Guild Wars 2

amg skys falling!

Shield of Absorption is pretty good.

• It knock’s people back. Great for getting people off you or punting people off cliffs or interrupting.
• The absorption part is too short, but you can detonate the shield and heal yourself and people around you for about 1,400~ with decent +healing. It’s an extra heal.

foofad.5162:

magicthighs.5372:

ComeAndSee.1356:

Aza.2105:

I feel that many players tend to think about how old style mmos work, i.e soak up damage with mitigation. Its true to a extent in gw2 but toughness, armor and vitality should be considered more of a buffer that is used when you make a error. Dodge is the real mitigation in game, along with block and blind.

That is the case in sPvP, but not for WvW.

Toughness, Vitality, and Armor generally works fine on every class, but Thiefs and Warriors basically ignore your armor with certain abilities.

My Thief -> Stonetouch Venom -> Shadowstep -> Haste -> Cloak n Dagger -> Backstab -> Heartseeker = you’re dead.

None of those abilities ignore armor. Condition damage, however, does.

While this is true, the sentiment is that because crit damage can be increased so much it causes the abilities to feel as though they bypass armor on crits because they hit so tremendously hard. I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with the notion that it’s “too much damage.”

Keep in mind, that in order for it to be mathematically possible to be struck by a Backstab crit in the 9000-10k range against a 3200 armor target, the thief needs to have a lot of factors on his side. Might, vuln, Executioner, Eagle runes/full Divinity, Bloodlust stacks, and so on and so on. Every once in a while all of those factors are bound to combine in such a way as to cause you to get hit for what seems like a disproportionate amount of damage. Especially against a zerg.

I’d be really interested in seeing screenshots of people getting hit for that much damage 1v1. It shouldn’t be possible. What is possible is the much more reasonable 5-6k backstab.

I know someone’s going to get incensed at my use of the word “reasonable” with respect to a single hit dealing 6k damage, but what I mean by reasonable here is that it’s completely within the realm of possibility for a single person, given the amount of damage that Backstab does, to actually hit for that much.

In other MMOs there are usually soft and hard caps in place to make sure that stacking one stat doesn’t get out of hand.

Backstab can hit so hard because there’s a lot of damage multipliers. You can use Power Signet for 15% damage, trait for 5% more dagger damage, and 5% more damage to targets from behind. Then I have a trait that does 20% more damage to targets below 50% HP.

Also, I forgot to mention is +damage % bonuses for speccing deep into certain trees. If I got 30 points into Critical strikes I do +10% more damage when initiative is over 6. Cloak n Dagger also puts 3 vuln’s on the target.

So if stars align (not really, just be below 50% hp) I deal 58% bonus damage with my Backstab on top of my critical damage bonus, power, might stacks, and vulnerabilities on my target. That’s why you see huge number Backstabs and Heartseekers. Toughness can’t scale against it.

Let’s see.

Scepter → 1200 range, but can only hit 1 target.
Staff → 600 range, but can hit 5 targets.

MHE Tiger.4875:

@ComeAndSee

I messaged you in game, I figured it would have been easier to talk.

But I am not necessarily traited for healing power, how do you suggest doing so?

Right now this is the PvE build I use. http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcc9omvxR0mbNC9Maxx0MVmqcak

I get my healing power from 5 pieces of cleric gear and 2 all stat rings + 1 all stat earring + 1 cleric earring + 1 cleric amulet. Also, I use Cleric weapons. My chest piece is the Vitality + Toughness + Power piece.

Armor I use 3 runes of Water and 3 runes of Monk. It’s an extra +150 healing and +20% boon duration. Weapons I use stacking healing power and my jewels I use cleric jewels.

Those all stat items give you the most bang for your buck because they give you basically all the stats you need. Vitality, toughness, healing power, and some crit dmg.

Just have to be on at the right time.

Guilds get all the credit, but militia are really the backbone of a successful server.

Merciful intervention is just too weak and you have no control over where it teleports you.

Heal on dodge is really one of our most powerful heals if you have Vigor available.

Aza.2105:

I feel that many players tend to think about how old style mmos work, i.e soak up damage with mitigation. Its true to a extent in gw2 but toughness, armor and vitality should be considered more of a buffer that is used when you make a error. Dodge is the real mitigation in game, along with block and blind.

