Guild Wars 2

iFocus.3781:

Just for the sake of discussion:
whatever happened to “play however you chose to”? All I see is how more and more people are getting herded into this huge chunk of gray goo. “That is not what we meant with play however you chose to, we meant that you should chose to play like this.” Very, very disappointing.

“Play how you choose” never, ever meant exploiting, hacking, cheating, or justification for a completely unbalanced game.

Maylojager.1307:

Itchen.8754:

So as of late i’ve been using the Gw2lfg site and well im starting to get really annoyed of groups wanting X class only

Quoting the OP- he is “annoyed” because people are trying to be efficent.
Where does all this kittenness comes from?
What happened to the “Let the people play the way they want to play” ?

If all classes were balanced and people were just doing this for fun (like in WoW forming all druid or all paladin parties), no problem. The issue is that it’s not balanced and warriors dominate PvE and it’s made worse by the fact that CoF is the most desirable instance to farm (b/c you can buy rares for ectos) yet has the fastest path of any dungeon, leading to warrior only groups. It’s not “letting people play the way they want to play”. It’s the game being unbalanced heavily in favor of a certain class, and the player base reacting to that unbalance by exploiting it.

The crying is probably because the Legendary grind is the only “progression” remaining once you’ve geared up in fractals and it takes a significantly higher time/gold investment than anything before it. It’s also completely unsatisfying and involves 0 actual content. By saying it’s optional you’re basically just admitting that there is no content/achievements past fractals so these players might as well quit.

I face tank every boss on my Warrior in full berserker gear without dodging. Adrenal Health heals me from 10% to full in like 5 seconds.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Yaki.9563:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.

Why isn’t this a viable solution? You should force players to fight the trash mobs that are in the way because it’s content that you designed for the players to fight. If you don’t want players to fight trash, don’t put trash in the dungeon.

Or (as has been stated on multiple occasions) having certain encounters skipable IS intended by Anet. Just because it’s in there, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be killed.

Then why is it in there?

alcopaul.2156:

you want a full support, offensewise and defense wise combined and staying true to the word “support”?

Staff-> spam empower on the right locations. (2 handed mastery is a must)
full clerics with water/monk runes

trait and skill appropriately

you can give your whole team 500+ power and 500+ condition damage X 5 that lasts for ~10-12 seconds (you don’t need to claim that your guardian is doing awesome dps coz its still subpar compared to the obvious dps classes) and have the top notch healing power to make your team alive, still with utilities like protection and stability.

and if you get bored with this kind of setup, you can do the healway build, which is more on offense, without spending gold on a new gear.

how about that?

If you’re going for this kind of build you’re better off with Pre/Vit/Heal because you want the extra crits for procs and vitality > toughness especially if you aren’t “tanking” in melee.

Seems kind of worthless to me though, since you can a) do good damage while b) providing the same utility buffs and c) giving about half as many might stacks and d) soaking some damage by going the standard AH/EM 2H sword or 2H hammer Knights setup. You may think your healing is useful but really, it’s not all that great. DPS is king in this game because way damage works (avoidance via dodge) and the huge sacrifice for marginal increases in healing.

Pre/Vit/Heal may be superior to Cleric’s depending on what you are planning to do with it. Your damage is going to be bad regardless and vitality is generally superior to toughness, especially for heavy armor classes like Guardian so you might as well get the higher crit so that you can proc more Might and Vigor and food buff heals.

Another plus is that the gear is easy to get from AC and/or Karma vendors so you can save quite a bit of gold.

Mirta.5029:

haviz.1340:

Mirta.5029:

It’s noobish to run full berserker gear without getting any toughness AND accept only warriors.

But toughness is waste of stat point in current metagame.

except that instead of getting hit for 14K damage you get hit for 1K.

ROFL. The reality is that instead of getting hit for 14k you dodge the attack, and if you do get hit your extra toughness reduces the 14k damage to 11k. 1k hahahaha.

