Guild Wars 2

Obtena.7952:

No, I don’t think i’m wrong here …. it was wrong to give people bad advice, especially if you claim your so rigourous in your tests and results.

That’s your opinion only. You haven’t demonstrated anything except a hilarious penchant for localized self contradiction.

Frankly even Danicco has demonstrated a far better argument than you since he actually used data and numbers in his arguments which you’ve totally abandoned after that initial post which had erroneous data anyway. (Claiming 27% when it’s 25%, spinning the mitigation as 100% of a percent when it’s actually 12%. Leaving out crit severity.)

How about you post a screenshot of your character build for everyone to see so we can all gaze upon your greatness seeing as how according to you my opinions are wrong and you are right?

Or are you afraid of a bit of peer review?

Obtena.7952:

OK I failed mental Gymnastics. You were still wrong.

Lol, it only took you several posts to admit your failure, and you choose to end it with an unprovable accusation.

Hint, unless you can prove my base numbers wrong(which you stated previously you don’t dispute), you can’t prove someone’s opinions are wrong. It just ends up being your opinion of my opinion.

You’re just frustrated that you have lost the argument because your argument was not sound in the first place.

A sound argument would’ve been: “I don’t agree with your conclusions, and here’s why…”

Class dismissed.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t actually mind you post that quote. It frees me of the burden to continually reminding you your advice that mixing is terrible was garbage. You do it for me.

Your failed mental gymnastics attempt to change the topic indicate otherwise.

Obtena.7952:

Sorry, your opinion, while it’s respected, is crap advice…

It certainly takes a special person to contradict himself in the very same sentence.

Obtena.7952:

The edit button is much easier.

Problem for you is that post already exists and I can always call on a copy of it.

No amount of dishonest editing by you is going to undo it.

Obtena.7952:

Sorry, your opinion, while it’s respected, is crap advice…

Thanks for admitting and reaffirming the fact for everyone that you are totally devoid of honesty though.

You give me "vindication by demonstrations of oblivity” each and every time.

Danicco.3568:

DeathPanel.8362:

I went a step further from the calculator and put the builds from the calculator to a real gameplay test. That’s far from not having an idea of what I am doing.

That’s not a sign of knowing what you’re doing. What’s the base for making the build in the first place, before actually trying it out?

I said I went a step further from the calculators. That implies I’ve done the base build in the calculators.

Unless in your universe “going a step further” means not taking the initial step.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel.8362:

I am the one with worthless advice?

Yes, by contradicting yourself. Fun fact: This isn’t the first time either.

Sorry, but you failed here yet again at deflection. I haven’t contradicted myself and especially not like you in the very same sentence.

Obtena.7952:

Sorry, your opinion, while it’s respected, is crap advice…

Pointing out your failure is as simple as copy/paste.
Every time you deflect and lie you give me "vindication by demonstrations of oblivity”.

Build yourself a time machine, because that’s the only way to undo your own words.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel.8362:

My only advice for people is to actually play with their chars and put their theorycrafting to actual test in various areas of the game …

This makes some sense. We may have a convert. If this is your only advice, it’s safe to say the other advice you gave about mixing being terrible is worthless.

My advice is that even if you don’t agree with my opinion at the very least you should test your builds.

Of course it’s not surprising for someone devoid of honesty like you to twist my words.

Afterall I remember someone who is prone to contradicting himself in the very same sentence. Yet I am the one with worthless advice?

Obtena.7952:

Sorry, your opinion, while it’s respected, is crap advice…

Is there such thing as vindication by demonstrations of “oblivity”? (That’s right, I used your word again)

Brutaly.6257:

@Danicco
Thx for taking the time to write such an excellent post but i fear that the intended recipient hasnt read it or actually didnt understand it. My suggestion is that you maybe simplify it a bit.

@Deathpanel
Personally i understand your claim, its what best for you, to stack just knights.

What i dont understand is that you state it as a universal truth when the most comprehensive post, Daniccos, in this thread mathematically actually proves beyond any reasonable doubt that in general mixing stats is infact the only way to get an optimal build when it comes to ingame performance.

Hopefully people in general sees this and dont follow your advice, even if it works for you it wont work in general.

The discussion is over for me, its kind of hopeless to carry on when you wont answer a straight forward question. Gear you use, inverting the former example etc and then it becomes futile imo.

Have a nice one.

My only advice for people is to actually play with their chars and put their theorycrafting to actual test in various areas of the game instead of stopping at the drawing board and declaring victory.

Obtena.7952:

All the testing you speak of has been done by every player in this game and our opinions are based on ours. Anyone that plays the game tests their builds every day and come to conclusions different than yours. You’re just like everyone else. You don’t stand out because you claim you ‘tested’ something.

That’s fine. Like I’ve stated many times before you are entitled to your opinions.

