Guild Wars 2

I couldn’t care less about what builds people want to run. If you find it enjoyable, go for it. Just don’t go telling me or others how it’s the best build ever. Play how you want, but don’t advertise it as more than it is.

Depends on if you run RHS or not. Shout CD is kind of meh in teams, and unless you’re Dub, you probably have a mes to cover damage reflects.

Ethics.4519:

haviz.1340:

Romo.3709:

You can solo it as a shortbow thief. I do it all the time.

You can solo it as a naked greatsword warrior. At level 79. I do it all the time.

Link it!

Try it!

Stack tight in the wall, its pretty reliable. Try have the guard pop an aegis in transition. May as well fb though if you have the mes

Ethics.4519:

Anicetus.1253:

AC 1-3, (CM?), TA up/fw, SE 3, HotW 1-3, CoF 1-3, CoE 1-3, Arah 1-4.

You wouldn’t take a mesmer for any of Arah? What do you use on Lupi’s p2?

wall or dodge.

Mes is nice for casuals anyway, not really a (big) loss to take one.

Obtena.7952:

Rainshine.5493:

Let me be clearer. If you’re just posting a build you enjoy, rather than an extensively tested/optimized one, you shouldn’t put “guide” out front imo.

And that’s your personal preference, but doesn’t excuse anyone from making inappropriate posts. As a guide, it’s more than appropriate because it explains the aspects of the build. Are you suggesting that a 0/15/30/20/5 build isn’t tested and optimized? If that’s the case, you don’t have much history here. That was a very popular build being pushed near the beginning of the game.

Most of the posts are constructive and informative. You’re just derailing the topic with your nonsensical rants about how you think everything and anything should be used, and that there is no such thing as mathematical truths. Please stop trying to sabotage the OP’s thread, Obtena.

Winkin.1490:

hybrid.5027:

Israel.7056:

kfarb.6732:

you think the t1 roamers got there by being bads like magumma? get on their level

When I played with AoN they were very focused on optimizing comps and builds. I actually learned a lot of smart theory from them. If they’re bad then we’re all bad.

They’re kind of bad :\

Dungeon Master calling AoN bad. I can’t go on.

Also farmed your members on SoR/Mag BL Dungeon master indeed!

Israel.7056:

kfarb.6732:

you think the t1 roamers got there by being bads like magumma? get on their level

When I played with AoN they were very focused on optimizing comps and builds. I actually learned a lot of smart theory from them. If they’re bad then we’re all bad.

They’re kind of bad :\

3 minute grenth lfg

Try your best to keep 10 in virtues for MoC

Got like 5 infraction points at once, but it’s ok now. I’m just letting it ‘cooldown’, hoping they’ll abandon the flood control and signature removal

I don’t think that Knights armor is a huge dps loss (~20%?) relative to berserker, but maybe I read some inaccurate information. So if you’re not short on gold, you could buy some knights armor with scholar, and then go berserker trinkets and weapons.

If the DPS difference is a lot bigger, then maybe it’s less of a decent idea.

On second thought, scholar probably won’t be an amazing investment. Other than Ruby orbs, I’m not sure what alternative there is. Ranger I guess, but who knows when those will get fixed.

Israel.7056:

PvP: Focus squishy and/or easily disabled targets first, res teammates when downed, stomp enemies when downed, learn to read buff bar.

EDIT: Sounds simple and yet downed state management is one of the most crucial differences between what I consider to be good players/teams and bad players/teams.

Pretty much sums it. You can pull any format down to the base to make it sound braindead easy. It’s what happens when you start looking at what makes good and bad.

Player Character.9467:

Israel.7056:

Player Character.9467:

Except there is no difficult PvE…

That’s just your opinion. I have far less experience with PvE than I do with PvP so i often find myself clueless in dungeons and fractals.

LoS npcs into clump, spam high dps, dodge telegraphed instagib skills, stagger interrupt skills if necessary.

WvW: players clump, spam auto attack, play tag with blue dorrito.

Create a new thread

Player Character.9467:

hybrid.5027:

Player Character.9467:

Israel.7056:

dreztina.4820:

Lot of pve’ers think what they do is complex and skillful, too.

PVE can require skill if it’s difficult enough. It’s just a totally different skillset than the one PvPers develop.

Different toolsets for different obstacles.

Except there is no difficult PvE…

Go do lvl70+ fractals

Been there, done that. Not worth spending more time doing it as the rewards suck and it’s monotonous.

Takes more player ability to progress through those fractals than it does to blob around

Also, to the Mag group that got 2v6’d at Astralholme…. oh boy.

Player Character.9467:

Israel.7056:

dreztina.4820:

Lot of pve’ers think what they do is complex and skillful, too.

