Guild Wars 2

In theory, I’d definitely prefer another guard with the DPS build. But since there is virtually no one else in my guild who knows how to play any kind of DPS, I’d probably want some kind of healway in practice. At least that’s better than all those soldier-bricks and helps me to survive the too long fights.

The Bane Signet is for the passive, not the active effect. And the others are right – mace + zerker is a more than strange choice since they don’t fit together well. Use either sword/hammer/GS + zerker or mace + cleric and you will get better results. Besides, the hammer’s near-permanent protection will yield even better defensive results than the mace’s options in most cases.

Your estimation is still way too low. I did this once, comparing my full zerker 10/25/0/30/5 with a guildies soldier/cleric 0/0/10/30/30, both with greatsword. I ended up with a difference of roughly 150-200 % and the use of a typical healway’s mace or staff will make it even greater.

Unfortunately, the Mists are not capable of simulating a real DPS build. You don’t get enough crit damage there – something like 20 % from the amulet and the jewel, iirc, since half of the crit budget is put into vitality on the zerker stuff. In PvE, on the other hand, I run around with 80 % from gear, so you see the difference …

If you like to use shouts, the soldier runes are indeed quite good and certainly more useful than dolyak. 30 regen/s is not really good – take mango pies and you already get 85 HP/s. Never understood why so many people seem to go for dolyaks.

For the sigils, I’d say that accuracy might be a safe choice since you don’t want kill stacks (though they are pretty good in most cases and the use of both a stacking weapon and a weapon with another sigil is rather nice). That gives you more reliable vigor stacks and if you sometimes use Empowering Might, it helps there, too.

As for the 1000 healing, it will boost the VoR passive by 60.

Danson.1094:

Running PVT on your armor gives you the option of switching weapons and jewelry as needed, while also enabling you to focus on traits that benefit others rather than yourself. That’s what a support build is. The OP said he wanted to support his party.

For the last time: PVT has no viable role in PvE. If you really want to do support, take cleric’s (with maybe a bit magi, if you play so badly that you need the extra health) with a healway build. That beats any PVT crap by worlds since most groups will profit a lot from it. On the other hand, zerker/knight with AH, if you still struggle to survive, or without AH if you do well, will help you to deal much more damage with still some decent support.

Now I’m done with wasting my time on this incredibly stupid issue. Have fun.

Danson.1094:

That’s a really stupid conclusion. Short term defense? No sustain? NO SUPPORT? If we are talking about PvE, we are talking about dungeons primarily. I can chain dodges together to provide a 3k burst heal to my party, if necessary. I run Healing Breeze and either shouts or consecrations, and use traits like Protective Reviver and Resolute Healer if warranted. My boon duration keeps regen, might, swiftness, and protection on allies nearly constantly, and I can provide stability very often if needed. I use Hammer/Staff which gives me a hell of a lot utility.

Indeed, we are talking about dungeons, but obviously, you did not think about what that implies for a second. So, let’s see …

Short-term defense? Yes, absolutely, compared to knight’s (or even zerker). PVT gives you a bit more health, but once that has been beaten away, that vitality is not helpful unless you can refill it. For which PVT does not do anything, while knight’s provides extra healing by the on-crit-effects of an AH build. It’s the same for cleric’s, which will heal a lot more in any fight than the PVT vitality can give you.

No sustain? Same as above, PVT cripples AH without giving anything in return (apart from a bit health that you should not need) and cannot compare to the healing potential of cleric.

No support? Of course, that was exaggerated. Nevertheless, a healway with cleric’s gear offers a lot more support without any big downside. Both of them won’t do any meaningful damage anyways. An offensive build, on the other hand, can have the same support, but a lot more damage.

Chain dodges, healing breeze, stability, protection and whatever are not related to the armor question. That stuff can be done by anybody who choses to do it.

Don’t even attempt to tell me this build doesn’t offer my group healing and support. To suggest someone go Berserker instead while saying this build offers no support is pure idiocy.

So, let me think about it, what kind of support does PVT bring exactly that zerker can’t? Ah yes, none. They both offer more or less the same, with the slight advantage on the zerker side since it activates EM more frequently.

At the end of the day it’s up to personal preference, so don’t come onto the forums trying to spread your one prescribed build as the best because it’s what works best for you in your group.

Obviously, you should improve your reading comprehension. He asked for advice, so I pointed him into the two (!) most efficient general directions a guardian has for PvE. PVT simply has not anything to do with efficiency, but is all about egoism.

Especially for AH builds, precision is in most cases way more useful than vitality since quite a lot of your selfheal depends on Empowering Might procs, which in turn require a decent crit chance.

Zackie.8923:

glass cannon builds will work in dungeons only if you have 4 other people who know what to do and are spec to kill.

Even that works, although it is more work than fun. But if you know what you encounter and have good reactions, most things are doable as a melee glass cannon no matter what kind of group you have.

Goose.5196:

First and foremost, Bosses will need to be increased in their difficulty (by adding more damage from their attacks rather than giving them more heatlh) to make it impossible to bring the exact same ZerkerFTW team to every battle.

