Guild Wars 2

All three are good both in PvE and PvP.

- Engineer are more versatile. There is a lot of different way to play it and you can adapt to a situation rather quickly. But they usually harder to play. You need to remember your skills and your cooldown when you switch from 1 kit to the other. In PvE, they are rarely needed, but rarely hurt your team.

- Mesmer can be powerful, but can be hard to master and need timing to make the best use of your illusions. Two Mesmer with the same outfit and look can be so confusion for your enemy. In PvE, Mesmer are well known for their utilities. For some dungeon like Arah or Fractals, they are fantastic. For other dungeon, they bring little.

- Thief are the best in small encounter. If you can’t outfight, you can disengage without much problem. Depending on your build you can burst down in a hit and run gameplay or have really high sustain for longer fight. But thief are usually easy to see coming when you know how to play them. They usually only have a limited amount of trick they can do depending on their weapons, so one you figure out their type, they are easy to counter if you have the right setup yourself. In PvE, like Mesmer they are mainly there for utilities. Blind and Stealth mostly. They are invaluable in fractals like dredge and dungeon like Arah or CM. But for other dungeon, they don’t bring much. Back when FGS what a big deal they had a bigger role.

You really went to the extreme if you started with a full zerker Ele. It is the best way to play it, but it’s the hardest too.

Like sorrychief said, D/F is a good weapon set for harder content or if you have difficulty to survive with S/X. Staff is between both in term of difficulty. For S/X you are usually in melee range, D/F and Staff you can a least stay in a 300 range, leaving you a bit more room. But Staff don’t have as much defensive skills as D/F.

You can also switch. Some Elementalist use D/F in high level Fractal, but play S/X in dungeon that they are used to play.

- I’m a completionist so I wanted to complete all of them.
- To level up my alts
- To have access to some gift for Legendary and some special exotic weapons. Usually cheaper to craft than buy those.
- To craft ascended armor and weapons because it the only reliable way to have a complete set.
- Some food are cheaper to craft than buy.
- You can make a profit with some crafting.

I wouldn’t start again. I would be just so kitten off.

But I think that I would restart with a Ranger. I have all 8 profession, but I really only play Thief, Guardian and Elementalist for a long time. I know the Ranger is not better than it used to be and its the profession that I played the least, so it would be the less repetitive profession to play again.

Really really bad for PvE. You want as little passive defensive as you can. Your ideal would be 100% offensive stats and no defensive stats, but that’s not someone that everyone can play or enjoy playing.

First choose what weapons you like to play and that are good in PvE.

Hammer/GS or GS/Sword&Focus are the best two choice for PvE. But there is other option that can do the job. With the right build Hammer alone can do a great job, meaning that you can bring a staff if you want camp if and only use it between fight or in the beginning of the fight. Scepter is good against big target and you can keep it as back up for harder content if you need it.

Check out the guide from ’’Obal’’. You can adapt it to your need and your playstyle.

Warrior is one of the most passive way to play the game. Don’t get me wrong, you playing Warrior can be really challenging if you want to be really good with it (especially in PvP). But the Warrior job in PvE is usually to put banners, give passive buff, use FGJ when ready and bash the hell out of all mobs, pretty straight forward, not much thinking or preparation when you play casual.

The guardian is not that bad either for that. But for some dungeon, some party will expect the guardian to do some specific stuff. Guardian is all about active defensive skills. Put a wall of reflection to protect your team. Pop an aegis so your team don’t have to dodge. Spam blind to keep your team alive. Give them stability so they are not knock back in a risky situation. Guardian are also on of the best profession to rez people (with thief).

You can play the Guardian passive, but you will lose a lot of the strength of the profession.

Maybe you should keep playing Warrior. You are only level 30 man. Go through you story, level up to 80, learn your profession, experiments with different build, get yourself an exotic gear set, then try again in sPvP. Of course right now, you will have a hard time in sPvP. You don’t know your profession, don’t know which build is best for your, don’t know what the other profession can do and what are your counter. Take it slow, learn your profession.

There is so many kind of people. There could be a lot of different reason why they kicked you. Maybe they remember you from another time, maybe your class, level or your amount of AP wasn’t good for them. Maybe they tried to kick someone else and made a mistake, maybe they tried to do another action and kicked by mistake. (Can’t tell you the number of times I guild kicked someone by mistake lol).

ProRulez.5207:

Thanks for the replies, thing is, im in the army, i can’t realy farm every day.
i just want to come back home for the weekend and have fun playing.
so unmotivating all that precurser situation.

Legendaries are the hardest item to get in the game. Of course, if you play only during the weekends, it will be really hard to get precursor, its supposed to be that way.

Just enjoy the game and eventually, you’ll be able to get your Legendary.

MMO will always be like that. They can’t produce fresh new content that will give you good amount of gold as fast as the players will be able to go through it. And remember that GW2 don’t have a monthly fee, meaning that if not enough people buy gems, then they won’t have as much staff to create new content.

That’s a huge paradox of MMORPG. A lot of people that play these games, want to play it almost everyday. But if you play it several hours per day, you will burn through content really fast and end up with grinding gold to get other stuff.

I’ll just start by saying. I never kick someone because of what is his build or how he play. I usually have a hard time of doing that, but when it happen and I kick or quit its usually not because of a weapon, but several difficulties that add up and make the run terrible.

That said, I’ll never use Hammer in PvE myself for different reason. Keep in mind, i’m not talking about PvP or WvW hear, only PvE. Hammer is really good in PvP and WvW, so I won’t talk about that.

