(edited by Salamander.2504)
Is there a good reason the signet passive effects are disabled while in death shroud?
(edited by Salamander.2504)
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by this?
I mean that if you want to get into a thief duel off point against a P/D thief it’s going to feel like this oppressive overpowered thing, but if you aggressively rotate around the map the P/D thief is this joke character that doesn’t do anything – it doesn’t +1 effectively, its teamfight is awful, it can’t hold a point against a decap.
That’s why I see them as a sort of ‘you must be at least this tall to ride’ benchmark – if you cannot stop yourself from chasing a P/D thief they’ll act as a hard ceiling that holds down your MMR, but if you attack the capture point, not the thief, then they’re a sign of an easy win more often than not.
It’s the same deal with PU mesmers – utterly obnoxious if you’re foaming at the mouth trying to run them down like a rabid dog, but merely this mildly annoying thing if you focus on the points.
There are a handful of players that know how to rotate on them well enough to still be obnoxious, but they’re honestly playing with a big handicap – it’s simply not a good character in conquest.
Thanks, very helpful!
The major limiting factor in sPvP is that D/D just isn’t very good. Amongst people who seem to know what they are doing, there’s a ton of D/P (which is simply the best build right now), a decent amount of S/D, a bit less P/D (which serves as a ‘you must be at least this tall to proceed’ build that wrecks people who have no idea how to rotate), with a smattering of S/P (brave soldiers they are) and P/P (kitten Wirriam stop trolling). You never see D/D.///
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by this?
My unbiased opinion:
I main a guard, and stealth always irritated me. Whenever a thief would stealth and run, I’d call cheese. How irritating, right?
Two days ago I made a thief, and I’ve already realized how essential stealth is. Thieves are trading a lot to have the ability to stealth: they are a melee class with low health, low armor, and abysmal condi clear. Whereas rangers and guardians can go invincible for a few seconds to take the pressure off, thieves have stealth (but can die quite easily in stealth). Most of their weapon sets are useless in the current meta, so evades cant make up for it (I’m looking at sw/d).
If they are running from you and are about to die, either: (1) you outnumber them, in which case, who wouldn’t run?; and (2) they can’t kill you in a 1v1, but then why should you be able to kill a thief 100%? Shouldn’t it be 50% in a balanced game? They are a zerker class, after all. Running=draw=balanced.
Add to that: no thieves use speed/traveler runes, which means if they want to keep up their famous mobility in or out of stealth, they need to be spending initiative, dodges, or utility cooldowns. Those all need to be balanced to maintain mobility but also be ready for a fight.
So coming from an entirely different class and just playing thief for 2 days, I have to say: stop complaining about stealth. It’s not cheese.
well why not give ranger ele and engineer initiative system and stealth skills too
the reason thieves are squishy is the same reason everyone else have Berserker gear even engineer end up at 10-11k hp in serker gear
I’m not sure why you would want other classes to use the initiative system; its extremely difficult to use properly, and not necessarily an advantage. As I’ve said, I’ve only been playing thief for a few days now, but the “spamfest” you might think it is, is not the case. Balancing initiative and knowing what skill to use when is not trivial. You can frequently find yourself unable to use an important skill simply because you don’t have enough initiative. I’ve never auto-attacked more frequently than as a thief, and that tells you all you need to know. All I can say is go make a thief and PvP unranked for a day: your time will be better spent than mashing it up on the forums.
And as already stated, it is impossible for engineers to have 10-11k hp in zerker gear, because their base HP is 15k.
And: Aw shucks, thanks for all your support guys.
My unbiased opinion:
I main a guard, and stealth always irritated me. Whenever a thief would stealth and run, I’d call cheese. How irritating, right?
Two days ago I made a thief, and I’ve already realized how essential stealth is. Thieves are trading a lot to have the ability to stealth: they are a melee class with low health, low armor, and abysmal condi clear. Whereas rangers and guardians can go invincible for a few seconds to take the pressure off, thieves have stealth (but can die quite easily in stealth). Most of their weapon sets are useless in the current meta, so evades cant make up for it (I’m looking at sw/d).
If they are running from you and are about to die, either: (1) you outnumber them, in which case, who wouldn’t run?; and (2) they can’t kill you in a 1v1, but then why should you be able to kill a thief 100%? Shouldn’t it be 50% in a balanced game? They are a zerker class, after all. Running=draw=balanced.
