Guild Wars 2

I used to play with a hammer for the constant protection boon, AOE damage and constant heals from Altruistic healing and writ of the merciful traits, however i found that mobs/bosses hit too hard even with 3k armor,protection boon(-33% Damage) and Signet of Judgement(-10% Damage),so i switched completely to ranged with the scepter.

Here’s my scepter build:(copy/paste to browser)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAre7dlYg67mFyIEf4Eh1DCaQ/hVAjXPooEZIA;TQALMGYsJYSA

Armor: Power/Precision/Crit%
Amulet/rings/accessories: Power/Precision/Toughness with Power/Precision/Crit% gems

Of course all comes down to your personal preference,but since most boss fights are not melee friendly (ex. Arah), for me range weapons is the best option.
Ranged dps allows you to avoid a lot of unnecessary damage, see incoming projectiles and be able to dodge more easily,better position yourself during the fight to provide your allies with shout support.
Also a side effect is that you can go with more offensive stats since you are not getting hit very often.

I’m sure however that 5 Guardians with AH and writ of the merciful using a hammer, all standing in one place spamming 1 and 2 would make them immortals but for single guardians i would say ranged weaponry is way better.

Heals for 453 at level 80, and an additional 1 health for every 10 Healing Power.

If you have a high critical chance(at least 70% without fury) and altruistic healing, then go for
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Strength
This will allow you to constantly heal with every appliance of might very often(Cooldown 2seconds)

If you don’t have altruistic healing, then go for
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Blood
This will allow you to heal for 450-500 every 5-6seconds(Cooldown is 5seconds)

If your critical chance without fury is less than 50% total (70% with fury),then go for a on weapons swap sigil,a passive bonus sigil or a sigil that procs. on crit% that has a 10second cooldown.

REMEMBER that all sigils with a cooldown, share a global cooldown, so if your Sigil of Rage(With 45seconds cooldown) procs, then no other sigil will be able to activate for those 45seconds,even the ones on weapon swap.

Edited to correct Sigil of Blood

I wouldn’t mind a 25-33% speed increase to our Scepter’s projectile speed,so we don’t have to stand at melee range to make sure we can hit a moving target.

They increased mesmer’s scepter projectile speed by 33% why not guardians

Bump, so this Rune can FINALLY be fixed for once…It’s been 3months, this is getting ridiculous, we can’t use it due to the constant bugs.

Being able to easily obtain 30+ seconds of protection(-33% reduction),regeneration,vigor more than makes up for the 300armor extra that the heavy armor provides to the Guardian,especially the protection boon which allows you to be much more tanky.

The Guardian cannot keep up boons for too long even if they spec into 30% boon duration.They may have a few blocks, but elementalists have other ways to avoid/absorb damage as well making them an excellent bunker.

I also see elementalists stacking up the Might boon up to 20+ very often,(that’s 700power and condition damage) and fury,swiftness are on a long duration as well allowing them to do decent damage compared to a bunker guardian.

So unless you are a class that can remove boons on your opponent,you will have a much harder time to drop down an elementalist than you would had with a guardian.

I think you are referring to the Greatsword attack that mesmers have.
It is not considered a projectile, but as a melee attack that has a 1200range.
This is akward ,but this is how it is :/.

“Juno Guardian’s Staff 2 is an orb, which is a projectile.

I suspected it was something like that but went with recharge rate as cooldown reduction.
Your first formula makes sense.Thanks for pointing that out.

I don’t think it’s the second formula because if they are adding each increment after the previous one then a new calculation should be made for each 1%,because you can add points one by one in the trait trees.

The ability is buggy, after activating the shield, you need to wait at least 0.5seconds before clicking the button again to detonate and activate the heal.

If you click the button too fast, the ability bugs out and your character stays in a bugged state unable to move.
No heal will activate and you will have to wait for the ability’s duration to end before you can even move.

These are the “real” recharge times, I’m aware that the reduction is not reflected in the tooltip…

The Guardian Virtue line increases +5% recharge rate of your virtues for each 5points spend.
However this is not true, the +% recharge rate is not calculated correctly.

