Guild Wars 2

Heiltdo.2891:

Just teamed up with a Scepter/torch guardian, where is your god now?

I just teamed with a scepter/shield guard. Karma at its finest.

Aomine.5012:

For those who said toughness is worthless and zerker is the only choice,
gl with content like Aetherize dungeon,

Did it with zerker, didn’t downed once aside from the jumping boss. #Shelter #Renewed Focus #Dodges #Swag

It’s been quite some time since i last saw a full scepter guardian. I’ve seen plenty of mace + staff lately tho. I’ve also seen a guy using meditations on CoE last week. Meditations. On. PvE.

Melody Cross.8465:

Your team support comes from—reading your posts; and not just in this thread—trying to down the enemy as fast as you can and praying to Dwayna that you do without downing. And that type of play works very well…when you have someone like me backing your behind with heavy boon builds and the HoT you doubtless don’t carry.

You simply can not be this delusional. C’mon i know you’re trying to troll me (and was sucessful, i mean, i stoped pvping for a moment to reply to this) but at least tell me you’re in fact trolling and not being serious.

Yaki.9563:

Oxxy.7068:

If alpha, for example, insta kills you with zerk gear (and he probably will if you don’t go deep in valor), wearing cleric’s will change nothing. Healing power is kitten in PvE, in fact, the only place you need heals is to survive jade maw’s agony in high level fractals, but we have tome of courage #5 for that.

There is damage that lies between 1-shot kills and avoidable.

Also, there is no place in the game where you need zerker gear either. It’s only optimal because you can be successful in it and it makes the runs faster. It doesn’t actually increase the chances of success on any encounter.

The damage that won’t 1 or 2 shot you probably comes from mobs (and there are mobs who will 2 shot you anyways, Icebrood wolves are a good example of this). It can be avoided with aegis, protection and blind. And if you think zerker gear doesn’t incrase the success rate of any encounters, let me explain something: if you overextend a fight, it is most likely that anyone with no vigor on critical will be out of dodges, and i guess you do know what happens when someone is out of dodges.
I have no idea why you’re defending cleric clear for PvE purposes.

If alpha, for example, insta kills you with zerk gear (and he probably will if you don’t go deep in valor), wearing cleric’s will change nothing. Healing power is kitten in PvE, in fact, the only place you need heals is to survive jade maw’s agony in high level fractals, but we have tome of courage #5 for that.

Sannhet.8745:

Guanglai – MM Necro? Really? I’ve been away for 4-5 months, so I’m not arguing, but….wow. When did that happen.

I don’t think it did, for what i can tell he just tested the dps assuming the minions will remain alive all the time, same as mesmers, which means that is “peak” dps, in most fights any minions are going to die because of splash damage anyways.

People should say if they’re looking for WvW, PvE or sPvP advice when posting threads like this (well, at least this one is definitely not sPvP), every single time there’s a mix up between PvE and WvW stuff.

Txema.7859:

And die miserably in 1 second on the frontline ^^

I love this kind of mindset.

Because you only need one guardian, replacing a guardian for a warrior is usually a bad choice if you only have one guardian on your group. Same thing goes for warrior, you seems to believe that warriors are the god’s gift to humanity (well, banners are), but most groups don’t need more than one. And yes, ele have spike damage, so does warrior (MUH 100B), what i’m pointing out here is that ele’s spike is higher than warrior’s, with most likely more DPS while hitting with LH instead of FGS.

As for pug runs, what i can tell from your first post is that you’ve played with terrible pugs and nothing more, let’s take CoE for example, WoR and SotA are useful as hell on the golem guy to avoid insta kills, aegis is highly valuable on the destroyer fight and cleasing in general is good on most fights; everything about CoE applies to CM (well, aside from aegis), SE and TA, and while organized groups can cover all that stuff without a guardian, pugs in general will most likely have a much easier time with one.

I don’t “think” that guardian can outclass warrior in equal footing on sustained dps (warrior have more burst, which is better for clearing trash), it is a general consensus. Ask anyone with half a brain. Even better, just ask the peeps from the dungeon forum, at least they know their kitten.

