Guild Wars 2

Hi there. Take a look at the YouTube channel in my signature. You’ll understand then. You’ll also want to take a look at Amins’ channel when you get a chance.

ZD would be too powerful in my eyes if you could move while casting. It also follows stealthed targets if you’ve casted it before they stealthed. I don’t think it’d be able to do that very effectively if you could move while casting — the targeting would get all messed up if you could move around while casting it.

At present, the only thing I’d like to see changed is Power of the Virtuous being increased to 2% extra damage per boon to be on par with Elementalists’ similar trait.

As long as you stay away from Zerker builds and run a reasonable amount of Vitality, you’ll be fine. You might have to heal sometimes, but that’s part of the game.

This is more of a problem on Borderlands than in EBG because the nerf isn’t active on Borderlands right now, but at most you’re taking around 1.5k damage per tick on a full 5 targets from Barrage in EBG, assuming you just drop your Barrage without waiting a few seconds for their collective Retal to fall off, which is typically very short.

I don’t know how many ticks Barrage hits for, but if you’re running any amount of Vitality, it shouldn’t be enough to kill you. Especially if you’ve got Regen and/or Protection up. And again, use your heal. If you’re actually dying to your own Barrage, then it’s because you’re standing in enemy AoE/in the way of their charge as well. Not just because of Retal.

Edit: As for the “it’s the same deal as Confusion pre-nerf” argument, Retaliation can’t be stacked and epidemic’d and it can’t cause several thousand damage per action whether single-target or AoE.

Both Confusion and Retal were nerfed heavily. The Retal nerf is broken on Borderlands (not EBG), but it’s still simple enough to delay your zerg bombs. It’s the player’s own fault if they let themselves dry up the last of their health on Retal instead of backing off and healing.

Asking for Retal to be nerfed AGAIN is just lazy players asking for the game to be made even more mindless for them. “YOU MEAN I CAN’T JUST SPAM MY AOES? THIS GAME IS BROKEN.” Know what my guild does when we’re faced with an enemy group stacked with Retal? We drop CC and boon removal and move around for a few seconds to let it fall off.

That said, Retal duration is negligible on anything except Guardians, especially when you don’t give them time to stack light fields. Most groups spend too much time stacking Might and Swiftness to get any threatening amount of Retal stacked.

Should have seen my collection from Valley.

I just think it’s cool when people believe/chest thump about how skilled they are individually when their guilds perform well at any given time.

I don’t mind watching GvG if it’s at a reasonable scale, but I would never participate. I’m too much of a PTFO player. Guild engagements are great, but only if they’re pertinent to an objective. Otherwise… waste of my and my guild’s time.

Any other Mesmers wish to chime in with their opinion of Condi vs Power?

Thanks for the responses so far. Now, let me ask this:

Power or Conditions, and why? I know that Confusion was nerfed and it’s something I’ve been struggling with when designing builds for my guild.

Again, I’m looking for input on builds for groups ranging from 15 to Zerg.

Trap them in a RoW and then plop a Sanctuary down in the middle.

Look at it this way. Leaderboards have not been updated for the new system as of Devon’s last post a few hours ago.

It may take more than a single reset for large matchmaking value gaps to close enough for mixing and matching to occur in many tiers.

It’ll happen eventually.

Anyone that thought about it for a second should know that the odds of having the same matchups this week are still quite high. The system isn’t just going to instantly compensate for large rating gaps (especially in top and bottom tiers). It may take 2 or 3 weeks to see some mixing and matching. Quit asking for so much all at once and just play the game.

I’ll order pizza and have it sent to ArenaNet’s campus if there’s at least one new server in Blackgate’s matchup tonight.

Peetee.9406:

Christos de Soufre.3802:

This may seem strange, but I’m looking for a Guardian with Twilight from either SoR or JQ. There may be gold and YouTube involved. Please contact at your earliest convenience.

Also, score update!

Chris, I’d like a duel that doesn’t involve your 2 guildmates jumping me the second I engage. You going to be in EB tomorrow morning as well?

I don’t do pre-organized duels anymore, but if you find me alone I’m happy to fight.

My honest advice is to hit 80 and then come back to ask.

My first post said “your weapon choices are wrong” when I meant to say “aren’t…”

GG mornings.