Your problem is your ego does not allow me to be entitled to mine.

Reborn.2934:

i don’t know if i faced a hacker but two times in a fight with a thief he escaped twice from line of warding and ring of warding after ….

i was ready to report him but i didn’t do it because in shout my server ppls told me that the stability skills can escape from these two skills.

i checked stability description and i didn’t found something about wardings …..

So, you have two options dear devs .

1. you fix the problem and nobody can pass though these two skills while they are active or fix the description of stability , or

2. i re-roll to a thieve to stop be a victim when i am playing alone in www

Warding is a knockback effect. Therefore stability is not effected by it.

Also for balance reasons there has to be counter, otherwise people can hold SM and forts indefinitely by cycling warding with guards.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel, does your ego take up and extra seat at the dinner table?

Do you have any response to Danicco’s proof that mixing isn’t terrible? You must have missed it since you have posted here since he’s presented it. I’m very interested in your perspective on that since you’re someone who thinks he’s correct all the time.

That’s funny coming from you.

His and your opinions are irrelevant. What I care about is actual gameplay results.

My method is sound. I reach conclusions based on actual gameplay testing where it actually matters.

Your method(and his) stops at the drawing board. I take it to live testing.

It takes a grand ego to tell someone who’s been doing testing that you haven’t that their opinion is wrong based on what you have on the drawing board when my method goes past that stage doesn’t it?

Danicco.3568:

DeathPanel.8362:

You won’t know the answer to these questions by crunching numbers on a calculator because in a build there’s always tradeoffs in stats. When you emphasize one you lose in another.

You find out by actual gameplay testing.

That’s not how you use a Calculator. That’s like messing with it, developing new builds while having no idea what are you doing.

Wrong. I went a step further from the calculator and put the builds from the calculator to a real gameplay test. That’s far from not having an idea of what I am doing.

You can crunch numbers all day but those numbers only give you a tangible idea of how well a build performs. In order to actually see how it handles in game you go further and play with the build.

That’s why development cycles have QA and beta stages. Code and specs may look good on screen but you won’t know how well it handles until you actually test it.

You disagree with my conclusion which is fine and irrelevant to me, but you are attacking my methods when they are sound. That makes you incorrect.

Brutaly.6257:

DeathPanel.8362:

Brutaly.6257:

Conclusion, what you display is an opinion’ while Obtena is actually trying to present his *opinion and back it up with facts.

Btw what gear do you wear, i bet its a mixed one since stackng in stats in this game is pretty “terrible”

Wrong.

I’ve backed up my “opinion” with more than enough facts. I’ve even posted a screenshot of my gear and stats. So if that’s not enough evidence then nothing is.

Just because you don’t like my opinion doesn’t mean you can be dishonest and pretend I haven’t provided statistics and facts when I’ve practically done nothing but that.

No you havent.

Go back to the discussion you had about swapping some berserker for some knights and invert the arguement. Assume you are right there, then the opposite, swapping some knights for berserkers should also be true if your opinion “mixing gear is terrible” but its not. Assuming your observation is correct in the first example, you loose on swapping, then the opposite should also make you lose out on stats. Assuming you where right in the first place the opposite would apply and you would gain from swapping. Ie if you swap one piece from knights to berserker you gain dps but lose survivability and vice versa.

The above falsifies the theory that “mixing gear is terrible”.

Its not about being dishonest, im not disputing the facts, im disputing the ability to interpret the facts.

To be blunt, advising someone to not mixing gear as long as it supports:
-Relative skill level
-Assignment on the battlefield
-Objective,
-Type of terrain
- Size of your task force
- Beforehand or afterhand
-Mainly pvp or pve
-Type of damage, direct or indirect
- Etc
Is a bad advise
Once again, what gear do you use personally? Not a single piece of other armortypes?

Wrong. I did provide data to back up my arguments. This is a fact.

You happen to disagree with my conclusion, but to say I didn’t use data is factually wrong.

GonzoNeo.4965:

First all sorry for my english

Well, second all, i show you numbers to show you my build, dont worry i alredy tested my guardian very well if you think that i only build a character in gw2skills and i stop play in the the image attachmnet you can see that i have a “few hours”, and no only 1 armor /weapon set and a legendary, im not a 1 man build dont worry

Good analysis. Much better argument for mix than any others here.

If it works for you, then great.

The reason I stack knights is because I gain free precision from retributive armor, which then frees me up to set up my traits and sigils in a certain way.

Also keep in mind that I run bloodlust sigils which does make up for my deficit in power compared to yours in a way. (Unless you also run it. I don’t know what sigils you run. If you run accuracy sigil then it may hurt to take it out for bloodlust for example.)

Obtena.7952:

Sorry, your opinion, while it’s respected, is crap advice and I can say that without repercussion because your opinion, is in fact, disputable.

