Guild Wars 2

Ottohi.2871:

There is the Warrior’s Spring trait in Discipline line. It increases speed by 10% when wielding melee weapons.

You meant the most useless trait in the game?
Because it doesn’t stack with swiftness and is therefore a completely useless trait.

Ottohi.2871:

I do agree that we need a bit more in combat and out of combat speed by default. Not enough to catch a thief out of combat but enough to run as fast as one in combat. In combat we need to be fast moving armored attackers.
Guardians can be the slow ones, they’re supposed to be the tankier ones.

No we don’t need to be as fast as Thieves, that would be OP.
We’re already the second fastest class, Thieves need to be the 1st due to them being 2shot material.

1) Movement speed slows down for everyone in combat.
2) Norn “looks” slower than other races which gives you the feeling of being slower, though it’s exactly as fast as other races.

Note that your buffs still apply.
Swiftness still makes you 33% faster than you normally would, and gap closers still work wonder.
Warrior is actually faster than any other class beside Thieves on a proper build when you take into account near-permanent swiftness with SoR and all the movement skills.

Try boon duration runes, GS+Sword/Shield, it’s what I use and nobody can keep up with me beside Thieves, even D/D Eles get left behind.

The truths spilled in the OP of this thread hurts me as it is exactly what I was thinking when WvWing on my Guard.

Having played Thief and Warrior in WvW, playing a Guardian is a big letdown.
The good thing of… basically any other class beside the Guard is that if you’re dying you still have a chance to escape, Guardian doesn’t and it won’t really make up for it in tankiness.
I mean if you’re killing 1-2 guys and other enemies approach you, you’re dead period.

Plus the complete lack of swiftness, I mean.. why are Guardians so handicapped from this perspective?
Even Necros, the so called “slower class of attrition”, do get infinite Swiftness and they absorb damage through DS so they can somewhat make an escape, they even get the 25% speed passive with a signet.
They have good gap closers too like the pull and plenty of chill/immob, they remove conditions better and burst just as good (or can do a complete weardown od enemies with conditions).

I was starting to love Guardian as it does better in PvE than my Warrior (at least on a support/staying power perspective), but in WvW I’m completely depressed.
Add the fact next patch we’ll be losing tankiness due to boon hate and what reason do I have to WvW again on this class?
Anet in the last video said we’re fine and don’t need any change and that is a deal sealer for me.

Xynn.2748:

Sigil of Rage? Ick. 45s cd shared on all sigils for something that more often than not will proc at an inconvenient time isn’t attractive to me.

It procs at least once per fight, 2-3 times on any longer fight (up to 4-5 at maw).
It’s a major DPS increase, but to each his own.

Khristophoros.7194:

You should always be ranged because melee risks eating the boss’s huge attack.
Melee is pointless.

Not even close.

If you have the skill to melee the chance to fail is 0% and there is no risk to eat the attack if you have hald decent reaction times. The animation is so obvious.
GS and A/A make the fight a joke as I explained in a post above, boss goes down very quick, adds die on spawn with GS3 and WA.

Maybe you’re just learning the ropes of fractals but when you get to 40+ most people will expect you to have the skills to do the above, it makes the fight last a few minutes compared to being a full ranged warrior.
Because a ranger is better than a non-melee warrior in that case so you’re being carried.

They are afraid to add more skills go figure if we get something like that.
This is to achieve “balance” supposedly, yet D/D Eles and Thieves show that having few skills doesn’t prevent unbalances.

Jax.5261:

Balanced Roamer (Sw-Sh / GS) – http://tinyurl.com/c5he37d
Balanced between AoE and Single target DPS, both extremely strong. This is so you can easily hop into team fights and still be very strong 1v1. Very resistent to burst builds and can force stomps with high AoE. If you have no clue what your enemy is running this is quite often your best build, if you’re roaming.

One thing.

How can this build roam with no access to swiftness whatsoever?
The point of a roamer is to roam fast and kill, no swiftness is slow as hell.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t see much wrong with being hit for alot by a glass cannon. Isn’t that the point? There would be something seriously wrong with balance if a glass cannon build would glance off our defenses. Where would that leave anyone NOT glass cannon hitting us?

