Guild Wars 2

With that kind of gear, Amplified Wrath is worthless. It will give you about 130 DPS (if you have 100 % burning uptime), give or take a bit. Taking 10 points out of Zeal and dumping 5 into Radiance and 5 into Virtues should yield at least 400 DPS (no boons) and more than 1000 when you have full support from a group. So the trait choice is pretty much a no-brainer.

Makes the entire attack (including any cleaves) miss, if I’m not completely mistaken. Anyway, I fully agree with maha – like all the other stacking threads, this one is just full of useless and nonsensical pseudo-solutions for a non-existing problem.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Um he pretty much explained everything spot on. If you want to dispute it go ahead, I’m sure I can post a significant number of videos showing exactly what he described. Now if you don’t like that, it’s fine. However stacking/los is now the meta for most anything.

edit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/25jl7r/world_first_sub_3min_dungeon_by_snow_crowssc/

I’m going to go ahead and just start posting videos

And of course some (record run) videos by hardcore guilds are absolutely indicative of what the masses (who don’t make videos, btw) do …

Guess you should consider other runes for WvW later, not the same ones, but I don’t really care enough for mindlessly bashing doors. For PvE, it looks quite fine, you just should take other sigils. In theory, battle is nice for many builds, but a hammer build does not swap weapons often, so you won’t profit from it. And bloodlust on one weapon is enough to keep the stacks, at least right now. Better go for force+accuracy or force+strength. Or, if you want to spend a lot of money, several weapon sets as described in obal’s sticky.

And no, there’s no berserker set you can buy for karma.

Stars.2179:

First, you’re ridiculous. I’ve never said there is tanking in this game.

Pretty bad memory, haven’t you?

Stars.2179:

He does WANT full tank. I simply answered the best mathematically possible tanky equipment set. Sentinel / Soldier gives the best defensive stat. It may not necessary be the best “support” role / heal set, but it is the best tanky set. And tanking is supporting.

Second cleric gears is the worst. Why would you even consider the piece of crap? You should know better to stick with berserker dude. Just look at all Obal’s builds and see.

O rly? You should get a nobel prize for the realization that berserker is the best. But unfortunately, cleric still is not the worst, as this place goes to soldier/sentinel (ignoring all the useless condition crap). Both sets offer approximately the same damage potential, but while cleric has more than enough defense to faceroll through any PvE content, it offers at least some kind of support to the group, while soldier is 100 % egoistic. So if the OP wants to run a subpar build, it should be at least one that gives something to a group.

Stars.2179:

Please read what he “wanted” before you post your unnecessary comments. He does WANT full tank. I simply answered the best mathematically possible tanky equipment set. Sentinel / Soldier gives the best defensive stat. It may not necessary be the best “support” role / heal set, but it is the best tanky set. And tanking is supporting. And if he does not want to be full heal and just want to be tanking while doing some support, the cleric gear is actually the junk. So OP if you want to use those, it is up to you. I also said that the meta is DPS with full berserker.

This is wrong on so many levels, it’s ridiculous. First, there is no tanking in this game. Tanking means having the mob’s attention – however, the aggro system in this game is so wonky that you’ll never be able to actually tank. Unless you’re alone, but then have fun surviving even a dungeon trashmob trying to facetank him. Second, cleric gear is massively overpowered when trying to facetank stuff. You will not be able to AFK-solo the AC spider queen or do Arah 2 without any dodges in soldier/sentinel, due to the lack of sustain – clerics have already done it.

Deitus.6053:

if support is truly not viable in pve and wvw with groups, should i just trade for dps instead? what do most groups look for in a guardian?

also, wouldnt mace be better for off hand with the heals, and healing breeze for allied healing?

WvW and PvE are two different stories. In WvW, you can have fun and actually be useful with a healing supporter build, as completely avoiding all enemy damage is pretty much impossible. However, as good players can do that in PvE, you’’ll be able to imagine the usefulness of healing if no one takes damage. In PvE, competent players bring guardians mainly for:
- projectile defense/reflections (actually profit from offensive gear with crit chance and ferocity)
- aegis (gear-independent)
- sometimes protection (hammer, otherwise gear-independent)
- here I probably forgot something, but whatever it is, it does not need defensive gear
- and finally DpS, as is the case for every class.