Is there such thing as vindication by demonstrations of “oblivity”? (That’s right, I used your word) That’s how I feel now. Thank you everyone. If the point wasn’t made through some logical approach, it’s now solidified by common experience of respected players.

Obtena.7952:

I respect that it’s your opinion that mixing is a bad idea but it’s crap advice to someone who might not be comfortable with that build. Only the most capable Guardians I have seen play can do everything in a full zerker build. Others opinions and capabilities differ. Saying mixing is terrible can construed to be a vague insult.

Funny how you state you “respect” my opinion when in the very same sentence you label it as “crap advice”.

Maybe the word “respect” has a different meaning to someone who’s been thoroughly condescending and devoid of honesty?

Brutaly.6257:

Conclusion, what you display is an opinion’ while Obtena is actually trying to present his *opinion and back it up with facts.

Btw what gear do you wear, i bet its a mixed one since stackng in stats in this game is pretty “terrible”

Wrong.

I’ve backed up my “opinion” with more than enough facts. I’ve even posted a screenshot of my gear and stats. So if that’s not enough evidence then nothing is.

Just because you don’t like my opinion doesn’t mean you can be dishonest and pretend I haven’t provided statistics and facts when I’ve practically done nothing but that.

Obtena.7952:

I’ve also done those tests. My results were different because the resulting conclusion can only be an opinion. In fact, everyone that plays does those tests … when they experiment with making builds and seeing what works for them. That’s OK, I don’t mind if you want to pretend you are the only person here that has ‘tested’ things and the rest of us have no clue how to play. It’s rather entertaining.

That’s strange, with that condescending tone and the whole time you were trying to dismiss my opinion it looks like you are the one that is doing the pretending. It is afterall only my opinion that “mxing is terrible” yet you’ve dedicated a dozen posts to try to dismiss it. (And failed)

That’s what would be known as classic projection. Entertaining indeed.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel.8362:

Is 30% mitigation worth 200 in attack and 60 crit severity.

Which is better?

You won’t know the answer to these questions by crunching numbers on a calculator. You find out by actual gameplay testing.

Ah, more sweet vindication. I love it. So now, mixing is dependent on who is behind the keyboard testing it instead of being absolutely terrible? It’s not both.

Do you not ever bother to read?

My point is I’ve done these tests unlike you, and have come to the conclusion that mixing is a bad idea. If you disagree, then cite your reasons.

Or, you can continue to troll as you’ve just done here and embarrass yourself further.

Danicco.3568:

How’s that any different?

If the calculator shows you X, it’s X.
If you’re going to hit or miss this X, that’s effectiveness and that’s solely up to you.
Calculators won’t do anything with player skill.

My point remains. You can’t dispute numbers. A better build is always a better build.

The calculator may show X, but you won’t know how well X does until you test it.

20k life may seem good on paper, until you find out you have 1.7k toughness and take far more damage for example.

Numbers are numbers, but the effectiveness of numbers in one area compared to effectiveness of numbers in a different area is another story.

The point is, what weight does one put on numbers in one area vs another.

Is 12% mitigation worth 96 power and 32 crit severity for example.

Is 30% mitigation worth 200 in attack and 60 crit severity.

Which is better?

You won’t know the answer to these questions by crunching numbers on a calculator because in a build there’s always tradeoffs in stats. When you emphasize one you lose in another.

You find out by actual gameplay testing.

Fenrir.3609:

DeathPanel.8362:

No solo roaming. AH is not good at that. Although I could 1v1 or 1v2 or even 1v3 depending on what builds and classes I’m facing if need be. I try to always stay with a group. My guardian is also my commander tagged character so it wouldn’t make sense for me to roam. My roamer are my necro, ranger, and theif.

This is strictly for zerg vs zerg. I use sup sigil of bloodlust on my staff, gs, and shield. Sup sigil of strength on scepter.

It’s very tanky and gs with high bloodlust stacks really wrecks people. You gain roughly 114 free precision from having retributive armor and high toughness from knights which is good for crits.

I thought about taking out the soldiers for the x2x2×2 boon setup but I noticed in large wvw fights conditions really stack up quickly and being able to remove multiple conditions at once with soldiers/pure of voice vs having longer boon duration is more important for survival.

I have the x2x2×2 setup on my cleric set.

So you’d get more sustain and more group sustain via a more traditional small group/spvp bunker meta spec. But in a larger group blob/zerg that is overkill (less focus) and as such you can drop it for more dps.

Essentially yes.

Although I would argue that the only way to go more sustain/group sustain in this build is to spec clerics and boon runes.

This build can also go boon runes its just that in large fights quickly stacking conditions is more of a threat in my opinion than not having as long on boon duration.

Danicco.3568:

DeathPanel.8362:

I didn’t dispute his numbers. I disputed the conclusion that he made based on his numbers.

