Guild Wars 2

Meh, IMO protection/retaliation/stability, aggressive AH and stun breakers is the way to go. It even works in sPvP. Yes of course you can’t defend a camp like that alone, but you can ninja most people. There is a lot to be done by ANet on the wall to become appealing for me personally. If you think that you should care how far and how close you are to the wall and if you are taking a projectile centrally or sideways. I usually prefer melee gamestyle and I go very close and I make it very personal :P but it is kind of difficult and I can’t really spare time for the wall. Not to mention that not knowing when exactly it will go off is a huge game stopper for me. They could’ve added some blinking 1-2 seconds before it disappears but no. You have to count too >.>

Don’t get me wrong, When I was leveling up, WoR was one of the most used skills by me and it saved me countless times versus champions that shoot from distance and make me go 20% in few seconds. But overally nowadays I prefer what I said above, for these very reasons. Just look at Ruii’s previous post, look in how many fractals the WoR is not having any effect. Add the long reuse time and I get an urge to throw up when i see its icon nowadays :|

Blissified.8369:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Yes i love dodging out of zealot defense spamming whirl of wrath on the likes of you with my 3400 armor bunkered guardian ^^

And i love dodging out of ur whirling wrath while i tank your damage since im tanky enough to not have to worry about a bunker build trying to kill me, but with my 2-4k dmg auto attacks (4.5k when i got 20stacks of might and even more when i get my 19 stacks of invuln on you WHICH I WILL DO) 15-25k damage bursts, YOU DO have to be worried about me.

You can’t possibly claim and believe that single sword has better damage burst than GS. If you do, I’ll really add your thread to my list of “never come back”. Fact is, I can move while I’m whirling, you can’t while you are in zealot defense, enough said. Not to mention that your third normal attack is quite buggy if your target is walking around you. Also, alone you can never meet 20 stack of might alone, even with the 12 staff stacks. 15-20k damage burst … so what, you like … 1-shot people? Oh excuse me oh great one

Dredge shockwave does not get reflected, I always LOL at guardians that use it against them. Especially the one from the champion

Have you done CoE story? Kudu has 1-shot projectile. It doesn’t get reflected, he still shoots your kitten Not to mention that in there even aegis doesnt help, you can only dodge out of it. And there are quite a few examples of such mobs.

Or the fact that if you are 5-10 steps behind the wall the mobs just shoot over it, the same applies if you’re downhill and mobs are above you. Which is realistic but kind of not cool due to the long reuse of the wall. Not to mention that sometimes you might lag and you might think you are behind the wall but you really arent. No, I personally prefer protection, if anything

Schnuffles.5369:

End game = grind your face off in fractals.

Or have some fun in WvW, or maybe grind around the world for legendaries. I don’t know, those are just few of the stuff that come in mind to me. If you really want a goal, try collecting 100g and get a commander to shine ^^

Snafoo.2869:

I see you take CoP over Judge’s Intervention though, I normally don’t feel like I need that much extra condition cleaning and JI is just a lovely skill to have, especially with the hammer imo, since it lacks mobility.

its great for greatsword too ^^

Yes i love dodging out of zealot defense spamming whirl of wrath on the likes of you with my 3400 armor bunkered guardian ^^

Dude wall of reflection is useless to some encounters. Some projectiles can not be reflected. For me this skill is useless now. Everything related to it is useless too.
I also dont see how this is a boon contorl build, you only have “Save Yourselves” as your boon skill which is once a minute o.o

Yes I’m being too hard on the skill, it has its uses, of course, but when most stuff is scripted to avoid it and im wasting an utility slot for it, i kind of have sore feeling in my throat

PS: Not to mention that “Save Yourselves” will get you conditions every once in awhile. And I don’t see you having condition removals o.o

nofo.8469:

If you are after a finely tuned PvE MMO with lots of teamwork etc then no, this is not for you.

I’m pretty sure he’ll fail arah, or 20+ fractals. Maybe you would too. Because the game REQUIRES strong teamwork to pass it. Having max level and best gear means absolutely nothing in there

Lets not fool ourselves guys. All of you endgame beggers, you must stop. Look around, after all the leveling, all the gear treadmill is over even for a short time in traditional MMOs, what sparkles afterwards is the PvP aspect. And in that department Guild Wars 2 is just perfect. As soon you create your toon, you can join in any type of pvp this game has to offer. Which in my opinion is great.

