Guild Wars 2

How will you name dual Sigil weapons?

with both suffixes at the end?
Apothecary’s Pearl Broadsword of Bursting of Purity
Apothecary’s Pearl Broadsword of Purity of Bursting

with “and” in it?
Dire Greatsword of Frailty and Strength
Dire Greatsword of Strength and Frailty

or with one of them becoming a prefix?
Bloodlust Berzerker’s Ceremonial Scimitar of Doom
Doom Berzerker’s Ceremonial Scimitar of Bloodlust

or simply name everything Twilight?

Rampager’s Destroyer Greatsword of the Hydromancer of the Geomancer!
Icebrood Slaying Sentinel’s Destroyer Greatsword of Elemental Slaying!
(if that even makes sense)

Edited for more options.

Great idea, I get to use my Elite Signet again just by giving up on my passive heals. I think Healing Signet should make you Invulnerable for 2 seconds as well to be on par with Renewed Focus.

Really.

Hero.2319:

Any tips on how I can do better in 1v1 or 2v1? Maybe different build suggestions?

I can tell from a glance that your build will get countered by a condition necro really fast in a 1v1 situation, and there are a lot of reasons why, see below.

Your build is currently tuned towards “zergling” rather than 1v1. Let’s look at what you lack against a condition necro.

Skills first:
Shelter is the very worst heal skill you can bring against a condition necro. Shelter is not blocking anything at all because the conditions are still ticking on you. Signet of Resolve is what you need when fighting a condition necro. It removes a condition every 10 seconds and is almost double the heal amount of Shelter. In a 1v1, Shelter is unlikely to be blocking enough hits to warrant the loss of 4k heals from Signet of Resolve, and you probably wont block enough hits to gain any meaningful amount of Might stacks to overpower your opponent.

“Stand your Ground” is lackluster against any condition necro. Retaliation does not tick on them much, and Stability only prevents Fear, which a simple stun breaker can take care of instead. Even Signet of Resolve passive can take down Fear often(though not reliably). “Stand your Ground” is more oriented towards a group vs group situation, rather than in a 1v1 situation. Contemplation of Purity will fill in better as it is a stun breaker(breaks Fear), it is also a condition converter(you lose ALL conditions, and you gain boons instead) plus it is a meditation. The recharge is not too high, it is 48s because you are already traited. 48s is less than the 50s recharge on Absolute Resolution in terms of condition removal unless we include Renewed Focus combo.

In a 1v1 situation, you might also want to consider “Save Yourselves”. Since it is 1v1, we will consider that you are not pulling any conditions to you. 12s of extra Fury + Protection + Regen + Vigor + Swiftness + Retaliation(yes you gain more Retal than “Stand your Ground”!) is worth it to take in a 1v1, even on a 60s recharge. Often, 12s is all you need to finish off someone really quickly. Additionally, it is a stun breaker so you can use it to surprise your opponent and reverse the flow of the battle. You will probably only get to use it once in a 1v1, but it might just be enough to turn the battle into your favor.

Traits next:
Honor line(other than Vigorous Precision) is also more oriented towards group play. First, if you do swap out “Stand your Ground”, you dont need Superior Aria anymore. Superior Aria was not doing much in your build anyway, it is currently moving “Stand your Ground” from 30s to 24s recharge. 6s recharge on just one non-self-heal skill feels like wasting a trait slot.

In a 1v1 situation, I would pull out 15 points in Honor and invest 10 in Radiance.
Almost all Adept Major Traits of the Guardian are bad for 1v1.
But you want to consider Boon Removal in 1v1 though. The new buffed Searing Flames in Radiance is good in 1v1 against almost any class. With 10s cooldown, if you did not activate Justice, you are removing a boon from your foe on every Whirling Wrath, or every Zealot’s Defense.
You might also consider Signet Mastery just for Signet of Resolve. Making Signet of Resolve almost the same recharge(32s) as Shelter(30s) while removing conditions passively and healing for 4k more is definitely worth taking, even if you are not using any other signets.
You might also want to consider 10 points in Zeal instead just for Fiery Wrath. Zealot’s Speed is pretty bad in 1v1 as it is only a small stationary AoE, but you gain Retaliation(which works well against many classes but not condition necros).
Then 5 points in Virtues for extra damage, specially with CoP or SY.

Stats finally:
Cleric is very bad against condition necros. First, they have Poison, it kills any meaningful Healing Power you might have. Then you have a lot of stats wasted on Toughness. Condition damage from condition necros simply bypass Toughness, therefore every point you have in Toughness is considered wasted against them. Last, you have very low Vitality, which means you do not last long against conditions. If you want to deal with condition necros, you might want to consider Melandru Runes and Lemongrass Poultry. Those will get you a long way against any condition builds, as well as save your life in WvW. Another option is Lyssa with Renewed Focus + 25 Virtues.

Final note: Condition necros are much more fragile than they look. A condition necro is probably investing all of their stats into condition damage, and have very low stats of everything else, so if you can outlast them with good skills/traits/rune setups, you will probably win the fight or force them to withdraw. What I mean by this: you do not need to make all the above suggested changes to your build to outlast a condition necro, but only a few of these should be enough to compensate for what you lack.

Remember when we placed random skills on our bars to make jokes back in GW1?

We should make GW2 versions of these.

Silferas.3841:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Silferas.3841:

@Turtle Dragon: ok, can you make me a video of a full zerker thief 30/30/0/0/10 or zerker ele 30/10/10/20/0 that doesn’t ever die with any party in CoF 1? I know warriors can do it, but that’s because of maximum HP and one of the best (passive) heals in this game, but that’s an issue of one class, not a gear spec.

First, I only claimed that it can be done for CoF1 final boss, not the whole run.
Second, to show that someone “never dies” would be a very difficult thing to video. You want me to video his everyday CoF for you? How many videos will be enough to show you that he “never” dies?

For final boss, take a look:
All it takes is 1 Guardian with Virtue of Courage, Renewed Focus and Retreat, and the Zerker party. You see the large AoE circle? Retreat. Next AoE circle? Courage. RF to recharge Courage, next AoE circle? Courage. that boss does the AoE circle about every 10 seconds. 40s is more than enough to down that boss with full Zerkers. You do not need to dodge even once. Thief and Eles welcome. Again, never dodged once, never took a single hit.

Yes, and here we are getting into the area of teamplay. Not pugging, not general dungeons, not berserker gear, but teamplay, which is the area of organized teams.

I don’t see why PUGs should get the same results as teams. I don’t see why PVT should be as fast as zerker, I don’t see any reason to do anything about any of these things. They can all run dungeons, they won’t fail them, they won’t be hurt by any mechanism that makes zerker superior to them. They will just be slower.

And about the “never die” thingie: you never die in an organized team. You PUG and you will be hugging the floor in full zerker on ele or thief the moment you fail one minor thing, and that’s balanced.

This is not a team, this is actually pug. This is how many are running pug CoF P1 nowadays when they mention “Zerker 80s Exp only 4k AP minimum or kick”. Want some extra safety? put in 2 Guardians with Aegis. You see the red circle, you have 4 whole seconds to press the Aegis button. No failing, no minor thing, 0% skill or teamplay involved. DPS the boss to death while stacking on it, do not move, do not pass go, but you do collect 200. Mindless.

The point i need to stress here: this does not work with non-zerkers as you will run out of Aegis before you kill the boss(as a single Guardian). Thus this is 1 more thing that makes zerker even better than others while being mindless. My party is doing NOTHING other than press 1 or their basic DPS rotation, not even dodge. The only one that has to do things(and easy things that even a 1 handed monkey can do) is the Guardian.

Silferas.3841:

@Turtle Dragon: nobody is against upping the difficulty of content in this game. We are all against upping the difficulty selectively for berserker players and making it not worthwhile for people to run that spec anymore. Everybody will be ok if the game got more challenging, but where would be the reward in running a spec that has it harder than everyone else when everyone else would be able to finish the content in comparable time?

“We are all against upping the difficulty selectively for berserker players and making it not worthwhile for people to run that spec anymore.”
Zerker will always remain worthwhile for better players.

“but where would be the reward in running a spec that has it harder than everyone else when everyone else would be able to finish the content in comparable time?”
Zerker will keep their shorter time as reward.

To make this clear, we want
Zerker = harder but shorter
Armor = easier but longer

What we have now,
Zerker = shorter
Armor = longer

Silferas.3841:

@Turtle Dragon: ok, can you make me a video of a full zerker thief 30/30/0/0/10 or zerker ele 30/10/10/20/0 that doesn’t ever die with any party in CoF 1? I know warriors can do it, but that’s because of maximum HP and one of the best (passive) heals in this game, but that’s an issue of one class, not a gear spec.

