Guild Wars 2

Glass really needs a strong team to be effective, and to be honest a character that can’t survive on its own just isn’t a strong character. But on the other hand, a character that deals next to no damage is almost as useless. A balance between damage and defence is the goal here.

Personally I lean more towards the tank side of the scale, main reason being that far too many people go full glass these days, in fact I make an effort to turn bosses around into GS warriors that try to “thief” behind them while I hold aggro.

Healing signet, banner of strength (with healing), For Great Justice, Shake It Off (always always, this skill will never ever leave my skillbar), and either signet of rage or Warbanner.

Tank warrior for the win! With improved toughness when reviving I become kitten near invincible, locked in a battle with the victims health and those attacking them, with the hits merely pinging off your armour. Also in certain destroy object challenges (e.g graveling burrows) just bust out the GS and you’ve become the biggest damage dealer there, with the exception of frost bow slingers of course.

Granted, with a well oiled dungeon running machine team, being a tank becomes quickly unnecessary. As most people go high DPS and have long since mastered dodging at crucial times, it’s more of a race to tear through to the end. However with green players its much more practical to have that one player always standing to res the others.

Turbo Whale.1738:

Kuzzi.2198:

Please don’t troll on my serious thread…

This does not transfer over to PvE where fully tank speced eles are about as tanky as berzerker geared warriors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ToSaS9xjQ

You’re trolling your own thread.

I hate seeing videos like this, it always reminds how slow I am at Elementalist. Also using lightning flash during churning earth, can’t say I ever thought of trying that. Still oh so very noob at the profession wow.

Because I’m the kitten avatar that’s why.

6 slots is the Superior version, which you’ll want at level 80. The wiki page on Runes lists every single rune and all it’s bonuses, it’s really great for deciding which one to go with

You need to think of the armour and the rune as separate things. With an unused upgrade slot it’s just armour without a rune in it. Whereas one displaying bonuses already has a rune, if that makes sense.

Armour pieces only have 1 slot. You build up 6 of them by having the same rune across all pieces of armour.

tOss.9024:

Disclaimer: this is my opinion, there are other reasons I’m sure but this seems most prevalent.

The current meta is focused on what an individual can do within a team, not for the team.

The traits and utilities are there, though some traits are a bit skewed from optimal allocation. A warrior has great combo finishers on weapon sets. Low c/d blast, leaps and whirls. They also have low c/d utility blast finishers, and these are generally good for the team as well.(e.g., all banners are blast finishers) We have traits that would be great for team synergy, as well as the war horn.
I have recently been spending a lot of time on my warrior again, and these points really stick out to me. Every time I use a hammer I think about how great a water field or smoke field would be for the team. Things like this happen all the time.
I believe, that once the meta shifts to a stronger focus on synergy and the team as a sum of it’s parts warriors will be much more desirable as a class in tourney play.(aside from lolhbfrenzy)

Now, Im no warrior veteran, I only recently started seriously playing him. So please offer more insight, and things that would make the warrior more desirable teammate in tor current meta.

You don’t like it because it doesn’t have the exact same skills as other professions? The professions are MEANT to be different, and as you get better you will find DIFFERENT ways to support the team, dropping combo fields isn’t the only way. Though I do like switching to the longbow and using banners to rack up a lovely 25 stacks of might for myself and allies. Boons aren’t the warriors strong point, they provide more direct support through healing and staying on the front lines.

You’re missing out it you’re not playing an MMO with other people, that’s kiiiiiiiind of the whole idea. I have thousands of Ascalonian tears even after all the weapons and armour set, it’s good money and xp for other characters.

It doesn’t really matter until you unlock the traits that greatly effect which skills you’re using. Also don’t be surprised if a lvl 80 with full exotics is doing more damage than you, there is very little you can do to match that as the “levelling down” still leaves the 80’s rather overpowered compared to the rest.

As far as doing damage you have too little survivability as it is at that level, going full glass will only make you a burden to the team.

My advice would be to choose a build at lvl 80 (or y’know, JUST MAKE YOUR OWN) and make a start towards that, and see if you like where the character is headed.

A guardian pairs well with anything lol.

GO ANOTHER WARRIOR, with contrasting builds, that look really similar, oh let the festivities begin. Oh and dual warriors have a nasty habit of racking up a long lasting 25 stacks of might.

Perhaps a random statement when defeating an enemy? Maybe veteran or higher? I really have no idea, but that’s sounds like a good start…

There is no wrong profession for dungeons, only wrong builds. A team of any 5 professions is more than capable of doing any dungeon, which always makes me laugh when people in the map chat are all “LF3M AC EXP WARRIOR, ELE, RANGER”. And it’s hardly for speed purposes because being that picky will take longer than doing the dungeon with the first group that they find. Why one time I was even kicked for daring to use an Elementalist.

