Guild Wars 2

Skill bar
I kept the scepter and torch together. Both are rather defensive weapons (through stealth and with the block/fact that it is range). I figure you’re going to want to stay back and use this combo til you notice an opening which is where you’ll want to swap.

sword/pistol: I’ve already explained why I wanted the pistol. I like incorporating sword as you get the immobilize to help aid in a finisher but you can also use blurred frenzy defensively should the need arise (or it may just be the finisher skill I was talking about). sword is also going to be the weapon you’re going to want to attack with once you get them stunned for higher physical damage since they’ll will not be taking confusion damage at this point.

Healing: I fully understand why you took mirror (prevalence of projectiles), but keep in mind that the skill doesn’t go into cooldown until after the channel. effectively you have much weaker heal that is only 3 seconds less CD than ether feast. This just isn’t going to keep you alive in solo/small group, which you said you spend 50% of your WvW time split between.

Signet of Domination: My armor/build lacks the condition damage of yours, this makes up the difference. Put it’s active next to magic bullet and you have plenty of time to kill off a weakened opponent. Make sure to use bullet before signet, so if they use a stun breaker, not only will any confusion stacks hit harder, but you also get the longer duration stun as the one that sticks on them.

Blink: lacking the staff, this is your disengage of choice.

Feedback: With my preference for melandru runes, I don’t see a need for null field, Feedback however is everything you want it to be. Ethereal field for your projectile, leap and blast finishers as well as massive damage to anything that ranges you.

Mass Invis: When situations go south.

When your in a zerg you could probably swap blink for null for better team support, and you may want to swap out the sword main to just have scepter on both sides (assuming the front line is too packed to get any damage with the sword). I wouldn’t swap out the signet as it really helps your damage and really lets you punish anyone that overextends.

Sigils
I’m curious if sigil of paralysation stacks. If so putting them on both the sword and pistol for 6.5 total stun duration would be hilarious. Sigil of Impact would also be nice on this set for 10% damage bonus once you stun them.

Energy sigils on either set help for staying alive, give you extra clones, which proceed to kill the old clone and stack confusion. I’m rather partial to this option giving some more thought since you can’t pick up the 15 in chaos +15 in inspiration combo for easy protection.

for a stacking sigil, you’ll probably want perception. doing so puts you at a respectable 47% chance to crit (53% with quality maintenance oil, 55% if you put the last 5 points in dueling, one more percent if you take master oil). swapping to a sigil of accuracy after your done stacking and your up to near 60%.

Here’s my take on the build, note that I went more for the “spirit of the build” than the “letter of the build”. Fair warning, you will not have confusion on glamours, but I think my alternative is a lot better at keeping pressure up on your target.

The build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgQQNArfWlwzKoHTzqGb9ICKFXn3RShq9alZgbXIA-jUBBIgCi5QFRjtMqIasabYqYER1A-w

The specifics:
Armor
I really am not a fan of mesmer’s condition removal options in WvW. traited torch hits one condi every 24 seconds. Mender’s is also a one condi (good with mantras, but else wise it’s 17 seconds for mirror – channel + CD – or 20 for ether). Null field is a great hit all, but it restricts your location and can cause AoE’s to start focusing you.

Hence I like Melandru runes. Condis and stuns start melting off you. With those in mind Cavalier trinkets (makes up the crit damage loss from traveler runes), rabid armor (making up condi and precision) and rampager weapons(rounding out the offensive stats).

End result, a much higher effective health pool since condis will start rolling off you and the much higher toughness will increase the potency of your heals and your resistance to the physical damage. Overall it is a much improved survivability with a slight loss to your damage. Another option would be keep the traveler runes and use Lemongrass and poultry soup (even more potent with melandru runes of course).

Traits
25 in dueling “your clones cause 3 seconds of confusion when they are killed” very misleading and does not help fully understand how it works. The confusion is AoE around where the clone died. Player A, B, and C are near the clone, A kills it, all three of them get confusion. It doesn’t matter if B and C never attacked the clone, they still get the confusion. Here’s the best part: this activates even if the clones death isn’t caused by damage

When you make a new clone, and you already have 3 out, one of your old clones is automatically “killed” thus procing this trait. With the confusion when entering/leaving glamours you get 5 second of confusion, but opponents are unlikely to enter the area if they can’t help it. Best bet is it’s 1 stack of confusion that’ll last 5 seconds. With this trait, ever auto chain on scepter and every dodge roll is a potential confusion stack (25 points deep in dueling, no reason not to get deceptive evasion).

