Guild Wars 2

Sennheiser HD595s, AKG K701s and ATH-M50 are what I use mostly.

stevelim.1649:

CMF.5461:

Writ of the Merciful – 0.075
Pure of Heart – 0.1
Zealous Blade – 0
Altruistic Healing – 0.01
Monk’s Focus – 0.1
Virtue of Resolve – 0.06
Faithful Strike – 0.18
Regeneration – 0.125
Shield of Absorption – 0.2
Selfless Daring – 1
Sanctuary – 0.05
Empower – 1

The above are the healing power coefficients for each skill.

Just would like to know how / where you got this list? Where does one find other coefficients?

You can solve for healing coefficients by:

Find the base healing number without any healing power equipped by taking damage and then healing yourself with that skill. The tooltips are sometimes incorrect or misleading. Then, figure out how much it heals with some arbitrary amount of healing power, whatever you have handy. Set up an equation like this:

(Amount healed with healing power)=(healed without healing power)*(coefficient)

So say it’s like this:

1100=1000 * (coefficient)

Solve for coefficient:

1100/1000=(coefficient)

Which gives you 1.1. You would call this a coefficient of .1, since the whole number 1 comes from the base healing in addition to your bonus healing from your healing power. You can do this for any healing skill.

Edited to clarify: The use of this number is that you can then multiply your healing power times the coefficient to then figure out how much additional healing you’ll do for a given skill, by saying (total healing)=(base healing) + (healing power * coefficient)

Well, the thing about Valkyrie is that it will always out damage Soldiers and Knights but it’s still a step down from Berserker. The trade off is condition damage resilience. That’s why I like it. In PvE I rarely if ever die to direct damage, it’s always conditions that get me if I don’t have any cleanses left. That’s just me though, your experience may vary.

The zerkers that are dying would have died anyway. I don’t run full zerk, but I have something approximating it, and I didn’t have any trouble. I brought stunbreaks and lots of condition cleaning and, you know, didn’t stand there and LET them apply 20 stacks of bleed to me.

Also, for the large cannon barrage phase of the last boss, don’t run at all. Wait for it to target you and just move a few feet out of the ring. Rinse and repeat. It always drops one shot directly on you, the rest are random, and there is almost always a free space very nearby.

It’ll work but it’s a super selfish spec. As long as you’re cool with that, go for it. Some changes though:

Use Shelter, not Dwayna. As long as you block a couple thousand damage you will have basically out healed Dwayna. Having a block skill is tremendously helpful. You can use it for all sorts of things, particularly as a last ditch to prevent big hits from bosses.

Your gear is too tanky. Roll with Valkyrie armor if you want some padding against conditions. I’d use Berserker trinkets as well. If you’re concerned about getting killed, run Judgement instead of Bane for the extra stunbreak plus 300 toughness worth of damage mitigation.

I’d also strongly consider moving away from Monks Focus and into Honor instead. The reason being, that Vigor trait is baller for keeping yourself alive. Constant vigor really helps. If you’re concerned about healing, you can do all kinds of things – 2x Vampire runes, Sigil of Blood, Omnomberry Pies, Leeching sigils, etc.

ODB.6891:

foofad.5162:

ODB.6891:

Setun.4368:

foofad.5162:

I haven’t run Altruistic Healing since November. Don’t need it, don’t want it, enjoying the buff to Greatsword Power when I’m not busy demolishing things with sword/shield and staff.

So, y’know.

Learn to play, and the build diversity skyrockets.

Amen brother.

+1 to the pair of unskilled and clueless tools. Make sure to get that wool sheared off yourselves so you look good after this awesome patch.

Lmao. Since when did not needing a crutch like AH make me unskilled? I’m not the one having issues building my character away from Altruistic Healing.

Pretty sure you are so clueless that you managed to miss the point of every post in this thread. The entire point of the advertised build diversity was to get people to do something different than what the majority has and still are doing. That being 30 honor/30 valor builds. The fact that you keep specifically talking so much about not needing AH (despite my initial post not even mentioning it) makes me think you are actually an AH user. I don’t, have never, and will never trait any into valor and i’ve only gone as far into honor to pick up EM. This thread has nothing to do with my ability to build my character…my character has been built and is built for dps with a little thrown in to honor for EM. This thread was about the lack of the advertised build diversity when it comes to guardians. The current set up for guardians remains focused on GS/hammer/staff/mace. This patch just reinforced that majority instead of promoting different choices. It didn’t even promote exploring zeal for anyone other than GS users (zealous blade).

Once again….+1 bro

The point of build diversity is to allow for the maximum number of viable builds possible. There will always be a most popular build for any given meta. You can’t force the majority of players who play the popular builds from switching. You can only give them alternatives. Right now, Guardians do have alternatives to x/x/30/30×. It’s not anyone’s fault that the players don’t go with the alternatives. People will flock to what they think is the easiest, or the best. Popular perception is that AH builds are the be all and end all. AH is viable, there’s no disputing that. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other builds out there, and that you shouldn’t use them.

