Guild Wars 2

Scepter? Not sure about that, haven’t used it for a year or so, but are you sure it would really fit to a phantasm mesmer? With the useless clone on the end of the AA chain?

Afaik, some effects like WW are changed. Don’t think that you can make so much wrong with the weapon, since greatsword on guardian is quite good. In contrast to all those mesmers I see with legendary GS …

Whatever Beigarth may be, just take Berserker stats.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Pretty sure the highest DAMAGE phantasm is Focus 5 (but it IS stationary, so needs to be used properly). I run a 10/30/0/0/20 build with Sword/Focus & GS (sometimes Staff).

Just multitarget. At singletargets, duelist and swordsman deal a LOT more DPS.

Oh, and I need to agree with colesy. Greatsword is a desaster.

I’m already waiting for your next attempt to redeem the guardian class forum.

laharl.8435:

We comment how we want.

Until the modbot springs into action

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

CptAurellian.9537:

We have the staff for two-handed ranged uselessness, what do we need a second useless weapon for?

Just curious, but why do you think a Longbow would be useless?

Because it’s ranged. Besides, what would its role be? We have a singletarget ranged wepon (scepter) and a multitarget-supportive one (staff), there’s not so much space which a longbow could fill.

TheGuy.3568:

You will pump out more DPS with normal play with 10 30 0 30 0 than 10 30 0 5 25 any day so not a big issue.

Rather not. The meta has both better support and better DPS under normal conditions.

Master of consecrations is useful but that is really is you need wall of reflection and how long will you really need it (2 extra seconds is not going to make or break a build)?

Increasing the uptime from max 25% to max 37.5% is quite significant.

We have the staff for two-handed ranged uselessness, what do we need a second useless weapon for?

Change the traits on the fly, simple solution.

@Carlos: That probably can’t be taught by anything but experience. Besides, dodging to keep UC (and probably scholar runes at the same time) active will always be a great DPS gain compared to not dodging and losing both.

However, there is one very important thing: The meta is made mainly for at least halfway organized groups. The best build for those is not necessary the best build for PUGs. But if I needed a build for those, it still wouldn’t be one of yours, since they lack the chance to take MoC. So there, it would be rather Brazil’s old 0/30/0/30/10 despite the small DPS loss from Zeal.

durend.6237:

This. While ever class is expected to do it’s share of the DPS I do view a line between pure DPS classes and support DPS hybrids.

Well, that’s pretty much nonsense. Warrs and eles, on which I switch stuff pretty rarely, are as much support as guards and mesmers, on which I switch all the time. It’s just the type of support that differs.

Well, this thread was quite good comedy. Other than that, Cat Has Ducks said all the necessary stuff in the second answer (including his edit, ofc).

Haven’t tried it (since spirit weapons are usually just rubbish), but any dungeon group would probably be better off bringing just another ele/thief instead of such a guardian.

laharl.8435:

Nope, the two guys I heard say it, specifically said torch 5 is awesome burst. One guy runs some 10/30/30 build that he claims is highest dps. I’m guessing it’s someone’s weird guide from the guardian forum.

Oxxy already said it. Probably some kind of hundred blades syndrome – seeing a big number and thinking it must be awesome, when it’s really just awful.

Interesting question. Maybe I missed a big change (though I doubt it), but last time I used the torch, I found it incredibly useless. So my gut feeling is that you heard that from a bunch of people who have no clue.

From a PvE perspective? Unfortunately, there is virtually no way to make 30 zeal attractive, as long as Vigorous Precision is not moved to zeal 25 or whatever. Unless ofc you want to put something entirely overpowered there, like a permanent 20% modifier. But that would be even more stupid than Kindled Zeal.

As long as it isn’t moved into Valor or removed entirely, I don’t care too much. Everything else is within reach for a reasonable PvE build.

Survivability? If we look at it objectively, no. At least nothing that isn’t inherent to the class or the result of an easily picked trait like Vigorous Precision. But tell that all those AH guards out there.

ODB.6891:

snip

Quite funny how you interpreted that post. In fact, I don’t give a **** about PvP or WvW, so I’m talking purely from a PvE perspective. And to be honest, I also don’t care for all those guards who run around with the AH crutch. What would be the effect of putting such a trait into 30 zeal? Those who have the slightest idea of what is good or bad in terms of builds will still avoid it and run real DPS builds. Those who want survivability, whether it may be useless or not, will still run AH, since it has more synergies than your trait could ever give. And last but not least, such a 30 zeal build would do nothing better than the existing builds. Compared to AH, it would either give up any support or have no damage/survivability advantage, and compared to DPS builds, it can only give up support without gaining any meaningful damage.

