Guild Wars 2

On the log in screen it would be nice if you could click on the banners of each order and rewatch the in game cinematic for each order that your characters have joined.

Small suggestion but it just feels like those icons were meant to be clicked, yet they do nothing.

Zacchary.6183:

keeganrms.6301:

Well, if we’re taking the story seriously, he’s an idiot. The lord commander of the pact goes out on field missions with his lieutenants?! Are you kidding me?

I understand that its a fantasy world but its also not a kids’ cartoon.

This….

You would think that putting top leadership in the same group begs for Zhaitan to ambush the living hell out of you.

In the military you sometimes hear the saying “Lead from the front”.

May not apply directly in all situations but when my leaders don’t hide behind me and send me out as cannon fodder, then I appreciate and respect them more.

necro thread is necroed. But maybe players are too self involved and selfish, so they can’t appreciate a bigger picture than themselves?

Biggest complaint I hear is that he takes all the credit/attention away from the player. Second biggest is that people don’t like the voice acting. That is all opinion but I didn’t mind either.

Honestly I feel the sylvari are the “heros” of this story since they were created or born purely for the sake of fighting the elder dragons. All of the other races are in retreat as the sylvari are in full charge forward. Thus it makes sense in some ways that Trahearne a sylvari is leading the charge with his great hunt, while still being somewhat new and less experienced than other races and characters.

While I agree that Zealous Blade is not sufficient, you will not get the same amount of healing from AH and relying on the might proc to heal you.

Zealous Blade heals for each enemy hit, so with a lot of enemies around you, you will heal for 25 for each target hit. Put 4 targets around you and you will get 100 life on a greatsword swing, 3 swings in the auto chain that’s 300 life.

AH will only give a heal at the end of the auto attack chain, and we will generously give it a 81 hp heal with 1200 healing power scaling.

Combine with whirling wrath you have some quick burst healing (7 swings and 4 targets = 700 health. Add in approximately 2 bolts for another 50 health that’s 750 health each whirling wrath).

Problem with Zealous Blade is that it does not heal as fast as the damage you take from 4+ targets. That and as you down enemy targets you get less healing. AH will maintain consistency as long as allies are near you and getting boons. So you will heal better with a group no matter if it is a single target or multi target fight.

Zealous Blade needs a higher heal to make it worthwhile, but if you are going AH, don’t rely on the might boon. Get the trait Empowering Might to proc might on crit to allies and you will see better benefit from Altruistic Healing and the greatsword, or go hammer or mace for more consistent symbol applications.

Another answer could be user slower/heavier hitting weapons/attacks during retal phases as retal only does damage per a hit and not per skill activation. While confusion damages on skill activation and not per a hit, so with confusion use fast multi attacking skills to get more damage in between each confusion tick.

That is if you can’t “not” attack or strip the condition/boons off.

Also retal does not tick on condition damage so you can apply those for “non attack” phases with retal/confusion.

I turned around and reinstalled GW1 a week or so ago and it is disrupting my ability to log onto GW2 =p. Played the game for about a week a long time ago and didn’t give it a second chance till now. Bumping around presearing still after trying a bunch of different builds and classes (and starting over and over and over cause I was trying to hit 20 without dying…I’m a masochist apparently) and not leaving till I hit 20 for the title and any other things that may give me credit for achievements in GW2.

The only down side right now is I am not logging in to do daily/monthly activities in GW2, something that I feel causes a root problem in design, but that’s for a different topic.

What I have noticed is what a lot of the old GW1 players have mentioned about the complexity and balance of the skills, classes, and combat. With the simplicity of the stats and the idea of horizontal progression, you do not get bloat and inflation of stats and gear. After a few years many MMOs talk about a stat squish because things just get out of hand after a while. This brings me back to EQ1 before any expansions, and gear increases how little to no stats on them. Gear was good just because it was gear, and not because it was a class specific, stat oriented, dps/healer/tank, set. GW1 still has some intricacies such as % of life stat bonuses or spell school orientation, but they are in the minor amounts so that gear isn’t leaps and bounds different from one person to the next.

