Guild Wars 2

Furious Interruption always seemed like a mediocre PvE trait, because interrupting isn’t all that useful against mobs. Certainly it never seemed like something I’d want to trait for. But when I actually thought about the numbers, I realised that it could very well be one of our strongest traits.

If Quickness is a DPS boost of 100%, then the 20% uptime provided by FI is a 20% DPS boost (in ideal circumstances). And unlike other damage multipliers which modify base damage, Quickness acts upon final damage, making it a multiplicative modifier! Not to mention the utility uses of Quickness e.g. rezzing, casting mantras / phantasms etc.

With all the power and utility it provides, FI just seems like a far stronger choice than other candidates for the Grandmaster slot (e.g. Duelist’s Discipline). Amirite?

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

But some how this is demeaning to you and insulting. I’m for inclusion where you are for exclusion. I’m for big where you are for small. I like playing in a world with lots of people and you like to hide in the corner with your 4 friends.

Here is your problem. You express surprise that people find you to be insulting and claim that it’s all a big misunderstanding. Then in the very next sentence you assert that people who enjoy dungeons “like to hide in the corner with your 4 friends.”

Exactly how is that not being a condescending jerk?

Have you considered moving 10 points from Valor to Virtues to pick up Absolute Resolution? The extra Retaliation and condition removal seems to fit more with the theme of this build than extra Might (although the healing from Altruistic Healing would probably end up being slightly higher than the boosted VoR).

What do you think?

Agreed, swap in Berserker trinkets until your survivability is as low as you feel comfortable. You’ll probably be surprised at how much you can increase your offense without feeling fragile.

There aren’t really breakpoints per se; the balance between offense and defense is a personal choice and ultimately depends on how skilled you are at playing your profession.

Oh, and if you end up keeping some Knight’s pieces (and you have some spare gold lying around), swap them for Celestial. It provides statistically superior offense and defense to Knight’s (for Guardians).

Guardians really don’t need high Toughness to benefit, simply because of the huge disparity they have between base armour and health. The build I linked has 1231 Toughness and even that gets a survivability buff from Celestial.

1. Ok, follow this link:
   http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|c.1g.h8.d.1g.h1b|9.1a.hz.e.1a.h15|1n.71g.1n.71g.1n.71h.1n.71h.1n.79.1n.79|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67|a2.u2ab.0.k28.a1|39.1|v.1a.18.19.g|e
2. Note the stats (especially Effective Power and Effective Health).
3. Now, to simulate swapping Knight’s armour for Celestial armour, enter the following into the manual stats page:
   power: -84,
   precision: -84,
   toughness: -175,
   critical damage: 19,
   vitality: 140,
   healing power: 140,
   condition damage: 140,
   magic find: 19
4. Compare new stats with old.
5. ???
6. Profit.

When I run dungeons on my Guardian, I tend to pug more than I run with guildies, so I use Knight’s armour in my otherwise full-zerker set, just to be able to withstand the occasional stuff-up from running with a disorganised group.

I’ve always been aware though, that for Guardians, Vitality is mathematically a far better defensive stat to invest in than Toughness, because of our high base armour relative to our health. But I couldn’t find anything else that gave that defensive bump without sacrificing too much damage.

Enter Celestial armour: while at first glance I never seriously considered it, the more I thought about it the more it seemed like it could work. So I ran it through Buildcraft and found that it gives both higher Effective Health and Effective Power; the extra Vitality more than makes up for the lost Toughness (because of our heavy armour), and the extra Crit. Damage adds more than we lose with the relatively lower Power.

“But wait!” you say, “the loss of Toughness reduces our Sustained Health!” Not so: Celestial gear also grants Healing Power (+140 for a set of armour, +205 for trinkets, +80 for weapons).

Also, it adds Condi Damage. Ok, so even fully decked out in Celestial gear it would only add 106 burning DPS, but hey, free DPS is free DPS.

And if that wasn’t enough, free Magic Find to top it all off (18% armour, 30% trinkets, 6% weapons).

TL;DR: If you are a Guardian, Celestial > Knight’s.

LordByron.8369:

It just need 1 good guardian and all other players can be suboptimal.

