Guild Wars 2

Slot both, why pick only one? There is room for both in many situations.

This way already discussed in another topic — why did you create a new one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/My-Guardian-vs-Mesmer

Seriously the search feature works pretty well.

The next skill on the ruin list will probably be shatters. It’s our dominant build at the moment (some folks say our only viable build). Ruin that and there’s not much left to target except little things like Time Warp.

Other games allow crafting of top tier gear by making the recipes a vertical progression item (i.e. you have to get the drop, you cannot buy the recipe from a trainer).

This is a simple way to include crafting in the vertical progression without eliminating the vertical progress.

If this was the only way of obtaining the ascended gear, imagine all the “I don’t want to craft” whiners we’d have (probably all the players currently defending vertical progression by fractal grind).

I’m pretty sure having a dedicated heal skill does not makes a class “hybrid”. I see plenty of glass-cannons in PvE and WvW — sry but those are DPS and not hybrid.

I would consider hybrid a “balanced” build with decent vit, toughness, health, power, etc. Not some toon running at 15k health with 60% crit and 2300 power.

People are providing feedback on the game they bought.

If a Player doesn’t care about the game at all, they are certainly not going to waste time posting on the forums (positive or negative).

I think it’s fair to say most players posting on the forums care about the game. Many posts start out constructive and devolve for various reasons. Also seeing the same problems go unaddressed for months generates negativity from despair.

I see many constructive topics in the forum regarding improving the game in areas some Players don’t currently enjoy. I see these constructive topics derailed by “L2P”, “entitlement”, “go play something else” responses…. just garbage.

This door swings both ways, and it includes participating in constructive criticism discussions rather than belittling anyone with an opinion on how the game could be improved.

WvW/PvP and Fractals. Occasionally working on explorer. They game has gotten very slow for me. I’m dead-tired of fractals (I try to avoid it but all my buds still want to go).

I miss healing role too. My support role in GW2 is important, but not as important as a monk in GW1. I get satisfaction from helping my teammates as opposed to DPSing everything.

I get some of that kick from shouts on my guardian, but my team would get by without me (the effect of not having a trinity is anyone can fill the team).

Very little in this game requires me to issue a well-timed “Stand Your Ground”, “Save Yourselves”, etc. Actually nothing that I can think of.

It’s a double-edged sword. Right now a team can be completely homogeneous and still succeed.

I use mass invis almost exclusively in wvw. Time warp is good, but i like the utility of mass invis.

Stevefin.7251:

Peter.8659:

We’ve become such an ADD culture that people can’t stand to play a profession simply because it travels slower than others…

Agreed.and its only 3 classes that have a perma 25% speed signet, not everyone and their mother

Actually it’s four (necro, ranger, thief, ele). Warrior has traits which boost movement speed. Engineer has perma-swiftess trait for 10-pts in the class trait-line. That leaves guardian and mesmer.

Nothing to do with ADD, it’s a “quality of life” feature.

You experience this the most in WvW roaming zergs. If you don’t WvW, then hey you probably don’t belong in this conversation — because you’re already happy with the status-quo.

I’m a huuuuge GW1 fan and as such my expectations for GW2 were unrealistically high. GW2 is a good game but violates some aspects of the Manifesto that I held as divine. So now GW2 is more of a new MMO, like other new MMOs, rather than the ground breaking guild-wars sequel that I expected it to be. It’s still good, it’s just not what I expected/hoped it to be. I’m still playing it and that’s a testiment to the game (as well as the quality of its competition).

More of my opinions:

ANet has some great ideas, but they seem to be lacking in execution — there have been some class-A bungles in dealing with the Player base. This should improve with time. I think they were lacking experience in this department and that experience wasn’t required in GW1 or vacated before GW2 was released.

It’s also concerning that many bugs are still unaddressed. In software development, this is a red-light. It could indicate that the software is overly complex, has little process controls, the team has a talent vacuum (i.e. talent left), or some combination thereof. If you couple this with “defect injection rate” (defects introduced while fixing other defects), it’s very concerning. However the ship is still floating so here’s to hoping for the best!

agreed — probably something like a 20% chance as aoe support targets up to 5 players (although one is most likely to be yourself).

KirinDave.6451:

You can bring a ton of utility to a zerg.

Unfortunately “utility” doesn’t win you badges — tagging with lots of DPS does. That’s the life in a zerg.

