Guild Wars 2

Yeah confusing combatants only inflicts those 3 conditions. According to the guildwars wiki. I feel that the most useful one early on is Crippling Dissipation. I dropped the scepter and switched to sword so my clones would melee as well, using that with the staff keeps enemies at safer distances while I apply the rest of the conditions I need with staff skills. I want to give confusing combatants a try when I lvl up enough to trait it. Then maybe they will kill themselves swatting my clones. This is all for PVE btw I will bring my Mes into WvW later on and probably change my strategies around after I hit lvl 80.

You know I read the subject without actually clicking on the topic and immediately went to see what the update notes were for mes and other professions first. >.< d’oh

Funny read though.

Genesis.5169:

Well..
I play a mesmer.
I agree with you.
But i’d rather them rework the scepter first,
I think mesmers are the only class that have a really really really kittenty weapon.

You should read the Guardian forum and see how they feel about the scepter.

I like this using that trait too but I’ve had similar results when using Hold the Line in particular. It’s been mentioned on here before and I’m hoping it gets fixed as some of my favorite guardian utilities are shouts.

Watching you battle that ele in the first fight makes me want to try an ele. To have been either you or the ele in that fight would have been great rush. I would have sent them a friend invite.

@ Sarcasmic

That’s the best idea I’ve seen in a while.

Clearly your reading comprehension needs work. That is exactly what I said when you blindly quoted me the first time.

Let’s review:

I’ll clarify, SYS (Save yourselves) pulls conditions from allies (other players that aren’t trying to hit you) and gives you (the caster of SYS) buffs it’s a great panic button for you but it doesn’t give your allies any buffs … Ok I’m going to stop right there that’s the most important part because I am explaining that SYS only buffs the caster.

Now I know it’s hard but if you actually scroll up to the OP you’ll read that the gentleman (or lady) wanted to use SYS to buff other players. Now open wide I will spoon feed you just this once.

Empowering might will give you and your allies constant might, while in combat, and your two shouts will give your wvw team the umph you need, one thing i love about shouts is they work fine for solo builds also, as the buffs are pretty good, especially save yourself, and when traited their just as good as self buffs as they are aoe buffs.

So the purpose of my statement that you quoted first was to let the player know that SYS may not be the best option for what the OP wanted to do since it only buffs them and not the other players (the ones that aren’t hitting him) around him.

Now let’s bring it around to what you just put into writing.

What you might have meant to say, or rather, what you should have said is ‘SY might not be the best of shouts when running a glass cannon and expecting it to support your allies with buff’s’.

I believe sir that that is basically the same concept is it not? I just didn’t use words like zerg and glass cannon, no I’m not above those words I understand their importance and use them as needed.

Now on to conditions, each profession is capable of dishing out conditions some do it really well compared to others, so in a WVW environment you are constantly under barrage from conditions if you are fighting competent players. So unless you are geared for condition removal through shouts using SYS to get rid of conditions alone isn’t very helpful to your group. The players will get conditions stacked back on them again in a relatively short amount of time. This skill is rarely used for that purpose it is mostly a super buff for the caster with the minimal draw back being they pull conditions, the shout works just fine if you are solo. This is why it has a long cool down compared to other shouts and why it was nerfed in spvp.

Yes, I try to be amusing while I inform, and kiddo? Well at least I’m not turning the word epic into a grunt of approval by mimicking what I saw on a social media site.

Amins.3710:

MastaNeenja.1537:

I’ll clarify, SYS pulls conditions from allies and gives you buffs it’s a great panic button for you, but it doesn’t give your allies any buffs so no umph for your allies when you use that shout. Is SYS bad? No absolutely not. Does it help anyone other than you out? Not really.

The suggestion to trait into virtues is if you’re looking to expand out and try something different, you can take it or leave it. I say its worth it because every time you kill an enemy you can throw out blind, burning, vulnerability and might with Renewed Justice.

Kidding right? To say it’s “umph” for your ally’s is short sighted. It pulls “All conditions” off nearby allies… that’s quite a bit of “umph”. If they’re allive, they’re DPS’n. If they’re dead, no DPS.

Lyssa Runes + SY = epic.

I can only assume you disagree with my statement about SYS’s lack of “umph” yeah pulling conditions is great, you reset them back to no conditions for all of 2 seconds before they get a fresh set of conditions reapplied from the same set of attacks. Now for keeping your allies alive for the almighty DPS what exactly does that accomplish? You shout SYS sponge up an average of 2 conditions at best and then get a nice stack of boons… for you. While your allies are left with no buffs.

