)

I did it the other way around and crafted two vision crystals. I just checked the chest and it said vision crystal and since i didnt remember seeing a lesser version when crafting weapons or when i leveled armorsmith i falsely assumed every piece needed a Vision crystal.

Basically wasted 300 dragonites earned in wvw. And getting those in wvw is a kitten compared to pve where you can easily get 200 each night and maybe attend for 3 minutes in each event and <30 minute in total.

So last two months progression in wvw went up in flames. :-)

Ok I Did It.2854:

I did that too by mistake but as I intend to make a different set I can use mine, also most people have stacks and stacks of these mats.

Only if you do pve, if you are into wvw you dont have stacks of anything worth jack.

As been said, skip celestial trinkets, you loose out on stats by using them. Any build with celestial trinkets can be bettered by mixing other types of trinkets/gear.

If you are going to get celestial go for armor and weapons. If you wvw hoelbrak runes are really nice as condiremoval and they also push your power. But imo they require staff and at least retreat to work ok in wvw. I just hate moving like a snail.

If i where you i would pick celestial armor and weapon.
Berserker back and trinkets
Cleric amulet and ring and finsih it off with a berserker ring.

But to contradict myself, im close to all celestial in my gear but the reason for that is that i only do wvw and pvp atm and i cant see myself ever get a second set of ascended and celestial can do pretty much everything but not optimal. So i compromise.

This isnt a thread about how poor we are at ranged but a thread about the options we do have. If you want to complain about the ranged capability the door is —-————->

Thought it was time to discuss the validity and road map to get a ranged guardian.

I seen several of threads and posters asking for builds or advice to help them with the ranged guardian and personally i just hate caster classes.

As we all know we are lacking in that area but shame on me if i didnt try so i figured lets start a thread and see what people have to contribute with.

So for the past two weeks i been trying to find a setup that works in wvw and that is 100% ranged.

So weapons are obviously staff and scepter but the traits and gear i come up with is a bit different.

First of all there are some stuff that i found that dictates the build so lets start with those.
1. Ranged only is poor for roaming and small group game play. So we are talking about lemming trains or organized guild play.
2. When you focus on ranged the pressure is lower and you dont need as much survivability.
3. The condition preasure is considerably lower.

So what trait distribution did i end up with.
I picked 20 in zeal to get fiery wrath and 10% extra damage on the scepter.
25 in radiance to get 10% extra damage and since i ended up with mostly ranged utilities i actually invested in signets.
15 points in honor to get heal on dodge and larger symbol and 5 points in virtues since not taking them is just stupid in any build.

How did i end up playing this. Well after a couple of nights i found the pace and position this just behind the frontline and ranged it can actually do wonders. Just follow the pushers and lay down the symbol over the front (hence larger symbols) and inflict vulnerability and when you see a specific target you swap to scepter and chain lock them with knock back (signet) smite, root and 4 or 5 aa and ofc burst with torch 4.

If you are into ranged gameplay its worth a shot.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNArfWlYgqCHEyIEgIFRuAbGB0gVKin+wPoRA-jUCBYfBKRtIasVWFRjVNLQqawqkYKXJ1ceRz2zBVKA9EGB-w

Now what have you guys found out about playing the guardian as purely ranged?

Celestial armor is worth it, trinkets are kitten. As said above, get on a good build crafting site, where you can see effective stats, and you will find that trinkets are bad and head, chest, legs and maybe weapons are worth it in celestials. The rest you mix to get the stats you want.

With that said i craft my entire ascended in celestials but since im only going to own one ascended armor so i took the one i could do most stuff with. Will get the final piece on christmas eve or the day after. Depends on how wvw goes this weekend.

I wont get into this discussion whats bad or whats good, its gettgin old, but just to make one thing clear.

Shouts are minor when it comes to AH, in fact i often run wvw builds with not a single shout in them and still use AH because if you play in a coordinated team, AH is just absurdly strong. A single shout heals for about 700. One single hammer chain and MB can can distribute 40 applications of boons, sometimes even 45 boons, to the team. No need to ever use shouts just because you run AH.

So stating AH is bad based on people using shouts is wrong, it might be so that the individual is bad when they havent udnerstood how little shouts contribute to AH. Just pick the proper weapon.

Amins.3710:

More Deeps: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_Hoelbrak

I never leave home w/o them.

Qft

Cheap and underestimated. I have both melandru and these and unless going commander these are better since they add damage as well.

In a solo/roamer/small group surrounding they might be best.

In any other format i would go for boon duration or soldiers.

I use all three and travelers ofc but for different situations. So how do you intend to play? That should/could dictate what to use.

Amins.3710:

The single biggest problem w/Guardian burst is it’s gimmicky.

Agreed!

Skills like focus 4 absolutely demands you to either suprise (ambush or running away while popping it with JL) them or be before hand.

Personally i would really like if they shortened the animation on hammer 1 and duration on the symbol and instead of a light field it was a fire field.

This would give us burst capability, not off the bat but over time, and it would also be possible to counter due telegraphed animations on our skills and with boon removers.

