Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the advice all.

I notice that when moving from lions arch to a low level zone my crit chance may stay the same but my crit damage will decrease substantially.

While I understand downscaling is supposed to drop your hp and damage output to that of a character who would otherwise be playing the zone at the correct level, this seems wrong.

It makes sense to drop power etc down to reasonable levels, but crit chance and crit damage are essentially a post-damage-formula increase to your damage in a percentage form. A +20% damage buff from having +50% crit dmg and 20% crit should be a +20% damage buff whatever zone you’re in, otherwise it makes gearing for crits less attractive in downscaled environments compared with gearing for stats which decrease linearly such as vitality, toughness and power.

I called this a long time ago when the nerfs came in and everyone said I was over reacting. heh

Would you recommend it over 0/0/30/30/0 +10 or 0/0/10/30/30?

I don’t see many builds featuring this trait, why not?
Aoe blind refreshed on kill with 3 stacks of might each time.
15 hits of ah if you are so specced (0/15/30/20/5).

Seems like an interesting tweak on the typical valor/honor setup to me.

What do you think?

Thanks for the detailed reply.
Wouldn’t ar only increase your ticks by about 50? I think you would get more hp from ah, but like you said it doesn’t have the short term benefit of the active effect or the possibility to share with allies.

I suppose this is more for keeping allies alive during the bursty moment two gvg groups clash with active virtues compared to valor/honor focusing Mr on keeping the self alive.

Can you help me understand why you didn’t go 0/0/30/30/10?
Did you think 30 in virtues was better than AH even with all that healing gear helping AH? I don’t really get the point of the virtue line, aren’t the passives better than the actives anyway?

HatSimulator.9362:

All i can tell you is that you should keep the healing to WvW and PvP and find a max damage build for PvE.

Everytime i run my healing build in PvE it takes 20 minutes to kill a boss and people dont like that

Unfortunately I agree with this. I enjoy running full soldier/cleric with mace for symbols + heal on symbol tick, rolling around healing everyone… but nobody is going to die anyway. If they’re going to die it’s because they were inexperienced and likely would have died even with your heals. In fact chances are you increased the risk of them dying because the time taken to kill the mobs was far higher.

Funny you should link that thread. I’m actually Lilitu from GW2 guru, so a portion of the math is actually mine throughout the thread. Small world

This is how I put a rough number on the percent modifier:

If the output of the damage formula is 2,127,000 and you have the base 916 toughness and 1211 (2127 defense) then you will take 1,000 damage from this attack.
If I manage to get 1418 toughness from gear, valor, traits, shield etc (okay that’s a stretch, but I’m making the numbers simple) then my overall defense is 916+1418+1211 = 3545.

The damage formula changes to 2,127,000 / 3545 = 600 damage taken. All that toughness reduced my damage taken by 40%.
Now add the signet and it drops to 540. Alright, but how much toughness was that worth?
You can find out by switching the formula above to fit the 540 number:
x (toughness) = 2,127,000 / 540
x = 3939. An increase in toughness of 394. The signet was worth 394 toughness.
My effective hp shot from (assuming 1000hp for relative terms) 1000/600 = 1.666 to 1000/540 = 1.85.

Comparatively the formula would have looked like this if the signet was before the damage formula rather than after (which is why I was asking):
x (toughness) = 2,127,000 / 500 (pre-existing 40% dmg reduction as shown above plus 10% from the signet)
x = 4254. An increase in toughness of 709.
My effective hp shot from (assuming 1000hp for relative terms) 1000/600 = 1.666 to 1000/500 = 2.

You can see why I was kind of hoping it was additive with the damage reduction from armor/toughness I guess it was too good to be true, but this is equally as tasty.

If you keep going down this road you’ll find that this signet and protection actually get better and better in both effective hp terms and toughness equivalence terms as you get higher and higher toughness. The numbers also start inflating if you use light armor rather numbers rather than heavy (in the very first example I have 3545 defense and 40% damage reduction compared to if I had nothing except my base stats… it’s probably closer to 50% damage reduction if you compare it to an ele/mesmer/necro. So it’s actually worth even more toughness and effective hp if you take a lightly armored class as the baseline, since toughness is worth ever so slightly less on heavy armor.

