Guild Wars 2

Honor of the waves dungeon set. I’m getting it on my norn guardian too. Only missing the chest piece.

I don’t know if this is a bug or intended but when you activate your virtue of resolve, your allies still get the passive regeneration while of course you don’t.

To answer the poster above me, here is a post from Jon Peters in the Ranger forum.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/General-Patch-Discussion-merged/page/3

JonPeters.5630:

Hi Anders, I’m totally not here so skip this post and read on…

We made the improvements we had time to test. There are still more ranger improvements but when our time is limited we have to focus on things we know we can fix. Signets and shouts are still on the docket, and I suspect some of each of these will get some love in the next time around. As you can see a lot changed in this build for every profession and we have to test these changes as well.

I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.

I see a lot of talk about ranger weapons, but I don’t think that is the real problem. I think sword and longbow are both good weapons, which is why the changes take longer. The problems are deeper, in pets ability to hit moving targets, trait lines with not enough viable choices and skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds. These aren’t things we can change overnight. The change to Greatsword block was in fact a very difficult change, but we made it because we knew it was the right thing to do.

There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this. Even then often we are bottle necked by other issues. I’m not going to say we are not working on these things, nor can I say there are things we could have changed but just ran out of time on, but this was a patch that contained ranger improvements and it will not be the last one that does so. Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.

Jon

For everyone to see it clearly.

There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this.

I think that’s pretty self explaining. Can we expect anything good in the future for our complex class in this context? I don’t think so and it makes me sad to be honest as I really enjoyed playing my mesmer.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

Sabyne.6329:

Really nice changes to the staff. Prior to the update, I wanted to try it out as a replacement for mace/shield in a PVE AH hammer build because of the might stacks and heal. Now that the might stacks last longer and that they’ve improved the speed on the orb, I really enjoy using it. Skill #5 plus the cc from the hammer give nice control.
As they have reduced the heal from the dodge roll too, it also helps in this area.
Now I must decide which sigil I’m gonna use on it. Not sure energy is still really worth it with the dodge heal nerf.

Energy is always worth it. The best players all use parkour skills that you need to practice on every class.

Sorry English is not my native language, what do you mean with “parkour skills”? If it’s pvp related, keep in mind I only play PVE on my guardian.

Really nice changes to the staff. Prior to the update, I wanted to try it out as a replacement for mace/shield in a PVE AH hammer build because of the might stacks and heal. Now that the might stacks last longer and that they’ve improved the speed on the orb, I really enjoy using it. Skill #5 plus the cc from the hammer give nice control.
As they have reduced the heal from the dodge roll too, it also helps in this area.
Now I must decide which sigil I’m gonna use on it. Not sure energy is still really worth it with the dodge heal nerf.

I’m not convinced what you’re suggesting is as efficient as a power/precision/toughness build to be honest but I guess it’s a matter of taste/gameplay too and if it suits you then it’s what matters.

With an Altruistic Healing build and Empowering might (not sure if you include EM in your build though), you need a decent crit chance to trigger EM(+ vigor) to proc AH. That means with knight gear (pow/prec/tough) you can survive really well even without a lot of hp because you heal a lot and mitigate damage really well with high toughness and on top of that, you do decent damage with the crit/might.

With power/vit/tough you’re gonna have more hp and power but less toughness and low crit which means less vigor/might proc and less AH/roll heal so you’re gonna have a harder time to get back to full health. You can use ranger runes for example to get decent crit though.
Then again, I don’t know which traits you are using but for an AH/EM build to be effective, you need this crit.

Having low hp can seem bad for some people but you mitigate damage so well and have so many options to remove conditions with a guardian that I never felt the need to have a huge hp pool. With runes of the soldier on a knight set, you have almost 16k hp which is enough imo.

Edit : kitten I was so long to write this that Brutaly posted before me.