So to answer your question, any profession will do as long as its built correctly. Whilst all out damage sounds impressive, you really need a solid contribution into tough or vit. Because a player who is always downed is hardly making good use of their “great damage output”. As well as being a burden to those trying to revive you (I know that downed penalty can get some people, but if they go down more than twice in one battle when they’re not even getting aggro’d, sorry, but they will receive no help from me)

I buy rares at level 35 and make it last till 65 (unless I find more along the way) it’s pretty pricey but I usually love the look of the rare craftable armours.

Get used to dying early on as an Elementalist, they only start to shine once you’ve unlocked the higher traits. I found the armour didnt matter that much if I used the staff, as most things are dead before they reach you, whereas duel daggers requires almost constant melee range, which means taking hits you aren’t meant to take at that level.

Have a look through the dungeon reward maces, you can preview them all. Though the ascalon one is glow in the dark so it looks normal in the preview.

Thief by far. Mesmer can, but not so much.

Oglaf.1074:

Oh don’t get me started on the Rangers in AC! They’re are programmed to be such… poo-poo heads, lol

You roll towards them to avoid their arrows and bang! Boot to the head and you go flying out of melee range again, usually followed by a Crippling/Poisoned arrow before you get back on your feet!

I’m trying to solo them as an ele, avoiding each strike, even a tank can’t hold out against thousands of damage with each shot. And I have to say its pretty funny to see them knock themselves over with reflect projectiles.

Donari.5237:

I didn’t find guardian hard, but I spent most of my time learning the game on my thief. That plus having to quickly scan new skill sets when I picked up things like ice bows taught me how to get a feel for what a skill does in a hurry.

Though it really helps to go into the hero pane and read through the various weapon skills once you know enough of the game to understand the tool tips. Do that, and unlock all the skills on a weapon before you rotate in the next one, and you’ll find the set you like. I really like maining scepter/focus with a swap to sword/shield because those weapons move fast and light. But sometimes I have to use a hammer (Lovers fight in AC Story) or staff (bandits in butler path in CM) and it’s good that I opened up and learned all the skills.

My warrior’s settled in on rifle/greatsword, more for the visceral satisfaction than for any theorycrafting reasons. Plus they fit her RP personality. I’d say warrior is even simpler than guardian for the basics — but hanged if I can match the expertise of a warrior charr I know that can solo AC explorable and usually lets a few of us tag along just to speed things up.

There’s always a someone who’s a master at the profession -grins-

I’d have to see it to believe it, I can solo all of it but the event that varies between paths. It can’t be done, path 1 you can’t destroy burrows whilst keeping them off hodge. Path 2 you cant survive against, and kill, THAT many gravelings, half of them just Zerg rush detha anyway. And finally one player does not have enough DPS to clear the burrows quick enough on path 3, they would be overwhelmed instantly. DOES NOT BELIEVE. THE REST OF THE DUNGEON IS EASY, BUT THOSE NO.

A warrior with shout based healing and soldier runes aren’t too shabby. A trait provides healing to all nearby allies when using a shout (so 3 potentially) as well as removing a condition from yourself and allies when wearing 6 runes of the soldier. Whilst I haven’t tried it you can make a condition damage build with bleeding using swords. The warhorn has a skill that turns all conditions into boons for your team.

Also using the longbow and banners you can grant a lengthy 25 stacks of might to yourself and allies.

Elementalists with dagger/dagger and cantrips set to give vigor are agile as all hell. As most of the cantrips are evasive attacks/moves as well. throwing in devastating attacks at the end of dodge rolls etc. I haven’t really gotten the hang of it but I’ve seen people who have, and it is pretty impressive to see such a squishy character dart around a boss dealing crazy damage without a single hit being landed on them (even if they do elementalists have great burst heal abilities.)

I found warrior much simpler, as most guardian skills have x1000 different effects. Just a pain to learn and figure out which combos work for you. But my main is a warrior, so I suppose I’m just used to a very easy to learn profession (which is why Elementalist is doing my head in.)

Toughness sounds legit, as a defense-orientated warrior (people seem to get upset by the word “tank”) I usually maintain a mobs aggro, and a boss will rarely deviate away. However I find as soon as I’m out of melee range, it will switch to the nearest target instead of pursuing me (usually due to being knocked back.) Granted different AI’s act differently, Ascalonian ghosts for instance. Once a ranger fires regular attacks at you, he will rarely change, and will chase you everywhere, however his projectile trap will always be thrown at a different person to the one he’s shooting at. Necro’s seem to alternate regularly, which makes them easy to take down when he’s outnumbered, etc, etc.

