Guild Wars 2

Necromancer have good weakness uptime, condi management, and above average burst damage. They also have decent access to self-buff in pugs. Apart from that, it’s a selfish class that doesn’t bring much to the table compared to top tier classes. Focus on dps, as that’s the thing you’re doing best anyway.

That Purple Miku guy is such an elitist. I myself run a 3/3/3/3/2 celestial mace/axe rifle warrior with a banner, a shout and a signet. It may not be as cheesy as the “meta”, but I’m having fun playing it, and it’s a great all around build. I can adapt to many situations, and I’m always the one picking those zerker elitists off the floor. I mean, how could I know the run was asking for a specific build? I play how I want, and the lfg window is so small I can’t read it so I join whatever group I see. That kind of toxic behavior kicking people from playing what they want disgust me. It’s like some people think about the group instead of themselves or some non sense like that.

dobri.7820:

so a-net can take some good ideas from us

lol

I’m expecting people to read lfgs description, but then maybe I’m growing old.

Are you on EU? I can help if you are. I’m not online consistently those last few days ( because the update is kitten), but I can get back if there’s dungeons to do.

Meh, I do that everyday.
:3

Generally speaking, pistol offhand is better for pve and dagger offhand is better for pvp, when paired with a sword. For pve, sword has good synergy with pistol as it’s your cleave ( 3 target) set and black powder is an extremely valuable skill for trashmobs. The 3rd skill is also a defiance stripper and procs the healing signet a lot of times. In pvp, as the same things aren’t needed, sword offhand pulls ahead, providing an excellent dual skill that allows boon strip, evades and good damage. S/D is a great set, mostly due to larcenous strike. However, as you don’t need the boonstrip that often in pve, and the evade is harder to aim than, say, pistolwhip or a dodge, it only has niche uses.

Stubie.5834:

Less dmg then a Rangers pet? That seems a bit unlikely but I’ll take your word for it. I spec’d it up last night and ran a fractal. Dps seemed ok, easy might stacking and good support. It’s sooo much fun to play thought but I guess I’ll go back to staff

The dps is horrible because you have no auto attack with scepter. After using your damaging fire burst and the fresh air proc, you have nothing to deal damage. Air 1 hits pitifully low, and the others are even worse. In pve, as you want sustained dps as well as burst, you use scepter as a burst set, blow your damaging cooldowns, then use a conjure, lightning hammer, to gain access to a highly damaging auto attack. If you enjoy the scepter play, try to get used to LH. You won’t use fresh air, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post, though.
Hope this clarifies.

Ps: the ranger pet was more of a funny comparison, but it would be worth to do the maths. It’s probably not so far.

Whatever, I know I’m right, you know you are, if you want proper maths and reasoning behind the build ( I doubt you do, you don’t seem like someone who like being proven wrong), just pm me. This discussion is unhealthy and not helping the OP in any way.

Skady.5916:

The only “defensive responses” I see here coming from “full zerk or no skill ololo” people who refuse to make one step away from the middle of the universe and see things differently.

I’d say that’s an exemple of being pretty defensive, and insulting the people trying to argue with you at the same time. It’s also the things people do when they know they’re wrong,by the way. It’s just making your ( well- explained) post less attractive to read.

Someone had a bad day.
Thanks to you petyr baelish for going on with that I was honestly far too lazy to keep arguing.

No joking, I got hit by a 10k ranger autoattack once. It hurted. ( I still have no idea how he did that. Even with sig of the wild, sig of the hunt and moment of clarity, that’s one big auto attack)
Then I came on the forums, complained and.. wait, no. I just dealt with it and learned to pay attention to what was around.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Nikaido.3457:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

I’m sorry what cleric guardian uses AH?

Get some reading comprehension? I never said AH builds ran cleric. I said cleric was useless because there was superior tank-ish builds that didn’t need a single piece of it.

Still don’t get why you’re comparing AH to BP though which serve completely different functions outside of anchor.

Purple Miku.7032:

I have a question Skady.