1) You said Hammer is less DPS, but bring other stuff? Ya of course. But that other stuff is not really useful in PvE. Weakness is actually a good thing in PvE. Its a defensive condition ya, but like protection it allow you to melee and burst down some mobs that would otherwise kill you in zerker gear if you don’t have it or you are play it the right way (fractal high level especially). Fumble is an effect of weakness so its not a different reason, its the same. But then, you have cripple and hard cc. But it never really useful in PvE. You may want to pushback a mob in a corner or decrease the number of Defiant to move the boss, but that’s really situational. And in most of these case, you can equip Hammer with a GS, use the cc of the Hammer, then switch to GS for the rest of the fight. After that fight, you get back to GS + Axe or whatever you use.

2) I’m not sure about your point here. GS have more movement skill, but you usually don’t really care about that in dungeon. Ya in some situation like in arah, the GS is handy, but like for the hammer you could equip it only at that precise moment. This is not a good reason to use or not use any of those 2 weapons as your main weapon.

3) DPS, well that’s the main reason. The main focus of any build is the dps. Ya you will sacrifice some personnal dps for more offensive support, but only in the optic of having a better overall party dps. Even when you decide to go for defensive stuff like the Guardian with hammer protection, etc. It’s usually only to allow your team to stay in melee range against harder boss to do more overall DPS. But even more than DPS is time. You will sacrifice some dps to get a thief that will allow you to skip some stuff. So from this point of view, the Hammer is not the right choice.

- Surviability : I can survive on my Ele in full zerker gear, no defensive utilities, no condition removal, no defensive boons and even no healing skill since I use it to stack might before the fight. Its hard as hell and for the couple first weeks of doing that I used to die like 5-10 times during a dungeon path. But I got better and now rarely die in most normal dungeon. I do fractal high level with my Guardian and I use the full dps meta. You can survive just fine in those condition. So the argument of dead dps in no dps only work if someone don’t have the skill to survive so he personally need more defence. And don’t take it badly. Someone its because someone is new, or someone just don’t play enough to develop the skill to survive, or just don’t give a crap because he don’t have fun in that kind of stuff or simply he don’t think he can do it (which was my case for about a year btw on my guardian).

In the end my personal view is :
- Hammer is a not a good PvE weapon, pls don’t try to advocate that it is.
- Its a game, and in the end you can play how the hell you want.
- Internet is full of jerk for all side. Ya some ppl will call you off on your choice, if you can’t take it then quit on the internet because that won’t stop ever.
- In 99% of party, if you have good knowledge of the encounter, are a good player, but have a half good build you will do just fine. You won’t really hurt your team, the party will complete the run in an average amount of times, not record time, not speed clear time, just average time.
- Hammer is a visible way to tell that someone is not using a meta pve build. But A LARGE majority of the player don’t use it neither. They hide in with their gear and trait, but I can guarantee you that a lot of ppl use far more terrible build that an hammer zerker build in PvE.

Your build is good man, no need to change the trait. But the skills need some reworking. First of all, S/D have a good burst damage, but terrible sustain dps. So if you don’t use lighting hammer, you will have a terrible build. I suggest that you replace lighting flash for it, especially since Flash is not that good anymore (use to be a break stun before).

The two other thing are your healing skill and arcane shield. You are fairly new to elementlist, so keep them for now. Elementalist meta can be hard to play at first so those two skill will help you survive while you get better on it. But eventually, you will want to change those two skill. S/D build are mainly for might stacking, so Arcane Brilliance as your healing skill will give you and your team more might. Arcane Shield is good in some situation, but you mostly want to have either Signet of fire or Frostbow in there. In the end, only your healing skill and arcane wave shouldn’t move of your bar. The rest of your utilities will change depending on the situation.

maxinion.8396:

(don’t forget mesmers)

Well lets not generalize pls.

Mesmers can achieve massive dmg, even enough to get to the top. But to achieve that, they need 3 phantasm up. So they have the potential to be really good against boss, they are just not that good against trash mobs and their dps suffer A LOT if the player is not good. On the other hand, a Necromancer will never reach high dps, even if they are the best.

Engineer is usually better because
1) They can do more DPs, but watch out, you need a special rotation of kit which can be hard to master if you want to get the max dps out of your engineer. If you don’t, you will drop drastically in that categories and then there won’t be that much difference between engie and necro.
2) Engineer bring better support than necro. Its the best profession to put vulnerability (which is powerful), they can stealth, and far more.

The problem is, if Necro is view as the worth profession for Dungeon, the community is still slip for the Engineer (mainly because not enough ppl play it). Some say that Engineer’s capability to give vulnerability and take care of multiple type of support make him the jack of all trades that allow to be useful in all situation. The rest say, that ya its a Jack of all trades, but you will always find another profession better at something specific. Since most ppl have several character, its easy to always form a better team, that the one with an Engineer.

In the end, any profession can do a good job. The most important thing is to build it right. You can have an Elementalist (which is view as the best for dungeon right now), but if you build it for condition or tanky, then a Necromancer with the right build will be more useful.

True meta profession sound kind of weird, but i get the idea.
- Elementalist is the best dps and can bring Frostbow or FGS for some high burst dps. Depending on the build, it can bring A LOT of might and fury to the team. But to achieve meta build on an Elementalist, you won’t have much passive or active defense, so that will be hard at first. During the first week of using a meta on my Ele, i use to down like 5-10 times in a dungeon path.
- Warrior is the best offensive group support. With banners, EA, FGJ, Phalanx, warrior can boost massively the group all by himself. Banners will never hurt you own dmg, but EA and Phalanx will. So you can find a balance between your own dps and the dps boost that you bring for the team.
- Guardian is the best at defensive group support. Its dps is between a full support and a full dps warrior, but most of his support don’t really change the personnal dps of a guardian like it does on a warrior. Guardian is a safety net in some dungeon, but a truly important part of the team in other. A guardian can keep his team full health during a good period of times with block, blind, reflect, protection etc, which will boost the dps of his group (like scholar buff) and allow them to burst down some ’’harder’’ boss.
- Thief have the best single target dps, can bring good amount of vulnerability, are the best to pick up Elementalist conjure weapons and give enough stealth to allow the team to skip big chunk of a dungeon.

