Guild Wars 2

AH doesn’t benefit much from healing power, the scaling factor is horrendous. If stacking healing power, healing symbols, skill 6, Empower, regen, Virtue of Justice (and its party-shared version) will benefit. If running AH, damage reduction via toughness will be more significantly more effective for sustain than the pathetic increase via healing power.

AH requires 69 healing power to increase its heal by 1%. In comparison Empower requires 15, VoR requires only 14, writ of the merciful requires 14, regen requires 10.4, etc.

Buffing healing power to increase AH is even less productive than buffing condition damage for a permburn guard build.

Rebound.3409:

Let’s put it another way…tel me in what way are they more efficient/better then OR as good as any of the other classes.

In a condition spec rangers are the highest condition damage dealers in the game on a single target, like dungeon bosses. They possess a bleed-on-crit trait equalled only by necros but proc it more often due to a faster firing speed, and bleed from backshots on shortbow far more than any other class can match. With enough experience in the ranger this particular niche becomes quite obvious. Note however that necros become better the moment the need is to condition ‘multiple’ targets. The viability of this, however, is sadly affected by the condition cap problem. While in PvP, WvW roaming and dungeon applications the ranger can be quite strong, condition caps make this type of build suboptimal against super zergy content like world bosses.

In all other areas it is inferior to something else. For pet-tanking, the necro and mesmer are both better. For healing and survivability, the engi and guardian are both better. For direct melee damage, the mesmer and warrior are both better. For extreme long range damage, the grenade engineer is better. For mobility, the thief and warrior are both better.

If a razor is judged by its ability to saw through a tree it’ll forever be regarded as useless.

“Overall, I’d want a Viable class who’s got lovely range, isn’t repetitive or overplayed/restricted to 1/2 specific Builds, uses strategic gameplay and is specifically good in Dungeons, WvW and in PvE (I don’t like switching Builds when it comes to ‘flipping’ my stats, meaning I’d be alright with changing a few stats in specific gear, but not full gear).”

The mesmer is the closest actually, to your requirements.

The warrior has lovely range and is good in all three modes, but is overplayed, repetitive and nonstrategic. The condi ranger has good range, is strategic, good in WvW, PvE, but cannot coexist in a dungeon with another condi user and is pretty much locked into one build. The elementalist has good range, is strategic, challenging and overpowered in PvE and dungeons, but it fails in WvW. The thief is strategic and good in PvE and WvW, but is bad in dungeons due to pretty much zero supportive traits, squishiness, and is restricted to exactly two optimal builds.

Necros do not fit your description much as they suffer from the same problem as the condi ranger, except they do even less damage in party contexts, and I wouldn’t exactly call their skill rotations strategic. They are much better for WvW however. Engis are the hardiest and the best healers, but dismal at overall damage (grenade engis have the niche of being the highest ‘long range damager’, but those numbers are significantly smaller than mid-tier melee damagers). Guardians are relatively useful for all three modes, but a bit overplayed, low damage even in max damage specced builds (though a lot of guard fanboys insist the contrary) and has a very low max effective range.

Small group roaming…. warrior.

You’re not really going to need a guardian unless at the head of a zerg.

Norn female, because Norn T3 chest and T2 skirt are pretty much the best looking heavy armor in existence. To me, anyway.

Also, the Norn racial elites are surprisingly useful. Especially Snow Leopard Form.

Pounce and Dash used on random out-of-range targets gets you out of harm’s way much faster than any normal Guardian skill, and then there’s stealth.

No other race has the ability to solve the Guardian’s mobility problems like this.

Warrior for direct damage. Ranger for condition damage.

Let’s put it this way.

You have 2 possibilities.

One, the ranger is bad. This accounts for the majority of cases. The easy kill should be taken first.

Two, the ranger is good. As its maximum effective range is greater than most other classes, you want this person dead asap so he doesn’t interfere with murdering the next target.

Sword mainhand is compulsory for at least one set. There are many viable possibilities aside from that single requirement.

A good permstealth thief is basically impossible to kill, but he won’t be able to kill you either. Duels between skilled mesmers and thieves always end up in a draw where nobody kills the other – if the thief approaches he dies, if he doesn’t approach he can’t kill. Until someone gets bored and quits the fight.

Don’t forget phantasms lock targets. When he stealths all the phantasms will ‘save’ their attack for the moment he destealths. Use this to your advantage.

If going glass cannon use a sword.

