Guild Wars 2

You can also buy them from the Guild Mission vendor guy if you have a bunch of those saved up

Scepter should be able to work fine. If they’re melee, they’re going to get hit. If they want to stay ranged and strafe dodge all day, smite is on a short cd and should be larger then their strafe. This either forces them to move or get hit. There’s also the immob from skill 3. If needs be you can manually aim the scepter in the middle of their strafe. Between using the orbs and smite to corral them where you want and WoR, you should be able to sit pretty against people for a bit.

Zhaneel.9208:

I like the idea of Mordremoth feeding off of a bloodstone, though somehow I was under the impression that Elder Dragons were much more potent sources of magic in of themselves?

We’re quite potent meat sources ourselves, but that doesn’t stop us from seeking out more meat to consume.

Gotta get those totem axes

So basically, what Thad said. 5/5/0/4/0 for most dps, 3/5/0/4/2 for support, or even 3/3/0/4/4 for most support, although that is usually too much. Hammer is nice for its ease of use and benefits it gives. It’s why I use it.

Of the top of my head, you could run dire armor with soldier everything else, with a 6/4/0/0/4 and scepter for a hybrid ranged and quite tanky build. Permeating wrath and supreme justice (for burning) or absolute resolution (for regen and condi removal). Aim for 100% burn duration (30% zeal, 20% radiance trait, 30% flame legion runes, 20% smoldering sigil for example). The damage from burning and scepter will be pretty nice.

If you want defense in the form of heals, then consider a cleric/zealot/knight mix with force of will to shore up health. You should end up with a bunch of healing power, and a bunch of actual power and precision as well. Consider points in valor for extra toughness and survivability traits.

Unfortunately spirit weapons are rather unimpressive compared to most any other summon. They have a healthbar (that people say is too small) and they despawn and will go on full cooldown after a given amount if time. That means even if they somehow didn’t die to all the aoe flying around, they still might leave you when you most need them.

Aeolus.3615:

Can we at least have videos of dev’s playing guardians and shows us how the class is played?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mcGuhizHEnU
Current as of Mar 3 14

So basically what jerus said. There is a priority system for each person in any sort of content:

1) Doing the job that your class/build is designed to accomplish
2) Damage
3) anything else you can contribute

He brings up a good point that we might forget sometimes, in that “what else are you going to so when you don’t need to do #1?”. Even fit my 2k+ hpow guardian I have for fun, after trying to pump out all the heals I can, I focus on raising damage, because there’s nothing else to do. You can’t just stand there in a zerg or on point or in a dungeon doing nothing because you don’t have anything to cc or any conditions to remove, you’ll just attack and add whatever small amount of damage you can do, even if it’s pitiful.

Even meta builds don’t builds for full damage. We have some “theoretically highest dps builds”, but no one actually recommends them, because the build that sacrifice a bit of damage to add in support are much more desired. You’re properly building towards the support you need to give first, then adding in whatever extra damage you can afford.

Note, this doesn’t mean I don’t want there to be even more options for support, or to see conditions and cc have a more game wide application than currently, but we’ll have to wait for some more updates for those.

Its likely because knockback isn’t too insignificant of a thing. They can also cause interrupts, which could proc perplex runes. If anything they were changes for consistency across professions. Then again, maybe not.

I probably just failed at proper capitalization to make my points. “meta” is an abstract term that encompasses many concepts. The “Meta” is specific in relation to something specific. That’s how you have a pve meta. It’s the Metagame in relation to pve (Usually people don’t capitalize anyway, and such specifications are usually moot).

I still think we’re saying the same things, just two different ways, or with different weights.

Conversely, what they could do is have more bosses with boons. Up the toughness and lower the vitality a bit, and conditions would be in a better comparative spot than otherwise. This also has the bonus of not requiring any splitting of mechanics for different game modes.

Honestly, I think PvE encounters need to be built more like average player builds, with something like defenses x5 or x10 and offense x3 or x6 (of course, these are random placeholder numbers). This way, you get some high vit low toughness mobs that melt to direct, and some low vit high toughness that melt to conditions. They could also stand to have some more healing done, remove the defiant, and give them stability periodically like you would find in WvW or PvP. For all the talk about not wanting to split skills for different game modes, and having things become unrecognizable, its still pretty jarring to go from PvE dungeons to and pvp format.

Impact.2780:

Ghotistyx.6942:

That’s not entirely what Meta means
-snip-

You’ve taken the single word ‘meta’ , identified it as a prefix, and appended ‘game’ to it.

