Guild Wars 2

haviz.1340:

Is warrior axe able to blind or absorb projectiles?

He means that u always want to complete the auto attack chain before using other weapon skills as the bulk of the damage lies in the last hit of the attack chain.

Obviously the thread starter deleted his post for some reason but foofad post is still there. U should notice that thread starter is a person with nickname call epix

In a realistic PvE setting, i think the 10/25/0/10/25 built is the best dps if u dun use one handed weapon or 10/30/0/0/30 with one hand weapon. If u insist on getting 30 in valor , then 10/30/30/0/0 should be the best dps . Unscathed contender is very hard to maintain outside of theory crafting. I will take a relatively active 10% bonus over a 20% bonus which only works like 20~30% of the time realistically?

The problem with your calculation are that u dun take into account strikes that do not crit which greatly favors the built with higher critical damage.

What i mean by favoring the built with higher critical damage is that it shows it performing better than it should and i wasnt aware that u were assuming 100% critical chance.

Edited: To explain what i mean

CMF.5461:

Ok lets look at that then, think you will pull ahead on damage again with damage mods as in the last example.

30% damage mod then 269% crit damage on 1000 damage

1000 * 1.3 = 1300
1300 * 2.69 = 3497

50% damage mod then 239% crit damage on 1000 damage

1000 * 1.5 = 1500
1500 * 2.39 = 3585

Actually that shows that the damage mod is before or after, doesn’t matter, but it is a little higher than crit damage in value. They are very close though, and having the survival from valor I contest is a good trade off for 100-200 damage loss.

Either way, I admit the mistake for putting critical damage and modifiers together, didn’t know the sequence which I am sure is a common mistake so I am not ashamed of that one.

30 in valor and critical damage is not “pointless” for a damage build, but not “as” optimal for damage as getting more damage modifiers.

Again, you gain a good chunk of survival and you don’t drastically dip down in damage by going down valor.

Damage multipliers scale multiplicatively so your damage modifiers are wrong.
10/25/0/25/10: 1.5972(1.1*1.1*1.1*1.2)
0/0/30/30/10: 1.32(1.1*1.2)

Furthermore your calculations doesn’t take into account about the offensive stat bonuses from the trait line. A 10/25/0/25/10 will have 100 power more over your 0/30/30/0/10 but 50 precision less and 30% critical damage less)

So average damage done by a 10/25/0/25/10 assuming 1000 base : 0.51*1000*1.5972*2.2+0.49*1000*1.5972=2574.6864(1.08x of other built)
Average damage done by 0/30/30/0/10 because I read wrongly the other time:
0.53*1000*1.32*2.5+0.47*1000*1.32= 2369.4

The correct way to look at it that the 10/25/0/25/10 out damage the other built by approximately 8%. And this translates to more dps loss as your damage gets higher and higher with max might stacks.

Edited because of wrong trait distribution as pointed out by CMF on the post below.

Entropy.4732:

VERY menacing. Fantastic. What sword is that? Is it dripping blood?

Its the sclerite sword skin from southsun supply box. I just bought it a few days ago on the trading post. The effect is like some black colour goo, definitely not the colour of blood, although i imagine it to be that.

Too bad the ‘bloody’ effect of the sword isnt prominent when u use ur skills.(It surrounds your character with a small amount of the black stuff it drips when u swing your sword and use skills, but its not very visible even to me. I only noticed it today in TA when i touched the volatile blossom and was attacking in the green gas, then its only quite visible)

Would have been nice if the ‘blood’ aura on the sword is more visible when swinging just like twilight or sunrise.

My menacing guardian

I personally like the previous few living story patches, eg zephyr sanctum was cool with some new platform style/cutthroat with the activities/ queen gauntlets was satisfying.

But I dislike this invasion thing, it feels rather boring for me as it just feels like the old queensdale zerg or champion farming or boss chest farming (which I personally dislike and never participated in). I find it such a chore that I have to at least do it 5 times and after the first 2 times, I just cant be bothered to fight and just park my character on the invaded map and do other stuff on the internet.

