Guild Wars 2

Rangers have 1 pet out at a time. We can have 4 turrets (with three being offensive). You cannot make a turret equivalent with a ranger pet.

In addition, as mentioned in a previous post, the Ranger DPS is not the same as other professions because it’s expected that the pet contribute to the total DPS of the Ranger.

You don’t want to invalidate Engineer builds that do not use turrets. Therefore you cannot make a turret something “awesome” because you’d be 4x awesome with max turret skills slotted.

Think of turrets as another utility skill (like an elixir or gadget). From that standpoint, you can feel better about the turrets not being “pets”, but some adjunct to your own weapon actions.

Speedy Kits is significantly better because:

1. It provides +33% instead of +25%
2. It works in combat (whereas the signet passive does not)
3. It does not consume a utility slot on a signet with a horrible active ability

It does come with the down-side of 10 points in the class trait line but that seems an acceptable trade off for the advantages listed above.

Combine it with the vitality trait for “Get vigor when you get swiftess” and now you have perma-vigor. Pretty awesome.

Engineers have very little to complain about here — we may have the best swiftness option of any profession.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Engi – Mostly neutral, but 40% burn uptime from just critting? Seems a bit much for a 10 pt trait. Engi already had lots of conditions. Now they have more burn. At least it may add a bit to variety for them.

The original trait could keep 100% up for high-hit-rate type of attacks like Flamethrower and traited nades. So it’s definitely a reduction in DPS for some builds. It’s a move towards a more consistent DPS improvement from the trait which would work for more builds instead of FT or grenades.

It’s rock-paper-scissors. If you run a bunker build, your weakness is conditions. Sounds like that’s the match-up for the OP.

The game is not balanced along 1v1, so don’t expect that you can beat EVERY possible class out there, no matter how skilled a player you are.

Short bow condition rangers are also the bane of other bunkers (like a Mesmer staff/condition bunker). However a glass cannon will mow down the same shortbow ranger (like a Mesmer GS Power build).

They were a “timed” skill with a limited duration. Because of the duration you had to think a little bit before using them.

ANet turned the weapons into pets without providing the other benefits of pets (like unlimited duration). They can be targeted and die like a pet, but they still evaporate after the skill duration expires (unlike minions and ranger pets).

I think the build is not viable. The revised skills work in situations where the weps aren’t insta-killed. In those situations you probably didn’t need the spirit weps anyway.

Indure.5410:

FACTS:

• 30 Valor gives you very little to no direct group support.
• 30 Honor gives you great group support.
• 30 Virtues gives you great group support.
• You cannot be 0/0/30/30/30, because that equals 90 points.
• You cannot go 30 deep in both great support lines and still pick up AH.
• You don’t need any survivability traits in order to be effective in a pure support role.
• You don’t need any damage traits in order to be effective in a pure support role.
• Since 30 Valor has almost no direct support traits and no support attributes, it has no reason to be mentioned in an argument about MAXIMIZING a support role.

---

Is AH a great build? Yes. Does AH give more survivability in group content than any other build? Yes. Is AH a better group build for most content? Maybe.

Is AH the best pure support build? No.

Well said.

Honestly this has been beaten to death many times. Each one of these Hammer vs. Greatsword threads devolves into ugliness.

@OP: Did you bother to search for Hammer vs. Greatsword using the search feature? Seriously you’d save everyone a pile of effort and have enough topics to keep you busy for 30 minutes or more (assuming you are truly interested enough to read them).

Danicco.3568:

But Altruistic Healing builds aren’t versatile.
Altruistic Healing is for defense/survivability, and it excels at that.

There’s nothing in Altruistic Healing provides for damage or support, direct or indirectly.

But that’s just 30 points of our 70.

We can say we get to pick 2 or 3 main roles from Damage (Zeal, Radiance), Support (Honor, Virtue, Zeal), Survivability (Valor, Honor) and other minor roles such as Control, Conditions & Utilities.

