Guild Wars 2

I find these dc’s extremely frustrating. At upper 20’s, it’s getting harder to find a group, and I feel like I’m wasting like two hours finding the group plus progressing through two of the fracts just to get dc on the last fract. I’ve dc’ed like 5 times on the 3rd fractals in the last two days (especially the Ascalon one, I usually get internet lag during the courtyard then dc) plus various dc’s on others.

Much appreciated for the work you’re doing for the community. I greatly admire your creativity and artistic talent. Here’s my guardian if you could just whip up something for her. I also include a close up shot of the sword and shield if you want to use them as well as a shot of her face.

paskuda.2497:

Trungalung.7850:

A more moody picture

Wow! What is the sword skin you are using?

It’s the fractal sword. You have a chance to get it from the bonus daily 20+.

I love these wreckage!

A more moody picture

I notice that the human faces are unusually round. I had to minimize the face width then maximize face size to have it look more normal.

Thanks God for make over kit. Now I can actually design my Guardian’s face instead of having the old boring default face (I rushed the character so I can reserve some name).

If you’re doing lower fractals or any other old dungeon, a full zerk or knight armor + zerker jewelry is plenty for a hammer build depending on how good you can dodge. If it’s for WvW, I’ll suggest using knight/zerker combination. For DEs, full zerk is better. Might stacking is great if you’re running dungeon regularly with ele, otherwise I’d use ranger x5 + lyssa or full ruby orbs.

Archer.1658:

I wouldn’t go glass cannon let alone use berserkers gear. Our base Hp just isn’t high enough, nor do we have escape moves like thiefs(no im not saying thieves are op, their escape moves make them a thief) that allow them to go glass cannon/full dps.

Pve: Fail
sPvP: Depends
WvW: Fail

PvE is not fail when you have the hammer giving permanent protection (yes, I’ve face tanked with zerker or knight/zerk before including Mossman on 20+ fractals).

PvP, it depends on how good are your awareness and position to decide how much error you can have. Zerker/Knight give less room for errors comparing to like pvt.

First off, max out Valor for either Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus. Now that you have one of the two best guardian traits, it will allow you to survive much longer. You can then start dropping pvt/healing gears for more damage oriented set up like knights/berserkers. Damage comes more from gears than from traits.

I’m hovering around 10-15 stacks of precision in WvW due to the fact that only my on-switch set has the sigil of perception. About might, it’s easy to get them with Inspired Virtue of Justice and Sigil of Battle plus whatever allies randomly throw at you. The hardes thing is to get all WW projectiles hit the target.

If you can land a “full” Whirling Wrath, you’ll get burst damage that can rival warrior’s 100 Blades. However, that is hard to pulled since it requires the target to literally stand still. The picture below is from PvE, but I’ve critted 14-15k Whirling Wrath in WvW before (costs me two cool downs to set it up).

You get an extra daily that can potentially give you a ring (can have two chances at the ring you want instead of one, and more chances if you unlock 30 or 40 daily). The daily bonus on 20+ also has a chance for weapon skin.

2-Handed Mastery lowers the cool down of Mighty Blow. While it’s true that you do not get increased DPS from it, it does allow you to blast finishing more frequently. If you have like two staff elementalists (any field spammers), may as well interrupt your chain (once you have a decent protection duration, 5-8 seconds are plenty) blast finishing their fire fields.

I tend to ninja skip my very first chain to quick apply protection on myself. Once I get long enough duration, I would start to interrupt my chain to blast finish desirable combo fields. This is to allow me to actually blast finish any other field other than a light field. Finishers apply on the most recent field, so if you use chain into MB, you will likely blast finish a light field and get the old boring retaliation. To quickly build up the lost protection duration, I would do the ninja skip again.

1-List the issue.

• Staff does not work on Z-axis.

2-Detail why it annoys you.

• You cannot hit targets that are above or below you. Example: the gargoyles in AC’s spider room. It’s one of the main reason I rarely equip the staff beside for mobility.

3-Short description of what you would like to be changed so its fixed.

• Make it like a dome effect so you can hit targets above and below you.

North America region. Need two for FoM level 10. Currently have warrior, guardian, and elementalist.

Edit: Only need one now.

Title says it all. We need one for fractal lvl 7, currently have guardian, mesmer, ele, and warrior.