Force is always better than fire for dps.

If u know the encounters well enough for dungeons, u probably dun need to keep staff as off set and just run dagger/warhorn+ focus or u could take dagger/warhorn+ axe/focus(if u really want a range option) instead.

On the chance that u want to range to relieve some pressure, u could just pop into DS and use lifeblast instead and wait for your heal cooldown. This works well for me. Of course this is from my limited experience with necro in dungeons except for arah/fractals. i mainly play a guardian

Just get a exotic backpiece and slot the respective exquisite jewel into it. U dun even need ascended backpiece to clear most content. U can get them from guild commendation trader/arah vendors etc.

The difference between exotic(berserker) and ascended (berserker) is only 9 power/4 precision/ 1% critical damage.

For fractals, I believe the most important traits are master of consecration and u want some form of grp condition removal via pure of voice or absolute resolution or soldier runes. The rest are flexible slot.

Im personally running 10/30/0/5/25 and I believe it is the best built for dps. However u will be a glass cannon with only 11k hp in full zerk set, and at 38 fractals normaly u can only survive 2 hit from mobs with the built im using. ( have not been to 40+) The trait i miss most from my previous built is shouts cooldown 20%.

For a good guide on what utilities to bring, you can checkout Obal videos in http://www.youtube.com/user/obal100/videos and see what utility he uses. Im referring to his older videos and not his newer speedkill videos.

Azraeel.1238:

Yesterday, I spent the whole day trying the 30/25/0/0/15 build in dungeons.

Cons:
1- I feel squishier.
2- I lost a big chunk of critical damage from 93% down to 77%. If I use scholar runes, it will even go down 74%.
3- I lost a 5% increased damage (SR25)
4- Lost ability to enter DS every 8 seconds. Thus losing retaliation and fury uptime.
5- Lost DS pool size.

Pros:
1- I gained some precision to break the 50%.
2- Gained 2% increased damage per condition on foe. On average the enemy has 3-4 conditions. That’s 8% damage increase.
3- Able to trait Warhorn.

Not sure if I missed anything, but can’t say if the 30/25/0/0/15 beats my 30/15/0/0/25.

As for 30/10/0/0/30. I use that in sPvP, and used that for a long time with Axe/Focus. However, for a dagger build, outside DS, without fury, makes it annoying. I have yet to try it with dagger.

Not sure how come u lost 15% crit damage by dropping 10 points from sr because 10 points =10% crit damage. I can’t understand why u feel squishier. Both built looks the same to me unless u stay in ds for prolonged periods or u use ds to absorb damage.

Anyway I think a risen giant isn’t thAt good of a test for dps..it’s more of a burst damage test. In the video, I noticed he was using food/potion and sigil which matters alot. Furthermore I believe that for solo purposes the ds built is much better cause it can self stack might and vulnerability. But in a party situation with buffs and condition applying from other classes, dagger should outperform the ds built.

spoj.9672:

Broadicea.8294:

I love when people from the class subforums wander into the dungeon forum

all wide eyed, all full of hope and moxie, all believing in themselves

:D

@Nike
Would bloodlust or perception be better for my build?

Actually i know of this spreadsheet that was created by Nike whom i found in his warrior guru guide (i believe he is the same Nike whom is posting in the topic) to answer just your question. Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At-9DjTMMF1jdFRCMmM1V1VzRHMzR2VjLU0wRWVObFE#gid=0

Anyway i punched in the numbers and results differ in different situation.
1) fury+ 25 might stacks or 25 might sttacks without fury= perception is better
2) fury only= bloodlust better
I assume the damage modifiers to be 10% scholar runes+5% force + 20% close to death + target the weak 8%.

Maybe u will like to play with the spreadsheet yourself.