It’s a no brainer that a Support Build with little/no points in Radiance/Valor are better.
Same for a Damage build with little/no points in Virtue/Valor.

But for some reason, Guardians who don’t try to come up with their own builds and just follow some guide or someone else’s opinions get stuck in the “there’s no other way to play!” because they didn’t think up all their traits/gear from scratch.
GW2 does an excellent job in having various viable builds, better than any game I’ve played, and if they start thinking for themselves they’d notice there’s plenty of options and playstyles available to them.

As long as people don’t try to use the wrong build for the wrong job, they can’t go wrong.

AH “builds” can be very versatile — I don’t think that’s where you were going with the comment, but I’m not sure.

Like many others have said, AH is just one trait from the total build. Personally I run a 0/15/30/20/5 AH Build. I like the crits and all the procs from the crits. The vigor proc allows me to dodge more which provides group healing in addition to damage mitigation and granting me an AH reward. The might proc supports my team while also granting me an AH reward.

Want more support, slap on the staff. The staff AoE auto-attack is amazing with the crit procs. More might for my team and more AH rewards for me. Want less support, grab a GS. Want more control, yeah hammer.

Anyway, I don’t see how AH makes me less “versatile” as you put it. If anything I have a great range of flexibility. As was mentioned above, it’s a very useful build that can accomplish a lot. IMHO, more than any glass cannon build.

It’s true that AH does not directly effect your team mates. However, if you are playing a shouter (which is support), then AH benefits from it greatly. Everyone should be able to agree with that.

Having AH as a shouter may make your more survivable than other non-AH shout builds. That survivability is a form of support in that you soak up damage that may have hit a team mate instead. Keep in mind that AH comes with 300 extra toughness over a build not using any points in that trait line. You can even snag “Strength In Numbers” on your way to picking up AH.

Anyway saying that AH is the only support build is a joke. Likewise, saying AH is not a support build at all is equally stilly.

George Steel.1804:

Here I stopped being so lazy and I felt compelled to show what I meant by my last comment. (sorry if you have to sit through an ad)

Scepter sucks.
http://www.twitch.tv/georgesteel/b/389646266

Too funny…

T1 bounty would be your best hope — but you still need 5 or 6 to knock off each bounty boss. This assumes you get lucky enough to get easy bounties that you can find quickly in the world.

Similar to the guard topic — post your stats!

EDIT: Forgot the gears and build:

Armor: Soldiers with Ruby Orbs
Weps: Zerks with Sigil of Fire (GS) or Blood (S)
Jewels: Knights
Build: 20/20/0/0/30

Honestly I would love to see it as a 1200m white beam attack (similar to mesmer GS auto). Insta-hit like a laser, maybe a few ticks of damage over time as well. Would be cool in addition to fixing the useless projectiles.

Thanks Zach!

I see some of the difference now — you have 30 in honor whereas I’m at 20. So that’s the missing 100 from vit I was looking for. Also the ascended gears will help me a bit too.

Zach.9687:

This is a Soldier Rune build.

Armor is a mix of zerk/soldiers/knight, same for trinkets.

Build is 0/5/30/30/5

Stats without food are;
Crit Chance% -27
Crit Damage% -70
Crit chance % with food and sigil of perception is 54%.

Food is, Master Maintenance Oil and Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup.

Any Questions, feel free to pm in game.

I’d love to know how you hit 18k Health with 40%+ crit and 3000+ attack/defense.

I need to find a way to move 200 pts of toughness into vitality, but that still won’t get me to 18k Health (I’d need another 100 to do that).

I just avoid scepter — staff is much better imho. Yeah you can’t hit stuff at 1200m (but the scepter really doesn’t either).

I love the -20% c/d on all 2H weapon trait. I don’t think any other profession has that. It makes my hammer/staff/GS that much more awesome. Until the 1H weps can compete, there’s no reason for me to use them.

Here’s my build.