You want dungeons? Well, here’s a tip … you can actually join fractals at level 1, yes you are being upscaled to 80 with pretty decent stats. Sure you miss some skills but then again lets face it, this way you skip 99% of the game content, you should feel bad. When you get bored, at 30-35 you can start running ascalonian catacombs which is pretty amazing and fun IMO. Afterwards you build up. So far the greatest dungeon challenges are CoE, Arah and Fractals 20+. So yes, you basically have been an endgame the moment you step foot in the world of tyria. Stop complaining about it. Play the game and what you like about it.

There are also numerous bugs that would allow a person without stability to get out unchallenged. For me its not really useful skill. One of the reasons I poke around with greatsword

KensaiZen.3740:

Hammer players play the waiting game. They can survive any full burst from any class and when the damage has been absorbed they destroy the enemy as he has used up all his skills.

In reality though, hammer users go for crit rate. That means lose some in the armor department, that means that usually the GS users are more “tanky”. I mean … I’m happy 3400 armor user and I deal nice dmg in WvW. Alone I make a zerg back off and focus me while I’m in renewed focus while my zerg is bashing at theirs. Fun 10 seconds xD Agroing zerg is almost like CC a whole bunch of mobs. It’s funny actually, it ALWAYS works O_O

ironzerg.3196:

Ravenmoon.5318:

@Fabsm I guess hammer has changed since head start (or was it the open beta few days before head start) because the third attack used to lock me in place. And afaik the third hit is still at least 2 seconds cast? That’s enough for me to run away because if I’m not going to whirl I usually stay as much away as possible. Yep that costs me few misses every now and then but it’s worth it!

AFAIK you can’t dodge during Whirling Wrath.

You can. You just tap the dodge key and the guardian attacker gets “Evaded” messages even if you are in proximity to him. I guess dodge gives you something like a second or so of invulnerability

@Relentliss there is a way to make Whirling Wrath “more accurate”

@Fabsm I guess hammer has changed since head start (or was it the open beta few days before head start) because the third attack used to lock me in place. And afaik the third hit is still at least 2 seconds cast? That’s enough for me to run away because if I’m not going to whirl I usually stay as much away as possible. Yep that costs me few misses every now and then but it’s worth it!

On the thief, I actually knock them down with blinding blade. It gives me enough time to heal up and get back offensively on him. Most thieves run from a GS combo cuz most of them are glass cannons traited for high opening attacks and conditions and 0 defense. And I’m not running

Greatsword is incredibly offensive weapon. As such it’s better than the hammer in the DPS sector. It’s mobile, it’s versatile. Every single attack is AoE. Whirling Wrath is actually 9 hits in ~3 seconds from which I can land at least 5 hits at a single target. Most of the time I manage to land more hits on a single target. With 45% crit rate on a completely bunkered build (read toughness) I manage to crit every other hit. Every third hit stacks group might – hello AH. And while hammer casts its third attack quite slow, I can easily just walk away from stomp range. Both weapons are good in specific situations but for me the greatsword is more useful in more situations. Now I see why ANet nerfed retaliation’s duration few months back. This is the most powerful defensive buff imo. You just have to survive, and your enemies kill themselves in you. So if you leap in the closing seconds of the leap you get extra retaliation seconds which is extremely effective against thieves.

It was just yesterday a thief hit me for 11k on 3400 armor with opening attack out of stealth while i was full hp. Clearly something is bugged about this class with the damage and the non-stop stealth which some ppl abuse in WvW and retaliation is really the only thing stopping a thief from kitten you. I don’t see how a hammer could save me

Are you kidding me? You guys are doing 10% of the content the game has to offer, and you are telling me that you get bored, well duh. I can play GW2 for 24 hours straight and NOT get bored, you always have something to do. You are NOT locked in 1 zone to farm/grind for a material or something. You basically get anything from everywhere. Have you tried WvW? sPvP? I’m not going to ask for tournament pvp because it’s mainly teams there and I dont have one and I end up with a PuG vs team, you can imagine

I was denying WvW until few weeks ago tbh. I was doing dungeons, fractals, exploring, achievements and stuff. But one day I decided to give WvW more time. Landed in an small but awesome WvW guild that manages to pull 2-3 parties sometimes, and it’s a blast. Defending stuff with 5 vs 20 with just some siege, and then having those 20 call their friends, trying to outzerg and outsmart you. It’s really a blast. The only downfall is the repair bills, BUT you earn so much from anything else, you don’t care about repair bill.