Boons on the other hand get removed far less frequently than conditions. I’d rather have stability and poison, than to have poison removed for seconds then have it reapplied again.

Furthermore I do not rely on others to remove my conditions regardless of which profession I am playing. If you are downed because of conditions it’s your fault.

You want to get rid of conditions while shouting use 6 superior runes of the soldier.

And no, just no. Space and the formation of galaxies is kittening epic, and the vastness of the ocean is epic; a rune setup in an MMORG is “really good” at best.

Since I mostly use shouts in my utility skills I agree people should hear me yelling buffs at them. I had no idea they didn’t hear it but come to think of it I never hear another Guardian shout SYG! Retreat! or what ever.

Also is the trait Pure of Voice broken or does it only work some of the time? (As in a 50% chance) I want to convert conditions into boons and heal myself even more with Altruistic Healing when I yell at people.

Humor, I loled

This is heritage armor it’s what I currently use on my Mes, well the chest legs and boots I didn’t unlock all of it. It’s pretty hot though.

Yeah you should probably just not use the scepter then, sorry about that.

Does it? I didn’t think clones would override phantasms. Just have 2 phantasms out and 1 clone the clone that the scepter keeps producing will always get replaced leaving the other two phantasms alone.

If it turned out to be medium armor my Eng or Thief can wear it, but I would rather have it as light armor.

I use the torch from time to time, when mobility is very important. I think its a great weapon. The only weakness I can see with the touch is that it’s not the best choice for defense but that’s why we have two weapon sets to pick from.

To answer your question, the torch is not a bad weapon it has fairly quick CD compared to the shield and focus. I think most players that are giving it a bad rap primarily use two handed weapons for AOE instead. IMO all Guardian weapons are good when I play sometimes my biggest dilemma is choosing which weapon I am going to wreak havoc with for the day.

Just use the guardian teleport skills, staff skill #3 and/or the shout Retreat you’ll get around pretty quick.

if the weapon doesn’t fit your playstyle and none of your alts can use it’d I’d say sell it and by something more useful such as Ironfist

I really like this hammer it’s simple yet awesome.

That looks like it should be light armor since it’s not a trench coat or made out of metal but its probably just town clothes … blegh.

Nice dress though would look great on lots of Mes out there mine included.

Ok knowing aggro priority helps. I will keep that in mind chances are I got too close to the mob then.

I have to ask, are you coating your illusions in bacon grease and cat nip, then having them hold tacos and booze? Mobs tend to walk right past my clones and come strait after me. They do usually go out of their way to swat my phantasms though.

I have a lvl 35 Mes and that i have only used in PVE so far, my damage output seems adequate I am traitng and building equips for condition damage and crits with a staff. I haven’t settled on what my other weapon set will be but so far I like playing my Mes my main is a Guardian and it’s a completely different way to play.

If only there was a way to get my clones to hold dirty magazines…

yeah you can give that a try and if you don’t like it flip it back to using the shield it only takes 3.5 s to retrait your char at lvl 80. You have to find out what feels like home for you. And yeah I agree untraited focus is better.

On further thought with that set up you’ll be able outright null a lot of incoming attacks. Sword skill 2 and Focus 4 blind in addition to Virtue of Justice, (that will really put Blind Exposure trait to work for you) and Focus 5 will also block up to 3 attacks. That’s a total of up to 6 separate attacks that will not connect with you.

Stability is absolutely worth it, you can’t get pulled to, or knocked away or interrupted also if you’re knocked down, SYG will stand you back up and get you back into the fight so they can’t control you by keeping you on the ground or pulling you or knocking you away. It’s a free pass to 5 seconds of uninterrupted beat down. So if they fight back that’s when retaliation comes into play. Anyone dropping AOE damage on your group relation won’t have much fun for example.

I’m just saying try it out that’s all if you don’t like it don’t use it.

I’ll clarify, SYS pulls conditions from allies and gives you buffs it’s a great panic button for you, but it doesn’t give your allies any buffs so no umph for your allies when you use that shout. Is SYS bad? No absolutely not. Does it help anyone other than you out? Not really.

The suggestion to trait into virtues is if you’re looking to expand out and try something different, you can take it or leave it. I say its worth it because every time you kill an enemy you can throw out blind, burning, vulnerability and might with Renewed Justice.

