Guild Wars 2

Several utilities have been mentioned but I don’t think Portal is out of line early. Not for portal bombing but for portal stomping. It and invis are the only two ways we have of downing folks in a large fight before they can be rallied.

To portal stomp you have portal started nice and away from the fight. When you get the stomp chance run up to your target, start portal, start stomp, take portal. These actions have to happen right on top of each other so for me it’s Alt-2, F, F in very quick succession. You’ll now be standing at the other end of the portal. You can start spamming the return or you can chill a second once you learn the timing. If you don’t catch the return ASAP though you’ll miss the stomp. I highly recommend going to the Mists and practicing on the NPCs that are used for stomp practice. Once you get it working though it’s awfully fun.

If you buy armor at the 1s and 6s (e.g., levels 31, 36, 41, 46…) it’s cheaper than at the 0s and 5s. A full set of Fine armor is a few silver. Set the level at the previous 5 for trinkets (If you are level 51 look for trinkets from 45-51) to get a set of those. There’s not reason not to be in the lastest armor since you’ll sell your leveling sets back to a merchant for not much less than you bought them for.

I run Maskaganda’s build and it works fine in the zerg. There is little more enjoyable than picking out a target, bursting them down, spiking them while people are trying to res them AND bust you, and making it out alive.

That said it is still a single-target attrition build. You’ll need to concentrate on your target. Make your move when they are low enough that static shot (blinding those nearby) and blowtorch are gonna do em in. Start the stomp first, then elixer S. And I think only elixer C let’s me get out in one piece. But yeah. It plays exactly the same against 50 as it does against 1. You’re opinion may differ if that’s “fine for the zerg”.

MrForz.1953:

And here we are, directing people finally trying out the Engineer directly to what they do best and literally scrapping the stuff they’d have probably signed up for.

The world doesn’t turn around HGH and 409. If anything, you’re more than welcome to try anything that comes through your mind because they all serve a good purpose, even is situationnal.

Um, no. He said he was building duel-pistol and HGH. He didn’t suggest he was looking to sign up for anything else so I answered the question he asked. If you care to offer other suggestions that’s fine but knocking people for answering the asked question seems odd.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

although I don’t understand why he has only 10 in curses and 20 in death

Well Death X (minions have 50% more hp) is mandatory for a Minion build and I couldn’t get that with only 10 in Death.

Look at Maskaganda’s video threads. He runs Pistols and Pots (duel pistol + HGH) and his gear has been discussed several times.

1) I have an 80 Mesmer, Engi, Ranger, and Guardian. I’ve got a level 71 Necro I’ve been leveling up. I can only answer for PvE so far but Necro is as fun as the others (MM Build) and stronger than most.

2) For leveling build I’d say berserker gear and minion master. I leveled to 31 and then used Cooking and Artificing to bypass the minion-gap (where the mobs have gained hp but your minions haven’t gained hp and power). I don’t even consider switching to conditions until 60 when you have enough traits and your gear has 3x stats.

I’ve gone full condition on my Mesmer and went back to Shatter. Didn’t consider condition on my Ranger but I understand it can be very strong. Engi is condition build and I think the best class to stay alive while attritting your target(s). Necro can put conditions on folks but other than Vulnerability can’t restack them to full if they get cleared (as quickly as the Engi). Obviously folks do play condition Necros and have fun but I’ve heard it said and agree that Necro is about spreading conditions and not killing with them.

3) I’m a minion build so I would say yes. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/MinionMaster-Builds-and-Tips/first#post1541022 I’m going 20/10/20/20/0 with d/d + a/f since I love Enfeebling Blood on DS and perma weakness. It flips well enough to a Marks + Wells build when running with the zerg too.

My take on Maskaganda’s gear setup but without Ascended items.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0%7Ca.1h.h17.a.1n.h5%7C0.0.0.0.0.0%7C1o.71g.1o.71g.1b.71h.1n.71h.1b.b1h.1n.b1h%7C1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.cg.67%7C0.u46c.a6.u24b.0%7C2m.e%7C2b.2g.2j.2h.0%7Ce

Yes, I should switch to a Giver’s pistol and use Rare Veggie. Been playing up alts to see if anything is as fun. (Mesmer is close – I need more practice. Ranger is fun in Dungeons. Guardian is meh. Working Necro to 80.)

