Guild Wars 2

Lack of Night Sigil would be my assumption.

The only thing Staff is good for is in support of a strong sustained DPS weapon that isn’t bad to park in, like Greatsword, Hammer, or Sword/Focus. If you have high Boon duration, in theory you can pop Empower then enter combat with inflated Might duration for an extended period. But it’s not something you ever want to swap back to while still in combat if you care about dealing damage. You also miss out on having a burst weapon you can swap to for the high damage cooldowns and then return to your sustained weapon.

It was also incredibly good synergy with AH back when that was still a thing, too. WW in a pack of mobs could heal you for 1-2k sometimes. Nutters.

Have they confirmed they’re changing the trait bonus? Afaik only equipment is getting the Ferocity change.

Um, most builds have SOME KIND of boon duration. Anywhere from 25-50%. Some even go as high as 80%. At most a 10/25/0/10/25 person is going to miss out on 3.75 out of 10 seconds of vigor. If they run boon duration runes, it comes down to 1.5 seconds. Not a big deal at all.

The thing I’m most excited about isn’t that you can now put two sigils on Greatswords, but rather that they won’t share a single ICD. That’s huge. Energy+Battle is now an option for example.

Nope. It’s not like Skyrim where having your weapon out slows you down. The game doesn’t care what state your weapon readiness is, only whether you’re in or out of combat.

I personally really dislike Knight’s gear because it isn’t a power-primary stat loadout. Where other people mix Knight/Zerker, I always do Soldier/Zerker. There are some mathy reasons why that is but the gist of it is that you get more EHP and more consistent DPS as opposed to the potentially large fluctuations you might get from a high crit low power build. It also gets more effect out of sharpening stones.

Throwing Berserker trinkets on with your Soldier armor isn’t a bad idea for either WvW or PvE.

I would do something like this instead:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApdiEhgTBpIyFYzAg9rqQ8weoRP+RA-jAyAotASNCYyTZNLKIWcLiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-e

The Spirit Weapon duration trait is not worth sacrificing the other options you have. Neither is the Mace trait. Keep in mind that Spirit Weapons only go on cooldown once they die, so if your Sword gets killed after 10 seconds it’s as if you never had the trait at all.

Edited to add: The other thing is that Mace isn’t the greatest weapon to park in long term. It’s good to make use of the cooldowns, particularly Protector’s Strike to get some extra AOE burst in (as long as you don’t wait around for someone to hit you) but generally speaking you want to use it in conjunction with a weapon that has high base DPS. So in this case Hammer is a good choice to hang out with while you wait for weapon swap and other cooldowns on the Mace to wear off.

Protector’s Strike is weird. It’ll work off of any hit regardless of your current state, and it will still burn through one strike of whatever it is you’ve got going on. In other words, if you pop SoW + Protector’s Strike, and get hit, your SoW will drop to 4/5 strikes and Protector’s Strike will proc. Similarly it’ll also burn up your Aegis even though you technically blocked the hit. It’s very annoying.

Dude.

Eight month old thread, and the OP hasn’t posted anywhere in eight months. The forum warns you that you’re about to necro a thread for a reason. Lol.

None of the traits are really worthwhile. What you can do to address the fundamental problem of them being so squishy they get their kitten destroyed in dungeons is use them when you’re running an innately AOE-heal centric or highly supportive build, like anything with a Mace, or Symbol healing, or Hammer, or any combination thereof. Writ of the Merciful + Mace/Hammer can typically keep a Sword alive as long as you’re fighting near it. Sword is the only one worth using in dungeons though – Hammer knocks enemies away from you which is bad, Bow is useless, and Shield is used in specific encounters but that’s it.

Basically the one saving grace is that they are affected by boons and healing.

Came expecting to see a full Celestial build video. Left with a new outlook on life.

robertul.3679:

Does he really earn that much cash?

No. At absolute best you can expect about 5 dollars per 1000 views. In reality it’s more like 1.5-2 dollars. I believe youtube ads require clickthroughs to actually add to your revenue though, which means that anyone with an ad blocker isn’t contributing.

Supreme Justice is pretty worthless. Pick up Absolute Resolution instead. That’s a big one especially in WvW where you can actually make use of its 1200 range – your party doesn’t have to be right on top of you like they do with Shouts and Purging Flames.

