Guild Wars 2

Pop F3 for the first AoE (but always after the circles appear, otherwise the appearence will simply kill your aegis), Retreat for the second, then RF and again F3 for the third. At least the first two versions of Alpha should be dead by then. However, in my experience it’s a) not 100% reliable that aegis prevents all damage, even when stacking, and b) dodging that stuff isn’t difficult.

€: Oh, I just noticed that I didn’t read properly. CoF isn’t CoE …

You know that, I know that, but I’d guess that at least 90% of the players out there do not know it. And since ANet caters to them, such a skill won’t come.

Besides, it’s bad design anyway. Useless against good players, overpowered against the usual bad ones and probably borderline OP in PvE, too.

I agree with swiftpaw. Some variation of obal’s hammer is probably the best thing beginners can do. Maybe even a bit more defensively something like 0/15/0/30/25 – that one would sacrifice a bit of damage, but gains a larger HP cushion for error and still more support flexibility. As gear, okittennight or more offensive.

And as usual the question: What part of the game do you plan to focus on?

Fist weapons don’t seem very guardian-like to me. I’d rather have a spear, naginata or whatever in that direction.

Besides, yor No. 5 would be ridiculously overpowered. Imagine, all those braindead noobs out there couldn’t continue to hack at you without being oneshotted in return. That’s outrageous! People would need to use their brain!

But is was awful design from the very beginning, so I don’t think ANet will ever get it.

For a group, such a build is approximately as helpful as an empty group slot.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

My theory of how to get good dps…

1. Get a lot of Power
2. Crank up crit chance to close to 100%
3. get some bad kitten base damage modifiers.
4. Pile on crit damage.

Should be ok then.

No mighty condition damage? :’(

Usually, I’d probably prefer the ele. However, since I’ve never ever seen a good ranger ingame …

Louk Tsoup.2108:

again can’t figure it out, it would be really helpful if you provide me with the means that you came to this result.
and again: if 100% crit chance, meaning you only deal critical, how does crit dmg differ from dmg? I’m just asking in a friendly manner, constructive criticism helps becoming better.

It’s pretty simple: Damage modificators like PotV or whatever work multiplicatively. That means if you get a 5% damage boost, you’ll do 1.05 times the damage as before. Crit damage, however, is first summed up, naturally.

So let’s take the meta build, which has about 80% crit damage from gear/traits iirc, plus 10% from food and 15% from the banner. This means that a crit will deal 255% the damage of a normal hit. Now if you add 1% crit damage, you’ll sit at 256%. If we lazily assume 100% crit chance, that’s a damage boost of just 0.4%. So in the end, your wonderful 20% crit damage are worth only 8% total damage – under the precondition that you always crit. Otherwise, it’s even less.

Louk Tsoup.2108:

CptAurellian.9537:

Louk Tsoup.2108:

ON TOTAL

power: 3667/3677
crit chance: ~100%
crit damage:104%/124%
extra dmg:89%/80%

if we add these , you end up with 11% more damage on the second build
and lets face it, when you hit 4000 on every hit, 440 is not trivial.(you are gonna hit more than 4000, but for the sake of comparing, bare with me)

So how do you arrive at those 11%? If the answer is crit damage, then think hard about the maths. Because with 9 boons, the meta deals more damage than your second build, and at the typical 5 boons, your build’s advantage is only something between 1-3%.

well if you add them you will see that the total damage is 11% more, also crit damage in that build, is pretty much damage because your crit chance is at 100%.
I am pretty certain that the second build deals more damage, because 9 boons up constantly during the fight, still means 11% more damage for the second build, if you have 5 boons up the damage difference is increased by 4% meaning 15% total more damage at the second build.I don’t see how 1~3% was your result.

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious why you don’t see why that was my result. To give you a hint: 1% more crit damage is – by far – not equal to 1% more damage.

It was too easy to get karma before that patch, but now it’s just stupid. Sometimes the devs should think for a second about the things they are doing.

LordByron.8369:

I m not saying nerf war…i m saying make other profession equally desired

And since that would require god throwing some brain from the heavens, it will never happen.