In a siege we’re good for:

1. feedback someone on the walls
2. pull someone from the walls (never gets old, although it’s harder to do now that most players prepare for it — still a noob killer tho).
3. defending the flanks
4. looking for stragglers running for the keep to get inside

We really can’t hit anyone standing on top of the walls, but a few of the other classes have the same problem.

If portal is dictating ANet’s approach to balancing mesmers, then remove it. It’s not fair to our class to be balanced around a single skill.

I don’t know this to be true, but what other reason to not give us 25% passive. We are a mobile class after all. Wierd to have a class uber mobile in combat, but then gimp them when simply walking across the terrain.

If the issue is portal (i.e. keep the mesmer slow so they can’t get portals up faster for the group), then remove portal. It generates a lot of complaints anway.

Turn portal into a mass “blink” like Spear #4 skill (line on the ground that propels you forward when crossed).

Then give us a 25% passive like everyone else.

I enjoy roaming in a team of 3 the best. We’re quick, mobile, and have a decent output for events, karma, etc. However we have to be cautious of an enemy zerg because it’s instant death depending upon the situation.

That being said, I was in a zerg the other night and we hit 30 events in a little under 2 hours. Did wonders to complete the achievement this month.

Feedback is awesome if you can drop it on a target in a bottleneck (like a tunnel or gate in WvW). It’s instant satsifaction because it blocks all those projectiles from the other side of the choke point.

Dueling line — it increases armor while “charging” mantras. That’s not the same as channeling any skill.

I don’t know anyone that takes it tbh.

Power and toughness are identical between soldiers and knights gear. You are trading precision for vitality. Guards need some vitality (but arguably not as much as other professions need). If running AH you could get away with a bit less vit than not running AH.

So the only damage increase from knights over soldiers is going to come from the precision stat on the gear alone (again because toughness is the same which takes the 5% tough to prec trait out of the picture).

If your crit is already at 40% without knights armor, then will moving to knights armor to get 50% be worth it over the increased vit? Depends on how you want to roll. For me, the soldiers armor is my only source of vit on my gear so I roll that way (and my crit is already at 40% which seems sufficient to maintain vigor and might).

The “remove condition on shout” effect for six soldier runes is equivalent to one of the Guardian’s “Grand Master” traits. You can get it for free using the runes, so that’s pretty significant.

Alarox.4590:

You’ll have low damage with that kind of build since you won’t crit much.

Using soldiers armor doesn’t preclude crits and damage ouput.

I run soldiers armor (slotted with ruby orbs), knight’s jewelry, and knights weapons. Combine that with a 0/15/30/20/5 build and crit rate is near 40%. Given the AoE nature of GS/Hammer/Staff autoattacks, that’s a lot of crits (especially for the staff — funny I know). In addition, power with that build is about 1600. It’s not as awesome as 2000 which other gear provides, but it would not be considered “low”.

The crit is important as it fuels vigor and might which are staples for an AH build. With this gear/build I always have vigor so my crit rate is definitely not “low”.

One viable alternative is a 0/0/25/25/20 build with staff and +condition gear. It’s very tanky and a lot of fun if you like to outlast opponents. I used that build (or something like it) as I leveled. I dropped the build after diving into WvW at level 80. It’s too slow in a zerg resulting in fewer tags (and therefore fewer badges). It’s also more difficult to tag foes in DEs.

I enjoy the burst of a 20/30/0/0/20 GS shatter build with Deceptive Evasion more. Less tanky, but more DPS. When fighting at range you take less damage anyway. In solo WvW you have clones to take hits for you. Add in Blink and Decoy and 1v1 foes are easily befuddled. Mass invis is also good for survivability and additional befuddlement.

SneakyErvin.3056:

It’s not hard to get ascended gear, it doesnt even take much time to get it. 7-8 hours for a ring after lvl 10. Getting nice gold in the proccess. 45 mins of your gametime per day. Thats not asking much from the players.

I currently do dailies with 4 toons, they all have 15 AR besides my mesmer who sits at 10 since hes missing his cloak. I have around 10 leftover rings in bank (hope they add so you can toss 4 in the MF for a random new one). Saving up for my next toon now while getting relics for my mesmers cloak.

This is a “point of view” opinion. Consider that you had to get to rank 10 fractals before the gear drops. I’ve had a single ring drop after reaching rank 10 fractals. I’m now at rank 14 fractals still with that one ring (and this includes grinding rank 10 for a couple weeks — all pre-token patch). Now you can get a ring with 10 tokens — but you must run an “even” fractal rank so you cannot progress rank unless you do two fractal runs a day (even followed by odd).