I use the bear for condi cleanse and tanking – not because I can’t survive without a tank, but because condi bleed rangers need to shoot enemies in the back nonstop to achieve maximum dps. In party contexts this is no longer relevant, so the lashtail devourer gets called up instead for its poison and bleed potential. The bear makes an occasional cameo for condicleanse before hibernating some more, unless the party is so fail that it’s needed to keep everyone alive.

Rangers not using back shots on shortbows should generally not use bears. The cat-type pets are among the better choices out there.

The staff fire 2 spam mode is nowhere close to the dps possible on lightning hammer type builds in PvE, not to mention the damage the mighting does to party members – which the staff type is incapable of doing. That is not to say it is not viable, because of how easy dungeons are.

Fire staff 2 is, however, one of the greatest skills on dps against zergs. It’s not just viable there, it’s one of the optimal configurations.

Use the right tool for the job.

Swapping between frost bow, fiery greatsword and lightning hammer without any cooldowns would be completely OP.

If you don’t get why, you’re not using the FGS in its max damage configuration.

I’m going half Cleric and half sentinel. Well, partially because there’s no such thing as Sentinel ascended accessories, but you need both the health and the heal as a support type spec. And partially because this is a commander spec.

Do not go condi on a guardian under any circumstances. Permburn is useful for some builds, but not because of the burn damage – because of the up to +20% damage and debooning per burn application traits. That build is still viable but it uses direct damage amping gear.

Reason being, Burning scales horribly with condition damage. Very horribly. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_damage

For every other condition, damage scaling is along the lines of 8.5 condition damage = +1% damage in that condition. Burning is along the lines of 13.1 condition damage = +1% damage.

That is to say, every other condition will be 54% stronger than you. Or, your max potential as a burning condi guardian is barely two thirds of any other condition type user. That’s like using blue gear compared to an ascended geared player with the same build.

We haven’t yet even gone into the fact that you can’t stack burning more than once by intensity…

By the way, it’s not 26,640 damage in 7 seconds. It applies 4 stacks. That is to say, it does 26,640 damage over 28 seconds. It’s misleading, I know. But we’re talking only 951 dps from burn here.

This doesn’t even begin to compare with the >3500 damage per second rangers can get through bleed alone.

Nearly full assassin. Critrate is important to my build for more than one reason, mesmers don’t quite self-fury, fury from party support is rare, and Might can easily be obtained from teammate buffs for the power requirement in both dungeon and WvW purposes.

Mesmers are one of those rare classes for which assassin is better than berserker for dps purposes; normally it’s the other way around.

The solution has already been mentioned months back – an account bound bag type, where anything placed in it will be shared among all characters on the account. At the moment. Unequipping a tool before logging out isn’t half as troublesome as unequipping, moving it to the bank, then logging another char in, moving to a bank…

I don’t think Pay to Win means what you think it means. Pay to Win is when people can use Strength Boosters, etc in WvW for an advantage not obtainable from any other source but Black Lion Kits (something I’m very unhappy about; something nobody else seems to have noticed). Something that generates additional ingame income for an initial ingame income investment via gems doesn’t fit the definition of Pay to Win as it does not change any battle outcome. Furthermore gems are entirely obtainable without you spending real world cash – all of my additional bank and character slots, and the 100+ transmutation crystals came entirely from gold. Depending on the situation it may widen the gap between haves and have nots, but that is not Pay to Win by its definition. That is not to say it is desirable – I do not support this implementation either, but you’re using the wrong term.

Engi is best dps at superlong ranges or best AoE heal and best tank.
Warrior is best dps at melee ranges, second best burst, best controller.
Guardian is best damage mitigation on group, 2nd best tank, second best AoE heal, second best booner, best condition remover.
Necro is best AoE conditioner, not that good in direct damage as they don’t have Cleave, 2nd best condition remover.
Mesmer is best dps against a single target and best self heal, second best stealther.
Thief is best stealther, best burst, second best dps at melee, second best controller.
Ranger is best single target conditioner, bad in direct damage, third best tank, easiest class.
Elementalist is best AoE, best booner, third best AoE heal, best speed, hardest class. The Fiery Greatsword elite has the honor of being the only weapon that can do 7 digit damage numbers in a minute.

Choose what you are looking for then spec an optimised build for that role. If you still can’t decide, play all of them.

Choose 1 of the following:

1. Keep stats, switch weapons to Mace/Mace. This becomes better for WvW.
2. Change stats to berserker. This becomes better for PvE.

At the moment you’re a little ‘in between’, so not optimal for either.

