Guild Wars 2

By ‘short’ do you mean ‘easy’?

I haven’t really done the new AC yet but I thought they just updated the boss fights.

I don’t mind the punishing mechanics of the dungeons (when they’re not buggable by groups at any rate and completely avoided) but the health on bosses is a bit annoying. It’s almost like they want you to run 5 zerk warrior groups (or whatever the popular speedrun setup is) just to get through the boss fights in a decent amount of time.

Did HOTW p2 last night for the first time and that final boss was such a pain. It wasn’t difficult just took forever to kill – it seems underwater weaponry/skills are just pitiful compared to land. And the rest of the bosses the group elected to bug in one way or another which annoys me (but not enough to drop group) – just more poor design.

They could just be immortal and do no damage I suppose. Not sure if that’s the fix you’re looking for…

Can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so on either of those. I don’t use strength with battle though, that’s just a hunch.

1. How are guilds and friends not a valid reason? That’s the ONLY reason I play an MMO, single player games are made better (sorry, they are).

2. Nothing, I have absolutely no interest in PVP in any shape, I’ve played that game for years and nothing ever changes (talking PVPers and their attitudes – like your own clearly displays).

3. Not particularly, I could give a crap about the WvW buffs.

4. Repairs for PVP kills is definitely a turn off on an activity I’m already pretty opposed to, sure.

5. I don’t have a legendary yet, if that’s what you’re referring to. Not sure I’d bother with one honestly.

6. Obviously doesn’t apply to me, I’m on Yak’s Bend.

Since you’ll get the majority of the stats you want from karma or crafted gear the racial stuff is ALL about the looks. They could have no stats on them at all (they might as well) and people would still pay those prices – you’re going to be wearing better/more customized stat-wise by the time you get them.

I haven’t used it in months but when I did I believe it was just one condition removed in an AE upon activation, the rest just being a fire field for you to use.

Your build sounds similar to the paragon one I use from these forums, though you’ve made some choices I don’t quite understand. With hammer you really don’t need the 20% skill reduction (mighty blow isn’t even being used on cooldown anyway typically) so pure of voice would be better (especially with it mostly fixed now).

Also you took master of consecrations but…don’t use any consecrations?

As for sigil I use strength for hammer, rage for greatsword.

Spiderwick.1879:

All those replies are good, but the topic driffted a bit from the orginal idea. I was not talking about damage, what is the best damage weapon. I was looking at the weapons from the FUN aspect.

So, once again.

If I would like to not just auto attack or use 1 skill, I’m basically forced to go GSword. Potentially, Staff or Mace.

But, for an idea of a Sword and Board Guardian, that is basically, auto attacking.

Well if ‘fun’ is what you were looking for, you won’t get much help – nobody here can define what you find fun.

I actually have more fun with the hammer. I greatly enjoy the animations and the constant blast finisher.

If you play the game based on buffs and nerfs you should just not play anything.

I have a guardian and elementalist, I enjoy them both.

Darx.9842:

Think so? Whenever I use my hammer I just feel so weak, I mainly only use it for group support in dungeons when we need the full time protection. I just see huge numbers from whirlwind, GS auto attack, symbol, and a ticking binding blade. It may be because hammer 3 and 5 effectively do no damage.

Someone posted the numbers in another thread showing the hammer was higher than greatsword with identical traits. I’ll admit I haven’t done the testing myself in the mists to be sure but if you factor in how often those symbols are down and do damage for hammer vs greatsword there’s a lot of damage there taken for granted.

Darx.9842:

This seems viable, but are you sure about the end result? Symbolic power is only a 10% increase in symbol damage. And missing out on the valor line is missing out on 30% critical damage. Which is effectively +30% damage, 50% of the time. Plus no altruistic healing, or beefy Resolve. Healing from symbols isnt that great if I can remember.

Sounds correct from my experience, the thread is about max DPS not healing or support roles. Hammer with no traits does more damage than greatsword with no traits so it’s not a stretch to imagine it’s higher when you buff the symbol too.