Nope.
A glass cannon Warrior hits a defensive Guardian for lulz dmg, you can tank him down to him autoattacking due to all on CD.
Thief still hits bazillions and has more chances of escaping you than a Warrior.

The reason I stopped playing my Thief (even though I spent a ton of money on him) is that everything really feels too easy.
Killing people is unsatisfying because it requires zero skill.
You 3-shot a tanky Guardian inside a zerg of 20 people and port far away as if nothing happened.
Come on.

There is a reason everyone and their mothers are running Thieves in WvW and sPvP.
If not even Guardians can take their burst then who should?

Of course tank builds should beat glass cannons.
They already do, and there is only one exception to that.

Artaz.3819:

Banner changes may fix the Shout v Banner balance issues.

You mean making shout healing even more worthless in comparison?
Banner healing might heal a bit less but you can keep Endure Pain slotted which alone negates more damage than shout healing would heal.

If anything they should make shout healing better, considering that to get the full effect you need to not slot Endure Pain or other useful tools such as Bolas (vs bosses) and Balanced Stance (Snowblind, AC, etc) which makes the whole concept ridiculous.
Should they give 3s protection or Aegis each shout it would make them somewhat on par with banners as it covers up the loss of Endure Pain.
And it wouldn’t touch PvP as shout healing in PvP is a joke.

Artaz.3819:

I do not agree (I have a Guardian 80 as well). Guardians do have escape/disengage options. For instance, Guardian does have massive movement condition removal options (pick your version), Leap of Faith (GS), multiple chain blocks (Shield of Wrath (Focus) usable while stunned and instant is my favorite), Aegis, Renewed Focus (elite Invulnerability) which also refreshes Virtue of Courage/Aegis again, Judge’s Intervention (find an ambient creature), Merciful Intervention (usually suicide but can work), etc. I’m not saying Guardian’s are better than Warriors as tick-for-tat they are weaker in the escape department but Guardians do have more than -zero- disengage.

None of those you mentioned are disengages, save for JI which also really doesn’t.
Let’s be intellectually honest here, the chance of JI’ing on a mob that happens to be far from enemies is totally unreliable at best.
In normal conditions Guards have no disengages.

The reason I prefer Warrior over Guardian in WvW is because of the freedom of movement that is fundamental to not die.
The reason I prefer Guard in PvE is because Warrior has no sustain.

I believe Warriors as a melee class should get something like Guardian’s AH trait for PvE purposes.
You can’t realistically stay in melee without something like that against anything remotely serious, and that’s a design flaw.
Warriors are not Thieves that need to hit and run all the time, they need more staying power.

When you change a class you do it to give it what it needs or remove what is too much.
Warrior has more access to stability than any other class, there is simply no reason to add more, regardless if “it makes sense” or whatnot.
Also Guardian comparison is pretty bad because Guards have less stability than us.

What we need is sustain in PvE and cripple/chill removal in sPvP. That’s about it.
Adding even more stability would fix none of our current issues.

Lupi is easiest on Warrior due to large access to stability.
I personally range phase 1 (dodge grub), then just dodge the shadowstep, stability bubble and kite PBAoE.

rchu.8945:

agree with your sentiment. I feel guardian class needs a slight bump in health pool or some extra % for dmg reduction, if the role is truly front line dps/ support instead of healer.

Nah Guardian has enough defense in both PvE and PvP to hold the ground for long.
It’s just one specific class that can burst a full defense Guardian to the ground in 3-4 hits, and it’s that class that needs changes not us.
And hearing the last Anet video they want to change that next patch so maybe things will be a bit more balanced.

Baldmeora.2376:

warrior is one of the least mobile class in the game
most classes and builds can outrun a war
war have no control
we have little damage unless we use gun

These gotta be the 4 most out-right totally wrong things I’ve read in this forum at all times since August 28th, and you managed to pack them all in one, single post.