Maskaganda.2043:

coated bullets and the extra range trait are very situational, they are not mandatory for the build at all. you can do just fine with only 10 points in firearms for the reduced cooldowns.

I find that coated bullets are great at stopping/delaying resses, I dont use it in s/tpvp and I regret it often.

I’ll add the observation that, having just played up a Ranger, I really missed piercing shots while leveling and when I got into WvW I had to switch to a build that used them. (Yes. I admit it. I made my Ranger on an Engineer’s frame. If you keep in mind that your bullets are coated and try to set up the geometry for them you’ll find you get a LOT of use out of them. Pet classes; trying to nail a thief while that warrior is in your face; nailing Dolyaks on camp flips. They might be more useful than you are thinking.

Of course there’s a trivial test. Run without the Coated Bullets for a week or so and see what you think. For me I find them a must.

I think both play wise and video wise you are fine. I personally like watching both solo and small group play since there’s something to be learned from both. Was interesting to see it from PAXA’s side. (Saw it enough as the target while roaming AR.

People abused TC by running across it several times. I doubt it will ever stack. I’d be happy if it just gave full duration again (but only if that’s greater than what you already have on).

You don’t have to actively try, Maskaganda. You lead by example. I bet more folks than just me started an Engineer specifically to play your build after watching one of your videos.

Here’s Shadow Cat Mist as described in the guide (I think).

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1|c.1g.h17.c.1g.h1|6.1g.h8|1g.71a.1g.71a.1n.71a.1g.71a.1p.71a.1g.71a|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2s.0.3s.0.cg.67|0.k4a.k3a.0.u36b|39.7|33.3a.3d.34.3o|e

Here’s as close as I could get without Ascended gear which might be useful for folks just starting out.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/mesmer/?4.1%7Cc.1g.h17.c.1g.h1%7C6.1g.h8%7C1c.71a.1c.71a.1g.71a.1c.71a.1g.71a.1c.71a%7C1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.1n.67.cg.67%7C0.k4a.k3a.0.u36b%7C39.7%7C31.34.3d.3a.3o%7Ce

That question has come up before, Graybes. Boils down to basically feeling that reaching for 100% duration takes away too much from the rest of the build. 50% is almost trivial to get (Giver’s pistol + Rare Veggie Pizza) while 100% takes more work on gear and runes to achieve.

Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Battle come to mind. Obviously those aren’t Ranger specific so the point stands.

Hmm. I’m carrion trinkets and using the armor for the other stats. When you get a chance would you fill out your current gear on gw2buildcraft.com? I can’t seem to incorporate ascended trinkets without taking a real hit to my power and I’m wondering how you are threading that needle.

Btw, any Asura can put down 6 stacks of confusion for 5s but only every 45 seconds and you have to lose out on 2 utility slots to do it.

Engis only have single-target Prybar (yes Static Shot but it’s 2×3s and Confusion Bomb but I can’t remember the last time I stood on one of those) with 5×5s confusion which only gets interesting and painful because of Magnet. If Prybar got nerfed I think Engi’s would be sad that their fun had ended but I don’t believe folks would think a core mechanic of the Engineer had been pulled.

In your vid you were laying 7 and 8 stacks of confusion on folks. I think limiting the number of stacks that could be active would very much hurt Confusion Mesmers as well and more than Engi’s who don’t build around it. Mesmers are the only class that can mass-confuse but you have to trait for it and it’s really only effective in the zerg. And yeah… traiting for the zerg and then can hurt when zerging. Surprise.

Confusion is too powerful at the higher condition damage levels. I wonder if allowing blocks, heals, and dodges without damage would make it less so. In your vid you nailed that Engi in vale when they swapped kits. Wha? I know it’s probably not a surprise but ANet did not think through the implications of letting confusion kick in for every ability use. I hope they clean up that aspect of confusion first (if their code allows it) and see how it goes before they reach for stronger medicine.

So I play a mesmer. And I do like to decoy, blink, and portal to be confusing. But I also run food bufs so finding me only takes tab targeting around (or noticing that “clone” that just formed with it’s back to you – blink; or a “clone” disappeared at one node of a portal and appeared at the other).