Fire fields may be especially useful, but pretty much any of the blast combos is better than retaliation.

Deitus.6053:

-full support
-not damage oriented, just keeping myself and the group alive (group comes before me, however)
-“tanky” as far as the game would let me be, keep enemy’s attention while the rest of the group focuses dps
-shout oriented, with pure of voice, superior aria, etc
-mainly pve, though recently i’ve been getting into wvw…is there a set with a happy medium i could craft/acquire?

Any support useful in PvE is totally independent of your equipment, hence a good build will always go for full offensive equipment and just take the supportive traits in the meta. Tanking is not possible anyway and if you go for defensive equipment, you actually reduce your chance to get any mob’s attention. This is no boring trinity game.

However, if you insist on being a healing-supporter and are aware that both competent and pseudo-competent dungeon groups will likely kick you for your useless build (though there are still many groups that don’t care), go for zealot or cleric gear. Do NOT go for the soldier/sentinel junk suggested by the poster above me, as that is absolutely selfish and just hurts a group due to the lack of damage while not bringing any kind of compensation.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Still good info. I’ll be waiting on the expanded armor and build exposition. (I personally run the hammer deeps when I go dungeoning. I’m sure people would be interested in hammer vs gs/sw vs sc builds)

The hammer vs gs/s stuff has already been done by fade some months ago. I think his table is still linked somewhere in obal’s sticky, but the TLDR is: hammer meta is approx. 5 % weaker than gs meta and scepter can overtake both of them – if all conditions necessary for smite are fulfilled, which is practically never the case.

Zeal V and Virtues IV must be a bad joke. But anyway, for dungeons or fractals, there can be only one answer to this build:

“Full zerker or gtfo”

Astralporing.1957:

The obvious conclusion we can draw from what you posted is that the ascended armor is indeed too costly for its stats. Therefore, since increasing stats is a definite no, the crafting cost should be decreased.

This. 5 % more stats is more than enough, it’s just the price that’s ridiculous (especially for light armor).

Stand out? Yes. But rather in an inferior way, as most randoms appear to be too dumb to get anything done.

Not a single cent, and I’m pretty glad about it. If ANet actually starts moving in the right direction, that will change, but the development of the last 1.5 years did not deserve anything.

maha.7902:

I think there should be hard content too – but look at the wurm and tequatl releases – people immediately flooded the forum with complaints that it’s too hard. Look at the marionette – the strategies had been learned but people were still failing it. Whenever faced with challenging content, people in this game will endlessly complain, and then when told what to do they ignore instructions (marionette was a massive offender for this) an fail the event for everyone else. But then when they make easy content, people complain that it’s too easy. Anet can’t win.

Worm, Teq and the marionette disqualify themselves from being (good) hard content, as they are uncontrolled open world zerg crap. The only challenge I remember was before the actual fights – being lucky and getting on a server that is not full of completely incompetent people. Real challenge can only be created when you aren’t left at the mercy of the megaserver RNG.

Just read the summary of the review, but I wonder what kind of drugs the reviewer had taken.

“ArenaNet is not only matching the quality of update I’d expect from a subscription-based MMO, it is surpassing the quantity by leaps and bounds.”

My favourite part of the whole stuff. Both quality and quantity of the updates ANet has produced for GW2 so far are a bad joke compared to other MMOs.

Take whatever build you want and make sure NOT to join any groups that want berserkers, speedruns or whatever else of that kind. From an objective point of view, that gear is not useful for any kind of good build for dungeons and fractals, but there are more than enough people out there who either don’t care or have no clue anyway.

VideoGamermike.5813:

lets instead discuss ways to -use- said guardians to their fullest. What can staff guards do, and what can you do with those powers.

In case you missed it, we’ve already found the best thing you can do with staff guardians: Ridicule them on the GW2 subforum where competent people meet, the dungeon forum. There’s nothing else remotely useful on them.

dutchiez.7502:

He is saying that people who complain that stacking removes game mechanics should learn how the game/stacking works, not people who don’t know boss tells or are new to the game in general.

Indeed. Guess I should have written “anti-stacking/…-whiners”, but it was in the morning before work …

And that requires the devs and almost all of the stacking/skipping/whatever whiners to actually understand the game, which appears to be a very difficult task.

