The damage with axe and lifeblasts are still good in 30/25/0/0/5. The builds were discussed and compared on the dungeon forums recently. 3 power builds were considered. 30/25/0/0/15 had the highest effective power at about 9k. While the other 2 were below. The 30/10/0/0/30 was considered the worst. Whereas 15/25/0/0/30 is very close to 9k so long as strength of undeath actually gives a 5% damage boost instead of 90 power (heard it was bugged, may have been stealth fixed).
It doesnt matter what power build you run, all 3 are going to have burst aoe and then nothing for 30-40 seconds.
If your a competent player dagger is best in pug and solo play aswell. It simply achieves the best dps and so if you can use it to full effectiveness its obviously the best choice.
Id suggest swapping spectral walk for signet of spite. Only take walk when you absolutely need the stunbreak. Its better than the standard 30/10/0/0/30. But 30/25/0/0/15 still beats them both. If your groups providing subpar might then you can swap WoC for BiP. Id also suggest having warhorn instead of focus. Locust swarm is a dps monster. You could scrap the staff and have warhorn focus so your just swapping offhands.
Anyway I think a risen giant isn’t thAt good of a test for dps..it’s more of a burst damage test. In the video, I noticed he was using food/potion and sigil which matters alot. Furthermore I believe that for solo purposes the ds built is much better cause it can self stack might and vulnerability. But in a party situation with buffs and condition applying from other classes, dagger should outperform the ds built.
It out performs it solo aswell. Did some more kills today. With a better rotation my slowest times were 19 seconds. The rest were faster. Only thing which slows it down is really bad rng with giant stomps (had the giant chain stomping 5 times in a row from the start at one point so i just reset and tried again rofl) or just getting really unlucky with crits (not an issue at all in a dungeon group).
I said it doesnt synergise. I didnt say its not fine. The blind and condi transfer can be good in pvp/wvw. Ones power based, ones condi based therefore they dont synergise.
I honestly would love to take axe on most occasions, And I dont mind it in PvE because I can always use it.
However, In PvE I usually really need that spike damage that dagger has and use many immobilize to stick to the target making Dagger more attractive. The big problem moreso is the way Axe 2 works. Its amazing burst DPS and is good because if you do run stuff on crit (traits or even on hit) then it can proc a good deal. But dodging this is too much of a DPS loss to me compared to an auto. That and the whole running behind deal. I might try it again now that i learned you can stand still and your character will turn, but I can’t see a reason to stand still besides letting them DPS on me heavy themselves.
And no, the 15% doesn’t make it outrank Dagger in damage.
Axe #2 is longer than the dagger auto chain and does less damage.
Its your choice but imo triple shouts isnt the best support you can carry for the team, especially since only one of them has any valuable impact on the team (stability) that other professions cant give out as well as a guardian.
I would say the opposite, any guardian with support as their main objective isnt carrying more than one shout in pve since there are much more powerful utilities in a low condi environment like pve/dungeons.
Hold the line= any competent team stack both boons so they never ever go down.
Retreat = same with swiftness. Aegis can be valuable though but very few can actually time it for the team.
Save your self = condi removal on the team, great utility and gets even better with 10 points in honor for cd and traited virtues to cleanse the guardian.
Imo this leave SY and SyG (and perhaps 50% of Retreat) and SyG already has condi removal which means in practice honor becomes a 30 point investment to get condiremoval in SyG and maybe retreat if you want the extra aeigs.
Imo a triple shout guardian is kind of poor support even though i see the merits of it in less skilled teams.
For condiremoval gs/whirl+ SY+purging flames+traited virtues out shines triple shouts any day of the weak when it comes to condi removal as well. But thats me.
I only take triple shouts when theres no use for reflects or other utility. Theres no point running around with wall if im not using it, same goes for purging flames or hallowed ground. Although arguably they are good for the fire fields. Ive recently changed my build to not have shout cooldowns so i may start running with them + retreat instead. Anyway the only utilies people ever use in dungeons are shouts, consecrations and shield of the avenger. When most of those consecrations arent needed your going to be running with mostly shouts as they can always provide a use.
For DPS:
DS build based on crit damage and Dperception > Dagger crit build
Base power dagger (so low crit) > DS based power with Dperception
Also DPS…
Please enlighten us. What do you think DPS means?
If you guys seriously think your doing good damage with lifeblast ill just leave you to stew in your ignorance. I generate a fair amount of might with sigil of strength and if i didnt id still be doing more damage than the DS build. I did another vet giant kill after getting scholar runes and a bloodlust sigil. Killed it in 19 seconds with a poor rotation, I believe thats 3 seconds faster than the DS build which was self generating might and vuln a lot better. Lifeblasts hit harder on my build aswell, they just crit slightly less often. So really 30/10/0/0/30 is just superior DS dps but it still doesnt beat dagger in any situation. Even if you have interrupt dagger dps or whatever. If your a bad player I can understand that using dagger might be a dps loss but thats not what were discussing.