You do get sharper images, but your attack frequency’s are 6.5 second and 5.7 seconds with torch and staff clones. I wanted to get more from this trait. Enter the duelist: 8 hits, attacks every 6.5 seconds (4.4 seconds of not hitting) AND can combo with feedback for more confusion, slap on phantasmal fury to ensure those bleed procs and empowered illusions for the damage mod and you have a monster at your disposal.

Moving on, I’m traiting the torch. I’m not the biggest fan of the phantasm, but the prestige is truly a godly skill. Effectively we’ve rolled decoy and signet of midnight together and gave it burst damage. It is this reason I don’t slot decoy on the skill bar, despite leaving 5 points open to grab IC.

Illusions line. Taking out the staff, you no longer need Illusionary Elasticity. I’m also perfectly happy without compounding power since I’m 25 deep in the precision/crit damage tree. What I do want is longer confusion durations. add on quicker phantasm attacks and I’m all set here (do look this trait up when making builds, it effects each phantasm differently).

5 points open, your options:

• IC: quicker CDs on a block, the duelist, an immobilize, and opens up decoy as a possibility.
• Duelist Discipline: foe tries to run, duelist can track them down longer. foe tries to run, you have a longer range and quicker CD stun skill.
• Wastrels Punishment: between magic bullet and signet of domination you have 5 seconds of stun duration. this could really increase the potency of your finisher (likely sword 2)
• Vengeful Images: A very distant 4th IMO. but it does buy you some extra damage (beyond the confusion on death) should they realize the treat of your phantasms and move to take them out.

A just as viable option on trading some offense for defense would be -10 in illusions and 15 into chaos for the regen + protection effects as well as manipulation CDs or illusionary defense (or 15 into inspiration and picking up extra phantasm health/quicker movement speed with clones).

Xyonon.3987:

So – I tought about 15/30/0/25/0 recently. What shall I take at 30 in duelling if not mantra stuff?

Well your mandatory things are III in domination and II in dueling. You’ll probably want II and VIII in inspiration at most times, but when you don’t need reflects there’s no reason not to swap something to V.

so those last 2 in dueling.

IV: is one that’s hard not to take. 50 precision will help you and your reflects, give you quicker cooldowns on counter blade (daze for cancelling sword 4), your strongest single target dps phantasm AND blurred frenzy; making it a great offensive and defensive trait.

IX: if your taking sword and pistol offhands for the higher single target dps, take this. or if your in a place where you need the extra magic bullets.

X: clones on dodge, f3 shatter to proc dazzling without needing to put your phantasms to waste, otherwise you’ll probably want to avoid so you don’t override a phantasm with a clone.

XI: mantra of distraction procs your dazzling, if your willing to use mantra of recovery that’s 8% there. especially in cases where you can do high damage to mobs with your reflects.

• I’ll also mention VII because of this. MoR + MoD + Mantra of Resolve. I’m not the biggest fan of the healing mantra, but MoD and MoR give some great offensive utility (through dazzling) and defensively (party con removal) and can really boost your reflects. if your taking XI, VII prevents too much down time on your boost.
• You could also swap to the mantra heal using this, but I would only do so if you don’t need phantasm health or focus reflects (just remember to swap back when you do need the reflect) but I can rarely think of a time this is the case (melandru on arah 4?)

Mjgander.1905:

And I presume it’s zerkers with ruby/scholar still, yes? I’ve read a couple people saying assassins is better : o

Assassin’s can be better, but only in select circumstances. For instance, solo play on my mesmer putting some assassins pieces improves my dps, but if I put too many on, I end up below full berserker. I’ll sometimes make the same changes in pugs that have low party support (banner of disc/str, spotter, might, fury, etc), but if your running with a dungeon guild you should be fine running full berserker (even a semi-hardcore one should have more then enough party support to render assassin’s meaningless).

Anyway weapons:

1h sword: strongest auto attack, but the cleave isn’t great for instances like fractals where there’s large numbers of trash.