So yeah, in retrospect, just because you don’t know how to have fun, doesn’t mean that the game is not fun. Please stop spreading false rumours.

KensaiZen.3740:

Hammer, for people who can think more than just KILL KILL KILL. superior in everyway.

Really now? So what now, you think you are smarter for using a hammer?
To the dude quoting me, yes I have gotten underground fractal and colossus quite fast with my combo. I usually aggro all the mobs and just run until some team member finishes with the contol panel

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The guardian is supposed to be the “knight.” That was their original name too. They’re basically warriors with less offense and more defense. They also have more support buffs compared to the warrior, although they’re not really healers. They don’t actually have that many healing skills and the ones they do have aren’t that good.

Amen, someone finally saying that we are not healers. I think it’s the blue color making people think we are healers, but let me tell you this guys … if you rely on a guardian to heal you, I have bad news for you xD

Huh, really? :O
Well I’ve done every single dungeon with greatsword/staff combo including getting in 20+ levels at fractals o.o
but I guess I should thank you

Thank you, GW2 community, for making most guardians pick a hammer
Thank you, for advertising it as the only “pro” weapon
It’s so much easier to kill these in WvW.
Keep up the good work, I want to see more hammer guardians :p So I could AoE you xD

It seems you haven’t tried shout heal warrior. That’s 8k hp for the group right there. Tell me one class that can pump up 8k for the group in 1 second. This is just hillarious. The only path i haven’t tried about healing guardi is with virtues, I don’t like the traitline, but you are free to test that out. But I doubt it can pull as much as warrior. What’s cool about virtues is that your current condition doesn’t bother them. Stunned, knockdowned, doesn’t matter, they work

Why is guardian been called a healer >.>
Warriors heal for much more, more often, wth? In the heat of the battle, AH rarely matters for your party members. For you, yes definately, for them … not so much. The “OP” heal on the staff comes in 3-4 seconds after click, so you must have sidekick abilities to know when to use it.

RubberDougie.2750:

I’m afraid of getting kicked from more groups for being “slow” when all I want to do is not exploit. Happens in every game where exploits become common place. If you don’t exploit, you get kicked or people avoid you.

Please fix the exploits so I can enjoy Fractals without feeling peer pressure to exploit.

Don’t worry, after the 20th run you’ll want to skip content, I suppose you’re still fresh.

OP please curse less. The guys made the best MMO in years, cut them some slack, they are working on the issues and no they are not putting bugs for fun lol. Bugs are bound to happen and I’m telling you this as a software engineer. You just can’t predict all the outcomes, that’s why your Windows OS is rumoured to have poor security. So yeah calm down, file your bug report and enjoy some other dungeon/path in the meanwhile

Sorrow’s Embrace rune of the forge give nice toughness boost. I prefer those compared to dolyak. Same toughness, no vitality but protection and extra healing

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the healing signet healing with % too? When I used to roll as vitality guardi it did heal me for around 70. Now that I’m all knighty it gives me the same heal rate (think)

enough with the WoW crap >.>

AmBoSS.7129:

Why would I want to be friends with Charr? Charr are animals, they destroyed our land and slaughtered our people. Don’t trust the Charr.

We did that to them first xD

Last night I did 20 with a PUG (lots of dying) and ended up in the conclussion that, after 20, you actually need a team that knows what it is doing (especially on to cliffside fractal) OR you NEED a very destinctive classes getting us closer to the holy trinity that we so hard try to avoid. I mean, after tonight, I don’t see myself doing fractals without guardian and support ele/shout warrior.

