Guild Wars 2

Well for PvE you’re team is basically wasting a party slot if they have a player geared as a tank. Larg-scale WvW fights however require defensive stats.

If you are looking for builds try metabattle.com, hopefully you’ll find everything you need there

D/P counters S/D.

Also, *Red Levin. :P Plus it’s not over yet, it’s Best of 5.

Celestial D/D is probably the easiest and most effective ele build currently, it’s easy to pick up but hard to master, I’d recommend that for beginners. Watching top streamers also helps a lot – there are plenty of streamers listed below the build on the page I’ve linked.

But if you really want a diverse class that feels like a puzzle at times, you might as well enjoy playing engineer too.

They are warm and fuzzy no doubt. But other pets provide better dps / party utilities.

In general you can try metabattle.com when looking for builds – they list pets too.

And 1 golden rule of rangers, never use bears :P

Btw making a build for 1v1 servers achieves nothing. You won’t learn to use your conquest build, which is a problem because that’s the only gamemode, plus you won’t learn how to teamfight and position yourself. People often swap utilities and adjust traits based on their next opponent, that’s another thing you can’t do in rated. If you want to improve, then at least use your tournament build and don’t change anything – makes it a lot harder but that’s how you improve.

You can try this – but as Grey posted, current meta’s guardian-ele-warrior-necro.

Well in general condi is more viable. Power offers some insane burst, but it’s also a lot easier to take down.

Most necs are currently running this build in pvp.

And no, you’re not in WvW, you shouldn’t really run hybrid necs in rated play :P But they are good for 1v1 servers.

DrDivine.5378:

Vikkela.7261:

DrDivine.5378:

Which do you think is better to go with my mace in a AH build?

Mace: #1 Melee cleave #2 Symbol on your location #3 Block/Damages. Melee weapon so you need a target to stay close
Shield: #4 Does absolutely nothing #5 Pushes enemy away from you
Focus: #4 Blind and Regen #5 Blocks attacks or damages enemy

The Mace and Focus has a good symbiosis while the shield at its current state does the opposite of what you want when you’re using a Mace.
I’d love if they Shield would get a whole rework, #4 could do something like “Block 1 attack, apply 2 second of Chill on attacker” like some NPCS already do. But now? Focus in 99% of all cases

I guess I need to learn how to live with focus then, I do have a few questions though. Should I use strength in numbers? Another thing I always wanted to know is why sigil of intelligence on both is always recommended? A general strat on staying alive might help too xD

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Altruistic_Healing_Bunker <- gear, traits, sigils, viable options etc are listed here along with usage.

Your crit chance is pretty low, Sigil of Intelligence helps to proc the trait that gives you vigor upon landing a crit hit.

I’d recommend this one for dungeons.

And in general if you are looking for builds you can use this site

Plus as an engineer, you might also find wolfineer useful.

Focus. Shield won’t save you while CC’d but focus 5 can, not to mention it can secure stomps with both skills.

While shiled has its moments ~96,4% of bunker guards take focus.

Whatever they migh change in the future, spirit weapons shouldn’t be any stronger in PvP. AI carries players way too hard in this game, even if most of it can be countered they offer too much reward for 0 effort.

The combo works like this: you hit your opponent with HS, then you gain Stealth because you used HS in the combo field, and then you can backstab the other guy and get revealed. The HS part should not reveal.

Edit: you can also find top streamers associated with a build in every build’s page on metabattle. For D/P you can watch Caed and Levin.

Welcome back :P

D/D is more of a WvW build, you really shouldn’t use it in pvp. Every other thief can take it down and you have a lot harder time in teamfights too.

D/P is perfectly fine, there are 2 main versions of that build currently, you can find both here.

Other viable thief builds are S/D and S/P.

And in general you can catch up with buildes you can use metabattle.

For skyhammer, just have a hammer instead of GS in a meditation build and knock people off with banish + Judge’s Intervention. Not really recommended but you can also take shield instead of scepter for an additional knockback.

In general if you are looking for builds you can try this.

For DPS I’d recommend this build.

For bunker, this sees the most play.

There’s also a usage guide for both.