You’re playing and understanding the class completely upside-down.
The sole presence of this thread visible in our forum makes me feel embarassed because everyone else reading this will be laughing at us.

Please do a favor to the Warrior community and delete the starting post.
Let’s just do that and pretend this never happened ok?
I’ll give you PvP lessons or gold or drinks, women, camels or cheeseburgers, whatever you are into.
Just delete this. Please.

Artaz.3819:

There is a reason Pull-mechanics are aligned with melees ‘in those other games’.

You don’t need to search in other games to see a melee class with a pull.
Guardian’s GS #5 does exactly that.

And let’s be honest, Guardian is a lot more melee than Warrior, considering it has zero disengage and poor ranged weaponry.

aFLEX.8230:

Does this build work well out of Fractals as well? (in open world pve, and other dungeons? What other weapons do you keep in your inventory?

Also, in regards to the Omnomberry Pies, do you know if the internal cooldown is still only 1 second? I’ve been told that it was much higher than that now.

Thanks for the writeup… gonna try it out tonight

1) It works anywhere as long as you adapt utilities to situations.
There is no build that fits all content, i.e. if there is tons of CC you swap to consacrated ground / SYG etc.
2) I keep Sword, Shield, Scepter, Focus and Staff, but I also have GS and Hammer for WvW.
3) CD is one second. What people speculate and rumor has little to do with reality, you can check yourself and notice the proc every second (use cooldown timer to gauge seconds).

awgardner.9634:

I am going to give it a shot. I don’t have any ascended gear or what not, but I will replace with the best I can get my hands on with money not being a problem. I appreciate the new concept Red

Thank you.
And you don’t really need ascended gear if you don’t do fracts so you can use standard exotics.

It’s really satisfying to play this. You get top DPS without giving up support and survivability.
The only weak point of this build is condition removal but it doesn’t really matter in PvE.

Dolan.3071:

@ Red Falcon. IMO saving those valuable skills for escapes is the reason you need to escape in the first place. Rush is a poor gap closer and should be escape only, however bulls charge and WA are how you stay on top of them, bolas or other physicals to bog them down some more. Don’t get me wrong it could be better, but warrior isn’t as underpowered as everyone thinks.

Infact I use Rush as escape mostly (though it is valuable for damage too, 7k burst is not so shallow).
My escape combo is Charge→Savage Leap and then whatever other thing I saved up, usually Rush but sometimes Bull in case I didn’t need it.

You know, I use Flurry to land HB too so Bull is not always needed.

Varyag.3751:

I remember seeing this build five months ago over on the Guild Wars 2 Guru forums… it wasn’t well received by many back then as well. Basically what I remember from that thread is that you endlessly ranted on about “shout healing wammo elitists” because there was criticism regarding your build.

Actually this build was a PvE adaption of an old sPvP build I made in BWEs that got Evis and Brawn nerfed into the ground as it was OP.
Not sure if you were around those days, but the reason Brawn is now 1/2/3 and evis nerfed is because of this build’s sPvP version (which included bull+HB and secondary axe with pre-nerf sigil of doom+sigil of intelligence).

Some criticism came after the dumbing down of AC and other dungeons, and the first wave of shout-healing “warriors”, and infact we’ve seen how bad is shout healing in the new hard content which should tell you something about the weight of that criticism.

Julie Yann.5379:

lol Props to Sheytan for necromancing a 5month old thread.

Thing is, it wasn’t a bad build at the time (when dungeons were quite a bit tougher than now.) I used something very similar to it when running AC and CM while I was leveling and I don’t know why peeps hated on it so much. Falcon did have a point, if you are running with people capable of removing conditions, especially if it’s people you play with often and you can count on them removing your cond, why would you spec in Vit and Cond. removal?

Nailed it!

Though I wouldn’t recommend this same build nowadays, it’s been 5 months and many traits were nerfed/buffed, content was toned down etc.

Currently I run 20/30/0/0/20 but I think I’ll switch to 20/20/0/10/20 when the Banner buff next patch.