Focus Mastery isn’t doing anything for you. You’d be better off dropping 10 out of Zeal and putting it someplace else. You can either just go ahead and do full Altruistic Healing or do 10 Honor instead of Vigor and Shout cooldowns, which would be pretty nice for Stand Your Ground.

Permeating Wrath, while fun, is outclassed by Indomitable Courage. IC gives you Stability when you pop Courage, which allows you to guarantee a stomp as long as you aren’t outright killed during the animation. That’s huge in WvW, and typically a lot more compelling than a minor increase in your AOE DPS.

I’m actually more worried about them trying to fix the DPS meta and inadvertently screwing over everyone else than I am worried about the DPS meta.

JoxerNL.3752:

I’m sure Nemsis doesnt mind all these people coming to his video, im sure he made a pretty penny out of it.

Paranoid sentiment aside, he didn’t make any off me; gotta love adblock =]

One thing you need to be worried about with a solo build is making sure you can resist enemy bursts long enough to heal out of it. Generally speaking the more nasty bursts coming out of Thieves and Mesmers and other Guardians is in the neighborhood of 15k. So I’d aim for at least that much HP, with perhaps an extra thousand or two for good measure.

Guardians get their magic from the Monk side of things. Monk, a GW1 profession, was recast as Guardian. Only instead of getting magic from deities, they get their magic from the same place as everyone else, the Bloodstones. Specifically the Preservation school.

Guardian magic is faith based, channeled through objects of power or inspiration, aka weapons like scepters, staves, and the focus. What they have faith in varies from person to person, but it’s definitely not directly given by any gods – they are all gone. Typically it’s faith in a cause, person, deity, or powerful object that is the actual inspiration. Guardian magic also seems to be spontaneous and not require specific learning, but that’s up for debate.

The other three magic schools are Denial (Mesmers, Thieves), Aggression (Necromancers), and Destruction (Elementalists).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/

Stickied.

Welcome to Guardian PvP, enjoy your stay. :P

We actually got a 33% increase in scepter speed last year, but… it’s still an awful weapon.

dace.8019:

Everything has a counter, should we abandon conditions because of AoE cleansing? Stability is one of the hardest boons to reliably maintain/access for most professions anyway. And in PvE it’s pretty solid.

Out of curiosity, who uses RoW in PVE and why?

Arlette.9684:

It would make sense, sadly it won’t happen as their primary focus right now is “nerfing” warrior’s Healing Signet by buffing its active heal.

I hope you’re being sarcastic. They want to buff the active heal so they can nerf the passive and have it be an actual exchange, as signets were meant to be.

Hold up. Don’t buy anything from DirectSong. Ever.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1uhfka/jeremy_soule_has_made_a_wonderful_soundtrack_for/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/14slg7/ive_fought_with_directsong_for_too_long/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/11qpa7/guild_wars_2_soundtracks_from_directsong_still/

Valarauka.2719:

That’s true, but Zealous Blade is a good boost for when I swap to GS (5% more damage on WW, yes please), and some nice extra healing. I can’t see a single useful Master trait in Radiance…

I don’t understand. You’d take 5% more on Greatswords alone over 10% on Greatswords and everything else?

10% more damage on WW, yes please. This is one of those cases where a Minor trait is completely overwhelmingly the superior option over Majors. It also allows you to inject flexibility into your build – what if you don’t want to run a Greatsword for a particular fight? You don’t lose your edge. So to speak.

If you’re gonna do a guide, I’d cut out the enormous amount of dead air in the beginning. No one wants to listen to half-volume music and you saying hello to people for the first two minutes.

In fact, cut the music entirely, or don’t use music with lyrics. It distracts from what you’re trying to say.

Radiant is your best bet. 10% on everything means 10% on your symbols too.

Arlette.9684:

dace.8019:

RoW is fantastic when coupled with Judge’s Intervention.

You shouldn’t have to use a 2nd skill to get the first one to work.

QFT.

Writs are always better than Battle Presence because BP doesn’t heal you or other Guardians in your party, which is very important if you’re pugging.

All boon duration is always better especially if you’re running any shouts.

You don’t need more boon duration. Go with damage food, unless you have a very specific and compelling reason to do otherwise.

