Guild Wars 2

Today for the episode of GW2’s MythBursters, I now will question the myth of: “Does animation skipping increase your damage?”

I conducted and fraps two videos of the hammer chain attacks, one normal sequence and one with animation skipping. The videos were filmed in 30 frames per second.

I then put each clips into Adobe Photoshop CS3 and count how many frames it takes to complete the chain. I calculate from the very beginning of the first attack when you first see damage number to the time the 3rd attack Symbol of Protection damage first appears.

Here’s the results:
Normal chain attacks takes 120 frames or 4 seconds to complete applying Symbol of Protection.
Animation skipping takes 75 frames or 2.5 seconds.

So in conclusion, a good "animation skipping* is 37.5% faster than attacking normally. Does this mean it will equal to more damage? Pretty much, it will allow you to start the next chain faster. If you wonder what’s a “good” animation skipping, scroll up and look at my GIF.

Since there’s a lot of questions regarding animation skipping, I made a GIF for it:

I just want to say this. Dissing people’s build because of utilities is stupid. Just because they have those, it doesn’t mean that they can’t change them. Utilities are designed to be switched around especially on contents like dungeons. Certain utilities will be better than others in a particular situation. If you’re running dungeons, you should be switching utilities every few pulls.

If we’re talking about practical PvE environment (especially dungeons), you can’t MB every time it’s up (2>111>12). You have to time it with your team’s combo field. Also, depending on how long protection is already on you and/or do you need the extra AH healing, it’s good to cancel the attack chain Symbol of Protection for some of the combo fields such as poison for AoE weakness, fire for AoE might, or water for heals.

I also want to mention that hammer has the most consistent AoE between SoP and MB. Greatsword chain attack can only hit up to three targets (same as hammer but it has SoP that hit everything in the radius). SoP deals slightly less damage (10%) than SoW but has way more uptime. Whirling Wrath’s damage is split between swings and projectiles making the damage uneven among the targets (some will get hit more with projectiles. In some cases, the projectiles will just plainly miss).

http://www.gw2db.com/items/67167-foefires-power-of-peril#

Nothing better than smashing someone face with a spirit hammer. Yes, it glows and have a chain connected to it just like our skill.

WvW:
Scepter/Focus and Greatsword

Chain of Light > Pre-popped Shield of Wrath > Switch Weapon > Judge’s Intervention > Virtue of Justice > Whirling Wrath > Shield of Wrath exploded > dead target

SPvP:
Scepter/Shield and Sword/Focus

Chain of Light > Switch weapon > Flashing Blade > Virtue of Justice > Zealot’s Defense > Pop Shield of Wrath during ZD’s channel > Shield of Wrath exploded

kwatrich.3805:

Thanks for the great post. I just hit 75, I switched from the GS to Hammer at 65, the last ten levels have been a breeze using the hammer.

How did you go about gearing up at 80? Dungeons? Grinding Gold? PvP? Just wondering what to start with as a soon to be fresh 80 as it seems there are unlimited options and I wanted to see how others went about it?

There’s a few ways of getting gears.

Farming: you can either farm mats directly to craft the items or farm gold and buy it from the TP. It’s a pretty fast way to get gears. This is how I got my first exotic set, but it’s before DR was introduced.

Playing with TP: you can get gold by just playing the economic game and use that gold for gears.

Dungeons: 180 tokens/day for an all paths run and more if you’re redoing the paths. It’s a really fast way to gear up if you’re efficient at running dungeons.

WvW: killing enemies for badge of honor. I think this is the slowest way of gaining exotic gears, but it’s the only way if you want to PvP only.

Imo, dungeons running is the best at getting exotic gears. You can also get quite a bit of gold from finishing the dungeons and selling the goods which then can be used to buy jewelry.

Edit: forgot that you can also get gears with karma. This makes dungeons even better since you get 1800 for the first time of the day that you run that path.

Runes of Divinity is for overall stats. I think it’s really overrated since using the orbs to cover your weakness is much better. Example: you have high attack and high armor but not enough crit. Use some Emerald or Ruby Orb to increase the precision.

