587 replies to this topic

[Strife025]

TakumiUsui, on 07 December 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

You should be carefull with the Mod that lets you use your Mouse buttons. Since it IS a third party program that lets you do stuff that other players without it cannot do.

Combat mod has been around for a while and has many dev comments regarding it, they've pretty much said they aren't going to ban for it.

I can understand if someone is hesitant but after the back and forth between Gaile and the community when the mod first came out I'm not worried about it. I've been using it since September or whenever it first came out.

CrystallineDIVA, on 07 December 2012 - 12:16 AM, said:

It's okay guys... Go with this bar. I am just very happy that even after this long time most players still have absolutely NO idea how to build their main character. This is actually very funny!

Well at least your build is still 70-75% as effective as real builds, so it will not occur to most PvEers (who don't play dungeons etc.) that they are holding back HUGE TIME

This is an okay build for casuals etc...


Best regards!

Make a build or post some videos of your dungeon runs showing how much better your build is, until then I'll consider you a noob who can't back anything up. cya.

[snaketzu]

Don't listen to the trolls.  I leveled a guardian because I wanted something tanky with group utility and I held my eye on this build all the way.  Now that I've got it exotic geared I'm having more fun with it than I can remember having in an MMO in a good while.

Good dps output, some controller ability with the pull, a gap closer / make you miss ability (time the greatsword 3 ability for when the animation starts for a big attack on a champion or dungeon boss, damage prevention is as good as a ton of healing), tons of buffs for your party and yourself, two stun breakers, insane condition removal, and did I mention ridiculous tough?  Also you only need one set of high level gear, since you can pve and wvw in the same set of exotics.  I use a green magic find set, magic find % is the same on masterworks or exotics, you don't need to spend 20 gold on a mf set to be effective at farming if that's what you want to do.

If you have a guardian, give it a try.  I think you'll have loads of fun with it.

[kissmyelemental]

Good job on the build. This is what I currently use, although my gear is slightly different. I use standard AC p/t/v gear along with berserker jewelry, and my runes are ones that sustain boon duration. I may just end up switching these out for something that boosts vitality/precision though. Do notice that crit chance is a bit on the low side even with a 5% sigil on my weapons, but I can make this trade for the awesome survivability and decent sustained damage.

[arekkusuro]

i'm actually working on my PVT set right now as well, taking a bit longer though.. lol mixing CoE/HotW armour for looks and AC /HotW for the stats to transmutate onto the CoE. looking forward to trying it out.

currently running all knight's and decent crit chance. however, looking to switch up the playstyle slightly and might try boon duration for a chance. with that said, going with 2x monk, 2x water and 2 major sanctuary for the runes. goign to lose out on the condition removal on shouts and might give PoV a shot in the Honor line.

any other recommendations in terms of traits? might aim for a 0/0/30/30/10 build and see how that goes. mainly debating on what traits to pick up in the Honor line for best group play (mainly for dungeons).

[Strife025]

kissmyelemental, on 07 December 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

Good job on the build. This is what I currently use, although my gear is slightly different. I use standard AC p/t/v gear along with berserker jewelry, and my runes are ones that sustain boon duration. I may just end up switching these out for something that boosts vitality/precision though. Do notice that crit chance is a bit on the low side even with a 5% sigil on my weapons, but I can make this trade for the awesome survivability and decent sustained damage.

I've actually switched my gear around a bit now that I no longer WvW.

I pretty much got rid of all my p/v/t gear for a combination of knights and berserker. I also replaced the jewel in my knights earrings/amulet with exquisite ruby orbs since they offer the most amount of crit dmg with the least amount of toughness lost. I've managed to luckily complete my ascended gear, so my back and rings are the power/tough/crit damage set.

Basically, as I got better at dungeons and run dungeons with a bunch of good players now, I found myself not needing as much health, especially with agony in fractals. My main reason for PVT was for WvW as well or if you pug more and need more leeway for getting downed or tanking for your group. I have roughly the same toughness, but basically replaced my health for more crit to make dungeon runs go faster. Since I was hardly dieing anyways, I figured the health was a waste at this point.

For fractal build I run 0-10-30-20-10 now.