Add to that: no thieves use speed/traveler runes, which means if they want to keep up their famous mobility in or out of stealth, they need to be spending initiative, dodges, or utility cooldowns. Those all need to be balanced to maintain mobility but also be ready for a fight.
So coming from an entirely different class and just playing thief for 2 days, I have to say: stop complaining about stealth. It’s not cheese.
Am I the only one who doesn’t care? Why does the name matter so much?
@WoodStatue,
I can agree with splitting up the traits or even adding new ones to the mix for Master Tier.
DPS: Increases size, duration
Supportive: Applies healing and increases duration.
Increasing the size is as much supportive as it is for DPS.
Cut the duration & number of hits in half, keep the damage.
Maybe make it clear 1 condition from the user.
Then it’s fine.
Really I’m more worried about other skills like
Sword auto attack number 3
Sword number 3
Mace number 3
The shield
And how frekin slow the AA is on the hammer.
What’s wrong with mace 3?
Yes! ANet, please rework torch 5. At the very least, remove it entirely so I can’t accidentally hit it. This is a useless skill, and why the torch is so underused in PvP at the moment.
@Salamander.2504
I’m curious what game modes you play (PvE, WvW, PvP) or what you’re focusing on.In PvP there are much better supportive choices in Honor than the new Writ of Persistence. I already described its weaknesses.
Pure PvP. I’d argue that there aren’t “much better” choices—there are equal choices. In the current setup, WoP is competing with PoV and FoW. PoV is fantastic for team support, but it forces you to use shouts, and so becomes majorly redundant with the fact that some well-used utilities (e.g., SYG, SY) are already a personal stunbreak. It isn’t a super reliable condi cleanse because it only clears 1, and so you’ll need to either take Absolute Resolution (don’t give up virtues), purging flames , or a soldier rune (say bye bye to DPS) to compensate. If you want to use consecrations (or even [gasp] a signet, in the upcoming patch), you’re hurting yourself. It also doesn’t offer any sustained healing/dps/area control that WoP has. All in all, I’ve say PoV is quite equal to WoP—by using WoP over PoV, we’re essentially sacrificing long-range condi cleanse/boon application for shorter range modest healing and damage. FoW is pretty straightforward, and I don’t find the extra healing power all that compelling when the best way to protect my party isn’t to heal them but offer protection, aegis, blinds, and some cc (hammer).
The best use of the new Writ of Persistence is to pair it with other symbol traits from Zeal to make a hybrid build. And that begs the question: why not just combine them into one line to focus on symbols.
That’s a strong statement, and I don’t think it’s totally accurate. Lets take a look at the other symbol traits:
Symbols apply vulnerability to foes: 1 stack of a 3.25 second vuln a second? Unreliable, and worse: useless. Who cares about a short and low stack of vuln?
Increased symbol damage by 10% and 33% chance to apply 1 stack of 1 s burning: First of all, 10% damage only for symbols is terrible compared to 10% increased damage when your endurance isn’t full (the current equivalent honor trait which we lose in the new system). Moreover, no one who uses symbols in PvP is using them as a primary mechanism for DPS because they aren’t reliable. They are useful for area control and self/party healing/protection synergized with AH. The extra damage if they don’t run out of them is just icing on the cake. Which is why WoP will always be taken over Symbolic Power.
I and others have already stated above why Symbol Power is useless on it’s own.
because none of the other Zeal symbol traits are good
This weakens your argument as you mention this several times. All because “you” don’t think the traits are good for your style of play doesn’t mean there isn’t a style of play. I’m not saying that as a way to call you out…
?_? Why invite discussion and feedback and then make ad hominem attacks? This has nothing to do with my play style, and everything to do with suboptimal trait placement in your spreadsheet.
(edited by Salamander.2504)
First, the defensive and support aspect. A support or defensive guardian will usually be using two of hammer, mace, and staff. All three have symbols so it looks great, but you need to look at how allies utilize symbols. No matter which symbol it is, allies are not going to stand in them, even larger ones, for long.
I just don’t see any hammer/mace/staff support-oriented guardian wanting to invest in Zeal. Also, allies won’t stand in them long, but opponents even shorter, so symbols are still more defensive than offensive.
That leaves the guardian as the overwhelming benefactor of Writ of Persistence. In actuality, it’s more self-defense than group support. Since it’s mostly for yourself and you’re defensive and able to stay in one place against light pressure, the size doesn’t matter as much.
