Guild Wars 2

For dungeons, read obal’s sticky.

I suggest the addition of “Sigil of Facepalm” for the mobs. When the group is full of those incredibly bad builds, the boss is so busy facepalming that it loses 50% of its defense.

Knight armor with zerker trinkets was quite a good compromise for those who wanted a bit more defense, since they could take advantage of the good crit damage conversion on the trinkets. However, the feature patch will end this, since ferocity normalizes crit damage and the trinkets lose all of their advantage.

For GW2 to dominate anything, ANet would need to correct a kittenload of massive design and policy flaws. So far after 20 months, there’s not the slightest indication that they would just be capable of realizing all those flaws.

Meleeing the stuff is at least still a lot more interactive than pewpewing away at range while being practicallly AFK.

Seiniyta.6971:

Dungeon design is one of the best I’ve ever seen in the mmo landscape. They blow the dungeons of Guild Wars 2 out of the water.

That’s the thing I’m looking forward to. Though let’s be honest, blowing the GW2 dungeons away is not difficult at all. A highly limited combat system, an unpolished release and 1.5 years of total negligence make no recipe for success.

mPascoal.4258:

Scepter is also one of the highest DPS weapons we have but in my believe there isn’t a really a PvE build focused only on that weapon.

Scepter has massive DPS when three conditions are met:
1. Single target. For multiple targets, the weapon is effectively worthless as its DPS does not scale at all.
2. Giant hitbox (as big as #2). Otherwise not all Smite hits will connect, lowering DPS by a lot.
3. Crit-able target.
You can think about how often you’ll find targets that meet all those conditions and then consider why there is no scepter build (except Nemesis’s epic fail). Sword, greatsword and hammer are virtually always superior by a large margin, making the scepter an absolute niche weapon for the extremely few fights where a ranged weapon is favourable or when your group absolutely sucks.

Lane.3410:

I honestly thought I was done with the subscription model, but GW2 changed my mind.

Exactly this, even though the reasons are different for me. I’ll gladly prefer to pay a subscription if, in return, I get actual updates for the game. Stuff like balancing, real content (and not Unliving Crap), and so on. In the last year, ANet did a great job reminding me on the advantages of the subscription model.

SkylightMoon.1980:

If you want to zerk nerfer in pve, make the content different and the AI smarter.

But those changes would actually require some thoughts, cost money and can’t be sold in the gem shop. Hence, nothing like it will ever happen.

Buran.3796:

I don’t support their idea, I’m just trying to understand why Guardian has 0 viable builds based on conditions.

Well, I think the really honest answer would be worth a permanent ban.

Don’t even try to start with lore things. ANet has shown pretty clearly that they don’t care for any reasonable lore things. Besides, I think that at least torment would fit quite nicely to the guardian.

You’re wrong and Spoj is right.

kkthxbye

Not really disappointed, as I didn’t expect anything good from the feature patch. Though I’m still surprised how bad it will really be.

Moving to PvD? Dunno, leaving the game actually sounds more probable to me.

Nope. They simply have no idea of their own game.

Quarktastic.1027:

If you’re going to criticize, at least make it constructive. What might this “something useful” be?

What about “virtually anything other than burning stupidity”? Should be pretty obvious to anyone who has the slightest clue of the class. I’m pretty sure some sustain would be something PvPers would love for the line, for example.

Relshdan.6854:

it baffles me why they keep buffing our condi damage without giving us access to more conditions to cover the burning damage.

You know, Einstein once made a statement on two infinite things. I think that’s the explanation for this stuff.

Deleting both traits and replacing them with something actually useful would be the better solution.

itachi.3176:

now i understand why Force of Will was shown first. it looks A LOT better now with all the garbage surrounding it

Yay, I was right in my expectations: Those are the worst traits in MMO history

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

The QA testers are constantly testing the Living Story content the earlier team pumps out.

Testing? I think that’s a myth …

Depends on how bad you are and how bad your group is. If you know how to play the dungeons, then even a bad group won’t hurt you a lot. If you don’t and the group is bad, playing zerker can be a pain.