Also, take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p8bh-_wzXk
See that? Two eles, one thief, warrior and mesmer. OH MY GOD IT IS NOT 3 WARRIORS. And i’m not even going to reply that frog argument.

Dune.2904:

Oxxy.7068:

3k on sword auto? Even if your damage is that low the full chain would still deal more than 10k damage in 2.5 secs, without a cd, shrugs.

As for pugs, yes they suck, but you shouldn’t be pointing a finger.

Yeah enlighten me about your constant 6k Sword Autos. I read a lot of DPS Threads and seen a lot of Speed Run Videos and posting in the forums about your normal 6k hits or a 40k WW is anything but realiable constant DPS Output in a dungeon against real opponents. You just have to look at the Arah Speed Run Videos to get a view for reality.
Or why the hell does nearly every speed record include 3 warriors? For 3 banners? Sure, why not include 1 warrior with 2-3 banners then if the other classes have higher DPS.

What makes you think every group upload their best times?
Also, look at the SEP1 “record”, in the “reality” we have right now putting two eles would’ve made it faster simply because of FGS, so the group would be something like guardian, ele, ele, warrior, something. I guess people don’t upload fgs stuff because they think it is not fair play for speed records.
Brazil’s speed CoF clear for instance had two thieves, one ranger, warrior and mesmer.
Just because you think 3 warriors are the next best thing after Megadeth doesn’t mean it is true.

As for my sword autos, i’m usually hitting 4.3~ 4.8k on bosses, while pugging.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Are Warriors much better with might/vuln scaling than other classes?

Nope. But they do have banners, and everyone loves banners.

Also, on eles, anything that synergies with LH has a ludicrous amount of dps.
My ele run 30/25/0/15/0 and 9, 9, 17k crits are actually common while auto attacking.

If your group ins’t stacking might thru fire fields staff #4 is probably the best way to start any fight.
Also, whoah, didn’t knew double night/force stacked.

3k on sword auto? Even if your damage is that low the full chain would still deal more than 10k damage in 2.5 secs, without a cd, shrugs.

As for pugs, yes they suck, but you shouldn’t be pointing a finger.

I laugh everytime someone mentions banners like they work for warriors only.

Relentliss.2170:

Tbh no. I only meant I would be picking between those two. I just wasn’t clear. Last time I saw the theory craft, damage was about equal between the two but one of the Bloodlust is much more expensive. I am not the sort of person who stresses over 1-2% and Perception gets better as your crit damage gets better.

That’s not exactly how it is, perception will lost it’s value if you go too deep into radiance, which means it is better for builds like 15/15/0/30/10 and maybe 15/25/0/30/0 but not for things like 10/30/0/30/0, 10/30/0/5/25, etc.

I can’t see myself using only 20 in honor and RHS, it feels like i’m wasting a lot of potetial by traiting that line without taking PoV.

Condition removal ins’t for you, Blood, is for your group. I would drop PoV in no time if it didn’t affect my allies. Not having condi removal at cliffside fract, for instance, doesn’t seems right to me.

You can drop five points in virtues (10/25/0/30/5) and put them in zeal since you’re running GS and hammer and using a lot of symbols. Same thing applies to the other variant (10/25/0/10/25), but drop 5 in honor instead, since you should run master of consecrations at all times (it is better than the retaliation mambo jambo, that only works in pvp) it is better to move away from shouts (2 consc and 1 shout, the shout could be either HTL or SYG, or 2 consc and SotA for fights like imbued shaman). Also, play a bit with the second trait from virtues, you could change it between cleansing on F2, uptime on spirit weapons or unscathed.

Also, some guy is using rune of the ranger on his guardian (getting the extra damage from SotA i believe), here’s the thread link if you want to check it out: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/We-Got-Guardian-Builds/first#post2907228

If i where a couple years younger i’d waste more time here trying to make you understand how wrong you are, Death, but instead i’ll just leave you and your total ignorance in peace, have a good night. Everything i could add to this discussion is already written, that way OP or anyone else looking for some info can just read it.