These are the 4 most popular in the moment. Mesmer can do massive dps, but its hard to get that high in normal condition, while ppl learned to do most stuff without the mesmer utilities that seem so important a year ago. The Ranger can boost the dps party, but not enough while having one of the worst personnal dps, so having a good range won’t hurt your team, but won’t really help it either.

Zerker. PvT won’t help you team at all, only give you and only you some survivability at the expense of a great part of your dps.

The Hammer fractal build on the other hand will give constant protection to your team and all the support you need to keep you and your team alive, while sacrificing only a small part or your dps.

I don’t mind if ppl use them or not.

- Sometimes you just don’t think about it. You pop one, then complete 3 path and figure out that the 3rd path you completed it without any potion. Or you simply don’t think about it at all.
- Some ppl play dungeon from time to time or stopped to play dungeon on a regular basis. So they don’t really care to have several potions in their inventory just for that.
- Some ppl don’t really know about it or don’t think its important enough. After all, they complete most dungeon in a fair amount of time without them. They can be PHIW ppl, but they can also be meta zerker build ppl that will complete the dungeon maybe 1min after a group with full potion and food.
- You can be playing on an Alt. Even if you have a complete set of potion in your main or even 2-3 of your character, you could be playing another character at some point, that don’t have any potion.
- You can have a limited inventory. Either you don’t play fractal and find bags costly, so you keep your 15 slots bags wihtout any updage in the number of bags. That give you a rather limited amount of place to cary around 5-10 potion, + secondary weapons + maybe a WvW gear + some food + booster, etc. Maybe that you rather scrap the potion and keep the other stuff that you use more.

So, there is plenty of good reason not to use potion. Personally, I have most of them and use them on my 2 main dungeon character. But it wasn’t always like that and even today I sometimes forget about it or use an alt without any.

Condition is a really bad thing in PvE dungeon. In group, you will max several condition even with direct damage player only, if you add a condition player, then it will drop the global dps of the group, not by much, but it there. And if you get in a group that already have a condition player, then one of the two will be screwed. Condition are really good for solo, and would be also good if there is only 1 in a group, but for pugs you can’t really police that, so most ppl don’t use condition build because direct damage always work at their maximum.

For PvE, ranger can be ok, but they are never the best option. They are still better than a Necromancer, but most other profession come before them after that.

Why? Ranger have one of the worst dps (Fully buffed, they reak 9k DPS, compare to warrior 12k, Guardian 11k or Elementalist 14-15k). They have a good offensive buff with spotter + frostspirit, but at best it only make thing even compare to the lost in dps of a ranger compare to another profession. So even if brining a ranger won’t probably hurt your team, it won’t help it much. One other point to consider is that for a ranger, its harder to get to their max dps.

- About 10-15% of your DPS come from your pet. If you don’t manage it right or if the AI kitten up (its an AI, of course it will kitten up), then you dps can decrease drastically even if you’re the best at this.
- To get full DPS, you will need to master the art of the sword. Trap in the sword animation, it can be hard to dodge, which can be dangerous in melee range. A lot of ppl give up the sword for Greatsword only, which is not that bad, but decrease even more the already limited amount of the Ranger’s DPS.
- You have limited support capability. You have some reflect, and fury which is really good, but other than that, you mainly have stuff like water field and stuff that help you after the damage is done and not to prevent it. You have access to vulnerability but mainly with a bow, which is not a good option.

Don’t get me wrong. A good ranger can be awesome, and the skill of someone will be far superior than the capacity of his profession. But a equal level of skills by the player, most other profession will bring more than a ranger. Its bad, but its the truth and ranger need more love for a long time now. Anyway, it can be a challenging and interesting profession to play, but it come with some disadvantage and plague with a bad reputation that could get you kick from parties.

For Guardian PvE :
- Shield of Avenger is a weird choice. Its helpful, but very situational. Usually the standard utilities for a meta build is wall of reflection, purging flames and retreat, and retreat is the one that you usually never remove of your bar.

Here a list of good build for Dungeon. They are have between 10 to 11.5k of dps once fully buffed, so they are all top DPS build. For each category, the build are usually in order of best dps to less dps. But since they are pretty close to each other, the order can change depending on what buff and equipment you have.

P.S. : UC = Unscathed Contender, MoC = Master of Consecration

Greasword + Sword/Focus Build
- 6/6/2/0/0 : Best DPS
- 4/6/4/0/0 : Good DPS, but also give you a bit amount of toughness and Strength in numbers for you team.
- 4/6/2/0/2 : Sacrifice some dps for MoC or UC
- 4/5/0/0/5 : Sacrifice some dps to add Absolute Resolution

Hammer + Greatsword
- 5/5/0/4/0 : Best DPS
- 5/5/2/0/2 : Sacrifice some dps for MoC or UC
- 3/5/0/4/2 : Sacrifice some dps for Writ of Persistence (constant protection) and MoC or UC. That’s the fractal build.
- 4/5/0/0/5 : Sacrifice some dps to add Absolution Resolution

Hammer camping
- 5/5/0/4/0 : This give you about 95% of the dps of a normal build. But you can bring whatever secondary weapon you want and don’t have to care about proper dps rotation. Do you need a range weapon just in case? Do you are really into that staff? Here your best choice to bring decent dps, while using you favourite non meta weapon. Keep in mind that the less you use the hammer in favor of that other weapon, the more your DPS will decrease, so this is not a magic build to make you Auto-attack staff break record.