It looked like you questioned the effectiveness of numbers show in calculators by saying they’re somehow different from the paper and live testing.

Wrong.

“Using online calculators may show you the numbers but live testing is where you actually see the EFFECTIVENESS of those numbers in various areas of the game.”

Obtena.7952:

Brutaly.6257:

And no you aint on topic, you nitpick on an example, which in full displays what he tries to say, and avoid the issue, you stating that mixing gear is terrible.

DeathPanel.8362:

You seriously saying “full zerker spec” implies I’m talking about a mix?

I can understand you want to try to twist my statements to fit your failed argument but you should’ve chosen something less unambiguous than that.

Lol.

Is there such thing as vindication in demonstrations of oblivity? (That’s right, I made up that word)/ That’s how I feel now. Thank you everyone. If the point wasn’t made through some logical approach, it’s now solidified by common experience.

Demonstrations of “oblivity” If there is, you’ve just shown it.

Obtena.7952:

The examples I presented demonstrated only one thing, that the hypothesis that ‘mixing is terrible’ is not something that can proven and therefore, can’t be presented as an absolute factual statement. Therefore, providing that as guidance IS terrible. The accuracy of the numbers is actually completely irrelevant. Are they wrong or right? Neither answer goes to the point that was clearly demonstrated.

Wrong. “mixing is terrible” is my conclusion that I arrived at through data and reasoned arguments that I’ve outlined. Others may come to a different conclusion based on the same data and arguments and I couldn’t care less because they are entitled to their own opinions.

The reason that it’s not objectively disprovable or provable is because it’s an opinion. ie mine. I had never stated it was the absolute objective truth. The only thing in this game that are objective truth are the stats and numbers of the builds.

You were just being a contrarian trying to prove someone’s opinion wrong much like Danicco, which is why you’re frustrated now.

Forzani.2584:

My prediction ? The top players will still dominate. As Clint says, adapt, improvise, overcome.

The top players will still dominate… as another class.

Fenrir.3609:

DeathPanel.8362:

Fenrir.3609:

Looking at the screenshots posted, are these builds pve/damage orientated?

Mine is wvw oriented. I’ve also run up to 48 fractals with it.

So pve and dmg roam in wvw then?

I just wondered because the emphasis on stats seems somewhat different to the heal power based bunker/support meta i’m a bit more used to.

No solo roaming. AH is not good at that. Although I could 1v1 or 1v2 or even 1v3 depending on what builds and classes I’m facing if need be. I try to always stay with a group. My guardian is also my commander tagged character so it wouldn’t make sense for me to roam. My roamer are my necro, ranger, and theif.

This is strictly for zerg vs zerg. I use sup sigil of bloodlust on my staff, gs, and shield. Sup sigil of strength on scepter.

It’s very tanky and gs with high bloodlust stacks really wrecks people. You gain roughly 114 free precision from having retributive armor and high toughness from knights which is good for crits.

I thought about taking out the soldiers for the x2x2×2 boon setup but I noticed in large wvw fights conditions really stack up quickly and being able to remove multiple conditions at once with soldiers/pure of voice vs having longer boon duration is more important for survival.

I have the x2x2×2 setup on my cleric set.

Fenrir.3609:

Looking at the screenshots posted, are these builds pve/damage orientated?

Mine is wvw oriented. I’ve also run up to 48 fractals with it successfully.

Danicco.3568:

Math doesn’t lie. People do.
I’m going to quote someone here for a better example:

DeathPanel.8362:

You can dispute my conclusions but you can’t dispute the numbers.

Still trolling and taking people’s words out of context I see.

I didn’t dispute his numbers. I disputed the conclusion that he made based on his numbers.

Zerker guards are also called free badges in WvW.

GonzoNeo.4965:

4 Knights, 2 soldiers and i can reach 3K attack, 3K armor, 15K HP.

Without soldiers i lost almost 1K of health and about 80 power, and i alredy have 3K armor with my mix to win about 100 armor that i dont need and lose other stats more important.

I dont like the idea of using a full set in guardian when you can mix gear and reach better overal stats, i used full knight already time a go but after use a good mix of gear now i had much better stats.

Now i have 3K armor and 15KHP wich is pretty tought for a guardian with AH without lost much offense, 3K attack, 45% critic and 90% damage.

I recommend people spent sometime in buildcraft or gw2skills to test mix gear, you spent much more time getting your gear and pick “full knight” is more comfortable but the overall stats are better to me.

You didn’t actually get better “overall” stats by spreading it around. You simply made tradeoffs in one area to gain in others. Mixing gear does not actually really give you net increase in stats.

Using online calculators may show you the numbers but live testing is where you actually see the effectiveness of those numbers in various areas of the game.

The main question is, does your setup result in a more effective character for what you are doing in game, or are you just basing your decisions on what looks good on an online skill calculator?

