Guild Wars 2

Irony.5203:

Bursts.1540:

Now I stay away from politics too, but…
The irony is killing me.
Last thing, get the information right about the situation of guilds coming to blackgate. These guilds chose us first and foremost. I do not know the full story. So I can not post about it. I suggest taking the same route.

I’m not killing you.

had to rehighlight this. gave me a little lol in the office.

joocheese.6314:

P.S. pls forgive my spelling, typing on a kindle in the hospital while your wife is in labor makes for some interesting sentence structure… it’s a girl.

congratulations!DDD we’ll patiently wait for your return. now go spend some time with that precious little one.

Blade.9317:

Score update brought to you by Feisty:

and how i’ve missed these.

fortunate enough to spend a few moments on SoR BL last night. woot! our Commander did a great job. for the time i was on, we took back all of SoR BL. though green and red started trickling in again. good fights all around!!!

also, welcome, [OCX]! glad you are here and hope you enjoy your new home. lookign forward to seeing you on the field.

Uriel – that looks frigging awesome. i’m slowly working towards the corrupted bulwark as well. : ))

agreed with most of what Danicco said. a decent starting place for what armor pieces to get i feel can be:
Knights – head, chest, legs
Valkyrie – shoulders, gloves, boots

then mix and match your weapons and trinkets to get the stats you’d like. of course, don’t forget about runes or orbs. sigils as well. then add on food and consumables (oil for precision, stones for power) for WvW as well.

pretty much all in the site that Dannico linked.

oops forgot to check guild tag this weekend! ://

seems not many play during NA mornings.. say.. EST 9, 10am-ish? if you do, let me know!
either way, will check in-game tonight. hope to get some runs in on weekdays too!

one day, salvaged 2 rares, no ectos. next day salvaged 2 rares, 1 exotic, got 8 ectos (5 from exotic).

assume it’s RNG as well. keep at it! and you’ll get ’em soon enough.

pretty close up top with JQ in the lead now.
c’moooon SoR! i love points as much as only having good fights. i love badges as much as simply fighting alongside the most solid of teammates.

WvW is a while lot of fun regardless. let’s hope the March udpates only makes things better.

when i do run a similar build akin to 10/30/30, i do switch between AH and MF and utilities depending no if there are peopel around me or not. : ))

nice stats btw Atremis! though, could i suggest using hydromancy on the focus? helps with landing sword #3. though most kills would also happen on sword i assume thus stacking up perception.

^^ to add – autoattacks with a chain (hammer, GS, sword, mace, etc), you’ll notice the animation change if you’re actually hitting them when they’re stealthed. so that gives indication as well.

and yes, nothing like a thief coming out of stealth downed. XDD

blind exposure coupled with the GS (#3) in particular since it’s “bugged” in that for each foe you hit you apply the number of vulnerability. for e.g. if you hit 3 foes with leap of faith, you will put 9 stacks of vuln on each mob (3×3). ot sure if they fixed that yet though. so vuln in itself is not CRAZY awesome. but when you can get stacks that high it’s not too shabby.

while leveling, i worked towards putting 15 in radiance and then 5 in virtues. essentially in addition to ltitle more crit chance, 15 will net you F1 (Virtue of Justice) being refreshed each time you kill a mob. on the wiki it states you need the killing blow, but IME, you just need to contribute enough to get kill credit. if you run solo, this won’t be a problem though. and with 5 in virtues, you get might as well when you hit VoJ.

so in PvE, where mobs die considerably fast enough, you can pretty much spam F1, which blinds, gives vuln, gives might, burns.. and all those AoE blinds will help with you feeling “squishy” as well. since an attack that will miss, you’ll be taking that much less dmg.

then you can spec the rest into valor, wich gives you more toughness and crit dmg. argubly one of the Guard’s strongest lines. go into hono if you want more vitality. a decent “hybrid” build could be 0/15/30/20/5.

the hammer can be really fun. it’s a great PBAoE weapon as well. even with the #1 chain, you’re always hitting multiple foes. with a decent crit chance and dmg, you’ll always see numbers and crits pop, especialyl with #2 mighty blow!

dmg wise we won’t compare to the warrior on face value. what we are better at though is dealing relatively high sustained dmg over time. but if specced right, you can still hit like a truck. : ))

you’ve pretty much stated it. : )) if retaliation is built in “passively”, i think it couldn’t hurt. though one could alwys argue that you could spend more resources to get your DPS higher.

Jayne.9251:

So peanut butter and jelly, or peanut butter alone.