No, people just see a long windup time as a downside without counting the constant symbol application let alone high damage of the attack itself.

It’s totally a player problem, not a dev problem. Hammer and mace are absolutely fine.

ToT.7018:

I dont think people who have invested time and gold in making alts should be punished. I think the chest needs to be changed to one per character per day whether its on your own server or guest server.

Yea that needs to happen if for no other reason than it’s clear their server tech can’t handle the loads of people guesting for events – Frostgorge and Queensdale lag to holy hell in the evening when those events go on now. And I was on the other side of the zone from them.

Zosk.5609:

There’s no ‘hurting alts’…whether you choose to invest 10 hours in one toon or 1 hour in 10 toons is not relevant to whether they should be rewarded or not… and unsure why you think it should be.

Making things account bound and being agnostic about whether somebody should be an altaholic or not is probably one of the best design decisions in the game, IMO. So this is why I ask..why an exception here?

So you’re saying that you shouldn’t ever have more than one character?

That’s what I’m reading here – you shouldn’t be ‘rewarded’ for playing more than one character. Man it’s a good thing aside from the Daily/laurels situation that’s completely different from how they designed the game. I’d of quit after the first two weeks.

Lane.3410:

Ugh. I don’t want to have to do the daily on 8 characters, especially when half the time their daily options suck. The better solution, IMO, is to make Ascended gear account bound. At least then I could swap gear between whoever I felt like playing at the time.

That’s a great solution…if you use the exact same gear on every single character.

I haven’t tried every single build out there but I find the paragon one to be a great balance between offense, defense and support.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Paragon-Build/first

Zeloux.2804:

“Save Yourselves” & Contemplation of Purity – ’nuff said

You felt the need to bump this…why?

No Brutaly that sounds like the way you should test raw damage. And in that case, yes hammer should win based on how it’s set up.

Of course having traits that impact greatsword only will change how much damage they do, but then all weapons and traits weren’t created equally anyway as there’s stuff you can do with the hammer that you can’t with the greatsword.

They’re both very good weapons and I wish people would stop trying to make a case for one being objectively better than the other.

I think they’re hurting alts enough with dailies being account wide instead of character wide. Not all people with multiple 80s are bots or farmers. Some of us are just…players.

I’m really enjoying the hammer with shout based Paragon build listed on these forums. I find it provides me plenty of offense, defense and support.

You know in a game with a combat log and test dummies I really expected to see more facts and less feelings.

I find it pretty funny that not only did we not get nerfed, they specifically fixed the two issues the OP cites as always being broken :P

They pretty much did what I expected them to with evasive arcana (pvp only) and ride the lightning (longer cooldown).

No nerfs as far as I’m concerned. Nothing that impacts my performance in the slightest.

Greatsword is just an easy to use weapon that gives good results without having to look much into trait synergy or anything deeper than your 1-5 skills. That doesn’t mean it’s the best weapon, however.

While I agree it’d be nice if things were gated to force clearing more (just as my personal opinion), it’s very clear that the developers have designed the game without that in mind. I think trying to shoehorn that into the game now would break more things than it fixes, not to mention kitten off all the players used to how it is now.

One thing I’ve noticed with crit damage is it doesn’t seem to scale down well at all. It’s almost as if the 3rd stat on your gear (in this case being crit damage) gets stripped if you get downlevelled below when it shows up (60+?). For example at 80 I have close to 70% crit damage however in AC I have like 19%.

Makes me wonder if regular dungeon runners should be gearing completely different from level 80 (WvW/fractal) folks.

As far as this thread and build goes – I absolutely love it. Got me playing my guardian again regularly.

Is for me, just tested it on a thundershrimp. Were you fighting dredge or something?

That is really funny wanting to change the one thing that’s great on scepter and leaving the rest alone.