Lastly, for God’s sake get rid of Signet of Mercy. It’s awful. You should also get rid of Sanctuary, which is okay but has a horrendous cooldown. Replace them with Purging Flames and Wall of Reflection.

I realize you didn’t come here asking for this particular bit of advice, but I’m compelled to give it to you anyway; Your damage is awful. Think of it this way: The objective of the dungeon is to kill things and get to the end. You aren’t helping with that if you aren’t doing damage. By and large, people can take care of themselves. Dedicated healers really aren’t needed in this game. But with all that said, it’s still possible to do good healing and condition removal without completely sacrificing your damage. I put up a build a couple weeks ago on that topic that you should take a look at and modify to your preferences.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/A-Brief-Guide-to-a-Healing-Power-Hybrid

Arlette.9684:

Devils.3679:

yeah this is an ok set up but in pvp witht he nerco/condi meta i would rune purging flame over judges intervention and healing signet over shelter.
Purging Flames is much better as it is condi cleanse and good dps on points.

I not sure how long fury last when you use a medi but i also rather take Purity for more condi removal.

10/25/30/5 is what i run. But thats my playstyle maybe i like to dodge roll a lot in order to avoid dmg.

I also use divinity runes

did they fix purging flames? last time I tried it, you had to walk out and back in to cleanse conditions.

It clears 3 conditions instantly on use.

You got hosed. I’m in the same boat, pretty much. Only I just got one ticket.

CptAurellian.9537:

foofad.5162:

But 12 stacks does translate to about a 30-odd percent damage boost. So that’s pretty neat.

Not even close, unless you take crap like giver gear for granted. It’s rather 12-14%.

Damage boost over base I mean. Which, it’s actually 40-odd percent over rather than 30. On a two handed weapon with a 1.0 coefficient skill it’s roughly 162 damage more per hit against a 2600 armor target. The ratio of additional damage added by might to how much your starting damage was decreases as your starting damage increases, so you get less proportional benefit as your starting damage increases, but it’s still quite a good boost of damage.

For example on a coefficient of 1, a beefy 2500 power character gets 961 damage. With 12 stacks of might that goes up to 1123. Proportionally that’s only a 17% increase before crits. The more crit chance/damage/modifiers you have, the wider the gulf. But it’s still a difference of 162. Which, I mean, even at 17% a constant party-wide boost like that is very nice… unless someone else can do it. And you miss out on having a burst weapon swap and yadda yadda everything has already been said on that.

I would never advocate sitting on the staff in combat; you’d preferably never swap back to it after the fighting started due to the DPS drain. But carring a staff with you on a 20/25/0/0/25 GS build isn’t the worst idea.

He was snarkily referring to Obal’s sticky on building a DPS guardian, which is all things considered an improvement over this.

All that said, some neat things start to happen when you have excessive boon duration. If you can get your Might duration to above about 80% (with Two Handed Mastery; 100% without) you can run 12 stacks of might basically forever using Empower. The idea being that you start a fight with the Staff up, Empower, swap to your DPS weapon, and then when your weapon swap timer dings you hit up the staff for more Might again if the fight is still going.

The trouble is that that’s really not terribly effective if you’ve already got a party capable of stacking a lot of might. But 12 stacks does translate to about a 30-odd percent damage boost. So that’s pretty neat. There just aren’t many encounters where it’s actually particularly needed, over just plain having a better DPS weapon.

Other than Staff for swiftness, Mace is good because of the additional AoE. In solo PvE if you are in a group it’s much easier to use Protector’s Strike, and stacking symbols is also good damage too. You will find yourself pretty ‘slow’ feeling if you don’t bring a staff or Retreat for some on demand swiftness though.

J Eberle.9312:

Which is why I elaborated in the next post. People are quick to make assumptions, I need to be more descriptive in my first post I suppose -.-

Yes, actually. Because “people join my group with bad builds” is a completely different situation from “people join my group with builds that do not meet the specifications I outlined in the LFG tags.”

On the one hand, the fault is with you for having little justification for being upset when it’s pugging with total randoms to begin with. On the other, people are idiots for not reading.

Specificity is good. =]

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

There’s a difference between organized and just not being bad.

Okay, let me rephrase. He plays with pugs, and then gets mad that they don’t play the way he wants.

It got straight elementary school up in here all of a sudden.

