Guild Wars 2

Thanks all. I appreciate the input.

C’mon guys, help me out here. 116 views and not a single comment?

I main a Guardian but am having a lot of fun with my warrior recently and I’m looking to solidify his build so I can finish gearing him up. The problem is while I’m much more familiar with my Guardian, I’m not very familiar with the synergy of warrior traits/gear/skills. Some of it is pretty self explanatory but I figure this would be the best place to get some advice.

My goal is standard PvE/dungeons (not really fractals on this char) and WvW. I don’t really plan on spvp with this guy. Right now I’ve planned my hammer warrior around the build that was in the “Matale 7” youtube video. I really liked his playstyle and build so I took it and modified it slightly. This is what I have right now.

10-V
0-
30-VI-X-XI
10-I
20-VI-X

Knights Hammer-sup sigil of rage
Berserker Rifle-sup sigil of stamina (this came on the rifle)

Mending / Shake it off / Endure pain / Signet of fury / Signet of rage

He runs with a full knights armor/jewelry set up with Hammer and sword/shield. I want to use a Hammer/Rifle. Now, I could go that Knight’s route and I’m sure it’d be fine. But let’s be honest, while I want to be slightly “tanky” on my warrior, I have that for my Guardian and I’d rather see high numbers on my Warrior while still maintaining some decent damage mitigation through med-high armor and some condition removal.

What I’m wondering is would I still get higher numbers (high single figure killshots) at least using knights armor and berserker jewels? Or would this work better with full berserker gear while still maintaining some “tankyness” from being able to take hits and condition removal? I like the hammer playstyle and want to maintain that damage/control ability while still being able to dish out respectable damage with a rifle.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Edit: I’m absolutely not looking for a glass cannon warrior.

The fractal back piece is working for me but it only shows on my character, not in my Hero screen or any preview screen.

As Colin Johanson stated above, ecto salvage rate haven’t changed. I’ve noticed peaks and lulls in my salvage rates too but it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. I’d imagine the ecto prices are going up because more and more people are crafting/upgrading the new back pieces which take 250 a pop for some of them.

Man, I was looking for this yesterday but must have missed it. Search didn’t bring it up either. Anyway, first pic is unbuffed, second pic is buffed. Not finished with my back piece yet and I might trade out some sigils as well but for now this works well for 20’s fractals and WvW as well.

You’re welcome.

Ah, I think you mean basically grinding mobs for experience or those quests in other MMO’s that require you to kill xx amount of mobs and run back and turn in the quest. No, there’s none of that required here. I’ve never done that on my 3 80’s as a requirement. The only time I’ve done that is for farming in Orr for gold or karma (a different type of currency) or to get fine crafting mats because I didn’t want to buy them off the broker. Grinding mobs is not a required part of leveling or gameplay in GW2, the only time it’s done is when it’s the choice of the player.

@ Lisamee, you might look at rune of the eagle for extra precision and crit dmg. Unless you’re specifically seeking the majority of power that is on the rune. Rune of Hoelbrak, afflicted, centaur, vampirism and many more are all solid viable choices.

Well it looks like you’re going pretty heavy into vitality which can be good but if you have good condition removal you won’t need that high vitality. So I think you can swap some of that out for precision.
Your armor level looks good but instead of using (it looks like your jewels have an emerald base) valkyrie gems in your jewels, I would swap those out for exquisite ruby gems.
You could also do the same thing to your armor. I had thought about the valkyrie armor at one point too to keep more offensive but in the end I went with knights for a good mix between offensive and defensive. Depending on your build, Berserkers could also be very viable for you and would increase your crit chance dramatically.
Regardless of which armor you go for, I would go with Berserker weapons.
For a sigil, I see good use made of a variety of them. Most often I think sigils of accuracy, blood, bloodlust, energy, intelligence, strength, rage, or the one that increase stacks of precision on kill (can’t think of the name right now).
if you’re looking for more offense still, I would recommend swapping out your rings when you can. those a good rings but the condition dmg is kind of lackluster for us. I would go for the p/p/c ones but of course if you’ve already changed a lot of your stuff and you feel you’re lacking on defense then I would just go for the defensive rings.

I think I started rambling for a bit but hopefully you can dig some useful upgrades out of this mess.

Below is what I run (I do mostly fractals atm). Full knights armor, 6x rune of the pack, emerald jewels with ruby gems, , p/p/c rings, p/v/t greatsword w/ sigil of bloodlust, berserker scepter of force, corrupted bulwark w/ sigil of purity (might swap this but I’m not sure), soldier back with ruby gem (just got the p/v/t fractal back that I need to upgrade to beta).
First pic without food buffs, second pic is with Master maintenance oil and loaf of omnomberry bread food.

I agree. I think a spear/shield combo would be cool (kind of like the paragon from gw1).

If you aren’t concerned with conditions then rune of the dolyak would probably be the next best bet to increase durability.

