Guild Wars 2

Here’s why condition builds are lesser than regular damage builds.

Person A uses a condition build, person B uses a damage build. For simple maths, the A will do 100 damage with bleeds, and 600 with burning. B will do 3K damage per auto-attack swing

If person A could keep up 25 bleeds and perma-burning, he would do 3.1K every second (not counting attack damage) while B does 3K every half second. Conditions are usually more single target too unless you’re a Necromancer with Epidemic

This is a challenge because the game is designed for any combination to be able to do any dungeon/etc.

I think the main issue is you just don’t get enough out of Toughness, Healing Power, or Condition damage

Toughness can protect you a little bit but even a full Toughness build won’t keep you up for eternity. Compared to crit damage it doesn’t scale nearly as well.

Healing Power doesn’t scale well with anything except maybe a few skills. It especially doesn’t scale well with many traits or utility skills thus pushing Healing support builds out of the way

Finall Condition Damage, DoT builds can be really fun to play but this stat scales poorly. Between having to stack conditions (bleeds mostly) to do decent damage, there being a cap, and those stacks not lasting incredibly long amounts of time, puts this set up behind. Bleeds only get 5% of Condition added to their damage. I think this should be at least 10%.

Another issue Condition builds have is they don’t scale with increased damage traits like Berserker’s Power or Vulnerability. I think this would help condition damage builds immensely. As it stands right now if you go full damage, conditions are good additional damage. If you go full condition damage, your regular damage doesn’t support it as well

I don’t like going under 10 gold so make sure you have some left over cash. So aim around that area and you shouldn’t have to worry about waypoint costs/armor repair/etc.

Mace/Shield works great on this one. Use Berserker’s Stance for condition immunity, Balanced Stance for the stability, and Frenzy when you’re ready to burst the boar down.

Keep the boar targetted and when Strugar is ready to throw the meat use Shield Bash, Skull Crack, or Pommel Bash to get a leg up on Chomper. Get 4 stacks of meat then use Frenzy to break the stun and burst them down

Here’s how I did it.

Typical 30/25/0/0/15 build. Utilities were Healing Signet, Signet of Stamina, Balanced Stance, and Endure Pain
Traits III, IX, and XI in Strength. VI and X in Arms. and V I believe in Discipline.

Weapons were Sword/Sword and Longbow. I know I had Greatsword traits but forgot to change them.

I did phase 1 with Sword/Sword equipped. Mobility + 2 second or so block. The first phase shouldn’t take alot of dodging. After I threw the last Orb of Blazing Light I would use Impale on Liadri while she was doing her weird spin thing. Then I switched to Longbow for the rest of the fight. I ran straight to outrun the AoE of death until I was clear, then I would turn and shoot at her, backpedaling. Combustive Shot is a great skill for this fight and when you can land it, Arcing Arrow bursts her HP down a bit. Balanced Stance gives Vigor if you need for extra dodging, Endure Pain is if you’re in a bind. Signet of Stamina is for sustained Endurance Regen and Condition wiping

It really isn’t a hard fight but it’s hard. Takes good execution

Wonder if instead of increasing the condition cap they could add that damage to one of the bleed stacks

Example being if you have 25 bleeds doing 100 damage, and stack another bleed tha does, say, 75 damage. That one the bleeds ticking would do 175 damage. Probably too complicated to implement though

I found him real easy to beat once I figured out to just range him down, strafing to avoid his auto-attack while staying inside the ring. The fire fields on the ground don’t do much damage if you keep moving from what I noticed

I don’t see why Greatsword is a bad weapon. Skill 2 can give you 6 Might on top of all the Might you get from Shattering to spread to the group. Skill 4 does a ton of damage like Warrior’s Whirlwind Attack. Skill 5 knocks the Slave Driver back into the wall or I think it can at least

I didn’t vote for Ellen because she’s human. I find Charr cooler, my main character is a Charr Warrior.

As for the Fractal, I would like to see the Abbadon Fractal, but I don’t do Fractals much, so meh.

I voted for Ellen Kiel because she’s not as slime ball like Evon Gnashblade. I was pretty sure I was gonna vote for her but when I did the candidate trials and she said she wanted to return the gold to the people instead of using it for her campaign, unlike Gnashblade. That pretty much sealed it

ish. They have similarities both good for different things. Comparing Berserker Stance to Signet of Fury, only similarity is the Adrenaline gain and they even do that differently. Signet of Fury gives 30 strikes all at once. Berserker Stance gives 64 strikes over time.

