Guild Wars 2

Ikaros.7812:

Are you an ambient creature by any chance?

I expect you to reimburse me for my keyboard; it has coffee all over it now.

Seriously though, as a PU power mesmer, rangers are some of my easiest prey. There are always exceptions, but considering how easy most of them are to kill, I’d just quietly ignore the ones that one-shot you and not make too much of a fuss about balance.

We built 58 golems the other day. It was great fun. But then we hit the cap… I think they should raise the siege cap. We had prints for a 100.

Are you sure you have enough boons? There’s still some screen estate left.

Every single day. But not in EB.

Perhaps Vabbi. Plenty of room to roam and not a soul to hassle you.

Not fixing it until halfway the next match means that match will be a complete wash as well.

Yeah we just tested it. Just melts the gate. Ten people in half a minute just dps’d it. We actually learned it from Abaddon’s Mouth, who forgot to report it.

Do you have any tips on doing dungeons (AC, CoF, HotW…) on a Mesmer? I’ve only just started my Mesmer in December, before that I played only a Guardian for a year. So, since a Guardian is rather useful in dungeons, I’m always running it there, but it does get a little boring. So I’d like to take my Mesmer there instead, but I’m hesitant. One thing I have noticed about my clones is that they’re always running off aggroing random mobs in the open world. Therefore, if there are any crucial tips that you could give me, like “take off DE” or “don’t use this/always use that”, I’d be most grateful. Some jobs seem less favoured in dungeons, like Rangers or Necros – are we among those?

Pyroatheist.9031:

msalakka.4653:

Is there any way to be able to see and listen to all of the episodes using Downcast? I use it for other podcasts that I love, to keep track of new episodes and listen to old ones. Unfortunately I can only see nine episodes of SOAC on it…

Which 9 do you see?

Hey, thanks for replying. I see the following:

Arrow to the knee – ep 11
Mesmer awards – ep 16
But of corpse – ep 39
Advanced mesmerics – ep 15
But of corpse – ep 38
But of corpse – ep 37
Phat loots – ep 14
But of corpse – ep 36
Mesmerized – ep 12

Is there any way to be able to see and listen to all of the episodes using Downcast? I use it for other podcasts that I love, to keep track of new episodes and listen to old ones. Unfortunately I can only see nine episodes of SOAC on it…

I’m pretty new to Mesmer and have a tendency to gauge the portal distance wrong in WvW. I love portaling and finding different uses for it, but the range issue is a downer. I came up with a down & dirty solution involving overlaying a circle over the minimap. It doesn’t involve any changes to any game files or whatnot, it functions similarly to Overwolf albeit much more crude in its design. I took a screenshot of the minimap to get the dimensions, then applied a circle on it a few times and tested portals to figure out where the range approximately is, and adjusted the circle accordingly. Then display it with Irfanview and overlay (adjusting opacity) with Ghost-It.

I know most Mesmers probably have no trouble with it nor would want to go through such trouble, but I thought I’d share it anyway in case it helps someone or inspires them to develop something better.

I don’t really enjoy zergs much, neither fighting them or running in one. I like to scout and do my own thing. However, I know many people enjoy them, and I understand why. I think they’re a staple of WvW. In fact, few things brighten my day more than getting my solo roamer beat down by five foes and seeing them turn around just in time to see their lives flash before their eyes as a sea of my friends comes and washes over them, rezzing me on the fly. It gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling.

Probably the issue you refer to is the incredible condition spam that’s common now and really demolishes you if you get anywhere near the center of the hurricane. Aside from that, the only problem I see vis-à-vis zergs is the PvD issue. I don’t think you should be able to do any damage at all to gates with ordinary weapons, only siege. I also don’t think golems should be able to use portals or waypoints, or benefit from any sort of quickness or swiftness. Reinforcing structures is pointless when a 40-man lawnmower melts it down in seconds with no need for a strategy.

While on the subject, get rid of its visibility in PVE and replace it with a guild officer tag or something so that guilds doing missions etc can have a dorito to follow which only they can see.

I had my fill of PVE ego-commanders during the initial Scarlet trains when they’d argue over which one of them tagged up first and which ones should tag down.

