Guild Wars 2

greyblue.4962:

This admittedly hits guardians and engineers too, just to a much smaller degree.

Ret is far more important to guardians than any other class.

Might is probably last in the list of priority of boons to steal. Not a big surprise, the point of stealing boons is to make bunkers more vulnerable, so it makes more sense to steal defensive boons first.

The warrior trait doesn’t bother me in the slightest because they have to sacrifice a lot to get it. Thieves being able to steal boons at will is a much bigger problem and will affect other classes as well. For instance, a thief can now essentially steal rampage as one from a ranger. Larcenous strike is almost certainly going to turn out to be an op skill along with dogged march+melandru’s runes+food.

This will be patched.

It is probably going to end up being overpowered and nerfed to 1 boon stolen.

Kharel Arhew.1437:

fishergrip.4082:

Is it just me or does this new thief skill basically render the entire guardian class worthless:

Larcenous Strike: Deliver a quick strike that steals up to two boons from an enemy. Costs 1 initiative.

It’s not as bad as it looks. For one, the thief has to land a skill that costs 3 initiative and looks very obvious/takes time to perform before they get the ability to deliver a larcenous strike. If you can’t dodge, block, blind, knock the thief back/down (improved bane signet? Yes Please!) when they approach to use flanking strike, or otherwise avoid that skill and/or the followup, chances are you would have died even faster against a backstab thief in the same situation.

Actually they don’t have to land flaking strike, they just have to use it first and larcenous strike is unblockable.

Is it just me or does this new thief skill basically render the entire guardian class worthless:

Larcenous Strike: Deliver a quick strike that steals up to two boons from an enemy. Costs 1 initiative.

Probably not. It a strong ability but not overpowered. Healing power is a pretty kitten stat in general, the dodge roll is the main thing that makes it viable.

Its called spinal shivers.

If you think 90 is bad, try ranger’s signet of stone. 35 toughness. They better increase that to 180 as well.

Doubling the passive stat boosts on signets might make a signet build guardian and perfect inscriptions more viable. +270 power with one signet passive? That would be pretty strong. Although I’m more worried about the boosts it will give other classes like signet warriors, thief, etc.

I can agree that ranger and engie are underdogs. Necro, not so much.

Uhh, gaurdians are already getting nerfed pretty hard this patch. Retaliation nerf, unblock-able warriors with boon hate, boon stealing thieves and more unblockable necro abilities.

60-100% swiftness uptime with 1 weapon skill isn’t that bad. A guard can travel at about the same speed as an engie, mesmer or necro. Its the lack of action-based move skills hurts the most.

I don’t do PvE but you probably don’t need any extra healing power beyond the amount you get from the honor trait line, which is 200-300 for most builds. Extra healing is nice, but not really needed unless you are running a support type build.

There is no DR on toughness.

People think that there is because each point of toughness provides less % mitigated, but what matters is effective HP not % mitigated. Bottom line is each point of toughness is just as useful as the last in terms the boost it gives to your effective HP — the number of hits you can take. The reason not to go full toughness is that vitality and healing become more powerful as you get more toughness, so its usually worth getting at least some vit/healing to take advantage of that fact rather than pushing you toughness up a lot past 3k.

Renewed focus is ok to great depending on the situation. I have only dabbled in tomes, but they don’t seem that great other than the healing potential of the tome of courage in larger groups.

I have a friend who came back to the game just because of SAB. If its removed he will be very sad and probably quit. Why on earth would you work so hard on creating a cool minigame that a lot of people like and keeps them logging in and then remove it? It should not be temporary.

Permeating wrath is actually the highest dps boosting trait we get, IF we are fighting 3-5 targets that all stay clustered. More useful in PvE than WvW.

Power is king for leveling with pretty much every class, so it sounds like you’re dong the right thing. I’d recommend getting minor runes with +10 power each on all your armors (for the first 15-20 levels or so, then switch the gems) and keep a minor sigil of bloodlust on one of your weapons (always useful, can upgrade to major sigil at level 39 .).

Confusion is the most broken thing in WvW now that culling and stealth have been addressed. Damage on skill use is a just a bad mechanic in general, but it make no sense for it to do as much damage as it does.

The best solution imo, is to change it so that it stacks duration instead of intensity and boost the damage a bit to compensate. The reason this is the best solution is because otherwise mass confusion stacking using mesmer spam and epidemic becomes absurdly powerful in big fights. Losing 5-10k hp on 1 skill use simply should not be possible.

The easiest and most likely solution is simply to make WvW confusion damage match sPvP damage.