If u are strictly talking about dps, I dun think brazil’s built has the highest damage.

The highest dps built should take all damage modifiers possible such as fiery wraith/radiant power/elusive power/power of the virtuous etc. it will also depend on weapon setup n circumstances as well

I dun see the need for charged quartz ring. It adds less stats than Lunaria, circle of the moon and I dun think 30 toughness/vitality/healing power is going to improve your survivability a lot. I will just take the zerker ring
If u want some defense, might as well trait for it like 5 in honor for vigor on crit..or 10 points in valor for 250 toughness if u take strength in number.

Thanks for the writeup!
I was using Brazil’s 0/30/0/30/10 dps guardian built but im certainly intrigued by the built u posted. But im going to tryout 10/30/0/5/25 built instead as i know i certainly waste dodges while using Brazil’s built, that way i still get the vigor which think is more valuable then the 3rd major slot in Virtues line.

will be nice if we have warrior #5 on our shield #4 for blocking

If u gonna invest in crit damage, take cavalier or berserker stats on ascended backpack/earring/rings before your armour. This is because ascended stuff have a lower stat points trade off as compared to armour/weapon.

I think u shouldn’t let one bad dungeon experience deter u from playing dungeons. With experience, u will realize that no matter how much toughness you have, u can’t just take damage from some big attack from boss and hope that u can heal back before he hit you again. You have to dodge the big attacks and take the smaller hits if u dun mind.

For a new guardian, I will recommend Strife’sbuilt: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70142-after-100s-of-hours-my-final-guardian-build/
It is relatively forgiving to new players and allow you to fight the mobs in the face, if u like that, but u still have to dodge the big hits

As for your current built, it certainly have too much toughness, use the guide I post for reference. Sigil of blood sucks as it has a 2 second internal cool down(player test say it is 5s) and only heals for 452 hp.

Just to share my experience, I started my guardian as a healway built ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/WvW-PvE-The-Healway-Guardian) . I certainly feel quite godlike in that built. I can pretty much out heal 90% of most boss attacks and dodge oncs in a while for a 1.5k heal. That was until I went to 2x fractals and realize that each boss now hit for like 5k damage and does it consistently very few seconds which i cant outheal anymore. That was certainly the changing point to my way of playing guardian.

I was too lazy in the past and just press the skills whenever I want and dodge whenever I want to for the heal without regards to the timing of the monster attacks. In fact the tanky built I use was making me a bad player because i was face rolling everything else except fractals. After that I started to learn when to dodge and use blocks more intelligently than before. Then I realize that all the tankiness in the healway built was wasted on normal pve content and decided to swap to a dps zerk guardian built. After swapping to a zerk built, I’m getting downed in fractals 28 less than before because I am learning how to dodge properly and use blocks better, but I am still far from a perfect player.

Hence I recommend strife’s built, it is not as tanky as healway but not as dps focused as the built I’m using. I think it is a good starting point for a guardian

Bringing up for attention since not mentioned on july 23th patch.

Tested and confirmed still bugged.

1)Higher damage for mind spike if mesmer has no boons(211 damage).
2)Lower damage for mind spike if mesmer has vigor (176 damage)
3)Lower damage for mind spike if mesmer has 3 might stacks (182damage)

(2) was tested by adding 5 points in duelling for vigor on critical trait
(3) was tested by using Sigil of battle

All tested against heavy armour golem using pvp steady sword in heart of the mist and 0 trait points on mesmer except for case 2

Just delete the obsolete skin, then login to your other character that needs the skin. Open acheivement window, click on the skin in withdrawn window.
Presto! U got a new skin on the character you want.

Bringing up for attention since not mentioned in july 9th patch

TooBz.3065:

zexion.5842:

Godmoney.2048:

The worst part of this is the health regen. Health regen, unless wearing full healing power is basically worthless. 150 ticks aren’t going to do much for anyone.

I’m soooo resisting QQing right now. I’ll adapt I suppose, but this is hard to wake up to.