Cogbyrn.7283:

msalakka.4653:

Cogbyrn.7283:

My WvW doesn’t need change, really.

Oh?

Coghbyrn, 80 Charr Warrior
Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro

Oh.

I only play the Necro these days, and I roam solo as a Powermancer.

What do you play, and how do you play? I really hope you roam solo as a Bow Ranger, just so you can make comments about what other people play.

Naw, I roam solo on a PU Mesmer. Sometimes I slap on my Perplexity set just for that extra slice of cheese.

So I shouldn’t really be talkin’. I just think that WvW needs some serious balancing no matter how much I enjoy my insane condition duration.

Reverence.6915:

msalakka.4653:

I don’t think they have any time or resources allocated to balancing/making sense of WvW. Moar Scarlet, moar gem store items.

It really is a shame because WvW is to me the most fascinating and interesting part of the game, or was back pre-WXP. Now I am lucky to find a commander who will bother defending a keep because “we can flip it for WXP after they’re done.” The people who are interested in strategic gameplay in WvW are a dying breed, and instead we get clowns looking for the win button.

Cogbyrn.7283:

My WvW doesn’t need change, really.

Oh?

Coghbyrn, 80 Charr Warrior
Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro

Oh.

I’m assuming you’re in a server under tier 4. The only times I’ve seen servers give up certain structures was because they ran out of supply to keep up maintenance of it.

Yeah, I’m in tier 5. I play almost exclusively in our home borderland. To be fair, it has gotten really hard to find people to defend stuff, sometimes commanders tag off because there are only one or two following them, so even at best they may not have enough people to defend keeps. If we get attacked at a keep it’s almost never a small group; it’s a blob or a tag. So they’re not very excited about interrupting a camp flipping field trip to die pointlessly at one of our keeps. I keep telling myself that maybe the “we’ll flip it later” is more like something to tell people as to why they’re not going there when at heart they want to defend but just don’t have the manpower.

We do defend fully upgraded keeps at our home borderland but for that we have to call one of our EB commanders to pop in to save it.

It’s still fun, just wish there was more of a point to upgrading and defending stuff since these plus scouting are things I enjoy the most, and I’d like to see the WvW community keep growing. It has so much potential.

I don’t think they have any time or resources allocated to balancing/making sense of WvW. Moar Scarlet, moar gem store items.

It really is a shame because WvW is to me the most fascinating and interesting part of the game, or was back pre-WXP. Now I am lucky to find a commander who will bother defending a keep because “we can flip it for WXP after they’re done.” The people who are interested in strategic gameplay in WvW are a dying breed, and instead we get clowns looking for the win button.

Cogbyrn.7283:

My WvW doesn’t need change, really.

Oh?

Coghbyrn, 80 Charr Warrior
Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro

Oh.

We’ve seen this on Gandara too. Usually emptying Gandara Garrison of sups by building random b.s. siege next to the quartermaster. I’ve seen the intentional golem suicides too, but the siege crap is far more common.

I don’t frequent the forum so I apologize if this is common knowledge, but my Google search and forum search produced no results.

My guild completed “Save Our Supplies”, a guild challenge in Iron Marches, for the second time in a row without actually doing anything. The first time, after we started the challenge in the Guild Panel and wp’d to the location, there was a guild already doing it. A few members went ahead and started helping them. The person in our guild who knows most about these events and usually leads them said that those persons would need to exit the map or the event will complete and we won’t be able to do it. We thought they all did, but that happened anyway.

The second time only a few of us entered the map to keep an eye on the timer of the guild currently doing it before we’d invite the rest in. None of us participated in any way or even went close enough to be able to see the other guild’s tags, but again the challenge completed as the other guild finished.

What’s going on? What are we messing up? The only thing I can think of is that I stepped inside the orange circle that appears on the minimap when you get in the challenge’s range, but you can’t see the timer without stepping inside it. Surely this is not enough to complete it?`

Thank you for your time.

This topic is over a week old, but I am resurrecting it so as to not have to create a new thread on the exact same topic.

I think I understand where the OP is coming from, and I agree with him. I’ll try to keep this brief.