First, I only claimed that it can be done for CoF1 final boss, not the whole run.
Second, to show that someone “never dies” would be a very difficult thing to video. You want me to video his everyday CoF for you? How many videos will be enough to show you that he “never” dies?

For final boss, take a look:
All it takes is 1 Guardian with Virtue of Courage, Renewed Focus and Retreat, and the Zerker party. You see the large AoE circle? Retreat. Next AoE circle? Courage. RF to recharge Courage, next AoE circle? Courage. that boss does the AoE circle about every 10 seconds. 40s is more than enough to down that boss with full Zerkers. You do not need to dodge even once. Thief and Eles welcome. Again, never dodged once, never took a single hit.

NoTrigger.8396:

i understand exactly what he means and he is trying to nerf berserker to the ground.
read all his posts and you will understand my reaction.

+ zerker players who are bad already receive max punishment.

They dont.
I can run CoF P1 with 5 full Zerker players and never take enough damage to get downed, let alone die from the final boss ever, without even dodging once. Same with many other dungeon paths that have “80s exp zerk only speed clear”. All it takes is stacking. Where’s the punishment?

You seem to be considering yourself in the list of “dont dodge like gods” then. Because if you were in the list of “dodge like gods” you are unaffected, what’s your problem?

If you are indeed in the “dont dodge like gods” list, I am sorry to say that maybe it is time you up your gameplay, or maybe Arenanet should up the game difficulty for you. Or swap gear to something else that will be at your skill level.

NoTrigger.8396:

kyubi.3620:

All of these post all show the one important point they need to make it twice as harder for full zerker to survive but somewhat worthwhile for someone whos not zerking to do the same. That way player who dodge like gods arent any more punished then before and people who run balanced build wich doesnt rely on pure damage actualy get to be party worthwhile.

oh boy,

can you start thinking before you post?

PLAYERS WHO DODGE LIKE GODS SHOULDNT BE PUNISHED BECAUSE THEY ARE kittenING SKILLED.
and by nerfing berserker you will also nerf the fun of those players.
and no matter what arenanet will do, one thing is for sure.
i will never allow people like you to join my party.

what is going on in your head?
why do you want to nerf playerskill?
what about if you l2p and buff your own playerskill so you will be able to enjoy min/max builds that also provide maximum support at the same time?

you didnt even understand this.
a full berserker build can provide as much support as your tanky hulk build.
because gw2 doesnt have a trinity and everyone can do damage, cc and support at the same time.

concept of guild wars 2
concept of the guild wars 2 combat system.

I think you might have misread what he said. Because it means the exact same thing you said.

He said:
That way player who dodge like gods arent any more punished then before

Translation: players who dodge like gods are not punished.

You said:
PLAYERS WHO DODGE LIKE GODS SHOULDNT BE PUNISHED BECAUSE THEY ARE kittenING SKILLED.

Translation: players who dodge like goes are not punished.

The punishment is not being added for players who dodge like gods. They are the only people unaffected because they are skilled and pro.
Rephrasing:
All attacks now 1-hit
Players who dodge like gods never get hit = Pros are unaffected.
Players who do not dodge like gods will get hit a lot more = Bads get spanked.

The punishment is only being added for players who do not dodge like gods and still wear Zerker gear without any consequence or risk.

You should only have something against this if you do not dodge like gods. Then it comes to a matter of “QQ dont nerf my imba playstyle”.
Being Zerker should walk hand in hand with being able to dodge like gods.
Being unable to dodge like gods should go hand in hand with not wearing Zerker.

stof.9341:

Silferas.3841:

kyubi.3620:

well then we can always reduce zerker damage by half. Best way to balance thing will keeping active defence a key feature.

I am starting to feel like you are here just to make people angry.

But I’d be alright with that as long as damage is halved on EVERY single set in PVE. That’d make encounters take longer and therefore make it more challenging for berserkers.

Well the issue then would be that PVT is far too faceroll and easy. The solution is obviously to shave some tankiness from the set and put it into Precision and Crit Damage.

Or as I said, there is no zerk issue because the best thing we can do for the game is decide that PvE = zerk gear and everyone uses the same gear and the PvE content is tuned for that one

To be honest, I like that solution. It is linear but great. It completely kills diversity, and provides 1 gear stat combo to rule them all. If we all get to be Zerkers only and no choice in stats, then everyone is the same, easy balance. Then the devs balance around that. Give players 1 free-stat change but only to Zerker on all their equipment.

Your stats will still differ from your trait lines only. The difference is minimal enough on the trait lines to allow any build you want to run, whether you like Mantra or Shatter, whether you like Venoms or Stealth.

We also then change crafting to be uniform. You have all those recipes, but all of them lead to Zerker gear. So regardless of whether you have 5 Powerful Blood or 5 Elaborate Totems, you can craft 1 piece of Exotic Zerker gear. But you must have 5 of one of them, you cannot craft with 2 Powerful Blood and 3 Elaborate Totem.

Requiem.8769:

How about an aura effect that pulses blinds around the thief for ~3s; as in, a literal “cloak of shadows”?
This would have no problems with revealed, yet provide a brief period of safety for the thief.

But this does not keep Stealth as a mechanic. The dev already explained they want to keep the Stealth as part of this trait. The compromise would be dropping Black Powder at 25% health, the Thief can Leap/Blast through at will to initiate the Stealth. With a cooldown of course.

Berner.7289:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Suggestion1: Add more Immobilize and Weakness to monsters
The one line of defense that all zerkers use: Dodge. If you stop them from doing that to avoid every single attack and more and force them to take damage and be killed, then they will learn to avoid zerker and add more survival gear.

Translation: Remove the availability of active (high-skill) defenses and increase dependance on passive (low-skill) defenses, thereby lowering the skill cap.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Suggestion2: Improve Toughness
What is the point of ever taking the Toughness stats if the boss is going to 1-hit me anyway?

Translation: Make passive (low-skill) defenses more effective, thereby raising the skill floor.

We get it … you want the game to be easier, for you.

Yes.
Game becomes easier but still takes longer to do a dungeon run with people who spec in Toughness.
Game becomes harder but still takes shorter to do a dungeon run with people who spec in Zerker.

Provided you can run Zerker perfectly, you gain the right to speed run through.

Therefore going Zerker is now very risky but also keeps being very rewarding.

Instead of the current meta where everyone simply goes Zerker because there is no reason to spec elsewhere and even bad players can go Zerker and speed run through without any sort of punishment or ever taking damage, let alone dying. Zerker will become something for the better, or should i say more elite, players.

Being acknowledge as someone who can run Zerker perfectly will surely be a great honor for me and probably for you too if you ever make it to that skill level once it means something.

Ahlen.7591:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Going to re-iterate what I suggested in another thread.

Suggestion1: Add more Immobilize and Weakness to monsters
The one line of defense that all zerkers use: Dodge. If you stop them from doing that to avoid every single attack and more and force them to take damage and be killed, then they will learn to avoid zerker and add more survival gear. We all know that dead players do 0 damage. Moreover, this will force players to carry condition removal skills, or having support party members that carry condition removal skills. Forcing support on players = making support more desirable.

Suggestion2: Improve Toughness
What is the point of ever taking the Toughness stats if the boss is going to 1-hit me anyway? Might as well go full damage. No boss should ever be able to 1-hit any player who is fully decked in at least full Soldier’s gear worth of Toughness even with Light Armor.

Suggestion3: Increase Monster Damage
Zerker carries extremely little risk to play because of low monster damage. Even though there are telegraphed attacks, taking a hit from those as a Zerker does not kill you. Example: CoF1 final boss. The large AoE attack that hits 4 seconds after the red circle appears. A zerker Warrior can even not dodge it all and eat 3 of those before being downed. The boss uses the attack about every 10 seconds, but the boss will be dead before it can even use this attack 3 times. If this attack 1-hitted any full glass cannon(including Warrior), then they would be forced to dodge it, or carry some extra Toughness to allow for mistakes(not being 1-hitted). If you do improve monster damage, it will not affect a good zerker player, because that player will dodge every one of those attacks. But even bad zerker players are not even punished or take any risks from dying.

Improving Toughness and Improving Monster Damage are a bit contradictory, but the sweet spot should be:
Anyone in full Zerker even with Heavy Armor should be 1-hitted by all telegraphed monster attacks, but no attacks should ever 1-hit any player who has say full PVT even while in Light Armor.

Immobilize and weakness don’t matter. It won’t change anyone from wearing zerker, it will just change their build slightly to include more condi removal, it won’t change their stats at all.