When I decided to roll a guardian, I had a certain build in mind and I wanted to use Tome of Courage (support/tanky build). When I leveled my character, I bought Renewed focus first and when I finally got the tome I wanted to use, I was so addicted to Renewed focus that I just couldn’t change it. I find it amazing and I almost feel naked if I don’t have it.
As for chosing between Asura and Charr, I can’t really help you as I rolled a Norn and as far as elite skill goes, I stick to renewed focus anyway.

Sherman.4631:

I have to say that the #5 is actually really useless in PvE as well.

I like it in PVE. I often use it in dungeons to trap mobs that doesn’t stick to me or to prevent them from getting closer while they are showered with aoe. It’s pretty handy in some situations too, like CoE path one in the room where you need to activate the console for example. It’s situational though like #3 and #4 too.

If the tooltip on skills doesn’t update the damage, and if the weapon attack from the attack power stat in your hero panel doesn’t update either then you can only test it out yourself I guess.

Polle.6908:

LOL did you hack that gear? I know only a few are 50 like Java….. is 50.. so did you hack it or what? If not post SS of your lvl….. SO basically take off Ctrl Shift H

Ladies and gentlemen. This is why drugs are bad for you.

A side effect from the Mists maybe.

He doesn’t mean it should remove several conditions at the same time, just that some type of conditions aren’t removed at all. I haven’t tested it so I can’t say though.

Just a few comments on the format. You should put Battle roar at the begining in the utility skills you use and precise that it’s a racial chaar skill imo.
It seems to be an interesting build, good job.

Thank you for this guide. It really helped me fine tuning my build. I had an altruistic healing build in mind but not with the hammer at all as I was playing with the greatsword. This guide made me give the hammer a try and I don’t regret it at all even if I miss GS 5 sometimes (amazing skill really). Anyway thank you, it’s good to see people helping other rather than keep their build for themselves.

Bsquared.3421:

I rolled Norn for my Guardian alt, for the simple reason, that if I’m going to be a Guardian and protect people, I wanted to be big and badkitten while doing so…

I rolled a female norn, as tall as possible, for this reason.

Well, I mainly play guardian in dungeon and yesterday I was grouped for HoTW explo, there were already 2 other guardians in the group, a warrior and last was a ranger or an engineer I can’t remember. Anyway, as soon as I was grouped, one of the guardians said no way, that it would take ages, etc, so I just left. Just an anecdot to show that even if you play a guardian, you can be unwelcome if the group is already filled with tanky members. Bad luck I guess.
Anyway, OP, just play what you like, you will find groups to do dungeons.

In some dungeons, you simply have no choice.

Can you name some examples?

First coming to my mind is Giganticus lupicus in Arah. This boss is moving a lot and I wish you a great “brief” pleasure to fight him in melee. Nightmare tree in Twilight Arbor can’t be fought in melee either. At least this boss doesn’t move so it’s not really a pain except in path 2 where you have to kite those oaks. Even Brangoire in story mode can’t really be fought in melee. Some mobs like abominations are really hitting you hard in melee once they have some stacks. The Butcher in Honor of the waves can be fight in melee but isn’t really safe either, I’ve done it with success but really prefer to fight him in range. Last guardian I’ve seen going melee was downed every 30 s as the animation before his pull/knock down/Spin combo isn’t always obvious so if you don’t time your stability/dodge really well it generally means you’re instant down. The destructor troll in CoE path 3 needs some good range dps if you don’t want to spend the entire day fighting him. I always end up taking one of the canon anyway as I have simply no way of touching him from the plateform. Spamming F for what seems like an eternity is really fun.
There are certainly other but these come to my mind and I haven’t done all the dungeons path yet.

Lots of people seems to only have pvp or WvWvW in mind in this topic. When I read that we are in plate and shouldn’t go range at all or reroll another class, I find it amusing. In some dungeons, you simply have no choice. While I really prefer to be fighting at melee, I sometimes must equip a range weapon if I don’t want to be a burden for my group and waste my money in repairs. When these situations arise, I use the scepter and I don’t really enjoy it as I find its damage to be unreliable on a moving target. I’m not asking for a 1500 pew pew megalaser autoattack, just a weapon that makes me feel I’m not completly useless damage wise when it comes to some content in this game.

