Guild Wars 2

Well I disagree, I am going to be there long enough to make a serious impression on any fight. This isn’t about dodge rolling, swapping weapons for energy, dodging more, blocking, dodging, LoW, more dodge, bunker bunker bunker dontfightdontfightdontfight dodgedodgedodge olookaluckystaff4healcosenemiesarenubs
The damage output compared to a cleric build is probably nearly 3x as much overall, if not more.
It is aggressive, engaging and literally drives enemies off point constantly with the pressure. It tanks and facestomps anything glassy with ease and is a total shutdown on any necro, ranger, warrior, thief and mesmer build. Only something like a turret engi with all his skills off cooldown who literally insta-spams you with everything he has can really “scare” you. And that scares me on any build on any class anyway.
Did I mention this build is super effective against d/d ele as well? (and super duper effective alongside one)

TheZeus.8617:

Hmm looks interesting.. on thing though.. how do you close… ON classes that run away and seeing as guards are slow as crap…

Hammer 3 can work, tho it’s not reliable. If somebody is running away enough it means we have the point under control at which point I am happy.
All forms of guardian have this problem tho. Medi Guard has only sword 2 and JI as gap closers and any Bunker Build doesn’t have a gap closer (unless they are weird and play greatsword or something)
Anywaywho, it’s all moot. I only care about controlling points, not running around chasing. This is a PvP build.

Again, I SERIOUSLY recommend people who enjoy Guardian at LEAST give this a go, it’s good fun and it’s nice being able to tank a fight properly and actually score some kills of your own rather than staff 1’ing for zero effect.

I was thinking the other day about how certain Warrior builds are made super strong because of sigil of intelligence, and thought about combining a soldier build with something that can also do some pretty heavy damage. Cos let’s face it, playing cleric bunker is pretty dull at times.

The result;

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS5dlsApVo97wZI8DRR8Ql5Y8iVFAY/EbRWc1MA-TJBHwAAeCAq2fwZZgBXEAA

The traits -

Zeal – II

You will be putting out a rather decent amount of burning on this build, and it making it easier to exploit this trait. Purging flames+Constant Symbol ticks over points mean you will be constantly hitting your VoJ trigger.

Valor – II

3x Focus block, 1x Mace block, Shelter multi-block, Aegis. More burning on enemies (particularly nice against bursty thieves and the like) gives more exploitation of Zeal II, as well as more damage. Therefore this trait gives a slightly exponential damage boost, so its worth taking.

Honor – II VII XI
Purity of voice is the key, the first two traits can be played with an have a certain flexibility. I prefer superior Aria for obvious reasons, and the longer lasting symbols is to increase the output of VoJ passive. Once again it’s about finding synergy between the traits.

Virtues – VI IX
Reduces recharge on Purging Flames, increases duration, gives more burning, more responsive condi-clearing, ability to stack might more frequently and generate a better might-uptime. Oh and absolute resolution, just cos it’s standard guardian banter.

So what do you offer with this build?

Support wise, you are pushing out the buffed virtues, a fire field that you can personally blast for 6 stacks of might. Taking reduced recharge on 2 handed means you can actually blast 3 times, giving 9 stacks of might. Runes of Hoelbraak are obviously a good choice for this build. Strength Runes are also decent if you want to go with more power.
On top of the might and virtues, you have stability, retaliation, a LOT of condi removal for your team (Going Save Yourselves then Purging Flames is nice if your team is overloaded and you are doing ok) and some really excellent CC from the Hammer (trapping the enemy after a switch with 5 then unloading 2 and autos will destroy glasses), Mace 2 offers regen and and the excellent mace 3 (guaranteed crit on mace 3 after might stacking REALLY hurts anything not tanky, augments stomps due to the AoE block) is always welcome. Focus offers blind as always.
Another thing you can (and should) try is to remove save yourselves and replace it with Hold the Line. Save Yourselves has it’s uses and in conjunction with a purging flames will reduce all condis on you by 58% duration when running Melandru, which is hugely significant. Otherwise, Save Yourselves is only really used as a stunbreaker.