I played FFXI before Guild Wars, and in that game, which is subscription-based, I paid the 12.95/month standard fee, plus for additional 15 characters to serve as storage space (the max being 16) which were a dollar each, coming to a little under 30 bucks a month. I did this for many years, and don’t regret any of it. Entertainment on which money was well spent.

With Guild Wars 2, I was happy to spend money in the Gem Store in the beginning. There were items such as the account upgrade and the bank expansions which, although expensive, are quite useful and offer longtime value for money spent. When I bought the game, I knew of the Gem Store, and I had no problem with its concept; I never bought the game specifically because it was “free to play”, but because I bought into the hype. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t have a family. I don’t buy movies or go out to eat. I spend most of my time either working, reading, or getting some exercise. My needs are simple, and thus so are my expenses. To spend 20-30 bucks a month on the Gem Store would be of no consequence to me.

Unfortunately, even people who have the means to do so don’t necessarily spend money on frivolity; what is or is not frivolity being subjective of course. There are things I don’t care one iota about, and things I would buy if they were cheaper. Since more or less the amount of money I am willing to spend each month stays static, my buying decision depends on what I get for that money. Right now, not a whole lot.

For ten dollars, I can get six hours worth of a single type of booster. If I spend 10 bucks a week, that’s not bad. I’d pay 10 bucks a month…not so grand. I can also get one 2-week bank golem for easy bank access. I love those golems… But not enough to blow that ten-dollar allotment on it. SPVP arena, if one wants to do guild tournies or something, is 20 bucks to start, then 5 bucks for 20 days, or 10 for 40. But even then, you can only buy 800 gems, or 1600, and so on.

This brings me to issue #2: gem purchase amounts. Funny how the prices on many items are adjusted so that they don’t match the gem purchase amounts. You can buy 800 gems for 10 bucks if you want a 500-gem item. But you can’t buy just 1000 gems if you want two; no, you have to spend 20 bucks and have the 600 gems left over, whether you wanted them or not. You can’t just let people buy the amount of gems they want, because then they’d only spend only the amount that they want.

I look at the Gem Store, and I can’t buy anything even when I have money to spend. As much as I want to support the game, I don’t want to feel like I am bending over every time I do it. I don’t want to pay what everyone knows are airport prices for Wal-Mart sandwiches.

On the flip side, telling the OP to just convert gold to gems isn’t exactly doing him any favours. Right now, it takes 55 gold to get 800 gems. Look at the thread which asks people how much gold they have; many of them have never seen 55 gold. The other issue with that one is the fact that many items are time-gated and only available temporarily.

Give me items that I care about and can buy without feeling like a complete idiot for doing so, and I will buy them.

I suspect we’ll be seeing more Gem Store items for PVE/sPVP.

Nerfs that cut into basic job principles, but don’t provide balance. No fix for WvW matching system, which is a disaster.

The problem is not that the game is bad or badly designed. It isn’t. The problem is that the game is not the game they advertised at launch or said it would become during development, and the developers aren’t playing the same game as the rest of us.

If you have deep pockets on the Gem Store; if you run dungeons with parties consisting of a variety of jobs, killing all the trash mobs; if you really upgrade structures and build siege and defend with one guild while attack with another, with catapults hitting on the walls… If it’s a year after launch and every random PUG doesn’t have at least one legendary and two ascended weapons…

The devs clearly don’t play with a sportswatch and a spreadsheet. They don’t design dungeons and then test how well a Warrior can solo them and sell seats for gold. They don’t PvD lawnmow everything down in the borderlands. They don’t run WvW as a Guardian and experience the fair and balanced condispam/permastealth meta for themselves.

They don’t play the same game as us at all, which is why they won’t know how to fix it.

Ezekiel.1985:

Faithful strike (as well as the rest of the chain) is not one target. It hits multiple targets.

The first two in the chain hit multiple foes, but Faithful only does damage to one.

StefanSaegull.5804:

Hey , I was just wondering if any one could help me with a MAX damage build for some WvW fun on my guardian.

Excellent! Many people come here looking for something like this…

I want to run full Berserk armor and extras . . . keeping up with the zerg . . .