The other thing is the way that combat seems to work. Bleed didn’t have a damage amount to it, it simply reduced health regeneration. This can be counteracted by a boon that increases health regeneration by more ticks than bleed or any conditions that may be applied. It felt more like a tug of war with HP and Energy than a number crunching game. This is a good thing because it leads way into player skill and strategy and not big numbers win.

Some of you hardened GW1 players may be more indepth than I am seeing the game. But there is something about the combat that is vastly different and refreshing to me after playing so many MMOs since EQ1. So much so that while I see the root ideas and similarities in GW2, I would like to see more of that contributed now.

I do recognize that GW1 is more strategic in combat and GW2 is more action/tactical, so the combat style in general is vastly different and at a different pace. GW2 combat is highly involved and keeps me active, which I appreciated and enjoy. I just want to bring some more complexity into the fight and skill mechanics that they were able to do in GW1 to the fast pace action oriented combat of GW2.

Excuse the ramblings of a guy who discovered a game years after other people have played and finished already =p I just find it highly refreshing and enhances my enjoyment of GW2 even more!

I do sometimes wonder if the virtue of courage refresh trait (when you rally) could be reworked to something like 25% of life instead. Also there is a surprising lack of virtue of resolve refresh trait. Could be something like after casting a heal speed VoR is renewed.

Put elusive power up on the zeal trait line, zealot’s speed, trait and name it zealot’s power, put virtue of resolve refresh in honor trait line and call it honorable resolve.

Change Courageous Return from refreshing Virtue of Courage on rally to refresh VoC at 25% life. Or maybe even “upon entering combat”, so it doesn’t interfere with valorous defense (aegis at 50%).

That is under the assumption that the whole party is zerker but you. So if you are the cause of slower dps the rest of the group will be subjected to more instances of damage that they may or may not be able to handle.

On release, most people shunned those without survivability because they were downed and the mindset was low dps is better than no dps, so in that instance you had groups of people with low damage but high survivability, causing the one player with zerker gear to be the odd man out who would cause the rest of the group heartache because they had low dps and long fights, a downed person caused even longer fights and a general pain in the rear end. All in all the only person that dies is the one without tanky gear and the rest of the group trods on.

As we see now, tables have turned and most people are capable of avoiding the big hits and do enough damage to down enemies and clear dungeons in the matter of minutes instead of hours.

This does not mean every group is zerker though. So when a zerker guy joins a group that is more survival, they now look bad since the fights last longer and they have to play perfectly or get downed (thus they get downed a few times throughout the dungeon).

Turn that around and have a pvt guy in a zerker group. They are angry because fights are again lasting too long and causing them heartache and potentially death. Opposed to the tanky group, if someone comes in against the grain, then the whole group can die because of the long fights versus one person dying.

I sort of fall in the middle of those two mindsets, because I solo a lot and full glass makes it hard to take on some of the champs and events versus my more tanky set up. Yet if I go full tank then I run into long fights that may push the time limit of a dynamic event or just bore me in general.

So pick your groups or find a balance. Most people are polar and like the extremes of one side or the other though.

Not picking sides per say but the reasoning was flawed is all. If you and your group can go full zerk and win, good. If you and your group can go full tank and win, also good.

If you can’t win, change something.

And yet, if you die in zerker then you are still doing little to no damage as you are arguing if someone would to survive in pvt.

So when I type /age or /played what ever it was, is that how long it has been since I first registered that CD key? If so I had played a grand total of 2+ hours in the last 83 months…..lol I never really gave it a shot back in the day did I.

edit
Ok did the command again and across ALL characters I had played 37 hours 53 minutes over the last 83 months…not AS bad as I thought heh.

The intent was that it is stronger to keep passive for yourself but if you need to activate it, it will help the group.

a burn every 5 seconds versus everyone adds 4-5 seconds of burning. In a full group that would keep burning up just about until justice is off cooldown. If you have points into the virtue line it reduces virtue cooldowns so you could keep burning on a target for the duration of the fight as well as giving everyone might. Tie that into zeal with fiery wrath and radiance with radiant power and you have 20% extra damage you can do to that target.