I"m starting a group for fractal scale 4. Whisper me in-game: Trungalung.7850

Just finished downloading the patch in case anyone couldn’t whisper me.

Title says it all. I want to start a group for fractal level 3. I’ve only done 7 out of 9 fractals so far. If you guys are interested, send me a tell.

Confirmed that it doesn’t share internal cool down. I was in the mist spamming tennis balls with both the sigil and the trait. I would occasionally get two stacks of might.

Also, combining both the swings and the symbol’s ticks, you’ll be able to keep up with the internal cool down.

IV Endu.8920:

Does Stand Your Ground also break others’ stuns?

I noticed on the Warrior that Shake It Off cures others’ fear but then again, I might be totally crazy.

No. Stand Your Ground doesn’t break others’ stuns. Shake It Off removes condition thus it’s able to remove fear.

Best way is to turn off auto attack. This way you have more control on the 3rd attack and lower chance for it to interrupt your dodge. Also, when you dodge, keep holding the same directional key (hold A if you dodge to the left).

If you’re talking about the ninja skipping, yes. You will lose part of the invincibility frame, effectively cutting down your “evading time”. Selfless Daring is still applied as if the dodge was shortened (you only get the heal at the end of a dodge). So if you get a heal from Selfless Daring, the dodge’s invincibility frame is ended.

If you skip a dodge animation, I’m pretty sure you will lose its “invincibility” frame.

bigtommy.4015:

Hello there fellow guild wars players!
I’m pretty new in the world of guild wars 2, and i just got a lvl 80 guardian character. I’m still figuring some good build for pve out, and i came up with one that’s pretty decent i do think. So i’m just sharing this to share some thought with you about this build. What could be better?
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcccMM0zMmNvaomNvam9MGxGosMRbMs8khT7kiQ7khT7070M7kGj70z7kIM70z7kGL70z7owX70m8ofy

I personally do like the shout ‘save yourself’, it’s a huge buff for yourself and also draws conditions from allies to yourself wich can be very handy. So your guys opinion if I should trow the ‘save yourself’ in there or keep it this way, or change my traits or other utility skills.
Thanks in advance!!
Greetings

Remove 10 points in Virtue and put into Valor for Altruistic Healing. AH and Monk’s Focus are our best traits for defense. You don’t need the group condition removal on Virtue of Resolve since we already have spammable light fields for the group. If you do need extra group condition removal for certain fights, pick up Pure of Voice.

In PvE, never limit yourself to certain traits and utilities. For a defensive build, I’ll take “Hold The Line” as a “staple” utility of the build since it’s awesome in most situation. The other two slots can be switched around. Example could be picking up Master of Consecration trait and Wall of Reflection utility against range mobs or Purity + Pure of Voice against conditions.

“Burstiest” weapon we have is the greatsword with Whirling Wrath. Due to its random projectile design, the burst is very inconsistent. To limit that, you need to be literally inside the target for the whirl since the projectiles come from the center of your character. The target has to be stood still in one place to get the maximum of whirling wrath’s damage. Your best bet right now is to pulled off a knock down/immobilize then whirling wrath (Bane Signet/Signet of Wrath/Chain of Light are the best choices. Greatsword’s pull knock down effect doesn’t last long enough). A full whirling wrath (14 hits, 7 swings, 7 projectiles) can rival warrior’s 100 blades.

Using hammer’s ring of warding won’t keep the target in place for the whirl (even if the target trips on the circle, it will be moved slightly a little bit and screw up your damage).

I’ll do some tests on various races after I’m done writing my paper.

Try to turn on auto-attack to see if it’s any difference.

Sammael Darksbane.4572:

I’ve been trying to get the dodge hit thing, on my guardian, but it seems to have no effect at all when I dodge after the second hit in the auto-attack chain. Wether I dodge, forward, left, right, back, it still does the entire animation. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. >_<

After 2nd hit lands on the target, you hit your dodge key then quickly hit #1 right after.
Try smashing #1 may help a little bit.

Black. Not abyss because you will lose the shining reflects of the armor.

@Brutaly’s original post:

Max dps in pve is done by performing chain+step 1 in chain+ mb and requires 2h mastery.