Another shout healer… Even Anet is telling you shout healing sucks but you keep doing it.
I want to see when banners are buffed to 170 stats if you still insist on this terrible, lock-all-your-utilities-for-poor-healz Guardian-wannabe setup.

KazNaka.4718:

0 pts in str => -22% dmg, -200 power
no 25 pts in arms => -10% dmg, -50 prec (2% crit chance)
no heightened focus => -9% crit chance
knight’s armor over berserker => more power and crit dmg loss

thanks but no thanks.

This build was actually from 5 months ago if you haven’t noticed.
Back then dungeons weren’t nerfed like now aka you couldn’t go full zerk faceroll mode as we currently, and this build was good due to the staying power and versatility (all weps traited) it offered.

I get it that now that Anet dumbed down content to the ground you guys blink at seeing a build without all the offensive traits, god forbid Anet leaves some challenge somewhere in the game.

World bosses are definitely paying zero challenge to me.
Never do them, though it’s fun to see the huge mob of people gathering up just to get the shinie.

Behellagh.1468:

Casual games aren’t the ones who would spend money on a game controller, gaming mouse, gaming keyboard, gaming keypad. And equipment isn’t going to improve my jumping skills.

Casual game means catering to people who don’t play a lot of time, period.
It has nothing to do with the skill or hardware required to play the game.

awgardner.9634:

How can you gain some additional condition removal to this build without damaging its integrity, making it a viable option for WvW ?

I use it in WvW, works very well.
Just replace the Valor traits with usual Meditation-healing traits and change your skills appropriately. I personally dump one med for immob.
You’ll see the surprise of people when you immob+ZD for 8k in 2s, knock them back, pull out GS, 5 to rupt obvious heal and finish up.

Oh btw I suggest Sigil of Rage on all weapons. Haste is just too good.
Just make sure you never use WoR when hasted as it halves the duration (wonder if that’s ever going to get fixed).

I personally decided that until I find something that is at least as challenging as the first pull of Avicara out of Droks I’m not bothering to visit it unless it’s required for something (in which case I complete the zone fast and abandon it).

Southsun cover? No “mob teams” with proper class combos and good skill builds, simply an empty land filled with random mobs with 1 CC and 1 bursty skill.
That Avicara team would clean the whole zone easily.
Avicara 1 Southsun Cove 0, game set match.

I’ll stick do dungeons until Anet decides to make the open world end-zones hard.
I don’t even care for rewards, I want a challenge. Challenge is the fundament of gaming.

Why don’t you ask for advices on how to improve?
Honestly gaming is not rocket science, and GW2 is not that challenging considering we now do solo Lupicus and can plow throw frac 40-50.
I mean you’re a human like the others here, unless you have some genetic impairments I’m pretty sure you can do just as well as others.

I believe the main issue though is keybinds and how you play.
Having a gaming mouse with 5 buttons for instance allows you to take all the utilities, elite and heal off your left hand’s burden.
Then you use left hand only for skills and profession skills.
Move with mouse if melee, if ranged you need wasd but ranged is so much easier to play than melee in pve so it pays off.

haviz.1340:

What 2nd weapon set are you using for GL?

My set is Sw/Sh+Staff on all content except vs Lupi and the Ooze boss I go Scept/Shield+Scept/Focus.

haviz.1340:

Do you really have to use staff for solo?

No, focus is a good offhand for additional blocking if you feel the ones you have aren’t enough.

Lunatic.9314:

Can I ask what utilities you use during the Lupicus fight, because I want to start doing Arah?

SYG is a must for phase 3 bubble, others are a toss up but I prefer Retreat for an additional Block (very useful to block those green balls he spams at you) and Swiftness (also useful to kite his shadowstep attack without using a block/dodge), then either SY for more swift/prot or WoR to JI to get another escape from bubble.

Overall bubble is your worst enemy there, everything else can be blocked and dodged (except grub on phase 1, remember that when he raises hand you must dodge, can’t block that).

All I want is CD reductions from Mace/Sword traits.

