Yes, that’s the ‘build’ I’m referring to. Of course, you have presented the ‘nemesis’ to make your case. I think what is more realistic is the fact you have already mentioned … you can’t get enough removers to deal with all the conditions you encounter.
Strategically, your not really playing to your strengths doing that, so I would consider that a non-optimized build. That’s simply my approach. I’m not trying to indicate how anyone should play, I’m just offering some guidance that a build should enhance aspects of things in your control. Conditions applied to you is not in that scope.
Condition damage only fails if you don’t recognize it’s not meant to be the primary damage source and it’s FREE … no restrictions, no requirements to have specific weapons, etc… . That is a different concept than conditions on say, theif, where it is. Therefore, I think the Cond Damage on Guardian is more than appropriate. Anything better like access to an additional condition damage like poison or bleed, combined with a very straightfoward CD build would be ridiculously overpowered in my build IMO.
While there is an issue with Scepter missing hits, when it does, it’s in fact extremely high in damage potential. I don’t know about #1 but I can see where even a few hits from smite along with an appropriate crit build would be awesome.
Bottom line is that Guardian can do both Con Damage and ranged. It’s just not as ‘simple’ to do it well on Guardian as you can on other professions because of how the concepts are implemented.
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If you feel like you could use more condition removers in WvW when you already have more than 2, then perhaps it’s not a good approach to load up on them for an all purpose build. I happen to like a build that someone posted here that reduced conditions by 65%.
I’m starting to come around to the idea that including tools that focus on removing conditions in most encounters in WvW is a fool’s errand. Better to learn how to deal with the most debilitating of them and simply be aware of the others.
As for the posted build, I probably would stick with 0/15/30/20/5 because I find the traits in Honour more ‘flippable’ than Radiance 20 and Zeal 10 when you switch to different content. Any loss of stats can be addressed with gear and can open up you weapon choices a bit more.
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So warriors asking for protection makes Guardian useless? I hang my head in disbelief.
Many Guardians have not found the value of using condition damage, especially for PVP. It can be used to great effect because strategically, no one really knows how to deal with it due to how unpopular it is. Be assured that the right Condition damage build is a scourge to tanks and thieves.
Contrary to popular belief, CD works for Guardians because we have staying power and the ability to apply CD very often … more often than any class can remove it.
Don’t really care what it looks like … it takes the guesswork out of determining what your damage is doing for how much. The next step would be for conditions.
The increase of ingredients is annoying. What is more offensive is the fact it gives the same buffs to something we already had.
I had to double check to make sure the recipe didn’t make more than one item before I could believe the volume of components necessary.
Hopefully at least some tattoo skins in gem shop … They put new hair and eye colours, why not tatts
It took 2 months but sword remains the worst choice for guardian because of any symbol, boon and terrible mobility
There are many other things going for sword despite the lack of these attributes. It’s certainly not the worst choice for alot of stuff. It’s quite arguable that it has terrible mobility as well. There are other weapons with worse mobility, namely weapons that have NONE.
I’ll take a look at how it compares to Necro staff auto. I will say that when this does hit it is the highest DPS #1 skill in the game. We wanted it to feel this powerful but difficult to land but the effect may be too exaggerated. I’ll play some PvE and PvP scepter Guardian later today.
Jon
Sounds good, except the forum trolls have no clue what they just asked you to do and you’re going to ‘fix’ something that isn’t broken.
I hope you see this: The problem isn’t that it’s difficult to land, the problem is that some fool that is strafing left to right very quickly can avoid scepter 100% of the time. There is a video of it somewhere and if anyone would post it or send it to you, you can assess for yourself the issue.
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I hear you. Those skins are awesome. I’m going to think of a mace/sheild build myself, though I’m still uncertain if I like how it will play out.
Still as I’ve said. why don’t they say something? If it has reached their ears, they should say something to shut people (like me) up. Literally, all it would take is “This design is intentional, It will not be changed” And boom!
Honestly, no one can argue with that.