So far I have an 80 Ranger, Guardian, and Warrior. The ranger was my first 80 and was extremely easy to level. I did very little crafting with him but cleared each area I came to and found that I was consistently between 3-5 levels below the next area and could still make my way in the next area with very little problem.

Chorel.1720:

Mazer.8923:

Ascended weapons are in the game. But as of right now they are only skins with no stats. They have a cool “misty” effect and leave a trail when you use them or run but they have no stats currently.

Those are fractals weapons, NOT ascended weapons. Ascended weapons are coming later on.

Ah yes, my bad. Fractal weapons are what I’m talking about. I realize the ascended weapons with stats are not available yet.

No, I’m talking about the actual Ascended (no stats) weapons that have a chance to drop from the daily chests in higher level fractals. My evidence is my guild mate that I run fractals with (he’s at about 38 but got his first one is the upper 20’s or low 30’s) and he’s gotten 2 so far. A hammer and I think an axe or dagger.

Edit: corrected below. I’m thinking of Fractal weapons, not ascended weapons.

Ah yes lol. I was switching between threads and forgot where I was. I use Rune of the pack for the extra attack since I use an AH build and it’s a bit low on damage so the extra power keeps me around 3k attack. The benefit to the Soldier rune is that your shouts remove conditions which are horrible for us considering our rather low end HP so if you run a shout build whenever you use a shout you remove conditions on yourself. Now, there may be an internal cool down for the rune but i’m not positive about that.

I actually like the scepter and it’s uses but I do wish the balls it shoots out could lock onto the mob/player or at the very least moved faster.

I would go for Superior Rune of the Soldier for condition removal with shouts and the added defense personally. Are you a Guardian or Warrior. I’m going to guess Warrior but it’s good for them too since they have shouts as well.

Ascended weapons are in the game. But as of right now they are only skins with no stats. They have a cool “misty” effect and leave a trail when you use them or run but they have no stats currently.

Here is my guy atm. I’m getting tired of his skin color so I might change that. Pretty happy with his armor look but would’t mind changing the helm at some point. I don’t like the Sylvari cultural gear and I didn’t want to play one of 7 billion humans in gw2 so I can’t get that great looking cultural gear.

Draconic Helm
Banded Pauldrons
Armageddon Breastplate
Nobleman’s Gauntlets
Orrian Legguards
Orrian Greaves

Midnigth Rust dye
Charcoal dye

I was using a brighter color scheme before but got tired of it and decided to go for something a little darker.

First pic has Destroyer Scepter and Corrupted Bulwark, second pic has the Ghastly Greastsword.

Quarktastic.1027:

On the right: my guardian’s current look

On the left: something I’ve been experimenting with.

I’m not sure which one I like better.

I never really liked the look of the AC pauldrons (that’s what you have on the right, correct?) and I used the same one you have on the left on my asura warrior for a while so I kind of like that look. But I ended up going with the Banded Pauldron skin for my guardian (not asura) and I really like it. One of these days I’ll actually get around to posting a pic of my guard and stats…

I would say the AH build in the sticky (or a variation of that) is probably one of the most common since it provides excellent group performance while not losing out on too much of your personal damage. So you can use that as a good starting point. there are also several other very good builds out there that are all over these forums (Healway build, some “glass cannon” builds, meditation builds..etc) so I might watch a few of the videos posted along with those and find what suits your play style. Guardians already have some innate defenses with virtues so you probably won’t need to worry about dying much at lower levels if you want to focus on mostly offensive stats.

For leveling purposes I used a greatsword/ scepter/focus with only offensive stats (no condition dmg, more in line with berserker stats) and did just fine. I found that I could handle mobs several levels higher than me by switching weapons to use specific cd’s. At 80 I run a lot of fractals and other dungeons so the AH build works great for me. If you’re going to be doing more solo play then AH might not be the best choice since it’s stronger when you can grant boons to your party as well as yourself.

Especially in the low levels, level up all your weapon choices as you get them and play around with what you like to use. That way you can focus on what you want to spend money on when you’re max level. I myself always carry a greatsword, shield, focus, scepter, hammer, and staff so I am ready for whatever I need to do in a given situation. Not to say the other weapons aren’t viable but these are what I prefer and what works for my play style and build.

I run an AH build as well (0/5/30/30/5) since I do a lot of fractals and other dungeons but I also solo PvE from time to time. While I think meditations would be better for solo, I don’t really notice much of a lack of healing from being solo in an AH build. Of course there definitely would be a lack if my health dropped a lot but for the most part in PvE, the mobs die fast enough that I don’t really worry about my healing. You do gain some healing by applying the boons to yourself (tho of course not as much as you would in a party) and I find that to be enough to get me through any solo PvE I do. Even in Orr where there are mobs galore.

If you plan on playing mostly solo, I would probably rethink going for an AH build but if you’re just leveling solo and plan to do more group oriented content at 80 then AH will suit you fine for the next 5 levels.

Congrats Malediktus. That’s an insane amount of time invested into the game but at least you have an awesome legendary to show for it (and also my personal favorite).