The post includes 3 points, not just one. Immobilize alone does what you state, yes. Getting 1-hit a lot more from Suggestion3 is where they start switching gear. Combining the two together, you get a very risky playstyle. You not only have to condition cleanse but also dodge perfectly after that within the alloted time of the telegraphed attack or you end up downed on the ground.

Therefore, if you run out of condition removals, you are dead. With Weakness to the lot, you may also run out of Endurance, meaning you are also dead. The goal is not to remove Zerker completely, but make it extremely risky to play. After people start going dead more than 3 times per run and losing all their Bloodlust stacks in dungeons(thus taking a huge dip in DPS) while others with Toughness survive and keep their Bloodlust stacks, people will start swapping gears around. Exceptional players who manage to play perfectly while under Weakness/Immobilize/1-hit constraints deserve to run full Zerker gear, I acknowledge that much. Their time-saved should be their reward.

Immobilize! Weakness! Just put it on every dungeon boss! No more dodging for Zerkers! Dead people do 0 damage! The end!

Going to re-iterate what I suggested in another thread.

Suggestion1: Add more Immobilize and Weakness to monsters
The one line of defense that all zerkers use: Dodge. If you stop them from doing that to avoid every single attack and more and force them to take damage and be killed, then they will learn to avoid zerker and add more survival gear. We all know that dead players do 0 damage. Moreover, this will force players to carry condition removal skills, or having support party members that carry condition removal skills. Forcing support on players = making support more desirable.

Suggestion2: Improve Toughness
What is the point of ever taking the Toughness stats if the boss is going to 1-hit me anyway? Might as well go full damage. No boss should ever be able to 1-hit any player who is fully decked in at least full Soldier’s gear worth of Toughness even with Light Armor.

Suggestion3: Increase Monster Damage
Zerker carries extremely little risk to play because of low monster damage. Even though there are telegraphed attacks, taking a hit from those as a Zerker does not kill you. Example: CoF1 final boss. The large AoE attack that hits 4 seconds after the red circle appears. A zerker Warrior can even not dodge it all and eat 3 of those before being downed. The boss uses the attack about every 10 seconds, but the boss will be dead before it can even use this attack 3 times. If this attack 1-hitted any full glass cannon(including Warrior), then they would be forced to dodge it, or carry some extra Toughness to allow for mistakes(not being 1-hitted). If you do improve monster damage, it will not affect a good zerker player, because that player will dodge every one of those attacks. But even bad zerker players are not even punished or take any risks from dying.

Improving Toughness and Improving Monster Damage are a bit contradictory, but the sweet spot should be:
Anyone in full Zerker even with Heavy Armor should be 1-hitted by all telegraphed monster attacks, but no attacks should ever 1-hit any player who has say full PVT even while in Light Armor.

chaosdeity.6287:

Wow this thread, I had no idea people despise ranger so much

I am now going to use my ranger in more dungeon runs just so that I can help fight the negative stigma people have with ranger. Alot of these mistakes are pretty terrible and I do know how to support a group in a dungeon and I want to help improve the community and change things.

I’ve seen one Ranger having to explain everytime they join a party that
“I am not a bowbear, I have Spotter and Frost Spirit”

That Ranger will always be welcomed to my party.

The discrimination is not against Rangers, but against Bowbears.
The fact that a lot of Rangers are using Bowbear make people assume Bowbear the moment they see a Ranger in party. People tend to remember negative experiences more than positive ones, and since having a Bowbear in your party is a really horrible experience, people tend to remember that.

ens.9854:

evilapprentice.6379:

ens.9854:

I won’t say this skill hasn’t saved me, but I have sunk a lot of hours into thief and can see how it can screw over some1 new to the profession that aren’t prepared for it and treat it like a “shouldn’t need to think about it bc it’s passive” trait. (Such irony)

This is incorrect – a positive passive trait should not penalize you, it should at worst just have no positive effect.

If you weren’t paying attention and LR went off, the absolute worst that should happen is you don’t get stealth. Penalizing the player (inadvertently of course) with revealed is not an acceptable outcome – you shouldn’t have to change your playstyle just to avoid being penalized by a supposedly helpful trait.

You speak as if the only way LR would ever penalize you is if you weren’t paying attention – there’s plenty of situations where your best course of action is to do something immediately rather than wait for LR to trigger – you should not be penalized for making the best choice because of LR.

If your health is that low, it is extremely rare that you would not want the stealth, and if you can’t stop attacking for a quarter second when the hit is incoming then I’m not sure the revealed is going to matter.

The irony is that there have been countless threads in the spvp forum for many weeks about how awful and brainless “passive play” is, and some of the same people are here looking to create more

Your health can go under 25% within less than 1/4 second in the middle of you using Leaping Death Blossom or Unload where multi-hit attacks instantly cause Revealed on you, in which case you are dead.

Before you can say you are predicting the hit, no you are not. A Stealthed Thief just Backstabbed you to under 25% health while you were attacking and you never saw it coming.

quaniesan.8497:

“Gain aegis when you are struck while below the health threshold.” – threshold = 50%

The description seems pretty awesome for an adept minor, no?

Until you dig abit further. This awesomeness comes with rather a huge catch. The aegis lasts for an awesome duration of 3 seconds and with internal cool down of 90s second, quite spammable. Being frugal is not always a virtue.
The Aegis is powerful when it’s timed skillfully, and trash when it just pops randomly. This traits is the latter. At best it will more likely just block a tick of lava font or just one of the hits of 100blades. And 3 second duration? we all know how slow pve mob attack. Why can’t it be 10s, or even just 5s when it will just block another attack soon. I dont understand this stinginess in the way skill designer handing out the numbers. The worst insult is probably the 90 second internval recharge. Basically they are saying: “only once per encounter (and hopefully it will be useful..hopefully), thou shalt not ask for more!”. I understand it will be rather powerful without internal cool down. But this 90s is beyond human commonsense. Its usefulness is already limited by the randomness of your cause to hit 50% health. Why 90s cd? For that functionality, why not 30s, kitten , and.. fine! if you insist that the Guardian is already perfect, why not 60s. The Elem’s armor of earth trait deserves a high CD because it’s a powerful and reliable effect obviously. But a 3 second aegis is not likely a life saver and certainly dont deserve a 90s cd.
I understand it’s in Anet’s perspective that the Guardian currently stand at such a flawless stage that a little twist will enly destroy the balance of the universe ( don’ we all seem to have a hard time remember when was their last input in the Guardian forum?). But as with many other thing not so perfect about the Guardian that players have put time to point out, they should ask themself maybe it’s them (anet).

The problem comes with Aegis/Blocking traits that have the potential to be Overpowered in encounters. When they test and balance it, they test it at maximum potential, meaning with all traits that affect Aegis and Blocking active at max stats along with any chain of effects(see below example) then adjust the balance for it to not be broken. However, Aegis/Blocking traits never even reach half of their full potential in combat situations.

You are probably using Valorous Defense as is, gaining only Aegis(1 block) at 50% health.

But when balancing, Valorous Defense is considered as:
Free block on the next attack at 50% health.(Aegis)
Increased damage by 20% at 50% health.(Unscathed Contender)
Heals you for 645 at 50% health.(Pure of Heart)
Deals 146 AoE damage at 50% health.(Shattered Aegis)
Gain 3s Retaliation at 50% health.(Wrathful Spirit)
Gain 1 stack of Might at 50% health.(Blocking + Might of Protector)
Inflict 1s of Burning at 50% health.(Blocking + Defender’s)
Increased damage by 10% for 1s at 50% health.(Defender’s Flame + Fiery Wrath)
Removes a Boon from foe at 50% health.(Defender’s Flame + Searing Flames)
Heals you for 210 at 50% health.(Aegis + Retaliation + Might + Altruistic Healing)

Even though no good build can feasibly contain all that, the balance is around that. The minor trait is considered to be giving you ALL of the above for FREE at 50% health. Which ones you take out of all these effects is then up to you.

Also taken in consideration are
The maximum possible stats for each of these effects.
(such as Pure of Heart heals for 1500 at 2k Healing Power)
Any other effects you may gain from any Runes.

Valorous Defense never reaches its full potential but is balanced around it being at full potential.

Another example of another trait that never reaches full potential.
Shattered Aegis (When an aegis you applied is removed, it damages nearby foes.).
People have been screaming NERF on this trait in the last balance patch where it changed from applying Burning when Aegis is removed to doing damage barely worth a Burning tick.
But know this: Shattered Aegis is not balanced around things like Valorous Defense, but more around Virtue of Courage.
It barely does 200 damage when Aegis is removed.
But consider this:
200 damage per Aegis
5 Aegis
5 Foes for each Aegis
If an enemy hits your whole party with a big AoE, you did
200 * 5 * 5 AoE damage(5k damage total divided at 1k per foe if we consider the same 5 foes) to nearby foes while also blocking the AoE. Free extra 1k AoE damage when activating Courage or Retreat. This potential is clearly never realistically reached due to number of foes/allies and positioning.

evilapprentice.6379:

So a thought occurred to me.