The difference is, you don’t deal any damage with all the stuff you mention. And no, staff 2 is no damage, it’s a joke like the whole weapon.

You don’t need to be rT for facetanking, since there’s no skill involved in it anyway. And no, your suggestion will break PvP and won’t do any good to PvE.

Can’t the flood of clueless healing whiners stop for once? It’s getting really annoying.

Corian.4068:

If you’re expecting to facetank dungeon bosses with healing, that’s not how this game works.

Funny thing, it is how the game can work. Get a group of five people with defensive builds and you can facetank Arah 2 (arguably the hardest dungeon path for doing it) without dodging once. Hell, you can even AFK-facetank a spider queen solo. It’s just a bit slower than going with real builds, but on the other hand it’s risk-free.

Useless runes (if you want to buff might, why the hell don’t you take might duration runes?), way too defensive gear choice, wtf are sigils of generosity and fire good for? Zeal II is more effective than the points in Valor and staff 4 is just bad in a fight.

Jamais vu.5284:

What about the promise they’ll rework the dungeons “one by one”?
Have they abandoned that idea after Aether Path (not to mention they didn’t rework it, just add a path and remove another)?
Was that another lie?

They didn’t abandon it after the aether path. They already did after the AC revamp.

Mosharn.8357:

They need to add more solo content and small team content. Things like liadri were great. Give us skill based small group fights and solo stuff. This zerg auto attack stuff is boring and pointless.

Agreed.

All those open world zerg bosses are just boring. Even if the fight is -in principle- remotely interesting, the zerging destroys it by ridiculous scaling and the giant clusterkitten of particle effects.

Good job, OP. “Improved AI” as the single good suggestion and otherwise just nonsense, that’s an achievement for itself.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The TLDR of it all is that PC collision detection can lead to immense griefing and what amounts to kitten-blocking in WvW. Which is something you conveniently overlooked.

This. No matter what positive effects might be there, they’ll be annihilated by all the griefers.

FrostSpectre.4198:

And Defiant, that’s abit mystery for me how that would be changed. For PvE, if big boss is zerged, it does make sense to prevent players from stun locking the boss, but as zerging goes, it’s least tactical strategy.
In dungeons, I think defiant works pretty much as intended, tho the simplicity of hostile NPCs makes use of zerker build more favorable.

That would be incredibly simple: Introduce diminishing returns on CC effects for mobs that have the unshakable buff. First stun works full duration, second one only 50 %, third one 25 %, fourth one immune. Reset after a reasonable amount of time (something like 30-60 s), probably pool some CC effects like knockdown+knockback and stun+daze so you can’t lock the boss down forever by cycling through the different effects.

maddoctor.2738:

Khal Drogo.9631:

Can you tank Lupi and win with 5 Cleric Guardians?

You can. I can’t find that video now but I did get this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMltxyvAvo

See how “underpowered” Healing Power, Healing Skills and “Support” is in this game?

There can be only one consequence: Nerf cleric!

Khal Drogo.9631:

Can you tank Lupi and win with 5 Cleric Guardians?

I’m too lazy to search for rT’s No-Dodge-Arah2 run right now. So the answer is yes.

Agnima.3714:

The only ones really able to get away with full berserker gear and standing in the corner and not getting downed every other special are warriors. I don’t like running full berserker gear in dungeons and I suppose its a blessing for all the other people doing it since after they get downed I am there to bail them out and get them back on their feet. I’ve seen more runs fail from people unable to take the hits then from people being too tanky. Not a single class has infinite dodges available at every moment or no CD heals.

There are enough dodges and blocks if your group’s damage is no bad joke. Of course, you need to use them properly, and that’s where most people fail.

fadeaway.2807:

I choose to rely on my knowledge of the fight and dodge reflexes to keep me alive rather than sit in tank gear. I take more risk in my playstyle. Are you saying I don’t deserve something in exchange for being glassy?

In any pve fight, if you can’t keep yourself alive in full tank/cleric gear, no amount of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc will keep you alive because the damage is clearly far too high for skill to harp ve an impact.

If you make mobs hit faster but for less damage you greatly diminish the usefulness of active gameplay, thus rendering the gameplay boring and passive. This would be a bad thing.

This. Taking away the active gameplay means that there’s no single reason to stay in this game, as pretty much any other gameplay aspects are solved in a better way in other games like WoW.