Does the other guys feel like that? Of course thanks to the level fragmentation its quite hard to find the needed classes on the needed level and I think it’s something worth digging in. You have no way of blocking those necromancer bitting attacks on the arms seals, while the other seals are extremely easy compared to the last seal breaking. Even with the worst built PUG you can get through legs and waist of the giant without dying. But once you get to the top, the game changes. Your only strategy is to run from seal to seal switching the hammer (which drains ur HP mind you) and you get sick damage from both sides of the coridoor out of those necros.

At some point me as a bunkered guardian decided to run alone from seal to seal beaking at least 1 of the hands, but 4 people couldn’t hold of the enemy on one seal. I mean I was on my way back and they were wiped out xD

Anyway that reminds me also that, initially its very easy, with 2 mobs on each seal. If you happen to wipe :X oh boy I have some bad news for you, then you have to fight through swarm of high DPS mobs with no way of blocking it and getting 25 stacks of vulnerability almost all the times. So yeah, restarting after wipe wouldn’t be bad but not that necessary.

I’m curious what the gw2 community thinks about that. People that have gone over 20 and ones that are struggling at that zone.

(Not mentioning agony because I have good resists atm and It’s not that much of a deal)

thisolderhead.5127:

@Ravenmoon – Sounds like you’ve chosen to build a glass cannon and given up a lot in order to try to get decent burst damage, does the “good initial burst” have a weapon swap as part of the cycle?

Nah I’m actually bunkered with GS and Staff. Kind of a beast but still. Have to wait to start my combos again xD
I usually troll my wvw enemies until they waste their 2 dodges and then I burst on them and they’re like 20% hp left.

Seriously, quit whining. All dungeons were and some still bugged and “expoitable”. There are those that like to watch the cut scenes after the 50th run, I ain’t got time for that. Go make friends and put them through the same thing over and over again. In the end even the so called ‘bugusing’ or ‘exploiting’ is giving you nothing more than 5-10 min headstart. In the end if you’re weak, the boss or the dungeon mechanic will kill you off.

Now I see you all speak as some kind of “higher” beings for doing the fractals as inteded not even skipping cutscenes and trash, but I really do hope all of you get DC on the jade maw 3 times in a row at stage 20, then you will see how your opinion changes and you just emoquit posting in this topic because it would be embarassing for you to take U-turn in the same thread, so yeah, keep your opinions for yourself

You have a solution for such groups by standing afk aside? Well newsflash … the group has solution for you too. I would love leaving a person like you splat dead not even ressurecting you for the chest which you all crave so much.

And just FYI, by ‘speed running’ we screw ourselves. If you haven’t noticed, the so called ‘trash’ drops far more rares/exotics than the chests but we don’t care. We are not doing it for the drops anyway.

Cooldowns c: i hate cooldowns. I have good initial burst and then I’m like … okay now lets survive for ~10 seconds :X Q_Q

Iehova.9518:

Kishandreth.2798:

The players are to blame, its your choice to abuse the glitches.

It’s Anet’s fault for not testing content. They’re not glitches. It’s clever use of game mechanics.

That is all.

That. Plus as many others have said before, I’ll stop skipping content when I know that I’m not on the clock, because ONE DC, one minor disruption of service, costs me well over an hour and as a mainly casual player during the week with job and all I can’t allow myself to lose that time for nothing. And we all know how easy it is to lose a service for just half a second and that’s exactly the time you need to get a DC.
Mods, keep merging those posts, but until this problem is fixed, they WILL keep popping. People already agreed with your half-thought, rushed ascended fiasco. At least fix their dungeon on “wintersday”.

Recently.1043:

I seriously hope the first and most important thing your fixing is DCed members not being able to rejoin the group.

Cause that’s about 100x more important than people saving 2~3 mins or so on the dredge level

Totally agree with this one. I’ve beem disconnected several times on the last fractal and it does feel … bad .. to say the least. So yeah, until that is fixed I’ll be trying to use any bug I know to pass those dungeon faster so that I could progress.

See Anet, I don’t mind if you would kill my toon upon entering the fractal after DC. Hell by all means please do so. I DC, I join back, I insta die, so that the party must wipe-out for me and I don’t use the DC mechanic as “instant waypoint”. It can’t be that hard to be done.