I agree, but I still don’t understand why a highly defensive trait belongs in Zeal if trait “specialization” is the path forward. Sure, lumping all symbols effects in the same traitline is specializing towards symbols, but by play style, I think WoM is still Honor.
The problem with not combining the symbol traits into the same line and making them compete will cause balance nightmares. In particular, the anchor guardian (somewhat high defense meant to tank trash mobs while everyone else is full zerker). They’ll go Zeal and Honor, take lots of symbol traits and just let stuff melt while having permanent protection on top of huge damage increases.
Maybe, but an Honor symbol guardian investing into Zeal is taking a big hit by losing out on Radiance or Virtues, because none of the other Zeal symbol traits are good, and I don’t see any synergy with the other Zeal traits (please point out if I’m wrong here, though). That being said, using +20% damage on symbols without any symbol enlargement means that trait will be even less useful than unscathed contender: (1) UC can be used from range, but 3/4 of the symbols are made in melee; (2) dodging/running out of a small symbol is so easy, one would be hard pressed to get even a single hit off. By putting WoM in Zeal, we’d be making the +20% damage trait useless (and really, its not that good to begin with because folks can still waltz out of a large symbol).
Lastly, the argument for using Writ of Persistence with an offensive focus. The increased size and duration when combined with higher damage allows the option for an area denial build. If you go near the guardian for this period, you’ll take heavy damage, but lose that if they chase out of that area. It fits the lack of guardian mobility compared to other professions.
Isn’t area denial defensive rather than offensive? I’m not sure what I’m gaining by argueing semantics (sorry), but I just want to stress the defensive nature of WoM, and why I feel it doesn’t belong in Zeal.
And by keeping the symbols in a trait line with offensive focus, it encourages more build variety.
I need to think on this, but my preliminary thought is that in your scenario, the archtypical symbol guardian is going to be forced into Honor (for mace trait) and Zeal (WoM) rather than just Honor (the way it currently is), which doesn’t sound like build diversity to me (this statement is predicated on the fact that I really just don’t see many symbol guards caring about the +20% damage from Zeal because it doesn’t make for a versatile “ready for anything” build whatsoever).
Very true, if we moved AH back with MF what would you suggest to help create more build diversity? Both of those traits are “selfish” but inherently they are meant to heal. This tells me that Shattered Aegis and Pure of Heart are not strong enough to force a guard to choose otherwise( if we go by the spreadsheet).
AH and MF already define two different paths: even though AH is selfish, it rewards boon application to allies, so in the end it doesn’t reward highly selfish builds. I know this doesn’t really answer your question. : /
You’re right that SA and PoH aren’t strong enough to take over AH. I’ll note that putting them together in the Valor GM only exacerbates that issue, though: If one wanted to really put some love into an aegis build and buff virtues and grab retreat, they’ll need to get SA and PoH, so lumping these together is basically throwing out an aegis-oriented team-buff build that uses communal defenses. Again, less build diversity.
I would honestly like to see more abilities move away from “apply on aegis removal” and just be apply on block.
On paper, I agree with this. In practice, it might be overpowered, because then mace/focus combo would have more sustain and burst than it already has. I wouldn’t mind keeping the “aegis on removal” if aegis uptime was 30 seconds baseline, and then traiting for the Virtue GM reduced it to 20 seconds. But maybe that would be OP? Communal defenses as a master is already a huge improvement…
It is true that it benefits mace and hammer the most but as Exedore pointed out one of the major ideas revolving around specializations is that you specialize into something specific. It could get swapped back, but it’s a bigger choice between do I want to deal more damage and burn with my symbols or do I want a little support? It may not make sense now but I suggest thinking it over a bit more. Perhaps it isn’t the right choice, we can only see what others think.
I understand that, but I do feel that Writ of Persistence shouldn’t compete with 20% increase damage since you’d need that trait anyways just to compensate for the lack of power from Zeal (I’m paraphrasing someone else’s words in another topic here). That being said, the other symbol traits in Zeal just aren’t very good compared to Writ of Persistence, and I could foresee people going in Honor for WoP and skipping Zeal altogether because using Symbols for regen, protection, proccing AH, and point control is reliable, whereas symbol DPS is not.
Perhaps more importantly, WoP should 100% compete with PoV because these are 2 very important but very different traits with which to provide group support to your party. Keeping this competition enhances the very specialization that you and Exedore discuss.
