You’ll never be great at escape beyond getting lucky with some teleports.
For supply running, between leaps and teleports you should be ok but you can always keep a staff in your pack when you have distance to cover, or temporarily switch a utility for retreat.
As for killing fleeing targets, you could try swapping one of your meditations for Bane Signet if you can handle the reduced healing and condition cleansing ( I consider Signet of Resolve to compensate ). It’ll knock down a foe at 1200 paces and do a signficant amount of damage to boot with a DPS build ( you can also use it as control for your burst )
Yes the main issue is all of our escape tools aren’t actually designed for that purpose, but instead for charging into combat and locking opponents down so that they can’t escape
The biggest issue that if the fight has gone bad for you ( or you see 5 enemy team mates charging towards you duel ) your teleports and leaps are most likely already on CD.
If you are lucky enough to still have them then try and teleport through an approaching enemy rather than away from them and start running in the opposite direction, the couple of seconds it will take to re-acquire you might be enough for you to get away or hide in shrubbery. You have to watch your range otherwise you might end up in the middle of them – if that happens just try and make it look like you are dying heroically instead of just failing to run like the coward you are (kidding ;-) ).
Shelter and Renewed Focus is sometimes enough to get your through fort doors to safety ( and if it suits your build, then Mist Form from Runes of Vampirism ).
If you are near a cliff, the other alternative is the leap of shame, and cast yourself off. If you are lucky there might be a mob you can teleport to at the bottom to survive the damage – otherwise you can meet a sticky end but at least not have to repair your armour ( aside from laundering the urine stains out )
Just to point out that landing a control effect via a ward or knockback doesn’t necessarily guarantee an interrupt, your timing has to be good to catch someone mid-cast ( someone running into it and falling over doesn’t count ). Perhaps in a zerg it will happen randomly enough to be useful, but in smaller battles you’re going to want to save your interrupts to catch telegraphed heals and big hits.
That said, I was myself curious about its potential as someone who used to frequently run with Pain Inverter before they nerfed confusion – a little extra sauce for a burn build.
Nope that’s right ( scroll up ten posts or so ) – you’re actually increasing Virtue Recharge Rate not reducing your cooldown ( I’ve added this one to the FAQ, thanks )
@Brutaly, I was kidding about asking/volunteering foofad. Meaning instead of us doing the work we should just make foofad (that was the joke). I really don’t know foofad to ask him something like this haha. Of course I would never mind foofad contributing or doing this as he is great at it.
No no, that’s a great initiative – I second this proposal:
+1 to foofad doing all the hard work
Generally anything that has a cast time will interrupt the preceding skill.
I wouldn’t even say generally. Plenty of skills don’t interrupt others, but are chained to be cast afterwards.
For example, casting Smite Condition while channeling Zealot’s Defense will chain it to be cast after ZD is finished.
Also not all skills can be canceled though, the Ranger’s one-handed auto-attack is a glaring example of this.
Another point to make is not all instant cast skills are the same. Flashing Blade doesn’t have a cast time, but it interrupts ZD. However, Judge’s Intervention and Hold the Line do not.
Some actions just take priority over others, you really just have to test them all out.
Yup ok, perhaps I was generalising too much.
Generally non-first slot weapon skills will interrupt each other, and generally utility skills will daisy chain if they are not instant cast.
FYI Flashing Blade does have a very short cast ( about 1/4 second ), that isn’t documented you can see the cast bar for a moment just above the utility bar when you use the skill, which is why it interrupts compared to Judge’s Intervention
I really think we should avoid build specifics. As pointed out, no one will agree and there really is no single correct way of doing things.
Rather focus on the individual traits and the synergies between them, and try and not bias any particular build. Encourage practise and experimentation.
Generally anything that has a cast time will interrupt the preceding skill ( you can check a skill’s cast time in the wiki or ingame on the skill’s tooltip ).
You can also cancel the current skill by hitting the ESCape key, dodging or clicking anywhere in the game area.
Skills with instant cast time can be chained on top of a currently active skill.
A prime example of this is Judge’s Intervention, which is an instant teleport – you can begin casting a skill and then hit JI to move closer to your target without interrupting the first skill.
As Hevosin has mentioned, shouts and virtues are also instant cast.
Some skills can be traited to remove their cast-time ( when you reach high enough level ).
There are a handful of skills which will cancel simply by moving ( these tend to have very long cast or “channel” times of a few seconds ).
Finally there are skills that prevent you from moving while they are being cast ( although you can still ESCape or dodge out of them )
Copying the calculation I did in the max whirling wrath dps thread from couple of months ago. It might be useful to illustrate how all the modifiers glue together vs armor vs buffs vs conditions. The inappropriate bonuses, like warrior and ranger passives can be edited out easily.