That is the case in sPvP, but not for WvW.

Toughness, Vitality, and Armor generally works fine on every class, but Thiefs and Warriors basically ignore your armor with certain abilities.

My Thief → Stonetouch Venom → Shadowstep → Haste → Cloak n Dagger → Backstab → Heartseeker = you’re dead.

It’s an issue with Thiefs (and Warriors) right now being able to hit for excessive amount of damage in short-bursts.

I have an 80 Thief (D/D Backstab build) and 80 Guardian (Support—bunker build).

On my Thief I can use Venom Touch + Steal + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab and 3/4th’s (or kill) somebodies in less than 2 seconds and they can’t do anything because they’re paralyzed and you can’t stun break it. That’s if I can actually get behind them because you spend a lot of time chasing people around on a thief trying to get behind them.

On my Guardian I have 3300 armor in my WvW build and I’ve been crit numerous times for 10,000+ damage by Warriors Killshot. You don’t even get a chance to react or even see it coming when you’re in mass PvP. I mean, if you want proof look at my video and skip to 1:17 → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GekhA7Ix1IE

I don’t have as much problems with backstab Thiefs anymore because I know how to counter them now, but a lot of them just faceroll Heartseeker for 4-6k’s back to back.

• 43% crit damage. (Another 10% crit chance missing from no Maintenance Oil.)
• 1,168 healing. No food (70 Vitality & 100 Healing). No sigil stacked (250 healing).

MHE Tiger.4875:

I am trying to build a tankier guardian but I cannot seem to last long no matter what I do…

I have 30 in toughness and full 6/6 Sup Runes of the Dolyak

In total, my armor rating is 3,563 and I have about 15.5k health

I still get dominated in PvE

Suggestions?

How much healing power do you have? My Guardian has 3200 armor, 16.2k hp, and +1400 healing and I can tank many bosses.

With Symbol, Writ, and AH with the Mace you can heal yourself for a respectable amount of health. If you have it traited you can also heal yourself for 1,400 each time you dodge roll and with vigor you can dodge roll very often. Often times I dodge roll into a wall next to the boss.

Guardian’s can only tank in PvE by constantly healing themselves through their skills and abilities. If you just go straight toughness and vitality you end up just becoming a sponge.

I already did number crunching and every +100 healing is equal to +100 health per second when you’re using the mace when you factor in Writ, Regen, and AH. The staff is basically guaranteed to heal you for 3/4th’s your life in full duration.

Also, picking the right tools for the fight can make it significantly easier.

Churchill.8714:

Meteor shower doesn’t hit for 4k…lol

Stop going into WvW upleveled. A glass meteor shower barely hits be for ever 2k and then you can go ahead and get away from it because it takes forever to full cast.

I get hit by Meteor showers for 2k-2.5k all the time and that’s with 3300 armor FYI. Multiple meteor showers in one spot can drop you fast. Almost 5k a second incoming damage.

Thobek.1730:

JQ has more potential than SoS atm, we on SoS are trying to stop JQ from stomping over everyone at the moment. We barely have enough numbers during NA time to stop them due to all those lovely new guilds they have acquired.

I was watching pugs lead by competent commanders grinding entire guild group strategies to a halt. The only advantage guilds have over pugs is VOIP.

Unfortunately SoS can’t field a team on every BL. We just have to hold out as long as possible until our larger Oceanic teams arrive.

This is a common problem on all T1 servers. It’s not as bad as it use to be with the server transfers.

4 maps is just too much IMHO. It was fine when the game came out because you had plenty of guilds to assign to each map.

The fact is mass-AOE can kill you faster than any single target damaging class can dream of. You see it all the time when people portal bomb and use culling in order to hose the entire area with AOE before they even load on your screen.

Once they open up paid transfers things will probably change a lot as everyone funnels into the T1 servers.

You just have to tag players to get credit. Wall of Reflection and whipping out the staff will help you get bags, but it’s still crap compared to pure DPS.

There is an incentive, having fun and helping your team. I don’t care about bags.

Score @ 2:23 PM EST

Leo Paul.1659:

JQ has definitely strengthened.. I won’t be surprised if they take the win this week.

