Guild Wars 2

AH Bunker is what I play on my guardian since the beginning. Just some starting tip for you.

- The job of a bunker is to keep the middle point hopefully to your team, or at least decap.
- You should never get out of the node except for some very special occasion. When to get out and when to stay in your node will be learn with experience but you should stay the vast majority of time in the node.
- Renewed Focus and Invisibility will stop you from capping or keeping a node. So only use Renewed focus when there is a friend with you in the node, when you are about to die or when there is no enemy with you in the node so you don’t lose it. Think about attacking an enemy to get ride of stealth when a friendly thief or Mesmer stealth you in a wrong moment.
- Your survivability come from mainly 3 things. You need to learn when to you use your damage mitigation (blind, aegis, block, invulnerability, etc) to block burst attack, do not just spam them unless there is a lot of ppl on you and you just try to survive for a couple second. You won’t have that much vitality with the clerics amulet, but you will have a lot of healing. Other than the obvious healing skill you have your F2, your shouts, mace 2, mace 1, focus 4 and staff 2 to heal you. Staff 4 is also a good healing but watch out it roots you in place in a vulnerable situation don’t use it in the middle of a brawl. Finally your dodge will be a big part of your survivability. You gonna need to switch weapons a lot. Not only the sigil of Energy will give you more endurance, the sigil of intelligence will give crit each time you swap to activate Vigorous precision.
- You are the one that survive the most. All stomp inside your node should be your responsibility most of the time. Keep your stability, nothing worth than not stomping someone in a big fight. You can also use F1 to blind a downed person when you stomp.
- Use your line of warding to make ppl waste their stability. I prefer to put the line in the middle of my node and I usually wait until my friend or enemies are half their HP, that way if they waste their stab, they won’t have it back when someone will down on either side.

One thing they could do is giving the expansion for free so there is not a split in the community (like a map that can only be access by ppl that have the expansion). But they would still need an increase of income from that expansion. It could be gem store based but only to unlock some specific feature, not for the content itself.

It’s hard to come up with a list of stuff that would be buy to win. For example, new weapons or profession shouldn’t be on that list since they could be part of a meta and discrimination could happen to ppl that didn’t bought it. It should mainly be customization option and for looks.

- Unlocking a new race is the obvious one. It doesn’t grant any advantage, its only cosmetic.
- Maybe a new item needed to craft the new generation of legendary or for precursor crafting.
- New armors and weapons skins.
- New characters creation options.
- The season 1 repeatable like season 2.

And of course a bundle price for everything.

Don’t know, but it seem like an acceptable option to new split the community and giving a good income to Anet to fund the expansion itself.

blakdoxa.7520:

All you people saying the damage reduction won’t affect anything should run all paths of HotW till the day of the update. Then come back and discuss something about “reducing damage.”

It’s really not going to take any more or less skill to beat the same mobs you’ve been fighting for the past 2 years because you have less damage.

Zerk or die.

I did all HotW path everyday for the collection and you are right. But that’s because HotW is so different in that regard compare to other dungeon. Even Arah have boss with lower hp than HotW. The issue there is more about the dungeon itself and not how much dmg we have.

xDudisx.5914:

I support the idea of raising lvl cap. Would be nice to get more trait points. But I think the max gear should be kept the same and require lvl 80 to use.

My question to you is : what would raising the cap would bring to the game?

Most of the stuff that ppl talked about in this tread were stuff not linked at all with a cap raise and more Trait pts could be done wihtout raising the cap either, they already changed twice the way pts were gain as we level up, they could change it again and give us more pts at level 80 (not that I think it would be a good idea, more choice of trait ya, but no need or more trait pts).

I just think that raising the cap don’t bring much at all, just add some weird stuff with the gear. Either we need to get all our gear again, they give us some special MF recipe to upgrade everything or we keep level 80 gear on all our level 90 toons.

Dadnir.5038:

Taku.6352:

TL;DR: Let’s punish those who use zerkers.

Feel like you read nothing… This doesn’t punish zerker at all, this add more room for diversity.

No it won’t. Except for the difference between condition and power build, gear have nothing to do with build diversity. You gain that diversity with trait, sigils, runes, skills, weapons. Gear only give you a balance between Damage and Survivability.

That doesn’t mean that diversity should be increased, but you target something that isn’t a problem. Talk about fixing condition damage in PvE or adding some meaningful support build like they did with Phalanx trait or stuff like that. Not awkwardly forcing ppl into specific build that are not good right now.

Wish list of stuff that would like, but probably won’t happen.

