Guild Wars 2

Commander should be the last man standing, directing to the second last man and being the beacon for people to return to the action if he’s lucky enough to live that long. A dodge won’t be sufficient to ‘save you’ from whatever you will encounter hitting the front line for long enough to be in the Commander position.

You don’t need to command at the front when zerg hits zerg so the instinct to fight takes over the instinct to chase the doritos.

I’m not all that versed on other professions but is there anything else that other professions have that compare to Active or passive VoC? 40 seconds for a passive block might seem a long time but you need to put that into context if you’re going to claim it should be better.

^What this guy said for traits:

Knights is probably the least compromising in Gear for non-swapped PVE-WvW build.

Don’t worry, I think most people get why this would be ‘neat’, though I would only specify one hammer Guardian and the rest GS

kitten , what are back items so BIG and ugly?

namastex.8906:

Are you sure it’s 21-29? I am almost certain it’s 26-34. I have a level 34 and a level 33 parked at a chest, and they have been getting silver doubloons for 2 days now. While I had my other alts at level 22 and 24 not getting anything but copper doubloons for a week now. Maybe it’s just a fluke but I just want to make sure, I am currently leveling the other 2 to level 26 to make sure.

I’m certain that 21-29 works. I haven’t tested anything else. If higher levels work, I wouldn’t know. I think the SAFEST thing to do if you want to farm with this method is to get level 29.

True, but then again, a regen warrior with full melandru runes and lemon grass food aren’t the only opponents I face in WvW. The fact that this build has a nemesis isn’t really a reason to dismiss it. The risk of meeting that person 1 vs. 1 isn’t high so it doesn’t factor into my own assessment of the value such a build has, nor would I think it should for anyone else.

Agreed, but that’s not what the OP was asking. Even though that is the case, my advice will offer what I believe is the best burning-focused build a Guardian can use in WvW.

Even as a method to make people spam their removers, it’s worth it, especially for my team. It’s not like we offer a whole lot more in WvW atm anyways …

I’m not commenting about other classes and their relative damage output for condition builds w.r.t. Guardian. Nor am I going to consider the speculative scenarios where condition builds, in general, are less effective. Those things are not relevant to the question the OP was asking.

My feedback is based on my experience. Therefore, it’s not incorrect. It’s simply my perception. I find I’m rather successful with that build … more so now than before, simply because of the hysteria over cleansing and conditions. More people are jumping into the barrel that my cannon is pointed at. I’m sorry to hear that other people’s preconceptions don’t allow them to be more objective.

I love that Average Damage Increase chart on GW2Wiki … you don’t have to guess where 30% crit damage increase will place you. It’s simply the result of a calculation.

At around 40%/50%, a 30% increase will give you 12% more damage. That’s on par with other damage increasing traits we have access to.

The burning build I have for PVE is very specialized … I wouldn’t advise it for general PVE like dungeons, etc… That’s not it’s purpose.

For PVP in the current meta, I’m finding that the build is very resilient to cleansing. If you get your duration up to 100% (like mine does), you can use VoJ in a passive approach and cleansing doesn’t become an issue. People will either waste their cleansing on a 2 second burn just to get hit with it again or eat successive stings of burning because they don’t consider Guardian burning a threat … either way, they fall behind rather fast.

Bottom line is that short duration, fast applied conditions in PVP are broken atm. We have had that broken capability since day 1.

For some reason, everyone has failed to direct the OP to the stickied thread. It’s still VERY relevant. Shame!

AH builds are a good entry into teaming but the majority of people will encourage you at some point to evolve past (or into) a build that has DPS. I’m not sure you are going to realize that DPS with a 0/0/30/30/10 build. That’s not to say you can’t make a DPS build with AH in it but I feel that it’s not going to be a very competitive build.

Maybe you don’t care and that’s fine too. PVE isn’t competitive content and you shouldn’t let anyone try to tell you to play a certain way by shaming or guilting you into it. It’s up to you to find your way and if you arrive at that DPS-only PVE conclusion, it was your choice, not someone else making it for you.

Bottom line: At some point, I think you will realize you will not need AH in PVE or it might even be boring to you. It’s a natural progression to move to a more DPS-oriented build in PVE, especially for a Guardian with alot of intrinsic defenses.

morrolan.9608:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

Cause Colin Johanson, in a prerelease blog, stated that their overriding metric for the GW2 game design is ‘is it fun’

Just one of the may pre-release ideals that has fallen by the wayside.

That’s a matter of opinion. Something being time-gated doesn’t mean it’s not fun. One thing not being fun doesn’t mean that generally, GW2 isn’t fun either.