Discuss.

i want to say… peanut butter, condensed milk, butter and sugar.

on a simiarly tasty note – the fights have been pretty awesome so far.

BG, it’s good to have you guys back! always been a formidable (and frustrating) foe in my mind. looking forward to more battles.

JQ, keep it coming. that is all. ; ))

all of the above. just apply pressure best according to your own playstyle. they’ll most likely turn to run and don’t let off them and you’ll have the match.

utilize blocks, blinds, and hammer GS combo is decent. if you’re able to trap them with hammer #5, you can haev your way with ’em.

made a new friend on JQ today! one guard and one thief had a little fight going. then guard got run over by a group from thief’s world that came a running by. thief stuck around though so we chatted for a bit. looking forward to finishing what we started next time.

and here’s another welcome back, BG! hope to see how you’ve all grown. as well as how how SoR has. here’s to good fights this week on all sides.

ps. @Bash, Christos – definitely hope to see you guys on the field! >:DD

random thought – so you mentioned this build may be hard to counter similar well-played “bunker” style builds as the Healway. how do you specifically deal with builds that stack retaliation? namely because both the GS and sword have fast and multi hitting attacks.

lol the woes of having too much choice. ; )) i mean best bet is really to jump in WvW and see how it goes. 13k HP might be cutting it REALLY close. i personally feel more comfortable with at least 15k-16k-ish. i have a healin gbuild which i’m sitting at 14k, and maybe breaking 15k with world buffs but the high healing and passive regen makes up for it.

if you’re running meditations and switching to 10/25/30 build, i’d recommend changing the gear choices a bit so you have a little more HP to sit on. i don’t think you’ll be killing your crit rate TOO much depending how you go about it. meditations are extremely fun though. couple that with radiant power and fiery wrath, make sure you have some fast and multi hitting weapons to get those burning procs. i actually slotted hydromancy sigils into my weapon sets for that one build to further ensure i’m able to keep conditions on foes. it’s more of a fun build and it’s exactly what that is.

the 30% on boon duration for your meditation build might not be optimal.. but if you’re able to convert say 8 conditions on your using contemplation of purity, the boon duration s hould affect them as well no? seeing as it can be quite common to get that many on you at a time in wvw ; )) lol

bottom line though, iw ouldn’t get too bogged down on what’s “superior” in terms of stats. of course, they are important but you can always further implement by how you act in-game on the field. : ))

[added: re: crit chance.. if you run in a group, you can sometimes rely on getting fury from them. or use a sigil of perception before hand, get your stacks up and then switch to your regular weapon to make up for a loss of crit chance if you want to get your vit up for the medi build]

Mance.5640:

I’m pretty sure I won the internet today.

/cheer @ Mance

gave me a decent chuckle at work.

@Brutaly and Hyuri – great insights and thanks for the shares! Brutaly you’re right in that everyone mixes and matches their numbers differently and i like your approach as well. min/max is not the only way to go. : )) and most importantly, what numbers can’t tell is how you play on the field, use your skills in acordance with your stats and how you react to various circumstances that each and every single player will throw at you, cause they’ll all be different.

my threashold is similar to yours tha tyou’ve laid out (which are really nice btw!) but depending on my build i’ll tweak them accordingly. at the same time, i haven’t really had a chance to look at ascended gear in detail yet so i’ll probs have to change my approach as well.

so @Timber – do take what is aid with a grain of sale, as i currently enjoy being able to make small tweaks using upgrade slots in jewelry, etc so if i want to get a full ascended lay out, i’ll probs have to make changes as such.

@Hyuri – i thought it was interesting that ascended trinkets offer more crit dmg per stat compared to exotic jewelry. so like you said, definitely makes sense to get crit dmg % on ascended jewelry even before you throw it on regular armor.

i want to say, or should i say HOPE, that we will be seeing a similar trend with the ascended jewelry.. where we won’t be giving up as much stat points as we are currently with exotics. but we’ll see where it goes. so as it stands, in terms of just armor, head, pants and chest offer the least amount of crit dmg% across the board. but hopefully ascended will make a difference. and perhaps, that is where ascended will stand even further out compared to exotics. solely for the purpose of trading off crit dmg or % stats vs flat stats.

i personally feel with the mace build, you don’t have to build as offensie. you can make up the difference in “DPS” using gear and trinkets, as well as runes.

i have a mace / shield setup (though it wasn’t built around the mace and board) and i feel with the mace, having 30 in honor can help a lot with the symbol traits. and if you’re going deep in valor, i’d prefer to pick up the shield trait as opposed to the 5% dmg increase on the mace. you can always throw in a sigil of force if you need. or stuff with more utility. the beauty of playing a MH + OH set. : ))

i actually play the hammer with my mace/shield and you’ll be abel to offer a lot of control, area denial, knockbacks and support through heals and blocks and protection and symbols in dungeons.