Thanks all for the extra info and advice. It’s not like it can’t be done without the extra crystals so I wouldn’t exactly call it an exploit. Little things to help out in higher fractals will help though.

Ok sweet. So as the tentacle is about to die I throw out binding blade but don’t actually “activate” it correct? If the icon is up then more crystals will drop? I’ll try this out tonight when I get off work. Timing sounds easy so it shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks again.

I searched forums but couldn’t find it anywhere so I decided this would be the best place to answer this question.

I’m up to lvl 20 in Fractals and I know there is a trick to getting more crystals to drop from the mobs in the daily level to throw at Jade Maw but I can’t seem to get an answer on how to do this. I’m pretty sure you use Binding Blade but I’m not sure when to use it or what mob to use the skill on. Hoping some of you more experienced Guardians can give me a detailed answer to make our runs a bit smoother.

Thanks for the replies.

They actually had this in GW1. It was great being able to go out every once in a while once they reset and get loot from them. If I remember right you had to follow an NPC’s dialogue and they would send you on a kind of scavenger hunt for the treasure.

There are a few pants out there for light armor. I have no clue what they are called but my wife has them on her Necro.

Absolutely. After having this option in another game for the last 3+ years I was surprised not to see it in GW2. I never realized how much I would miss it but it’s irritating on a daily basis considering there are a lot of unique skins that have very “toned down” or simple looking icons.

I searched the suggestion forums and it came up with a few threads that talked about race change being available in the gem store and I saw some comments about possible issues regarding that option. I think race change would be fantastic (I’d honestly be willing to spend $10-$20 on this) but I do agree there are some problems associated with the idea. However, I think there should be a window of opportunity to do so, kind of like a “once you cross this line, you’re locked into this race” kind of thing.

Please let me know if you see any problems with this idea but I think I’ve identified a window that this could be done. Here are the prerequisites as I see them.

-Be level 80 (sometimes you only know you don’t like a race until after you’ve put a lot of time into them and gotten to know some of their quirks)

-Complete your personal story line (I think this would eliminate any problematic approaches to how your story plays out with a race change)

-No cultural armor yet acquired on that character (obviously I can’t buy human cultural armor on my Asura and I like that I can’t. I see the issue with this)

As far as I can see this really eliminates the problems that have been brought up in other threads about this issue. This stems from leveling my third level 80 character (an Asura) and at first I really liked him but now after 40+ levels I can’t stand everything being so small on him that I can barely make out the different parts of armor sets and weapons like I can on my other characters. His movements are getting kind of annoying as well so those two key issues were enough to make me barely want to play him and I don’t plan on making any more characters in the short term so I’d really rather not go through the process of leveling yet another character.

I understand the Dev’s will not be personally responding to this and I’m ok with that. Frankly, I’d be amazed if they even had people to read through all of these threads. But I would like to get some feedback from the player base of my suggestion. Are there any other problems you see other than what I’ve identified? I think I found the sweet spot but I might be getting tunnel vision on the issue.

Thanks to any and all who respond.

I’ll probably be getting the Nightmare armor from dungeon tokens for my sylvari guardian. It’s “end game” gear and seems to fit well with a sylvari. Other than that I’m kind of disappointed there’s not sylvari type craftable armor. Seems like all the craftable armor is based around humans. which kind of sucks for my asura and i’m sure those char characters.

That is the Hall of Monuments heavy armor set. To get it you have to have played GW1 and unlocked it.

I was a clicker for a long time (I also moved with my arrow keys). I played mostly console games and only Counter Strike on computer before MMO games. GW1 was my first MMO and I clicked my way through all the expansion for about 1 1/2 years. Then I moved on to Aion and played that for about 3 years. Being a clicker in that game became noticeably more detrimental to my game play and how fast I could react in the higher levels, especially in pvp. I finally got tired of it and picked up a Naga mouse since that’s what most people seemed to like and use. It took me about a week to become very comfortable with it but once I left Aion I decided to never click again. I moved on to Diablo 3 and using the Naga in that game was very easy since there weren’t many skills. Then I played in the beta’s and headstart for GW2 and since there are a small amount of skills and such required for everything in this game as well, keybinding and using the Naga is extremely easy. Here is the breakdown of what I use for everything in GW2.

W – move forward
A – move left
S – move back (don’t use this too much tho. Much easier just to turn around and go forward).
D – move right

Q – F1
E – F2
R – F3

X – pull out weapon / stow weapon (just because I like how it looks )
C – swap weapons

1-0 buttons for skills are all done on my Naga.

I don’t keyboard turn either if you’re getting that impression. Keyboard turning is extremely slow and can hinder your game play big time. If I need to strafe or turn I just hold down the right button on my mouse and use either A or D. It’s really very easy and is quick to learn.

I’m sure there are other areas I can improve on but this seems to work very well for me in both pve and WvW style pvp. I don’t play much spvp.