Raising the server population cap helped T1 a lot.

Raztlin.7964:

ComeAndSee.1356:

Not really too impressed with PRX’s performance tonight. Been doing SoS map for almost 6 hours now before my sound crashed and all they’ve been able to do is cap supply camps and kill the same treb that gets rebuilt at Garrison.

You do realize that is a majority of a [EMP]/[AoS] push with serveral members of JQ’s guilds. Many [PRX] were involved and probably enjoying it as much as we are right now. I don’t know if you think in terms of tactics but slowly killing off supply stream and breaking down walls so you use supply is very technical tactics.

Well, you weren’t doing a good job at it because Garrison had over 1,000 supply all night, but then again we didn’t even budge you out of Bay. I just expected many Golem pushes and other stuff, not whack-the-treb and run circles around the map re-capping supply camps. It just got boring and too predictable at the end.

I mean tonight people were just on the ball though. We had like four commanders on SoS and militia all over the place.

Not really too impressed with PRX’s performance tonight. Been doing SoS map for almost 6 hours now before my sound crashed and all they’ve been able to do is cap supply camps and kill the same treb that gets rebuilt at Garrison.

Updated my color scheme.

I meant paltry, but being able to throw chickens around sounds more interesting.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

ComeAndSee.1356:

AH with the Staff and Mace is very good. The staff triggers AH 60 times if there’s 5 people around you and AH triggers on the mace each time a regen buff stacks on somebody standing in it.

Really there’s nothing special about it. The trait does everything for you.

That’s nice, except the guy was asking about SOLO play not grouped.

Well, AH triggers on yourself. I mean, what can you really say besides be near other people if you want the full potential of the trait? :P

If you’re by yourself its a mediocre self-heal, but around others it has its full potential.

Leo Paul.1659:

Aww really? PRX has moved to JQ? It’ll feel weird fighting our former ally, one that was even a key figure to our success.. But a welcome challange nonetheless.

It reminds me of Lineage 2. People who helped you one week are your enemies the next.

Guardian’s are more susceptible to burst damage because of the lower health pools, but in terms of longevity and self-healing capabilities we are better than Warriors in endurance battles. Also, we are capable of basically giving other classes the same self-healing we receive with Battle Presence + symbols.

My thief for example has a handful of passive self healing abilities, but they require you to attack your targets. It’s a big difference.

AH with the Staff and Mace is very good. The staff triggers AH 60 times if there’s 5 people around you and AH triggers on the mace each time a regen buff stacks on somebody standing in it.

Really there’s nothing special about it. The trait does everything for you.

Guardian’s aren’t a “selfish” class. We have staff symbol + retreat which helps get the zerg from a to b.

My thief for example has the passive 25% movement speed trait and Shortbow #5, but I have NO group buffs except for traits that I have to sacrifice damage for.

I’m a advocate that if you want to play your class to its full potential than you should carry around 1 of every weapon.

I use the Mace + Staff as my primary set, but I also carry around a Greastword and Scepter. Depending on what’s needed on a fight I switch out weapons.

There’s no reason to nerf Guardian AOE because they have serious drawbacks.

• Greatsword AOE requires you to be in melee range. That isn’t going to happen zerg vs zerg.
• Scepter and Staff AOE does poultry amount of damage.

Classes like Elementalist have long-range spammable AOE skills.

MrSpanktastic.2059:

Can anyone link me a really good guardian build for dungeons which focus on healing and support?
Also does healing power make alot of difference or its better to go soldiers gear? for vitality toughness and power?

I wouldn’t recommend going “full heal” because you cannot can’t sit and heal. You however can be a tank, healer, and a DPS all in one. It doesn’t make sense, but you can tank bosses because of your toughness and you can heal yourself + allies who are near you basically of your self-healing capabilities. Your DPS isn’t even remotely as good as somebody going for pure DPS, but it’s not subpar.

Healing power does make a noticeable difference if you are using the Mace as your primary healing source. I’ve run numbers and every +100 healing is basically equal to an extra +100 health a second when you factor in Writ, Symbol, and AH. Don’t listen to the people who say +healing power doesn’t scale because they are lying and or are misinformed.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVccMV0zMmvbRomvbRo0axx0MVsqcak
^
This is the build I use for PvE. You really aren’t going to get anything better than this.