Half of people’s troubles that I see on the forum stem from a lack of creativity when it comes to building their characters. Most people don’t sigil past accuracy/force/kill stacking, or rune past water/dwayna/sanctuary. They don’t build without AH. They are stuck on these old standby skills that work instead of venturing out into the unknown wildlands of weapon swapping, using Unscathed Contender/Retreat as a DPS tool, most people don’t even switch their utilities to suit what they’re fighting. ANet can’t force you to do that. All they can do is dangle carrots – like merging traits to make Zeal 20 more attractive.

Anyway, if it helps you feel better to think of me as some sort of unskilled, lying, dirty Altruistic Healing specced forum warrior then knock yourself out. If you look at my post history I think you’ll find that I have almost always supported doing things differently.

Sword is not the best choice for AOE damage, but it’s single target DPS is unmatched by any other weapon. The best Sword DPS builds will always outperform the best anything else builds against a single target. But that only gets you so far. Which is why we can switch weapons in combat.

Shufflepants.9785:

If killing people in the WvW jumping puzzles is griefing, then so is killing people in sPvP who are just peacefully trying to capture control points.

Pretty much this. The objective is to open that chest, and in PvP people are welcome to thwart you from accomplishing that objective. Get over it.

I actually kind of like Tome of Wrath now that they’ve increased the Quickness to 5 seconds and made the cone attack affect the Guardian too. Hitting 4 then 3 and canceling out of the tome can be powerful in a pinch.

Don’t use Pack, use 5 Citadel and 1 Ruby (in your helmet slot). Virtually the same damage, but you get a massively long Fury out of it which is much better than 5 seconds of Might, Fury, and Swiftness occasionally. I know Pack sounds like an awesome thing but I used it for six months and it seriously doesn’t proc enough to be useful. The only case I would recommend it over Citadel is if you have AH, because it ticks 3×5xAH healing which can be awesome.

Also, use Shelter instead of Signet. Much better in WvW because if/when you get zerged, you can buy yourself some time to get back to safety with the block. If you block more than a few thousand damage you’ve essentially out-healed Signet. Only downside is the potential for an unblockable interrupt but them’s the breaks.

Also, don’t use 2HM, use EM. You only have one two handed weapon and a slight cooldown reduction isn’t going to meaningfully affect your damage with Greatsword, but EM helps you and your group. You could also pick up larger symbols to catch more friendlies in your Regen and Retal symbols.

Edited to add: Also, I would drop Honor entirely. Get 15 Radiance, trait Blind Exposure. You now have a spammable blinding and vulning VoJ. Put the last 5 into Virtues for the 25 minor which is gonna give you a damage boost for all those boons you’ve got through shouts and everything else. Learn to use your blinds to mitigate big hits.

Like Soryuju said, it PULSES the Swiftness buff, it doesn’t apply as soon as you walk into it. If you want a guaranteed swiftness, you drop it such that when it’s cast you are directly on top of it, because it always starts the pulsing as soon as it’s laid down.

Your reasoning is sound – with more toughness and less HP conditions do become more viable. But the issue is that burning on its own doesn’t scale enough to actually make the trade-off between [power, precision, critical damage] and condition damage worth it. If we had a second condition that did damage, yeah, go for it, build for condition damage. But burning alone isn’t enough.

I find that it works best to supplement an already DPS-heavy build with ZB to cover your mistakes and when you get hit. It’s especially nice with enlarged symbols and using another symbol-handy weapon like Staff or Mace; you can drop a symbol with those weapons and then immediately swap to Greatsword and reap the HP from it. Pretty neat. The HP is also nothing to sneeze at, you just have to get over the fact that it scales with enemies rather than allies.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

foofad.5162:

I haven’t run Altruistic Healing since November. Don’t need it, don’t want it, enjoying the buff to Greatsword Power when I’m not busy demolishing things with sword/shield and staff.

So, y’know.

Learn to play, and the build diversity skyrockets.

Then please tell us your all new original build. I can wait.

There’s nothing all new or original about it. When I build for straight DPS, I run 10/30/0/30/0 sword/shield + staff or alternatively sword/focus + scepter/shield shouts with PoV. Berserker gear.

ODB.6891:

Setun.4368:

foofad.5162:

I haven’t run Altruistic Healing since November. Don’t need it, don’t want it, enjoying the buff to Greatsword Power when I’m not busy demolishing things with sword/shield and staff.

So, y’know.

Learn to play, and the build diversity skyrockets.

Amen brother.

+1 to the pair of unskilled and clueless tools. Make sure to get that wool sheared off yourselves so you look good after this awesome patch.