1) On-Swap sigils work with attunements, which means you’ll maintain a high Poison uptime – important because that reduces the healing your enemies recieve.
2) You are doing it right
3) You can Immobilize them with Magnetic Grasp, or CC them with Updraft and Earthquake to make it easier to land – but also more obvious. You can also apply burning by dodging to them on fire attunement.
4) Yeah, you can’t really land it without lightning flash and even then most people will dodge it because they know the trick. It’s easier to land if you are just entering the teamfight (so some enemies still haven’t noticed you), start casting it far away and then lightning flash in. That usually works, but it’s really rare that an ele can land even 1 CEs. But don’t really attempt it in the middle of the fight, because you are a free kill while casting this.
5) Mist Form is more common with s/f and s/d, so Berserker Amulet, because they can’t really manage being focused for too long, they need something that negates enemy burst. On Cele D/D you are a lot more tanky, so those eles usually pick Armor Of Earth – stunbreaker, stability, and allows them to keep casting – both skills allow you to stomp enemies. As for other utilities, the ones you currently have are totally fine.
6) Your entire fire attunement is about bursting, but you can use skill 3 to evade attacks too, even when immobilized. Burning Speed’s distance can be change by camera positioning – if your camera is in “bird’s eye view” (so aimed at the ground) the distance you travel will be smaller, so you can aim it better with this trick. Air autoattack is a nice cleave and has some great skills for damage mitigation like skill 3 or even skill that applies weakness. Updraft gives Evasion, you can use it to avoid damage while immobilized just like Burning Speed, but this one also CCs your opponent. If you are on low HP, click the ground so the game cancels target (and make sure you don’t have auto-targetting on) and then just Ride the Lightning out of the fight. Water proivdes excellent healing and soft CC with chills too.

Hope this helps

Welcome back

Well metabattle might just help, it’s a site that collects viable builds for all PvE/PvP/WvW. You’ll find up-to-date builds for every content.

Bhawb.7408:

A wiki is only as good as the collective group that manages it. In the case of metabattle, this means for you to make a change to a page, even if the build is obviously bad and you know it, you have to convince the community that you are right. Its not worth the effort, frankly, I spend enough time here dealing with people who don’t know what they are talking about.

Its a great idea, but especially in the context of the MM build there, it isn’t a great resource right now if you want the best version of a build possible. It is better than seeing people running around with Blood Fiend, but not by a ton.

So reckless editing should be allowed without people having to bring up reasons or sources for the changes they are about to make? Even if they are right, I guess it would be extremely hard to track every unannounced change. All you have to do is tell the change and why is that better. Takes 1 min.

NeXeD.3042:

Yeah I was only seeing if it would make him rage, I don’t use the site.

Idk, I think it would be awesome if GW2 had a site where you could get builds for every type of content. Getting every minor thing right on 100+ builds to the last sigil is not a job for 4-5 people, that’s why it’s a wiki – everyone who notices that something’s not right can propose changes on the discussion pages (or edit it, but careful with that).

Also it’s a lot harder to get everything right on less-widespread builds that you barely ever see at tournaments. Plus it’s a even harder to polish a build and agree on a final version if the outcome can’t be better than mediocore. But IMO the Meta/Great categories are all correct. But feel free to prove me wrong, because then changes will be made.

Having a site like this also reduces the chance of people running around in soloque with totally random builds which improves matches for everyone.

On my main acc I play GS/Longbow a lot in soloque around top ~30, and no, please don’t increase cast time. The whole point of it is that you need to find a way to land your burst this adds counterplay too.

There are many other ways to make the set better, like moving around some traits on the Strength line (the minor is is just useless and we have to put 4 points into that usually).

Or give 100b a 50% chance to block projectiles, so we can use it defensively while being kited.

Phase retreat is really strong if you know how to use it. Then there’s Chaos Storm, which is a great skill when used on a downed enemy/ally, IMO this skill is the main reason (this or PR). iWarlock isn’t a bad skill either, can hit hard.

Yout autoattacks also stack Might and Fury which sets the stage for your burst.

xXBurningEmberXx.6085:

I mean, if someone cant see the animations on asura compared to charr, then they should get their sight checked… Its pretty easy to see your enemy flying at you in a heartseeker…

An asura warrior dodge-jumping is almost the same as Earthshaker for example. Or try to notice an asura raising his staff 1.2k range away from you while you are in a teamfight.

A charr, on the other hand..

Tengu.5267:

The animations are easy to see, with that said it doesn’t matter anymore. due to the new standard character model option.

It still matters in soloque.

So yes, it is disadvantage in PvP unless you’re only doing Teamque and every opponent you face enabled the standard enemy models in the options.

In general if you are looking for builds you can use metabattle.com, they have builds for pretty much every type of content, especially PvP, so once you start playing that it might be useful

As a mesmer, you can also find some Phase Retreat guides (so basically a list of tricky teleport spots on maps).

Welcome back

In general if you are looking for builds you can try metabattle, you’ll find working builds for every type of content there, organized by effectiveness.

You can also find 99% of builds played by top players on metabattle too, organized by effectiveness and expanded with usage guides and viable choices for customization.

As for turrets, I’m not sure how far that build can carry a player. Takes 0 effort to be effective in 1v1, I don’t doubt that. But you are useless unless an enemy makes you useful – by that i mean that you can’t really rotate with a turret build and in a teamfight you are pretty much useless most of the time -> you will be basically afk on a sidepoint. If an enemy tries to take the point and you defend it, then you were useful. If they let you stay there and decide to 4v5 your team, then you just make your team lose the game.