“Making use of the most useless player-activated burning condition”?

Now that’s a reason to be afraid …

It’s really disturbing, but I think that for once, I have to agree with Hunter …

I’m rather curious about the new Zeal grandmaster. With examples like Kindled Zeal or this one for Honor, I expect the worst trait in history.

This looks pretty epic.

Lalangamena.3694:

for all classes while leveling:
power
vitality
toughness
condition damage
precision

take critical damage or condition damage only if it a secondary stat and the primary stat is power/vitality and never ever take gear with healing power

while you level up , precision on blues/greens have very little impact , so it is better not to have them.

This post is so wrong, I don’t know where to begin …

I admit that this build turnaround has escaped my attention. So I retract the damage argument, but there’s still no good reason to ignore the guardian’s signature move blind spam. A build with 30 Honor and 10 Virtues already has more than enough condition removal available and if someone wants absolute resolution so dearly, 15/15/0/20/20 is the way to go.

foofad.5162:

The DPS difference between 15/15/0/30/10 and 15/0/0/30/25 is negligible. On the order of 1-2%. The only exchange worth talking about is blinds versus condition clearing, and that’s a matter of preference and group composition.

Wrong. 15/15 boosts the whole group’s damage by the vuln stacks via symbol and VoJ active, which can be seen as a damage increase of >10 % for the guardian.

layzoe.6035:

hybrid.5027:

full clerics, mace/shield + staff, 0/0/30/30/10

have fun!

You are trolling surely…

That was obvious from the very beginning. Cookie did what he had to do on this forum.

And the “obvious reasons” for 25 virtues are what exactly? 10 points there, for all the benefits of MoC. There’s nothing beyond it that’s a necessary choice, which frees up further 15 points. Hence, 15/15/0/30/10 (which is, in the end, another variation of the typical hammer builds) is an option I’d definitely prefer. Superior DPS and superior group support via blind spam and vuln stacking at the price of a bit burst condition cleansing.

I don’t really see any reason for all those points in virtues. But before entering any detailed discussion, the OP should state what parts of the game he wants a bunker (since there are no tanks) build for.

jihm.2315:

i said the dungeons are doable without being a zerker.

The dungeons are “doable” naked, in a 0/0/0/0/0 build or maybe even under both conditions (didn’t bother to look whether there is a video about that). So “doable” is hardly an argument for any kind of build.

Sinbold.8723:

The bug-ridden finale has to be a large reason many people are scoring the LS so low.

Nope, the Unliving Story has been rubbish from the very beginning.

Gatvin.6510:

Nono, I was actually complementing them on their condition system. Confusion is conceptually fantastic, as is torment. There’s lots of ways to play around with it too.
My main point was that if we’re blaming the caps, which are a limitation of the engine, then the fight is putting focus on engine limitations, which is bad design.

Ah ok, sorry for the misunderstanding. However, I can’t agree with your last paragraph.
The limitations are so tight that any fight, even involving a single group of five, will finally focus on the condition limitation. To give some examples: With my guard, I can take care of virtually 100 % burning uptime. A second character who wants to use burning? Wasted. My mesmer can spike up to ~20 stacks of bleed when using duelists or wardens (swordsman will die too quickly in many situations), there’s not much space left for someone else to bring bleeds. Note that with both characters, I don’t aim for the conditions themselves, they are just a by-product of direct damage.

You cannot design a fight that avoids these limitations – unless it’s a solo fight, but this is an MMO (at least in theory).

Gatvin.6510:

This can be circumvented by adding more condition types, which they have done at all.

Do you want them to have a hundred condition types which all do essentially the same? Srsly? That’s absolute nonsense. Without a total system overhaul, condis will never be viable in PvE, but I agree that creating that condition reflection was just plain stupid. It even annoys me as a dedicated direct damage player since it makes me miss out on 40-50 % worth of damage modifiers.

