You could sell them and take the money for exotics. I mean, I understand exotics drop less than rares but they are still craftable and buyable. My real problem is that there is a thread a week on someone wasting hundreds of gold yet when we dig deep, very few people converting exotics. Maybe it’s time to rethink that approach.
My big question is this: Of rare or exotics, what gives the better return on investment.
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I got a wack of celestial gems. I have an itch to use them for something. I’m just not sure what. Anyone have PVE build for any profession that takes advantage of all the stats celestial has to offer?
Sure, it’s cheaper but the economics might not make sense: For example
If it’s 1.6g for a rare attempt vs. 6g per exotic, but the rate that rares convert to exotic is … 2% (just guessing) then it doesn’t make sense to do rare conversions instead of exotics.
Here is a question I have never bothered to ask:
Why are people dropping rares in toilet instead of exotics for their precursor? Since precursors are also exotics, isn’t the probability of getting one going to be similar to:
P(forging precursor) = 1/ # exotics for a weapon type
… assuming the probability to get any exotic for a weapon type is equal? From this, someone can calculate the probability they will get a precursor in a certain # of forges and therefore the cost. Kinda surprised this hasn’t been done (or I have simply missed it)
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It thus rewards only those with unlimited amounts of time and/or those who use software tools to assist them.
So what? That’s not a problem. Listen to what you just wrote … people are rewarded for giving their time and tracking the market. Why is this something you think is unreasonable? You don’t think that someone should be rewarded in line with their efforts in the game? Again, that’s not so much a problem as simply recognizing that’s how the market (should) works.
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The intention of competition is to drive down prices. Allowing people to reap the benifits of competition without actually sacrificing profits is a market failure: it makes buyers and sellers worse off.
0.00000000001% is not an appropriate sacrifice. 0.000000001% doesn’t make buyers better off when competition should be giving buyers real price savings.
True, but there are more than one seller for an item and all offering competitive pricing, then your assessment of what’s happening in the market isn’t accurate. The proof is to actually SEE all the sell orders and what prices they go for. If you do that, you will see buyers ARE getting price savings.
So I am just curious how many people here run “selfish” builds in dungeons meaning builds that do absolutely nothing for your party. If so why do you do that?
It’s likely the people that run those builds don’t value the same things as people that label them selfish.
I don’t find the things the OP lists as problems unless a person doesn’t understand how the market works. Annoying? Sure, but they aren’t problems. Don’t confuse competing for goods on the market as a casual shopper as a ‘problem’. That’s simply not how this market is set up in the first place.
I have a problem with a system that says “I match his bid but sell to me first”. And that’s what the TP is now. Topping my 12g bid by 0.00083% is NOT a real overbid, it’s just an attempt to skip to the front of the line for offerers.
While you have a problem with that, it’s not a problem. That’s just other vendors competing with you.
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Regardless of how it works, I don’t think you will get a very objective answer.
Personally. I never use it. It’s not dependable.
If a 10% total increase in damage sucks, then logically, all the base mods for weapons ‘suck’ as well.
The only thing that makes Valor undesirable for the damage increase is that you need all 30 in the line to get it full benefit, while you can get away with 10 or 20 trait points in other respective lines for comparable mods. Based on the available traits, the economy for raising damage with this isn’t high. It only makes sense to go this route if you are creating a build around the traits in Valour or find that the traits in Valour suit whatever you are going to do.
I wouldn’t recommend it unless your finding your group has more support than they need.
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If you really want to take advantage of some crit, then I would recommend an ‘on crit’ sigil as well. You seem heavy on the endurance refill even though your vigor is procing alot. Might be worth thinking about.
That looks interesting though I question why you would take the Revive trait over the shout cooldown … the strength of your build is boon uptime.
Consider this … with 20% cooldown, you get recharge on SY to 48 seconds instead of 60. That makes your average boon uptime from it 41% instead of 33%. Also, it’s not situational like reviving someone and the revive only gives 3 boons, SY gives … all.
I would dump Valour 10 and do 0/5/5/30/30. You have 1800 toughness, you get 90 precision from it. It takes 21 precision points to get 1% crit increase. On the other hand, you have the ability to blind alot of people with VOJ on a 21 second cooldown. More valuable for you and your friends I think.
As for gear, maybe my view is radical but you don’t actually benefit much from your crit rate.
1. You don’t have ‘on crit’ effects
2. You don’t have much crit damage
You can probably streamline the build a little more and focus on the select stats that make this build hum for you. I would lean more to a Cleric/Soldiers mix myself.
