The price of Zealot armor is just half of the problem.
There is currently no way of obtaining ZEALOT TRINKETS.
I believe that should be looked into
BELIEVE TEAM! MAKE IT HAPPEN!
P.S. Just joined random Rata Sum instance and I was soo happy so see tons of people next to SAB entrance
Looks like Ambrite Fossizied Cricket and Ambrite Fossilized Bee are parts of Energizer collection. The thing is that some of us already farmed all those fossilized insect parts and crafted them into weapons.
I really hope ANet will retroactively add those items to our collections since I don’t think that making us farm those things again is fair
Thanks!
It’s a viable strategy and definitely easier to carry pugs with in fractal 50s than using a regular meta build.
I used to run with some guardian that played like this (and his wife used a celestial/soldier ele build I believe) and the runs always went smoothly because the guardian pretty much can’t die and you just stand behind enemies using perfect rotations.
I saw both of those people in town recently and they’re in DnT now (pretty funny because I remember them mocking the pve zerker meta but whatever) so it’s not like only terrible players wear this gear. It’s just an easy “nothing can go wrong” tactic and it’s perfectly viable even for a quick run. Just don’t expect to beat records is all.
Honestly I’m half considering getting a second set for my guardian for this, to bring into a fractal 50 for when I can’t find a proper group. It sucks playing thief in fractals when you get a less than desirable groups (or just if I’m having a bad day and/or lagging, would be nice to put on easy mode).
Like others have said, these type of things will probably be even more useful with HoT with stability bars.
I know some people will call me a newbie for that but honestly you’re not always going to be able to find an optimal guild group to run with and carrying is a big part of pugging.
This build is perfect for 5man pugs! As long as other party members wear zerker gear and use DPS builds it will be smooth and easy! You just can do so much for them in terms of support/dps/tanking – nothing can possibly go wrong
Good luck!
Hey team!
You can only say “I can tank in zerk gear” so many times. I think it’s time to post some footage. I am genially curious, no kidding!
So far all the zerk “tanking” we’ve seen and experienced ourselves includes but not limited to:
- bugging Mossman wolves (makes fight completely irrelevant to me, plus you spend at least 5-10 min trying to bug them on the other side of the room)
- chaining ice bow freezes (duo/quadro icebow trivializes the fight and allows you to have the boss stunned at least 50% of the time)
- kiting around/dodging which again defeats the purpose of having a tank
The point of the build was to have boss close to 100% locked in one spot, locked on a tank who doesn’t have to dodge/move out of AOE. I would love to learn how that might be done in zerker gear (maybe we missing something and you can have more blocks in one build). So far zerker tanking on existing bosses comes down to lack of blocks, basically eventually you have to take some hits and zerker gear gonna kill you (hello, Mossman bear form).
Thank you for sharing duo ele video, its pretty impressive!
Plus it further proves the effectiveness of having a tank in low man from DPS perspective. Even with bugged wolves duo ele took 5:30 with lots of kiting and DPS loss. Just by adding one tank guard you can kill the boss legit with all wolves up right where he spawns in less than 3 min, I’m sure you can push the time to somewhat close to 2 min if you really maximize DPS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-K3nWS2lQE&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS&index=14
I am all for zerker meta myself (and zerker ele is my main). And honestly I was amazed how having a tank improves party DPS for those encounters where bosses actually mean something, don’t die in 5 sec and hit hard.
Is it possibly to tank in other gear? Yes, of course, you just need some toughness as was pointed out before.
Is it possible in zerk gear? Yes, it is possible with fair bit of moving/dodging. The thing is that moving/dodging was somewhat we tried to avoid. And fairly I wouldn’t call it a tank.
How about we call a zerker guard with mace/focus a hybrid tank and move on? Seems like we beating a dead horse here
Hi team!
Why do you run Clerics instead of Nomads? Wouldn’t you be able to tank that much better in Nomads?
There are few reasons for picking Cleric over Nomads:
- Nomads has lower healing power than Cleric. That means you wont be supporting your team as well as Cleric (healing power is mainly to keep group at 90%+ not yourself).