GS: I’ll start and end most encounters here for the burst. My order is 3 first for the blind (vuln stacks) > 3 > 2. Also alot better cleave when you need that (assuming your not using a hammer). Also the pull.

Hammer: 100% protection uptime, google up obal’s fractal guardian guide for more info here

Staff: tagging stuff, for either sigil stacks or kiting. you can also stack might before fights if you’re not using a fire field for this. Line of warding can also be useful in some cases.

Scepter: when you need range.

For WoR, I’d suggest looking up some dungeon guides videos (the mechanics in strife’s should be mostly up to date still, even if the builds/tactics are not). Also learn when to use party aegis (high damaging boss attacks that only hit once) and stability. Once again, a video guide will better explain these things then I could type them.

Your guildies should have some of an idea of when to use those things as well, let them know that you are new to the class and they should be glad to tell you when you need to use certain things.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Tree.3916:

I don’t rez anyone. Use the WP and learn to dodge.

My policy on this one is:
if(person has been useless thus far in run)
leave dead
else
rez

During a fight, sure. Afterwards I’ll balance those with the proximity of a waypoint.

Trinkets are fine, and you shouldn’t be getting any boosts from your utilities.

I’m fine with engi’s slotting utilities for the sake of their class skills however, elsewise they’re at a disadvantage to the other classes.

I can’t recall. It only happens if your right by him however. I did a test to make sure it was viable and was able to stay out of range during the enrage phase just fine.

I do remember the burn being quite painful, but I would still think classes will be fine with use of healing skills/traits:

• Ele: Ether Renewal
• Engi: Drop Antidote
• Guard: Signet of Resolve passive or Absolute Resolution
• Mesmer: Mender’s Purity
• Necro: Consume Conditions
• Ranger: Healing Spring
• Thief: Hide in Shadows
• War: Mending.

…. and now is the time that I remember engi’s don’t have melee weapons, time to write them an exception.

I figured the challenge would be too easy with the tranquilizer guns. So surviving the berserker state was part of it. The state lasts 20 seconds and his animations are rather long so it should be pretty doable to keep away.

That said, I’d imagine you’d see at least 10+ berserker states with the dps loss from gear/skills, so it’d would probably be 3-4 minutes of running. I’ll add an optional rule for using ranged.

Hahaha, I just like the extra challenge. It’s honestly been awhile sine I’ve ran TA so I’m a bit rusty with the mob mechanics. Two runs since then and it’s looking alot smoother/quicker, that paralyze spider is still giving me grief on the no downs part.

Anyway, speaking of challenge, I guess I need to issue one.

On His Level
Fight and defeat the Berserker Abomination “on his level”

• no armor
• no utilities/elite (healing is fine unless you want the extra challenge)
• no tranquilizer guns
• only one main hand melee weapon allowed*
• optional: you may have 1 ranged weapon on swap for the berserker states, if so, only auto attacks may be used and it must be swapped back to your melee option within a reasonable time of the berserker state ending (5~ seconds)

*Since Engineer’s lack a melee option, they can use the Tool kit’s first 3 attacks for their melee option and switch to rifle/pistol when the Abomination enters the berserker state.

Also, are there any NA guilds doing the group challenges? I’m currently in a mostly casual guild and would love to join up with some people that enjoy doing things like this. (I’d probably consider making an EU account if theres no one doing in NA side)

Super Thrashmaster reply: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFbSv_8hyM8&feature=youtu.be

I recorded my first go at it (aka no practice), so I’ll work on making a “now with 100% less blossom rallies” version when I get on later tonight.

I started getting impatient recording a new take every time something leashed so some of the segments start with the mobs leashing.

Enjoy!

Some things I would add to his guide. I’ve found myself liking having a dagger or axe offhand on swap for when the warhorn skills are on CD.

Dagger is mostly for extra dodges and I guess the cripple could come in handy on occasion.

Axe offhand however is really alot better then what the tool tips suggest. The throw skill on 4 will pull the mobs to you on it’s return path and the 5th skill doesn’t just block projectiles, but reflects them. If you mostly pug these two can be super useful for groups lacking a mesmer/guardian.