Louk Tsoup.2108:

ON TOTAL

power: 3667/3677
crit chance: ~100%
crit damage:104%/124%
extra dmg:89%/80%

if we add these , you end up with 11% more damage on the second build
and lets face it, when you hit 4000 on every hit, 440 is not trivial.(you are gonna hit more than 4000, but for the sake of comparing, bare with me)

So how do you arrive at those 11%? If the answer is crit damage, then think hard about the maths. Because with 9 boons, the meta deals more damage than your second build, and at the typical 5 boons, your build’s advantage is only something between 1-3%.

Or a single LH elementalist who can provide 1 min of fury every 30 seconds.

Wasting endurance means wasting DPS, unless you can’t use that time to attack anyway. As for the gear choices, there are already some other suggestions around, have a look at obal’s sticky.

Well, I think that 100% uptime for Elusive Power is a very optimistic assumption. Vigorous Precision usually prevents that. Besides, the 10/30/0/30/0 stuff is not really new – I think I saw it as Guang’s “ultimative” guardian build something like half a year ago. Even ran it for some time, but today I wouldn’t use it instead of the meta. The possibility to take MoC and/or UC is much stronger than any of the Honor stuff, imo.

Me too (and besides, I hate hammer gameplay), but I’m not sure whether it’s the same for beginners.

I’d rather suggest the hammer build instead of the SF/GS meta. More room for error and good support for suboptimal groups, that should be better for a beginner.

Lord Kuru.3685:

To zerker experts — if you were a dev, how would you modify encounters so that zerker is not necessarily king?

The whole combat system would need to be built from scratch, if you wanted to achieve such a thing.

msalakka.4653:

Summa summarum, AH is bad because it helps you stay alive through providing boons and condi cleanse to your team mates – the definition of selfishness.

The right path is the glass cannon approach where you try to throw up as big numbers as possible before your kitten is torn to shreds, at which point your party, who no longer get any boons or cleanses from you, can rez you once the boss is down or you can all wp together and see those big numbers the second time.

Summa summarum: L2P. Then you can see big numbers even without greeting the floor.

Before I get into any details, I’d like to ensure one thing. Are you conscious about the total uselessness of defensive healing-supporters in PvE?

Since you are new to the game, I’ll elaborate that point a bit: In GW2 PvE, you can avoid virtually all dangerous attacks by active defenses or intelligent positioning. Active defense means the dodge roll, aegis/other blocks, projectile reflections/absorbers or blinding trash mobs. Additionally, healing power and defensive stats scale badly – you won’t be able to outheal anything, except maybe a rabbit outdoors (but beware the Fractal rabbit!), and many things will simply oneshot you, no matter how pseudo-tanky you are.

As a consequence of all this, good players go full offensive in gear and traits, doing all the necessary support via utility skills and some few traits that fit nicely into offensive builds. Defensive builds are a crutch for bad players or those who are at the very beginning of learning GW2. But even in the case of the latter, learning an offensive build from the start will be much more useful.

As for good PvE builds, please have a look at obal’s guide:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

fadeaway.2807:

Take away the 10% freebie dmg multiplier that website gives to elusive power, and then give both builds real dps food, fury and might. I’m easily seeing a 60% plus increase in effective power for the 15/25/0/10/20 build over this one. That’s before considering the gap-widening effect of night sigil, damage multiplier potion, vulnerability and more boons.

Ah right, missed EP, I should have known better. Still, that increases the gap to about 50% more damage for the DPS build, not 66. And just one thing, since you seem to get that one wrong: All those damage multipliers you mention increase the absolute gap in damage, but they do NOT cause any changes in the relative gap, as long as the same multipliers are used on both setups.

foofad.5162:

Effective power is only an appropriate comparison when you’re using the same weapon. I’m assuming he’s referring to using sword/greatsword rather than mace/hammer.

I know about EP, but since he’s talking about 15/25/0/20/10, I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about SF/GS, since that one is a pure hammer DPS build.

foofad.5162:

Do you have an actual DPS figure for 15/25/0/20/10? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hard number. It would be nice to get an actual comparison.

Comparing the effective power of the builds should do the thing (as long as you just look at the hammer, ofc), since you already used buildcraft. There, I get a 34% difference, assuming 5 boons for PotV, which sounds reasonable.

Which is, of course, very helpful when the whole thread is centered on PvE …

You aren’t bored, are you?

The internal CD is 1 second, so without any further boon duration, you’ll almost never get above 3 stacks from it.