Just remember previous dungeons. People stopped bugging as soon as you fixed your stuff and listened to the community and dumbed them down. I expect nothing less out of a dungeon like fractals

Stop complaining, pick a greatsword and be done with it. Even though they kittened it last month it still has more “synergy”. Not to mention that hammer skills are awlfull, you really open up yourself to a lot more damage with a hammer.

Nah, I look on ascended as more of an experiment. I was quite frustrated at first, but then realized that in the end it’s not so bad although some things could’ve been better done/explained so it would feel less of a slap over the face. Either way IMO GW2 is by far the best MMO out there right now. With that being said, I really don’t want to see some people getting the new stuff faster than others, while not experiencing the new content the game has to offer. The problem is that, PvE based players can’t possibly reach the WvW-only crowd in term of tokens as it is vice versa – dungeon-wise. So a middle solution must be found. I play the game in a certain way, and it would suck for me personally if it turns out that I’m playing the game “the wrong way”. I already think of me as kind of a succesfull player :|

Marcspc.7839:

to OP, you should be doing fractals for fun, not for gear

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m having a blast in there. Especially when I beat the next level, it gives me a feel of satisfaction. And still it would be lame if you get the same stuff I do with much less effort. It’s just not fair. And besides, the stat bump is worthless especially in WvW. You have no agony there either, you guys can’t really complain. I do play WvW every once in a while but I mostly do dungeon runs and stats and player skill and team effort matter. Also in sPvP there is no such thing as ascended because of balance.

But farming WvW is extremely easy. Just move with the zreg and try to hit as much targets as possible to obtain the badges/tokens. While you have FoTM which does require some team effort and it’s not that easy if you run with PUG all the time, which is always risky because few days ago, when I was at fractals 12 (notice the difficulty level) the party I ended up didn’t know what to do on the maps. It was THAT bad. These people leeched their way up. At least at lvl 20 there are none like these yet but still, at lvl 20 the dungeon itself is quite hard compared to WvW

Should be regular human cultural weapons/seraph

I had a talk with a friend last night, and at some point we reached the fractals/ascended stuff since it’s bothering many people and the complete lack of official information is not helping at all. Anyway I asked how far this friend is in the fractals, and the answer was “3 and I can’t find a party but I don’t care”. And of course I was like o.O" “But that is how you make ascended rings” and after that the conversation continued with my friend saying “I’ll just wait for the next patch when ANet will add all the ascended stuff as purchasable stuff in WvW” and again I was shocked O.O . I asked if the information is from a trusted source and the friend in question told me that it is.

So here is a fair question … am I currently wasting my time in the fractals?
Because if the WvW junkies just go and buy the top tiered stuff and I worked my kitten off in the fractals, seems “just a little bit” unfair. Not to mention the price a backpiece is worth with globs running for ~30s as of the writting of this thread and 250 T6 fine-craft mats which drop extremely rare and prices start from 5s unless you’re buying bones.

Whoever requires a ranged weapon, and forces other people to use range, are just simply, noobs, period. NightyNight I melee the boss at dredge fractal, I’m not 1-shot, I’m not a glass cannon. Not to mention that his “OP” attack has 3 seconds of animation which only blind, or well, a ranged noob wouldn’t notice

In the end its up to the player. I get that probably most guardians are just doing plain face tank and dying like flies, but you should evaluate your members before kicking. The OP has stated that he’s skilled and he knows his char, why not give him a chance? Because you’ll wipe once and you are going to lose ~1 silver? AWMIGAWD SO MUCH MONEY, HOW COULD YOU…….

I have one thing to say to you … crybabies!