I will just hope they’re not as blind as you.

DeathPanel.8362:

I was using that guy’s own numbers as an example of why the dropping of AH is not warranted even in his build.

Being blind must suck.

DeathPanel.8362:

Oxxy.7068:

Surviability that you do not need, and 450 toughness is nothing compared to cleansing in pve.

What are you talking about. In what way does having AH exclude cleanses?

Unless you’re running some sort of x/x/30/30/x you can’t cleanse, and if you do run x/x/30/30/x your dps is a bad joke (4930.71 effective power assuming 10/0/30/30/0, 4711.08 effective power assuming 0/0/30/30/10 (5653.29 with unscathed. See? Bad joke)).

Surviability that you do not need, and 450 toughness is nothing compared to cleansing in pve, why is it so hard to make people like you understand this simple concept? Guess i’ll have to thank Apollo that i’m not a teacher.
Edit: Also, 6584.4 is the value without any boon, i’d love to be corrected with the value for 5 and 8 boons.

DeathPanel.8362:

dps comes mostly from gear and some from trait synergy. You can go full zerk with AH build so the only difference is traits.

How much extra dps do you think you can squeeze out of traits by not speccing AH?

AH comes from the line that grants 300 toughness and 30% crit damage. (450 toughess if you take certain trait in that line)

That in itself is extra dps potential. (Roughly 14% extra damage at 50% or so crit chance)

Also, if DPS was all that mattered there would be no reason to even have a guard. I’d just get my might stacking zerk warrior and call it a day.

Survivability does actually matter in pve, just in more difficult instances like fotm. The difference between surviving with 10% life and recovering to full via AH or being downed in 1 hit is the difference we are talking about.

The point is, how much would you sacrifice in terms of utility and survivability for that tiny extra sliver of dps.

Percentage based modifiers are better than raw stats, i wish i had the exact formula, but sadly i don’t, i’ll just post values from that buildcraft website, without consumables, using exotic zerk gear and weapons, ascended trinkets and only one force sigil (even for S/F setups):
Running 10/30/0/5/25 with 10 might and 50% fury uptime (which seems to be the average pug values), without unscathed, we have 6584.4 effective power, with unscathed 7901.28, plus 1% from each boon you have.

Running 10/30/0/30/0, with the same 10 might and 50% fury uptime, we have 7242.84 effective power (6584.4 while your stamina is full).

Now with 15/25/30/0/0 (using greatsword or hammer instead of S/F) the effective power is 6421.28, 10 might stacks, same fury uptime (which equals to 63.8% critical chance here in case you’re curious).

So you basically lost raw DPS, fire fields and reflect lenght from master of consecrations or shout cd and some might from valor, plus cleansing from PoV (which is way better than AH in PvE, by the way) in favor of some toughness (any boss is still going to one or two shot you if you screw up) and a weak heal? Yeah, nope, you’re the one sacrifying utility in order to get AH.

Ah, if you think warriors actually deal more sustained dps than guardians…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-or-Warrior-2/first#post2896541 (i finally did some non-pug runs of CoE yesterday, managed to hit 5.2k x2 + 3100×3 from my sword autos on the destroyer, yum!).

DeathPanel.8362:

Oxxy.7068:

DeathPanel.8362:

timidobserver.7925:

Not everyone likes it/chooses to run it, but AH is a solid choice. Running damage gear with AH usually works out pretty well in PVE.

As you will notice from the responses, some people don’t run AH so that they can gloat about not running it. However, it really is powerful in all environments of the game.

Agreed.
Not running AH and gloating about it is akin to not taking a polio vaccination and gloating about it.

Unless you are building for meditations there’s really no reason not to take AH since you can still gear for dps and still do very high dps while having high survivability.

It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

There’s just one thing… you don’t need AH.