I can think of a good reason … to remain flexible to change it according to their own timetable … or not. They decide and speaking to players really has no bearing on their decisions. It’s a moot point they don’t make a statement. The statement IS that you go ingame and see it hasn’t been changed. That’s the most significant and far reaching statement they can make.
As for the changes this patch, again we dodge a HUGE nerf bullet this time around. Even some nice increases. Frankly, I like the way Guardian has been handled by the devs so far. It’s a far cry from the clusterF that thieves have been since the beginning.
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Strategically, you have to take the fight to the people using the zerg for protection. People don’t tend to target behind their zerg so if you can get back there, you have a pretty good chance to lay down some smack. It’s key to be organized; you aren’t Rambo either. Get a team of other Guardians and thieves or something. Try to use voice chat.
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On equal playing fields, Guardian and Warrior can be within each others damage range. The myth perpetuates because it’s more difficult for the average player to attain the skill needed to play a full zerker Guardian to attain that damage with the same survival that’s intrinsic to a full cleric one. Some players never will.
Frankly, you have to find the ‘best tanky DPS’ build that suits you. It will be the one you can play that’s closest to the full zerker gear damage output that allows you to survive like you are wearing full PVT or Cleric. Probably not the answer OP was looking for.
As a more serious suggestion, I would start with a combo of knights/PVT gear and 0/15/30/20/5; I consider this pretty vanilla. Adjust towards more ‘DPS’ stats and traits as your skill allows. Over time you will creep closer to your ‘tanky DPS’ build.
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Boons are the only thing keeping the guardian viable, and alive.
This is a great thread. Here I thought dodge, my almost 100% heal and blocks were keeping me alive and my skill as a player and build flexibility keeping me viable. Now I find out that it’s just temporary effects were doing all that.
There is no rules that say they should be viable in all field. That is determined by Anet devs that develop the concepts for the professions. No holy trinity model does not automatically indicate every class should be capable in any role players define for them.
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If you prefer ranged capability AND the Guardian profession, you recognize the shortcomings of your choices. If being ranged in WvW is more important then the conceptual shortcomings of a profession, you have the choice to play other professions.
This is the problem, Guild wars 2 does not have a holy trinity. This means every class must be viable at any given department. If not, it shuts a class down or have them at a severely disadvantage. Your argument of having the choice to play another profession goes null here since every profession should be viable be it ranged be it melee.
‘Ranged offense’ is not a defining member of that trinity so this association doesn’t make sense. Therefore, Anet’s approach to no holy trinity does not dictate Guardians should get improvements in ranged capability.
The argument of choice is very fundamental here. Again, if these restrictions are by design, then your options are available and you choose the ones that fit how you wish to play. There is no argument to claim it needs improvement if there are other choices and Guardians are capable of fulfilling their profession definition.
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But a smart warrior, in TS/Vent, in a solid guild grp, will now shut down a guardian.
I wouldn’t worry about such a low frequency occurrence. That’s alot of ’IF’s in order for a Guardian to get shut down. It’s not like they can ignore the people you are running with either. You would be toast if you got focused in this scenario anyways. One signet won’t make or break it.
Honestly, my biggest concern here is IF I do happen to meet my nemesis in battle and it’s 1 vs. 1, what my chances are going to be … I certainly don’t want to simply feel like I should lay down and die to him every time. I just don’t buy all this doom and gloom, we aren’t the only targets out there with boons and we aren’t always the primary focus for PVP either. Playing smart will go a long way to how much of this affects you.
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There’s a bit more. They said they will begin to increase the base damage for some skills so we won’t have to rely so much on crit. and there will be a possibility of making the shadow step skills teleport even if you don’t have a target.
That seems counter-intuitive to me … I actually dropped crit because base damage was so low. /shrug
Show you how to what? We don’t even know enough about this boon hate to talk about it and your off crying it’s already destroyed Guardians. I’m not even sure how to respond to that. It’s just purely sensational.
Even if what you say is true, the risk that you find yourself in PVP against a boon hate traited profession is really not all that serious of a risk. It just speaks more to working more as a team instead of a group of individuals. Everyone here talks like when two groups meet in PvP, that somehow warriors have a natural affinity to attack Guardians and voila, game over. That’s just not a realistic view.