This is not really related to the build, but I just want to throw this out there since it’s one of my tactics:

Scepter’s Suppressive Fire:

“In military science, suppressive fire is a fire that degrades the performance of a target below the level needed to fulfill its mission. Suppression is usually only effective for the duration of the fire.¹ Suppressive fire is not always a direct form of fire towards targets; it can be an effective visual and audible distraction. It is one of three types of fire support, which is defined by NATO as “the application of fire, coordinated with the manoeuvre of forces, to destroy, neutralize or suppress the enemy.”

How do you incorporate that in GW2? Easy. By throwing out Orbs of Wrath randomly all over the field, you are suppressing the enemies from moving forward. This is ideal for the scepter since it has a slow travel time as well as a clear visual and deal enough damage to be a dangerous threat. If the enemies start to push forward, they have to go through the sea of tennis balls especially when you have more than one guardian doing it.

You should split all the utilities into its own section: Shouts, Meds, Spirit Weapons, Consecration, and Signets.

I want to say good job on the remade guide. I also want to add some of my perspective on PvE since you already cover most in PvP:

Utilites:

Hallowed Ground: this skill needs to be in its own section. HG and SYG are two of our strongest support utilities. Stability is very rare among all the professions, but we have two, not to mention that it’s for the whole group. HG is a must on some encounter such as the Inquests in Arah Ex Mursaat or the first bosses in CM Ex Asura and Butler even if you don’t have 10 points in Virtue.

Shield of the Avenger: even though this is a spirit weapon skill, it’s extremely powerful in conjunction with Wall of Reflect on fights against a large amount of range enemies such as the riflemen in CM Ex.

Meditations – Smite Condition and Contemplation of Purity: our two “active” condition removals. Very useful on fights against mobs that you can’t risk yourself having to gamble on the passive condition removal. Example would be the Bandit Cutpurse in CM Ex. One Death Blossom will equal to 12 bleed stacks AND a poison.

Purging Flame: same as above but group condition removal. Bonus: provides a 5 seconds fire field.

In PvE, especially dungeons, you need to have every single weapon in your bag. You will need them whether to travel across the trap room with Flash Blade + Judge’s Intervention or use Protector’s Strike to group block certain boss mechanic like Kholer’s pull in AC ex or Staff’s mobility when you want to skip/move through a certain part of the dungeon. Not to mention that you can combine the hammer with greatsword to be an AoE powerhouse or with sword/torch for single target.

Also, VOTE FOR STICKY!

I had some cash and extra tokens lying around so I decided to buy my 4th set. I went with the Soildier stats and mix and match it with some Knights and Berserker. Here’s my new set’s stats:

2977 attack
43% crit chance
54% crit damage
3022 armor
15,839 HP
300 healing power

Gears are socketed with Emerald and Ruby Orbs with Sigil of Strength on weapon. I kinda want to have 3k attack, 16k hp, 40% crit chance, and 3k armor set up to test out some stuffs.

Omnomberry Ghost: 66% chance to steal life and 70 precision. Testing it now.

Edit: It turns you into a ghost for the duration. Pretty neat.

I’ve successfully wall jumped into the area behind the door. There’s not a single NPC around. So he probably only exist in the instance of the personal story.

@xaarli and Italyguy
Ya, I run with berserkers.

@Lucubration

You had me in suspense until you finally went back and picked up that loot bag at 3:48.
I think I’d probably still try to make Crithammer work in WvW instead of going Greatsword. From your comments, it sounds like you’re doing the same nowadays. Do you have any advice on how to adjust gear from PvE to WvW? I imagine you want more Vitality, but I’m not sure how to pick it up without sacrificing too much Precision or Power (running fill Knight’s atm).