J Eberle.9312:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

I just find it ironic how its 10/25/0/10/25, or the like, or “it’s DIAF you n00b!!!!!!!!!!1!!11!!1111111111” when it was the same way with AH and how it’ll be the same when the future builds change the current meta.

I don’t see anything ironic about that. People want to run the most effective builds, and they hope that other people in their team run effective builds. Just because the perception of “effective” changes over time doesn’t mean people were necessarily wrong at the time for requesting people run the most effective build at the time. You seem to think that because in the future there will be a different meta build that we are stupid for advocating the current meta build. That seems like a drastic misunderstanding of how and why these builds are even run in the first place.

You’re missing the key piece there. It’s the attitude that’s the irony. Simple as that. You’re putting extra meaning in. If what you said is what you think, I’d suggest re-reading what you quoted.

If we are talking about attitude, well I’m sick and tired of people joining my group with ‘play how you want builds’ wasting everyone’s time because the meta is ‘too mainstream’.

They really should release a fedora skin in the cash shop, they would sell like hotcakes.

>plays with pugs
>gets mad that they aren’t organized

I leveled two guardians to 80, the second was easier. The first one was Greatsword/Sword and Shield. Kinda miserable. Second one I changed it up, and use a Hammer for 90% of it. It went a lot faster. If you pick up Honor 5, Virtues 5, and Radiance 15, you can basically sleepwalk through PvE using that. 15 Radiance and 5 Virtues is one of the fundamental synergies in our traits. Honor 5 is important for survivability. You can shotgun you traits all over and not worry about it after that. I recommend points in Honor to round out your build for leveling.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

foofad.5162:

His link doesn’t include upgrades of any kind. Runes, sigils, food, etc.

What is your point? I added scholar runes and I put what he suggested to get the numbers I quoted. He wanted to know how bad his damage will be effected, and I think I answered that quite well. He actually wants advice on a good build. So I’m helping him out.

@OP
And to your question about the virtues. Don’t go deeper that 25. That’s the sweet spot. You are better off with Right hand strength or Superior Aria.

The OP’s link lacks upgrades, hence the lack of apparent stats. That’s what I was referring to. I apologize if that was confusing.

Eir Jordan.2156:

… but where were you guys when Strife was posting his anchor nonsense? Yeah…

Working on burn bui-

:[

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

33% crit damage and 35% crit chance is painfully low for PVE. The usual recommended route for people to learn is Knight armor with zerker trinkets. Something like this. I also moved traits around with 10 unspent, so you can see the basis of a dps build. The last 10 is dependent on what you need. I’d recommend for starting out to go 10 into honor, for vigor and shout reduction. Oh and focus is superior to shield. Check out lower linked guide for more details.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlUg6CXFyMEfIFSODRCBtZAQHUVh4BXAA-jgxAYLB5EYR0YLuFRjV7gpKJiq9GFRrGA-e

Read this guide for more in depth look:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

His link doesn’t include upgrades of any kind. Runes, sigils, food, etc. It’s actually a fine build, not as far behind as it seems at face value.

Well, it depends on what kinds of threats you’re dealing with. Do you:

Need mobility?
Need blinds?
Need hard crowd control?

If you answered yes to any of that, you should probably consider a greatsword. Otherwise, given the traits available, Hammer/Mace work very well together particularly in symbol builds.

Would you consider throwing this up on google docs and allowing contributions? Might be nice to offload the burden of testing additional specs or very specific gear choices. I’d also like to add the burning module I’m working on to it at some point.

chaplain.9261:

foofad.5162:

chaplain.9261:

I love how when some people say this is a horrible build they look like they clearly haven’t watched the whole video.

And even inforemd criticisms, Nemesis already mentioned about swapping out the signets for the support utility skills that so many people are used to. And if you don’t like this build, fine. It was already mentioned this is a completely new build and some people are not going to receive it well since everyone is pretty much expecting a guard to support. Yes, Obal’s build has good support along with some very good dps. And if you weren’t paying attention, Nemesis is going more for what a pure dps would look like on a guard. And that is exactly what the build does. Obal’s build is just what fits best with the meta now since everyone still wants a guard to support while still giving out good dps.