In all honesty, I don’t think boon hate will be all that popular. Does anyone really think stealing some boons from a single individual in a group is going to significantly change the course of a fight? OK, maybe in a duel or small encounters but in zerg WvW … not a chance. I don’t even get the point of stealing random boons from people that I can’t exploit properly. I think the whole idea is rather stupid.
It’s simply too early to cry about it.
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Now that Shelter & Renewed Focus has had a huge nerf due to a warrior being able to Stun you while you’re “Blocking / Invuln”, effectively removing our Damage Mititgation, are we finally going to get an increase to our HP Pool?
…
Thoughts?
That’s slightly sensational. Our damage mitigation is hardly removed. You still block and are invulnerable, even if you get stunned. In fact, it would be kind of stupid to stun someone that’s invulnerable in the first place.
Zergs don’t automatically target the closest players. Facing, lack of assist function, mobility all prevent any particular individual from being focused by the whole zerg. Even a team on voice chat might have a problem focusing a single player.
I don’t believe it’s a realistic approach to try to make a profession into something it isn’t. If Guardians are poor at range and more than capable at melee BY DESIGN, there isn’t really a compelling argument to change it. If you prefer ranged capability AND the Guardian profession, you recognize the shortcomings of your choices. If being ranged in WvW is more important then the conceptual shortcomings of a profession, you have the choice to play other professions.
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Perhaps people have come to the conclusion that complaining about the same thing every two days with new threads isn’t really an effective way to get dev’s attention.
I don’t see why the name matters (unless the OP is just using the name as an excuse to complain about how the profession works). You like it or you don’t. I don’t think there is a serious complaint here.
Anyone have experience with something like this?
Me. I see someone posted my builds. I think the ones in my signature are more up to date but you will probably customize to suit your purpose anyways.
There isn’t much to explain for the PVE one. You get 8 seconds of burning (enough to kill the average Orr mob) from active VoJ. The gravy part of this build is when you realize you can swap Carrion gear for as much Traveler’s gear as you are comfortable using. That IMO is the ultimate farm build in the game.
The PVP is just a trick I thought of to avoid the weakness of condition damage in PVP. I get 2 seconds of passive VoJ … every 2 and a bit seconds. Almost 100% burning uptime. It’s a nice approach … if someone blows a condition remover, the burn is up two seconds later. If they don’t, they are always on fire. I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that conditions ignore defense values either so basically, I’m melting alot of tanks and thieves with this.
If you do insist on using a mace with burning, you will probably want to adapt the 2 second passive VoJ idea to PVE because it will take you longer to kill stuff. To do it you need the following:
1. Highest pizza for food (40%)
2. 3 flame Legion, 3 Balthazar runes (30%)
3. Smoldering Sigil (10%)
4. 20 in Zeal (20%)
You could also get 10% more duration using a Giver weapon. That would free up some traits or the sigil, but it’s critical to get that 100% increase in duration.
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And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!
If we used math, we could actually determine if that was true.
Do you really belive the 250 armor difference between Light -> Heavy is significant?
…http://oi50.tinypic.com/24uzr6w.jpgWe’re looking at a whole 5% and that’s being generous.
Depends on your context. Considering that everyone wears some kind of armor and we get the best of the three types, I find it pretty hard to complain about any increase we get from it. What do you compare armor stat to in order to claim 5% isn’t a significant difference? There is too much bias in using our own experience in making such claims. It must be something reasonable to have a standard level of gameplay over all the professions. 15-20% would be ridiculous.
Now of course, if there weren’t so many people around that felt math was some kind of witchcraft to be avoided because this is a game, you might have a better understanding of why that light-heavy difference is 5% and not something else.
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The price, perhaps???
So the price of charged lodestone (3G+) vs. the price of the lowest lodestone (<1G) is because of a difference in drop rates? Do you have something more substantial to link price and drop rate? How does higher demand for charged lodestones fit into your theory?
I made an attempt at a burning build in PVP. The idea is pretty simple. You get 2 second duration from passive VoJ. I paired that with GS/Sword/focus. The auto attackas are very fast so you get almost permanent burning. You can go as far as doing the AOE damage with it as well.