Quick side question, what sigil are you using on your weapons?

GonzoNeo.4965:

I have mix of knight and soldier in my armor, and Berseker/Valkyrie and Cavalier in my trinkets with berseker weapons and im pretty happy with my stats, i do a pretty kittenage and never feel squish.

So +1 to mix, i dont like full berseker in my Guardian

This is my stats with mix gear, no food buffs:

That used to be my spec a long time ago actually.

After some playtime I’ve come to the conclusion that mix while very decent is not as good as full knights for AH. (The 300 vit from traits should be sufficient to not be squishy for knight. But in zerk gear you’ll take a lot of damage from hits)

You should give full knights a try. (Use retributive armor)

You can free up a sigil of accuracy for sigil of bloodlust for a power boost since you gain a lot more precision from full knights with retributive armor.

Btw, are you really using soldiers items in that screenshot? Your hp is low for that unless you are only using 1 piece soldiers, in which case I question the reason for doing so since the health gain is minimal.

Brutaly.6257:

the word “full” implies that you actually talking about a mix of berserker and something else. That is contradictory imo when you state that mixing gear is terrible.

You seriously saying “full zerker spec” implies I’m talking about a mix?

I can understand you want to try to twist my statements to fit your failed argument but you should’ve chosen something less unambiguous than that.

Lol.

Lighter.5631:

so pretty much every classes are getting stun breaks according to leaked info, did they make warrior not cc dependable or am i missing something…

Every class already had stun breaks. What they are doing is basically removing stun break from staple skills and adding them to others that no one ever use in order to force people to use them more.

The problem is those other skills have no synergy with the builds so this is basically going to be a direct nerf.

Brutaly.6257:

Also, words of the wise (careful, one of the statements below is false):

DeathPanel.8362:

Guardians will never compare to any of the dps classes in dmg anyway so there’s no point in speccing for damage.

The extra damage squeezed out with a full zerker spec (and I’ve tested it with a full zerker set) doesn’t outweigh the lost utility in support and survivability.

Yeah he contradicts himself and dont see it. I think there is something personal.

There’s no contradiction here. I never supported the full zerk spec for guards. I merely stated that if you wanted to go in one direction, then go all the way. Mixing/matching is not optimal and just makes you mediocre in both areas and defeats the purpose.

And it’s hypocritical for you to call me a troll when I’ve been on topic the whole time while you’re the one that injected yourself into the discussion along with Danicco who is a self admitted troll who is just mad I find him irrelevant.

The fact that he spent all that time diving into the archives just so he can find one paragraph of mine to take out of context shows who has the real personal problem here.

Unlike most of you, I actually tested in real gameplay with the setups mentioned here in real instance runs and wvw to come to my conclusions.

You can dispute my conclusions but you can’t dispute the numbers.

I’ve explained why based on the numbers it’s a bad idea to mix. If you think otherwise then that’s your prerogative.

I doubt there are so many changes for just necros in one patch.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Don’t confuse minmaxing with convenience. In fact, from a minmaxing perspective, 4 warriors/1 mesmer isn’t even remotely a contender for best damage output.

This is what you initially said.
You have failed to justify it.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you read anything I posted beyond the first line, you’d see how I already answered pretty much all of your questions, including how to run a DPS guardian build and how to build for optimal minmax DPS.

I did read your uninformed block of words, and was not impressed or convinced.

You have failed to support your assertion that 4 warriors/1mesmer " isn’t even remotely a contender for best damage output."

To prove that you must give examples of many better team setups for dps since if it’s “not a contender” then by definition there must be many setups that is better in dps.

Just by blindly throwing out the “1 warrior, 1 guardian, 1 engineer, 1 ranger and 1 Mesmer” statement doesn’t make it true. You have to explain how exactly that setup results in higher dps.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel.8362:

Your mixing results in a 12% dmg reduction increase in exchange for 96 less power and 32% less crit severity, that’s a fact regardless of how you try to spin it.

Um, you must have some difficulties comprehending at this point … I AGREE with those results. They are close to the values I also obtained. The disagreement isn’t based on the actual values of some example I present you. That would be pedantic.

The disagreement is if whether your statement that “mixing is terrible” is true or not. Not sure what the barrier is here … is it that hard to understand that statement is just your OPINION and it’s not something you can prove? I’m going to assume at this point, you just won’t get it, even though I and others have attempted to demonstrate the error of your interpretation.

I can only think that continued attempts to explain the difference between facts and opinion to you will only lead to your further ridicule so for your benefit, this will be the last post I make responding to you. Have a good one.

It’s interesting you NOW agree with my numbers when just a few posts back you were using wrong numbers regarding mitigation. (27 vs 25% on knight mix, neglecting the crit severity difference.)

