Guild Wars 2

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

The effectiveness of toughness is a curved shape progression.
Damage*some stuff / Total defense = received damage

lets say you have 1000 armor and you get hit for 2000 damage, with 2000 armor you would get hit for 1000 damage, 30000 armor 666 damage.

Depending on class vitality might be better overall.
Protection is also OP because its an effective 50% total armor boost (the equivalent of 33% damage reduction).

The damage mitigation provided by toughness is a curved progression, but effective HP scales up linearly with toughness and effective HP is what matters. Using your example, if you have 20k hp, you’d survive 10 hits with 1000 armor getting hit for 2000 a swing. At 2000 armor, and 1000 damage per swing you can survive 20 hits. At 3000 armor and 666 per swing, you can survive 30 hits. You still gain 10 hits worth of effective health for going from 2000 to 3000 armor just like you did from going 1000 to 2000 armor. There is no diminishing return.

1. PvE- Don’t play it WvW- D/D Ele followed by thief and mesmer
2. WvW- Engineer
3. WvW
4. 3 – The auction house is good, the cost/grind for ascended, lengendaries, etc. is absurd.
5. 8 – its really not that buggy
6. WvW – Needs better loot, less repairs, more rewards etc. Hopefully next patch does a decent job with this.
7. 8 – Pretty good community

Liquid.9672:

FilthyRat.4652:

Food buff got nerfed for all the crit heals

Yeah.

I wonder what the ICD is now. Is there any precedent for crit effects no other items where the ICD is known? Hopefully it’s not more than 3 to 5 seconds.

Even if the ICD is 2 second its pure crap now. The only reason it was good was the ability to proc multiple times on AOE skills and multi-hit attacks.

Cayl Bourne.8073:

fishergrip.4082:

You can make any build work ok for PvE farming, but that doesn’t mean its actually good.

This ignorant and unhelpful statement needs to be abolished from use in the forums right along with all the people who spout it.

Not everyone has the same gameplay priorities as you do. PvE in this game is no more “farming” than PvP or WvW is. Different builds, traits, playstyles, and gear work better or worse in different portions of the game (and even different situations with in those portions).

This is a game with options. Stop telling people there aren’t any.

I didn’t say there aren’t options, just that some options work better than others. From a pure efficiency standpoint(total dps and sustainability) condition damage is not a good stat for guardians. That doesn’t mean you can’t make a build around that is pretty effective and have a lot of fun with it.

Obtena.7952:

That’s nonsense. You don’t need access to bleed stacking or more damage conditions to make a good condition build with a guardian for a few reasons.

1. Condition damage on a guardian isn’t meant to be the primary damage source, unlike thief for instance.
2. It’s not a requirement to have more than one source of condition damage to make a good condition damage build.

These things mean that a good CD build on a guardian is about enhancing an already existing secondary, parallel damage source to take advantage of the condition damage benefits. If you recognize burning for what it does, you realize where it’s useful and how to get the most from it.

You can make any build work ok for PvE farming, but that doesn’t mean its actually good.

Runes of lyssa don’t work particularly well on renewed focus from a condition removal standpoint, since conditions don’t drop until after the ability completes, meaning you take damage for 2-3 seconds before losing the conditions. The boons are great though, and cond removal, even if on a longish delay, is still nice to have.

The main problem with 30 radiance and RHS is that sword and scepter underperform against multiple targets. If you play PvE I could see this build working pretty well against single tough mobs. It might work decent for WvW solo roaming. For general WvW group and zerg fighting, you’d be better off with 2h.

It is not possible to make a good guardian build around condition damage because burning is the only damaging condition guardians have. A condition damage build needs access to bleed stacking and application of some other damaging condition(s) (pois, burn, confuse) to really be effective.

For PvE players, a level increase might be a good thing as it would give them more content, more gear to grind, etc , but it would not be good for WvW players. So taking that into consideration, they probably will do a level increase, since they don’t seem to care much about WvW.

IMO if you want to increase your dps, use dps-oriented runes instead of boon duration runes, stack power on a sigil and use a dps active sigil. You don’t necessarily have to change your traits around if you like your setup. IMO stacking boon duration is only worth it if you’re going all in on shouts, might-granting abilities, runes, sigils etc. and maybe hammer/mace for perma prot and regen. I use 0/0/30/20/20 as well because absolute resolution frees you up to use whatever utilities you want instead of having to use either shouts or meds for condition removal and I like to roll with sig of judgement and wall of reflection, both of which are very valuable for big fights.