Meta (when capitalized) is the same as Metagaming, without its base (at least, how I used it in my previous post). What I was going for, but lost to tangent, was that the Meta isn’t merely the most popular, but it becomes the most popular because it is thought to be the best. This is derived from the theorycrafting A and B do, and fed to the masses of C. When you get into a game mode, there are some assumptions that are made, which enable them to take a meta of their own.

The PvE (dungeon) Meta is full direct damage. There has been nothing so far that looks to move that from its spot. In WvW, it seems that for zerging, you’ll want damage backliners, with Control frontliners a la Warriors and Guardians. There’s nothing saying Rangers can’t be part of that frontline, also providing lots of control via Immobilize, but its not the Meta. In PvP, theres a lot of talk about a condition meta, where it is perceived that condition builds are best at accomplishing PvP tasks. There is nothing “in the game” that will tell you condition builds are better or worse than direct damage. There’s a slight but significant difference to finding things by “playing the game” and getting info “in the game”.

The point of the above paragraph is to illustrate that the perception of what builds are and do, entrench the Meta. There are many ways to contribute to the goals of a game mode or playstyle that aren’t part of that perception. This brings me to another point.

Xae Isareth.1364:

^However, awesome player+meta>awesome player without meta.

There’s nothing said about the anti-Meta. Anti-Meta, as I’m referring to it, is not a disregard for the current Meta, but rather its own meta built to counter the Meta. This doesn’t exist so well in PvE, where your encounter design is the anti-Meta, and once built, is largely the same. However, in pvp formats, the anti-Meta is very much worth building towards. If in WvW Hammer trains are the Meta, you’ll probably want something to try and stop them. If you do well, you’ll start a smaller meta that can put a stopper on the Meta. Depending on how well you accomplish this goal, you could potentially remove Hammer trains from the Meta (unless of course, there’s nothing to replace it. They’ll stay, but they’ll have to make room for your counter-train defenses).
All I’m saying really, is that people need to start learning how to optimize fun, rather than builds. If your fun comes through builds, that’s great, keep doing it, but focus on the fun first, and everything falls into place. I’m not trying to have an argument about semantics or anything with anyone, just trying to get some knowledge out there to help those who don’t know, or are confused. So, in reference to this quote above me, the anti-Meta could be much better than the Meta with equal skill, depending on how its built.

The point of the Meta is, that the game won’t tell you itself that Hammer trains were even a good idea. There is no trait text that will say “This pairs will with this trait, and if you get a bunch of gaurdians and warriors, you’ll be pretty dangerous”. This has to come from out of the game, or “beyond the game” thought to develop. As I also mentioned above, rangers can actually perform fairly well as a frontliner in a Hammer train. They don’t have Hammers, but they accomplish the ideas of the Hammer train, and that is Control. Their control is via Immobilize, and depending on pets, fear or the like. However, the perception is that rangers can’t actually do that, and so they aren’t part of the Meta.

All I’m saying really, is that people need to start learning how to optimize fun, rather than joining the Meta. If your fun comes through the Meta, that’s great, keep doing it, but focus on the fun first, and everything falls into place. I’m also not trying to have an argument about semantics or anything with anyone, just trying to get some knowledge out there to help those who don’t know, or are confused.

Svarty.8019:

Ghotistyx.6942:

Guardian > enemy > allies. Boom, cone skills justified.

Eh? What just happened?

The guardian sits on the left facing the enemy, while his skies are on the right. Any cone skills can now hit both the enemy (if necessary) and his allies.

Guardian > enemy > allies. Boom, cone skills justified.
1-2k HP won’t change anything about guardians, and 1-2k dps is a drop in the bucket.

Really, what we could use is some more access to damaging conditions through skills or traits, and since slightly better ranged prowess. The prior I’m starting to feel might come soon (I don’t have the link, but a Dev stated that before kindled zeal appeard, that they were looking into opening up conditions for guardians. First would come kindled zeal and guardians would have to rely on sigils and runes, but then later more options would come. Radiant retaliation is one, but I think there is more). The latter, maybe not so soon according to the ready up. We’ll have to see. Maybe we’ll get some melee stick instead. Who knows.

Kindled zeal really does feel out of place. Unless Anet decides to provide more diversity in our damaging conditions, there isn’t really much use in going for it. I would expect to see either the trait drop to master, or we might be close to seeing a true condition weapon for the guardian.

For radiant retaliation, I feel like a x/6/x/6/x base with settlers in PvP, or shaman armor settlers everything else for wvw would be a preferred setup. You get about 20k health, 1k+ condition damage and healing power (-3khp in PvP). Everything else can go towards increasing those stats further. Maybe going into signets or shouts out both. You’ve still got 2 points to play with and runes aren’t spoken for. The largest problem with that is again, we don’t have a lot of diversity. Doom and geomancy sigils will only get you so far. We just need a little bit more, and we’ll have done fairly comparative dps condition and bunker condition builds.