This is no longer the case. The best use of MB in PvE right now is to trigger desirable combo fields such as fire for mights or poison for weakness. If there’s no such combo fields available at a decent rate, it’s best to do a chain x2 into MB.

Fabsm.5897:

WoP is probably overkill in any case except when soloing, because it is rare that a mob/player stays still enough to make a difference. You can safely switch it with Superior Aria, if you need better shout power.

This is quite not true in PvE/Dungeons. Monsters will literally sit on the symbols til it’s dead unless being kited by the group.

So you have either monk’s focus or altruistic healing with 30 valor? I need more specific on how you are dying. Most of the time you can correct it by switching 2nd weapon set, major traits, and utilities.

Give me a link of your build. Which path of CM? What did you die to?

Protector’s Helm

Simply because it’s awesome. It’s the only helm that looks good on my female guardian.

Chances that all 5 will turn back and smack you also high (not giving them that chance since I’m full glass). As I said above, mine is to go for the kills. Yours is to cause disruption and help your team push forward. I’m not usually with the main zerg. I have my own small group flanking along with the main army.

I go straight for the kills instead of causing disruption since using blinding blade will give them more time to dodge/interrupt/stability. I call it guerilla tactic because it’s pretty much hit and run. I don’t stay back after killing the target or it runs away. It’s usually a small group flanking strategy.

You can try out my guerrilla tactic . Burst is plenty on a well-timed Whirling Wrath combo.

This move works around the basic of the dodge animation. As of currently, dodging has to interrupt any kind of animation to be effective in a semi-action game like Guild Wars 2. I incorporate that into a chain attack and use it to interrupt its recovery animation. As others have pointed out, the ninja skip is on a very thin line between exploit and “creative use of game mechanic”, and the only one who can ultimately decide this is ANet.

If Anet really wants to fix this, it’s simple. Make it so that the 3rd hit cannot interrupt the dodge animation. This will cut back at least 20 frames or 0.66 seconds, but I expect to be even more. The use of dodge to interrupt recovery animation is still there, but its effect has been reduced greatly. This is tied with the whole animation so it’s really a big mess to fix it any other way (no offense but resetting chain upon dodge is stupid).

This move is easy to pull off but requires focus since there’s so much you have to watch out for:

- Do you have enough endurance to dodge (or double dodge) the next fatal attack or will your endurance regenerate fast enough for that attack?
- Is your target in range for the 2nd hit? (the 2nd hit is very crucial since it’s the activation)
- Are you afflicted by the blind condition? (miss attack will totally throw you off on the whole move)
- Are you afflicted by immobilized? (can’t dodge while under its effect)
- Does the target have aegis boon on? (Questionable: will aegis stop your chain attack, or the chain still happens but there’s no damage)
- In PvP, will the target go in the opposite direction of your dodge? (this will allow the target to actually increase the distance)
- Can you see through the countless effect on your screen to time the dodge perfectly with the 2nd hit?

I personally would like them to keep the ninja skip since it adds depths to the game. As of currently, all we do is auto-attacking and wait for the other skills. It also promotes the use of endurance for offense at the cost of survivability. And no, you cannot do the ninja skips forever even with vigor and 40% endurance regenerate food unless you want to be at zero endurance and then get smacked in the face.

If you guys had played WoW, remember priests’ Shadow Word: Death damage delay to cancel crowd control spells like polymorph or blind? That wasn’t the intended mechanic, but Blizzard ultimately decided to keep it because it adds depths to their game. So back to my original point, it’s all up to ANet.

akamon.2769:

Q – Do all your Guardians out there have multiple armor sets? if so, what are they? rarity type, stat sets, runes and for what purposes?

I cannot speak for others, but I personally have 4 exotic armor sets (berserker, knight, magi, and soldier) and three exotic jewelry sets (berserker, knight, and cleric). I just like having them to balance out my stats depending on builds. All the armors are socketed with 2 runes of fire, 2 of runes of the monk, and 2 runes of water.

@exphryl

I’ve gotten used to not having Renewed Justice by running 0/0/30/30/10. The build I posted above was more of a damage build by gaining 10% damage and 100 power.