Greatsword + Sceptre
- 6/6/2/0/0 : Sceptre can be really good against large enemy because of smite. I’m really not a fan of this build because its situational, and if you really need a scepter as secondary just in case because you are new with the meta guardian low hp, then you are better with the Hammer camping build with scepter as a secondary.

For Warrior PvE, you’re pretty spot on. But there is several build that is almost equal to those three. We are talking about 1-5% less dps overall, so people should choose whatever they like the most.

Personnal DPS build
- 6/5/0/0/3 : The build you already have in the website. Its the max dps in most occasion. Its less personal dps than pure GS, but give you a lot more vulnerability, making it the best choice in most case. But the rotation can be a bit tricky for some ppl.
- 6/6/0/2/0 pure GS : The GS will give you a better personnal dps, but overall will have less dps than a GS + Axe because of vulnerability. It will be the best choice if you have other player taking care of vulnerability, but not by much and this happen rarely. Without the rotation, it will easier to get max dps with that build and you always have access to the GS utilities like the evade.
- 6/6/0/2/0 pure Axe : It less personal DPS than GS + Axe or Pure GS. But its the best to give Vulnerability. The problem is it don’t give enough vulnerability to compensate the lost in DPS. So it will always be behind the two other build, even if its not by much. It will be between 3% and 5% less DPS depending on the amount of vulnerability the party will give. The more vulnerability the party can give, the less good this build will be. If you really like the Pure axe gameplay, you are better with the EA pure Axe build, but 3-5% dps is so little, that its not that big of a deal.

EA pure Axe Build
- 4/6/0/4/0 : The exact build in the website. No much to add. In most case, the advantage of EA over the personnal lost of dps is small but still significant. But the more you play with ppl that use bad low DPS build, the less EA is good. In normal pugs, EA or not EA is irrelevant since the different in dps is so small. Take what you like the most.

Phalanx
- 0/5/0/6/3 : Sacrifice some might for more vulnerability. In most if not all situation, this will be the best option since Vulnerability is way harder to get than might. The might that you don’t produce can be produce by a lot of your party member to keep it to 25. While in most situation, you will have plenty of space for more vulnerability.
- 0/6/0/6/2 : Even if GS + Axe Phalanx is usually better, Pure GS is not trash. It give you more personnal dps and give you a bit more might to keep it at 25 all the time. If you prefer GS, there is no reason not to.

DimaDunedin.8965:

I’m playing mid-level warrior and thinking about which way to go, so after spending some time with build calculator I wonder does the build really matter that much?

Let’s consider greatsword with 5 signets/Deep Strike build. I put 6 trait points into arms, with Deep Strike I have 36% critical chance. With 150% critical damage it transfers to 18% overall damage increase. So after spending half of all trait points I’ve got a bit more damage, which sounds more like “barely visible” then game changer

Or am I wrong?

Until you reach level 80, the build don’t make that much of an impact. But at level 80, ya its a really big deal. For exemple, with the elementalist, the damage modifiers from a build alone (not counting the stats, cooldown reduction, etc) can boost your dmg by 200%+.

And, the difference between walled or unwalled is not that high, since you can interrupt your whirlwind in the middle of the enemy by switching weapons and continue to dps him. You don’t need to fly far away or stop using whirlwind when you are not in a wall. Ya you lose dps and its harder and you can screw up more compare to when you are walled, but its not that big of a deal.

Ya i see what you mean. But not all ppl can and want to do all the math. Of course, it depend on a lot of factor and using a percentage is far from perfect. But it will give you a good idea of the situation. Anyway, even if you do the best math possible, it change so much during even a run. Someone forget its potions, the might, fury and vulnerability vary, a banner is in CD, etc. So even if you do the perfect math, its won’t be representative and never will be. So a percentage will do the job just right. But your right, you need to use your head when you use the percentage. But it give you a general idea of the EA buff. Its range from 3 to 6 percent depending on the situation. It different than a buff that give you a 10-15% buff.

lordhidetora.3189:

That’s right, I better play this game like it’s my fulltime job. And by “PHIW,” I am guessing you mean “pew.” If so, pew pew. If not please enlighten me.

PHIW = Play How I Want, not pew pew.

Wethospu.6437:

I don’t really care about the result. But I care about people spreading misinformation (basing their results on nothing).

What does your 4% tell if you can’t get any reliable results out of it?

You begin to really kitten me off right now. Its just a number dude relax. Its not misinformation based on nothing, it based on the math I did on DPS, which is really similar to other ppl number so I figure out that even if i’m probably not 100% perfect, I’m not that far from the truth.

All the dps numbers were fully buffed. For a thief Sw/P it gave me + 3.8% dps with EA, for a Sword Ranger it gave me +3.4% dps, for a Elementalist its about +3.8% dps. If i remove fury, vulnerability, might, banners, but keep a meta build and gear, then the numbers are more 5.6% for Elementalist, 4.4% for rangers, and 5.1% for the thief.

Now you see that the % change. The more dps you have the less impact it have. But the numbers don’t seem to drop more even if you drop your dps. If i remove all the damage modifier on the thief, the food, potions and sigil it is still at 5.1% dps increase. So that’s why I said that 4% will give you a good idea of what EA will provide to you group.