You are just trying to change the topic away from your initial numbers which were wrong/misleading now that I’ve pointed out the real numbers twice.

You’ve also shown your dishonesty by trying to spin the mitigation by saying it’s 100% more when that sounds better than just stating the base fact, which is it’s a 12% increase. (It’s not even 100% technically even if you do take the percentage of the percentage)

Ultimately it does come down to preference, but one thing that can’t change is the actual numbers, which your initial posts were wrong and blatantly dishonest on.

At this point any possible change for guardian would be either to some useless trait or a downright nerf.

So you people better hope they don’t change a thing.

Kcrook.3945:

This is all relevant to WvW and none of it is or will ever be tested by me in PvE. Also, this is from a solo roaming perspective.

I was messing around last night and decided to pull out my scepter and torch and see if I can make anything happen. I know this is a completely offensive weapon choice but I wanted to see, since I play a mainly defensive build, if I could put down more damage in a small amount of time with this choice. I found that I was actually able to synergize very well with my greatsword. I’ll just put below what my skill sequences tended to look like.

1. I open with sc/t and get my autoattack going while closing in.
2. I get on top of my enemy if possible and activate torch4 and immediately activate it again to shoot the flame. If you have trouble closing use scepter 3 to close distance.
3. I was typically fighting melee classes so then I would drop scepter 2 on top of myself and activate torch 5. Torch 5 isnt very strong, but it normally forces your enemy into a dodge roll. By this time they have eaten about 5-6 shots from scepter 2 and multiple autoattacks which hit pretty hard. Not to mention torch 4 and 5.
4. At this time I switch to greatsword. Now, you have a few options here. I personally drop symbol of wrath to protect my immediate area and gain retaliation. I then use leap of faith to close onto my enemy and proc more retaliation for leaping through symbol of wrath. I then use greatsword 5 to get ready for a pull. Normally at this time I am pressing them hard and they are hurting fairly bad so the will try to kite me. I follow for the next few seconds and try to land autoattacks. I will then activate greatsword 5 and pull them in. I see a ton of guardians use gs 5 and then immediately activate it. This leaves your opponent options such as dodge or a teleport. Every class out there knows what the little white sword is flying at them and they know it means bad things for them. For that reason alone I let it sit on my enemy almost for its full duration before I pull them, which allows them to waste more endurance/evasions. Finally, I pull them in and hit with greatsword 2. By this time alot of people are low on health and will try to kite you or you are fighting a bunker. If you are being kited, swap back to torch and use your immobilize or keep pressing with damage. When fighting a bunker class I tend to stay in greatsword and land autoattacks and use greatsword 3 and 5 to close ground. The autoattacks hurt like hell so make them count!

REMEMBER: You have no purely defensive weapon skills with this build. This if solely for fun/experimenting and to get people thinking. I normally run GS-M/Sh.

A little about my build. I run cleric gear, berserker weapons, and a mix of knights/cleric jewelry. I run citadel runes on my armor because without them my crit chance is only around 25-30 percent depending on food. The fury you gain is invaluable. With this gear selection I only have around 2800-2900 attack, again depending on food. I don’t want to go into my traits really as it is my own unique build, but I will tell you that I very very rarely lose 1v1 and every one of those I have lost I beat that same player multiple times thereafter and my loss was due to not clearing heavy conditions or making big mistakes. For more survivability I normally run greatsword and mace/shield.

This post is mainly intended to get people to think outside of the box with the guardian because there are waaaaay too many people running cookie cutter builds out there! Let me know if you have any bizarre weapon combos or stat combos that work well for you. Also, if you are interested in my build please pm me and I will be happy to share it with you. I’m not posting it here because I would hate to run into my enemies in WvW using it :p.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and if enough people are interested I will create a short video showcasing the combat sequence with the GS-Sc/T and it’s capabilities/limitations.

It’s useful in pve if you spec high crit chance, empowering might, and slot sup sigil of strength in scepter and sup sigil of bloodlust on torch.

Both scepter and and torch have attacks that hit multiple times frequently so you can proc empowering might and strength sigil consistently with that setup while building bloodlust stacks.

I don’t see the torch being all too useful in wvw though. The range is low and most people won’t stay in range of your torch attacks long enough to take advantage of it.

Obtena.7952:

DeathPanel.8362:

Yet again you try to spin this with dishonest rhetoric.

So, now I present pure numerical results you can’t dispute, you calling me dishonest. So I will take it that you agree with the numbers I cited and ignore the attack? That’s all I needed to know.

DeathPanel.8362:

Doubling a low base doesn’t make that big a difference,

Well, that’s your opinion. If someone else thinks that trading 10 % effective power is worth an increase of 14% damage mitigation, I guess you will just have to swallow your pride, accept the fact that someone doesn’t agree with you and mix their gear a little bit to get those stats.