So yep it’s definitely possible, but “easy” is relative.

In January we should have an “unlock” of fractal ranks based upon the highest achiever in the team — but if you read the “fine print” you’ll see that the reward is based upon your base fractal level. So if I have a toon at fractal level 5 and I go on a level 10 run, I’ll get loot based upon level 5 (so no chance for a ring drop). It’s a wierd limitation — do the same work, get a lesser reward (although you can argue that at rank 5 you did less work to begin with because you didn’t “grind” your way to rank 10). Still a punishment for players with alts who know how to play fractals but have to deal with an antiquated gating system.

This achievement is a bit of a joke because it’s “discover 30” instead of something more meaningful like “complete 10”. In addition the 30 are not “unique” so there’s little motiviation to go and see the 40 puzzles currently in the game.

You can complete this monthly requirement in a couple hours without leaving Lion’s Arch. There are two puzzles you get credit for in LA simply by running to where they start (you don’t have to do them). That’s 2 points right there. You get those 2 points every time you switch overflows (as easy as logging out and back in when not in a party). Thanks to fractals there’s ALWAYS an overflow in LA (ironic). You can also repeat this exercise with alts since any toon can get to LA. Boom, within a couple hours you have all 30 points.

Is this an exploit? I don’t think so. ANet must have considered this when they made the achievement “discover” instead of “complete”. They also put in a rather large total of “30”. I tried to finish this achievement by actually completing unique jumping puzzles in the world. I finished all the puzzles in ascalon and it took a full Saturday of gaming. That’s a whopping 9 puzzles at the exclusion of all other content. Yeah this is a monthly achievement, but what other monthly achievement (in the history of monthly achievements) took more than a day of playing to complete???? The only one I can think of is “complete 5 dungeons” about 3 months ago.

The point is the ascended gear is statistically better (it doesn’t matter how much better “best” really is). Players strive for the best items in the game. Keep in mind the stat increases become significant when applied to a full set of gear (6 armor slots, 5 jewelry slots, weapon slots, backpack, breather). Yeah I know that there are only rings/packs right now, but ascended will be rolled out to all slots.

Saying the stat increases are “meaningless” or “trivial” is missing the point entirely.

Boa is justified in his opinions that crafting is demeaned when he cannot craft the best gear (stat wise) in the game.

Not sure what the solution is here (maybe recipe drops so players can craft ascended gear — such gear could be bound when acquired which keeps it off of the TP).

Rangers are one of the easiest professions to win against in WvW, 1v1. They can’t spike you, they can’t escape, they can’t take a beating.

I recommend d/p #3.

pretty much every guardian build benefits from soldiers gear… there’s a reason it’s a stat combo you can’t craft (although I think it’s a stupid reason). It’s the most valuable stat combination and ANet has restricted it to some degree.

Every class should get a +25% passive utility skill of some sort. The skill forces a decision to be made for mobility vs. utility. Not having the option on every class is weak. It’s not a combat mechanic (although movement out of combat between strategic points is battle-effecting).

It doesn’t make much sense to give the passive to 5 of 8 professions, but not the remaining 3. You’ll have a hard time arguing that that 3 professions left out are “buffed” in some other fashion that makes them too powerful otherwise.

@Lysico: we only have swiftness so that’s the only comparison we can make for +movement speed. When not in combat swiftness is comparable to passive movement buff because they are so close in magnitude (25% vs 33%). The guardian is in a similar boat (only swiftness) and my post was in response to previous posts about mesmer being 2nd to last (with guardian in last). My point was “no mesmer’s are really in last”.

Nobody is going to go back to Orr as long as fractals exists as the exclusive content for ascended gear and best-in-game drops — fact.

Firegoth.6427:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Fixing guardian shouts? Please tell me you’re fixing that. I wanna know when I have the buffs y’know

Please tell me which Guardian shout needs a buff and why.

They don’t need a buff, but they need some bugs fixed. Some of the most noticable:

- some shouts aren’t removing conditions when traited to do so
- other players cannot hear the shouts, making skillful player response very difficult (example dodging out of a knockdown after guardian shouts SYG because you didn’t see the stability icon on your buff bar the split second before hand).