My killtime without scholars was around that too (~19sec) and my rotation was far from complete (I even used one axe auto at start). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXdGjHVR8mw
And I already stated the advantages of both builds groupwise earlier this thread.
Ill do some more tests tonight, because after seeing the calculated dps for the 2 builds it really doesnt make sense that life blasting keeps up so well.
Sounds interesting. Ive been meaning to do arah more often. Im not a total expert but ive done melee lupi plenty of times and am very familiar with p2, p3 and p4. I dont really do p1, but thats mainly because of the ooze.
Dagger 1 and 3 have quite the aftercasts, so no you finish a dagger 1 chain in around 1.4 seconds while a Axe 1 attack goes off in around 1 second.
But overall melee damage > safe position of range.
How do you know that ? Is there any source that tells us the cast time of 2nd and 3rd dagger chain attacks ?
Or you just tried it ?
There is a very old thread that will give you fairly decent estimates. Most seem fairly accurate, but some are a bit off; dagger 1 chain f.i.: in one of his recent videos, Nemesis did 17 full chains in about 33 seconds which would put the chain around 1.95 sec instead of 2.2 sec.
You can (and should just like in mobas) cancel the aftercasts of 1 and 3 by pressing esc/keybind on mouse you use for it, speeds up both dagger and on DS 1, 2 (UW), 4; so if you got a mouse with 2 or more additional buttons just click 1-2-1-1-2.
Surely thats more of an exploit than the stuff you claim speedrunners do as exploits.
Just keep in mind that if you go condition damage you are USELESS is any group. That’s not a necromancer thing either, any class that heavily invests in condition damage is useless in any sort of group content, because your teammates will constantly overwrite most of your conditions whether they want to or not.
And dagger is the absolute best weapon for a necro. If you don’t want to use a dagger then you might as well skip necromancer alltogether (unless you really want condition damage, then get a scepter and keep yourself in 1v1 fights only).
PS. If you don’t want to go melee berserker, then you’re out of luck, because ALL classes are supposed to go melee berserker in dungeons. Blame Anet for being terrible at designing their dungeon mechanics.
More mindless zerker spam… hint hint these are the kind of people that caused all the necro nerfs
Because zerker necro is soooo strong… You really do come out with the stupidest posts sometimes. Anyway can you answer my question. What do you think dps means?
ofc its relevant if you can add better utility and more dps by moving points into other lines.
Either people invest in honor because:
1. They dont know better and actually think its the best dps options, its been marketed so for a very long time and people might have bought it.
2. They need the HP cushion/survuvability the line offers
3. They desperately need PoV of because of some obscure reason.
4. Or a combination of the 3.
regarding EM, i described a test in this thread i have done with my tpvp teammates in fractals and i can tell you before that test i had the exact same opinion as you, that it was great and a must. But i realized it was mere an opinion and havent used it ever after that, not even in my frontline pusher build.
Fraps and encounter and set the team up so you are the only one giving out might and watch the clip and se how many stacks you have in average on the team.
But frankly it doesnt matter, traited consecrations with 25% boon duration outshines Em any day of the week as a complimentary might stacker.
Its not better utility in all situations though. Thats the point. I really like 10/25/0/10/25 but the standard skills I run around with are shouts. I swap them out if I need reflects or we have a LH ele. But for the most part i run with 3 shouts. Which im pretty sure is how most guards have their bar as standard. You can argue all you want but both builds have their merits and their disadvantages. Its preference. Do you want more dps but less condi removals or do you want more condi removals and slightly less dps. Its situational.
For DPS:
DS build based on crit damage and Dperception > Dagger crit build
Base power dagger (so low crit) > DS based power with Dperception
Also DPS…
Please enlighten us. What do you think DPS means?
If you guys seriously think your doing good damage with lifeblast ill just leave you to stew in your ignorance. I generate a fair amount of might with sigil of strength and if i didnt id still be doing more damage than the DS build. I did another vet giant kill after getting scholar runes and a bloodlust sigil. Killed it in 19 seconds with a poor rotation, I believe thats 3 seconds faster than the DS build which was self generating might and vuln a lot better. Lifeblasts hit harder on my build aswell, they just crit slightly less often. So really 30/10/0/0/30 is just superior DS dps but it still doesnt beat dagger in any situation. Even if you have interrupt dagger dps or whatever. If your a bad player I can understand that using dagger might be a dps loss but thats not what were discussing.
Pure of voice gives you potentially 3 seperate condi removals. The other condi removals are higher cooldown. For fights like alpha p1 the burning attack happens at pretty spread out intervals. You can cleanse it more effectively with shouts and pure of voice. Its a good trait when you arent maxing out the kitten but as you have said there are alternatives. And even though elusive power isnt that greakittens still something, so honor isnt completely wasted. You also get EM which is not a bad trait either. If you want examples of bad traits just look at the necro, most of them are a complete joke.
DPS is absolutely primal in the game but does not mean that you 100% sacrifice all vestiges of self-preservation in pursuit of it.
I agree with that but it seems that line of thinking doesn’t resonate with the people pushing the idea that DPS is best for PVE which was the point I was making with Spoj who thinks anyone that doesn’t understand why a DPS build wouldn’t use PoV is ignorant.