I’m on Kaineng. People seem to say its getting more and more deserted but I never have trouble finding parties.

This is more social anxiety than a mere game tactic… If people get downed they don’t start blaming the guardian (and if they do, you may as well kick them right then and there, you don’t need those sorts of people in your party.) the best thing you can do is to keep yourself alive, as long as your up, the battle isn’t over, you can res other people, draw aggro, by protecting yourself you’re protecting your allies.

Don’t give up on dungeons is all I can say. If you find a strong guild party you can go with then it will be infinitely more fun. I find most PUG’s are rather useless at grasping the basic mechanic of reviving people in dungeons. I have a regular 2-3 man guild party and we take many lower level players with minimal defeats. To put it bluntly 90% of the Guild Wars population are a bunch of selfish kitten, but if you find someone who is friendly and is a strong team player, just add them as a friend, and try to build parties with these people

I don’t even know how people manage to hit the numbers above WASD. I’m usually strafing the fastest you can go (forward with either left or right) that doesn’t exactly leave fingers free to comfortably reach up use the numbers. And I’m hardly letting go of the mouse to use the other numpad. anything short of using R but that just seems like pain in the kitten too much button pressing when the mouse is quite capable of clicking the skill then dropping the AoE.

David.4821:

They also need to add a dungeon expertise level according to how many times they’ve done the dungeon, sometimes I get the worst players that don’t know how to do anything and ruins the whole run.

That’s rather heartless as most people (ones such as yourselves) would never give newcomers a chance. Having a newbie on your team only ends badly when the “pro’s” fail to tell them what to do. Because you sure as hell didnt know all the ins and outs of a dungeon on your first run….

Perhaps change certain aspects that REQUIRE multiple people, for example the chain challenge on path 2 of Ascalon catacombs. The rest is completely solo-able, so perhaps jack UP the reward if this was the case.

Shameless self bump

Ever played Left 4 Dead? I propose a similar post level review. Break it down into different events of the dungeon, as well as in total, across a variety of categories. Who did the most damage to the boss ? (condition damage included) Who supported the team the most through healing/boons? Who revived the most? Who got downed the most? Perhaps who maintained aggro the most? Who took the most amount of damage?

These are just a few of the many topics the summary could cover. It could appear right after the dungeon reward is accepted, giving people the option to skip to the next category, or skip it all completely for those not interested.

The reason for this is that it’s very hard to acknowledge those carrying the party. I know that in the heat of battle, I’m only really focussing on what I’m doing. I have no idea what others are doing for me, their actions possibly the only reason I’m still standing.

There’s a regular person I dungeon with, and for whatever reason, I find it significantly more difficult without them. So in a way I believe this person is a huge asset, yet I’m only finding out because of when they’re not there? There just isn’t enough appreciation for skilled team players IMO. Not only that but I personally would like to know how I fared against the other players, am I contributing at all or am I just dead weight? I only seem to be able to tell when I end up fighting something alone, which is rare/stupid to do in a dungeon.

Let me know what you guys think. But I think it would revolutionise team performance to be able to see EXACTLY how each person contributed.

….. I think that…. You’re over thinking it….

http://www.cyclonefanatic.com/forum/attachments/football/16480d1353450049-isu-basketball-will-always-isu-football-http-m-espn-go-com-ncb-rumors-913535e2_why_not_both.png

Warrior and Elementalist haha, the easiest profession to the most difficult. Might I suggest engineer role if you’re into a race matching profession? The buildable turrets and equipable backpacks really make you feel like you’re using technology to beat your opponents. (On that note, a sylvari engineer would be interesting when using the seed turret elite skill combined with all utility turrets/healing turret. YOU WOULD BE SO FORTIFIED WOW.)

My warrior can solo face tank Kholer, it’s slow and painful but very much do able. The chosen race makes no difference as most race specific abilities are rubbish anyway.

I’m lvl 80 with full exotic Power/Vit/Tough equipment (only the rare jewellery though). For Kholer I use mace/shield x longbow to help get him away from his allies. For skills I drop a banner of defense and banner of tactics at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Kholer, slightly around the corner (the distance at which Kholer will attack but his allies will leave/be distracted by the NPC), I do this before starting the battle, allowing enough regen to last as I pull him down (you cop a bit of a beating from his allies especially if there’s a ranger in there, also do note he usually opens up with the spin pull fairly early.)