The worst part of the nerf is the ICD. You won’t be able to get off no more then 2 boons and 2 conditions via chaos armor.

This makes it suck in group situations. Because the conditions will activate for only one enemy… and then you only have a 33% chance of getting protection which is the only thing that will save you.

It said it’s per target, so it may be that you can still get lots of boons in a 1 v Z scenario, but it definitely makes mesmers weaker in general, and very much so 1 v 1.

Unless the mesmer is the target of the boons? Oh this is confusing.

If u read properly, it says the random condition applied now has a 1-second internal recharge per target. Boons has a internal cooldown of 1s, so i will assume that only one boon will trigger per second.

Going back to playing guardian~

From what i know, the first shattered clone damage get +9%, 2nd shattered clone is +6%/3rd shattered clone is +3%.

Yeah you are right that I typed the time wrongly.
But im glad that u understood what I was trying to say.

Your interpretation is wrong, if it was your case , it will be shatter cooldown reduce by 30% and not recharge rate increase by 30%

As an example, F1 shatter(untraited=15s) has a recharge rate of 6.6667% per sec. If u increase recharge rate by 30%, it becomes 8.6667% per sec( 100÷8.667=10.5s). U can do the same for all other shatter and find the same result.

Da Sonic.6521:

brunobyof.3541:

Yes, i just mentioned wiki in case you don’t know about that.

And yes again, Mind Spike is now a crappy skill because i would prefer to keep my phantasms alive doing damage over time than shattering them. Even if there is only one target. besides, phantasms can be set as targets by your enemy, saving your HP, while if you shatter them you would be the only target.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. The autoattack for mainhand sword has absolutely nothing to do with shattering clones or phantasms.

I think he misunderstood and thought i was referring to mind wrack(F1 shatter) since mesmer have so many ‘mind’ attacks, (Mind Spike/Mind stab/Mind slash/Mind Gash/Mind Blast) and he seems to be a phantasm mesmer.

Mind Spike is the 3rd hit on the sword auto attack just for clarification sake.

brunobyof.3541:

As of patch released on 25th june:
Mesmer:

•Mind Spike: Reduced the base damage by 20%. This skill does an additional 50% damage to targets with no boons.

This Bug is reported also on the WIKI:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mind_Spike
They must have swapped the parameters of the skill on the patch and put the wrong one….

It should be +50% dmg on TARGETS with no boons, and not +20% dmg on target if YOU have no boons.

The gw2 wiki content is created, maintained, and administrated by players. Hence i am not sure if anet developers is aware of this bug or not and they didnt respond on the post in mesmer forum.

Either way i am just hoping to highlight this issue with the mesmer auto attack chain that is causing my mesmer to deal lower damage than they are supposed to. Its already low enough

Mesmer mind spike deals less damage if u have boons on you as shown:
1) No boons on mesmer Mind Spike deals 198 damage instead (no traits)
2) With Vigor on mesmer, it deals 165 damage instead (5 points in dueling for vigor on critical trait)

The issue is discovered by Baa.4582 and i am just bringing it to the bug forum with pictures for attention.(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mind-Spike-testing/first#post2333864)

Phantasmal haste only affects the attack rate of phantasm and not the cool down of phantasm summons

AndrewSX.3794:

Levetty.1279:

I guess we should start taking bets on how many patches before this is fixed then.

Implying it wasn’t intentional and the wrong things are patch notes/tootips.

/sarcasm

That will be a sad day for mesmer if that was really the case.