Conditions are killer and with traits you can cleanse them on your group with resolve AND give them regeneration boons to recover from the condition damage, as well as a minor direct heal.

Courage can provide a block to save yourself and allies as well as provide protection after aegis wears off to reduce the damage after blocking as well. Additionally if you are stunned or knocked down courage could break stuns or avoid knock downs/fears or other conditions stability can avoid to allow you to keep control of your character and maybe roll out of the way and survive that big hit.

If you want to get even more crazy you can trait for pure of heart and provide a heal after your aegis breaks for even more group utility on “oh no” moments.

Renewed Focus lets you do all of that a second time without having to wait for virtues to recharge.

I’m selling virtues pretty hard, and they are REALLY situational, but they are not useless by a long shot

Without at least 5 points into virtues trait line they are mostly pointless to activate unless grouped. Even when grouped, they are minor to use unless traited.

If you pick up 5 into virtues you get boons for yourself and the group depending on which virtue is activated like Chris just mentioned. Also if you keep going down that line you can gain a 3 condition removal for your whole party and increased passive effect on virtue of resolve. Virtue of courage can gain a stun break and stability with increased passive occurances (30 sec cooldown instead of 40).

Go back up the trait lines and put some points into radiance and now you get an ae blind on each activation of justice. Also refresh justice each time an enemy is downed and you can spam blind on AE groups to increase survivability.

Alone virutes are weak but you can enhance them for situational useage.

still bumping around in gw1, for sure an older interface style, but interesting to see how some of the same ideas have translated and evolved into gw2.

That’s ok, I mostly solo now a days anyway so I’m not worried about the social aspect. I knew about henchmen and such. I never played paragon or any of the other things and after I reinstalled it I remembered how few classes there were without expansions.

Like you said, I am mostly just going back to experience lore, but wanted feedback on if buying expansions or not was a tad excessive for my intents.

Of course, as I’m playing it right now I am fiending for GW2 =p

Furthest I got when I bought it a few years ago was after Ascalon went kablooy and then I kind of just stopped. I think I did that because I didn’t finish exploring the rest of the game and then it pushed me forward into the “present”. I know I could have just restarted or made a new character but slightly frustrated my OCD nature and I never came back.

So I bought GW1 way back in the day and never got into it much as I was playing EQ1 or 2 at the time. For some reason GW2 has me totally hooked and I enjoy every minute of it, but I went back and reinstalled GW1 on my computer again.

I only have prophecies, but was wondering what the experienced GW1 players think. Should I bother to dish out money on the GW1 expansions or just get my kicks in and don’t worry about the expansions. (I don’t plan on playing it in depth, but wanted to experience more of GW1 to better enjoy GW2 even more….and maybe get some of those legacy/heritage achievements

Warrior:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/What-s-your-highest-crit/first#post1895851

Guardian:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-much-dmg-your-Guardian-can-do/first#post1773157

Although for sake of argument, debuff/buff conditions and sustained DPS versus burst damage are factors to consider but you can glance at what warriors can do versus what guardians can do in those limited scenarios.

Interesting bug with Sword Wave. If you turn away from the target right before you swing sword wave you hit the target with all 3 hits and the game registers it as a miss so you get a second “chance” to Sword Wave again back to back.

Easier to reproduce with auto chain on

If that’s the case Gunglai, then I’ll have to take your word for it. I really can’t see how OP it could have been, maybe it was just the skill level of players in beta is not where it is now. Still, I wasn’t there so case closed..for now

Thanks Kavia, I put a strike through on the Shatter Cat build and added a s/tPvP Shatter version on top of the list. Keeping the older Shatter build for building blocks/reference but will most likely remove and put in a separate list later to truncate it, as well as the other variants seen.

One interesting thing is how the builds will change with the new PvP patch. This whole list may change.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword

Taking into account ranger and thief that have a “disengage” and then an engage, but that is their fight mechanic, they want to move away to avoid damage.