I use full berserker and 10/25/30/0/5 because I need WW burst damage to bring one down as fast as possible since I can’t afford to stay in the “No Man’s Land”. Hammer just doesn’t do the damage fast enough for me. Vitality is not that big of a deal since I have a lot of ways to remove conditions. I would suggest you try to use full Knights first then replace your jewelry to Berserker if you need more firepower. This is a “hit and run” tactic. Bring the pain swift and hard then retreat. If you can’t kill the target, you’ll be forced to retreat or chase them deep into their army. An example would be on my death in the video. I committed too much on the kill (failed execution of the WW burst) while my team has already retreated. When you’re retreating, remember to use Chain of Light, Shield of Avenger, Leap of Faith, Judge’s Intervention, etc…

@AmalWright
I was using Ruby Orbs x6

@Nabarue
I’m glad that you can get it to work. Judge’s Intervention is really good for a suprise attack since you can never see when it’s coming.

Korgov.7645:

Do you mean cosmetic effects like “Your shield looks bigger”? Or off-hand specific buff like “Decreases shield cooldowns by 10%”? Or guardian specific like “Increases Sanctuary radius by 25%”?

Not going to happen, because runes should work for all professions and not all can wear shields.

Look up rune of the ranger and another rune set that has the 6th bonus with shout remove condition.

mega.7816:

Video is good. And I use to use this until i went support since I hang with more buddies. But man the music I just can’t bare. Volume ftw.

Finding fitting music is probably the hardest part for a video, especially on long clips. I did this quite quick so I’ll keep this in mind for future music choices.

Dealdrick.9701:

Cool vid, i like the playstyle. Could you post a link to the build you are using in the vid plz?

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccz0mzzMmrnaMmrnamapx0VMMsozb

Nabarue.3290:

Fantastic video! My guardian runs a similar setup, but admittedly you use it a bit better than I. Keep up the good work, OP, greatly enjoyed this video.

Thanks for the feedback

Natas.1306:

Nice job OP someone finally bringing the guardian pain on their enemies. Good change of all the noobs whining on this forum saying guardian are useless in WvWvW when in reality we are wrecking force to be fear.

Thanks for the reply. Melee in WvW is still viable in open battle. Just need to know when to go in and retreat. In a stalemate, if a melee attacks the enemy group, they will fall back (range mentality) and kinda disrupt their “formation”. That opens up space for your team to gain ground and start pushing.

Cempa.3645:

Could you add music description plx!

Music:
0:25-3:40 Elena Siegman – Coming Home
3:49-7:02 Linkin Park – Point of Authority
7:03-10:08 Linkin Park – Don’t Stay
10:37-12:18 Linkin Park – One Step Closer
12:29-15:26 Linkin Park – Pushing Me Away

Added to the description box.

Thanks a lot guys for the positive feedback.

Rydell.9612:

A fun hit and run style of play, thanks for the video. May I ask someone to please link the 10/25/30/0/5 build? In particular I’m wondering which 20 point Radiance trait is best, the others are pretty obvious.
Thanks!

I’m pretty sure I had Blind Exposure since that was the same build I used for PvE before switching to crithammer.

Ya, that’s the build I use for PvP.

Full zerk: 3136 attack, 56% crit chance, 103% crit damage (153% with base).

This is some of my old clips I put together showing one of my favorite tactic in WvW. I usually go with a small force, flank their army on the side, and retreat back as soon as they start chasing us. It also shows my favorite combo: Chain of Light > Judge’s Intervention > Whirling Wrath.

I did this really quick so I apologize for the editing and music.

Try another strat, use chain of light > judge > whirling wrath one shot someone then run the kitten out. Preferably a squishy target. I have some clips doing this. Probably have to upload them up. Every time you teleport in, the enemy will fall back (range mentality: stay away). That opens up more space for your squad to slowly push them back.

I’ll rather use Ruby Orbs over Divinity Runes. Provides more damage and I only lose 60 vita and toughness which is nothing. It’s also much cheaper.

Staff for mobility and overall support. Personal choice for PvE since you tap mobs with it in big DE. In WvW, great for roaming and keep defending.
Scepter/focus for range offense and defense. Use this about 50% of the time in dungeon. In WvW, great for harassing defenders during a siege with Smite.
Hammer for all out melee offense. In WvW, good for small skirmishes.