I still agree with AH. However, I wanted to change it to see what others thought. While it makes sense for them to be fought over I wanted to place the aegis skills within the Valor line. It may require a change in AH, perhaps a smaller heal but an aoe heal instead of a self only to make more sense in Honor. Ideally we wouldn’t want to deviate too far away from the way some of these staple traits function.
Ok. Just keep in mind putting MF and AH in separate lines does absolutely nothing to shift the current meta: Guardians will continue to be rewarded playing “selfish” high-sustain high dps builds. I for one want to see more build diversity, but the rewards for not taking MF and AH together (in your spreadsheet) seem pretty abysmal, regardless of what build you actually are (RF elite and SC on heal without any other meditation utilities are worth MF alone if I can have AH too).
(edited by Salamander.2504)
Thoughts on Traits
…All the symbol stuff should be in Zeal, most notably Writ of Persistence…
I have to disagree 100%. The symbol that works best with Writ of Persistence come from the mace (and hammer), which synergizes really well with Honor (e.g., Invigorated Bulwark). Putting Writ of Persistence in Zeal forces you to lose out on the huge level group support that Honor gives (and which symbols offer). Putting all of the symbol traits in Zeal would really mess up symbol usage, because not everyone wants to go full-out offense with them. Writ of Persistence is great where it is.
Also, Altruistic Healing should compete with Monk’s focus, not with Pure of Voice. The way the spreadsheet is setup now (with regards to the GM traits discussed here) is not better than what Anet already released.
Can you program the pointer to the thumb pads?
Yes (though if you use a gamepad, you’ll need this $10 program: http://xpadder.com/). Mine was initially programmed to do that but I was never as fast with it as with a mouse. It’s not a huge deal for me since my primary build doesn’t use any ground targeting. I use the left toggle for movement (clicking takes target). The right toggle is my utilities + stomp (clicking jumps). The d-pad is f1, f2, f3, and elite. Left shoulder/trigger is strafe left/next target. Right shoulder/trigger is strafe right/swap weapons.
If you wanted to make the pointer one of the toggles, you could do it, but then you’d be down 4 buttons and would need to use the keyboard also.
Greatsword :
Whirling Wrath: Great skill overall, but due to guardians being unable to be mobile without a swiftness or traveler’s runes, I think it needs either a radius increase of ~100 or a removal of movespeed decreasing effect that is triggered during cast-time.
Honestly, movement speed is abysmally slow even with a traveler rune. That being said, I think the slow movement speed is necessary because it promotes smart use of this skill (e.g., after some kind of immobilize/knockdown etc.).
Leap of Faith: As the slowest melee class in the game, this one should be at 12s cd base.
Binding Blade: Being the only viable CC (imo), it has a ridiculously long cooldown – wich should be decreased to 25s.
Pull: Cast-time should be decreased, landing BB takes some patience already.
…
Banish: A great way to get cappers out of your point, but has a long cast-time and cooldown, 20s base would be great.
I think the idea behind two-handed mastery is that, yes, you can have the lower cool-down times you’re looking for, but be prepared to sacrifice a trait(s) to do it.
Hammer:
Symbol of Protection: While being a great support skill, the wind-up and cast time of it is really long, and basically feels wierd while placing it during movement. Could’ve been replaced with a simple 0.5s strike that grants allies 1,5s worth of protection.
Zealot’s Embace: A good skill, but almost unreliable on 500+ distances, would be fantastic if it had a homing mechanic.
Placing SoP during movement can be weird, but as long as you commit to the AA, the symbol can be placed at reasonably far distances. Given that your teammates aren’t just camping out in your symbols, you’d be granting about the same amount of protection in your scenario, which seems overpowered on a 0.5s cooldown. As for Zealots embrace, I think the homing mechanic is a great idea, but if you’re using it to get runners, it’s pretty easy to land at a distance, unless you lose LOS, in which case no homing mechanic will help you anyway.
Sword:
Sword Wave: Yeeeeeah, everyone can agree that projectile mechanics should be removed from this one.
Zealot’s Defense: Horrible accuracy on projectiles past melee range, should get more velocity on those.
Scepter:
Orb of Wrath: Probably the worst range AA ever, should be reworked completely into a ray-like ability (akin to mesmers greatsword AA), or added velocity and tracking to current projectiles.