PVE can require skill if it’s difficult enough. It’s just a totally different skillset than the one PvPers develop.

Different toolsets for different obstacles.

Except there is no difficult PvE…

Go do lvl70+ fractals

Israel.7056:

dreztina.4820:

Lot of pve’ers think what they do is complex and skillful, too.

PVE can require skill if it’s difficult enough. It’s just a totally different skillset than the one PvPers develop.

Different toolsets for different obstacles.

Requires reactions, reading of tells, and knowledge of class mechanics. Pretty similar skill set to PvP. You actually learn more valuable tools by playing PvE than you do by running around in a blob.

lunyboy.8672:

hybrid.5027:

Romo.3709:

hybrid.5027:

Dredge fractal takes ~20 minutes at lvl48, which isn’t really that unreasonable

1st boss fight alone takes 15-20 minutes, so not sure what witchcraft you’re using…

Our wealth of game knowledge. Brazil has a 22 @ 48 recorded, but it was bombs + bad.

This is what people should be selling, not paths of Arah. I would pay 5 gold to learn techniques for dredge frac, and I am sure others would as well.

PvP’ers have known the secret since day 1!

I think Engineers thrive in fractals, personally. Though, I wouldn’t take one in place of a competent guardian, if the team didn’t already have one; but that’s just because Guardians are so powerful in Fractals also.

gear is the same, weapons are the same, seems same flavour to me!

Romo.3709:

hybrid.5027:

Dredge fractal takes ~20 minutes at lvl48, which isn’t really that unreasonable

1st boss fight alone takes 15-20 minutes, so not sure what witchcraft you’re using…

Our wealth of game knowledge. Brazil has a 22 @ 48 recorded, but it was bombs + bad.

Kilandros.2098:

My recommendation is you start running Fractals on your Warrior (like I’ve been doing) and we’ll talk.

I main a warrior, I hate playing guardian because it’s boring. I’m just not letting my personal preference skew the reality of classes. I can accept and acknowledge the merits of each class, and judge what they bring to the table in context of the rest of their kit, relative to other classes. I think guardians are extremely powerful for fractals, I just hate playing it, I would much rather play my warrior because it’s more fun (see: opinion/personal preference), and is also very powerful. I have friends who hate warrior and love guardian, so it’s not like guardian is just boring to play for everyone.

Kilandros.2098:

Warriors are superior at providing Support and DPS. Do you dispute that claim? Do you honestly believe Guardians may as easily achieve strong DPS/Support hybrid builds as Warriors can?

Guardians can deal equal or superior DPS to warriors with minimal effort. Guardians provide defensive support, warriors provide offensive support. Guardian rotation is 90% of the time spamming 1, warrior rotation has more involved than that. Sure, guardians are squishy, but their defensive utility more than compensates, and isn’t such a big deal after you practice for a while. I’ll put it in really simple terms for you.

Warrior buffs guardian, guardian buffs warrior. Team much buff, very damage, such defense, difficulty easy.

‘Princess Cookie’ – Death and Taxes [DnT]. Pm me and I’ll show you my lvl80 fractal.

Kilandros.2098:

Please find and quote where I say Guardians do “Bad” Dps. Please.

Kilandros.2098:

they excel at neither DPS nor support

I used hyperbole, but point stands. Guardians excel at both of these. Anyway, I’ll stop helping people who don’t understand guardians, to derail the thread. Good luck OP, hope the information was helpful.

Ethics.4519:

hybrid.5027:

Konu.1826:

hybrid.5027:

Dredge fractal takes ~20 minutes at lvl48, which isn’t really that unreasonable

Problem is the increase in time beyond lvl 48. As I said earlier it reaches the point where you do a set of 3 fractals in equal time as just doing dredge.

I know, I’ve done dredge at 79. I think you’re exaggerating a little bit though. Clown car (on a good run) took us 15-20 minutes, if we wiped a few times it would take up to 30. Rest of the fractal totals to about 10 minutes, so it’s not really too bad. 25-40 minutes isn’t too bad really.

My guess is you run with a pretty optimized group that’s all on VOIP. I know not everything in this game should be catered towards casuals, but I would guess that only 5-10% of lvl 48 dredge are done in 15 minutes or less.

If the round were fun and engaging, I would be fine with it taking 20/30 minutes. It’s the fact that it’s just mindless killing just to have things respawn.

I mean the clown car? What’s the point? If you don’t wipe after the first 2/3 waves, you’re not going to wipe in the next 15 unless you make a horrible mistake.