Mr Wyman.6028:

I was just out running around in the cursed shores and was doing what I was doing last night, spamming events for the heavy bags, potential rare items, exotics, and potentially anything else thats a cool find. And I realize i am farming events…I also do a lot of farming for different types of the high level cores…. and I think, its really not that much fun doing the same thing over and over and over and over again cause its the easiest way to gather something so you can create something fun. It seems that is what these games are based on though, if you want really anything worth anything you must farm for it.

so back to what I was saying, I was doing this mindless farming of the same ol, same ol, and I was like “this is brainless …” “I consider this entertaining and fun?” and it just got me to thinking, what if they made this so you didn’t have to farm items to have cool stuff? I’m done farming btw, not a way to enjoy a video game after working hard in real life all day.

Nobody is forcing you to farm items.
Legendaries don’t offer any required bonus, they’re just cosmetic items meant to take several months to get.

You play the game for fun and accumulate for long-term goals, not farm for goals and not have fun.
Don’t play with a traditional MMO mechanics like “I farm X so I get Y that allows me to unlock Z”.
Z is already unlocked in GW2. If you decide to farm you’re doing a disservice to yourself.

Nice attempt Sokar, but you missed the fact that those who complain there is nothing to do or that there is grind approach the game with a traditional mentality.
That defeats any logic you could ever explain because those people are expecting X while playing Y.

For me GW2 offers both, though most is intrinsic.
Most content I do is for fun/challenge, though I make sure there is also some reward for it.

haviz.1340:

Your build is pretty tanky so you could use a focus for 3 blocks.

The point of this build is Protection and Projectile reflection to cover your team.
If I ditch the main source of this (shield) to get a focus which only offers 3 blocks it would defeat the whole point.

Xynn.2748:

All sigils trigger and go on cd regardless of if they do anything, i.e. all sigils always check for procs and will cd if they get one.

Yup sadly this is true.
I considered that sigil until I discovered it’s flawed.
It should be made that it won’t go on CD when not removing a condition imo.

haviz.1340:

Do you play in EU or NA? I’d like to see that 2-man lupi.

EU, Far Shiverpeak.
2-man lupi is nothing special tho, considering people solo it nowadays.
So far Guardian is my only class I can’t solo it with, I haven’t yet found a way to get beyond phase 3; I SYG the first bubble, RF the second, SYG the third but then I’m out of stability and get bubble’d to death.
I could try Indomitable Courage but I’m not sure it would be enough.

Confusion is probably the only condition beside Immobilize that I ever bother removing.
It’s not just trivial stuff you can outheal, you must remove it before doing actions and thus causing too much damage.

haviz.1340:

Zerker is for warriors. If you don’t want to be called warrior wannabe, get soldier’s, knight’s and/or cleric’s.

There is no such thing as “for Warriors” or “for Guardians”, min/maxing makes use of all possibilities to achieve optimal results.
Once you get enough health/armor there is no reason to stack more armor (especially due to diminishing returns on armor-stacking) or health.
It’s actually way more efficient to combine both, given the way stats are diminished in GW2.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Red, wanna say ty for some inspiration here. I’m messing with something completely different but this post brought me back to an RHS build. I was Sword before the crit/food patch but I’m back now after messing with the build calc.

I’m actually surprised by the performance of Mace, I also don’t think it would match Swords sustained damage but I feel it could come pretty close. If you view Protectors Strike as a means to dps it does quite well. I’m seeing 6K+ crits out of it which is equal or bigger than ZD on the same CD and if timed right the damage/block happens very quickly. With Protectors Strike timed right you can burst kill stuff just about as quickly as Sword. I need to run it more to see how it does in the long run but I think its a viable option.

Blood

Well, assuming you time it well and since it hits AoE instead of single target then you could get good DPS out of a mace too.