Damage wise, your best combos look something like;

Purging Flames > (Filler Attack, preferably Focus 4 blind to offer coverage over the fire damage) > Shield Of Wrath (mightx3) > Switch > Hammer 2 (mightx3) > Hammer Auto (Or Hammer 4 knockback if you have burning still applied to interrupt any clear attempts)

Generally you want to go straight into a fight using all your skills to take your opponent off guard with blocks, blinds and CC. The facetanking potential of this build is just phenomenal. Typically, the only enemy you will have trouble with 1v1 is a Turret Engi using tons of knockback. However, you have a decent level of AoE damage that can tick over, if you can remain mobile and dodge the immobs and clear the turrets, you can take the engi down easily enough. I wouldn’t reccommend approaching an engi already bunkered into position that has his turrets set up to get clear LoS on your approach.

Anyway, give this build a shot, it’s a hoot. The sustain is very good, the damage is strong and has much better stomp-securing ability than any Meditation DPS zerker build.

the targeting system in this game is really bad, they need to redesign it so that you can automatically tell which players will be targeted next/previously for example. Trying to manually target with a mouse on a mid-graveyard fight with turrets, clones and minions running around is ridiculously difficult and makes fighting against stealthy classes a lot more difficult.

sigil of intelligence is a problem tbh, I don’t know what the solution is. Warriors wouldn’t be as much of a problem if their eviscerate only did half the damage, The problem is a celestial build or soldier build building might stacks is able to do insane zerker-like damage by using weapon swaps and the sigil.

this isn’t the place to post this anyway, but check your inventory before you make a thread next time ^^

This is simple to work out.
-Sigil of Fire gives about 1K damage every 5 seconds, on top of your base damage.
- To work out how much DPS you would need to be doing to make Force a superior option to Fire, simply multiply the Fire damage by 20. This is because 5% = 100/20.
- 1Kx20 = 20K every 5 seconds. This means you need to be doing 20K of damage every 5 seconds in order to make force a superior option to fire. Even a proc every 10 seconds rather than 5 would require 10K damage on an enemy. In a PVP envrionment this is just not gonna happen.

I think this speaks for itself.

Damage is also way more useful when applied in “bursts” in gw2 anyway. Force is for sustained damage, whereas fire and air let you burst far harder.

perma-evade aka evade for like 3-4 seconds.

I don’t get how someone playing S/D can QQ about this so much, you should know fine well that it is still perfectly easy to blow evades pointlessly and that perma-evading actually lasts an extremely short duration and will do nohting for you in a 1vX against GOOD players.
Bunkerish-D/D Eles, Soldier Warriors, Bunker Guards. These guys are extremely difficult to fight (damage) as a S/D thief, this build is not overpowered. Even many engi builds are hell to face due to the AoE and Necros always pose a threat to any thief build, this one especially.

It has very clear strengths and weaknesses.

AP is an indicator of how long and how much somebody has played this game. I know people who specifically grind out AP and they aren’t even good players.

The only way to measure someones skill is to duel with them, sorry. Everything PvE in this game is just a case of doing something over and over til you know the patterns and can play blindfolded.

whenever I see a guard going shelter I just don’t use any of my 2-5 keys and then his block function becomes pointless. With shelter you only really mitigate large bursts against bad players who repeatedly attack you despite the obvious animation, not realising they are probably buffing the guard or damaging themselves in some way by doing it….

Blind field > S/D.

I certainly wouldn’t call it fantastic to use against D/P. It has way more SAFE stealth access (CnD is extremely dodgy in this particular fight and we all know it) and a blind field that mitigates pretty much all the damage you can do to him if he just stands inside of it…certainly enough to out dps you with AA and heartseekers…..

The best thing you can hope for is too whittle down their intiative (difficult against good players) then try to break them down from there. The moment they lose access to Pistol 5 is when you attack properly.