ODB.6891:

I would also suggest having a trait at the grandmaster level of zeal that gives a significant conversion percentage of power -> hp so guards aren’t locked into honor so much if they choose to trait for pve dps. I think that would be infinitely better than kindled zeal’s current implementation. Something like that may actually break up some of these 30 valor/30 honor builds and provide the build diversity promised in earlier patches.

Ehm, PvE DPS? Are you really talking about that? 30valor/30honor builds don’t have anything to do with DPS and we are locked exactly 5 points into honor for having permanent vigor up. Hence most DPS builds stop at 5 oder 10 points in honor. For PvE, no one would take such a useless zeal grandmaster.

Anicetus.1253:

Wasn’t the greatsword autoattack like 3.0 seconds whereas the 1h sword auto attack is 2.7 seconds?

GS auto chain is something between 2.4 and 2.5 seconds, not 3.0. Tested it once when I didn’t even know how crappy the ingame tooltips are. Afterwards, I knew better.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Sarcasm is my best trait. I put 30 points into it.

I am still confused at your response to me though. Where did Anicetus say that he was specifically talking Dungeon groups?

Dub lives in the dungeons, that’s common knowledge :P

Black Box.9312:

InfinitySoul.9240:

EDIT: Build is 10 30 0 10 20, zerk armour and trinkets.

There’s your problem right there. Rather than taking the time to learn the class for yourself, you just dove headfirst into a build that someone told you to run without knowing how to properly utilize it.

And how is the stuff he has problems with dependent of the build?

Except ofc that Brazil’s build is one of the best regarding group support etc.

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

The biggest problem that I see with the Guardian, and with these changes, in PvE is that it doesn’t seem like they have a defined role. And yes, I do believe that it’s possible to have a defined roll without having the ‘Holy Trinity.’

Well, what about having the same main role as every single other class? That’s simply dishing out as much damage as possible. The guardian tweak is then defensive support via tons of blinds, aegis and anti-projectile skills.

Isslair.4908:

But, but you can’t melee and dodge grubs if you play how you want

Yup. All at range and eating every stupid grub would have been more realistic for the play how you want fraction.

Imho, I would never let go of all the support stuff just because a mesmer could potentially do it, too.

Well, I tried to teach four people yesterday (who I’d rate way above the average pug). It wasn’t funny to be the only one getting into phase 3 while the others always died to some punch

hybrid.5027:

Dolan.3071:

Or… You could just melee Lupi.
Complaining that a boss is too easy because you choose to go AFK range makes no sense.

Melee’ing is easier than ranging. Next time your team melee’s, stand at range and let me know how you do.

Well Cookie, in that case I think that you should try to do that some times with a bunch of Lupi melee newbies (and without soloing the remaining X % yourself when everybody else is dead). You’d probably be surprised how deadly his kicks and punches can be.

ZoroDaOtter.3859:

fadeaway.2807:

^they don’t seem to know we’re probably one of the highest dps classes around if we want to be though the buff wasn’t really needed.

Against stuff that’s standing still, yes.

Nope, against any stuff, as long as you have a decent group and all the relevant buffs are up.

10/30/30/0/0, assuming that you won’t be able to maintain Unscathed Contender for a long time anyway. Though it is needless to say that the combination of AH and DPS without support is incredibly stupid in any PvE environment.

Besides, that second is the difference between perma-protection and no protection in the worst moment.

spoj.9672:

Ignore him, hes a soldier mm necro. That negative lupi dps!

The perfect addition to the perma-scepter guard I met in CoE yesterday.

Anyway, just had quite some fun at Lupi. My guild group decided to try it melee and, in the end, spent an hour wiping to him before we decided to range him again. His kicks and punches are great newbie-killers.

Somehow, that reminded me of the good old WoW raids a long time ago when you could spent weeks or months wiping at the same boss again and again.

Haha, nice. 5% more damage to sword is fine, making the already strong offensive guard even stronger.

Oh, I think you have no idea about all the great things you only see in pugs.

Molch.2078:

Dungeon is fine. All you need is someone who shows you how to beat it.

That’s 100% true. The “problem” of Arah (except P3, maybe) is that it has an incredibly steep learning curve, which makes most pugs quit before they’re halfway through it. I thought of P2 as being like hell, too – then Dub, Molch and some others showed me a few times how to do it properly and it became pretty easy. Since then, I myself have explained it to quite a bunch of people from my guild and it was never a big problem.