Fully buffed meta build do around 9k-16k dps depending on your profession.
Pugs that can’t maintain all buff, but still use meta build usually have around 7-11k dps depending on the composition and profession.
Pugs without any meta build will do between from 3k to 10k dps. (Build can vary by a lot so its hard to pinpoint a smaller range of dps.

That’s is the information from where I base my conclusion. With bad pugs, EA is not worth it, with normal good group it doesn’t really matter if you have or not EA, while on good organized group, this will help, but not by much.

I didn’t want to stack 2min of fury. I just said that it happen once.

Trying to put more diversity is not equal to pushing for more crutch mechanics or bring poor build up to the efficiency of good build.

Take for exemple Staff Elementalist. Its a range weapons, but its also one of the best DPS weapon in the game once you build it right. I play meta build and I like it. Everytimes someone try to change the game to make defensive gear viable over zerker gear, I call them out because defensive gear is by definition a suboptimal gear only for those that need defensive gear.

Its all about balance. I’m not saying make range weapon better only because I want to play range weapons, because actually I don’t really like that. I’m just saying, I’m sure there is a way to make more weapons and build viable. If we can, that’s great, if we can’t too bad, but not a big deal.

Would it be terrible, if a longbow could have a good DPS but only single target. Making the ranger a really good profession against boss, especially since it can give a good amount of vulnerability and it something that can lack in several party. Of course, someone using a Longbow in the rest of the dungeon would be pretty stupid, and you should carry another weapons like a Sword or a GS for the rest of the dungeon.

But this can’t be possible as long as the boons range is that small. But like I said, if it too wide or if its completely remove this would be bad too. A larger tactical circle within which you can move around and still receive boons. Something that the devs could use to make some boss that move around and where stacking wouldn’t be the best solution. Just to be clear, I like stacking when there is a challenge to it, but not when its braindead and its the only solution possible in most situation.

Again, its all about balance. I would like Condition Duration gear for a specific vulnerability or weakness build, I would like condition damage to be efficient in group content, etc. I like the current system, I just want more diversity to it. And I’m not talking about diversity in the way maha talk. Ya you can use range weapons or condition damage, but its kitten right now, so i don’t use those.

I don’t want to make Staff build viable in dungeon, its a support weapons for WvW and its just fine the way it is and should stay outside of dungeon for most situation. But there is no reason to ban all range weapons. We already have staff Ele and Scepter guardian can be good against very large mobs, so why not more?

If you want a definitive answer go do the math yourself man and stop bursting my balls. I said that the 4% wasn’t the whole answer and a lot of ppl always give information with fully buffed DPS numbers. I won’t take the time to do the math on a pugs build, because that can range from 2k up to 10k dps.

Then I don’t have any good answer for you man. Like I said, I remember having about 2min of fury at some point, but it was about 1 months ago. One guys in the party said kitten, 2min of fury guys and I saw it when I looks it up. Can’t really remember what was our party composition sorry. I think it was at the final boss of SE path 3, and in my guild the guardian usually give everybody stability so we don’t get knownback and the boss spawn some destroyer of Earths. So probably that allowed ground was up (give boons duration) and I was playing with one of my friend that play ranger so he probably used the warhorn skill that give more than 10sec of fury if I remember. I won’t do the math, but I thinke its possible to reach 2min of fury, even if its very situational and not at all important.

Wethospu.6437:

So let’s say using EA I lose 5% of my damage. Everyone else gains 4% damage.

Worth of it or not?

Really. What do you want to achieve here man? I already said, the percentage on it own mean nothing, you need to apply it to a specific situation in order to have an answer.

Lets take this the other way around. What would you give in place of a percentage if you were in my place?

Wethospu.6437:

So in your opinion 520 is same as 160?

If I lose 2000 for using EA, it’s a huge difference whether everyone gets 160 or 520.

I didn’t said that. The percentage was only to give a measure. The better DPS your party have, usually mean that EA will be a better investment. But again, the better the party DPS is, then the less EA will affect them.

Usually, in a fully buffed party, EA will be good. Not spectacular, but good. In normal, party, it will be only a small buff, while in bad group, it will be a waste.

You can’t take a decision whatever its good or not to bring EA just by looking at 4%. But it give you an estimation of what will be the result of having or not the 4%, so someone can figure out, when its a good thing to have and when it not. Its only a tool. If you need a house, be glad if someone is giving you an Hammer, don’t say that a Hammer can protect you from the rain.

4% all by itself don’t help you much to make up your mind. But its a tool that will help you figure it out. If I said that EA give around 2000 dps to a party, it would be a lie and wouldn’t help most ppl at all. But on a party of bearbow and AH staff guardian, it won’t boost the dmg by 2000 dps.

I really don’t think that removing the range factor would be a good idea. But boosting it to like 2000, 1500, 1000 range? Enough so that someone don’t need to be always stacked. Don’t also mean that stacking would be useless. For sPvP, i don’t know. 1000 range seem pretty good, but 2000 seem a bit too range in the small map used in sPvP. And I don’t really like that sPvP and the rest of the game have too much of different rules. So maybe 1000 range would be better.

The point is, its a step toward more diversity in meta build. I like that I can Hammer camp, use GS + Sw/F, or GS + Hammer or GS + Scepter and still do really good dmg (even if GS + Scepter is situational). I would like more good option that feel different. And for ranger its really, really limited. Why not work toward finding a nice for those weapons to make them useful? I would like to see the ranger longbow being one of the best Single Target in the game, while putting a good amount of vulnerability. A Sw/Warhorn + Longbow meta ranger would be nice too see. A longbow build that can actually bring something to the party. Who can be against that?