Smite: Stands as a great pve skill, but not all that great when comes to pvp. COULD be reworked into a delayed aoe explosion (with 3 targets max) and a small tick of burning for the sake of condi builds. Something like Karthus’s ability from LoL.
Mace:
Well… I don’t really know what to type here, last time I’ve used it was in the training area, feel free to propose something in comments, I guess. :|
Shield:
Shield of Judgement: Noone’s favourite skill, 3s of protection with 25s cooldown, should either have 15s cooldown or a cone-aimed knockback with 20s cooldown.
Shield of Absorption: Probably the only reason of even picking a shield up as a Guardian, but it’s an ABSORPTION mechanic, leaves you without already poor movement. By most comments I’ve seen, it should be reworked into “Fiery Block” that ascalonian ghosts have – immobile blocking stance that burns attackers on each block.
Yeah. Or at least allow the user to be mobile after casting Shield 5.
Those 3 skills give me way more capability than a 10% reduced incoming damage. But whatever float your boat man.
Now I won’t go in depth for the comparison of HTL versus the signet because Bunker Guardian are no longer viable in higher end sPvP. But you seem to think that Weakness roughly equal to protection. Weakness is around 25% reduced incoming damage vs the 33% from protection. It’s also harder to remove Protection on a player than removing weakness from yourself. Protection is also more efficient as all enemies attacking you will have their damage reduce, not just those we were there when you use it (that include that Ranger 1500 range away). You also didn’t not consider the boon conversion capability with Pure of Voice. It doesn’t just remove the condition, it give you a boon. A aspect that good players use at their advantage.
Thanks for the great response. I want to stress that what I wrote above hasn’t ever actually floated my boat because I don’t use signet of judgement (although as you can see, I’m considering it).
Keep in mind that Weakness is only 25% reduced incoming damage if the attacker never critical hits. In my 3rd paragraph above, I show that the crits from a typical zerker build bring that 25% up to 32%, roughly equivalent to protection. Good point about the ranger and condition/boon conversion though.
Thanks!
(edited by Salamander.2504)
Thanks for the Response Thaddeus.
A guardian taking 3* shouts with PoV, Soldier Rune, and Superior Aria can clear ~0.19 conditions per second (C/s), whereas a guardian taking using VoR and Absolute Resolution with Renewed Focus can clear ~0.10 C/s, so about half. My specific question: is that enough, or are Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity critically important? Note that adding these two utilities with Meditation Mastery would bring that ~0.10 C/s second to a minimum* of ~0.19 C/s (*because CoP can clear more than 1 condition at a time), exactly the same as the Shout Guardian estimate above.
*(2 shouts is ~0.11-0.15 C/s, and 3 shouts with just PoV is ~0.1 C/s)
As for the Signet of Judgement, I guess my question is this: why is it considered a waste of a utility? Damage mitigation can be gained through other means, but it’s importance can’t be stressed enough: for a low hp class, it effectively increases the usefulness of any heals/regens. While the -10% damage isn’t much, it might not be something to sneeze at, either. Perhaps more important is the active effect, which allows guardians to apply aoe weakness (600 range) . Although guardians have no shortage of protection (e.g., HTL/VoC/SY/Hammer symbol), weakness should be considered simply another means to the same end.
To quantify this, lets take the nominal case of an enemy with 40% precision, and 200% ferocity. For round numbers, lets say the enemy makes 10 attacks, each doing nominally 1k damage. Without any boons/conditions, we would expect to receive 14k damage (4 of the hits are critical). With protection, we receive 66% of that damage: 9.3k damage. If, rather than us having protection, the attacker had weakness, 50% of the attacks will do 50% damage (and remove the critical damage if it had any), we would receive 9.5k damage. In equivalent terms, this is taking 68% damage, which is comparable to protection. This 68% value is relatively insensitive to precision and ferocity: a 150% ferocity drives it up to 70%, while a 250% ferocity drives it down to 66%. Likewise, with 60% precision and 200% ferocity, it reaches 75%, and the result is the same for 0% precision because the absolute damage is lower.
If we compare this to the commonly used HTL, Signet of Judgement active is essentially offering:
-1 second more aoe protection
-3 seconds of aoe retaliation
-a stun break
-reduces opponent endurance regen
in return for:
-6 seconds of aoe regeneration
-An aoe condi clear if you have PoV or Soldier Rune
-~70-350 hp if you use AH.