Thanks for the answers. I will watch the video when I get home from work also.
I have calculated that for a full valor / soldier guardian with the 150 toughness and 90 toughness traits using a shield has almost 50 percent damage reduction compared to a light armored char, and that the signet provides the effective hp equivalent of over a few hundred toughness. When combined with protection it increases to having the equivalent of nearly 900 more toughness, and over a thousand if traited.

A very good investment for a tanky guard, thanks!

If I have 40 percent damage reduction from armor and toughness, and I use signet of judgement for the 10 percent damage reduction… Will I take 50 damage from a 100 damage hit (the reductions stacked) or will I take 54 damage (first the armor/toughness reduction brought it down to 60, then signet took another 10 percent off)?

And how does protection figure into all this?

Thanks <3

For tournies and high rated play I suggest a necro, guardian, thief or ranger.
For low rated spvp phantasm mesmer should still work fine in 1v1 fights (pointless). 10/30/0/0/30 works, as does 10/30/0/25/0.

Unfortunately our best condi removal (on shatter) is the GM trait on a line devoted almost entirely to Phantasm buffs… aka not shattering!
Talk about build synergy..

Oh this guy again.

Is Defektive still around to compile this?

Those who follow this thread..

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/sPvP-Class-Tier-List-Updated-6-30/page/15

..will have noticed that most half decent players are now placing the mesmer very low on the list – sometimes next to or below warrior. Keep in mind this is for tournaments and not hotjoin-hero.

Is this purely a result of the condition meta? Or have all the nerfs stacked up?
If the condition meta goes away, will mesmers climb again?
Are things alright the way they are? It’s fair to have a counter, but when that counter is SO popular..
Our own condi spec sucks compared to other classes, which doesn’t help.

Do you think any changes should be made to mesmers? Or do you think once the condi spam meta is addressed they will be fine again?

Hotkeys that announce and acknowledge things to your team such as “Player_A is requesting reinforcements at location Y!” and “Player_B is on route to location Y!” would be useful.

Eg if you are stood on a cap and notice 2-3 people incoming, you press the key to call for backup. This creates a quest circle on your team’s map.

One or more of your team press a hotkey to tell the rest of the team they are moving to position (3 cap points = 3 hotkeys, 5 cap points = 5 hotkeys etc. For example alt+1 announces that you are moving to cap point 1, alt+2 announces that you are moving to cap point 2 etc. #

This could be linked to the minimap and automatically draw arrows showing player movement for a much better strategic style of play for solo qs.

I thought it was a conal attack which did not pierce? Aka each of the three waves can only hit one enemy.

Most people I asked in game seemed to say soldier is better than cleric. Is that true? I notice heal way used cleric.

Why use sword if it doesn’t cleave?

What’s not good about aoe blind spam, 15 percent crit and percent damage?
Now if only our 1h weapons didn’t suck…

Does the heal on dodge get cut in half in wvw like it does in spvp?
Is it still full power in dungeons?

To expand on my original post;

The min value of 1g and the max value of 3g does not represent the disparity between the min effort to run a dungeon and the mas effort to run a dungeon. If you’re going to give me 1g to run CoF in several minutes, you’re going to have to do better than 3g to get me to run arah.

Each day when you finish a unique path for any explorable or story dungeon, you’ll receive a bonus reward for completion—1 to 3 gold for explorable dungeons depending on their length and difficulty, 50 silver for story dungeons.

6 min for 1 gold in cof?
Or 45 min for 3 gold in arah?

Hmm.

No cleave, small cone. I’m not a fan unless it’s single target.

What gear should I be aiming for on my defensive zerg guardian?
Full solider or full cleric? A mix? What kind of mix?
Sentinel?
Some knight gear?

I’m thinking staff and mace/shields on a 0/0/30/30/10 or 0/0/10/30/30 build?

If it was best of three cc would have won.
But it was not best of three. As everyone pointed out, you were all told it was being changed to 5v5 before the game started. By walking out onto that field and hitting ready you agreed to the rules. Only with hindsight did you decide against it.

Don’t get me wrong I was excited to see the underdog win, but this discussion is a non issue imo.

Ele is crucial to a zerg, I agree. However you only need a few to cover your tactical fields, and you only need a few mesmers for veil/portal. These things are incredibly important and powerful, but it does not make them the best wvw class.