@Quark – re: the hammer chain #2 and #3 hits, i think he meant between the 2nd and 3rd hammer hit, you’re exposed to being hit and thus taking damage, even though you’re moving. with the animation skipping, you’re effectively shortening the time you’re being exposed to damage while connecting the last hit. key is the time being exposed to damage.

so you’re still doing the same hits in more or less the same amount of time (as opposed to a full dodge in between 2nd and 3rd hit?) while being exposed less. and if you have 25 in honor, i guess you get extra dmg in as well.

this discussion as seemingly been in place since release or i don’t know but maybe even before that with bwe’s.. regardless.. i find both weapons to be great. i personally prefer 2hers over 1hers in this game (though i love sword scepter mace and the offhands as well). and i personally run with hammer AND gs. just because liek so many have mentioned hammer has a lot of CC, mb is too awesome and AoE triggers every 4 – 5 seconds is to die for if you play with people who know to drop fields when they see a hammer guard. GS is great for control, mobility and fast damage as well. each weapon works well against certain situations and enemies. no point picking one over the other. if OP doesn’t like hammer, that’s fine with them. why they had to come here to cry about it, i am impartial towards. just play with what you enjoy the most.

and Mance has consistently said Tysm. ; )))

that’s it?D i don’t mind that at all. lol. tbh, none of the monthlies were really that bad. just glad id on’t HAVE to do fractals. heh.

though for those who don’t have any crafting (sure it’s easy), i guess it’s a little meh. as well. choices for monthly would be great as well. but i can see why they’re keeping monthly’s a standard set for all.

i haven’t tried the new AC yet so unsure if the howl mechanic has changed.. but i think there is a tiny window that you can interupt his scream, where (a) the rocks won’t fall and (b) he won’t reset and do the howl a gain right after the interupt but instead move onto his next attack set.. i.e. if you do it outside this window, he’ll still pull the move off, or he’ll do it again shortly after being “successfully” interrupted

Crenshinabon – so the stats you’re running doesn’t include consumables?

it’s about finding what you’re comfortable with. how do you feel in most encounters playing the current stats that you have now? if you feel HP pool is too low, try to make up some of that. if you feel each direct hit you take it too big, maybe some added toughness will help.

i’ve run a number of different builds, and as much as i’d like to stay to my “comfort zone”, i’ll break the barriers with toughness or vit or other stats here and there to make things work. which they do! one thing to take into account is how much active dmg mitigation do you do, how much passive mitigation do you get? do you use your dodge rolls effectively. do you have enough passive healing, condition removal? they all play a part in the equation as well : ))

some Guards never run with less than 3k armor, some go as low as 2.6k. some think 14k HP is more than enough while some like to push it to 20k.

they’re adding new stuff to WvW and WvW specifically so i see this as a good thing. and yes, before you call me out, i haven’t spent my entire gw2 career in WvW. i’d say it’s about 50/50 total considering now i mainly WvW and do PvE for daily and getting new gear.

i would have loved for these rewards to work retroactively for those who’ve worked so hard in building up their WvW communities.. but it hink it’s a bit silly to say that all that these people have done is a waste. i know you’re voicing your concern but that just undermines what these dedicated WvW-ers have achieved and have been doing. i know who are the hardcore WvWers on my server and will always respect them as so. and i know in no time, they will achieve these ranks and abilities in due time. simply as many of you have stated, because they frigging love WvW.

[edit: to clarify, i do agree that these awards should be given and awarded retroactively]

i’ve found recently starting your armor off with the following it’s quite easy to get decent crit rate and balanced stats:

Head/Chest/Pants: Knights
Shoulders/Gloves/Boots: Valkyrie
All jewelry: Knights + Exquisite Beryl Upgrades

alternatively, you can use berserker or ruby upgrades as mentioned to upkeep / increase your crit chance as well. i like balancing with some vitality though. then you can mix and match or use runes / sigils to help make the final tweaks.