Your #2 ability you should swap out to what best suits the fight.

Are people just now catching onto this?

When GW2’s came out my friend had me join Condemned which created the Titan Alliance. They were ultra-hardcore and required all our Guardian’s to go full support (bunker) build. We all had the same abilities; wall of reflection, sanctuary, and the 3rd one was based on group composition.

So typically we have four-eight “bunker” Guardian’s in Teamspeak during our nightly WvWing and it was extremely effective. 3-4 of us could literally block off choke points with walls and sanctuaries and hold off entire zergs because back then wall of lining lasted 8 seconds. One time we held off 40+ players next to their spawn with 10 people with siege and 4 support guardians for over 40 minutes. Also, near constant up time on Wall of Reflection meant that our group took very little damage.

When we would do big pushes into keeps or Garrison through choke points we would all blow our tomes of Courage with AOE stabilities and just mass spam everyone with heals and it worked every time.

Also, we use to group up into “the ball” and have all the Guardian’s start dropping symbols and heals and it made our entire raid invincible. This was when AOE heals didn’t have a cap and it was ridiculous.

Condemned is long gone and I’ve asked several “top” PvP guilds why they don’t use Guardian’s like Condemned did and they told me they didn’t want to force people into specs. It makes sense.

Most guilds have shifted more to portal bombing or portalling golems across the map instead of using individual classes to their full potential.

So now you see everyone talking about their big 2 hander, but the full potential of Guardian’s in WvW lies in support builds.

If you stack 2x Rune of Water and 2x Rune of Monk and trait the 20% reduced cooldown on Two-handed weapons you can get about 90% up-time on the staff’s speed boon.

Aberrant.6749:

If you’re off alone AH isn’t going to heal for much at all. Since the ah/vigor nerf you need to have people around you to have it work well. Try using monk’s focus for solo work instead.

It doesn’t hurt to invest into healing power. Having high toughness and vitality doesn’t really seem to work on Guardian’s because your healthpool is balanced around your ability to have constant healing coming in.

Also, you can have all the toughness in the world, but it doesn’t do jack against Thiefs and Warriors who can hit you for huge numbers regardless. 10k kill shots, 6k backstabs, and 4k heart seekers flying all over the place.

Elementalist AOE can hit you for 2,500++ (a tick I may add) and if you happen to walk into the spot getting aoe’d by multiple classes you can get killed really-really fast. AOE in its current form is area denial and the next patch won’t change that. It just means that you will have to focus on single target damage more than AOE if you want to kill somebody.

Also, it’s kind of silly that players can hit you harder than siege weapons.

Thiefs are fine FoTM, but ATM Guardian’s make a lot of the encounters so much easier. I’ve been running groups with 3 Guardian’s total and we can cheese a lot of the fights.

The staff is fine. You trade half the range of the Scepter, but can hit up to five targets simultaneously with 3 out of 5 abilities.

Empower is a great support ability and with AH it gives you gigantic amounts of health back. Line of Warding is pretty much win in WvW.

You can’t be a “real” healer as a Guardian because your cooldowns and short range prohibit it. You, however can heal BETTER than the other classes in game, but that’s not really saying much when everyone has their own big self-heal.

They increased the cap because back then transfers were a day and people were jumping ship en masse whenever their server was losing.

Since then overall WvW player participation is significantly down across the board. Even in T1 you have servers constantly outmanned on maps and with the servers being labeled “full” 24/7 you can’t bring any new players or guild in to fill the gap.

Correcting the servers to their “real” status will help T1+T2, but then you’re killing the lower ranks.

The only way to “disperse” zergs completely is if you had say 3 capture points spread out and you had to have players in each spot. Think World in Conflict.

Also, they need to tone down the amount of damage certain classes can do. Crowd controls should really diminishing return or stability should last longer and work on roots.

YojimboJones.6243:

Advent.6193:

ComeAndSee.1356:

Why do people complain about backstab when Killshot can hit you for over 10,000 damage?

Don’t quote me for truth, since Warrior (as of yet) is the one Profession I lack.
But – iirc – folk leave Killshot alone, because it has a pretty wicked cast time and c/d.