Sooneroo.2074:

What’s at 25 virtues? Is the % damage per boon worth it? Also, no recharge on shouts and aegis at 50% health? Aren’t those essential?

Aegis at 50% is pretty useless. However, if you like shout cooldowns, take the 10/25/0/10/25 build, which trades a negligible amount of damage for more supportive flexibility. As for the weapons, replace torch and staff with focus and greatsword, since both are much better alternatives.

Finally, the utilities … here it comes down to learning what is needed when. Purging flames is almost always good stuff due to burning, fire field and condition removal. Other important utilities are Wall of Reflection, Retreat (to block big hits), Stand Your Ground/Hallowed Ground (if you need stability), the ghost shield (for really projectile-heavy encounters), bane signet (if you don’t have anything else to do) and one or two I’ve probably forgotten right now.

Justice.3608:

TBH I’ve seen a lot more crappier guardians than I see bad warriors.

The only bad warriors I’ve ever seen, are the ones that still play signet warrior @lvl 80.

Well, I suppose it’s simply more difficult to spot bad warrs than bad guards. If aegis/reflection is missing in the wrong moment, you’ll notice it because you can admire the wonderful ground textures. There is no equivalent for warrs.

In the end, I think that there will be roughly the same proportion of bad players in both classes. I’ve seen so many staff-campers, wannabe-shout-healers, useless hammer warrs and healways in dungeons that I couldn’t tell which ones were more frequent.

ShannonKasull.2091:

I play guardian as a secondary profession, no, I do not claim to know everything about a guardian but I’ve put my fair share of time into one.
I’m not saying a guardian cannot DPS, I’m just saying they can’t do so as well compared to others.
Anyone who claims so have not tried playing both guardian and other pure DPS classes.
I believe Zerker gear for support guardian as the OP is seeking advice on is a wrong place to start.

Sure you can wear Zerker, try to DPS and Support at the same time, but doing both at the same time means failing to excel at any specific one.

I stand by what I say, a good support guardian, keeps a staff on-hand, constantly upkeeps might, heal, protection and prevents any party member from dropping, and above all, controls the situation by using the right utility/virture at the right time.

It’s pretty obvious that you’ve wasted most of your time on your guard, since you seem to have no clue how the situation in any halfway good group looks like. Let me just pick two parts of all that nonsense, since I’ll have to go to work soon:

1) The DPS stuff. First, there are no pure DPS classes. In a good group, virtually everyone brings some kind of support (except the necro, but that class is borderline useless in most dungeons). Be it offensive boons, vuln, defensive boons or reflections. Nothing of the guardian part cannot be done in fully offensive gear and build. Second, both theorycrafting and the experience of good players indicate the same thing: Guards are in a very good position for DPS, if played and buffed correctly. There is especially no need to hide from warriors – they’d rather need to hide from us if we can either keep up UC or have a lot of stuff to reflect.

2) To the last paragraph: Let’s check the real tasks:
- give might to the group: Not really the guardian task unless you use a hammer. Might is stacked by fire fields + blast finishers, which are much better than anything you can put out. If you have an ele, it’s first of all their job. Besides, staff sucks massively since the weapon is incredibly weak and a waste of time for 10 seconds if you use it in combat.
- heal: Useless. Only bad players need tons of heal.
- protection: Can be done easily in a DPS hammer setup. Besides, anyone needs a hammer to apply constant prot anyway.
- prevent party members from dropping: Aegis, protection and reflection are totally independent from gear and part of every good DPS build. Anything else is just a question of the personal (in)competence of your group members.
- utility: Again, any good guardian knows this by heart and has all viable options in his build. The meta 10/25/0/10/25 is there for a reason.

Conclusion: A good DPS player can fulfill any of the important parts about being a guardian.

If you just want to explore the open world, it does not matter. No one else is negatively affected by it and both stats are more or less on the same level of ineffectiveness, so take what you want. However, one thing for you to think about: neither of the two stats helps you to kill all those harmless mobs outside any faster.

And if you plan to do some dungeons, it’s pretty simple: Vita and toughness are 99% useless, healing power is 90% useless (unless you are in an utterly bad group) and full offensive is the way to go.

Weren’t the 5+ stats infusions ridiculously overpriced?

Nice one.

/15 charrs

Dynnen.6405:

Another thing thats not in the game…spirit weapons.