(not taking into account ascended gear yet though as i haven’t really spent time looking at them yet)

you can use www.gw2buildcraft.com to test the stats before you invest : ))

[added: just saw they do indeed have 2 Knight stat combos. pretty neat. i guess like you said, go with whatever you think you’d need more. don’t forget to take into account retributive armor where toughness contributes to precision as well! though with the difference in looking at the two, wouldn’t be too significant between goign with major precision or major toughness.]

someone mentioend in another thread that 15 might be good “compromise” or “middlegorund”. that’s 3 full parties. you can do quite a lot with some coordiation. but not to the point where it’s just you and two others if you wanted to go under the radar.

with scouting, i agree it’s important but who’s going to do the job? if you have dedicated WvW guilds and enough people, sure you could maybe do shifts. though for anyone else, i assume most will ask for volunteers. and no one’s gonna want to do it. and you can’t blame the individuals or PUGs for losing a tower or map because they didn’t want to scout.

you do have to use shouts / virtues (as a Guardian) to keep the animation going though. if not, the animation will eventually stop after a while : ))

@TimberWolfe – i’ll try to answer what i can.

just in case, ascended accessories are also available using 40 laurels and 50 ectos. which seem quite pricey.

as for knights vs berserkers or other stats. i’d say take your build lay out and try to tweak the numbers to see where you want your stats to spread out over. and just a general rule of thumb, for ascended trinkets as it stands, for each 1% critical damage you add, you give up 7 regular stat points for Ascended Back, 8.5 for ascended ring and earrings and around 9.4 for the amulet. so you can sort of base your decisions off that as well and mix and match.

glad they have ascended Knight’s now. : )) i personally wouldn’t mind Knight’s with a valkyrie prefix :PP

i love polar bears!

here you go buddy.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guardian-aegis-and-shields/first#post1507941

i don’t think it looks THAT that that bad.

kenzuro.1073:

I just did it, so no its not nerfed

as in, none of the animation looping was fixed?
so i can still breathe flames forevarz?

you could always switch to that trait when you’re going up against a Guard or Ele or sth in wstPvP. though it’s not something to build around ://

that being said, i wouldn’t mind if torch #4 actually gave us the burning condition. since we have a bunch of ways to get rid of conditions or even convert them anyways.. though might not be worth to waste a condition remover / concerter just for one burn but sth to think about. would make the trait lot more proactive, instead of passively reactive, as it stands currently..

i’ve run a mace/shield + hammer combo for a while. running 0/0/10/30/30 and worked extremely well. definitely was not hitting as hard as i could have – which the mace is capable of doing.. but you definitely offer a lot of support and staying power. which is always fun. : ))

thinking of putting together a mace/shield or even mace/focus combo (depending on group composition) with any variation of a x/x/30/30/x build. or even as mentioend up top, with triple meds as well.

either mace or shield trait would be nice. though more inclinced towards the shield trait. with high crit chance, the mace is a hefty weapon which offer utility.

a middleground would have been nice. i think 5 was too small. but 25 seems a bit extreme.

though i suspect after a week or so, they may drop the cap back down after seeing how it works out and how people react. it’s all fine-tuning.

i actually have had my fair share of “fun fights” at camp spawns. either being camped or my server camping. i’ve never used or seen siege being used when camping other’s spawn points… though i’m sure it’s happened on every server. individuals can choose to participate them or not. i do think a lot of these situations can be a lot of fun though.

just the other day when heading into EB, enemy server was spawn camping with siege. a bunch of my servermates were trying to push forward.. then i notice a fellow server-mate whom i’ve recognized and stood alongside in many battles.. drops shadow refuge. i step into it. a few more step into it. the house disappears and we all rush up, take siege out, a few of the enemy with us. and we’re on the map. all without communication and i thought that was kind of cool. : ))

valid tactic? sure. you’re preventing enemies from invading you’re land, even if you’re taken what’s not yours. gives time to reinforce. ensure yaks get in uncontested. finish upgrades… is it honorable? that’s a different story here and won’t get into that. to each their own i will say and who are we to define what other’s idea of fun is? we can’t impose onto other our own ideals.. but we CAN hopefully show them through action.

if you didn’t enjoy it or feel comfortable partaking in it, you didn’t participate so good for you. : )) keep playing the way you do and enjoy and you’ll soon enough notice, there are more like-minded players around you than you’d expect.

how many people did you have running the event? one thing i’ve realized is.. it’s way easier if you only have like a small group of 5 people doing it (way less mobs) or have a zerg running through it. am no expert but from my experience, there is no middle ground. well, there is.. just makes things a lot harder.

make sure to spam any AoE heals on your NPCs as best you can as well so at least they don’t die. be in a party and have people call out targets on those with low health.

