Guild Wars 2

Ran my g – imp (censored?) version of this with zerker weapons cause I didn’t get magi, so missing healing power. Also used a staff in off hand cause SLOW!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFSIEf4Eh1DCaQ/VVIeYPw4H7IA-jgyA4NBRiQgoCgZRio10IYVDooyoxqrxUuBS7qULEgzFA-e

Did some solo roaming with it, 1v1 it did really well (except against the 2 thieves that I could never catch in the open so I died a slow lonely death).

I got hit…hard..really hard, but I was able to run away and recover a lot. I know for a fact I caught a lot of people off guard with the 5k crits back to back with a protectors strike and mace auto chain, but in a mobile pvp fight, no one stayed in the symbol of course.

Most of the fights I got into started off aggressive, then I ran my little behind off till cooldowns were ready and turned and downed the chaser.

This build is still drastically missing survival, and I’m not sure where to pull it from yet. I’ll drop even more damage out of it and see what happens, but the crits are huge in keeping it viable to fight other players.

Other than that, this performs well enough in pve :p not what I was looking for though.

I think it is because we have a lot of interesting dynamics that are readily visible but haven’t come to fruition yet. Also we have been pigeonholed into a bunker support role, either by self design or by opinions of others, so some are trying to break the paradigms and find ways to innovate the profession and game.

I have noticed the lack of active theory crafting on other forums, and I do appreciate the active participants here Good on you all.

As renny said, we have no reliable and frequent application of fury, save for inner fire, which is situational at best. In pvp it is on a lot actually, but in pve you will hardly ever see it.

The only way to get the fire debuff on yourself is again save yourselves, as it pulls allies conditions onto yourself, but you are already getting fury from the shout itself so…meh?

I think a long time ago someone in beta said that the torch used to burn you? but no more.

AH scales extremely well in group scenarios and zerg situations, but tapers off a bit when solo.

Healway is consistent in it’s gameplay and performs the same in both solo and grouped, that is to say it performs better than AH solo but just as good in a group. Additionally, you will heal your allies with healway, AH will not.

AH will allow you to go more offensive, do more damage, but ignores healing power, so if you are giving regeneration to allies it is pretty much worthless. Typically AH is run with hammer because of overlapping symbol, which plays into the offensive/defense set up by keeping protection on.

Healway will have higher healing power, making it heal allies way better and relies on dodges/blinds/blocks and is more active in it’s gameplay than auto attacking with hammer. But it will do a lot less damage….but it is more mobile because of the leap and teleports on greatsword/sword.

We could keep going this way, but they are two different builds, one is passive offensive (while keeping survival in mind) and the other is active defensive (while not being too shabby at damage).

I duno….dancing norns are awesome…ly akward…

http://youtu.be/DxJN59W8IYY

Asura Ball is amazing and possibly better put together than some of these mini games we have been getting

On topic, I would like to see an increase to base healing for some of our profession based healing, namely virtue of resolve, writ of the merciful, and zealous blade.

I think altruistic healing and monks focus are in a functioning spot right now so they shouldn’t need to be changed.

Also I feel that symbolic power should be moved down to the master tier major trait and swap it with possibly eternal spirit or revenge of the fallen.

I’m sure there are TONS of things that could be looked at, but those are the ones hot on my mind at the moment.

Those two areas could spark a lot of build diversity, especially by increasing survival of non-bunker specs via higher VoR without investing heavily into healing power.

Clearly an underdog in here as no one takes a second look at guardians anymore, but.

With the emergence of Warrior healing signet/Adrenal health builds, and the large influx of HP per second with an already sizeable HP pool, are there plans to relook at the guardian mechanics of self sustain?

Guardians have a lower health pool because of the slated “boon centric figher”, who makes up for " a lower base health than the warrior profession but compensate for this with their higher health regeneration granted by Virtue of Resolve."

This is clearly not the case now, as the guardian has to invest a lot of resources to make virtue of resolve useful for inbound heals per second, which limits builds to focus on healing power and not other stats.

Virtue of Resolve and possibly Writ of the Merciful, maybe prime targets to receive an increase in base healing to put this back on track with the original statements of health renewal makes up for lower HP.

Additionally this may open up build diversity if people are less worried about a lower health pool and lack of survival out of bunker set ups.

The end goal of the build is wvw viability, so of course. I was only testing in spvp cause ease availability on gear/trait swaps.

I am headed to the direction that I think it is too difficult to obtain meaningful damage and healing for the guardian at this time, but I am waiting eagerly for someone to find a new trick to spice things up.

Right now I think this is my proposal for a pve/wvw geared build. Removed reliance on healing power with mace, gained more power and 10% burning, and removed reliance of signet of mercy to gain higher healing power.

Also gained more condition control this way.

Symbol doing about 5226 with max crits and heals per second add up to 564. Not the 730+ that warriors have but getting there.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFSIEf4Eh1DCaQ/VVIeYPw4H7IA-jQyA4NBRiQgoCgZxioxW1AKqMas6aMlLRUtFvIa1CB4cBA-e

I can gear this myself, but need a little more time to get magi weapons, also I have a mix of valk/zerk ascended trinkets/jewelry so it won’t be exactly the same. But I will give feedback when I get it going.