I'll try and work on updating my guide with some new info and current build in the next week or so.

[Morpurgo]

Strife025, on 07 December 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

I've actually switched my gear around a bit now that I no longer WvW.

I pretty much got rid of all my p/v/t gear for a combination of knights and berserker. I also replaced the jewel in my knights earrings/amulet with exquisite ruby orbs since they offer the most amount of crit dmg with the least amount of toughness lost. I've managed to luckily complete my ascended gear, so my back and rings are the power/tough/crit damage set.

Basically, as I got better at dungeons and run dungeons with a bunch of good players now, I found myself not needing as much health, especially with agony in fractals. My main reason for PVT was for WvW as well or if you pug more and need more leeway for getting downed or tanking for your group. I have roughly the same toughness, but basically replaced my health for more crit to make dungeon runs go faster. Since I was hardly dieing anyways, I figured the health was a waste at this point.

For fractal build I run 0-10-30-20-10 now.

I'll try and work on updating my guide with some new info and current build in the next week or so.

I would really love to see you writing it down.

Edited by Morpurgo, 09 December 2012 - 06:10 AM.

[Wspc]

Strife025, on 07 December 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

I'll try and work on updating my guide with some new info and current build in the next week or so.

I love to see that too :-) and thanks for the build you already provided and also for take time to answer people on forums.
Wish you all the best!

[Playboy]

Have you tried using Master Maintenance Oils? With your stats, you could gain ~8% critical chance or ~170 precision, at the least. Paired with the Omnomberry Ghosts, this is a crazy addition to survivability and damage output.

[Strife025]

Playboy, on 09 December 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

Have you tried using Master Maintenance Oils? With your stats, you could gain ~8% critical chance or ~170 precision, at the least. Paired with the Omnomberry Ghosts, this is a crazy addition to survivability and damage output.

Yep, although I usually just end up using the slayer potions for dmg and reduction for the dungeon I'm doing. But I covered that in my update video. Thanks.

[Playboy]

How do you have your 6-0 skills bound? I imagine it'd be a pain to use them with your mouse while also using combat mod.

[Strife025]

Playboy, on 11 December 2012 - 01:57 AM, said:

How do you have your 6-0 skills bound? I imagine it'd be a pain to use them with your mouse while also using combat mod.

I go over that in my build video at the end, but I have attack 1 bound to mouse left click, dodge to mouse right click, then my other 4 weapon skills and my heal bound to 1-5.

For my 3 skills and my elite, I have my elite bound to 'w' (I use eadf for movement) and my 3 skills bound to mouse wheel click, mouse wheel up, and mouse wheel down with combat mod. So I can easily hit any weapon skill or choose-able skill without moving my hands.

I'm not a fan of crappy MMO mice like Razer Naga since I come from a comp. fps background, so this setup works really well for me while still letting me use my MX518.

Edited by Strife025, 11 December 2012 - 07:48 PM.

[Shadowresli]

Thanks for posting your build.

I speccd my guardian accordingly and i'm having alot less trouble now. Gearwise im not there yet, cause i lack the necessary gold to buy the runes.

I'm also looking forward to do dungeons now, because i feel less a burden now for other players.

[earthcry]

So how do you get 103% crit damage?
30 from traits,
6 from armor,
9 from the weapon,
5 from the back,
9 from the earrings and amulet,
16 from rings.

That's 75. And 28 from being awesome?

[Strife025]

earthcry, on 12 December 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

So how do you get 103% crit damage?
30 from traits,
6 from armor,
9 from the weapon,
5 from the back,
9 from the earrings and amulet,
16 from rings.

That's 75. And 28 from being awesome?

There is some formula or stats that increase your crit damage as well, not sure exactly how it's calculated. Just take off all the armor of one of your characters or put on gear that has no % crit damage and you'll notice you still have crit damage on the tooltip.

I just go by whatever the tooltip says for my build

Edited by Strife025, 12 December 2012 - 10:30 PM.

[earthcry]

Strife025, on 12 December 2012 - 10:29 PM, said:

There is some formula or stats that increase your crit damage as well, not sure exactly how it's calculated. Just take off all the armor of one of your characters or put on gear that has no % crit damage and you'll notice you still have crit damage on the tooltip.