I personally use Ruby Orbs for the extra damage. Other choices would be Superior Rune of Strength for 20% Might duration and 5% extra damage while having Might or Superior Rune of Scholar for the crit damage/power and 10% damage while above 90% hp. I would pick Superior Rune of Strength since it has more synergy with the build (20% Might duration for Empowering Might).

Guardian has at least 20 points in Honor. Pretty sure on it since he has Selfless Daring and using a GS so he should have 2-Handed Mastery. His Adept Major trait seems to be Superior Aria. He seems to be heavily geared toward healing as Rayya pointed out. At 11:00, you can see that his Selfless Daring heals for quite a chunk. My guess is that he’s a Virtues staff support (0/0/0/30/30 for example) with GS on switch for some extra offensive power.

Altruistic Healing
If you’re using Empowering Might to compliment it, getting pieces with Magi stats would be good (precision/vita/healing power). Or you can just get the soldier pieces and make up the crit with jewelry since heal scaling is not that great for AH.

Use a hammer. Get some crit chance up for Empowering Might/Altruistic Healing combo. Whoa la! You have a crithammer build and be much more tankier than using meditations + any other weapon combo, at least in dungeons. In SPvP, stick with meditations since you can’t expect people to be around for Altruistic Healing.

Crit chance will usually rate higher than crit damage unless you have like no crit damage and extremely high crit chance.

@Brutaly
Here’s what we agree on:

Replacing Knight (precision) with Valkyrie (crit damage) will reduce his damage without doubt.
If he wants to reach 15k hp, replacing those pieces may still be worth it to him since the difference is only within a few percentage.

Just to make sure, I was totally against replacing all his gears with crit damage since it is a stupid move. Precision will almost always be better (the build name is crit hammer for a reason).

Melizande.7230:

………

My spec is 0/15/30/20/5. As much as I tried to make myself love Trungalung’s build, I can’t live without Renewed Justice. It’s frequency, stacking might and spam-blinding packs is far too useful a utility.

………

Now my question moving forward is my excess crit. In my PvE and PvP experiences in MMOs, including WoW & SWToR, you typically want to aim for either 25%, 33% or 50% crit. If you’re in-between you have “wasted” points, because the benefit just plain isn’t worth the stat allocation.
……….

My build is mostly for dungeons (Master of Consecrations). Giving up Renewed Justice will always be hard. A 0/0/30/30/5 with 5 points spare will allow more flexibility when switching traits since you have so much choices to choose from in the Honor tree.

If memory serves me correctly, those games have diminishing return on crit chance (take more points to get the same % as you’re stacking it up). I’m pretty sure precision /crit chance scales linearly in GW2.

Brutaly.6257:

I must totally misunderstand the formula! What am i getting wrong here?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_damage
“Critical Damage is added to the default 1.5x bonus (rather than multiplied). For example, +50% Critical Damage results in 2.0x critical hits”

An example based on
x=Basedps with no crits=1000
y=Critchance=50%
z=Critdamage=50+50% 50% are the basevalue, see definition in wiki, of critical damage and 50% is obtained from gear.
Z=additional critdamage=25%

…………..

Sorry for getting back so late. I was really busy with my work and school.

After I read your post, I went back and calculate the crit damage in a different route:

Test 1:
100 hits
1,000 damage per hit
50% crit chance
50% base crit damage

50 hits are normal: 50 × 1,000 = 50,000
50 hits are critical: 50 × 1,000 × 1.5 = 75000
Total damage: 125,000

Test 2:
100 hits
1,000 damage per hit
50% crit chance
75% crit damage (50% base + 25% crit damage from gears/traits)

50 hits are normal: 50 × 1,000 = 50,000
50 hits are critical: 50 × 1,000 × 1.75 = 87,500
Total damage: 137,500

The damage difference between the two tests is 12,500 or 10% (from 125,000 to 137,500). So 1% of crit damage actually equals to 0.4% overall damage with the stats above which is 0.1% off than my original calculation. I’m still finding that missing 0.1% to see that where I made the mistakes.