This is what I will be able to test it on, too cheap to keep switching infusions out though :p so left them blank.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFSIEf4Eh1DCaQ/VVIeYPw4H7IA-jgyA4NBRiQgoCgZRio10IYVDooyoxqrxUuBS7qULEgzFA-e

Ran a few pvp hotjoins with the most recent build posted just now.

Damage really isn’t there without high crit chance. I know it’s balanced at 41-42, and I did get a lot of other stats out of it, but it was that master of none kind of thing.

Conditions are much less of an issue though, needs more tweaking. Or it may be a l2p thing with a new build.

Going for the “balanced” approach, while still focusing on reaching a decently high heals per second, we get this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFyvDf4ESmiVCBxegRfUHdpgieIA-jQyA4NBRiQgoCgpxioxW1AKqMasqZioadNmBvIa1SBExYA-e

A lot lower on the damage end of the scale and the crits will be more randomized, thus making damage lower in consistency, but maybe even out in terms of “dps” instead of burst.

I don’t have ascended clerics gear, otherwise I would be tested this one too. I’ll have to muster a set of exotic and try to match the stats.

Closest thing I could muster for a spvp variant:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFyvDf4ESmiVCBxegRfUHdpgieIA-TsAAyCqIqRRljKDVSqsUNIYRwsAA

Here is another variant with more damage/healing while using RHS to hit the 41-42% mark.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeSlUgyCXFSIEf4Eh1DCaQ/VVIeYPw4H7IA-TsAgzCnIQShkDJDSSksINIYRwsAA

I plan to test these tonight, haven’t done so yet. If anyone tries them, feedback would be appreciated.

Thank you, I’m checking that out as we speak.

I understand it is not the be all end all, but I still like to know the synergies with stats and how they interact with each other more.

Interesting read, especially the 50*50=2500 but 49*51=2499 in terms of thinking about balanced is optimal.

Still digging around for the 41.9/42% thing though.

Slightly off topic, but a lot of what inspired this build was from a couple other threads about crit/crit damage/damage modifiers, and also playing to our strengths and having some warrior posts showing the new regen/survival builds they have that still do damage.

in this clip:
http://youtu.be/lY5VpExRvPE?t=4m11s
The warrior has 3 heals ticking
Regeneration: 176
Healing Signet: 416
Adrenal Health: 427 (142 every 3 seconds)

With a combined heal per second at 176+416+142 = 734

If regeneration has a base heal of 130 and has a 0.125 coefficient, that would make the warriors healing power at around 364-371?

In order to get 730+ heals per second on guardian with regeneration, writ of merciful, and virtue of resolve we would need 1600 healing power, or 1410 with VoR traited…..

I contest that our base heals in some of our survival traits and mechanics need to be increased. Namely Virtue of Resolve and Writ of the Merciful :p

I duno about plagiarism as you are not taking credit and trying to cite a source and I doubt that they have an official copywrite on it. Now if they don’t want to share that’s fine for intellectual property and having an advantage over opponents, but if someone does like to share I am interested.

Not even sure where to start the math myself or I would try.

I have been hunting around with the team names as keywords to try and find random posts on the internet and dig through them :p

Since the form is locked and you can’t link us, can you take a screenshot at least and show an idea of what you are getting at?

Or go out of your way to transcribe it to another spreadsheet :p

After playing with AR for a while, it becomes frustrating to pop my VoR and still have conditions on me. Even worse, if I’m not traited in virtues at all and I don’t even get regeneration.

As Chris said, the already high healing power stacks up quickly with it, and it is not reliant on other players nearby.

The transition into group play and sharing VoR with teammates is probably less useful than Pure of Voice, but if there are already a good amount of condition cleanses, then it is just icing on top with an easy switch to Battle Presence.

Bottom line though, the condition removal on virtues, which frees up utility slots for other abilities is a god send.

Damage is decent and the healing is higher. I would swap out the soldiers back maybe and drop the vitality infusions as well as possibly change out longer symbols, but how does it feel playing?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRApf7flYgSD3ESIEf4Eh1DCiQ/hVQjXPo4DZIA-jQyAYrBRTFCUWUaMNKkW1AKcMas6aMlbg0uK1CBMaBA-e

Currently running around with AH mixed in and dropped writ of merciful. Doing well, but its not a unique build anymore. What it is showing me is that the original build is still lacking in survival, that I need to find a way to make up for somehow (probably healing power).

Running dungeons in it to keep testing, the build is still missing some crucial survivability. The damage is good, not optimal, but that’s not the point. I’m consistently seeing 1000-2000 auto attacks and 5k burst/multi hit attacks….nothing like a full damage build but it is fairly decent.

The issue is still: mobility, survivabiliity, and conditions.

I was considering magi weapons to increase healing power but keep the crit chance at 65 (80 with right hand strength and 100 with rhs and fury)….but those only drop from dungeon tokens, so it goes hand in hand, doing dungeons and rounding out the build.

Changing from zerk to magi weapons keeps damage above the 1k+ hits, but puts healing power at 1135 with mace.

Like mentioned earlier, having a middle ground build makes it difficult because you don’t excel in super fast damage or amazing survival.

Maybe sigil of blood for some life steal?

Still tweaking and thanks for feedback guys, helps me look from an outside pov.