Anyway, I think that setting the range of boons and buff to something like 1000 range would bring a bit more tactical mobility, while not removing the fact that you need to stay relatively close to your teamates.

Wethospu.6437:

Do you guys realize that 4% boost, 6% boost or whatever doesn’t actually mean anything?

10% boost to build A is different than 10% boost to build B. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.

No its not. Now, if you said it boost 2000 dmg, it will only work if you talk about fully buffed meta build party.

But when you want to compare different build, then % make more sense. If you have a guy doing 4000 dps, EA will bring is dps to about 4000 * 1.04 = 4160. If someone else is doing about 13 000 dps, EA will bring is dps to about 13 000 * 1.04 = 13 520 dps. So that work perfectly. 4% boost is the same for everybody, but the actual dps that this produce is different. Of course the 4% is only a small trick to estimate the difference. Its not the same for everybuild neither. Some build will get better return from the power, while other won’t be as much. For some build its more around 3-4% while other, it more 4-5%. But its a good estimation.

VodCom.6924:

What we call meta builds are “speed clear meta builds”. We should not confuse both.

The speed clear meta is a proof of the lack of experience the dev had when they first designed dungeons, since most mobs can be los’ed and bosses killed before they can do anything interesting (spider in AC).

Things are starting to change however: I noticed woodenpotatoes stated that mobs during LS2 are “convincing” him to move away from berserker, just for extra survivability since mobs are much less forgiving in dry top.

There is no official definition, which make things a bit confusing sometimes. For me a meta build is a range of build that do decent dmg. For ele its Staff, S/X LH or D/F, and each of these familly can have several variation depending if you need more fury, vulnerability, pure dmg, etc. For other ppl, it mean only 1 build, the best build, which for me is stupid since the best build depend on so many thing like the situation, the party composition and your level of skills.

But I really don’t think that what WP said point in the direction of change, neither that i think it should change on that particular point. Its new content and we may or may not have some difficulty completing some of that new content in Beserker gear. AC was view as a really hard dungeon during the first months of the game and same thing happened when they changed it. But look at it now. For any content that dev will throught at us, the community will eventually find the best way to complete it and more and more ppl will be able to complete it with minimum defence. Some ppl may have difficulty with, but the best player will never remove their zerker gear and still be able to complete it, because they are that, the best player (whoever they are).

haviz.1340:

How do you end up with 2 minutes of fury? Do you use additional boon duration? The theoretical max I can get is 90 seconds.

Well, it was most likely because I’m usually not the only one giving fury in the group. Even in guild run, we usually don’t adjust our composition much so Warrior and Ranger probably add some time to my own fury. Anyway, its been a long time since the last time I used persisting flames on my LH Ele, but I clearly remember seeing 2min+ of fury sometimes. But like I said, it was most probably because of other source of fury too. Anyway, the point wasn’t about the exact time of fury, it was more to point out that a S/X Ele with Persisting Flames can give enough fury by its own.

haviz.1340:

Thaddeus.4891:

haviz.1340:

I’m clueless about lh rotations but even I wouldn’t use comet there.

Indeed you are clueless since several ppl use comet indeed. Its not a good dps, but that’s a blast. Since LH Elementalist are mainly about might stacking you can see how it’s important.

Bolded for emphasis.

OH you mean in that position in the rotation? Ok got it, sorry.

That’s is 6% ’’power’’ increase, which is about 3-4% ’’damage’’ or ’’dps’’ increase.

It is worth taking in most situation, but not that much. So both option are good. You can be a full dps warrior or a EA warrior, you will bring about as much to your party. You are not more and less selfish by using any of those two build.

Ya like Maxinion said, its usually fully buffed dps. Its the best way to make comparaison between different build since if someone do the math with 10 might, the other with some vulnerability, the other don’t take into account fury, etc that would be super messy and we just couldn’t make comparison between different build. Ppl that reach that kind of DPS are really rare. Not only do you need to max your character, but you also need the right composition to full buff the party, which is rarely done. But anyway, like I said, that’s mostly for comparison.

Tripzter.8623:

I have something to say about that.. I usually play with a friend and if ppl from the guild wanna come its fine, but sometimes we take some outside ppl, and the new excuse everyone, guildies or not, uses is that they dont want to blast my fields because my blasts give fury and their blasts dont (if I am the only ele on the group its no use, I gotta take Fire XI – Persisting Flames whether I want or not) so they leave the blasts to me (thanks alot my friends <.<).
So trying some other builds without 6 in Fire is a no go.. And since I really don’t like to start a fight with pretty much every skill on CD, I usually stack might with another set. Using S/D as a main set, I change to S/F to stack, and Comet is a really precious blast. Not really hard to use it on a field either. And… Well.. You are already stacking might and fury, so why not use Comet aswell for that purpose?

And btw, anyone else got that awsome excuse before?

Ya I saw that escuse before. Its bullkitten. A S/X LH Elementalist can do 6 blast. With persisting flames that 60sec of fury. WAY more enough that you need before the next set of blast. In dungeon, with a LH persisting flames Elementalist you can end up with 1-2min of fury after some fight. And your party blasting, don’t restrict you of blasting yourself, making that even more of a bad reason, not to blast.

Ok passive offense was not the best way to put it. Its just that its easy with a warrior to do good damage. That’s also why it was view as the best dmg in the game for a long time when the game was launched. PPl didn’t figure out how to play the game exactly and the first good setup was 4 warriors and 1 mesmer. Why? 4 OMM and 4 FGJ will give you a pretty good base of Vulnerability and Might, while fury wasn’t a much a problem. Its easy to get high dmg with a party of warrior.