People just keep blaming classes because they don’t want to take responsibility for:

A. Their inability to employ mathematics for buildcrafting.
B. The inability to search for/listen to people who can do A.
C. Their lack of skill.
*D. They don’t want to blame bad players for being bad. Partially because that looks more offensive, partially because someone they want to suck up to may be one of those bad players.

And when 80% of people bully the bespectacled freckled kid in the corner, most people joining will bully the same kid, not find a new target.

It doesn’t change the reality about the class, it simply reflects the lack of intelligence on the side of the bullies. Don’t worry about it too much. If the class sucks it sucks whether or not people hate on it. If it doesn’t it doesn’t whether or not people hate on it.

The Asc bonus doesn’t apply yet right… if not I missed something there. As far as I know the only benefits to Asc weapons atm when in kit mode are greater base stats and the additional infusion slots.

AFAIK all kits use 969 weapon damage for their calculations.

Wethospu.6437:

You are cutting so many corners I would label your work as a black magic.

If you honestly think your calculations are correct then you should take few steps back and learn the basics properly before trying to do any advanced stuff. I’m sorry for being so harsh but not much else to say.

No problem. With no mathematical support you are simply entirely irrelevant.
Let’s put it this way. I can prove that my build is objectively superior. You cannot because you objectively have the weaker build. If you ignore me you simply underperform permanently. It is to your own disadvantage to not listen to reason. This is true of any situation in which one ignores reality.

Talking about ‘basics’ and ‘advanced’ is a good joke. I’m used to being underestimated, but the degree of underestimation here is just amusing.

If you want to go into skill rotations, using Burst to proc Fury on the Greatsword, etc… I can go into rotations as to multiplier per second on all the attacks in the rotation against every specific boss target in existence in the game. This can and will involve the dynamic nature of the 3% damage bonus as people dodge. The amount of adrenaline generated per second relative to the amount of adrenaline you can spend from Eviscerate, Kill shot and Arcing slice for the two builds. The synergy potential relative to any of the 7 other builds in your party. The damage gap simply widens even further. But I don’t want to spend any more time at this point to people who simply do not want to improve, and talking about multiplier per second per target applications is easily greater than 80 times the length of the discussion thus far.

The discussion thus far is sufficient for new players with a view to min-maxing to decide for themselves, current players who insist on being suboptimal are not my business as arguments are meant to persuade – talking to someone who has already decided on what to do yields a zero positive result, and costs me a lot of time.

This will be my last post on the topic, for my own sake. Rejoice if you will, ignore if you will, but reality will not change.

Goodbye.

P.S. Svetli, I hope you got what you wanted, one way or another. The time I spent here is for your benefit really.

Numbers corrected for fury uptime (though >100% fury uptime on the axeaxerifle build is reduced to a static 100% because it doesn’t add any further benefit to critrate), vuln effect of mace 4 and axe 2 added to the axehammerGS build (14.6 vuln over time), multipliers changed to multiplicative scaling, sigil on rifle changed to sup. sigil of battle. You can get a further damage increase for certain dungeons by swapping Bloodlust to Night, but I didn’t do this swap because I don’t like a sigil dropping to 0% usefulness under certain conditions.

http://i.imgur.com/KSNuAEo.png

Calculation: Just multiply all white fields, delete by grey fields. Black fields add to white fields. The final relative result doesn’t change, though the numbers are higher than before because multiplication is obviously greater than addition.

An additional build exploring what happens if a mace is used instead of an offhand axe in the 30-10-0-0-30 rotation is also added, but as you can see, it doesn’t outdamage the axe offhand. The fact that axe 5 can hit 5 enemies instead of 3 makes that a good skill for large mobs, though it’s largely useless outside of that context relative to AA – but these calcs use only autoattack and the fury/vuln granting weapon/utility skills. Both 30-10-0-0-30 builds still outdamage the 30-25-0-0-15 build in groups, but underdamage the 30-25-0-0-15 in solo applications because of Sigil of Night (if you really want to use Sigil of Night on the 30-10-0-0-30, both types still outdamage 30-25-0-0-15; 8073 and 8025 for offhand axe and mace types respectively). You can replicate the calculations yourself.

Lastly, the facts that you have no stunbreak, no condicleanse, no speed, lower toughness, lower dodge regeneration and lower adrenaline regeneration are all still true.

WvW doesn’t affect PvE. The fact that it’s superior in WvW in addition to PvE simply buries the 30-25-0-0-15 even deeper.

Sigil of Stamina is used for condition removal. If you have a problem with it, swap it to Sigil of Might – which further widens the DPS gap between 30-10-0-0-30 and 30-25-0-0-30, but at what is to me an unacceptably high cost in survivability.