Slight change in paradigm, was messing around with a more offensive set up and came up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRApf7elYgSDXFSIEfIFh1DCaQ/VzIe6DXwVBKC-jgyAYrBRTECNVIQpvioxW1AKcMas6aMtLRUt9WZ1gLILEwoFA-e

With this you have symbol that does 7759 damage (1551 a tick) and smite that does 15382 (1025 a tick…not all smite orbs always hit) and torch just for the sake of talking about it that does 8049 on cleansing flames (840 a tick). This is all assuming damage mod 10% from burning and 10% from condition on target (1.21 damage mod) and 250% crit damage with 100% crit chance. Scepter and symbol damage mods were factored into the base damage via build calc. Actual gameplay will differ.

Still suffers from condition damage, and mobility…loses a lot of sustain, but gains damage. Maybe good for dungeon speed runs?

I am sort of stuck on RHS as a crucial part of the build as having 80-100% crit chance stabilizes the damage instead of randomizing it.

At around 41.9% the mathematically optimal crit chance as stated, increases in crit damage become less valuable, but what happens when that crit chance hits 100%? Now all attacks are “doubled” (depending on where crit damage is), getting “effective power” out of not investing into power stats at all.

Vitality was not a crucial part of the build, but I think “some” vitality is good up to around 13-15k, to absorb some spike damage. Healing power does not decrease in effectivness, unless you are talking about healing percentages, as the HP pool goes up but the heal stays the same. If you start talking about effective health, having a higher HP pool and also having a high heal per second rate, gives you more time to live.

Besides I picked the magi gear to fill in for healing/precision and the vitality was just “bonus”.

So I can have 10000 HP and 2000 healing power (548 hps as mentioned earlier in this post) and die against 1000 damage per a second in 22 seconds.

10000/(1000-548)=22.12

Or I can have 15000 HP with the same healing power and heals per second and die in 33 seconds.

15000/(1000-548)=33.18

This is all ignoring obtainable stats in game and just theory crafting the usefulness of stats. Yes, more vitality makes the heal do less “percentage” but you gain more “life” (heals per a second and hard hit point pool).

That said, I have been re-evaluating the build. Did some roaming in wvw and did well against most targets without life ever dipping while still putting out good pressure, but against mass conditions the healing is not enough. Factor in poison and it gets worse.

I think there are two answers for this, go x/30/x/30/x and pick up pure of voice to handle conditions.

or

Go x/30/30/x/x and pick up altruistic healing and run with groups.

This now changes the build into normal builds that we have seen before, and I was trying to be innovative and break our mold

The build as it stands now does fairly well in pve, but my end goal was wvw effective as well.

I am thinking of dropping hammer and putting scepter in to gain ranged and make use of the high crit chances with smite. It can do a possible cumulative damage of 11425, depending on if all the orbs strike the target…which is typically around 8 or 9 instead of 15 hits.

This then moves away from “symbology” though, so still pondering it.

Inner fire and the boon removal with burns are not a critical part of the build. Just fillers because no good reason. If anything the Fury from inner fire is fairly cocnsistent in pvp/wvw, so it is one of two of our only sources of fury (save yourselves and inner fire).

Again signets were just filler to “see the stats”. The build currently could use more healing power I feel, at the sacrifice of critical damage. As long as crit damage is around 50+% things should decent on the damage end.

I would probably put shouts in the spot of the signets for the boons/utility they bring as well as already being in honor for shout reduction. Also can drop points out of valor and lose mace of justice/healing power to gain condition conversion on shouts. I was simply trying to push the stat side of the theory crafting to see what we “can” do, then bring it down to something usable.

Also, the reason I am trying to emphasize symbols is because of the 99% uptime of symbols with hammer and mace, which provide a good synergy with writ of the merciful, which is crucial to the idea of the survival side of the build.

The damage comes from right hand strength and “100%” (80% without fury) crit chance and the symbols provide a fairly high and consistent damage since they are up 99% of the time…as well as providing survival boons depending on the situation (protection and regeneration).

So symbols provide damage and survivability via always being active. Healing stacking is more effective than raw healing power in the sense of having 2 or 3 weaker heals doing as much with less investment than 1 strong heal.

So I can dedicate a majority of my stats and hit 2000 healing power which will make regeneration heal for 380 a tick and virtue of resolve heal for 204 (combined 584 heal per second).

Or I drop down to 1009 healing power and I can spend 991 of those points somewhere else like power/precision/vitality and get the same healing out of writ of the merciful (183 hps), virtue of resolve (145 hps), and regeneration (256 hps) and still get a combined 548 hps.

Symbols do a lot for us, but I still contest that they don’t do “enough” and should be relooked at in application or effect. Either way, I wanted to explore the idea of more synergistic symbol usage, instead of single minded damage “or” dps….why not have both?

true story, I didn’t include options outside of guardian mechanics. If you want to go that far you can talk about lyssa runes and what not for % condi reductions and such.

Just ran around testing it, hitting for 1-3k consistently. Was able to solo a champ giant in orr if that is a feat of capability? Decent healing…could use more.

Initial feedback, probably want stability in there, no ranged option and running is slow, so maybe staff swap? I don’t have full zerker trinkets cause I have some zerk/valk ascended, but swapped it around to reach the 65% crit chance before traits and fury.