Spirit weapons are very weak now. Shield of the Avenger has uses still, but they’re few and far between. Zeal is also by far our weakest trait line.

Your weapon choices aren’t wrong, but you may need instruction on how gear works stat-wise. Soldier’s, Knight’s, Cleric’s, etc., and the different sets’ synergy with different builds. I’d like to help more, but I’ve got a splitting headache this morning which prevents me from thinking too much…

No, but srsly.

When I say serious, I mean players in organized, team-oriented guilds which consistently play in groups of 15-25. Thanks in advance.

I’ve never, ever seen the projectile absorb fail me, and the damage is dealt much faster than the #1 chain. I really have no issues with Zealot’s Defense. It’s one of my favorite skills.

If you’re running Cleric’s, you should run Shelter anyway.

This may seem strange, but I’m looking for a Guardian with Twilight from either SoR or JQ. There may be gold and YouTube involved. Please contact at your earliest convenience.

Also, score update!

You mean ranking up in WvW is rewarding us primarily with WvW currencies and siege blueprints instead of placing PvE rewards first? Hrm.

WvW is fine. WvW players play for WvW, not for extra cash that they don’t need. The declining numbers line is something that’s been used from day 1 to give people something base a baseless complaint on and it hasn’t been true since. Tiers 1 and 2 are still megazerg fests and my recent three week stint on T5 showed little difference.

If you’re in it for the loot, WvW probably isn’t the place for you. I literally do nothing but WvW and I’ve got plenty of cash from it to pay for T6 consumables, upgrades, and repairs.

Double the base damage of Flashing Blade and I’ll be happy. The fact that it barely hits for a fourth of the auto-attack’s damage is mildly annoying.

Thanks for the response.

Scepter has one of the (I think the, actually) hardest hitting single-target auto attacks in the game. It just needs to be sped up a bit.

Nice video. Quick question though; how often were you able to engage in a fight where 2 or more level 80 foes had the jump on you or saw you coming and win? I’ve been wanting to play a full zerker set for funsies, but hadn’t found anyone that was playing it to any great effect past 1v1s. I’d basically like to know if I’d be wasting my money trying to fight multiple people at once consistently in full zerker.

I have trouble figuring that out myself. It’s honestly a little overkill. AH is best run with anything but Cleric’s almost exclusively because everything else heals for so much in Cleric’s. AH is just overdoing it at that point.

I tried very hard to find a second consecration that lasts for 5 seconds, but I couldn’t.

Edit: The wiki is wrong. Sanctuary’s base duration is 6 seconds. I went ahead and fixed it.

Greatsword doesn’t outclass anything. It has its own strengths and weaknesses just like every other weapon.

Running with absolutely no Power doesn’t help you or your group; it makes you a liability, whether it may seem that way or not. They may as well 4-man whatever they’re doing (dungeon-wise). When it comes to WvW you’re just a rock that can’t do anything but…well, be a rock. A rock can’t exactly hurt you; it’s just hard to destroy until you hit it with enough force (i.e. a zerg). Doing damage is a huge part of this game, even if you play a bunker/support build. You may not die often, but you’re not helping your group any more than you would if you ran something that actually allowed you to do damage.

That said, condition damage is easily the least useful stat to us ever, so Apoth is out. Magi’s is useful if you mix it with some Power pieces. The crit lends itself to more EM procs if you’re into that sort of stuff for AH builds. I’m also going to go ahead and say that it’s my opinion that Toughness is more valuable than Vitality when it comes to survival. Some Vitality is important since we share the lowest base health pool with Thieves, but Vitality without any armor isn’t going to help you.

So, Cleric’s. Maybe with some Magi’s (or Soldier’s) mixed in, mostly for the little bit of extra health. I personally mix in Soldier’s because my build doesn’t utilize EM.

You’re not really that dedicated to WvW if you couldn’t take the 15 minutes to do 1-2 of the non-WvW accessible dailies (when we actually had them) for your laurels for the slight edge that Ascended gear gives. WvW is literally all I do and I’ve had a full set of Ascended trinkets for some time now.

I think I’ve spent a few minutes per day (at most) in PvE for my daily. A lot of the time the daily is completely doable in WvW though, so.