The poor rest of the group, clearing those fractals effectively in a group of four …

Thinking of the quality of the old dungeons, I wouldn’t pay more than 1 gem for a new dungeon pack. Not to to mention that they should first put a lot of work into the old ones without even thinking of the gem store, if they had a tiny bit of self-esteem.

AkiraZero.8514:

More excuses man, you can easily dodge the majority of attacks, soak up some others and switch to range for a bit. People refuse to adapt and accept you cant just stand still hitting 1 all day long.
And while yes I do use mixtures of Knights/Clerics/Soldiers on my characters for WvW this only further proves that people still wont budge from the so called Zerker Warrior Meta they have become so used to.

Ok, that’s all I wanted to know. I actually prefer fighting the knights instead of standing around uselessly and soaking up one attunement spot.

So how exactly do you consistently negate the knight’s 360° melee attack which extends beyond max melee range and happens far too often to dodge/block it for more than a few seconds? Unless of course you run cleric facetanking gear, but then even a zerker player standing AFK in the mists will deal more damage to the knight.

Taygus.4571:

how about anet actually makes conditions viable, why should there be only one type of build.

That won’t happen, since it would obviously require the game’s handling of conditions to be rewritten completely and the devs aren’t capable of doing that. A long time ago, they already stated that the 25 stack cap wasn’t going to be removed as the engine could not handle more stacks. And as long as the cap is in place, you’ll start running into problems with the condition stacks as soon as there are two characters who apply the same condition, not to speak of 50 …

ANet probably thinks that the content you’re talking about can’t be used for sales in the gem store, hence it will never come.

Yeah, the answers above you are bullkitten. Except haviz’s, which actually offers a view I haven’t considered before – thank you for that one!

That isn’t AH he’s talking about, but healway. Though the rest is correct, it’s garbage for any kind of PvE. Berserker is the way to go there, though the OP’s stuff might be quite funny in WvW.

DaShi.1368:

1/10 Definitely the worst of the LS. So many bugs. It’s like they took all the wrong lessons from the previous installments. 1. Zerg content. 2. Unskippable cutscenes. 3. RNG. 4. Bosses than are just hp tanks. 5. Story full of large plot holes. 6. Tedious achievements that promote selfish gameplay 7. Many gamebreaking bugs.

This sums it up nicely. Like the rest of the Unliving Story, the finale was 100 % fail.

Anti-condition is not related to any of the fights themselves, but to the broken condition system and the ridiculous stack limit. Anti-ranged, well, I can’t remember anything like that. Ranged combat is faceroll.

Oh and Merlin, why exactly is complaining about a high frequency, no target limitation, 360° stun with a considerable damage output a consequence of “very easy” melee combat (which is still by orders of magnitude more challenging than range-noobing stuff) in other parts of the game?

Rennoko.5731:

You see they can’t do this, because their condition damage system is broken in large scale to medium scale.

If, by “medium scale”, you mean anything more than a single player …

RyuDragnier.9476:

Watch it, Anet may start putting in bosses that reflect the entirety of direct damage. What’ll you do then?

Not care, simple as that. I’ve pretty much given up on GW2 anyway.

Zanshin.5379:

The condition reflect is stupid. Period.
A lot of people play full condition builds. What are they supposed to do?

Start playing with a useful build?

stemare.2578:

It’s common thought that sword is the highest sustained DPS weapon the guardian has.
Many tests have been done and everyone agrees that no other weapon can outdamage sword, some others have better burst but in the long ride sword still wins.

That’s a rumor. Sword has top DPS only if you take RHS – with other builds, greatsword or hammer will deal more sustained DPS. Have a look at the numbers in fade’s DPS comparison.

Numu Boltar.6105:

The LS was the solution from anet for new content i needed to keep playing. I quit.

Haha, I agree. Though I’ll be nice and give it a 1/10, as there were a few positive things like the Labyrinthine Cliffs or the jubilee’s cages.

On the negative side, however …
- incredibly stupid story with a moronic villain
- just grinding stuff
- practically total lack of permanent content
- too slow pace …
- … which even cost us a lot of necessary balancing due to the management of the game development
- many more things