Warrior – Savage Leap: 8s, 252 dmg
Ranger – Hornet Sting -> Monarch’s Leap: 8s, 235 dmg on evade and 336 dmg on leap
Thief – Infiltrator’s Strike -> Shadow Return: infil strike uses initiative so no cooldown, 252 dmg on infil strike not on return
Mesmer – Illusionary Leap -> Swap: 12s, 1 dmg on clone leap then mind slash for 202

Guardian – Flashing Blade: 10s, 67 dmg

Ranger and mesmer also have traits that reduce cooldown on sword attacks all lower than guardian. I think other classes are doing fine on gap closer, and that’s just sword, lucky them.

Of course, Jsu. I apologize.

While I understand and know full well that it is “not meant to do damage, but is a form of mobility”, not meant to do damage is different than possibly having the wrong damage values according to trend analysis. Mistakes shouldn’t be given a pass because “it’s ok”.

Would having the correct damage values change Guardian combat drastically? No, but I still think it should be addressed and fixed.

As far as the thief skill head shot, it is still in line and not drastically behind the other skills associated with the pistol.

Vital Shot 134, Body Shot 168, Unload 101, Head Shot 84, Black Powder 84

I know it has come up before, but was going through all the guardian weapons and I come across flashing blade and the minuscule damage it has.

I really wonder if this was a typo and flashing blade was supposed to have 267 or 167 damage.

If you look at the attack chain that would line up with it.

269/269/168+168+168
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_of_Wrath
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_Arc
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword_Wave

I really really really feel that it was a typo and the programers missed a 1 or 2 at the start of the number.

Compare it with our other gap closer/control abilities and you will see that 67 damage stands out… a lot.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flashing_Blade
67 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap_of_Faith
406 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Embrace
296 damage

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Judge%27s_Intervention
122 damage

Updated links and added some more of the suggestions. If there are any builds that are complete BS and need to be removed or bad/redundant/misdirected links, let me know and I’ll fix them as best as I can.

I mostly want the “meta” builds that are working now the theory craft builds. Multiple roles under one profession are fine, but we have two ele d/d builds right now so need to select one.

Just for the hell of it I went to the wiki to take a second look at the definitions of the combat roles they defined for gw2 and I think it breaks out support fairly well.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Support

• Gives boons
• Removes conditions
• Heals (very little)
• Provides combo fields (meh….)

In essence, providing other players with greater capability than they can do alone.

Ideally I think they wanted us to contribute a little bit of support/control/damage into each build so that as a group you can enhance each other’s weak points, not just one person is running DPS while someone else is control and then another is support. Instead it seems that DPS is king for the most part.

rest of the roles and combat defined for those who care to look
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

awesome thanks jcbroe, a starting point is better than nothing. Yeah I noticed a lot of those were pve, but hoped they translated to other areas or someone like you could pick them apart and find the good ones.

I see what you mean jsu, for sake of argument I put both of them up there, but without utilizing fury or precision, Renewing Stamina is not getting utilized as much as it could be.

As more people chime in I will clean up the lists but will just cross off things for now so they are still visible and can be maybe built upon or verified.

Also having problems finding specifics for the warrior/thief/ranger builds, so any help with these would be appreciated.

Back and going to dig through some more to post the “right” popular build. Thanks for updates guys. Kind of surprised at how undocumented the builds are. At least on these forums. Everyone knows the names but not the actual build it seems.

Tired of digging through forums for builds for now, will pick it up later tonight. Feel free to link better/more used builds than what I posted as I just took the most viewed and talked about builds in each forum.

If you have reference links to posts or even a build link that is complete that would be good. I am currently looking at the d/d ele build by daphoenix, but there are so many variations.

(April 27, 2013) Updated Mesmer Shatter build as informed by Kavia
(April 26, 2013) Updated all links to tinyurl’s as I hit my character limit for this post

I often find myself researching and theory crafting more than I play as of late. What I was hoping to do with this post was to consolidate the most popular builds for each profession in sPvP/tPvP. I did some preliminary searching but there are a lot of theory craft builds, so not sure which ones are effective and used or not.