To you, what is the point of low manning, be it soloing/duoing/trioing/whatever, if your objective is to make it as easy as possible? It seems counter productive to me so I don’t understand what you hope to achieve by posting this thread.

I ask this because normally people seek challenges or in the case like me, I prefer to low man because I cannot stand pugs.

P.S. – Just about everyone here knows it’s possible to complete content with all builds, even without armor.

You know you can use that argument against power glass setups right? Hell why not take this a step further, doing an underman? don’t care unless you’re doing it naked, yeah let’s go ahead and invalidate Sesshi’s solo videos while we’re at it since he is wearing armor, fantastic.

If you politely ask sesshi to do his solo naked he may do it.

Bingo !

Fresh air is a burst spec, but the dps is horrible. It’s probably less than a ranger pet in the long run. Some specs use fresh air for extra damage, like d/f, but scepter in pve is always coupled with conjures, meaning investment in other traitlines than air.

Skady,

I manage to keep aggro on myself ( or the earth ele) reliably. Use hammer 3 and attack the boss when you’re the only person in melee, and it should get aggro on you and not loose it ( apart from a few exceptions). Hammer is a slow weapon, but it sure isn’t bad dps. The overlapping symbols hit like a truck. If your goal is to keep aggro on yourself, your teammates don’t need any kind of support apart from some aegis in case the boss cleaves, as they won’t even get hit.

oxtred.7658:

I’m giving directions and answering questions if needed. The guy asks for the maximum solo dps build, in a 2 line sentence. I give him the max solo dps build, in a 2 line sentence. Get off yout high horse.

Your point being? I said in the post it was general informations. I won’t confuse someone with a wall of text when he’s not even sure about what he wants.

Then why are you arguing against it?

Meanwhile in the guardian subforum, I’m getting PvF xp.

Using 4/6/2/0/2 is optimal in lower level zones as well, because your auto attack will one shot everything below champion ( esp if you take on crit sigil). I’m giving directions and answering questions if needed, but I’d rather not have tards telling me how toxic I am by giving something not completely terrible. The guy asks for the maximum solo dps build, in a 2 line sentence. I give him the max solo dps build, in a 2 line sentence. Get off yout high horse.

So, giving a bad build is helping, and giving a good one is “pusing my agenda on susceptible players”, huh. I’ve no idea how much trait points you do have at 65, hence me giving a level 80 build. Anyone can make his own adjustement,starting by taking the point in radiance and keeping power/prec/ferocity gear.

Zenith.7301:

Muffin Nook.5923:

If people just took the time to read the lfg post before joining, there would be nothing to fear. They bring it on themselves by clicking and joining the first group they see even though they do not have the lfg requirements. (specific level, experience, agony resist, etc)
What I would like to see:
When a player clicks on the join button in the lfg tool a confirmation window with the full lfg description pops up and asks “Are you sure you want to join this group?”

Sometimes it’s not in the description.

Try for example joining a pug Arah p1/2 "speed’ (no such thing in pugs, what they usually mean is stealth run) as a Necromancer or Ranger. Try the same on fractal 50.

The fact is, you’ll likely never get kicked as soon as you join on an ele or warrior, ever.

I think those are the most obvious examples people cringe at. Or they get tired of waiting an extra 5-20 minutes because less people want to join the group with a necromancer, a ranger, a mesmer and a warrior versus the group with a thief, two eles, and warrior/guardian.

It’s really not such a mystery. GW2 is one of the most rage-ish PvE communities relatives to other MMO’s out there. In Wildstar you had people from the leading raiding guild worldwide, Enigma, helping strangers do attunements on their servers to be able to raid. I’ve seen people from Codex, Enigma, many top 5 guilds joining 5 man dungeons, not once a single one of them was sour or sociopathic.

The closest GW2 gets to this kind of community building is likely via WvW guilds.