And ya, you are right, if you want to max the dmg of a warrior, you gonna have to master a rotation that most ppl can do. But normal dmg is easy to reach on a warrior. I guess it get back to the defense of the warrior. Ppl feel more comfortable to go full berserk on a warrior because of all the HP pool and the heavy armor. Its kind of psychological, but its there. It pretty standard for ppl on a warrior to have a lot of zerker gear on them even if they are casual, but go on an Elementalist and you gonna see ppl with defensive gear and trait that try to get 14-18k hp on them just to feel safe. I’m not saying that out of nowhere, even within the best dungeon guild back in the days, the Warrior was view as the best dps of the game. Not only because of pure personnal dps, but because of all the offensive support they can bring wihtout much problem. The change in mentality from ‘’Warrior is best dps of the game’’ to ‘’Ele is best dps of the game’’ is not that old. We started to hear about LH build about a year ago, but at that time the build was view as interesting, but not as good as Warriors.

Ya blind, aegis and such are as easy as dodging, or almost as easy. But, again you’ll be surprise at the number of ppl not that good at dodging. Its not about the act of dodging itself, but to recognize the situation and knowing when or not to dodge. Active Defense need to be balance. You can’t just through them all back to back or you’ll run out of it. On a warrior, its easy to dodge at the very big attack, and then let your hp pool and heavy armor do the rest of the job. Again, I think you give too much credit to the average joe. They are not necessary bad, but a lot just don’t care. They are there to have fun so lets go on a Warrior its easier. Again i’m not making that up. Not so long ago, there were tread on forum about how many topic there were on Warrior or go home. Ppl were whining about Warrior was always the answer and this suck. And even if this mentality is dying because ppl figure out this wasn’t true, old habits are hard to scrap. And the reason why the community as a whole thought of the Warrior as the best profession a year ago, is still the same reason why normal pugs still think that.

Ya some build like bear bow or minion master or engineer turrets or AH guardian are even more easy than a Warrior. But Warrior shout too is super easy. You can always do a super easy build with pretty much any profession. But on the warrior you can have an easy build that do a decent job DPS wise. While on the other hand a bearbow, AH guardian, etc are pretty much known to be pathetic build for dungeon.

Ah if only more ranger would run build like this. You got traited Frostspirit, you got spotter, you got the right weapons and at least half bezerker gear. Its not perfect, other point out some weakness, but if you feel good with that build there is no major problem with it.

Charak.9761:

Warrior now has lower dps than a ranger.

Not really lol.

quote=4190848;Pregnantman.8259:]
Don’t forget that Hammer is also part of the Guardian meta. I hate the “clink, clink” noises of Greatsword auto, as if I was swinging a rusty piece of metal.[/quote]

True, but even on a Hammer build, you usually run GS for burst and Hammer for AA. Of course, you can camp Hammer with only a small lost of DPS, which is not the case with GS or Sword camping which make you lost a big chunk of dps.

haviz.1340:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I get like 12k on an non-frostspotter LH spec, I’ll have to recheck the numbers. What is your rotation outside of LH specifically? DT > Flamewall > Phoenix > Comet?

I’m clueless about lh rotations but even I wouldn’t use comet there.

Indeed you are clueless since several ppl use comet indeed. Its not a good dps, but that’s a blast. Since LH Elementalist are mainly about might stacking you can see how it’s important.

Artaz.3819:

The problem with this argument in general is (1) do you think any class is ‘hard to play’ ? and (2) what makes the non-warrior class ‘hard to play’ ?

If you think about it, it is reaction timing related to the pace of the game. That’s it. It is nothing more than the time it takes you to learn an opponent’s skills and how you should respond to them. Warrior is just more forgiving to learning the pace (but that is also countered with the Warrior doesn’t have the same variety in its toolset as any other class).

As an example, against a pistol/dagger thief in WvW/PvE, how hard is it to really be effective in the setup to learn and play (same iWin rotation) with the proper gear setup. (FYI, as an owner of all 8 classes, I’ll give you a clue … a few hours tops). IMO, all classes are relatively very very easy to play. Blind spam (i.e. Thief pistol offhand)/Aegis ‘spam’ (chaining with blocks and excessive heals)/Dodge spam (hello, vigor boon or even just the food)/Evade spam (i.e. Ranger melee)/Clone spam/distance kiting/etc., it is all done with the same purpose and boils down to basically one/two/three defensive options available to every class.

You all are really arguing over something that is purposely designed to be very simple for every class or for every playstyle. Warriors are easy to play. But so is every other class.

I think you give too much credit to the average pug. Is most profession easy to play? For me ya, and for you too obviously. But that’s doesn’t change the fact that Warrior is the easiest profession to play good. The warrior is pure Stats, you don’t need to blind, put aegis, use utilities to survive, and its a bit more forgiving for mistake. Warrior is all about passive. Passive defense and passive offense. So does most profession are relatively easy to play? Ya, but I play the game for almost 2 years now. A lot of ppl play a couple hours from times to times, they don’t know the encounters at all and don’t master the game or their specific profession. And that’s where the Warrior found its place as an easier profession.

Kahrgan.7401:

Painbow.6059:

/15charsyoloswag420

That isn’t pug mentality. That’s meta/dnt mentality.

How’s that meta/dnt mentality??? In almost every single meta build dnt or not, the guardian always have a Greatsword.

True, but its close. And keep in mind that you are in a group. Depending on the situation, even in a pug you can have some might going on by the rest of your team.

On a complete Phalanx warrior, sigil of strenght and battle are useless.

If you don’t have the runes? It can be good, but personally I still prefer damage sigil. They are always good.