First of all, why on earth would I sit through half an hour of him running around Orr timing himself killing things? Why? Don’t criticize people for “not watching the whole video” when half of the video is less interesting than watching ink dry.

Second, even from a “pure DPS” standpoint Nemesis makes mistakes. Picking Valorous Defense instead of Inspired Virtue when he has Renewed Justice is a mistake. Using a Scepter in dungeons is a mistake, save for certain bosses. Using a Torch in dungeons is a mistake. Using Cleansing Flame especially is a mistake. Make all the excuses for him you want; His build has real problems.

And that’s suppose to be an actual constructive criticism in what way? Timing does matter in dungeons and pve. I’m not sure about the exact math but the scepter skills timing compared the greatsword timing is crucial. Everyone knows the more damage you do per second the faster you can down the boss. And that doesn’t just include how much you can do in one hit. I’ve seen too many zerker warriors not being able to dodge and completely fail a dungeon run. That’s why dps uptime matters and that’s why Nemesis showed the timing of the damage in those tests. Since the scepter is able to stay ranged at 1200 distance then its a better chance at more dps uptime. That should of been no argument there.

I’m having a hard time parsing how anything you just said relates in any way to anything I said. I did not say DPS didn’t matter. I did not say timing didn’t matter. What I did say is that I don’t think I need to watch half an hour of PvE DPS tests in order to have an informed opinion of the build.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

fadeaway.2807:

Hi Guang, the difference between your base dps numbers and mine could be due to the cast times we allocated to specific skills?

For example – for hammer I used the three hammer swings as being 296, 333 and 370, followed by 5 ticks of 185 for a grand total of 1924 over 3.7 seconds, or 520dps. 505 might imply that you used 3.8 as the cast time?
For greatsword I used 296, 296, 443 for the auto attack (1035) over 2.5 seconds for the base dps of 414. I used 1428 as the base WW damage assuming all projectiles hit, and 1016 as the base damage of the symbol.
I then used a WW, symbol, 9 seconds of auto attack, WW, 10 seconds of auto attack and repeat 24 second rotation, as the cooldowns for skills begin when you’ve finished the skill. I assumed 2 sec cast time per WW and 1 sec for symbol.
This meant 1428, 1016, 3726, 1428, 4140 for a total of 11738 over 24 seconds, or 489.

I’m guessing you used slightly more favorable cast times for the greatsword skills?

Oh lol I see what happened, Anet stealth buffed the hammer symbol to be +2 ticks with WoP. That is extremely silly.

I wouldn’t call it stealth, it was in the patchnotes.

chaplain.9261:

I love how when some people say this is a horrible build they look like they clearly haven’t watched the whole video.

And even inforemd criticisms, Nemesis already mentioned about swapping out the signets for the support utility skills that so many people are used to. And if you don’t like this build, fine. It was already mentioned this is a completely new build and some people are not going to receive it well since everyone is pretty much expecting a guard to support. Yes, Obal’s build has good support along with some very good dps. And if you weren’t paying attention, Nemesis is going more for what a pure dps would look like on a guard. And that is exactly what the build does. Obal’s build is just what fits best with the meta now since everyone still wants a guard to support while still giving out good dps.

First of all, why on earth would I sit through half an hour of him running around Orr timing himself killing things? Why? Don’t criticize people for “not watching the whole video” when half of the video is less interesting than watching ink dry.

Second, even from a “pure DPS” standpoint Nemesis makes mistakes. Picking Valorous Defense instead of Inspired Virtue when he has Renewed Justice is a mistake. Using a Scepter in dungeons is a mistake, save for certain bosses. Using a Torch in dungeons is a mistake. Using Cleansing Flame especially is a mistake. Make all the excuses for him you want; His build has real problems.

From a purely objective standpoint the build is awful. Anyone willing to pick up freaking Valor 5 instead of Virtues 5 when they have Radiance 15 needs to get their priorities straight. It has zero party utility, awful handicaps (oh my god he uses Torch 5 in the video) in the form of poor skill and weapon selection, and no synergy either between the traits chosen, the traits and utilities, or any other kind of synergy for that matter.

I mean, good try for doing something different I guess. But just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s good. There are no bonus points for originality.

It’s a bad build. It’s so bad I’d think it was a comedy build if he weren’t so serious about it.

Four Druids and a Smiter walk into a bar…