I already pointed out where your numbers were wrong so in fact your numbers are more than disputable.

Doubling a very low number doesn’t make it a large number. That’s a fact not an opinion. The fact that you blatantly and dishonestly try to spin it with rhetorical nonsense just proves you yourself don’t even believe it.

Your mixing results in a 12% dmg reduction increase in exchange for 96 less power and 32% less crit severity, that’s a fact regardless of how you try to spin it.

I’d like it if it meant a variety of ways to obtain it beyond fractals. (Crafting, dungeon tokens, coin, laurels, etc)

Obtena.7952:

So yes, if you assume the calculations on that builder are correct, I have increased my damage mitigation 100% for a loss of 10% in effective power simply swapping exotic zerker to exotic knights trinkets. My data and analysis are quite solid thank you very much.

Yet again you try to spin this with dishonest rhetoric.

Btw with knight jewelry you actually get 25% reduction, not 27.

The bottom line is you gained 12% in actual mitigation vs losing 96 RAW power and 32% crit severity. (assuming exotic jewelry)

Doubling a low base doesn’t make that big a difference, so you try to make it sound better by presenting the increase as a percentage of a percentage rather than the actual value again and again and frankly your dishonesty is so transparent it’s sad.

If I were to use your line of dishonest arguments I could easily say that since base effective power is 934 the loss of 386 effective power is equal to the loss of 41%.

Broadicea.8294:

DeathPanel.8362:

Morbyd.3761:

Just curiously, based on achievement points, what do you consider new vs vet?

0-1000 is new. I wouldn’t do any fractals or arah with these types. Most people in this range are on their first char, will have substandard gear unless they have outside help. They will most likely not have experience with most dungeon runs.

1000-2000 is moderately new. Most likely have gone through story mode once, probably not fully geared and moderately knowledgeable about some of the dungeons. If they listen to feedback can get through any dungeon without much trouble. Probably not high fractals since they probably won’t have enough agony resist.

2000+ is experienced. Probably ran most of the exp dungeons a few times, fairly experienced. Should have at least full exotics on one of their chars at this point. As long as they listen to feedback on encounters they haven’t done any dungeons can be done easily.

4000+ is vet. Probably ran all dungeons and maybe even have world completion. I very rarely see any bad players in this group. Everything these people do is like clockwork, they rarely if ever need to be told what to do since they already know what to do.

The above is my estimation of how people are according to their achievement points.

I’d say you need to revise all of your numbers up by 1500 or so. Especially with all of the easy cheesy living story garbage out lately, achievements have been flying around.

You really don’t see rock-solid players until over 5000.

Doing living story still counts as some form of experience of the game I would think. Besides it’s a limited time thing so not everyone is going to farm that for achievements.

For example I have like no achievements from living story because I just simply didn’t bother with it since aside from ascended infused stuff for my alts I don’t really need anything else.

In the dungeons I’ve done recently my numbers seem to still check out roughly.

Gary.7105:

Hello,

I love using the renewed justice to use virtue of justice on every foe. But I have no idea how condition damage scales. If for example I have 500 condition damage, how much more damage does that do?

Burning 0.25 ratio. 328 per second. +25 per second for every 100 condition power.

Don’t go condition damage on guardian. Burning doesn’t stack in intensity, only duration and guards don’t have many ways to apply it effectively and consistently enough for it to be useful.

Slic.9541:

Aiden.6209:

Nice video, i prefer shortbow to greatsword. Whats the build?

I prefer Sb as well. The build is :

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAsfVjAVV2BWKWo2Bi2jM1fM9e0qY1eXhRVhVqA-TsAg2CrIuRdj7GzNybs3MKYFwEEA

Varies not always the same.

Are you using full shamans?

Also, what do you think of the following setup?
x2 Rune of Centaur. +25 Power, 15% bleed duration.
x2 Rune of Afflicted. +28 Cond, 15% bleed duration.
x2 Rune of the Krait. +28 Cond, 15% bleed duration.

For a total of 45% extra bleed duration. I noticed your main dmg is coming from bleed stacks.

Also, I think superior sigil of corruption would help you. (To stack more cond power)

eldain stenlund.4306:

Assassin X.8573:

Remove the root it does to the war and its fine in its current form. Allow for the user to move with their target.

you are kidding.. right ?? you sure you dont want it to have 1200 range also ?

you want a mobile 25 k burst dmg aoe skill ?? on its short cd ??
you need atleast 30 – 40 second cd to balance that crazy dmg with mobility.

I want it to be 1200 range AOE.