While I’m on the fence with the new changes, the point is clear; to make world bosses challenging. Not a SINGLE world boss was anything more than orchestrated auto attack gold farm prior to this change. Anet simply need to strike a balance at this point but IMO, it’s a step in the right direction.

Having Aegis pop isn’t necessarily because players are bad. I think it can be up a reasonable amount of time but enough to take advantage of it to trait it? That’s a question of how much aggro your team shares with each other. I can see in an equally capable DPS team, it could very well be possible.

Epic.3950:

colesy.8490:

The only thinking involved is “my condi build is useless” and “I need something purely with power main stat then defensive secondary stats … like PVT”.

Though again, the OP crying about PVT gear being useful against objects is just pathetic beyond belief.

you say cry. I say highlight flaws that must be addressed. Close enough

Funny, most people that would call a ‘flaw’ that is done purposely through design … a feature. Seems to me it’s already been thoughtfully addressed by the fact that it was introduced.

I was hoping that at some point, the collective experience of MMO’s running for … 15 years? would add up to devs realizing that server-wide events of this sort are not worth the effort to implement.

It’s cool the first few times, then it literally becomes history … “Remember when we did Teq here?”

Anything bigger than a team requires an organization that is rarely seen at the server level. It has to have some serious impact to the game if that number of people self-organize to complete the content. This content can simply be ignored and forgotten about.

Heh, I didn’t say it was a deep thought but based on this thread, it seems that people can’t bring themselves to make that intellectual connection.

It doesn’t cost 200G, especially considering you can sell or salvage some of the results to get back your investment. Such sensationalism.

Arthos Ravron.3796:

What I’m saying is that he shouldn’t go full Soldier’s.

I agree. I would assume that at this point in the game, people are at least going Knight’s armor but if he’s full Soldiers, that’s what he has to use and build with.

I think the point is that he has a specific set of gear that he has to work with. If he had full zerker, he would have asked for a build based on it.

Again, I don’t see the problem with the PVT bias for this encounter …. I could argue that all other PVE is biased to Zerker’s gear but that wouldn’t get much more than a few pages of insults.

What the OP is outlining as the issue (poorly I might add) is actually what should be happening in this game … content should make people THINK about their build, gear and stats and how to change it as the situation requires. If there is any laziness being exhibited, it’s from the players that DON’T want to adapt to their situation.

Good job answering the question guys

1. Take advantage of your boon duration with shouts
2. Take advantage of getting boons with hammer or GS
3. 10/5/X/30/5 is my suggestion

I think you can figure out from there where else to put remainder of points and what traits to go with.

cranked.3812:

The only reason I have ever heard is that they don’t want people to blow through the content and complain for more.

I think that’s one reason. It also impacts the economy.

No, it’s not fun. That’s my point. Not everything is done to ensure players have fun. People need to get over themselves a little bit.

I don’t even get the problem here … Dragon can’t be crit so ANY primary power armor will be good. How is that lazy if someone uses PVT in that case? I call it smart.

I wouldn’t say it plummeted. It’s historical price is easily checked. I don’t think it will even stay at this price … It’s going to take alot longer than an month for people to get an MF they will be happy with. In fact, why would they stop at all? I wouldn’t be comfortable with anything but the max MF I can get and as long as green/blue items drop, there isn’t a reason not to salvage them.

Luminarin.2301:

Nike.2631:

Park a character in the appropriate level range (about 19-29 IIRC) at a jump puzzle chest and log in and open that chest every day. Silver doubloons will trickle in. Multiply this by as many characters as you care to or spend some time going from chest to chest.

Wait, so what? Do I have to park with a 19-29 character at a 19-29 area’s chest? Or is the character level irrelevant? I just tried picking the chest with a 65 lvl char in Snowden Drifts JP and i got sapphire crystal or something. I’m lost

I will bring some clarity to this …

Park a level 21-29 character at an Lion’s Arch JP and farm the chest every day at reset. You are guaranteed a gem or crest and if it is a rare, you can get a silver doubloon (sometimes a gold). I have three characters doing this every day. I also salvage the other stuff for Essence and mats. It’s a win/win. Level 19 and 20 characters does not work … they only gives copper doubloon from my testing.

The MF recipe has already been mentioned and it’s also very good. I have always come out ahead of my costs when I do this … i.e., it can make you money. I prefer the 3 pebble/1 lump version.

These are only rare for one reason … people don’t know how easy it is to make or set themselves up to farm them.