Note: Table values are rounded up for simplicity

Lets look at 10% intervals what the cooldown actually indicates:

• Recharge Rate……: |Base|10%|20%|30%|
• Virtue of Justice….: | 30 | 27 | 24 | 22-23 |
• Virtue of Resolve..: | 60 | 54 | 49 | 45-46 |
• Virtue of Courage: | 90 | 81 | 74 | 68-69 |

Let’s look at the actual second reductions for each 10% intervals:

• Recharge Rate……: |Base|10%|20%|30%|
• Virtue of Justice….: | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1-2 |
• Virtue of Resolve..: | 0 | 6 | 5 | 3-4 |
• Virtue of Courage: | 0 | 9 | 7 | 5-6 |

The correct values should be instead:

• Recharge Rate……: |Base|10%|20%|30%|
• Virtue of Justice….: | 30 | 27 | 24 | 21 |
• Virtue of Resolve..: | 60 | 54 | 48 | 42 |
• Virtue of Courage: | 90 | 81 | 72 | 63 |

We can clearly see that beyond the first 10%,the recharge rate is absolutely wrong. More noticeable with the virtue of courage at 30% instead of being 63 seconds of cooldown we get 69, which is incorrect and 6seconds of difference is a lot in a fight.

Are there diminishing returns or something we are not aware of?

Guardian R24, I play spirit weapons defender or roamer.

/w me in game if you are interested.

Ye, this specific rune has been bugged since the beginning of the game.
The funny thing is they “fixed” it 3 times already and yet it’s still broken…

There must be one person doing all their QA.

Superior Rune of the Pack set 3/6
+50 Power.

Instead of giving 50 attack power the set bonus gives 50 healing power.

Please fix it.

Bump so they notice

Superior Rune of the Pack set 3/6
+50 Power.

Instead of giving 50 attack power the set bonus gives 50 healing power.

Please fix it.

I am, it’s not even 8seconds infact the duration has been reduced to 7seconds.

Guardian patch notes indicate:
“Empower: This skill’s might duration increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.”

The tooltip for the might duration is correct and indicates 10 seconds, however the actual duration is only 7 seconds(not 8 as before the patch but 7) both in PvP and PvE.

Tested with and without any boon increasing traits/runes, the base duration is always 7seconds.

Please fix this.

I agree with the OP, quickness is way too effective and doesn’t allow your opponent time to react. Reduce its effectiveness to 50%-33% speed increase instead of 100% or remove it completely from pvp.

Unfortunately i think after they got their initial income from sales, pvp is no longer on their priorities.Almost everything on their virtual store is exclusive to PvE and most of the player base still playing this game is doing so casually on PvE, so they are taking their pace adding some PvE content and marginal things for PvP.

I’m sad to say this, but the game had and still has so much potential for greatness however it seems the esport boat has set sail without Anet on it and they don’t seem urged about it.

I think downed state is fine,it adds an extra element to the game, however the way it is now is absolutely ridiculous.
Some classes such as rangers and guardians get 1 interrupt and that’s it, meanwhile some others like thieves and mesmers get multiple teleport/stealth abilities forcing players to spend a considerable amount of time to try and finish them off,while also doing absurb damage from a downstate…

They need to homogenize downstate and have the following for all classes:
1. An average damage hitting attack.
2. One AOE interrupt/knockback ability on an average cooldown.
(Countered by stability)
3. An average PbAoE damaging or healing ability on a long cooldown.
4. The selfhealing ability they have now for ressing.

Also quickness should be removed from the game or not affect ressing allies speed.
Downstate health could also use some reduction.It takes too long to kill a downed player.

I just want to correct you in a few things:

Sigil of the Water (Weapon)- Heals for a base 800 every 10 seconds
6/6 Water Rune(Armor) – Heals for a base 1250 Every 10 seconds.
These are not affected by healing power. They do not share the same cooldown. They are only activated by direct healing abilities such as “Symbol of Faith” and “Signet of Resolve”, “Merciful Intervention”, “Healing Breeze” and “Faithful Strike”.