I just go by whatever the tooltip says for my build

If I take off all my gear I only have the +30% from the traits, I'm really curious what causes the surplus in your case. Care to test it by checking if each peace gives the right amount? As far as I know there's no secret formula, without runes and consumables it should be  the sum of the +dmg on your gear and trait.

Edit: Checked your first video, you have +39% there as you should have, 30 from traits and 9 from the weapon.

Edited by earthcry, 13 December 2012 - 03:02 AM.

[Strife025]

earthcry, on 13 December 2012 - 02:53 AM, said:

If I take off all my gear I only have the +30% from the traits, I'm really curious what causes the surplus in your case. Care to test it by checking if each peace gives the right amount? As far as I know there's no secret formula, without runes and consumables it should be  the sum of the +dmg on your gear and trait.

Edit: Checked your first video, you have +39% there as you should have, 30 from traits and 9 from the weapon.

I dug into it futher, it looks like the ascended rings are "bugged" somehow and are actually adding 22% crit damage each. I'm not sure if it's a tooltip bug or it actually adds that much though, maybe it's a good bug :x But that's where the mismatch is coming from right now.

[Another Newbie]

Hi Strife and everyone else,

I'm leveling a Guardian now and trying to figure out what build to run on him. I mainly do PvE, with some WvW and dungeons with friends (we're all quite bad, so I'm trying not to take your example on eq verbatim, simply because the group isn't the same and our skill level isn't remotely close. We play together, we die a lot, we have fun). At this point I'm debating between two builds: yours and the modified one in the Guardian of Lyssa build.

So my questions:

First, roughly what are your stats? I played the video but couldn't make it out clearly.

Second, I'm probably going to be using craftable eq, with maybe one piece of karma eq. What would you (general you, not just Strife) advise for armor, runes, trinkets, weapons, sigils? I'd follow the build but I imagine it differs slightly with craftable eq rather than the dungeon eq/lesser vit you're running now. I'm trying to get something that'll work well and have decent stats, and hopefully will work well in those three arenas (WvW/dungeon/PvE).

And are you still running 0/10/30/30/0?

And as I'm not yet 80, a little unsure on what health to aim for. I don't have a dedicated group and we're all pretty new at this, so trying to err on the side of caution if anything. A dead Guardian is pretty useless, after all.

[kissmyelemental]

Strife025, on 07 December 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

I've actually switched my gear around a bit now that I no longer WvW.

I pretty much got rid of all my p/v/t gear for a combination of knights and berserker. I also replaced the jewel in my knights earrings/amulet with exquisite ruby orbs since they offer the most amount of crit dmg with the least amount of toughness lost. I've managed to luckily complete my ascended gear, so my back and rings are the power/tough/crit damage set.

Basically, as I got better at dungeons and run dungeons with a bunch of good players now, I found myself not needing as much health, especially with agony in fractals. My main reason for PVT was for WvW as well or if you pug more and need more leeway for getting downed or tanking for your group. I have roughly the same toughness, but basically replaced my health for more crit to make dungeon runs go faster. Since I was hardly dieing anyways, I figured the health was a waste at this point.

For fractal build I run 0-10-30-20-10 now.

I'll try and work on updating my guide with some new info and current build in the next week or so.

I still love having at least 16k health lol. Especially for boss cheap shots and I'm a decent dungeon goer too. But I see your point.

[Strife025]

Another Newbie, on 14 December 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Hi Strife and everyone else,

I'm leveling a Guardian now and trying to figure out what build to run on him. I mainly do PvE, with some WvW and dungeons with friends (we're all quite bad, so I'm trying not to take your example on eq verbatim, simply because the group isn't the same and our skill level isn't remotely close. We play together, we die a lot, we have fun). At this point I'm debating between two builds: yours and the modified one in the Guardian of Lyssa build.

So my questions:

First, roughly what are your stats? I played the video but couldn't make it out clearly.