- You don’t need Vitality to “hold aggro”, this stat serves a “selfish purpose” to give you more room for mistake and doesn’t bring anything to the team.
- You can comfortably survive in Cleric gear even in 2-3man party. You can test it for yourself – just get rid of wolves on Mossman and rotate blocks for 5-10 min solo without moving (dodge only for double axe).
- Also as mentioned above Archdiviner’s cages will be a problem without a power stat. Cage is a structure – meaning that you cannot crit it and apply condis, but you need power to break out. Since guard is holding aggro he will be caged every 10-20 sec and you wanna get out asap (your team will only have 1 aegis up).
To be fair, the guys that came 2nd in the fractal tourny used something similar to this strategy (and arguably they would have had a good chance at winning if they didn’t have a mass dc in the final). Pretty sure the guard used full knight’s gear though, which is definitely more that enough in a 5 man pt.
Honestly I kinda feel the same way when I run with 5man guild group when builds are minmaxed I feel like Cleric is a bit of a waste and Knights would be enough to act as a tank.
Cleric stat combo really starts to shine in pugs and underman parties. You can replace Cleric with Zealot/Knights/Zerk/Cavalier depending on your group’s DPS and encounter (same rule applies, min TTK = min defensive stats). I believe that if you really try to minmax this strat with perfect group you can go with zerker gear – you technically will be able to hold aggro just from 4 points in Valor (+200 toughness, you gonna have more armor than PS warrior). Just remember – 1 block missed/wasted and you dead Cleric is just a universal answer for all existing fractals and all existing party comps and it doesnt really gimps your speed, in fact it just makes runs smoother and reliable cause things are not going to kitten due to one mistake (they will still go to kitten if you make more than 2 mistakes though).
I will keep adding more vids and examples with different trio comps. Tonight’s run with Staff Ele+Engi combo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ubRKdpDfU8&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS&index=16
We are planning to do Necro+Engi, need volunteers Hard to find a person passionate about Necro and experienced with builds.
The point of this thread is to show the community that GW2 PvE mechanics are in fact no different from “traditional MMO” mechanics and in fact you can have a tank in this game just like in any other game.
*for certain bosses
Doesnt work everywhere. For example imbued shaman and lupicus.
Sure thing
This is why we showcase Mossman/ Archdiviner where tank actually shines, Frizz trio where healing power actually shines (I would like to see Frizz trio with zerker guardian) etcetc.
As for Fire Shaman. Aggro on that guy means firestorm. If you check my vids you will see that he always drops firestorm on a guardian. It means that guardian can just sit 300-400 units away from dps and keep aegis up for them. Fire Shaman trio was somewhat unreliable with zerker guard – cleric guard made trio a cakewalk. Generally speaking, when played right, it gives your group more room for maneuver, less wipes. Yes, you can swap gear between boss encounter and carry Cleric (melee bosses), Zealot (pure heals for Frizz) and Zerker. I just dont believe people would do that in “normal” or “casual” runs.
I’m glad you mentioned Lupicus. One day I was bored and joined one of those casual groups that was stuck on Lupi. We just did “stack on guard in front of the boss and you dont have to dodge” strat – worked pretty well and guys were impressed. Of course alternatively I could let em die and solo him on my zerk character – but many people do that already anyways
So here is the thing. You can hold aggro on two or three bosses in the game with full clerics and allow your team to more safely DPS.
But guess what? You can do the same thing with Full berserker and two-three pieces of Soldiers/Knights/Celestial gear without totally gimping your DPS. You don’t need to overload on Toughness. You need just enough to hold aggro. That means every piece of Toughness you equip beyond the necessary minimum is quite unnecessarily prolonging the fight.