In every MMO, dungeons runs are made with just enough support to keep everyone alive, more than that was always a waste, here the situation didn’t change. This game has a lot of mitigation thru aegis, dodges, absorptions and reflects the level of support needed in general PvE and dungeon running is minimal compared to other titles, and i know it must be a pain to realize that you’re wasting potential by running around with your favorite trait, but you gain nothing by thinking that AH is needed for anything outside PvP (while we’re at it, i prefer monk focus over AH in PvP).

You don’t NEED a lot of things.

I can run through any exp dungeon with NO traits selected.

That doesn’t mean it’s the best way.

To reuse my analogy, you don’t NEED polio vaccinations either. You can still survive just fine as a cripple.

But it is the best way, perhaps i failed into explaining my point, allow me try again:
Extra survival in PvE is wasted potential that could be turned into damage, making the run faster and easier.

DeathPanel.8362:

timidobserver.7925:

Not everyone likes it/chooses to run it, but AH is a solid choice. Running damage gear with AH usually works out pretty well in PVE.

As you will notice from the responses, some people don’t run AH so that they can gloat about not running it. However, it really is powerful in all environments of the game.

Agreed.
Not running AH and gloating about it is akin to not taking a polio vaccination and gloating about it.

Unless you are building for meditations there’s really no reason not to take AH since you can still gear for dps and still do very high dps while having high survivability.

It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

There’s just one thing… you don’t need AH.

In every MMO, dungeons runs are made with just enough support to keep everyone alive, more than that was always a waste, here the situation didn’t change. This game has a lot of mitigation thru aegis, dodges, absorptions and reflects the level of support needed in general PvE and dungeon running is minimal compared to other titles, and i know it must be a pain to realize that you’re wasting potential by running around with your favorite trait, but you gain nothing by thinking that AH is needed for anything outside PvP (while we’re at it, i prefer monk focus over AH in PvP).

darkace.8925:

DeathPanel.8362:

That single block for you and nearby players easily means the difference between success and a wipe.

Oxxy.7068:

It is a group-wide block.

I thought it was pretty clear I was discussing the passive effect, but I’ll reiterate that point in case it wasn’t. The passive effect of Virtue of Courage provides a single self-block once every 40 seconds. That seems to me to be a long cooldown for a single block; especially considering the timing of the block is uncontrollable (meaning it might very well be wasted on an auto-attack or other similarly weak attack).

But you compared it with a weapon skill with a fairly high CD, we don’t have to give anything up to make use of the passive effect, and its fairly obvious that virtues are meant to be activated, the only virtue that is worth to left untouched is resolve, and yet again you’ll activate it from time to time to save yourself or someone else from dying. To be honest i have no idea why so many players let their virtues untouched, both in PvE and PvP.

swiftpaw.6397:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/We-Got-Guardian-Builds Here you go OP, everything u need to know :P

This is probably the best post i’ve ever seen in here.

Just put Force on your main hand, that’s what i did since i’m kitten sure i’m not making double ascendeds aside from daggers, for now.

Well if you do CoF/CoE/Arah every day, one way or another you’ll have enough tokens to another set of weapons anyways. I wouldn’t use Strenght since it becomes useless the moment you get into a competent group .

It is a group-wide block.

Seriously, dude?

Daecollo.9578:

Okeano.5930:

K first of all, EM is independent of AH, so high crit build with fast attack rate buffs might MUCH more compare to the slow hammer attacks with lower crit rate. And why aren’t you using the other 10 points?

AH is NOT a party wide heal and only heals the one with it. I don’t think you know how this works.

We’re not talking about tanking zerg in WvW, OP is asking about PvE. And my point is that you don’t need the heal from AH in PvE and it just serves as a crutch for lazy players.

I don’t think you understand.

AH is the best PvE Trait in the entire game.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccM9VMGRTmMGRTm9MxxVVzqMRa
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Protection

Have 5 Guardians all using that build with Symbol of Protection alone, you Heal all your allies, each critical giving them Might.

That is 3-5 Might stacks and 5 Protection boons per second.

70 × 5 × 5 = 1750 Per Guardian with Altruistic Healing. Now lets say all 5 of those symbols also healed allies, that is an extra 535, which is 2285 Hp/S per second, not counting the healing skill or virtues.