@Brutaly
I incorporate the ninja skip further into the rotation with 40% endurance regeneration food. Right now, my rotation currently is: ninja skip > MB > ninja skip > ninja skip > MB > normal chain (resting period). This is quite dangerous since you will have a moment with not enough endurance for a dodge (double skips), but it only takes you 1 second to get that endurance back.

On another note, the food also gives one might on dodge that last 5 seconds. I average two dodges per 5 seconds. So that’s 2 mights + sefless daring heals x 2 every 5 seconds. My selfless daring heals for about 600-700 or so with 6 pcs of magi gears so 1200-1400 every 5 seconds to the group.

Oh, and gratz on the sticky.

I’m trying out a new build 10/0/30/25/5. Since WoP no longer gives the damage boost, I’ll drop 5 points in Honor and 5 in Virtue to get Fiery Wrath. I decide to keep Elusive Power due to the fact that I will be constantly at 50% endurance (5% damage) which is quite not bad for 5 points. I will be running 40% endurance food to test out the dodge on might. I will lose the versatility of the build by losing a lot of options from the honor major grandmaster trait.

Since this is being discussed in the altruistic hammer guide, I decide to let the whole community know since it’s not only about hammer.

This is regarding the using of dodge to partially skip the animation of a 3rd attack within a chain (use dodge to interrupt the recovery animation of the 2nd hit then use the 3rd hit to interrupt the dodge animation). Here’s a video demonstration with the hammer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sDPdy8xMDTo

The ninja skip allows the hammer to speed up its chain by 37.5%. It only takes 75 frames to apply Symbol of Protection (as oppose to 120 frames when attacking normally). The tests were done by frapsing two entire clips with 30 frame per second and analyze them with Adobe Photoshop CS3. The time was calculated from the moment the damage number of the first attack appear to the moment of Symbol of Protection was applied.

The ninja skip also works with our other melee weapons. Here’s the result I got from 1 handed sword:

Normal: 62 frames or ~2.07 seconds.
Ninja skip: 49 frames or ~1.63 seconds. That’s an increase of 21% approximately.

I expect that the longer the 3rd attack swing of a weapon, the more benefit you will get off by executing this technique. I also want to note that this move is much harder to pull off on a greatsword due to the fact that you cannot cancel the dodge with the 3rd attack (I can only pull it off by colliding into an object to stop the dodge animation). So for you greatsword lovers out there, sorry that you have to sit there and do the boring auto-attack.

This is extremely powerful for us guardians due to the fact that we have access to permanent vigor and two weapons with the slowest 3rd swing. I also want to note that this is not exclusively for guardians, other classes can do it too.

If you guys want, I also have clips of the mace to analyze.

HM…to name it? I’ll go with something catchy and stupid like…the “ninja” step/skip. When you skip the animation, it’s as if your guardian disappear then reappear (the lag) like a kittening ninja. The stupid and catchy name is also easier to remember and contagious.

The key is the second hit. You have to land it to activate the 3rd hit. If he use the script on his second hit and it misses (due to out of range or blind), he will dodge but his 3rd hit is not activate yet. This will result in him having to walk back to the target to reapply the 2nd hit. I will predict that he will swing a few time into the air and hit nothing (unlike 2nd hit, the 3rd one doesn’t need to be in range of the target).

If they do decide to shorten the animation, that will be a buff across the board to the class but a nerd to the elites that mastered this technique.

Here’s my own personal opinion on this move.

What you need to watch out for using this move?

- Do you have enough endurance to dodge (or double dodge) the next fatal attack or will your endurance regenerate fast enough for that attack?
- Is your target in range for the 2nd hit (the 2nd hit is very crucial since it’s the activation)?
- Are you afflicted by the blind condition (miss attack will totally throw you off on the whole move)?
- Does the target have aegis boon on? (Questionable: will aegis stop your chain attack, or the chain still happens but there’s no damage)
- In PvP, will the target go in the opposite direction of your dodge? (this will allow the target to actually increase the distance)
- Can you see through the countless effect on your screen to time the dodge perfectly with the 2nd hit?

Those are the reasons on why having script/macroes will not be even close on optimizing this move. Example: Hacker hits the macroes, but the mob suddenly goes to the opposite direction. Hacker misses his 2nd hit. The script goes on as if the 2nd hit lands on the target and proceed to dodge. Hacker now has his whole move ruined.