Yeah, we should take that as an exemple and see guilds created only for teaching people. We would call it noob or something. Then maybe people from “leading guilds” ( as you said) will start helping people daily because they like doing it. But I’m partly dreaming, I can’t think of a single person being helpful in this toxic community.

tboneking.2531:

You just need to recognize the strengths of what you want to use. Bringing at least one banner for dungeon runs is standard, so youre good to go there. Offhand axe is good for refilling your adrenaline bar, but the fury skill isnt very useful because of FGJ and you’ll have 100% fury uptime from your party anyway. Rifle may be good for certain niche scenarios, but in general its base damage is lower than that of a greatsword and mainhand axe, and as dungeons are about max damage it doesnt really have a place as a regular mainhand weapon.

In PvP/WvW however I am unsure of rifles uses. In my eyes it has potential as a backline sniper in wvw, and maybe in pvp you could pressure people off points? It definately isnt meta in pvp but theres nothing wrong with trying some new stuff

It’s actually the opposite. Skill 4 is kind of useful sometimes when soloing when you can’t take fgj, and you shouldn’t ever use skill 5. It seriously hurts your dps over auto attack.

@op: most pve warrior builds use the fast hand traits in discipline to make use of the greatsword burst skills, and switch back to axe auto attack. Using rifle will seriously cripple you, maybe you could use a pure axe build and have a rifle on switch as a backup? As I said above, axe offhand is pretty useless outside of solos, any other offhand will do better. Use 6/6/0/2/0 with the usual dps traits, the increased attack speed in arms, and destruction of the empowered.

I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.

I got 39 with dredge and cliffside. It wasn’t a meta group, so at least 2 of them weren’t contributing to the damage output but weren’t dying at least, so I don’t know if it would work, but I just used hallowed ground, stand your ground and traited virtue for maximum stability uptime, played hammer for protection, and we waited for everyone to be here and burst them down quickly with invul if available. The boss shouldn’t be a major problem, try to trigger the mob’s death from afar after the hammer is charged.

Obtena.7952:

OK so it’s optimized for groups. OP wanted solo. Thanks for the info.

Since guards can’t self buff anyway, this happens to be the maximum dps build for solo as well. Having 6 points in radiance is also a good way to reach decent crit chance with the really low fury uptime of guardian. If you can’t maintain unscathed contender, play 4/6/2/2 with superior aria for more fury and a bonus 100% swiftness duration.

It was studied 2 years ago, back in the AH anchor meta. Anyone remember? You can face tank bosses on guardian with minimum dodging for a long time using hammer/shelter/ mace/focus. With superior aria and focus mastery,you have enough blocks, even for non coordinated groups. If you happen to have a gap in your cooldown, there’s still deep freeze and earth ele.
Also, you won’t loose ago if you dodge inside the boss hitbox. As spot said, it’s not about the time difference. Some people enjoy being as supportive as the game allows to, some others like the concept of supporting in offensive gear like myself.

Most of the posts are well made and constructive, but we’re starting to see some ill-tempered, “I’m right and every person disagreeing is obviously a liar” mentality, and since the thread deserves a healthy conversation, keep your aggressiveness for the game discussion subforms.

That said, did anyone tried zealot? If we assume you can reliably take aggro without the extra toughness, zealot wouldn’t be such a high dps loss ( on non reflect bosses) and would get the healing power to out sustain bosses with a good error margin. I’d expect that to be a good match between offense and extra defense. Keep in mind I’m referring to 5 man fractals, low man are another story.

The damage you’d gain from condition damage won’t outweight the loss of raw damage output; keep berserker. Mainhand axe is also a pretty bad switch for any kind of longbow rangers, as you want something able to keep you alive and efficient in melee (sword, greatsword)

What I see here is people trying to defend against the idea using tankier gear is a training wheel, and then discarding proofs of the ability to survive fine without them by saying the people doing it had more skill. If it’s not a training wheel, it has nothing to do with skill level. If it is a training wheel like I and others believe, it just means you can improve your gameplay to the point you don’t need defensive stats anymore, wich is the whole point of the pve meta. There’s nothing wrong in not being absolutely godmode at this game, but don’t argue trinity is back or healing power is useful in a speedrunning mentality.