Berserker Stance compared to Signet of Stamina, Berserker Stance reduces conditions duration applied to you by 100%. Signet of Stamina just cures them all. Berserker Stance doesn’t do anything to conditions already on you

Now, Balanced Stance and Dolyak Signet are very similar. But they’re pretty balanced. Dolyak Signet gives you a nice boost to Toughness, but you lose that if you activate it. It also has a longer cool down than Balanaced Stance (assuming it’s traited, 8 seconds longer). Balanced Stance doesn’t give the Toughness boost, but it gives Swiftness. I do think this stance needs a little something more though. Maybe gain 2 stacks of Might for 10 seconds when people try to stun/knockdown/daze/launch/knockback you

I’ll probably never use it. Would be alot better though if all of it’s attacks were Physical Skills though then it would be effected by the trait and do really good damage

Endure Pain is fine. It lasts longer than most invulnerable skills but doesn’t block conditions like the others do. It can be traited to last 5 seconds compared to the usual 3 seconds. The only thing that lasts longer is the Ranger’s Signet of Stone at 6 seconds. But for the Ranger to be effected by it they have to go 30 points into Marksmanship and take the trait.

Berserker’s Stance is our condition immunity, it doesn’t block direct damage but it stops all conditions for 8 seconds (10 traited) unless they got some condition duration, and has a 60 second cool down. Very powerful. Now I don’t see how signets and stances are copy/paste except maybe Balanced Stance.

Frenzy = Gain quickness for 6 seconds. Take 25% more damage

Berserker Stance = Reduce Condition duration by 100% for 8 seconds and gain 8 strikes of adrenaline every second

Endure Pain = Take no damage from attacks for 4 seconds

Balanced Stance = Gain Stability and Swiftness for 8 seconds. I could see this maybe having retaliation but, don’t know if it’s needed.

Compared to..

Signet of Might: 180 Power all the time unless activated. Activated your next 5 attacks can’t be blocked

Signet of Fury: 180 Precision all the time unless activated. Activated, refill your Adrenaline

Signet of Stamina: 33% Endurance Regeneration all the time unless Activated. Activated cleanse all conditions

Dolyak Signet: 180 Toughness all the time unless activated. Activated gain Stability for 8 seconds

Healing Signet: Gain 400 HPS all the time unless activated. Activated heal for ~3500

Signet of Rage: Gain 1 strike of Adrenaline every 3 seconds while in combat unless activated. Activated gain Fury, Swiftness, and 5 stacks of Might for 30 seconds

I fail to see the copy/paste

30/25/0/0/15 will maximize your Greatsword damage. You get a 15% damage boost from Berserker’s Power, 10% Greatsword damage boost from Slashing Power. 1 stack of Might every time you crit for 5 seconds. 10% damage to bleeding foes. Finally 15% extra crit damage from the Discipline Line.

The 10 point trait you pick in Strength and Discipline is up to you, I personally like trait III in Strength since I don’t dual wield (Hammer off-set), and VI in Discipline.

As for utility skills, when there’s a group I run For Great Justice, Banner of Strength, Banner of Discipline, and Battle Standard. This is mostly for dungeons. If you’re running with your friend and he’s a Warrior, I recommend y’all both taking For Great Justice and On My Mark, one person with Banner of Strength, and one with Discipline. Can use Signet of Rage for your elite in the open world

Runes need to be looked at, alot of their effects just aren’t worth it when compared to Orbs. Like the Rune of Infiltration, you do 10% more damage to foes with less than 50% health with the 5 piece bonus, gain 50 precision, and cloak when under 10% health with the 6 piece bonus. Or you could use Ruby Orbs to get 12% critical damage, 160 power, and 84 precision.

Would be more enticing to use the Rune of Infiltration if it was a 20% boost to foes under 50%, and gave more precision.

I’d like to se the damage on Powerful Banners increased or changed to Allies gain 50 power when in range of one of your banners, or, 25 Power for each of your Banners they are affected by

@Qin, 8/10 of Guardian, somehow got the tattered armor look to work for a Guardian, I usually a full heavy armor look or lighter armor look to fit.