would love the guild invite as well! have done a few p3 runs with Obal and his crew along with other new runners : ))

Name: Akaimon
Profession: Guardian (hammer main usually)
Traited: multiple builds, but most likely going with standard 30/30 AH build for Arah
Experience: Paths 3 only so far. would like to eventually do all paths
Time: Am GMT+8 (Hong Kong) so usually on EST 9am. so i assume i’ll most likely be able to play with you NA folk over the weekends.. where i could be on anytime : ))
Other: I don’t mind skipping trash, don’t mind killing everything either. I like to think i know how to have fun. ; )) definitely willing to listen and will never leave any one behind.

so seemingly.. after the patch it’s dropping a lot more?
pure speculation here. good luck to all those that have been hunting it for so long!

finally… ; )))

ah, thanks for clearing that up, Bash. that makes sense. so i assume when the duration of any given retal is up, you can reapply with another new stack then? or how does that work exactly?

: ((( i sadly assume this is the same for all “animation” tricks for the Guardian??
boo….

Jayne.9251:

BG. Darlings. You’re better than this.

JQ, I don’t know you, but I suspect you all are better than this, too.

Be nice. Shake hands and conduct yourselves like ladies and gentlemen. You’ll be happier for it.

Love,

Me

everyone please listen to Jayne. : ))
as always, thanks for stopping by.

i was gonan say bloodseeker is a pretty neat little focus skin.
so count my vote in as well.

i was gonna ask you, Bash, to see what you thought of the change to the pies / ghosts. i’ve been running my own version of 20/0/30/20/0 now with the following stats:

Attack: 3,300+
Crit chance: 39%
Crit dmg: 80%
Armor: 3,042
HP: 15,175

including consumables / traits / etc. running AH but might switch to Monk’s Focus instead for some more burst healing which i feel it more valuable with this build’s play style. it’s been pretty fun so fast and i drop guys so fast, including the surprise factor and picing off stragglers at the edge of the zerg. 1v2 and 3 is usually okay as well, but depending on their makeup.

1v1’s i feel extremely confident. unless if i was out of position and get surprise attacked instead. ://

FractalChaos.6539:

I’ve been a rather rabid WvW player since launch, but I have to say that since SoR got into T1, I’ve been bored to tears. Actually, it’s not so much our being in T1 if I look at it objectively. It’s the change in server mentality.

We have literally a few dozen commanders. It seems I see 2 or 3 new ones every day. Most of them are absolutely awful…. [snip]

We absolutely do not learn from our mistakes. .. [snip]

There are good people on SoR, exceedingly good bordering on exemplary. However, most nights, I almost feel like apologizing to JQ for some of our poor tactical decisions and varied stupidities.

care to elaborate? at least, perhaps offer constructive criticism instead of sarcasm to help your server out. if you’ve already expressed so on our server or your guild’s forums, then, my bad. i guess.

not a bad update for the Guard! the staff changes seem nice though i’ve put mine ndown for a while. will pick it up again to check it out. casting while running is definitely nice. nooow i wouldn’t mind that for the hammer’s ring of warding either ; )))

reading between the lines, and being a little more skeptical than i usually am accustomed to, seems as if they’re pushign Guardians to more healing or more AH focused builds

hahaha i just had to come in here and i expected no less from your reactions, Chris. grats! lol
gotta work hard for them ascended now!D and mann. i just spent my laurels the other day.. i TOLD myself as well, i should wait. :/// actually, not in game, are all the new stats (including knight’s) added to ALL vendors and avenues of acquiring ascended gear?

unsure of what that note re: retaliation meant either. glad to hear it’s not been effected adversely. i thought retaliation only stacked in duration anyways… i didn’t even know it ever stacked in intensity.. in addition to duration?? oh well.

@Limey – if you haven’t yet, check out Chris’ youtube channel for his build in action. though i assume you would have already : )) you can see how he really is able to stay on his targets. and at the same time, he also effectively uses LoS to one, avoid dmg, but two, i also feel that it is able to bait his opponents to come to him at times.

haviz.1340:

Blasino.3128:

The more you stray from one or the other you are getting diminishing returns on the stat.

Multiplication of two numbers doesn’t imply diminishing return.

i think he meant if you solely focus on either stat. i.e. if you focus purely on crit chance, you’ll hit DR for that stat. likewise for crit dmg. so you’ll be tryign to find a “sweet spot” for crit chance % and crit damage %. easier said than done of course.