It seems like these two active abilities are already fairly balanced, and even have comparable CD if you take Superior Aria . Weakness’ minor disadvantage compared with protection (less triggering of AH) comes with an opposing minor (and more situational) silver lining: it will mitigate opponent damage on NPCs like Svanir (not a huge deal by any means, but something to keep in mind. On that token, does anyone know if boons can be applied to the Lord?).
Based on this alone, HTL is probably still in the lead. Adding in the passive ability of Signet of Judgement, however, makes me wonder if the scales shouldn’t tip towards the signet. You can probably start to see where I’m going with this. If we make the assumption that VoR with Absolute Resolution provides enough condition removal (a big if) so that we don’t need to rely on shouts for condition removal in a shout guardian build, switching out a shout with Signet of Judgement could be advantageous, even accounting for the fact that it wouldn’t synergize with any traits (because wasting traits to buff the signet would be stupid).
You’ll notice that my comparison is restricted to HTL. I don’t see the point in comparing the signet with SYG (because it’s virtually irreplaceable in a shout build). I’m not really comfortable comparing Signet of Judgement with SY, either, but then again, I wouldn’t want to compare HTL with SY either. I suppose this comes down to the question of minor team-wide boons versus massive self-boons.
Thoughts?
(edited by Salamander.2504)
How many condition removals do your guardians typically run in PvP? For example, do you find that Virtue of Resolve with Absolute Resolution/Renewed Focus is usually enough, or do you typically add more (Shouts/Meditations/Purity etc.)?
As a side note, can anyone comment on the usefulness (or lack-thereof?) of Signet of Judgement (-10% dmg) in PvP?
Skills:
I like the way shouts synergize with the team (and clear 2 condi), so I’ve loaded up on them. I’m using Stand your Ground for the stomp stability, and Hold the Line for some team healing/protection. Originally I was running Save Yourselves, but now I actually prefer Retreat. This was a tough decision to make because of the obvious benefits SY brings to the table, but I prefer the team-wide speed/aegis over a single target (i.e., myself) boon-fest. After traiting Absolute Resolution, I didn’t really need the extra condi removal; none of my teammates get the boons; and the CD is a tad high. After switching to Retreat, I never looked back. It adds much needed mobility to my guardian (133% movement speed 81% of the time), allowing more effective movement across the map to points/wherever needed. It also offers me a way to disengage. This is important: if I’m getting 3v1’d (unfortunately this happens often) and need to run for it, I’ll pop retreat and stability, and haulpass out of there. If I can’t disengage and am still getting ganked, at least 2-3+ of the other team’s players have wasted their time on me while my team is (hopefully) outnumbering the rest of them and kicking butt. The team aegis from retreat may not initially seem like it’s worth all of the lost SY boons, but with pure of heart, it offers a 3rd “on-command” aegis to block/heal me and my teammates for a modest 765 once every ~15 or so seconds. Retreat also theoretically synergizes well with Unscathed Contender, although I can’t get this part to work well to be honest. Like I said, I was running SY for awhile, but I do prefer retreat. Renewed focus is a must, as my virtues are nearly always on CD—blinds, condi clears, and stability stomps as much as I can.
Gear:
I’ve got intelligence sigils on both weapons. Aside from the modest damage boost on weapon swap, it’s important that I trigger Vigorous Precision so that I can keep dodging (base critical is a meager 6%). I use Sigil of Leaching on both weapon sets to aid the lack of sustain in this build. It helps a lot. I use Rune of the Soldier so that I can get the most out of my shouts. I use a Soldier Amulet: If I don’t, the power is too low to do any damage. My power is only 1858, but I can work well with the 2.9k toughness and 22k health.
Sustain:
I’ve already mentioned the lack of Monk’s Focus and AH. It’s definitely a loss, but I do prefer the benefits from maxing Honor and Virtues for the team condi clear and stability. Individually, the healing from VoR/VoC/Pure of Heart/Retreat, the leaching sigils, plus the regen from VoR/HTL are unsubstantial. Together, however, they add up to a passable level of team sustain. The healing from these and shelter can go a long way by taking advantage of dodges, blocks from VoC/Retreat/Fc5/Shelter/Renewed Focus, and blinds from VoJ, Sword2, GS3, and Fc4.