Blackgate has this problem on T1 EBG, on and off.

Sure, if you build for it. It’s the centerpiece of any build it’s a part of. I just don’t think people should assume that it’s the end-all, be-all of Guardians like so many do.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

JustCurious >> You have increase the Virtue of Resolve healing but you didn’t take the most important trait for healing/boons build which is Altruistic Healing.

I have made some changes > http://tinyurl.com/oegv3nh
With boons duration/healing power runes.

I wouldn’t say it’s the most important.

Depends on what you’re trying to do and what kind of stats you want. The armor you’re describing (Healing Power and Precision + whatever the last one is) is Magi’s and I’m personally not a big fan. I know it has its uses if you mix it with Power-based pieces.

You should see some of the Engineer builds I’ve faced.

You shouldn’t abuse your drake like that.

Finally listened to it myself. I was pretty nervous at first, hah. :>

Crapgame.6519:

Not sure if there is anything you can do but seemed overall quality was off. Noise, clicking, or static I guess. I just listed to the plug-in off the URL you posted and didn’t download it. So maybe that could be it.

I know what you mean; I almost freaked out in fact. I use a pretty new Podcaster (which is sort of expensive) so I had to go run a battery of tests to make sure it was just the Mumble recording go all staticy. Thankfully it was.

Bash.7291:

As i already told chris, pretty much the same stuff in the podcast that he gets on my case for on a daily basis. not running more support style in zergs, using 1h weapons in groups the standard stuff :p

Still a good podcast, though I would have thought they would talk more about his specific build rather than general WvW questions, but then again it makes sense since he is the first true wvw guard to be on this.

I was, of course, hesitant to talk about my personal build. We did do some talking about AH and Healway and a few other builds in more depth than what is heard, but we had like 2 hours of content recorded. They don’t want it to run more than an hour.

Call me crazy, but I only put on WoR if there are enough dangerous projectiles that any of my guild group is actually threatened. And I almost never use SotA since it became vulnerable. I usually stick to my shouts.

Split T1 arbitrarily. Tired of skill lag.

Could we please get an idea of what sort of WvW bonuses the new infusions will offer? Anything that directly increases our effectiveness against other players?

I know from experience that this setup works with a trait distribution of 0/0/10/30/30; you may also have success with something similar to the common 0/0/30/10/10 AH/EM build.

I’m assuming you run Soldier’s or Knight’s gear (or a mix).

You exist in a tier where a vast number of dedicated WvW players have caved and moved from BP and AR to EB. There’s almost zero chance of either server beating Ehmry alone, so it makes sense to work together when possible.

There’s a reason I didn’t stay in T5. It’s pointless and far more boring than T1, despite the fact that it’s nothing but bandwagons and overwhelming coverage/numbers here. At least there are people to play with and against at any given time.

If you like it, buy it. You’re purchasing a skin. If the skin is worth 55g to you, it’s worth it.

Bas.7406:

SOACGaming has hit 315 subscribers on youtube. Thank you to everyone who has helped us grow as a podcast, and helped launch this amazing venture.

Thank you!

We are making some changes as to how we do things on our youtube to better assist Guardians who are doing guides, videos, and amazing things. We want to give someone to see what everyone is doing, and not just things we do.

AT SOACGaming we never want to forget that it’ snot about us, but about the players and fans. Stay tuned for more information.

Subscribed and featured on my own channel.

:)

Bringing this to the top. Dying to a terrible mechanic is terrible. You can’t allow something that interrupts everything else—no matter what it is, heals or elites—to queue under the skill queue system. That is absolutely awful design.

Night capping isn’t a problem. It’s people living and playing in different areas of the world than you.

I leave for a few days and everyone and their mom is getting transfers, because T1 wasn’t overpopulated enough as it is. Don’t people ever move to bottom tiers? Wouldn’t that make more sense instead of bandwagoning up to T1?

I run at 1.2-1.3k with mostly Cleric’s, some Soldier’s, and I use Bloodlust. I’m also not AH though (tried it and hated it—too generic), so…

AH doesn’t need healing power outside of the 300 from traits unless you just like having higher sustainability at the cost of some damage.

I can’t imagine why anyone would put points into Zeal. But that’s just me.

Staff Eles never listen…