- Give us back the old difficult fractal where Agony Resistance was only for an easy way to do low level fractal, but couldn’t help you at all in high end fractal where only active defence could stop the Agony from one shot you dead. It was the only difficult content in gw2.
- Hard mode for all dungeons so they give us a real challenge.
- A better reward vs challenge vs time system where CoF path 1 and 2 don’t give you more reward than a level 50 Fractal.
- A better currency system. We have soo much of them and a lot of those only have value for the time you need to get some unique reward. They rarely have a good value after that and that put the content they are linked to less rewarding as time pass.
- Eliminating RNG with item that you can get several times. Not much of those in the game, but they can be frustrating : Fractals weapons, ascended armor/weapons chest, etc. Don’t mind RNG, but not when it give me useless item several time in a row while never giving the item you need.

And anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. Lets ppl make more test and we’ll see. Do you guys know how much tread on salvage nerf of all kind were posted here? And as far as I’m concerned i never saw a single one being right. So maybe he’s right, but pass experience tell me that he just made a small mistake while counting his stuff.

Maybe he just deposit something by accident or didn’t count right. Just saying.

Xyonon.3987:

Due I bug I was unable to login a few days – sry ’bout that

Those “arcane formulas only i know the internal logic of” are nothing else than the wikis damage over the chain duration multiplied with all the trait multipliers a build has.

I’ve asked for someones opinion that has already made the same calculations with a team and when we come to a result I’m gonna post it here

greez!

If you try to change the meta you should work with groups of ppl that everybody know on the forums and dungeon community so your result have a minimum of recognition. Saying you did the math and someone you know is backing it up won’t be enough. Alternatively you could make a video a team with that build killing a mob faster than the same group but with the standard warrior build.

Fluffydonkeys.8037:

Thanks a lot for the insights, guys!

I got me a guardian. I guess I’ll find out what ‘shout’ guardian means, but so far I tried 2h sword, 2h hammer, 2h staff and mace+shield. I like 2h sword the best, but I only just started off course.

Shout Guardian was a relatively ok build 2 years ago when ppl were still figuring out the game. You can use that build if you want, but is far far from being the best build. Its a selfish build that boost only your survivability, while having limited damage and group support. Build exist right now that will give you more survivability with damage mitigation over the self healing that shout build provide you. These same build will also give you way more damage and group support. I think that all guardian used shout build at least one, but you should stick to it for too long.

If some ppl need a raise in cap level to continue to play the game, then they should just stop playing it. Rising cap level give nothing, it just kitten things up. All the stuff that you cited don’t need a cap rise at all. It’s not needed to add skills, maps, new armor, new stuff, etc.

The only reason for raising the cap level is the same as adding new tier of gear. Gear treadmill and power creep, which is not the mentally of this game. Player of this game don’t want vertical progression.

They having milestone so ppl complain that it should be progressive and higher AP will always receive better reward.

If they did it progressive, another bunch of ppl would have complain that you need to farm AP to get any kind of good reward, that it discourage new player to go for any AP because all the good reward is a year away, etc.

No system is perfect, but this system is no bad. Some ppl would prefer another system, while other prefer this system. Its just achievement chest, i don’t want them to put too much time into that, that’s not why anyone play the game.

Does game balance only cares about spvp? No

Otherwise the ferocity path would not have happen. Ranger and Engineer would still be out of a lot of dungeon runs. Warrior would still be the top profession in dungeon, etc. The game evolved a lot in PvE through game balance.

Does its 50/50, not at all. But I think its normal because PvP always need precision and change over time because unbalance can break your game in PvP faster than it can do in PvE, it need more attention.

Does Anet do it perfectly? Not really, but who do it perfectly? They did a lot of mistake and seperating PvP from PvE on some stuff, but not on other stuff is just weird. This half system make the game fall between two stools. Not being able to bring PvP to an esport level, but still having a lot of weird stuff going on in pve.

The incoming nerf is not about celestial, its a nerf for D/D Ele. It won’t be nerf to the ground, it will still be a good build, more balanced with other profession. So the incoming nerf should change the situation about your celestial

But, i wouldn’t craft celestial armor if I was you anyway. You can get the same result with 3-4 celestial trinket and a mix of soldier/knight for your 2-3 other trinket and armor. This will achieve the same result and celestial trinket are FAR more easy to get than celestial armor. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t be all celestial or you won’t have enough power and toughness.

For PvP. D/D ele is a top build in pvp right now. The nerf will only make them more balanced with other profession, but it can be an hard build to master so your point is legitimate as a new player. Play ele in PvE to get more knowledge of the game and try it back later. D/D ele will probably be the best pvp build for ele even after the incoming nerf.