The only abilities considered a healing ability, are the ones under the “healing skills” tab, which means for the guardian are “Signet of Resolve”,“Healing Breeze” and “Shelter”.Therefore only these abilities can proc. a set bonus that activates upon a healing ability use.

I have tested this with both 6/6 Runes of Water and 6/6 Runes of Dwayna and in all occasions the procs only happened when one of the above healing skills were used.
Internet search will also give the same answer.

“Regeneration gains the most from healing power.”
Incorrect, evasive rolls scales 1:1 with healing power,so most of your healing will come from this, so your best bet it so make sure you have endurance regeneration through sigil swaps and vigor. Your second best healing will come from the staff empowered.

To best use Altruistic Healing, i would suggest running a full shouts build.
For runes i would put 2xSuperior of Water, 2xSuperior of Dwayna and 2x Major rune of Sanctuary and for sigils i would put “Sigil of Superior Energy” on both weapons,to gain +50% endurance back everytime you swap weapons,allowing you to heal your team constantly.

The runes will give you +15% +15% +10% = +40% total of extra uptime on all your boons which is the most amazing thing a guardian could ever get imo.

Welcome to Thiefcraft or better to the Thieves guild.
The game has potential but at the moment it has a lot of glaring balance problems.

Down states should be normalised or at least give each class 1 avoidance ability and not more. Thieves and Mesmers have the luxury to have 2 abilities to avoid stomping and if you are not quick enough the cooldown is so short that they can use it again.

If you notice your character sheet(the green numbers), your power and condition numbers change with any might boons that you have.
The next hit you do will use the new number to determine damage.
Therefore ( b)(1000+35)*1.5 = 1552.5

“Rune of the Pack (Major and Superior): This upgrade’s on-hit effect now works properly.”

This rune’s on-hit effect was working correctly after the halloween patch,but after the latest mini patch it has stop functioning.
I have used a brand new set of armor and added the rune of packs, went to test it out in hearts of the mist.
I was hitting for 20minutes straight with various combinations and weapons,but it no longer seems to proc.

Also the set3 bonus says: +50power but instead it gives +50healing. Another bug.

Here’s the single reason we are getting nerfed over and over again: RETALIATION.
The devs are going the wrong way with this, instead of changing how that specific ability works they mess up with abilities of a single class.

1.Greatsword changes made to reduce retaliation up time.They created a big mess with the abilities.
2.Signet of Judgment active retaliation boon is no longer affected by any traits, which basically makes the ability have an akward hidden rule just to save up on 0.75seconds of extra retaliation if you took the Virtue trait “Vengeful” that grants +25% duration to retalation.
3. Various Virtue traits that provided retaliation,had their duration given cut by 50-70%.
4.“Save yourselves” shout uptime halved, no compensation through cooldown and a further mess by seperating a single ability from PvP and PvE.

Everything leads back to retaliation and i’m really disappointed to see the devs just using cheap quick fixes to a problem instead of looking at the image as a whole and directly addressing the problem where the problem is.

How to correctly address Retaliation?
Stop trying to work around the problem, if its that bad of a problem that makes tanky guardians too strong,then either change what retaliation does or reduce that specific boon’s duration from abilities and remove the virtue trait “Vengeful”.

Stop messing with our class and instead fix retaliation.

Monk Focus allows you for on demand burst healing,meanwhile Altruistic healing provides you with a steady healing flow.
In PvE and WvW usually altruistic healing is best but i find that in tPvP the burst healing is more beneficial especially with smite condition that becomes a ~2k heal with no healing power on a 16second cooldown(with -20% cooldown trait).

Will have to test more to see which is actually better but at the moment i prefer Monk Focus for tPvP and Altruistic healing for the rest of the game.

You will be suprised how much difference the protection boon does.
Constant -33% Damage reduction is amazing and is better than any heal could ever be.
Crithammer build with shouts, Altruistic Healing,Writ of the Merciful and you will be able to still maintain good dps while having high survivability and supporting your group all in one.
There are a lot of crithammer topics open so check them out.
Healing power is only good for the dodge rolls since it scales 1:1 but it’s horrible for any other healing spell.