Impact.2780:

The people C end up using one of the builds that people A made, and that was the most popular among peoples A and B. This becomes the meta. So ultimately, what you’re suggesting is indeed what happens. ‘Meta’ is just a word which means ‘most used’ and it is most used because it is believed to be the most effective at a particular purpose.

That’s not entirely what Meta means, but the results end being the same. Your ABC type people is largely correct. I would name myself a B type player. Particularly with thief. I think in concepts, and then decide which one I want to use for each class.

P.S. (This should really be in the balance forum methinks)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta
Meta as it applies to GW2 involves a few things. It has the definition here as “beyond”. The Metagame is “beyond the game”, or, information gathered outside the “in game text” in order to create something optimal. Optimal for what, depends on the focus. There is a healing meta, and control meta. There are individual meta builds within each profession. When people talk about the pvp meta, they’re (or should be) referring to team comps that perform optimally in either their particular group, or for most teams in general. Now, this performing optimally is based on what people do outside the game, or, theorycrafting, number crunching, and dedicated testing to find the true values of skills and traits. Things like damage and healing co-efficients are meta knowledge. The game doesn’t outright tell you these numbers, but by using them, you can find out how much more dps you’ll get per individual skill when you raise your power.

There are multiple metas that exist. People tend to get bogged down in specific metas at the exclusion of others. Some game modes don’t offer much to other metas. Some people have just never even heard about certain metas. But, they all exist. When in WvW, you don’t have to run a roaming or zerg meta build, at least one that’s meta to the community. You may have a separate build that is more finely tuned to your particular goals in playing, or skill set. So far, every post has some valid points. What I would like to say, is create your own meta. Find out what gives you playtime gratification, and build towards increasing that. There is no other way to play, than to maximize your individual enjoyment. If that means you need to run speedclear dungeons, then do so. If that means you need to become nigh-unkillable in WvW, then find out how. Once people understand that, then we won’t have need for Leet vs. Casul arguments. This becomes the ultimate play how you want. Optimizing your desired playstyle.

You shouldn’t have any problem using a Hammer in dungeons. If your group cares enough about stacking might at all, they’ll likely know they should stack might before a fight, leaving you free to drop symbols to your hearts content during. Now, I wouldn’t mind being able to chance which field our symbols drop, but people complaining about “losing stacks because of light fields” is likely unwarranted in dungeons. PvP and WvW are a different matter, but those take different coordination anyway.

Aza.2105:

I don’t think Anet will be making changes to our traits any time soon. My guess is that they feel and see what we have now is completely viable, its just the general perception of the player that causes them to feel what we currently have isn’t viable.

This was warriors a few months ago. Anet has plenty of ways to test and math out things internally, so they might think we’re in a good spot mathematically, and are just waiting for the community to realize what it’s always had. That doesn’t mean I want the class to stagnate, but it’s easily a reason it feels stagnate.

By the six, I commands this thread to be raised from the depths of October 2012!

Still wouldn’t mind LB or inland spear.

Thaddeus has it. Builds are correct, timing is essentially correct (not that the math is wrong, but that untraited, SoP disappears, and traited, you have one overlapping tick. There was a buff some time ago that changed writ of persistence to 2s flat, instead of 50% duration. This change alone increased hammer dps by… 33% I believe people said, and made hammer a viable pve dps weapon.

Also, if writ of persistence and symbolic power were the exact same cost, WoP would be better. Luckily you can have both.

(Phone formatting is weird)

Hammer does the same thing as mace 2, even more often. Plus, you’d want to stay might before you even get in combat, and if you really care this much about dps, then I would expect your fights to last shorter than 20+ sec, so in combat might stacking should also be moot.

Consider Runes of the Wurm over Exuberance. You’ll gain 222 Ferocity, while losing 121 power, 87, Precision, and 52 Hpow. You can drop curry butternut for sweet and spicy butternut and with RHS and Fury, you’ll still have 71% crit. If you switch to Valkyrie weapons, you can further up your power and ferocity at a slight cost to toughness and vit.

modified armor page with some options to consider. Depends on how much you value that precision. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNAsfRl0ApbolDxdI8DNh/QY9xUAWvX3e+B-TViFABDcEAU7UAkmeAFV/Jn9HuSJIAPAAmU+ZnmgAAIA3sNbzbG4oH9oH9oHtduzduzduzSBExyI-w

If you’re going to be zerging, I’ll vouch for Sigil of Celerity. its be crazy

Also, there is no armor cap, soft or hard.