Also, holy poop generosity sigils expensive! so I just put purity in it to test the condi removal on weapon idea….if it becomes a good build I’ll dish out for generosity later.

It’s not “bad” but needs more work I think. Check it out and give me feed back to make it better

Build Link

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApfSlUgSD3ESIEf4Eh1DBGQ/hpQjf8SBEfIA-jgCBYLCiUgBiKAMLSaMNSItqBowhRjVXDT5iIq2erIa1CBMaBA-e

(same build but with into the mists calc if people liked that better)

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7;4NFk30O3V0-90;9;5TJJ;234A06-29;2hNFA;2VqMUxpMUn-kZNJX5;2VR-pWv1-Z549a-30C-2i;5cW5PcW5P;9;9;9;9;7V8k3u

Synopsis

Just messing around trying to integrate our survival mechanics (VoR/Regen/Writ of Merciful) with good damage via crits.

Just theory crafting so not tested at all, mostly for talking points and community involvement.

First off the:

Bad

• Limited condition control
• Not bursty in damage
• No AH or MF heals
• No mobility

Good

• 80%-100% crit rating depending on fury active or not
• 244% crit damage to increase symbol damage up to 4965 in 5 ticks (993 a tick)
• Overlapping symbols via hammer as well as mace
• Symbols heal as well as damage
• Decent healing power at 945 providing 567 heals per second (Symbol/Regen/VoR)

Now as far as optional items, I was not big on the signets for utility, but was just playing with damage and healing for the sake of seeing numbers, those utilities can change.

Points in valor can be moved to make shouts clear conditions in Honor, or dig into Zeal or Virtues for flavor items (maybe virtues for imp VoR for more healing and condi removal).

Also the only trait in radiance that is mandatory is right hand strength to max crits on mace. The other two traits were just fillers, maybe fury on being burned but that is situational in pve…pvp happens a lot though.

Torch is there because meh? Any offhand can be replaced for that spot, but was trying to provide an AE condition to make use of 10% damage mod on AE targets.

Sigils of generosity create an interesting aspect of returning some conditions back on attackers, but the cooldown of 10 seconds is somewhat limiting. This is better than nothing as the condition removal was low, and there is “some” condition damage with the build. Honestly I would prefer both weapon swaps to have energy for dodge roll heals.

This build has decent damage and decent healing. Was looking to find a balance between GC and Bunker, and ended up here. Again, untested and it may end up being one of those jack of all trades worthless builds. Just wanted to share and maybe collaborate with others to round out problems that may make it an actually usable build.

The goal is to have high/decent damage via crits, high crit chance to maintain damage, and to utilize healing power to the best of our advantage to layer healing mechanics providing good heals per second.

Feedback and name calling welcome

Rofl…poop, wrong forum! Deleted it thanks for quick heads up.

Not a symbol -

Pros:

• Allowed to tick faster than once a second

Cons:

• Gains no benefit from trait line symbol modifiers
• Does not count as a combo field
• Does not evenly damage multiple enemies, causing it to be worse for AOE
• Projectile/bolts can miss, leading to an average 8-9 smite hits out of the advertised 15 (depending on target size)

Would making it a symbol be worth the high dps it “can” do if all the bolts hit? If it was a symbol it would only tick once a second instead of be a “flurry” style attack that hits multiple times in a second.

Without changing your traits around from the 0/5/30/30/5 setup you can cleanse conditions with:

• shouts/pure of voice (you said you didn’t want to use this)
• signet of resolve (already on your build)
• purity (already on your build)
• contemplation of purity
• smite condition
• purging flames
• bow of truth
• light fields and projectiles/whirls from allies/self

You were interested in meditations, and while they are good at solo roaming, they are not as good in sustained life as would be something that ticks more frequently such as regeneration, writ of the merciful, altruistic healing.

The reason being is that if you don’t use the meditations on cooldown the healing potential goes away and you have a moderate gap in time before you can use the heal again. They are amazing in terms of burst heals, but not as good for sustained combat (meaning soloing champs gets tricky, but doable).

The mechanics of meditations are inherently selfish as well, so you lose a lot of group dynamics with it, at most Merciful Intervention is an ok buddy support, but again, not as good as regeneration in longer fights, good burst and mobility though.

Concecrations are very group oriented, but at the same time limited in application. Mostly see good use in WvW or even s/tPvP.

Purging flames is pretty amazing at condi removal because you can run in and out and so can your team mates. Maybe get 2 or 3 conditions off that way. Also it is a fire field to provide more of that ever so loved group might boon stacking, provides burning to enemies as well.

Hallowed ground provides stability to your group…but so does stand your ground and it is not area specific. Hallowed ground is best for longer durations of stability, but stand your ground will provide more useful because of the short cooldown and provided mobility.

Although, with Altruistic Healing and Hallowed ground ticking on multiple people, it does provide a good source of healing for you if used correctly.

Sanctuary I have a love hate thing with it. I like the projectile block and “ward” aspect of it. I hate the small bubble and weak heal, as well as I hate how easily it is to walk up to it and melee you through the bubble or even aoes can hit/push you back out of the bubble. It can buy a lot of time in PvP, but I see less use in PvE honestly.