When you use heartseeker through a blackpowder, even if you hit your target, you gain stealth – it appears as though mechanically, the stealth isn’t applied until the very end of the skill, so the fact that HS did damage does not effect you gaining stealth (IIRC, Haven’t played D/P in about a year).

Why not make last refuge operate the same way mechanically? If the thief isn’t using any skills, they are immediately stealthed – if they are in the middle of a skill, they gain stealth at the completion of the skill, as if they had leapt through a smoke field. Would that be too difficult to program that kind of split? It would solve 90% of LR’s problems.

I was thinking about that too, but more like a Cloak and Dagger type of thing mixed with Venom/Justice/Leech mechanic(affects your next hit type of mechanic).

Last Refuge: You gain Last Refuge(buff) when your health reaches 25%.
Last Refuge(buff): Your next attack grants you Stealth.

Stealth occurs after the attack(just like Cloak and Dagger). However the issue remains with this type of buff with multi-hit attacks like Unload. Only the first hit is affected, the second hit will cause you to be Revealed. If Last Refuge triggers in the middle of your Unload, we are practically back to square one.

The reason? Bowbears.

I am sorry but Bowbear Rangers are so so so much fun to play while leveling and open world that you fall in love with them. But in dungeons…they do not quite make it.

Reasons not to take a bowbear ranger in your party ever:

1. Really bad DPS.
2. Even lower DPS because they are ranging while everyone is stacking boons at melee range of the boss.
3. The pet aggros things it should not.
4. Playing ranged makes the wall-stacked boss to move away from the wall if the ranger draws aggro, therefore reducing Fiery Greatsword and other AoE DPS greatly due to movement.
5. The pet stops mobs from coming into melee range for stacking, such as the Graveling Stalker and Breeder in the trap room of AC(after Spider Queen). This leads to the Breeder breeding dozens of little gravelings that swarm at your party and waste your time just because of the ranger.

The playstyle of the bowbear ranger just does not fit or synergize with the current stacking-melee meta. They are almost mutually exclusive.

Louk Tsoup.2108:

i somewhat agree with what you guys said,
but im asking if you would find ok such build in pug groups.

The key word here is PUG groups.

Pugs are pugs, they will join your level 80 party when they are level 35, they will also join your 3k+ AP party with 924 AP, they will even join your Exp party for their first time through the dungeon, they will open and go into Story mode even though you said P1. AH is fine for pugs, but never for advanced teams.

What you need to know about pugs and AH:

1. You run anything you want when you pug unless otherwise specified.
Anything you want, really anything. Pugs do not usually care what you run as long as the run gets finished, I doubt anyone is looking at how much DPS you are doing in a pug unless you are blatantly running “Sigil of Life”, then you might get a few comments. Even then, most people do not check, they only see 25 stacks and assume Bloodlust. Most often, people can notice a team has low DPS but cannot really tell who in the team has low DPS. If there is only 1 person with low DPS, it is rarely even noticeable.

There are 2 things that will make pugs rage quit, and your build is definitely not one of them. Pugs rage quit if most of your party wipes multiple times, specially if someone keeps doing something incorrectly(such as stacking at AC Spider Queen), or if people cannot perform a certain task of the dungeon path(such as getting across rolling rocks in CoF P1).

2. AH is extremely selfish and useless.
AH is a trait that relies on surrounding allies for you to get healed for more, but does absolutely nothing to help your allies survive. If many of your allies die, AH becomes useless. Therefore it is a bit of a contradictory trait in itself.

Most people will tell you to go with good party support instead of selfish AH. But you have to realize that if some pugs can go with 5 full zerkers and DPS the boss to death with practically no support(other than self heal and traits), then I doubt they ever needed your support in the first place. Again this is opinion, some people will swear they save their teams from wiping by going support, but i believe that if your team is wiping, then there is something else that’s wrong with it in the first place as every class is already self-sufficient without a Guardian’s support.
(Note: The point here is that DPS rules everything, therefore going AH is equivalently bad as going for unneeded support. Useless vs useless ends in a draw)

Another small point you need to consider is that for many mob encounters(even some bosses), if you have AH you are essentially invincible, therefore you do not need to dodge. If dodging takes 1 second, and other people need to dodge every 5 seconds, then I landed kittens in 5 seconds while they landed 4. Depending on gear setups, I might actually have more DPS than them due to that 1 extra hit. Of course, you clearly cannot compare an AH build against a full zerker DPS build, but AH build might actually have more DPS than some hybrid builds, or at least a little more DPS than you expected. The exceptions are 1-hit bosses where AH is clearly useless.

3. Pugs do not blame you for being 0% support with AH if they die.
When somebody dies, they are usually on the defensive to find an explanation for why they died in case people start blaming them for dying, rather than blaming you for lack of support. This is only because of GW2, in other games the healer gets all the blame. If they do blame you, then you can simply reply “I am not your healer and you died because you are bad” and be done with them. It works every time. The exception is if you were expected to do something and they wiped because you did not do it, such as stacking at AC Spider Queen or using reflects against the 3 golems in SE P1. Because this has absolutely nothing to do with AH, feel free to run AH with 0% support in pugs.

style.6173:

Easy fix for the issue. It should have 2 parts.

1. Puts you into stealth for 3 seconds at 25% health ignoring any existing revealed status
2. Next attack does not cause revealed flag

Play around with the recharge to make it balanced and this should work for everyone.

2. Consecutive Backstabs?

evilapprentice.6379:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Josh Davis.6015:

Last Refuge is something we’ve been talking about quite a bit internally, and we certainly don’t like the way it can occasionally unintentionally punish players.

We’d like to keep the minor traits in Shadow Arts thematically the same (stealth based) rather than simply providing boons or something similar. Keep that in mind when you’re suggestions changes for Last Refuge.

Thanks for the feedback!

I have an idea that will make Last Refuge more player friendly while also keeping it Stealth based.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Feathers

When your health reaches 25%, you gain Throw Feathers in your Steal skill.

This allows the Thief to get a free Stealth(which is what you want from Last Refuge) which can be player-triggered(thus no more unintentional Stealth). This however could seem a little overpowered, but keep reading.

The balancing issues with this are:
1. If you already have a Steal skill.
Let’s say you already have Consume Plasma. We can either make Throw Feathers replace Consume Plasma, or Last Refuge does not trigger at all and the Thief keeps Consume Plasma.

2. If your Steal skill is on recharge.
We can either give Throw Feathers to the Thief while making it keep the remaining recharge left on Steal, or allow Steal to recharge instantly when Last Refuge activates.

3. The possibility of adding a cooldown to Last Refuge.
Depending on what you choose to do in 1. and 2. as well as whether this new mechanic is overpowered or not, you might want to add a cooldown to Last Refuge to balance it out.
If you choose Last Refuge does not trigger at all if you already have a Steal skill, then Last Refuge does not go on cooldown unless it activates at all.
If you choose to make Last Refuge give Throw Feathers and recharge Steal instantly so the Thief can use the skill, then there should be a cooldown on Last Refuge triggering again.

The problem is, any way in which you attempt to keep the skill stealth based will be flawed. Either the skill will be affected by revealed and be UP, or will ignore/circumvent revealed in some way and be potentially OP in the right situations. The skill simply cannot remain stealth based – if the devs want it to be useful it needs to be redesigned, no matter how much the dev team wants it to remain thematically centered around stealth.

With a 60-90 recharge on it, i doubt it would be overpowered.
It would only be 3 seconds on Stealth(as much as Leaping through a Smoke Field).

I am also aware that this could interfere with Steal-style gameplay, as replacing your well traited Steal with something else in the middle of combat can have nasty side effects, but given that Steal skill itself already has a separate recharge from any “Stolen” skill, your Throw Feathers should not interfere much with Steal skill(use Throw Feathers and you get Steal back to what its current recharge was).

However, gaining a triggerable(intentional) Throw Feathers is a far better option than getting a random Stealth that unintentionally kills yourself.

Josh Davis.6015:

Last Refuge is something we’ve been talking about quite a bit internally, and we certainly don’t like the way it can occasionally unintentionally punish players.

We’d like to keep the minor traits in Shadow Arts thematically the same (stealth based) rather than simply providing boons or something similar. Keep that in mind when you’re suggestions changes for Last Refuge.

Thanks for the feedback!

I have an idea that will make Last Refuge more player friendly while also keeping it Stealth based.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Feathers

When your health reaches 25%, you gain Throw Feathers in your Steal skill.