As far as traits go, I’ve gone 10/0/30/30/0 from memory. With 50% falling damage (not really relevant for Kholer.) can’t remember exactly where they go but I’ve gone with: banner cooldown reduction, mace skill cooldown reduction, shield skill cooldown reduction, shout cooldown reduction, healing banners, oh and turtles defense. For skills I use healing signet, banners of defense and tactics as mentioned above, elite skill is usually signet of rage. The third utility skill can really be anything, I usually go with For Great Justice to try and speed up the battle. Sorry I’m all over the place here, I’ve got runes of the dolyak as well for bit of added regen.

As far as the method goes, you’ll get a knack for learning the order of his attacks, one inflicting poison you will want to counter/block to not cripple your regen. One attack will cripple which you WANT him to land to utilise turtles defense. There’s one unblock able attack which you don’t want to waste a counter or block on. And of course the almighty wire spin, which counter can avoid the wire as you casually walk out of range, block can last the entire spin, or just dodge.

On a side note its the passive regen saving you, combination of banners/healing signet/adrenal healing (don’t waste your adrenalin, keep it at full)/rune of the dolyak.

I find that as the battle goes on he seems to do less and less damage, where I mostly go AFK and tap 5 when he goes to do the wire spin. Hope this gave you an idea of what the warrior is capable of

Elowin.9078:

Go ahead… Talk about gear. It was never my interest or my mention. All I wanted was some title recognition for a player finishing up My Story. Maybe something for finishing PvE and WvW poi, vista, hearts, skill challenges? But NO, the OPs content doesn’t interest any of you at all. You’d rather hi-jack the thread and talk about kittening gear or how easy the game was for you then concern yourselves with gamers who are/were interested in the GW2 story and adventure and some tough times they had finishing it with Anet not giving a rat’s kitten of recognition. Thanks a lot. I won’t have to revisit this place often until a major expansion or GW3 comes out. Seriously Anet—just skip the Solo gaming next time. Just leave the whole thing MMO only. That’s all your die-hard fanboys care about! That and their kittening gear—always their kittening gear!

And for all that why should I take part in any Wintersday activities—to spend real money in your fantasy world when I don’t get any visible recognition for my accomplishments? But a guild commander gets to spend 100 gold on a blue icon over his head jumping around with a sword bigger then he is.

Someoooooooooones mad. Also you do infact get a little star thing next to your name showing that you’ve reached 100% world completion. Apart from that there is no need to show recognition for easily accomplishable tasks. Most lvl 80s have finished their story, so you’re asking for everyone to have the exact same “recognition” what on earth would be the point of that? Congratulations you finished the storyline, nobody cares.

Tolmos.8395:

Elementalist.

Remember that old game Guitar Hero? When it came out, my friends got it a week before I could. They started on easy mode, worked their way up. Easy used only 3/5 buttons. Medium added the fourth. When I got the game, I started on medium. I failed every song, but I kept at it. I ended up advancing to hard mode before my friends, because since they had gotten used to using less buttons at first, it was harder for them to catch up. Where they had to add 2 more, I only had to add one.

I look at the ele the same way. Look at their forum- a large portion of the complaints about the class can be summed up to “it’s too hard”. It’s fragile, required lots more dodging than any other class because of that, and to do comparable damage to any other class you have to do complex rotations. But I guarantee you that as a result, any average elementalist will be a better player than even some of the best guardians, thieves or warriors.

Start on hard mode, and work your way down, IMO.

Worst advice ever. I never would have gotten into the game in the first place as I didn’t find Elementalist a fun or rewarding profession, and would have judged the rest of the game as so.

BlankHearts.8216:

Oh wow thank guys, this is very informative. I’ve been looking into tank builds for warrior but none of them really list what kind of armor I should be using. Is it Toughness and Vitality armors?

I use Power/Vit/Tough on everything. Also the most challenging parts of AC are destroy burrow events. Burrows are immune to conditions and critical hits, so with a maxed out power stat just bust out the GS and you’ve become the best burrow ravager there. Also whilst not necessary to use a tank it is much easier to use one during the chain challenge on path 2 (luring everything onto the traps) and protecting hodgins from gravelings in path 1 (again also valuable as far as destroying the burrows go in that challenge.)

Warrior and ranger were very straightforward for me. Using the rangers pet bear as a tank and only worrying about doing damage was very simple. An all damage GS warrior can cut through PvE with ease also.

Aussie here I play on Kaineng, though its numbers seem to be dropping, I’ll never change though unless the whole guild goes too.