This is not the point of this thread. Lets try it again
The point of this thread is not to show off how I can tank Mossman in berserker gear and kill him in xxx milliseconds. I will leave that to professional speed run groups
The point of this thread is to show the community that GW2 PvE mechanics are in fact no different from “traditional MMO” mechanics and in fact you can have a tank in this game just like in any other game. This is why you don’t need to kite bosses that actually hit hard and require more than 60 sec to kill. You can just lock em down with a “Tank”, stand still and just do damage. For some reason this gave to some forum guys an idea that Tank is just AFK and this is ololo easy – this is why we got a videos showing that in fact he is not AFK and in fact you need to have an idea about block rotation. Even in tankiest gear (nomads) you gonna die if you miss more than 3 blocks in a row (zerker gear will get you killed if you miss 1 block, cleric -2 blocks).
How do you gear this Tank up? Its totally up to you. I am fully aware that in professional speed run group you can kill Mossman in somewhat about 1min (hell we even have video showing that you can casually 3man it with cleric guard in under 3 min). But that is beside the point. The point of the build was not to make a speed record. If I had a goal to make a speed record I would probably go with “zerker gear with a few pieces of cavalier/knights gear” idea. But this is not. This is not a speedrun record, and this is not a speedrun forum
As for “training wheel” part – you are entitled to think whatever you prefer As of now we have no proof that zerker guard can perform as a reliable tank in a real dungeon situation. Once again: by real dungeon situation I mean more or less decent pug, not speed run group that kills boss before it even spawns properly or gets out of deep freeze This is why we showcase underman – you can clearly see mechanics, skill rotations etcetc.
Have a nice day and enjoy stability changes (RIP Tornado 2012-2015)
a few vids added:
- engi+ele run
- sub 3 min Mossman trio kill, staff ele POV (ele is actually my main). That video shows how tank guard lets us basically freecast entire time without the need of kiting and losing any DPS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-K3nWS2lQE&index=14&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS
I am behind the idea of 1 tank and the rest focusing on dps as a viable playstyle for a group of friends that are coordinated and know what they’re doing.
Saying it’s great for pugs, however, is something I have mixed feelings about. In theory it’s nice to hold aggro and healing up your team to stay above 90% hp for scholar runes, but pugs are far from using optimized dps rotations.In fotm 50 pugs I have over the weekend encountered a staff camping guardian, dual pistol thief (at bloomhunger, then I left the party), people generally using knockbacks or fears at random,… all kinds of things that lower the party dps or mess up your aggro. I don’t think going full healtank and sacrificing your own dps is a good thing in pugs, where your dps is usually needed or where people will take the aggro off you, making your build kinda pointless.
TL;DR: With a group of friends I would also think this might be a fun playstyle, but I think it won’t fit for pugs.
The main problem with pugs is to make people execute ‘stand-behind-the-boss-do-not-move’ strategy. They still trying to run around like chickens getting hit by Mossman/Archdiviner cleave and dying. But after a few minutes they usually pick it up and stack behind since they see that strategy is actually working. Same with Weapon Testing Facility – you telling em to stack on guard and they still running around dying sometimes.
I guess it just takes time to break the ice, change people’s mentality and show them with an example that it is quite possible to have a Tank in GW2. People just too used to “every man for himself” thing.
Thanks for questions
1. Is communal defences a good idea especially for mossman? I notice you took battle presence. Especially for mossman, he hits so hard. The additional regen on your fellow teammates arguably won’t help that much. With communal defences, every twenty seconds, using non aegis blocks like focus 5 or mace 3 grants ur team mates a free aegis which blocks a harsh attack. Additionally going further into that tree increases your toughness which is needed to hold aggro.
For Mossman you want at least 4 points in Virtues to pick ‘Master of Consecrations’ (longer wall, shorter cd) + ‘Spirit weapon mastery’ (+15 sec on SOA duration). If you drop one of those and go 00662 you gonna lose a lot of reflect uptime. I usually rotate WoR-SoA-WoR and after that combo you gonna have 20 sec gap in reflect which is usually covered by aegis/smokescreen. I tried Communal Defenses but it works weird and I didnt notice aegis procs on party members. Maybe range is too short, or most likely skill has internal cooldown (there is no IDC on tooltip) and my guess is that ICD is long and it usually being ‘eaten’ by Retreat/Courage when your team gets aegis anyways. For Archdiviner you gonna need traited Resolve to remove weakness from your dps after wells, that again wont allow you to go 6 in Valor.