This allows the Thief to get a free Stealth(which is what you want from Last Refuge) which can be player-triggered(thus no more unintentional Stealth). This however could seem a little overpowered, but keep reading.

The balancing issues with this are:
1. If you already have a Steal skill.
Let’s say you already have Consume Plasma. We can either make Throw Feathers replace Consume Plasma, or Last Refuge does not trigger at all and the Thief keeps Consume Plasma.

2. If your Steal skill is on recharge.
We can either give Throw Feathers to the Thief while making it keep the remaining recharge left on Steal, or allow Steal to recharge instantly when Last Refuge activates.

3. The possibility of adding a cooldown to Last Refuge.
Depending on what you choose to do in 1. and 2. as well as whether this new mechanic is overpowered or not, you might want to add a cooldown to Last Refuge to balance it out.
If you choose Last Refuge does not trigger at all if you already have a Steal skill, then Last Refuge does not go on cooldown unless it activates at all.
If you choose to make Last Refuge give Throw Feathers and recharge Steal instantly so the Thief can use the skill, then there should be a cooldown on Last Refuge triggering again.

Dojo.1867:

Anyone else thinks that these are nearly exclusively bad and block trait slots that could actually increase build variety?

There is just one really good one that comes to my mind (and actually makes sense by itself) which is the guardian bubble on revive. I also guess some people take the fall damage traits for WvW because you can actually survive some of the cliffs there.

But again 90% seem uselss.

Let’s not just bunch up everything together.

Some on Revive traits are actually useful. Reviving is something that is going to happen in the game, no matter how you look at it. Reviving makes a huge difference in PvE and WvW, between losing 1/5 of your team’s DPS in a dungeon until you kill the boss compared to the 2 seconds it will take you to revive that person. People make mistakes and get downed, it happens to everyone. It can also make the difference in WvW between a dead commander and a headless chicken zerg, or a zerg that comes back and mows down the opposing one.

Medic’s Feedback on Mesmer can turn a lot of things around. Ranged people in WvW tend to shoot down the downed person in an attempt to stop them from rallying/bandaging, while not going anywhere near to attempt finishing them off because it is too risky. Medic’s Feedback gives you the chance to revive that person and deal a lot of damage at the same time. In PvE, a well timed Medic’s Feedback can take down 25% of Lupicus’s HP bar while you finish reviving.

Resolute Healer on Guardian can stop an attempt to finish off an ally completely in WvW by pushing away all foes. Meanwhile, you and other allies revive the downed person.

Protective Reviver on Guardian is not as good, but it essentially tells you that the person you just revived is unlikely to get downed again with Protection, Regeneration and Aegis on. You benefit from it too.

Merciful Ambush on Thief tends to be a little bad in WvW, because the downed ally tends to try to hit enemies and getting Revealed. Even if you use it while they are bandaging(not getting Revealed), enemies tend to know where that downed ally is and keep the AoE pressure on. There is a good point to this trait though, enemies cannot finish off that ally(due to Stealthed) for 2 seconds, if you time it right you can avoid 3-4 finishers aimed at your ally. Unlike Resolute Healer, Stability does not even work against this one, but Sic Em does. In PvE, this trait can work wonders. Reviving usually draws aggro to yourself as high priority, this trait makes you completely bypass that and revive that ally safely.

Fall damage traits are bad and gimmicky. Fall damage is an awful mechanic in the first place, it’s just there to make the game more realistic and avoid people from getting bugged by falling into glitched nothingness areas of the game(people still manage to do it though!). I’ve seen a Guardian bug the Protection Symbol before on a slope, because sometimes you take multiple fall damage when dropping down slopes. The Guardian in question dropped about 5 symbols on top of each other, and the enemy landing in those symbols got downed pretty fast(5 stacked symbols is a lot of damage) after taking fall damage themselves.

Death traits are mostly bad. Except for Sweet Revenge on Warrior.
Both you and the Warrior are downed at the same time. The Warrior uses Vengeance, gets back up, finishes you off with F, guaranteed rally on your corpse. The Warrior wins the fight.

Vandaeriel.9012:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUEQNApeWlYgyC3ESPEm4ESmCRCBxeoRf0GdpIheIA-jgCB4hgoNBioGk+IQZRFRjtMMsVXRr8KIqZER16kYCB8dMA-e

This is what I came up with. It focuses on team support so I chose Battle Presence over Altruistic Healing. I would like to hear your suggestions about:

1. Battle Presence vs Writ of Merciful vs Writ of Persistence. Which combination gives better party heal? I understand that Battle Presence works well with Absolute Resolution. I don’t know if I would be able to get greater healing from larger symbols giving pure healing + regeneration or passive effect of Virtue of Resolve

2. 2x Runes of the Traveler or 2x Runes of Dwayna? Is all boon (including regen) duration better than +50 pure healing power and +20% regen duration

3. Which food should I use? I was thinking about Chocolate Omnomberry Cream, Bowl of Saffron-Mango Ice Cream and Omnomberry Cookie

First, you need a more reliable way to remove Poison.
Take Purging Flames instead of Signet of Mercy.
The reason is, Poison reduces Healing Effectiveness and will make your build only 66% of what it is. It pretty much destroys your build.

Let me give you simple number breakdown, you have 2007 Healing Power in your build.
Poison makes you lose 33% Healing Power.
0.33 × 2007 = 682.38
The Signet of Mercy’s +180 Healing Power really pales in compensating the amount of Healing Power you lose(-682) if your party is Poisoned.

Absolute Resolution alone is not enough to deal with conditions, they tend to reapply fast. Specially because you are not using Renewed Focus to recharge it. On top of that, Purging Flames would reduce the Poison duration if it is reapplied within the next few seconds, so it is a good choice. It is also a consecration, so it will benefit from your traits.

1. I would take Writ of Persistence instead of Writ of Exaltation.
In a fight, you are likely to be right next to your allies hitting the boss in melee. A larger Symbol does not do much if everyone is already in the smaller area, but 2 extra ticks of Writ of Merciful will heal for more, on top of getting your Symbols boons to last longer.

2. Mace’s Regen can be maintained rather easily specially if you take Writ of Persistence. It would take you 35% boon duration to maintain Regen permanently
(6 seconds of Regen x 1.35 = 8.1 seconds of Regen. Symbol’s Recharge is 8 seconds)
provided you stay in Mace. Therefore either 2x Dwayna or 2x Traveler is enough for Regen coverage. However, it might be better to simply not take either and use Chocolate Omnomberry Cream or even Chocolate Raspberry Cream to reach 34-40% boon duration. You can then use a completely different set of Runes that focuses on other things instead.
A boon can only stack up to 9 times in duration.
source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Swiftness-Bug-when-40s/first#post3448857
You can also see this by simply casting Hallowed Ground, you will see that it skips some applications.
If you are trying to stack Regen too much with long boon durations, you are losing out because at some point Regen will simply stop re-applying it. Take enough so that it can be maintained, maybe a little more in case you need to switch weapon(you are also using Hold the Line which gives Regen) but it seems like a waste of runes to keep going up boon duration for just Regen that can be maintained easily.

3. Covered in 2.

Given that you have Writ of Merciful + Regen + Protection + Battle Presence + Shield of Absorption heal, it is very unlikely that you will ever need to use Tome of Courage. The “just in case” does not pull its weight compared to taking another elite such as Renewed Focus. You might also consider taking Save Yourselves instead of Sanctuary, then take 6 Runes of Lyssa and see the amazing combo below.

What you can do with Renewed Focus:
Use all your Virtues as necessary.
Use Save Yourselves to pull all conditions to you, and gain many boons from Save Yourselves.
Use Renewed Focus to gain Invulnerability, all boons for 5 seconds and remove all conditions you just brought on you with Save Yourselves.
You now have your Virtues back again.
This gives you 4 condition removal skills(Purging Flames, Absolute Resolution, Save Yourselves+Renewed Focus, Absolute Resolution again) which your build is really lacking in right now, plus a ton of boons on yourself. It is definitely more than enough to take care of Poison which pretty much ruins your build, so it is vital that you cleanse it.

JonPeters.5630:

Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.

I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.

i.e.

List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.

Other ideas floating out there

• Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
• Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
• Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.

Jon

Self Priority is first because it gives you a guarantee that the self-combo you had planned with your build activates. Preparing the right build for the right situation is a big part of the game and should be treated as a most important aspect.
Follow the plan and only improvise when things get rough
Improvise meaning using your ally’s Field instead. If things got rough, I would consider it skilled play to move to that small corner where my Field and my ally’s Field do not overlap just to use their Field. If my Field completely covers my ally’s, then I would consider it skilled play to know not to put down my Field when there is a better one down there. Besides, if i put down a Field, I have the intention of using it, so even if I do not get to use my ally’s Field, I get the expected result i planned beforehand.