Any more protests?

@Wethospu: Rifle butt’s multiplier per unit second is too low, though it does cleave; it’s not meant for dps. The only skills you use in Rifle are Brutal Shot, Kill Shot and Volley in that order for the 5 seconds before switching back to Axe/Axe.

Khisanth.2948:

You would get at most 1 stack of might per toss not up to 3. Once any of the hits procs the timer would be started and you would not be able to get any more stacks from the sigil.

Correct. Assuming a 70% critrate and assuming mainhand has priority, tossing 3 grenades at once gives you a 50% chance of getting one might per throw or a lifesteal, which will block might activation for another throw.

In 1 throw you have a 50% chance of might.

In 2 throws, the possible outcomes are as follows:

Where M is Might, B is Blood, N is No effect, X is any sigil (blocked) and Y is either B or N.

MM = 2 might, 0.25 chance
MY = 1 might, 0.25 chance
NM = 1 might, 0.125 chance.
NY = 0 might, 0.125 chance
BX = 0 might, 0.25 chance

That gives you 0.875 might in 2 seconds, or 0.4375 might due to sigil blocking.

In 3 throws,

MMM = 3 might, 0.125 chance
MMY = 2 might, 0.125 chance
MNY = 1 might, 0.0625 chance
MNM = 2 might, 0.0625 chance
MBX = 1 might, 0.125 chance
BXM = 1 might, 0.125 chance
BXY = 0 might, 0.125 chance
NBX = 0 might, 0.0625 chance
NMM = 2 might, 0.0625 chance
NMY = 1 might, 0.0625 chance
NNM = 1 might, 0.03125 chance
NNY = 0 might, 0.03125 chance

Total 1.28 might per 3 seconds, or 0.427 might per second due to sigil blocking.

It get increasingly complicated as time passes, but we’re still expecting at the end of the day like 0.4 might per second on average. In 10 seconds you should still get 4 might, not <1. Knowing your critrate will help.

As far as I know all sigils share internal cooldown, but sigils, food and trait cooldowns all should not interact at all. That makes your situation a bit strange.

Another possibility – are your attacks actually more frequent than one per second? We know grenades are ‘approximately’ one per second, but if it was actually say 0.99 seconds, then the might’s cooldown would actually last for 2 throws rather than 1, and the blood’s cooldown would last for 3 throws rather than 2. That would drop the expected rate further.

Svetli is correct. The best dps build is still 30-10-0-0-30.

Using the 30-25-0-0-15 build achieves only a stable 3 vulnerability at maximum (0.33*100%*1 att/second), with 5 stable might from the GS trait, 3 average might from the Elite, 3 average might from FGJ and 6 might from sigil of battle summing to 17 might, 3 vulnerability without additional support, 97% critrate, 119% critdmg with the banner and 1.48x damage in greatsword mode, 1.43x damage in axe mode, with 2496 power to use. Add 0.10x if your godly player can remain above 90% hp indefinitely.

Sustained dps = 5 mult / 3.6 s * 1.43x * 2.64 * 1000 att * 3091 pwr *1.03 / 2600 def = 6420 dps.

Even if I were to assume that your user is insanely skilled and can truly remain at 90+% hp for the whole fight, raising your multiplier to 1.53x still gives you only 6869.5 dps.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAU3XjkOBvFPaPMxBAzjhCqoTBoUPszt2A-jkCBYfERzEEQUBDZOzsIaslhFRjVXDT5iIq2uDwaWRzgO1SBExwK-w

30-10-0-0-30 in full berserker achieves a stable 19 vulnerability (9.6 from Brutal Shot, 10.1 from Cyclone Axe), 2.3 might from the weaponswap trait, 3.6 might from the elite for a total of 6 stable might without additional support. It also has 96% critrate, 142% critdmg when bannered, 1.28x damage in axe mode, 1.23x damage in rifle mode and 2798 power at its disposal.

Sustained dps = 5 mult / 3.6 s * 1.28x * 2.84 crit * 1000 att * 3008 pwr * 1.19 / 2600 def = 6951 dps.

6951 > 6869.5, even considering that your ‘perfect activation conditions’ are exponentially more difficult to achieve than in my build, considering autoattacks only.

Furthermore, because this build has >100% fury uptime – every 48 seconds, it can trigger 35 seconds fury per target plus 34.5 seconds fury with the signet for anything from 69.5 to 139.5 seconds depending on how many targets Axe 4 hits. That’s a 145-290% fury uptime. Whereas the 30-25-0-0-15 build only has 46 seconds of fury every 50 seconds. which is only 92% uptime.