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^^ I think that’s bad advice. If cost is your argument to avoid Juggernaut, you can use that logic for any legendary. Sure, the Juggernaut is relatively expensive to the other legendaries, but every legendary is relatively expensive compared to Ascended weapons.
So if you want to talk economy, then every legendary should be avoided (NONE are cheap to make) and just get ascended weapons for an order of magnitude cheaper than a single legendary.
As for the OP’s question … be aware that any build you use for both PVE and WvW will be sub-optimal because of the completely different aspects of each. My recommendation is simply to reset your build whenever you want to do one or the other.
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I think there are quite a number of things poorly done with Virtues but I don’t think the recharges are one of them. VOJ works well as it is, VOR recharge is inline with other on-demand heals ingame and VOC is strong enough such that any faster recharge on it might push Guardian away from a less active defense.
I’m of the belief that virtues on their own should be a significant effect. I don’t think traiting or activating should be necessary to get good benefits from them. Even when traited, the passive effects are barely enhanced. Rant over.
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Hey all! Just wanted to say that it’s on the list in the future to only have searing flames (and other similar effects) trigger only when your target has a boon.
-Karl
Not sure that is better … the cooldown for Active VoJ is longer than the ICD of Searing Flames. The only advantage is if you trait Rad 15.
my other issue … it’s not useful for PVE. It would be preferable if Anet could make traits useful in some way for all game aspects.
criteria for assessing builds
Great. Would you say it’s a stretch of the imagination to assume your criteria and your rankings associated with them are based on things you value in game?
^^ I’m game for trying …
Compared to what? What’s the context?
Compared to available recources. To what else, pandas flying in the space?
I’m not asking very thought provoking questions here. You clearly have a criteria you use to determine the boundary between what a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ build is. If those criteria are robust, you shouldn’t have much difficulty answering my question.
For instance … is 1/7/3/3/1 a bad build? Not compared to a 0/0/0/0/0 build …
Let me ask an even simpler question and it should be a real easy one for you … what ARE your criteria for what makes a build bad or good?
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^^ I’m game for trying …
Compared to what? What’s the context?
There is a whole stickied thread about how to use AH in an effective build. Did you read it?
As for your actual build, it seems a little all over the place. Do you have any particular part of the game where you want to use this build? PVE? WvW? etc… People can help you alot more if you say what your focus is.
I would suggest that for PVE, you already have it figured out …
Full zerk when you want the most damage and some combination of knights/zerk when you want to be tankier. As to WHAT pieces to get, I’m less knowledgeable. There is something that people have referred to where certain pieces give you better stats return. I’m not sure what criteria they use to determine it and it seems to change a bit depending on … things. Someone else can comment on that.
Personally, I have full ascended Zerker trinkets and I just swap knights/zerker armor as I see fit for PVE.
Glacial heart. Increase sving speed on the third step of the mace and hammer chain and increase damage with 5%.
Nice!
Is this your idea or something that Anet has proposed recently?
I see that as options, not oversimplification. If I can CHOOSE to apply poison with gear and traits, that actually needs more consideration when creating a build, not less.
That’s a matter of opinion really. It’s simply a label. If ‘poison’ was called ‘wrath’ or ‘spiritwind’ or some other Guardian-like thing, that would change the perception of how fitting it would be for the class. I’m not certain how you think maintaining and improving the variety in builds for a class is a homogenization of all classes, but that’s certainly not how I see it.
My newest idea: Keep the condition damage to power conversion and add “Convert all fields to fire”
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Poison actually fits with the idea of outlasting your opponent. By reducing their healing, you raise your effective HP against opponents that use heals as a primary method to mitigate damage.
Of course, removing Condition Damage elements doesn’t solve the problem of the poor condition damage implementation on the profession. it simply puts the nail in the coffin. I don’t believe that reducing access to game elements is a direction we should be supporting.
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I’m honestly ignorant here so this is an honest question.
Can someone explain what these terms are in the OP’s post or how they are related to GW2? Sunbro? Sorcery spells? Scepter Catalyst?
@ obtena
Your damage goes from 1.5x the base to 1.65x the base. But that is when it is compared against base damage.
If u compare the damage between (50,50) to (50,80) , the increase is 1.65x/1.5x =1.1×. Meaning that at (50,80), u are dealing 1.10x the damage as compared to (50,50). Damage increase of only 10% as compared to (50,50)
Hope u can understand what i am saying.