I disagree on the Guardian — I think they are second best. Staff 2 provides 8s swiftness on 15s c/d (untraited). That’s 53% uptime right there BUT every guardian that’s any good has points in Virtues. Assuming a minimum of 5 pts, that ups the swiftness to 9s (it seems to roll up to next highest integer in my experience), so now were at 60%. Lastly if you use 20% c/d on 2H weps (which is a great trait tbh), the recharge is now 12s making the uptime 75%. This doesn’t even include the use of “Retreat!”.

Now look at the mesmer — 12s of swiftness on a 25s c/d with an uptime of 48% (untraited). We can reduce the c/d if we take the focus skill trait but that’s a Master trait in the vitality line and it’s good only for focus (and nothing else). So using a crappy focus trait makes it 12s of swiftness on a 20s c/d for an uptime of 60%. To get boon duration we have to spend toughness trait points which is not a “must have” like the Guardian Virtues trait line.

Consider that the guardian staff has a lot of other good uses compared to the mesmer focus, and I’d say the Guardian is better than us for swiftness.

So a final comparison

Untraited: Guardian 53%, Mesmer 48%
Weapon Trait: Guardian 66%, Mesmer 60%
5pts in +boon: Guardian 75%, Mesmer 65%

Guardian ftw.

I also use 0/15/30/20/5 — it can be configured for AH with Hammer/Staff, or changed up to Meditations with GS/Staff.

For PvE I use AH, for WvW I use meditations. Same armor and runes for both. I like to roam solo or in pairs in WvW so AH doesn’t shine as well (due to fewer peeps to receive my awesome shout/symbol/crit boons).

A tanky guardian lasts a long time against a shatter mesmer (I play both professions).

Your keys to victory are AoE to wreck the clones/phantasms, gap closers, immobilize. Burning also helps as a mesmer typically has only one condition removal on long c/d (either Null field, iDisenchanter, or mantra).

You’ll also need a melee weapon as nothing ranged is going to cut it for a guardian.

Not sure if CTRL-T still works, but you may want to try it as it singles out the mesmer from the clones. There are other tricks for clone identification as well such as attack rate, movement behaviors, and off-hand weapon for 1H wep mesmers.

/end sarcasm

We are pretty limited…

Don’t run with Thieves, Necros, Elementalists, nor Rangers because they have +25% passives.
Don’t run with Warriors that have +movement with melee weapon trait.
Don’t run with Engineers that have perma-swiftess with kit activation (trait).

Do run with other professions that give group swiftness boons — like a Guardian that throws down symbol of swiftess from their staff or uses “Retreat!”, or maybe an ele with air staff 4. The other professions are not likely to bring group swiftness now that they have a passive which is almost as good (and opens up a utility slot for something other than swiftess).

I’m pretty sure zones are already desolate with the waypoint fees. I don’t like the waypoint fees. There are plenty of other sinks in the game, the biggest being the TP.

This is also a departure from GW1 which had zero penalties for movement.

This is really an area that encourages game play by removing any inhibition to joining players in other zones. It’s one of the few sinks in the game that encourages a Player NOT to play by taxing the simple method of moving around the map.

Granted movement is done better in GW2 than other MMOs by far… but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

I’ll be the first to admit this specific thief was skilled — also I’m not the world’s greatest PvP player (not by a long stretch).

However I was using a hammer and essentially the fight boiled down to:

1. Thief hits me at range with pistol, I start to bleed
2. I close with thief and maybe get a hit or two in (even fire with justice)
3. Thief stealths
4. Repeat at step 1 about 5 seconds later

I believe my AH build with Hammer and shouts was not the best for a pistol thief (prolly P/D thief). However the number of stealth cycles in there was a bit high imo.

I was definitely outplayed, but not all fights are equal as ANet has stated they don’t balance for 1v1. This was a bad match for my guardian build.

I have a guardian and I thought the armor was pretty much worthless. Stacking toughness however does improve survivability.

I had the opposite thought when I started which was “what good is having heavy armor?” Seriously it’s like tissue paper.

Thief took out 3 guardians in WvW last night — I found two dead in the road by the time I arrived. Fought the thief for 45-60s before I finally died from bleed stacks. During that time he stealthed about 5 seperate times (I would really like to say more than five but I honestly lost track). I found the stealth the most frustrating. I understand it’s a “mechanic” of the thief, but the frequency of application seems too high.

My favorite… stomping from stealth — yep that’s just salt in the wounds baby.