I see… Hmmm, interesting…

. . . full focus to be on Staff damage, pumping them high staff numbers out.

Aaaand that’s where the wheels come off from Cinderella’s carriage. In words you may recall from your prom night, “it’s just not gonna happen, okay?”

I mostly roam, but I’ll throw in my thoughts for what little they may be worth.

The mace is a very stationary weapon – zerg combat is anything but stationary. Faithful Strike is one-target and has a 1 sec activation by which time god knows where your target is, or your allies for that matter. Short range, small radius. Staff is a great support weapon, but none of your weapons or skills include a gap closer. Frankly I’d use Hammer, or if you like the Shield, maybe Sword/Shield.

I just don’t see “support” oozing out of this one so much as survival. As much as I would love to see a build like this be more useful, in zergs your support is more useful, I think, when delivered in the form of pre-emptive boons and condi cleanse, which you can distribute through shouts and virtues. IMO forgoing Valor entirely and going 30 into Virtues & replacing ToC with Ren. Focus (which you can spam twice as often as ToC) will enable you to support your brethren better. Nothing that you give up in Valor is going to decrease your support capability. Virtues will considerably enhance it.

But this is the opinion of one lowly rank-and-file Guardian. You appear to be a commander so your needs may vary quite a bit.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Never heard of yolo queue.

It’s mostly subjective, what feels right in your hand. I considered the G600 but went with G700, and later G700S. I am quite happy with its performance. I specifically wanted side buttons, but not fifty billion of them. My personal choice would be the G500S.

nexxe.7081:

msalakka.4653:

It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re using WoW as a graphics yardstick.

It’s a sad state of affairs when people fail at reading. I said, “I’m not talking about graphically either,”.

You’re absolutely right. I apologize for my quick and unhelpful remark.

It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re using WoW as a graphics yardstick.

Summa summarum, AH is bad because it helps you stay alive through providing boons and condi cleanse to your team mates – the definition of selfishness.

The right path is the glass cannon approach where you try to throw up as big numbers as possible before your kitten is torn to shreds, at which point your party, who no longer get any boons or cleanses from you, can rez you once the boss is down or you can all wp together and see those big numbers the second time.

Prysin.8542:

. . . ArenaNet listens and adds LS features, simply because experience has shown that LS features are the most effective and engaging way to get attention to a section of the game . . .

No, LS features are the most effective excuse to get attention to the Gem Store.

Great duel w/ a formidable Deso ele @ Bauer’s Estate, Gandara BL. Thank you!

The week is off to a great start, very interesting skirmishes. If it stays this close all week it will make for a hectic reset….more so.

(I think you’ll get more views for your thread if you edit it into paragraphs; I almost skipped it entirely until I read a few sentences here there and saw that it wasn’t made out of gibberish and tween lingo – those being the usual trademarks of a wall-o-text.)

With a deep sigh I agree with everything you’ve said, and I’ve complained about this to the deaf ears of ANet. I think it got much worse when they implemented the matchup lottery where you fight T1 this week and Vabbi the next (the guy in my signature puts it eloquently), because you end up dealing with a lot of zergs, fighting Outnumbered. Maybe not if you’re on a T1 server, but certainly we on Gandara have seen plenty of defenses just vaporized by oceans of red.

Defending, and particularly running supplies, upgrading, and building siege was the most fun for me. In fact, I’ve never been big on PvP games, and it was the whole “being useful to my server while not constantly being face-stomped” aspect of it that drew me in, until I got better at 1v1 and could do other things as well without constant death.

It got fairly depressing, though, once we fought Outnumbered all the time and those upgrades I’d spent hours building and wasting gold on were totally obliterated. It got to the point where commanders said to not even go and defend a keep that was under attack, because “we’ll flip it later for wxp.” It just nearly killed my morale; since I don’t care one iota about wxp, I’d like to hold on to and defend things after capturing them. That’s where the fun is. But now there is no defending.

What finally pounded the last nail into the coffin for me was the addition of Bloodlust. Now we can be Outnumbered and overpowered in terms of stats as well, and there’s a PVP lottery arena to boot. It’s great. I haven’t logged in and played WvW since the week they implemented that crap. I come here every now and then to see if they’ve gotten rid of Bloodlust, but it’s probably pointless to hope for. Instead of fixing existing problems in WvW, the devs just unzipped their collective creativity and showered their golden nuggets of fantastic ideas all over what was left of the fun. Peachy.