I don’t really buy this notion that thieves can’t make mistakes

We have a stun breaker or two, a few teleports and stealth. It’s the thieves that make a mistake, don’t realise it was a mistake, who stay in the fight, who make another mistake straight after their first….. these are the ones that die. You get stunned? Break, withdraw, teleport, reset. You get Condi blasted? Port away, clear asap.
Don’t sit around to see if you can eat the zerker warriors combo and come back from the fight. It’s stupid.

Guardians and thieves are polarised in this aspect. The Thief has extremely low durability but very high surviability due to the mobility and withdraws and shadowsteps and stealthing. The Guardian has extremely high durability with the blocks, armour, boons, blinds etc but extremely LOW survivability when focused by more than just a couple newbs. This is mostly due to their low mobility. So in effect, if a guardian is roaming about and fails to execute some combos correctly you can bet your kitten he is going to suffer some serious incoming damage and better do all he can to run back to a tower or some friendlies cos he’s not outrunning his enemy thats for sure.

People seem to underestimate the trait Shadow Protector which basically gives your thief perma regen, and it’s actually quite useful for a S/D build to get some more sustain going. My next fave is cloaked in shadows which turns your cloak and daggers into blinding cloak and daggers, which makes engaging any enemy a lot safer (I see this on P/D builds and I have absolutely no idea why, the blind spam is already insane in this build) ESPECIALLY the heavies…..and Mesmers, and basically anything with a bunch of AI and pets following it around.
I used to use Shadows Embrace as a crutch but I forced myself to stop using it and wow has my play improved dramatically as a result.
Apart from that going deep into SA doesn’t appeal too much, and learning to play without it at all will improve your play.

Not gonna lie, whenever I see D/P roaming about I always tend to think less of them as a player, even if they kill me. Even if they kill me over and over.

I think a perfect nerf to this would be if pistol 5 only procced a blind field IF the target was actually hit by the initial bullet, even tho it doesnt really make much sense logically I think it would help with the stealth-combo abuse.
The thing is that D/P is nowhere near as strong in PvP, where it is actually quite difficult to play in an effective manner (i.e. not stealthing constantly, resulting in your team losing nodes) and I think nerfing the pistol 5 > 2 combo would basically make it unplayable in PvP.

Also I guess it depends how much runners annoy you. As a solo roamer these guys are a lot more annoying but in a small party they will rarely come back after receiving their intial beat down cos they don’t wanna lose all their stacks of +power +vit to your gank squad.

I play s/d wvw with zero toughness added to my base if that gives you any idea, but then I am stupid like that.

A lot of the builds go for the lower crit chance because thieves have very easy access to fury which gives them a bonus +20% crit chance, meaning they don’t have to worry too much about precision.

Been messing around in another thread and came up with some random stat combos using stealth arts that seems pretty strong

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAsYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNBNRxdNsCzg3hxXshaFAA-TVCFABHqeRJ7PskSP70HMpKKAcKAQSZgAPBABVCGAABYn1ZduzAH9oH9oH9otzjuzjuzjWKgRFGB-w

Open any fight with a steal + cloak and dagger combo (you ckittene sword 2, Signet of infiltration, ShadowStep and Steal to gap close, and if you practice, you can do these almost all at once (sometimes best to leave sword 2 out cos it can screw with the timing) as long as you have an enemy targeted. This can allow you travel something like 3000 (YES 3000) units almost instantly (3600 if sword 2 is included), which nobody ever seems to expect (why would they tho lol). For example whenever I see another thief baiting around trying to get me into range to hit me with his own steal (usually 900, 1500 if traited which nobody does) I just press 5+Shadowstep+F1 and travel to him 2100 range instantly giving him one hell of a shock, interrupting him and generally making him lose the fight before he was even ready to start it. If the thief is a very good player and dodges this first burst then you can just shadow return back and theres nothing he can do.

Anyway, just play around, every thief has their own style. Personally I don’t have much respect for other thieves that fully exploit the shadow arts trait line using D/P or P/D, it’s just cheap and cheesy IMO (but makes sense)

SlitheSlivier.1908:

If someone could comment on what I’m about to say to let me know if it is a good idea or show my my error in thought, that’d be great.