Obtena.7952:

The facts will set you free …

Went back again, made a full exotic zerker build (GS, armor and trinkets) and started swapping those three things to knights> I got this:

Full zerker; Toughness 916, Effective power 2586, Damage Reduction 13.6%
Knights trinkets: Toughness 1327, Effective power 2218, Damage Reduction 27.7%
Knights trinkets and armor: Toughness 1506, Effective power 2095, Damage Reduction 32.4%
Full Knights: Toughness 1824, Effective power 1884, Damage Reduction 39.4%

Draw your own conclusions. My favourite part is when I made a ‘terrible mistake’ going to knights trinkets, increasing my damage mitigation 100% but losing a little over 10% of my effective power. Clearly an overall loss. :p

I applaud you for actually using numbers in your argument for once.

The problem here is you conveniently failed to provide the loss of the crit damage severity of approximately 30% in addition to the loss of power of about 368 which are the stats you lost by adding knights if we take your numbers as fact.

Therefore it is far more than a matter of just losing only 10% of your effective power like you say.

Your post is what’s known as a special pleading fallacy.

If we assume your numbers are right then you’ve gained 14% more mitigation in exchange for losing 368 effective power, and 30% crit severity.

Now that all the values are on the table including the ones you conveniently left out, you can decide for yourself if that’s worth it or not.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

DeathPanel.8362:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

juno.1840:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

EM is one of the guardian’s better traits if you have nothing else to put in that slot. It is better than Writ of Persistence or Two-Handed Mastery for greatswords (both are worth about 5% extra damage, same as EM, except EM gives that +5% to the entire party). Even for something like hammer (where Writ of Persistence is mandatory), it’s still worthwhile if you have 30 in Honor. A lot of the time there simply isn’t anything else worth taking with your remaining 10 points, i.e. in a 10/30/0/20/0 spread, you may not need Master of Consecrations and you won’t get as much mileage out of 10 more in Valor or Zeal.

For raw damage EM is better than 2H Mastery — but that’s not really a good comparison. 2H Mastery provides many other tangible benefits that outweigh EM imho.

Such as?

Being able to take actions 20% faster therefore having a de facto 20% damage buff?

There’s an internal CD on EM, so you won’t have many stacks of might active anyway even with a high crit chance build.

Other than the Binding Blade pull, which Soryuju already mentioned, the reduced cooldown is in fact nothing more than DPS increase, since greatsword skills don’t do much else other than raw DPS. Also, it’s not a 20% buff, it’s about 5%. It doesn’t affect the damage output of your auto-attack, nor does it speed up the casting time of skills (and skills don’t start recharging till the channel is finished).

Also, accounting for the ICD on Empowering Might, you usually get about 3 stacks of might, which is about 5% extra damage, which is what I originally said. If there was no ICD you’d be getting closer to 7-8 stacks of might, which would be so insanely good there’d be no reason to ever not take it.

Empowering might only gives you those stacks consistently if you have a lot of crit chance and use something that hits many times like Smite and that’s provided the target doesn’t run out of the damage field.

20% less CD trait also applies to all the CC abilities and buff abilities from Hammer and Staff. That’s what the poster was talking about earlier when he said about the other benefits of having 20% less CD.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

juno.1840:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

EM is one of the guardian’s better traits if you have nothing else to put in that slot. It is better than Writ of Persistence or Two-Handed Mastery for greatswords (both are worth about 5% extra damage, same as EM, except EM gives that +5% to the entire party). Even for something like hammer (where Writ of Persistence is mandatory), it’s still worthwhile if you have 30 in Honor. A lot of the time there simply isn’t anything else worth taking with your remaining 10 points, i.e. in a 10/30/0/20/0 spread, you may not need Master of Consecrations and you won’t get as much mileage out of 10 more in Valor or Zeal.

For raw damage EM is better than 2H Mastery — but that’s not really a good comparison. 2H Mastery provides many other tangible benefits that outweigh EM imho.

Such as?

Being able to take actions 20% faster therefore having a de facto 20% damage buff?

There’s an internal CD on EM, so you won’t have many stacks of might active anyway even with a high crit chance build.

Obtena.7952:

Sure, direct me to the nearest tool that measures the ‘absolute terribleness’ of mixing … Take as long as you need.

You are the one that made the claim to mix gears without actually providing specifics on what pieces to mix, so the burden of proof is on you.

There are plenty of gw2 build tools on the internet, choose one.

Just so we are on the same page, can you please indicate to me where the ‘facts and statistics’ are in this post you made? I just want to make sure I haven’t forgotten what those things are:

I’ve posted full build links on many of my past posts. In those that I haven’t I’ve given figures and specific trait names as well as gear stats and explained why those are useful as opposed to others.

This is totally contrary to your posts, which states totally unsubstantiated things without any builds traits to backup your claims.

The bottom line is, I provide specifics and reasoning while you provide unsubstantiated and therefore useless information.

I don’t know if you are simply doing this to troll or not, which is why I am giving you a chance to actually prove your not trolling by actually staying on topic and providing specifics to why your idea is worth considering.