Time Based Priority comes out second because with a “least recent” method, you can be sure of what you are comboing with as well, which I believe is what we currently have as system. I would say a “most recent” method is worse than a “least recent”. Players overwriting say a Water Field with a Light Field is frowned upon by many. You can already hear Commanders expressing their frustration on Teamspeak such as “which of you idiots dropped a Light Field?”.

Fixed Priority comes out last even though it gives you a “best” effect out of the lot, so really you always come out with something good. However you may come out with an effect that you did not expect.
Even if you want to compare Water and Fire in priority, there is no saying which one should really take priority. Water technically should, as survival is more important, but if you Blasted healing 5 times while at full hp, compared to 15 stack of might which could make your enemies drop dead within seconds it is like comparing apples to oranges. Therefore, to decide on what takes priority over what is a decision that is sure to not please a good portion of players. Unless you can make an AI that detects my low HP when I Blast a Water on top of a Fire field to know whether to give me Healing or Might, this is dead last.

tl:dr
Self Priority = Everybody wins.
Time-based Priority “least recent” = I only win if I dropped my Field first. My allies should move out of my Field and drop their own elsewhere if they want their own Fields.
Time-based Priority “most recent” = I only win if I dropped my Field last. I am certain to anger my allies by overwriting their prepared Fields.
Fixed Priority = I only win if you decide to make an AI that can detect what kind of Field I should combo with when there are more than one available.

Weapon Skills
1-handed weapons are really lacking in Fields or Finishers. Sword, Scepter, Torch have no Fields, no Finishers.

Sword#2 should be a Leap.
Greatsword#3 does almost the same thing. Actually does much more damage and it is a Leap. How would making Sword#2 a Leap break the game when Leap of Faith is better already? Increase recharge to 12-15 if you think it will really be too broken.

Scepter#2 should be a Light Field
Just a Light Field, not a Symbol. Smite is ground targeted on foes for damage. Light Fields do not add much in terms of damage, be it Projectile/Whirl/Leap/Blast, therefore not increasing Scepter DPS in any way, but giving it an actual option for a little Support.

Healing/Utility/Elite Skills
Healing Breeze cone needs to go
Nobody uses that skill, not even people who want to be pure healers/support. The reason is the cone. It should simply create a healing aura around you for 3 seconds. Reduce the range to 300(around you) instead of 600(cone in front).

Hammer of Wisdom should apply 1 second Chill on hit
Guardians have very little soft control skills. We only get low duration Immobilize, and dont even get a 25% Increased Movement Speed Signet. It is already unlikely for a Guardian to chase any other class(even Mesmer) if they decide to run away. Just look at the skill, it does 1/10th the damage of Bane Signet per hit, has double the activation, does not provide a passive effect and has 5 seconds more recharge. Even if the Spirit Hammer manages to live and hit a foe 10 times, it still does not even break par with Bane Signet. This skill needs a unique effect to be viable.

Bow of Truth should use Volley Condition Removal
Bow of Truth is mediocre to remove conditions even on yourself. Compare to Contemplation of Purity which shares the same recharge, or Purging Flames. Even if you look at removing conditions from allies, it is still mediocre. Purging Flames can remove conditions from every ally around you with a much lower recharge. Absolute Resolution also does that, even at 1200 range. Bow of Truth should shoot Volley and remove 1 condition from you and allies it hits every time it shoots to even be viable.

Signet of Wrath passive should be change to Improved Critical Chance
Condition Damage has almost no use on Guardians. Make it become +5% Critical Chance passive, just like Signet of Judgment has -10% Incoming Damage.

Tomes should only replace 1-5 Weapon skills
It should act like an Item in your hands just like Banners or Conjures. The reason for this is because whenever you use a Tome, you are giving up on everything else. You cannot activate your Virtues, you cannot activate Healing/Utility skills. You even lose your Passive Virtues and Signet effects. Before a certain patch, you could not even move while using a Tome. So unless you are in a safe spot where nothing can aggro or hit you(which is extremely unlikely for frontline Guardians), Tomes are extremely situational to use compared to Renewed Focus. If Tomes were similar to an item like Fiery Greatsword, they would actually see a lot more use.

Traits
Focus Mastery and Scepter Power should change trait lines
Why are the improvement traits for two weapons that have absolutely no Symbol have to figure in the trait line that specializes in Symbols? Hammer and Mace actually have Symbols and would synergize greatly with the Zeal line. Swap the traits with Glacial Heart and Mace of Justice, they are all Master Major traits.

Kindled Zeal
New trait proposal: Gains 1 stack of Might for 5 seconds every time the Guardian applies a condition to a Burning foe. This is basically the condition version requirement of Empowering Might. The catch is a condition on a “Burning” foe.
New trait proposal: Whenever the Guardian inflicts a condition to a foe, that foe also suffers from 1 second of Burning. If you insist on a condition Guardian, improving Condition Duration is already what Zeal line does.

Strength of the Fallen
New trait proposal: Whenever you are struck by a foe while in downed state, you inflict Retaliation damage to that foe. This will make foes think twice before trying to finish you off with plain damage instead of a finisher.

Retaliatory Subconcious
New trait proposal: Lose one condition whenever you are dazed, stunned, knocked down, knocked back, or feared. Cooldown 30s. The potential here is it can remove Fear once immediately when Fear is applied.

Here is my take on Zerker.
The DPS right now is completely fine, but the risk of running Zerker is also very low, to the point where people dont even feel squishy.

1. Improve monster damage
If monsters start 1-hitting people unless they time their dodge perfectly, the risk of being Zerker is increased. Yet the risk does not become very high because of highly telegraphed attacks. This should not affect any Zerkers who already dodges perfectly as they would never take the hit in the first place, but for those who are less skilled might have to consider other gear options to survive. A Zerker Warrior can already survive 3 hits from the large AoE attack of CoF P1’s final boss. The boss is already dead before it can even charge 3 of those attacks.

2. Monsters should have more Immobilize and Weakness
If there is one thing that Zerkers have issues dealing with, it is Immobilize. The fact that you cannot dodge and you are forced to take the hit(and likely get downed from that hit) makes playing Zerker risky. Weakness is also there to reduce a Zerker’s DPS and make them possibly run out of Endurance, increasing the chance of them making mistakes, thus increasing the risk of being Zerker. This will make Zerkers have to carry condition removal skills(or have a party member carrying condition removal), thus increasing the need for Support skills and/or Support party members.

3. Improve Toughness
The first boss of Arah P3 1-hits anyone no matter how much Toughness they have. To a lesser extent, CoE’s Alpha also does it(depending on how many circles were created). Same for anything inside Queen’s Gauntlet. What’s the point of having Toughness stats if you are going to be 1-hitted anyway? This goes together with increased monster damage, if Toughness is not increased as well, there is no point having that stat anymore. Toughness should be a buffer to allow for more mistakes. Not asking for Toughness to become a face-tank mechanic, but 1-hit mechanics are just bad.

mahariel.4981:

I would say healing support is trash, but ANet are nerfing zerkers anyway, so maybe you’ll be the new meta.

Source? Zerkers will never get nerfed! Long Live Zerkers Forever!

1. Zerkers never make mistakes or die or even downed in dungeons!
2. Zerkers time all dodges perfectly!
3. Zerkers never need healing and never take damage!
4. Zerkers kill the boss before it even has the chance to attack or even spawn!
5. Zerkers can run every dungeon path within 2 hours then sit in LA for 3 hours!

gnotshr.9136:

Kaos.9162:

stale.9785:

That’s actually reasonable, for how duels should work. Which means the pro-duelist crowd won’t like it, since they can’t gank folks who don’t want to duel.

That’s not open world dueling, that’s an open pvp server. This thread is about the ability to challenge someone to a duel, not the ability to have a free for all.

This..

We aren’t even debating the same issue because of semantics. Some people are interpreting “Dueling” as “Open World PvP”, when they are two completely different things.

Dueling involves consent, if you do not want to duel, then don’t. Seems simple to me.

If you want to duel, you can get already get a custom arena and do it. The idea proposed in Open World PvP is only for those who want to guest into that specific server where they will be allowed to PvP each other in the Open World. The fact that you enter that PvP server means that you give consent to PK and be PKed.

My idea of GW2 dueling:

Make a whole separate server for it. We name the server Ascalon for now.
People who want to duel must Guest to Ascalon to participate.
You may NOT select Ascalon as your home server ever.
You do not spend one of your two daily passes to Guest to Ascalon, it’s free.
Ascalon will never participate in WvW.