Anet expecting us to play without boons to increase damage. -_-

I really think that blurred frenzy deserve a damage buff since it got a cooldown increase. The damage is really pathetic compared to whirlwind attack (warrior) and the damage is dealt within a shorter period of time as compared to blurred frenzy.

pullnointer.1476:

Sutcliffe.5491:

For example on my warrior with fast hands trait, I think it is quite overpowered for me to be able to use all my burst skills on my greatsword(hundred blades+third skill) then swap to the axe for the best autoattack skill for warrior every 5 seconds. Imagine if u can do that on every class -_-. The greatsword autoattack is weaker as compared to axe to compensate for the fact that gs weapon skill 2-5 are more damaging than axe weapon skill 2-5, hence u are supposed to be stuck with a weaker autoattack by choosing to swap to gs for 100 blades. But fast hands circumvent this limitation, and hence allowing my warrior to use the best of both weapons.

bad weapon balance. you can’t fall back to that when making decisions about things like this.

I wouldnt call that bad weapon balance. The weapons are rather balanced if u use a 10s weapon swap cooldown. They only become inbalanced if u remove weapon swap cooldown. And for warrior they need to take a 15 point minor trait to reduce weapon swap to 5s cooldown which is pretty closed to overpowered for a axe/mace+ gs combo.

As I said, if they were to remove weapon swap cooldown, most weapon skills have to be rebalanced to make them weaker or increased cooldown. Given a choice between the 2, one being a nerf to weapon skills due to weapon swap cooldown removal, the other being the current system, I prefer the current system.

I think weapon swap cooldown makes a lot of sense, it creates a limitaion for people, to either remain in their current weapon set if they want to use the weapon skill immediately after cooldown or to swap to use another weapon and wait 10s to go back.. If they remove the weapon swap cooldown, I think they will have to modify the current cooldown of the individual weapon skills to account for that.

For example on my warrior with fast hands trait, I think it is quite overpowered for me to be able to use all my burst skills on my greatsword(hundred blades+third skill) then swap to the axe for the best autoattack skill for warrior every 5 seconds. Imagine if u can do that on every class -_-. The greatsword autoattack is weaker as compared to axe to compensate for the fact that gs weapon skill 2-5 are more damaging than axe weapon skill 2-5, hence u are supposed to be stuck with a weaker autoattack by choosing to swap to gs for 100 blades. But fast hands circumvent this limitation, and hence allowing my warrior to use the best of both weapons.

Hence if weapon swap cooldown was removed, we will have to most probably autoattack most of the time or have our individual weapon skills nerfed to account for that matter.

Osicat, thanks for the respond!

I actually played around with the equip of shattercat heavy 2.0 and was able to come up with an arrangement that i feel is slightly more efficient. The secret to retaining the vitality you want is swapping a piece of gear for sentinel stats(like 8g for the gossamer insignia now -_-)
The build is here : http://goo.gl/eeasv

Admittedly there was a tradeoff of lowering 2% critical damage for an increase of 3% critical chance(not sure whether this is actually bad), but I was able to retain most of the stats at the level you want them to be.

I just wanted to share this with you since I already took the effort to make it. I think the difference between your built and my built is not that significant, but since this is going to be my first lvl 80 mesmer set(still lvl 38 now though), I just wanted to optimize it.

Once again, thanks for reading!

Hi Osicat,

First I will like to say thanks for posting such great videos on mesmer and sharing your built with us! Your videos spurred me to play a mesmer.

However I got some query about the equipment u use for your built. For example, u are using a knights ascended earring but berserker helm. From what I know, this arrangement is inefficient as the critical damage % tradeoff for an ascended earring and a exotic helm is different.

As a guideline (copied from strife025 guides), for each critical damage %

5 stat points – upgrade slot of trinkets and backpack
7 points – Ascended Back Piece
8.5 stat points – Ascended Rings
8.7 stat points – Ascended Earrings
9.4 stat points – Ascended Amulet
10 stat points- traits (not an equipment, but listed for comparison)
12 stat points – glove, shoulder and boots
12.8 stat points – 1H weapons and amulet
13.33 stat points – Earring
14 stat points – Backpack (rare version from guild armorsmith)
14.22 stat points – 2H weapons
14.4 stat points – Coat (Chest)
16 stat points – Ring, helm and legging

So theoretically, u should go for a critical damage earring (eg cavalier/berserker or any other critical damage earring) before using a berserker helm due to ascended earring losing less statpoints for the critical damage than helm (8.5 <16).