I wanted to see how much of an increase Absolute resolution gives to the Virtue of resolve passive so i did some tests and found out that the increase doesn’t correspond to the value indicated on the tooltip.

With no gear/weapons and 0 healing power.

Without Absolute Resolution trait:
Virtue or resolve tooltip Healing: 84
I get healed for 84 per tick.

With Absolute Resolution trait:
Virtue of resolve tooltip Healing: 243
I get healed for only 105 per tick.

The difference is huge and very noticeable. Which one is the correct amount the tooltip or the current heal value?
Increasing the heal by simply 21 is ridiculous so i assume the tooltip is the correct value. Please fix this.

I wanted to see how much of an increase Absolute resolution gives to the virtue of resolve passive so i did some tests and found out that the increase doesn’t correspond to the value indicated on the tooltip.

With no gear/weapons and 0 healing power.

Without Absolute Resolution trait:
Virtue or resolve tooltip Healing: 84
I get healed for 84 per tick.

With Absolute Resolution trait:
Virtue of resolve tooltip Healing: 243
I get healed for only 105 per tick.

The difference is huge and very noticeable. Which one is the correct amount the tooltip or the current heal value?
Increasing the heal by simply 21 is ridiculous so i assume the tooltip is the correct value. Please fix this.

From the testing I’ve done, Signet of Resolve never removes conditions when its active is on cooldown.

You probably remove conditions through combo triggers or through a trait or maybe one of your allies is removing them from you.
If you use your greatsword’s symbol and then whirlwind you will remove conditions to you and your allies.

Keep in mind that melee weapons have a wide arc when they hit,therefore yes scepter may be a little better against single targets but melee weapons get better once there is more than one target getting hit by you.Not to mention symbols also provide AOE and other boons and benefits through combo field/finishers.

Mighty blow has the utility of a short blink and a huge 300 blasting AOE range.
So yes perhaps mighty blow gives the same dps as autoattacking,but if your target runs away you are not hitting him anyway therefore using mighty blow guarantees a hit and gets you closer to your target.

Just a clarification.
Purity and Signet of resolve passive have the same timer that never stops ticking.
If signet of resolve is used and on cooldown, the timer still goes on and when the time reaches zero, it will only use the purity trait and therefore only remove one condition.
If signet of resolve is available then it will remove two conditions.

Retaliation’s tooltip is misleading.
It doesn’t reduce or reflect any incoming damage,you still get hit for the full damage (before other midigations).

Retaliation should read: Retaliation is a boon which causes damage to attackers when hit. Retaliation bypasses armor completely and can proc from conditions on you.

As per the wiki,it scales with power, increasing damage by 1 for every 13.4 power. At level 80, base damage is 267.

Makes it deadly against classes that have fast hitting attacks and ones that apply a lot of conditions,especially stackable in intensity ones.

Nirvash.3018:

Currently have 91% crit and 95% crit dmg in WvW. Can’t lose in any 1 v 1 situations and have 1.6k tough and 15.5k life it’s the meta now.

I assume that is including Fury buff +20% and/or +250precision max stack from the sigil that gives +10precision on kill.
If not how did you manage to get 91% crit chance, I can only get around 75-77% with 30points in radiance,one handed weapons +15% crit. trait and +5% critical chance sigil.
Btw two +5% critical chance sigils do not work.

Rune bonuses are additive, which means they add up between them but only once.
Example: Rune of X, Lets say you have all these runes of the same type X.
Bonuses:
(1) +10 Power
(2) + 10 Vitality
(3) + 20 Power
(4) + 50 Vitality
(5) +15% Burning Duration
(6) + 100 Power

You will get a total of:
Power: 10+20+100 = 130
Vitality: 10+50 = 60
+15% Burning Duraiton.

Same thing if you add runes that have only stats and are not part of a rune set like +14precision +14power +12vitality.