Second, I'm probably going to be using craftable eq, with maybe one piece of karma eq. What would you (general you, not just Strife) advise for armor, runes, trinkets, weapons, sigils? I'd follow the build but I imagine it differs slightly with craftable eq rather than the dungeon eq/lesser vit you're running now. I'm trying to get something that'll work well and have decent stats, and hopefully will work well in those three arenas (WvW/dungeon/PvE).

And are you still running 0/10/30/30/0?

And as I'm not yet 80, a little unsure on what health to aim for. I don't have a dedicated group and we're all pretty new at this, so trying to err on the side of caution if anything. A dead Guardian is pretty useless, after all.

You should be able to see it pretty clearly by going to 720p and full screen, but it's 2839 power, 39% crit chance, 103 crit damage (bugged because ascended rings are giving 22% instead of 8%), 3154 armor, and 15,455 health without WvW bonuses (usually in the mid 16000s with wvw bonus).

I no longer use any gear that can't be craftable except the 3 ascended pieces, which could be replaced with knight's stats and ruby jewels in them instead. So a combination of knights and berserker depending on your playstyle and how often you die. If you do need more health and for some reason don't want to spend karma or dungeon tokens which shouldn't be too hard to save up, you can look into valkyrie as well. I switch to 0-0-30-30-10 now since I do more fractals, and gave up my signet heal for the human racial heal. I did try 0-10-30-20-10 for a while, but empowering might is just way too good for sustained healing.

Also soldier runes are amazing if you run shouts, I would never change those.

Edited by Strife025, 14 December 2012 - 07:39 PM.

[Elysen]

Just a quick question I was wondering you could shed your opinion on ...

As I don't have any Ascended gear, and I'm yet to start doing fractals (due to no permanent groups), would you recommend 6/6 Knight & Staff, with Valkyrie Rings/Amulet/Accessories and Berserker GS? I'm still working on grinding AC to get Soldier's.

Your insight would be appreciated. Also subscribed.

Edited by Xephenon, 14 December 2012 - 11:09 PM.

[Mugen]

Xephenon, on 14 December 2012 - 10:59 PM, said:

Just a quick question I was wondering you could shed your opinion on ...

As I don't have any Ascended gear, and I'm yet to start doing fractals (due to no permanent groups), would you recommend 6/6 Knight & Staff, with Valkyrie Rings/Amulet/Accessories and Berserker GS? I'm still working on grinding AC to get Soldier's.

Your insight would be appreciated. Also subscribed.

I use a 0,10,30,30,0 build and I run full knights armor with valkyrie jewelery. I replaced the jewel on each jewelery with emerald. I also use a berserker greatsword with sigil of strength. I use lyssa runes on all armor pieces and run maintenance oil. This puts my crit chance at 52% which is more than enough to benefit from sigil of strength and its minor healing imo. I haven't really settled on food yet and been trying out a variety of them. I dont use any fractals gear. Here are my stats:

Attack: 2,844
Crit Chance: 52
Crit Dmg: 56
Armor 2,831
Health: 16,354 (using Plate of Lemongrass Poultry puts your hp at around 17,300)
What I really wanted was a common ground between wvw & pve so I don't have to keep my guardian in the attic till I feel like dungeoning xD. Anyways, hopes that helps.

[Playboy]

Vigorous precision. How do you think that will change functionality?

[earthcry]

Mugen, on 15 December 2012 - 12:11 AM, said:

I replaced the jewel on each jewelery with emerald.

Don't do that. The stat <> percentage ratio is the best on the jewels. Do the opposite, use +% jewels in a preferred accessory.

I use knight accessories with beryl jewels, the same as you just inverted.

[Mugen]

depends what stats your after ^^

[Playboy]

Actually, no. You can replicate the "desired" stats almost identically while maximizing total stats when using beryl/ruby jewels instead of trinkets.

[maxwolfie]

Can someone give some direction with levelling with this build, i.e. trait order, cheap gear, what skills to use? AH is not available until 60, so does that change things? New to Guardians (and pretty new to GW2 in general). Any help appreciated!

[Strife025]

Xephenon, on 14 December 2012 - 10:59 PM, said:

Just a quick question I was wondering you could shed your opinion on ...