P.S: IMO ANet should give every fractal boss a 20 second AOE on the outer ring to show those ranged noobs that they simply suck

I won’t use a website built by a 3rd party in 15 minutes.

bump bump +1
Even the milking LOL korean f2p MMOs has that group finder, even it being a lame one.
From my experience I really enjoyed Lineage 2’s and SWTOR’s party matching systems. If GW2 devs dare to innovate on that I’d be really happy, even if it means to buy an expansion for it _

So as I’m reading this forum I’m getting mixed feeling and I’m quite confused
So I reached level 11 and I could really use some agony resist but for that I need ascended item x.x
We did lvl 10 last night and only 2 out of 5 got their rings from the jade maw. Of course not me, I always fail when games require luck, thats one of the reason I liked GW2, everything was “written in stone”, I could care less about drops etc etc

But anyhow. So I heard that ascended rings should drop from 10+ and infused from 20+. With that being said, no one in my group got ring at stage 11 so that makes me wonder. Do I have to repeat stage 10 until I get the ring, or I have a chance of obtaining it at 11,12,13…..19. This is all very confusing to me, and there is no official statement about it, saddly. So yeah, any help on this one is more than welcome!

shagworth.5017:

You certainly have every right to go pure melee, but if you’re getting downed every 10 seconds trying to facetank particular bosses, I’m not going to select the ‘Kick from party’ option, but I’ll second it if someone else does.

You’ll be shocked at melee guardian’s survivability. Usually the rangers in my party die from AOE damage rather than me, melee tanking and … who does facetank anyway?

Meh, If you happen to play on Underworld I’d be happy to have you in my party. I’m staff/greatsword guardi in fractals, and from experience I must say that scepter+staff dmg COMBINED doesn’t reach the greatsword DPS (yes, damage per second) and I find myself combatting bosses that should 1-shot me with the GS rather than staff. I only use staff to buff up group members with might and heal. Greatsword is THE perfect tool against the boss in growl fractal. Going close range on the boss makes him lose any type of aggro he has on other players, ergo you save your group. So yeah … gtfo with the ranged requirement. I make my own parties and last night lead 3 complete noobs through lvl 10 and 11 with 0 agony resistance this way. And that’s an achievement. Yes, we had the dredge and colossus maps

I don’t know, we did diff 10 and 11 last night and only at diff 10 2 of my group had ascended rings. The rest, the rest are being kitten by agony c:

Phuriok.9307:

I notice a lot of people have mentioned it could be abused by dead people dc’ing to come back alive, but, if they make the DC not kick you out of the dungeon, simply respawn in the instance dead, it shouldnt be an issue. Just make it so that a DC doesn’t kick you out of the instance. Just don’t let other players join a party or a fractal halfway through, if somebody has to go or dc’s for a really long period of time, then make the party restart the fractal. Client crashes shouldn’t affect the whole party.

Checkpoints are just like waypoints. Not to mention that once a checkpoint is reached and someone is dead, the whole party intentionally wipes. I don’t see the point of their preventive system in this dungeon. It doesn’t slow me down, what it does though, is to screw me BIG TIME when I DC on the last path and NO obviously NOT from my ISP. Last night I was running constant PING to the server, I had DC and 0% packet loss or increase of delay. So please ANet, get your kittentraight >.>

If running the same dungeon 30 times in a roll to get a single ascended item is not called a gear treadmill, I’m an airplane

Pretty sure they have serious issues on their part. I had 4 DCs today, 3 of them happened in less than 3 minutes, yep, lost fractals progress twice, once it was on the 4th path
So yeah this has become like a huge issue for me. I want to move on but people are already skyrocketing through the levels, there seem to be no last level and i dont know how am i going to find a party in a week from now.

I love the dungeon, it’s amazing, but that difficulty thingie with no top, totally suck. For the people that actually go to work 8-10 hours a day the game will advance way too much in a week time. Add the disconnects which kill any fractals mood whatsoever and what do you end up with? Overally good looking, but broken dungeon. That’s what you get, and all that hard effort you guys put into it, goes to waste :|

What build do you suggest for a guardian there.
I’ve done all other dungeons and Arah is like my holy grail ^^ . I never really tried it because I already find other dungeons rather difficult with random people just because everybody does what he knows best and there is no outlined strategy unless I bark 5 minutes on how to proceed. But I want to try it. I’m running bunkered Greatsword/Staff build and the way I see it, according to your guide, I should use the staff to range DPS him, but that DPS is low, so I’m thinking of just stacking might to by group. Or is there a better option

p.s. I was refering to giganticus path ^^

Don’t you think that killing heavy armor user for 2 seconds is a bit OP? Having in mind that most guardians are being speced for toughness