For PvE you have three main kind of build. D/F, Staff or S/X. S/X is for might stacking in party while dpsing with LH, Staff is the best dps, while D/F is more suited for difficult content. They are all 3 good type of build in PvE and feel free to use the one you prefer.

Ya Zerker is for beserker. Exotic or Ascended is only the quality of the gear. Ascended is better, but not by much and it cost a lot more than exotic. You should stick to exotic as you learn the game, you don’t need ascended (except for fractal 30+) and event hardcore player don’t bother with ascended. Full zerker will be squishy, but ideal. If you have some difficulty with that you can use a mix of zerker and other gear, but try to keep your toughness as low as possible, you want as little aggro as possible on you.

The trait are really important for a Ele, so check out gw2meta battle for some basic informations.

Ya pretty much unlimited skills point. You get them by leveling up (event after level 80), you also get a lot of scroll that give you skill points. You shouldn’t have any problem getting enough skill point for a legendary. These weapons take a bit of time to craft so you should have enough when it time to craft it. Once you craft 1 legendary you can put that same skin into another weapons. So you can dual wield incinerator for exemple. But you can equip all the legendary you want, its just the footstep will always be the one of your main hand weapon.

thefantasticg.3984:

Thaddeus.4891:

The big controversy will be the Might nerf. In PvE, this will change about nothing. Everybody will do a bit less dmg in organized group, but most pugs group will never see any different. But it won’t change a thing is how we play.

Won’t change how you play. Will change how I play and change who I play with. Maybe you aren’t good enough to notice the lack of DPS in parties that aren’t full zerk (which makes you bad), but plenty of us are. It will make PuG runs last that much longer. If you think it won’t you’re being purposefully ignorant.

It’s these nerfing DPS changes that make me really really really want the ability to gear check other players.

WOW. First of all, i’m a filthy elitist that play zerker meta, try to speed run everything and have all profession ready to swap so I can always have the best composition possible when I do dungeon. I don’t know what stuff you are taking, but I think you hallucinated a LOT of words that wasn’t in my post.

Second of all, some ppl said the same about the ferocity nerf. OMG dps will be so much more important now that its nerf. Everybody will ask for gear check now because otherwise it will take SO MUCH MORE TIME, we are all doom, anet keep nerfing everything to the ground, now 100% maximum dps will be out only option if we want to complete in a reasonable amount of time. All that kitten was shout in the forum and the ferocity nerf patch was 5 times worth than this one. Guess what, nothing changed. We adapted, we evolved, it wasn’t the end of the world, everything was fine. And it will be the same with the path. Ppl will cry like babies, other will be a bit sad but will get over it and in a couple months nobody will talk about it anymore. Just like the ferocity nerf path.

Finally, what will change if how you play? I don’t mean : Oh i’ll be more strick with pugs. I mean with your perfect party, what will change? Will you don’t try to get 25stack of might? Will you get might from another source? Most pll will play about the same way, they will just all do a 3-4% less dmg.

To reach your maximum dps there is a lot of important details.

- What are your runes?
- Do you have both banners up?
- What sigils do you have on your GS. Damage modifier sigils are powerful.
- Did you have fury?
- How much vulnerability on your target.
- Did you have food?
- Did you have the right slaying potions?

Xyonon.3987:

but why – if others are able to perform 25 stacks might – it just takes engi ele or something.

Phalanx Warrior have 2 advantages
- Can stack 25 stacks of might by himself, which Ele or Engineer can’t do in combat (no changing weapons)
- Can do it more reliably. A dodge won’t ruin a might stacking, errors in rotation won’t after the stack as much, etc.

Engineer are ok in speed runs, but are never used in record run because they fall between two stools.

So there is two main ’’ideal’’ ways to gain 25 stacks of might. Elementalist or PS Warrior.

- Elementalist will be better where you can stack might before the fight. Ideally when you can stack on a boss while he’s still green, stack might in peace and have 25 might when he turn red, ready to get burst down. The boss should die under 20second so ele can equip scholar runes for more dps.

- PS Warrior will be better where you can stack might before the fight, for harder fight where Elementalist will have a hard time completing their rotation without dodging, or for fight that should last more than 20 seconds.

So PS Warrior is not only for pugs groups, they are use in some records run, it depend on the situation. Like a lot of things, its not black or white.

But nice, I see that most ppl talked about the issue that I ask in the OP.

I suggest you to not try to get ascended stuff for now. Try to learn your profession and what build you wanna play. Dmg is important in this game, if you can see it and don’t want to hear about it, maybe you need to learn more about the game. Other stuff are important too, but you shouldn’t not care about attack. Experiment with exotic for a while before crafting an ascended set. I switch 5 times armor when I started to play the game, I would have been kitten if I had crafted a ascended right away.