KratosAngel.7289:

i just hope it stops all this skipping and exploiting since its getting directly stupid -.-
would be easily countered by 2 things
1: mobs NEVER! resets, once you got agro its there till you die or mob dies.

Lol, no thanks, not this dumb WoW system which brings lots of bugs, thanks Anet for not bringing garbage ideas into the game
Though I don’t really like skipping, this solution is the dumbest possible.

It’s dumb for Anet to make players complete the dungeon as intended? Wow.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.

Why isn’t this a viable solution? You should force players to fight the trash mobs that are in the way because it’s content that you designed for the players to fight. If you don’t want players to fight trash, don’t put trash in the dungeon.

Karizee.8076:

The exotic gear you get from high level map completion, crafting or the corrupted god temple karma vendors is the same stat level as you get from dungeons.

High lvl map completion doesn’t reward lvl 80 exotics, and the karma gear sets have some of the worst stat combinations in the game. No P/V/T is not good, we don’t need you to sit there and pretend you are tanking while contributing half of what someone geared for DPS is doing.

That said, you can sell the exotics for decent gold and spend the resulting ~20g from leveling and map completion on a set of good exotics on the TP.

Anyway, why would you want endgame gear if you aren’t going to do endgame activities? If you’re just farting around in the open world, just buy some rares and call it good.

If it actually takes effort and building up resources then it’s likely not an exploit. If you go and find a karma vendor that is selling rares for 1 karma and buy 10000000 of them to cycle through the mystic forge, that’s an exploit.

Exploits are obvious, though they tend to become commonly used when they aren’t addressed quickly. As an example of that, fighting the last boss of path 1 in AC on the stairs is an exploit and almost everyone does it but it’s been that way since the game was released. Also, since the profit from it is very low they aren’t going to ban people for that kind of exploit. But if you’re exploiting and making 20g/hour off of that exploit, expect to see some kind of ban.

Metaphysicist.9427:

You can ALWAYS support with your Virtues, and if you trait for AH and the first in Virtues you can produce a LOT of group healing while having a long life in mid-combat.

5s of regen every 60 seconds isn’t a lot.

Svarty.8019:

While I very much enjoy my Guardian, I often feel like I’d do better as a Warrior. This is probably a “grass is greener” situation, tho.

I like my Warrior slightly better. The best thing about Warrior is the free 500 Vitality and not being tempted into any sort of psuedo-healing build.

Obtena.7952:

The build variations are tremendous and the value in team is high. The versatility is good, though some drawbacks of the profession hold some people back in WvW.

LOL @ build variation. 0/x/30/20/5 doesn’t leave much flexibility. Sure, you can do other builds and still be ok but that’s because Guardian is such a stupid strong class that you can hardly fail unless you try. That doesn’t mean the other builds are good.

If you think the story is awful I wonder what you think of all the other MMOs.

But yes, the one role combat is pretty uninteresting.

You didn’t post a build.

I think axe/warhorn is pretty sweet for leveling, with some kind of ranged for whatever stupid solo event you might be forced to kite for.

I use signet build for roaming around solo in PvE because it’s less buttons to press. For groups though it is just so much worse than anything else. Just 1 shout adds as much to your damage as the 160 precision from 4 signets, not to mention it affects your entire group.

Healing is clearly not an intended role in this game so I wonder why they even have +healing power as a stat, maybe to delude people who think that there is actually a “support” role in this game. All gear should be Berserkers and be done with it since DPS is the only effective role.

Can’t wait for AH/EM + crit food to get the bat so that there will finally be some reasonable alternative builds.

Worst thing about this game is that when it boils right down to it there’s not much point in having alternative gear sets as there is only one role in the game, DPS. “Tanking” is just whoever happens to be in melee. “Healing” is just using your personal heal ability and dodging the big 1-shot hits.

Puandro.3245:

Then go shouts. but then you have to save them to heal up instead of using them to boost party dps because you risk of having them down when you need to heal.