6/10 Warrior, just really isn’t my style but good job getting it look right with the Hellfire stuff.

9/10 on your Elementalist, nice combination of armor and good dyes. Looks like a Water Elementalist

@OliverT, 7/10. Good looking character. Has a royal or noble look about him

Here’s my Warrior, Thief, and Mesmer. I posted them in the Mix and Match thread too.

Posted my idea for Warrior 2 handed Axe several days ago

Skill ideas for Greataxe:

Adrenaline Skill: Decapitate, does high damage, each bar makes the damage increase from Vulnerability for this skill 1.33>1.66>2X more effective (so if the target has 10 Vulnerability, when this skill hits it’s like having 13>16>20 Vulnerability)

Auto-attack chain Penetrating Chop: Does damage and causes 1 Vulnerability for 6 seconds. Penentrating Blow, same damage and causes another stack of Vulnerability for 6 seconds. Agonizing Chop: does more damage then the other 2 previous skills, and applies 2 vulnerability for 6 seconds

Skill 2, Executioner’s Strike: High burst damage skill, 10 second cool down

Skill 3, Charging Strike: Leap at your foes (600 range), with a powerful swing, gain 3 Might for 5 seconds if you hit, 12 second cool down.

Skill 4, Rending Sweep: Swing your Greataxe 360 degrees, causing 5 Vulnerability for 8 seconds, and doing high damage. 20 second cool down

Skill 5, Power Attack: Swing your Greataxe as hard as you can, doing damage and knocking foes down for 1 second. 30 second cool down

Cool downs and Vulnerability might have to be balanced, but I thought it would be cool if the weapon focused on taking advantage of Vulnerability

Had another post suggesting that Executioner’s Strike could apply 3 Vulnerability like Maul, and Rending Sweep could be the big Vulnerability applier and do 10 stacks for 8 seconds

I enjoy playing because I like my guild, it’s pretty casual, not much activity during the day but we try to do a dungeon or two every night. I enjoy getting armor/weapon skins I want for my characters, doing word bosses occassionally for money. I like getting most of the achievements in the Living Story events and I’m looking forward to many good updates that are down the road

Best tip I can give is if you’re curious on how anything works, type /wiki whatyourecuriousabout. For example, if you wanted to get more info on Skill A you would type in /wiki Skill A

Champions all over Tyria are gonna be having their loot drops bettered, I believe the Rapier will have a chance of dropping as well as those purple glowy mini Fellblade swords in the screen shot

Hey Duke, thanks for the compliment. I used the Makeover kit and that was the closest I could get. I wish it was a bit darker but I’m sure Anet will add more colors over time. She was always one of my favorite characters, as a Trueblade she was absolutely unbeatable in Radiant Dawn till the last couple missions for me

Got 2 new pics, my Warrior and my Thief has gone through a makeover

Warrior is using T3 Charr Helmet, CoE Chest and Shoulders, Priory Gloves, and HoM Legs and Boots. Dyes are Sage and Graphite, with Burnished Steel in areas that needed to be lighter to match properly

Thief has been changed to look like who she’s named after, with the rest of my Fire Emblem character copies. Using the Karma Duelist chest piece, Rawhide Gloves, Vigil Leggings, and Outlaw boots. Using Black, Antique Gold, Apricot, Grey, and Pottery dye

Staff Ele is probably the combo field spamming one. You got Lava Font, thats a fire Field. Geyser and that AoE Ice FIeld, the only Lightning Field in the game, and a blast finisher in Earth Magic.

There’s also Guardian who produces a bunch of light fields with Symbols.

Now you said you like Banners, Banners are incredible in dungeons and having one on hand (Discipline or Strength) is great in open world PvE. When I’m with my guild in a dungeon I usually run For Great Justice, Banner of Strength, Banner of Discipline and Battle Standard. I’m full glass cannon and all the while im supporting the group by giving them massive damage boosts. It’s awesome

Warrior’s support is the ability to increase the group’s damage considerably. Especially with Banners. You can spec to get Banners with permanent regen on top of their huge stat bonuses. Between For Great Justice, Banner of Strength, and Battle Standard, you give the group 450 power and condition damage. With Banner of Discipline, Battle Standard, and For Great Justice you give the group 170 precision, 20% crit chance from Fury, and 15% crit damage.