No Pulse.2967:

CptAurellian.9537:

Simple consequence: A good bunch of builds, which are competitive right now, get screwed (like hammer guardian, staff ele, whatever …), while other meta builds don’t give a kitten. Isn’t everyone on this forum crying that build diversity should be increased instead of removed completely? So yeah, brilliant idea …

I highly doubt anyone would stop playing hammer guardians or staff eles. Instead, soft CC like cripple/chill/immobilize would be more desired. How would that “completely remove” build diversity?

Why would anyone bother to waste damage by applying those conditions when most builds don’t need to care whether a target is moving slowly or not?

No Pulse.2967:

CptAurellian.9537:

Nick.6972:

Easiest and laziest fix to AI: if AoE -> move out of AoE.

So the boss is pretty much supposed to be perma-dodging, since almost any attack in this game is AoE?

Not dodging, just moving. They could even copypasta it from centaurs or something.

Simple consequence: A good bunch of builds, which are competitive right now, get screwed (like hammer guardian, staff ele, whatever …), while other meta builds don’t give a kitten. Isn’t everyone on this forum crying that build diversity should be increased instead of removed completely? So yeah, brilliant idea …

Penguin.5197:

Galtrix.7369:

A Charr Mesmer. How weird can you get. You have a big hulking charr that you expect can smash you to death with one mighty sweep of his paw, and then he shoots you with a purple laser with butterflies flying around him.

Now tell me thats not interesting to look at :P

My eyes, my eyes …

Nick.6972:

Easiest and laziest fix to AI: if AoE -> move out of AoE.

So the boss is pretty much supposed to be perma-dodging, since almost any attack in this game is AoE?

Ok, it’s only 2800 power. Guess I threw in Bane Signet by accident, which would lift it to 3k but is too situational. Still more than enough to do double damage.

silvermember.8941:

The problem with runes and sigils are that a lot of them exist simply for the sake of inflating rune and sigil number and lot of them are so terrible that no one ever uses them. Arenanet should remove a good percentage of them, while at the same time buff the the remaining non-terrible ones.

Indeed they should, but that would require them to understand their own game …

Strength does not deserve a nerf. I can only repeat it – it’s the only real challenger of scholar dominance in PvE (aside from ranger, but that’s too niche, even if they bugged it again as a fiend told me). It’s rather the other runes which should get a buff.

Oh yeah, bloodlust. So a real build will sit at 3000 power under the same conditions and still deal double damage. The point is pretty simple: Your build does deal DPS like a baby throwing cotton balls.

So much about 2k power with the celestial junk …

And concerning DPS, the hammer meta will deal about double damage with the same food. No more word on “great dps”.

The runes are fine, at least they’re one alternative to scholar in PvE for certain builds. I’m still amazed how they kittened up almost the entire rune rework with this single exception …

It obviously isn’t. Let me re-quote what build he claimed was doing the stuff:

Lucente.5071:

Try running Celestial gear with a 0/0/6/6/2 setup and exuberance runes. It basically Min/Maxes all the stats a guard needs while being tanky and having great dps.

Lucente.5071:

If you dont know why its good then you dont know kitten about guardian. The dps vs tanky is about as good as you will get. 21k hp 3k armor 2000 power (no might) 203% crit dam 40% crit chance and 800 healing. Cant ask for more than that. Obv full zerk is better but thats not what the OP asked for..

Funny numbers – build or it didn’t happen (especially the power value). But anyway, such a build’s DPS still sucks massively.

For PvE, scholar runes in a full berserker set. Period.

Great DPS? Compared to what? A baby throwing cotton balls?

They can’t, the ele holds that title firmly. Even if they made the hammer auto a fire field, we’d still lack the sheer number of blast finishers to get to 20+ might quickly. One mighty blow in 7.5 seconds is nothing compared to what a S/F-LH ele can do.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I once did a “experienced zerk only, must know how to melee lupi and do all skips first try” LFG and got a guy who joined and asked me where Arah was, then asked me if it’s far from Queensdale.

He was level 80 too.

Wow. The GW2 community is just great.

To Zeal? No, we need more condition damage traits there.

Who cares for the original topic anyway? But at least I’m delighted how Skylight and some others set out to prove my claim at the beginning of this thread right.