With this move, it will add so much depths. Endurance will now acts as a resource to increase your damage, not just your survivability.

Even if Anet wants to fix this, it’s not an easy fix. This move is tied with the whole animation system for guild wars 2 (other classes can use it too). Plus it has no effect in the macro game for PvE (at most, it will increase your speed in dungeons by a little bit) and PvP (this move is good for quickly applying the damage and protection and avoid the interruption at the cost of endurance which will open yourself up for the enemies’ attacks. You also have to watch your conditions, enemies’ boons, and endurance to pull it off).

I myself see this as a legit move due to its skill level to pull off. It has no effect in the macro game unlike the bans from exploiting items which result in worse economy.

Also, I want to confirm that double symbol cannot be done. Tested this in the mist. The first symbol will disappear if the 2nd one is placed. So pretty much you will want to do: animation skip > normal chain > animation skip > repeat or animation skip > MB > animation skip > normal chain.

Now, it’s also giving me idea of going healer mode with mace since you also heal every time you dodge then finish the 3rd hit for the mace heal.

Edit: this move now downgrades Writ of Persistence. You will lose one tick of SoP if you use this move back to back thus canceling WoP’s effect. If you don’t have WoP, you can use it every chain without losing anything.

Brutaly.6257:

When i checked the forums and saw Trungaung´s gif image i got a bit worried and there for i made the decision to post the video. Why i got worried, well it was like opening up Pandoras box by just taking a peak.

My hope was that my clip would remove some attention from the gif but after he posted the animationtimes the box was suddenly wide open and people started to ask questions. Hence i also pm:ed him and asked him to post the whole “story”.

The reason why i didnt mention anything in the guide regarding this is that frankly im terrified using it, it actually makes it possible to place “double” symbols.

When i tested this the first time i actually got a feeling that its exploiting, not saying it is, hence i left it out all together from the guide and also why im not using it, except “by mistake”. And its also kind of difficult to do it manually which also leads me to believe that this is an unwanted mechanic.

Well now its all out there so people can judge for themselves and it might be for the better to have an open discussion about it.

If we look at the chain its pretty clear that the gain from using 3rd party macros isnt there and i think this is a good thing but if this is a legit move then macros would be very powerful indeed, 100% timing on the dodge would have a huge impact on gameplay and even more if you have a logitech soft-/hardware, or similar, that can handle scripts which is very difficult to detect as well.

@Akamon
No you aint doing it wrong, read above. To me it feels a bit fishy so i left it out of the guide.

@Lagonazer
Its two different things, one adds huge amount of dps and one adds survivability which allows you to use more offensive setups and gain a bit of dps.

It might have been a mistake to leave this out of the guide and frankly its probably better to have a discussion about it then trying to hide it.

Is it legit, if so, i will add it to the guide and also start using it on purpose and not just by mistake.

I have always thought the animation skipping you mentioned was that one until I realize in your video that it’s different. This move is EXTREMELY powerful. With the 40% endurance food, you’ll be able to do this almost every chain attacks. This is also partially the cause of the whole Writ of Persistence vs Two-Handed Mastery debate I had with you.

I also want to mention this. One way to nerf this move is to actually remove the ability to resume your chain after a dodge. To do that, Anet has to remove that ability from every single chain skills in the game. Or else, it will create a gimmicky that only a guardian’s hammer is unable to resume its chain attack. Yes, this move also works on other weapon such as the mace for guardian. It benefits hammer more since we have permanent vigor and our 3rd hit applies SoP.

I actually want Anet keep this. This has been my favorite move since the hammer is pretty boring for DPS. This also separates a good hammer DPS guardian vs a bad one. It gives you options: spend endurance to increase damage or save it to increase survivability.

@Akamon

After you see the damage of the 2nd hit, you dodge instantly then hit 1 again during the roll. This will cancel your dodge animation and enter the slam mode of the 3rd hit.

It also has another effect beside increasing your DPS. It will evade any interrupt that people try to stop you from putting up SoP. The window to interrupt is also smaller since you cut down the time needed to execute SoP.

Due to anonymous request, I’ve uploaded two clips regarding the animation skipping and a little explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPdy8xMDTo&feature=youtu.be

If you guys need an even more thorough explanation, let me know. I’ll try my best.