There is no best class in a zerg, but there is a best addition to a pre-existing zerg which already has it’s mesmer/elementalist : another guardian, you can never have too much of them.

If you currently put mesmer high up, you play too much hotjoin and not enough tournament.

If you try to be all-round good at each scenario in wvw, you will be sub-par in all of them.
I can’t imagine a reason why you would want to do that. You either join wvw knowing you will follow a zerg, or join wvw knowing you are going to roam.
If I had to pick one it would probably be thief, at least then you can keep your slipperyness and add in shortbow #4 for zerg tagging. The other zerg classes (guar/war/nec) just can’t escape mobs of enemies chasing them well enough, stealth is too good for solo.

Tier S
+ Thief
Tier A
+ Ranger
+ Necro
= Engineer
= Elementarist
= Guardian
Tier B
+ Mesmer
Tier C
- Warrior

Guardian for zergs.
Thief for solo.

Whatever you like for small groups.

Biggest reason people turn off the facebook page is that they delete negative comments.
So fake.

Yes please!!!
Need so I can enjoy alts.

I don’t get it.
None of this is new to warriors.

I had a dozen keys sat in my bank so decided to use them yesterday.
3 scraps and nothing of any real use.
I won’t ever bother with rng boxes again.

I’m sorry you’re being forced to play a mesmer in a zerg.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank Jonathan and the team for their posts today.
The transparency and insight given to his and anet’s thought processes was truly enlightening and encouraging.

Loved it when he wasn’t afraid to hit back. Devs shouldn’t be afraid to go head to head with us, they should be as much a part of the game and it’s world as we are. It’s great to see some passion. Fantastic to see crazy ideas thrown out, drawn back, discussed and being asked for feedback on. There’s no way you can get it right first time.

I know you can’t/won’t keep it up, but every now and again it’s really appreciated – even if some people disagree with you or think you’re making wrong choices.

Some of my faves;
“Err…if you want Solo Q…you should…um…how do I say this….“check back” ….. “soon”.”
“By denying tools, you create choices for the players. We sometimes do a poor job of this, sorry”
“The truth is that we need to balance for both, and we need to use 1 set of #‘s for THREE game types, which all have “high” and “casual” markets.”
" we choose WORKING FOR YOU GUYS over talking TO you every time"

Dd ele is probably the closest but I think I’d still pick a thief for solo work any day.

Agreed especially with new fractals coming out.

If anet are going down the route of more fractals as a primary way of increasing pve content I’d like to see fractal level be account wide.

Why should I be forced to log on an old character I don’t like anymore when new content comes out if I want to do it at high difficulty?

Doesn’t make sense.

Thief for roaming or solo.

Mesmer for being a portal/veilbot but being kinda useless in zergs but fairly good at roaming.

Guardian/Necro/Ele/Warrior for being awesome in zergs.

Rance Webster.2635:

Wait… if such a hack exists… I want to see it in action! :O, war-gua-nec-ren-ment-mes-thief-neer, GO!

Pretty sure they’d just stick with necro.
No point risking the dice roll and ending up with warrior.

For meta:

Portal and Illusion of life are essential. Your goal is to deny the enemy kill points or reinforce cap points. If you want to bunker or be offensive you should be a guardian or necro.
Preferably with some kind of aoe damage (shatter).
20/20/0/0/30, 0/20/20/0/30 both work well. One for high dmg shatter and boon removal, the other for more defensive work or better/more blinks for mobiity.

Would you solo roam on anything besides a thief?
If so – why?

This isn’t a troll. I enjoy having a roamer and a zerger.

Romek.4201:

rating show only how lucky you are by farming SoloQers with your premade

useless

This.

Nice one dude. Glad to see you back.

Looks like humans are the favorite races. Guar/mesmer/ele the favorite classes, and whispers the favorite order so far.

Charr ii
Asura iiiiii
Human iiiiiiiiiiiiii
Norn iiii
Sylvari ii

guardian iiiiiii
ele iiiii
mesmer iiiiii
necro i
ranger iiii
warrior ii
engi ii
thief i

whispers iiiiiiiiiii
vigil iiiiiiii
priory ii

Jae.5138:

aren’t you basically asking people what their main is

A lot of people don’t have mains in this game.

Which race?
Which class?
Which order?

Why?