If anything other players could then have a consolidated list of starter builds off this post, so please help me fill out this list:

Elementalist :

• Jsu’s Burst Cantrip D/D (reference post)
• Defensive Cantrip D/D (reference post)
• Aura Share (reference post)
• Phantaram’s Arcane Burst (reference post)
• D/D (reference post) unsure of weapon sigils

Engineer:

• HGH (reference post)

Guardian:

• Point Control Bunker (reference post)

Mesmer:

• s/tPvP Shatter (reference post)
• Shatter Cat (reference post) unsure on amulet/gem as it was a wvw build link
• Phantasm (reference post) unsure about elite

Necromancer:

• Conditionmancer (reference post)
• Khalifa’s D/D (reference post)

Ranger:

• Trapper (reference post)
• Beast Master (reference post)
• additional references

Thief:

• compiled builds

Warrior:

• Captain Hammer (reference link)
• Defektive’s Longbow/GS (reference post)

What I don’t understand is why don’t they have dynamic events in the cities?

Would help populate them and give people things to do. Then NPCs could react differently depending on how the city was doing

Could have simple things from deliveries up to a full on invasion if no one tends the city.

Sort of like at ebonhawk with the separatists but on a bigger and more dynamic scale.

mmmmmm friendly fire

I think gw2skills.net is just missing consumable buffs and they could be set. I do use a bit of both sites though depending on what I want to theory craft

Actually I have gone through all your builds and tested them out to see which ones I like. Good info in there on your PvP builds post.

I was simply trying to do new things and see what we can come up with out of the norm. Threw the idea out there for others to play with if they wanted to and see what the community could come up with.

Traits are fine and could easily be moved around a trait here and there if you find something lacking.

Some might min/max you on gear selection though.

Overall no glaring issues, but you could always push it for more damage or survivability. If it feels good to you though, enjoy it till you find a time you want to tweak it some.

since damage mitigation is dependent on attackers power versus defenders armor rating, it all depends on how much armor you have.

General consensus seems to say that past 3k armor you don’t need as much, which would make sense if most players have a power rating of around 3k-3.5k.

After that as I know you are aware of, conditions wreak havoc on our low life pool if we can’t cleanse them fast enough. That in conjunction with readily available dodges and blocks, it would seem that vitality would help us more in the long run if you are near 3k armor.

Did math in another thread based on the damage formula on the wiki
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Vitality-and-the-Guardian/first#post1866593

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

min maxed vitality versus toughness and vitality gained more survivability by a small margin.

Extreme examples but worth a note I think. In the long run balance seems to be the key word.

As far as the scaling better with toughness, warriors and guardians are both heavy armor users so they get 291 more armor than a light armor wearer and 147 more armor than a medium armor wearer.

Take into account that warriors are heavy armor and highest hp and guardians are lowest armor and lowest hp.

What we are “supposed” to have is better health regeneration and that’s why our hp is low.

Yeah, not willing to dish out money to try it for real. Was just entertaining the idea.

Was thinking symbols because they continue to tick on AE as long as targets are in it. Sword would have to go through a full rotation to trigger 4-5 hits.

Torch seemed redundant since you are already getting burning from symbols, also torch only burns 3 targets at a time, so felt unbalanced. Also torch AE burning does not count towards virtue of justice procs, as it is a condition and not a physical hit. Torch 5 does though, but still only hits 3 targets at a time.

Hammer may be a good candidate since it reapplies symbols frequently.

Not saying the build is any good or what I did was optimal at all. Just my own personal thought process.

Just because I ran a quickly mashed together AE burn build in sPvP and had decent AE results when in groups and racked up 300 points cause I tagged so many people in the cluster I got credit for them all.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlUg6CXFSPEf4ES2DR6AVwqCxD2DNyjyIA

Survivability on it is horrible and can’t solo anyone at all, but does good AE damage. Needs a TON more work, but fun results if grouped.