If you find yourself needing to swap points into wilderness survival for the natural vigor, You may as well take 10 from nature magic for 10 deep in wilderness. With the extra endurance regen enlargement will have even less chance to proc, so you’re likely better off getting the survival skill CD reduction so you have more uptime on your quickening zephyr.

also @ casmurro: your dodges will fail if you press your dodge key in the middle of the leap animation. a.net has already given you a way around that however. If you hit sword 2, 3, dagger 4, or lightning reflexes during the middle of the leap animation, the skill will activate right after. The trick is getting practice with each type of dodge skill.

For instance, you can still get hit during the stab part of sword 2, so on attacks where you need to react quickly, you’re better off using another skill.

For his non-trolling guide go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bjq1vcnhpQ

I went looking for a DPS calculator and found Nike’s.

His formula is: power * (1 + crit chance * crit damage) * modifiers

Best to worst set up I found to be:

1. assassin’s armor & berserker weapons/trinkets
2. assassin’s weapons & berserker armor/trinkets
3. full berserker
4. assassin’s armor/weapons & berserker trinkets

Yellow to compare better base damages, Green to compare max potential with food/sigil.

This was using a 10/30/0/20/10 build and factoring in 210 might for 6 stacks of might with sigil of battle. I didn’t bother entering the modifiers as it would affect everything equally.

Overall the increase is less then 1% so it probably isn’t worth it unless you have nothing better to spend money on.

Here’s a link to a discussion on guard builds I did in another thread earlier today. Like Young said, there’s quite a few builds that are used right now, most of them will balance utility vs dps based on the situation.

For instance if your taking a hammer build into level 38 fractals and your party already has condi clensing covered, you’ll be able to put points in radiance over virtues, but at 48 with that same group you may opt for those 10 points in valor to increase the teams defense against harder hitting enemies.

Anyway, here’s the link to it, it’s continued on the post below it

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/A-DPS-Build-that-uses-AH/first#post3058661

In general: while your blurred frenzy is higher dps the auto attacking, saving it for defensive use is the best plan 90% of the time. Also from the dueling tree you’ll have vigor on critical hits, so you’ll have pleny of dodges if you time them right.

For bosses, look up guides on youtube (Strife’s guides are old, and while some of the build advice is outdated, most of the boss mechanics are not). Watch the boss fights several times over if you need to so you can see what the attacks look like, so you’ll know when to dodge/blurred frenzy/F4/sword block. Also with the sword block, some attacks will have multiple hits to them, so make sure you don’t use the block then, or you’ll end up eating the other hit.

For trash, I’ve found myself liking pistol more then sword for trash encounters. The sword offhand daze doesn’t always hit as many mobs as you’d like, and the pistol CC is twice as long. Make sure you feedback/summon a warden/use a traited curtain on any mob that uses projectiles to avoid their damage. For non-projectile mobs, place the curtain some place that will not take the mobs away from where your meleeing them (against a wall/corner) and you can use the pull to interrupt their actions. Life steal food also helps. Slice of candied dragon rolls are like 80 copper and last 20 minutes (enough for most of the commonly spammed dungeon paths).

Also learning what mobs are more dangerous and how to avoid them helps. For instance, if I see a risen berserker start it’s axe spin, I’m getting out of range, otherwise I want to stand behind them so they can’t hit me.

Lastly, if you find your pug isn’t CCing the mobs much in melee and you’re still getting eaten alive, dodge out of range and let your phantasms to the work while waiting for your cooldowns to come back up. If this continues to be a problem, you can buy some extra time using signet of midnight for the PBAoE blind.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

@CptAurellian, Other then the fact that I know I have DPS, I’m using the kitten build right now for gods sake, who are you to say that I don’t? are you using the exact same build as me? have you used the exact same build as me before? No? Maybe? you probably aren’t and your short reply does nothing to back up your statement that I have “no dps”

As for your previous post that “The only DPS build that can take AH is 10/30/30/0/0” Oh, it looks like your wrong, because I’m not using that and I have dps.

I’ve seen guardian’s do 7k auto attacks (12k sword waves) and 40k+ whirling wraths. Using that as a benchmark, where does your build fall in terms of DPS?

Yes CptAurellian didn’t do anything to back up his statement of you doing no DPS, but you also didn’t do anything to back up your statement that it WAS good DPS.