Braxxus.2904:

Dolan.3071:

That’s not very “warrior”, but then again, neither is a rifle.

Every soldier since the invention of gunpowder is saddened by your words :’(

Haha when I think warrior I think a brutish armour plated grunt that headbutts things, weapons with complicated moving parts just don’t seem to fit :P

I usually roll with mace/shield x longbow, and I am traited accordingly (20% cool down reduction on both). But lately I’m finding the extra defense from the shield somewhat unnecessary, so I’ve started to try out the greatsword which everyone rants and raves about. And to be honest the damage increase really isn’t that spectacular, the only thing making it remotely worthwhile is Hundred Blades, which is pretty well useless on mobile enemies. So I was just wondering was there some GS defining trait that I need to invest in which turns it into the rapetrain that everyone seems to think it is or is it just obsolete on a build that’s put a singular point into defense?

Was thinking about this today, does wielding a 2 handed weapon put you at a disadvantage in terms of number of sigil effects? Seeing as you can equip 2 when using an offhand weapon.

It’s pretty much been said, but always stick the group. And I mean the main bulk of people not the one idiot who goes charging off into the middle of the mob, cause that guy is usually me, but I can take it, followers not so much. Also a tank works great in this dungeon, if everything goes to hell you want at least one guy still standing to res. Really unlucky one time, the boss’s almighty scream downed ALL of us, then it proceeded to drop rocks, preventing any sort of self heal. I figured “screw it” and vengeanced up, landing the Warbanner on 3 allies… My death was not in vain haha. Warrior ftw.

That’s not very “warrior”, but then again, neither is a rifle.

I would like to a see a summary at the end of each dungeon. Ever played Left 4 Dead? That would be great. For example outlining how much each player contributed, in terms of DPS, support/healing and damage taken in relation to times downed. Because let’s face it in the heat of battle, you’re hardly noticing what the other people are doing. Support characters are rather under appreciated IMO, most people just look at how much health things lose when you attack them and whine about how little immediate damage you do compared to their glass cannon (my experience anyway.)

Nonlinear.9823:

I use 100% carrion gear with condition duration runes, mostly PvE:

Link to Build

As stated above I don’t recommend crit unless you are going to get at least 50% crit damage to back it up. The build I use doesn’t realy on crits at all, just bleed/burn damage. IMO Carrion gear synergizes well with the build because it gives you vitality and you get 300 toughness from Earth so you have more survival. Throw in weakness on Earth 1 and Earth Elemental and you can act as a tank in a pinch.

I have 65% duration increase on Bleed, 35% on Fire and 20% on everything else (10 points fire + Mad King Runes). Unbuffed I have 1283 condition damage, my bleed ticks for 107 and my Burn for 649. Bleed gets 5% of your condition damage (Eruption basically gets 6×5 = 30%) and Burn gets 25%. I can keep up 18 stacks with burning it is about 2.5k damage per second, with Sandstorm to get to 25 stacks it is about 3.3k damage per second.

One cast of Eruption does about 13.8k damage over 20 seconds. Signet of Fire does about 10.3k damage over 16 seconds. With 20% duration increase I can stack up to 30 seconds of weakness with Earth 1.

IMO if you are going to go direct damage then stack power/crit/crit damage and if you are going to go for condition damage then go condition damage and trade it off for healing because they both scale at about the same rate, 5% to 25%.

I like it. However I was looking through traits and saw that at 30 in arcane you can add things like churning earth to the end of a dodge roll, surely that would slide in nicely with your bleeds and would be worth shuffling 10 points around to achieve? HAVNT actually tested the trait though, but in theory it sounds good.

Don’t know if overly relevant or not, but a Mesmer and regen warrior make a glorious duo. Found out by accident when running a dungeon, the regen was granting constant protection to them due to one their perks.

If anything I make an effort pick up the banners, regular swiftness, a charge which also gets you places faster, and regen, why on earth would you leave it behind? Also I’ve trained it to last longer, only seems to be a 2 second wait from when it disappears till I can drop another one….

Thanks for the comments, bit of an eye opener. I guess I’m trying to simplify a complex profession by sticking to one set of attacks. But I’ll definitely invest in condition damage and start alternating to earth attunement to stack on the bleeding, and eventually start looking at air. Also i might be investing in healing power as on a recent dungeon run I found myself sitting in water attunement, barely managing to keep the front liners from dying.

Put the guide away, just, no. Just play the game, experiment, find what works for you, and go from there. There is no satisfaction in re-creating someone else’s build, in fact the entire concept is utterly pointless. The first thing I do when I hit lvl 11 is look through all the traits, get an idea of where I can take the character.