I think you should reduce your total critical chance to 80 and then try to get fury for a good portion of the time. This could maybe allow you to get more power and vitality

This is actually an important point with regards to this build, however the stat combos got me excited, and as a PVP S/D player I wanted to see what I could fiddle with to get some scary numbers. Unfortunately the lack of certain stat combos make it difficult, so after a lot of fiddling I got some numbers similar to the OP minus a significant amount of crit percentage. Nevermind, the perma fury from the steal + the interrupts, dazes and boons it gives you, plus perma might (with strength rune) means that the total dps of this build is pretty nutty whilst still being way to tanky for what it should be.

Firstly, I dropped the entire critical strikes line, and replaced with the trickery line. OP steal activated ^^
I realised that making a thief this tanky without going into shadow arts that can still crit at a stupid high rate WHILST maintaining trickery is basically impossible, so I gave in there.
Next I dropped a lot of the gear and just began to randomly fiddle with different combos. By the end, I have this

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQNAsYVlsMp0pdPxwJ0PNBNRxdNsCzg3hxXshaFAA-TVCFABHqeRJ7PskSP70HMpKKAcKAQSZgAPBABVCGAABYn1ZduzAH9oH9oH9otzjuzjuzjWKgRFGB-w

It’s looking pretty nice, with;
-2051 Power, 62% crit rate (82% with near perma fury from stealing)
-180% crit damage (this wants to be a little higher imo but the constant critting you will be doing should mean that this won’t matter too much)
-13K HP and 2.6K armour.

Personally, I would be willing to drop even more precision, to around 55%, so that with fury I am still hitting a 3/4 crit rate, simply by dropping the Assassin Weapons for Valkyrie (giving us 2100 power and 14.5K HP). But I guess the more we move away from that the more we move away from concept.

Note that this modified build is wayyy more fitting for s/d than d/p, but that it also offers way more might and boon stacking.

Anyway thanks mr OP for the inspiration, gonna save up and try this out.

I’m sorry but this trait clearly lets warriors tail it out of there whenever things are going badly in WvW. This trait is certainly not underpowered :/

great “banter” mate.

Yasi.9065:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY-6T8ExNFw

Yep, so much skill. Im really proud of myself there. Never knew what I was capable of. Skyhammer made me realize how much raw potential there is in me.

Not.

Map working perfectly as intended…..

¬_¬

Seriously look how stupid this is xD

Darnis.4056:

Sizer.2654:

Nerfing air/fire sigils would actually buff sd thiefs lol atm these sigils give u guys extra burst to pressure us , hf trying to kill us without them

Sizer knows for a fact that if Sigils were nerfed the sustain/burst damage on Thief would take a big hit.
Don’t let his cool demeanor fool you.

Do Sigils effect both parties? Yes, does it effect the Thief who is evading most of the damage in between his own proc CD’s more so ? Yes it does.

Do The 7k Larcenous strikes hurt? Yes they do, Do they hurt more with a 4k(double) proc and 3k steal? Yes.

I often see these kinda of numbers like 7K thrown out for thieves.
Trust me, no thief in pvp is hitting anything for 7k with larcenous striker, EVER.

It’s a 1.5K base damage attack after a few dodges on a build that has a 60% crit rate.

I don’t like the idea of nerfing the S/D thief too much, at least not it’s spiking ability, it’s literally the only thing that helps it take out PROPER bunkers. On a proper tank you can hit for a maximum burst of approximately;

(basi venom) .75-1.5K CnD + 1.5K Steal (basi applied) + 1K Air + 1K Fire + 1K-2K Auto + 1K-2K Auto

Total – minimum = 6.25K
Total – maximum = 9K
Crit rate = 60%. Steal, Fire and Air damage doesn’t crit. 9K – 2.5K = 6.5K. 6.5X.6 = 3.9K

3.9K + 2.5K = 6.4K average max burst.