I don’t disagree, the clown car is some seriously tedious design. I just think people are exaggerating how bad it really is. I’m a pretty laid back person though, maybe it’s worse than I give credit

Kilandros.2098:

hybrid.5027:

Kilandros.2098:

hybrid.5027:

High reflect and prot uptime in higher fractals is just such a game changer. Warriors aren’t any good at providing those.

True. Warriors unfortunately are only good at stacking might, banners, sustain, and dps.

Oh right those are game changers too

It’s almost as if you can take a mix of professions, to fit the needs of the party.

Never mind, I forgot you have to pick one profession to fill all 5 spots. What was I thinking!

Truly ironic considering your reply to my post.

No, I just don’t have the patience to explain to someone why guardians are amazing at high level fractals, when you seem to have no idea about them. I played my guardian up to fractal lvl80, I’ve seen the difference guardians make, and so have my friends who have done it without a guardian or two.

Guardians maintain permanent protection, strong reflect up time and have good control, vuln and DPS (lol @ you saying guardians do bad DPS). They are a far superior choice than a Mesmer, unless you want to include the mimic gimic. Other classes do not have the same utility or reflect up time as guardians.

@OP, 10/25/0/5/25. This leaves you with 5 points to put where you please. Zeal for vuln on symbols (good for trash in combination with hammer, mainly dredge fractal), Radiance for RHS, good for scepter and sword (mostly for boss stomping), Honor for shout cooldowns, or Virtues for some reason that I’m sure you could justify. For this trait set you usually want to have x/focus + GS, swapping GS out for hammer or staff whenever you need the utility from those weapons.

Alternatively, there is 15/15/0/20/20. This is a very powerful guardian build, as long as your party remains melee and you don’t mind camping hammer (you should probably learn to like hammer). Hammer+Staff is the general weapon set you’ll want for this trait spread.

Obal from DnT has some very good, helpful guides related to guardian in high level fractals. I’d recommend checking out some of his stuff.

Kilandros.2098:

hybrid.5027:

High reflect and prot uptime in higher fractals is just such a game changer. Warriors aren’t any good at providing those.

True. Warriors unfortunately are only good at stacking might, banners, sustain, and dps.

Oh right those are game changers too

It’s almost as if you can take a mix of professions, to fit the needs of the party.

Never mind, I forgot you have to pick one profession to fill all 5 spots. What was I thinking!

High reflect and prot uptime in higher fractals is just such a game changer. Warriors aren’t any good at providing those.

Konu.1826:

hybrid.5027:

Dredge fractal takes ~20 minutes at lvl48, which isn’t really that unreasonable

Problem is the increase in time beyond lvl 48. As I said earlier it reaches the point where you do a set of 3 fractals in equal time as just doing dredge.

I know, I’ve done dredge at 79. I think you’re exaggerating a little bit though. Clown car (on a good run) took us 15-20 minutes, if we wiped a few times it would take up to 30. Rest of the fractal totals to about 10 minutes, so it’s not really too bad. 25-40 minutes isn’t too bad really.

Dredge fractal takes ~20 minutes at lvl48, which isn’t really that unreasonable

Captain Swag.5893:

hybrid.5027:

Captain Swag.5893:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

being in melee range of spider queen isn’t an exploit.

Keep telling yourself that. You’re forgetting to mention how it almost completely negates 90% of her damage.

They’ve fixed things like this before, for very obvious reasons.

It’s not the same thing. She doesn’t use skills because they have minimum ranges, which is intended game design. This remains true for every boss in the game. Skills have a minimum and a maximum range, this isn’t difficult to understand.

They fixed things which involved the bosses actually not being able to attack people, which is not the case for stacking for spider queen.

Either way, it’s an issue with more than the one boss.
For many, it simply takes the fun out of the dungeons.

Feel free to not stack, make your own groups stating so. It’s not an issue, it’s intentional game design.

‘Play how you want’, as they say.

Captain Swag.5893:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

being in melee range of spider queen isn’t an exploit.

Keep telling yourself that. You’re forgetting to mention how it almost completely negates 90% of her damage.

They’ve fixed things like this before, for very obvious reasons.

It’s not the same thing. She doesn’t use skills because they have minimum ranges, which is intended game design. This remains true for every boss in the game. Skills have a minimum and a maximum range, this isn’t difficult to understand.

They fixed things which involved the bosses actually not being able to attack people, which is not the case for stacking for spider queen.

I’ve been playing less as well, and that trend will probably continue.

Dub likes to maintain his party with a healthy mix of 90% warrior, 10% other

You also must have a twilight. Sunrise is an instant kick.

viciouspike.8624:

That doesn’t make sense wouldn’t you benefit from having sigil of night, force or something on your s/f since you can only get the 25 max stacks and then you could just swap the staff out after?