(side topic: gw2skills.net got a website upgrade while I typed this, pretty nice. They have a pve and wvw option now! Always like the interface the most and now it has all the options. Also they seem to have gotten rid of the bad link errors with the forum so no need for tinyurl anymore!)

While condition damage is arguably negligible in PvE and for the most part ignored as a Guardian, especially in PvP. I had an interesting thought on AE damage with the guard.

Two traits that I don’t see a lot of people talk about are Permeating Wrath and Supreme Justice. These cause AE burning around you when Virtue of Justice triggers instead of single target, and reduces the hit to proc to four hits instead of five.

Most of our AEs can hit up to five targets per a hit. Staff 1 and symbols to be exact. So with Permeating Wrath you would now cause a burn tick per each tick of symbol with 4-5 targets in range, or with each auto attack on staff.

Played around with it in mists on the cluster of target dummies and it is interesting to say the least, but probably is only useful as a farming build. You can symbol and whirling wrath to quickly stack around 5-10 seconds of burning on everything around you in two moves, but still you need to wait 5-10 seconds to do that damage, versus power builds that can kill on hit.

Was just an interesting side thought that maybe someone would like to flesh out into a real build. Maybe a support/ae build for WvW zergs? Boons and Burns

They go together in aspects of both provide burst damage via mighty blow/whirling wrath/symbol of wrath.

Also as you mentioned they are both AE damage, so in WvW fights a lot of people are trying to maximize offensive pressure on a large scale, thus GS and Hammer with as many burst cool downs as possible.

As far as fluidity in cool downs and style, they contrast somewhat, but it has proven to work well enough.

Like you said, you are looking for something to recover from face tanking, and I think mace will provide you with that recovery. Regen + block on it will buy you some time, stack that with focus for more blocks and you will survive a few more hits. It will not be a full recovery, but it buys you time to get more energy for dodges back and maybe your heal off cool down.

Later on AH as most will attest can provide all the passive healing you need for the most part. Best used in groups of course but solo works well enough too.

I get what you are saying on the mainstream thing though. Which is why I do so much testing and research cause I want to find something new and different, but I have recently gone full circle and picked up AH crit heals again and I immediately see the improvements :p . Did the healaway/boonaway thing for a bit and it works really well too, but doesn’t scale up when in groups. Meditation healing is nice and all but some long gaps between your burst heal and limits utilities somewhat.

I am actually leveling a second guardian (why??? I don’t know, I have 1 of each class but I like guardian so much I made a second to see how I could do now that I “know it all”).

Like you said trying to find a way to mix and mesh these things together is clunky at times. Sword is good at buying you time due to the blind aspect being AE causing all mobs around you to miss, so sword focus would be good to buy time with multiple blinds and blocks.

What I ended up doing was having hammer/staff, mostly for travel speed reasons. But I do swap to staff to charge up an empower+ symbol then switch back to hammer with 12 stacks of might. Works well at lower levels, but I know it tapers off later on to not be so amazing. Like you said the ward on staff has been nice too as a way to buy time.

Mace/Shield and Hammer has some interesting synergies since both are quickly refreshing symbols so you can maintain symbol damage even if you switch weapons, difference between regeneration or protection. Shield is nice because you can keep protection on a bit longer while in mace mode, and mace gives you some HP recovery. I think if you want to do a lot of swapping, this is your best bet. Maybe even mace/focus.

In WvW a lot of people have found Hammer/Greatsword to work well together with circle of warding and whirling wrath. Helps keeps targets inside and knocked down so you can do damage, then switch back to hammer for a mighty blow while they are still in the ward. Seen some groups get devastated with that combo.

One thing I did notice while soloing PvE is the lack of ranged and some encounters working better with ranged (soloing melee champions). So I swap out to scepter and Smite Kite things when I need to.

So if you want to weapon swap, think about what you are swapping to. Are you swapping because of a deficiency in the weapon you are using for that scenario, or are you swapping to combo skills together to do more damage/utility?

edit
Also remembered I wanted to mention that torch only burns 3 targets at a time for both torch 4 and 5. So if you were thinking it is amazing for AE, it still has limitations. Still, I am testing it out with mace and it works well enough to augment the defensive nature of mace with some passive condition damage.