Ascalon only has basic events such as escort monastery brew or collect wurm eggs.
No Scarlet Invasions. No Group Events. No Bosses such as Tequatl or Shatterer.
There are gathering nodes on Ascalon.
You can be of any level and use PvE gear.
You get downscaled depending on the map. You do not get upscaled.
Confusion and Retaliation use the same formula as WvW.
There is no overflow. If you are in Queensdale and Kessex is full, you queue.
Free Player Killing. Do not complain about being Player Killed while doing events, you are here for that.
Players drop loot when killed. Players gain better loot depending on how many players they killed on a streak, dying resets the streak. Killed Players drop better loot depending on how long they survived.
Every player is your enemy(red names) on all the maps, except for 6 safe zones(major cities and LA).
You see every ally on minimap as a green dot, and every foe as an orange dot(just like in southsun survival), but you only see people on your current map.
If you add someone to your party, they become your ally.
Party limited to 5 members(and walk in a group of 5). This discourages large guild zerging as they are going to be hitting each other if they walk together. This encourages small guild groups of 5 though.
Ascalon is never included in and does not give credit for map completion.
All waypoints are active and have the same cost depending on how far you travel.
You can waypoint to escape if you see enemies, but not if you are in combat.
Repair costs are the same, must be done at Repairs npcs.
No Commander tags.

Feel free to add your ideas on top of mine for Ascalon, the Open World Free PK server.

Vixon.8032:

Why is it impossible to get a black lion key from a mob drop? I know there’s suppose to be a very slim chance they can drop. I don’t know not one single person in the game that has ever gotten one from anywhere except the one near the beginning of your class quest or from buying gems and then getting they keys from the gem shop.

It just feels like a cash grab item to me. Are there any plans to up the drop rate anytime soon?

Gotten one yesterday, one two week ago.

The funniest part: it contained a Magic Find Booster.

Use a Magic Find Booster and find a Black Lion Key.
Open a Black Lion Chest and get a Magic Find Booster.

Get Lucky enough to get a key that gives you more Luck

Great RNG…

This happens if you are moving while dragging the mini map with the mouse.

Notice the following on the mini map:
Whenever you character is standing still, you see the O> and
a lighted triangular field of view <////
The field of view disappears when you move the mini map and you only see O>
You can move the mini map fine until it attempts to re-center around the O>
Once the mini map tries to re-center itself, your <///// does not come back while moving
The mini map refuses to not be centered until your <//// comes back
To make the <//// come back, you need to stop moving.

waxpax.6350:

That boss has light armor so takes more damage. Other things in lvl 80 dungeons have light armor as well, like the evolved destroyer, but the mage crusher is easier to get to and to reset than the destroyer.

For that vid, obal had a max dps build, prec infusions, prec stack, the best food and potion, max might, max vuln, fury, a traited frost spirit, an untraited frost spirit, empower allies and banner of disc and banner of strength boosting him as well, if I remember that day correctly. He’s also as much inside the mage crusher’kitten box as he can so that he maximizes the amount of times that the attack hits.

A lot went into setting that up, don’t expect to do it causally in every run.

I understand, thank you for letting me know this.

This means that this video is as relevant to Guardian DPS as hitting a rabbit for 5 million or hitting Gaheron Baelfire for 0.

dutchiez.7502:

His and his party’s setup was entirely geared towards making him do the most damage. This should not be common in any regular party especially in pugs.

I think this boss has very low armor and that is why it takes so much damage.

Can anyone else please confirm if this boss has very low armor?

This video shows a Guardian hitting an Arah P3 boss for 56k damage with Whirling Wrath and 10k auto-attacks.

I am wondering, is there something special about this boss that makes him take higher damage?

Because i tried going full zerker with all the buffs and the same build in the video against a boss like Aldus Stormbringer from HotW P1 and I am nowhere close to reaching 56k with one Whirling Wrath or 10k with an auto-attack. Is there something I am doing wrong? Am I supposed to consistently be able to hit 10k with auto-attacks on every dungeon boss?

Danikat.8537:

One of the things I love in this game is when I’m swimming along on the surface of the water, looking at the reflections and surface effects, and then I dive down and it all changes, all the blurry shapes under me are suddenly clear and bright and it’s like I’m in a different world.

It’s especially nice when there’s a big contrast between the two. For example earlier today I was swimming along the river in Archen Foreland in Bloodtide Coast, heading out towards Sorrowful Sound to mine some gold. It was grey and rainy above the surface, then I dove underwater and suddenly I’m in peaceful waters with bright, colourful reefs and a humpback whale in the distance.

It’s a very small thing in the grand scheme of things. But it makes me smile every time I do it and reminds me how beautiful this gameworld is.

I agree with you, but I have a different version.

One of the things I hate in this game is when I’m swimming along on the surface of the water, looking at myself with no skillbar, and then I could not dive down and activate any skills, because all the enemies above and under me used immobilize and my skills are just not there to remove conditions and it’s like I’m definitely dead in a different world.

It’s especially nice when there’s a big contrast between the two. For example earlier today I was swimming along the lake in Red Borderland in World vs World, heading out towards Dreaming Bay to join the zerg. I could not use any skills above the surface, then I dove underwater and suddenly I’m there with all my underwater skills, aquabreather and tons of autoattacks in the distance.

It’s a very small thing in the grand scheme of things. But it makes me frown every time I do it and reminds me how broken this gameworld is.

Why not sPvP?

1. My PvE gear is gone.
I look like newplayer123 whenever I enter sPvP. So you are saying I have to make the skins both in PvE and PvP? No, I am not putting in more effort to earn gear that I already earned in PvE. I dont even have a clue on how to craft Draconic Armor in PvP, let alone pretty PvE cosmetics like Light of Dwayna or Foefire’s Essence as PvP gear. GW1 had one thing right, your PvE character could jump right into PvP with their Chaos Gloves, Obsidian Armor and Envoy Sword on. Maybe PvP now gives good money, but it involves me having to “not look like my PvE-version” while fighting other players.

2. The stats are awful.
The stat combinations are so disgustingly limited. Go tell a glass cannon PvE player that PvP Zerker gear must have Vitality on it, I can assure you that they will not want even try to step in PvP because “i no can run my full glass cannon”. You take Rock, Paper, or Scissors. You cannot sharpen your Scissors to bypass the child-safety standard, paint a smiley face on your Rock or even draw an angry face on your Paper because that would be intimidating and break the Balance of the game.

3. Lack of formats.
Playing GW2 PvP is like playing GW1 Alliance Battles while solo capping. Alliance Battle in GW1 was already a dead format that took a good 1hour queue to get in(because nobody played it) unless on Zaishen-day. People did not even want to play it even after the rewards were tripled. Where is RA death matches? Where is HA King of the Hill? Where is FA Gunther? Where is JQ Purple Hauler Turtle? Where is my GvG Flagrunner?

4. Nerfed skills and runes in PvP Shenanigans.
These skills and runes are so OP that they have to be nerfed in sPvP format. We are already using those “supposedly OP imba broken skills and runes” in WvW to kill each other and we are all fine with that. Double standards much? Do you know how many people actually will not enter sPvP because of those shenanigans? Take a look at every borderlands and find the gvg or 1v1 players at the bottom-most ruin. Why do you think they are doing 1v1 in WvW instead of sPvP?

square.7832:

Karizee, thank you so much for those links. Exactly what I was looking for.

Brutality, thanks for being brutally honest. I appreciate the opinion of someone who clearly enjoys the game but just wants more.

Let me show you the list of things that you missed for good or will probably have to pay a leg to have

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Greatsaw_Greatsword_Skin
There are 5 left on Trading Post. Because Arenanet decided on “investments” to let a few players become super rich instead of providing “permanent content that reward cool skins for everyone”. Price tag: 1440g. By the time you come back and make this amount, all of them might be gone.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghastly_Grinning_Shield_Skin
Same as above. Price Tag 1800g. 4 left.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Glacial_Sky_Dye
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pyre_Dye
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glacial_Sky_Dye
If you like dyes, know that Abyss Dye is not at the top of expensive anymore. These, among others, are about 5-10 times the price of Abyss/Celestial, and ever increasing because there are only a few left.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Holographic_Shattered_Dragon_Wing_Cover
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Antitoxin_Injector_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rox%27s_Quiver_Set
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slickpack
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fervid_Censer
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wings_of_the_Sunless
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heavy_Fused_Gauntlets
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Horns_of_the_Dragon_Skin
You missed your chance to get these. Ever. Account Bound, probably not coming back, not tradable.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kasmeer%27s_Staff_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Braham%27s_Mace_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Braham%27s_Shield_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Marjory%27s_Axe_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Marjory%27s_Dagger_Skin
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rox%27s_Short_Bow_Skin
These are gone from the Gemstore. Even if you are willing to pay big money, you are not getting them. There is a chance they might show up on a sales day, but dont get your hopes up, because they have not shown up again even once yet. I would consider them gone for good.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Weapon_Specialist
Anything in this list is considered hard to get, but can be bought on Trading Post for a decent amount of gold.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Jade_weapon_skins
Are gone unless you have previous tickets.