Yup, I understand.
I’m not sure what you are saying .. the chart is pretty easy to follow there. It tells you the damage increase for a ‘critical co-ordinate’ normalized to the baseline crit damage and chance.
If I’m starting at (50,50) and I go to (50,80), my damage goes from 1.5x the base to 1.65x the base.
It doesn’t sound stupid, but it’s pretty surprising to see someone say they hate Warrior in it’s current state. Is the problem that your simply tired of easymode? If so, then yes, try a Guardian. It won’t be hard for you to feel the difference quickly.
Ah, so true. I retract and apologize. Edited my post.
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10/30/0/30/0 can’t deal more damage than 10/30/0/5/25 in any case. It will always be less or even, assuming zero boons.
How did you get to that conclusion.
25 in virtues, power of the virtuous.
You’re welcome.
Edit: It’s always less.
This is assuming an organized group or well put together PUG.
Most of the PUGs I’ve been in don’t give me 9 perma boons.
This also sort of counters your own statement of saying its more DPS with zero boons.
1 boon is enough to out dps the 30 honor spec.
I wrote some stuff that was wrong. I corrected the error …
I think it’s still going to take more than 1 boon for virtue 25 to outdamage honour 25.
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I don’t know, this might be a foreign concept for some people but you might want to consider leveling to 80 by a means that is not exclusively crafting, such as… well… playing the game?
“Play how you want”, buddy. Not everyone wanna level a character traditional way when it’s more time and cost efficient to just craft. Not to mention it’s boring as hell to go out in the open world. WvW karma train makes it less painful though.
“Play how you want” isn’t not the same thing as ‘Demand how you want to play". Obviously, it’s no longer time/cost efficient to level to 80 just by crafting for some people or the thread wouldn’t exist.
If you were so inclined …
What I find interesting is the difference in gear sets for a particular build. You provide that with Soldiers/Zerker. I think it would also be telling for Cleric and Knights. I think anything else can be extrapolated.
I’m not sure what method you used to come up with your values but it may be more informative to present the actual power value you get, as well as the % increase in damage due to your (crit chance,crit damage) co-ordinate for a given gear/trait choice. Your numbers pass my litmus test as well:
Going from Soldiers to Zerker in a 10/20/0/5/25 results in an increase of 72% … I check the chart from GW2wiki for that increase, find it’s in the range of 50% crit change and 90 crit damage … and conclude that makes sense with values I see in full zerk.
Very informative work. If a whole body of work of this quality could be made for DPS, it would be a very sticky worthy post. mt only suggestion based on my own self interest is to focus on differences in gear, not traits. Hard for me to demonstrate wihtout a proper chart but really, I’m suggesting a simple table that would have a column for gear, a column for resulting power, column for crit co-ordinate and column for final normalized damage to the baseline. I don’t even the traits are necessary to include. Don’t confound too many variables.
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I don’t think it should be GM. I can honestly see it as an Adept since the effect is pretty weak (it only affects passive VoJ and even @ 1 second, it’s not very noteworthy).
Frankly useless in PVE. I’ve had some success in a WvW build using it, but probably only since no one really knows what to do with a Guardian that burns them constantly.
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A written transcription would be appreciated and if it had it, would be worth making sticky. Something this forum has been lacking for a while. I’m glad to see it.
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And the reason given to us is that Guards are innately defensive. So they can’t have a strong offensive. But this same rule of thumb doesn’t apply to all the other classes.
I would just like to make the point that to do decent dmg Guards give up all their “innate” defense. And still aren’t a stable DPS build. (I know most top tourney teams take a guard, but how many of those guards can ever go dps)
Unless you were talking specifically about sPvP, I have to disagree very strongly with what you have said here.
1. If you JUST want strong offense, you can have it. Guardian pushes some of the top damage of all the professions and doesn’t need fancy tricks to do it either. Take the right traits, pick the right weapon … you’re there.
2. Guardians give up NO innate defense to do this. In fact, Guardian maintains their NUMEROUS innate defenses even in the case where they do a full offensive build. I would even go so far as to say that depending on your choice of weapon and traits for an offensive build, your defensive skills are further enhanced.
Unless you have a very specific example or speaking specifically about sPvP, I’m afraid you don’t appear to know what you speak of.
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Check out the sticked thread. It’s covered quite well there. Permeating Wrath is not for the uninitiated in WvW. It has little value outside of that game element.
In the interest of balance (the bigger picture) I think VP needs a nerf, but not without getting something in return for it. It’s just too good and frequent for it’s trait cost.