For Might stacking, all you really need is precision for Empowering Might (and Sigil of Strength if you use it), and I already pointed out that precision priority is higher than crit damage with Cezton’s stats. There’s no other stats that would increase your might stacking potency (not talking about the runes’ boon duration, that’s not actually a stat). He was thinking about switching gears to have 15k HP. If he switches two pieces from Knights to Valkyries, he’ll only lose a little bit of crit chance (around 2-3%) which won’t matter much to Empowering Might (not as much as you would notice anyway). Also, other ways of might stacking doesn’t rely on any stats (Sigil of Battle, Might of Protector, etc…). It’s not like he will lose 3 stacks of might from switching a few pieces to Valkyrie.

Crit damage is flat percentage. So it also takes into advantage of higher power. You’ll gain more damage from crit damage with higher power (if you have a lot of mights for example).

Power of the Virtuous, I’ve read reports of it being only 0.5-1% per boons which is pretty low. Comparing to Radiance Power or Fiery Wrath which is a flat 10% on conditioned/burning targets, Power of the Virtuous is pretty weak.

10% damage while under Aegis is only good if you are to not get hit at all. To get half of its effect (5% is still pretty good for a trait), you can only be hit once every 15 seconds with the 30 seconds VoC trait.

Just equip a Staff and tag mobs with #1, #2 (don’t use the explosion chain) and #3 when they clump up. Can be used for any build. The point here is to tag mobs for loots/experience since he specifically asks about it. Let the others do the killing.

Brutaly.6257:

Dont focus to much on critdamage, its not as great as one might think.

A hit for 1000 with 50% crit damage hits for 2000. If you add 25% more critdamage it will hit for 2250. So you increased the stat with 50% and gained about 10% in the individual blow and if you have 50% critchance you gain5% overall dps.

If its huge hits you are looking for then i would go for might stacking, its much more effective.

Crit damage is a really good stats given that you have a high crit chance to go with it. With 50% crit chance, every % of crit damage equals to 0.5% damage (if you have 100% chance to crit, every % of crit damage equals to 1% damage, so half of that). So if you increase your crit damage by 25%, you increase your total damage by 12.5% overall damage. In his case, he has 52% chance to crit which equals to 0.52% overall damage per one percent of crit damage. He needs to find a balance of crit chance and crit damage.

I’ll help and calculate that for him:

Empowering Might has an internal cool down (expect to be 1 seconds, I tested this in the mist with Sword Wave and it never procs more than 1). At 100% crit chance, you’ll be able to maintain a 5 stacks of might just from the trait which is a total of 175 power. So every % of crit chance, it will provide a damage increase of 1.75 power over a period of time.

So now let’s look at his stats:
2884 Attack
52% crit chance
71% crit damage

Every % of crit chance he gains will increase his damage by 1.21% (50% base + 71% crit damage). Assuming that attacks equal to damage, every 1.75 power he gets from Empowering Might per % of crit chance will equal to 0.06% (from 2884 to 2885.75). So every % of crit chance equals 1.27% of damage. 21 precision equals to 1% crit chance so 1 precision equals to 0.06% damage.

Every % of crit damage equals to 0.52% overall damage. Each % of crit damage equals to about 12-14 stats, so 13 stats in average according to the Berserker’s itemization. Then every 1 crit damage stat equal to 0.04% overall damage. This is not taking into account of your damage overall gained from crit damage will diminish with lower crit chance.

So overall, his best stat is precision follow by crit damage. But if he wants to hit 15k hp, switching out one or two piece for Valkyrie will still be fine since his damage will reduce by only a few percent (I can calculate the exact damage difference but it requires me to know which pieces he will replace).

No smite condition? First time I see a med build without one. If you prefer to do more damage. You can go 10/25/30/5/0 for Radiance Power. You also get shorter cooldown on signet and remove a condition on its usage.

There’s a pirate in the zone that has Vigil Keep. He sings the “Yo ho! A pirate’s life for me” song from Pirate of the Caribbean.

Staff: roaming with symbol of swiftness, area denial with line of warding, and keep defense since you can hit people through the gate with #1.