Sure you quoted your stats, but that is only half of it. Critical Damage does not scale as well as damage multipliers, and that’s where the Valor line falls short of the other 4. Zeal and Radiance each have 10% modifiers that can easily be maintained (to burning foes and foes with conditions).

While your build does have a 10% modifier from elusive power, vigorous precision can end up working against you there. It is similarly hard to keep up Unscathed Contender for the 20% mod. Also your build isn’t using Scholar runes so there is another potential 10% mod lost.

Using that rational, it is very reasonable for CptAurellian to assume that your build isn’t doing good DPS without strong evidence to the contrary.

Also your build falls in support options as opposed to most of the builds I listed. Pure of Voice + 3 shouts can only cure 3 condis before putting itself into cooldown. Purging Flame + Absolute Resolution, you can cure 9 very quickly (recharging VoR with Renewed Focus) while creating a field where condi time is lessened and can be blasted for might stacks.

PoV/AH builds become even less effective when the situation requires Wall of Reflection as your down to only able to clean 2 condis (and only 2 shouts to get AH buffs from). The newer builds have no problem taking Wall and Purging to maintain both reflects and condi cleanse.

I did play the 0/0/30/30/10 build back when it was popular. I have switched to 10/30/0/10/20 since then. I find myself able to do better DPS and support my party better with the new build.

That said, the new builds do require a much more active play style. Back when I did AH I was easily able to tank some hits that would likely one or two shot me now and proceed to heal up with empower/shouts/empowering might/etc. The thing is, I’ve now spent enough time playing that I can see those hits coming and avoid the damage though dodges/aegis/blinds/etc.

Hammer Build
15(II)/15(VI)/0/20(III, VII)/10(VI) (10 open points)

Most useful for difficult content where the 100% protection up time will be useful (high level fractals). Always make sure the auto attack chain finishes unless you really need to dodge.

10 open points can go into radiance (more damage), Valor (Strength in Numbers) for more party defense, or Radiance (Absolute Resolution condi cleanse).

The point of a hammer build is for the protection up time, so you’ll probably not want to swap your weapon much, but bring whatever you think will give you the most utility – staff for line of warding in addition to ring of warding and might stacks (assuming the party isn’t blasting a fire field for these); GS for the pull; sword/focus for blinds/shield.

The ideal armor is berserker + scholar runes (ruby orbs if you can’t afford scholar). but mixing in some knights pieces (do this on armor not on trinkets – also the higher toughness of knights will make any passive healing from life steal food/VoR stronger then soliders would without sacrificing as much DPS) will help you to avoid feeling like glass while your learning how to cycle your blinds/aegis/shelter/renewed focus/dodges/reflects to avoid damage. After some practice I’m sure you’ll find yourself not needing the extra defense and you can start moving to a pure berserker gear set up.

Hope this helps!

PS, feel free to send me a whisper in game if you have any questions.

spalt.6938:

What then is the alternative to a non-AH DPS build that isn’t glass? Would it be wiser to do the opposite of gearing defensively but using offensive traits/utilities? I have tried a zerker guard with a DPS build and didn’t like it (it was a long time ago so I can’t quite remember the stat distribution).

The current skeleton that most guard builds are based off of now is:

10(II)/15(VI)/0/5/10(VI) (30 unspent trait points)

From here the core playstyle starts with spaming your virtue of justice. Doing so will:

• blind nearby foes and put 3 stacks of vuln on them
• give 3 stacks of might to the party
• have the next out going attack of each party member burn, procing your 10% damage to burning foes trait

and this recharges every time something you have damaged dies.

Between this, and blinds from 1h sword/focus or GS you can keep silver mobs chain blinded to avoid damage while killing them. For Bosses, your survivability should come from knowing when to dodge (you have vigor on crit hits) and using Virtue of Courage/Retreat to Aegis as well as Shelter/Renewed focus.

Purging Flame replaces Pure of Voice/Solider runes in the old AH build. It removes 3 condis on the onset, reduces condi duration while standing in it, and is a fire field that can be blasted for might stacks (your second option will be traiting your Virtue of Resolve to remove 3 condis which is rechargeable with Renewed Focus that’ll get discussed later).

Due to the usefulness of Purging Flame and Wall of Reflection, you’ll always want Master of Consecrations, but if there’s ever a fight where those aren’t needed (Simin in Arah 4 comes to mind) you can swap in Unscathed Contender for more DPS.