Armor accounts for about 30% of your stats, while trinkets cover around 50%.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment
Check the table towards the bottom of the page.

Also, a reason for fire on sword is to give some more aoe to an already fairly aoe weapon. It doesn’t really matter though, as long as you get the procs going on your damaging weapon.

It can (at minimum): force the opponent to pop a cleanse, otherwise they get 4s of reduced movement and skill recharge, and/or be another piece of the whole chill puzzle like we have now, but for all weapons instead of just hammer. Also, the nondescript active could make it worth having. It’s often the case with the current 3 virtues.

Also, RNG isn’t bad. It’s like people think it’s polio or something.

Anet creates the tools, but it can’t make people use them

924 isn’t a lot. You can easily get towards 2k malice, which is about 500 a tick, or 328 in pvp venues. Those are numbers back at pre-retal nerf. It was easy to see burn and hybrid builds evolve out of the Apr 15 patch, but I have yet to see people try out Radiant Retal.

People could be running around with this:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWl0ApSoFCxRIEENR8QZ9JsCRa1BQDslYdiA-T1xCABAcEAsU9H82f44PAQe6CSUJYWK/CAgAMzZGAGv4Fv4Fv4ZmzcmzcmzsUATKNC-w

With Might and Corruption, you should be seeing 3857 Malice, which equates to 776 a tick in PvE, and 512 in WvW (sans Might is 2809, 619 and 408 WvW/PvE respectively). In PvP, http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJARWl0ApSoFCxRIEENR8QZ9JsCRa1BQDslXtDA-T5wCwAAOCAC3fQbZAA is probably your best bet, which is 3159 Malice; 443 ticks or 2170 sans Might, at 345 ticks.

I’ll say it again, I’m interested in whatever people come up with to make use of Radiant Retaliation.
(I realize the Malice Sigils don’t stack, and they aren’t calculated that way in the editor. 3857 is a correct number)

Honestly, glacial heart in its current implementation could be excellent for a 4th virtue. 2-4s -ish chill on crit every 30s, with damage and some other effects on pop.

The balance team is way ahead of you. This past April 15th -ish they added a trait called radiant retaliation. This trait let’s you use condition damage instead of power at a better scaling rate. You’ll only need 924 condition damage to out pace power, so go out there and build a retal condi guard! I believe in you.

IJust want to point out how well written and useful CMF’s post is. I second everything he said.

I’ll drop in my two cents:

I run a 2k hpow build for my preferred wvw setup. Armor is magi with monk runes (oh hey, you can buy exactly that from AC) with cleric everything else. Staff/mace+shield, 0/0/4/6/4 with battle presence, mace trait, VoR trait (I’ve forgotten all these names… Why), and whatever else I can choose to increase my healing options. Sigil of benevolence on staff and sigils of water (?) on each set.

The hps is a little insane and because of that magi armor, you’re sitting at 20k+ hp after guard stacks. The first day I brought it out, we had a ZvZvZ in SMC that I just sat in for about 10mins. This wasn’t “poke people from the edges and how they don’t see me”, but rather " tag all the things! Heal all the dommages!".

Something like this might suit some well and it might not, but unless you’re personally severely outnumbered, you should never die, nor will any of the people in your general vicinity.

You could mix cleric trinkets and knights everything else, particularly if you wanted to take force of will. If not, then you might want to add some vitality in that armor mix. Generally, you’ll want 2.8-3k armor, and 15-17k+ hp depending on healing power. If you’re at ~1k hpow, then 15k should do fine.

I’ve got my own thresholds for numbers, but I’m sure a few other people could continue to point you in the right direction

I wouldn’t mind kindled zeal dropping to master, though I don’t know what would take its place. It’s not like you have to take kindled zeal with radiant retal either, and full dire in wvw isn’t terribly squishy. For PvP, best bet might be rabid or settlers x/6/x/6/x with force of will. You’d have to get your conditions from sigils and runes, but that’s life.

One concern in PvP formats is the retal damage reduction. You’re doing 33%(?) less than you would be in pve, which kind of hurts the point. Might be worth messing around with in hot join for a change of pace, but I don’t think there’s anything going for it yet.

Lo and behold, we have chill on hammer crit. We also have chill on hit and chill on weapon swap. Now, since I’d these options aren’t class specific, but they are options and it’s up to people to take them.

Plus, a cripple version of voj would be too much, considering guardian is balanced around not having that.

Right. Chill doesn’t deal damage, so only condition duration is useful. The build technically has 110% chill duration, but that extra 10% is worthless (capped at 100%).

And for messiah, possibly carrion instead of dire might suffice.