On my Engi I use all of the above and watching for the clone on dodge to make it faster than just tab targetting but if the only way you have of noticing the real mesmer is watching for the dodge then you’re missing a lot of other tells.

But… but… you aren’t an Asura!

Nice video! I thought grabbing the SP off the two rangers at the end was a bit over the top since Pistol and Pots eats most rangers for breakfast (try going after a power-based ranger that knows not to close :/ but that was awesome play. I open with static shot for the blind but this video made me go “duh” for not opening with Magnet + Prybar.

Several years of high-school German (sadly it never took made it even better.

More videos please.

So damage from power falls to precision on average if your critical damage is greater than 50 and you have more than 2100 attack.

For 1% more damage from power you must add Attack/100 more power. At 50 critical damage each 21 points of precision adds 1% more damage (over time)¹.

All that said previous poster is still correct that Power, Precision, Crit Dmg gives you the highest DPS. Looking at SB you can get bleeds if flanking on #1 and you get a 6s bleed on #4. You are probably also taking the trait that gives you a chance to bleed on crits. Looking just at SB there isn’t enough conditions floating around (unless you think you can flank for most of every fight) that condition damage is going to be a good return. — If you throw in the Spike and Flame trap I believe it could (depending on playstyle) become worth loading up on conditions but not just for SB.

Here’s a good power build involving the SB (and longbow but sword+warhorn for PvE should be fine.) with the only real drawback being lack of ability to clear conditions. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Video-Team-Roaming-WvW/first#post1643101

For Orr I would suggest wolf + drakehound for the knockdowns and at a guess you aren’t moving and dodging enough while still keeping on target.

¹ Thought experiment. Crit chance of 100%. Each attack with 0 critical damage does 50% more than a normal attack so each 1% of crit is 0.5% more damage. With a critical damage of 50 each attack does 100% more than a normal attack so each 1% of crit is 1% more damage.

Always nice to see folks keeping it classy.

Good thief video, Amadeus. I’m looking forward to the other class ones. You’re spot on with aggressive play and denying the thief mobility which reminds me (yet again) that I need to improve my use of glue shot.

Those d/d ele’s are fun. Have had two 10+ minute fights with them in the last few days. One a duel, the other for keeps. That one started 2v1 (us after her). She was strong and the warrior that was with me dropped. (First time I’ve seen a mist-form spike. Impressed the hell out of me.) Then it was back and forth with yak guards and minotaurs joining in. Two more on her side (who I totally missed amongst all the NPCs also trying to take our heads) finally put me down. I find that if i can’t sucker a good d/d into suiciding into confusion stacks I have a huge amount of trouble closing the deal. Wondering if that’s been your (and Maska, same question) experience as well?

Amadeus.5687:

Time will only tell! It all did sadly end with him raging at me for using a OP build, and that Engineer > Elementalists allways, so I sucked because he won a few of the duels, shouldn’t be poissble for a good Engineer to loose to a Elementalist, cause they are so OP! So I highly doubt he learnt anything from it! But time will tell! Was fun none the less

Poison volley misses half its shots because that’s the design choice ANet made on all volley shots. Take a look at Ranger’s poison volley on short-bow or the bleed spread on axe. You see the spread all at once but if you are farther than melee range some are going to miss. It’s designed to to be used at close range to get full effect.

Now if you want to ask why a shortbow or axe gets all its volley off at once such that it’s possible to actually hit with all stacks if you are close enough instead of like Engi where someone will dodge halfway through the volley… well then you are on to something.

Ok Just spent WAY too long killing a d/d bunker Ele. Good for you if you just died and tied up a bunch of people But what I want to say is after several months on my server I can count the times that we’ve killed folks and someone has done /dance or /gesture or whatever weak-kitten stuff that gets done. Better things to do than be petty I guess (barring this post

It is a good tip but playing up a Ranger alt I gotta say that a pet’s charge/pounce is telegraphed about a day in advance of it happening. I prefer to shoot the Ranger (and get the pet on the bounce) because I hate trying to switch targets.

Lots of good advice above. Until 60 when you get enough traits and armor has enough stats to try out different builds I’d recommend straight power+precision gear. And bombs. Silly OP for levelling since the mobs don’t try and dodge.