This means Eviscerate can be spammed a lot on the 30-10-0-0-30 giving actually much higher DPS than autoattacks can predict as the ridiculous uptime on Fury means the signet doesn’t necessarily have to be used off cooldown every single time – while the 30-25-0-0-15 is forced to use FGJ and SoR off cooldown. Eviscerate usage also recharges endurance – combining the greater endurance regen from this plus SoS. D.S adds more base toughness. My build also runs at permanent 25% speed whereas yours is entirely dependent on SoR’s swiftness (62.5% uptime or average 20.6% speed – which is less than 25%) and the greatsword mobility skills. The inclusion of Kill Shot plus SoM (taking the place of the banner in solo applications) allows for this build to ohko more than half of all players in WvW, undetected from 1500 range. Finally, the 30-25-0-0-15 build linked doesn’t even have a stun breaker or condition removal skill, let alone Stability. Taking that into some situations is a complete death wish.

The only practical benefit 30-25-0-0-15 has over 30-10-0-0-30 is Mace 5’s knockdown ability.

Tl;dr: 30-25-0-0-15 does less damage per second, has less dodges, bursts for less, has no stunbreak, no stability, no condition cleanse, less defense, less dodge, has a much lower maximum effective range, and has no stable movement speed buff relative to 30-10-0-0-30. To compensate for all of this, it has a single AoE launch skill it can use on a 25 second cooldown.

I find the lack of optimisation – indeed, the lack of proper calculations – disturbing.

In parties, where eles can maintain 25 might on their own for a whole party, where guardians also buff might AoE…. and no other class in existence can match the Warrior’s ability to inflict Vulnerability… the gap just stretches wider and wider.

Kill shot does 17037 damage to light armor classes.

Spot them before they spot you, one hit kill them before they see you – nobody can dodge a bullet coming from behind their screen.

Fight ends.

If it doesn’t end they’re so close to death by that point that Volley should finish the job. PU mesmers should never last long enough for you to ever get to use your axe on them.

Made a tank/healer engi today just for fun.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqyWnpynF17IyoCdWoHSogpWfeIXtVaB-jgCB4hBhgAgKAJJtIas9CFRjVNjIqWnEzuDwaWa1eOxSBcxYA-e

2225 damage per second to up to 5 targets (if you consider the max AoE target limit, it can hit 11125 damage per second total – which isn’t that much lower than the full zerk warr’s 14058 damage per second from Cleaving with 4686 damage per second per target), 690 heal per second to up to 5 allies, 3233 toughness. While obviously you wouldn’t want to bring this for dungeons with only one boss to fight, this DOES allow for very high relative performance on uncrittable objects and swarms of mobs. I.e., this is good for CoEp1 and TA, but kind of useless on CoFp1. While this will also necessarily be quite useless in roaming WvW, this would be rather good in the heart of a zerg, especially for defensive purposes.

To level, kite massive numbers of mobs together and just drop bombs nonstop. You can’t die with heal and toughness at such an insane number, and the more mobs you can lure, the better your final killrate will be.

For now? Yes, it’s the best berserker gear available.

It’s not even hard. It just requires an absurd amount of players that plain do not exist on some servers (particularly Devona’s Rest). It’s easy content that requires a lot of half-competent players.

Trouble arises when you don’t have a lot of half-competent players, either because your players are incompetent, or you don’t exactly have players.

I preferred the older content that scaled, where it’s possible for the best PvE players to solo, very difficult to duo, provided an ok challenge for a party, is optimal in a group of 10-20, and takes a longer time to complete when you have too many players. World boss timers are stupid; if you want to add more challenge just double the world boss’ damage output.

To answer the OP’s question: Condition rangers and necros can both breach 5000 dps before might effects, but take about 4-5 seconds to set this up so they’re not very useful on trash mobs. You can take a necro, you can take a ranger, but never take both at the same time (or more than 1) as they’ll cancel each other out if they’re both conditioners, and they will have subpar DPS if they’re not conditioners because the attacks on their weapons either have bad power multipliers, do not Cleave, or both.