Fire and Air make up 2K of this burst. That’s about 30% of our entire damage output in an optimal environment. Any super hard nerf to these sigils will simply kill the build, there is no other way to look at it.
After a successful basi application you can do….wow…2 auto attacks on an enemy before the basi ends. You can choose to go Sword 3 > Sword 3 after basi instead of AA but the larcenous strike is iffy and the timing is very tight. On average it doesn’t make too much of a difference.
The thief can also charge a basi venom and chain a dagger 4 into the mix for another .5K-1K damage OR it can fire a shortbow shot and switch before proccing the CnD+Steal. This combo adds +2K or so to the combo.

So the max burst is about 8.4K if the stars align, with a normal burst of about 6.4K every 21 seconds and a lot of smaller bursts inbetween.
It is nowhere near as bad as people make out. If you play something very tanky, the thief will take a seriously long time to kill you no matter what. If you play something super glassy, then yeah you are gonna get rekt.
Tough, that’s the way this build is.

S/D cannot carry teams (unless opponents are extremely bad) it cannot really hold points and it cannot sustain under heavy pressure for more than about 5 seconds. It has crap all condi removal (sword 2 > 2 is super predictable and initiative heavy, the signet is rubbish as well) and gets absolutely rekt by any condi tank worth his salt.
What it can do very well is augment your teams superiority and offer better cover and quick bursts across the map than most other builds at the moment. It is great at coming into ensuing fights and laying down burst to turn the tide.

It’s also the only properly fun thief build to play at the moment that is actually viable.
PLZ don’t nerf (much)

Anymore than a 5% nerf to the entire build and i think it would die off quickly.

umm

Blade shards aren’t on the TP, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

You need 50 sprockets to make about 10 blade shards. That means bladeshards are about 5x the value of sprockets. Simples.

whut s/d trickery is awesome at interrupts since the sword gives an interrupt when you attack from stealth when attacking from behind, making it doubly effective. Pistol 4 is ok for a ranged interrupt but it is quite expensive initiative wise and if the thief doesn’t take the trait “Prepared”, it becomes even more so since s/p is quite an expensive setup initiative wise compared to something like s/d.

I agree the lack of access to a blind field can make stomping more difficult but it’s actually possible to use Steal to interrupt your enemies anti-stomp mechanic as you are stomping him as a work around to this specific problem. But I’m not gonna lie, S/P has insane downstate pressure just by 5+3ing. With regards to S/D, generally in a 2 on 1 if I can’t secure a stomp on the first downed enemy I will go into stealth on the rezzer via CnD then proceed to interrupt their res immediately with the stealth attack and chain them down with 2 before laying down as much aoe cleave as possible. When possible I will also save basi venom for striking the resser (which when followed by Steal > interrupt > CnD > interrupt from stealth is extremely strong and usually guarantees that both guys are going down) so the S/D build still provides some fantastic downstate pressure. The problem with thief in general is the lack of stability, so it’s always tough to clean stomp against properly prepared opponents without support.

^PvP is not the discussion since are talking about mobility. This is a WvW issue

for a squishy zeker it’s a nightmare to be focused by any good thief in a teamfight, regardless of the build. That’s kinda what thieves are all about.

My advice is that this is WvW, which is horribly unbalanced anyway so it doesnt matter.

I agree that Warrior was far too much mobility. I would shred their mobility to be on par with rangers at the very most. But in PvP, their mobility is not an issue… with the current gamemode. I dread to think of the Q_Q that might result of Anet introduced a pure deathmatch type environment where thieves and warriors just ran away everytime you were about to score a point, but I digress.