Wall of reflection is a well known and really useful projectile reflector that is highly useful in a lot of PvE scenarios. Also it stays up a good period of time and has a fairly fast cooldown.

Some things to consider as you look for an “interesting” build to play.

Oh for sure, I never take unscathed contender since you lose so much by not having aegis up.

Also if I am going all the way down radiance I typically take 1h strength for 15% crit chance on 1handers and put that left over precision into something else like power if I need to.

Again, this is all just theory crafting and trying to break down what we “can” do via mechanics, not what we should do in actual game play.

We are assuming 100% critical hit chance with gear and fury. Realistically the there will be gaps in 100% to 80% critical hit chance, but just theory crafting here.

But as they pointed out, the damage modifiers still do better overall damage than the critical damage build, based on multiplicative and that modifiers are calculated before the critical damage.

So it does not favor the critical damage build, but in realistic game play the critical damage build will fall behind without max crit chance.

For reference, this is a build calc showing what i was comparing

Crit Damage
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFAREChTIZFKQrHAAAUQXPoIAAAA-jQyAYLAiAQyrIasVNgiKjGruGT5SEVb5XWtpPQCBMaBA-e

Damage Mods
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFAREChUIZFKQbGAAAUVIewZAAAAA-jQyAYLAiAQyrIasVNgiKjGruGT5SEVb5zqpfIyCBMaBA-e

Although, now going back and looking at it, not putting points into valor creates a 5% crit chance loss, putting the damage mod build into the 95% crit chance rating instead of the 100%.

This would affect the outgoing damage as noted with some hits not landing, as you said, putting the critical damage set up slightly higher in some cases.

Although outside of theory crafting the 10/25/0/25/10 build is ridiculous and probably wont get you anywhere useful.

edit: in response to your edit sutcliffe, we are relying on an external source of fury that is not inherent with the guardian.

We could put in save yourselves or fury on burning, but too many what if’s in this example. Thus we are just assuming 100% crit chance in optimal conditions.

Most of the time you will have the fury last the duration of the fight and it will result in the theoretical 100% crit chance.

the trait setup I was suggesting was 0/30/30/0/10 so max precision/crit damage and then the damage mod from aegis, not 0/0/30/30/10, that would have no precision and sacrifice your crit chance, thus lowering the value of crit damage drastically.

Also Kelnis kindly pointed out that it was multiplicative as well

So lets go back to my original mistake with crit damage and damage modifiers and see the difference

0/30/30/0/10
damage modifiers (132% or 1.32)

• 10% conditions
• 20% aegis

critical damage (269% or 2.69, these are additive though right?)

• 150% base
• 89% gear/food
• 30% valor trait line

so 1000 damage will be:

1000 * 1.32 = 1320
1320 * 2.69 = 3550

5000 damage will be:

5000 * 1.32 = 6600
6600 * 2.69 = 17754

10/25/0/25/10
damage modifiers (159% or 1.59)

• 10% burning
• 10% conditions
• 10% low endurance
• 20% aegis

critical damage (239% or 2.39)

• 150% base
• 59% gear/food
• 30% valor trait line

so 1000 damage will be:

1000 * 1.59 = 1590
1590 * 2.39 = 3800

5000 damage will be:

5000 * 1.59 = 7950
7950 * 2.39 = 19000

This creates a 250 low end damage disparity and a 1246 high end damage disparity.

Just trying to do the math for mine and the people’s sake. Any errors?

I’m running full zerker for those too, but I have the AH and larger symbols to tag as much as possible and provide a lot of inbound healing with so many people clustered together.

Without AH I think I would be getting downed as well.

Kelnis, they corrected me on that one, so no worries. Although it doesn’t seem to matter if the crit mods are before or after, just as long as they are separate.

1000 * 5 = 5 * 1000

Open world you should get some survival as is being seen with these world invasions (lol at people downed/dead constantly as I am still standing), certain dungeons have harder to avoid damage than others, wvw you for sure need survival, and spvp/tpvp you definitely need survival, but just pure defense will never kill anyone.

…but we can’t reach/maintain the same type of damage as other professions because we are inherently squishier with less survival in a dps set up….which puts us at bunkers.

We can dps in spvp/tpvp and it is done, but not as effective for our profession and the current meta.

As much as I hate the generic meditation or AH builds, they just prove too useful in terms of making up some lost damage (provided you have high crit chance) and providing us good sustain, grouped or solo.

Honestly I tend to run more bunker or support style most of the time and sacrifice damage for the ability to stay alive. I solo a lot, so all damage isn’t always as useful in certain scenarios. I do have a full cleric set and a full zerker set to switch out between depending on situations.

I am constantly trying to find the balance between them that has survival and high damage, but I think we all are.

Ok lets look at that then, think you will pull ahead on damage again with damage mods as in the last example.

30% damage mod then 269% crit damage on 1000 damage

1000 * 1.3 = 1300
1300 * 2.69 = 3497

50% damage mod then 239% crit damage on 1000 damage

1000 * 1.5 = 1500
1500 * 2.39 = 3585

Actually that shows that the damage mod is before or after, doesn’t matter, but it is a little higher than crit damage in value. They are very close though, and having the survival from valor I contest is a good trade off for 100-200 damage loss.