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I disagree with people that complain about the exchange rate being too high but at the same time, I can at least understand their point of view- it’s not a feeling of “entitlement,” they just want a price that seems fair. They don’t want free, they want a good deal.
And to want that is just human nature.
Unless you can point to me in some direction of another vendor that sells GW2 cash stop items, then the price is whatever the market will bear. It’s not about being fair, nor will it because “Fair” is just an issue of perspective. People don’t want to see it go up because they knew last month it was lower and kicking themselves in the face they missed out. If they had any sense there, they would realize it’s only going to go up again when another event happens and profit from it.
When I first reached 80, I had a similar tanking build. It was slow and it was boring. I worked in more offense not only in gear but through paring down traits in Valour and Honour. Eventually I arrived at a satisfying balance for my preferred content. It was an expensive path to take but I learned alot of Guardians because of it.
If you want to ease into a new build, I would suggest converting your gear with the highest stat values first into Knights/Zerker. I don’t actually have a build to suggest to you though. That’s something you need to find out for yourself based on your style and the content you do.
Renewed Focus doesn’t really need to be improved. Not only is it three seconds of invulnerability, it’s a free faceroll of your Virtues. I would rather see other elites completely reworked.
And the most important thing to take away from this thread is that there is minimal difference between the damage mitigation going from light armor to heavy armor…. way to go Anet!
If we used math, we could actually determine if that was true.
Vitality is the length of your fuse, toughness is how slow your fuse burns. I don’t think having an extreme amount of either while having little of the other is a good approach.
If anyone here knows some calculus, what I’m really interested in is a chart that plots the rate of change of damage reduction w.r.t toughness vs. toughness. Please and thank you.
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What was it doing a month ago that it’s not doing now?
Nope. Not ridiculous at all. Everything is working as intended.
So drive up the prices and make ppl who dont use real money grind much more? yea that plan makes so much sense.
Depends on your perspective. It does make sense to me. If you look at how the game operates as a business, I don’t see any other way unless you would like to go back to monthly fees and out of control inflation.
If you can make 10g/hr crafting, you certainly can’t do it very often.
Smite being a short duration is actually good i think. It’s harder to react to and avoid.
So i guess my 3622 Armor with Shield and Mace is a waste?? i didnt know that armor didnt work above 3k armor or am i not understanding. The way i understand it is anything above 3k armor is a waste is this correct or not?
… and this is what happens when people talk in absolute terms to people asking legitimate questions about game mechanics …
There is no ‘waste’. Your defense values always work and as you get more defense from increasing toughness, your defense continues to increase in damage prevention value. The diminishing return that people are referring to is the decrease in the rate that defense prevents damage. It must be this way because if there was no diminishing effect on the rate of increase for defense, there would be some defense value that would prevent 100% of damage.
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You won’t do good DPS with a hammer with AH.
You certainly can do good DPS with Valour 30, even with AH traited. It might not be the BEST setup for damage, but to say it’s not good … that’s just not being objective. I hate to be THAT person on the forum but someone is asking for advice here and these statements without context serve no purpose but to limit people’s exposure to the game … not a good thing. Let’s limit our statements based on our experiences as opinion and not fact, even if we feel strongly about them shall we?
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Between the two of us only I have demonstrated knowledge of the guardian class/traits/gear setups while all you’ve done is post pathetic personal attacks and never supported any of your statements.
Yes, clearly your demonstrating your knowledge. It’s evident when you cleverly avoided a discussion of builds by misinterpreting my proposal for improving an AH support build as saying that valour and honour are mutually exclusive traits, even after I provided repeated clarification that was not my meaning at all.
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Sorry but you fail again. Anyone can simply scroll up to see your words so your denial is irrelevant. You deliberately misrepresented the facts and I simply called you out on it.
OK, you win. AH is the absolute pinnacle of support builds because you continue to belabour your comprehension issues with my post. :BIG ROLL EYES HERE:
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There are times when AH is very good in a support build. It’s definitely not the absolute best for every situation someone wants to support a team because it’s simply not needed in every situation.