Lmao. Since when did not needing a crutch like AH make me unskilled? I’m not the one having issues building my character away from Altruistic Healing.

More likely, he meant 3k attack, which people need to stop looking at.

I haven’t run Altruistic Healing since November. Don’t need it, don’t want it, enjoying the buff to Greatsword Power when I’m not busy demolishing things with sword/shield and staff.

So, y’know.

Learn to play, and the build diversity skyrockets.

Celestial is terrible. Don’t use it for condition damage. In fact, don’t spec for condition damage as a Guardian. It’s just not worth it. The exchange rate between direct damage and condition damage is not in any way shape or form equitable or advantageous.

Love this dungeon. Laaaaav eeeet.

It’s really not that hard. Lure her into static fields, win.

Zeal is still terrible for tPvP, that much is true. But for everything else, including WvW, I think you’ll be more than fine with it.

Arken.3725:

The GS symbol won’t do much when no one stands in it. Staff I can see.

It’s no less of an issue than Hammer symbol or Mace symbol. Don’t forget that you get 1 stack of might off of GS third swing per hit, not per attack, too.

Arken.3725:

I get that foofad, but the problem still stands that it doesn’t stack with healing power. 25 a hit is WAY too low to justify 20 points into zeal when it can be spend elsewhere.

1k Whirling Wrath heals in crowds are nothing to sneeze at when you’re also increasing your overall damage. 20/25/x/x/x is a worthy damage spec for Greatsword, 20/x/30/x/x is a worthy defensive spec now as well.

Arken.3725:

Again, putting in a sigil will solve your problems instead of vesting 20 into zeal. I really hate to say it but the trait is still bad.

You realize Force stacks with Greatsword Power and all the other multipliers?

The more multipliers you can throw on a DPS build, the better. They’re huge damage increases, comparatively.

Arken.3725:

CptAurellian.9537:

I suppose you become some kind of heavy battletank now, with AH and the new Zealous Blade? Didn’t test it that way, but it’s surely an interesting combination.

I don’t think that would work at all. You don’t apply boons when hitting with the GS(unless third attack) so what healing would you get?

EM and a staff secondary weapon, plus GS 4.

It’s a bug that has been in the game for a long time. Use the dye remover on it, then accept the changes, then try dying it again.

There’s this really neat weapon called a longbow you should look into.

I’m using the heavy chest, legs, and boots on my female guardian with the Guardian class shoulders (not the ones with the glowing symbol) and some Split gloves. Looks pretty sweet on my female Norn.

Go to the PvP lobby instead. Same tactic, doesn’t take up WvW slots.

Zealous Blade is awesome. Whirling Wrath heals for about 1080 now in a full group of mobs. Currently running 20/25/0/5/20 for funsies, love the change. I imagine that if you desperately need the safety net of some additional healing but don’t want to go AH for whatever reason, Zealous Blades is going to be the go-to skill. I wakittenting like a truck in the Aetherblade Retreat and didn’t get downed but two or three times.

Make it a toggleable option, easy peasy.

Hell, I’d pay for more announcer options. Be able to select whichever one you want… That’d be neat.

One thing that has always frustrated me about playing in a group is that whenever I buff or otherwise support someone in some particular way that isn’t healing but still contributes to that person’s success, I don’t get any information at all about the success (or not) of that action. The three instances of this that come up most often as I play my Guardian main are Retaliation, Aegis, and Burning.

Currently, when I pop Virtue of Justice (which gives everyone nearby a 4 second burn on their next hit) I don’t get any indication whatsoever that those people got any use out of it. What I’d like to see is a separate, differently styled damage popup for the damage that those people are doing as a result of my action. In other words, if we’re all fighting a boss and I hit VoJ, I’d like to see my burning numbers and the burning numbers that I enabled my party to apply. As it stands, what I see is mine tick and then the ticks stop because someone else’s have taken over.

Same thing with Retaliation. I have so many AoE retaliation sources, but when I apply them to my party I don’t have any way of seeing that it did any good. What I would like to see is a floating combat text popup for my party’s retaliation hits that I applied, just like mine, only styled differently so I can tell what’s what.

Aegis is a little bit different, as instead of doing damage, it absorbs a hit. What I’d like for that is for floaty text indicating that my party member blocked an attack with my Aegis, just like what I get. In addition to that I’d also really like to see how much damage that would have done if it had connected. So instead of just Blocked! it would say Blocked 1093! or what have you.

I’m sure other classes have similar things that I’m just not aware of.

I kittening love the top floor of the windmill in Queensdale. I go lay down in the bed and play with the cat up there. It’s my home away from home.

As far as most beautiful goes, one of my favorite areas is the secret strawberry patch near the Town of Nolan.

It’s basically the standard Guardian healing build. I would suggest picking up hammer instead of GS because the Protection symbol is going to proc AH a lot more than anything you’ll get off of Greatsword.