Nah, it’s in the game, but banned from the forums due to being too bad to tolerate them here.

I agree with Norjena. Axes are weapons for mindless berserkers, which does not fit the guardian. For the zealot theme, I’d rather prefer an offhand sword – we still need an offensive offhand since the torch just plain sucks.

Aza.2105:

Makes me wonder what were they thinking with this change?

Nothing at all, probably. Just random tossing around of numbers, hoping they might produce something useful.

Donut.6914:

Just gonna throw this in there, Knight’s armor is not for less skilled players. Defense is not a crutch, it’s just a playstyle. It’s impossible to avoid every big hit, if it was possible then everyone would go full glass cannon.

Since the OP seems to be talking about PvE, it is perfectly possible to avoid every big hit and defense from gear is a crutch.

Should have been a bowbear solo to claim they’re OP
:D

Zach.3264:

What do you mean no?
I said what gear I use, how can that be “no”?

The No refers to your claim about great DPS.

Rigel.3092:

Lol, captain clueless to the rescue. Umm, Guardian tanks just fine, kills just fine. Cya on the WvW battlefield. Stay toasty.

Reading comprehension: F. Have a look at what the OP said about WvW.

Rigel.3092:

Painbow.6059:

in short no you can’t

Spoken from one inhabiting lala-land?
Guardian can be one hell of a tank.

If you define tank like “standing uselessly around at full health while the mob kills your group members and ignores you”, then yes, you can be a tank. Otherwise:

Painbow.6059:

in short no you can’t

Zach.3264:

I play AH and I’ve been playing for quite some time now. Mix and match PVT with zerk gear, Ah traited along with 15 in Radiance, 20 Honor and 5 Virtues. I heal a ton, apply 100% uptime to nearby allies, Might on crits and able to spam VoJ for Might stacks on kills. It’s great DPS, tanky and gives good group buffs.

Nope. AH DPS with full zerker is already mediocre, with a mix of useless PVT it will be outright bad.

To the OP, it’s in essence what Molch said. However, one additional warning: Once you go full DPS after playing AH for some time, it can be really difficult to get rid of the bad habits an AH build promotes. So going directly for a hammer DPS build is quite a good idea.

Celestial is far away from being anywhere close to DPS due to the lack of power.

The meta build is much more supportive than this one and stopping at 5 ranger runes is pretty useless.

Useless patch, but at least they haven’t broken important things (yeah I know, SoS is debatable, but I don’t care about staff). Time to look at the bright side of … crap.

Wow, the ascended stuff is even more stupid than I thought before the patch. 25 days time-gating … god job, ANet!

However, one correction:

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

• Each piece of armour has around 2-3 stat points more in each section (1% crit damage more on one of the berserker items, the rest are the same as exotic crit damage) and (using a ballpark guess) results in around a +5% damage increase, similar to weapons.

The armor will be far away from the 5% increase weapons yielded. Haven’t calculated it thoroughly, but if we assume that each piece has 5% more stats than an exotic one, it will end up at something like 1% damage increase in total. Armor lacks weapon strength, which makes the weapons so powerful, so only the stats count. And I suppose that the increase will be only something like 1% plusminus a bit compared to your total stats (don’t forget boons (might etc.), the 916 base stats, trait stuff and trinkets which aren’t affected). If someone wants to calculate that crap in detail, you’re welcome – I’m both too lazy and too tipsy.

Dagoth.7038:

Well this ‘discussion’ thread was a waste of time.

QFT

That’s a big, bad joke.

Why do they even ask for feedback when they introduce “lackluster change[s]” anyway? (Jon Peters on Radiance X, one month ago)

That’s ridiculous.

g e o.2589:

Guys did you even read it? I am not saying that they are too difficult for people who KNOW it, as for me aswell. I tried with stuff that drops and entered with 36 lvl to see how it was to people who have never done before. For NEW players it is way too difficult if they are doing it with lvl 35s and mostly with DROPPED gear.

That’s no new phenomenon. In fact, this has been complained about for more than a year. The problem, however, is not the dungeons – it’s the open world. Everything outside is so easy that a moderately difficult dungeon seems too hard to new people. Besides, sometimes I’ve got the impression that a lot of people don’t even want to learn and just want to have success served on a golden tray.