This is starting to sound like a virtue bunker build with a GS, and I guess that’s kind of what it is. I’m trading healing power for the capability to do passable damage. If I’m mistaken in calling this a hybrid feel free to correct me; I’m using that term because it offers plenty of team support through virtues/shouts, but the Sw/Fc and GS playstyle is meant to stay offensive and aggressive in a skirmish. It’s not bursty, but the damage over time is high enough to make a difference on point, and I’m really comfortable in 1v1’s.
Controller:
In case anyone is curious, my virtues and Renewed Focus are on the D-pad. Left toggle is movement. Right Toggle are my shouts + stomp (click to jump). Left triggers are strafe L and next target, and Right triggers are strafe R and weapon swap (double tap the strafes to dodge). Right-side buttons are skills 1-6 (this controller has 2 more buttons than a ps2 controller).
Thanks for sticking around; I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m new to the game, so thanks for going easy on me.
4/6/2015 edit: After much more playtime, I can’t recommend the abobe build. The goal was support/DPS balance, but the DPS is just too low to be effective. Also, I mention above that I wasn’t using hammer because I couldn’t get the timing down. Now I can’t play without it. Cheers
(edited by Salamander.2504)
4/6/2015 edit: After much more playtime, I can’t recommend the following build. The goal was support/DPS balance, but the DPS is just too low to be effective. Also, I mention below that I wasn’t using hammer because I couldn’t get the timing down. Now I can’t play without it. Cheers
I’ll preface this post by mentioning that I’m extremely new to the game, and thus far my PvP has purely been hotjoin (for practice, as I don’t have a group to play with). I’m not actually any good at PvP (those who have seen me can attest), but I’m improving, and the build below has helped a lot with that.
Initially I went the meta medi dps route. For a new player, the “glass cannon” style has a lot of appeal. The damage was nice but I felt it was kind of a selfish build—I couldn’t synergize with my team at all. Perhaps more importantly, I was frustratingly squishy, and downed guardians don’t synergize with anything. Then I tried the meta Altruistic Healing and virtue bunker builds. This solved my squishy/selfish build issues, but it was frustrating being so useless in terms of damage. If even one player showed up at point, I could never come close to eliminating them. This was probably my fault, as it takes some skill to DPS with a mace and staff. Being able to buy time at a point didn’t help when teammates don’t arrive (I suppose this is unique to hotjoin). Importantly, being a bunker meant that my team was down a considerable amount of firepower. I’ve found a build I’m currently enjoying playing (the most important part) and thought I’d share it…any comments ya’ll have would be great.
I’ll call it the Prostate build to help raise cancer awareness.
Weapons:
Sw/Fc, GS
Nothing was more fun as a bunker build than planting a line of warding in the middle of point with the staff. Staff damage never impressed me though, and I started using a usb controller (the ultimate luxury), effectively eliminating my use of AOE skills. This rules out the scepter too for the 2 skill (orb was too easy to dodge anyways). I found the shield most useful with the scepter, so that was off the list. Torch4 burst is nice, but I never found torch5 useful. I really like the CC of the hammer, but I could never get it to work for me in practice. Having to stand still while casting and the slow AA3 chain made the hammer an unrequited love for me. I suppose if I practiced my timing I could work well with the hammer, but I’ve got plenty of time for that. By process of elimination, I found myself with Sw/Fc and GS. I like the mobility/blinding GS3 and Sw2 offer. Focus just felt natural, as I rely on Fc4 and 5 for blinds and blocks. This weapon combination is, in my opinion, the easiest to use.
Traits:
01166
Initially I had 2 in Valor for Strength in Numbers, but I’ve come to rely on the VoJ blind. My build is shout heavy, so Superior Aria was a no brainer. Without Monks Focus or AH, the sustain this build offers is below the meta. I took Pure of Heart to aid this weakness. Although the healing isn’t much (or even frequent) it is “on demand” (virtues + retreat), and helps out my allies. I took Pure of Voice—I don’t consider this a pure support build, but I really can’t part with being a condi removal machine for both my team and myself. I took Unscathed Contender mostly because nothing else seemed to fit. If I time my Fc5 block or VoJ/GS3/Sw2/Fc4 blinds well I can get a few hits off with aegis still on, but I haven’t yet gotten the timing right to make this anything more than mediocre (edit: I just found out Fc5 doesn’t keep aegis up on hit. Maybe I’ll switch UC to Vengeful). Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage are my last 2 traits, mainly because I needed stability for stomps and more team condi removal.
(edited by Salamander.2504)