For me the LB is too stand-off for solo fighting (or small group where I’m principal aggressor). I’ve grown up in WvW on an Engi (Pistol and Pots). It’s all about timing the opponents attacks and keeping up the pressure. LB doesn’t do that for me. In small group fights you will be closed on. (Although I’ll always remember the staff guardian that tried to range me. Guess he’d never looked at the range on his auto-attack. He must have thought I had about 4000 armor.) Given that you’ll be closed on the auto-attack on LB is now less than ideal. Less damage up close and no condition to keep the pressure on. (Put a 30% on crit 2s cripple below 500 on it and you’d really be on to something. — Oh yay. Synergy with Frost trap! Oh boo. 30s cooldown.) So you try #2 and maybe quickness from util or pet swap. Except your target has just side-dodged or dodged rolled through you and half the damage is gonna be lost. #3 and #4 are solid but on too long a cooldown to be fight changers. (I’d love to see Hunter’s Shot also have a 3s cripple so your pet can chew on em a bit.) #5 against someone who’s also traited for fighting solo/small is gonna be laughed at and just locks you in place.

That said if you deliberately take a backseat to someone else a lot of those negatives turn positive. Opening shot + Hunters + pet opener is 20 vulnerability (If I’m doing the math correctly.) Dodging #2 is much less likely if you have even a touch of range to prevent a huge slew or them getting behind you on dodge. #4 + wolf + hound is going to let you take pressure of the other fighter(s) and/or set up time-on-target bursts. #1 and #5 are still meh but hey, auto-fire and/or extra damage without much risk.

My $0.02 anyway. Not saying it doesn’t work. Saying it doesn’t work for my playstyle.

tl;dr – LB is a support weapon that utilizes the idea that the best defense is a good offense rather than condition CC — but only if you aren’t in a melee-range furball.

Well Ladies (and Gents) that’s nice but when I find an Ele in WvW on my Pistol and Pots Engi all it means is a long fight before I get to stomp em. To be fair I lose to them about 1 time in 4 so they are pretty strong. (And to be extra fair that’s Small vs Small. They beat the pants off us for zerg support.)

There was more to the Engi before the KR change than KR.

If anyone has a Recluusa in guild on AR I hope you’ll pass this on.

I’m offering my apologies. We were in L Room Bay and I misread their /say. I whispered rather intemperate words before I had read the /say twice for a double-check. I tried to immediately whisper an apology but they had blocked me. I’m hoping to reach out and let them know I was wrong and I regret it.

My char name at the time was Ranaelli and if someone recognizes who I did wrong by please pass this on. Thanks.

I’m not sure if it shows more or less discipline on my opponents’ part but every time I get around a group taking a camp I’m much more likely to get focus fired by everyone rather than getting to peal them off in 1s and 2s.

I am curious what your targeting order is? And note to self, remember box of nails.

digiowl.9620:

Goloith.6349:

Tbh I think the only time devs play the engineer is in sPvP and not WvW or PvE. Seems to be shaping up their behavior towards this profession.

Sums up the game in general. Just about every balance decision is done based on SPVP performance and meta.

But don’t you see? That’s where the money is! Why wouldn’t a business concentrate most on what brings in the revenue? Am I right? Right? … No?? ok.

What? You must have missed the “rest day” memo. It didn’t get marked Spam did it?

(Thanks for keeping our bacon out of the fire then!)

bradderzh.2378:

AR has had a very poor turnout today on my shift. Shocked we kept what we have. DH easily had enough to make a move on our keep in EB (especially with IoJ hitting bay in ARBL) Many times today I felt like the only commander on the 4 maps…

Basic build is

0/30/10/30/0
pistol distance, pistol recharge 20% faster, penetrating shots
invis on immobilize
elixers recharge 20%, elixers last 20% longer*, hgh (might stacks)

gear is high condition + as much power as you can stack while reaching the vit/tough you want. (Given those constraints crit-chance gets surprisingly high.) Food of plate of fire-flank steak and either maint-oil for perception or tuning crystals for cond damage. Runes are 2x S Monk, 2x S Water, 2x M Water for boon duration. Sigils are Earth and Corruption.