For updating your gear while levelling, plan ahead and put in purchase orders (don’t instant buy) from the trading post for blues a few coppers above vendor sell price. You’ll get people selling to you and then you can vendor those pieces when you outlevel them – meaning the net cost of upgrading was just a few coppers per piece.

I usually fill all my purchase orders doing this within a couple hours (so if you plan far enough ahead you’ll have gear waiting for you always as you level).

Windwalker.2047:

why on earth would you do such a thing when we have no idea what exactly the patch will nerf?

Gonna have to second this, none of us are seers.

Here’s my 3 most regular:

Thief (Rielle Malin)
Elementalist (Shima)
Guardian (Shimond Elessar)

zTales.4392:

That’s sad, I think. :<

I can do decent damage! I can survive! I can also give you auras, which can give you swiftness, fury, and protection! Why won’t you accept me?!

Because a lot of people for whatever reason like to simplify things down into fastest/best/most powerful/what have you and don’t even consider things that aren’t at that top level.

note: I’m not one of those people (hence playing an elementalist :P)

There’s a reason speed run groups go with mesmer and either 4 warriors or 2 warriors and 2 thieves. Elementalists cannot do what mesmers do.

I think they’re secretly encouraging everyone to run in full magic find gear :P

Has Anet said they intend to add more weapons to professions ever?

Just curious because I see a lot of these threads full of ideas to bring new weapons in, but have no clue if that’s something even remotely on the table.

Kodiak.3281:

Combo fields are a rather advanced topic, but lets delve into it.

1. Combo Fields only give you what was placed on the ground first. This means if you do an Eruption and then a Guardian does Symbol of Wrath before you lay down Lava Font that’ll combo as something else which you typically don’t have. Mesmers and Guardians also have a huge number of combo fields that get thrown all over the place. Most people are throwing down whatever random abilities they have.

2. People have to take advantage of said fields to make them worth a kitten If you don’t have people purposefully taking advantage of Water Fields, dropping them isn’t going to add any benefit what so ever. Most players tend to just do whatever they do and rarely take advantage of what’s presented to them as a possibility.

3. Combos tend to be very minor effects that are strong when added up with everything else. Even the devs have commented on this regarding our class, that it isn’t any one thing that’s too strong, but rather a combination of many things. Most Eles who are setting up Water fields are spec’d deep in those lines and the Water fields in combination with the rest make for a very strong package.

It isn’t hard to calculate. Go to SPvP, pull out a staff and DPS in Fire for 9-12 seconds, then swap to Earth and do whatever DPS you can until you can swap back to Fire (9-12 seconds) and then stay and DPS in Fire again with your +3 might stacks for 9-12 seconds. Now add it up all the damage for each time period and total time. Next just stay in Fire the entire time for a similar duration and total up all the numbers between the two. You’ll easily see you’ll have done a HUGE chunk more damage just sticking in Fire with a 30 Fire spec than you did by adding 3 stacks of might, but then being stuck in Earth for 1/3rd the time.

I run the numbers and don’t make just blind assumptions on whether or not adding 3 stacks of Might to an unknown number of players is “clearly” better.

So your argument against fields is that people are morons and won’t use them properly? That’s fairly valid I guess, but I expect more out of people around me (perhaps I get disappointed at times, but not often).

I said 3 stacks of might to everyone in range, not just yourself.

What you say makes perfect since in a solo environment with a staff – which is a terrible idea to begin with.

Kodiak.3281:

Razor.6392:

etc

This guy is your classic example of setting unrealistic expectations about the class and how it plays. He thinks you’re doing a service to anyone swapping to Water to heal someone even if you have zero points in healing. Or how gaining 3 stacks of Might to do an Eruption -> Lava Font combo is going to contribute more than the 10 seconds or so of significantly higher damage you could have been doing in Fire.