When a sigil is on cooldown no other sigil with a cooldown can ever proc./activate.
All sigils with a proc. on a critical hit or on a weapon swap have a cooldown either it mentions it or not.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10ilke/how_sigils_work/

KryoKore.3281:

This is what concerns me in GW2. With low drop rates, DR, farming mats for exotics (that apparently takes forever), one might say you’d have the urge to just, oh, use real money to get that gold. Now, I don’t mind spending a few every now and then, but with things the way they are now, you could easily shell out well over $20.00/mo. – more than an average subscription fee. Sorry, just don’t like the way this is headed. I’d rather pay $14.99/mo., run a dungeon,get an epic, look cool, still have fun. Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I’m wrong? Do exotics actually drop in dungeons? What are the odds? I’m hearing they very rarely do? (Please don’t say spec Magic Find, that seems just, well odd to me – now I have to acquire two sets of gear for PvE? lol)

I’m buffled at people that complain they can’t have a full exotics set instantly in one day.
Let me ask you, have you played any other mmo? Do you know how long it took to acquire an end game epic item in WoW? You had to raid for hours every week, sometimes for months before you could even get one item AND you had to pay a monthly fee.

Guild Wars 2 is fine as it is in this department and you don’t even have to pay a monthly fee.There are so many and fair ways to acquire exotic set gear.

Dungeon exotic set items cost from 180tokens up to 330tokens and weapons 300-360tokens. You get 60tokens,YES 60tokens per path of a dungeon the first time you do it and 20tokens if you do the same path again.Each dungeon has 3paths,so that’s 180tokens earned for doing 3paths per day,which takes total about 1h30 – 3h depending on your group.

On top of that each path run nets you close to 1g income from item drops and chests sold either on TP or to a vendor and you get a chance for rare exotic drops.
If you want more tokens you can speedrun the fastest path of a particular dungeon or go to another dungeon and earn 60-180 different tokens from that as well.
Did I mention tokens are account bound as well?
You can even use other characters to run the same paths and earn 30tokens for their first time.
It took me one week doing the 3paths once per day with random groups, to fully gear my character with an exotic armor set.No exploits no nothing.

Crafting the sets is even more easy if you have an armor crafting profession and if you
are more into the karma/WvWvW then there are legitimate ways to earn that fast.
Google Karma earning guides and you will find plenty of information.

After a few runs I think i have an understanding of how the system woks.

Each path has a first time run bonus flag and an akward DR “First run bonus” timer.
Each path,after the second run has a DR “reward” timer account bound.
I’m not sure how long but i think it’s around 1h-1h30.

1.Doing one dungeon path earns you 20+40 first time run bonus,total 60tokens.
DR “First time run Bonus” timer starts and current character is flagged with having done first time run.

2a.Doing the same dungeon path a second time with the same character earns you 20tokens. DR rewards timer starts.

2b.Doing the same dungeon path a second time with another character will earn you 20+10 first time character run bonus,total 30tokens. DR rewards timer starts and character flagged for first time run bonus.

However If you wait a certain amount of time for the DR “first time run bonus” to go off (unknown how long),before doing the same dungeon a second time with any of your characters and you run it with a different character you earn with that character 20+40first time run bonus,for a total of 60tokens.

3.Each subsequent time you do the same dungeon path before waiting for the DR timer to go off, will earn you only 10tokens. This also resets the DR timer.
If instead,you wait for the DR timer to go off before (?)starting/finishing(?) the same dungeon path,then you will get 20tokens.

When they made the changes,they did not take into account all the symbol traits which were originally made to work with Greatsword,Hammer and Mace builds. (Staff doesn’t really adds much and has horrible dps anyway)

Nerfing the symbol cooldown without increasing its duration makes all those symbol traits useless and the symbol itself subpar.

If the goal was simply to make retaliation less viable or prevent guardians keeping it up for long durations,then the simplest solution would be to change the boon granted by the symbol.
Greatsword is a pure offensive weapon so perhaps adding Fury or Might or Vigor for 1second each second to the symbol would had worked better.

Players at a down state do not benefit from any boons.
It’s not bugged,working as intended.

All classes are good. Some lean a bit more towards damage, others such as the (most obvious ones) guardian and engineer more on defense and support but they can still deal good damage if specced for it.