I play as a guard and a thief, so i see both sides of the coin. As a guard, I have rubbish HP so am forced to invest in that to compete in WvW zerging, which utterly ruins any chance of me being able to roam effectively solo. As a thief, I must invest almost totally into zerker stats, and have absolutely no toughness to make my class effective in it’s role. I get 2 shot by fully buffed warriors, no joke. Luckily, most warriors are just food to practically any thief build at the moment as long as the thief is a good and patient player. As a guard, I have no real mobility outside of swiftness (which is useless when you are moving at “fighting speed” anyway) and my GS 3, which isn’t a huge amount of mobility, certainly not enough to outrun um…. every other single class in the game? Most warriors I come across I can wear down to a killable range before they fly away at 2,000 unis per second leaving my standing there thinking “what a waste of time”. This is pretty kitten tedious for a class that does nothing but faceroll into you for 90% of any fight. They get the easy fight and they get the easy escape, it is thoughtless and, sorry to say it, totally boring to fight against.

As far as I see it the warrior players are split into two camps (and keep in mind i know a lot of people who main warrior, I am not being biased, i play pvp, not so much wvw so i don’t have any actual investment in this, emotional or otherwise!)
The first camp comprimises people who play warrior for fun. They know the class is easy, they go around in wvw using as much mobility as possible cos they know it’s OP and they want to play as an OP class for a little while. Have a chat with them about it and they are usually very tongue in cheek about the warrior. Fair enough.

The second set is more a set that concerns me. They are absolutely refusing the move on the fact that the warrior has just got a TINY LITTLE INSY WINSY TEENY WEENY MINI WINI little bit too much of everything now. I don’t really get this. Speak to any other class any they will usually admit the aspects of their class or build that are a little bit OP. I admit Guardians fully invested into bunkering are a bit too “boony”, and that s/d thieves are too strong 1v1 now with all that crazy evading and the ridiculously strong full traited steal. In fact, I think it would be good if there was a slight nerf to the trickery line in someway…

Why do so many warriors refuse to admit the aspects of their class that are too strong? People aren’t necessarily saying remove all mobility, they are saying it is not fair that the warrior is currently the fastest class in the game alongside thief. Oh except a thief that chases a warrior basically has no initiative and all his stepping utilities on cooldown so gl once the warrior decides to turn around at the wrong moment.
This is the problem. It is a class that is strong in all areas, relatively, that can also dictate which fights it enters, and which fights it can leave. Any screw ups can be mitigated with stances, shield 4 then the warrior usually has some kind of cool down off so he can tail it out of there.
It’s like playing a thief with no risk but no stealth. I don’t really get the design around it at the moment, it is a class that has no proper direction I feel.

Is that a fair assessment? I dunno, I think it is probably true for more than just the warrior at the moment as well.

happened to me a few times just yesterday, usually resulting in me dying shortly afterwards.
Fix plox anet :>

this thread is making me want to cry, so many people who don’t have a clue.

2 0 0 6 6 S/D teef is ridiculously strong, has access to the best skill in the game (fully traited trickey steal is just…..well it needs a nerf in some way thats all I’m gonna say) and has crazy damage and survivability in comparisons to it’s d/p counterpart.

And grats the guy who plays meditation guard who wrecks thieves above. You are playing a hard counter to thieves that is basically useless outside of this function. GG.

D/P, D/D, P/D and P/P all need a bit of love, but currently the meta S/D is very very strong.

BlueZone.4236:

Yeah, it would be interesting for the millions of accounts to have zero characters.
The game is dying in the west, so it wouldn’t help the western population, anyway. High five!

Dying? Nah, there are still loads of players.

Is it more cheese than all the other cheesy things in this game? Nah not really, your opponents are just annoyed because your kills are drawn out, tactical, and clearly expose your opponents build flaws and the flaws in their playstyle more so than d/p, or even s/d for that matter.

Personally as a zerker guard, bunker guard and roaming d/p thief I would much prefer to fight you over the s/d builds that are extremely difficult to take down at the moment (these fights stalemate 90% of the time for me), and I would still prefer to fight any thief build over a well set up turret engi 1v1 on a point, or a PU mesmer or a Necro MM.