Ranger swords only have a 1.9 multiplier on autoattack per 1.8 seconds by the way, and max power builds only can add 20% damage ish in ideal circumstances with Steady Focus and Scholar runes. That is, 1.27 multiplier per second. Warriors on the other hand running GS for skill 2 and 3, then using the Adrenaline to Eviscerate followed by axe autoattacks, have 5.0 multiplier per 3.6 seconds on autoattacks, and greater ratios during the GS 2|3 phases. They can also get up to 48% damage from traits plus the Scholar rune, for a total of 2.06 multiplier per second. To say that you can match a warrior shows no understanding whatsoever of damage calculations; for the same power level warriors do 62% more direct damage, but axe,x|greatsword warriors actually will have a greater power level because crits on the greatsword during the 2-3 phase give Might, whereas the Ranger version only mights the pet.

It’s fine to play whatever you like in whatever way you like, the game is easy enough for that; but don’t go insisting on something in a min/maxing topic that can be mathematically proven false.

NEVER use the word ‘experienced’ or ‘exp’. New players think ‘exp’ is ‘explorable’ as they have no idea what the p1p2p3 thing is about yet. ‘Experienced’ attracts bad players who are hoping to get carried since it’s sometimes hard to detect the fail in a group with 4 pros when everything’s dying fast anyway. More than 4 times out of 5 I join a team with the word ‘experienced’ in it, my damage surpasses any 2 of them added together, and they still get downed in spite of having no damage output.

Normally I word it as, for instance, ‘CoFp1 speedrun’. It works almost all the time. My support/WvW Com guardian is always on standby for the occasional 4 dps team of bads who can’t stay alive, but otherwise I don’t generally use the guardian because its heal is way too high, and its damage is way too low for content that easy.

I wasn’t kicked, but I ran a few dungeons before with guilds of really, really bad players.

There is no player as bad as a bad player who thinks he’s good. And if one of them is bad enough, 4 of them together is even worse. I had to pull my ele into the dungeon for CoFp2 because they couldn’t tank, couldn’t damage, couldn’t focus, couldn’t focus the Assassins, etc.

The ele works in that situation because it can single handedly wipe the whole mob group repeatedly, and that was the only way to deal with that situation given all four of them were literally useless. The last part with Baelfire was difficult as well given how they don’t listen to instructions and insist on killing acolytes one by one, so I had to run the opposite direction as them and spam FGS. I did 90+% of damage to the boss, alone… before any of them could reach the centre, because with their fooling around with single acolyte kills the boss predictably regains invulnerability before they can reach.

On another occasion for a high level fractal, I was with another 4 man noob guild where all 4 of them were bad (though not as bad as earlier), and the 4th had <20 AR. I had to bring in revive orbs on the Molten boss to get it to phase 2. Then my ISP disconnected me at phase 2 start, and they completed the fractal without waiting even 30 seconds. Bear in mind the fractal took 2.5 hours because I was carrying all 4 of them through every previous fractal as well.

PuGs are way better.

When joining a party, check for AP. If all 4 of them have <4000 AP, be wary. If you enter and realise that all 4 of them are in the same guild, quit at the start. It’s not worth the very likely headache. On the contrary, <4000 AP PuGs are ok because they don’t have the ‘idiocy in numbers’ Grandmaster level trait.

I wonder. Is the guild tag of the players who griefed you a 4 letter guild tag starting with the letter D?

Oh no, Lormar’s easy. Horace is the difficult one.

Just kill all the other mobs first then take your time whittling down his health.

Psst. Elementalist water attunement Soothing Mist is also unstoppable.

Rolling rangers means you don’t have to learn to stay alive. It’s precisely because it’s too survivable at the start which is why it should never be a first class.

Many rangers roll that as their first, get to 80, then get stuck. Rerolling other classes, esp thief and ele, lead to a string of deaths, whereby they give up and continue with the 80 ranger. They normally end up as bearbows permanently.

What Khisanth said.

If you’re talking about the champion underground in the ruins, that’s normal. It’s pretty much the hardest soloable champion in the game; even my ele has problems soloing it. Krait witches are even stronger, and completely unsoloable.

PS don’t use leather bags, they can’t even be resold. Get at least the 8 slot leather backpack off the TP.

I’d wait until the patch hits first unless you’re prepared to re-craft if the nerf is excessively hard.

Sigil is 30% chance to steal health/give might per crit, not per attack. If your critrate is 60%, your actual chance of getting might is less than 18% (because of the chance Sigil of Blood is overwriting it). Even with 3, your chance of getting might is still 45% on an optimistic estimate, given all grenades hit the target(s).

If your critrate is only 30% for instance your chance of getting 1 might is only 25% if all 3 grenades hit.

Not sure whether or not you already accounted for this, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

Phadde.7362:

Dodosaur.6324:

I don’t really like the “general” description of it (more so because I dislike range than anything), I still don’t think anything can come quite as close for me to playing D/D in terms of how fun it is.