Scepter: keep offense with smite harassment and the ability to chain of light (better than hammer #3 since it’s instant) into ring of warding (even better if you have Judge’s Intervention since you can teleport on top after immobilize the target).

Greatsword: pull and leap are great for gap closing. You can also coordinate a pull into ring of warding or hammer’s immobilize into greatsword’s WW. This combo will probably does the most damage at the cost of being in melee. Best for small skirmishes.

Crithammer with full berserker gears. The survivability of the build allows me to go full glass while being able to live longer than most thanks to permanent protection and altruistic healing.

@ImarKurumi

It’s perfectly viable. Unless your group are staying far back, you should be able to get empowering might up on most of them. The only thing is that you can’t give them protection, but it’s only a small part of altruistic healing. The melee probably brought Weakness to reduce the damage even further which is why you feel squishy without them.

Hammer guardian.

A well built and experienced one can cover all roles: damage, support, and control while having top notch survivability.

The beam will have to be multi hit to balance the speed. For example, our scepter will take 1 second to travel for 1000 damage. The beam can be two hit over 1 second, doing 500 damage each hit. This will guarantee that you cannot outrun it and prevent the scepter doing too much damage. Imagine in WvW that your scepter’s beam keep critting for 3k with no travel time. Would be a little bit too strong.

@Melizande

A good PvE question might be: does the Knight’s set provide enough DPS to complete the Lover’s Crypt explorable in time?

Berserkers will provide more damage since power is its main stats. Knight shouldn’t fall far behind since crit and condition damage are useless against the burrows. Just grab a GS and switch it between hammer and you should be good.

AC ex is the easiest one to do all paths on. It has been my daily routine to speed clear AC ex for cash and extra tokens. I’ve been doing it too much that I have full set (needed the precision/vitality/healing for my other build), the gift, and 5 weapons (4 of them are two-handed). That’s around 3500 tokens.

I’ve successfully run with pugs for Arah multiple times (Jotun and Mursaat mostly, didn’t get time to try Forgotten yet). On Alphad, I’m a guardian so Wall of Reflect gives a lot of breathing room (reflects back 15-20k unload). Pretty much just hide behind crates when he teleports back the middle. When you’re out of crates, spread out and max range so you can have an easier time dodging the balls. If you get hit, it shouldn’t bounce to other players and bounce back to kill you (since you should be at max range from each other). It also helps that the pugs listen to the direction from the leader (in most cases, it’s me) when doing Arah. Usually take me 3 tries to kill Giganticus Lupicus with a fresh pug that’s new to the instance. Maybe I just got lucky with the group.

@Melizande

My question is, what do you use in your weapon? Another Ruby orb? or a sigil perhaps.

Trungalung on the other hand frequently advertises the full Berserker/ruby setup for nearly all applications. I can only imagine the killing-speed of that set must be so much faster. I can tell you from running with a Thief/Mesmer/Engineer regularly, my Knight’s DPS is pretty pathetic, but I stay up when all of them fall over.

I run with Sigil of Strength since it should take advantage of my Altruistic Healing (never test this, I just assume it does).

There’s one thing I have over other people. Experience. I’ve run dungeons so much that I know what most mobs will do. Once you know what they’re gonna do, all you have to do is switching your traits, weapons, and utilities to counter them. I’m at the point that I’m comfortable with full berserkers (I also have full knight and magi set stash in the bank except for some jewelry). I push the potential of the class and build. Before all of this, I would mix and match for some survivability then once I’m comfortable enough with that particular instance. I’d run with full zerk. I’d not recommend this however if you’re easily spaced out. You need quite a bit of concentration and focus to see through all the cluster kitten in melee.

In WvW, I rarely run into any small skirmish so I’ll stick with full damage or running Magi for support. In SPvP, I use Knight with zerk jewel however.

I think that’s the masterwork back lace from the personal story. Don’t quote me on it though.

Some fight will require you to go range so just carry a scepter around in the bag (Giganticus Lupicus for example). I’ll suggest to have all the weapons in your bag.