Warrior’s can apply alot of single target vulnerability, great for bosses. When me and my bro are both running our Warriors we both take For Great Justice, On My Mark, Banner of Strength/Discipline, and Battle Standard. Helps melt down foes

Basically, Warrior’s support is offensive support rather than defensive

@Derps, maybe it could apply 3 Vulnerability kidn of like Maul. Rending Sweep could be the big Vulnerability applier and apply 10 stacks for 8 seconds.

Edit: Also, it would share traits with Greatsword I think

Skill ideas for Greataxe:

Adrenaline Skill: Decapitate, does high damage, each bar makes the damage increase from Vulnerability for this skill 1.33>1.66>2X more effective (so if the target has 10 Vulnerability, when this skill hits it’s like having 13>16>20 Vulnerability)

Auto-attack chain Penetrating Chop: Does damage and causes 1 Vulnerability for 6 seconds. Penentrating Blow, same damage and causes another stack of Vulnerability for 6 seconds. Agonizing Chop: does more damage then the other 2 previous skills, and applies 2 vulnerability for 6 seconds

Skill 2, Executioner’s Strike: High burst damage skill, 10 second cool down

Skill 3, Charging Strike: Leap at your foes (600 range), with a powerful swing, gain 3 Might for 5 seconds if you hit, 12 second cool down.

Skill 4, Rending Sweep: Swing your Greataxe 360 degrees, causing 5 Vulnerability for 8 seconds, and doing high damage. 20 second cool down

Skill 5, Power Attack: Swing your Greataxe as hard as you can, doing damage and knocking foes down for 1 second. 30 second cool down

Cool downs and Vulnerability might have to be balanced, but I thought it would be cool if the weapon focused on taking advantage of Vulnerability

I think a Venom sharing build, 20/0/30/0/20 would be better support wise. You could give your party up to 9 stacks of Might via Venoms and Stealing. Lot’s of bonus effects from Venoms, as well as powerful Life stealing. Keeping a 50% up time on Vigor and 33% up time on Fury/Swiftness

Would love if they added a Greataxe and it could do equal damage to Hundred Blades in PvE. Heck, I’d probably use it anyways as long as they look cool. Note to Anet: Double bladed Axes > single blade

I’m actually gonna say in technical terms, Malrona should be done in Melee. Whenever I fight Malrona I go into melee to get hit by her poison breath. It increases your damage by 400% or something like that till her next attack. I’ve hit 90K with Hundred Blades in there.

It’s not too hard to survive if you can keep track of her attacks. She starts every fight with the AoE spread, then breath, spread, breath, spread, etc. If you’re taking too much damage from the breath you just side step when she’s charging and save your dodge for her AoE

Stance cool downs are pretty good. You got Balanced Stance at 40 seconds, for 8 seconds of stability, 10 if traited. Thats 20-25% up time just with that. Also Swiftness.

Berserker’s Stance is incredibly powerful, 8-10 seconds of no condition worry at all. It’s basically a 2X Endure Pain against Condition builds but has to be put up prematurely.

Endure Pain is a 4-5 direct damage negator. Now, it doesn’t give complete invulnerability like other skills like it, but it has a shorter cool down than them and lasts longer.

Frenzy, like other Quickness skills has a pretty long cool down. Still, it can be a 6 or 8 second 50% damage boost. You take 25% more damage as a trade-off, speeding the fight up for you by 50% but only speeding it up by 25% for your foes. 60 second cool down isn’t unreasonable. While Ranger’s Quickening Zephyr can be reduced to 48 seconds, and Engineer’s Elixir U to 40 seconds, they don’t have as much damage as a Warrior. Maybe it could be reduced by 5 seconds but I think it’s fine

Traits are 30/25/0/0/15 as I mentioned, taking ?/IX/XI in Strength. V/X in Arms. and VI in Discipline.

Armor is Berserker’s with Ruby Orbs, Berserker Jewelery with Ruby Orbs. Greatsword has a Superior Sigil of the Night on it, Hammer has Force. Both weapons are Berserker.

Utilities are Healing Signet, love it since the update. Could use Healing Surge as well. For Great Justice, Banner of Strength, Banner of Discipline, Battle Standard.