And yeah, watching top players fight and rotate is also an important part of learning the game. Just don1t mimic everything they do unless you understand why they did that. Just because they are usually confident they can take far does not mean you should be pushing far 24/7, common mistake of soloque.

Renn.8241:

Correct me if I’m wrong guys but, isn’t it know pointless to have 2 sigils of the same category on a weapon.
i.e. 2 on hit sigils won’t activate , 2 stack sigils won’t activate

They changed it some months ago. Now you can have 2 of everything except for stacking sigils afaik.

I hope you do realize warriors aren’t magic users, so they will never add teleportation to the class mechanics.

mrjediconsular.4396:

what type of gear should i focus on for the D/P blind build?

Every single detail you could possibly need can be found on the build pages I’ve linked before.

Condi ele’s fun :P but the least effective one, borderline viable, wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. It’s different from Diva’s but they already have 1 for pvp:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F_4_Signet_Condi

dominik.9721:

pls don’t try wvw roaming builds in pvp. they suck even in wvw and are even worse in pvp

This. Either play hambow or GS/Lb but do not play Hammer/GS.

Warlord.9074:

witcher.3197:

Well, the PvP section is based on top streamers and tournaments and PvE on DnT guides, but seems like you know better. If I had to choose between builds used by ROM and other players at major tournaments or ones produced by your made-up arguements, I’d pick the first one.

Well then Id suggest that you listen to those people then. And not somthing that anyone can edit or change.

Moderators exist to check the edits made to pages.

Warlord.9074:

Yah people always make that argument but If you are swaping weapons as a warrior whenever the CD is up your doing something wrong.

Nobody said you swap weapons every 5 sec. But if you swap weapons sooner than 9 seconds you make that sigil worthless. There are so many excellent sigils you could take instead of a 2nd energy sigil you will barely proc.

With merciless hammer there is no cool down shorter than 9 secs on hammer why would you swap back to hammer if your skills are on CD for example

Earthshaker has a CD shorter than 9 secs. Even that auto-attack melee cleave can be handy, and bow’s autoattack is pretty lackluster in a teamfight, once you use up your skills there there is no point at staying on that set. And people usually take the energy sigil on Longbow, not Hammer so it fits perfectly. On LB normally you shouldn’t spend 10 seconds.

Not to mention that your weapon skills don’t start recharging when you leave the set, they start it when you use them. By the time you leave Hammer you already have some skills on a CD of only some seconds, usually.

That means people who base there arguments on tool tips rather than game mechanics shouldn’t be voting on anything thats why I wont use that site. Becasue I don’t take advices from unreliable sources.

Well, the PvP section is based on top streamers and tournaments and PvE on DnT guides, but seems like you know better. If I had to choose between builds used by ROM and other players at major tournaments or ones produced by your made-up arguements, I’d pick the first one.

It’s a PvP build, but you might draw some inspiration from it
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_D/F_4_Signet_Condi

However condi ele is far from being the most effective ele build.

For beginners I’d recommend this one:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Dagger/Dagger

Tanky, good damage with might stacking, and probably the easiest set to play. It’s also the most common ele build at tournaments. But if you want to browse viable builds in general metabattle has plenty

If you’re looking for builds try metabattle.com – I’m sure you’ll find everything you need there.

For PvP, these are the viable builds:

• D/P
• S/D
• S/P

You can also find usage guides on every build’s page Viable options for traits/sigils/skills/runes/etc are also listed.

Sube Dai.8496:

It just highlights how uninformed/unskilled the player base is.

Rangers are still not viable in tpvp…

Still not viable.

Therefore the qq is completely without substance.

Ranger’s totally viable in PvP. I’d say the reason why you don’t see many rangers is because the current teams were formed when ranger was kinda bad, so they don’t have ranger players. But they do well in higher tier teamque and soloque.

TCG even swapped warrior for ranger. But people on these forums think that ranger = longbow. Try condi

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Condition_Survival – this build’s a beast, especially on sidepoints.

Another thing is, on lower ratings peole QQ because they can’t dodge a rapid fire. On higher ratings, people QQ about rangers who just stand at 1.5k range autoattacking and that makes them think longobw is a bad weapon for bad players – there’s more to that build, you just don’t see that many good rangers around. Not to mentione ele’s so OP teams often take 2 of them, which greatly reduces the spot for other classes.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Double_Ranged_Shatter

This is the best and most frequent mesmer PvP build atm. But if you dislike staff you can also use this version:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Traditional_Shatter

Warlord.9074:

witcher.3197:

Warlord.9074:

witcher.3197:

Warlord.9074:

Meta battle is good if you are not sure. But knowing better myself a lot of the builds on there are not optimal or totally correct.