Shield 4 – Use when available to apply protection to yourself and allies.
Shield 5 – Not so useful in PvE, put very useful in WvW to interrupt people and provide a little bit of healing and projectile blocking.

The shield is lackluster in pve. You’d be better served using the focus imo. It provides blind, regen, condition removal, blocking a blast finisher and a high damage attack if the shield isn’t broken.

Torch can provide a nice damage boost, but it won’t help your tankyness at all.

The div gear does have good stats if you want to make a balanced build. The biggest drawback of it is lack of power stat.

The best you can really hope for is to force him to run away. Eles have far too much tankyness and mobility for a guard to kill. Its not too hard to out dps them and make them run though.

Yes you are, mainly because confusion is op.

Bas.7406:

fishergrip.4082:

I’ll give you my thoughts from a wvw perspective: power necros are weak, condi necros are strong and minion necros make me lol.

From a Minionmancer to a guardian – We don’t even think about you :P.

Then why bother making a podcast about guardians?

Harbinger.8637:

I’m all for giving this to Warriors. ATM it’s very hard for a warrior to beat a guard if they are equally skilled.

Just because that is true doesn’t mean a change is needed: some classes and builds are counters to others others. Or are you of the perspective that any class/build you can’t beat most of the time should be nerfed? Condition damage necros and thieves and people who know how to kite well give guardians a bad day. Guards can’t away run or chase well at all.

This whole boon hate thing seems like using a hatchet where a scalpel is needed: d/d eles need a nerf and that’s it.

Asmodal.6489:

to OP: before you invest in crit damage you should invest in precision.
i really think rabid is the worst combination of stats for almost any profession. (i like to be enlightend otherwise)

seems like we have an awful lot of burn/CD usefulness discussion threads at the moment so i do not want to start another one here and just invite the naysayers to back their statements up with some evidance.

i do want to mention though that the only easy and constant burn competiton for guards is ele and only if they stay in fire which never happens (i dont think CD builds are that popular with eles anyways). Engis are close to none existent in pve (unfortunately) and i dont know how rangers are supposed to burn effectively without torch – their condition builds focus on bleed and poison.

Ever heard of flame trap? With that 1 skill rangers can get 75-100% burning uptime on 5 targets in a large area. Not to mention they can easily get 20 bleed stacks and perma pois.

I’ll give you my thoughts from a wvw perspective: power necros are weak, condi necros are strong and minion necros make me lol.

Hopefully this is going to be one of those spvp only things because damage in WvW is already pretty crazy with bloodlust stacks, foods, ascended gear etc.

TheGreatA.4192:

I enjoy the fact that I can give and take a beating with my character, so I disagree. It’s crazy that you can have 2000+ power, 3200+ armor, over 25k health, over 60% crit chance and crit damage, but I like it.

Those stats are only possible on a war.

DeathPanel.8362:

Condition damage is the single most useless stat for guardians to have.

This. A build based around it might work ok in solo PvE, but its not going to be as efficient as direct damage and its going to fall flat in groups where burning is being applied by everyone and in WvW where its not easy to keep conditions on people. You have to sacrifice a lot build-wise to get near 100% burn up time on a guardian, something that is easy for other classes, like eles, engies and rangers, who also have access to bleeds, pois, confuse etc.

1. I like knight’s gear w/ ruby jewels.
2. Up to your preference really.
3. For dps, strength, battle or fire. For sustain, blood.
4. Depends on the situation. Against many enemies all around you 2 is good because it hits up to 5 enemies on all sides. Don’t use 2 against someone with retaliation.
5. Radiance is quality for pve. Not quite as good in wvw where you aren’t going to have kills rolling in constantly.

A kill exp pool should be divided between all players that did damage. 10 people beating down one guy in the field should not be worth as much as winning a 1v1.

The main thing that’s annoying about foods is how expensive they are. I think having foods and stones/oils is fine but I’l like to able to equip something in a food slot that is permanent so yo don’t have to constantly buy and consume stuff.

The only real issue is that certain foods are overpowered and should be toned down. Omom pie was a well-known offender and has since, justifiably, been nerfed. I think most people probably agree that +40% condition duration is overpowered. That’s the equivalent of 400 stat points in a trait tree, +40 crit damage etc. It should be 20% at the most. Foods that just give raw stats like 100 power, prec etc are fine. They give people more flexibility with gear.

+14% crit rate will increase your total damage by approx 12.5% starting at a base crit rate of 11%, assuming you have +50% crit damage. You’d need around +150% crit damage, to get close to +25% damage. Increasing crit does, of course, help with procs like sigil of fire, empowering might, etc. that can add to damage, but even with those you aren’t going to come close to +25%.