I’m still hesitating on which set of runes I should grab. I’m playing an altruistic healing build with knight gear. Dolyak runes are expensive so I don’t think I’ll grab these ones. I’m torn between 2 Monk/2 Water/2 sanctuary or 6 Soldier. 40% duration on boons is amazing but being able to remove pure of voice to take battle presence seems really good too (plus the precision boost with toughness and the extra hp). So many good runes to chose from, I’m lost. x)

OneManArmy.5617:

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.

I may be wrong but aren’t you speaking about Superior runes of the monk instead of Dwayna? Last I checked Dwayna gave +15% duration on regen only, not on all boons. Anyway, I’m still hesitating between this setup or soldier runes or dolyak runes. Difficult to chose really, having extra hp/toughness (and in fact precision too) wouldn’t hurt but as you said 40% boon duration is just amazing too.

Well I don’t think rolls are only meant to dodge as you can trait them to heal for example so sometimes you are gonna use them to help out allies even if you don’t really need to dodge. Mesmers can use them offensively to create clones, elementalist can use them to cleanse conditions and there may be other use too but I don’t know all professions yet. In a way that’s just a way to use it offensively in my opinion. To be honest, I don’t do it, nor have I trained myself to do so as I mostly enjoy doing dungeons on my guardian and I still use MB as soon as it’s up as there are generally lots of combo fields around.
On a side note, my main is a mesmer and before a patch, some people used to press the esc button to speed up the animation of the auto-attack on the greatsword because the last bit of the animation wasn’t doing damage. Anet patched to speed up the animation so we don’t have to use a strange mechanism to be effective. Maybe we can hope they do the same for the hammer so you won’t have to roll to make it more effective.

I really think the 5 points in Virtue is just too good to not take it, especially if you run Altruistic healing but then again I really like this trait so maybe I’m not objective.

Maybe I’m masochist but I want more boss like this one.

Give us a whip made of light.

I’m still leveling but I use sword/axe and shortbow and I love it for the moment.

I think the whirl finisher from berserker is quite unreliable. Just look at the guardian GS which has 2 whirl finishers much more reliable than our berserker, a leap and the weapon itself can create a field. I would trade the damage or even the boon stripping for a blast finisher on a viable weapon any day (not really liking the torch which is our only blast finisher option). I guess that won’t happen anyway as we’re more getting nerfs than buff, but I can still hope.

I’d like it to be a combo blast finisher. That would be so nice.

I wouldn’t mind these changes if they were actually fixing anything. I wonder how they can even hope to balance anything while so many skills/traits are buggy, that just seems pointless. I enjoy playing my mesmer but having this class nerfed and not being able to play with the build I have in mind because traits are buggy is quite a pain.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or not.
Have anyone else noticed you can poison mobs that are supposed to be immune to poison with the feedback bubble?
I’ve had it happen with some hylek shooting poison projectiles into the bubble and poisoning themselves. While I find it quite funny, I’m not sure if this is intended or

Yeah almost, the trait was reducing the recharge time of his attacks more than it is supposed to. So you had insane damage and almost 100% uptime bubble. It was ridiculous to be honest and I’m glad they fixed it. I hope they’ll fix the phantasm not getting the trait properly though and the fury/retaliation/regen bugged traits too.

I found a pistol that got the same model. I don’t know where you get it though sorry.

http://www.gw2db.com/items/67124-ilya-of-nullification

Pinky chaos armor bubbles everywhere.

Just to clarify, sharper images and fantasmal fury are in the duel tree, not the illusion one.

I wish it was a combo blast finisher, that seems coherent with the animation and would give some great utility to it. sigh I can dream.

Thank you really, I enjoyed the three videos a lot and look forward to see the next ones. I learnt a lot from them, especially about the combos as I did not really understand how it worked. I wonder what you think about the GS now that it has been buffed. And also do you think having Mind blast as a combo blast finisher would be a bit too overpowered? I’d really love to see that, haha.

I’d really love to see Mind blast become a combo blast finisher. It just seems logic and would add something really nice to this skill.