However i think there may be other reason for your choice of allocation of equipment. Thanks for taking your time to read this!

Thanks for the great list of builds!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players

Read this.

Then go to other race starting zone to explore and get experience. To go to other race starting zone, click and enter heart of the mist( its the 2nd button from the right in your top left hand interface), then go to lion’s arch from the portal ( just run straight after u enter heart of the mist, u will see the portal)

After which u will end up in Lion’s arch, open the map and look for the place with 5 asura gates surrounding a waypoint…go there and enter one of the asura gate(choose one gate where the npc standing in front of it is not human), and u will reach the other race starting town. From there explore and find a way to go out to the pve area of that race

U can get a ascended berserker stats backpiece for 1350 fractal relic. (Prototype fractal Capacitor with stats =+24power +17precision +1% crit damage)

U can further upgrade it with another 500 fractal relic. Get a gift of ascension from fractals, 1 vial of condensed mist and 40 crystal from miyani.
After upgrade u will get a fractal capacitor with stats =+56 power +35 precision +5% critical damage)

U get fractal relic from fractals. Note that u cant put upgrades into ascended pieces.

Another way to get ascended backpiece is more expensive so i wont mention it now.

However there is another option to get a exotic backpiece with Cavalier stats if you dont mind. (stats = 16 power +22 toughness +1% critical damage) That is also a good backpiece. You can get it from Balthazar temple when its uncontested for 42k karma!
If put a exquisite ruby orb into the cavalier exotic backpiece you end up with (41 power +15 precision +22 toughness +4% critical damage), still quite good.

You can also get a rare berserker backpiece but u will need to join a guild or open a guild urself and have the Guild Armor Contract upgrade to purchase it.

Ostricheggs.3742 for engineer. I heard he is quite a good pvp engineer

http://stormbluffisle.com/index.php/forum/wvw/1943-wvw-event-yulo-s-art-of-war

Try going to this event if u can!
Yulo is a very known person in the wvw circle of SBI

Asura cause u dun wan people to spot u using kill shot!

For all intent and purposes, your race doesnt affect your stats in any way. Each race got their own unique skills but most of the time, u will use your own class skill because racial skills are meant to be ‘worse’ than class skills.

Just go with what u want…although i will recommend to train your human warrior to lvl 80 first because it will be easier to earn gold with a lvl 80 character and it sounds like this is your first character.

SE 1/3 or hotw p1 are the faster dungeon.

But for se path 1, u definitely need a class with projectile reflection or absorbing class.
Fastest depends on your familiarity with the dungeon

The guardian can just ignore the animation effects of the elementalist and just focus on the boss.

Boss normally swing their weapon to attack or use aoe effect.

If he uses aoe attacks, a red ring will be shown on the floor and normally u should dodge those, so he doesn’t have to worry about about those particle effects being created by the boss.

-Watch some videos on dungeons runs by strife025 (he has a fixed party and he is a dungeon veteran so u might not be able to reach his dungeon timing, but it is good just as a guide to what u will expect in that dungeon)
-http://www.youtube.com/user/strife025?hl=en-GB&gl=SG
-If he is uncomfortable at first, just use range until he is comfortable with the boss then swap to melee.
-practice more

Is there any specific dungeon he is having problem with now?

http://stormbluffisle.com/index.php/forum/non-wvw/1485-pve-event-temple-invasions-epsilon-and-sigma

U can check out this stormbuff isle community forum, this organizer usually clears temple every weekend so u could join them to do the temple run if u are free.

Instead of trying to decide one to main, why not just play both classes if u like them equally much.

Choose a class to play depending on your mood that day. I feel that it isnt that difficult to outfit 2 characters with full exotic equips in gw2.