Armor: Soldiers with Ruby Orbs
Jewelry: Knights
Weps: Knights
Build: 0/15/30/20/5

NOTE: Picture shows stats with NO food buffs

I think most professions are pigeon-holed into just a few builds. Mesmer is pretty much shatter or condition-bunker for example. I only have a couple lvl 80s which are mesmer and guardian. I have the other professions at various levels between 20 and 50.

I personally don’t see a lot of variation myself.

This is too funny!

More skill should be rewarded as such. The “out” is that there are other avenues to achieve the same reward.

Think of a rope-and-pulley system:

• No pulleys you have to have more strength (skill) but you don’t have to pull as much rope.
• Lots of pulleys you don’t have to pull as hard, but you have to pull more rope before you’re finished.

So as long as all players have a “path” to the rewards it’s good. If it takes you 2x the time because you can’t run hard-mode, that’s irrelevant — you still get the reward with enough effort.

1UP

Very entertaining and clearly doesn’t hurt the game content if it remains. I predict it’ll be more popular than any other PvE content currently in-game (including fractals).

Some quick points:

- Three tourney wins are on the monthly, so you should expect everyone to enter tPvP at some point (and the “free” tourney is going to be the preference). If you don’t like this then lobby for a change to the monthly. Otherwise deal with it.

- The glory system rewards capture, not point defense. So don’t be surprised that a PuG tourney has this behavior — it’s a PuG without any special team-based coordination. All hot-join PvP players are conditioned to behave this way by the current glory system.

- On Sunday all I saw in the tournaments were bunker engineers, bunker mesmers, roaming thieves… with very little else sprinkled in. Yeah an occasional ranger and condition necro, but not that often. I wouldn’t classify this as “burst builds”. It seemed quite the opposite. I would have preferred a pile of burst builds instead.

I think PvP is definitely worth playing — more so than WvW imho. Smaller maps, smaller teams, instant fun.

However it should be painfully obvious that mesmer and thief are a cut above the others in PvP. If ANet published PvP demographics, I think you’d see a huge disparity for these two classes (clearly my opinion, but without data that’s all I have).

I play only mesmer in PvP. When I fight other mesmers and theives I’m on the edge of my seat working my fingers off. When I fight other classes it’s a walk in the park — I don’t think my pulse even rises. I feel strongly this is due to the class mechanics of clones and stealth. They are hard to play against — period. I mean does anyone sweat the warrior class mechanic? Oooooo burst skill — but no big deal as I can see it coming, I can easily dodge/block/stun-break/whatever. I can’t see a thief pistol unload from stealth until it hits me — period. This is a trivial example, but it illustrates the point.

Without reworking those class mechanics, providing adequate counters to other classes (maybe a “reveal” skill of some sort), or some other idea I haven’t though of, then this will remain the status quo.

vs. Mesmer, use Ctrl-T — that’s what I do (and I use mesmer almost exclusively in PvP). It doesn’t make it easy to fight a mesmer, but it makes it easier. No such help with Thief — you have to wait for stealth to break (or shoot into the dark).

The issue here isn’t balance… mesmer is well balanced against other classes. It’s the class-mechanic of clones. Same argument with thieves — thieves are not OP, but their class mechanic is very challenging to fight against.

These two class mechanics require skill to counter — more so than any other class in the game (go ahead and pick one — no other mechanics compare). In addition, using these two class mechanics is very easy — it doesn’t take a superb player to use clones/stealth adequately (I’m an example).

I see more mesmers and thieves in PvP than any other profession (especially in the free tourneys). That says something (I wish I knew what ).

I play a mesmer in sPvP (almost exclusively). Playing as a mesmer is very easy — it’s not hard (the skill floor is honestly pretty low). However the class mechanic (clones) is difficult for others to play against. Similarly with thieves: stealth is hard to play against.

So while I feel that mesmers and thieves are balanced (wrt DPS, survivability, etc), they are difficult to fight. Anybody who says otherwise is lying. No other professions are as challenging to fight due purely to class mechanic — pick one and try to argue your case (it’ll sound non-sensical in the end).