For crafting profession, yes you can have all profession on your main, but you can only use 2 at one time. Your progression will be saved, but you need to switch profession each time you need another one and it cost some money to switch, not much I think its a couple of silver only, maybe 50 something like that. You can do it, but you are way better off with 4 character each with 2 crafting.

Staff is the most powerful weapon of the Elementalist in PvE, but I really don’t like it for solo because its mostly fixed targeted ground attack. Not ideal in solo situation when mobs are running around chasing you or your elemental. You should try D/F, it give you more survivability in melee range, or D/D if you want more mobility/cc. Both can stack some might to improve you dmg, which staff can’t really do.

Try to use you glyph of storm in Air and not in Fire. You have the same amount of direct dmg. Yes you lose the burning dmg, but you put vulnerability on mobs, which will increase your dmg way more, ideal for a burst.

Take a look at the Icebow, its the best burst dmg of the Elementalist and the skill 5 can deep freeze mobs in place so they don’t chase you/move while you burst them down.

It depend on ppl, which weapons they prefer. But its always a good idea to run with all of them and switch depending on the situation.

It work most of the time. On thing that can screw it up is ceiling. When the ceilling is low or when you are really close to a wall, comet or dragon tooth can be lost in it. You can try and see where it work and where it doesn’t work.

I’m NA so sorry. But I can give you some advice. As a guardian you have two main builds : Bunker and Medi. There is a lot more of them, but these two are the most popular and ’’easier’’ to play.

Bunker is mostly a team role. Its awesome to play with friends, but when you are alone it can be frustrating. Your goal here is to stay alive as much as possible and keep a point (usually the middle point) for as long as possible. You buy your teamates time to get back at mid to help you.

Medi build are the typical roamer/killer build. Its a high risk/high reward kind of build, you are squishy but can kill quickly. I can’t really give you much information about this build as I didn’t play as much Medi as I did as Bunker.

Both of these are more a family of build with different kind of trait and weapons available to fit what playstyle you prefer.

You can explore those two kind of builds on gw2 meta battle and ask more specific question depending on which you would prefer.

Ppl have a hard time to read. They buff LW. They decrease the casting time by 17%, but nerf the dmg by 10%. Overall its a buff.

Don’t mix pve and spvp pls.

In PvE, your dmg will come from direct dmg Lighting Whip. D/D is not that great in PvE because dagger off-hand don’t offer much while focus will give you the defensive capability to stay close to the target in difficult situation, but not a bit deal. You should keep zerker as celestial would be bad there.

In sPvP/roaming, your dmg come from everywhere and that’s why celestial will be efficient. You have the same skills, but the target is different. You gonna need the mobility, CC and healing that d/d provide you and condition will be more effective there. D/D ele in PvP will need to constantly switch attunement to use the most of all their skills while make the best use of swapping sigil like battle or energy. Your dmg will mostly come from Fire skills for burst and burning and air for the lightning whip.

Azure.8670:

I’m really concerned about the lw nerf for pve, I see why they did it for pvp. Are you sure it’s a buff? I don’t want to be forced into staff

Why did you have to make another thread? But anyway. It buff your speed attack by 17% and nerf your dmg by 10%. Make your own conclusion.

spoj.9672:

Thaddeus.4891:

Sublimatio.6981:

Lighting whip gonna be nerfed to ground instead of staff. Lol ^^

Well not the fault of Anet if you didn’t know that Lighting whip could be exploited to double the healing with diminishing the damage. Its was kind of broken when someone was exploiting it.

Whats this about? Lightning whip heals? Wot? I assume this is something in PvP.

Not LW by itself, but there is an exploit with the signet of restoration. You could have the full healing effect of a LW+Signet of restoration wihtout completing your LW fully. So you could make 1 whip, cancel, make 1 whip, cancel, etc. This give you as much dmg, but double the amount of healing from signet of restoration. That’s why sometime you can see the Ele heal himself constantly while you are doing a burst on him.

Azure.8670:

Lightning whip nerf really sucks.

They didn’t nerf it. They buffed it and fixed a exploit at the same time.

They reduce the cast time by 17% and decreased the dmg by 10%. Overall its a buff. And they needed to fix the LW exploit obviously.

Quick call 911 someone stole some letters on your keyboard.

Chasind.3128:

Ele didn’t need a nerf. I don’t see where the changes for D/D were necessary. I don’t play D/D & I still don’t think the nerf was necessary- They need to explain better why it was necessary. They seem to want more D/F, Staff & scepter/X, it’s like you wanna play a spec for fun or because you like it- anet nerfs it bc they don’t want you to play it.

Because of 2 reason.