And then, after all this, you realize that healing is useless in PvE. Well, not useless but surely over the top. AH is far from the best PvE trait in the game (master of consencrations and pure of voice both seems way stronger than AH to me).

Few links, hope you take your time to read’em:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Why-people-hate-zerks/page/3#post2878918

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Survivability-in-dungeons-with-a-DPS-build/first#post2800900

Hunter.4783:

Oh? so im a bad player now because im bursting you little bubble? Keep living in phantasy world friend.

There is a reason most guards are complaining that they are forced to spec 30/30/10 for most things, Yet here you are telling us all we suck and you are better, typical forum warrior

How do you burst a bubble that doesn’t exist? If anything i bursted yours. I mean, really, who the hell still uses anchor guardian?

@Stut – I wouldn’t use 10/30/30, even with a full zerk party you do need utility in many situations. The only place it could work 100% would be… CoF P1, lol.

As for aegis pop, it has nothing to do with being bad, but it is not something you can mantain just with skill alone, take the Spider Queen in AC as an example, the moment she shoots her web thingy your aegis is gone, even if you double dodge.

Hunter.4783:

Ok people, you are going too far down the theorycrafting aspect of the game. Its true that a full zerker guardian running full DPS traits, something akin to 0/30/30/0/10 would most likely outDPS a warrior in group settings but this is due to 2 things

1) Guardian taking advantage of the warrior buffs
2) Guardian stacking every possible dmg % increase trait which are practically impossible to sustain, like unscathed contender

blabla yada yada unscathed blablabla

1) They are full of kitten
2) They are testing their builds on stacked groups with another anchor guard and elie babysitting their kitten as well as a warrior providing banner support

Therefore yes, the guardian under very specific aforementioned conditions can outDPS warriors but it requires none other than warrior buffs in order to do so and is very impractical If u are pugging or are the only guardian

1 – Yes, of course. Every group should have one warrior for banners, that’s not news for anyone. Plus every class needes help of others to do maximum DPS (warriors themselves needs firefields and blast finishers like everybody else to mantain 25 stacks of might thru any fight).
2 – No one uses unscathed unless they’re running 25 in virtues, you may be able to mantain it on fights like CM P1 boss, Evolved destroyer and Searing Effigy. Anyways, in that case the damage would be even higher.

With 30 in honor, i’ve got like 13900~14000 HP, along with aegis, perma vigor, shelter and renewed focus all this stuff is more than what i need to not die, in fact i’m able to mantain 90+% hp easly when i screw up, thanks to shelter.

1 – Nope, you just suck. Don’t post false information just because you’re a bad player.
2 – Anchor guard is a piece of kitten. I’m glad i didn’t played this game when it was a thing. LH Eles are probably the best blast finisher provider in the game, but they usually need our fire fields to maintain their DPS, oh wow, teamwork (engies would work for them as well, but lolaegis). As for banners, check the first #1.

I didn’t knew that a five man party is a spamfest zerg. I must be new here.

LostBalloon.6423:

known group -> do it the normal way and burst down
pugs -> don’t trust, stack them somewhere safe where i know the biggest kitten wont die.

Known group – burst it down
Pugs – Are they kiting the mobs after spider for no reason? Y/N?
Y – Leave the group, save yourself from the trouble.
N – Burst it down.

Big numbers are not DPS. Every class needs support from others to deal maximum damage. Guardian may suck at self buffing but they’re pretty strong in a group, also, good thing i wrote this down earlier:

I’ll help clarifying a bit since i’m bored as hell and can’t actually play due to lag issues:

If the wiki is right, the full sword’s basic attack chain completes itself in 2.5secs, assuming you have 20ish stacks of might and 20ish vulnerability on your target the first two autos will hit by something near 4500 damage, third one 2800ishx3 i believe (not sure if that includes bloodlust as well, i’m just pulling the values i remember from most dungeons runs), that’s 17400 damage in less than 3 seconds, without any cooldown.
Ah, with banners and fury RHS guardians have around 90% critical chance, so getting the full basic chain to crit ins’t a problem at all.