When I play a mesmer, I rarely lose 1v1 — seriously. I roll with two different builds (shatter and bunker). As a shatter my big problems are fighting any bunker or any thief. As a bunker my big problems are rangers and other bunker mesmers (sry thieves are easy as a bunker mesmer).

Anyway, while I think mesmers/thieves are balance, their class mechanic is inherently difficult to play against — more so than any other profession (hands down). My advice: use Ctrl-T against those memsers (it’s what I do).

I dove into PvP hard this weekend, going from R0 to R10 over the two days. I play a mesmer in PvE so I spent all my time in PvP on that toon. I really enjoyed the PvP because the battles are short (compared to pve activities) and it’s easy-in with hot-join. It makes PvP more casual friendly than much of PvE tbh. Anyway, onward to my observations. I’m wondering if other players feel the same way on this or not:

sPvP:
- Pretty much all professions in attendance. Thieves and mesmers seem to be a bigger slice of the population but I saw all professions really.
- Seems more DPS oriented, with few bunker builds

tPvP:
- Almost exclusively thieves, mesmers, engineers
- All mesmers and engineers are bunkers
- Thieves are all DPS (mostly P/D)

I started Saturday with a Sword/GS shatter mesmer. By the end of the day I had switched to a Staff/scepter bunker build. I felt bunker was necessary to counter all the other bunkers.

Dove into sPvP this weekend hard — achieved rank 10. I have to say this topic is still accurate (even though it’s 6-months old).

It’s a shame because there should be some incentive to guard a capture point, or occupy a zerg Many-vs-Me.

I don’t use clones — I just perma stealth and club you when you’re not looking.

This game doesn’t pay everyone the same. It pays people using a random number generator. You and your friends can all run Fractals 10 and only one person get an ascended ring (instead of everyone on the team, you all did the same amount of work after all).

You and I can each shove 40 greatswords into the mystic toilet, and one of us might get a legendary precursor. It’s not guaranteed, and the rewards for both us two would not be the same.

You and I can go farm loadstone drops and there’s no guarantee we’ll both get the same number of stones.

There is no “everyone paid the same”. I think you’re sour grapes about something — because if you thought about your post for more than 5 minutes you’d see how nonsensical it is.

I’d like to see the weapons hang around now — not die after they timeout. This would compensate for the fact they can take damage.

I agree they still need more health, the ability to receive boons, regen health outside of combat, and get stats from the guardian (similar to mesmer illusions which receive bonuses from the mesmer’s pwr,prc,vit,tough).

Agreed that Wrathful Spirits sux — why waste 30 pts for that trait?

Rather than make them invulnerable with a trait, I’d rather see Wrathful Spirits do something like:

Wrathful Spirits — Spirit weapons are persistent after summoning.

So if you summon a weapon it stays around forever until it dies (i.e. it becomes a pet like a necro’s minions). The skills can still have the cooldowns when the spirits die as that makes sense.

The weapons would need more health, or be able to regenerate health outside of combat. If they don’t regenerate, then they’d need the ability to receive boons from players (like necro pets).

Test using the training dummies in the mists. That should give you repeatable results worth comparing.

I never hit above 5k on my WW either, but my build is different (0,15,30,20,5) with soldiers and knights gear. My crit chance is 45% and my crit dmg is +45 (for a total of 195% dmg on crits). For MB I crit in the high 3k range.

Snoots.2970:

This may not me a mesmer nerf excatly but i was messing around in Ascalonian Catacombs and when the cave troll spawned i naturally automatically put Arcane thievery on my utility bar, because stealing the Trolls 25stacks of Regen just makes me giggle constantly.

However, after the patch Arcane thievery doesn’t steal the trolls regen anymore. (I don’t know if this is a change else where. or just a bug.. either way made me sad.)