1) D/D cele elementalist was on the top of the sPvP list like the cele Engineer. With the might nerf, there are both tune down a bit to make them more equal to other profession.
2) The Lightning whip exploit needed to be fix. An exploit that double the healing shouldn’t exist in the game.

I don’t think I would have nerf the might/sigil of battle like Anet did, but overall I don’t think it change anything in PvE, while in sPvP it will help balance Engineer and Elementalist a bit.

But for Warrior, this nerf could hurt us a bit for sPvP. Might was our thing. It made the difference between a bad Warrior and one with a good rotation to keep a high amount of might. I’m not against the nerf might, but Warrior were not in such a great place to begin with.

Do you believe that sPvP Warrior needed such a nerf? Do you believe there should have buff a bit the Longbow so we can stay competitive?

Sublimatio.6981:

Lighting whip gonna be nerfed to ground instead of staff. Lol ^^

Well not the fault of Anet if you didn’t know that Lighting whip could be exploited to double the healing with diminishing the damage. Its was kind of broken when someone was exploiting it.

Riku.4821:

I don’t see how their deaths put you at fault, if anything you’re better than they were because you survived. It is true that Ranger, Necromancers, and Engineers are the least wanted classes. I for one don’t care what profession you play, as long as you know how to play it and can listen to what I’ve got to say. I hate people who play meta builds, then blame people for doing poorly, the build means nothing. You’ll just have to find a party who are nice enough to not be jerks about silly things. Feel free to add me if you wish for that experience.

PS: For the person on the first page saying to blame the dev’s for the game being bad. The game works just fine thank you very much. It’s the community that’s lazy and want no fun just rewards to cover up as “fun”.
I run dungeons with minimal corner stacking and I get the same rewards you do and 10 times the fun.

Oh kitten , and all that time I was sure I was having fun. Thanks for telling me that in fact I never had fun and I was only there for the reward.

Oh and how is august 2014? I suppose its where you from because here we don’t stack in corner or kick engineer and ranger anymore.

You just missed Winterdays. You could take 1 more laurel per day by doing the winter’s daily. But right now you can only wait and log-in everyday. That’s kind of the goal of laurel. If you could farm laurel, then there wouldn’t have any point of having laurel.

Overall I like the change.

The lightning whip change to stop the exploit is really nice. Overall, these little change to engineer and elementalist will tone down just a little their dmg in sPvP, which is a good step. Not overnerf them because of ppl complening about the cele ele and engineer.

The big controversy will be the Might nerf. In PvE, this will change about nothing. Everybody will do a bit less dmg in organized group, but most pugs group will never see any different. But it won’t change a thing is how we play.

In sPvP this will mostly hurt Elementalist, Engineer and Warrior because they are the one that profit the most of the might and sigil of battle. For the first two, this won’t be much of a problem since they were just a little op recently. We’ll see what are the final result in-game, but I think this will help balancing PvP a bit.

For the warrior, its gonna hurt the profession a lot. This ways their main thing is PvP and one of the reason they were still competitive. They were able to pump a lot of might, more than ele or engineer and nerf will hurt them a lot since Warrior were not in such a good place in sPvP these days. Warrior will have some bad time ahead of them in sPvP I believe. Maybe a small buff to the Longbow would have been nice to not overnerf the warrior in sPvP.

Beldin.5498:

dlonie.6547:

Competent dungeon runners will tell you that all 7 PvE professions have a place in dungeon runs. .

Yeah .. and for some it are ALL 6 .. and for other ALL 5 ..

Not really. Its just that there is some variation.

Elementalist, Thief, Warrior, Mesmer and Guardian all have a place in records run.

Engineer and Ranger fall between two stools so they don’t really have a place in records run, but are excellent in speed runs.

Necro is ok, but don’t bring that much to the group.

So all 8 profession can do a good job, 7 profession can do a great job and 5 profession can do excellent job.

Asumir.1978:

And all the considerations to be given to the other members are important, as well.
This game is so not ‘me, me’, is it? It is very much a ‘we’ game.

It can what you prefer it to be. You can be a lone wolf in WvW roaming for the kill. I use to like to much running behind a enemy zerg and picking the fat kids one by one in their tail.

Or you can be part of a team in a zerg or in a dungeon, where each member will bring something specific to the table to boost the overall capability of the team. Thief don’t bring much defense, no problem the guardian got your back. Need more offensive buff? The Warrior is there to help, etc.

Or you can simply take whatever you want, where you want and complete the it. You won’t be efficient or quick, but it will work.

You have the freedom to do whatever you want and take on the challenge you want.