I don’t think reverting to it’s original is an option. I think it’s more appropriately swapped trait position with Selfless Daring. The original option has too many unintended benefits (increase AH effectiveness, less boon stripping)
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Someone probably already mentioned it but I was thinking more about why I dislike the idea of Sword dominating our DPS if it were to get another 5%. I’m put off by the idea that if i want to do something, there will only be one optimal way to do it. I WANT to be able to have a competitive DPS build using a variety of weapons, not just one … and not just the one that has the least interesting interactions with the other Guardian tools and skills.
Please consider how more damage to the highest DPS weapon would further differentiate whatever build variety is left in PVE. There are plenty of good ideas to address Radiance Master Traits without focusing on a particular weapon to do so.
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There is a way to critique a build without the negative impact to the thread that I’m seeing here. For a bunch of people that think everyone should play the correct way, it’s pretty ironic that the positive critique being provided is suggesting to use spirit weapon and burning builds. Come off it already. The intent is clear.
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That’s fine if you want to critique the guide. As for the build, at this point, everyone should be offended for the OP … there isn’t any reason for people to come into a thread where someone presents a build (one that’s well established at that, the OP doesn’t actually say anything I haven’t seen many times already) and say it’s garbage because it’s offends their sensibilities on the ‘correct’ manner to play the game.
The funny part … if the whole strategy is to ‘convert’ people to playing the ‘correct’ way, it’s not a very endearing method to do so.
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Let me be clearer. If you’re just posting a build you enjoy, rather than an extensively tested/optimized one, you shouldn’t put “guide” out front imo.
And that’s your personal preference, but doesn’t excuse anyone from making inappropriate posts. As a guide, it’s more than appropriate because it explains the aspects of the build. Are you suggesting that a 0/15/30/20/5 build isn’t tested and optimized? If that’s the case, you don’t have much history here. That was a very popular build being pushed near the beginning of the game. It still has a purpose, even if it doesn’t appeal to the ‘correct way’ to play the game.
As for the flaming, I’ll just reiterate the bit about separating criticism of an idea vs. criticism of a person.
I will simply leave it to Anet to decide what posts are flaming here or not. There is enough experience to tell me that I’m confident more than a handful of posts won’t be here tomorrow.
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Every thread about a guide to a build is not about optimization because not every person is looking to optimize, not every person is making a guide for the purpose of optimized play. That’s just your preference, that’s ONLY what correct way play people want to see. If you don’t see the flaming in this thread, you haven’t looked very hard. If you actually read the first paragraph of first post, even the OP states outright that this isn’t about an optimized build so it shouldn’t fool anyone, even a new player. Those things are excuses so people feel justified in tearing the thread apart.
I’m not fooled and I don’t think anyone else is either.
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If people are felling left out of the Gems, the solution is simple … Anet makes EVERYONE pay a monthly subscription fee …
Let me guess … people QQing about the cost of gems don’t want to pay a monthly fee to play either?
Promoting sub-optimal builds as anything but “for fun” does not help new players, who don’t have enough information to know any better.
Agreed. I missed the part where that gives open license to flame threads though. I’m all for helping people but what I see happening in this thread isn’t the way to do it. Someone asked me for an example of toxic in the forums … this is it.
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I hope this isn’t a sign that Anet is loosing sight for who their customers are …
The same ‘approach’ to reward vs. risk was taken for the new Aetherblades dungeon run in TA as well … Anet please notice how this is working out.
You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter. People can decide for themselves if they find value in a build and use it.
But they would find more value in better builds that’s the entire point. Promoting something sub optimal is just wrong.
Maybe. That’s for them to decide for themselves. If you have a better build, make a thread about it.
It doesn’t matter how you have labelled it. People can decide for themselves if they find value in a build and use it. If you have a better build, feel free to educate the community and make a build thread for it.
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We’re not dictating which builds people should be using, we’re pointing out the objective flaws in the build and the danger it brings to the community, namely, presenting itself as a ‘good’ build while not being one and promoting bad play.
I think that’s a very subjective interpretation. People can decide for themselves if this is a build they want to play or not, regardless of how you have labelled it. What you think of the build doesn’t give you free reign to flame it into oblivion. I’ve already mentioned a few of the positive aspects of this build. If you think there is a better build that does all that, feel free to make a new build thread about it.
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Who am I to decide what builds someone may want to use, regardless of what I might think of them? Maybe some people should ask themselves that question.