Long story short, you got the people who actually look at the numbers and look at the benefits and then you got people like him who just puke up the same advice they lapped someone else vomited all over them.

your ‘heals’ in water attune are actually fields as staff – so yea with 0 points in healing these are still incredibly useful in groups

3 stacks of might to everyone around the target area (at least melee) will do more damage than you spamming more auto attacks from your fire attune

So only in a solo situation does what you’re saying actually work – and I really pity you if you solo with the staff. For a guy who claims to ‘look at the numbers’ and know how stuff works, every post shows less of a clue…

SlimGenre.6417:

Shimond.2478:

There’s a lot more to the game than that, however. And don’t even try soloing like that, it’s a royal headache (I should know, I did it for 45 levels at launch).

Oh man… ele at launch ?!? What a nightmare that was before any of us knew what this class was really all about

Yea, and it’s why I stopped playing it for 2 months and got a guardian and engineer to 80 instead. Glad I read daphoenix’s d/d guide and gave it another shot, haven’t had more fun in the game since (not saying this is the only way to play, just, WAY better than sitting in fire attune auto attacking).

Ok so in the situation the OP is presenting this, it’s ok to do what they did. Norn starter area, likely grinding DEs for experience if you have a staff you can do perfectly fine sitting in fire in the back row auto attacking and laying down your fire field/meteors when they’re available.

This however isn’t going to be amazing dps, just enough for you to get the tags/credit you need. You’re not giving yourself any of the many boons available by switching around, nor are you applying any of the conditions (aside fire) that can be beneficial to team play.

So in short, you’re absolutely right – if you’re just doing DEs in a zerg, sitting in fire attune is fine.

There’s a lot more to the game than that, however. And don’t even try soloing like that, it’s a royal headache (I should know, I did it for 45 levels at launch).

Full exotics just makes you able to ignore some mechanics, doesn’t mean you can’t do an explorable at the min level – just requires more thought, work and communication.

Gaudrath.6725:

I am still amused when I realize people actually think devs base their balance decisions on forum whining and bragging.

Yea like they’re so incompetent they can’t monitor what people are doing in the game.

Ioflux.4369:

Refusing to adjust to the team in a “team content” is just outright rude. If you want to “play how you want to play”, feel free to do so when you’re the only one affected by how you play. It’s very selfish to have the team to “revolve” themselves around 1 player when the whole party should be trying to mesh together for synergy. I don’t want to hold a party back by being on the floor all the time because I’m too stubborn to grab a skill that’d save my life as well as everyone elses. I expect the same respect of the people I run with. If they don’t, well we’re not partying again.

Now personally, when I see bad players, I throw suggestions like, “Wall of reflect makes these so much easier, should try and get it if you don’t.” “Stand your ground would help us all with the knockdowns.”

Yea definitely the approach is important too. You can’t expect a good response from a pugger by shouting at them that they’re doing it wrong. But if they refuse to listen to you when you’re being nice about it…

JJBigs.8456:

Stop forcing people to play how you want. Let them play how they like. Its one thing to mention it, suggest and if they want to, they can. But insisting as you did and trying to “convince” the thief to use smokescreen is not right

Someone getting repeatedly downed (or wiping the group) because they want to “play how they want” isn’t “right” either.

Soon as you get in a group your “it’s my game and my money” has to make some compromises to what’s best for the group. You’re no longer playing by yourself.

Wow I never knew this was even possible. What a horrible design.

Should either be a min level req on dungeons or an account lock preventing you from zoning another character in after going in on one.

Mentioning levels at all in a game that sets the level you are supposed to be based on the zone you’re in (even story zones) is kinda pointless IMO.

Any class is going to have a small handful of builds that become popular and termed ‘viable’ by people, that doesn’t necessarily mean that other builds won’t work. This class does have a couple easier to play builds (d/d in particular) that perform really well, so you’ll see a lot of people use similar builds to that.

Doesn’t mean it’s the only way to play.

As to whether you like the class or not, nobody can tell you that. You’ll have to start one and see.

To be fair, some builds I’ve seen posted don’t have any pros at all :P

I don’t agree that d/d is the only way to play, but it’s certainly the easiest to be good at and give good returns with – hence its popularity