(
Weapon Attack
* (
Base Power/Food/Traits
+ (Sigil of Bloodlust * 25)
+ (Warrior Banner of Strength + Empower Allies)
+ (Might * 25)
+ Bane Signet with Perfect Inscriptions
)
* (
Main Strike Coefficient
+ Secondary Projectile Coefficient
)
/ Target Armour Rating
)
* (
Base Crit
+ Crit from gear/traits/food
+ Crit from Warrior Banner of Strength
)
* (
6th Rune of Scholar
* Unscathed Contender
* Radiant Power
* Potion of the Undead
* Fiery Wrath
* Greatsword Power
* Sigil of Night
* Ranger Frost Spirit
* ( Vulnerability * 25)
)
= Maximum Total Damage
I do agree with what Brutaly says though – maths shouldn’t be the focus of the article ( or perhaps it can be reserved for it’s own section at the end? )
Probably need to juggle the order. It’s probably worth getting an overview of sigils, weapons and traits before attempting to go deeper into combos and might stacking:
Gear/Accessory considerations – key stats – to zerk or not to zerk
Runes / Orbs / Sigils
Food / Potions / Oils / Stones
Traits / Multipliers which matter
Utilities
Weapon choices / co-efficients & DPS
Might Stacking / Combos and Vulnerability Application
Control, Mobility & Burst
Ancillary DPS – Retaliation, Burning, Symbols
Survival ( mitigation/evasion, healing and condition removal )
How does that look as an outline?
edit: posted before seeing foofad’s suggestion. Are there any general guides? Most of the ones I’ve seen tend to be weapon combination/build specific
The question “Q15 Healing Breeze is useless right?” was fixed in the last patch (at least is described in the patch, not sure in practice). Only trigger once now (now you can say that skill is useless – they should reduce its CD to 30s).
Ah thanks, I had tested it after the patch and it is indeed “fixed”. I was going to remove it from the FAQ and forgot. Rather than leave a hole in the numbering, I’ve just rewritten it to say that it is useless ;-) Cheers
That sounds like a great idea to me. I get most satisfaction and enjoyment from DPS builds in game, but alas I don’t really have anything like the time required to put together a comprehensive guide on the subject. I can certainly help out with the theorycrafting and some general suggestions though…
Ah good point akamon. I see those crop up quite alot. I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself ;-)
lol, I’ve never had a dungeon run when people complained about protection – but it can definitely be an issue in WvW when hammer users autoattack the fort doors and it overrides water fields.
I should be able to put something together tomorrow – unless someone else wants to jump in now and come up with a description
Do you mean the active or the passive? The active effect can also feel “less” if you are used to running with 5 points in Virtues, and you drop AH ( or vice versa )
36k whirling wrath and 18k shield of wrath have been recorded with ideal conditions. In theory we can achieve more, but it takes a bit more effort. Warrior DPS comes much more easily.
Yup, one of the reasons why I didn’t include builds originally was because it becomes a subjective and ongoing task to decide which should be listed in the faq.
I was also thinking about mentioning foofad’s thread and also your crit hammer guide, but really they deserve their own faq entry and I was running out the door to catch a plane. I should be able to update in a couple of days.
@Tarsius
Probably not the hardest hitting in the game, but definitely in the top 10 in the right circumstances.
Yeah, probably not in terms of DPS – but I remember we calculated its max theoretically total damage in the max dps thread – under ideal circumstances (all guardian buffs, debuffs, 2600 armor target) it would do about 75k of damage ;-)
At the risk of repeating stuff that has been discussed a lot already in historical threads, I’d be tempted to keep its fast hit damage baubles, but have it also proc a symbol for a secondary effect ( 1 sec cripple for instance )
Burning builds are marginally more viable than before. ( although condition damage still isn’t )
The scepter finally got some orb speed improvements.
GS blind/vulnerability stacking got nerfed/fixed.
Mace trait includes a nice HP bonus
Downed state “wrath” now hits 3 targets
Most signets got a nice double stats buff ( inline with other professions )
Symbols got made uniformly larger
Some professions got unblockable attacks or ways to make their next attack(s) go through Aegis
Merciful Intervention might actually be useful
Generally you’ll find the Guardian has kept status quo, although other professions have received a fair number of improvements that make life harder for us ( more ways to ladle on conditions, unblockable attacks and new debuffs like torment ).
It is basically a PvE focussed skill – If it were to become a symbol I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet also reduced its damage by 80%.
The question is, do you want another symbol AoE skill that does mediocre damage to up 5 enemies, 1 tick every second or a very high damage single target skill ( I believe it’s the highest damage skill in the game in ideal circumstances ). In its current form it procs on-crit effect like nothing else, flame bursts, might, vigor etc.
Short Answer: You have to be gearing for a very specific kind of build if you want to get any real benefit from Celestials. Generally it’s better to focus on a few stats that compliment your build, without wasting points on attributes you don’t need.
If you just like the skins, you can always transmute the item onto a cheap exotic with the stats you are after.
I got him first try with a full glass cannon MF build: bumped him backwards with the shield and just pummelled him in the face with a GS with lots of AoE blind until he was dead.
Had to dodge alot but I did get downed at the last moment and had to rally off an Ooze – no acheivement for me
I might go back and try a more considered approach ( with SoA ) later.
Also, I REALLY wish I had reserved more space. I’m completely out of room. I’m going to have to split the guide up or rewrite sections for brevity. Very annoying.
Perhaps you can ask Knox to delete his first post, then you have another 5000 chars to play with.
Alternatively you dedicate your first post to a table of contents and embed anchors in your guide pages:
p(#Section1). Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
"Link to Section 1":#Section1
That way you can do a Leap of Faith to different posts in the thread. ( I’d also recommend putting a “<Previous” and “Next>” link at the top and bottom of each post )
Levelling is a great opportunity to test out and become familiar with all of your weapons.
The guardian is rare in that pretty much all its weapons are very viable end-game – so it pays to be comfortable with them all. We also have enough innate survivability to be experimental without overly endangering yourself.
– but it can definitely be an issue in WvW when hammer users autoattack the fort doors and it overrides water fields.