Utils — H, B, S, Toolkit, Supply Crate

• Re: Potent Elixers — This one is probably not needed with Runes and can be swapped as desired. Maskaganda runs 409 for the extra condition removal.

Well there’s only really four viable items to slot there. Self-Regulating Defense, Protection Injection, Potent Elixers, and 409. PE can be swapped out thanks to the Runes.

Of the remaining I would think on paper that PI was the strongest. Ideally you never get to 25% hp for S-RD to kick in and (at least in my experience) I don’t have tosses/drinks waiting around to clear conditions with 409. However, I’ve run PI and I can’t recommend it. 1vSmall you aren’t getting banged around enough to get a lot of use. There is a Ranger/Ranger/Thief group I see occasionally that I’ve learned to leave well enough alone. The rangers bang you around so you can’t move and the thief goes to town. I found the same issue taking on 2x Rifle/SD/Net Turret Engis that worked as a team and I never got off the floor before they put me on it again. So not enough gain against small groups and against constant CC and/or a zerg the protection you get doesn’t really keep you alive much longer.

So 409 vs S-RD. I think it’s an either-or thing on playstyle but my abhorrence of thieves and the feeling I don’t get as much use of 409 as I could because of HGH and wanting the bufs to give me the edge means S-RD is what I run with. Note that S-RD, Toolkit, and S up is 9(!!) seconds that nobody can touch you. For roaming that’s almost always overkill. For the keep attack/defend that I’ve been doing lately it means I can be popping someone from the wall, charge when they get too close, drop and S-spike them in the middle of their zerg, and still get back into the keep. It’s a small and perhaps cheap pleasure but I do enjoy it.

Maskaganda.2043:

about the loot bags, I don’t know why I don’t pick some of them up; I guess that between all the keypresses and stuff to keep track of, my brain just prioritizes other stuff over looting.

about the defensive part of this build: I like to think it’s pretty solid, there’s no lack of invulnerability, no lack of condition removal, plenty of swiftness/vigor/protection.
I had a recording of me fighting 2 decent condition thieves at the same time for 8 minutes, I downed them half a dozen times but I could never get the stomp, I think that speaks for itself regarding survivability.

Also, on those 2 larger fights at the end I was running with my guardian buddy (The Tekno Viking) and he has been described as a beast, he helps alot keeping me alive. I found this with my thief when duoing with him: if you force most players to disengage from you often enough (using S, gear block, stealth, cripple, etc or with the thief just perma stealth), they will focus on the slow moving -unkillable- hulk and leave you alone.

@lanny, I see self regulating defense working, but I usually stay away from automatic actions (not boons) if I can. it’s a personal thing, I just don’t like having something happen that can interrupt what I’m doing.

Been doing keep acquire/defense lately and in those situations Self-Regulating Defense is quite nice (with C instead of Toolkit during defense.) You might be surprised how many times pounding on a gate you don’t pay attention to your HP until suddenly you are tiny (-ier since I play an Asura to begin with).

Maskaganda.2043:

sorry, I didnt update the traits in the second link. Yes, I am using 409 instead of potent elixirs now.

You might rewatch the vids, Eviator. Maskaganda is always sauntering back across his loot bags and picking them up. He just does it without breaking stride so it’s easy to miss. (That said I’m posting before I’ve watched this movie so I’m definitely speaking out of turn.) Ok. I take it back.

I run this build and survivability is NOT an issue (well not for me. The other side does have problems.) It is an attrition build and works best when folks don’t decide to try to form a human pyramid on you. 1v1 I have problems with the thieves that can tie up a 5 man and there are some mesmers out there that eventually we get tired of trying to kill each other. Everything else is warm buttery toast.

Mmm toast.

Eviator.9746:

It bugs me to no end that you don’t pick up loot bags in battle. That said, it’s great to see your amazing work using another build which looks like a lot of fun. I think the key to your success here is your skill in survival. My guess is the averge person would probably have survivability issues with this build.

In your preview post a week or two ago you mentioned moving around traits to get Formula 409. Your build calculator doesn’t have it. Did you decide to just go without a condition cleanser for now, or is the build link out-of-date?

Yeah. There’s a lot of wiggle room. I’d certainly say go with more toughness rather than vitality if you are going to go with more of one than the other.