Get the stacks then take the weapons off….?

InfinitySoul.9240:

Quick question stacking sigil on staff yay or nay? If not then where.

Best on sword/focus, so you can have 2 stacking sigils. Staff works if you’re a casual

Flamethrower does really bad damage, I don’t know how anyone could even try to claim otherwise. It took me one lupicus kill to realize that.

voidwater.2064:

viciouspike.8624:

A good few people here are the chefs they make kitten good builds and you turn it down because you are stuck on the PB&J.

Sort of tangential, but I don’t think GW2 currently has enough build complexity such that anyone could be considered a build “chef”. For every class, only a handful of builds make any sense, and they’re fairly obvious IMO.

Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have an abundance of shout heal warriors.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Anicetus.1253:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

But for any other dungeon or a team with any additional projectile defense it’s just throwing away dps.

Well, that’s where EU and NA tactics (HC aside) usually differ. You have two guardians in your fotm team, we have none, you run mesmers + guardians in normal dungeons we use either guardian or rarely mesmer.

I heard cookie’s team was planning on doing the run over again without guardians, and rare mesmer says hi

Waiting for Brazil to craft his necro!

laharl.8435:

Ropechef.6192:

MIght be an interesting thing to see…

DnT, rT, HC, LOD, (and any I am forgetting)

Challenge. Kill time for Lupi with 25 stacks of empower.

Thinking something like staying out at range and letting the grubs get eaten. timer starts at 25 stacks and first charge in?

Given that I have seen you guys do the Ice Elemental in fracs in 5? min, this may not be to hard, but I still would love to see it.

Ice Elemental was 25 seconds.

he means without the superheated

Don’t forget that phantasmal haste doesn’t work with swordsman!

frifox.5283:

hybrid.5027:

Personally I think IC is kind of overrated >.>

IC + weapon specific CD reduction:
- iDuelist every 12s
- iSwordsman every 12s
- iWarden every 15s

This allows you to setup and maintain 3 phantasms with little effort. Combine that with PH and other phantasm buffing traits and you get yourself a mesmer that’s actually doing decent DPS compares to other classes.

I’m aware of what it allows you to do. But all it does is allows you to refresh more weak phantasms, versus having up stronger ones. You also have to sacrifice personal DPS to get it.

Personally I think IC is kind of overrated >.>

Your prices for things are a little off. I’ll have to figure out the ‘Dub’ formula for item costs, but that might take me a while.

I’m thinking something like x/y^pi*10.

Aza.2105:

Look at what has been done with AH, you and others here have created a whole stigma upon it, a self created definition that if you use it you are bad and if you don’t use it you are good.

No, the stigma is that AH is a crutch. It is an unnecessary trait that goes into a less than ideal trait line, and should only be taken if you need the help (see: crutch). You are not instantly good if you don’t take it, you are simply making smart build choices. If AH was an Adept trait, it wouldn’t get as much hate as it does. But the fact is, you have to invest 30 points into a line that you otherwise wouldn’t touch. That is a very big trait investment. Are you instantly bad if you need AH? No, not necessarily. But you are quite likely not very good if you have to swear by how ‘amazing’ it is. There is a difference between recognizing that you need help, and claiming that it is an optimal option.

The “min/max’ers” share their knowledge, which is almost always backed up with video/textual evidence, as well as supporting math. They show what is possible, and what you should look to do with your build if you are having trouble. Contrary to popular belief, if someone is actually asking for help, they won’t be told “Zerk or you’re bad and uninstall”. We almost always tell them the mathematical and anecdotal truths, that berserker is the best gear for PvE, and what we have found to be the best traits. We will explain why these traits are good, and why others are not as good. There will also be “If you are not comfortable running full zerker, try doing x, y, and z”. This is being helpful towards people who want help. Some people do not want help, and those are the people who get angry at ‘elitists’.

The hostility comes in when people such as Scion Storm come in with their “I have an amazing build!”, and it is anything but that. When they present these “amazing” builds, that do not make sense mathematically or practically. When we provide facts, supported by evidence, just to get a response such as “I dont care, you won’t change my opinion. My build is good, I have proved it is good”, that is when people will get frustrated. It’s like trying to tell someone that cutting a steak with a spoon is a bad idea, but they refuse to use a knife instead.

spoj.9672:

Im assuming some of that cost is from ascended weapons. If not then wtf dub!

Flood Control: Please wait 120 seconds between posts!

:<

It’s a ‘Dub’ number. You have to divide it by 100 then multiply by pi.

It takes so long for him to even get 25 stacks ._.

Anicetus.1253:

I ran p4 more than 1000 times and have yet to get one :/

I exaggerated more than 1000 times :d