Cheese is relative in this game. I would say in terms of spvp the AI builds are a little too cheesy at the moment, but only minor changes are needed.

haha wut

You aren’t max levelled, probably don’t have all the traits set up properly due to this, don’t have the gear…you are talking about PvE anyway where enemies are just HP punch bags.
Almost all PvE enemies, including veterans, go down super quick to backstabs/heartseekers and autos. There is nothing more needed in that department. The idea of increasing backstabs power in WvW or PvP is just hilarious, and I say that as a thief player.

My take on backstab : It is a very strong move that does anywhere from 3.5K/7+K damage on tanks/full glass enemies, supposing crit, and supposing an “average” investment in power/precision/ferocity for your “average” wvw roamer. It is now in a nice spot where you cannot just spam your way into stealth now and get an easy insta-down on glassier or uplevelled players. Instead, and particularly in this current wvw meta, you must usually land a couple of backstabs to take down a even a semi-glass type player on top of all the other concurrent dps.
This to me is important because it means that the thief must use at least a modicum of intelligence in a fight to win, and it also means that a cheap-free backstab on an enemy you caught completely unwittingly will not necessarily win you the fight either.

if you are getting bluescreens then you need to sort that out and stop even wasting time complaining about, and instead fix it, because it could be doing some serious actual damage to your PC.

My guess is that you have some memory issues or some issues with power supply.

what is truly amazing is that some people find these paths consistently difficult enough to merit buying them off sellers in the first place 0_o

A medi guard should be able to take a thief of any spec out extremely quickly
Use this sort of rotation next time, you will do a lot more effective DPS.

Focus 5 > Focus 4 > Scepter 3 > Scepter 2 > Weapon Swap > GS 5 + JI + Smite > GS 4 OR GS 5 Pull > GS2.

If the scepter 3 lands, and he has no withdraw/shadowstep to get away, teef is dead.
But yeah, more practice with your JI combos and you will improve quickly. JI is the most important thing ever in guard build because it lets you land mega bursts.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Flumek.9043:

Keksmuffin.1450:

You do realize that the nerf from 7% to 5% more damage is something arround a 28,5% nerf and you can’t even compare that to the 8% healing signet nerf?

Also you should prolly learn to dodge earthshaker.

ups forgot about that. so -2,85% means 4857.5 dmg now.

Thank god. I always ended up dying but with those 150 extra hp, i wont get kicked out of deathshroud

2 / 7 × 100 = 28.5714285714
that is a 28.5714285714 % shave for runes of strength, not 2%

a 5,000 damage attack would be 107 % pre patch
after patch it would be 105% so

5000 / 107 × 105
4906.54205607

by simple maths it ought to do 4907 damage.
but the damage in gw2 is calculated differently.

anyway, it is your fault entirely if you die to hambots.

afaik i know percentage modifiers are applied AFTER all the damage calculations, not before. They don’t give +5% power or attack or anything, they give +5% DAMAGE. It is a very minor change that actually doesn’t affect the condi damage of the rune, and since the rune’s main strength is the might uptime, not the minor damage modifier, the rune is still ridiculously powerful and a clear choice for any might stacking build, no question.

They need to nerf the might uptime, that is the only thing this needs. +45% is too much.

Poison is incredibly powerful and you aren’t looking at it right if you think it isn’t “doing enough damage”.
Let’s say you are attacking a guardian who has constant regen 200hp/sec and his healing virtue at 150hp/sec.
By using poison you are doing the base damage of poison (let’s pretend 100 damage/tick) but also an effective pseudo-damage of 50hp/s on the virtue and 66hp on the regen. If he uses a shelter, you are also going to take off a good 1.5K from the heal there. What’s even worse is that it is incredibly easy to apply, stacks duration and can be made to stack for entire fights if you have mutiple applications (p/p engis with grenade kits for example).
If a fight lasts for 30 seconds and the guardian has poison the entire time but still manages to heal for a total of 10K HP, that means your poison did 5K pseudo-damage for the fight duration as well as 3K damage of real damage. This is not something that should be laughed at.

Poison is more than effective enough.

I just started using a valkyrie hammer guard shout build, its pretty simple so I made a video of the first game i could be bothered to record. Set up is in the vid.