Other utilities you’ll commonly see on your bar:

• Retreat -> aegis for bosses, running through trash
• Stand your Ground -> Stability
• Judge’s Intervention -> trash runs, target something out of range ahead of you, teleport then untarget
• Shield of the Avenger -> when Wall of Reflection isn’t enough (mostly in fractals)
• Bane Signet -> for the passive when there’s nothing better to bring
• Hallowed ground -> not a common option, but a long duration fire field to blast + stability can be useful to some groups

Renewed Focus will almost always be your elite (exceptions do exist, such as the jade maw’s agony at high levels)

For your healing skill, I find that the signet overheals you in most cases so prefer shelter, which beyond healing can also be used to just outright avoid damage. But this is really up to personal preference.

Options from Here:

GS build:
20(II, VII)/25(VI, X)/0/5/10(VI) (10 open points)

Traits obviously focusing on buffing the GS damage. The most likely place to put the 10 extra points is in virtues to gain Absolute Resolution to have your Virtue of Resolve act as a second condi removal (or the only one to free up purging flame’s spot on your bar if you don’t need much removal). If you find yourself not needing vigor, you can drop the 5 in Honor and go 25 Virtues for more Damage.

This build would probably feel the most similar to the old AH build as you’ll have the stronger passive heal on your Virtue of Resolve and a passive heal on your GS attacks (add in life steal food for even more passive heal)

Other options would 5 in honor for Superior Aria (faster aegis/stability), The other 5 would go into Radiance for Signet Mastery or Perfect Inscription (to buff the Signet Heals CD or the Signet Heal and Bane Signet’s Passive) or Zeal for more damage on your Symbol of Wrath.

Weapon Swap is likely a staff would probably work best, here you can put a stacking sigil (perception is probably best) to easily tag trash for a quick charge. Also has might stacks before a fight and CC options with line of warding.

Sword/Focus Build
10(II)/30(VI, X, XI)/0/10(II)/20(VI, IX)

While losing the passive heal from GS attacks, you gain an extra blind and the focus shield and zealot’s defense to help mitigate damage.

Your auto attack will do more damage then the GS (also zealot’s defense is a channeled skill, so while the numbers look bigger, it’s actually less damaging, save it for the defensive use) Also you’ll get some burst damage from the focus shield if it doesn’t break.

On weapon swap either staff for the same usage as the GS build (stack bloodlust over perception due to the higher crit chance with right hand strength) or use a GS for utility (binding blade) and burst damage (Symbol of Wrath + Whirling Wrath)

More DPS options would be dropping the honor line for 20 in Zeal (increase the GS burst with Zealous Blade) or 30 in virtues (Unscathed Contender)

continued below

Dub.1273:

Full berserker is way stronger. 10% on average if not buffed. You would have to be really, really unlucky to make assassin armor “better” (and even then only with more luck).
Also: Undead Slaying and Potion.

Maybe I have been unlucky, I’ve just found that with 68% crit chance (full berserker + curry butternut squash soup + 25 perception) vs 75% crit chance (assassins armor/weapons rest berserker, same food/sigil) I end up seeing my 3rd sword auto attack (or any attack really) not crit more often then I’d like.

In any case I haven’t really put a stop watch to anything. Just know what I see about the rate of critical hits on screen (where I may be more apt to notice the misses) and my odd tendency to think sub 70% = not likely to happen.

Anyway, at what point do you judge crit chance to be high enough? For instance, would it be worth it to use a 56% crit chance and stack bloodlust? My dislike of random chance makes me like that number even less, but I’ll accept you’ve probably done testing then I have.

Syn Sity.5826:

If you are playing solo assassin’s would work quite well since you don’t have fury/banner of discipline or any other party buffs and your crit chance would be quite low with berserker’s. But of course berserker would work, I’ve been able to get brie to 50% on a mesmer with berserker armor just shatter alot and hope for the best.

pretty much this. berserker you need those “lucky crits” someone talked about above, sacrificing some power for assassins reaching over 75% crit chance is very doable and can lead to an overall DPS increase most of the time (unless the berserker person got very lucky). Once again, only armor assassins, keep your accessories berserker.

I’ve gotten her to 50% in one go on mesmer with no party buffs.