Sorry, but Dub is right. Unless there is a much clearer distinction between offensive and defensive characters, it will be simply impossible to discourage the use of zerker gear without slapping every single melee into the face so hard that meleeing is no option anymore. And if this distinction is applied, the holy trinity is back (which would be quite a good thing, imho).

Knight’s is virtually always the better choice than soldier’s, at least in PvE. However, I have the impression that the very first thing you should learn is combat awareness. That means right positioning, dodging and the timely use of your defensive abilities. If you die from just a few hits, you are not supposed to eat those hits but avoid them instead.

Indeed. Crit damage is worthless without a decent crit chance.

The big problem of WW is its unreliability which needs to be fixed. The damage potential is quite fine with something like 15k under circumstances comparable to those of the warrior you mention. Also don’t be too impressed with HB numbers – he can do his 36k or whatever, but in the same time, we can have two auto-attack chains which may also hit for something like 25-30k (Or even more? In my guild, I never manage to get a decent offensive group to find out -.-). Other classes are in a worse situation than we are.

Unless ANet has implemented really weird and stupid calculations behind the scenes, why should it be otherwise? Those multipliers come from totally independent sources, so it is only natural that they stack multiplicatively and not additively.

The reason is probably that the group leader was incredibly stupid.

I’d either go full zerker or full cleric. Ok, to be honest, I personally would never touch a healway build or something similar, but that does not matter. Do one thing right, instead of both things badly.

The damage of a PVT build does not exist, it’s as simple as that. So no, PVT is the exact opposite of a wise choice if you want to do PvE. That kind of gear is just the maximum of useless egoism – much more short-term defense than necessary, no sustain, no support, no damage.

If you want to play support, cleric will probably be the way to go. You don’t do any damage either, but you can support your group a lot and help them that way. In groups that are not very well organized and don’t play too well, this kind of support guardian is pretty useful. It just loses any function as soon as you play in an organized group of people who know what they do – there, the typical zerker builds beat everything else.

Yet you usually dont need it, if you know how to dodge.

@topic: Agreed. Precision would be a lot better than the useless condition damage.

Crazy Crazy Doctor.3946:

That would certainly make PvE more interesting. In it’s current state, PvE is mostly a mindless endeavor that would actually be IMPROVED by the trinity, so if they did what you suggest, the PvE might actually be enjoyable.

I agree. Going without trinity sounded exciting in the first months, but PvE did not profit at all from that change. I think it is a fault of both the system’s inherent limitations and incredibly bad work from the dungeon designers, but in the end, the return of the trinity could only be an improvement.

So, did I get it right? The story mode troll is essentially the same as in explorable? Haven’t done story in half a year. In that case, it should definitely be removed or changed on that path. The troll is not difficult (though I’ve heard far too many people cry about it), but this is nothing for the very first dungeon in story mode. The increase of the difficulty between the leveling content outside and the dungeons is already too high, mainly because of way too easy content outside, so such a boss is stupid in AC story. For explo, however, it is fine.

Some better CC would indeed be nice, but imho Zeal needs a rework that goes a lot farther than just that. Right now, there is virtually no reason to go deeper than 10, maybe 20 points into that tree. That is pretty sad for what should be the DPS tree.

1. You can use EM while also having VoJ and Empower.
2. In contrast to Empower, EM does not require you to use a weapon that has no damage output at all.
3. A steady flow of healing and permanently ~3 stacks might on the group are reason enough.

Greatsword. Looks better and has a way more interesting gameplay than the hammer.

Ezeriel.9574:

Altruistic Healing, Empowering Might, a 50%ish crit chance and 3k armor from knights and emerald jewels.. some soldiers stuff… maybe 17,500 health.

No, simply no. Apart from very few specific situations, where it is helpful but not at all necessary, Soldier’s is crap in PvE. If you want some vitality, Valkyrie can replace some items, but in general, 14-15,000 health combined with a decent amount of toughness (or not, if you are more experienced) is more than enough to survive. Once you are comfortable with your survival, start switching gradually to Zerker’s items.

You find them in Southsun Cove, they are the remains of the … wonderful and epic event back in November.

Oh, and when you upgrade your gear, try to stay away from Sentinel’s or Soldier’s. Use Knight’s instead. The former two may give you a high short-term survival chance, but they utterly cripple any damage output you might have and don’t help much in the long run. Knight’s, on the other hand, still has a good defense, decent offensive potential and increases your self-heal by a lot since the high crit chance grants you more procs from Empowering Might.

Don’t meet trouble halfway … they might actually do such a stupid thing.

5 Points out of Zeal into Valor for AH, change Glacial Heart into something that’s actually useful, general advice. Exchange all PVT stuff for zerker or at least knight, if zerker is too squishy for you, to lift that build to acceptable levels in dungeons while retaining some of the things you seem to like (although Bane Signet and the Spirit Sword are pretty bad utilities, tbh).

I’m too lazy to focus on all the small things that seem pretty weird, but stopping 5 trait points short of AH? That does not make any sense. Oh, and if you do dungeons with that, I pity your group mates – no damage, bad support, mediocre long-term survivability.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

AH doesn’t need healing power outside of the 300 from traits unless you just like having higher sustainability at the cost of some damage.