Well you could be right there; as I mentioned I do main a guardian! I guess it’s just the dirt-napping zerker warriors that tick me off…

It’s odd really, because the elitist mindset of the guardian/warrior community on these forums has grown far beyond any actual grounding in the reality of the game. The zerker war/grd/mes team composition for farming dungeons is only optimal if your teamplay is also optimal. But honestly, optimal teamplay is quite rare in reality (with the exception of perhaps CoF P1 simply because of how much it’s run).

I main a guardian but recently I’ve been levelling my ele (currently level 53) by pugging AC. And honestly, the versatility of the ele has made the whole experience so much more enjoyable than it would’ve been on my guardian, because when the zerker warrior is downed for the 10th time it doesn’t affect me as much. I can Lightning Flash past traps, demolish burrows with Ice Storm, and pump out ~15 stacks of might to the party without breaking a sweat.

But that kitten zerker warrior, who spent half the fights on the floor, will still come on the forums and proclaim superiority to all other specs. My advice is to smile sadly and jump back in game with the most exciting, dynamic profession in GW2!

Yeah, generally I treat the third utility slot as flexible. If clearing one condition every 20s isn’t enough, Purging Flames or CoP can do the job. In general though, I think Smite Condition does just fine for cleansing that pesky Immobilize or large bleed stack.

Also GK, does the DPS of Cleansing Flame really suck compared to the mace auto? Usually I use mace auto for more sustain against harder hitting mobs, but its cleave is terrible so I figured Cleansing Flame would be stronger at clearing trash. Again, this is only vs mace auto while waiting for swap.

This is a build for PvE that focuses on two things: keeping groups of mobs burning and cycling through an attack rotation that maximises the benefits this brings.

Many builds take Fiery Wrath and just take it as a given that everything will be burning when you attack it. In reality, I’ve rarely found this to be the case except vs bosses; VoJ typically has around 25-50% burning uptime, and only vs a single target. Because this build can maintain AoE perma-burning, the damage (particularly AoE) is more consistent, without having to rely on a handy elementalist or engineer nearby.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|1.1g.h1b|9.1g.h2.f.1g.h1b|1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67|k27.p67.0.k28.5|39.7|d.18.19.15.1i|e

A typical rotation goes as follows:

1. Leap of Faith to open
2. Whirling Wrath
3. Swap to Mace/Torch, Symbol of Faith then Zealot’s Flame while SoF is activating.
4. Cleansing Flame
5. SoF again when it comes off cooldown, ZF when it comes off cooldown, then swap back to GS and go back to 1.

After the initial rotation, each weapon swap will have a few seconds where you can either auto-attack or use other skills as you see fit. Of course the main benefit of perma-burning is the 20% damage boost, but with you should be able to maintain ~10 stacks of Might by yourself, which will add ~500DPS from the burning damage itself. You should be able to maintain ~10 stacks of AoE vulnerability as well if you remember to activate VoJ before mobs drop.

The posted build uses full berserker, but of course you can swap in a few pieces of more defensive gear for a little more survivability if you want. I recommend swapping in maybe a Valkyrie amulet and Knight’s helm, legs or rings (keep Exquisite Ruby jewels though). Alternative rune sets include boon duration runes or runes of the Wurm.

Feedback welcome

Yep I was talking about uptime. I did say uptime but I can understand with all the %‘s been thrown back and forth it could’ve become lost

The 9 is 3 burning procs of 3 seconds each given by Zealot’s Flame, and the 15 is its base cooldown. 9 is modified by 1.3 (30% burning duration) and 15 by 0.8 (20% cooldown reduction from Radiant Fire), giving 97.5% uptime.

IMO duration alone is only telling half the story for duration-stacking effects; the overall uptime is its true measure. Once you can achieve 100% uptime, extra duration is meaningless.

But yeah, my comment was mainly directed at ODB, who claimed that the buff to Radiant Fire resulted in no noticeable difference. I don’t focus on burning myself but I think it’s quite a strong trait for those who do. It requires less investment than Permeating Wrath and it still allows you to activate VoJ for Might/Blind/Vuln stacking. The only tradeoff is that the burning is limited to 3 targets, which I think still does quite well.

CMF.5461:

…unsure how you get 97.5% burning from 10 points in zeal (10% longer conditions) and Radiant Fire (20% longer burns).

(9 * 1.3) / (15 * 0.8) = 97.5%

Raif.9507:

Vigor is all around better as it recharges the endurance faster, but it’s good enough for PVE. You can also spam Phoenix just to get the vigor while running aruond in that part.