Either way, I admit the mistake for putting critical damage and modifiers together, didn’t know the sequence which I am sure is a common mistake so I am not ashamed of that one.

30 in valor and critical damage is not “pointless” for a damage build, but not “as” optimal for damage as getting more damage modifiers.

Again, you gain a good chunk of survival and you don’t drastically dip down in damage by going down valor.

So say we take 1000 damage and use our 0/30/30/0/10 example with 150+119% crit damage and then an extra 30% after for damage modifier.

1000 * 2.69 = 2690
2690 * 1.3 = 3497

Now we do the 10/25/0/25/10 damage modifier set up with 150+89 crit damage and an extra 50% after for damage mods.

1000 * 2.39 = 2390
2390 * 1.5 = 3585

This would change things and make the damage mod greater like he said earlier. Or did I miss something.

Granted, the damage modifiers are very situational with aegis and low endurance, but we just going for numbers here not real game play.

Seen the wiki before Bluna, don’t see the damage modifier/critical damage sequence listed in it at first glance.

Just going back and using my original numbers even if incorrect.

299% damage mod with 1000 damage
1000 * 2.99 = 2990
289% damage mod with 1000 damage
1000 * 2.89 = 2890

Difference of about 100 damage

Using damage mods after critical damage also results in about 100 damage difference, but this range scales more as the base damage goes up. Fairly close, but room to pull away from crit damage alone.

Also haviz, how is the critical damage modifier incorrect?

150% from base line crit damage
damage modifiers that are not reliant on critical hits and happen all the time
critical damage modifiers from armor, gear, 30 points into valor

I may have mixed a 10% in somewhere and duplicated a number. If I did point it out please and I’ll correct.

The next question is are these additive or multiplicative. So would the damage modifiers happen “after” the crit so an extra 10-20% on top of the crit damage, or would the damage modifier happen “with” the crit and add to the existing crit damage.

clarify your confusion

30% critical damage, 100% crit chance

Zeal
10% on burning
5% with greatsword
10% with scepter

Radiance
10% with conditions
5% with sword/spear

Valor
30% on crit (max traits in tree)

Honor
10% on low endurance

Virtues
20% if Aegis up
9% from max boons active

So if you don’t go down valor for 30% extra damage (assuming 100% crit chance or at least 90%+ you have the option of moving those 30 points into:

Zeal (gained 15-20%, lost 15-10%) weapon dependent
Honor (gained 10%, lost 20%)
Virtues (gained 9-29%, lost 1-21%) highly situational gains
Radiance (we didn’t argue to move points out of radiance so we are using this as a baseline max 30 and building around it)

You still have 10 point to put somewhere, which will most likely get put into zeal for the 10% damage on burning, Valor for precision off toughness or 10s condi removal, Honor for shout reduction, or Zeal for retaliation modifier or aegis 20% modifier.

Valor is a higher increase, assuming high to max crit chance and it provides the all too famous altruistic healing or monks focus survivability as well.

If you do not have high crit chance, then the critical damage will not assist you, and you also will not be getting as many crits in the first place, so then your damage modifiers go from

30 in valor
150% (base crit) + 119% (crit dmg on gear/traits) + 30% (aegis/condi modifier) = 299% extra damage

to

30 spread out to damage modifiers
150% (base crit) 89% (crit dmg on gear/traits) + 50% (aegis/condi/burning/low endurance modifier) = 289% extra damage

So you lose 10% overall damage and your trait lines are all over the place. compacting it into valor provides a solid trait set up with already acknowledged survivability, especially in a group setting.

These are extreme examples and you could divy up the traits more evenly and put more into zeal to gain power and make up for the 10%+ gap here and there. But from a theoretical standpoint (not always practical in real game play) going down valor seems to go well for us in reaching our higher damage potentials.

if everything was the same in reward, then the masses would only do the easier stuff to get the same reward as the harder stuff. Thus a majority of the content gets ignored.

Hard balance to find, risk/reward. Right now the lucrative stuff is low to moderate risk, especially with the zergs running around you don’t have to do much but tag along. This should give low to moderate rewards honestly because of the repetition and ease.

The only reason they give good rewards is because the mob itself is “harder” then others in stats, but the skills are so simplistic that we are able to spam and out number it.

Right now everything seems like low to moderate risk with some things having huge rewards and others pointless.

Best damaging weapons are greatsword, hammer, sword, scepter.

Greatsword provides good burst potential but has its down times as cooldowns come up.

Hammer seems slow, but the consistent symbol provides a lot of consistent dps in a pve scenario.

Sword auto attack is high overall damage, but not as fast dps as using a cooldown like WW, still very good damage just not bursty.

Scepter is our best long ranged damaging ability but the randomness of smite makes the dps unpredictable and of course drops off as mobility comes into play.

For the sake of talking about it, mace is not a high dps weapon, but the overlapping symbol creates very good PBAOE damage much like hammer can, while providing some sustain via regeneration.

With the weapons situated you have to talk about traits and gear. To achieve high dps you need to increase the damage of your attacks higher than normal, and as said earlier damage modifiers are key to getting the 10k+ damage.

There are a few avenues to achieving this, the most obvious are traits that increase damage by 5-10% In a PvE scenario unscathed contender is amazing dps increase with 20% as long as you don’t get hit, good for boss fights.