You’re basically always in Melee while wielding daggers.

There are still certain parts in the game that forces every profession to wield a ranged weapon, but they are few and far between.

Actually there isn’t one in PvE. The closest to doing this is the Fire Elemental, but there is actually a spot to the west of the elemental outside its hitbox where you can hit it with melee attacks but not take any burn damage. If you stand there you’ll see particle effects appear on a particular spot. Melee that spot and you’ll see damage numbers fly. You DO have to spam 1 though, since the game doesn’t recognise that you’re hitting a valid target given that you’re technically not in range.

WvW is a different ballgame together – when defending a keep against a zerg you don’t exactly want to jump off the wall to melee them.

For all other bosses and dungeons, they’re meleeable, though the Molten Boss Fractal is difficult. Generally it’s always a risk vs reward thing, where potential damage is always highest in melee due to multiplier per second on attacks, but you also take a higher risk of taking damage. People differ as to where they decide that the benefit is no longer the risk.

I’ve been suppressed a few times, it’s annoying.

High efficiency dungeon runs sometimes can work with 5 dps builds, but if its members are all lousy the party can wipe. In terms of support/healing/tanking if you’re into that stuff, the elementalist and the guardian are the best at that role. Between which, the elementalist’s skill floor is so high it’s probably better to start with the guardian first.

The build I have linked is a support build used for WvW mostly – its heal is basically too strong for PvE applications, and getting that level of healing required sacrificing quite a bit of damage to be efficient. Though I do occasionally drag her into dungeons when the rest of the party completely and utterly fails at keeping themselves alive.

If you want more skills play an elementalist. I’ve 33 at my disposal in that mode- 20 weapon, 1 heal, 2 utility, 1 elite, 5 from lightning hammer and one skill per element type when dodging.

Most other classes other than Ele and Engi are more or less stuck with 15.

Don’t do dungeons at low levels. Your speed will be slow, and you’ll get too much xp that you’ll speed through the mid-levels.

The early levels (1-15) you don’t have a fully functional character yet, and loot is crap that is worth nothing anyway. If you want to skip through these with levelling books, crafting and whatnot go ahead.

The mid levels (15-79), make sure you spend as much time in the open world as possible. You want to get blue-green drops from random mobs now while doing hearts as they will salvage to the highest-priced materials, especially linen. Do NOT skip through this phase.

The late phase (80) all drops will now be based on either level 80 or zone level. At this point, you can do anything, but world exploration will earn you LESS than at lower levels because so many people are at level 80 that the level 80 disassembled materials are worth very little, with the exception of silk. At the same time, because scaling isn’t fully efficient, a downscaled level 80 character will always be more powerful than a character of the correct level for an area. Thus dungeons can be run at the fastest posisble speeds.

Ideally at level 80 you have all the important waypoints for dungeon opening and world bosses, several maps completed and at least one waypoint on every map. If not, get those as soon as possible. Full world completion is optional.

Lindbur makes a good point. Overlapping Warhorn and the Elite will work well.

@Rawkan, All of my final builds are linked in my signature. The engineer is the only one without a permanent final build yet because the nature of the class makes it very difficult to calculate a max potential build.

Virtue of Justice spam has a limit – it doesn’t work if your target doesn’t die fast. This applies to veteran+ classes, spamming it is easy on trash mobs, but for those we don’t talk about additional multipliers that much anyway since they die too fast for anything to really matter. Torch 4 upkeeps burn permanently, on the other hand – having >100% uptime ensures 100% uptime on your desired target since not every tick will necessarily burn your intended target due to its 3 target PBAoE limit. Torch 5 is without a doubt the best condition removal skill for party support.

Focus is more used because having an oh-crap button (Focus 5) is important at times and Focus 4 provides heal via regeneration, but Torch 5 exceeds Focus 4 for the specific purpose of condition removal and Torch 4 is the guardian’s best boon remover when traited.

Personally I don’t use any of these at all because I’d rather do those roles using different classes entirely (warriors for instance can do 5400+ dps cleave solo before might effects), but that – or the unpopularity of certain weaponsets – doesn’t necessarily make them bad. S/T can be optimal in a few situations… of which Ascalonian Catacombs bosses, HoTWp1, CoE all paths come to mind where either debooning or condition removal is very important.