Re: siege, perhaps one thing you could do is to provide extremely diminishing returns for using siege of the same kind in close proximity. For example, if you have three rams on a gate, one does normal damage, the second does far less, the third even less, and so on. It would be much more interesting to have a ram pounding at the gate and a catapult hitting a wall on another side. At least it would still feel like being attacked by, you know, people with brains and stuff. You should probably be able to stack them up inside the tower/keep, though… It’s probably a throw-away idea, but all I’ve got off the top of my head. In addition to, of course, buffing up the tiers to actually mean something.

However this complaint which has been raised before is currently thwarted by all the perfectly valid anger induced by Bloodlust – as it should be.

I used to spend hours running supplies, upgrading, and building siege, because I thought it was useful. But when a zerg PvDs into a T3 in under 10 minutes, those hours feel completely wasted. So when our commander tells us to not bother defending because “we’ll flip it later for wxp”, I have a hard time arguing with it anymore. Frankly, it makes it seem pointless to try and defend anything, and if there’s no reason to defend, for me there is really very little reason to capture either, since I don’t care about wxp.

The update has killed the fun for me, but what probably is even more depressing is the knowledge that, as Devon said himself, they don’t care one iota about what people say on the forums. I feel like giving feedback on why the game isn’t fun to play anymore is pointless due to that. He said they’d only take a different approach if people stopped playing, but then how would they know what the sticking points were? When people quit playing they don’t fill out exit surveys, they either just leave or they post here.

Before the update, I’d stay up until 3 am sometimes, even though I had to get up early, because WvW was just so addictive. I logged on the day after the update, and experienced the joys of a higher tier server having constant Superior Bloodlust, and the utter death of any kind of solo roaming. I haven’t logged on since. I realize there’s a new farmville event but PvE is just so boring in itself… Fun as a quick break from WvW, but not a replacement.

I know Devon Carver said people could still solo roam or 1v1, but I don’t think even he believes it. On the plus side, I’ve gotten to bed on time, and if they keep Bloodlust in the game I’ll save a nice wad of cash over time since I don’t have to make any Gem Store purchases. These things have a silver lining.

This has been a pretty crappy week, all in all. I’d like to log on and not see the Overpowered icon. Just blob after blob… It’s not their fault, though, that they have the numbers and we don’t. What else are they to do? People follow the tag.

I suspect Desolation folk would like a better matched opponent as well.

Use Greatsword & Scepter/Focus as your weapon sets. Or anything you want, really, but I like these because the GS is great for everything, but you can switch to Scepter/Focus when you are in low health or overwhelmed. You can have some distance to mobs while continuing to hit them, and the Focus has great defensive abilities.

Use food. I have found that regen food, in particular, is extremely useful in pre-80 levels. It stacks nicely with Signet of Resolve’s passive, too. It is also very cheap food. It’s not something you can rely on entirely but I always found it helpful to the point where I would notice right away if it wore off. You can find a list of them at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food#Regeneration. Use the highest regen you can use at whatever level you are. Once you reach 80, or maybe 60 even, there will be better food options (arguably even now +power food may help more depending on your playing style, but I thought I’d throw that out there).

WvW is nowhere at all on their list of priorities. It’s all e-sport, Deathmatch, King of the Hill here on out.

I wear one as a backpack. I didn’t skin it myself, or anything. But it’s my way of always taking the quaggan with me everywhere I go.