Regen doesn’t have stacks, maybe this is a monster buff of some sort and not the true regen boon?

penatbater.4710:

Actually, Green = 1st, blue = 2nd, red = 3rd at the start of the match. So either you can try and help your team go to the next level (I’m assuming you’re in red or blue level) so you’ll be switched to a different map. For EB, that’s a diff case >.>

Hopefully, your server gets partnered with servers that are of the same level as you are, so you can get an even match. If all else fails, grab a team of 5, and ninja-flip the places you need.

haha, so that explains the “rotation”. I have to say it’s a bad system due to the map exploration goals in WvW. How do you “help” your server come in 3rd so you can be red next week?

It should be more of a true rotation — granted it can’t always be red-green-blue because you have three teams rotating through matchs, but it could be close.

Darx.9842:

@You people complaining about no Knight’s ascended or other combos.

Do you think investing all your gear into 3 stats is wise? It’s not. Try to think outside the box.

With the use of ascended gear you can balance out your build in areas where you could be lacking, or potentially strengthen your build.

For example. Someone using all Knight’s gear may want Knight’s ascended, BUT, using the ascended rings combo power/toughness/critdamage (Cavalier’s) you can substantially boost your critdamage without needing to resort to using berserkers or valkyrie gear. It’s a huge increase in damage (8% crit dmg per ring) and defense (103 toughness per ring), these blow Knight’s out of the water for a majority of builds. Most likely a person with Knight’s will be lacking crit damage, so these rings are incredible.

You guys just need to think outside the box.

You conveniently ignored the loss of precision in the cavalier’s gear which reduced DPS from the lowered crit chance.

Stats on gear is a balancing act. I have knight’s jewelry but I do not have knights armor nor weapons. The jewelry is a balace to my other gear. If I switch my jewelry to something other than knight’s, then I need to rebalance my other gear.

It’s not impossible, just expensive. I’ll wait until knight’s is available on ascended.

Your WvW home-map changes based upon the “color” of your team. You dont’ realize the home-map changes because it looks like everybody else’s home-map.

Essentially each time your team color changes, you’re on a new home-map and can explore some of the points “safely”.

If you are lucky your server will rotate through the red, blue, and green maps in the span of three weeks. You still need to visit all three maps each week, including the eternal battlegrounds.

Quise.5628:

Dusk No.1 – 12 December 2012 – I spent on him about 50 gold and on the second char still had about 40 rare greatsword. Profit: 550 gold

Ok so for this first precursor you fed only green GSs into the forge?

Quise.5628:

Dusk No.2 – 29 January 2013 – I spent on him 1560 Ascalonian Tear’s on exotic greatswords and that was all. Profit: 700 gold

Do you have the math correct on that?

A single AC GS is 390 tears — so you bought exactly 4.333 GSs? Assuming that’s 4 GSs in total, you got a precursor at one feed through the forge?

I want to love 1H sword as well, but it’s not worth it compared to GS attacks 1, 2, 3.

If sword 3 was an AoE (like mesmer sword 2) then I’d consider it. Right now there’s no AoE except for the auto attack (which you get on any melee auto attack). Don’t try and sell sword 2 “reflect” as an AoE — that’s not going to fly with anyone that’s used real AoE skills and has tried sword 2.

Alarox.4590:

With PVT you won’t hit hard. With 0/0/30/20/20 you won’t hit hard either unless you have a lot of precision. You’ll be a sponge though, but that’s it.

If you want a balanced build then go Pow/Pre/Tuf and 0/15/30/20/5.

Exactly how I’m running my guard — PVT armor, PPT jewelry, PPT weps, 0/15/30/20/5 trait build.

Torch 4 is excellent. The problem is the torch 5 phantasm is a kitten That’s the only skill keeping the torch from greatness.

Belenwyn.8674:

I do not understand why Arenanet is hesitating to introduce the recipes for jewelers to produce ascended items. It would solve so many problems. And we are waiting over two months now for it.

I think the answer from the developers would be: “because we want you to work a while to get the ascended gear and crafting is instant-satisfaction”.