On the other hand, banners will never help you when you need to heal.

Shouts do more healing over time than banners. The advantage of banners is that it only takes one slot instead of relying on 3 for full effectiveness.

People doing zones in 45 min -1 hour are teleport hacking. There’s ~20 hearts per zone there’s there’s no way you’re averaging 3 mins per heart + travel time and getting all the vistas and out of the way POI’s.

Or maybe it’s just the standard kitten waving on the forums.

Comparing the healing numbers like was done earlier in the thread is misleading, because it makes an assumption which is almost never true: you will use your healing skill on cooldown 100% of the time. If that is the case, Healing Signet is the worst choice. But I’m certain that most fights don’t involve heal ability spam, so the regen effect is providing healing on top of what you get when you activate the ability as needed while the other two skills are doing absolutely nothing. I bet if you looked at the total healing done by each ability over an average fight, Healing Signet would easily be well ahead of the others.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

All the scepter needs is it’s projectiles to home in on targets, it doesn’t need anything else changed.

I agree, but there are people who don’t understand that a) ranged weapons are intentionally inferior to melee weapons in damage and b) scepter only uses up 3 ability slots leaving 2 for shield or focus.

Skipping seems natural. I’ve skipped every time I’ve gone in AC. It’s like running around in Orr, do I stop and fight every single mob? Heck no, I run right past all of them, agro or not. Why wouldn’t I do the same in a dungeon?

My skipping has nothing to do with trying to finish the run faster and get more tokens/loot (I don’t really care that much, it’s not like there’s anything great to get). But why fight uninteresting and annoying trash when I don’t have to?

I’ve only started running dungeons at 80 but I do axe/warhorn with 2 shouts and one banner, +elite banner skill. I spec x/x/15/30/x (none of the other traits really seem to matter) taking banner cooldown, warhorn cond. removal, and banner regen traits. I might switch to 3x shouts once I slot all Soldier’s runes…it’s a tough call.

I don’t understand the scepter hate. Fast attack speed autoattack, low cooldown AE that isn’t channeled, and an immobilize. You get 2 extra abilities for an off-hand, seems pretty great to me. If the autoattack balls hit 100% of the time instead of missing on moving targets, scepter would be almost perfect.

I’m worried that if they change it to a symbol it will have a smaller AE radius and longer cooldown, basically nerfing the EM proc goodness of scepter to provide some buff that won’t even be used much of the time except in PvE.

Also, a symbol with fury is a little too much to ask for imo…unless they make it 20s cooldown with 5s duration of fury in which case, no thanks.

There’s a reason half the playerbase is warrior or guardian, and it’s not PvP.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Grok Krog.9581:

You can still be an epic self-regen warrior. With full cleric’s gear I believe I calculated Adrenal Health, Healing Signet, Regeneration from Banners, and Mango pie to get over 2.3K health every 3 seconds

signet and banner regeneration doesn’t stack. Regeneration from signet is the same regeneration but without visible boon (So with adrenal health, signet and regeneration you still can have only 2 HoT effects)

That makes the signet awfully bad. I can’t believe I haven’t noticed this yet.

Ynna.8769:

Twill.6217:

I don’t think Bows or Rifles or Javelins suit the profession.

People keep saying that, but they never say why.

Anyway, I don’t think we need a new weapon. Just make the Scepter into something good.

It is good.

Whoever is meleeing is “tanking”. People run dungeons with any set of classes. The only exception is if they need a specific class for some exploit or because of some OP ability (like guardians with their reflection in fractals). No one cares whether you are “tanking” or not.

Anyway, I don’t like the build. 20 in valor is just bad because those traits are very bland and really just filler until you get AH with 30 points. Far, far better to go with 20 in honor for EM and SA as well as the vastly superior minor traits. I also don’t like your gear which is very unfocused.

SSalp.6423:

And also guardians always have power in their equipment doing a fair amount of damage (except you run vit/prec/healing, which would be kitten imo^^).