It’s a matter of what you spec your build and gear for.

Leper.7853:

I did some testing last night and found that in fact multiple +Might duration runes DO stack, however all they do is maintain at least one stack. The rate that stacks fall off looks constant and unchanging, despite the total duration for Might itself lasting longer.

Boons and Conditions that stack on intensity, stack but every stack group has it’s own duration, that’s why you see stacks falling even though the duration still has a long way to go.

For instance lets say you add a Might stack (3) for 20seconds.
10seconds pass and you add another Might Stack of (1) for 30seconds.

You will see your might duration show 30seconds with (4) stacks but internally your first might stack has 10seconds left and your second might stack 30seconds left.

10 more seconds pass and you only see a stack of (1) for 20seconds.

_
Also may I suggest that instead of going for multiple +20% Might duration bonuses,you should go for the following:
2x Superior Rune of Water: +25 healing +15% boon duration
2x Superior Rune of Monk: +25 healing +15% boon duration
2x Superior Rune of Strength: +25 Power +20% Might Duration

It will benefit all your boons, you exchange 40% might duration for 30% to all boons duration(including might,so basically 10% loss for 30% gain to all the rest)

Retaliation’s tooltip is misleading.
It doesn’t reduce or reflect any incoming damage,you still get hit for the full damage (before other midigations).

Retaliation should read: Retaliation is a boon which causes damage to attackers when hit. Retaliation bypasses armor completely and can proc from conditions on you.

Makes it deadly against classes that have fast hitting attacks and ones that apply a lot of conditions,especially stackable in intensity ones.

@Szar “mystic forge…”
Can you please elaborate more on that?
How can i get an armor set recipie that will give me a set with Precision/Toughness/Vitality ?

If you are referring to the mystic forge Armor Box Recipie,it requires 1 Crafted Chest Armor and since there aren’t any craftable chests with Precision/Toughness/Vitality, how am i going to create an armor box set recipie that includes those stats.

Bobnintendo.1256:

It should be worded like this “Automatically removes a condition. 10 second cooldown.”
The cooldown will only start if a condition was actually placed on you. So if you just started a fight, and someone put a condition on you it will get removed right away. Then it goes into a 10 second cooldown.

Are you certain about this? What about after the first removal.
Is it (a) a 10second rotation that resets when it reaches zero, regardless if you have conditions on you OR
Is it (b) a passive ability with a 10second cooldown that as soon as it reaches zero,it waits for a condition to appear to remove it and then reset the cooldown?

Rotation:
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Is it
-(a) IF Conditions are on then remove them—>Either way reset count OR
-(b) Is it Wait for a Condition removal before reseting count
10
9
8…etc.

ImariKurumi.5761:

@OneManArmy

There is a Toughness/Vitality/Precision Armor set, Weapon and Acc/Rings/Amulet?
What are they? I been trying to find it.

Also are there Toughness/Precision/Healing or Vit/Precision/Healing Armor/Wep/Acc/Rings/Amulet?

Unfortunately I haven’t found a Toughness/Vitality/Precision set.
What I really meant is to try and focus on those stats.
For example for the build I use I would get an armor set with Precision/Vitality or Toughness/X and from the amulets Precision/Vitality or Toughness/X to balance out with as much precision as possible.

Full list of armor combinations:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/zrd0c/complete_level_80_exotic_armor_list_find_the/

I assume Frozen duration benefits the Chill effect, in which case you could use that with the Hammer and its valor trait “Glacial Heart”,but even then i find that trait kinda bad due to the long cooldown.
Does +% Frozen Duration increase your block of ice duration as well?

Trungalung.7850:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Stat_Combinations

I’m aware of that list,but unfortunately there isn’t a Precision/Toughness/Vitality combination.

I want to try a resilient build but I also want to boost my critical chance due to how well it synergises with the Honor traits Vigorous Precision,Empowering Might and Altruistic Healing.

I searched but I could not find a set with Precision/Toughness/Vitality(regardless which is the primary stat).
Does anyone know if such a set exists for PvE?