But it would be totally OP in pve though.

akamon.2769:

anyways, regarding Guardian party. i agree, after holidays would probs be best. : )) also, i play during Oceanic time so GMT+8 evenings / night times. so unsure if i’ll actually get to play with u guys :// though i’ve seen and have played with / against Bash or Blas online during those times : ))

Yeah, sounds like a good idea.
Lets pick up this subject after the holidays, i wont let it slide, this would just be to fun to neglect.

Personally i almost never use 5 with JL. I use focus 4 and MB and time with JL. Easy 10 k damage. I dont know how many fights i turned around with that. Just start to run away and dodging and they never see it coming either since you have your back against them. Hysterical but a one trick pony.

Lots of guides but the general rule is that you chose gear and build so you dont become a rezbot for the other team. Personal survivability isnt selfish in the pvpformats in this game.

So chose gear based on:
Skill
opponents
Terrain
Objective
Playstyle
your role in the group.
Etc

Just crafted my first pieces of celestials and those sigils are really expensive.

Having different geartypes in different slots gonna take forever for me.

fadeaway.2807:

If you stack up before a charge in wvw and drop a light field swiftness instead of a fire field I feel bad for you son.

There is no contradiction in casting them both.

Its only in uncoordinated setups that there is a perceived contradiction.

Oren.1736:

What are the alternatives?

It is simply a poor choice to shackle a support class to be so reliant on other classes.
Our freedom to play has become so low with heavy condition meta, and this is another bite to more midrange builds

Team work.

With the second part i do fully agree. but imo this isnt tied to SoS, its an overall problem i frankly dont think the issue got any worse by the change of the staff. There are options tbh.

And other builds that didnt had high uptimes on swiftness actually got it. So basically it changed for the individual but not for the profession.

Laivine.9308:

Your zerg when they stack for battle , doesn’t need swiftness!

I dont zerg and we still have perma 25 stacks of might and endless of swftness from a 5-10 man squad and have no issues with letting the guadians be in charge of the majority of swiftness and might.

EDIT, i dont pug so you wont see me even if i move down to desolation. Might do that though since the ques are gettign to long fo my team. I moved out of T1 3 times now to get in and play coordinated..

Edit again:
just realized i was unclear, overlapping fields is only an issue if they are casted in the wrong order hence why pugs ban light fields since they doesnt have the ability to coordinate enough.

PF – SoS – Swap – MB- Swap – Empower when out of combat. In combat you pull empower before you swap and then MB.

earthian.1520:

when the team huddles up before an attack, you ’ll spam SoS? Really?

You have 23 pages of posts. It’s time to get into the game and play it. Those are facts!

Spam? One button, 26 seconds of swiftness while adding 12 stacks of might to the team, with empower, while the symbol ticks on the team.

After 3000 hours in wvw and actually playing with the staff before posting i think you should get into the game and play.

The only time this is a nerf is if you solo and have no second source of swiftness. That is what i know from playing wvw yesterday for 6 hours with the new staff.

If people say this is a straight nerf they are talking about nerfing the way they play it and not that the weapon it self is nerfed. Its a matter of people being really bad att adapting.

23 pages of clueless people is still 23 pages of clueless people, not saying that people are cluelless in general, just saying the quantity of posts say nothing about the quality of those posts.

daros.3407:

Requirement to use retreat and save yourself makes it nerf.

And you didnt have perma swiftness prepatch without those either unless fully focused on boon duration. Forcing 30 points in virtues and 45% boon duration from runes and not even then would you have 100% uptime due to how bad it stacked when reapplied.

The fact is that you can run for longer periods of time now when using shouts or having a secondary source of swiftness in your team..

Obtena.7952:

His point is valid … what is the value in playing in groups that don’t all help each other out? If you aren’t, no buff or different SoS is going to matter. Changes to SoS are actually good because they ENCOURAGE good group behaviour. In otherwords, it separates people that know what to do from people that just mash buttons. It’s a skill-separator.

Spot on. Its a better team tool now. At its just great when the team huddles up to stack might before an attack. 20 s of swiftness and 12 stacks of might in 3 seconds, yes please.

Brutaly.6257:

daros.3407:

Brutaly.6257:

Get into the game.

The fact is that you have perma swiftness with 5% boon duration, with staff and two shouts.

And you dont have to trait a single point or wait in the symbols to achieve it. This wasnt possible pre patch and ofc the staff has more group support as well.

Those are facts!

if people chose to see upon it as a nerf, well that is their choice. To me it works better than ever since i play in small groups and we always have a secondary source of swiftness.

Requirement to use retreat and save yourself makes it nerf.

^^exactly! I don’t want to use Retreat and especially SY for swiftness. It was not necessary till now. I can’t understand why people deny the obvious..meh

How did you achieve perma swiftness prepatch?

The only time its worse is in soloplay with no shouts. But why would you use staff in solo play to begin with.-

Get into the game.

The fact is that you have perma swiftness with 5% boon duration, with staff and two shouts.