Problem is that higher healing power does not mean more sustained healing for AH. Of course, you may run Magi’s items to retain a reasonable crit chance, but those lower your damage to ridiculous levels and vitality is way worse than toughness in PvE. Cleric’s, on the other hand, costs you much crit chance and in return healing from EM procs. So, in my estimation, your healing output would probably remain more or less constant (in the best case, otherwise it may even drop), but you sacrifice a lot of damage for nothing if you use AH with healing gear.

Sigil of Life means to sacrifice Bloodlust or Perception, while Signet of Mercy uses a utility slot that you’ll need for other stuff in group content. So no, both of them are not really good choices unless you decide to play full healway or run around solo – but where in solo play do you need any amount of extra healing?

I already said it: The “sufficient amount” for an AH build is 0. The rest purely depends on your personal wishes. I, for myself, won’t sacrifice any useful stats for some healing power that is completely unnecessary for an AH build and even worse for more offensive ones.

For AH, you need none at all. It scales at 0.01 and has a sufficiently high base healing. Hence, I run around with the 300 extra healing I get automatically from the Honor line and nothing else, since it’s simply a waste of stats.

You are talking about apples and oranges. In PvE, zerker is the perfect set due to slow and predictable enemy attacks. If you know how to counter them properly, you don’t need any defensive stats, so any sets besides zerker are by definition subpar. WvW, on the other side, is a completely different story, especially when running in groups. Some defense will be pretty helpful in most cases there, although soldier’s still seems like useless overkill to me.

Oh and by the way, crit damage is also a stat for sustained damage. With typically 50-100 % crit chance on zerker builds, depending on fury and weapon choice, crits happen regularly enough.

At least you do not fall asleep when you melee. Besides, the things you mention get just really annoying in one situation, imo: when fighting a bunch of dredge trash mobs.

Doesn’t work? Thanks a lot, I would never have expected that. In that case, the choice really becomes a no-choice.

According to ANet, even condition builds are great for a guardian …

What they want and what they get are two different things, so I’m not concerned at all. As far as the last patch is concerned, I don’t care. A thief playing sword/dagger must still be pretty desperate.

40 min on an average PUG? Either there have been real improvements in the PUGs (or massive nerfs in Arah) since the last time I did the storymode, but I’d plan at least with an hour. Probably even a bit more.

As far as the fun is concerned … I did not have a lot there. For the great, final fight against an almighty dragon, the whole instance (and especially the boss fight) just sucks.

Njordfinn.4921:

No Schroedingers Bjarl anymore, now i am sad.

Thanks, that made me laugh.

I absolutely dislike condi damage and I don’t think that will change so soon. The calculation is pretty simple: 1000 condi dmg gives you, in the very best case where you have 100 % burning uptime, 250 DPS and does not scale with anything else. If you invest that stat budget in something else, I’m pretty convinced that it will turn out with some more damage.

That should be self-evident. Nevertheless, situations in PvE, where PVT gear is actually useful, are negligible. Right now, I can only think of the cage in the dredge fractal, where you just want to survive without needing to do any damage. In most other cases, knight’s gear allows you to deal more damage while having sufficient defense (or even better defense than PVT, if you run an AH build with EM).

EM unfortunately only gives 5s might, so the bonus would be 1s. Furthermore, I thought of 6/6, 2/6 does not make any sense imo. The question is just whether the (small) might bonus for the group would outweigh the minor loss of my own damage compared to the rubies.

Out of curiosity, what do you think about the runes of strength? I’m wondering whether the 20 % might duration are useful or just negligible when using Empowering Might.

Cavendish.2168:

So maybe I should try new armor set with more vitality and healing and runes doing the same?

Rather learn when to use protection and dodge rolls in the best moments.

High toughness and rather low HP are thought to draw quite some aggro. You have both of them, although with an AH build, you should not die very often.

They may not be useless, but to be really useful, you need to invest heavily in them.

The same for me – justice is quite nice, if you have at least 15 points in Radiance, when you can spam it at trash mobs.The other two just serve as “Oh kitten” buttons for me due to the long cooldown, the relatively weak effects and the lack of ways to recharge them apart from RF, which is itself on a rather long recharge.

Although in general I don’t use any healing gear, my staff in fact has +healing stats. Since I only use it as backup, if I get into trouble with my melee weapon, its primary purpose is only survival. For that, additional healing is great since it scales well with #2, #4 and, not to forget, the dodge roll with 15 points in Honor. Staff sucks at damage anyways, so why not improve its survival capacity by using a healer staff.

Maiden England.3491:

Let me remind you gentlemen that though zerker guardians do more damage, PVT gear still does some decent damage as well. So you’d be contributing somewhat decent dps as well as tanking the entire dungeon.

No, you simply don’t. After one rather disastrous AC run with two very defensive guardians from my guild, I calculated a bit because I was curious. Fortunately, one of them used the greatsword, with a mix of PVT and cleric’s armor, so that I could directly compare us. The final result was that I did roughly 250 % of his damage, which could probably be increased to almost 300 % if I was wearing 100 % zerker.

So in total, the damage output of a PVT guard is just one thing: ridiculous.