Guild Wars 2

Eveningstar.6940:

One more thing:

Under Siege (is this the Vigil storyline where you have to break Zhaitan’s catapults?)

Killing enemies in this story quest does not trigger “Renewed Justice,” which should refresh Virtue of Justice after killing an enemy.

Unless the enemy rewards loots or experience, Renewed Justice won’t activate.

Merciful Intervention doesn’t receive the recharge reduction of Meditation Mastery even though the tool tip is correct (states 64 secs cd however start at the untraited 80 secs).

I only lost to a ranger 1v1 so far (didn’t die yet b/c it was interrupted by reinforcement, but the fight was going downhill for me). I was getting my behind kited so hard it’s not even funny.

Jahaudant.9267:

Turn on walk through target. It’s in settings. No need to thank me.

I knew there’s an option to turn it off but couldn’t figure out which. It’s Melee Attack Assist under General Option. I guess the name confused me.

Whirling Wrath has two damage components, the swings themselves and the projectiles (the random blue light flying out of the whirls). Since the projectiles fire randomly in 360 degree, it creates quite a noticeable damage swing between having a few or a lot hit the target.

To minimize the randomness, the best way I’ve found is to use Whirling Wrath while inside the target (stacking on top or as close as possible). This will give you a higher chance to have more projectiles hit the target. However, there’s two things to keep in mind:

The first is mob repositioning. The target will try to reposition if you’re too close to them. This is not big of a deal since you can always move accordingly to their position. If the mob targets a different player/NPC, it will not try to reposition against you.

The second problem is target collision. In PvE, you will have target collision against the mob you targeted. I’ve found two ways to work around this. It’s either you deactivate your target (once you cancel it, you can stack on the mob) or you can just move in a spiral toward the mob.
Thanks to the info by Reihert, you can turn target collision off by unchecking Melee Attack Assist box under General Option tab.

The size of the mob is also a big factor. The bigger it is, the more projectiles it will hit. With this, I am now able to have a more consistent Whirling Wrath damage (and even extreme amount of damage like during Temple of Grenth event, I had a 19.7k crit). Give me some feedback if this is working for you or not (calculate how many hit per Whirling Wrath, not the overall damage).

Pretty sure it’s a flat 15% crit chance. Anet tooltip is pretty straightforward.

CMF.5461:

Again, I was going for a defensive build. Retaliation will not increase your ability to survive but only do thorns damage, so you still take full damage.

As I said, this is not an offensive build, but it is one that has been helping me to counter some of the more aggressive professions that have given me problems, such as warriors and 100 blades, or other similar big hitting abilities.

As far as a retal set up, I originally tried to do that one with a great sword, but relying on symbols became to restrictive for my mobility and keeping up with the target, the other option is hammer but that is fairly slow as well.

If you have an interesting retaliation build I would be interested in trying it out.

You say you want to go a defensive build, but you went 25 radiance. You could have easily pick Monk’s Focus which adds a lot more survivability.

A retaliation build only relies on Signet of Judgement and SYG, not Symbol of Wrath.

CMF.5461:

It is a one second burn, but with repeated blocks I can get the duration up to 11 seconds.

As trungalung said though, one good condition removal can wipe that damage away, but you can always reapply faster than they can typically get the condition removal back up.

Since you need to block to get your burn up (well, not counting VoJ for now), it will be quite hard to reapply since the blocks cool down is 10+ seconds (passive removal is 10 seconds). Also, any serious PvPer wants at least one active removal (exp: Smite Condition) and one passive (exp: Signet of Resolve) due to the overwhelming popular of condition builds.

I generally prefer focus since you can prepop Shield of Wrath, teleport into ZD, and it will explode to add even more burst.

Any offensive meditation builds:

Go 30 for Monk’s focus, the rest of the points focus on damage. Use knight’s amulet with Divinity runes for a balance of damage and survivability. One of the best builds there is for 1v1.