I recently posted a thread in which I asked for help on how to beat mesmers and thieves. While my issues in my original post were slightly different from yours, some of the suggestions may be helpful to you. You can find that thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-do-you-deal-with-Mesmers-and-Thieves/first#post2633196

One advise in that thread that has been of big help to me was Christos de Soufre’s suggestion to apply “constant pressure”. This has changed my game in two ways: I always felt that I was the underdog in my encounters with pretty much any job, and that my strategy had to be defensive first, offensive second. I’ve tried to change my approach, and I intentionally go after them very aggressively in an encounter even if I think I will probably eat gravel. I have also changed my gear choices to allow for a more damage-oriented build. It occurred to me that 1) if I don’t go after them aggressively, and for example try to run away, they will kill me. There is never a tower near enough for me to reach it with my kittenty mobility. And 2) turtling up doesn’t do me much good either, because I won’t be able to kill them, and the best possible outcome I can hope for is that I don’t die, and that either a friendly comes across us and helps me finish him, or the enemy disengages. If that is the best I can hope for, then what’s the point? It is less frustrating for me to go all out and die 50 times and walk back across the map than to blow my most offensive moves on some warrior killing a dolyak while completely ignoring me, and not getting his health even halfway down. True story.

I’ll say this, though: currently the condition spam is very difficult to deal with, and I don’t personally believe it is balanced well. I don’t think you or I are the only Guardians having trouble with these particular classes right now more than ever because of it.

TLDR; gear more offensively. Maybe you won’t survive as much, and the condi spam is hard to deal with anyway, but you’ll have a better shot at downing your opponents.

The devs have a strange sense of humor, as evidenced in the tiers-apart matching system alone. This is just icing on the cake.

I used to enjoy WvW tremendously, particularly roaming and getting in 1v1 fights. Now I feel like if I do that, I am fighting the same guy over and over again at every encounter. Can’t move, skills are disabled, three seconds later I’m dead. And I run a PVT build now, with Pure of Voice and Soldier runes. Makes no difference, all my defense is paper. Forget about being in the frontline of zergs either, because it is the same condi spam times a million as soon as the enemy gets within range. I don’t mind that it’s tough, and I don’t mind that I can’t just Rambo in; I mind that I don’t have the proper tools to deal with these encounters.

Also, regarding how in every MMO every profession gets pigeonholed into a certain build… Yes, they do, based on widespread concept of what makes the profession perform most optimally to its strengths. Having to build your Guardian against this one specific stat – one which isn’t even within our range of particular strengths – isn’t pigeonholing you to be the best you can be; it is forcing you to diminish your capacity to play to your full potential due to unbalanced mechanics of other jobs.

tom.7468:

Why not just make a necro, it take 2 mins. And deathly swarm/consume conditions is good condition removal.

Because some of us like to play Guardians. Some of us have spent a lot of time farming for good gear pre-farmville, getting ascended trinkets, infusions, etc. Working on builds, becoming better at our professions. Just roll a new character? No offense, but are you an idiot?

Sounds like you were all just slowing that guardian down. He’d probably solo it faster.

I hope there’s enough Vaseline in the world to keep this thread going.

Can’t wait for this week to be over.

I would take Renewed Justice instead of Strength in Numbers, since you have Fiery Wrath in there, regardless of the Smoldering Sigil & Condition Duration. Or if you want to keep the Valor points then Retributive Armor instead. I just don’t think you’re going to get much mileage out of SiN in a roaming build, or most builds for that matter.

I didn’t mean to invite an argument about DPS v. AH/EM, although I guess it was inevitable. I was primarily interested in how to maintain the same (or close as possible) level of self-sustainability in more offensive build as you find in an AH build. I had wondered whether there were specific skill sets, traits, weapons or some other tricks that enabled this survivability, or if it was simply a question of knowing the content so well you could run it with your eyes closed.

As an example I’ll use last night’s AC P1 run. We were 3 warriors and two guardians. Everything else went more or less fine but we had great difficulty with Hodgins. I don’t know how many times we failed it but it was over 5. I was left to guard the NPC while the rest went to kill the burrows on one side, then the other, and finally we’d do the one in the middle. It was fine at first, I was kiting them to the best of my ability, trying to keep the trail away from Hodgins yet grabbing the strays off of him. By the time my party passed Hodgins and moved to the other side, I had quite a lot of them on me and a lot of my skills down. Typically either the strays from the passing mates finished Hodgins or after one or two of the warriors had died on the burrows, the leftovers finished us both. At any rate, I switched my trinkets back to PVT options and I was still surviving with the skin of my teeth, eventually.