I have run a 0/0/30/20/20 build in WvW for months now and it very good so your build should not be the problem. I can’t speak to dungeons or fracs because I find them dull, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t perform adequately there as well.

Your difficulties are almost certainly a matter of having bad gear, perhaps making poor gear choices and a bit of inexperience.

Feeling strong a low levels has a lot to do with your gear. You need updated gear with +power to do good damage. Get a green greatsword. Put +power minor runes on all your armor. Get a minor sigil of bloodlust on your weapon. Watch things die.

Necros are coming out of the woodwork on blackgate lately. Very annoying. I’ll agree that rangers and especially engineers are underrepresented. There’s a fair amount of warriors around and I see more necros than guardians lately. Thieves and eles are the most common probably followed by mesmer.

EddardStark.4692:

What is the best Critical Chance % range for a DPS?

My build is currently 36.95%.
I was thinking of boosting my precision to enable me to get to approx 40-50%. I am affraid this will make me into more of a Glass Cannon DPS.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3|1.1n.h15|b.1c.h4.f.1c.h1g|1n.a1.1n.a1.1n.a1.1n.a1.1n.a1.1n.a1|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1c.64|u17c.0.a5.u36c.0|0.0|e

If you want to boost your crit % a bit without changing gear, just use maintenance oil, precision food and the superior sigil that gives you stacks of precision on some off-weapon you can swap out once you get your stacks. This should boost you crit % by over 20%.

Toughness makes a very noticeable difference. I run full knight’s with no +vit gear and I rarely miss not having the extra HP. All you need VIT for is to survive bursts, particularly condition damage bursts. As long as you pack a bit of condition removal you won’t miss higher max HP most of the time. With 3300 armor, sig of judgement, shelter, renewed focus, aegis, etc, direct burst damage is not a big problem. The great thing about toughness is that each extra 10% of mitigation essentially increases the effectiveness of all your heals by 10% (except against condition damage.).

buki.3108:

I think Shelter was designed for WvW zerg fights. The amount of damage you block in a zerg ball is likely way higher than the signet can heal. It also serves as an OH CRAP button if you get out of position. Being feared out of the heal is pretty stupid though and should be fixed -.-

Yeah, unblockable fear forcing your heal onto cooldown is overpowered. Unblockable skills is bad design in the first place, but if you are going to make something unblockable, it shouldn’t make shelter go on full cooldown. I’m hoping that was unintentional and will eventually be fixed, if the devs are even aware of it.

I dunno about dungeons and fractals because I don’t do those, but in terms of general PvE leveling ease from 1-80 I’d put mesmer last. Also, ranger is very strong in general PvE.

Every class is gear dependent, but gear is very easy to get.

The only thing wrong with the current wvw matchups (NA) is T8. So if you play on ET or FC, yeah you are kind of getting the short end of the stick right now and you will probably be facing SF for eternity unless they decide to do something about it.

A guardian can take camps solo without much trouble and they are strong in 1v1 or even 2v1 but they do not make for good solo roamers due to lack of mobility. Ele is probably the best right now but they are going to be nerfed in an upcoming patch so who knows.

Guards are strong in 1v1, but they are not good at roaming due to low mobility and inability to escape zergs. Also, most classes can run away from guard fairly easily. Most kills come from people too foolish to know when to run.

green plum.7514:

Guardians have access to many teleports and leaps on short cooldown. Add a cripple to it and it would be difficult to kite them at all. And btw, with a shout build it is not that difficult to get perma-swiftness (or close to it).

Many? Guard has 1 600 range teleport on sword that requires a target and 1 600 range leap on greatsword. Other than that, all guard has is judge’s intervention, a teleport on a fairly long CD that also requires a target.

Mighty blow on hammer is not a proper leap. It is a blast finisher that does not cover ground any quicker than running normally.

The mathups are pretty good already. The only real problem I see with the matchups right now is that SF is going to be stuck in tier 8 forever.

I don’t use mace much, but it seems much better suited for PvE than WvW.

I use 0/0/30/20/20, but I mainly play WvW.

Notice how only mesmers are trying to argue that confusion is not overpowered and even some unbiased mesmers agree it is overpowered.

I think everyone agrees that a bit more movement between tiers could be a good thing, but the reset would have been terrible for WvW. They don’t need to reset to alter how servers move between tiers.