So far I like guardian (although the altruistic healing is a bit weak).

The reason you AH healing is weak is because you don’t have much precision for crit, which procs EM. It’s the AH/EM synergy that makes AH so powerful.

The reason to run Vit/Pre/Heal over Cleric’s is so that you crit more and proc EM. Your damage is bad either way, but proccing EM is very useful if you build around boon duration and crit even without the AH synergy. Yes, Vit isn’t as good as Tou but that’s the price you pay for the superior utility from Pre vs. Pow.

blinkxzero.8035:

I have a shout Guardian who (I’d like to think) is very useful in fractals. He runs PVT armor from AC tokens / karma with full Soldier runes (last one removes condition every shout). The shouts I use are Hold the Line, Save Yourselves, and either Retreat, Stand Your Ground. In the third utility slot, sometimes I’ll use Wall of Reflection (projectile fights) or Battle Roar (extra dps for not hard fights).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJARWlYgyC33xKEf4ERWhVi9AjwPjXPcIFZIA;T4Ag0ynEOJdS9kyJqsMZJyymlLLZWrPGEA

GS for grouping mobs so runs go faster, staff for might/healing when I’m low or a teammate is low. My dps isn’t bad either haha

Yes it is, stop deluding yourself. You bring decent utility but the Vitality is largely wasted and you do bad DPS. You’d be much better doing the exact same thing with Cleric’s gear.

KeepersWay.4159:

Molch.2078:

Depends on the Guardian:
P/V/T wannabe Tank without Support = horrible.
Sharing boons and healing like candy = I like.

btw, this thread belongs to the dungeon forum. It’s not about Guardians, it’s about feelings for Guardians in Dungeons.

Boon duration is affected mostly by runes and no sane guardian would go healing power armor as it leaves them being squishie or lacking damage to even get drops. so Power, Vitality, Toughness is the way to go.

People should not comment about a class they know nothing off.

So you do bad damage AND don’t provide healing or boons? What do you do, exactly?

P/V/T is the worst non-condition stat combination you can wear for guardian.

Bakitten291:

Drawing Guy.3701:

Personally I’ve never really considered Guardians tied to their traits for playstyle. They’re screwed with almost no traits that shorten weapon timers – you have 50 points pre-defined, and 20 to pick according to what utilities you prefer: 30 in Valor for toughness to crit (as half the game triggers on crit), purity (guardian can basically ignore debuffs with purity + signet) and AH (every weapon you have can cast buffs as with 2/3s of your utilities and your F1-F3 with 5 virtue) – so you have a small constant heal that synergizes with everything. 20 in Honor to get your only real weapons skill reducer or EM + buffing your dodging with vigor and heals. The end of the day is you’re left with Yaki’s statement. The only people I’ve seen break from this (0/x/30/20+x/x) is people that went with spirit weapon builds.

It’s really the weapon that defines the Guardian. Unlike other classes where you are picking weapons by best DPS or favorite skills, each guardian weapon has different utilities (symbols, blocks, heals, buffs, debuffs), so you should ALWAYS have EVERY weapon. Swap according to the situation.

It is called imagination, try using it when you go to put trait points in next time, its fun.

Yes you can imagine you’re as useful as a x/x/30/20/x Guardian.

I’m going to be trying Pre/Vit/Heal gear from AC, mainly because I believe precision is far, far more important than power because of vigor and might procs we get. The lack of toughness is bad but there’s nothing you can do about it since they don’t have Pre/Tou/Heal gear. I just wish they would convert all “on crit” abilities to “on hit”.

PVT gear suffers from this as well. It’s as if they want to require guardians to wear Knight’s or Berserker’s gear and spec 0/x/30/20/x.

Kvader.2689:

PS: Orb of Wrath attack speed is sure as koala not 0,25s. The wiki says it’s 0,83s, though you can measure it yourself and it’s easy enough to tell that it’s not 4 attacks every second (not even with quickness).