Ascended gear was clearly created to provide a longer-term gear goal (but not as long term as legendary). It’s a mechanism to create a feeling of “something to do” for some players. In order not to look completely kitten-faced, the stats are weakly increased over exotics (think of the fallout if the ascended stats were significantly higher than exotic stats, and how do you rationalize that with the manifesto).

IMHO, the only way you’ll see “crafted” ascended gear is if one of the materials (or recipes) can only be attained through a gated mechanism like Laurels. This way you can let players craft gear, but they can’t immediately craft every piece they need because they need a gated currency to achieve it. Of course if you stockpile the currency then it’s kinda moot, but they might introduce a new currency…

Heals are a problem for some professions. Take mesmer where the only group heal we have is if you trait 30pts for restorative mantras.

I don’t think my mesmer has healed anyone but himself… ever.

Delofakitten.4231:

Clones generating confusion could very well be in the mix. . . of a great Grandmaster Trait in Dueling to replace Mantra buff when they move that into a lower tier!

Well it sounded good to me!

Edit: Actually putting such a trait in the Inspiration line based off of Phantasms actually sounds nice, Phantasms have 50% chance to apply Confusion on hits. (duration >= 5 seconds if affected by condition duration, 7 seconds if not)

Probably OP given how powerful the trident clones were with confusion. I doubt we’ll ever see this mechanic again (confusion on clone autoattack). However putting a percentage on the trait may make it possible — although 50% in your example is a little high. I guess they could jack around the duration as well to make it anywhere from worthless to OP.

Snoxx.7943:

Before or after patch, why would a non-condition build ever use Trident, except maybe to produce a clone + phantasm as pure shatter fodder.

Quite a few reasons:

1. It’s the only ranged option for when you need range
2. It creates boons as well as conditions
3. It still does direct damage so it benefits from power
4. Confusion is a shutdown mechanic in PvP and the trident was superb at it

The trident in PvP/WvW was much better off with confusion instead of bleeds. You’re now limited to whaler and shatters for confusion with this weapon. Not as reliable as before (but on par with our other weapons).

Passing on all ascended jewelry for now. None of the stat distributions fit my gear build. If I switch from my Knights jewelry to ascended (probably soldiers) I’ll have to swap out my soldier’s armor for knights. Not going to happen right now for a few additional stat points.

I’m pretty sure he’s more than a “wee bit too nasty”. It’s a very different experience than from before the Jan 28 update.

Last night every temple was open on Yak’s except Grenth. Every attempt I participated in was epic fail (lol yeah maybe because I was there).

YES change it so I can grind out new gear (and skip working on ascended from fractals until a later date!).

Although honestly the ascended gear is underwhelming with the horrible stat combinations. If you want something other than zerks or soldiers, too bad.

In PvE the bleeds are more powerful — except in a large group where the fights already generate 25 bleed stacks. Nobody else generates confusion under water except the memser (and then mostly with the trident).

In WvW confusion is 2x as powerful (compared to PvP), so you can’t use WvW as a basis to balance any skill that creates confusion. Otherwise every confusion skill would get nerfed.

In PvP, I could hold an underwater point against multiple opponents by myself simply with the trident and clones. In that regard it was too powerful. It was so powerful that I would never shatter my clones because that would remove a lot of my confusion generation.

In PvP the confusion on the trident auto-attack was amazing (probably why it was changed). Bleed doesn’t compare to the damage that was dumped out by the confusion stacks created by the auto attack + clone attack.

For those hoping that scepter #1 will get confustion — the trident change is a clue that the scepter will not change that way.

Clones generating confusion is not going to be in the mix.

The trident change is definitely a nerf. It was very powerful so maybe it was deserved.

Bleed as a condition on the trident is a sorry exchange. If you are in a group, bleeds are normally at 25 stacks anyway.

Overall it isn’t horrible, but it’s definitely a nerf if you PvP or WvW.