Guild Wars 2

heh great.

I had been using banish + JI “The Freight Train” combo for a while, but never thought to combine JI with blinding leap. “The Meteor Leap” may have just become my favourite GS opener.

with spear #4, I tend to fire it on top of a mob and once they’ve drifted out, use #5 to drag them back inside – it’s still pretty weak though

Eveningstar.6940:

IV. Spirit Weapons: Sword of Justice and Hammer of Wisdom

Spirit Weapons don’t get talked about much on these forums, and I don’t know why.

Well speaking of spirit weapons – I favour the defensive ones. ( which get talked about even less! )

I. Spirit Weapons: Shield of the Avenger
The damage mitigations of ranged attacks offered by this is insane, and with +duration traits it last practically forever. Giving Caudecus’s Manor again as an example, you can park this in a corridor to block any arrows flying down it’s length, or better yet in open areas if there are group of rangers nearby you can use greatsword skill #5 to pull them all inside your bubble, and nothing they throw will make it to any of your teammates. You can park a bubble around the gates in WvW to help protect your team while they man the battering rams.

II. Spirit Weapons: Bow of Truth
Less useful for condition removal, but when geared for healing power can offer a nice on demand area heal that’s good to counteract condition damage situations. ( getting it to fire in the right location is a challenge however ).

III. Judges Intervention
A fairly obvious one, but I like how you can pre-cast hammer skill Banish and then teleport it right into someone’s face. I like it more for the fact you can reach opposing players that are on higher ground easily ( when they think they are momentarily safe ).

IV. Save Yourselves combined with Contemplation of Purity
Very situational, but: Draw every nearby condition onto yourself + give a shed load of boons, and then convert all those remaining conditions into boons as well. Can be a great counter to mass fear etc.

It’s not quite that simple – healing power only really comes into it’s own if you are traited to take maximum benefit from it

In other words exploiting synergies using various combinations of Altruistic Healing/Monks Focus with Empowering Might, Selfless Daring (good if you’re slotted/traited for endurance recovery), Writ of the Merciful, and Zealous blade.

Take a look at Altruistic Healing when combined with Staff’s Empower skill #4 for example.

This combined with Sigils of Energy give you some pretty awesome damage mitigation and health recovery

Might it be an interaction with an additional trait? – like the 0 cast time one?

I’m running 20 points in Virtues atm, so using the second slot for Elite Focus

Just tried it on my asura guardian and I didn’t see the effect described in PVE or WvW – server related?

I was about to retrait and pull some points off Virtues, but after hearing this I’ll probably be taking it up to the max.

I hope it’s just a case of buggy animation and the skill is actually working as intended ( making a true Elite if you ask me )

It depends largely on your style of play.
Personally I like to run with a cleric’s set, with sigils for energy recovery, accessories that make up the short fall in precision/power/vitality and skills favouring blind and teleporting and traited to heal on evasion – it makes you quite a slippery fish on the battlefield, avoiding a heck of a lot of damage, and restoring your HP with relative ease.
The downside is a low HP pool can make you susceptable to burst if you are caught off-guard – and you won’t have the highest DPS in the world ( but reasonable sustained damage ).
Personally I like divinity runes, but boosting boon and protection duration is also a strong setup.
In WvW, 2v1 is viable and I’ve often been able to survive far longer than I should against groups of 4-5 – and in PVE the only mobs that give me a headache are the ones with a lot of range AoE and/or blind resistance.

Having said that, if I favoured the hammer or sceptre, I might choose the soldier’s set.

I’ve not experienced the other two, but I’ll say that I really love my cleric set. Roll healing rocks, especially when you are slotted for energy recovery

I’m inclined to thing it’s a simple mistake – if skills are ordered by CD by default, it might just be that someone forgot to fix it after rolling out the skill changes.
The question is, will putting it back to how it was before in a couple of days time infuriate everyone again that has acclimatised to the new layout?

I always found the symbol’s best utility was for condition removal anyway – and an extra few seconds on there won’t hurt my play style too much. 5 secs less on blind leap gives me an extra blind per encounter – which is nice.

hey don’t nerf my focus!

I really like energy sigils, so I can recover 50% endurance each time I switch weapon – it can keep you very mobile on the battle field ( and especially good if you’re traited to heal on dodge )

Aye the giant is all about dodging and was just as easy at lvl 45, provided you didn’t get whacked. I spent half the fight res’ing people aswell. There’s something quite satisfying about wading into the action and successfully revive someone whilst 1 or more foes uselessly beat you over the head.

We also have a few ways to break stun/cc and remove fear, which helps against the tougher bosses.

oh and to answer your other query – if you are level 80 with exotics in a 15 zone you will be like a demigod despite the drop in base stats

At higher levels with a support spec you can do some fairly crazy things.

A champion with adds are definitely doable with the right traits and weapons equipped – although if the champion is resistant to blind it gets much harder.

Champion attacks tend to be slow and predictable, so between blind, block and evade you can avoid most damage it throws at you.

Since blind skills also tend to be AoE, adds get taken care of at the same time. We also get some fairly insane shields for mitigating ranged damage aswell.

PvP/WvW is another matter, but even there you can pull off some pretty surprising feats against multiple opponents if you time your skills right ( and happen to be equipped with the right utilities for the situation )

Personally, I’ve rolled my traits/skills for maximum blind, teleport and evade potential ( enhanced vigor with energy recovery sigils ) and try and keep as mobile as possible in the battlefield

I actually run with Protective reviver and protectors impact most of the time.

Infact, I put points into Zeal purely to get the latter. Although there are other trait lines that I could really benefit from maxing out, I find I miss it when it’s not there ( mostly because I misjudge the safe jumping height and end up in a squishy mess ). The only downside is that it agros mobs when protection pops too close.

As you said, Reviver is really nice for dungeons and WvW, helping you get out of harms way (or quickly back into the action), and I prefer it to the rather short-lived bubble trait. ( pretty sure the downed player appreciates the buff too )

Since I run a build that focuses on…well the focus… I also like Blind Exposure which stacks vulnerability on blind. ( can work really nicely when combined with Virtue of Courage traits )

Am I the only one who likes the feeling of being a 3 foot high hammer wielding gremlin, who smashes foes 5 times larger halfway across the map.

Oh and we lift both feet off the ground when firing Zealot’s Defense and Cleansing Flames.

Personally I love the GS, with sword and focus combination – rotating between both sets you can very nearly keep constant aoe blind ( gs skill 4, sword 2, focus 4 ), block ( focus 5 ), aegis and evasion up to the point that 1v1 you rarely receive any damage at all, and a boat load of GS AoE damage + skill 5’s DoT ( which ends with a pull that can interrupt ) to dish out when facing groups.

I always end up missing that rotation if I switch to other weapons.

As others have said – find whatever suits your play style and stick with it ( but adapt when necessary )