To keep on the same analogy of turret engis or any cancer condi builds in pvp, It’d be like posting a thread about " turret engis shaking the meta" while playing against barely experienced players.

tl;dr: have fun with what you play, but don’t try to justify it by saying it’s efficient. It’s easier, yes ( for you mostly; your team couldn’t care less), but not meta in any way.

4/6/2/0/2 with unscathed contender, sword/focus greatsword, 3 assassin pieces/ rest berserker.

For your specific exemple in the ascalon fractal, there’s nothing much you can do against those arrow carts aoes. Thankfully, they don’t hurt that much, and any small regen buff will overcome the damage you’re taking. Destroy the oil pots, burst dulfy and the gate, and move inside as quickly as you can. For general tips, use blinds on melee trash mobs, use smokescreen as a projectile defense skill between reflect gaps, and use 5/6/0/3/0 as mentioned above. For bosses, try to always be behind your target, both for additional damage and an easier time as some attacks are frontal cones. Swap between heals depending on the fight; signet of malice is great against sustained damage or multiple targets, whereas withdraw can mitigate bursts and deadly aoes and hide in shadows is a good condition clear.

One of your main job as a thief is knowing where to stealth, where to blast, where to stop and path mobs. This is a lesser problem in fractals are most mobs don’t need to be pathed, but for dungeons, you’ll have to wait at some specific locations to gather all mobs while stealthed.

Playing with a good team helps. Try to get exotic berserker gear as soon as possible to contribute to the damage output and rally off trash mobs. Don’t get used to pistolwhip ( S/P 3) spam. It messes up defiance on bosses and leaves you without initiative for blinds on trash mobs. This is all general advices, if you have trouble with a specific encounter, you can either pm me or ask on this topic and I, or others, will answer.

Good luck with your thief !

RoseofGilead.8907:

Khisanth.2948:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Khisanth.2948:

You are playing the game in a way the devs didn’t intend(if they intended for people to play dungeons with variable number of people they would have given a setting for that) and you are surprised they don’t support it?

If they intended for dungeons to only be doable with five people, they wouldn’t have made a system that allowed for a single player to enter and complete each segment. They may not provide active support for those who solo dungeons and sell paths, but they also have said that they’re not breaking any rules or anything.

How do you finish finish CoF p1 with 1 person?
I am genuinely interested. We were having this discussion the other day while running that path with 4 people(maybe an Engineer with grenades at the right angle or turrets …).

How one would do that, I have no idea. Like the first room in Arah Story, I think you need an actual body on those areas to continue.

Send a ranger pet.
You can also low man the cof p1 console using barely moral strategies (read: exploits) as far as I know, but I don’t know it precisely. Ranger pet is still easy when 4 manning.

oh, and before I forget: Dungeon selling is obviously an exploit because I’m not good enough to do it myself and successful people should be punished and taken back to my level of gameplay so I don’t feel bad for being less competent.

With what? A dungeon team?

focus offhand is really strong against projectiles and will destroy completely any bearbow. That said, if D/D, the goal is to force them playing defensively by closing the gap immediately with rtl. I recommend using air 5 right away to trigger the potential shared anguish trait. Earth dagger 2 gives you a low cooldown projectile defense skill as well, use it intelligently. Protection is your best friend, swap in earth if you’re forced into eating a full rapid fire. Then, burst them down with the usual fire burst, dodge longbow 4, and get out of entangle asap. If the ranger is competent and knows how to melee, dodge path of scars ( axe 4) or maul ( gs2).

l wouldn’t recommend using tanky traits, as most of the guard support come from traits and utilities and not gear. Take a bit of knight/zealot/ ptv if you really struggle, but it all comes down to practise and class knowledge.

There’s a target cap on boons, and AIs are low priorities, so if she happens to run with more than two or three people, the pets won’t get the buffs. It’s not like they need them in the first place, though; pets are only meat shields.

suggestion: no.