Beyond that the largest impact we can have to our damage is critical hits. by maximizing your critical hit chance you gain a 150%+ modifier. Increase your critical damage to about 200% (50% crit rating) and you have a 500 damage auto attack change to 1000.

I think the guardians key to high damage is via high crit rating and critical damage with power as a support stat.

This would mean of course berserker gear because of the critical damage modifier on it and precision as well, the power is an added benefit as you wont max out zeal in your tree.

10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/0/10 has shown some amazing consistently high damage.

It is difficult for us to push higher because you start to sacrifice critical damage or precision to gain power as our trait lines do not contain the trinity stat in 2 trees, instead it is spread out to 3 trees.

Now the question is, can I survive like that? If not you can adjust to your survival and get things in honor for more health and shout utilities such as condition removal, and then you pretty much get brazil’s pve build. A good balance of damage and utility/survival.

ahh, “that” chains. I was thinking the immobilize chains of light on scepter. You mean binding blade on great sword right?

For sure gehenna, I have had to just suck it up early on in the game for some of the one time live events as I work extended hours throughout the week. Thankfully they have moved away from the one time thing and to individualized storytelling.

Although it was amazing to have the community band together like that for the openings of these things, I think this repeat on the hour or instanced versions of storytelling are better.

I understand we can’t please everyone and there will be times that you just wont get everything you want. Very acceptable and it can/will happen, but I do get the feeling that I need to log back in and get stuff done like I had in other MMOs. GW2 didn’t have that at first, but it is slowly moving in that direction. What they have done is amazing when you compare it to the lack of updates in other games, but it is having it’s side effects.

wards I knew could interrupt, but that is usually bypassed by most, still gets a few people with multiple knockdowns.

shield of course is a knock back and interrupts, also well known.

chains on the other hand I didn’t know could interrupt, I’ll have to go back and look at that. I know on mobility moves people will just jump up and down in location or charge in one spot, so unsure which moves it could interrupt.

I was going back and watching and I don’t think the bleeds were crucial in your damage, most of the damage came from retal/confusion/burning. That typically happened when you had pain inverter lined up with a good interrupt like bane or technobabble, or like you mentioned the rogue who kept falling over line of warding

the next question is, will the interrupt happen even if they are not casting/using an ability? were you trying to time it, or just use it on feel? I’m pretty sure the only interrupts you can get are during ability usage, but in your vid it looked like they were doing nothing and you got an interrupt causing confusion stacks.

Maybe swap out that earth sigil for something else? condi removal on crit? heal on swap? Still room for testing.

need versus want grileenor, I think I explained my motivators already and don’t want to rehash, if you can’t understand mine and others desires to do certain things then I can’t do anymore, but please don’t just discount it because it doesn’t matter to you. There are others besides ourselves with differing mentalities, and we just have to remember/understand that.

In the long run though, you sound like you would like them to spend more time working on the content, inadvertently providing something I want, more time between content (less content in a month).

So you are sort of asking for what I want, but with a different reason for the request.

I think it is worth noting that the addition of confusion dramatically changed the damage potential of guardians with conditions.

Confusion goes well with retaliation as they will get hit for using the skill and then hitting you as well, stacked together with burning causes heavy hitting conditions that take out chunks of life at a time.

This is sort of gimicky as we don’t have the means to do this without asuran traits or runes of perplexity, so our class doesn’t promote it as well as it could, as far as I can see. but it is a working build that is catching people off guard

It just goes to show that we need something else on top of burning to make conditions viable for us.

I think we are saying the same things with different words gehenna.

by less content I mean more time to do current content and delay the new content “or” give us a filler content that is carefree to put a buffer between two really active content updates.

I like the new stuff, I like the variety. I am enjoying the game a lot…I just need some room to breath….It’s not you….it’s me…..

Thanks azizul, yeah I think that would be a decent buffer. The big content would have to become longer though to satiate the player base and not become stagnant.

There is always room for tweaking the timelines later as well

There is coming to terms and giving up, it is a fine line.

I am extremely proud of myself for the clock tower and also the queens gauntlet.

There was no real “gain” in doing them and if anything they were a waste of time as many felt. The risk versus reward was not great enough.

That is where it changes from person to person, my reward is the “achievement”. Not the points or the loot, but taking on a challenge and completing it.

This is something akin to little things I do in real life. Sometimes I will say to myself I will take my keys, throw them up in the air, and have them drop right into my pocket…why??!?! well cause it sounded hard to do and entertaining….. I am odd, I know.

I have been playing MMOs since EQ and UO. I understand the “race to the top” mentality that you speak of and the pressure it can bring. I don’t feel this is as demanding on the player as it is demanding on the group, so I didn’t care much for guild raids and world 1sts. Besides I wasn’t into a lot of the uber guild mentality either.

I did my raids and in everquest I spent a year of real life time raiding dragons till I got my fiery avenger due to a player council who would vote on who was allowed to loot the quest items…. I also was racing against the other paladins to get the fiery defender (I forget, i think that was what it was called) first when the 2.0 weapons came out. I think I was in the top 50s on my server at the time? no idea. So I understand what you mean to some degree.

For you, the missing gaps were not important. I don’t think I need to learn to accept that if I have a gap. If I do end up having a gap then I can accept that, but I will do what I can to not have a gap.