What are your queues like on Kaineng? Your numbers are ridiculous.

MarzAttakz.9608:

@Fishergrip: got a case of class envy? We use the tools at our disposal, yes it’s fun jumping in and tickling the enemy then running away like a little girl. Guards don’t “jump” into a zerg, they plough through them instead.

Comparing a bunker guardian vs. a bunker ele the only difference is ele’s have more mobility and comparable damage.

No, I don’t get class envy because I play all classes. I have leveled 4 chars to 80, have 67 ele, 10k wvw kills, so I’ve played enough to know a bit about the game and not be extremely biased in my views as most people seem to be on class forums. The ele is simply a bit too good right now and the fact that Anet is talking about nerfing them proves that point. If you think guards plow through zergs you haven’t played one. Guards get killed by zergs more than any other class because they can’t run away. They might be able to survive a bit longer than most while being focus fired, but they can’t do much to escape being focused. If your allies aren’t close by, a guard in a zerg is dead.

lukeire.3679:

but thats a condition build/ confusion mes other mes don’t do much with condition and your punish them too like wth mate

Even someone with no condition damage can do 500-1k damage per ability use with a few stacks of confuse. I’m not sure why they decided to make confusion stack in intensity instead of duration. Think of how op it would be if retaliation stacked in intensity. Confusion is similar.

Junkpile.7439:

Stability needs nerf too.

Not really. You can still cripple, chill and immobilize someone with stability. It is good to provide away to avoid being stunlocked.

Oozo.7856:

Only 1-2K? Try over 3K with 8 stacks.

I’m usually able to remove some stacks before I get that high as a guardian, but yeah it can get pretty absurd if you are out of removals.

A while back Anet reduced confusion damage in sPvP by 50 percent because it is simply overpowered when used against other players. I see more and more mesmers spamming confusion in WvW that causes 1-2k damage per ability use. This is simply too much damage for a condition that can trigger 3-4 times per second. They should add the 50% reduction to WvW.

JaNordy.6149:

My mesmer buddie complains about aegis blocking his berserker which wont allow him to 2-3 shot guardians. I have a complaint about guardian, how do you beat a good confusion shatter memser 1v1 on open field? I have yet to see it happen.

You can’t really. Confusion is very overpowered in WvW because it doesn’t suffer from the 50% damage reduction that they added to sPvP. It should really get the same treatment because 2k damage on skill use is stupid.

Raif.9507:

Yes because guardians running in and out of zergs by themselves and living is totally ok.

You obviously have never played a guard and have no clue how to play your ele if you make if you make a comment like this. Guard has among the worst mobility in the game. All a guard can do in a zerg is 3 seconds of invincibility, 2 seconds of block and then they are dead. I see eles dive into zergs and escape easily all the time. You can dive into a zerg, fight for a bit, teleport out whenever you need to and then ride the lightning so nobody can chase you.

Good. D/D eles are very overpowered right now. They are practically invincible. They have the best bunker and mobility in the game, makes no sense.

Bleed thieves are by far the most annoying to face on a guardian. Direct damage thieves are a joke.

Braxxus.2904:

Vodka.3958:

Bunker Ele is the strongest class in the game!

Pfffffft.

Highest skill ceiling for sure. Average ele players are more skilled than the greatest thief players by leagues in comparison. Warrior players don’t even register on the same scale as ele’s because their skill cap is so low by comparison.

Try playing an engineer well and get back to me on that comment. Eles are not particularly hard to play well.

Taking 10 points out of valor to drop into honor would not reduce your damage much and it would give you near perma vigor along with reduced CDs on your shouts. Shorter CDs on shouts and perma vigor lets you take advantage of your 25 points in virtues by keeping more boons up to boost your damage. You might lose a little damage overall, but it would be a big net gain imo.

If you are going to use 3 shouts, you might want to put 10 points in honor for reduced cooldowns.

I’ll be very surprised if Kaineng beats BG. I’d be slightly less surprised if TC beats Kaineng. I foresee Kaineng being in T2 for a long time.

Signed.

Reset was not necessary. All that is necessary is perhaps tweaking the math behind the ratings a bit to make it easier for servers to move up and down.