A thief single handedly took out 3 guardians last night in WvW. I found two lying in the road when the thief presented himself.

I run with hammer/staff and I couldn’t do much to save myself. The fight was long by thief standards (45 sec or so), but the problem was the perpetual stealth. I’d lock him down with hammer 3, ring of warding, whatever and he’d stealth before I could do much damage. Then he’d reappear a few seconds later in a different spot and repeat.

I’m not sure why the class is designed to stealth so much. He did this vanishing act about five times before I finally succumbed to the bleed stacks.

In WvW/PvP there isn’t really a skill that will keep you from getting finished if you’d get finished anyway without said skill. In other words, in most situations it just delays the enevitable.

However in PvE the skill is fairly useless. As already mentioned it moves you into AoE as much as it moves you out of it. The clone that’s summoned isn’t much of a distraction.

Question answered… although the post from ANet didn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’ll try and verify in hot-join PvP (although I don’t see too many mesmers with the star because of the bug keeping players from finishing exploration).

At least a “nerf” won’t be required if they give us stats. That’s because the PvP community already gets the stats. If a nerf does roll in with the stats in PvE then something is horribly wrong on the development side of things.

Embolism.8106:

They did confirm it.

Do you have a reference? That would put the matter to rest. Sorry if you’re offended — I’m not willing to go on just your word.

I’m really confused with the latest update that gives weapon sigil effects to kits. Personally I didn’t care for the sigils, but I do want the stats. That’s how PvP works, you get the stats because the stats are on the jewelry, not the gear.

So getting sigils and the kit DPS nerf due to getting sigils is disappointing.

I would have much rather had the stats.

This is just my opinion, how does everyone else in the engineer community feel about it?

I thought my mesmer was hard from levels 5 to 35, but I think Engineer may have it topped. I started leveling an engineer alt and it’s painful so far to level 20. We’ll see if it picks up like mesmer did.

sinican.9250:

juno.1840:

sinican.9250:

He ya no… at 220 + per tic of bleed per second, 1k burning per second, and 500ish poison damage per sec while still having 2500+ power… (screw crit @ 4%)… People dies real fast…. at 5 bleeds im doing 1k per sec.. 10 2k per sec… it’s death coming… fast.

It takes a while to build up to that level of condition DPS. Conversely a shatter/GS mesmer will unload a lot of damage pretty quick (GS4, GS2, dodge, F1).

Also don’t underestimate crits. You get 50% more dmg without trying on a crit. Most people run with +60% so now you are at +110% dmg on crit. If you combine that with a 45% crit rate the result is a 49.5% overall DPS boost. That’s significant. (Reference http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit if you are confused by the math)

Once you hit a certain power, you’ll get more bang by adding crit chance over more power.

From that wikki… what you are forgetting is “Condition damage such as bleed and poison cannot inflict critical hits.” In other words crit is useless for a condition build because the majority of the damage is not direct damage and it also is unmitigated by armor/toughness.

Additionally getting a single stack of burning/poison and 5-10 bleeds + 3 confusions takes very very little setup… That’s why I didn’t talk about 25 stacks or bleeding or 6+ confusion because those are possible but unreliable and usually do take time to build.

No I was referring to your comment that as a condi-build you are doing more damage than a GS Power build. My example shows how crit on a GS/shatter build is quite powerful compared to conditions and that your conditions take some time to establish.

The crit calcs are for direct dmg.

sinican.9250:

He ya no… at 220 + per tic of bleed per second, 1k burning per second, and 500ish poison damage per sec while still having 2500+ power… (screw crit @ 4%)… People dies real fast…. at 5 bleeds im doing 1k per sec.. 10 2k per sec… it’s death coming… fast.

It takes a while to build up to that level of condition DPS. Conversely a shatter/GS mesmer will unload a lot of damage pretty quick (GS4, GS2, dodge, F1).

Also don’t underestimate crits. You get 50% more dmg without trying on a crit. Most people run with +60% so now you are at +110% dmg on crit. If you combine that with a 45% crit rate the result is a 49.5% overall DPS boost. That’s significant. (Reference http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit if you are confused by the math)

Once you hit a certain power, you’ll get more bang by adding crit chance over more power.

I would wager as follows:

- Condition Mesmer, Guardian Wins
- Shatter/Power Mesmer, Mesmer Wins

NULL field hurts the guardian in either build.