Yep, I totally forgot about symbol duration, 15/25/0/20/10 seems a better choice here. I’m sad about not being able to use 25 in virtues but it still seems solid to me.

I’m really tempted into crafting an ascended hammer instead of my ele 2nd dagger right now, i’ll probably do some testing first and prepare myself for some pointless and boring open world content. I mean, it seems to be better than s/f if you want to run with 25 in virtues instead of 30 in honor.

edit: what in the hell is wrong with the profanity filter today?

new edit: just realized – what about double sigils? With S/F you’re able to stack undead slaying and force, force and night, etc, and they play a big role into dungeon dps, i request further testing. >:

I’m more concerned about long fights, let’s say, grawl shaman (tho you can probably just stack might between phases), CoE Golem(even with boon removal it tends to use 3 LHs on my ele (2 casts)), maybe the third alpha assuming you don’t have two eles, CoF p3 Burntclaw etc, these are some fights that screwing fire fields really hurts your party overall damage. As for vulnerability stacks, it only beats sword on static stacks, in burst stacks it’s pretty much even if you run s/f + blinding exposure. Hammer seems really awesome at clearing trash and a kitten solid weapon with the right group setup, tho. I’m actually impressed.

Now that’s something, i didn’t expect hammer to be actually that good at DPSing but… i’ve got only one problem with it:
Combo fields. It has so much potential to ruin might stacks on the fly, blinds and heals that i’m not sure if i’d use it as my main DPS weapon (blinds may be neglectible to some extent since you’re spamming protection, but sometimes -33% damage ins’t enough). There’s also the fact that your target has to stand still, but aside from some fractals that’s not a problem in general.

mosspit.8936:

Whats with the surge of these kind of topics?

I blame the in-game LFG.

Wukunlin’s post seems accurate to me, the wolf just pauses and stares at the group before insta killing 2 or 3 guys.

I’ll help clarifying a bit since i’m bored as hell and can’t actually play due to lag issues:

If the wiki is right, the full sword’s basic attack chain completes itself in 2.5secs, assuming you have 20ish stacks of might and 20ish vulnerability on your target the first two autos will hit by something near 4500 damage, third one 2800ishx3 i believe (not sure if that includes bloodlust as well, i’m just pulling the values i remember from most dungeons runs), that’s 17400 damage in less than 3 seconds, without any cooldown.
Ah, with banners and fury RHS guardians have around 90% critical chance, so getting the full basic chain to crit ins’t a problem at all.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I know the feeling. I’ve come from games that had several hour long “dungeons” in them, so when people complain about a 15 minute run, it makes me hate them. But, that is what you get when the community favors grinding over playing the game.

Last game I played had 45m~1:30h dungeon runs (well, endgame dungeons), you know what? I hated it, more than anything, all i did was PvP, all day long. Now I can actually enjoy PvE since i’m able to do almost everything in 15~20 minutes tops assuming i don’t have a braindead party.
If you think that anyone is grinding instead of playing because they enjoy faster content then you’re just wrong.

sigh

/15charrs

tom.7468:

NoTrigger.8396:

purgatoryz.6038:

On the other hand, guards are more desired in PvE and can be traited to do nearly the same DPS as a warrior

nearly the same?

in good groups, good guardians deal MORE damage than warriors. and when you add reflections ,alot more damage.

lol keep thinking that as soon as you try warrior you will see how wrong you are. My warrior deal on average 2x as much dps as my guardian both are using full berserker.

You either suck at math or as a guardian.

korelg.7862:

well guardian using full zerker is just wrong

Nah, you’re wrong, zerk is a viable choice for both pvp and pve. I wouldn’t use it on hot joins due to the ammount of players and AoEs but on 5v5s it is a pretty solid choice, as for pve… i’ll let the research function do it’s job.

Then don’t wait doing nothing, i do my world bosses in between dungeons runs or pvp games, aside from Orr stuff that i do right after the reset.