It wasn’t until later reading more about it that I found out you’re not supposed to pass Hodgins from behind, but I guess none of us knew it or there was something I as the protector was supposed to do to prevent strays from their trails from latching onto him. It was my fault for not reading a guide thoroughly before waltzing in there, but I also feel like this is not an atypical PUG experience. My guild doesn’t do events aside from bounty/rush/trek, so these are likely what I will have from hereon out.

I feel as though the defensive build allows me that “skin of my teeth” by which to live through the unexpected, but I also feel like there’s a certain amount of defensive overhead that just lingers there the rest of the time, doing nothing, contributing nothing. I want to provide the optimal contribution, within the confines of my skill and lack of experience. I’m trying to improve on both.

Immolator.5640:

Maskaganda.2043:

oh you will. most likely either right behind the blob hitting the stragglers or right in front of the blob running for our lifes^^ here’s hoping for some fun fights.

regarding desolation (and I hate to be generalizing, I know it’s only a small portion of players that do it but) I never saw so much childish trashtalking. People actually join our groups screaming homophobic insults in caps lock, a la 14 year old playing CoD. We had that happening more times last week than all previous year together. Its only a game, try to behave and have fun.

I’ll check rs mill from time to time for duels as well. cheers.

^This, happens constantly from the Deso I’ve met so far, they kill you solo with 5 friends with gravity because they couldn’t any other way, then they all stand on your corpse and start mass /laughing, and that’s just one of countless occasions :/ this might just be your PvE population Deso but with the amount of times it’s happened I’m sitting here hoping for a fun matchup like Gandara/Riverside/Abbadons. Such childish behaviour, it’s quite sad really.

Oh yes, happens all the time. Usually it’s /dance though. They’ll only kill you if it’s 3+v1, though; solo they run away. Judging by that it’s probably not regular WvW players, but a party of PVErs who feel godlike having together stomped a solo roamer. I’m just surprised it happens so frequently with Desos, but maybe that’s because of the larger population.

CptAurellian.9537:

What kind of armor do you use? Something like Knight’s, as “toughness-heavy build” suggests?

Knight’s primarily. I’ve a set with Soldier runes, and a set with Divinity. I blew my laurels when I thought I’d never want to move out of the PVT comfort, so my trinkets reflect it: 4xPVT, 1xPPT. I do have PPC replacements for all the trinkets but they’re not ascended. I have enough gear options that I feel I can mix & match them to adjust the stats to where I want them, but as long as I am putting 30 into Honor and Valor, I’m not sure it makes much of a difference.

Yes, another one of these DPS threads. I’ve been reading through tons of them, and there’s certainly a lot of good info in them as to how to build a DPS Guardian. I’ve been a Guardian since I started the game in November, and have played primarily an AH/EM build throughout this time. I play mostly PVE content, and a little bit of WvW. I’m growing tired of the open world solo, though, and would like to get into doing dungeons regularly. I’ve done the story modes of all but two, and a few exp modes in AC, CoF, and HotW.

The only problem with 0/0/30/30/10 for me now is that I feel like I’m wasting much of my potential. The few times I’ve done dungeons I’ve found myself dead quite a number of times despite my toughness-heavy build, so I’m not entirely sure I am getting as much bang for my buck there as I think.

I’ve read that survivability doesn’t really go down that much in a DPS build; many people seem to be of this opinion. However, in none of the threads I’ve read has anyone been very specific as to how survivability is sustained in a DPS build, particularly in a dungeon setting with a PUG (which will be my destiny). Is it a question of simply knowing the enemies so thoroughly by heart that you know exactly when to dodge their most destructive moves, or are we talking about damage negation through boons/food/skills?

Even with an AH/EM build, I’ve found myself in these simpler dungeons in situations where all my skills and endurance are blown, I’m near death, and the only option left is pretty much standing out of dmg range and wait. My concern with a DPS build, presumably being less defensive, that the increased damage output would be a moot point if I have to spend even more time out of the mob’s range just to stay upright.

It is undoubtedly a L2P issue, but that’s part of why I am asking in the first place.

I don’t know whether to just sit tight and wait, or to submit a ticket so I’m not the 48,192th in line to get my account fixed.