Dire or Rabid would be the best gear for a Necromancer Condi Roamer and ya it use a staff with a scepter/dagger.

Whatever you do, do not use assassin on your thief. In PvE, thief already have so much precision that it will be a waste in most party, while in WvW most thief build are build around the backstab and you have a trait that give you 100% crit chance when stealth, making precision one of the lest important stats for a Thief roamer. Of course there is exemption like a solo PvE thief or a S/D roaming thief that wouldn’t be hurt by assassin gear, but is most situation you shouldn’t have assassin gear on a thief.

GuzziHero.2467:

There is a soft trinity but its more like an octernary.

Guardian: healer
Warrior: flexibility
Thief: single-target damage
Engineer: AOE damage/support
Ranger: ranged weapons
Elementalist: DPS
Mesmer: distraction
Necro: conditions

My dream of dreams would be an 8 man dungeon where the party can only include one of each class.

Gonna fix it for you

Guardian: damage mitigation (healing really, please)
Warrior: damage buff
Thief: single-target damage + stealth
Engineer: Jack-of-all trades, master of none (except vulnerability)
Ranger: A warrior with less buff, but more dmg (certainly not range )
Elementalist: DPS
Mesmer: utilities
Necro : Whatever, who care in PvE (and that make me sad)

Only apply in PvE.

Caedmon.6798:

Thaddeus.4891:

Caedmon.6798:

Purple Miku.7032:

The overall really low damage is still really depressing, but I still can’t get over how awful it is that they still haven’t fixed the bug with our burst skills and the Berserker’s Power trait.

Really low dmg… ? That all depends on how you build your char,for e.g i can make a pure 4k tank build while still being able to crit for 5- 6k on final thrust..again thats Full tank.

Ya and 5-6k is really low dmg.

I was giving an example on how “Non zerk” can still do big numbers.5 – 6k is def not low dmg in my eyes ( Again..for a Full Tank ) ,youre talking about insta kill hits from 12 -15k and up when running full zerk,which is possible if you build for it.I dont really get the Op’s claim about low dmg tbh.I can have lots of complaints about warr,but dmg is not on that list.

Its 5-6k for a skill with a coefficient of 3. Its a higher coefficient than a Thief’s backstab. Now if you can tell me that you can do 5-6k dmg with a final trust while the enemy is more than 50% hp, that would be more impressive. Otherwise no.

Where you spent you trait pts is not bad at all, but which major trait you took is really not ideal.

Every pve guardian build should at least be 2/5/0/0/0 with Fiery Wrath and Blind Exposure. That’s like the baseline of the PvE Guardian.

The blind on F1 will increase drastically your survivability, especially against group of small mobs and the vulnerability that it give will increase your dmg by a couple of percentage.

Fiery Wrath will increase you dmg quit a bit even in solo since your F1 will put a good amount of burning to keep it up. In group, its should always be up depending with which profession you are playing.

When you use Sword on your secondary you should swap Radiant Fire to Powerful blades.

Focus will give you more survivability and overall dps because its skills are quick. The torch have better dps than focus by itself, but the skill 5 is a long channelling that make you lose time you could use with Sword or GS attacks. Torch is still really good in solo because of the burning procing Fiery Warth.

Hold the Line and Save yourselves are situational skills. Save youselves is good when you need the vigor and fury mostly, while stability is not that often needed in PvE. Retreat is YOUR main skill that should always be in your bar as one of the best survival skill you have. The other two skills should always be swap to the one you need. Wall of Reflection and Purging flames are usually the basic load out for a PvE Guardian, but take the utilities that will fit the situation. Renewed Focus will help you more than hounds if you know how to use it. Look at it this way. It give you another heal (F2), a blind (F1), a block (F3) and an invulnerability with the skill itself. That skill alone can save you thousands of incoming dmg.

The guardian have a low amount of hp so how can you survive? You need to time well enough your blind, aegis, block and invulnerability. That’s the bread and butter of the guardian in PvE. With renewed focus you have 1 invulnerability, 2 blind (F1) and 2 Aegis (F3), you have a 3rd Aegis with retreat, you have another block if you use Shelter, you have another blind with GS #3, another blind with focus #4, then 3 block with focus #5 and another blind with sword #2. That mean that you can receive ZERO dmg from 12 attacks from a mob. If you time them well enough, that can keep you and your team at 100% even for hard fight.

As for the situation on the Guardian DPS. Well its not that good. If you take all the best dps of all profession, the guardian rank at about 6th place. But its dmg isn’t that far from the Ranger, Warrior, Mesmer and Necromancer.