Glad I can help.

The endurance regen bonus is the same (+100%), and given that Vigor is a boon (and can thus be stripped), it’s certainly not “all around better”. But my original comment wasn’t really about which is better, but more about alternative ways to get more dodges that don’t require 100% Vigor uptime.

Baladir.2736:

Nice use of Zephyr’s Focus. Thank you.

+1! I’ve been agonizing over choosing between Elemental Attunement and Renewing Stamina. But with ER as my heal and the number of channelled skills in S/D, Zephyr’s Focus solves all my Endurance woes.

This patch really has opened up build diversity; I’d been dependent on 30 Arcane for so long I’d pretty much forgotten about sneaky little traits like this!

Well, Radiant Fire and 10 points in Zeal gives you 97.5% burning uptime in an AoE using Zealot’s Flame alone, which is pretty nice if you ask me.

Zosek.3658:

Apart from that, i really dont see grounded trait working. All bosses have defiant stack up once you kd/stun/etc, so the trait is pretty much a waste on bosses, on the other hand, great for trash/veterans.

Also, Grounded = Fresh Air. You might need to catch up on today’s patch notes.

MasterDeere.3417:

Juts add cooldown reduction on attunement for each attunement with the trait that cost 25.

ex: fire 25 should be: dammage increase by 5% to burning target, fire attunement cooldown reduce to 4 sec (cooldown cannot be reduce more even with trait in arcana).

same for earth and air only. not water

Yep I think something like this would be the simplest approach, and quite effective at addressing the issue. Honestly though I’d take it further and just remove the cooldown for that attunement (so it falls back to the 1s cooldown that all attunements get when swapping), and put ICDs on all the 15pt traits.

Then make the base attunement swap cooldown 10s (i.e. normal weapon swap cooldown) and halve the Arcana bonus.

Interestingly enough I don’t think this would actually be a practical buff, because swapping attunements to access the more powerful skills off cooldown would still be necessary to maximise DPS. But it would enable the people who like the idea of staying in their favourite element to play that way without crippling them.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Now hopefully it won’t get predictable with Mai Trin being the villain. Because that would be way too easy.

My prediction (and hope) is that Kasmeer is the villian. Nobody can be that powerful and beautiful and not be a kitten!

First off – I enjoy this podcast and it seems clear that Aiden and Zoose really understand the elementalist and enjoy playing it. I really enjoy learning about the clever nuances of ele play (e.g. attunement swapping while casting channelled skills to gain the Fury proc), and every podcast so far has given me new ideas.

BUT, it hurts the professionalism of the show when I hear consistently wrong or mispronounced skills and traits. I get that the “message” is what’s important here but it just diminishes the quality of the podcast.

Aiden – Zephyr = /?z?f?r/, Vigor = /?v?g?r/, Conjure (in the context being used in GW2) = /?k?nd??r/. I don’t know if English is your first language but these are ordinary English words. When you’re on a show which involves speaking for an hour, you need to know how to speak!
Edit – Looks like the filter doesn’t like Unicode characters in the IPA notation. But the linked pages allow you to listen to the pronunciation.

Zoose – This is minor but I heard you refer to “Chaos Meteor” several times in the last podcast. There is no such skill. I assumed you meant Meteor Shower, but if you intend for people other than diehard GW2 fans to follow your show, you need to get these things right! You also referred to Blink a few times instead of Lightning Flash; this isn’t as big an issue because you could very well be talking about the mechanism of blinking i.e. using a blink skill instead of the Blink skill. Again though, it makes your show less accessible.

I don’t want to seem like I’m bashing on you guys because as I said I do enjoy listening to you. I’d love to hear you doing some shoutcasting because you can really provide a lot of insight, but errors like this make it hard for people to connect with what you’re saying.

I have a different question about the chest(s) for this event. Yesterday I completed the Maw chain on my home server and received the normal (in-world) chest plus the bonus (UI) chest. Then I guested to another server and completed the chain but received no chests (but I did get gold participation).

I understand that since the patch the bonus chest is once/account/day, but I thought that the in-world chest was supposed to still be available. Has this changed?

I’m taking suggestions for which shade of gold will match the Glyphic Edge sword skin. I’m currently just using Antique Gold.

I’m also considering getting the Pact Focus, but I don’t know how it looks when drawn. Does anybody have any insight into this, and do you think it would fit the aesthetic?