-Man siege equipment.
-Do supply runs to build/repair towers and keeps.
-Roll with zergs and rez players in the downed state as fast as possible.
-Keep your equipment as up to date as possible for your level. Low level chars are terrible with outdated equip, but with very up to date equip, you won’t be completely worthless in a fight. A low level char with up to date equipment can have pretty high stats in at least one or two of stat lines. I’ve had over 3700 attack power on level 10 chars in wvw.

I can agree that SoR’s exploitation of SBI to gain a ton of points was lame, but BG might have avoided falling to T2 by performing better in T1 and not dogging it in an attempt to exploit the reset.

Also, SoR is much stronger now than when BG last fought them. They took a lot of SBI players and are a legit T1 server now.

On TC we spent something like 7-9 weeks grinding wins over lower ranked servers in the top position of T3 before moving up to T2. BG has had its chances in T1 and probably will again. TC is basically going to be rank 5-6 forever at this point, always losing to BG, SoR, or whoever else is #4, but you don’t see us whining about it. If you really want to be T1 again, win by bigger margins next time. I can say for certain that the SoR we faced last week would be beating TC and FA a lot more than BG is right now.

Rested Fox.2560:

even if ratings dont get reset the math needs to change.

my server blackgate NA for example. we are in t2. we have significant ratings over everyone else who is in t2. the other factions in t2 are decent quality…. but we beat them week in and week out.

shouldnt we move up in ranking? according to the system which apparently works now, the answer is NO

no matter what happens in t1 ( as long as it isnt a blowout) all t1 factions will remain at higher rating…. look at the scores now, the losing faction is GAINING RATING.

the average rating in t1 is somewhere around 2160

blackgate LOSES rating for a SIGNIFICANT win in tier 2.

throughout the history of matchups the only way matchups significantly changed was due to direct player involvement. players “bandwagoning” off a server that was losing was the only way the server would drop rating. now that free transfers are over NA bracket will be very stagnant after about 2 matchups. kaineng is the only wild card. they will most likely move up to t2 with us because of player transfers that happened before free transfers was over.

my prediction: in 3 months guild wars 2 will have had many tiers with the same matchups lasting for months and months.

WE WANTED ratings reset and a new math system for the change…. but we would have liked 1 day matchups for 1 week to shuffle the rankings faster.

this is an inappropriate response to player complaints. we need changes to glicko, just not too major of a change, and a reset probably would have been acceptable with 1 day matches.

scrapping the entire idea because of short term negative effects is not a good long term strategy. in 3 months when factions havent moved up or down a tier in 1-2 months youll hear of complaints of stagnation …. people will get bored, too bored to complain in forums and instead theyll simply slowly stop playing.

TL DR
should have kept the changes but made 1 day matchups for a week to help the ratings to settle faster.

BG has already been in T1 a couple of times and failed to keep its position there. BG has placed 3rd in T1 every week it has been there except for maybe 1 week a long time ago. I’d say the system is working as intended.

Thank god. Thank you Anet for listening to your hardcore WvW players and making a sensible decision and preserving the relatively balanced match-ups we have right now.

The main reason ascended gear is not an issue in WvW yet is that there aren’t that many ascended items out and the stat distributions on ascended items are very limited. Once they expand stat distributions and release more items, like armors and weapons, players with ascended equipment will have a noticeable advantage in WvW. I just hope they add more ways to get ascended items for WvW players other than laurels, like spending a bunch of honor badges. But any way you slice it, getting ascended gear requires grinding in one way or another.

No matter how you alter the math, the servers that win by the biggest margins will gain the most ranking points and go straight to T1.

I think people are focusing too much on the amount of culling going on and not on the actual impact of the culling on WvW. It seems worse sometimes because your allies are culled around you more often, so you end up noticing more culling overall. It is much better in that enemies appear on your screen sooner, so you don’t get trampled by a giant zerg without seeing at least part of it first. Culling of allies is much less of a problem than culling of enemies. For me, it is an improvement overall, but it is definitely not a fix.

Liquid.9672:

JQ has faced a total of 7 different opponents since the 1 week matches began. Ferguson’s Crossing 6. For some servers, I think the rating reset could create a little bit of fun for awhile if only to see some different opponents for a change. Yes there will be some blow outs, but I think some games will also be pretty good. Assuming the reset takes place, I’m personally looking forward to seeing some new server names up on the WvW match frame for a little while.

The novelty of new server names will wear out quickly and you will be left with a pointless week of WvW. Although ironically, it looks like JQ could end up facing SoS and SoR again, just in a lower tier.