There was nothing random about trait placement. GS is a fine secondary weapon to hammer. Radiant fire is for the burn duration foremost, but you could run scepter/torch for an extra 5% damage on the swap and better use out of radiant fire. (The only traits that aren’t really locks are 2 in valor and radiance)

Also, don’t know what is meant by conditional damage of since skill, but the burns add 650ish dps, while glacial heart has some direct damage, but is in no way emphasized. The idea and key behind this build is 1) perma chill 2) perma burn 3) stacking damage modifiers for chill and burn. You get all the benefits of chill with the added pressure burning supplies to deal more damage by virtue of stickiness and if course, damage mods.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASBmIeos8DehqDgG4RvcHeSA-TVyDABRcBAQVJ4PK/Aw83H6CmZ/BdU/BhnAgDHCASBAxwK-w

Something like this is what I was talking about. Swap some sigils around and mouse over their durations on the skills page.

The key, like a few of us have said, is to combine the chill with other sources (and increased duration). Sigil of ice and/or hydromancy being big ones.

I had a build I theory crafted a bit ago (can’t post it atm) that had double duration burn and chill, with 80% duration everything else. 6/4/4/0/0 , runes and sigils of ice, amplified wrath, +15-25% damage mods depending on traits, etc. Basically, perma burning (~650 ticks) perma chill, lots of vuln, 3k armor, 15-17k hp.

The key to building it, was stacking all the durations I could get my hands on, with all the sources of application. Glacial heart adds a significant chill uptime that covers the downtime of your sigils and rune, which in turn cover the downtime of glacial heart.

If I remember, I’ll try posting a link

These changes weren’t made with only spvp in mind. The other traits do have their uses in game.

Also, what I meant was the retal duration trait gets merged into retaliatory subconscious, leaving room for the new trait that gives +11% per virtue

Anet just overhauled runes and sigils, along with giving each prof 5 new grandmaster traits. If you don’t think that’s changing classes, I don’t know what.

What you really need to do, Is take it out to pvp.

Glacial hammer, sigils of ice and maybe hydromancy, runes of ice, and then see how it plays. Other classes might do perma chill better, but this is fun to play in its own right.

If we take carpboy’s suggestion:
4th master trait replaces retal duration, which is merged with retaliatory subconscious. Changed to +11% speed for each virtue on (passive or active? There’re good reasons for either). Boom, done.

Because radiant retaliation fits even better in radiance than amplified wrath does, comparatively. Amplified wrath also directly affects burning, giving you the one-two punch of duration and damage in that line. Radiance augments retal damage, which basically gives you another condition source. Problem is, the feathered cap on retal hurts that kind of build in the venues where it would be most useful, wvw and spvp.

Amplified wrath builds are easier to use, particularly in a hybrid format, whereas radiant retaliation is a much harder beast to tame.

This class is great at protesting. It’s forces on tank allow it to for support and dps role at the same time. Hammer allow for most force on tank while dps role.

Also, it’ll be worth grabbing character slots to make an engi and necro along with your guardian.

Threads like these make them run away and his in their cubicles

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon

These aren’t relevant to pve dps, as you shouldn’t be running meditations. Also, GS isn’t even the best guard weapon. Technically, scepter is best dps, but this is assuming all of smite hits. Sword/focus will be better than gs, except for when you’re using gs 2-5 in a burst. Hammer/gs is going to generally be your best real dps, but it might not be worth it to spam light fields during many fights.

And of course, you bring a guardian for the utility. Otherwise every group would be 5 lh ekes eles

It’s a stat that needs to be invested in, like any other. I’ve got one guardian who does exactly that. 2.2k healing power, and between staff, mace, and battle presence, i’m literally a walking healing signet handing out 400 tick regens and empowering for class heal levels of HP. Now, I’ll be the first to admit it’s really only useful in wvw, but that’s exactly where it’s the most welcome. It’s usefulness are like conditions, in that they take time to become more and more useful.

In regards to op’s questions, it’ll come down to whether he wants to go full out heals like I described, or use it for speed, might, wards, and tagging. I used to carry my staff everywhere on my main guardian, but I’ve since replaced it with greatsword, as that now benefits me more in my non healing power char. I personally suggest going a more damaging route for op, rather than the full healing one. I’m just saying it’s not useless, or even scales bad, because at those numbers, with all effects stacked and considered, you can really start to see the effects.

They always have, it’s just easier to get to high end dps on a war. Not sure where you got your metrics for popularity, though that’s largely irrelevant.

Completely false that healing power week do nothing for you. You are correct in that might and swiftness work just as well in any armor (barring boon duration).

I’m just going to say this is a terrible list, because that’s all it deserves