I’ve tried to break my HGH habit several times with 409. The biggest trouble I see with it is that you (well I) want the bufs that the tosses and drinks are gonna give me for a fight more than I want to hold off on using them just so I’ll have a condition removal. Outside of static line zerg v zerg or keep defense where the conditions can REALLY mount up I usually just ignore condition removal in favor of Toolkit and in those situations I slot C. (I’m running 22.8k hp though so I have a nice buffer to soak up a condition or three.)

MentalPause.9183:

Lanny.6987:

So there’s a really good reddit thread on the trade-off between vitality and toughness. To a first approximation you want an armor to hp ratio of 1:10 because adding 1 point of toughness is equivalent to adding 1 point of vitality. To a second approximation you have to know how much incoming heal you’ll get over a fight and how much of the incoming damage is a result of conditions.

For most people I would suggest the 1:10 ratio and then worry about more important things. I’ll use Masakaganda’s numbers here. He’s suggesting swapping 100 vitality for 100 toughness. He is currently 21632 hp. He’ll lose 1000 hp in that deal and pick up (100/24 ) 4 mitigation. 4% of the new 20632 hp will be 825 hp.

The reddit author doesn’t take weapon coefficient into account but now we can. If Maskaganda is attacked by a coef of less than 0.825 he’ll come out ahead on direct damage but will lose EVERY time on condition damage which bypasses the tradeoff to toughness.

Tl;dr – build preferences allowing go with an armor to hp ratio of 1:10 and move on.

[Doing the coefficient math off the top of my head and have a nagging suspicion I might have it backwards. I welcome corrections if I got the numbers or logic wrong.]

Yeah I read that article, I’m assuming its the same one, and its partially why I suggested going with a bit more toughness. My reasoning is that with his boon uptime, specifically regen and protection, he has access to a higher effective health pool already.Taking more toughness, despite losing out on his overall effective health pool point by point, he gains a larger effective health pool based on its interaction with healing: i.e. negating incoming damage. At least this is how I understand it.

Regarding Condition Damage: He does lose out in that battle and here’s where build preference comes in. With 409 you have 6 condition removal options, creating significant condition removal. It seems to me he would have more wiggle room to negate incoming direct damage based on his ability to remove conditions. I guess if he feels like he loses to conditions more than direct damage, more vitality would be the way to go.

I hope this made sense, and I wasn’t too far off with my assumptions, considering I didn’t work out the math, just used approximations in my head.

Link to article: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/161m2d/vitality_toughness_and_you/

@Otaur, fine Pistol and Pots play. Welcome to the club!

For gold I recommend living in WvW or repeating AC paths 1,2,3 each day. For AC that usually requires a guild. Nice thing about grinding AC though is that it’s nice xp towards 80.

But y’all play for 4th so I’m not sure what your point is? Oh, we aren’t supposed to start the rank from the tier above? Most precisely you should say that AR plays for 17th.

peter.9024:

dabomb.4056:

Faranox.4217:

I was looking at the WvW ratings when I noticed something neat.
Anvil Rock has the lowest Deviation and Volitility of all the servers in North America
SOLID AS A ROCK!

Good observation, also means that we’ll be in this tier for a long time more :p

That’s what happens if you play for second place..

They danced with us for the last 11 weeks. That’s just under half the time the game has been live. If you don’t get that… well then I guess you don’t get it.

Sazdek.6830:

Why is NSP still posting in this? I don’t get it….

AR is Just… That… Good. No wait. Lucky? No, no. Good. Definitely good.

<mumble>phases and plans. phases and plans</mumble>

dank.3680:

Your plan was for IOJ to lose so bad they drop a tier even though BP is losing rating? Which phase was that btw?

It’s a race between us and the moderators. We add posts, they delete. (I was collateral damage when replying on a deleted sub-thread. “Your post has been deleted since the post it replied to has been deleted.”)

Rob.7624:

You guys are only on page 4 for your forum thread?

Pssh.

Slacking.

So there’s a really good reddit thread on the trade-off between vitality and toughness. To a first approximation you want an armor to hp ratio of 1:10 because adding 1 point of toughness is equivalent to adding 1 point of vitality. To a second approximation you have to know how much incoming heal you’ll get over a fight and how much of the incoming damage is a result of conditions.