If you are dying a lot on a guardian, its because you are doing it wrong. It take a lot to down a guardian in PvE and your problem is probably that you are not using the huge active defense capability of the guardian. Which is the best in the game. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you are bad, it took me a WHILE to use the guardian at its best even if it my main, it took me about 6months to start to use my active virtues and about 12 months before being able to go full zerker with it.

kokiman.2364:

Farzo.8410:

Well, you can now replay the missions with achievement and challenge mode. Good luck.

I actually prefer serious answers

Well the serious answer is. Check how much you paid for the game and see if it was worth it. Living Story content is free, don’t give money in the gem store if you feel its not good enough content for you, but don’t feel entitled for more.

You can criticize the content itself saying that its not good enough or the story wasn’t good enough or things like that. The the amount of content was pretty much the same as it was in the last 2 years. They have enough resources to put that amount of content for the last 2 years, what do you expect? That they can double the amount of content? After a long break ya, but it was a two weeks break (you can’t count the two weeks of christmas as working time).

RNG is RNG stop seeing conspiracy theory behind it. My friend got 3 coat boxes in 2 runs. My other friend who’s doing silverwaste non stop since path only got 1. Its always like that with RNG. I used to do a lot of fractals and i never got 1 single ascended chest, neither weapons nor armor. I got 5 of them in the last 2 weeks.

RNG is RNG.

Caedmon.6798:

Purple Miku.7032:

The overall really low damage is still really depressing, but I still can’t get over how awful it is that they still haven’t fixed the bug with our burst skills and the Berserker’s Power trait.

Really low dmg… ? That all depends on how you build your char,for e.g i can make a pure 4k tank build while still being able to crit for 5- 6k on final thrust..again thats Full tank.

Ya and 5-6k is really low dmg.

Most WvW ZERG elementalist run 0/0/0/6/6 with the last two points where you want, soldier gear, zerker trinket. That’s the safest build for a more support elementalist that will always be ready to give water field to the melee train. Its also the best build to start as its give you a lot of option to survive.

From there, as you get better build will change a lot depending on what you prefer. Some ppl are ready to sacrifice some of their defensive trait in Arcana for some sweet offensive trait in Fire to make you lava front and meteor shower hit hard and often.

Other buy rune of strenght and use sigil of battle to stack might for more dmg wihtout sacrificing your defensive trait.

Other go almost glass canon for massive burst on the ennemies, but you better be ready to get the help out because its easy to die.

Asumir.1978:

Thank you, gentlemen.

Inferring from all the above I gather the following:

I have to carry my own ’Superman’s clothes-changing telephone booth’ everywhere I go, where I have to carry a wardrobe of three different full clothing/gear sets:

1. Dungeoneering and gallivanting about the countryside: Berserker Power- Precision- Ferocity
2. World Bosses: Soldier Power – Toughness – Vitality or Cavalier Toughness – Power – Ferocity Valkyrie Power – Vitality – Ferocity
3. WvW: Power Builds without Ferocity. Does this mean Power as any attribute (Major, medium, minor)?

Right. I see.
So it boils down to ‘glass cannon with group’.

Not necessarily. See in this game when you know your encounter you can survive anything without defensive stats by using your active defense. As a thief you don’t have much else than your two dodge and that enough for most dungeon. If you need more you can keep smoke screen in your bar. Its a very good option in the best builds to stealth ppl in dungeon, but if you need it you can put it on a boss to blind then and safe your group a couple hits. But just watch out if there is Sceptre elementalist that would want to stack might at the beginning of the fight (dropping your smoke screen at that time would kitten their things up). If you still need a bit help, you can take the trait Vigorous Recovery without sacrificing too much damage to give you some more dodge. But keep in mind that its normal to have some difficulty at the beginning. Not only you have to learn how the game work, you also have to learn how your profession work and the content. That’s a lot to learn at the same time so most ppl learn with some pieces of more defensive gear. You can take 2-3 pieces of soldier or valkyrie gear for example just to give you more room for errors. Then eventually get to all zerker as you get better and know more about the game.

You can’t crit on most world boss, but not all. You shouldn’t take a specific gear for World Boss unless its one of the major place where you fight. In that case, Soldier all the way and check on which world boss you can or cannot crit, don’t use your soldier gear on Triple Trouble for exemple, because the second phase need all the dps they can and you crit on it. If you do world boss from time to time i suggest that you use your WvW gear instead of keeping another set of armor for not much.

In WvW it depend on what build you are using. If you are using Dagger/Dagger or Dagger/Pistols (D/P is the most popular right now) your main source of damage is your backstab and you have a trait in that kind of build that allow you to have 100% crit chance when you are in stealth, making precision less useless than with other build. For that build Power, Vitality, Ferocity, Precision would be your stats priority until you reach a sweet spot in survivability (it depend on your play style, some ppl like to burst and flee, other like to play in the middle of the zerg). Make your own mix of zerker and Valkyrie gear to fix what you need.