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

So many fall to the inevitable MMO development cycle. They don’t wait to see what’s around the next corner.

Actually … I’m intrigued but I think there are two things I don’t like

1. the lack of balance between power and precision, C damage numbers
2. the low power.

That would make me feel uncomfortable. I would be inclined to run some soldiers in a few places to fix those things. Seems that the crit damage ratio to stats on any celestial is fairly constant as well. Even as a balanced build, celestial seems some mixing for optimization.

Amins.3710:

Obtena.7952:

I’m going to say it’s because watching a zerg on a video is even more boring than participating in it ingame. :p

Sounds like you’ve never been in a real roaming group.

yeah, that’s even better … even less action and rewards than the z vs. z. And of course a video of it puts the cap on that snoozer.

I think my point is that it’s a fallacy to associate the amount of videos with ingame activity.

I’m going to say it’s because watching a zerg on a video is even more boring than participating in it ingame. :p

Dahkeus.8243:

Anyways, with those considerations, I’m wondering the following questions:

- Would it be more worthwhile to put additional points into Virtues to extend boon durations? A lot of the talents in that tree seem rather lackluster.

- For the second tier of Honor, is Writ of Persistence, Two-Handed Mastery, or Empowering Might better?

- Would Ruby Jewels/Scholar Runes be better for a build like this or would picking up the boon duration runes (2x sup monk, 2x sup water, and 2x major sanctuary) be better?

- Is there a better way overall to rearrange traits to fit a good hammer build without sacrificing tons of damage (i.e. keeping 10 in Zeal and 25 in Radiance)?

I run 15/15/0/20/20. It’s a balance of things that I think are important to me for PVE using a hammer. I tend to run writ.

I never run 2H mastery with hammer. It gives little benefit to increasing damage.

I use Ruby cause it’s cheap but there are scenarios (I don’t know the exact details) where scholar are better. I think the damage difference is very small.

Yes, that’s true. All those multipliers still work regardless of my armor. They even still apply when I crit or not, so for my purpose of assessing the difference between Assassins or Zerkers, I don’t need to worry about multipliers. I’m only interested in a straight swap of stats.

OK I will follow through with your method:

I start with 2251 power, 1838 pre and 80% extra crit damage in zerkers armor

Power multiplier = 2251/916 = 2.45
Crit chance = (1838-916)/21 + 4% = 47.9%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .479% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.622

Now I swap to Assassins, lose 91 power, gain 91 pre:

Power multiplier = 2160/916 = 2.36
Crit chance = (1927-916)/21 + 4% = 52.1%
Crit damage = 80% + 50% = 130%
Precision multiplier = .521% × 1.3 + 1 = 1.677

I lost 91 power, power modifier gives a difference of -.09, a loss of 0.09/2.45 = 3.7%
I added 91 presicion, presicion modifier gives a difference of 5.5%
So here, I get a 1.7% gain in damage swapping to assassins.

So basically what I’m getting at: there is some curve in the (power, precision,crit damage) space where increases in precision give the same damage increases for an equivalent amount of power. For the example I provided, I’m in the region where precision is favoured for maximizing damage over power. Would you agree with that method or have I missed something?

I don’t mind skilless effects countering other skilless effects. Retal vs. condition damage seems reasonable to me.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m just going to resolve this right here and say that Assassin is bad for Guardians. The reason is because any Guardian with 30 in Radiance and RH Strength already caps out at 100% crit chance (base 40% in Berserker + 15% from RH Strength + 14% from Radiance + 20% from Fury + 8% from Banner of Discipline + 7% from Spotter = 104%). Trading power for precision is literally a loss. You are gaining nothing for the power tradeoff.

OK, under that specific scenario, I would agree but I’m talking about something more generic.

The basic question is: At what point does gaining 91 precision give the same damage than 91 power? My interest is simply knowing the stat conditions needed to achieve this balance.

There is actually a point where that happens. It’s when your power is so large that losing 91 is a smaller damage loss when compared to the damage gain you get from additional crit from 91 precision.

Again, a realistic example to illustrate:

If I have 2250 power, 45% crit rate and 80 crit damage in zerker armor. If I swap to Assassins armor, then:

1. I lose 91/2250 damage due to a power drop = -4%
2. I gain (according to the chart on wiki here http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit) almost 6.5% damage

My net is almost 2.5% increase. Does anyone see if I have made an error with that approach? If not, then you can see that as your power continues to increase, the percent damage loss continues to drop, making assassins armor even greater net gain. There are some stat combinations and scenarios (provided you aren’t capping crit rate) where using Assassins will give a greater damage increase than zerkers, if I haven’t overlooked anything.