First thing, assassins armor + perception stacks, you have no fury, but with those two you’ll be in the high 70s% crit chance (still use berserker accessories).

I’ll use a sigil of battle in my main hand sword and inquest slaying in my offhands. curry butternut squash soup is your best food option and ofc the inquest potion.

Also phantasms do 0 damage to her. Switch your empowered illusions to mental torment and compounding power to precise wrack and shatter as often as possible (deceptive evasion for clone generation).

For offhands: sword for the quick shatter bait phantasm and clone on block skill. otherwise I’ve found myself liking torch for the higher damaging skill on the 4th skill. Also torches phantasm has a quicker cast time, so I can get it out to shatter quicker (countered by higher CD however)

3 mantras + feedback

rfdarko.4639:

I run mesmer, 0/30/0/30/10. Ruby orbs and and still only exotics, except an ascended pistol. Usually run s/f and s/p, but I’ve been playing around with offhand sword.

Soloing is ok, which path do you think is easiest to solo up to lupi? I was thinking path 2.

yep, path 2. the running segements can all be done easily with stealth, though swiftness/stab mantra/blink is also an option.

Belka max range of GS is outside of all his attacks, hide behind the towers when he’s in the center if you want to play it super safe.

Berserker abomination. I normally farm up about 15 rifles, but that’s mostly because I’m paranoid. just keep moving in a circle to get behind him to avoid the auto attack, and with some practice you’ll be able to lure the attack on you away from your phantasms so they can get several hits in. use sword 2 or 4 during the leap to help keep the DPS up (be careful if you’re using mantra’s here, the healing mantra isn’t overwritten by the sword skills like the others are, make sure to dodge if your charging it) and use the stability mantra when he goes berserk to avoid the knockback while your picking up a rifle.

For the gates, you can focus pull the two abominations apart so you fight them one on one (use the same circle around tactics as from the last boss). if you do both at the same time use focus pull and magic bullet to CC them when they get out of sync and blurred frenzy and signet of midnight to get through the attacks when they’re hitting together.

As for lupi, yes an untraited feedback is long enough for it. Also if your going for melee, I’d suggest sigil of energy in your main hand sword to help keep your endurance up (like guard, we can get vigor on crits, but like was said above, the extra dodges help if you miss-time which is very possible when learning).

I feel there’s nothing wrong with ether feast/blink/feedback/mantra of conc. The larger heal from ether will allow for more mistakes to be made, and blink can help you save dodges during the AoE life steal during phase 3 (or act as a backup to the bubble). Once you get more comfortable with his attacks is when you can start swapping in mantras for more offense.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

I wonder if it could also be used on bloody Victoria?

I do think she does get the revealed debuff, but you can just as easily fight her in one of the small rooms where you can keep hitting your melee auto attack to hurt her while she’s in stealth.

to make it even easier have the person that is 1 any class go as guard, put sanctuary over the barrel drop points while the thief is getting the final barrel.

Luke.2643:

durend.6237:

• quicker weapon swap (the pure axe build should be able to live with slower swaps)

I strongly disagree with this. A pure axe build relies completely on constant weapon swapping to trigger both Versatile Power and battle sigil.

I by no means main a warrior, but I still don’t think it would matter. Sigil of battle has an internal cool down higher then what fast hands weapon swap would grant, so long as the battle sigil is in the main hand it’ll stilll work the same. Also I was talking about modifying a 30/25/0/0/15 build so versatile power was never something to be lost.

In a party with multiple warriors, would there be any benefit to one of them running 30/20/0/20/0? Specifically one running the pure axe variant that Nike mentions in his video. As I see it that warrior would:

Lose:

• 50 precision (deep strikes over forceful great sword would help negate this)
• quicker weapon swap (the pure axe build should be able to live with slower swaps)
• adrenaline on swap (this wouldn’t be used anyway)
• signet mastery
• 15% crit damage
• a 10% damage multiplier

Gain:

• 750 power (spread over the party)
• empowered (to help offset losing the 10% damage mod in arms)

Obviously this would be a DPS decrease for that specific warrior, but would the added power to his team mates cover that loss to make this more beneficial to a party as a whole?