If there’s 2 Warrior’s in the group, make sure ya’ll aren’t running the same Banners, me and a guildy use For Great Justice, On My Mark, and Banner of Strength/Discipline when we run together on our Warriors.

As far as Battle Standard goes, depends on the dungeon and situation. In a Dungeon like AC path 1, I use Signet of Rage because I need Swiftness alot for burrow destroying/gathering scepter pieces/running. But in a dungeon like CoF I’ll use Signet of Rage to take down the turrets/Charr at the start then go Battle Standard the rest of the way for party DPS boosting.

The weapons work pretty much like Greatsword and Axe/Mace. I’ll build Might with my Greatsword then use Hammer 2/4/5 in some order plus an auto-attack or two, then switch back to Greatsword. I don’t always remember to switch to my Hammer though or sometimes save it for when we need a burst of CC

I use a Greatsword/Hammer build. It’s 30/25/0/0/15. Typical max DPS build, but instead of Axe/Mace it’s a Hammer. I really like Hammer for the defense it provides against trash, also using skills 5, 2, and 4 can do extremely high damage, I’ve done up to 21K with all 3 combined. Which my average Hundred Blades is around 25K. So I’m sure in a proper Might/Vulnerability stacking group you could pull 30K+ with those 3 skills

I like both of these classes. Now I don’t know about PvP and WvW too much, but Thief can be very challenging to play in Dungeons but they do alot of damage if you can learn to survive on one. I know in WvW Thief is really good at roaming but that’s about it I think.

Mesmer isn’t necessarily a ranged class, Sword is one of their best weapons. Blurred Frenzy gives you 2 seconds of evasion and is on a 9 second cool down when traited. Mesmer’s are also good at helping the group stack Might and Time Warp is one of the best elite’s in the game (10 seconds of Quickness which makes you attack 50% faster).

Both classes are fun and are good at different things, I found both challenging to survive on for a while till I learned how to play them better though

Due to how powerful conditions are in PvP/WvW this idea I have might need to be PvE only, but, damaging conditions should be effected by Vulnerability and damage boosts from traits/etc.

So, using a Warrior example, if the Warrior has Berserker’s Power and is at full Adrenaline, Bleeds/Burning/Poison/Torment does 15% more damage. A total 40% more damage if the foe has 25 stacks of Vulnerability on it

They’re all that’s needed for people who want to do super speed clears. However, Dungeons can be completed with any profession set up. Those 3 just happen to be the top in PvE right now technically due to high damage/support

I like the idea, and it kind of makes sense. But the healing amount you have per strike of adrenaline is way too high.

I think it would be good at 90 health per adrenaline strike gained via attack. Healing for 500 per adrenaline bar spent. But neither are effected by Healing Power

Elementalist can have extremely high DPS using Lightning Hammer. I belive the focused Lightning Hammer build is like 25/20/0/25/0. I’ve read people getting 8K crits with the auto-attack in a maximized damage group. And if something is against the wall, Fiery Greatsword pwns by using skill 4 with no target and 3 is as strong as Whirlwind Attack. The only difference is Ele’s are alot squishier than Warrior’s when using these weapons, but if you kill fast enough in a speed run, it shouldn’t matter too much I don’t think

I love all my characters.

My main is a Charr Warrior, as big as I could get him with a fierce look. He has a broken/barbaric armor set and a “heavy” armor set. Wields the Juggernaut and Volcanus

Thief is probably my second favorite, just gave her an armor redesign. She has a don’t mess with me look. Wields a Ceremonial Sabre and Usoku’s Needle for a Katana/Sai look. She’s Human

My Engineer is my other Charr, a little bit smaller but still big. I got him Riveted armor, I think it’s called for all the bones on it, and he uses a Godskull Rifle though is usually using a Bomb Kit. Has a good Charr Engineer look to him

I used the Total Makeover Kit from the 5K Point chest to give my Ele a makeover, started to feel like she didn’t look unique before and rather bland. She has tier 1 Asura armor minus the helmet, and I colored each of the glowie parts with one of the attunement colors. She has a Zenith S/D

My Norn Guardian is named after and looks like Titania from Fire Emblem. She uses the Guild Hammer because it looks most like an Axe, which Titania uses in the game. She didn’t originally look like her or have the name but changing all that made me like her more.