OK. That definitely ups the impact power has on damage but is still in a range where a power loss from swapping zerks to AA armor can be break even. When I have access to excel, I’m going to play with this more and get a more accurate set of values.

I’m really looking for someone to valid the approach. While I understand the difference between playing and doing excel playing around, there are no tricks here … if you get damage increase from using a specific set of gear vs. another, it’s not dependent on how you play. The chance to crit is averaged out over time so it’s a real increase to damage. The difference between probability and statistics.

Unless my assessment of how damage scales with power and attack is wrong, there seem to be definite DPS advantages of using assassin’s in situations where you can crit your target once you reach a certain amount of power.

Familiarity with the damage coefficients goes a long way to dispelling misinformation about the ‘low’ damage a given weapon and it’s skills give.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-Skill-Coefficients-List-Partial/first#post2309051

Why is this not stickied and why have other professions not done these yet.

Anyone considered this? I spent some time thinking about it (yeah dangerous I know). I’m sure I’ve done something wrong so please bare with me.

The stats you get form JUST AA armor is: 224 Power, 315 Precision. Zerker is the opposite (224 Pre, 315 Pow)

You get approximately 1% crit increase for each 20 Precision you get so the difference in crit rate is about 4% increase for AA.

IIRC, damage due to power is just linear so the damage you lose from a 315-224 = 91 difference in Power will be 91/Attack.

So AA is better than zerkers for damage when the increase due to 4% crit rate is better than the loss of 91/Attack. I will normalize this to 5% crit rate and use 114/attack, just because it makes using the wiki chart easier

You can determine the damage increase due to a change in crit rate (for a constant crit damage) using the wiki damage chart. Therefore, for a given attack, you can determine what value of crit damage you need before Assassins makes sense.

If you stuck around this long, my point is, I’m running around in some build with 3350 attack, 48% crit rate and 80% crit damage with zerkers. If I were to swap to full Assassins, I would lose 90 power (approx 91/3350 = 2.7% decrease in damage), gain 4% crit rate and go from 67% to 72%ish damage increase, giving a net total of about 2.5% ….

So, does anyone care to verify my calcs please? I have assumed that damage is a linear function of your attack.

It’s not a leap of faith to understand why gossamer is probably going to be the MOST expensive material when ascended armor is released.

You can most definitely get 500 in a craft through casual play. It’s a matter of time. The hardest part is the various kinds of play you have to do. People cry about grinding but that’s actually easy because you just repeat the same thing over and over. This is nothing like that.

It’s time to take stock … It’s unreasonable to expect a single change to solve a problem like lacking damage in WvW or suffering through a metaphase with specific or lacking tools. We’ve played enough MMO’s to know that the answer isn’t the one we want to hear.

The leaked change simply turns a useless trait into something useful. Not in all situations mind you, but better than instant meditations, that’s for sure. Even someone who doesn’t give a rat’s behind about PVE can acknowledge that.

I don’t see alot of benefit to getting boons on condition damage … We are already drown in boons, whenever we want them. That would simply give us the same thing we have now. We know how that works.

Retal on condition damage will definitely have a meta impact.

Amins.3710:

You’re reaching again Obtena.

There is no reaching. I just take a step back, look at what’s being proposed and think of the places it can be used and what it’s impact might be. When I do that, I don’t see a reason to be upset about the proposed changes …. EVEN from a PVP/WvW perspective. What we have seen is, at worst, a neutral impact for those elements of the game.

I see sensational responses, not because the change is bad, but because of how it affects the parts of the game people are interested in. That’s not being objective.

Amins.3710:

Clearly you don’t run around w/ Thieves, Warriors, Engi’s or any other class that is constantly dishing out Fury to the group.

Your right … I don’t evaluate the value of developments based on a vary narrow scope that is limited to my own personal interests and I’m very certain that it’s not how the devs do it either.

Four Anet devs are sitting around a table and one says:
“OK guys, we need to improve Guardians but …
…. for WvW
…. who team with Theives
… in a scenario where they are getting their boons wiped
… when it’s a full moon
… on a Tuesday”

I get you don’t like it. That doesn’t make it a bad improvement. And my objectivity is lacking? Please.

Amins.3710:

Fury is not a buff to offense….

Oh wow. I have nothing.

I believe Protect and Smite qualify as support but that argument is not really relevant anyways.

Regardless, if your underlying problem is that you feel they should buff our offense … they are doing that by giving us more access to fury.

At this point, I think some ??? are appropriate.