It only procs off of your healing (6) spell. Same with Runes of Altruism and so on.

Sword is REALLY irritating to use in Jade Maw. It’s stupid. It’s the only melee weapon in the game you have to stop using so you don’t kill yourself.

Oh, btw: Sword + Sigil of Fire is really good. Helps to mitigate some of the AoE inadequacies of it.

This thread comes up at least once a week, and sadly we’re no closer to it being a reality. What a lot of us hope for is that it only displays while in combat, which is very reasonable and only requires a flag rather than coding in a feature like a toggle.

That gear on the shoulder really is horrific, not gonna lie.

5% isn’t exactly what I’d call ‘mere’. Do you play damage builds?

Kill credit. Any time another MMO has required me to be in a party to get credit for helping, and being helped with kills, I have almost instantly rage quit since GW2 came out. It is so unbelievably wonderful to not hate the fact that there are people around me.

Just pointing this out but a lot of your 5% are boss fights.

Also, by the numbers, Greatsword’s optimal damage build doesn’t do as much damage as optimal Sword builds, to the tune of 10%. Sword definitely smokes Greatsword 1v1. It’s just that it’s a one trick pony in that respect.

Oh, and Zealot’s Defense is not fine. At all. There is no case where autoattacking does not do more DPS than Zealot’s Defense, and ZD isn’t even a spike damage skill in the sense that it dumps all of its damage at once instead of over time as autoattacking does. Considering the root, the lack of meaningful or improved damage over autoattacking, the fact that it’s a projectile and subject to reflection, and it’s so freaking slow and avoidable akittens max range, the only time you should ever be ZDing is to block a projectile or keep your damage up in momentary cases where you absolutely cannot melee (per boss mechanics, etc).

I like sword, but if you think 20 more range is even noticeable, well… I’ve been playing Guardians since BWE2 and I have never run into a situation where I’ve said “Man, that 20 range sure made a difference.”

Except that in exchange they give up their decent heals in favor of a crappy signet heal, while we can keep using Shelter or our signet. There is a trade off.

Why is this even an issue? Why do you care what Eles get when everything we have in that department is better? We get our Virtue, AH, two direct heals off Staff, a heal off Mace autoattack, and Shelter is an awesome ability.

Anyway, Zealous Blade is basically a freebie anyhow since its on a damage multiplier trait that a lot of Greatsword users are picking up anyway.

Of course you won’t always do it, but you can. And that’s when Zealous Blade would shine.

Also, if you’re staying out of melee and thus not taking as much damage, then once you heal to full you aren’t getting any benefit from the signet anymore. You can’t heal past full, it’s all wasted. Whereas if you’re in melee and taking hits, you’re actually benefiting from the trait more often.

Re: Your edit, one would think that… if you were talking about the same class. But we aren’t.

Don’t forget that you can stack Zealous Blade with Altruistic Healing, and even keep Empowering Might to boot if the changes are real. Guardians have no trouble at all surpassing Elementalist passive healing.

You’re comparing their /healing spell/ to our /trait/. It’s apples and oranges. It does have a downside, too – If they pop the signet, they lose access to the 200/cast (unless they’re traited Earth). And anyway, you realize that Whirling Wrath can potentially heal you for something approaching 1000? That’s a lot more than 200.

Substance E.4852:

DarksunG.9537:

Dedlaw.9130:

The heavy male armor made me laugh. The gear on the shoulder makes it look like you are a part of a life-size key-chain

Seriously… I don’t know how someone looked at that & said:

“yeah, that looks good. we’ll stick with that!”

like.. seriously? It’s ridiculous. why would they put that there?

Because it’s steampunk (seriously team, what is it suddenly 2006 again?). The whole idea is you take something vaguely Victorian in design and glue a kittenload of gears and cogs on it. They don’t need to be functional or practical, they just need to be there.

Steampunk is a genre of fiction, not a fashion style. What people do with their clothing may be steampunk-inspired, but generally speaking in steampunk fiction all those gears actually do something. Don’t hate whole thing because the nerds that ruin it with their bad fashion sense have muddied the waters.

While I don’t disagree with you on Symbols (I wish you “tagged” people with Symbols and the area effect followed the tagged individual), the new Greatsword Power is very attractive. Don’t forget that it’s 25 health (or whatever) per hit, not per attack. And any damage multiplier is very welcome.

Also, 30% increase is huge. I think you’ll be surprised how much faster the orb travels.

It massively helps when you do other things, though. If you don’t have Vigorous Precision, you’d better have a /really/ specific build in mind that doesn’t require it.

You sure it’s only 90? That’s a lot of precision, assuming you’re also talking accessories too.

Anyway, it mainly hinges on whether you need the crit for on-crit effects. Do you run EM? Do you run on-crit sigils? If so, you should definitely consider it.