The meta build uses all weapons. Torch has superior single target damage over focus, so take it against bosses where you don’t need the block/ extra burning is needed in solo settings. Torch 5 can be a good pug saver at se P3 first champion as well, and there’s probably a few niche uses i can’t think of including quick swapping to get all your party members out of combat. Torch 5 is quite a big dps loss though, so don’t you use if you don’t really need to.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-A-counter-to-Stacking

brand new, have fun

3 staff eles, 1 phalanx warrior, one thief/guard another ele.

And if you buff it to something actually useful, it would make warriors even more close to banner kittenes.

I laughed. Today. Not at this thread, though.

Iris Ng.9845:

oxtred.7658:

I personally find it satisfying to keep people alive without healing power by just using proper active defense, but for each their own. If you have fun using healing power, do so, as long as your group agrees.

You can’t use active defense against retaliation, or constant poison/burning uptime)

That’s where CC come into play. Bridgette won’t use retal if you chain deep freeze.
Then again, that’s how I do it. I’m fine with other playstyles.

I personally find it satisfying to keep people alive without healing power by just using proper active defense, but for each their own. If you have fun using healing power, do so, as long as your group agrees.

The best form of (defensive) support in pve is damage mitigation. For that, you can either use passive ( added toughness, protection via hammer specs, healing power to outheal attacks), or active. Passive defense is mostly personal, as toughness/vitality only affects your character, and healing power scales poorly. Protection can be really nice, but most of the time it’s unneeded or you have enough access to it for small fights via your virtue of courage. It then comes down to active defense, and guardians are the king of it. You should have at least 3 points in radiance for the permanent blinds on trash mobs. It’s a really powerful trait, allowing you to fully mitigate the damage of multiple foes. For single bosses, you should rely on aegis to support your teammates. Using retreat ( possibly traited with superior aria in tough fights like fractals) and making good use of your f3/ renewed focus can really save the worst teammates in the toughest fights. Those are the things you should use regardless of your build.

Then, you said you were using mace/shield sword/focus. Even though shield protection is nice, the cast time of the 4th skill and the uselessness of the 5th ( It’s a knockback so it messes up defiance or unstack the mobs) make it a really niche weapon. Mace is also a great support weapon, and you had a good instinct on that, but it offers too low damage for the support it gives in many dungeons. You can use mace/focus, but in most fights it won’t be needed. The go-to weapon for pve guardians is greatsword. The 2 and 4th skills are great damage skill, 3 is an additional blind for trashmobs+ extra vuln if traited, and the 5th skill is really useful to get all mobs stacked together for cleave

. As far as trait goes, investing in virtues allows you to take a great condi clear on f2, absolute resolution, or a quick stability skill on f3. That coupled with protection and regen on virtue of resolve and courage gives you plenty of defensive boons.

For your utilities, you have to switch around when needed; most consecrations skills are really supportive and if you don’t care about maximum dps efficiency you’ll probably have 1 or 2 of them. Wall of reflection is a really great skill for reflects, and then you have either purging flames for additional condi clear, hallowed ground for stability, or shield of the avenger for additional projectile defense. With all of that, you have far enough support to protect all your teammates, wich leaves room for more dps oriented stats as far as gear goes. I really recomend using a mix of berserker and assassin, as toughness and vitality won’t help your teammates. Lastly, Tome of courage and healing breeze, although good on papers, lock you out of your dps rotation/ blind rotation, and your teamates will probably take more damage than what you’ll heal them, making the skill pointless. Use shelter for your personal survivability, and renewed focus to refresh your virtues.

The usual support build for dungeon is 4/5/0/0/5, greatsword/ sword focus. This isn’t the best in every situation, but when you’re unsure, it has decent damage and really great support potential. If you have any question or if my post is too much of a boring wall of text, you can pm me.

Invoker.5462:

The only thing i couldnt dodge was gs 2 skill- where they whirl foward but everything else- even when it hit it seemed to only tickle my health.

?

What about the anet guys stop being full trykitten kicking me for telling people to not be kittened and they start kicking those pieces of kitten stealing instance?

I’m talking about a pug situation where the dredges will be alive long enough to reapply it.

You only need 1 person to activate the first pressure plate, then the path is perfectly soloable.

Having a sinister engineer is useful against dredges due to perma protection.