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AH + Hammer is training wheels. Eventually they should come off, though there are times when training wheels are still appreciated by the most experienced players as well. I question this combo’s impact relative to other heals we get and the things you give up to get them. With my growing experience, I find myself moving away from AH.
@ Silver
I don’t see anyone answered you question about the protection. Percentage damage reductions (protection and one of the signets) are gold for damage mitigation because they are percent reductions based from incoming damage. If you simply run #1 on Hammer, you get 3 stacks in duration (3 full seconds of -33% damage) and since #1 rotation is a little over 3 seconds, it’s almost permanent. Duration increase makes it up during the full #1 duration.
It’s my opinion that this particular application of protection alone makes Hammer our best weapon in any circumstance where you will take damage you can’t outheal or avoid with your array of healing and dodges. Much endgame content would fall in that category.
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I was wondering if there are ways to get around these problems
The only way I can think of to use a hammer and get a good AoE coverage is traiting longer and larger symbols to do ‘bombing’. That’s a very effective method because you lay down symbols quite a bit with hammer.
The other way with hammer, (more questionable) is traiting AoE on burning in Virtue 30. I don’t recommend that but might be an interesting experiment to satisfy yourself.
As for mobility with hammer, the best I can think of Judge’s Intervention.
I find there isn’t much I miss if I go with a hammer for a long period of time. I will practice with other weapons to stay on top of things but hammer is my go to.
It’s weird you taking more hits with hammer than GS. AFAIK, there is no mechanic to being hit and the weapon you use. It’s likely a perception issue. Generally, the damage difference between GS and hammer given the same factors is very similar, even if the hammer auto attack is slower. This has been discussed and tested pretty extensively.
The difference is offense and defense. Swap according to your situation. I don’t feel the PVE/WWW is a differentiator. Nothing but a full heal provides as much damage mitigation as long uptime protection from hammer. Little matches GS ability to control and lay down stacked damage effects.
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I already stated before, 10% boon duration does not make a noticeable difference in support, while not having AH, 30% crit dmg and 300 toughness makes a huge difference in everything else.
…. everything else except team support. IIRC, that’s what we are discussing here.
Your support is ZERO when you are down or dead, and frankly you will be down/dead far more than any AH build in any type of content that is remotely challenging.
Yes, but in the less challenging content, AH isn’t necessary so it’s not the absolute best of every support build as you claimed. You’re failure to convince in this discussion is due to attempting to qualify AH build as the absolute best based on your experience in the most challenging content. You fail to take into account or consider anyone’s experience that differs from your own. The relevance and context your personal experience has to the game and it’s players is limited and that inturn limits your ability to qualify AH in support builds, certain not expand it.
I for one definitely do not have problem living without AH for my teaming builds that are far more supportive than one that does have AH. If your experience tells you AH is the pinnacle of all support builds, mine tells me otherwise. There is no absolute here.
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No, you are the one that misrepresented the facts. You said you had to remove from one if you have the other, when obviously there are variants of AH that can have both and don’t require that.
I never said that at all because that would be a stupid thing to say (Obviously you can match any traits you want to). Your comprehension is lacking. Hopefully the third time is the charm:
Better support builds are available by by removing your Valour trait points that give AH and putting them into anything else that gives support. That doesn’t mean I am saying you can’t combine points into different traits.
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The use of torch isn’t really enhanced by a specific line of abilities. In otherwords, it’s just as good with meditations as it is with consecrations as one example. Though I think the concept of torch is really neat because I do love burning, I dislike torch because it competes with VoJ. One thing it can do is give you an element of condition removal in groups if you don’t take removal skills in your hotbar. I don’t consider these things strong reason enough to use a torch.
If I was to find a more consistent use for the torch, I would go with the sword over the sceptre for a few reasons.
1. Spectre misses. That’s a pretty demoralizing aspect of this weapon.
2. Torch is better in close melee range. Sword will get you there with the teleport
3. Sword + torch will give you a lot of burn uptime coupled with passive VoJ.
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