Here’s a video of demonstration of Sword/Focus + Scepter/Shield (10/30/30/0/0): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAQAClTLWXY
I would however prefer greatsword over sword/focus now (10/25/30/0/5).

Lexie Tanium.4958:

Trungalung.7850:

The new Destiny’s Edge (I’m in the middle):

:D haha that’s so cute. Look at you walkin all epic.

The walking reminds me of Justice League the animated intro.

I’ll rather go with a retaliation build. Relying on block to stack burn (or just relying on burn for damage overall) can be easily countered with just one condition removal.

Group:
Virtue of Justice in an average group of 5 (works on NPC and can be more than five): 5.5 × 5 = 27.5 secs of burning (92% uptime).

Solo:
With Renewed Justice, the target should at least be on fire for 6 secs when you engage it. Should be plenty of time to kill it (or complete your burst chain).

The new Destiny’s Edge (I’m in the middle):

1st Weapon Combination: Greatsword
2nd Weapon Combination: Scepter + Focus
Build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mccmzz9MmrnNomrnvmapx0VMMozob
Rotation: Drop Smite and chain him down, prebuff Shield of Wrath, Judge’s Intervention then pop Virtue of Justice into Whirl of Wrath while the target is still immobilized, and finally pull and knock them down into Symbol of Wrath (Shield of Wrath should explode already).

While being technically a glass canon build, this build is more durable than most will think thanks to Monk’s Focus. Last utility can be anything (I personally like to use SYG).

Edit: Since Whirl of Wrath projectiles go randomly, make sure that you’re “inside” the target while whirling to minimize the randomness (higher chance that ALL projectiles will hit the target). Since this is PvP, it will be hard since your target will be moving all the time. However, if they stand still like a PvE mob, it will be something like this:

A lot of testing seems to show that Power of the Virtuous only increase 0.5-1% damage per boon.

Human cultural armor tier 3.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mccz0mz0mrnvomrnvmapx0VMMozob

Offensive Meditation Greatsword a.k.a. “The Nuke”
Focus: PvE and SPvP
Note: Last utility slot can be anything. You can replace Judge’s Intervention with other meditations for more support/survivability. On-switched weapon can be anything.

PvE:
It has the best trait combo – Renewed Justice and Inspired Virtue. This allows you to spam Virtue of Justice (thus stacking Might) on AoE. It has the highest damage output out of of every build I’ve gotten my hand on (full berserker – 3100 attack/53% crit chance/91% crit damage). My Whirl of Wrath had crit for 10.2k (was in explore mode Arah) without cheesing Mights and Vulnerabilities. For survivability, you have a decent amount of armor (2500) due to 30 points in Valor and Monk’s Focus.

SPvP:
Based off a popular offensive meditation build in beta (however with sword instead of greatsword). Here’s a video of me using the beta model demonstrating the survivability: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAQAClTLWXY
The greatsword model should provide more damage with a little bit less survivability (lose either shield or focus). Remember to use Knight’s, not Berserker’s amulet.

10/25/30/0/5 Offensive/Meditation for me with full exotic berzerker gears. Have around 3.1k attack/52% crit/91% crit damage. You can say it’s pretty much glass cannon. As long as you don’t get hit back to back to back in explore mode dungeons, you can heal yourself easily with Monk’s Focus (unless you get hit by the obvious 5 mins charging one shot skill of doom). I’ve crit up to 10.2k whirl of wrath in explored mode Arah (without cheesing the 25 stacks vulnerabilities, was having about 5-7 stacks of might and 7-8 stacks vuln).

In WvW, it’s pretty fun to slap somebody with 7k crit whirls. Prebuff Shield of Wrath, pick an isolated vulnerable target (like just used dodge twice, light armor wearers, etc…), Judge’s Intervention on top and whirl of wrath to victory, then leap of faith away to safety and pop Retreat. Watch out for those guys that like to stand in the dead man land between the two sides and resurrect their teammates. They’re my favorite victims. The only downtime is that you have to wait til your cds are backed up. You can “try” to hit somebody with your scepter while waiting.

Thunderfury 2.0