2. What about the healing tome? If you have about 2k healing power, you might be able to sustain urself for 20-30 seconds while your blocks are on cool downs. Cast a SOA then go into tome. You can heal urself, ur shield, and ur team. Would this be a viable alternative?
I prefer Renewed Focus for all fights where i’m supposed to hold aggro and tank the boss. Since this build is not passive and highly relies on blocks – you will benefit much more from extra block and extra resolve. Also burst heal (Resolve) is more reliable in fractals than book heal since you can time it when you dont have agony (agony won’t allow you to heal). The only place where I find book useful is Old Tom (trio, i still prefer focus for 5man cause fight is very fast). Even on Frizz I pick focus for extra Courage (stab)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uczgA8AJITA&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS&index=7
I think its more of a natural reaction for many of us to try and optimise the tactic. That means taking something which can anchor without losing as much dps. Such as the old AH meta. I dont really understand why people are so defensive about it. Miku was simply asking the reason they use it. Others were simply discussing/suggesting better alternatives. And all weve got is defensive responses with very poor reasoning as to why they dont like the other alternatives.
Because i get the desire to anchor. I just dont understand the need to heal constantly when your group isnt even getting hit. :P
The only “defensive responses” I see here coming from “full zerk or no skill ololo” people who refuse to make one step away from the middle of the universe and see things differently.
I am all for alternatives and frankly we’ve tested other stat comps and just didn’t find it as efficient as cleric for what we doing and for what our goals are. As I said before – Zealot would be much better alternative for certain bosses where you don’t have to hold aggro (Fire Shaman etc.). I’m gonna test it as soon as I get full Zealot set and I will share the results.
So your main question is “why you need to heal group while you already holding boss aggro”. Brown already addressed that but I can explain that part again. Most fractal bosses do more things than just 1 auto attack skill
- Mossman has wolves that can bite DPS
- Archdiviner drops wells that screw up melee DPS by applying weakness (you cant crit, you cant regenerate endurance). Also adds.
- Frizz trio requires direct healing. I would like to see if you can do this as smoothly with knights/zerk guardian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me3Ae7htPzg&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS&index=13
- Molten duo – Berserker autoattack is 360 degree multi hit attack. You need heals/protection if you plan to fight him in melee for more than 5 sec.
You can continue the list on your own
The main assumption for creating this build was that fights last longer than 5 sec (either underman or not-so-high-dps pug). Isn’t this what people were begging for for 2 years? Build that would make fractal pug runs as smooth as other dungeons? When I run cleric BP guard 5man my fractal never takes longer than 25-35 min (depending on roll).
If a pug has to choose AFK auto attack for a guarantee way of progressing vs constant wipe, which would they choose?
See now you’re just reinforcing the point made earlier that this is a training wheels tactic :P
Why do we have to say it with such a negative connotation. Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t this exactly what all the people in the general forum have been crying that there isn’t? We have proof right here that all their complaints are complete bullkitten. Sure if you want to be more efficient and more optimal you can and should run with the full zerk setup still utilizing block rotations and what not, but, you have this, which can really increase the ease of play and result in that soft trinity people have been crying for.
This post is freakin amazing, we should be embracing it, bookmarking it, and linking it every time someone complains about the game. We shouldn’t be trying to rip this guy a part for giving us this awesome set of videos proving the points we’ve all been making in those general discussion threads.
As Rising said earlier, the only negative is if we start getting 2-3 of these in groups, naw, just 1, hell more than one ruins the effectiveness of it ignoring the additional dps loss as it’d ruin the agro manipulation.
Thank you for being open minded!
I must say you got the idea of the build right
and yes, you dont want to have more than 1 cleric tank guard in the group just like you dont wanna have 2 tanks or 2 healers in “traditional mmo” dungeon group.