As I don't have any Ascended gear, and I'm yet to start doing fractals (due to no permanent groups), would you recommend 6/6 Knight & Staff, with Valkyrie Rings/Amulet/Accessories and Berserker GS? I'm still working on grinding AC to get Soldier's.

Your insight would be appreciated. Also subscribed.

Yes a combination of knights and valkyrie could work if you do need more health and want to sacrifice some toughness for crit % in the meantime.

If you really want to maximize your stats though, going something like knight rings with valk jewels and then taking valk for hands, feet, or shoulders will cause you to lose less stat points. That's if you are a true min-maxer since jewels offers the most % crit with the least amount of stat loss, and rings have one of the worst ratios for crit % per stat point loss. I have it all outlined in my warrior guide for stat loss per % crit for each slot of gear which should be linked in my guardian guide.

Playboy, on 15 December 2012 - 04:23 AM, said:

Vigorous precision. How do you think that will change functionality?

Well the nerf does suck and we lose some healing. It really hurts more for soloing though. Basically AH is still really strong, just a bit less strong then before. I do think Empowering Might is pretty necessary though with how much AH healing it gives out in a group of 5 now. It didn't completely break AH dungeon build, but it did nerf it.

maxwolfie, on 17 December 2012 - 06:38 AM, said:

Can someone give some direction with levelling with this build, i.e. trait order, cheap gear, what skills to use? AH is not available until 60, so does that change things? New to Guardians (and pretty new to GW2 in general). Any help appreciated!

Leveling on guardian is really easy, it's so cheap to respec also you can really try out whatever. It's been a while but I did use meditations more like Judge's Intervention and whatever the clear condition meditation is. Just focus on things like 2 hand cooldown, and 15 in radiance 5 in virtues since it's really good for leveling when you're killing a bunch of trash mobs constantly.

[blinkxzero]

I'm running this build (kinda made it up as I leveled actually) and I have just hit 80. I don't really know what to do about gear, if anyone would outline it a bit for me.

It sounds like Power/Toughness/Vitality for my main gear (5/6 from Karma, 1/6 from AC tokens), with 6/6 solider runes? I guess my main question is then, what about jewelry? Should I be going all knights jewelry? What gems in those?

I want to be somewhat tanky but not drag the group down because my DPS is so low. Obv a lot of our support comes from the utility slots and our traits, but I think I have a grasp on those (running 0/0/30/30/10).

What is the best trait to get for the '10' in Virtues?

Thanks for all your help! I'm fairly experienced as a player (FOTM 14 on thief), but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Guardians.

Oh and I'll be using GS / Staff with obv Scepter / Focus in my baggie.

[AEnesidem]

blinkxzero, on 18 December 2012 - 12:15 AM, said:

I'm running this build (kinda made it up as I leveled actually) and I have just hit 80. I don't really know what to do about gear, if anyone would outline it a bit for me.

It sounds like Power/Toughness/Vitality for my main gear (5/6 from Karma, 1/6 from AC tokens), with 6/6 solider runes? I guess my main question is then, what about jewelry? Should I be going all knights jewelry? What gems in those?

I want to be somewhat tanky but not drag the group down because my DPS is so low. Obv a lot of our support comes from the utility slots and our traits, but I think I have a grasp on those (running 0/0/30/30/10).

What is the best trait to get for the '10' in Virtues?

Thanks for all your help! I'm fairly experienced as a player (FOTM 14 on thief), but I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Guardians.

Oh and I'll be using GS / Staff with obv Scepter / Focus in my baggie.

I run Full soldier gear from AC (fastest way to get it IMO) or HotW if you find people. With full soldier runes. I have Knight's trinkets with berserker jewels on them. My DPS is far from bad. Certainly the berserker jewels really helped my dps back up. I think i've quite hit the sweet spot with my gear now, as i can facetank most things while doing quite some damage and offer a decent amount of support.

thats only for dungeons and wvw though. i'm only at lvl 4 in fractals so i wouldn't know if another setup would be better there

[Playboy]

OP is using a mix of knight's and bersrker's armor and (iirc) knight's trinkets with ruby jewels.
I'm using soldier's chest and rest of armor is knight's, but that is because our traits are slightly different.
If you are using OP's traits, go with something similar to OP's armor.