The traits lines are good I really like Radiance and Right hand strength

I think I would trade Powerful Blades for Signet Mastery just to cut down the recharge for Signet of Resolve. 5% damage seems negligible to me. Other than that you should give Stand Your Ground a try if you want to buff your allies. I prefer it over SYS because the recharge is much shorter and SYS only buffs you.

Hold the Line is a great skill that I think all Guards should use frequently.
Wall of reflection is also good, situational but good and fun to watch.

I know it may screw up your build a bit but traiting at least 5 points into Virtues is worth it since you’ll be spamming Virtue of Justice. If you trait 10 then you can get even more use out of Wall of Reflection for Consecrated Ground or Master of Consecrations.

I love my Guardian’s stubborn refusal to die. I enjoy running in and putting myself between my squishy allies and the enemy as I quickly whittle away their HP with my crushing Ironfist hammer. It’s great when I shout and I see conditions melt away from my party while my HP climbs back up from from the half way point without even using a heal skill. It’s so easy to laugh maniacally as I burn multiple enemies with Cleansing Flames. Chopping them to bits with Whirling Wrath never gets old.

Protector’s Strike! Access denied mother kitten!
Face me! My Shield of Wrath shall defend my allies.
Where do you think you’re skulking off to coward? Flashing Blade says you cannot escape me so easily.

The first time I had to fight a squad of 4 small kraka i got pasted and then the second and 3rd time but I finally got my revenge on the 4th. I’d rather fight the lager ones any day. Lots of blocking, dodging required it’s all timing. Those projectile attacks are designed to chew through armor and large amounts of HP. It was an interesting wake up call.

I enjoyed the event over all, there are some kinks that need to be worked out but the basic idea was good and the event was fun. I would like to see one of these come up occasionally but not make it a monthly or even quarterly occurrence.

The event was a solid 4 out of 5 Stars in my book. I would like to see similar events like this in the future, just not very often.

Pros
-awesome difficult battle which involved more than just hack and slash
-excellent rewarding loot

Cons
-lag during first event, though I didn’t have problems during the last event
-Last battle was just a bit too long from start to finish it took 2.5 hours, was fun however

Keep up the good work Anet loved the event, I thought over all everything was great with the exception of lag during the first event.

The loot from the chests was good for the amount of effort you had to go through.
Just remember if you keep trying to please everyone you’ll make no one happy at all.

Give me the dungeon I like that.

But as for the agony condition and ascend gear, no thank you.

Or instead of a burst heal you could warp to the nearest downed (not dead) player and start healing them, I think insta rally would be too OP

But I’m sure Anet probably tested that and deemed it not a good idea.

Many players have said they don’t like MI because of how they never really get to heal the player they want to heal and I agree. I think the skill should have some kind of targeting set up be it player or ground but it doesn’t so I do not use the skill at all.

I think the skill was designed the way it was exactly for the reasons given by Ynna, but that makes the skill too unreliable for me.

The only suitable compromise I can think of and I am pretty sure it’s been mentioned on here before is that the skill should have a target priority list programmed into it.

1) Party members
2) Random players
3) NPCs
4) Pets and turrets ( I haven’t experienced this but others have claimed that the skill heals these so I’m putting them at the bottom of the list)

I simply never use the skill and if I rolled another guard I wouldn’t buy it. I think the basic idea was good but there’s no solid direction for the skill so I think it needs to be scrapped all together and a new skill take its place.

I’ll look into that, i see what you mean bout chill being better since it also slows down skill recharge, thanks.

My biggest problem with wvw is that people tend to run away when I begin to get the better of them. Chasing them down with a guardian is difficult. I read through the posts here and it’s given me some ideas. I wish guardians had more options to cripple enemies, but their conditions seem to focus on burning which is nice but you can run away while you’re on fire. Even when I teleport to them they keep on running like scared little babies back to the motherzerg it’s pitiful.

Is there a sigil that inflicts cripple on crits like how earth inflicts bleeding?

Any player can ask to see another player’s gear in chat what this does is leave it up to the discretion of the individuals involved. So that pretty much covers gear checking.

I for one do not think gear checking beyond that is necessary. For starters I don’t want someone who thinks they know what they are doing telling me what to equip and what runes to use. Yes I know that 6 superior runes of the eagle are better than what I have but I don’t have the resources to invest in that yet. Give a more passive version of gear checking next will come trait checking again if I need help I’ll ask.

Players will be picked solely on what they are equipped with and not given a real chance to prove themselves, or even learn how to play a dungeon which takes a different mentality than just random PVE play. Similar instances have already been cited in other MMOs in this thread.