Hi team!
Thank you for your feedback, it was very helpful
I would like to comment on a few points that were brought here and sounded interesting:
1. “AH guard”. It is not correct to compare AH guard to BP Cleric guard. AH build is very selfish and does not bring anything to the group. The only thing that builds have in common is toughness stat and the fact that the guardian does not die. That’s about it.
2. “I can tank in zerker gear just fine”. While you might be able to survive without dodging/kiting (no doubts someone will, and as you can see on my vids there are many boss fights and situations where I am not taking hits at all) you will not be able to consistently hold aggro. Tanking = holding aggro + staying alive, not just one of those. As was pointed correctly you can perform as a tank just fine in Knights gear and xx224 build (or similar), the problem is – even in that case you lose so much dps so it makes sense to just go “full support” – it virtually will make no difference if you have 4 other full DPS players. Also your “tank weapons” are gonna be either mace (block tank) or hammer (protection tank) – both are very slow and low dps weapons.
3. “Full zerker group is faster”. Yes, it is faster for 5man guild record runs when you coordinate on comms. You can just tank up with double earth ele if you really need a tank and rotate icebows, because fights usually do not last that long and you basically “skip through” the most important mechanics due to huge DPS. Cleric BP guard really shines in 3man runs, when bosses don’t die first push + 5man pugs when you need to “carry” (I personally don’t like this word). Cleric tank guard makes lots of fractals easier for group. That does not mean that it is easy for guardian (I encourage you to test it on Mossman 3man with all wolves up, even 5man takes a bit of practice with block rotation). Basically for the same reason I don’t really see the point of bringing anything other than zerk/assassin into normal dungeons – fights just don’t last long enough so you don’t “need” a tank/support. On a side note – cleric guard might be fun on Lupi if you wanna do “5man no dodge” speed record
4. Zealot gear. I love this idea – I actually been thinking of using it for a while now for bosses that do not require holding aggro (Bloomhunger, Fire shaman, Frizz etc.). Problem is that it’s so bloody expensive and also I don’t know of any way to get Zealot ascended trinkets.
For those interested in FOTM trios – I have uploaded a couple more vids, I think I’m just gonna leave it with comms so you can have some insight on strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Nus5AoTvs&list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS&index=12
Cheers!
(edited by Skady.5916)
Hello team!
I started a series of vids showing how to run Cleric Tank Guardian in FOTM.
This build will allow you to face tank any fractal boss virtually without dodging/kiting while your team mates can focus on pure DPS (good old stack here and don’t move strat).
Here is the playlist on youtube with detailed build explanation, rotations and boss specifics. Currently being updated while i’m getting more fractal footage.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCxfgAjHhmmy0a29VtGeRpCK4ADb4SQTS
I hope this will be useful
Have a good one!
P.S. Holy trinity was never missing in GW2 it just never was a part of the meta. You can still play how you want and beat any content
I keep getting into the games with 10+ min on timer and nothing going on, no mobs spawn etc. Am I actually supposed to wait 10 min until the new game starts?
That does sound like a bug. Have you clicked the gear emblem, then Support, and then “Report a Bug?” We’d love to get those details!
Okay i will do that
The thing is that when all waves are successfully done its usually 20+ min left on timer. Nothing going on on the map anymore, nowaves spawn etc but people keep getting ported into the map even thou its done. So I guess the only way for now is to wait 20+ min until the next game begins.
Current ladder is an utter joke (no offense meant)
Top player is just pvp bots with <50 games won and over 9000 games grinded.
Ladder should reflect skill (winning %, personal scores etc.) over time spent in pvp, otherwise its just EOTM and WvW rank grind all over again
They said be ready for anything… I’m ready for SAB
(edited by Skady.5916)
I dont think OP has any stuff to share.
Must have been played for less than 2 weeks
Unless its something dead simple like the commander color changes, it simply won’t be done.
Cmon man, commander color change were made for PvE purposes to support Silverwaste event farm. It has nothing to do with WvW