I didnt say that rofl. I said him claiming that “honour in a dps build is for a hp sponge” is ignorant. Honor is for pure of voice. I dont take pure of voice anymore in my dps build but 0/30/0/30/10 is a perfectly valid dps build, its not the best for damage but its good and it provides good support.
I drop below 7.7k HP quite frequently. Mostly because the dagger really makes you belly up for the damage it does. I even drop below 3k on occasion to, in which I usually just go into DS and then wait for an opportunity to use a healing skill. There is a further thing to add to this, too.That 16.3% increases the overall effectiveness of heals, so you can take that 3K HP, and add an extra 850 for every consume conditions, as well as 16.3% of every heal your teammates give you. In long battles that last over a minute, this threshold for “the armor just saved you” gets pushed to 6.4K HP, for using consume conditions 4 times or more.
I wouldn’t even know how to begin factoring in life force generation. So all in all, that extra 315 toughness contributes a lot, and at a minuscule decrease in damage that is less than what the RNG in the game varies anyway.
The increased precision and target the weak more than make up for it. Plus with points in curses you can take banshees wail which is a pretty big dps increase along with weakening shroud which does damage while granting fury while flashing DS, also makes target the weak more effective due to weakness. Soul reaping on the other hand doesnt have any dps increase traits worth taking over curses. Even with deathly perception life blast isnt good dps. Its less than 1 life blast per second due to aftercast. Dagger on the other hand completes a full rotation in just over 2 seconds and does a hell of a lot more.
Heres the thread where some number were worked out. Page 3.
I got higher numbers when calculating dps before but i suspect i used a lower armour value. Guang is pretty much known for being the king of excelwars 2 on the dungeon forums. Dont know exactly how he gets his numbers but he does know what hes talking about when it comes to calculating sustained dps of a rotation. He mentioned on a gw2guru thread that life blast dps with deathly perception was about 7.2k dps which is quite a bit lower than dagger.
I would agree with that definition of DPS guardian so back to spoj ….
I don’t think someone that doesn’t believe that a DPS guardian should take 30 Honor for Pure of Voice is ignorant because that trait doesn’t DO anything if your goal is to increase you sustained damage.
What that DOES tell me is that any Guardian taking Pure of Honor then flipping around and saying you need to be uber-DPS with full Zerkers in all PVE content is being hypocritical.
Because you take a dps guard for the support they provide while dealing good damage. You can go maximum dps, but you almost always need someone in the group to have condi cleanse. The maximum damage role is pretty much never taken by the guard, thats left for LH ele’s, warriors, thieves… basically every class except the guardian. Because the guard has such good defensive traits that can be taken without sacrificing too much dps.
Remember how this discussion started? Brutaly claiming that people would take Honor into DPS builds just for a “hp cushion”, which is outright bull manure.
I think his point was that people take Honor in DPS builds because they are ignorant of how to get better DPS from a different trait allocation … he just said it in a nicer way than I just did.
Well then hes ignorant of why you take a dps guard. The reason many dps guards go into honor is for pure of voice.
Just a note to remember. Using DS for dps is some of the worst dps you can do. Which is why 30/10/0/0/30 is a bad build for dungeons when going for damage. I can understand it for a solo purpose due to stability in DS and that flexibility you have with DS traits, but for group based stuff its a bad build. Also axe #2 is not good dps either, the channel time is way too long for the amount it hits for.
My definition of dps is total damage divided by the time it takes to complete a full skill rotation and all the cool-downs, or several minutes if you want to include an elite skill or get a more accurate average.
Dps does not typically apply to peak rate of damage, which is more of a burst rate. All professions have skills for rapid damage, some more than others, so spike damage is also an important measure. Arenanet watches both metrics. That is one reason why some skills have longer cool-downs. An example is Putrid Mark bursting off of Chillblains with the CD on PM setting CD on the burst.
Yeah and thats the calculation of dps I was referring to. Its about 11k dps for all classes when fully buffed with might, fury, vuln, banners, spotter and frost spirit. With max dps builds.
too bad my set up character is gone ..
i normally run cof .. for dungeon token and fast gold i got 4 warrior and 1 mesmer lvl 80
just altering them and run the dungeon as fast as i can the whole day
easy money easy token i have many token i used to mystic forge great sword
this changes feels stupid having 4 warrior on my account
Spoj: Is Unyielding Blast (Soul Reaping VI) really worth it? If you’re just flashing DS on cooldown, you wouldn’t be using Life Blast at all right?
Not really, but there isnt any clear better alternative. You could take the DS cooldowns trait so you can aoe burst slightly more frequently, but thats rarely needed. Its kind of like warriors discipline line, everyone takes signet mastery because theres nothing better. On the plus side piercing life blasts are pretty good when you need to range for whatever reason, and you can sort of use them as a cleave. If im running around open world i take spectral mastery so i can keep permanent swiftness with spectral walk and locust swarm. Also can be considered if you need spectral walk/armour for a stunbreak.