Methal.9045:

You’ll all have to forgive me, Having spent the last 4 years actually being a warrior (US Army infantry baby!) I don’t have a lot of time to play.

You’ll have to update me on this Phalanx Warrior of which you speak.

Also I haven’t the gold flow to spend 10-20g on each rune that is FOTM.

Last time I played much was in February, and at that time there was no 1 point every 5 levels or whatever this new anti-fun garbage is, it was 1 per level so you actually felt like you were doing something when you got new level.
another topic for another time though

I’ll pick this up when I get off work in an hour. Then we can discuss which direction a good dps PVE build should go.

There is actually a lot of different type of build for warrior. Greatsword usually give you the best DPS, Axe put more Vulnerability on the target, while GS + Axe will give you a middle ground.

- Phalanx Warrior is build around the new Grandmaster trait Phalanx Strength. Its less personnal DPS, but you can stack a constant 25 stack of might for you whole party by yourself if you use runes of Strength, but you can do a lot even without those expensive runes. Its either 0/6/0/6/2 for a pure GS Phalanx or 0/5/0/6/3 for a GS + Axe phalanx.

- EA Warrior is build around the trait Empowered Allies. It the best buff for Competent group where you have other source of might like a Elementalist. 4/6/0/4/0 is for Pure Axe. I think you can do the same with a pure GS, but I don’t know the trait for that.

- DPS Warrior is build around the best personal DPS possible, but it lack the buff from Phalanx or EA. Here too you can either go pure GS with 6/6/0/0/2, GS+Axe with 6/5/0/0/3 (that’s the build in the guide linked) or Pure Axe (don’t know the trait for that, but its the least popular for DPS Warrior).

Keep in mind that this is the situation right now. It change a lot overtime, when the community figure out stuff, depending on your preference or depending on your party composition. For exemple, if you have a good Engineer in your group that can keep about 20 stack of vulnerability, then Axe or GS + Axe is usually not that good because their strength is vulnerability, while GS is more pure DPS.

All those build are pretty good, some are better than other, but not by that much. Except if you want to min/max your whole party, any of those build will do a great job so at this point pick what you prefer to play.

If you have to choose between a Warrior and an Elementalist, then its Warrior first. Not because of DPS, or because he can keep dpsing more often than an Elementalist. No its because the Warrior buff so much the party. I’ll take a Phalanx or EA Warrior anytime because an Elementalist, but only 1. But anyway, if you have to choose between 1 Ele and 1 Warrior then you don’t really care about what your composition is. Usually any good composition have at least 1 Warrior and 2 Ele so if you have to choose 1 between the two, who care.

Its true that frailty is not that bad. Since we are talking about a pug carrying build, it make sense.

But your setup don’t work at all for a Phalanx Warrior. Strength is useless since you will already have a constant 25 stack of might and Battle and Energy only proc when you switch weapon, an action that you almost never do in the middle of a fight on a Phalanx build since you need to stay in GS, and again the Might from Sigil of Battle is useless in a phalanx build.

Ryn.6459:

One last question if you dont mind.
Im short on dragonite, so right now I only have one ascended GS. What sigils do you recommend me? So far Im using force+accuracy.
Thx in advance.

Night + Force is pretty standard. It don’t work well for day time dungeon meaning CM, HotW and Arah. Usually, ppl don’t really care about CM and HotW, while they either don’t do Arah that often or have a special equipement for Arah with Force + Undead slaying.

Otherwise, Force + Accuracy is pretty much the best all around setup. That work well in all dungeon and fractals.

Well if you compare Elementalist fully buffed but without banners, EA, Spotter and Frostspirit, then you are pretty much near a Full dps Warrior fully buffed with banner and EA, but without spotter and Frostspirit.

They seem pretty kitten close at about 12-13k dps each.

But its a party composition, you mostly likely to have both a warrior and elementalist so that don’t mean much.

Iris Ng.9845:

100 Precision + a Damage modifier. Not so tiny if we have to crunch the number. Anyhow, less than 4 points in Air means you have to use Precision food and/or Assassin Gear to make up for the loss of critical chance. You may as well consider what equipment you already have.

Not at all. Its :

100 Precision + 100 Ferocity + Arcane Lightning (ferocity buff) for the 5/4/0/5/0

vs

10% damage modifier at 600 range or less

That’s what we are comparing. But true, that I simply do those specific change and see what are the result. Maybe some change in food or gear could change the result, but still I really don’t think that will make one build SO much powerful vs the other.

And btw its only 2pts in Air we are talking about.

xallever.1874:

Arcane buff can be easily refreshed using both arcane beilliance and arcane wave chains. If the encounter is gonna last more than 15 seconds, just be sure not to use them both simultaneously.

Actually

dekeyz proposes arcane lighning over stone splinters. You can ask her personally on that.

I know that you can keep up the Arcane Buff most of the time. That wasn’t my point. My point was, even if you can keep the Arcane buff up 100%, both build will have similar dps. But Splinters is super easy to keep up, while Arcane buff, well you can screw up sometimes and some situation you need to use your heal while you buff is still up because you receive a hit in the face. So even if both build are extremely close in term of dps, I prefer splinter over arcane brilliance.

Ok I just check the guid by Dekeyz were she talk about 5/4/0/5/0. I don’t what are the reason behind this. Like I said, from what I saw, they are both really close in term of DPS (like 0.6% difference). Close enough to not make much difference. So maybe Dekeyz put 5/4/0/5/0 in place of 5/2/2/5/0 because even if its small, you can do more DPS with 5/4/0/5/0, even if its so tiny.

Maybe there is something that i didn’t see too. This is possible.