Churning earth actually has higher base damage then fire grab, that’s where I’ll go and use earthquake/churning and switch to water during the churning’s channel. Also for churning earth, Area Might does pop up at the start of the cast, but the might stacks don’t go on til the end; however, they still go on even if the field is no longer present.

That said, you’re now making me want to test the dps differances of geting a few LH auto attacks in the ring of fire over using the earth skills (churning earth’s cast time >.>)

You can use it, and it’ll probably do more then your auto attack on dagger in air, but it will not do as much damage as a “pure” LH build.

Here’s the LH build I use on my ele

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k;4BJF5-v4kMkY0;9;4TJ99-57A56-5;03;9;9-knF6t

start dragon’s tooth > open ring of fire under it > phoenix > start fire grab and swap to earth while it casts > earthquake, churning earth, and arcane wave > swap to water and auto attack with LH

5 blast finishers in the fire field = 15 stacks of might and 50 seconds of fury.

If you’re playing with an organised group that can keep fury up, 10 points can be taken out of fire and put into water for vital striking (10% more damage).

Most pugs I’m in are decent about having some vuln uptime that just shatterstone is enough if I really need it, but if your worried take the points out of earth and put them in air, that’ll get you weak spot, extra precision/crit damage and an air trait of your choice.

I’ve not played the D/F build, but if I had to guess, I’d say LH build = more damage but less survivability. I’d recommended playing both those two and the staff build and seeing which you like best

Floryn.6307:

Skillful and gw2 don’t go too well together, but then again, we go back to Dunning-Kruger Effect. Not understanding that is the issue. -)

I can accept that zerker is one of the efficient ways to complete dungeons, what I can’t accept is that some random self entitled pros are telling the rest of the world that PVT is not viable and that is bad.

OP said “No one cares what armor you wear…. if your not doing speed clears” and if you bother reading those early posts you’ll see most people agreed to the concept of casual pug = anything goes, speed run pug = berserker.

I doubt that anyone here is going to say your inadequate, doing fractals at level 80 isn’t a small feat. What they will say however -this being a thread about speed running - is that you are not it quickly.

The fact that I can accept that I don’t hold the absolute truth makes me immune to DK effect.

no…. it really doesn’t. You come into a thread about [speed running] and try to tell them that pvt is viable. Every post you have made has been about pvt being viable in speed runs you have been refusing to accept that an all berserker party could be better.

On the other hand lets check the symptoms and see if you recognize yourself in them
(Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will)

• tend to overestimate their own level of skill;

Thinks that pvt gear can kill things just as quick as berserker

• fail to recognize genuine skill in others;

The only time he’s mentioned that [rT] and [DnT] members are skillful is offhanded to make himself immune to this “Dunning Kruger” effect

• fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;

is still trying to prove pvt can be used in speed runs

• recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.

Dub offered to play with him in game, which I am assuming would include some training….. that offer has not been accepted

In parting:
[rT]‘s Arah 1 video was 11 minutes. if you can show them a video of a group using PVT gear that can do it close to that time I am sure they’ll accept it as a viable option.

Until then I’m sure they’ll agree with “you can wear your pvt gear, just don’t claim to be speed running”

Floryn.6307:

Now run along go solo Lupicus, or whatever you think being skillful means. Oh and I almost forgot, post videos, showing your uberness, that doubles your skill right there! -)

If soloing Lupicus only makes you THINK your skillful…. what makes you ACTUALLY skillful?

I think I remember a.net saying they are going to “fix” conditions next patch? but I can also remember hearing that before, so I’m not hopeful.

Reason condi’s are broken in PvE is there are so many things that cause burns/put on bleeds/etc. that while you can potentially maintain 20 stacks of bleed, the number is less due to your teamates taking yours off. Even with your max level of conditions on a mob, your DPS will be less then another necro running a berserker build.

Also there’s several mobs in the game that can instantly remove all condis from them as part of their fight mechanic. These reasons are why you were given the advice of “don’t run condition builds” they’re good for PvP, but are not balanced for PvE.

As for your issue. Immune can come up if the game thinks that you are attacking the boss from some place where it cannot attack you… even if that is not the case. normally this is due to elevation differences. when swapping to your dagger/axe/staff for direct damage it probably reset allowing you to do damage again, but it was low due to the condi spec. you probably would of been fine to swap back to your scepter and continue afterwards