Everyprofession have different ways to stay alive other than the two dodge they all have.

Warrior : Heavy Armor, High HP, but not much else
Guardian : Heavy Armor, Low HP, but they have hp regen, block and blinds to compensate
Elementalist : Light Armor, Low HP, but they have have a lots of boons and 4 times more skills than other profession. They also have a high amount of dmg to make them high risk high reward if you want to go that way.
Necromancer : Light Armor, High HP, but they have Death Shroud that act like a second hp bar.
Mesmer : Light Armor, Medium HP, but they have clones to take the hit for them and invisibility.
Thief : Medium Armor, Low HP, but they have a huge access to invisibility a high mobility and high damage and they also kind of a high risk-high reward profession.
Engineer: Medium Armor, Medium HP, but like the Elementalist they have access to a lot more skills than other profession and are independent in their field and finisher.
Ranger : Medium Armor, Medium HP, but they have pets and survival skills to boost their endurance.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

If you have a PS warrior on the group, it means that the ele or eles can run staff/scholar and maximize dps. Speedclear groups should not have eles with strength runes, it’s a waste of dps.

Also indeed, the only class that is in the meta only due to their dps is Ele. Grd is there for support, thief for stealth, and single target dps, and warrior and ranger, for the flat dps increase to the group. The rest 3 classes are very rarely part of anything. Engi has good things, but I would rather have a 2nd ele or a ranger than an engi. Mesmer is guardian alternative (yeah I know that record groups might bring one for portal cause they want to finish some seconds earlier but…) and necro is out of the question anyways.

If such thing as “low end of meta” exists, the warrior is far far away from it. It has been and always will be a must have class in a speedclear group. That takes the class to the top tier of meta.

I already changed my stance to that the warrior is in the middle of the meta, so we can argue semantic as much as you want, I already change my point so I don’t know why you repeat it here? We still have the same understanding of the role of the warrior. You almost always have a Warrior in your group (I think I only saw 1 record run without a warrior and it was AC path 2 if I remember) it was just the way I said it.

Bringing a PS Warrior so that ele can all bring Staff is partially true. It depend on the situation. Have a PS warrior with only staff ele is good, but not in all situation. In a typical casual speed run ya, but when your group is able to kill most boss under 20sec, there is no point of having a PS Warrior. Especially when the boss is green when you stack on him or you have to wait for the boss. Ele will stack might before the fight and burst the boss with Lighting storm and Icebow before their might will drop anyway. It depend on what you are doing exactly.

Anyway, the point of the post was the state of the Warrior and for PvE its in the meta. 1 Warrior should always be in a party in 99% of the time. Its in a good place where ever you put it in the meta. Where exactly he is in the meta is pointless at this point.

I use 4/6/2/0/2 is most dungeons.

4/5/0/0/5 In CM path 2, SE path 3 and for some paticular fight so I can bring both UC and MoC.

6/6/0/0/2 for Lupi or Bloomhunger. Sometime 4/6/0/0/4 if I feel lazy at Lupi.

3/5/0/4/2 for high level fractals.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Yeah, the CC stuff in PvE wouldn’t fly so well, but i figure if they spec/trait for damage and damage buffing for PvE that would work better in those areas.

Ya but a new profession would need a niche a role to fill. We already have the Ranger that does about the same role as the Warrior and the Necromancer with a limited role. What will be the role of the Phalanx? Defensive buff? The guardian already do that. Offensive buff? The Warrior and Ranger do that. Ok then a mix of both so you can switch depending on the situation? That would be better, but again that’s old role on a new profession only. If they really gonna bring another profession, they must give him a role so it feel unique, not just an old profession in a new outfit or a mix of old profession with a new paint job and some new toys.

What will it be? I don’t know, pretty much all the role are already taken by the other profession. Weakness and Vigor and stuff that no other profession can share as a group to buff them. Most profession can give vigor only to themselves and not much of them can give weakness to hard boss like in Fractals so we can melee them. Will it be enough for a new profession? I doubt it. Maybe they gonna change an aspect of the game in the expansion. Maybe they gonna make condition more viable in PvE, or make CC viable and that new profession could make use of that. Maybe they could add some new stuff that we don’t think about right now. Its hard to see what other role could there be in PvE.

Damage AoE : Elementalist
Damage single target and stealth: Thief
Damage buffing : Warrior, Rangers
Defence buffing : Guardian
Utilities : Mesmer
Jack-of-all trade : Engineer
Nothing : Necromancer