Actually it’s better to world-explore, and harvest every single resource node you find. Levelling speeds are comparable to train usage if you run fast enough, profit is greater as you don’t eat waypointing costs but take a heck load of resources (the 15-25 iron ores, soft wood logs and carrots are especially worthwhile), and world completion makes doing everything else easier later on as you’ll have all the waypoints you ever need… plus, it is a Legendary requirement anyway, and it puts a nice star next to your character name.

Of course, it takes more skill to solo everything then to follow in a zerg where you basically can’t die, but that also trains you for content later on, while queensdale training to 80 leaves a new player still hopelessly inexperienced.

All of my level 80 characters have >60% world completion, and got to 80 from open world content (and for 4 of them, 500 crafting in 1/2 disciplines) alone. I dungeon exclusively with level 80 characters only to optimise completion speeds, and because drops in the mid level range are worth a lot (linen especially) – so I’d want to stay in normal exploration until 80.

Even after 80 I revisit almost all the maps daily in my 80s to harvest resources from permanent rich nodes, which yields more than 10 gold a day easily.

Since you specifically requested to keep the Sword/Torch build, I will not be telling you to change it.

Just to let you know, Burning has a VERY BAD CONDITION MULTIPLIER. Most of the damage is dealt by Burning’s base damage.

Your purpose of applying burn will be to use the traits Fiery Wrath and Searing Flames – these are compulsory. Radiant Fire is not compulsory, but helpful.

You can run whatever you want, but do not buff condition damage under any circumstances. If you want a DPS oriented build, buff the direct damage the sword gives, and use the DPS skill (I think it’s sword 3) as often as you can.

This build is not a theoretical max DPS build, but runs as a debuffer type build which also does mid-high dps, heals on dodge, has perm vigor for more dodges, and will crit a lot of the time – which you need in order to stack AoE might from crit AND get vigor for both healing and dodging – the dodging and AoE blind from Justice allows you to not use up your Aegis, which allows you to buff damage by 20%. Full berserker in this case is inappropriate as it will reduce your crit to a point that Empowering Might is underutilised. The constant might from Empowering Might (extended by Runes of Strength) fuels an additional 5% damage bonus from the Runes of strength.

Your burning skills are used to upkeep burning so that the traits based on it can proc. The burning damage itself may be overwritten by Dhuumfire or support elementalists, but that is none of your concern as even if your burning is completely overwritten you still keep 90% of your DPS, and it guarantees your traits are constantly active.

Overall your maximum damage bonus is 60% – 20% from aegis, 5% from strength, 10% from burning, 10% from any condition (which includes burning, which you will apply permanently), 10% from dodging, 5% from sigil of force. Without support from others you can apply 5 might constantly from that trait alone – more if you proc Virtue of Justice more often. Doing calculations based on 5 constant might and 25 stacks of bloodlust, your dps from sword autoattack and torch 4 is (3.1 * 2735 power * (0.62*2.21+0.38) * 1000 * 1.6 / (2600*2.5) or 3652 dps on a 2600 armor target, while permaburn is 434 dps = 4086 dps overall per target. 12258 dps overall given you can hit 3 targets at once. Using other skills will raise this number.

As Litany of wrath will heal for 220 hp/s under these circumstances, Signet of Resolve is your go-to heal skill as it also removes conditions with a heal of 211 hp/s.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAsfWlYg672GyLEfIFSWhC0mhAhQVFiHcGVE8B-jQCBoiERjEEAUBLaMPtIasVOFRjVXDT5iIq2uDwImRrWKA9EWB-e

All told this is only a 75% ish efficient build as the guardian was not initially built with DPS in mind, but it should be more than viable enough for most applications, and it achieves it while keeping your S/T preference. Also note that both because objects generally cannot be conditioned and always cannot be critted, you will underperform on uncrittable objects.

Last of all, note that trait Radiant Fire (Radiance VII) is for solo use only. In a party context you will generally have the enemies on permanent burn, therefore switch to Blind Exposure (Radiance VI) when doing any form of group content so you can instead contribute Vulnerability – which will synergise both with Justice and Sword 2. Not all parties are capable of upkeeping 25 stacks of Vulnerability constantly, so this will add additional damage output to everyone.

But your choice is not as bad as people will make it seem.

Also, don’t forget World vs World. Connecting to World vs World (key ‘B’ by default) for the Borderland of your world will spawn you in a citadel with easy access to banks in the form of crafting stations outside (east of) the citadel, a trading post, and merchants.

Then simply log out to character screen and log back in to be teleported back to where you were before you went to World vs World.

Not that I know of, no. The Celestial recipe vendors from the Bazaar are also gone, and the only way to get the recipe is from other players, in a similar way.