After testing, the wiki seems to be correct. I suspect our other attack speeds are not accurate either.

Just tested the Hammer attack chain as well, takes about 3.5s to execute the entire chain vs. the 2.25s on the tooltip.

It’s also a bit off that the 1H legendaries take the same to make as the 2H legendaries, meaning you’d need twice the grind to complete your weapon “set”.

Please no. One of the nicest things about GW2 is that there are no raids.

The only thing that is a grind is getting a legendary.

If you want to see a real grind go play any other MMO. I suspect people who are dissatisfied with GW2 endgame are people who came from WoW or elsewhere that their grinding rewarded them with distinct superiority over other players. Here the “grind” is pointless because you don’t get any gear that lets you faceroll other players or normal PvE content.

Creeper.9360:

Rukia.4802:

So yes, we need raids,

We need raids? Maybe you need raids, I certainly don’t. There are hundreds of raiding games, not every mmo has to have raids.

Raids are the worst part of WoW. 5-mans used to be meaningful but each expansion they have devalued them until currently they are 100% pointless to do. You can literally gear up faster for better gear doing just dailies and going afk in raid finder. I’m very happy this game does not have them.

Zeldain.5710:

Yaki.9563:

Rukia.4802:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

sonicsix.5713:

Go play another game until they launch new content. That’s what I am doing. I don’t like PvP or dungeons and there is nothing worthwhile to do in the open world.

So then what do you do in any game seeing how thats the end game in every single MMO.

Actually, most other MMO’s have an achievement system that actually matters

You sure? WoW doesn’t. WAR doesn’t. LotRO doesn’t. So I guess that means you know at least 4 other MMO’s that do….

Those achievement systems DO matter. They are publicly displayed, they are social… they matter. Here? I bet many players don’t even realize there IS an achievement system.

Oh you mean titles no one cares about except the player who has them (and usually not even that person). Consider that the vast majority of achievements in WoW don’t even have any title associated with them, and the whole system is as basically pointless as it is in GW2.

Rukia.4802:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

sonicsix.5713:

Go play another game until they launch new content. That’s what I am doing. I don’t like PvP or dungeons and there is nothing worthwhile to do in the open world.

So then what do you do in any game seeing how thats the end game in every single MMO.

Actually, most other MMO’s have an achievement system that actually matters

You sure? WoW doesn’t. WAR doesn’t. LotRO doesn’t. So I guess that means you know at least 4 other MMO’s that do….

kKagari.6804:

is spelling ridiculous incorrectly a new meme now? Everyone spells it as REDiculous

This is what happens when 10 year olds learn to spell on internet forums instead of at school.

I personally feel like scepter is a better ranged weapon than rifle/longbow on warrior. The only issue is the way the attacks miss moving targets.

Amins.3710:

Huge nerf to AH across the board. No way. Not just pve. This would kill the ah build.

This is a horrible idea and there would need to be soooo many other changes to the class to compensate for it….. Just because u can’t learn to fight in your circle?

Yea because being anything less than one of the two most desired classes for dungeons is unacceptable. AH needs a fat nerf in group PvE and guardian would be just fine without it as they have plenty of other ridiculous traits and abilities.

Rifle damage output is lower than melee on single target, and on multiple targets is insanely lower as even melee autoattacks are AE.

Symbols just need to be bigger. They are puny to the point of uselessness in many cases.

Archer.1658:

I vote for Holy Crossbow. Fires Holy Bolts that burn targets. Realistically, staff isn’t a ranged weapon. Scepter is very lackluster, but its “good enough” to kite bosses around with in PvE.

Sounds like Rifle and Bow for Warriors. This is intentional.

The scepter is nice except for the way the ball moves. The advantage of the scepter is that the autoattack has 1/4 second cast time, faster than the autoattack of any other weapon we have. You also get to continue autoattacking while your AE is going off, unlike most weapons. That means that you get a lot of “on crit” abilities. Scepter is far and away the best weapon, melee included, for doing this on a single target.