I was almost ready to accept a gap with the queens gauntlet and some of those challenges, but I kept at it and succeeded. I felt great and I still feel good.

Back to the original idea though, there is stress.

Stress can be good, because it motivates people and creates a sense of relief and achievement when you overcome that stress, but continuous stress without a break can be bad stress and it causes emotional and physical responses of exhaustion.

Everyone has differing levels of stress they can handle, so some are still doing ok, maybe I’m just old now and I can’t handle as much as I used to when I was in my 20s.

I really don’t think this needs to be a discussion about how I need to relax though, I think that for a healthy story arch and progressions of this game, we need to have things come in a wave.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure

Right now we are consistently stuck at rising action/climax after climax after climax.

I think we need to go on the down end of that slope and stop for a second longer.

Since I know the moves of the other guardian, I try to make them waste their attacks and get them after they blew everything. I tend to play more defensive and observe how that person plays first.

Retaliation and stability monitoring is key on both sides, when I have mine up and when they have theirs up.

Beyond that, I try to not waste any of my attacks on a renewed focus or a shelter.

The winner tends to be the one that still has moves left to use, at the same time, if you sit on everything and don’t use them enough you will fall behind…just have to find that balance and it changes from fight to fight.

I guess you guys don’t get it. There may not be a visible missing tile, or what not. I am not interested in covering up my missed achievements.

Maybe that doesn’t register in your though process and your only goal is to finish the minimum needed and ignore the rest.

“I” would know that I didn’t finish something that “I” wanted to do, and that would bother me.

Typically I finish all my achievements in the first couple of days and take as much relaxation time as possible, but I still think some buffer content would be appreciated.

I am not asking them to “NOT” make content updates, I am asking for a stress free content update that would have little to no feeling of “gotta rush to finish this before I run out of time”.

Optional or not, some people have personal goals that you may not understand or agree with.

At the moment the only thing I’m missing is frostgorge sound and iron marches and I have 100% all the living story for this update putting me at 18/17 for that tab. I won’t run out of time and those last 2 zones will happen eventually.

Technically I am “done” as soon as I finish frostgorge sound, but I like going that extra mile. Not for looks or for bragging rights or to be ahead on achievement points. Simply for me, because I like it.

I spend plenty of days not logging in and not worrying about finishing my daily achievements and I"m not worried about missing laurels or other things like that, so I’m not compelled to play every day to the point that it is an obsession….although denial could be a key factor here

I could care less about loot
the achievement points I don’t worry about
the storyline is easy enough to keep up with.
the living story rewards such as minis or weapon/armor skins are not critical, but are nice to have. Some have been so RNG that I never even saw it drop and I"m ok with that.

It is seeing the achievement tab filled to the sense of completion. This is what I like, a small challenge to myself that keeps me engaged and goal oriented.

Having a glaring hole in the achievement tab is irritating and it will never be fixed.

I have not 100% my other achievements like dungeons or mini pets, because they are not engaging enough for me to care about.

I don’t think it is fair to ask people to just stop liking what they like to do and change yourself.

This is akin to me saying, “why don’t you stop making money, if you change your view and understand that monetary gain is nothing but a distraction from true happiness, I think you will feel better.”

Sure it is true to a point, but no that is not something I’m interested in. If I do miss out on an achievement then oh well, I will survive and keep on playing. I will not have that same sense of pride in myself though, every time I see a missing achievement. It is a goal I set, for myself, and not reaching it is disappointing.

I could set my goals lower…but does that sound good? Maybe…maybe not. Just be happy with what you got? or strive to better yourself…depends on your philosophy.

Some of the achievements are one time only. Sure it isn’t really a big loss and new achievements will come, but for some the whole point is to finish everything and that is what brings a sense of accomplishment.

Also in chat I was hearing a lot of old players come back and some mention they still need to 100% the world or finish up personal story or some dungeon paths.

We are being drawn away from some of the other aspects of the game by this amazing consistent high paced content….but as I said, a nice breather would be appreciated.

Something that is still profitable for those that want to grind and farm, yet no achievements or very casual achievements for those that need a little bit of down time without the stress of missing things.

A living story update of peace and calm, maybe a party in town or something to that effect that doesn’t turn into run around the world and gather/kill 1000+ things and complete some obscure achievement that is totally luck or overly skill based.

I really enjoyed the mad kings clock tower, I kind of liked crab toss, the queens gauntlet was challenging and I felt amazing after I finished all the fights and 100% all my previous challenges…but I need a second to recuperate.

It doesn’t have to be hard core go go go, all the time. Even military members come back for recuperation every 6 months and get a chance to breath before you get sent back to hit the ground running.

In tv series, sometimes they will have a non eventful recap episode that lets people who missed all the previous shows catch up and understand whats going on. I think we need something like that to give some of us a chance to relax and others a chance to catch up.

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved the updates and I understand not everything is mandatory for the metas (thank you), but I’m just kind of worn out and I think some others have similar feelings. yet if we take a break we risk missing out, which is part of the stress.

I like dynamic and changing content and I think it has done wonders to make this game attractive and keep people active, I don’t worry about permanent content as much as a lot of the posts do, but I do think we need a little bit more of a buffer between content patches. At least every now and then.