It’s a wiki you can always decide to spend 1-2 mins and correct them. But first propose changes on the discussion page, because it might be you who’s wrong sometimes (as metabattle builds are 90% based on DnT guides and major Pvp tournaments)

Out of curiosity, which are some choices you don’t agree with?

Just a quick glance at the destroyer builds since I was helping someone in another thread. no one serious uses forceful GS in PVP….Its pretty much a red flag.

Ah that’s WvW, probably the hardest section to make. Getting builds for that is like building up the Pvp section based on hotjoin. There is no relyable source to draw builds for that and people can never agree on a build. But what I’ve experienced is that WvW players put that 4 into Arms and Pvp players put that into Strength.

yup that and any time i see a PVP or WvW build without energy sigils…I don’t even know how the community votes on these. Since I don’t know anyone serious who doesn’t use at least 1 and usually 2.

Idk, if you check the PvP section basically every builds has the energy sigil. But I don’t think any sane warrior would take 2 energy sigils – they have a 9 sec shared CD, warriors have a 5 sec weapon swap CD, 1 of those sigils would just go to waste.

Warlord.9074:

witcher.3197:

Warlord.9074:

Meta battle is good if you are not sure. But knowing better myself a lot of the builds on there are not optimal or totally correct.

It’s a wiki you can always decide to spend 1-2 mins and correct them. But first propose changes on the discussion page, because it might be you who’s wrong sometimes (as metabattle builds are 90% based on DnT guides and major Pvp tournaments)

Out of curiosity, which are some choices you don’t agree with?

Just a quick glance at the destroyer builds since I was helping someone in another thread. no one serious uses forceful GS in PVP….Its pretty much a red flag.

Ah that’s WvW, probably the hardest section to make. Getting builds for that is like building up the Pvp section based on hotjoin. There is no relyable source to draw builds for that and people can never agree on a build. But what I’ve experienced is that WvW players put that 4 into Arms and Pvp players put that into Strength.

Frenk.5917:

Guts.4967:

They should do something about might stacking & celestial first before changing anything else.

These were just few previews. I believe more of them are coming. Prolly they’ll do that too.

@ Guts – changing Cele might stacking would be extremely unfair around the time of major tournaments. It’s too impactful. Don’t expect any changes until the WTS ends, which is December.

@Frenk – why would they show such minor changes if huge ones are coming too? I’m sure these are the only changes. It’s more of a “we have to show we make frequent balance changes, let’s make up a balance patch by changing 1 minor thing on every class”. But because of the reason I’ve mentioned before, i can understand their decision.

Warlord.9074:

Meta battle is good if you are not sure. But knowing better myself a lot of the builds on there are not optimal or totally correct.

It’s a wiki you can always decide to spend 1-2 mins and correct them. But first propose changes on the discussion page, because it might be you who’s wrong sometimes (as metabattle builds are 90% based on DnT guides and major Pvp tournaments)

Out of curiosity, which are some choices you don’t agree with?

In general if you are looking for builds try metabattle.com

You can find working builds for every content type.

Well nobody’s using Rifle anywhere. :P (afaik)

But for GS use this one: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_GS_Axe/Mace

Dragonfeu.4356:

Sagramor.7395:

Getting farther from Bruiser and closer to LB power ranger.

Yeap, my build is changing.

What about this?

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNEQNBlYDbkQNUVwGsbYLW+r/Ku2rdg9gabA0At7hrdH4NwpshlQWA-T1CBABGt/gWK/6TjAaKBh4CIUp6PS8gCA4ICknOEGOIA6ppIAACwOHO+mv5bf7bf7oP3oP3oPnhLchLchLcSBExyI-w

Shortbow is a Condition weapon, it’s a very very bad idea for a Power build.

Welcome back!

There is a new site called metabattle which collects viable builds for every aspect of the game. You should find everything you need there.

Meditation guard is probably one of the strongest 1v1 specs in the game. If you want to try it out in PvP, I’d recommend this build:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant

Also has a usage part to it.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Rifle_Hybrid
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Tool/optional_kit – with grenade kit

lordkrall.7241:

How should they follow up on them though?

Afaik the “Ready Up!” show was created with the purpose of streaming the progress of PvP developement every 2 weeks, which is a pretty cool idea. We had 1 show about gamemodes so far out of 22 ready ups.

It’s been a while since any ranger (aside from spirit) was considered viable so I think people just want to enjoy the class a bit, especially power, which was joke tier before the patch. I’d say it’s nearly balanced, but most people who take Power Ranger are newbies and it’s easy to outplay them that’s why some people think the spec’s bad and not the player behind it. Others just facetank a full rapid fire without dodge/block/interrupt/LoS and then complain about how OP it is.

It will wear off