Throwing out random numbers like 40% and 25% reduces your credibility almost as much as acting all mysterious about your build as if you are running something nobody else has tried before.

Increasing your crit chance by 14% does not increase damage 40%.

1. AH is good even without staff if you are using a bunch of shouts.

2. As long as you have selfless daring, healing power is not a waste, but it should not be a priority either unless you are building to be full support.

3. Since it seems like you want to increase your damage, damage-oriented sigils like sigil of fire or battle make the most sense. I wouldn’t use +5 damage or 5 crit % unless its on your offhand weapon. The active effect sigils are better.

I know you say you want to use GS and sword/shield only, but you’d be better off using staff or scepter/shield.

Mayhem.1935:

I’m a thief. Stealth is broken. A solution? Maybe not let me regen all of my HP, remove conditions, and get stacks of buffs every time stealth occurs, which is 6 out of every 10 seconds. I can reset the fight when i want, run away if i want, or torment you if i want. I can kill that pack dolyak you are guarding with 10 ppl and there is nothing you can do about it. I play p/d +d/p and you lose every time. I started playing thief to learn how to beat one. My conclusion is you cant if the thief is patient and has an iota of talent for the class. If you are a great player and i cant kill you, i just run off and laugh.

This guy knows what he’s talking about. Its not even stealth itself that is the problem half the time, its that within stealth, the thief is very mobile and can heal/cleanse way too much. Compare it to deathshroud necro as they are both damage reduction/avoidance tools. In DS the necro can’t cleanse, can’t heal normal hp pool, is fairly immobile and deals poor damage. Stealth is strong to OP as a mechanic just on its face, but its the healing, cleanses, , buffs, mobility and high damage that really puts it over the top.

@ Excursion.9752

Omnom as useful for a lot more than WW. For instance staff spam with high crit rate = 3-4 crits per swing = 670-1000 healing per swing in a big fight before the nerf. Large symbols can hit multiple enemies every second. Smite does up to 15 hits in a short period of time. Torch 5 can do an crazy number of crits if you have enemies bunched up. It was overpowered I’ll admit.

The thing about T2 is that there hasn’t really been a true T2 for months because T2 has always had a T1 level server stuck in it, be it Blackgate or SoR. Now that SoS is no longer a T1 server, T2 actually looks to be shaping up into a tier of 3 servers who actually belong there. Kain, TC and FA are T2 level servers. None of them belong in T1 or T3. It should prove to be the most well-balanced T2 affair seen in a long time and I wouldn’t put TC in third either. We haven’t lost to FA in a long time and last week we were basically even with Kain. #4 is up for grabs.

Hunter.4783:

Armor = Full knights with Ruby or beryl orbs
Accessories = full ascended zerker
Weapon = PVT (so you don’t swap stats/runes when you get a legendary which is PVT)

Soldier runes are a waste because once you throw in Wall of reflection and Shield of the avenger you are left with 1 shout on a 30+ sec cooldown, so worthless. You don’t need the extra HP.

Assuming you throw in 20 in honor and from PVT weapon you should sit around 14-15k health which is plenty. Dodging > vit

Im lvl 48 fractal so i know what im talking about.

Cleric = worthless in PVE and semi worthless in WvW unless going full healing/boon duration (see healway)

Zerker armor and especially weapon suffers from too many stat loss on crit dmg conversion.

Most runes i also find worthless, If you are confy on HP, Ruby orbs currently offer you an amazing DPS option, you get 120 power, 84 prec and 12 crit %.
And if for a moment you consider divinity runes i will personally come and kick your kitten IRL…they are that bad and overpriced.

Div runes are better than ruby orbs unless all you care about is dps.

The question is this: how long will it take to gain ranks. Char bound isn’t that bad if ranks don’t take insanely long, but if the ranks are anything like the WvW achievements, then char bound is basically punishing people for having alts.

105 pow 105 condition is > 5% damage for most characters. Not to mention you can easily get 6 or even 9 stacks of might off sig of battle.

TC is definitely T2 level considering the depleted SoS is weaker than Kain and FA now.

Updating your gear is very important to ease the pain of leveling. Slotting minor runes with +10 power in all your armors helps a lot. Also, using a minor sigil of bloodlust on your main weapon and +power/power on kill food provides a nice boost.

If the new loot floods the markets with ectos and the cost drops, it won’t be any more profitable than doing anything else before long. Cheaper/easier to get ectos is a good thing. /thread

Spamming staff also makes thieves sad.

The more toughness the better.

As much vit as you need to feel like you can survive bursts decently well. For me that is zero outside of traits.

I can say one thing for sure, the necro masks look better on charr than any other race.