RHS works with any one-hander btw.
Even scepter deals big DPS with this build, especially vs stationary targets.

manudiao.9803:

Are you able to fraps a fractal run with your build? No commentary needed. I just want to see it in action Thx

I’m really not into the whole videomaking thing honestly.
If you’re up during the morning you can join my 2-man Lupicus teams and see how I do before going to work. :p

The biggest detractor for making a legendary for me is the fact they will release new ones, along with the fact they may change the way to obtain precursors (scavenger hunt) and even reduce the needed materials etc.
Not going to waste that much on legendaries just to discover I wasted 1000 more gold than I should have three months from now.

Soldier armor, Zerk everything else. Works wonders.

Autumn.8043:

I actually find the Ele easier to play than other professions. class.

Totally agreed.

Ele has a large amount of passive or easily accessed failsafes that make them ignore stuff other classes would otherwise need to carefully and timely deal with.

Protection/Shielding automatically negates big hits that you would otherwise need to timely react to.
Plentiful condition removal, mostly triggered by swapping or in-rotation, allows to basically avoid managing conditions that other classes have to instead do.
Long stability allows to ignore CC that other classes instead need to stunbreak.
Healing up also comes easily and passively from just rolling, your usual rotation and resto signet procs.

Basically you can focus on your rotation (rotation class is pretty easy) and disregard conditions/damage/CC/burst, while applying your CC/damage by simply playing your rotation.

Other classes need to manage all those aspects every second of the fight with more limited tools and hit buttons based on what they actually need to do instead, which takes a whole different level of skill.

Daecollo.9578:

All warrior builds start with 30 in vitality now.

All bad warriors start with 30 vitality.
Then they either l2p or swap to another class.

Full melee is the best way.
Meleeing him forces him to spam the fly-and-stomp type of attacks so he wont spam as many arrows as usual (which is what kills your team).
It works like this:
1) Bladetrail, Rush, HB, WA out when he flies up and swap to LB.
2) Pin Down, Arcing while running in, swap to GS, HB/hit until he stomps, dodge back and re-engage immediately.
3) Use what’s off CD on your GS, when he’s about to stomp dodge away.
Repeat from point 1.

I find it a tad harder than soloing Lupi, because the arrow is a pain and barely dodgeable unlike Lupi’s green puke things.

Let’s have some laughs and share our best lulz in-game.

Mine happened in Arah last boss the other day.
We had this Warriors, kind of simple-minded guy, we explained him that he had to use the terminal, enter bubble and get the boss to 50% life etc.
He was all excited and said “ok I got this!”, we buffed him up and he yelled “SPARTAAAA” while rushing to the boss but forgot to ping terminal and PONG! he bumped back with the “sparta” bubble still on his head.

eisberg.2379:

no no no. That is a very good way to turn these forums into crap. it turns almost every conversation into armory trolling. No good can come from it, and WoW forums are proof of this.

What you call “armory trolling” is simply giving credit to a person based on what he actually did instead of what he can troll up.

I’m not sure why some people can’t understand that if rare things get common, they drop in value and then your loots won’t be worth anything.
It’s a good thing that drop rates of rare things are low for your income.

1) You’d go from 36% damage reduction to 39%. Aka, no.
Armor gets diminishing returns when stacked a lot.

2) Yes it’s a constant. I.E. if you have 50% crit dmg in the hero panel it means your crits will do: normal damage*200% (150% base plus your 50% added).

3) That is completely dependant on your skill.
I personally have 15k health and find they are well enough.

Btw I would get AH or medi healing instead of 5 points in virtues.
You’re getting more out of those than you get out of those 5 points.

I have found a permanent solution to the sound bug btw, control panel → audio → properties → set sound to 24bit 48,000mhz.
Never happened again since.

It would be cool to start getting armory with gear/achievements, forum avatars etc.
Makes things a bit more competitive and get players to want to have their armory completed.

I buy a steel armor, dye it with gold dye and sell it to the Skritt in LA auction house.
Shiny!

I’d be very curious to hear something from Anet before the change goes in.
Why instead of giving boons to everyone equally do we need boon lovers and boon haters?
In the end the reason Eles are OP is their boon stacking, though they need those boons in PvE.
Why not simply nerf those skills in sPvP? Like you nerfed Save Yourselves for Guardians.