And you dont have to trait a single point or wait in the symbols to achieve it. This wasnt possible pre patch and ofc the staff has more group support as well.

Those are facts!

if people chose to see upon it as a nerf, well that is their choice. To me it works better than ever since i play in small groups and we always have a secondary source of swiftness.

@benbe well bring that build of yours into tpvp and we can try it out. I go 0 points in zeal ofc but full berserker and we see how it adds up.

Any build works in spvp and wvw since 90% of the people in there cant play. That doesnt make it a valid build. Any competitive opponent will avoid 90% of your ww, frankly i dont remember the last time i got hit by ww in tpvp..

The whole idea with zealous blade is absurd. First you need 20 points to get it and after investing in 200 power you need to add healing power (loosing power in gear) to make it strong enough and at the same time loose out on utility you could grab in honor/virtues and dressing up in a more offensive setup to compensate for not investing in zeal.

Why not bring more utility, more fire power and more survivability.

You mix up having fun with being competitive. Hell i run 30/30/x/x/x from time to time and also 30/5/30/x/x and i kill a lot of stuff but that doesnt make the build good. Just fun.

eleshazar.6902:

Brutaly.6257:

Read what blasino wrote, just like me he has actually been in game and tested it and you dont need traits to make it more powerful compared to the old SoS. 16s swiftness from one symbol with 20% boon duration, reaapply it 3 times while retreat is running adding 12s more. 28s swiftness from one symbol with. 26+15=41s with 50% boon duration with one symbol.

You can reapply it 3 times during retreat for an additional 12 seconds of switness with 0% boon duration..

Whats changed is the way you use it and you dont have to trait it for it to be very good.

Do i personally like the change, no i dont but that dont make it a nerf.

There are several problems with your assertion here….

1) Having to bring retreat is a tie down. In order to make the symbol useful you have to use another skill to augment it (a skill which I might add is pretty sub par unless you trait pure of voice and superior aria more tie downs…)

2) 20% boon duration increase on 4 seconds of swiftness is 4/5 of a second added. And to do that you have to spend 20 trait points? Yeah that seems like a fair trade….

3) You have to trait writ of exaltation in order to get the two ticks while running through the symbol without stopping; yet another trait tie down to make this skill useful….

4) Your calculation isn’t taking into account the need for stopping in your symbol if you don’t have writ of exaltation traited. The time you spend stop is lost movement time which negates some of the swiftness you gain.

In other words do the math and think about this stuff before you blindly say it is a buff. If 95% of the guards in the game are posting complaining about it being a nerf, and you are one of the 5% that doesn’t understand how it is in fact a nerf, you might want to think about why that is….

Im in WvW right now and having perma swiftness with 5% boon duration and no traits in symbols at all. Running a standard AH 0/5/30/30/5 with soldier runes. which was impossible before the patch.

And i dont stop in my symbol to pick up extra ticks.

instead of finding the shortcomings in stuff i try to find whats good and i just had to change my load out and it became a buff.

im not basing my posts on math, i base it on being in game doing stuff.

EDIT: The same build was tested with 50% boon duration and staff and retreat alone. Works great.

Zerole.7306:

It’s only a nerf when you have no other source of swiftness. In all other cases, its a hefty buff, allowing you to stack swiftness duration.

That said, I don’t see anything terrible in this patch. Nothing great, but nothing that breaks my guardian.

Spot on.

Maladon.5760:

If you trait larger symbols you can’t trait 2 hand mastery which means you can’t cast SoS as often as you did before.

you dont need larger symbols for it to be better. And ofc you can trait both as long as your not into shouts and if you are into shouts you have 100% uptime with shouts and staff with 5% boon duration with no symbol traits ofc.

perma swiftness with 50% boon duration is now possible with staff and retreat alone.

I have 100% uptime on swiftness with 5% boon duration with two shouts and staff, totally untraited.

So what you are saying is that your build in particular got nerfed.

Read what blasino wrote, just like me he has actually been in game and tested it and you dont need traits to make it more powerful compared to the old SoS. 16s swiftness from one symbol with 20% boon duration, reaapply it 3 times while retreat is running adding 12s more. 28s swiftness from one symbol with. 26+15=41s with 50% boon duration with one symbol.

You can reapply it 3 times during retreat for an additional 12 seconds of switness with 0% boon duration..

Whats changed is the way you use it and you dont have to trait it for it to be very good.

Do i personally like the change, no i dont but that dont make it a nerf.

daros.3407:

Brutaly.6257:

People exagerate. This isnt the end of the world.

Was the change to Sos a nerf, no it wasnt. In most scenarios its a buff and in some a huge buff.

Wrong. In very few scenarios it is buff and in most it is HUGE nerf.

Trait larger symbols and learn to land the symbol so two ticks hit you when running thru. With untraited symbols its a nerf and as long as you have a secondary source of swiftness (if swiftness is what you want) its a buff.

With superior aria and larger symbols its a buff.

So its not Sos that got a nerf, its your way of using it. And mine ofc, but i will/have changed my way of using it so the change benefits me.