For most people I would suggest the 1:10 ratio and then worry about more important things. I’ll use Masakaganda’s numbers here. He’s suggesting swapping 100 vitality for 100 toughness. He is currently 21632 hp. He’ll lose 1000 hp in that deal and pick up (100/24 ) 4 mitigation. 4% of the new 20632 hp will be 825 hp.

The reddit author doesn’t take weapon coefficient into account but now we can. If Maskaganda is attacked by a coef of less than 0.825 he’ll come out ahead on direct damage but will lose EVERY time on condition damage which bypasses the tradeoff to toughness.

Tl;dr – build preferences allowing go with an armor to hp ratio of 1:10 and move on.

[Doing the coefficient math off the top of my head and have a nagging suspicion I might have it backwards. I welcome corrections if I got the numbers or logic wrong.]

You mesmers… Ya ain’t got nothing for cuteness on the Asura Engineers! (Go AR! — See devs! On topic!)

Gothahm.6274:

Catisa.6507:

doesn’t matter what BP says in thread, everyone knows BP will PvDoor to take first

Everybody PvDoor’s…who cares. Let’s talk about other things like how cute Asuran Mesmer’s are!

They do say quantity has a quality all its own.

titanlectro.5029:

Rashagal.5867:

Burnnn.1903:

I just wanted good fights. Both BP and AR provided them the majority of the time, and I would hope both servers have a similar opinion of us.

That we do. As much smack we talk about the macro level stuff, you would be hard pressed to find a majority of either server that didn’t enjoy the fights with you guys. Almost exclusively the gripes about NSP were about you guys getting lippy and claiming that you were better and we were playing for second or double teaming you.

AR has a sore spot when it comes to being talked down to. The same thing happened when BP had their T5 population and kept getting big headed about denying it. GoM can tell you about that. Thems was dark days for the forums. lol

On the up side, if BP and AR can get over the drama and become bestest buds. Perhaps the same can happen with NSP. Here’s to hoping it will!

Yes, we on GoM remember those days.

I was so tempted to throw in here, “BP wins because of skill, not because of numbers,” and then run away REALLY fast.

Well you see AR and BP are actually the same server. It’s a bug in the code we decided not to tell anyone about. In fact it’s just the same guilds on each side attacking you. In fact there’s really only like three people that the game has cloned. Yeah… cloned. That’s the ticket!

Vinny.6924:

This fight so far has been the most fun in WvW ive had thus far. The score is so tight its amazing!

Side note: idk why both servers feel the need to zerg on our BL at the same time?glad you feel we are that big of a threat!

Also AR on DH BL last night attempting to take our tower 10+ times getting wiped over and over, lol what were you guys doing?? Had me confused TBH

It’s situational but hard to find a better place to spend the 5 points given everything else taken. (Hmm. Maybe some synergy with HGH/409 and Adrenalin Pump if you aren’t using Runes of Adventurer.) Look into Maskaganda’s earlier videos and you’ll see he actively sets up piercing situations (often across downed players but in a few you can see him working the pierce for the extra damage while 1v2+). Once you start looking to set up those situations in your own fights you find them more often than you might think. Which is not to say they are always easy to take advantage of.

Lupanic.6502:

May I ask why you take Pistol shots pierce?

Heh. Yeah. Saw Drakeco’s vids with y’all dueling and swapped out C for prybar. My favorite are guardians because it’s instinct for them if pulled to Whirling Wrath. Don’t overlook Box of Nails before Magnet if you have the tempo for it.

Good work tying up that loose end. Thanks.

Anvil Pants.3426:

I can confirm that Anvil Rock has moved all of its spies off of NSP. All zero of our spies have bought their gems and moved to BP.

Bzzt. Go AR!

Rashagal.5867:

Evilzara.6378:

First non Darkhaven to comment.

Sorry, Zara. Nutz was here first.

Happy Hunting!
Praise to the Anvil!

Just… not over me! (Asura are small you see.)

So I don’t expect this to do any good but I’ll try anyway.

Would everyone please tell their guildies not to use the section of cliff in Vale that makes you invulnerable? I’ve taken the screen shots and reported the bug just like thousands of others I’m sure. I’m guessing it will get fixed one day, but really — how weak do you have to be to use that section of wall?