As far as comboing weapon skills together, you need to think about synergy and cool down times.

If you are using hammer, the biggest benifit of hammer is the auto attack chain. Quickly refreshing symbols that provide protection and damage. Each action you take other than the auto attack chain delays that chain and provides openings to more damage and reducing your damage output.

In a pvp sense the hammer is great for area control because of the knock back, immobilize, and the ward. Those are all situational cool downs though and are not used unless needed.

Switching to sword from hammer changes your combat completely. Now you are not getting any protection boons, but you did gain blindness every 10 seconds. Sword 3 provides less “dps” but maybe more burst if they all land. It also can provide projectile blocking if timed correctly, so sword 3 sometimes ends up being a situational cool down.

There are a lot of guides to different builds which try to mix weapon synergies as much as possible with traits that enhance them. It all depends on how you want to play.

It sounds like you want to be fairly tanky but still provide some damage, a hard thing to do as a guardian and many are still looking to find that balance.

What if…

What if there was no auto attack and only cool downs?
Attack animations could trigger to “look” like fighting where weapons clash and people move and swing without doing damage so it looks like sparing and “melee”, but the only way to do damage is by using cool downs.

Now imagine if the cool downs are a sort of form of paper rock scissors. If I use rock you better use rock to block me or paper to counter me quickly before my rock lands. If you use scissors then I crush you. Something more elaborate than that, but to effect that simple idea but expanded.

That is sort of what I had in mind when I heard about the combat in this game. Unfortunately it really is just auto attack and cool downs. In the games defense I am more active in my combat than normal, but sometimes it just feels like a giant kite fest or a forever circle strafe.

I do understand the limitations when it comes to group combat though and how hard it is to balance paper rock scissors with 3+ combatants.

Still if they could bring more skill and “sparing” to the table instead of just large damage cool downs for the most part.

As ILobo said, torch is primarly a “dps” weapon, but its 5 skill is actually a reduction in dps if you use it.

It does how ever cleanse conditions on allies so it is useful in a support aspect…it doesn’t however cleanse conditions on yourself

Torch 4 is considered dps for 2 reasons. It provides a burn effect to targets that is readily available which in turn will assist by causing burning condition that is benefited by our traits (increase damage by 10% to burning targets and increase damage by 10% to targets with conditions).

Also torch 4 provides a good ranged burst option when you trigger the secondary effect. Hits pretty hard on crits.

Just to round it out, the focus is primarily seen as a solo off hand as it has the least amount of group utility.

Focus 4 provides regen and cleanses conditions. It also blinds enemy targets and does minor damage. Bounces between enemies and allies so it is hard to control who it goes to. If anything it is great at condition removal if you get up close to the target….but it casts slow so you can get a target not visible error and put it on a short cool down.

Focus 5 provides 3 blocks, and can be used while stunned or knocked down. Additionally it is a “burst” finisher so you can trigger might on fire fields or retaliation on light fields, both of which we can trigger ourselves.

If you don’t get hit 3 times the focus will explode doing high damage to targets around you, this too can crit pretty high if speced for it.

So:

• Torch – Offensive with bonuses to damage and group cleanse utility. No self defense
• Focus – Balance of offense and defense. Solo oriented, burst damage potential, self condition cleansing and self only blocks
• Shield – Defensive and group oriented, provides burst heal and area control

Largest benefits of the shield are as follows:

• On demand protection, shield 4. Use when large hits are incoming that you know you can not avoid.
• Push back, shield 5. Highly used in PvP when you need to control a point or if you need to protect an ally from a stomp or enemy revive. In PvE this is useful to buy yourself a little time and to block projectiles in general.
• Burst heal, shield 5 trigger. After using shield 5 you can also “explode” the shield to cause a bit of healing to self and allies. After detonating the shield it ceases to block projectiles I believe, so trigger it at the end of a cast if you want to maximize projectile blocks.