Furthermore, I’ve seen lvl 80s with better gear get spanked and sent home by dungeons and lvl 35s thrive, they were probably alts but still we are talking strictly gear here.

I think the way Anet has handled the issue with gear so far has been the best way, there’s other things they should devote resources to like fixing bugs and game balance.

Last I remember it says something about creating a healing ring but I’m not sure of exactly what the ring is. I don’t see anything on the ground that looks like a ring, so maybe it heals in an area similar to how Judge’s Intervention burns in an area? JI is awesome btw.

I would love to see some kind of targeting for this skill at the very least I think it should heal people in your party before it heals anyone else. But the skill is pretty unreliable so I never use it.

Sticky McStickington from Sticky-Town USA!

(seriously, why hasn’t this been given a proper sitcky yet?)

Great work a comprehensive guide for players who want to give the hammer a serious go.

what ever it is, I hope it’s a skill you depend on so you’ll be forced to think outside the box

This is essentially the list of why I like my guard so much as well. If your first character is a guardian (mine was) you can’t appreciate them as a profession until you’ve played some others for a bit.

I trait radiance to 30 to boost crits of one handed weapon. You can also use honor to get your 2handed cool downs shortened by 20% on the hammer for 20 trait points.

I use the sword or mace as my 1 handed and pair them with hammer or GS all the time. I don’t see why you couldn’t substitute the scepter as your 1h weapon. Because you’re using radiance you’ll be able to spam justice once you trait in 15 points so you can get plenty of burn just from that. BTW torch skill 5 unfortunately does not cause burning from what I can tell but I love using the torch anyway.

If you trait 30 into Radiance which also helps with conditions and 20 into honor for two handed – hammers that leaves you 20 points to play with to fill out a build that might better suit burning or complement your utility skills.

This is essentially what i am taking about on paper, with 50 trait points spent.

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/guardian#0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|30|2172|1369|1366|0|0|0|0|20|866|1400|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

My only true problem with elite skills stems from the fact that most of them you cannot use underwater, for Guardian anyway I cannot vouch for other professions. Fortunately I like Renewed Focus but seeing that I paid 30 SP for ToC and can’t even use it underwater that’s kind of crummy. I avoid underwater combat as much as I can anyway. I’m not against underwater combat I think its a great idea I just like fighting on land better because all the races are land based races anyway.

Ever wonder how many elite skills didn’t make the cut? I’m pretty sure any ideas or suggestions about new or improved elites were probably covered in one form or another already by the development teams at Anet, and didn’t make it into the game because it was some how game breaking or just didn’t live up to the expectations.

Indeed! I am pretty sure that’s how they are supposed to work I don’t think using shouts or meditations in this way is any kind of exploit. You just need fast fingers.

They are elite skills not win buttons.

Before I used Tome of Courage almost all the time, then about 3 weeks ago I started using Renewed Focus which is pretty awesome if you have built up your Virtues using the Virtues trait line.

lol especially if you have some eles or rangers helping you, watch them try to flee in terror but only to held by Ring of warding 5 seconds in hell

1) Get some ele or ranger buddies together anyone with Aoe will do

2) find horde of victims

3) find a target in middle of the crowd

4) start ring of warding

5) judges intervention!

6) lulz as your lock down several enemies while your ranger and ele friends Aoe them to death and doom. Snicker at the sheer panic when they try to get away but can’t

Why hasn’t this been given the Sticky yet?

well when you can’t beat ‘em join ’em. We never die even when we are downed we are still winning. If you do manage to completely deplete our HP pool we aren’t dead we are napping some like to call it meditating but those are the really “elite” guardians who are completely stuck up the rest of the guardian community shuns them.

It’s really hard playing a guardian at first because for some reason the game starts you off with this stupid mace weapon instead of a GS that just sucks you don’t get to spin around a lot and the symbol you make with it just heals you but since we never really die healing is over rated and not needed at all.

But once you get a GS you can spin like a Tasmanian devil and leave total destruction in your wake nothing survives it, nothing and skill 4 on the GS holy kitten its great I wish it had a faster cool down i think its called SoW it rules it’s the only weapon and skill you need as a Guardian because you can’t die, you just nap.

I don’t think we can Hold the Line! we may have to Retreat! unless a Judge’s Intervention happens you may have to Save Yourselves!!!!

I haven’t read it all yet but I can already tell this should be stickyed-the-hell-out of right next to [Guide/PVE] Guardian 101 – A Beginner’s Text

It seems really you can’t get away from it, so many posts that missed the purpose of this thread. But there were a couple of good tries too.