What? That’s impossible :P

That’s exactly what I thought of when I read the fat red message.

Rather take Brazil’s old build, 0/30/0/30/10, instead of that AH stuff.

Nice video. Now if just a tiny fraction of all rangers would play a bit like you …

LordByron.8369:

Ele since game release playing 99,999% of my time fractals and dungeons..
Tried all builds etc

If you want a reliable character for dungeons avoid elementalist at all costs.

Everyone wants ele for FGS bug, once it will be fixed ele will be the usual subpar profession. […]

Don t choose a gimmick profession based on glitches and awful outside that.

Well, in the good old WoW times, the only possible reply to this post consisted of three letters:

l2p

You obviously have no clue of the elementalist, since the damage and utility from a LH build should make quite some other classes cry.

Overlord.7394:

A cookie-cutter fractal build and a cookie-cutter dungeon build and no zerg builds.

For Fractals and dungeons, just go full berserker with greatsword, sword/focus or hammer and maybe one of the builds mentioned in this thread. There some other ones which are good but I’m too lazy to make a full compilation right now. Use gear like knight’s only if you cannot manage to survive at all and have no hope of getting better, because otherwise it is just a giant waste of potential.

That strongly depends on your judgement of the costs. Though it should not be too difficult to stay above 90% half of the time.

Syn Sity.5826:

No one is going to hate, we all agree with you (for the most part). Those who skip lupicus and use exploits should be banned. The bigger point is, most of the sellers, including all the ones on this forum don’t use exploits. We kill lupicus (why in god’s name wouldn’t we, he is the only fun boss in this game) and all the other bosses, people join and pay and then finish the last boss. It doesn’t hurt anyone else. It doesn’t deprive any other player out there of anything. It is a victimless not-crime. It’s like saying that using the trading post to sell an item is an exploit because the person buying it should be farming for it with me.

I’m not really sure whether it is really “most of the sellers” who don’t exploit and skip Lupi. Here on the forum, yeah of course, but if I look at my guild, I’d bet quite some gold that all of the handful of people who sell Arah 2 are not capable of soloing him.

durend.6237:

15/15/10/20/10. you pick up a 10% damage modifier for the one you lost in radiance, you retain the VoJ blind/vuln spam.

What 10% modifier? The 10% crit damage? In that case, you are wrong – in the end, they will increase your total damage only by something like 3%, plusminus a bit.

TheGuy.3568:

ODB.6891:

@Chico
I find that going 25 into honor is a waste as elusive power is counter intuitive to vigorous precision…the first trait in honor.

Actually it works with it. The idea is that you can dodge as you like without worrying about your bar. Most fight aren’t dodge wait 10 seconds dodge again. This mean you can keep elusive power up nearly all the time while not impacting your defense. Remember it is a 10% damage bonus managing your stamina is worth the extra dps.

Nope. Dodging just for Elusive Power is a net DPS loss. That trait just starts shining when you need to dodge anyway, either to survive or to keep Unscathed Contender/scholar runes up.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

@CptAurellian, Other then the fact that I know I have DPS, I’m using the kitten build right now for gods sake, who are you to say that I don’t? are you using the exact same build as me? have you used the exact same build as me before? No? Maybe? you probably aren’t and your short reply does nothing to back up your statement that I have “no dps”

As for your previous post that “The only DPS build that can take AH is 10/30/30/0/0” Oh, it looks like your wrong, because I’m not using that and I have dps.

Even a full giver player has DPS. It’s just very, very, very bad DPS. While your AH build may not be on that level, it is not on a level I’d call good, hence “DPS”. AH puts out some mediocre damage, but the traits alone are something like 20-25% (no time for a really exact calculation today) below the output of the weakest build I regard as DPS (Brazil’s old one). Trinkets, secondary weapon and runes make the gap even larger.

Oh, and before you ask: Yes, I do have played some similar builds for quite some time until they got boring. They are no DPS.

cranked.3812:

I run all Zerk stuff.

Why? Because I do PVE only and DPS is king at the moment.

For any other weapon, I’d do that, too. But staff? That one is probably as far away from any meaningful DPS as a weapon can be, so I stick to some healing stuff in that case. Makes life in some big open world zergs easier.

Wukunlin.8461:

Zelyhn.8069:

Was it removed?

yeah
If anything it was a pretty effective way to check if people’s sarcasm detectors were working properly

What a shame, that thread was one of the best of the last weeks

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

And there you go, DPS, Reasonable Support, and AH

Scratch DPS, then it’s correct.