Enjoy what you missed. Be aware though that if you’re not coming back, chances are prices will have increased even more and there will be even more items that you will miss and will never have in the future. So this should be incentive to come back.

Hate: Balancing Team
Like: Art Team

Blackwyn.8127:

As quoted from, when it was available yesterday:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/new-years-weekend-sale/
Regarding the Permanent Royal Pass

“This has never before been available – pick up a Permanent Royal Pass for unlimited, life-long access to the Queen’s Royal Terrace. The Royal Pass will teleport you directly to the Terrace from any PvE map!”

You can not however use it in Fractals / Dungeons or in the Hall of Monuments.
Is this intentional? Is this on the radar for a fix? Or are these instances suddenly considered PvP areas all of a sudden?

You cannot use it in any Instance. That includes Dungeons, HoM, Fractals, Personal Story Instance, Home Instance.

No Living Story until 21Jan2014(3 weeks from now).
Many people have expressed their boredom on forums.
Just ask random players in-game and many will tell you “nothing to do”.
We are in limbo. Many are saving mats to craft “New Legendaries” that have been rumored and are “Waiting” instead of crafting current Legendaries. Many are also refraining from buying precursors because there will be a sure-fire way to craft one soon and are also “Waiting”.
Logging in to craft your daily Ascended mats, mine your daily Quartz and do your daily for Laurels is NOT FUN.
The Wintersday mini-games are getting old and there is 3 more weeks of it…
Many have their first Ascended Armor by now, or will have it by tomorrow(many people play heavy classes) or the day after.

3 weeks of “nothing to do” and “waiting”, what do we do?

The Solution is simple: Bring Back Super Adventure Box!

We are not asking for you to introduce World3 or anything like that, just bring back World1&2, the same as Super Adventure Box Back to School update. You already have this content created.
Super Adventure Box was introduced in April2013, and then came back in September2013. They are 4-5 months apart. We are now 4 months later in January2014, this would be a really good time to bring it back(then back again in April2014 and September2014).

tl;dr
Just turn Super Adventure Box back on for 3 weeks?

Zanshin.5379:

Thieves and mesmers should have a skill to reveal other stealthed thieves and mesmers.

No, it should be Stealthed players can see Stealthed players. That way Thieves become instant counters to Thieves in any 1v1 situation.
However both can still use their Sneak Attack mechanic on each other while in Stealth.

It would also come down to this: If both Thieves are in Stealth, the first one to hit the other gets Revealed and immediately loses sight of the other(since the attacking Thief loses Stealth and gains Revealed while the enemy Thief still has Stealth).

Thieves can then Shadow Refuge their allies to see an enemy Stealthed Thief for a certain period of time. But if the party members attack the enemy stealthed Thief, they get Revealed, thus losing Stealth and are not able to see the enemy Thief anymore just like above.

Then we will have Thieves vs Thieves in party-wide situations, with Shadow Refuging your party being an instant counter to a Shadow Refuged party. Of course, first to attack gets Revealed.

If what you are after is successfully COMPLETE Guild Missions solo, very unlikely. If what you are looking for is just commendations, then it is quite possible,

You can solo Guild Rush, but not all of them. Guild Rush only awards 1 commendation. You do not need to go through 15 times, just once is enough to get commendations(you get commendations for getting to the finish line once per week, not for completing the guild missions. Commendations are awarded individually).

The Quaggan one is soloable, i have done it solo and it’s rather easy if you know what you are doing. I have also soloed the crab one, but that was after multiple frustrating attempts.
There is also the bear one and the chicken one. Much harder though, but not impossible to solo.
The spider one is extremely difficult to solo, i would say near impossible.

You cannot solo Guild Puzzles because some requirements (like activating 5 panels at the same time) are physically impossible for 1 character, just like you cannot solo CoF path1 because 4 people have to stand in the bubbles while someone gets the gate.

It is near impossible to solo most Guild Challenges either.

Guild Bounty depends on which bounty. I believe some like Poobadoo could be soloable, because I have seen people beat Poobadoo with 2 players. Perhaps some others like Trillia could also be soloable, but others like 2-MULT are very unlikely because of the time limit imposed on the bounty. The good part about Guild Bounty is that you do not need to succeed, just kill 1 boss in the list(you get commendations for defeating one/any boss in the bounty list, not for completing the whole list of bounties).

I played Guardian since headstart. I am however a bit out of touch with builds.

CoF P1 boss hits this AoE attack every 10 seconds or so.

This person is asking me to party-wide Aegis on every AoE attack, so that he does not have to use the dodge button.

Even at 30 in Virtues and 20% cooldown on shouts, Virtue of Courage + Retreat,
I cannot get Aegis up every 10 seconds.

Please link me to the build that can do this.

TriggerSad.2597:

Well, if you can remember any of their characters’ names, you could look them up that way. I know of a few players from Guild Wars that reused their old characters names when they made the transition since they were allowed to keep them for a few months after launch.

I did, and for many of them there was no match, even after trying different combinations. Some might simply not be playing GW2, but I am sure there are people i knew from GW1 that are in GW2 under completely different character and account names.

I am probably not the only person looking for “former GW1 friends” in GW2.

Situation:
I have played GW1 for many years, made many friends and joined many guilds. I do remember the character names of those people from GW1. I even remember some of their guild names and tags.

However, there are many who left GW1 for whatever reason. But they came back for GW2. But you did not have a chance to talk to them before GW2 was released.

And so they made a new account and linked it to their GW1 account.
Some people used their GW1 character names and I could trace them back. But others used brand new character names.

I would like a way to find the people I knew back in GW1 by character name.
I still have them in my GW1 friendlist, but I cannot communicate with them because nobody ever logs in to GW1 anymore.

GW1 had no “server restriction” and everyone could meet anywhere anytime. GW2 on the other hand, restricts players to their server. Therefore you might not even encounter each other suddenly while roaming open world. Moreover, WvW hides all enemy character names, so I will never know that the person I just killed was a former good friend of mine. You might meet somehow in dungeons, but may not recognize each other because of new names.

You can currently input any GW1 player’s character name in HoM website and it can tell you how many HoM points they have. Could it perhaps find a way to tell you which GW2 account is linked to that GW1 character name?

I just posted this in another thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-wars-2-combat-where-is-my-AI-at/first#post3431129

Vigor should not be removed. However there should be more Weakness and Immobilize to counter dodging.

Zerker or Kick
This is the biggest problem in GW2 right now. You either play Zerker or we dont want you in group. Some people even say that Zerker is the only way to play, and those who are investing in Toughness/Vitality are in need of a “crutch” to learn playing. Some even say Toughness/Vitality are completely useless. This limits “useful” builds to Zerker and Zerker only.

1. Improve Zerker DPS. Yes, practically double it. No I am not crazy, keep reading.

2. Implement more mobs with Immobilize and Weakness, but with good visual cues for those attacks. The only reason why Zerker is the very best is because of the Dodge mechanic. You can simply Dodge out of everything with infinite Vigor and faceroll your rotation mindlessly. You dont even need condition removal on your skill bar right now. Immobilize and Weakness changes all of this and will provide much more interesting gameplay.

3. Improve monster damage. Right now Zerkers dont even die if they get hit, specially Warriors and Guardians. Bosses should be 1-hitting anyone running FULL Zerker(glass cannon). There should be a really high skill cap on actually playing Zerker. If you are “really that good”, then this wont affect you since you never get hit by anything anyway and can still run Zerker. For those “less good”, you will have to consider other options or take the risk of being 1-hitted often.

4. Improve Toughness. Toughness right now is a very underwhelming stat that scales poorly the higher you go. If monster damage gets improved from 3., then Toughness should also be improved to match. Then with both Improved monster damage + Improved Toughness, players will know that difference between being 1-hitted with Zerker and not be. Zerkers clearly have way too much survival right now and even room for mistakes.

I understand that you do not want a “holy trinity” in this game. Every class should be able to run DPS or Control or Support, true. However, I expected teams to be more balanced to let’s say “requiring” 3DPS and 2Support out of 5 party members to be optimal or even 4DPS and 1Support. This would be regardless of class because all classes can do the roles. Right now, all people are doing is just run Imba teams of 5 full zerkers and faceroll everything.