My other Human is a Mesmer, named and modeled after Ilyana from the Fire Emblem game series. Which is one of the things that made me even try Mesmer because I had a deep personal hate for them from the original Guild Wars, but I enjoy them in this game. She has an Aurete Blade and one of the book foci to resemble the Tomes from Fire Emblem

My Ranger and Necro are kind of tied on how much I like the class. My Ranger is a Sylvari using a mixture of tier 1 and 2 cultural armor with a Noble headpiece, gives her a good hunter/one with nature look, she has a Dryad Bow and will have a Tribal Axe/Troch eventually.

Necro is my other Asura, I got a good dark looking face for her, with black “splotches” around her eyes which are a pale green. She uses Bone armor and a Winged head piece to cover one eye to give her a good mysterious look. She uses Godskull weapons to further go with the bone theme

Some trait changes I’d like to see

Cleansing Ire: Keep the current effect, and Burst skills no longer effected by blind. This really only matters in PvP and WvW

Sweet Revenge: Now just gives you a 5-10% damage boost while in Vengeance, Vengeance always rallies when you kill something now. Maybe reduce the time Vengeance is active before you drop dead by a couple seconds

Best way to get them I found was Light Miner’s Bags, selling all the stuff back on the TP (unless it was 1 copper over vendor price) got me all my money back or made me money. However, they’re much more expensive to buy now and the mats they give haven’t gone up so might not be as worth it anymore. I never had much luck forging

Amusing, stuff like that can make frustrating deaths fun.

I wish I could remember my poem about defeating Dhuum in Guild Wars =(

@Fiorrello, assuming you’re talking about Warrior’s Endurance, it might need a 5-10 second longer cool down since you could get it to last 10 seconds

New Shout, “Shield’s Up!”: You and nearby allies deflect projectiles for 2 seconds and gain 5 seconds of Protection. 50 second cool down.

New Stance, Battle Rage: For 5 seconds your next Adrenaline skill costs no Adrenaline and has no Recharge. 60 second cool down (maybe a lower cool down)

Another new stance, Warrior’s Endurance: For 8 seconds you regenerate Endurance 50% faster and gain 250 health per second + (healing power*.1). 30-45 second recharge

They don’t stab her because they probably want to use her life force, or kill her painfully and slowly. Villains are known for inefficient plans

Keep your lame hipster junk out of my Warrior

@Yamsand

I tested with one sigil and with 2 sigils, one sigil didn’t seem to do anything as the duration of skull crack would start at 2 seconds then go 1..0..gone. However with 2 sigils it went 3..2..1..gone.

Same thing for Shield Bash, 0..gone to 1..0..gone

Tested earlier and 2 sigils of paralyzation do stack making Shield Bash and Skull Crack last a whole extra second

Every class is viable in this game as far as PvE goes, however, some classes perform better than others.

Ranger gets jacked on some mechanics, like the laser room in Aetherblade Retreat. Theres other areas where they are useful though, for instance, I’ve 4 manned CoF with my guild thanks to a Ranger using his pet to take down the gate at the bubble part.

They do lack damage and pets need AoE damage reduction however, the recent pet damage nerf also hurt alot. Play what you want, if people tell you to leave because of your class then they aren’t the people you want to play with

I’ve thought about this before. Each weapon skill slot could have 1-2 extra alternatives aside from the auto-attack

Like, Hammer Warrior as you suggested..

Skill 2 option 2: Irresistible Blow, does damage (similar to Fierce Blow), unblockable. 15 second cool down

Option 3: Crushing Blow, causes 5 stacks of Vulnerability for 8 seconds. 10 second cool down.

Skill 3 option 2: Overbearing Smash, leap at your target and knock them down for 1.5 seconds. 18 second cool down

Skill 4 option 2: Auspicious Blow, swing your hammer in a circle hitting up to 5 foes. For each for you hit gain 5% Endurance. 20 second cool down

Option 3: Heavy Blow, slam foes with your Hammer launching them (400) (hits up to 3) 25 second cool down.

Skill 5 option 2: Enraged Smash, slam the ground with your Hammer knocking down nearby foes for 1 second and doing damage. Gain 2 strikes of adrenaline for each foe you hit