After that some other synergies are that shield provides extra toughness just by wearing it, traits can increase toughness by 90 when wielding the shield and reduce shield cool downs. Additionally shield 4 provides a not completely bad bit of ae direct damage hit in a frontal cone.

If you really want to get nick picky, its a front cone protection buff so you can use that to assist allies and trigger some more altruistic healing boons.

All in all though, it really is a situational thing, but your options are focus or torch. Most tend to pick focus because it provides more blocks for “oh no” moments". Also burst damage.

@Isslair:
If you are thinking purely on a healing skill scaling level, yes the higher vitality you have the more healing power you want to maximize that cool down.

If you are thinking about the influx of healing versus the reduction of life rate then think of it like this.

Your regeneration boon heals for 250
Someone hits you for 500 damage
At that rate you can not maintain life versus the incoming damage due to it doing more than you are recovering it.

Now add toughness in,
You heal for 250
Incoming damage is 500
You have 50% damage reduction
Incoming damage is mitigated to 250

Now you are healing at the same rate as the incoming damage so your health should maintain an equilibrium due to toughness assisting healing power maintain the health pool. Of course if your healing power out weighs the incoming damage, then you achieve over healing which is a waste. At that point you start moving stats to another location to better performance.

This does not directly translate into the game since attacks happen faster and hit harder than a majority of our healing skills. Add in poison conditions and heals become some what lackluster. Which is the original intent of the game, there are no healers, and we are meant to play actively (avoid damage not tank it).

To that end, the mechanics of the game defeat the stated mechanics of guardians…we are supposed to have lower health because we heal well, but we struggle against the “there are no healers” paradigm, so it puts us in a tough spot sometimes.

@Ghotistyx:
Last I timed it, the aegis on 50% health was a 60s cool down. So if anything you want more life to buy more time till 60s is up and you can proc aegis again. Same goes true for shimmering defense which gives ae burn on 25% life, it has a 60s cool down.

Realistically you are not going to rely on hovering at 50% to stay alive though, regardless of a big or small health pool.

Amins, I agree for the most part. I would hope that we could feel the difference with heavy armor vs light armor, but the argument on the general forum has me thinking.

A lot of the game is focused around avoiding damage and “playing smart”. Further into the game you run into more one shot deaths that down you.

In PvP you can’t help but get spammed on and again knowing how to avoid a lot of that damage will go a far way.

So in that post they state “berserker is king” with the logic of, you shouldn’t get hit in the first place. While I disagree with that, I do see some merit in what they say.

As far as DR on armor past 3k. There doesn’t seem to be any hard coded DR that prevents higher armor from being as effective, but you have to take into account that it is the attackers “attack” rating versus our “armor” rating that determines the damage we take. So based off stat limitations with what gear you can acquire, 3k armor has been the observable magic number for most players to defeat the attackers “attack” stat.

If someone with a higher attack rating comes around, all of the sudden your 3k armor doesn’t feel like enough again. Just depends on who is attacking you to see how effective your armor stat is.

Didn’t mean to cause an argument. I did see in my original research that necros have condition conversion on a 60-48s timer depending on if traited or not.

I did ask if it was readily available as in, can you maintain vigor throughout the duration of a fight.

The intent of my original research was that guardian’s have a trait called vigorous precision which provides vigor on crit for 5 seconds. With a moderate amount of crit any guard can keep vigor going. In turn they have Selfless Daring in the same trait line that provides a heal on dodging.

While I was looking around I was seeing if the game was intended for everyone to take dodge traits to increase survivability and every class had “on dodge” effects but necro did not have easy access to vigor.

I don’t consider the blood is power+well of power easy access but it is there if you need it. Smart use of condition conversion in natural combat would also provide a lot of useful boons as mentioned with the 1m of vigor on high stacks of bleed.

I did see a recent necro lupicus solo who had smart use of Death Shroud to avoid attacks, so I inferred that DS was the necro dodge. Good points on the speed of regeneration and PvP vs PvE making it seeming lackluster though.

Hope I cleared up your argument, but I did learn a lot from you all. Thank you!