If backstab is “easy” to avoid, like many thieves claim it is, than Killshot is the equivilent of a semi truck rolling towards you at 5mph, from 50 feet away. Blowing its horn the whole time. Oh did i mention the semi truck is covered in neon lights with Hulk Hogan dancing naked on top?

I have clips of me in WvW with about 20 enemy players 20 feet ahead and out of the blue I’m hit for 10k and 8k shots (two separate occasions). I’m sorry, but I can’t see a semi-truck next to 19 other ones all bunched up who are honking and throwing kitten out of the window at you.

I have a Thief (and Guardian) and having to chase everyone around in order to get behind them and backstab is annoying. What I learned is just to put my back against the wall or always spin my character around.

Killshot has a 1,500 range. Backstab is 130.

JemL.3501:

- JQ has WON T1, vs HoD

That was AFTER titan alliance fell apart and everyone band wagoned to JQ. >_>

Why do people complain about backstab when Killshot can hit you for over 10,000 damage?

P/P isn’t supposed to be better than your melee because you’re a melee class.

The Shortbow for example is throttled back by travel time on its abilities and its medium-range (900).

I noticed this when I was “trolling” a Thief using a Shortbow. I moved side to side to see what it would do and the arrow shots would get “sucked” into me when they were close.

They just need to add that similar behavior to the Scepter.

KensaiZen.3740:

Personally i dont think this video was the best example of a support guardian.

I don’t think so either, but then again the only time I’ve ever seen MAX use out of this build is when you have multiple ones coordinating. Coordinated wall of linings, sanctuaries, reflects, AOE stability, etc etc.

The reason they were timid is because we were trebbing their inner keep wall. Basically it was just sit on the bridge and prevent them from pushing across to destroy our trebs until their wall was down. Eventually it turned into a seesaw and I logged off.

I’ll get better footage if the map is actually interesting this week.

//

Also, Empower is my biggest heal. It heals 5 people up to 3,000 ! My second biggest heal is dodge roll. It heals for 1,500. The rest is from mace (writ, regen) and Battle Presence.

They do it for balance purposes. You could basically murder bosses if you could reflect them.

Like the Dredge boss in FOTM. You can WoR his bombs to him and when they explode with debuff you can do like 100k instantly.

141 more toughness is like an extra 1-1.5% damage reduction. Figure in your health. 15,000 * 0.015 = 225 health.

Honestly though… instead of 6 runes of Lyssa I would personally go with 6 Jewels. I think you would get more bang for your buck stats out of it, but then you would have to give and take elsewhere.

Otherwise if you got the money go for 6 divinity then take away crit dmg elsewhere.

They sync.

I would prefer if you could get them on separate timers. A condition removed every 5s would be ftw.

So when I first was invited to play GW2 with my friends I decided that I would play a Guardian. I didn’t know the whole “no trinity” aspect of the game, so I decided I would go the role of “Heal” Guardian. While I was leveling I was disappointed to find out there was no heal or tank role so I thought I would be playing a useless role.

Then I hit 80. I stacked +healing, +toughness, +power, and +vitality. Yet, strangely the WvW guild I joined MADE it a requirement that all Guardians had to be support. We were just THAT good. Somehow it just worked in PvE as well.

So now you hear the same load of crap.

“You can’t be a healer.”
“You’re bad if you stack +healing.”
“+healing doesn’t scale!”
“You’re bad if you’re not DPS spec.”
“The staff is useless.”

Now I’m going to lay out the fact.

“You are not a REAL healer. You are a DPS, TANK, and HEALER. If you play support Guardian you must USE your brain. Use your whole tool package.”
“+healing scales VERY WELL with the MACE and STAFF.”
“If you think bags and killing blows is how you win PvP than you are narrow minded. Support Guardians can turn the tide of battles just as much as a well placed portal.”
“The Staff is a great weapon for Support Guardians.”

Now, you can watch the video. I made some stupid mistakes from over estimating, but culling is to blame for some of it. Also, if you can spot the (perfectly balanced) 10k Kill Shot on my 3300 armor you get a cookie.

1/8/12 – camping the bridge to enemy spawn. Woo.

Dat build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcc9ombNC0mbNC9cxxaVmqckbc